Anti-vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement - Softcover

Berman, Jonathan M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262539322 ISBN 13: 9780262539326

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2020

Synopsis

A “clear and insightful” takedown of the anti-vaccination movement, from its 19th-century antecedents to modern-day Facebook activists—with strategies for refuting false claims of friends and family (Financial Times)

Vaccines are a documented success story, one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there is a vocal anti-vaccination movement, featuring celebrity activists (including Kennedy scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and actress Jenny McCarthy) and the propagation of anti-vax claims through books, documentaries, and social media. In Anti-Vaxxers, Jonathan Berman explores the phenomenon of the anti-vaccination movement, recounting its history from its nineteenth-century antecedents to today’s activism, examining its claims, and suggesting a strategy for countering them.

After providing background information on vaccines and how they work, Berman describes resistance to Britain’s Vaccination Act of 1853, showing that the arguments anticipate those made by today’s anti-vaxxers. He discusses the development of new vaccines in the twentieth century, including those protecting against polio and MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), and the debunked paper that linked the MMR vaccine to autism; the CDC conspiracy theory promoted in the documentary Vaxxed; recommendations for an alternative vaccination schedule; Kennedy’s misinformed campaign against thimerosal; and the much-abused religious exemption to vaccination.

Anti-vaxxers have changed their minds, but rarely because someone has given them a list of facts. Berman argues that anti-vaccination activism is tied closely to how people see themselves as parents and community members. Effective pro-vaccination efforts should emphasize these cultural aspects rather than battling social media posts.

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan M. Berman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Basic Sciences at NYITCOM–Arkansas. An active science communicator, he served as national cochair of the 2017 March for Science.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Anti-vaccine activists have been successful in limited ways by establishing doubt within isolated communities. In the United States, when rates have dropped low enough in enclaves that an outbreak occurs, historically, the reaction has been swift, culturally competent, and very effective in recovering vaccination rates. In absolute numbers, the number of children who have died because of these outbreaks in the United States is low.
These data are heartening because they show that the overall impact of the anti-vaccine movement has been low. However, if you are a parent or relative of a child who does become infected with a vaccine-preventable illness, your child is still sick. If you are a parent whose children attend school, you will have an interest in knowing that your community has high vaccination rates. If you are the parent of an immunocompromised child who is unable to be vaccinated, membership in a community where immunization rates are high is an important step in protecting your child’s life. Oscillations between minor outbreaks and adequate vaccination rates is less desirable than eliminating those diseases or maintaining a high steady state of vaccination.
Public health efforts to eliminate diseases have so far eliminated only two worldwide, smallpox and rinderpest. The goal of eliminating polio by 2015 has been missed, and it seems unlikely to be eliminated by 2020, although the cases of wild polio have decreased to the low double digits, and elimination still appears to be an achievable near-term goal. 

All politics is local.
—attributed to Tip O’Neill

Because the risks of the anti-vaccine movement take place at the level of local communities, schools, preschools, churches, mosques, synagogues, and neighborhoods, it is important that each of us knows how to understand the anti-vaccine movement. We should learn the kinds of arguments it uses and how it spreads in communities and becomes associated with group identity. We should learn how we can individually respond to the doubts or questions of our friends, neighbors, and family members in a way that is compassionate, well informed, and correct. Anti-vaccination activism is a local problem that demands local, personal solutions.

Edition details

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262539322
• ISBN 13: 9780262539326
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296