The Anti-Vax Insanity

While it isn't too hard to explain why much of science denialism happens, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theories -- once largely bipartisan but now strongly associated with the far right fever swamps -- are rather puzzling. During most of the 20th Century, the medical profession enjoyed growing prestige and profound respect for its expertise. A high point was undoubtedly development of the polio vaccine by Jonas Salk, announced in 1955. Endemic polio had struck terror throughout the country and the world, and Salk gained heroic status. Vaccines were developed for other dread scourges, notably measles, mumps and rubella, and the centuries long campaign against smallpox culminated with its eradication from the earth in 1980. (Polio has nearly been eradicated but pockets remain in war zones and areas of civil unrest, where vaccination campaigns face severe obstacles.)

 

Vaccination was nearly universally accepted as a miracle of science. Whereas it was once taken for granted that anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of children would die or suffer severe injury from infectious disease, parents had the expectation that all of their children would survive to adulthood for the first time in human history. So what happened?

 

We can trace the modern anti-vax conspiracy movement to a British physician named Andrew Wakefield, who with several colleagues published  paper in The Lancet in 1998 claiming a link between the Measles - Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The paper was based on a series of only 12 cases and the conclusion would have been dubious in any case, but in fact the research was fraudulent. 

 

It was later discovered that Wakefield had been funded by lawyers who planned to sue the manufacturer. The Lancet retracted the paper in 2010, with the concurrence of most of the co-authors who claimed Wakefield had duped them. Wakefield's medical license was subsequently revoked. Nevertheless the damage had been done. Uptake of the MMR vaccine fell sharply. A movement sprang up of parents of autistic children who, desperate to find a cause for their children's difficulties, made Wakefield into a hero and refused to believe the nearly universal condemnation of Wakefield by the medical profession. (Wakefield actually moved to the U.S. and became a leader of the anti-vax movement.)

In 2005 the execrable Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published an article claiming that thimerosal, a preservative found in a few vaccines (though largely removed after 2000) was a cause of autism among other health problems, and furthermore that public health officials knew this and were covering it up. This was a complete fabrication. Although the publishers retracted the article after it was thoroughly debunked, Kennedy has since expanded his claims to bring into question vaccination in general. His motive, apparently, has been simply to make a name for himself. He craves notoriety above all else, and this is how he gets it. The charisma surrounding his family gave him credibility he had not otherwise earned in any way.

So, essentially, you had a couple of con artists exploiting a lie to win fame and fortune, but there wasn't any particular political polarization around it. Kennedy in fact was more influential with people who considered themselves liberals, and the main villain followers saw in this was the pharmaceutical industry. I will be the first to criticize, nay excoriate the pharmaceutical industry, as long-time readers of this blog know well, but in this particular area they are largely above reproach. (Vaccines aren't particularly profitable, on the contrary they eliminate opportunities for future profit.)

However, with the Covid-19 pandemic the conspiracy theory migrated decisively to the far right precincts of Alex Jones, Q-Anon, and the Republican party in general. We'll discuss that next.