Jacob Rodgers is a third-year media major and writes “Inner Thoughts” for the Daily News. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the newspaper.
I was 2 years old when I was diagnosed with autism.
I was a toddler during the early stage of the anti-vaccine movement in the early 2000s. Autism was not well-known and there were already feelings of concern and even fear towards the disorder.
Those feelings are still alive in 2024.
The anti-vaccine movement started to garner more attention around the time I was in kindergarten, creating a large level of uncertainty about autism. It got to a point where my classmates' parents suggested I had a disease. Luckily for me, that rhetoric was short-lived, but now it is back and stronger than ever before.
A survey of 1500 U.S. adults from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that confidence in vaccines has dropped from 77 percent in 2021 to 71 percent in 2023. The survey also showed an increase in those who believe that the MMR vaccine may cause autism from 9 percent in 2021 to 12 percent in 2023.
While these may be small increases in skepticism, keep in mind that this only occurred in just two years, and with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, this trend will probably grow even more.
The rise and phenomenon of anti-vax rhetoric first occurred in 1998. British doctor Andrew Wakefield and 12 of his colleagues published a case series in The Lancet that suggested the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine may lead to behavioral regression and pervasive developmental disorder in children. This resulted in many in the medical world debunking this study and it cost Wakefield his license to practice medicine due to the data being fraudulent.
Regardless of this, some members of the general public became skeptical about vaccines and the publicity behind the study resulted in a decline in MMR vaccinations. This ultimately led to celebrities like Jenny McCarthy’s gaining influence as an anti-vaccine activist.
McCarthy, a former Playboy model turned actress, claims that her son’s autism was caused by the MMR vaccine and that putting him on a healthy diet helped “cure” his autism. Her celebrity influence boosted the anti-vaccine movement and her charisma managed to make her come off as reasonable and articulate
McCarthy openly stated during an interview with PBS’ Frontline,“If you ask 99.9 percent of parents who have children with autism if we’d rather have the measles versus autism, we’d sign up for the measles.”
Suggesting that vaccines cause autism or that you would rather your child have measles over autism is inherently ableist. McCarthy basically implied autism is a scary and dangerous disease that should be a bigger concern than polio or the flu.
As someone with autism who has gotten all of my vaccines, my autism is not a deadly disease.
This has become a common argument for anti-vaccine activists for many years and has also led to a rise and interest in embracing “natural” and pseudo-environmentalism. Wellness influencers have begun to promote natural immunity theories, recommending “organic” alternatives to medicine.
An article written by Dr. Traci Volyes for Indiana University of Pennsylvania states, “Because concerns over vaccines are now so closely linked to concerns over ‘being green,’ autism likewise comes to be imagined as an environmental problem: vaccines are seen as pollutants in a very literal sense, and children with autism are seen by opponents of childhood vaccines as victims of mercury pollution.”
This area of anti-vaccine skepticism has drastically changed the anti-vax rhetoric. In the past 5-10 years, anti-vaccine has grown more politicized than ever. There has been a rise in demands for personal freedom against vaccines even if it risks public health which has been dubbed the “vaccine choice movement.”
The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the country in 2020 yet we eventually managed to get a vaccine for the virus which became mandated in the same ways as other vaccines.
Rhetoric from conservative-leaning outlets and politicians caused an immediate distrust in the vaccine. It wasn’t just right-wing outlets as I saw this become an online trend due to popular podcast hosts suggesting that we just needed more research on the vaccine before taking it — an argument that has been used to justify questioning the MMR vaccines' efficiency for years.
According to a Pew Research Poll, this rhetoric has significantly impacted the public’s perception of the COVID vaccine’s safety. The poll showed that 69 U.S. adults were fully vaccinated from COVID by August of 2021. In 2024, only 28 percent of Americans were fully vaccinated from COVID.
Arguably the most prominent anti-vaxxer is currently being given a platform by former President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy is an environmental lawyer who ran for the 2024 Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
Kennedy founded the Children’s Health Defense in 2007 and utilized it to cause anti-vaccine skepticism abroad.
In December 2019, the government of Samoa was completely shut down for two days as the country was facing a severe measles outbreak. An article by Ars Technica detailed RFK Jr. and Children’s Health Defense traveling to Samoa, attempting to persuade the Prime Minister of Samoa at the time to question the MMR vaccine.
This came after it was reported two young Samoans died in 2018 due to complications of the vaccine. In reality the nurses who administered the vaccine to both men mixed a lethal dose of muscle relaxant in each syringe and tried to cover it up.
None of these facts mattered to RFK Jr. or his organization and Samoa’s vaccine rate declined to just 31 percent. Over 3,700 people got sick from measles and more than 50 young children died in this country.
The anti-vaccine movement is stronger than ever, and what was once considered extreme is now considered mainstream. With Kennedy potentially becoming the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, I cannot help but encourage the general public to educate themselves on the importance of vaccines.
Contact Jacob Rodgers via email at jacob.rodgers@bsu.edu.
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