17. The Dumb Roots of the Modern Anti Vaccination Movement
British anti-vaxxers played a key role in the spread of opposition to vaccination in America. In the nineteenth century, British anti-vaxxer William Tebb played a key role in founding the Anti Vaccination Society of America. In the late twentieth century, another British anti-vaxxer fueled yet another vaccination opposition movement across the Pond. He was Andrew Wakefield, a doctor who published a relatively obscure study in The Lancet – a prestigious medical journal. In it, he alleged that he had discovered a link between the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and autism. Wakefield’s claims were widely reported and led to a drop in vaccination rates in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and eventually, the US.
As a result, many children died or suffered serious permanent injuries. That was bad. What was even worse is that the study published in The Lancet was fraudulent. Not as in “controversial”, or “poorly researched” or “mistaken”, but as in straightforward deliberately fraudulent. As in the serious and deliberate type of criminal fraud for which fraudsters lose the license to practice their profession. Nonetheless, that fraud gave birth to a dumb movement that has killed or seriously injured many, and threatens to kill or seriously harm many millions more.
