A rubella-based murder mystery
In 1943, while pregnant with her first child, Hollywood actress Gene Tierney came down with German measles (rubella), contracted during her solo appearance at the now-defunct Hollywood Canteen. (It was very early in the pregnancy and the star was simply trying to do her bit to rally the troops.) The infant, Daria, who was born prematurely, deaf, blind and mentally retarded, eventually, had to be institutionalized.
A year after the birth of her child, a former marine approached Tierney at a tennis party and revealed that she had snuck out of quarantine, while sick with German measles, to meet her idol at that famous venue. That is how the star and her yet-unborn child had got infected. Right around then, there was a newspaper report about an epidemic of rubella in Australia, which was followed by the birth of deformed children. This event first alerted public health authorities to a correlation between German measles and birth defects. The actress discusses all this in her memoir, Self-Portrait, which was published in 1979 but the tragic incident in the celebrity’s life had been well publicized even before.
This well-known story inspired the Agatha Christie murder mystery, “The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side” that later became a movie. In real life the actress did not murder her fan, of course. Instead she suffered from serious depression when she recalled the blow fate had handed her. Daria, Tierney’s well-cared for daughter lived for six decades, but till the end her mind was like that of a two-year old.
While rubella is one of the few viruses which can be transmitted to the embryo, it is not the only one, a obstetrician-researcher tells me. When a vaccine works perfectly, as childhood vaccines for diseases like mumps, measles and rubella do, it grants the person immunity for life. Still, women contemplating pregnancy could take a blood test to see if everything is up to snuff and re-take the vaccine if need be. Vaccines made from live viruses, like the M.M.R. for measles, mumps and rubella, and the chickenpox vaccine, should be taken before a woman conceives a child. But the typhoid, diphtheria (whooping cough) and polio vaccine can be given during pregnancy and, in fact, women are advised to take these vaccines during their third trimester, so their newborn can be conferred benefits against these diseases. (Infants don’t get their first shots till they are two months old and the mother’s vaccination can confer protection in the interim.)
Influenza is also an infection that can crossover to the child and cause serious pregnancy complications, including premature delivery and birth defects. Anyone who will be pregnant during the flu season is advised to get these shots as well. Even family members who will be around them are asked not to skip these flu shots.
Such real-life stories as Tierney’s heart-breaking though they are, are good to recall in an age of vaccine hesitancy because they remind us of what we have been spared thanks to immunization measures.