(CC BY 2.0) frankieleon/Flickr Most of the claims made by anti-vaxxers in defending their refusal to vaccinate their children against measles and other diseases – that the vaccines cause autism, that they actually give some children measles, that they’re loaded with mercury and other toxins – have been shown again and again to be utterly groundless. But there is one argument that has been made against the measles vaccine in particular that actually seemed to have an element of intuitive reasonableness behind it. To wit: in battling the measles infection, the child’s immune system is toughened up, like going through a kind of biological boot camp, and thus becomes more able to resist and defeat other common childhood diseases. Lowers the death rate