Anti-Vaccine Heroes and Experts

Every movement has heroes and villains.

Who are the heroes of the anti-vaccine movement?

“To our community, Andrew Wakefield is Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one.”

J. B. Handley

In addition to Wakefield, there is:

• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr – has moved beyond his initial claims that thimerosal in vaccines is causing an autism epidemic
• Del Bigtree – a producer who now hosts an online show about vaccine conspiracies
• Sherri Tenpenny – once board certified in emergency medicine, Sherri Tenpenny now sells DVDs and supplements on her website, speaks at chiropractic health events, provides holistic medical care, and pushes propaganda and conspiracy theories about vaccines
• Robert Sears, MD, FAAP – a pediatrician who thought he could get more parents to vaccinate their kids by telling them that vaccines are dangerous, vaccine preventable diseases aren’t that big a deal, and it is okay to space out and skip some vaccines that are less important than others
• Ashley Everly – a toxicologist who publishes binders of misinformation for her followers
• Forrest Maready – discovered the crooked face theory of vaccine injury
• Jim Meehan – an ophthalmologist in Oklahoma who now practices integrative and functional medicine.
• Taylor Winterstein – gave anti-vaccine workshops and visited Samoa during their measles epidemic
• Hillary Simpson – founded #crazymothers
• Larry Cook – founded the Stop Mandatory Vaccines Facebook group
• Rita Palma – a parent in New York who had her request for a religious vaccine exemption turned down…
• Joshua Coleman – the sign guy, who has been described as an “anti-vaccination campaigner.”
• Brandy Vaughan – now deceased, she founded Learn the Risks
• Paul Thomas – like Bob Sears, he’s a pediatrician who wrote a book about vaccines that pushes his own made up alternative immunization schedule
• Toby Rogers – another psuedo-expert pushing misinformation and propaganda that vaccines are associated with autism
• Meryl Dorey – founder of the AVN, she has compared vaccinating a child to rape, has harassed the parents of a newborn who died of pertussis, and suggested the name “Shaken Maybe Syndrome” as a campaign slogan to help associate vaccines with shaken baby syndrome
• Mayer Eisenstein, MD  – now deceased, he was the founder of Homefirst, a medical practice in Chicago which claimed to have no autistic kids among their unvaccinated patients. He also used Lupron to treat autism and filed bankruptcy several times to escape paying malpractice settlements.
• Barbara Loe Fisher – wrote DPT: A Shot in the Dark, which influenced Bob Sears and she founded the NVIC
• Mark and David Geier – this father and son pair are infamous for pushing a chemical castration treatment (Lupron) for autistic children, a treatment that led to Mark Geier losing his medical license (he’s a geneticist) in several states.
• Ginger Taylor – founded the Canary Party
• Suzanne Humphries, MD – a nephrologist who became a homeopath and now pushes anti-vaccine talking points, including that vaccines don’t work and that polio never really disappeared, instead we don’t see it anymore because we changed its name to acute flaccid paralysis
• Leigh Allyn Baker – one of the latest “celebrities” to come out against vaccines
• Jenny McCarthy – one of the most famous anti-vaccine celebrities who’s anti-vaccine/anti-autism rhetoric hurts autistic families
• Neil Z. Miller – a psychologist who has written many anti-vax books, he also gives lectures at chiropractic associations.
• Tetyana Obukhanych, MD – the Harvard trained immunologist who believes that Immunology has no theoretical or evidence-based explanation for immunity
• Tim O’Shea, DC – a chiropractor, he speaks at anti-vax conferences and wrote an anti-vaccination book called The Sanctity of Human Blood: Vaccination is not Immunization. Dr. O’Shea does not believe that germs make us sick (germ theory denialism), thinks that vaccines cause peanut allergies, and he sells supplements and seminars.
• Viera Scheibner – the micropaleontologist who thinks that getting a vaccine-preventable disease is good for kids, that vaccines are contaminated with amoebas, and that they cause SIDS and shaken baby syndrome
• Yehuda Shoenfeld, MD – an immunologist who heads the Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases and is on the scientific advisory board for the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute. He is the latest to blame adjuvants for causing disease – his Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA), which describe as “basically a made-up syndrome that isn’t generally accepted.”
• Romain Gherardi – a French researcher who thinks that the aluminum in vaccines is bad and scares folks with his poorly done studies and his book, Toxic story: Two or three embarrassing truths about the vaccine adjuvants.
• Chris Exley – gives lectures about aluminum toxicity at so-called vaccine safety conferences
• Stephanie Seneff – the MIT doctor (she has a doctorate in electrical engineering) who thinks that half of kids will have autism in 8 years and that glyphosate causes everything from autism to school shootings and terrorist bombings
• Lawrence Palevsky, MD – an holistic pediatrician, he was an “expert” for the anti-vaccination movie The Greater Good and he links to and quotes other notorious anti-vax “experts.” He even appears on the Gary Null Show – in addition to being anti-vax, Gary Null is among the alternative medicine folks who actually denies that HIV causes AIDS.
• Kenneth Stoller – a doctor in California who was writing fake inappropriate medical exemptions
• Lawrence D. Rosen, MD – an integrative pediatrician who has endorsed flexible immunization schedules and has given talks at anti-vax conferences.
• Russell Blaylock, MD – a retired neurosurgeon who thinks that he is an expert on vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases among other things that are not related to neurosurgery. In addition to believing that vaccines are dangerous and don’t work, Dr. Blaylock also thinks that mercury in dental fillings and fluoride in water are dangerous, among many other conspiracy theories. And while decrying BigPharma and telling people to avoid vaccines, including flu shots, he sells his own “wellness report” and his own supplements to help you “repair your brain.” He even offers ‘natural strategies’ for cancer patients.
• Joseph Mercola, DO – like Dr. Blaylock, Dr. Mercola is against fluoride in water, vaccines, mercury fillings, and he is even against giving newborns vitamin K shots. He also sends out a “health” newsletter to paying subscribers and sells supplements, many of which have caused the FDA to issue warnings based on Mercola making illegal claims on what they can do.
• Christina England – the “high priestess of vaccinology,” Ms England seems to specialize in the vaccines causes shaken baby syndrome conspiracy theory.
• Stephanie Cave, MD – board certified in Family Medicine, Dr. Cave now practices integrative medicine. She wrote one of the first anti-vaccination books I ever read (2001) and came up with her own alternative immunization schedule. She appeared as an “expert witness” in some of the cases in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings.
• Kelly Brogan, MD – a holistic psychiatric who warns about stuff like “A veritable body-bomb, the MMR contains recombinant human albumin, fetal bovine serum, and chick embryo fibroblasts, and the potential for interspecies activation of unknown retroviruses, molecular mimicry, and reactivation of the virulence of the infectious virus itself – a completely unstudied and medically unacknowledged risk.”
• Erin Olszewski (aka Erin RN)
• Sandra Efraimson (aka Sandra RN)
• Leigh Dundas
• Elaine Shtein
• Denise Aguilar
• Tara Thornton
• Heidi Munoz Gleisner
• Stefanie Duncan Fetzer
• Shannon Kroner

These are the heroes and “experts” in the anti-vaccination community.

Whether you are on the fence, delaying a few vaccines, or skipping them all, it is often their conspiracy theories and ideas that you buy into when you believe that vaccines aren’t safe, aren’t necessary, or don’t work.

What To Know About Anti-Vaccine Heroes

The heroes and so called experts of the the anti-vaccine movement includes celebrities, some doctors and scientists who are practicing way out of their field of expertise when they talk about vaccines, and others whose work is not supported by the great majority of experts in their field.

More About Anti-Vaccine Heroes

• Are Anti-Vaccine Folks Smarter Than the Rest of Us?
• The Dunning-Kruger Awards
• This Is the Modern Anti-Vaccine Movement
• Who’s Who in the Anti-Vaccine Movement – 2019 Edition
• Jenna Jameson Helps Explain the Modern Anti-Vax Movement
• The Vaccine Extremists in the Modern Anti-Vaccine Movement
• Who Are the Anti-Vaccine Pediatricians?
• Who Are the Religious Leaders Who Are Against Vaccines?
• Anti-Vaccine Groups Are Still Targeting Minority Communities
• Vaccine Heroes
• Meet the Heroes and Villains of Vaccine History
• The Crash and Burn of an Autism Guru
• Antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield: Scientific fraud?
• Anti-vaccine doctors – naming names and listing lists
• From Anti-Vax to Pro-Vax: One Mom’s Journey
• Don’t listen to these “medical voices,” or: How did I miss this loony antivaccine site before?
• Vaccination, Confirmation Bias, and Knowing Your Audience
• Vaccine injuries and confirmation biases
• Revisiting adverse reactions to vaccines: A critical appraisal of Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA)
• Essential reading: A comprehensive takedown of Dr. Sears’ The Vaccine Book
• Cashing In On Fear: The Danger of Dr. Sears
• The Medical Board of California initiates disciplinary action against antivaccine “hero” Dr. Bob Sears. It’s about time.
• “Dr. Bob” Sears profiled: A cynical vaccine-averse pediatrician who accepts no blame for the results of his antivaccine message
• Robert Kennedy’s Dangerous Anti-Vaccine Activism
• Why Does This Immunologist Reject Vaccinations?
• Jenny McCarthy : Still an Anti-Vaccine Activist
• Kristin Cavallari: ‘I’ve Read Too Many Books’ To Vaccinate My Child
• Neil Z. Miller & Gary S. Goldman
• Tim O’Shea
• Why Dr Suzanne Humphries, an anti-vaccine activist, is lying to you about measles
• Research, you’re doing it wrong: A look at Tenpenny’s “Vaccine Research Library”
• Another Hero Of The Anti-Vaccine Movement Bites The Dust

Last Updated on April 26, 2021