The measles vaccination can cause all the same side effects + joint pain/arthritis/etc that is a lifelong side effect - and more. It's not that parents don't want to take advantage of modern medicine...it's we don't see the value in this particular part of medicine and choose to utilize what doesn't have the side effects.
and kids can die after the vaccination, get encephalitis, get arthritis..
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1005209/?page=2
There's differing views....
my doctor said that at 9, when diagnosed with juvenile arthritis - it was vaccine related. It's not temporary, it's been a life long problem.
http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/tools/MMR_vaccine_rates_information_sheet.pdf (this is the sheet that goes with every vaccination)
Encephalitis was included as one of the vaccine injuries to be compensated for under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccinetable.html
The link you posted actually disproved your point that the MMR causes arthritis. It is also a citation from December of 1993. A great deal has been learned about both the MMR vaccine and the triggers for juvenile arthritis in the 21 years since that was written.
"....The virus used in current vaccines is Wistar RA 27/3 rubella virus. In a Canadian trial,of this vaccine arthralgia occurred in 41% of women, transient arthritis in 9% and persistent arthritis (>18 months) in 5%.
Joint symptoms rarely occur in men but arthralgia occurs in 4% of children and arthritis in 0.3%."
"
In both women and children the risk of frank arthritis following rubella immunization is less then that after natural rubella infection."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1005209/?page=2
"About 1 child in every 1,000 develops some type of juvenile arthritis. These disorders can affect children at any age, although rarely in the first six months of life. It is estimated that around 300,000 children in the United States have been diagnosed with JIA."
http://www.rheumatology.org/practice/clinical/patients/diseases_and_conditions/juvenilearthritis.asp
I could not find current figures on measles/rubella arthritis - probably because the vaccination rate in the US and other developed countries has been high enough to make this complication of natural measles infection rare. However, your link (and other citations) states that the rate is HIGHER in natural infection then in vaccinated cases. The links you have provided are also very old. Much medical research has been done in the past 20 years. Also, the strain of virus used in manufacturing the vaccine has changed in the past 20 years.
The rate of encephalitis following MMR vaccine is approximately 1 in 3,000,000. (And it has not been conclusively linked to a vaccine virus infection.).
The rate of measles encephalitis is approximately 1 in 1,000. Those are not remotely comparable odds. Since the rate of infection is approximately 90% for susceptible people exposed to the virus, it seems that you would have better odds getting the vaccine.
"In the section Post-Marketing Reports, encephalitis (infection of the brain) was added to reflect the receipt of reports following ProQuad vaccination. Previously, this adverse reaction was listed under adverse events seen after MMR or varicella vaccination.
Encephalitis has been reported approximately once for every 3 million doses of MMR vaccine. Post-marketing surveillance of more than 400 million doses distributed worldwide (1978 to 2003) indicates that encephalitis is rarely reported after MMR vaccination.
In no case has it been shown conclusively that encephalitis was caused by a vaccine virus infection of the central nervous system. There was no proven causal relationship between ProQuad and any of the reported cases that prompted the change in the label.
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/QuestionsaboutVaccines/ucm070425.htm
About one child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or mentally retarded.
http://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/complications.html
You stated that when you were a kid, you went to a GP. Pediatric Rheumatologists are a rare sub-specialty (approximately 100 board certified pedis rheumatologist's in the US) today. They were even more rare 20 or 30 years ago since it was not even a recognized sub-specialty until the early 1970's. If a GP told you (when you were 9 years old) that your arthritis was triggered by vaccination, s/he was incorrect or your case is extraordinarily rare. As you know, research in rheumatology in general and pediatric rheumatology specifically has made great strides in the last 20 years or so.
Anyone choosing to not vaccinate their children due to fear of JRA/JIA or encephalitis is actually taking a bigger risk that their children will develop one of these conditions through natural infection then they would have had through vaccination.