'Law & Order: SVU' Season 16 Spoilers: Episode 19 'Granting Immunity' Recap
Last Wednesday's episode of "Law & Order: SVU" delved into the anti-vaccine debate as a group of teens get measles, and a mom named Trudy defends her decision to not get her child vaccinated.
Olivia and the rest of the team gets called to investigate a high school party that led to very inappropriate photos of underage kids going viral. The investigation hits a roadblock when the detectives can't interview a single student due to an outbreak of measles.
They find out that the outbreak started because of a mother named Trudy Malko. She runs a lifestyle website that promotes herbal and alternative treatments. Trudy thinks that vaccination causes autism, so she got her doctor to falsify her son Gabriel's immunization papers, which say that he was vaccinated. Trudy told the other moms about her views and had the doctor fake their children's forms as well. Now, after 15 years, all of their children have measles.
Unfortunately, Olivia's baby son Noah gets infected when he picks up the disease from Gabriel's infant brother while in the pediatrician's waiting room. Later, the detectives take Trudy to court for initiating a plan to hide the unvaccinated kids in school, so now it had to be shut down and contaminated.
In court, Trudy holds her own as a doctor takes the stand to warn against the dangers of measles. He said that it can lead to pneumonia, bronchitis, or death. The doctor said that Trudy's son got measles while he was in Pacific Palisades, which in an under-vaccinated community. The CDC said that he was the first patient, and so far, there are 48 cases of measles in the area.
Trudy fires back and argues that some vaccines have potential side effects. She notes that after her nephew was vaccinated, he got diagnosed with autism and she never wanted the same thing to happen to her son. When asked if she's aware that the CDC and other research groups have found no links between vaccines and autism, she said that she doesn't trust those institutions.
Trudy was found guilty of reckless endangerment and was sentenced to three months in prison.
"Law & Order: SVU" airs on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.
