What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Does Measles Cure Cancer?

The totals are in for 2025, and it's been a great year for measles. According to the CDC, the number of cases of the disease identified in the US has risen from 285 in 2024 to 2,144 in 2025, the highest number of measles cases since 1990. We've already seen at least 171 measles cases in the first two weeks of 2026.

As you'd probably guess, experts pin the rise in measles to lower vaccination rates. I covered a number of vaccination and measles myths in this column months ago, but there is a new spin on measles that seems to be gaining some traction: A lot of people think contracting measles is good for your heath.

“There’s a lot of studies out there that show that if you actually do get the wild infection, you’re protected later. It boosts your immune system later in life against cancers, atopic diseases, cardiac disease, etc.,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Department of Health and Human Services secretary said in a recent Fox interview. Online, there are posts like this one from a chiropractor's Instagram page, using a clip from The Brady Bunch to argue that contracting measles and other diseases "prepares a child’s immune system for a long-term resiliency to chronic problems like cancers and heart disease." Others point to news stories like this from CNN to bolster claims that measles fights cancer.

Can measles fight cancer?

There is no evidence that measles infection can protect against cancer. Full stop. But whether measles can treat cancer is a little more complex. There is a small grain of truth here, but it's wrapped in a lot of misconceptions.

The most basic is the meaning of the word "measles." Oncolytic virus therapy uses genetically altered viruses, including the measles virus, to target cancer cells. A modified version of the measles virus was used successfully to treat a specific kind of cancer and boost immune response to the cancer. Mayo Clinic researchers report that one patient's incurable cancer went into remission, thanks to the virus. "But that's totally a therapeutic application of viruses, completely different than what happens with natural infections," said John Bell, a senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in an interview, so it's not “measles cures cancer," it’s “scientists weaponize a virus under controlled conditions."

The bottom line: The wild measles virus is a dangerous pathogen, not a cancer cure. Not only that, but part of the reason the virus therapy worked so well on the patient CNN covered was because she had been vaccinated for measles, so if genetically modified measles ever end up being used as cancer treatment, it's better to have been vaccinated than not.

Does contracting measles prevent heart disease?

One study in Japan found an association between measles and mumps infections and a lower risk of death from atherosclerotic heart disease. But critics have pointed out that this research relies on self-reporting within a pre-vaccine population. Given the virulence of measles, all of the people in the survey would likely have been exposed to measles as children even if they didn't remember it, so it's hard to draw any conclusions from this study.

Does contracting measles boost your immune system?

While being infected with the disease will likely result in being immune to measles afterwards, it harms your immune system as a whole. A 2019 study from Harvard Medical School published by Science, found that the measles virus can cause "immune amnesia," the wiping out of up to three-quarters of antibodies protecting against other infections like the flu or the bacteria that cause pneumonia. "The measles virus is like a car accident for your immune system,” Harvard University geneticist Stephen Elledge, the senior author of the Science study, told The Los Angeles Times.

"If your child gets the measles and then gets pneumonia two years later, you wouldn’t necessarily tie the two together. The symptoms of measles itself may be only the tip of the iceberg,” said the study’s first author, Dr. Michael Mina.

Meanwhile, we have extremely strong evidence that the measles vaccine doesn't cause a general weakening of the immune system—note, for example, the dramatic reductions in childhood deaths from other diseases in places where measles immunization programs are introduced. After measles vaccinations began in the United States in the 1960s, deaths from diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea were cut by half, and in populations where infectious diseases are more common, the reduction in mortality has been up to 80 percent.

Playing devil's advocate on measles

Let's assume critics are right, for the sake of argument. Even if contracting measles in childhood makes you less likely to get heart disease later in life and gives you a stronger immune system, it would still make sense to get immunized instead of infected.

Measles is a serious disease. Regardless of any future benefit, contracting measles is deadly in up to three of every 1,000 cases. About one child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions, hearing loss, and intellectual disability.

Vaccination for measles, on the other hand, is very safe. The most serious side effects come from severe allergic reactions, and that happens about in a one in a million doses. The measles vaccine generates immunity without the risk of encephalitis, without immune amnesia, and without gambling a child’s life on a hypothetical future payoff. If measles exposure truly primes the immune system in some beneficial way, vaccination captures the immune response while stripping out the damage. No matter how generous you are to the "infection is good" argument, infection is a dangerous and inefficient way to get there.