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Anti-vaccinationists are people and groups who oppose vaccination. Since 1798, when vaccination had yet to become a standard part of public health and medicine, there have been groups and individuals who are most clearly characterised as anti-vaccinationists.

Wolfe and Sharp (2002) argue that between the 19th and 20th century, the arguments against vaccination remained essentially unchanged. Their paper and others offer views regarded as partial. While it is possible that anti-vaccinationists have some valid arguments, public health departments and almost every medical practitioner point to harm resulting from their activities in the 20th century.

Timeline

Efforts by individuals and communities to avoid death by infectious diseases have been recorded since at least the time of Hippocrates, as have disagreements on their details. Modern states assert an interest in and a right to control aspects of these efforts.

Widespread vaccination began in the United Kingdom in the early 1800s, after Edward Jenner described and systematised this approach. Vaccination followed and rapidly replaced the older treatment of variolation. At first the government encouraged vaccination; since 1840, successive Vaccination Acts made vaccination compulsory and banned variolation, which was deemed less effective and more hazardous than vaccination. This represented a significant change in the relationship between the British state and its citizens.

A prompt backlash occurred, initially focused on compulsion, which after a time settled on arguments that the vaccine was dangerous or ineffective. After compulsion ceased and large-scale vaccination had been conducted, arguments on the latter grounds continued to be presented. Some of them derived from a view of the world which rejected the germ theory of disease of Louis Pasteur, and advances as true theories which have been discarded by most scientists active in the relevant fields.

In the United States, smallpox outbreaks had become contained by the latter half of the 19th century. Vaccination had been widespread in the early part the century, and before that smallpox had been widespread. However, vaccination ceased following the reduction in smallpox cases, and in the 1870s the disease became epidemic, proving that the population had again become susceptible.

Anti-vaccination activity also increased in the United States in the latter part of the 19th century. In 1879, after a visit to New York by William Tebb, the leading British anti-vaccinationist, the Anti-Vaccination Society of America was founded. Subsequently, the New England Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League was formed in 1882 followed by the Anti-Vaccination League of New York City in 1885.

Arguments against vaccination

At first, arguments against compulsion gained considerable support. Religious reasons were also cited. When vaccination was introduced in the U.K. and elsewhere, there were reports of individual clergymen supporting objections to it.

Safety concerns were another focus of the arguments. Even before Pasteur's work, there had been several clear assertions that contagions spread from person to person. Prior to the availability of microscopes, the nature of that contagion (microorganisms) could not be elucidated. After that time, and as demonstrated by Ignaz Semmelweis, Joseph Lister, and others, the knowledge that there were specific modes of cross-infection and that there were means to avoid them diffused through the population. If Antoine Bechamp's older and incorrect germ theory had retained a following, they may have seen no reason to adequately clean or sterilise instruments. If there was an overlap in those decades between anti-vaccinationist thinking and Bechampist, then it may have contributed to many deaths from infection and not a few from cross-infection.

Harm resulting from anti-vaccinationist activity

In several countries, reductions in uptake of specific vaccines since 1960 have been followed by measured increases in illness and deaths, which have then regressed following a rise in uptake.

Anti-vaccinationist material

Anti-vaccination writings, on the Internet and previously on paper, are characterised by a number of distinct differences from medical and other scientific literature. These include:

• promiscuous copying and reduplication.
• Tendency to be without corrections, even when an initial report is shown to be false (e.g. Donnegan and Schreiber references below). See also absent_correction.
• Deficiency of references to allow readers, should they wish, to check sources.
• Personal attacks on individual doctors.
• An underlying assumption that the whole of medicine is aimed at doing harm.
• Dishonest or fallacious arguments.

In addition, there is a considerable overlap with homeopathy and various conspiracy theories, and a subset of the material shades into the appearance of psychosis.

An example of a dishonest argument is dismissing immunisation as ineffective because it has not eliminated any disease. Even this only works until 1979, when smallpox was eradicated. Some diseases, like polio, have been eliminated in several countries (as distinct from completely eradicated).

Anti-vaccination organisations

Historical

The initial aims and results of the early movements:- In the UK vaccination was provided free and Variolation outlawed from 1840 under the Vaccination Act. Widespread or organised resistance or protest is not reported at that time.

1873 Act: In 1873 a further Vaccination Act made vaccination compulsory. Records of the reasoning for this are not widely available. However it is apparent that soon after this there was considerable resistance to the compulsion, and this grew. In 1885 a Royal Commission sat, following riots in Leicester and reported 7 years later, recommending the abolition of cumulative penalties. A new Vaccination Act in 1898 removed cumulative penalties and introduced a conscience clause, allowing parents who did not believe vaccination was efficacious or safe to obtain a certificate of exemption. This act extended the important concept of the "conscientious objector" in English law.

The aims of the protesters and organisations had thus been achieved in 1898.

It has been suggested that National_Anti-Vaccination_League be merged into this article. (Discuss)

A rather separate organisation with a general anti-vaccination view but with other more significant characteristics was the Nazi party. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg18725131.600

Current

Since the reversion from compulsory immunisation in the UK, (... other states...) opposition has continued, albeit at a low level and with the termination of the national organisations set up to oppose compulsion (see their charters).

This opposition could no longer focus upon the abridgement of vicarious individual liberty - the right to determine what is done to one's children - and adopted the arguments that immunisation did not have an effect; that it had an effect but the effect was overwhelmingly bad; or that although immunisation had a beneficial effect that beneficial effect was less than lifelong and produced perverse consequences.

This was a change of ground and toward hypotheses that in theory require evidence and are susceptible to disproof rather than the philosophical questions of the relationship of individuals to state or deity. Accordingly, scientific investigation has been undertaken, and also accordingly subsidiary arguments essentially consisting of the serial assertion that each scientific investigation which did not prove one of those hypotheses had been incorrectly designed, conducted, interpreted or punctuated and spelled.

Specific People

Main page: List of anti-vaccinationists

The State

"Vaccination is unique among de facto mandatory requirements in the modern era, requiring individuals to accept the injection of a medicine or medicinal agent into their bodies, and it has provoked a spirited opposition. This opposition began with the first vaccinations, has not ceased, and probably never will. From this realisation arises a difficult issue: how should the mainstream medical authorities approach the anti-vaccination movement? A passive reaction could be construed as endangering the health of society, whereas a heavy handed approach can threaten the values of individual liberty and freedom of expression that we cherish." BMJ

Some of the United States in America make no requirement for immunisation, but a legislative requirement for immunisation before admission to school, and another for schooling. An overlap between followers of contemporary anti-vaccinationists and home-schoolers must arise from this.

Anti-Vaccinists quotes

• "The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunization.....There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease."--Dr Robert Mendelsohn, M.D (Ref: How To Raise Your Child In Spite Of Your Doctor)

• "I found that the whole vaccine business was indeed a gigantic hoax. Most doctors are convinced that they are useful, but if you look at the proper statistics and study the instances of these diseases you will realize that this is not so."--Dr Archie Kalokerinos MD (Interview---- International Vaccine Newsletter June 1995 )
• "The 'victory over epidemics' was not won by medical science or by doctors--and certainly not by vaccines.....the decline...has been the result of technical, social and hygienic improvements and especially of improved nutrition.....the claim that vaccinations are the cause for the decline of infectious diseases is utter nonsense."--Dr. med. Gerhard Buchwald (Ref: The Vaccination Nonsense. ISBN 3-8334-2508-3 page 108.)

Anti-Vaccinationist Assertions

It is difficult to resolve the many assertions made by various websites and individuals identifiably of the anti-vaccinationist fraternity, into a nesting set of propositions such that any individual one depends on any other. Multiplication and divergence are characteristic of the method of argument employed, rather than classification and consolidation. See Anti-vaccinationist/Assertion table for an incomplete list.

(See also Vaccine_controversy)

In on-line responses and Misplaced Pages

Responses to papers or reports of scientific or political enquiry in the BMJ attract responses deploying arguments of the usual types and in the usual fashion from a small population of frequent responders. It is characteristic of the anti-vaccinationist argument, as distinct from an argument on knowledge or science, that the same arguments are brought forward repeatedly despite having been refuted. The purpose is not to determine fact, but to persuade people into action. This is exemplified in the massive duplication of identical material, rather than placing a single copy in one place, maintaining it well, and pointing to it.

Attacks on a broad front

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Many attacks are made, not apparently on vaccination itself, but on some individual component of a vaccine or of the social arrangements around it. They appear from the association of the people involved to be anti-vaccinationist activity, rather than as may be asserted, an effort to improve the safety of vaccines. If an overlap with another group who have an interest in discrediting the use of some technique can be found, the tactic seems likely to generate even more activity.

Science

Assertions that immunisation cannot work because the theory on which it works is incorrect have been made.

Cell-lines

A reluctance to use (viral) vaccines derived from human cell-lines is a definite principled objection. Secular ethical, humanist and mainstream religious views generally do not reject them. The element of presentation of the argument, in terms of absolutes and the evil of those preparing the vaccines distinguishes arguments from an anti-vaccinationist stance from the discussion of proportionate benefit and harm in a continuum of ethics.

Thimerosal

, for chemical properties, see thimerosal

Thimerosal is being phased out (already in some European countries) and the U.S. is following.

Recently, largely in the United States, it has been suggested that the organic mercury content of thimerosal in childhood vaccines could contribute to autism. The 2004 Institute of Medicine panel favoured rejecting any causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. The interests in this are vested, for example, governments wishing public health policies to proceed, pharmaceutical companies preferring not to pay huge damages, and (in the absence of no-fault compensation) large monetary gains for successful litigants and their counsel.

Anti-vaccination sites present information on the assertions of danger more prominently than these findings or the fact that thimerosal is absent from most vaccines.

See also

Cranks

Publications

• 1884 Compulsory Vaccination in England by William Tebb
• 1885 The Story of a Great Delusion by William White
• 1898 VACCINATION A DELUSION by Alfred Russel Wallace
• 1936 The Case AGAINST Vaccination By M. Beddow Bayly M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.
• 1951 The Truth About Vaccination and Immunization by Lily Loat
• 1957 THE POISONED NEEDLE by Eleanor McBean
• 1990 UNIVERSAL IMMUNIZATION Medical Miracle or Masterful Mirage By Dr. Raymond Obomsawin

Anti-vaccine websites

• Vaccination.org.uk, a reproduction of the vaccination material of http://whale.to
• VRAN (Canada)
• AVN (Australia)
• Vaccination Liberation (USA)

Websites commenting upon them

• Quackwatch

References

1. Wolfe RM, Sharp LK. Anti-vaccinationists past and present. BMJ 2002;325:430-2. Fulltext. PMID 12193361
2. Schlafly, Roger (2003) Is Vaccination Dissent Dangerous? Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 8(2):57. Source (pdf)

• The Anti-Immunization Activists: A Pattern of Deception - Ed Friedlander, MD

• Section stubs
• Vaccination