Letter to the Editor: Response to Patrick Tierney's Article Entitled "The Fierce Anthropologist" Appearing in 'The New Yorker' of October

First, measles can be a devastating disease in a virgin population;

Plagues and Peoples: the Columbian Exchange - University of Manitoba

(Of smallpox) The attack rate in a virgin population was nearly 100% and the mortality rate over 50%. 

Ecological History and the World Distribution of Languages - Western Washington University

However, when a disease-tolerant population introduces its germs to a virgin population, the immunologically naive population suffers terribly while the disease-tolerant population remains unaffected.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7080183&dopt=Abstract

 

Trop Geogr Med 1982 Mar;34(1):3-6

Related Articles,

Measles and measles vaccine isolated amerindian tribes. I. The 1971 Trio ((Tiriyo) epidemic.

van Mazijk J, Pinheiro FP, Black FL.

Measles in an unvaccinated virgin population exacted a death toll of 4.2% which fell particularly hard on the age groups which would ordinarily be protected by maternal antibody. The organ system most affected was quite variable. When the virus spread to a largely vaccinated village it caused only one death. Herd immunity seemed to protect many who were not vaccinated. Vaccine failed to protect 7.7% of the recipients. Some of these failures may have been due to erroneous record, vaccination in the presence of maternal antibody or inactivated vaccine, but most occurred in a few family groups related by genetics and similar past immunological experience.

PMID: 7080183 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Natural History of Infectious Disease by Sir Macfarlane Burnet and David O. White

The response of virgin populations of man is attributable to their absence of specific immunity acquired in childhood rather than to any genetic susceptibility.