How do they push misinformation and myths about vaccines to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids?
Slogans of the Anti-Vaccine Movement
In addition to their celebrities and a relative handful of ‘experts,’ the modern antivaccine movement makes effective use of very catchy slogans to scare people away from getting educated about vaccines and vaccinating their kids.
If there is a RISK, there must be a CHOICE.
This is one of the more recent and also one of the more powerful slogans that we have seen. It implies that the choice over skipping or delaying vaccines is being taken away and that the only risk comes from the vaccines themselves.
But like most slogans used as propaganda tools, there is little behind it.
Parents nearly always have a choice on whether or not to vaccinate their kids, even if they live in a state without non-medical exceptions.
Vaccine mandates are laws that say you must be fully vaccinated to attend school. Instead of homeschooling their intentionally unvaccinated kids, some parents think that they must have even more choices though.
In addition to overestimating the risks from vaccines, these folks greatly underestimate the risks of getting a vaccine-preventable disease from skipping vaccines, both to their own kids and to the rest of us in the community.
They are simply increasing our risk and limiting our choices to keep our own kids safe and healthy.
You can always get Vaccinated, but you can never get Unvaccinated.
This slogan is likely a surprise to all of the folks who push (sell) regimens that claim to detox kids of their vaccines, or more specifically, all of the “toxins, poisons, and chemicals” that were supposedly in the vaccines they got.
It is also a sad reminder to all of those families who skipped or delayed a vaccine a little too long – long enough for their child to get a life-threatening vaccine-preventable disease.
This slogan really just highlights the fact that anti-vaccine do not really understand the risks of delaying or skipping vaccines. That’s despite the fact that studies have shown that following a non-standard, parent-selected, delayed protection vaccine schedule simply puts kids at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases, without any benefits of fewer side effects.
And for the record, you can get unvaccinated. It is one of the reasons that herd immunity is so important. Just ask the parents of any child who has had to have chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant and is now immunosuppressed.
Green Our Vaccines.
Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey led the “Green Our Vaccines” rally back in 2008.
In 2008, Jenny McCarthy ran a full page ad in USA Today warning about toxins, autism, and the “whopping increase” in vaccines kids were getting.
Although they always claimed they were not anti-vaccine, they helped pushed the idea that vaccines were full of toxins.
Jenny McCarthy can likely also be credited with creating with idea that kids get too many vaccines at too early an age.
Our kids certainly do get more vaccines than they did in the 1970s and 80s, but that simply means more protection from vaccine-preventable diseases that used to be killers, like Haemophilus influenzae type b and Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Today’s vaccines have fewer antigens than ever too, even though kids get more vaccines than they used to. But certainly not more than they can easily and safely handle.
Vaccination is not Immunization.
This idea is pushed by a chiropractor, who also talks about “pure blood.”
If you believe that vaccination is not immunization, then how did vaccines help eradicate smallpox and how are they helping to eliminate and control other vaccine preventable diseases, like polio, measles, and rubella, etc.
And that’s the whole point. Many anti-vaccine folks don’t really believe that vaccines work. That helps them justify their decision to skip or delay vaccinating their kids.
Even if you thought that vaccines had too many side effects, if you also admitted that they worked to protect your kids, then your anti-vaccine views would likely produce a high level of cognitive dissonance. So instead you cling to these types of slogans. And if your kid does get a vaccine-preventable disease, you’ll still feel okay, because you will blame it on shedding from someone who just got vaccinated.
I’m not anti-vaccine, I’m pro-safe vaccine
The problem with this slogan, and in general, using it as an anti-vaccine argument, is that vaccines are safe. They are not 100% safe, but no one claims that they are.
Serious side effects from vaccines are very rare though.
People who rally against already safe vaccines, claiming that they say are full of ‘toxins’ and wanting even safer vaccines before they will vaccinate their kids, are not really pro-vaccine.
Neither are any of the folks who push these slogans, all of which are pure anti-vaccine propaganda.
What to Know About the Slogans of the Anti-Vaccine Movement
Catchy slogans are one of the ways that the anti-vaccine movement uses to push misinformation about vaccines.
After 1883, Leicester became a a stronghold for the anti-vaccination movement. Outbreaks of smallpox soon followed, as is seen in this New York Times report from 1884.
Some people will be surprised to learn that it didn’t start with Bob Sears, or Jenny McCarthy, or even with Andy Wakefield.
“By the 1930s… with the improvements in medical practice and the popular acceptance of the state and federal governments’ role in public health, the anti-vaccinationists slowly faded from view, and the movement collapsed.”
Martin Kaufman The American Anti-Vaccinations and Their Arguments
But while anti-vaccinationists might have “slowly faded from view” in the 1930’s, they came back…
And that’s why we often associate the modern anti-vaccine movement with Bob Sears, and Jenny McCarthy, and even with Andy Wakefield. But who inspired them? The modern anti-vaccine movement took root with a discredited bit of research that was published by a doctor in London, but it wasn’t by Wakefield.
Anti-Vaccine Movement Timeline
Again, the anti-vaccine movement predates modern vaccines, but not surprisingly, they have always used the same arguments:
The Rev. Cotton Mather’s house is bombed after he started a smallpox variolation program in Boston in 1721
“Every year, thousands undergo this operation, and the French Ambassador says pleasantly, that they take the small-pox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any one that has died in it, and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take the pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England…”
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu On Small Pox in Turkey (1717)
Dr. Benjamin Mosely, who had a very busy practice inoculating people against smallpox, becomes “the first antivaccinist,” writing against Jenner’s new smallpox vaccine in 1798, warning about “cow mania” and “to guard parents against suffering their children becoming victims to experiment.”
The satirical print, Admirable effet de la Vaccine, appears in France in 1801, depicting horns sprouting from the forehead of a man who was just vaccinated against smallpox.
Also in France, Dr. Jean Vernier and Dr. Joseph Vaume each publish pamphlets critical of Jenner’s vaccine.
The Anti-Vaccination League is created in England in response to the passage of the Vaccination Act of 1853, which made getting the smallpox vaccine compulsory
Dr. C. C. Schieferdecker, writes about the Evils of Vaccination in 1856 in which he set out to “prove vaccination to be nonsense before reason – a miserable illusion, in a scientific point of view, and, in regard to history, the greatest crime that has been committed in this last century.”
the Anti-Cumpulsory Vaccination League is founded after the passage of the Vaccination Act of 1867
The New York Times announced the formation of the American Anti-Vaccination Society in 1885.
Lewis Carroll argues with folks pushing anti-vaccine information about the smallpox vaccine in 1877
William Tebb, a British anti-vaccinationist, visits the United States in 1879 and helps start the Anti-Vaccination Society of America.
Alfred Russel Wallace is recruited to the antivaccination movement after reading Papers on Vaccination
Leicester Demonstration March of 1885 – around the time that Leicester had become “a stronghold of anti-vaccination.”
In 1882, Henry Bergh, founder of the ASPCA and a vocal member of the anti-vivisectionist movement, which were often anti-vaccine, writes an article against vaccines. He later helped found the American Anti-Vaccination Society.
Lora Little speaks out about vaccines and writes Crimes of the Cowpox Ring in the late 19th century
George Winterburn, like many homeopaths of the time (1886), becomes an outspoken critic of vaccines, writing the book The Value of Vaccination, in which he tries to proves “how little of scientific research it was adopted, and how much the whim of a few fashionable folk shaped its destiny.”
In 1890, Dr. AN Bell debates Dr. Robert A. Gunn, who had “long held that vaccination would in time be relegated to the long list of medical fallacies, and such works as I mention seem to indicate that it will not be long before that time comes,” in a series of articles over several months, “The Truth About Vaccination,” in their respective medical journals, The Sanitarian and Medical Tribune.
Dr. Immanuel Pfeiffer didn’t think smallpox was contagious. He was wrong…
William Tebb publishes the book Vaccination and Leprosy in 1893, in which he pushes the idea that an increase in leprosy is caused by smallpox vaccinations. A review in the New York Times wonders “Can it be possible that for all the years of the present century we have been believing in the potency of vaccination and been stupid enough to work in the wrong direction? Such a conclusion forms the basis of Mr Tebb’s arguments.”
In 1902, Dr. Immanuel Pfeiffer, argues that smallpox wasn’t contagious, was allowed to visit the Gallop’s Island smallpox hospital in Boston. A few weeks later, he was found to be critically ill at his home – with smallpox.
Dr. Reuben Swinburne Clymer, an osteopath, in 1904, writes Vaccination Brought Home to You, which “tells what vaccine is and how it is procured from the calf; tells how some have been killed and others made to suffer untold miseries by being inoculated with pure vaccine [poison]; gives facts and figures showing the results of vaccination… All of which show that vaccination don’t prevent small-pox, but rather tends to increase it. It exposes some of the lies of the wily Medicoes.” Clymer was also an occultist, an Rosicurcian (a self-proclaimed community of mystics who study and practice the metaphysical laws governing the universe, but more commonly called a fake secret society), and wrote about alchemy.
“Here I would like to say a word or two upon one of the most terrible of all acute infections, the one of which we first learned the control through the work of Jenner. A great deal of literature has been distributed casting discredit upon the value of vaccination in the prevention of small-pox. I do not see how anyone who has gone through epidemics as I have, or who is familiar with the history of the subject, and who has any capacity left for clear judgement, can doubt its value…
I would like to issue a Mount-Carmel-like challenge to any ten unvaccinated priests of Baal. I will go into the next severe epidemic with ten selected, vaccinated persons and ten selected unvaccinated persons – I should prefer to choose the latter – three members of Parliament, three anti-vaccination doctors (if they can be found), and four anti-vaccination propagandists. And I will make this promise – neither to jeer nor jibe when they catch the disease, but to look after them as brothers, and for the four or five who are certain to die, I will try to arrange the funerals with all the pomp and ceremony of an anti-vaccination demonstration.”
Sir William Osler, MD Man’s Redemption of Man (1910)
The anti-vaccine American Medical Liberty League is founded in 1918 by D.W. Ensign, the owner of Ensign Remedies (which sold mail-order cures to all diseases), and works against the American Medical Association, employs Lora Little and Charles M. Higgins of the Anti-Vaccination League of America
Mahatma Gandhi writes A Guide to Health in 1921 and states that “vaccination is a violation of the dictates of religion and morality”
Dr. John H Tilden writes the book Toxemia Explained: The True Interpretion of the Cause of Disease in 1926 and explains that “Every so-called disease is built within the mind and body by enervating habits.” In addition to pushing germ theory denialism, he is of course, anti-vaccine, calling vaccines poison.
Louis Siefgried, a Brooklyn chiropractor, writes The Quest Against Vaccination and Cruel Vivisection in 1926 and is soon arrested for refusing to vaccinate his daughter
George Barnard Shaw wrote that “vaccination is nothing short of attempted murder” in a 1944 letter to the Irish Times
“I think it can be said that this demonstrates a conscious over-anxiety to appease what I may call the vaccine-damage lobby, which may have led to decisions being biased against the vaccine.”
Justice Murray Stuart-Smith on Dr David Miller’s DPT study (1986)
Dr. John Wilson of London, in 1973, presents to the British Pediatric Association and later publishes an article, “Neurological complications of pertussis inoculation,” in the Archives of Disease in Childhood describing “36 children, seen in the past 11 years, who are believed to have suffered from neurological complications of pertussis inoculation.” While Wilson actually supported immunizations, like Wakefield, he later took to the media to scare parents because he had “seen too many children in whom there has been a very close association between a severe illness, with fits, unconsciousness, often focal neurological signs, and inoculation.” What followed was a drop in DPT vaccinations in many countries and vaccine lawsuits, even though his study was later found to be seriously flawed, with most having no link to the DPT vaccine.
Rosemary Fox, forms the Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children, for which Wilson becomes an adviser. Fox, who believed that her daughter was “damaged by vaccination,” distributed questionnaires to the parents of suspected vaccine injured children, many who were seeking compensation in lawsuits, and many of which were then used in the National Childhood Encephalopathy Study by Dr Gordon Stewart and Dr David Miller.
Jack Ashley MP begins asking questions in Parliament about adverse events after vaccinations, soon after Wilson’s paper is published in 1974, supported by Rosemary Fox and almost 300 families from her Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children.
Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, one of the first celebrity, anti-vaccine pediatricians, was a frequent guest on Donahue and other talk shows during the 1970s and 80s, prompting the AAP Committee on Infectious Disease to call him out in a “Red Book Update” published in Pediatrics in 1982, stating his “views are counter to scientific evidence and clearly they do not reflect Academy policy or recommendation.”
Dr. David Miller publishes a study in 1981 that showed a link between seizures in kids and receiving the DPT vaccine. A link that could not be confirmed in any other studies and a study that was published before all of the data had been completed. Like Wilson’s study, the Miller study quickly fell apart upon closer examination, including a finding that of seven children reportedly having vaccine damage, “three of the children had been incorrectly labeled as brain damaged when in fact they were normal both before and after vaccination.”
Lea Thompson‘s anti-vaccine documentary DPT: Vaccine Roulette aired in 1982 and is often credited as helping start the modern American anti-vaccine movement, but would she have been able to make her documentary without the groundwork laid out by Wilson and Miller?
Mirroring the work of Rosemary Fox, Barbara Loe Fisher, with Kathi Williams, soon form the group Dissatisfied Parents Together (DPT) shortly after watching Vaccine Roulette. They later changed their name to the NVIC, which was once described as the “single most powerful anti-vaccine organization in America.”
The press in Great Britain, when articles from daily and Sunday papers from 1982 were analyzed, were found to be “irresponsible in their attitude” towards vaccines and often depicted “rare, negative events.”
“…because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year…
It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunised.”
Roald Dahl Death of Olivia (1986)
Lisa Bonet, of The Cosby Show, appeared on Donahue in 1990 and said that vaccines could “introduce alien microorganisms into our children’s blood and the long-term effects which could be trivial or they could be quite hazardous”
Andrew Wakefield publishes his first study trying to find a virus that was causing inflammatory bowel disease in 1992, “Detection of herpesvirus DNA in the large intestine of patients with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease using the nested polymerase chain reaction.” He moves on to the measles virus the next year with his study, “Evidence of persistent measles virus infection in Crohn’s disease.”
Heather Whitestone becomes the first deaf Miss America, winning the Miss America pageant in 1994, and promptly gets media coverage for her ‘vaccine injury,’ which was really caused by a Hib infection. Not surprisingly, the true story, that her deafness wasn’t caused by a vaccine injury, didn’t get nearly as much media coverage.
Andrew Wakefield publishes his first Lancet article in 1994, “Perinatal measles infection and subsequent Crohn’s disease.” The next year, he gets another study published in Lancet, “Is measles vaccination a risk factor for inflammatory bowel disease?” Foreshadowing what was to happen with his later “autism” study, his research was found to be “flawed because of biases from differential loss to follow-up and case ascertainment in the vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts.” The findings of his study also could not be replicated by others and was flagged for “epidemiological weaknesses and lack of biological plausibility.”
Meryl Dorey forms the Australian Vaccination Network in 1994, who’s name is later changed (on order of the NSW Government Fair Trading Agency) to the Australian Vaccination-skeptics Network.
“It would be most unfortunate if the publication of this controversial work led to public anxiety over the safety of measles vaccine.”
KC Calman on Wakefield’s 1995 Measles Vaccination Study
Beginning from at least 1995, and over the next 10 years, 37% of all vaccine safety articles “had a negative take-home message.”
Katie Couric does a segment on the NBC News show Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric about DPT “hot lots.”
David Miller writes a letter to the BMJ about a study he did, “Measles vaccination and neurological events,” and in which he concluded that “these findings provide no evidence of a risk of long-term neurological damage associated with measles vaccine.” Not surprisingly, Wakefield took issue with Miller’s study, but many will be surprised about one of Wakefield’s problem – ” a reaction to vaccination resulting in regressive autism is likely to be a rare event, so the number of cases used for Miller and colleagues’ analysis is woefully inadequate to investigate such a reaction.”
At one of the first anti-vaccine conferences of the modern era, the First International Public Conference on Vaccination, in September 1997, Andrew Wakefield gives a presentation and Lea Thompson gets an award.
Andrew Wakefield publishes another study in the Lancet in 1998, setting off a media frenzy by stating that “Again, this was very contentious and you would not get consensus from all members of the group on this, but that is my feeling, that the, the risk of this particular syndrome developing is related to the combined vaccine, the MMR, rather than the single vaccines.” Although widely discredited, his paper isn’t formally retracted until 2010.
In 1999, ABC’s 20/20 airs a segment about the hepatitis B vaccine, “Who’s Calling the Shots?,” which has been described as “a program that deeply scared the American public.” ABC’s Nightline also does a segment on vaccine injury featuring Barbara Loe Fisher.
Beginning in 2000, Dan Burton begins holding Congressional hearings trying to prove that there is a link between vaccines and autism
Also in 2000, Andrew Wakefield appears on the 60 Minutes segment “The MMR Vaccine”
And that’s the year that Cindy Crawford appeared on Good Morning America with her celebrity pediatrician, Dr. Jay Gordon, after which he said “They edited the segment to make me sound like a vaccination proponent. We also have to understand the impact of a person as well-known as Cindy Crawford delaying vaccines for over six months.”
The CBS Evening News begins their four year run of “extremist views of vaccines and autism,” including going “after vaccine makers and the make-believe link between vaccines and autism, taking up the cause of trial attorneys on the one hand and glossing over the scientific data demonstrating no relationship on the other.” This 2004 segment by Sharyl Attkisson, on “Vaccine Links to Autism?,” featured a ‘landmark study’ by Dr. Mady Hornig about overdosing mice with thimerosal.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. gets his “error-laced” expose “Deadly Immunity” published in Rolling Stone magazine in 2005 (it is later retracted). He also appears on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.
Jenny McCarthy appears on Oprah,Good Morning America, Larry King Live, and 20/20 in 2007 to promote her book about how she cured her non-Indigo autistic son who got the “autism shot”
“When a well-meaning parent like Jenny McCarthy blames vaccines for her child’s autism, placing the fear of God into every parent who has a baby, it’s not only irresponsible – it’s dangerous. Why? It’s simple math: vaccines are less effective when large numbers of parents opt out. And the more who opt out, the less protected ALL our children are.
Celebrity books come and go . . . but the anxiety they create lives on in pediatricians’ offices across the country. A small, but growing number of parents are even lying about their religious beliefs to avoid having their children vaccinated, thanks in part to the media hysteria created by this book.”
Ari Brown, MD on The New McCarthyism in the Wall Street Journal (2007)
Dr. Bob Sears publishes his Vaccine Book in 2007 which leads vaccine hesitant parents across the country to request that their pediatricians follow Sears’ non-evidence based alternative immunization schedule instead of the standard CDC schedule, leaving these kids unprotected from many vaccine preventable diseases
In 2008, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey lead the Green Our Vaccines rally in Washington, D.C.
The pilot episode of Eli Stone aired on ABC in 2008, a show described as “anti-vaccination idiocy about autism.”
The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, airs a segment in 2008, “How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders?,” pushing the idea that “strong financial ties” between vaccine manufacturers and the AAP and other groups pushing the idea that “industry ties could impact the advice given to the public about all those vaccines.”
Jenny McCarthy in Time magazine in 2009 and appears again on Larry King Live
Matt Lauer interviews Andrew Wakefield on Dateline in 2009 in the hour-long episode “A Dose of Controversy”
Barbara Loe Fisher discussing “Forced Vaccinations” on Lou Dobbs Tonight in 2009
Bill Maher again warns people about flu shots in 2009 (during the H1N1 pandemic), this time on his own show Real Time with Bill Maher
Bill Gates gives a Ted Talk in 2010, says that “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s heading up to about nine billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care & reproductive health services, we could LOWER that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent,” and folks think he has a plan to depopulate the world using vaccines.
“The way forward is clear. Because no credible evidence during the past 13 years supports the hypothesized connection between the MMR vaccine and autism disorders, it is bereft of credible evidence and must be discarded. At the same time, autism is a public health concern that must be addressed by enhancing research funding and directing that funding toward studies of credible hypotheses of causation.
To continue pouring money into futile attempts to prove a connection to the MMR vaccine when multiple high-quality scientific studies across multiple countries and across many years have failed to show any hint of a connection, and in the face of biologic nonplausibility, is dangerous and reckless of lives, public funding, and ultimately public health.”
Gregory A. Poland, MD on Vaccine Nihilism and Postmodern Science (2011)
The Greater Good movie, which has been described as “pure, unadulterated anti-vaccine propaganda,” debuts at the Dallas International Film Festival in 2011
Rep. Michele Bachman in a 2011 interview on Fox News discussing the HPV vaccine, says that “There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine. There are very dangerous consequences. It’s not good enough to take, quote, ‘a mulligan’ where you want a do-over, not when you have little children’s lives at risk.”
Katie Couric has a segment about HPV on her show Katie in 2013 in which she “promotes dangerous fear mongering”
In 2014, the Dwoskin Family Foundation creates and funds the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute, which is reported to fund much of the anti-vaccination research that is done over the next few years. Previously, much of that research was funded directly through the Dwoskin Family Foundation itself.
Robert DeNiro appears on the TODAY Show in 2016 to discuss why his film festival pulled Andrew Wakefield’s movie about the CDC Whistleblower, VAXXED
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who has said both that he is “not anti-vaccine” and that after kids get vaccinated, “their brain is gone. This is a holocaust…,” also claimed, in 2017, that he is to lead Donald Trump’s “vaccine safety commission.”
While the names change and we now have anti-vaccine propaganda on the internet instead of hand printed pamphlets, the key messages they use to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids are surprisingly the same.
What To Know About the History of the Anti-Vaccine Movement
As you follow the anti-vaccine movement from the very beginning, it is easy to see the common threads that connect all of the players from the Victorian Age to the 21st Century. Germ theory denialism. Alternative medical providers. The media.
What else?
Fear, especially fear of vaccine-injury.
And although George Bernard Shaw once wrote that “the antivaccinist is facing very serious persecution without any prospect of personal gain,” you just have to look at all of the eBooks, eCourses, conferences, seminars, supplements, and autism “cures” many of them push and sell to know that isn’t true.
The modern anti-vaccine movement certainly also has a wider forum these days, making them an even more vocal minority. Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. E-books.
But not much else has changed.
One can’t even really say that the names have changed. Folks in the modern anti-vaccine movement continue to bring up the work of long discredited anti-vaccinated propagandists from the past, even going so far as continuing to believe that germs don’t really cause disease, vaccines don’t really work, and that vaccines aren’t really necessary.
Some are simply scared of things they have heard from friends or family members – the common anti-vaccine myths and misinformation that float around on Facebook.
Others feel that either they or someone in their family has been a victim of a vaccine injury. While vaccine injuries are real, as no vaccine is 100% safe, these injuries almost certainly don’t occur as often as some people think they do.
Consequences of the Anti-Vaccine Movement
Although the anti-vaccine movement has been around as long as there have been vaccines, we are starting to see new consequences.
In addition to harming herd immunity levels and triggering outbreaks, by pushing their anti-vaccine ideas, many of these folks often hurt autistic families too.
How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Hurts Autistic Families
Many people think that the anti-vaccine message is anti-autism.
“Autism, as I see it, steals the soul from a child…”
Dr. Jerry Kartzinel writing in the introduction to Jenny McCarthy’s first autism book Louder Than Words
Why?
In addition to the imagery of a soulless child, Jenny McCarthy said multiple times that it would be better to have a life threatening vaccine-preventable disease instead of autism. Folks would line up for it she said.
This “deficit model” of thinking about autism, “which focuses almost exclusively on impairments and limitations, ultimately leads us to see autistic individuals as broken people who are ill and, as my child’s first psychologist explained, need to be fixed.”
“I look at autism like a bus accident, and you don’t become cured from a bus accident, but you can recover.”
Jenny McCarthy
Hopefully, no one looks at their autistic child and thinks about a child in a bus accident, or a child who has lost their soul, been kidnapped by autism, or that they have a damaged child. That kind of thinking is offensive to many, and hopefully more and more people.
Other reasons the anti-vaccine message is often seen as anti-autism include that:
Anti-vaccine/anti-autism rhetoric might get in the way of a parent accepting their child’s diagnosis of autism.
They waste resources. Every dollar that is spent defending vaccines, refuting an antivaccine study, controlling an outbreak, or on a MAPS doctor (the new DAN! doctors), is a dollar that cannot be invested in the needs of actually autistic people and their families.
They lead others from understanding that “communicating a strengths-based approach to autism may not only afford autistic patients the respect and dignity they deserve, but may also help family members better understand and support their loved ones.”
It leads to ableist messaging when we respond to anti-vaccine fears by saying “don’t worry, vaccines don’t cause autism” without pointing out that “autism and neurodiversity are far from the worst things that could happen to a parent.”
The anti-vaccine movement also harms the relationship many of these parents have with their pediatrician (who they characterize as vaccine pushers controlled by Big Pharma), pushing them to alternative providers who will be more likely to pander to their fears about vaccines and allow their kids to follow a non-standard, parent-selected, delayed protection vaccine schedule. These are often the same types of providers who push biomed treatments, instead of more standard therapies that a pediatrician or neurologist might recommend, who would also be more likely to explain that “autistic children can and do exhibit improvement in their symptoms simply through growth and development.”
And of course, in addition to being anti-autism, the anti-vaccine movement is typically anti-science.
Sarah Kurchak sums it up well in her recent article, Here’s How the Anti-Vaccination Movement Hurts Autistic People, saying that “The anti-vaccine argument is wrong in both the scientific and moral sense.”
“A huge thing for parents in the anti-vaccine movement is the emotional support. The talk of cures and biomedical interventions is almost secondary to the feeling of connectedness with other parents. A lot of the appeal of the community is just being able to talk to people who can relate to what you’ve been through.”
Seth Mookin author of The Panic Virus
It is certainly understandable to want and need support, but parents of autistic children should know that they can get that support from other parents who don’t think that their child is damaged.
In advocating for vaccines, I refuse to stigmatize autistic people. I will use neurodiversity over ableist messaging.
What To Know About the Anti-Vax Movement Hurting Autistics
Autism is not vaccine damage. Instead of a deficit model, it is best seen through a neurodiversity model, which “sees autistic individuals as possessing a complex combination of cognitive strengths and challenges.”
More on How Anti-Vax Movement Hurts Autistic Families
Have you ever seen a quarantine sign for smallpox on someone’s home? That’s because Vaccines Work!
Have questions about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases?
Think you have done enough research already?
If that research has you asking for package inserts and requesting low aluminum vaccines, then you might need to rethink how you have been doing your research.
Pediatricians do know a lot about vaccines. What they may not know is how to counter every anti-vaccine argument that you might have heard of, read about, or with which one of your family members is scaring you.
“Pediatricians who routinely recommend limiting the numbers of vaccines administered at a single visit such that vaccines are administered late are providing care that deviates from the standard evidence-based schedule recommended by these bodies.”
American Academy of Pediatrics
You can rest assured that these arguments have all been debunked, often many years ago, but they keep coming up, over and over again. In fact, today’s anti-vaccine movement uses many of the same themes as folks used when the first vaccines were introduced over one hundred years ago.
Some of the first celebrities to advocate for vaccines did so to help combat polio.
In 1954, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz asked everyone to “give every dime and dollar” they could spare to fight polio.
From Grace Kelly to Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, stars lined up to support the efforts of the March of Dimes to end polio, with celebrity comedian Eddie Cantor leading the way.
Joan Crawford, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Red Skelton, Johnny Cash, Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, and many others were a part of the Polio Crusade.
Before that though, there were celebrities that were working to fight smallpox. Celebrities of the time like Lewis Carroll, who is best known for writing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
There are, not surprisingly, many pro-vaccine celebrities now too.
Kristen Bell
Ewan McGregor
John Oliver
Jennifer Garner
Olivia Wilde
Amada Peet
Lenny Kravitz
David Beckham
Keri Russel
Julie Bowen
Serena Williams
Salma Hayek
Christy Turlington Burns
Kim Kardashian
Jennifer Lopez
Kristi Yamaguchi
Marc Anthony
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Kendra Wilkinson
Marissa Jaret Winokur
And like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the 1950s, many are working with organizations to help fight vaccine-preventable diseases and protect children.
Many, like Ewan McGregor and Salma Hayek, work with UNICEF.
Others promote flu vaccines, combat pertussis, or simply fight the anti-vaccine misinformation that is that out there.
For More Information On Celebrities Who Advocate For Vaccines:
I don’t know how Oprah feels about vaccines or much of anything else.
What I do know is that a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show show can get the phones ringing at most pediatrician’s offices across the country – and not in a good way. The calls are from parents who all of a sudden have become scared to vaccinate their kids.
Her choices of celebrities to have on her show and the message about vaccines they gave to parents is just another example of the Oprah effect.
Unfortunately, in getting kids vaccinated and protected against vaccine-preventable diseases, the effect likely wasn’t so golden.
From hosting Jenny McCarthy to Dr. Christine Northrop, she has been “of the most potent forces in America for the undermining of critical thinking and science-based medicine in existence.”
Very few people like to say that they are anti-vaccine.
Even the people who obviously are, often say that they aren’t.
They instead say that they are pro-safe vaccine or pro-vaccine choice or something.
Most have repeatedly said that they have delayed or skipped one or more vaccines though, which puts kids at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases. But what really makes them anti-vaccine is that they often push misinformation that scares other people from getting vaccinated.
Those celebrities who appear to be the most anti-vaccine include:
Why? Several have autistic kids and they blame vaccines.
And perhaps even worse, are the celebrities who give them a platform to voice their anti-vaccine views, including Oprah, Donahue, Larry King, and Ricki Lake, etc.
For More Information On Celebrities Who Appear to Be Anti-Vaccine
