The anti-vaccination movement is a multi-dimensional controversy that sparks debate among community members, healthcare providers, and parents alike. Significant numbers of parents are refusing to vaccinate their children, a decision made under the guidance of the anti-vaccine campaign, whose beliefs outwardly reject vaccine safety and effectiveness. While some parents ignore such beliefs and remain adamant that vaccines are an essential element to a child’s health, others are more easily influenced. Today’s anti-vaccine movement manipulates parents’ perception of vaccines through propaganda in the media. Such manipulation is designed to incite panic in parents and make them believe that vaccines are a detriment to health in hopes that they choose to refuse immunization. Not only does this cause severe outcomes for individuals, but it results in overall weakened community health. Parental fear needs to be eradicated by arming parents with accurate and current information while allowing them to openly express their concerns.

The denunciation of vaccines has been an issue ever since their creation, but the most recent rebirth of the matter came in 1998. Andrew Wakefield, who was a former gastroenterologist, and his colleagues executed a case study experiment on the relationship between the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine and childhood developmental issues.  The results they found proposed the idea that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism. This study was published in the commonly accepted and popular scientific journal, the Lancet, despite lacking a control group, large sample size, and otherwise definitive evidence (Sathyanarayana, T.S., and Chittaranjan Andrade). Studies were conducted shortly after that disproved Wakefield’s findings, so the paper was retracted. Wakefield himself was charged with ethical violations and scientific misconduct because he falsified his data and failed to get ethical clearances to investigate children invasively. On top of that, Wakefield did not disclose his financial interests: He was being funded by lawyers who represented parents in several anti-vaccine law suits (Sathyanarayana, T.S., and Chittaranjan Andrade).  In all, Wakefield was a fraud that manipulated his results to showcase vaccines in a bad light. Although, a mixture of the Lancet having a reliable reputation, Wakefield’s findings being novel and shocking for the time, and the paper being given massive media coverage caused many to believe his results to be credible and definite. As a result, widespread rejection of vaccines started to take hold. This is where today’s anti-vaccine movement began (Sathyanarayana, T.S., and Chittaranjan Andrade). Since then, it has grown into a vast network of individuals and societies who firmly believe and spread the notion that vaccines cause nothing but harm. The movement itself is not a single being or structured organization, but it is made up of these individuals and societies that share a common interest (Sathyanarayana, T.S., and Chittaranjan Andrade). Their values are rooted in Wakefield’s completely unsound study, and this research paper takes a look at how that invalidity is still present in today’s movement as well as how it is affecting parents. 

The anti-vaccination movement’s values are reflected in their objective to give vaccines bad publicity. A person who is anti-vaccination does not include anybody who remains skeptical about vaccinations, rather it includes people who hold much more radical views. True anti-vaccinators believe in the conspiracy that the government is working with successful pharmaceutical companies, or “big pharma,” to cover up the dangers of vaccines. Another belief is that if a vaccine does not work perfectly as it should, for example the flu vaccine, then it is entirely useless. Additionally, the “pro-safe vaccine” believers contend that the dangerous chemicals in vaccines are the direct cause of physical harm and adverse side effects (Gorski, David). The anti-vaccination agenda is to convince people of the truth behind these conspiracies, much like how global warming skeptics try to persuade people that global warming is not real. To carry out their intentions, the movement gives vaccines as much bad publicity as they can. The slightest defamation of vaccines plants a seed of doubt in the minds of those who hear it, making vaccines look almost villainous. Unfortunately, ideas of such magnitude are extremely difficult to eradicate. Therefore, anti-vaccinators have an opportunity to embellish their convictions. With enough of the right kind of bad publicity, the movement aims to instigate serious mistrust in the government, big pharma, and doctors (Gorski, David). This may seem to be a slippery slope, but it has occurred in the past. The anti-vaccination movement in nineteenth century England believed that their government had too much control over an individual’s body (Durbach, Nadja). It was during this time that new germ theories arose. Scientists and doctors were figuring out that diseases were caused by tiny microbes. Anti-vaccinators took advantage of these new findings. They claimed the new theories were a clever ruse made up by the government to maintain control, and that vaccines were not necessary because the germs were not real. Nadja Durbach details this by quoting an anti-vaccinator who said, “The government keeps the people in a perpetual state of disease panic.” They too utilized bad publicity in the form of newspapers, posters, word of mouth, and popular novels (Durbach, Nadja). The catch is that it worked. Although medical records were almost nil back then, it was apparent that vaccination rates decreased (Durbach, Nadja). Both movements from today and back then twisted the information from scientific findings to show vaccines in a negative way. This gave them a platform to advance their own agendas.

While bad publicity takes a variety of forms, the anti-vaccine movement utilizes misinformation in the media as their weapon of choice. Anti-vaccinators support their claims with false science and incorrect logic. They also use multiple levels of media to spread this information that include television, blogs, posters, emails, mail, and websites (Kata, Ana). The most common, websites, is also the most dangerous of them all because approximately 74-80% of internet users search for their health information online (Kata, Ana). Parents today have the ease and convenience of turning on their computer to search for medical advice without having to go all the way to a doctor. While there are plenty of credible sites on the web, there are an equal amount of non-reliable anti-vaccine websites as well.  Ana Kata, a researcher from McMaster University, conducted an experiment that studied what types of information are presented on these anti-vaccine websites. She found that nearly 90% of them used outdated and disproven sources, misrepresented sources by drawing false conclusions, and made unsupported statements. Kata broke down website information into several categories: safety and effectiveness, alternative medicine, civil liberties, conspiracy theories, and religious beliefs. Each category comes with a hefty list of frightening and erroneous criteria. For example, all websites that address safety and effectiveness of vaccines stress that they contain poisons which cause idiopathic illness like autism and sudden infant death syndrome. Websites that address alternative medicine claim that disease rates decline with proper hygiene alone and children’s immunities should be built naturally. Other sites related to conspiracy theories speak of vaccination information being withheld from the public (Kata, Ana). The list goes on and on. Sadly, the reason why these websites have had so much standing is because most people do not fact-check what they read on the internet anymore; 52% of people searching for health information believe what they read online (Kata, Ana). The movement relies on this ignorance to make their deceptions as effective as possible. Kata’s experiment is limited to websites found by a search on Google, but she briefly highlighted the growing role of social media. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are easy platforms for anti-vaccinators to publish their beliefs in short and concise messages or pictures. It is not uncommon to see anti-vaccination propaganda like disturbing images and catchy phrases or slogans on these sites. Information in these forms is more memorable and have a greater impact on those who view it. 

In the same way bad publicity is displayed on social media, celebrities augment the power of misinformation as well. Donald Trump, Miyam Bialik, Jim Carrey, and Jenny McCarthy are just a few (Ose, Erik). These celebrities use their fame to amplify the misinformation of the anti-vaccine movement, giving the movement more credibility because people tend to agree with the beliefs of celebrities they like. Celebrities have just as much influence on issues like vaccines as they do on things like fashion. Jenny McCarthy, for example, has done numerous interviews about her beliefs and she has set up several anti-vaccination campaigns in her name. She is deemed by Erik Ose as a “playmate turned pseudo scientist who by dint of sheer energy and celebrity became the nation’s most prominent purveyor of anti-vaxx ideology.” McCarthy’s fame is dangerous as parents can easily identify with her struggles of having an autistic son, something that thousands of other parents have to deal with as well. They will more readily accept misinformation from somebody who knows their own fears. Overall, because celebrities like McCarthy constantly have the spotlight on them, the movement gains more publicity and a broader audience to spread their ideas to.

Anti-vaccination misinformation has a profoundly negative influence on parents’ perspective of vaccines. The movement pins their propaganda as a form of enlightenment, but their disturbing and upsetting information renders it more of a fear tactic. In other words, parents are being frightened, not informed. If a parent’s rationalizations and reasoning are clouded by fear of vaccines, they are more likely to side with anti-vaccine beliefs (Haelle, Tara). This is especially true for the “fence sitters” who are not quite sure about what to do. Parents only want what they believe is the best for their child, and those who are on the fence are terrified of making the wrong decision (Haelle, Tara).  The human brain accounts for this kind of uncertainty by using decision-making short cuts. Availability bias, for one, helps people decide what is important to pay attention to and what to dismiss, making it so that potentially life threatening information is addressed first (Haelle, Tara). In this instance, parents are taught to pay attention to adverse vaccine effects while dismissing the potential dangers of actual disease. Consequently, vaccines become the main danger (Haelle, Tara). Human beings are hard-wired to protect their children from “predators” in whatever form they come. Unfortunately, diseases are no longer considered to be a “predator” because no one ever sees them in their communities anymore. Seeing an illness like polio these days is extremely rare, so why should anyone fear it? On the other hand, the anti-vaccine movement’s misinformation makes autism and SIDS seem more prevalent than they are, so parents have more reason to fear that which causes them (Haelle, Tara). The anti-vaccination movement takes advantage of parents by manipulating their availability bias to make them see a connection between vaccines and poor child health. Thanks to another brain function called confirmation bias, parents that believe in this connection subconsciously look for information that confirms what they accept as true (Haelle, Tara). Human brains are keen about seeking patterns like this to make sense of the world, especially those that are cause and effect. A cause and effect pattern like the vaccine- autism one is difficult to deconstruct because of how stubborn the brain’s cognitive framework is (Haelle, Tara). Therefore, parents who fall victim to this reasoning are more likely to become increasingly anti-vaccine. What happens if parents are not bombarded with anti-vaccine information, but given an equal amount of pro and anti-vaccine information (just as they would with a Google search)? A recent study answered this question by exploring the impacts of anti-vaccination misinformation on vaccination intentions (Jolley, Daniel). The experimenters of this study focused on people who were on the fence and could not decide what to do. They had their subjects read a variety of articles, some with anti-vaccine information and some with pro-vaccine information, and then asked them to indicate their intentions of vaccinating a fictitious child. They found that people more often chose to not vaccinate their child even when they are presented with correct information. The experimenters, Daniel Jolley and Karen Douglas, sum up their findings by saying, “anti-vaccine conspiracy theories appear to introduce undue suspicion about vaccine safety, and increase feelings of powerlessness and disillusionment, whilst decreasing trust in authorities.” This indicates that anti-vaccine misinformation strongly influences parental mentality by unethical control of emotion and morality. 

Although some anti-vaccinators may disagree, the anti-vaccine movement’s influence on parents does not come without consequences. The movement has been known to contribute to weakened community health and disease outbreaks by urging parents to refuse vaccines. The national vaccination rates are at an all time high: above 90% for routine vaccines (Kollipara, Puneet). However, statistics like this are insignificant when discussing the health of a community or population because of something called herd immunity. Herd immunity is a phrase to describe resistance to a disease at the population level; if a majority of a population gets immunized against a disease, then that disease does not have any viable hosts to infect, consequently killing its chances of circulating through a community (Haelle, Tara). Most importantly, vulnerable individuals (the elderly, newborn infants and those with autoimmune diseases) are protected from disease because there are less infected people to pass along sickness (Haelle, Tara). Herd immunity is only effective when vaccination rates are high. It is also important to note that herd immunity exists at levels smaller than entire nations, such as towns, cities and counties, because people in these populations interact with each other often. In other words, herd immunity is not geographically uniform (Kollipara, Puneet). Vaccination rates in certain “pockets” of people are starting to drop and public health experts are obstinate that the anti-vaccination movement has played a major role in this (Kollipara, Puneet). In fact, communities in southern California reported over 9,000 cases of pertussis in 2010, more cases than have been reported in the last sixty years (Pertussis). This is a direct result of increasing clusters of non-medical exemption vaccine rejections in that region (Atwell, Jessica). Colorado had similar issues with the varicella virus; a study revealed that 4.7% of child varicella cases in a population of over 400,000 resulted from vaccine refusal, a significantly higher percentage than the previously reported 1% (Glanz, Jason). To make matters worse, about 11% of the infected children were medically exempt from vaccination and had come into contact with an infected child who could have gotten vaccinated (Omer, Saad). In addition, Disneyland in California experienced a measles outbreak in 2014 in which patient zero was unvaccinated. When the reported cases were investigated, it turned out that 49 of the 110 California resides who were infected patients were also not vaccinated (Zipprich, Jennifer). In all cases, herd immunity could have prevented disease outbreak. If vaccination rates had been higher, then less people would have been exposed and the number of cases of pertussis, measles, or varicella would have been dramatically lower. Parents, however, are still conducive to the movement’s desires. These are just a handful of examples that happen in the United States, but there are thousands of other pockets around the world that experience the same. Regardless of where these outbreaks took place, it is obvious that the anti-vaccine movement is responsible for decreasing vaccine rates and ultimately spreading preventable illness.

Even though herd immunity is a well-known concept, anti-vaccinators still contend that natural immunity is better than vaccine-acquired immunity. Their main argument is that humans have survived viruses and infections for thousands of years due to the natural immune system; vaccines are not necessary for a clean bill of health because humans build their immune systems in natural ways over time (Cage, Arlan). The production of immunoglobulins, or anti-bodies manufactured by white blood cells, is stimulated by the thymus gland, which does not fully develop until the third year. Accordingly, until maturation of the thymus gland, the immune system cannot produce immunoglobulins to fight off various diseases. Vaccinations that contain pathogens given before this time would be ineffective because the correct anti-bodies could not be made (Cage, Arlan). Some immunoglobulins are acquired from breast-feeding, but start to fade away around age one (Why Are Childhood). This age is when the “childhood illness” phase takes place, where children get diseases like chickenpox or mumps. These diseases are required to teach the immune system to fight them off at later exposure, therefore protecting the body from disease they contracted later in life (Cage, Arlin). On a different note, some extremists of this argument believe that vaccines actually destroy the natural immune system. They argue that injecting a pathogen directly into the body bypasses the skin layers, mucous membranes, and respiratory tracts that help the immune system get ready before the pathogen enters the bloodstream. The immune system does not have time to react when a pathogen is injected directly, so the pathogen can wreak havoc on the body before anything can attack it (Cage, Arlin). The natural immunity defense is difficult to dismantle because natural immunity is scientifically sound. Anti-vaccinators are correct by saying the natural immune system is an important part of survival. Without it, the body would be vulnerable to millions of life threatening illnesses. However, there are flaws in their argument. They present a false dichotomy in which it seems as though one has to choose between having only natural immunity and only having vaccine-acquired immunity. In reality, vaccines are meant to give the immune system an advantage, not replace it (Why Are Childhood). Giving a child a shot is the only way to protect them from getting a disease that their immune system is not strong enough to fight off yet. By doing so, it prevents the need for the “childhood illness” stage while still providing immunity. Before the production of vaccines, many children died from illnesses like polio, measles, and whooping cough (Why Are Childhood). Today, the number of children dying of such diseases is incredibly minute (Kollipara Puneet). In fact, vaccines have saved over 322 million people from serious illness since 1994 (Kollipara, Puneet). That is 322 million people that could have gotten sick had it not been for vaccination. Moving forward, the natural immunity argument also does not consider herd immunity. Those who get a disease to become immune to it are still able to pass it on to vulnerable people, which is how epidemics occur. In these cases, immunoglobulin production would not been enough protection (Why Are Childhood). This was the reason vaccines were created in the first place, so it is ironic that people want to revert back to natural immunity.

In order to relieve communities of the negative influences and consequences of the movement, it is imperative to undermine their power over parents. Of course, there is no easy way to control the movement, but soothing parental fear is a key start (Haelle, Tara). Alleviating panic can be done in several ways. Scientific research on vaccines can be made more popular to show parents that every single vaccine risk is being assessed and that nothing is left unknown. Vaccines can be made into a social trend, making parents see that if everyone else is doing it so should they. Perhaps the most important way would be to let parents speak their mind about vaccine concerns. Giving them a platform to engage and be heard eases their worries. Sometimes, talking it through is all it takes for vaccine safety to make more sense (Haelle, Tara). On the whole, these solutions aim to boost vaccine confidence as well as they can. But, why should anyone care about what people’s confidence in vaccines are? Shouldn’t it be every man for himself? In some instances, yes, but unity is essential for vaccinations to succeed. In this way, the public should be educated on the dangers the anti-vaccine movement brings to the internet, as well as on the importance of vaccinations themselves. If people have the tools to protect themselves from anti-vaccine ignorance, they can in turn protect their communities as a whole. 

This research provides a tiny glimpse into the world of anti-vaccination. Still, it brings us the power and knowledge to understand that the anti-vaccine movement is more than just a campaign, it is itself an epidemic. Currently, the public stance on the movement is nothing but indifferent, but the issues addressed revealed that the campaign’s influence is actually something that affects the public’s overall welfare, not just individual wellbeing. Today’s media is flooded with propaganda, with Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook continuing to foster a growing number of anti-vaccine publications. Allowing parents to be exposed to and molded by these outlets is creating a false, almost dystopian illusion that vaccines are an invalid way to protect children’s health. And as a result, many are alluding to the movement’s wishes. California, Colorado, and a plethora of other spots have guided their people through the consequential disease outbreaks that follow.  Nevertheless, now is a better time than ever to start mending the damage done by the movement. If drastic measures are not taken soon, the integrity of the future of medical advancements could be jeopardized, setting the world of medicine back by decades at a time.
