Its also something of a collective action problem, and collective action problems are always difficult to solve.
The fact is that, for any individual, not vaccinating your kid is unlikely to have ill-effects. So if you believe there’s even a small chance that vaccines are dangerous, then skipping them seems like a good idea.
Of course, this is only true so long as most of the people around you aren’t doing the same thing. The more people that follow this line of thought, the greater the chance that not vaccinating will lead to a disaster.
In case I don’t meet the edit deadline: There was a residential facility in my neighborhood for “emotionally disturbed children”. The higher functioning kids went to the neighborhood schools with us, starting at about 3rd grade, and half the time, we couldn’t tell they were from this place until they told us. Most of them probably had what we now call Reactive Attachment Disorder (and most of those had been in the foster care system) but there were two who really stand out who I now believe were on the autistic spectrum.
It’s difficult to notice a non-existent thing. When society was experiencing diseases prior to vaccines, those sick children (and adults) were noticed. Were cared for. Were mourned when/if they died. The gradual disappearance of that suffering erased our ability to even notice the lack of suffering. So now, when a child experiences an actual rare reaction, or lives long enough (due to lack of disease) to develop other disorders like autism or asthma, we notice THAT instead of the absence of disease.
I am wondering if children with asthma or autism are more likely to die when young. I don’t know how early asthma develops but if symptoms are present in young children, I can see how medical advances could result in more living children with asthma.
For autism though, I don’t know enough about it to know if there are medical conditions associated with it which could raise infant/early childhood mortality.
Believe me, in 1955 there was no resistance to the Salk Vaccine (against polio); rather a mad rush to find some. Now that polio is gone from the first world, people might rationally avoid polio vaccine (no longer the Salk vaccine). When I was growing up, whooping cough was well known and, except for so-called Christian so-called Scientists and other crackpots there was no resistance to the vaccine.
Is opposition to vaccination subject to crank magnetism? (Crank magnetism - RationalWiki)
If so, what are the more common types of cranks which accompany anti-vaxxing?
Hari,
So when do you remember opposition to vaccination becoming noticeable in your lifetime? 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s?
I suspect that the antivaccination crowd is populated very heavily by people who have children with autism. I would be surprised if it has much of a hold on people who have healthy children, even among the anti-medicine woo people. I’m sure it’s for the same reason parents are absolutely 100 percent convinced that their kids get hyper from having sugar, that [insert new technology] is corrupting our youth and that, even though every generation ever has said this, this time it really is true that kids these days are so much worse than they used to be. Something happens in the mind of a parent. They become hypervigilant. They look for EVERYTHING that might be affecting their kid. And they will find it and then that’s all they will ever see. And if your kid has something as complex and poorly understood as autism, and you feel like doctors let you down, it’s not so hard to see why someone would be swept up in the belief that an injection full of “virus parts” is poison that the evil authorities put into your precious little son or daughter.
I’ve seen them all, including the black helicopter-FEMA camp-Vatican rules the world crowd. More common associated crankery is that revolving around beliefs that we are assailed by toxins, so you get anti-aspartame, anti-fluoridation, anti-GMO types and so on.
A solid proportion of the militant types are those who think their kids’ problems are due to vaccination, but there is and has always been (since vaccination began) a base of people who oppose vaccination for the reasons outlined earlier, and who have gleefully seized on the autism scare to advance their cause. Just check out the articles on the major woo websites (Mercola, NaturalNews, whale.to etc.) and you’ll get an idea of the multiflavored nuttiness that is antivaxery.
There is also the issue of control. That plays out in two ways.
People don’t like having control taken away from them. Immunization policy is a matter of public health; in some cases the right to make the choice to not go along needs to limited because the good of the group outweighs the right of the parent to do what they want no matter how stupid. There is pushback to that and that pushback gets broadbrushstroked not just against a mandated to attend public school vaccine but against all of them.
Also things like autism and developmental issues are things that are outside of our parental ability to control; thus human nature being what it is, we hunger for the control all the more, to irrational degrees. We are willing to accept risks that are the result of things under our control and be lax about them even; risks not under our control drive us crazy. We see it all the time (these each IMHO and as examples, not wanting to trigger any debates on these here): those in the self-driving car threads who would theoretically much prefer to be the driver even if autonomous or partially autonomous driving cars were proven to be safer; the desire by some to have a loaded gun easily available and accessible in the house even though it is pretty clear that the risk from that is greater than the out of our control risk of the home invader intent on murder/kidnap/rape; worrying more about school shootings and home gun accidents than about guns being sold illegally under current laws and suicide risks; so on. The point is that part of the psychology in each of those positions (again IMHO) is the urge to gain some sense of control over that which is outside it.
My best sales approach with antivaxxer parents is not the hard line. I am matter of fact. “This is the information as I see it. Here are some reputable sources to look at. This is the form that you need to sign that says you have been informed of these risks of not going along with the vaccines up to and including increasing the risk of death of your child and of other children that your child might expose. You need to sign this. I am happy to discuss it with you more if you want and discuss which vaccines are most important. That’s up to you.” Hard sell backfires. Pushing them out of a practice only drives them into the sphere of those who sell more dangereous practices and harms the child more. Sometimes, maybe more often than not, they end up after a few visits, trusting me more than the internet website or their friend and start getting reeled in.
Most are not otherwise cranks, more than other parents are anyway. Those who are come from all ends but most aren’t.
Combine that with the ideas of government/authority distrust and fear of putting unknown substances into your kids, and you have a recipe for irrational fear and dislike of vaccinations.
I imagine the train of thought goes like this:
“Nobody actually gets diptheria anymore (error 1)… and vaccines can give the disease (not error per-se, but not really relevant), and vaccines have all sorts of bad stuff- mercury, antifreeze, etc… (also not really relevant) and can cause autism (error 2), so why should I put this poison in my kid?”
I bet if parents of unvaccinated children were held financially liable for the deaths of children in their schools or communities who died from easily preventable diseases (with vaccination), they’d straighten up and vaccinate their kids tout suite.
To be clear, the antivax cranks I refer to are not parents deciding whether or not to have their kids immunized.
I am describing antivax activists, who got that way for a variety of reasons as detailed earlier. They do commonly demonstrate crank magnetism and either espouse or excuse the worst excesses of the antivax movement.
Case in point - the defense of child abusers by arguing that shaken baby syndrome and other serious and/or fatal abuse is actually due to “vaccine injury”.
I think the vast majority of parents with questions about vaccination would be aghast at such attempts to let child abusers off the hook. But I’ve yet to see any hardcore antivaxer denounce this tactic.
I just read Defying Providence: Smallpox and the forgotten 18th century Medical Revolution. Cotton Mather read about inoculation–a British diplomat’s wife in Turkey had her family inoculated by a Greek woman. Done properly inoculation (from a smallpox victim, not a cow) was fairly safe. The “foreign” communities in Turkey practiced inoculation but the Turks didn’t–illness was “God’s Will.” Mather’s friend, a doctor, inoculated two slaves & his own son–they recovered & never got smallpox. Some of Mather’s opposition believed the scourge was “God’s Will.” But quite a few others opposed the project because of Mather’s political position–they were of the other “party” & didn’t want to encourage him. So public welfare took a back seat to “other” considerations…
Inoculation (also called variolation) caught on in Britain but remained rare in the colonies. Disease killed more Revolutionary soldiers than enemy action; George Washington made inoculation the rule for anybody joining the fight.
Edward Jenner tried cowpox instead of smallpox cultures & got an even safer response, although boosters were required every few years. “Vaccination” comes from the Latin vacca (cow), so there was* no* vaccination previous to Jenner. (The word has remained even when no cattle are involved.) The book pointed out that Jenner was not inspired by the lovely complexions of milkmaids to make a great leap of faith–as the legends go. He made a scientific effort to find a better method than inoculation.
Why do people oppose vaccination? Ignorance & fear. But some of the “advocates” are in it for the money…
I remember when WHO announced it had been a year (I think) since the last documented case of small-pox, and that if no case were detected in 10 years, they would declare small-pox eradicated; that was around '78, right?. I remember when small-pox was declared eradicated, which must have been around '88.
Sometime in the '90s, rational people started discussing if all the common vaccines were still necessary. Preservatives and the schedules were questioned. And I completely supported that! Discussion and questioning is good, but we all know the medical profession does not respond well to that.
Then, out of nowhere, everything went to hell. Normal sane people decided to expose their children to horrible risks. At first, everything was fine, because enough people were vaccinated that the kids weren’t exposed. Now, little kids are getting whooping cough.
Woo and quackery have always had major income potential (if you pay enough attention to the business side of things, while denouncing mainstream practitioners as greedy).
In addition to the bozos already named, Mike Adams (another antivax loon), Dr. Oz and Andrew Weil have made lots of money promoting woo.
This is one of the better collections of woo and wackos assembled in one place (if you’ve ever wondered what Jeff Rense and Billy Meier (of UFO fame) look like, wonder no more. Just don’t take a look right before or after a meal).