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The article looks at a 2013 outbreak of measles in Great Britain that health officials say is the result of a generation of children who were not vaccinated against the disease as infants in the 1990s. A paper published in 1998 by medical researcher Andrew Wakefield that linked the MMR (measles-mumps-rubellla) vaccine to autism, later found to be fraudulent, is noted as a main cause for parents choosing not to vaccinate their children.

The article looks at how the declining vaccination rates are causing cases of relatively rare illnesses such as measles, mumps, and polio to increase. Topics discussed include the increasing number of parents declining some or all routine vaccinations for their children, the need for at least 95 percent of a population to be vaccinated for so-called herd immunity to take effect, and an April 2011 measles outbreak at a school in Quebec. A discredited study linking autism and vaccines is noted.