Fear of vaccines and myths against them are not a new phenomenon. Opposition to vaccines goes as far back as the 18th century. For example, Reverend Edmund Massey in England called the vaccines argued that these vaccines were an attempt to oppose God’s punishments upon man for his sins. Similar religious opposition was seen in the “New World” even earlier. However, opposition against vaccines was not only manifested in theological arguments; many also objected to them for political and legal reasons. After the passage of laws in Britain in the mid-19th century making it mandatory for parents to vaccinate their children, anti-vaccine activists formed the Anti-Vaccination League in London. Since the rise and spread of the use of vaccines, opposition to vaccines has never completely gone away, vocalized intermittently in different parts of the world due to arguments based in theology, skepticism, and legal obstacles.
While anti-vaccination supporters have always been present, the anti-vaccination movement was most strongly rejuvenated in recent years by the publication of a paper in The Lancet by a former British doctor and researcher, Andrew Wakefield, which suggested credence to the debunked-claim of a connection between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and development of autism in young children . Several studies published later disproved a causal association between the MMR vaccine and autism. Wakefield drew severe criticism for his flawed and unethical research methods, which he used to draw his data and conclusions. A journalistic investigation also revealed that there was a conflict of interest with regard to Wakefield’s publication because he had received funding from litigants against vaccine manufacturers, which he obviously did not disclose to either his co-workers nor medical authorities. For all of the aforementioned reasons, The Lancet retracted the study, and its editor declared it “utterly false”. As a result, three months later, he was also struck off the UK Medical Registry, barring him from practicing medicine in the UK. The verdict declared that he had "abused his position of trust" and "brought the medical profession into disrepute" in the studies he carried out.
The damage, however, was already done and the myth was spread to many different parts of the world, with one of the most affected areas being North America. In the US, the controversy following the publication of the study led to a decline of about 2% in terms of parents obtaining the MMR vaccine for their children in 1999 and 2000. Even after later studies explicitly and thoroughly debunked the alleged MMR-autism link, the drop in vaccination rates persisted. As a result, multiple breakouts of measles have occurred throughout different parts of the Western world, infecting dozens of patients and even causing deaths, with outbreaks occurring most recently in the United States during 2008, 2011, and 2013.
Ultimately, social movements such as this one illustrate that reform may not always be good, and serve as a warrant for being careful when approaching future reforms.
Source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/
I think this blog brought forward the important point that not all social movements/changes are a good thing. Obviously, the anti-vax movement is still a very small part of American society but it can have devastating consequences for people who are immunocompromised or children who are unvaccinated. This movement can be compared to the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s, which was also a time when fear was used to change the behaviors of Americans. Fear is a huge driver of change, but that isn't always a good thing.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/red-scare
This was a very thorough blog post that highlights the origins of movements like the antivax movement. It is very surprising to see that even though we are so modernized people refuse to pay attention to facts. They're recklessly risking their children's lives and are posing a danger to the vaccinated population. I would also like to call out the sheer amount of "false/fake news" being generated. All it takes is one of these tabloids to reach the general population. After that people will believe anything they hear. The point being is that we should always go to a trustworthy source or look at the facts ourselves.
ReplyDeleteThis post brought the light the errors that doctors make and how not all studies, even by medical professors, are ethical and correct. In your post, you talked about how Andrew Wakefield abused his medical status to create an unethical study that sparked unnecessary fear and consequences into the lives of the American people. His actions caused the death of many people who were not vaccinated even after publications proved his study wrong. Even though WakeField was revoked of his medical licence, he still relentlessly attacked the CDC through the movie he created called VAX. To this day there are still fears about people getting vaccinated because of his study, and it shows just how much harm a medical study from a trustful institution can harm society.
ReplyDeletehttps://time.com/5175704/andrew-wakefield-vaccine-autism/