As anti-vaccine sentiment rises nationally, prominent people have proposed splitting combination vaccines into individual shots. For example, the new acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently said that manufacturers should separate the combined measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine into three different (“mono-valent”) vaccines.
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The campaign to separate the MMR vaccine into three separate vaccines began in the late 1990s after a fraudulent study was published claiming a link between MMR vaccination and autism. At a press conference announcing this study, British physician Andrew Wakefield called for the vaccines against these three viruses to be split and administered separately.
Wakefield’s claims were based on fraudulent data, his paper was withdrawn, and his medical license was eventually revoked. Nevertheless, his message resonated with parents in the United Kingdom, and many began rejecting vaccination. In the United Kingdom, between 1998 and 2008, measles cases rose more than tenfold, leading to tens of thousands of preventable infections and dozens of deaths.
That dangerous idea has now been revived in 2025 in the United States.
