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Nigel, Ashawnte. “Unit 3 Essay: Anti-Vaccine Moms.” Ashawnte FI, 2016, rampages.us/ash50nig98/univ-111-documents/unit-3-essay-anti-vaccine-moms/.

In this essay student Nigel Ashawnte shows his point of view on the subject of anti-vaccination mothers. He explains how it is unfair to the children to not vaccinate them because they have almost no say in the matter. Not only this but they may be made an outcast, as other parents may not allow their children to play with someone who has not had their shots out of fear that their own could be at risk. He explains how anti-vaccine mothers are blinded by their opinions so badly that they fail to see the risks involved with skipping shots. If another child gets sick they may not even feel that they are responsible. A great example that can back up this claim is the 2006 Disneyland outbreak where over 50 children were infected with measles because the parents failed to protect their children. He goes on to explain that by not vaccinating your children you are hurting the herd immunity effect and therefore making it more likely to infect even those who were immunized, as no vaccine is 100% effective.

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Ashawnte Nigel

Univ 111

Anti-Vaccines Moms

Have you ever watched children playing at the park? Did you see the expression on the children's faces while playing with their playmates? Did you count all the smiles you seen? Well what if those smiles were gone and now there were just sad faces? What if the children you seen smiling a week ago, was now in a hospital fighting for their life? These are the outcomes when moms decide not to vaccinate their children. Now because of their beliefs that vaccines aren't safe, cause autism, etc, innocent children are facing the consequences. There are many reasons why moms should vaccinate their children.

According to the UNICEF estimates that an average of 353,000 babies are born each day around the world. This means over 300 hundred thousand vaccines are given to children every day. The vaccines that they are given are used to provide an immunity against diseases. It protects the child and others around them. So, one reason is because to not vaccinate your child could be a danger to the community. If your child plays with another child it puts that other child at risk. Imagine you're a mother and you have taken your child to every doctor's appointment. You have taken every measure to make sure your child is up to date on their shots. You believe you have done everything in your power to make sure your child is protected from diseases and illnesses. Then one day your child contracts measles, which they have been already vaccinated for. The mother of the child who has not vaccinated her child has now jeopardized another child's life with her own beliefs. Although it is the anti-vaccine mom's fault, she may not feel this way.

When it's comes to anti-vaccines moms, they believe in their opinion so much, they failure to notice the risk. They use excuses like vaccines cause autism. This reasoning manifested from Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Andrew Wakefield's disastrous and fraudulent research study linking the MMR vaccine to autism, created a substantial amount of vaccine hesitancy in new parents, which manifests in both vaccine refusal and the adoption of delayed vaccine schedules (Shelby). The research paper produced by Dr. Wakefield did nothing but help strengthen the anti-vaccine movement. He was proved later to be wrong and lost his license. Even though he was discredited, people still believe in his work. Several supportive Facebook pages also exist on D. Wakefield's behalf, including "Dr. Wakefield's work must continue," which has garnered more than eight thousand "likes (Shelby). All because his inaccurate study people are using this as a reason to not vaccinate their child which is illogical.

They also use other excuses like vaccines are toxic. Many websites list toxic ingredients supposedly in vaccines (e.g. ether, anti-freeze, formaldehyde, aborted fetal tissues, animal viruses, and foreign DNA [169] and [170]) (Kata). They claim that because theses toxic ingredients are in vaccines that they are not safe. This is untrue. Yes, vaccines have toxic ingredients, but it's all about the dosage. Every vaccine has a certain amount of toxic chemicals. This means the dosage in the vaccines are not high enough to do real damage. Vaccines have extremely low levels of toxic chemicals. This means the dosage are just enough to prevent diseases but not enough to be harmful to you. Vaccines are to help not to harm.

They also use others excuses like those who get vaccinated are the ones who get sick. This is somewhat true. Many people ask the question well if I'm vaccinated for the disease why am I still in risk? They are at risk because no vaccine is a 100% effective. People who have gotten vaccinated for diseases still have a risk of getting the very same disease they were vaccinated for. Large numbers of vaccinated people act as a firewall that prevent the disease from spreading to those who are vulnerable (Marder). The vaccinated protect the unvaccinated. That's known as "herd immunity (Marder). The virus can still be spread in air and people can still get it.

One question still remains though, what should be done about the moms who decide to not vaccinate their child? If parents are arrested for not feeding their child or making sure the well-being of the child is okay, then why not the same for them? Not vaccinating your child can seriously affect your child's well-being. Therefore, since the child's well-being is affected, why is this not punishable by law. Also, why doesn't Child Protective Services get involved. Is this fair? No, it is not. Moms who decide to not vaccinate their child should face legal consequences. Even though the mom is doing for what she believes in, she is still affecting her child and others. It is not that she doesn't care about her child. It is just that she is misinformed. If another child dies from getting a disease from a child that was not vaccinated, the mother is to blame. Even though she may not have meant to get another child sick she has. Is this not considered another form of murder?

Whether how anti-vaccine moms feel, they should think about the bigger picture. Making these drastic decisions affect everybody. Not only their child but others. When it comes to getting your child vaccinated, there should be no question. It's not that the anti-vaccine mom's opinion doesn't matter and that they are not right about some things. They are right when it comes to vaccines not being a 100% safe and that they have toxic chemicals in them. But overall vaccines do more good then bad.

Work Citied

Kata, Anna. Anti-vaccine activists, Web 2.0, and the postmodern paradigm - An overview of tactics and tropes used online by the anti-vaccination movement, Vaccine, Volume 30, Issue 25, 28 May 2012, Pages 3778-3789, ISSN 0264-410X, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.11.112.

( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X11019086)

Marder, Jenny. "You Could Get the Measles, Even If You're Vaccinated." PBS. PBS, 28 Jan. 2015. Web. 09 Dec. 2016.

Shelby, Ashley, and Karen Ernst. "Story and Science: How Providers and Parents Can Utilize Storytelling to Combat Anti-Vaccine Misinformation." Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 9.8 (2013): 1795-1801. PMC. Web. 7 Dec. 2016.

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Ashawnte Nigel Univ 111 Anti-Vaccines Moms Have you ever watched children playing at the park? Did you see the expression on the children's faces while playing with their playmates? Did you count all the smiles you seen? Well what if those smiles were gone and now there were just sad faces?

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Today, Medpage. “IS ANTI-VAX MOVEMENT GROWING?” Is Anti-Vax Movement Growing? | Vaccine, Physician, Pediatrics | HealthLeaders Media, 1 Sept. 2016, www.healthleadersmedia.com/strategy/anti-vax-movement-growing.

In this article Medpage Today talks about how physicians are reporting more vaccine refusals than ever before. This caused the AAP to issue an advisory for doctors to be honest with their patients about the importance of vaccinations if they were hesitant. Medpage goes on to explain that 87% of physicians have reported getting vaccine refusals from multiple patients in 2013. This really shows how the antivax movement is just getting more and more members as the years tick by. 72% of physicians also reported that parents wanted to delay their child being vaccinated for fear that it may cause harm to their immune system by overwhelming it. This is just more misinformation being spread and it is shocking just how common it is becoming, especially in the united states. The source then goes on to explain how we can minimize this by explaining the facts behind why immunization is so vital to public health, and how it rarely causes any side effects. This method has been proven by statistics as 80% of those who changed their minds were positively influenced by a healthcare provider.

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The number of pediatricians reporting vaccine refusals increased significantly, with the most common reason given for that refusal is the belief that vaccines are unnecessary.

That finding emerged from a small survey of pediatricians conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

To counteract this trend, AAP issued a clinical report in which it urged open and honest communication by a trusted pediatrician with vaccine-hesitant parents.

Adding some muscle to that advice, the AAP said all non-medical vaccine exemptions should be eliminated. That recommendation came in a separate policy statement.

In 2013, 87% of pediatricians reported experiencing a vaccine refusal -- a significant increase compared to 2006 (74.5%, P<0.001), reported Catherine Hough-Telford, MD, of University of Alabama at Birmingham, and colleagues.

The percentage of pediatricians who reported that parents refused vaccines because they considered them unnecessary was also up dramatically from 2006 (73.1% versus 63.4%, respectively, P=0.002), they wrote in Pediatrics.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate the perception among pediatricians of increasing rates of parents who believe vaccines are unnecessary as a reason for refusal," Hough-Telford and colleagues wrote. "These data represent a significant shift in our understanding of the motivations behind vaccine refusals, [which] has not been recognized in recent literature on the subject."

They added that other studies have suggested that the "relative rarity" of vaccine-preventable diseases has caused parents to perceive vaccines as "less crucial" to the health of their children. The authors suggested this presented an opportunity to research communication strategies to address these concerns.

Vaccine delays were also quite prevalent, with 87.6% of pediatricians reporting a request for delayed vaccination from a parent. Not surprisingly, 75% of pediatricians reported that a parent wanted to delay a vaccine because of concern for a child's discomfort and 72.5% reported delays due to "fear that too many vaccines are a burden on their immune system." Overall, the pediatricians surveyed estimated that 18.7% of parents requested to delay at least one vaccine.

In total, 627 pediatricians who participated directly in patient care and offered age-appropriate immunizations were included in the 2013 survey (similar to 2006, when 629 participated). Vaccine delay questions were only asked in 2013.

Pediatricians reported an increasing number of dismissals for vaccine refusal (11.7% in 2013 versus 6.1% in 2006, P=0.004). The most common reasons for dismissal were a lack of trust between physician and patient, as well as concern for other patients.

However, the authors also found that 31.9% of patients who initially refused a vaccine changed their minds after educational efforts.

"This ... illustrates the importance of initiating conversations about vaccines with an understanding of the reasons for parents' concerns ... to best devise effective strategies to promote vaccinations in the refusing and delaying patient," they wrote.
Strategies for Vaccine Hesitancy
The clinical report on vaccine hesitancy emphasized the importance of the pediatrician as a trusted source of information, and the importance of acknowledging and addressing parental concerns about vaccination, reported Kathryn M. Edwards, MD, and colleagues on the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases and the Committee on Practice and Ambulatory Medicine.

"The pediatrician is often the only medically trained person available to discuss vaccine matters with parents, and it is incumbent on him or her to provide scientifically based and balanced information when these questions are asked," Edwards and colleagues wrote. "The clear message parents should hear is that vaccines are safe and effective, and serious disease can occur if your child and family are not immunized."

In fact, one study found that nearly 80% of parents said their decision to vaccinate was positively influenced by their healthcare provider.

Information was a key component of certain strategies for vaccine-hesitancy -- namely that the pediatrician discuss why children need vaccinations on the schedule provided by the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the AAP. Another study found that only 55% of practitioners "routinely provide parents with the rationale for why vaccines are administered and their potential adverse effects," and that nearly half of vaccine-hesitant parents accepted vaccines after this dialog with their provider.

But the parents may not be the only ones who need information. A survey of pediatric residents found that a little under half received training in communication strategies for vaccine-hesitant parents, and 80% wanted more education about a vaccine's adverse effects.

"A brief educational intervention may not be sufficient to provide physicians with the skills to counteract vaccine hesitancy and ... more research is needed to determine the most effective educational interventions," the authors wrote.

In addition to factual information, the authors suggested "personalizing" the message about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Prior research suggested that physicians relating that their own children or grandchildren have received all their immunizations was helpful to convince "skeptical parents."

The authors also addressed the ethical dilemmas involved with dismissing patients who refuse to comply with recommended vaccine schedules. Though they characterized patient dismissal as "an acceptable option," they encouraged "consistency, transparency and openness" in the process. They also noted certain anecdotal evidence, which showed that given the choice between dismissal or immunization, some parents would opt for immunization.
Non-Medical Exemptions "Inappropriate"
The AAP also argued that non-medical exemptions for vaccinations are not appropriate for children entering school or a community child care facility, in a separate policy statement from the Committee on Practice and Ambulatory Medicine, and several other AAP committees.

"The AAP views non-medical exemptions to school-required immunizations as inappropriate for individual, public health, and ethical reasons and advocates for their elimination," the authors wrote.

Given the recent ruling against a legal challenge to California's law eliminating non-medical exemptions, the statement may be especially timely. The AAP called on all states and the District of Columbia to "use their public health authority" and eliminate all non-medical exemptions.

They noted that states offering personal belief exemptions have seen those requests increase over time -- and even states who have religious belief exemptions only "have, through regulatory language, broadly defined religion for purposes of obtaining vaccine exemption," the authors wrote.

In addition to supporting laws requiring immunization to attend child care and school, the AAP recommended that public health authorities provide the community with immunization rates. However, they also recognized the need for medically indicated exemptions "on an individualized basis" for children with rare contraindications for specific vaccines.

Hough-Telford and colleagues were supported in part by grants from the AAP and CDC.

Hough-Telford disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Kimberlin disclosed serving as site principal investigator on studies conducted by GlaxoSmithKline and Gilead.

Edwards disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Hackell disclosed that a family member has stock or equity in Glaxo Smith Kline.

The authors of the policy statement disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

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The number of pediatricians reporting vaccine refusals increased significantly, with the most common reason given for that refusal is the belief that vaccines are unnecessary. That finding emerged from a small survey of pediatricians conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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Sandlin, Megan. “Leaving the Anti-Vaccine Movement.” Voices For Vaccines, 29 Dec. 2014, www.voicesforvaccines.org/leaving-the-anti-vaccine-movement/.

In this article Megan Sandlin tells the story of how she joined the anti vaccination movement, and also how she ended up leaving it. Sandlin explains how she got into a parenting movement called “crunchy” parenting which involved doing hippy stuff like cloth diapers and home births. She made some friends while living this lifestyle that fear mongered her into not vaccinating her children. They told her that her breast milk was enough to protect her children for disease and that the vaccines were just full of poison. She even held off on taking her child to the doctor until she was six months old to which her new friends cheered at. Not only this but she also began liking antivaxx groups on Facebook and following blogs of the same sort. Sandlin eventually began to question her own views when she began to do a little digging on the CDC website. She found that everything she had been taught by her new friends was actually the opposite of the truth. After she read through all the statistics she was convinced she was making a mistake and did a complete 180 on her views and got both of her children the vaccinations they needed. This story is a great example of how being misled by false information can have very real consequences.

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I can't tell you how I became pro-vaccine without first telling you how I became anti-vaccine.

When my oldest daughter was about four months old, I discovered "crunchy" parenting. I entered a world full of cloth diapers, "intactivism," and home birth. I made a lot of new friends who shared my beliefs about peaceful attachment parenting, and I started to notice a trend - many of these same friends also didn't vaccinate. I discussed it one day with a real-life friend, who told me I should look up vaccine ingredients, read the package inserts, and check out the adverse events reported on VAERS.

So I did a Google search for " vaccine ingredients" and was shocked by what I found. Could there really be all of these nasty-sounding ingredients in vaccines, I wondered? I went to the CDC's website and found package inserts. I didn't understand much of what I read, but it did sound pretty scary. I looked up the prevalence of diseases today and realized that nobody had even caught diphtheria for years! I was confused, and my daughter's six-month check up was coming up. I opted out of vaccines then, telling the doctor I wanted to do some more research before we went any further.

However, my research was very skewed. I was going into it with preconceived ideas - my anti-vaccine friends had put ideas into my head, such as not trusting government websites. I was forced to rely on whatever I could find while Googling, which were often websites like Mercola or whale.to. I even started "liking" anti-vaccine pages on Facebook - pages that I now understand masquerade as "information" centers. I got added to Facebook groups like "Great Mothers Questioning Vaccines."

Even though all of my supposed research was coming from non-scientific sources, I trusted it.

Then I got pregnant with our second child and planned a home birth. My midwives were very supportive of my anti-vaccination stance. My second daughter was born at home, and for months I prided myself on the fact that she had never been "injected with anything." I even bragged about how we didn't take her to the doctor until she was six months old.

My friends, too, were supportive. They reassured me that my breast milk was protecting her from disease, and how she was a shining example of a healthy unvaccinated child. I was proud to have a sense of community with other mothers who shared my views and who cheered me on.

However, I've always considered myself a skeptic, and I began to notice how some of my anti-vaccine friends believed in some other things that I found, well, questionable. For example, several of my anti-vaccine friends posted about chemtrails pretty frequently. I'd never heard of chemtrails, so I did some research and quickly discovered it was just a conspiracy theory easily explained away by people who actually understood how airplane contrails work. I also noticed that skeptic pages I followed occasionally made jabs about "anti-vaxxers" and homeopaths.

It was a slow process, but I gradually began to question my own anti-vaccine views. I stopped posting about vaccines for several months and began seeking out real science that would show me the truth, either way. What I found shocked me.

Anti-vaccine people had told me countless times that safety studies on vaccines were extremely lacking, but I was able to pull up hundreds of studies with just a few PubMed searches. They had told me that better hygiene and sanitation had been responsible for the massive decreases in disease, not vaccines-but I was able to find graphs and information from the CDC proving this wasn't the case.

I was told vaccines overload the immune system. "Too many too soon" was burned into my brain, but then I learned things like this:

In the end, I couldn't continue to deny the science. It's hard to believe now how easily I bought into everything I was hearing from the anti-vaccine crowd. It seems extremely obvious now: doctors aren't evil, scientists aren't trying to kill your kids with toxins, and vaccine researchers aren't just trying to scam you out of your money.

When my youngest daughter was ten months old, I had finally made up my mind. It was time to start vaccinating again. It had been a two-year journey that took me from one end of the spectrum to the other, but at least this time I've got science on my side. Both of my girls are in the process of catching up on their vaccines now. They're getting immunizations in the same order they would have gotten them at a younger age.

Both handled their first round of shots just fine, without even a fever. If it weren't for the tiny bruises on their legs, you wouldn't even know they'd just gotten shots. I'm proud to be a vaccinating mom now, to be giving my children the best shot at a healthy life.

The fallout from changing my views was pretty extreme. Within two weeks of " coming out " on Facebook about my new stance, I lost over 50 friends. People who had cheered me on and supported me through my home birth, who had told me countless times that I was an awesome mother and an inspiration, just dropped me like we'd never been friends at all. I was removed from groups and blocked by people I didn't even know. I was accused of being brainwashed and told that my girls were going to get autism and have terrible reactions. It hurt.

I now view the anti-vaccine movement as a sort of cult, where any sort of questioning gets you kicked out, your crunchy card revoked. I was even told I couldn't call myself a natural mother anymore, because vaccines are too unnatural. That's fine. I just want to be the best parent I know how to be, and that means always being open to new information and admitting when I'm wrong.

I was terribly wrong about vaccines, and I'm thankful my girls never caught anything. I feel like I'm being more true to myself, now, as well. I'm not blindly following what others say, just because we agree on a few other things. I'm putting my trust in science, and discovering who were really my friends all along.

Megan Sandlin is a 20-year-old mother of two. She, her husband, and her children live together in the Midwest. When not playing with her children, Megan blogs about motherhood and parenting.
If you liked this post, support Voices for Vaccines today.

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Leaving the Anti-Vaccine Movement - Voices For Vaccines

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I can't tell you how I became pro-vaccine without first telling you how I became anti-vaccine. When my oldest daughter was about four months old, I discovered "crunchy" parenting. I entered a world full of cloth diapers, "intactivism," and home birth. I made a lot of new friends who shared my beliefs about peaceful attachment ...

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The Truth About The Evils Of Vaccination

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The Truth About The Evils Of Vaccination

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W, Todd. “The Truth About The Evils Of Vaccination.” AntiAntiVax, 25 June 2009, antiantivax.flurf.net/.

In this blog Todd W talks about the arguments made by antivaxxers and then swiftly debunks them with statistics. He talks about how the mumps vaccine has never even had mercury in it, and it is perfectly safe for anyone to take besides newborns and those that are very ill. He also talks about how there have been studies done that proved there was no link between autism and vaccinations. This is one of the main points the antivax movement uses to gain followers and justify their actions and the fact that there is no evidence behind anything really puts things into perspective. Another point covered in the blog is that antivaxxers believe the hepatitis B vaccine is not necessary because it is a sexually transmitted disease. He explains that while this is true, hep B can go undiagnosed and be spread just by contact with bodily fluids. If contracted at a young age it can even cause liver cancer.

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The information below began as a blog comment at Bad Astronomy, in an effort to address the common myths and misinformation spouted by those who are against vaccines (anti-vaxers), though the information can also be useful for some general vaccine questions that are not necessarily "anti-vax". At the urging of others and with the help of Eric TF Bat, this information now has a permanent home. It is intended as a resource for arguing the primary points made by anti-vaxers and is not offered as medical advice. I strongly encourage you to follow the links in the text and under the Additional Resources section. Finally, please feel free to send me feedback and let me know your thoughts and questions, as well as letting me know if any of the links are broken. And if you like what you see here, please share on Twitter, Google+ or your social media of choice. Enjoy!

Table of Contents

MMR - The Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine
(info available from FDA, CDC, investigative reports by Brian Deer)

Some in the anti-vax movement claim that the MMR has/had mercury in it. However, the MMR vaccine does not and never has had any mercury in it.

The basis of the "MMR vaccine causes autism" argument is a flawed study (retracted by The Lancet on February 2, 2010) by Andrew Wakefield, who had several ethics breaches, including failure to disclose financial compensation from a lawyer representing families claiming MMR cause their children's autism, failure to disclose financial interests in patents for MMR alternatives, failure to include data which contradicted his conclusions, use of contaminated samples to support his conclusions. Furthermore, on January 28, 2010, Wakefield and two of his co-authors, John Angus Walker-Smith and Simon Harry Murch, were found by the UK.'s General Medical Council to have acted irresponsibly, dishonestly and not in the clinical interests of the children involved in the study. The basis for this decision included, among other things, colonoscopies, MRIs and lumbar punctures (spinal taps) when such procedures were not clinically indicated. On May 24, 2010, the General Medical Council issued a determination that Wakefield and Walker-Smith (PDF links) were guilty of professional misconduct and should be erased from the Medical Register in the U.K. (meaning that his license to practice medicine in the U.K. has been revoked).

A 2009 study, titled "Lack of association between measles-mumps-rubella vaccination and autism in children: a case control study" examined whether there was a relationship between MMR and autism and concluded that there was no association. This study is one of the latest in the stack of evidence against a connection. (See also SBM's topic-based reference for more studies.)

Independent studies trying to replicate Wakefield's results have come up negative. To date, no properly controlled study has shown a causal link between vaccines and autism.

Many opponents of the MMR will claim that the diseases prevented are mild and not dangerous. This is not the case, as can be seen in numerous outbreaks around the world. Measles can lead to encephalitis (swelling of the brain) in about 1 of every 1,000 individuals, possibly leading to death. Mumps can lead to sterility in adult men, swollen ovaries or breasts in adult women and miscarriage in pregnant women, as well as encephalitis. Rubella (German measles) can cause encephalitis, as well as birth defects if contracted by a pregnant woman. There is also some evidence to suggest that infection with rubella while pregnant is the cause of some cases of autism. While the majority of individuals who contract measles, mumps or rubella will survive with little or no lasting ill effects, there is still a significant risk of permanent injury or death. The MMR vaccine can help to greatly reduce the risk of not only contracting the illnesses, and thereby reducing the risk of serious complications, but also to reduce the risk of passing the diseases on to others.

Hep B

Another concern expressed by anti-vaxers regards the amount of aluminum in the vaccine. See below, under Other Vaccine Additives for more information addressing this concern.

Thimerosal - Mercury-based Preservative
(info available from both FDA and CDC)

Thimerosal is a preservative that is used in the manufacturing process of some vaccines and other medicines to prevent the growth of bacteria and fungi, which could otherwise cause illness or injury.

It metabolizes into ethylmercury, not methylmercury, a mistake commonly made by anti-vaxers who claim that the amount of mercury that used to be in vaccine exceeded EPA exposure guidelines of .1mcg/kg/day. Those guidelines are for methylmercury, a compound that has a half-life in the body of several weeks to months and is often found in fish or other environmental exposures. Ethylmercury, on the other hand, has a half-life of a few days to about a week, meaning that it is not in the body long enough for it to build up to toxic levels from vaccination to vaccination.

Concern has been raised about ethylmercury in thimerosal causing damage to the brain. However, this compound does not readily cross the blood-brain barrier. Some may counter this by talking about inorganic mercury, but this form of mercury, also, does not readily cross the barrier; only prolonged (regular) exposure to mercury leads to accumulation in the central nervous system. Moreover, total mercury levels that do accumulate in the brain are cleared much more rapidly after ethylmercury exposure than after methylmercury exposure (though limitations of the linked study are that it was done in animals and overall dosing may not accurately reflect dosing in humans, among other criticisms).

Using the EPA guidelines for methylmercury, a 3.2 kg newborn could be exposed to .32mcg of methylmercury every day without adverse health effects. This amounts to 116.8mcg of methylmercury in the course of a year, assuming an exposure of .1mcg/kg every single day. This also assumes that the child does not gain any weight over the course of that year, which would drive the adverse effect-free exposure limit higher. Keeping in mind that ethylmercury is eliminated significantly faster than methylmercury, the maximum 25mcg/dose of ethylmercury in a thimerosal-containing flu shot is much lower than the EPA one-year exposure. Therefore, unless the child is regularly exposed to other sources of mercury, it is highly unlikely that the minute amounts in a flu vaccine will cause any adverse developmental effects. But, for those who are still concerned about thimerosal, thimerosal-free versions of the flu vaccine are available (see below).

Some vaccines still use it during the manufacturing process, but remove it from the final product, leaving, at most, trace amounts. The influenza vaccine still uses thimerosal, though thimerosal-free versions are available.

To date, no properly controlled study has shown a causal link between thimerosal and autism.

Formaldehyde

Vaccines contain formaldehyde. It is used during the manufacturing process, but is diluted to remove it from the finished product, leaving only small or trace amounts. The total amount of formaldehyde in a finished product is far less than what is naturally found in the human body. For example, at any given time, an average newborn would have about 575-862μg of formaldehyde circulating in their blood naturally.

The chemical structure of the formaldehyde in vaccines is the same as that produced by our own bodies: one carbon atom, two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Because of this, the body does not treat it any differently than what our bodies produce after eating, say, an apple, banana or carrot.

Formaldehyde actually plays an important role in our metabolism. Our bodies use formaldehyde to create nucleobases, like adenine and guanine, as well as the nucleotide thymidine.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, humans can consume 0.2mg of formaldehyde per kilogram of weight every day without seeing any adverse effects. When setting these levels, the EPA uses a safety buffer of about 10-100 times, meaning that the true safe level for daily exposure is likely around 2-20mg/kg every day.

The most formaldehyde that a child is likely to receive via vaccines is probably at the 6 month visit, when they may get HepB, DTaP, IPV and possibly inactivated influenza, for a maximum of 307.5μg (.31mg). Compare this to a single apple, which contains 428.4-1,516.4μg (.43-1.51mg) of formaldehyde.

The bottom line is that formaldehyde in vaccines does not pose a health risk to children. A more complete explanation of formaldehyde and its role in health and vaccines can be found here.

Squalene

According to the same GWI review, squalene is "an oily substance that naturally occurs in plants and animals. It is found in a variety of foods, lotions, and cosmetics. It is also used as a food supplement and has been postulated to provide therapeutic benefits. In humans, squalene is synthesized by the liver as a precursor to cholesterol, and circulates in the blood."

Squalene appears to be an effective and safe adjuvant, based on a PubMed search revealing several studies examining its use in vaccines.

It should also be noted that squalene is offered in pill form by a variety of organic and natural food stores, as well as makers of dietary supplements. Squalene is also promoted as a moisturizer.

Other Vaccine Additives

Some anti-vaxers claim there is antifreeze in vaccines. This is false. Antifreeze is ethylene glycol. Vaccines use polyethylene glycol. These are different substances, the latter of which is not toxic. More info can be found at Inside Vaccines.

Vaccines contain aluminum in a salt form. Anti-vaxers claim this is toxic, and some will cite that 4ppm will cause blood to coagulate. However, individuals are not exposed to such amounts of aluminum in a single vaccination visit. Below are the vaccines containing aluminum, with the corresponding parts per million (ppm) for an infant (~251 mL of blood in the body) and an 80lb. child (~4000 mL of blood); note the two numbers for DTaP represent extreme ranges of aluminum content.:

ppm (w/v) = (weight in grams of sample/volume of sample in mL) * 106

Vaccine

ppm in infant

ppm in child

age received (in months)

Some anti-vaxers claim that the HepB vaccine, for example, exceeds federal regulations of aluminum exposure. However, they cite the 25mcg/L for large volume parenteral (LVP) nutrition products (21 CFR 201.323),which are given chronically over the course of days or weeks, rather than the regulations governing adjuvants. 21 CFR 610.15 lists the maximum amount of aluminum per dose in vaccines, depending on the method of calculation. This ranges from .85mg (that's milligrams) to 1.25 mg. HepB vaccine contains 250 mcg (that's micrograms) per dose, or .25mg. LVPs typically come in packages of 100 mL or more and are administered intravenously (i.e., directly into the bloodstream). Total parenteral nutrition therapy (TPN), which uses LVPs, is typically indicated for nutritional supplementation for >10 days given at about 2 L/day. So, assuming a case requiring TPN for 10 days, the individual would be exposed to 500 mcg, twice the amount in the vaccine.

Further, about 71% of the aluminum is excreted from the body after about 5 days or so.

A more complete discussion of aluminum in vaccines can be found here.

Influenza and H1N1

With H1N1 being all over the media in 2009, there was (and still is) a lot of misinformation about the virus and the vaccine. Here are some of the more common claims heard:

Many people claim that the new H1N1 swine flu vaccine was fast-tracked through production and did not undergo proper testing. In reality, the vaccine went through the same process as the seasonal flu vaccine. Unlike the seasonal flu, which requires several months of study each year to determine which strains to include, the H1N1 strain was known, negating months of research. The initial occurrence of H1N1 also came at a time when production of a vaccine would not interfere with seasonal vaccine production, which had just finished, and when resources (e.g., chicken eggs for growing the virus) were still available.

Some claim that the H1N1 vaccine contains adjuvants, such as aluminum salts, AS03 or MF59 (aka squalene). After initial efficacy testing, however, the CDC determined that an adjuvant would not be required. Therefore, all forms of the H1N1 vaccine in the United States are adjuvant-free.

The severity of H1N1, and seasonal flu in general, is often brushed off. People will claim that if infected, you will only be sick for a week, and then you'll be fine. For the majority of cases, that is true. However, the seasonal flu kills, on average, around 30,000 people in the U.S., and 500,000 worldwide, each year. The 2009 H1N1 strain appears to have a similar severity as seasonal flu, though the burden is shifted toward younger individuals. Even individuals who survive may still require hospitalization. An October online early release study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that critical illness occurred very rapidly after hospitalization, primarily in young adults, necessitating the use of mechanical ventilation and other rescue therapies. With the combination of seasonal flu and H1N1 occurring at the same time, there are some fears that there may be a shortage of ventilators and support staff.

Another common myth is that you can get the flu from the vaccine. With the flu shot, that cannot happen, as the vaccine uses an inactivated (killed) virus. The inhaled formulation uses a live, weakened virus, so it may cause mild flu-like symptoms, and there is a small chance of spreading the vaccine virus to close contacts. Generally, only minor local reactions occur. More serious reactions with either (e.g., headache, nausea, etc.) generally go away in 1 to 2 days, instead of the week or longer of more severe symptoms that true influenza infection would cause.

Many of these myths are promoted by anti-vaccine organizations, some of which use misleading and dishonest ads to frighten people away from the vaccine. A fuller discussion of this can be found at Harpocrates Speaks.

Generally speaking, both the seasonal and H1N1 vaccines are safe and effective. However, it must be noted that some people should take care when receiving the vaccine (e.g., those with severe allergies to eggs, though those with minor allergies may still be able to receive it without risk). If you have any questions or concerns, consult your physician.

Polio

Anti-vaxers claim that polio rates increased after the introduction of the polio vaccine, that OPV spread the disease, and that polio was on a decline before introduction of the vaccine. This is wrong.

Before the approval of the vaccine, paralytic polio struck 13,000-20,000 individuals every year in the U.S. The number of cases peaked at 21,000 in 1952, only three years before approval of the vaccine. By 1960, there were only 2,525 cases, and only 61 cases in 1965.

The oral polio vaccine (OPV) was nearly 100% effective in preventing polio, though it did have a very small risk of causing paralytic polio in the recipient. OPV-caused paralytic polio resulted in about 6-8 cases per year. However, when vaccination rates were low, OPV had the added benefit of contact immunity. In other words, the virus from the vaccine was present in the stool, resulting in about 25% of people who came in contact with the immunized person would also become immune.

With the eradication of wild type polio in the U.S., the OPV vaccine is no longer used, and the less effective inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) is used. This version does not cause paralytic polio. OPV has not been used in the U.S. since 2000.

Gardasil - The HPV Vaccine

A post-market surveillance study by the CDC found that the rate of reported deaths (including anaphylaxis) was 0.1 per 100,000 doses distributed. Their conclusion was that reported adverse events did not differ significantly from vaccines in general.

Further arguments against Gardasil mention fainting after immunization. This is a known possible side effect of some vaccines and is included in the package insert. The insert also includes recommendations to observe the patient for at least 15 minutes after injection to ensure the patient does not fall or suffer injury.

Vaccine Court and National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP)

Anti-vaxers claim that Hannah Poling and Bailey Banks are examples of successful Vaccine Court cases where vaccines caused autism. This is wrong.

Hannah Poling was found to have a mitochondrial disorder (MD), and that the vaccine worsened her condition. The court did not rule that a vaccine caused autism. Note, mitochondrial disorder is not autism, though some in the anti-vax camp claim it is.

Bailey Banks was found to have suffered acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), not autism. This disease occurs in approximately 1 or 2 per million vaccine recipients, compared with 1 per 1,000 individuals infected with measles and 1 per 500 rubella infections. The court ruled that this is a type of pervasive developmental disorder, but made clear that it is not autism. Like the Poling case, anti-vaxers try to distort the truth to make their case. In the case of ADEM, vaccination helps reduce the risk of contracting the disease by reducing the likelihood of natural infection.

Despite the low standards of proof in the vaccine court (more likely than not, or 50% + a hair), no one has been able to establish a causal relationship between vaccines and autism.

In three of the best cases put forth by the anti-vax movement, the court ruled in all three that vaccines did not cause the individuals' autism.

Before VICP, the media fueled fears about vaccines, leading to increases in law suits and many manufacturers halting production of vaccines altogether. The VICP was proposed by a coalition of government, health organization, and industry representatives, as well as physicians and ordinary citizens as a means to ensure a suitable supply of vaccines while allowing legal recourse to those injured by vaccines.

Individuals may still seek damages through the tort system, if they choose, though they must then prove not only that the vaccine caused the injury, but also that the manufacturer was at fault.

Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)

Very often, anti-vaxers will point to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a database to collect reports of adverse events associated with vaccines, as evidence of the harm that vaccines do. It is a publicly searchable database sponsored by FDA and CDC, to which anyone can submit a report. Healthcare professionals and vaccine manufacturers are required by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) to report adverse events occurring after administration of a vaccine. In this regard, VAERS serves as a useful tool for identifying possible trends in safety data that might call for further investigation or more immediate action.

As useful a tool as VAERS is, it has several important limitations. One of these that is, perhaps, most important when dealing with anti-vax claims is that it does not establish causality. In other words, the reports found in VAERS cannot be taken at face value as meaning that a vaccine caused a specific effect. Many of the reports may be merely coincidental. Some may be spurious. Others may actually have a real, rather than merely apparent, connection between the vaccine and the outcome.

An oft-quoted example of just how unreliable VAERS can be can be found from James R. Laidler, MD. Dr. Laidler submitted a report to VAERS that the influenza vaccine had turned him into The Hulk. The report was accepted and posted to the database. As Dr. Laidler reports, he was contacted by a representative because the AE was so unusual. They asked his permission to delete the report from the database, after discussing it with him, and he agreed. Had he not given his permission, the report would still be in the VAERS database.

In the end, while VAERS can be a good tool for finding possible trends of vaccine-related adverse events, it is also open to being skewed by bad data. Compound this with lobbying, grass-roots efforts to get people to report certain events, and the data become horribly polluted with potentially misleading information. Why is this important? Well, it means that when searching VAERS, the results need to be taken with a substantial grain of salt, and that further, more in-depth inquiry is needed. Secondly, it means that mass-reporting of spurious connections can divert scarce resources away from investigating real health risks to chase after ghosts.

Vaccines in General

Anti-vaxers want vaccines that are 100% safe. This is never going to happen, as all medicines carry some risk. However, the relative risk of injury from vaccines is significantly lower than the risk of injury from getting the disease naturally. Prometheus, at Photon In the Darkness, explains how to calculate the risk of injury from the disease and the risk of injury from the vaccine. He also describes common errors that anti-vaxers make when determining the risk of injury from diseases and vaccines. For more information, see the CDC website.

Anti-vaxers claim that better hygiene has led to a decrease in disease, rather than vaccines. However, many of the diseases prevented by vaccines are airborne, and are not greatly impacted by improved sanitation or hygiene.

Some anti-vaxers claim that diseases such as smallpox or polio have not been affected by vaccines, but rather that these diseases were merely renamed. For example, some claim that smallpox was not eradicated, instead being renamed chicken pox. Similarly, they may say that paralytic polio was simply renamed meningitis. The problem with this claim is that these diseases are caused by very different entitities. Smallpox was caused by the Variola virus. Chicken pox is caused by the virus Varicella zoster. These viruses have different proteins, which result in different diseases. Likewise, polio is caused by poliovirus, while meningitis can be caused by a number of other viruses, like enteroviruses, coxsackieviruses, and echoviruses, not to mention the viruses that cause mumps, herpes or influenza. The viruses that cause of these diseases can be clearly identified and differentiated from other viruses. With that in mind, the claim that diseases have simply been renamed falls flat.

Anti-vaxers claim that too many antigens (the parts that make the vaccines work) are given at once, ignoring that infants and children are exposed to thousands of antigens every day by touching things and putting their hands or the object in their mouth, through absorption or by inhaling.

They claim that combination shots should be avoided, and that parents should break up the vaccinations into individual vaccines and spread them out. However, this increases the total number of shots received, as well as exposure to those various "toxins" they hate so much.

Some in the anti-vax movement say that an alternate, spaced-out schedule is better, yet they have no scientific studies to support such a protocol. In fact, a study published online in the journal Pediatrics on May 24, 2010 shows that children vaccinated on schedule do not show adverse outcomes as compared to those who received fewer vaccines or vaccines on a delayed schedule. They also claim that the schedule recommended by the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics is not backed up by science. This is not true. Each year, the schedule is reviewed in the light of the latest scientific studies on vaccines and revised as necessary, with the newest recommendations being published each January.

Another claim made by anti-vaxers is that so-called "natural" immunity (i.e., immunity gained by infection with the disease) is better or lasts longer than immunity gained by a vaccine. This is not necessarily true. For example, natural immunity to pertussis, wears off after about 4-20 years and the vaccine-induced immunity wears off after 4-12 years. Therefore, even if an individual had pertussis as a child, they may still become infected as an adult, suffering the full effects and passing it on to others.

Some anti-vaxers will ask "why worry" whether they immunize their child or not, if you and your child(ren) have been immunized? There are a number of reasons. First, not everyone is able to be immunized, due to a variety of medical reasons (e.g., egg allergies, age, etc.). Second, vaccines are not 100% effective, though most are very close. This means that in order to prevent an outbreak, a high number of individuals needs to be immunized so that a virus or bacteria does not have enough potential hosts to sustain itself. There is a small possibility that even with vaccination, you will not gain immunity. Finally, there are some individuals (the elderly, AIDS patients, transplant recipients, some cancer patients, etc.) for whom vaccines just will not work or not work as well, because their immune system does not, or cannot, mount a full response to it. These individuals are also unlikely to gain immunity from infection, either. For all of these reasons, it is very important to keep vaccination rates up, so that those who do not or cannot benefit from vaccines are protected by herd immunity.

There have been no properly controlled studies establishing a causal link between vaccines and autism.

There have been numerous properly controlled studies sponsored and run by various people and organizations around the world that have shown no link between vaccines and autism.

Population X and Vaccines/Autism

Anti-vaxers claim the Amish do not vaccinate and do not have autism. This stems from a lie by Dan Olmsted from Age of Autism. The Amish do, in fact, vaccinate, and it appears that their rates of autism may be lower than in the general population.

Some claim that the Chinese do not have a word for autism (they do, it's 自闭症 [zì bì zhèng]). And simply not having a word for the disease does not mean that it does not exist, merely that it is not recognized as a specific disorder. Did autism only afflict people after someone created the diagnosis? No, but it may have been called something else.

The same claim about the Chinese has been made about Somalis due to a March 16, 2009 article about Somalis in Minnesota. Again, lack of recognition does not mean that the disease never occurred in the population. Further, the cases in Minnesota do not have a consistent connection to vaccines. Some of those with autism have been vaccinated, some have not. Despite a lack of evidence, Generation Rescue (which runs Age of Autism) has told the Somali parents that vaccines were the cause.

9 Questions That "Stump" Every Pro-Vaccine Advocate

Naturopath David Mihalovic came up with nine questions that he feels will stump pro-vaccine advocates. Dr. Mark Crislip has addressed these questions very well over at Science-Based Medicine. I will also add some of my own answers here. Please note, this is a work in progress; I have written answers to only a few of the supposed stumpers.

3. Could you please provide scientific evidence which can prove that disease reduction in any part of the world, at any point in history was attributable to inoculation of populations?
Here are two studies (out of many) showing the efficacy of just the 7-valent pneumococcal vaccine:

Immunization with the 7-valent conjugate pneumococcal vaccine: Impact evaluation, continuing surveillance and future perspectives. Angela Bechini, Sara Boccalini, Paolo Bonanni. Vaccine, Volume 27, Issues 25-26, Vaccines, Immunisation and Immunotherapy, Sixth World Congress of Vaccines, Immunisation and Immunotherapy, 26 May 2009, Pages 3285-3290

Indirect Effect of 7-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine on Pneumococcal Colonization among Unvaccinated Household Members. Eugene V. Millar, James P. Watt, Melinda A. Bronsdon, Jean Dallas, Raymond Reid, Mathuram Santosham, and Katherine L. O'Brien Clinical Infectious Diseases 2008 47:8, 989-996

5. Could you please provide scientific justification as to how injecting a human being with a confirmed neurotoxin is beneficial to human health and prevents disease?

As Dr. Crislip mentioned, one assumes that Mr. Mihalovic means thimerosal (i.e., mercury) in this question. However, he could also mean aluminum, since that is also an oft-cited neurotoxin. The short answer is that the purpose of thimerosal and aluminum salts is not to prevent disease, but rather to prevent microbial contamination of a vaccine and to boost the immune response, respectively. So, this question is rather irrelevant.

Though not used to prevent disease, but rather to treat the symptoms of a disease and benefit human health, one neurotoxin that is injected into human beings is botulinum toxin. Botulinum toxin is a neurotoxic protein that, in even small doses, is one of the most deadly neurotoxins known to humans. However, in small enough amounts, it actually has clinical benefit. For example, it is used to treat cervical dystonia, to decrease abnormal head position and reduce neck pain. However, its more famous application is as a cosmetic to reduce the appearance of fine wrinkles. The product's name is Botox, which is proudly supported by Jenny McCarthy.

8. Could you please provide scientific justification on how a vaccine would prevent viruses from mutating?

This is really a bit of a strawman argument. The purpose of vaccines is not to prevent a virus from mutating. The purpose of a vaccine is to prevent infection by a virus or bacterium. However, with certain viruses, like smallpox, effective vaccination programs can eliminate the virus before it has a chance to mutate. This works best with viruses or bacteria which are slow to mutate (e.g., DNA viruses), only infect humans and cannot survive for long outside of the host. The faster a virus or bacterium mutates, the more likely a person is to be reinfected (e.g., a person can catch the flu every year or potentially even multiple times within the same season) and the more often a vaccine is reformulated and administered (e.g., flu vaccine requires reformulation and readministration every year).

Implied in this question is that other things (perhaps natural infection or naturopathy) can prevent a virus from mutating. That is simply wrong. If someone is infected, the immune system will try to stop the infection by killing the viruses. There is potential for some of the viruses to survive long enough to spread to another host. Those viruses can have some slight mutations that allowed them to survive long enough to reproduce. So, the only real way to stop a virus (or bacterium) from mutating is to kill every last one before it can reproduce and spread to a new host. Thus far, only vaccines have allowed us to accomplish this feat (e.g., smallpox).

Additional Resources

Sites for info on vaccine safety, efficacy and general information:

Sites for info on clinical trials and other research:

Other sites:

This content was posted by Todd W ( todd [at] flurf (dot) net) on the Bad Astronomer's article Jim Carrey loves the pro-disease movement on Thursday 23 April 2009, and is reposted here as a courtesy to the author by Eric TF Bat ( bat@flurf.net). Special thanks to kill3rTcell for spotting typos and pointing me to more references. This page was originally published 25 June 2009. Last updated 9 February 2014.

Recommended citations for this page:

APA Style: Todd W. (2009, June 25). The truth about the evils of vaccination. Retrieved from http://antiantivax.flurf.net

MLA Style: Todd W. The Truth About the Evils of Vaccination. 25 Jun. 2009. Web. [Date accessed]. [http://antiantivax.flurf.net - if URL required]

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The information below began as a blog comment at Bad Astronomy, in an effort to address the common myths and misinformation spouted by those who are against vaccines (anti-vaxers), though the information can also be useful for some general vaccine questions that are not necessarily "anti-vax".

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Anti-Vaccination Might Be Rational, but Is It Reasonable?

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Anti-Vaccination Might Be Rational, but Is It Reasonable?

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Koerth-Baker, Maggie. “Anti-Vaccination Might Be Rational, but Is It Reasonable? – Maggie Koerth-Baker | Aeon Essays.” Aeon, Aeon, 28 Mar. 2019, aeon.co/essays/anti-vaccination-might-be-rational-but-is-it-reasonable.

In this online essay  Maggie Koerth-Baker from Aeon discusses the rising trend of parents putting their children over public safety. Baker describes how a father made the NYT recently for stating how she saw nothing wrong with not vaccinating children and that it was a healthy, rational thing to do. His daughter had recently died, and of all the reasons that it could have been for he blamed vaccines. Though the side effects of vaccines are extremely rare, the anti-vaccine community chooses to use that as one of their main points of argument. A doctor responded to this, saying that the medical field needs to be careful of their public relationship because if these fears spread there could be dire consequences. Baker goes on to explain how not being vaccinated hurts our herd immunity by making more potential hosts which can infect those too young or sick to get the vaccines.

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Stop me if you've heard this one before. On 19 December 1984, The New York Times ran a story about parents who feared the risks of routine vaccinations. The parent quoted in the article was a lawyer who blamed vaccines for the death of his daughter. The story was framed as a conflict between parents such as him and medical experts, who pointed out that serious side-effects of vaccines were extremely rare, and that the diseases vaccines prevented were far worse. We have to be careful, the scientists said, or these fears could result in fewer people getting vaccinated and more people getting sick.

On 27 April 1999, The New York Times ran a story about parents who feared the risks of routine vaccinations. The parent quoted in the article was college-educated, an author and professional activist, who blamed vaccines for her son's brain damage. The story was framed as a conflict between parents such as her and medical experts, who worried that the internet was spreading false information and unwarranted fears. Parents today just haven't seen the devastation vaccine-preventable diseases can cause, the scientists said.

On 21 March 2008, The New York Times ran a story about parents who feared the risks of routine vaccinations. The article noted that parents who refused vaccines for their children were often 'well-educated and financially stable'. The story was framed as a conflict between those parents and medical experts, who worried that geographical pockets of vaccine refusal could help spread preventable diseases, such as measles. Parents today just haven't seen the devastation vaccine-preventable diseases can cause, the scientists said.

For more than 30 years now, we journalists have been telling the same story, with the same actors, playing the same roles, and speaking the same lines. The authors change, but the news doesn't. It barely even counts as 'new'.

There are two groups of people you can blame for this pattern of repetitive storytelling. Maybe it's them: maybe the problem is parents whose anti-science proclivities have carried them so far away from the facts that journalists have no choice but to repeat ourselves ad nauseum. The story doesn't change because the story hasn't changed.

That could be true. But there's also another option. Maybe it's us: maybe journalists aren't listening. The story never changes because we stopped looking for the other stories we could tell.

If that's true, it's a big deal. And not just for journalists. Vaccination is a deeply important part of public health. Whether to vaccinate or not isn't simply a decision you make for yourself or your family, independent of the choices of everyone else. Vaccines work in two ways. They decrease your personal risk of contracting a disease, and they reduce the number of potential hosts and carriers in the population. That means the more vaccinated people there are, the harder it is for a disease to spread. Vaccines can stop an outbreak before it happens. This so-called 'herd immunity' protects children who are too young to get a vaccine, people who are too sick to get one, and anybody whose vaccination isn't working as well as it should.

That's why medical experts really care about vaccination and why they're worried about vaccine rejection, even though, nationwide in the United States, children are vaccinated at rates of 90 per cent or better for most vaccines. In specific places, and for specific vaccines, uptake can be a lot lower, enough to give diseases a foothold. Measles, for instance, is highly contagious. To prevent its spread, you need at least a 96 per cent vaccination rate. In California, where a measles outbreak last year infected nearly 200 people and spread to 23 other states, the measles vaccination rate is about 92 per cent - and scientists have estimated that regions near where the outbreak began could have rates as low as 50 per cent and certainly no higher than 86 per cent.

Public health experts and the public they serve have very good reason to nose about in our neighbours' business when it comes to vaccines. This is why the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collects data on vaccination rates. It's why scientists have done surveys that show the number of parents with concerns about vaccines increased by 163 per cent between 2000 and 2009. But we still seem to be pretty clueless when it comes to why those people fear vaccines and what could be done to change their minds. Case in point, a paper published in 2014 tested different strategies for improving the likelihood that skeptical parents would vaccinate their kids. None of the tested techniques worked. When the researchers tried debunking vaccine misinformation, they succeeded in convincing more parents that vaccines don't cause autism. But those same parents were actually more likely to reject vaccines afterwards.

Clearly, something is amiss here, and it matters to all of us.

I'm a journalist. I write, mostly, about science. My two daughters, the first aged two, the baby aged six months, are both getting all their shots according to the schedule recommended by the CDC. I have written about vaccine rejection - stories that follow basically the same narrative as The New York Times pieces I mentioned earlier. I have also written stories bemoaning Americans' insistence on rejecting scientific fact.

What I hadn't done, at least until recently, was question whether those stories were accurate. I don't mean in the sense that I'd published incorrect information. Instead, I've come to believe that I haven't been asking the right people the right questions, and that's leading me to write stories that are factually correct, but don't accurately reflect what's really happening. What if scientists are wrong about the reasons parents don't vaccinate? What if, as a journalist, I've been steering the national conversation in the wrong direction by not questioning the reasons put forth? Herd immunity matters a lot, and there's good reason to think we aren't listening well enough to what the herd has to say.

In 2014, I audited a class at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Called 'Science, Power, and Politics', it addressed the way humans and our biases affect how science gets done and is used to shape society. The professor, Sheila Jasanoff, assigned a final paper and I decided to take the opportunity to see how those issues came up in journalistic coverage of vaccine controversies.

it was the exact same story - a tale where scientists and experts face off against well-educated, well-off parents

I decided to focus on The New York Times because that publication generally represents what journalists think of as high-quality reporting. (Fair notice: I've written for the Times and had a column, Eureka, with the Times Magazine for two years.) I used their archives to find stories about vaccine controversies and to weed out stories that weren't strictly news, such as opinion pieces and blogs. I ended up with 23 articles, stretching from 1981 to 2014.

I expected to see coverage of vaccine controversies change over time. In particular, there's a common trope that journalists spent a good chunk of the 1990s and early 2000s giving too much credence to the anecdotes of frightened parents - anecdotes that fuelled public panic and contributed to the growth of vaccine rejection. But I didn't find that in the Times at all. Instead of tracing why the story changed, I found myself having to figure out why it didn't.

All told, of the 23 articles I read, 11 told the exact same story - a tale where scientists and experts face off against well-educated, well-off parents. The parents fear vaccines. The scientists say those fears are unwarranted. Wash, rinse, repeat.

What makes the parents afraid, though? This is where things get interesting. In the 1999 story I mentioned before, the parent activist Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a non-profit charity based in Virginia, said she wasn't against vaccination, just mandatory vaccination. She had a problem with the aspect of vaccine law that's used to increase and maintain herd immunity. That's because vaccines, like all medicines, do have risks.

For instance, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in Washington, DC concluded that there is convincing evidence to support the idea that it could be dangerous for people with compromised immune systems to get the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). Those people could end up with encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that can lead to paralysis, memory problems, even death. There are also a number of potential risks that the National Academies don't consider proven or disproven yet: there's just not enough evidence either way. Included in that category are things such as inflammation of the optic nerve, which can lead to blindness.

Such risks are extremely rare. And catching measles comes with risks of its own, including, again, encephalitis. So you don't avoid risk by avoiding vaccination. You just change what the risk comes from. And, from a public-health standpoint, vaccinating helps reduce the risks to other people, including those who have immune problems and can't get the vaccine themselves.

It's this last bit that Fisher had a problem with. Sure, the risks of vaccination were low and the benefits to society were high. But if your kid is the rare person who experiences a severe side effect, the greater good no longer matters. In the story, she is quoted as saying: 'Parents are saying: "Hey, wait a minute, my child is important, too!"'

Contrast that with how scientists characterised the problem in the same article. 'We are in danger of becoming a victim of our own success,' said Louis W Sullivan, the former US Secretary of Health and Human Services. He, and other experts, believed that the problem was that parents were ignorant of the risks of vaccine-preventable diseases.

That is a significant disconnect. If the scientists are right, then this is a question of facts. Parents need to be shown data. They need to see evidence comparing the risks of disease with the risks of vaccination.

'I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good ... [but] I cannot deny that my child can put someone else at risk'

But if Fisher is right, then that approach wouldn't do a damn bit of good. The argument, to her, isn't about numbers. It's about philosophy. Vaccines, when used to prevent the spread of disease through herd immunity, are in essence presenting a trade-off. You accept the risk of vaccination, small though it might be, and, in exchange, society as a whole is safer. Kids with cancer are safer. Little babies are safer. Elderly people are safer. But those getting the vaccine are taking a risk.

Fisher didn't think that was a fair trade. And she's not the only one. In that 2008 article in The New York Times, Sybil Carlson, the parent of an unvaccinated child who attended a school that had recently had a measles outbreak, said: 'I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good ... [but] I cannot deny that my child can put someone else at risk.'

Meanwhile, in the same story, Mark Sawyer, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, told the paper that: 'Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don't realise it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive the risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine.'

Carlson had, actually, seen measles. And she did know she was placing others at risk. But Sawyer's perspective on what people like her are thinking is also treated as fact in a way that Carlson's own statements about herself are not. Four paragraphs after Carlson is quoted and just before quoting Sawyer, the article's author Jennifer Steinhauer states, in the voice of an objective narrator: 'it is the absence, or close to it, of some illnesses in the United States that keep some parents from opting for the shots'.

Scientists keep insisting that this is a question of parents rejecting science and ignoring facts. But that's not what the parents are saying. The debate they are broaching is a much more complex one, and one that can't be solved with the recitation of objective facts. Here is what they are asking: if the preservation of herd immunity is a trade-off, who has the right to make you accept the trade? Why should the government have that power?

Scientists think that they know why people reject vaccines. Journalists assume the scientists are right. And when we accept that single story as the only one that can be told, we end up backing ourselves into a corner - forced to repeatedly engage in a fight that isn't about what we think it is about. It's possible that this is why the communication techniques which scientists try to use to reduce vaccine hesitancy don't work - they're communicating the wrong information.

If two groups don't agree on what the argument is about, then public debates become basically futile, no matter how many times you have them, says Maya Goldenberg. She's an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph in Ontario, where she studies the process of evidence-based medicine and sociopolitical context of scientific research. She has recently begun to study vaccine resistance and efforts to combat it. In a forthcoming paper that will be published in the journal Perspectives on Science, Goldenberg reviewed existing social-science research on vaccine hesitancy and came to the conclusion that the central argument is really a philosophic one.

The public might not know much science, and might be bad at estimating relative risks, Goldenberg writes, but those facts don't explain vaccine hesitancy. Her research found that many parents' concerns about vaccines are similar to those of Fisher and Carlson: they can't quite mesh the goals of widespread, population-scale public health with their personal goals for their individual children. She cites focus groups where experts reassured frightened parents that the MMR vaccine was safe for the general public. Meanwhile, the parents kept asking: 'Is the MMR vaccine safe for my child?'

In multiple surveys, Goldenberg found parents who were perfectly happy to believe that the MMR vaccine was generally safe, even as they decided they wouldn't be vaccinating their kid. They worried about their own specific child's sleep patterns, their child's family medical history, their child's recent illnesses - and they found, in those things, reasons why they didn't believe the MMR vaccine was safe for their child.

'The conflict isn't about science,' Goldenberg says. 'It's a conflict about much deeper values, and the science serves as placeholders for arguing out value disputes.'

The same is true of climate change, Goldenberg says, which has become a battlefield on which Americans hash out their differences over how market economies ought to function, how much regulatory power the federal government should have, and what does and does not constitute undue government intrusion in daily life. That debate is not about climate data. It looks that way only if you aren't paying attention.

Here's another example, one that isn't so emotionally fraught to Americans. In June 2013, the anthropologist Andrew Mathews at the University of California, Santa Cruz published a paper in the journal Social Studies of Science that focused on a series of scandals in Mexico related to government tree-planting programmes.

Starting with the election of President Felipe Calderón in 2006, the government of Mexico embarked on a tree-planting palooza, aimed at sequestering carbon and reducing the erosion linked to deforestation. By 2008, they'd already exceeded their goals. Instead of 5 million new trees, the armies of volunteers, corporate sponsors and government workers had planted more than 8 million. President Calderón had been a big figurehead for this work. He planted trees at his residence, he travelled to four different states to plant trees with locals, and he and his son had planted a little sweet-gum tree in one of Mexico City's most historic public parks.

That last tree ended up at the centre of a political scandal. Just a year after its 2007 planting, journalists from the newspaper Reforma found that the tree had devolved from a lush, bushy plant to a single, mostly barren stick capped with a sad toupee of leaves. The pictures turned a PR dream into a nightmare, leading to widespread criticism of the tree-planting programme, a high-profile debunking of its success, even undermining President Calderón's political reputation.

Scientists try to fight with facts, assuming the public just doesn't know what's going on, while the public gets angrier because it's not being listened to

All of that seems a little crazy. The sweet-gum tree wasn't even dead, as Calderón's government was quick to point out. It just wasn't growing as well as it maybe could have. They tried to disprove the tree's demise. They tried to explain the science behind tree growth and why, appearances to the contrary, the sweet-gum tree might be perfectly healthy and go on to lead a long and happy life. None of it worked. That's because, Mathews discovered, the scandal wasn't about the tree's health (or lack thereof). It wasn't really even about the specific tree-planting programme, though a Greenpeace report later exposed a lot of waste and failure there. The whole thing was really about a long-standing lack of trust in the government, both in general and on the issue of tree-planting in particular. All the way back to the 1930s, Mathews wrote, the Mexican government had used tree-planting as part of authoritarian media performances, often in conjunction with actions against the indigenous people it blamed for the deforestation. Pulling out data to show that this one sweet-gum tree in the park was alive didn't fix that. In fact, it kind of made things worse.

Goldenberg thinks that this is the same kind of thing we're seeing with vaccine rejection today. Scientists try to fight with facts, assuming the public just doesn't know what's going on. When that doesn't work, vaccine rejection gets attributed to people being 'anti-science'. Meanwhile, the public gets angrier because it's not being listened to. Vaccine hesitancy continues to rise because the public sees experts inundating them with numbers and refusing to answer the real questions.

There are historical reasons to think that vaccine hesitancy might have a lot in common with this tree-planting issue. In 1977, the US launched the Childhood Immunization Initiative. It was an enormous programme aimed at dramatically increasing immunisation rates. This programme created the first laws linking school eligibility to vaccination - essentially making vaccination mandatory. It also created mechanisms for enforcement of those mandates. By 1981, all 50 states had such laws. Prior to the initiative, the trade-off - acceptance of individual vaccine risk in exchange for herd immunity and vast public health benefits - was, at least to some extent, a voluntary one. Afterwards, it was not. This is hardly ever mentioned - by either side - in public discussion about vaccine controversies. But it supports the idea that the backlash against vaccines is being driven by political and philosophical concerns.

As I read through coverage of vaccine controversies, a final story, from The New York Times Magazine on 20 April 2011, stood out. Written by Susan Dominus, it is a profile of Andrew Wakefield, a British former doctor famous for publishing the study that first linked the MMR vaccine to autism in the public consciousness. His paper, published in 1998 in the prestigious journal The Lancet, purported to discover a connection between MMR vaccination and gastrointestinal disorders in autistic children - disorders that Wakefield claimed, in a press conference, might be responsible for autism itself. He advocated breaking up the combined vaccine into three parts, and maybe delaying or skipping it altogether.

This paper was eventually discredited. Not only were Wakefield's research methods flawed, there was also evidence that he had manipulated data. And he turned out to have an unreported conflict of interest - he had been paid to do the study by trial lawyers who wanted to prove that MMR caused autism as part of a lawsuit. Wakefield lost his medical licence, but he went on to find fame working with parents who believed their children had been damaged by vaccines. As Dominus documented in her story, his success in that arena seems to be due, at least partly, to his willingness to listen to parents and spend large amounts of time talking and thinking about the problems they notice in their children and what they think might be causing those problems.

That is a big part of what made this article so interesting. Dominus explored how tensions between doctors and patients - over bedside manner, over basic respect and, significantly, over who should be making healthcare decisions for patients' children - could have been the cause of vaccine skepticism, rather than just a consequence of it. Parents trusted Wakefield in a way that they didn't trust legitimate, factually correct doctors because he was willing to acknowledge their fears and their philosophical concerns.

I don't think experts intend to ignore what the debate over vaccines is really about. They care deeply about the public health implications of vaccine refusal. They're worried about the health of their individual patients. But they personally think the trade-off between the small risks of side effects and the big benefit of herd immunity is a fair one. They decided this long ago, and that belief is built into every aspect of their work. For a lot of them - a lot of us, if I'm honest - it's easy to forget that our perspective on the trade-off is a belief, and not a provable fact. We are uncomfortable with the idea that opinions on scientific topics could be influenced by philosophy, politics and other things that aren't easily quantifiable.

That's not surprising. But it is something that has to be acknowledged. If we don't do that, we can't ever resolve the conflict.

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Anti-vaccination might be rational, but is it reasonable? - Maggie Koerth-Baker | Aeon Essays

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Stop me if you've heard this one before. On 19 December 1984, The New York Times ran a story about parents who feared the risks of routine vaccinations. The parent quoted in the article was a lawyer who blamed vaccines for the death of his daughter.

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AsapSCIENCE, director. Debunking Anti-Vaxxers. YouTube, YouTube, 15 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=b03U6BYF9L0.

In this Youtube video, ASAP Science attacks the anti-vaccination argument from all the angles of the argument. They discuss how vaccines do in fact contain some heavy metals such as aluminum, but they are in safe amounts and are also there to help the vaccination work more effectively. This is a common argument for anti-vaxxers as they believe vaccinations contain all sorts of toxic chemicals but it is all blown way out of proportion. ASAP also debunks the argument that all children should be left to develop their immune systems naturally. They explain how although we are immune to some diseases at birth, we still are prone to infection by many. Vaccines give your body’s immune system a head start on building defenses against the disease and make the chances of you getting them much lower. Another point that anti-vaxxers use to get their point across is by saying vaccines cause allergies. ASAP counters this by explaining that they actually have the opposite effect, and reduce the risk of children getting allergies to certain things such as peanuts. They then go on to explain how vaccinations have prevented millions of cases of measles in the US alone by using statistics to back up their claims, something that antivaxxers are unable to do.

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Anti-Vax Movement To Blame For Quadrupling Of Mumps Cases This Year

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Anti-Vax Movement To Blame For Quadrupling Of Mumps Cases This Year

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Salzberg, Steven. “Anti-Vax Movement To Blame For Quadrupling Of Mumps Cases This Year.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 23 Dec. 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2016/12/20/anti-vax-movement-to-blame-for-quadrupling-of-mumps-cases-this-year/#19a5069a71ad.

In this source Forbes uses a graph to depict the rise in mumps cases in the last few years. Before 2006 there was less than 1000 cases every year. Suddenly that number jumped to almost 7000 in 2006. This sort of thing just does not happen by chance and is great evidence of the negative impact the antivax movement has of society. For the number of cases of a serious disease to just jump by a factor of seven, there has to be something seriously wrong. Forbes goes on to reinforce this by blaming the increase on fear-mongering antivax followers and their presence in social media. Forbes claims one of the main driving points of antivax members is that vaccines cause autism. This is one of the most effective ways to get followers for their movement because autism is something currently plaguing the world right now, and only getting worse. By blaming the cause on vaccines they effectively get more members (mostly parents) to join their cause, which ironically causes more diseases than it prevents.

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The year isn't quite over yet, but we've already had 4,258 cases of mumps in the U.S., more than any year since 2006, when we also experienced a dramatic spike in cases. As the chart here shows, before 2006 we only saw a couple of hundred cases per year, but the numbers have been trending higher since then. After two years with about 1,200 cases each, this year looks to quadruple last year's total when the final numbers come in.

Just as in 2005, the outbreaks were centered in a few states, mostly on college campuses in the middle of the country, especially Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. (The 6,500+ cases in 2005 were mostly in or near Iowa and Illinois.)

Why are we seeing this increase?

At least some of the blame, if not all of it, belongs to the anti-vaccine movement. Despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines save lives, and that the risks are minuscule compared to the enormous benefits, the anti-vaxxers remain in denial. They claim that the government-usually the CDC-and pharmaceutical companies have been conspiring for years to hide the so-called harms of vaccines, and they spread misinformation and fear in a continual effort to get parents to withhold vaccines from their children.

The main harm claimed by the anti-vax movement is autism. This belief, though fervently held by many anti-vaxxers, is absolutely false. It was originally proposed in a now-retracted, discredited 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield, who was later shown to have fraudently manipulated data, hidden his secret payments from lawyers who wanted to sue vaccine makers and treated the children in his own study unethically. In 2010, Wakefield was stripped of his UK medical license. As the BMJ editors wrote in a 2011 editorial:

Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield.

Nonetheless, Wakefield he continues to promote his bogus claims (most recently with an anti-vax movie, which I won't name here to avoid promoting it), and remains a hero to the anti-vax movement, who seem blind to his flaws.

This is reprehensible-and frightening. If all parents followed the anti-vaxxers' advice, we would see massive surges in vaccine-preventable illnesses, sometimes leading to permanent harm or even death in helpless children. Fortunately, most children are still getting their vaccines, but the anti-vaxxers have succeeded in reducing vaccination rates in many communities around the country, illustrated most recently by the 19-fold increase in vaccine exemptions in Texas.

Twenty years ago, we had under 200 cases of mumps per year, and it was no longer endemic in the United States. In other words, the only cases in the country were imported by people traveling here from other counties. The same was true for measles, which is much deadlier than mumps. Fortunately, rates of measles are low again this year, after the major outbreak that started in Disneyland in 2015, but if anti-vaxxers have their way, more outbreaks are in our future.

This amazing progress was all thanks to the mumps vaccine, which today is part of the MMR vaccine, which also protects you from measles and rubella. Before the vaccine program started in 1967, we saw about 186,000 cases of mumps annually in the U.S. The vaccine led to a 99% reduction in mumps (and measles). It's not perfect: the mumps vaccine is about 88% effective, but when everyone is vaccinated, "herd immunity" prevents the disease from spreading, even if a few people get sick. As the CDC explains:

outbreaks are much larger in areas where vaccine coverage rates are lower.

Perhaps more alarming than the surge in mumps cases is that the U.S. has just elected the first anti-vaccine President in history. Others have documented Trump's " long, sordid anti-vaccine history," so I won't attempt to describe it here. We can only hope that reason will eventually prevail, and Trump's ignorance about vaccines won't lead to thousands of unnecessary cases of measles, mumps, whooping cough and other diseases that vaccines can prevent.

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Anti-Vax Movement To Blame For Quadrupling Of Mumps Cases This Year

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The year isn't quite over yet, but we've already had 4,258 cases of mumps in the U.S., more than any year since 2006, when we also experienced a dramatic spike in cases. As the chart here shows, before 2006 we only saw a couple of hundred cases per year, but the numbers have been trending higher since then.

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Facebook Vows To Quash Anti-Vaccine Misinformation

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Facebook Vows To Quash Anti-Vaccine Misinformation

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Romo, Vanessa, and Patti Neighmond. “Facebook Vows To Quash Anti-Vaccine Misinformation.” NPR, NPR, 8 Mar. 2019, www.npr.org/2019/03/07/701358833/facebook-vows-to-quash-anti-vaccine-misinformation.

This is a news source called NPR that is reporting on the current state of the anti-vaccination movement in America. In this article they discuss how Facebook is planning to pull anti-vaccination posts from their website because of the public health risk. This is one of the main ways anti vaxxers are voicing their opinion and trying to persuade others in their social circle. This is obviously not good PR for facebook as they are being seen as the meeting place for a very destructive group of people. NPR goes into detail about how facebook plans on taking misinformation out of the recommended feed, or just banning the pages outright. Not only this, but they also plan on the removal of ads on these pages so there is no monetary incentive for spreading the misinformation. Mark Zuckerberg even addressed the issue, stating that the pages are a direct threat to public health. NPR then goes on to cover how Facebook plans on further countering the issue by pairing up with organizations like the CDC to spread factual information on the subject, and to help solve the growing issue on their site.

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Facebook announced on Thursday it is taking steps to combat the spread of anti-vaccine information across the social media platform by reducing the distribution of misleading medical advice and relying on vetting from leading global health organizations that "have publicly identified verifiable vaccine hoaxes."

The company intends to provide users with authoritative information on the controversial topic, Monika Bickert, vice president of global policy management, said in a statement.

"If a group or Page admin posts this vaccine misinformation, we will exclude the entire group or Page from recommendations, reduce these groups and Pages' distribution in News Feed and Search, and reject ads with this misinformation," Bickert explained.

Additionally, ads that contain false facts about vaccines will be rejected and removed. If ad accounts continue to spread misinformation, Facebook said it will disable the account. It will also bar vaccine misinformation from Instagram, which Facebook owns. (Facebook is among NPR's financial supporters.)

The decision follows a Tuesday Senate hearing on how to stop the outbreak of preventable diseases in which an 18-year-old testified that he was immunized against the wishes of his mother, who he said had developed anti-vaccine beliefs through her involvement with various Facebook groups.

"For certain individuals and organizations that spread this misinformation, they instill fear into the public for their own gain selfishly, and do so knowing that their information is incorrect," Ethan Lindenberger said.

Last month, in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., also addressed Facebook's shortcomings in counteracting the dissemination of inaccurate facts. In it, he expressed concern that Facebook and Instagram, which the company also owns, are "surfacing and recommending messages" that discourage children's vaccination. He called it a direct threat to public health that reverses medical progress.

There is overwhelming consensus among scientific and medical communities that vaccines are effective and safe in preventing potentially deadly diseases, including measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. But despite ample available data some groups continue to lobby against mandatory vaccination, gaining significant traction on social media sites.

To mitigate the reach of false information on its platform, Facebook said it is partnering with prominent global health organizations, including the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create factually accurate content.

Facebook's new stance also comes as public health officials are struggling to contain a measles outbreak in Clark County, Wash., that has wreaked havoc on the community there. More than 70 cases have been confirmed since January - 66 "were found in people 18 and younger and the vast majority were not immunized," The Seattle Times reported.

YouTube and Pinterest have also taken steps to tackle the spread of anti-vaccine information.

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Facebook Vows To Quash Anti-Vaccine Misinformation

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Facebook announced on Thursday it is taking steps to combat the spread of anti-vaccine information across the social media platform by reducing the distribution of misleading medical advice and relying on vetting from leading global health organizations that "have publicly identified verifiable vaccine hoaxes."

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The overlooked dangers of anti-vaccination groups' social media presence

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The overlooked dangers of anti-vaccination groups' social media presence

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Evrony, Ayelet, and Arthur Caplan. “The Overlooked Dangers of Anti-Vaccination Groups' Social Media Presence.” Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, Taylor & Francis, 2014, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5489284/.

In this scholarly journal, Ayelet Evrony and Arthur Caplan discuss how the anti-vaccination movement has impacted society. They discuss the measles outbreak that happened in Disneyland in 2014 and how it could have been prevented just by a few shots. Over fifty people were infected just because a few parents decided to leave their children unvaccinated. They also discuss how organized anti-vaccination groups have attributed to the rising trend of leaving children without their shots, putting society at risk. They highlight that a group called “A Voice for Choice” has a high traffic website that explains the risks involved with allowing children to be vaccinated. Not only this but they also push their viewers to lobby for the exemption of vaccination for all children. This website has had thousands of shared links since its creation. They also discuss how A Voice for Choice spreads the false information that vaccinations are linked to diseases such as AIDS, cancer, and even peanut allergies. This is obviously a huge issue because not only are they putting lives and public health at risk, but they are persuading their audience with false information. The website also has parents post pictures of their children before and after their vaccination to showcase the injuries involved. This is all fake evidence being used to give some structure to their weak argument.

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In 2014, a large measles outbreak swept through the Disneyland theme park in California, infecting over 50 people. Several of the children who initially spread the disease were intentionally left unvaccinated by their parents.

Outbreaks such as the one in the Disneyland theme park are becoming increasingly common due to falling vaccination rates. Undoubtedly, organized anti-vaccination groups have contributed to the drop in vaccination compliance and anxieties concerning vaccination. These groups often have a strong presence on social media and well-developed websites that attract people to their cause. But these sites have drawn very little critical attention. In order to combat falling vaccination rates, it is important for those supporting vaccination to be aware of, examine, and counter the claims of these groups.

One representative example of a group with a highly visible website is "A Voice for Choice." The stated mission of this California-based non-profit organization is to "promote people's rights to be fully informed about the composition, quality, and short- and long-term health effects of food and pharmaceutical products." The group also aims to educate parents regarding the supposed dangers of vaccination and, based on these "risks," to lobby for increased vaccine exemptions. As of January 2017, 3,809 people have "liked" the group's Facebook page.

Far from being fully informative, A Voice for Choice promotes long debunked theories regarding vaccination that are unsupported in the peer-reviewed, scientific literature. For example, A Voice For Choice posits on its website that it is "rare that any kid completely escapes from some effect caused by the toxic materials in vaccines." It links vaccinations to cancer, autoimmune disease, seizures and even peanut allergies.

A Voice for Choice also purports to offer parents comprehensive information about vaccine ingredients. However, in reality it is a platform that promotes misleading information. For example, A Voice for Choice's website states that vaccines contain aluminum, a "neurotoxin," in an amount that exceeds levels deemed safe by the EPA. Aluminum is incorporated into some vaccinations as an 'adjuvant' to increase the immune response. An infant may receive about four milligrams of aluminum from vaccinations during the first year of his or her life.

However, the website omits the fact that infants may also receive about 7 milligrams of aluminum from nursing, as it is found naturally in breast milk. It also fails to mention that adults ingest 7 to 9 mg of aluminum per day.

Even more troubling is the group's disregard for the concept of herd immunity. In one part of the website, the group concludes that all California schools "as a whole" have a vaccination rate that far exceeds the levels needed to maintain herd immunity. The group does not substantiate how it reaches the conclusion that every school in California has a vaccination rate sufficient to achieve herd immunity. In fact, in 2015, the California Department of Public Health reported that in Marin County, only 87.8% of children in childcare were fully vaccinated. In 2016, a charter school in California shut down temporarily after one student contracted measles. The California Department of Public Health reported that the vaccination rate for kindergarteners in that school was 43%. Contrary to the evidence, the website conveys that the vaccination rate is so high that parents can easily opt out and still benefit from herd immunity. In the name of "choice" the website actually promotes free riding-the act of getting a benefit without being a participant in a beneficial group activity.

Another example of the of the website's failure to provide scientific rigor to its claims is the ease in which individuals can freely post their "vaccine injury stories." On one part of A Voice for Choice's website, parents can post how their children were medically affected by vaccinations. The website encourages parents to post pictures of their children before and after vaccinations and to describe how their physical abilities were altered. It is unclear if any of the stories posted are verified by the website. There is no indication that parents are required to show any medical proof that a vaccine in fact affected their child.

The website also purports to offer scientific information on both sides of the debate regarding vaccination. Nonetheless, there is no mention of the grave dangers that parents expose their children to by failing to vaccinate them. One study has shown that children who obtain vaccine exemptions may be as much as 35 times more likely to contract measles than those who are fully vaccinated. A child infected with measles may develop a high fever and without medical attention, encephalitis and even death. Similarly, a child infected with mumps can develop complications such as meningitis and in some rare cases deafness.

The website not only fails to cite the harms caused by not vaccinating, but also omits any evidence to support its claims regarding the dangers of vaccination. The website states that it is rare for any child to escape the toxic effects of vaccination without citing any supporting scientific evidence for its assertion. Rather, it scares readers into believing that vaccinations will inevitably harm the health of their children. The website also omits the tremendous number of scientific studies that discount any connection between vaccination and the risk of developing autism or other diseases. While the website ostensibly aims to give parents "informed choice" and "transparency," in reality it merely provides unsubstantiated information which cannot lead as the group claims to informed choices.

Another prime example of the distorted reporting of the website is its coverage of controversial remarks that Dr. William Thompson, a former senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), made regarding vaccination. Dr. Thompson, referred to by the website as a whistle-blower, initially claimed that he omitted statistically significant data in a scientific study which showed that African American males were at a greater risk of developing autism as a result of the MMR vaccine. He relayed this data to another scientist, who subsequently published a paper claiming that the data showed a clear link between vaccinations and autism in African-Americans. However, the website omits the full story. The study was retracted one month later due to "concerns about the validity of the methods and statistical analysis" leading the journal to lose "confidence in the soundness of the findings."

Also missing from the website is any mention of how falling vaccination rates can directly harm children and adults who are physically unable to get vaccinated, including infants, transplant patients, the immunosuppressed, the elderly and those with cancer. Since their immune systems are compromised, even minor infections may be life threatening for them. These individuals depend on herd immunity of the community to ensure that they remain uninfected. When parents choose not to vaccinate their children, they directly expose their children as well as other especially vulnerable members of the community to significant risk.

There is growing concern about anti-vaccine sentiment in the United States and other countries. There is also growing concern that false and misleading claims about science and public health are having significant impact on politics and policy in the U.S. A Voice for Choice is an example of how an anti-vaccination group can harness the power of social media to promote uncorroborated claims that engender fear. The effect that these websites have demands more serious, critical attention from public health officials, academics, the medical community and the media. Disagreement with proven facts is a choice that anyone can choose to make. Disseminating falsehoods, misinformation and distortions of the facts about vaccines is not a choice that ought to go unremarked and unchallenged.

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The overlooked dangers of anti-vaccination groups' social media presence

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In 2014, a large measles outbreak swept through the Disneyland theme park in California, infecting over 50 people. Several of the children who initially spread the disease were intentionally left unvaccinated by their parents. Outbreaks such as the one in the Disneyland theme park are becoming increasingly common due to falling vaccination rates.

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"'The C19th Origins of the Anti-Vaccination Movement'."

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"'The C19th Origins of the Anti-Vaccination Movement'."

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“'The C19th Origins of the Anti-Vaccination Movement'.” Performance by Sally Frampton, SoundCloud, Feb. 2018, soundcloud.com/conscicom/the-conversationalist-06-the-c19th-anti-vax-movement.

In this audio file Dr Sally Frampton and Dr Oskar Cox Jensen talk about how the first vaccinations came about during the end of the 18th century. They describe how a doctor named Edward Jenner injected a less serious disease called cowpox (from cows) into the arms of children which in turn successfully prevented the children from getting smallpox. This is the first recorded example of vaccinations being successfully used in the medical field. They discuss the backlash from the community about how this would turn people into cows from the injection of animal material. Shortly after the process was invented it was made mandatory to vaccinate children under ten years old as to prevent them from getting smallpox. This led to a major backlash from the community because they felt their rights were being infringed. This is what sparked the first anti-vaccination movement. There was a march of one hundred thousand people against the new law. Models of Jenner were being decapitated in the streets to show just how upset they were about the new vaccinations. They also talk about how there have been many anti-vaccination journals published since then, one as late as the 1970s. Cox goes on to describe how there was even a movement of political songs that were against vaccinations that helped to get more followers for the movement. Some of them even lasted to the current day.

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The Conversationalist - 06 - 'The C19th Origins of the Anti-Vaccination Movement' by ConSciCom

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You're invited to join our science-themed cocktail party, where experts on the history of science tell us stories, fun facts, and random anecdotes about the development of scientific knowledge from the 19th century to today.

In this episode, we talk to Dr Sally Frampton and Dr Oskar Cox Jensen about 19th century anxieties related to vaccination and how they coalesced into a vociferous anti-vax movement. We explore the scientific and cultural dimensions of Victorian anti-vax sentiment, including satirical cartoons and songs. (Warning - these tunes get stuck in your head!) And we ask what the historical incarnation of the anti-vax movement can teach us about the anti-vaxxers of today.

Interviews with: Dr Sally Frampton (University of Oxford), Dr Oskar Cox Jensen (Queen Mary University of London), Cory Mason (The Oxford Artisan Distillery), Tom Nicolson (The Oxford Artisan Distillery)
Produced by: Dr Kira Allmann (University of Oxford)
Music by: Rosemary Allmann

This podcast is brought to you by the Constructing Scientific Communities Project, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.