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THE CONVERSATION – As a pediatrician-scientist who develops new vaccines for neglected diseases, I spent most of my career in the Boston-Washington, D.C. corridor.
While working in the Northeast, I had heard about the anti-vaccinia movement. As both a scientist and a father of the disease, a diagnosis of autism and intellectual disability, I followed the general public. Ultimately, in scientific circles, no doubt, there is no association between vaccines and autism.
But then, in 2011, I relocated to Houston's Texas Medical Center. I soon learned that, unlike the anti-vaccine movement, the Texas anti-vaccine movement is aggressive, well-organized and politically engaged.
There are now at least 57,000 Texas schoolchildren being exempted from their vaccines for nonmedical reasons, about 20-fold rise since 2003. I say "at least" because there are 300,000 homeschooled kids.
I am worried these children, who are mostly concentrated in the Austin area and Texas, including Plano and Forth Worth, are at high risk of acquiring serious or even deadly childhood infections such as measles or whooping cough. Texas also gets their HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer – only four states had lower vaccination rates.
I then began to wonder about the U.S. Together with colleagues from Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, where I work, we did an in-depth study of kindergarten schoolchildren who receive vaccine exemptions across the country. Currently, 18 states allow nonmedical vaccine exemptions for either "conscientious objector" or "philosophical / personal belief" reasons. We were able to obtain information on 14 of those states.
A clear picture emerged: Vaccine exemptions are on the rise in 12 of the states we looked at. Indeed, especially in the Pacific Northwest (Idaho, Oregon and Washington) and the American Southwest (Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah).
What exactly is going on in the West, where do many parents get vaccinated and take their children out of vaccination programs? Researchers are still at the early stages of understanding the reasons behind the anti-vaccinia movement. A couple of these states, Oklahoma and Texas, host well-organized political action committees that lobby their legislatures and even raise campaign funds to endorse anti-vaccine positions. These committees appeal to parental fears of unwarranted government interference.
What's more, some studies suggest that you are more likely to be affluent and more likely to access the internet. There are now hundreds of anti-vaccinia websites on the internet, many of which are vaccines that cause autism or autism is a form of "vaccine injury," which is true.
The anti-vaccine movement also makes use of social media to share their message. Some studies show that anti-vaccinia social media has created an "echo chamber" effect that strongly reinforces negative attitudes towards vaccines.
Of course, scientists have found the safety of vaccines over and over again. As the father of a daughter with autism, I have recently written "Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism."
My book details both how and why vaccines can not cause autism based on the scientific literature, as well as the challenges of my wife.
The effects of anti-vaccine websites and social media, together with the PACs, are quite powerful. They include a terrible measles outbreak in Minnesota in 2017; measles outbreaks in New York and Missouri this year; and almost 200 influenza deaths of unvaccinated children.
However, my newest concern is the counties in the American West, where high percentage of kids are being opted out of vaccination programs. I believe that these are the areas most vulnerable to terrible measles or pertussis outbreaks in the coming years. In the past year, Europe has been inundated with measles, including dozens of deaths, due to broad declines in vaccine coverage. I'm concerned about the U.S.
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