Anti-vaccination movement
The anti-vaccination movement represents organized opposition to vaccines and is often seen as a more extreme form of vaccine hesitancy. Advocates, sometimes referred to as "anti-vaxxers," express concerns primarily in two areas: the perceived dangers of vaccines and the belief that mandatory vaccinations infringe upon personal liberties. Historically, opposition to vaccinations dates back to the early 1800s, notably during the introduction of the smallpox vaccine in England, where public sentiment was mixed due to safety concerns and religious objections. Over time, claims linking vaccines to conditions like autism gained traction, especially after the discredited 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield, which falsely suggested a connection between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. This sentiment has persisted, leading to decreased vaccination rates and subsequent outbreaks of preventable diseases, such as measles. The rise of social media has facilitated the spread of misinformation, making the movement more prominent, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, where vaccine hesitancy has been intertwined with political beliefs and individual rights. Public health experts emphasize the importance of community immunity and advocate for respectful dialogue to educate individuals about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, highlighting their critical role in protecting both personal and public health.
Anti-vaccination movement
The anti-vaccination movement is the organized opposition to vaccines, and is considered the most extreme form of vaccine hesitancy. While reasons behind anti-vaccination sentiment can vary considerably, the two major categories of claims are that vaccines are dangerous and that forcing them upon people amounts to violations of personal liberty. Anti-vaccination advocates, sometimes known as "anti-vaxxers," often rely on false or misleading information to bolster their arguments. Public health experts have called the anti-vaccination movement a major threat to public health.
Vaccines are biological substances injected into organisms to encourage their bodies to produce immune defenses against certain types of diseases. There is extremely strong scientific evidence that vaccines are in general safe and effective. However, some people have opposed mandatory vaccinations since the early 1800s, when some Western governments began requiring certain shots as a matter of public safety. These arguments persisted in the twenty-first century, and notably expanded to include the claim that some vaccines could spur the development of autism in children. Indeed, the anti-vaccination movement gained strength as such fears circulated on the internet, despite repeated claims by scientific researchers that no links exist between vaccines and autism. The movement generated much attention amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic that broke out in 2020, and it complicated efforts to combat that disease. Doctors around the world have urged people to educate themselves in vaccine science and embrace vaccination for the sake of their own health and that of their communities.
Background
Opposition to vaccinations has deep roots, but began to take modern shape principally in England in the early 1800s. There, doctor and scientist Edward Jenner developed a vaccination against smallpox, a deadly infectious disease. The vaccination involved taking fluid from a blister of cowpox, a type of smallpox that affected cows, and inserting it into the blood of a healthy person. The fluid contained not the smallpox virus itself but rather the inactive parts of the virus that would allow the human body to create biological defenses against the actual disease.
Jenner's claims about how vaccinations worked were radical for the early 1800s, and the English public at first rejected them summarily. The vaccination seemed unsafe to many, as it required breaking the skin on a person's upper arm to mix the cowpox fluid with the patient's blood. Some religious communities, meanwhile, considered the vaccine unholy because it was created from animal substances.
English opposition to vaccinations increased further during the mid-1800s, as the government started requiring smallpox vaccinations for infants and children. People objected to these vaccinations because they believed the government was violating their personal liberties to control their own bodies. As a result, concerned citizens formed the Anti-Vaccination League and the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League to protest forced vaccinations.
Anti-vaccination movements appeared in the United States in the late 1800s, as smallpox outbreaks led some state governments to introduce mandatory vaccination laws. The Anti-Vaccination Society of America, the New England Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, and the Anti-Vaccination League of New York City were all founded from the late 1870s to the mid-1880s. In the early 1900s, a man ultimately appealed to the US Supreme Court in an attempt to refuse a mandatory vaccination, saying he knew best how to care for his own body. The court ruled that US states could legally require vaccinations to protect their populations from diseases.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, some people in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia began protesting the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) vaccine following reports that children could develop neurological disorders after receiving the vaccine. Medical researchers who subsequently studied the vaccine could not agree among themselves about whether it indeed caused children to develop these disorders. The confusion led to decreased rates of DTP vaccinations among children across these continents and resulting epidemics of pertussis, or whooping cough.
The Anti-Vaccination Movement Today
A major development in the anti-vaccination movement came after British doctor Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the medical journal The Lancet 1998 claiming that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine had been linked to the development of autism in children. Autism, or autism spectrum disorder, is a neurological disorder that can cause difficulties in social interaction and verbal and nonverbal communication. The disorder has been associated with problems in motor coordination, attention deficits, sleep disturbances, and repetitive behaviors. Symptoms of autism can appear in children before the age of two.
Wakefield's paper was later discovered to be fraudulent and based on poor science; Wakefield himself also stood to benefit financially from publishing it, creating a major conflict of interest. The paper was fully retracted by The Lancet and Wakefield was barred from practicing medicine (he subsequently became an anti-vaccination activist). Medical associations such as the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) repeatedly argued that no evidence existed linking the MMR vaccine to autism. By the early to mid-2000s, however, thanks largely to media outlets' widespread reporting of the false claim, some parents in the United Kingdom, United States, and other countries began refusing to have their children vaccinated against MMR. The sudden and severe decrease in MMR vaccinations later led to outbreaks of measles in some of these countries.
Meanwhile, a campaign arose calling for the elimination of thimerosal, a preservative that contains mercury, from vaccines. Although scientists noted there were no known harmful effects of thimerosal, in 1999 US health officials announced that the compound would be removed from most vaccines out of an abundance of caution. The controversy further spurred doubts about vaccines among some members of the public.
Fervent arguments between anti-vaccination advocates and medical researchers continued throughout the 2000s and into the 2010s. In the United States, the CDC and various other medical institutions published the results of multiple scientific studies that repeatedly showed no link between the MMR vaccine—or the individual biological components contained within it—and the onset of autism symptoms in children. Still, anti-vaccination movements remained, with parents asserting that they alone possessed the right to have their children vaccinated. A few celebrities also embraced the movement, helping to increase its public reach. Many doctors and other experts acknowledged that some parents would likely always choose not to vaccinate their children, either because they believed some vaccines were related to autism or simply because they objected to government involvement in health decisions. Public health experts blamed outbreaks of diseases once thought to be eradicated on parents who refused to have their children vaccinated. An example of this was the 2014–2015 measles outbreak at Disneyland in California, in which more than ninety people became infected with the disease.
Doctors claimed that the best way to convince parents to support child vaccinations was to engage them in respectful dialogue designed to educate them about vaccines rather than to deride them for their views. Many doctors stressed the importance of creating herd immunity in a population. Herd immunity involves vaccinating a majority of a society's people as a means of protecting the weaker members of that population, the ones who cannot be vaccinated, from infectious disease. For instance, infants, pregnant people, and individuals with compromised immune systems—who may be unable to receive certain vaccinations—are less likely to contract a contagious disease if the majority of people in the society in which they live are vaccinated.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 brought renewed attention to the anti-vaccination movement. Multiple COVID-19 vaccines were developed in record time and were initially approved for emergency use rather than fully authorized by regulatory organizations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), leading to some public wariness. Health experts nevertheless noted that the vaccines had still gone through all the normal standards of testing including clinical trials, and data showed they were highly safe and effective. While some side effects were possible, the risks of contracting COVID-19 far outweighed the risks of the vaccines for most people. Yet despite these assurances, many Americans remained unvaccinated, hampering efforts to control the spread of the disease.
Some of the people unvaccinated against COVID-19 were considered merely vaccine hesitant, which could be attributed to a wide array of factors. However, others were vocally anti-vaccination and stated they would never receive the vaccine under any circumstance. Observers considered the influence of the preexisting anti-vaccination movement an important factor in such beliefs, especially as the rise of social media had made it easier for misinformation to spread. However, the politicization of the COVID-19 issue was also seen as an important factor. Studies showed that Republicans were significantly less likely to get vaccinated against COVID-19, for example, and right-wing groups were behind many of the public protests against the vaccines. Many conservatives especially opposed vaccine mandates, whether by governments or businesses, as a perceived infringement of individual rights. Indeed, many observers suggested that opposition to COVID-19 vaccines became a powerful force in right-wing politics in the early 2020s, intertwining in complex ways with a broader embrace of conspiracy theories, misinformation, and radical anti-government views. Public health experts warned that distrust of the government and of science were contributing to the growth of the anti-vaccination movement in general, which presented a major threat to public health not only with the COVID-19 pandemic but also through outbreaks of various other diseases that could be largely prevented by vaccines.
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