Joshua Daniel

English 21003 Writing for the Sciences

Professor Sonja Killebrew

3/20/20

To Vaxx or not to Vaxx?

What if I told you that there are people among us who are dangerously susceptible to diseases that have been out of public concern for several decades? I am talking about perhaps the biggest medical controversy of the past few decades: Vaccines. In the 18^th, 19^th, and even 20^th century, many people fell ill to novel diseases such as smallpox, measles, chicken pox, meningitis, mumps, rubella, polio, and tuberculosis. However, due to the great leaps in the advancement of modern medicine, we found ways to prevent further outbreaks of the diseases in future generations. The main solution was vaccination. Vaccination is a medical procedure in which an individual is inoculated with a weakened strain of a virus or disease. The weakened virus then activates the immune system and creates a “memory” of the virus in order to fight it again in the future.  By doing this on a larger scale, scientists were able to develop immunity in the general population against many common illnesses that were fatal in the past:

Vaccinations have reduced disease, disability, and death from a variety of infectious diseases. For example, in the United States, children are recommended to be vaccinated against 16 diseases (1)…. All of the diseases have been reduced by more than 90% and many have either been eliminated or reductions of 99% or more have been achieved. A recent analysis of vaccines to protect against 13 diseases estimated that for a single birth cohort nearly 20 million cases of diseases were prevented, including over 40,000 deaths (4). (Orenstein, W. A., & Ahmed, R. (2017)

This technique of mass vaccinations leading to a stronger immunity of the general population is called ‘herd immunity.’ Thanks to this technique many people are able to live longer, healthier lives. Not long after this movement began to take hold, it faced fierce opposition from several members of the community. This vaccine resistance movement became known as the anti-vax or anti-vaxxer movement. [BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE CONTROVERSY]

The anti-vax movement in the United States began with the advent of social media. You may be thinking to yourself, “What does social media have to do with the vaccination-resistance movement?” Well, in the early 2000’s with the emergence of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, people brought up ideas that vaccines in general were not good for children at all because all they did was put the disease into the individual. Some claimed that the various chemicals in the vaccines (namely the MMR) were responsible for developing autism in children:

A similar study of Canadian internet users tracked the sharing of influenza vaccine information on social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Digg. Of the top search results during the study period, 60% promoted anti-vaccination sentiments [40]. A study that examined the content of the first 100 anti-vaccination sites found after searching for “vaccination” and “immunization” on Google concluded that 43% of websites were anti-vaccination (including all of the first 10) [41]. (Hussain, A., Ali, S., Ahmed, M., & Hussain, S. (2018)  

As time went on, their ideas, without any scientific backing, spread like wildfire across the United States:

Since the early 2000s, as the number of required childhood vaccines was increasing, a generation of parents was becoming hypervigilant about their children and, through social media, patting each other on the backs for doing so. In their view, parents who permitted vaccination were gullible toadies of status quo medicine. (Hoffman, 2019)

As a result, many parents began to reconsider vaccinating their children because they were afraid their children would wind up having autism. Many parents even took to the streets in protest of the government’s vaccination requirements to enroll their children in schools. “the controversy still persists to this day. In fact, just last year, 21.4 percent of respondents in the Thomson-Reuters NPR Health Poll said they believe that vaccines can cause autism” (Cara Santa Maria, 2012). Social media in association with many tv shows gave preference to these ideas and promoted the messages of Jenny McCarthy. Jennifer McCarthy, one of the most prominent voices for the anti-vaccine movement reported that her son had epileptic seizures shortly after taking the MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine.

One of the first signs when I knew something was wrong was one morning he slept in late. So I opened the door and just saw Evan struggling to breathe, and pasty white, blue lips, and shaking. I picked him up and just started screaming at the top of my lungs, ran down the hallway, called 911, and it took them about 20 minutes to stop what they were calling a seizure. (FRONTLINE, 2015)

After several diagnoses from leading neurologists, she learned that her son Evan had autism.

I found the best neurologist in the world and pulled some strings to try to get in there. I was praying he would just say, “Yes, it’s epilepsy.” But after his eval, he canceled all the rest of his clients the rest of the day. And I just thought I was getting VIP treatment, but he sat me down and said, “I’m sorry, but Evan has autism. (FRONTLINE, 2015)

She also noted that a few days after the MMR vaccine was administered, Evan began to experience gastric discomfort and began to lose cognitive awareness of his surroundings. Jenny further noted that Evan began to regress in terms of his cognitive abilities: “Kids would steal toys from him, and he didn’t even know they stole the toy. And I would think I just had the most polite little boy in the world who didn’t mind people that stole toys from him. Really, those were the first kind of behaviors that I look back now noticing” (FRONTLINE, 2015). Jenny McCarthy also established her view of vaccines. “We’re not an anti-vaccine movement. We’re pro-safe-vaccine schedule. Until we have that conversation, people are going to think it’s an anti- and pro- side” (FRONTLINE, 2015). Here we see that Jenny McCarthy is not necessarily anti vaccine, but rather, she is advocating for a safe timetable with which to administer the vaccines to children. When asked about the different chemicals present in the various vaccines (for example, the presence of mercury in the MMR), Jenny McCarthy stated that,

“When I began my crusade for autism, one of the first speeches I gave was: “Is it mercury? Is it the schedule? Is there just too many?” My answer to people and what I’ve been telling them is, “It’s all of the above.” We don’t know for sure, which is why we keep saying, “Study it.” But they won’t.” (FRONTLINE, 2015)

Jenny states that the target (what causes autism) changes. A few years prior Jenny had stated that the MMR vaccine was responsible for the autism in her son. Now she claims it’s the order that the vaccines are given.

In addition to the claims that the various chemicals in vaccines allegedly cause autism in children, researchers across the globe began to conduct various tests. Their results were recorded in a medical article by Jeffrey S. Gerber and Paul A. Offit. Jeffrey S. Gerber, MD, PhD, is an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Medical Director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, and Senior Scholar within the Penn Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Paul A. Offit, MD, is Director of the Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He is the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Both of these authors are extremely educated and are experts in the field of infectious diseases and vaccinology. The purpose of this scientific article is to quell the fallacy that vaccines cause autism in children.

“Although child vaccination rates remain high, some parental concern persists that vaccines might cause autism. Three specific hypotheses have been proposed: (1) the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism by damaging the intestinal lining, which allows the entrance of encephalopathic proteins; (2) thimerosal, an ethylmercury-containing preservative in some vaccines, is toxic to the central nervous system; and (3) the simultaneous administration of multiple vaccines overwhelms or weakens the immune system. We will discuss the genesis of each of these theories and review the relevant epidemiological evidence.”

(Gerber and Offit, 2009)

This medical report gathers information from studies done in the United Kingdom, California, and Canada. This report was written as a response to increasing sentiment to the notion that vaccines, namely the MMR, contain chemicals that can be linked to the development of autism in children:

“A worldwide increase in the rate of autism diagnoses—likely driven by broadened diagnostic criteria and increased awareness—has fueled concerns that an environmental exposure like vaccines might cause autism. Theories for this putative association have centered on the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, thimerosal, and the large number of vaccines currently administered. However, both epidemiological and biological studies fail to support these claims.” (Gerber and Offit, 2009)

The article used scientific data from various research studies and disproves the claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism in children. The data also goes to show the benefits of vaccines:

“Vaccinations have reduced disease, disability, and death from a variety of infectious diseases. For example, in the United States, children are recommended to be vaccinated against 16 diseases (1)…All of the diseases have been reduced by more than 90% and many have either been eliminated or reductions of 99% or more have been achieved. A recent analysis of vaccines to protect against 13 diseases estimated that for a single birth cohort nearly 20 million cases of diseases were prevented, including over 40,000 deaths (4).”  (Orenstein, W. A., & Ahmed, R. (2017)

Vaccines are one of the main reasons that diseases that took millions of lives in the past aren’t a threat anymore. Vaccination ensures that the human race as a whole is able to develop beyond these diseases and is one of the reasons why we have a longer life expectancy in this century.

In retrospect, the controversy of vaccines in relation to it being healthy for children is clear. Vaccines have saved and will continue to save lives for years to come. However, I believe that more physician to parent communication is required so that parents can feel like they are informed about the health decisions they have to take as parents. Furthermore, the anti-vax movement is a perfect example of another enemy: misinformation. Many people take information they found on social media and hold on to it as if they were factual information with scientific backing. The anti-vax crisis is a result of such misinformation.

Works Cited

Orenstein, W. A., & Ahmed, R. (2017). Simply put: Vaccination saves lives. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(16), 4031–4033. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1704507114

            Hussain, A., Ali, S., Ahmed, M., & Hussain, S. (2018). The Anti-vaccination Movement: A Regression in Modern Medicine. Cureus, 10(7), e2919. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.2919

Gerber, J. S., & Offit, P. A. (2009). Vaccines and autism: a tale of shifting hypotheses. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 48(4), 456–461. https://doi.org/10.1086/596476

Hoffman, J. (2019, September 23). How Anti-Vaccine Sentiment Took Hold in the United States. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/health/anti-vaccination-movement-us.html

Maria, C. S. (2012, June 15). Vaccines And Autism: A Dangerous Misunderstanding. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vaccines-autism-controversy-why_n_1586898

Jenny McCarthy: “We’re Not An Anti-Vaccine Movement … We’re Pro-Safe Vaccine”. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/jenny-mccarthy-were-not-an-anti-vaccine-movement-were-pro-safe-vaccine/