The Science Behind the Anti-Vaccine Movement

The science behind the anti-vaccine movement?

Did I say science?

Is pseudoscience a science?

Anti-Science Claims of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

To understand just how anti-science the anti-vaccine movement really is, you simply have to review some of the the things that most anti-vaccine and pro-safe vaccine folks really believe.

“If there’s one thing about the anti-vaccine movement I’ve learned over the last several years, it’s that it’s almost completely immune to evidence, science, and reason.”

David Gorski, MD

Did you know, that many folks who are against vaccines also believe that:

• chemtrails are a thing
• germ theory isn’t true
• herd immunity isn’t real
• vaccines are full of toxins and poisons
• vaccines can’t ever be safe, which is why most are against vaccines that haven’t even been developed yet
• vaccines aren’t necessary anymore, choosing to “hide in the herd” or deny that outbreaks are a problem
• anti-vaccine celebrities are more believable than doctors and scientists
• vaccines don’t even work and they have charts and graphs to prove it
• vaccine-preventable diseases, like smallpox and polio, haven’t been eradicated, eliminated, or controlled with vaccines, and that it was, instead, the work of better nutrition, sanitation, and hygiene
• pediatricians and other doctors push vaccines solely because of all the money they can make money doing it
• there is a long list of vaccine induced diseases, from asthma to shaken baby syndrome – it’s not just autism
• vaccine-preventable diseases, like smallpox and polio, were never eradicated, eliminated, or controlled with vaccines, and that we simply changed the names of the diseases
• shedding from kids who have recently been vaccinated is a very big danger
• Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to control the population
• vaccine-preventable diseases aren’t that bad and aren’t the big killer that experts make them out to be
• the vaccines that a child’s parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents received could have damaged an unvaccinated child
• the government is covering up vaccine injuries
• detox therapies can cure kids of autism and other so-called vaccine injuries
• pro-vaccine experts are wrong or lying because they are being paid by Big Pharma
• a vitamin K shot for newborn babies is dangerous and not even necessary
• extended breastfeeding protects kids from vaccine-preventable diseases
• just about anything that happens to you after you get a vaccine, even if it is weeks, months, or years later, is a vaccine injury
• no one else is at risk if your family isn’t vaccinated
• testimonials and anecdotes they hear and read on the Internet, especially vaccine-injury stories, are more credible than peer reviewed studies published in well known medical journals

None of these beliefs are supported by science.

Many simply help folks justify their decision to skip or delay getting their kids vaccinated and protected against life-threatening vaccine preventable diseases. After all, why should parents think to get their kids vaccinated if they believe that the vaccines don’t work or aren’t necessary in the first place?

In fact, most of if not all have been disproven using true scientific principles.

And most are pushed by the most notorious anti-science web sites on the Internet.

Not only are these ideas anti-science, the pseudoscientific nonsense behind the anti-vaccine movement is dangerous because it scares parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids from life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases.

More on the Anti-Science Claims of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

• WHO – Six common misconceptions about immunization
• How do we resist the rising tide of antiscience and pseudoscience?
• What can the anti-vaccination movement teach us about improving the public’s understanding of science?
• Public Health Takes on Anti-Vaccine Propaganda: Damage done, Challenges Ahead
• Antivax 101: Tactics and Tropes of the Antivaccine Movement
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Advocate for anti – science and anti-vaccination.
• Learning the Hard Way: My Journey from #AntiVaxx to Science
• How pseudoscience tries to fool you
• 10 Questions To Distinguish Real From Fake Science
• The 10 Pro-vaccine Commandments According to Anti-vaccinationists
• Nine Questions, Nine Answers.
• When Anti-Vaccine Activists Falsely Dismiss Polio and Measles Harm
• How To Evaluate Health Information on the Internet: Questions and Answers
• Find Good Health Information