The rise in the numbers of individuals who choose not to get their children vaccinated—some for a justifiable reason, but most for some religious/philophical/political one—is most concerning. I have heard that some people are planning to refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccination in 12-18 months, or whenever it winds its way through the fairly-complex creation/testing/approval process! I just can’t fathom that. Elderly people dying in nursing homes; children getting a gnarly “Kawasaki-like syndrome” as a side effect of the virus; first responders and front-line workers putting their lives on the line, and on and on. It’s maddening, actually. I think it is a crystal-clear case-in-point of three phenomena a) misinformation/disinformation/ignorance; b) tribalism and political polarization; and c) hyper-individualism/extreme libertarianism. This blog will feature approximately 60 quotes about vaccines, vaccine refusal, and public health that I have collected so far (in alphabetical order).
It’s definitely very hard to have faith in the regulatory agencies in our government, but I think to suggest that the CDC, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — just to name a few — are all in a massive conspiracy to underplay the dangers of vaccines is a bewildering leap. ~ Amanda Peet
Committed anti-vaxxers sometimes display a sort of religious zealotry that makes attempts at dialogue deeply frustrating. But there is no reason to dismiss the concerns of parents and caregivers who worry about autism, the effects of vaccines and the interventions of the medical profession. Putting pressure on people, shaming them or forcing them to do something that they are scared of is never a good idea. Most people are reasonable: give them the data and they are only too pleased that their child has access to life-saving vaccinations. ~ Ann Robinson
There is a core of people who no matter what you say, they will not believe you. They are convinced that vaccines are dangerous or they feel they don’t want to take the risk of their child, even though there’s two reasons to give vaccine: one is to protect your child, the other is a duty that you have to society to keep society protected. ~ Anthony Fauci
We seem to continue to expect intelligence and knowledge to predict rational behavior, as if rationality was some kind of byproduct of intelligence. Even skeptics can often be caught suggesting that if we just give people the right facts, they’ll change their minds about vaccines, E.S.P., and global warming. But that is not how people work. ~ Barbara Drescher
In 1736, I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen. ~ Benjamin Franklin
I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing. ~ Bill Gates
The anti-vaccine community, at large, believes that vaccines are a tool of government control that make big pharmaceutical companies rich and have side effects that can cause lasting damage. Sarah, a Texas mom who asked that her last name be omitted over fears her family will be targeted by people who support vaccines, said she’s more scared that she’ll be forced to vaccinate her two-year-old daughter than she is of the virus itself. ‘For a vast majority of the population, this is a few days of a high fever and a week of a lingering cough,’ she said. ‘Once you give up rights to your body, the government owns you.’ ~ Brittney Martin
At the beginning of the 20th century, worldwide life expectancy was less than 40 years of age. Today the world average stands at around 70. The single biggest reason for this miraculous leap in longevity has been our ability to cure diseases. Vaccines, antibiotics and advances in medical technology have changed the game. We are still in an arms race against many diseases, but we stand at a unique period in human history where it’s possible to imagine a day when we have conquered disease. ~ Bryan Nelson
Regular readers of [website www.sciencebasedmedicine.org] hardly need to be reminded how pervasive and dangerous the modern-day anti-vaccine movement has become. Indeed, it is a frequently discussed theme of this blog, given that the anti-vaccine movement is such a major force among the forces that deny the efficacy of scientific medicine and seek either to replace it with unscientific or pseudoscientific ‘alternatives’ or to ‘integrate’ pseudoscience into science-based medicine. Indeed, anti-vaccine sentiment infuses large swaths of what we refer to as ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ (CAM), be it chiropractic, homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, or a wide variety of other modalities and systems. ~ David Gorski
Mandatory vaccination, which is what we have in the U.S., is far more effective. Mandatory, in contrast to compulsory vaccination, requires vaccination as a precondition for using certain public services, specifically the public schools. The message is that you don’t have to vaccinate you kids if you really don’t want to. No one from the government is going to come around and fine you or force you to vaccinate them, as what happened in England in the middle and latter parts of the 19th century. However, if you don’t vaccinate there’s a price to pay. If you don’t vaccinate, your kids can’t go to public school because they would then have the potential to bring disease there and serve as the nidus for epidemics. Since that policy was instituted, vaccination rates in the U.S. has skyrocketed. ~ David Gorski
In the final chapter, Dr. Offit correctly identifies the problem as a lack of trust between parents and health officials, pointing out that it’s easy to come up with conspiracy theories about, for example, pharmaceutical companies because they are to most people faceless institutions with profits as their primary motive. To try to combat this impression, he introduces us to scientists from Merck who work on vaccines, their dedication, and their passion. That’s good. What’s not so good is that Dr. Offit fails to acknowledge adequately that there is good reason why many people distrust pharmaceutical companies. We’ve written about some of those very reasons myself, including pharma ghostwriting, seeding trials, and conflicts of interest. Let’s just put it this way: I like Paul Offit, and I wanted to like this book, but even to me this argument fell flat because it more or less dismissed the contention that not all distrust of pharmaceutical companies is unreasonable or overblown. Far better is his pointing out that parents whose children have been injured or killed by vaccine-preventable diseases represent an underutilized resource for countering the misinformation of the anti-vaccine movement. ~ David Gorski
Nearly 60,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in April, and that was when physical distancing measures were largely in place across the country.By comparison, researchers estimate that the Great Recession that began in December 2007 led to 4,740 additional suicides in the U.S. over the ensuing three years. Even if you include deaths from other causes that might be tied to a bad economy, ‘I don’t think there is a great data-driven argument that any recession is likely to cause the same amount of death as we are currently seeing from COVID-19,’ said Dr. David Eisenman, director of UCLA’s Center for Public Health and Disasters. ~ Deborah Netburn
‘Because of confinement, there is an appearance that we can manage this,’ Lydia Bourouiba, Ph.D., said. But if those measures were suddenly lifted with nothing to replace them, we would overwhelm the healthcare system and doctors would start having to choose who lives and who dies, she said. ‘That’s the ethical question people in our society need to be thinking about,’ Bourouiba added. So, what will it take to ease the stay-at-home measures with minimal risk to society? Public health experts agree on the essentials: the capacity to rapidly test people who may be infected, isolate those who test positive, and track and quarantine their close contacts. ~ Deborah Netburn
We have huge inequities between rich and poor, black and white, and entire swaths of the country without insurance and access to doctors. If we allow this disease to run through the population, it will no doubt take the poor and the most marginalized people in the society. ~ David Eisenman
Never has a vaccine been so eagerly anticipated. Scientists are racing to produce a coronavirus inoculation on an unprecedented timescale, and some political leaders have warned that the restrictions on our lives may not be completely lifted until one is available. That’s something of a challenge to the anti-vaccine movement, many of whose members are strongly opposed to mandatory vaccines. But the virus has also done something more startling. It has made some anti-vaxxers change their minds. ~ Emma Reynolds
Imagine the action of a vaccine not just in terms of how it affects a single body, but also in terms of how it affects the collective body of a community. ~ Eula Biss
What an astonishing species we are. We acquire knowledge at a rate and in a volume unrivaled by any other. Then we throw it away. We have an awareness of the future and can project into it, so that our efforts today ward off trouble tomorrow. But we squander these abilities and hurtle toward disaster. On Monday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there had been 704 cases of measles recorded in the United States this year, the highest number since the disease was thought to have been wiped out here almost two decades ago. Measles went away because humans outsmarted it: with vaccines. Measles is back because some humans are putting creed before prudence, myth before science, ill-supported opinion before demonstrable fact. ~ Frank Bruni
…anti-vaxxers run the political gamut. They’re on the left, their professed concern for social welfare proven hollow by the risk that their unvaccinated children pose to newborns and others who haven’t yet been — or can’t be — vaccinated. They’re on the right, among people who see the government and its edicts as oppressive forces. Paranoia has no partisan affiliation. ~ Frank Bruni
…the anti-vaccine crowd (or anti-vaxxers) aren’t trafficking in anything as concrete, mundane and quaint as facts. They’re not really engaged in a debate about medicine. They’re immersed in a world of conspiracies, in the dark shadows where no data can be trusted, nothing is what it seems and those who buy the party line are pitiable sheep. ~ Frank Bruni
How many studies do you have to throw at the vaccine hysterics before they quit? How much of a scientific consensus, how many unimpeachable experts and how exquisitely rational an argument must you present? ~ Frank Bruni
Since Covid-19, I’ve seen firsthand what these diseases can do when they’re not being fought with vaccines. ~ Haley Searcey
[This coronavirus pandemic] is an important time to reflect on the value of vaccines. If we had had a vaccine for this, we wouldn’t be locked up in a room, the economies wouldn’t be crumbling, we would have been a whole different world. The question I would ask is, do we have to wait for something to be this bad? ~ Heidi Larson
I predict that the next major outbreak—whether of a highly fatal strain of influenza or something else—will not be due to a lack of preventive technologies. Instead, emotional contagion, digitally enabled, could erode trust in vaccines so much as to render them moot. Social media should be recognized as a global public-health threat.” ~ Heidi Larson
Is there any meaningful difference between Donald Trump evangelists who are at war with climate and evolutionary scientists, and anti-vax identity folks who are at war with epidemiology and immunology scientists? They are all anti-science tribalists, although at opposite ends of the political spectrum. ~ Howard Winet
I definitely see the positive effect in anti-vaxxers that previously would not have considered vaccination. It’s way harder to be in a state of denial when it comes to the objective truth of the dangers of these infectious diseases when you’re experiencing a pandemic [like the coronavirus]. ~ Isaac Lindenberger
Research suggests that the reason informed people fall into conspiracy-theory mind-sets often has less to do with a lack of information than with social and emotional alignment. Facts are necessary, but not at all sufficient. Websites and YouTube videos where a federal employee in a suit states various statistics are unlikely to be effective against targeted disinformation campaigns that only need to plant the seed of doubt in the mind of people already skeptical of the medical establishment. The work of global inoculation requires first rebuilding a social contract, which means meeting people on the platforms where they now get their information, in the ways they now consume it.
There have been anti-vaccination movements at least since 1796, when Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine. But many experts say that the current one can be traced to 1982, when NBC aired a documentary, “DPT: Vaccine Roulette,” that took up a controversy percolating in England: a purported tie between the vaccine for pertussis — a potentially fatal disease that can cause lung problems — and seizures in young children. Doctors sharply criticized the show as dangerously inaccurate. But fear spread. Anti-vaccination groups formed. Many companies stopped making vaccines, which were considered loss-leaders and not worth the corporate headache. ~ Jan Hoffman
Though the situation may seem improbable to some, anti-vaccine sentiment has been building for decades, a byproduct of an internet humming with rumor and misinformation; the backlash against Big Pharma; an infatuation with celebrities that gives special credence to the anti-immunization statements from actors like Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey and Alicia Silverstone, the rapper Kevin Gates and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And now, the Trump administration’s anti-science rhetoric. ‘Science has become just another voice in the room,’ said Dr. Paul A. Offit, an infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. ‘It has lost its platform. Now, you simply declare your own truth.’ ~ Jan Hoffman
The constituents who make up the so-called vaccine resistant come from disparate groups, and include anti-government libertarians, apostles of the all-natural and parents who believe that doctors should not dictate medical decisions about children. Labeling resisters with one dismissive stereotype would be wrongheaded. ‘To just say that these parents are ignorant or selfish is an easy trope,’ said Jennifer Reich, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Denver, who studies vaccine-resistant families. ~ Jan Hoffman
The growth of vaccine doubt in America coincides with several competing forces and attitudes. Since the early 2000s, as the number of required childhood vaccines was increasing, a generation of parents was becoming hypervigilant about their children and, through social media, patting each other on the backs for doing so. In their view, parents who permitted vaccination were gullible toadies of status quo medicine. ~ Jan Hoffman
For highly contagious diseases like measles, the vaccine rate to achieve herd immunity—the term that describes the optimum rate for protecting an entire population—is typically thought to be 95 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the vaccination rate for the measles, mumps and rubella (M.M.R.) injection in kindergartners in the 2017-2018 school year had slipped nationally to 94.3 percent, the third year in a row it dropped. Seven states reported rates for the M.M.R. vaccine that were far lower for kindergartners, including Kansas at 89.1 percent; New Hampshire, 92.4 percent; the District of Columbia, 81.3 percent. (The highest is West Virginia at 98.4 percent.) ~ Jan Hoffman
America is a sick society as evidenced by our huge number of guns for protection from neighbors and due to a fear of tyranny; more deaths have been produced right here with guns in the last forty years (1.7m)(mostly suicides and interpersonal violence) than in every war since 1776 (1.4m). Look at our veterans. Money in politics. Violence on tv. Football players giving themselves concussions for our entertainment. Wall St behavior. Trump. Sanders getting cheated. Vaccines as public enemy #1. Factory farming. Opoid addiction. It’s very dark here. ~ Jason Merchey
Vaccines save lives; fear endangers them. It’s a simple message parents need to keep hearing. ~ Jeffrey Kluger
Captains of industry will have to commit acts of genuine altruism, because not all of the innovations needed to build a modern public health system will be clearly lucrative. If you’re making a fortune out of cornering the market on ventilators, for example, designing a cheaper, easier-to-make version of your product might sound like bad business. Likewise, developing vaccines and antibiotics may seem like a risky investment compared with the prospect of another million-dollar cancer drug. But when the next pandemic threat arrives, millions of lives — not to mention the entire global economy — may depend on exactly these things. ~ Jeneen Interlandi
There is no disagreement that vaccine refusal is the cause of outbreaks. More than 70 percent of measles cases this year were in people who had received no vaccines, and in all, 88 percent of cases were associated with under-immunized, close-knit communities. Yet parents’ decisions have effects that can reach far beyond these networks and neighborhoods. ~ Jennifer Reich
The larger and more interesting group [of vaccine refusers] to discuss is the significant portion of American parents who say they believe in vaccines but just don’t want them for their children—or don’t want all the vaccines that experts insist are safest and most efficacious. As much as 20 to 25 percent of American parents fall into this latter group, and they arguably pose the greatest threat to herd immunity. They are also the most likely to be persuaded as long as we don’t call them ignorant and selfish. ~ Jennifer Reich
Parents who refuse vaccines are most likely to be white and college-educated, and to have a higher-than-average family income. I believe their decisions are less about how informed they are and more about the culture of what I term individualist parenting — one that insists parents are personally responsible for their own children, but not other children. Individualist parenting has encouraged mothers to trust their own judgment more than that of experts and believe they can manage their way out of disease risk, even as their choices present risk to others. ~ Jennifer Reich
We know that parents who refuse vaccines tend to cluster and that living near a high number of other unvaccinated people significantly increases risk of infection. After all, most people are more likely to trust those who are like them. It is therefore not surprising that many of the outbreaks we are seeing are in tightly woven ethnic and religious communities with shared values and practices. ~ Jennifer Reich
Measles can kill about one or two of every 1,000 people infected at any age but is most dangerous to infants and adults. The mothers I studied would often weigh each of these facts to decide if and how it would benefit their own children to get vaccinated. They would not consider that those too young, too old, or too immune-compromised to be vaccinated might benefit most from the herd immunity caused by mass vaccination. ~ Jennifer Reich
When thinking about her son’s struggles, Katie, like many mothers, made clear that she feels alone. Feeling unsupported by schools, health care providers, insurance companies, and her extended family, Katie insists she alone must take responsibility for her child and become his advocate. Like high-quality education, safe drinking water, food inspection, or any number of resources children need to thrive, infectious diseases cannot be controlled with individual hard work, and thus cannot remain a private concern. In the end, we must find ways to protect each other’s children and support everyone’s family. ~ Jennifer Reich
In the summer of 2014, I was in one particular anti-vaxxer Facebook group, and there was a debate going on about vaccines, and I started to notice that every time someone disagreed with them, the core members got belligerent, going straight to personal attacks. I also noticed that every single point they brought up had this immense conspiracy to go along with it. By that point, I’d started to think, ‘Do I really believe in all these conspiracies? Am I really that afraid or can I go back and look at the evidence again?’ By then, my daughter was 8 months old, and I just got over the fear I had as a first-time mom. I realized that my daughter was going to be OK. ~ Kelley Watson Snyder
The most reliable way to understand reality is science and the scientific method. Used wisely you may have a shot at minimizing morbidity and mortality. Deny or ignore it and reality don’t care. Reality will get us all. ~ Mark Crislip
the reality is that vaccine-preventable illness are still there and the barriers to prevent their return are surprisingly fragile. It doesn’t take much thinning of herd immunity to allow vaccine-preventable illnesses to come storming back. We are always skating close to the edge of infectious outbreaks and not aware of the danger. But reality don’t care if we think vaccines do not work or cause autism or that we give too many too soon. Stop vaccinations and it is not if but when we will see the infections return. We think we are safe from vaccine-preventable illness. We are not. ~ Mark Crislip
Take the pandemic now; if they come out with a vaccine and you have 15% of people saying, ‘I don’t want to take it, I don’t believe in it, it’s going to cause harm’, you’re never going to get up to the level of herd immunity to really shut off the process. ~ Mark Jarrett
Americans who don’t want to vaccinate are increasingly getting their way: A June study found that, over the past decade, the number of philosophical vaccine exemptions rose in two-thirds of the states that allow them. What drives these wrongheaded decisions is fear — fear that vaccines are somehow dangerous, even though research shows the opposite. And these choices have consequences. ~ Melinda Wenner Moyer
As with many late-night hosts, Jon Stewart has shut down anti-vaxxers on air. ‘They’re not rednecks. They’re not ignorant. They practice a mindful stupidity,’ he said in 2015 of ‘science-denying, affluent California liberals’ who don’t believe in vaccination. ‘There’s no red America. There’s no blue America. There’s just a needlessly sick America.
The World Health Organization has ranked vaccine hesitancy — the growing resistance to widely available lifesaving vaccines — as one of the top 10 health threats in the world for 2019. That news will not come as a surprise in New York City, where the worst measles outbreak in decades is now underway. Nor in California or Minnesota, where similar outbreaks unfolded in 2014 and 2017, respectively. Nor in Texas, where some 60,000 children remain wholly unvaccinated thanks in part to an aggressive anti-vaccine lobby. ~ New York Times Editorial Board
An effective pro-vaccine campaign needs to remind us: Vaccines prevent two million to three million deaths globally each year. In developing countries, people line up for hours to get these shots. It’s also O.K. to get out of the gray zone. Scientists, especially, are uncomfortable with black-and-white statements, because science is all about nuance. But, in the case of vaccines, there are some hard truths that deserve to be trumpeted. Vaccines are not toxic, and they do not cause autism. Full stop. ~ New York Times Editorial Board
Is it your inalienable right, as a US citizen or as a citizen of any country, to either to allow yourself or your child to be infected with a disease that’s potentially fatal, and it’s transmissive? I think the answer to that question is no. ~ Paul Offit
People can claim what they want, but the proof is in the pudding, and this is the pudding. – Paul Offit
When you look at babies that have received aluminum-containing vaccines, you can’t even tell the level has gone up. ~ Paul Offit
I think we are at a tipping point, i think people need to realize that a choice not to get a vaccine is not a risk-free choice. It’s a choice to take a greater risk, and unfortunately right now, we are experiencing that greater risk. ~ Paul Offit
…far from being unwilling to study whether parents’ concerns about mercury were real, public health officials and academic investigators had performed many studies to determine whether mercury in vaccines caused autism or other problems. It didn’t. And those studies cost tens of millions of dollars to perform. ~ Paul Offit
Public health/preventative healthcare interventions also can have very positive ROIs. From 52 studies that looked at the ROI of preventative health programs (covering a variety of program types, including vaccines, home blood pressure monitoring, smoking cessation, etc.), on average the programs created $14 of benefit for every $1 of cost. ~ Ray Dalio
The return on investment in global health is tremendous, and the biggest bang for the buck comes from vaccines. Vaccines are among the most successful and cost-effective health investments in history. ~Seth Berkley
In this scary, uncertain time, I can imagine that thinking about something as routine as childhood vaccinations may not feel like a priority. Just remember: What we’re going through right now with lockdowns, quarantines, and a lack of uncertainty, this is all due to just ONE novel disease in our community without herd immunity. Our lives have been changed, our kids aren’t going to school or having their normal play dates. And this is from just one disease where the community doesn’t have herd immunity. How much more awful and isolating would this experience be if COVID-19 been as contagious as measles? ~ Shannon Keever
To my dismay, of those I asked who had contracted influenza, most hadn’t received their influenza vaccine. People either don’t see it as a priority, or they have fears based on the massive amount of misinformation available online. For years I worked in pediatric hospitals and one sound I’ll never forget is an infant struggling to breathe with respiratory illnesses such as influenza and whooping cough. My heart would break for the babies as well as the parents because nothing is worse than watching your child suffer. I always worried for the children we had to transfer to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), knowing they may suffer long-term effects to their little lungs. ~ Shannon Keever
Critical thinking is a skill that can be learned and that can be reinforced by habit. The scientific approach to critical thinking is empirical; it is a way of testing our beliefs systematically against the real world. Once we develop our critical thinking skills and begin to examine our beliefs systematically, it can be very empowering. It is, in fact, a defense mechanism against all the machinations that are trying to deceive us—whether for ideological, political, or marketing reasons. Critical thinking also liberates us from being weighed down by the many false beliefs (and perhaps mutually-incompatible beliefs) we tend to hold because of our psychological makeup.
Individual studies can be preliminary and flawed, or they can be rigorous and methodologically sound, but either way, it’s still a single study. Very few studies are so large, rigorous, and unambiguous in outcome that they can stand alone and be considered definitive. One always has to put individual studies into the context of the overall research and published literature of a field.
The World Health Organization recently declared that “vaccine hesitancy,” as they called it, was one of the top 10 threats to global health. That’s right: it was up there with air pollution, climate change, influenza, Ebola, and other threats. For the WHO, “vaccine hesitancy” is a polite phrase designed to engage the public and highlight how serious the problem is, without angering those who are guilty of it. I’m not going to be quite so polite here: “vaccine hesitant” means anti-vax. The anti-vax movement, which aggressively spreads fear and misinformation about vaccines, has become a major, worldwide threat. It also resembles a cult…. ~ Steven Salzburg
It’s ironic that when the world is faced with a true health emergency, such as the Ebola virus or the Wuhan coronavirus, the first thing that public health experts start to work on is a new vaccine. That’s because vaccines provide our best protection against infections. We now have effective vaccines for 16 diseases that used to harm and even kill children in large numbers around the world. We’ve eliminated smallpox worldwide, and we’ve nearly eliminated polio, thanks to vaccines. Their very effectiveness is what has allowed the anti-vax message to take hold: many people are no longer frightened of dying from infectious diseases. ~ Steven Salzburg
…[w]hen parents of unvaccinated children attempted to allow their children to return to a school recently struck by a measles outbreak, the judge blocked their entry. He’s not the only one. In Italy, a new law went into effect this month that barred unvaccinated children under six from school and fined parents of children older than six for not vaccinating their kids. This is not, as some critics would suggest, government overreach. It is common sense, and these proposed measures resemble the many laws on the books that protect the public interest, even when they proscribe individual conduct. For example, driver’s license requirements, prohibitions on smoking on airplanes, restrictions on falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater—these widely accepted examples put the public interest ahead of private interests. Legislation on vaccines operates in the same spirit. ~ Suraj Patel
We’re in the midst of a public health crisis spurred by parents who won’t vaccinate their kids. Diseases such as mumps and measles, once on the brink of being eradicated because of vaccination, are making a comeback. Public health experts are struggling with how to reach parents who are vaccine skeptics, and a recent study shows it may be impossible to change their minds via some of the communication methods used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We need antidotes to the current wave of anti-vaccination celebrity craziness. ~ Susan Rohwer
Ethan Lindenberger’s mother is a prime case. Her information about vaccines came from “anti-vaxx” groups on Facebook. As her son put it, “She thought vaccines were a conspiracy by the government to kill children.” She is not alone. On Facebook and elsewhere online, hives of misinformation and pseudoscience push the view that vaccines are dangerous—that they lead to autism, that they are a government plot, or that they cause the diseases they are supposed to prevent. ~ Suraj Patel
This world of mom was new, but so was being around so many women with such strong opinions. Before Momdom, the extent of my interaction with actual humans came from male-dominated molecular medical laboratories. And because of my years in vaccine research, the brunt of a major mom group issue fell into my lap: to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. At the time, I could explain why you didn’t need to worry about thimerosal in your children’s vaccines, but I had only rarely interacted with this enormous debate going on in the real world. My mom friends, as well as all parents, needed good information. That’s when my blog, The Vaccine Mom, was born. ~ Taryn Chapman
It goes without saying that the internet can be an incredible resource for many things. However, it can also be a huge tangle of misinformation. The information is triggering and believable, and thus can solidify a parent’s stance on vaccines. So I get it. But here’s the deal—from my perspective as a scientist: not vaccinating your child is more dangerous to him and to your community than the very rare chance that he could have a reaction to a vaccine. An unvaccinated child is a sitting duck because these vaccine-preventable diseases have not been wiped off this planet. The reason you haven’t seen many in your lifetime is because of the progress of science and technology—the creation of vaccines. ~ Taryn Chapman
Many of the ideas propagated by anti-vaccine activists are squarely rooted in a distrust for authority. In a conversation about the anti-science movement with CBSN Originals, Asheley Landrum, an assistant professor of science communication at Texas Tech University, says suspicion of authoritative figures or groups is a common thread running through many anti-science conspiracy theories. “We see similar types of science denial propagate through the internet on social media, where communities of individuals will either share information that they believe demonstrates the corrupt nature of authorities in a variety of different science topics from vaccination to climate change to evolution to genetically modified organisms,” Landrum explained. “All of these different issues have that in common, where people want to reject the findings that science has delivered by doubting the credibility of those who have discovered that.” ~ Taylor Mooney
The World Health Organization reports that there are at least 70 vaccines in development around the world right now, three of which have begun human trials. If all goes well, researchers and public health officials hope to have a vaccine available by the second half of 2021. But those who promote anti-vaccine views aren’t waiting. They’re out there now on social media, cultivating conspiracy theories and planting seeds of doubt that could limit a future vaccine’s success. ~ Taylor Mooney
For several years, journalists covering the climate change issue saw it as a controversy requiring equal air time for both the climate change scientists and the handful of scientists—most of them funded by oil companies—who felt the climate was not warming. This approach prolonged—and continues to prolong—a period of doubt about climate change. The result of the media’s approach to this issue is that while more than 98% of climate scientists are in agreement that our planet is warming, people in the United States are split on the issue. The result is that we’ve been hindered in addressing pressing issues related to combating climate change and are seeing the very real effects the lag in action caused by this manufactured uncertainty is having. Vaccines are remarkably similar case, in that the scientific consensus on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines is perhaps even more overwhelming. ~ VoicesForVaccines.org
Focusing on the social controversy of vaccines is tantalizing, but it does not present the public with an accurate understanding of vaccines. Reporting on science is different from reporting on politics, because in science, the facts are reproducible and verifiable. Underplaying the science to emphasize the social controversy can mislead parents about vaccines, leading to decisions that are not based on correct facts and accurate risk-assessment. When it comes to vaccines, the costs of such misrepresentations can be high. ~ VoicesforVaccines.org
Fear is powerful. It’s so powerful that sometimes even the effort of trying to ease it can be upsetting to the person controlled by it. This can be especially true when the topic is vaccines. Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself and now hesitate to even bring up the topic of vaccines. Maybe you’ve “agreed to disagree” on vaccines, even though doing so creates a fear of your own—that your children and the children you love will be affected by a vaccine-preventable disease. ~ VoicesForVaccines.org
Science is not decided in the court of public opinion, and journalists need to be on guard about falling prey to false balance in order to report accurately about the facts involving vaccines. ~ VoicesForVaccines.org
‘Why are parents not vaccinating their kids? What the hell is wrong with people?’ As a father of two young children, I’ve had outbursts like this on more than one occasion as I sit in my Play-Doh- and Lego-littered family room, reading the latest news about measles and other preventable viruses making a global comeback. This week, Senator Rand Paul, who has previously fueled the dangerous myth that vaccines cause harm by saying in 2016 that it’s ‘wrong to say there are no risks to vaccines,’ spoke out against government-mandated vaccines at a Senate Health Committee hearing, saying, ‘I believe that the benefits of vaccines greatly outweigh the risks, but I still do not favor giving up on liberty for a false sense of security.’ ~ Wajahat Ali
With a measles outbreak affecting over 200 people this year and a recent study proving yet again that there is no reason to believe that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, known as M.M.R., causes autism, it’s infuriating to know that parents still resist vaccinating their children. But I know people whom I think of as otherwise intelligent and well intentioned who aren’t convinced that vaccines are safe. In the face of their dangerous choices, I’ve been thinking seriously about what I can do to get through to them. ~ Wajahat Ali
All of this has influenced friends of mine from the Bay Area and Virginia, otherwise highly informed individuals who pride themselves on sniffing out fake news, to remain skeptical about vaccines. [My physician wife] Sarah described their mind-set and those of the patients she sees: ‘The parents don’t trust big pharma. They don’t trust scientific studies, and they think evidence is always changing. They don’t understand how vaccines work. Some will be like ‘I don’t want to overload my kid’s immune system with too many shots at once.’ This global ‘doubt’ explains why measles reached a 20-year high in Europe in the first six months of 2018. ~ Wajahat Ali
I’ve begun to agree with [my physician wife] Sarah, who believes education, personal relationships and counter-narratives are the long-term keys to success and rebuilding trust in health professionals and experts. Her mantra: ‘Don’t vilify, bully or mock the parents, but try to empathize and teach, and then empower them.’ She encourages doctors to actually listen to their patients’ unfounded fears before jumping in with the kind of harsh critiques or judgment that can backfire and solidify their false beliefs. Instead, she suggests doctors acknowledge their concerns and build trust over time, while also providing correct information, facts and relatable personal stories. ~ Wajahat Ali
Epidemics, Anne Applebaum recently pointed out in The Atlantic, ‘have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact.’ [The coronavirus] has caught us in a moment of profound weakness. Faith in science, government, media, and all our institutions has badly eroded, and we are deeply divided politically and culturally, viewing each other as enemy tribes, not countrymen. The coronavirus cares nothing for these distinctions; it is a reminder that our separateness is an illusion. We Americans, and all humanity, are at war with a common foe. We can only defeat it together. ~ William Falk
I immunize for my daughter Alana. Alana died on February 3rd, 2005 of complications from the flu. ~ Zachary Yaksich
