Darla Shine's not a doctor, she just plays one on Twitter.
According to Shine — whose husband, Bill Shine, is White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and a former Fox News executive — having the measles as a child actually helps a person down the road. "The entire Baby Boom population alive today had the #Measles as kids," she tweeted Wednesday. "Bring back our #ChildhoodDiseases they keep you healthy and fight cancer."
Shine doesn't believe that the measles outbreak in the Pacific Northwest is an issue, tweeting, "Here we go LOL #measlesoutbreak on #CNN #Fake #Hysteria." She also lamented the fact that her kids received the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination when they were younger: "I had the #Measles #Mumps #ChickenPox as a child and so did every kid I knew — Sadly my kids had #MMR so they will never have the life long natural immunity I have." When Shine wasn't tweeting rhapsodically about the joy of the measles, she was gleefully following along with the media coverage she was receiving and declaring there are "so many ignorant people on #Twitter."
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that between 1994 and 2013, more than 70,000 measles cases were prevented in the United States because of vaccinations, People reports. Children who contract measles can die, and there is no scientific evidence that having the disease can prevent cancer or that vaccines lead to autism.
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