Vaccines are one of the most important preventative measures in protecting against disease and infections. Vaccine campaigns have contributed to decreasing rates of common childhood diseases such as measles and mumps.

Some diseases have also been eradicated some such as smallpox (saving up to 5 million lives) [1] and close to eradicating others such as polio.

Within the last decade, there have been increasing anti-vaccination movement in the public resulting in several outbreaks. In 2013-2015, a large measles outbreak swept through Disneyland in California. In this outbreak, children were left intentionally unvaccinated by their parents resulting in over 1000 cases of measles with one death reported in 2015.

Organized anti-vaccination groups contribute to a decline in vaccine compliance and through the use of social media spread anxiety and falsehoods about vaccines. Celebrity figures through their popularity also exacerbate this problem. Historically, vaccines were first banned in 1763 due to the failure of a physician to properly quarantine people inoculated [2]. In England in 1853, the Vaccination Act ordered mandatory vaccination from infants up to 3 months old. The anti-vaccine movement spread to the United States in 1879 after William Tebb visited the United States from Britain. In 1902, after a smallpox outbreak, the board of health of Cambridge, Massachusetts required all residents to be vaccinated. A series of unfortunate events in carrying out vaccine campaigns lead to public mistrust: The 1955 Cutter Incident produced 120,000 doses of Salk polio vaccine that contained the live polio virus resulting in 40,000 cases of polio, 53 cases of paralysis and 5 deaths.

In 1998 a British doctor published a research paper (later retracted) that claimed an association with the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism.     

False and misleading claims about science and public health are having a significant impact on politics and policy and engender fear [3] and therefore require critical attention from public health officials, academics, the medical community and the media. In order to address this anti-vaccine movement, we are proposing a ‘fact-checking’ campaign to educate the public on vaccine safety.

We hope to target popular anti-vaccine websites such as “A Voice for Choice” and dispel myths found on the websites.

We will use billboards and posters to debunk falsehoods and provide historical facts on the effectiveness of vaccines.

 

Fact-Checking the Anti-vaccine movement

 

References

 

1. UNICEF, Vaccines bring 7 diseases under control. 1996.
2. Kirkpatrick, M., Anti-Vaccine Movement, in Measles Rubella Initiative. 2018.
3. Caplan, A.E.a.A., The overlooked dangers of anti-vaccination groups’ social media presence. Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, 2017. 13(6): p. 1475-1476.