The BBC News website reminds us of the origins of the anti-vaccine movements. According to the portal, everything started with the publication of an article by Dr. Andrew Wakefield in The Lancet. After 12 years, the magazine withdrew the article as the research it described proved to be a stretch.
As Brian Deer, investigative journalist of the British newspaper The Sunday Times, recalls, in February 1998 the Lancet published an article by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It showed that 12 children were admitted to a London hospital, eight of whom developed symptoms of autism in less than 14 days after receiving the MMR vaccine (against measles, mumps and rubella). There was also a bowel disease. The case became high-profile and many parents stopped vaccinating their children – not only with the MMR vaccine.
However, when Deer took a closer look, the research turned out to be a stretch. One of the children showed signs of autism not days but months after vaccination. And it was the only real case of autism in the entire group. The selection of children for the study was biased and inspired by a small anti-vaccine organization. Over the years, medical institutions have analyzed Wakefield’s research, which has resulted in his removal from the medical register – no one has obtained results confirming the theory of a link between the vaccine and autism. Lancet withdrew the article from the database. However, it didn’t happen until 12 years after the article was published.
While in the UK, vaccination rates have finally returned to pre-1998 levels, Wakefield’s theories have a life of their own. And Deer continues to be bombarded with e-mails by vaccine opponents – as a sold-out man to the pharmaceutical lobby.
Experts explain that any drug – including a vaccine – can cause side effects. However, the benefits outweigh the risks.
Dr. Dyan Hes from New York does not admit patients without current vaccinations in his pediatric clinic. As the matter of life and death explains it, an unvaccinated child could infect others, among which they are also immunocompromised due to cancer or other disease.
If the majority of people in the city are vaccinated against the disease and the carrier of the disease comes there, it is unlikely that they will come into contact with someone they can infect and there will be no further illnesses. Even those who for some reason could not be vaccinated will be safe. This is called “group immunity”.
The first effective vaccine – against smallpox – appeared in the late 12th century. But it was the success of the vaccines that led to opposition to their use – parents saw no reason to vaccinate their children against diseases that no one they knew suffered from. They forgot that the death of a child from an infectious disease was once a common occurrence, and that measles encephalitis, for example, led to mental retardation. In the spring, the first death of a person suffering from measles in XNUMX years was registered in the USA.
Juniper Russo, a single mother from Chattanooga, Tennessee, was part of the anti-vaccination movement. She recalls that she was terrified by Wakefield’s research, and those involved in the movement believed that he was a hero who had been silenced as a result of a government conspiracy. She thought the same – that Big Pharma wants to harm her child, just to earn. She changed her mind when her unvaccinated daughter was diagnosed with autism.
Now Russo runs the Back from Nature blog, supporting science-based healthcare. Like journalist Brian Deer, she is exposed to threats from vaccine opponents who accuse her of treason.
Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, tries to understand how people feel about vaccines.
«People are growing stronger against vaccines because they feel no one is listening to them. Instead of just giving information, you need to learn to listen to it. I believe that we need to support health professionals much better in their difficult conversations. They are absolutely not prepared to question what they are doing. There is a lot of talk about society’s understanding of science. I think scientists have too little understanding of society, ‘said Larson.
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