German Measles Menace

German measles (rubella), as most adults know it, is a pipsqueak disease which produces only a rash and a mild fever. But if pregnant women catch it, it can give their unborn babies heart disease, cataracts, bad teeth or even make them deaf mutes or idiots. Many such children die in the first few weeks of life. These frightening facts, which have just begun to worry baby doctors, were thoroughly aired last week by Manhattan's Dr. Philip M. Stimson, speaking before the New York Academy of Medicine.

Nobody gave German measles a second thought until 1941, when N. M. Gregg of Australia noticed that many babies whose mothers had had the disease early in pregnancy were born with congenital cataracts. Two years later a group of Australian doctors reported on some 50 babies of mothers who had had German measles during pregnancy: they found defects in all the children whose mothers were ill in the first two months of pregnancy, in about half whose mothers fell ill in the third month, in two out of 16 whose mothers got it later. One mother with a defective child did not even realize she had had German measles. Another, whose child was perfect, had had both German measles and mumps, but late in pregnancy.

Since last May several U.S. doctors have reported babies with congenital eye and heart defects which they ascribed to German measles in the mother. In trying to explain why this tragic aftermath of a trifling disease was never noticed before, some doctors guess that an unusually virulent strain of German measles virus may have appeared in Australia and been carried to other countries by heavy war time traffic. But Dr. Stimson thinks that doctors have just begun to notice what has been happening all along. Possible reasons why the worst damage is done in the early months: 1) the placental barrier which tends to prevent transmission of disease from mother to child takes several months to develop fully; 2) the embyro is more susceptible to infection than the fetus later on.

One doctor has suggested exposing all young girls to German measles. This would make most, but not all, permanently immune. Dr. Stimson's advice: keep pregnant women away from cases of German measles; if a woman is exposed, give shots of pooled human blood plasma or serum to fight the disease. He thinks abortion will "have to be considered very seriously" whenever the disease appears in early pregnancy.

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