Kremlin spreads lies about MMR jab
Kremlin-sponsored social media accounts have promoted discredited theories about the MMR jab as part of an effort to sow doubt in the West over the safety of vaccines.
Russian government ‘‘trolls’’ voiced support for a film made by Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor who was struck off after falsely claiming that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused autism.
One of the accounts posted a false story claiming that vaccinations had left three quarters of the children of a Mexican village dead or in hospital. Experts said yesterday the debate over vaccines was being ‘‘weaponised’’ by Moscow. The Kremlin has been accused of attempting to seed social discord across the West through social media accounts that are thought to have reached millions of Britons. The project has disseminated misinformation on Brexit and the Salisbury nerve-agent poisoning.
Analysis carried out for The Times identified scores of accounts, either known or suspected to be tied to Russia, that churned out anti-vaccine tweets, including support for Wakefield.
Among them were messages from accounts created by the Internet Research Agency, a ‘‘troll farm’’ in St Petersburg that the US Justice Department has alleged was central to Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 US election.
The findings came as separate research by the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University showed that Internet Research Agency accounts sent hundreds more messages that academics say were designed to inflame the debate on vaccines.
This week it was announced that measles cases in Europe have surged to a record high amid warnings that renewed opposition to vaccination was enabling the disease to make a comeback.
Already 41,000 cases have been diagnosed this year, nearly double the number in the whole of last year. In Britain, 828 cases of measles were confirmed up to August 13, more than three times as many as all of last year.
Particular concern surrounds the socalled Wakefield cohort – young people whose parents failed to get them vaccinated as children after false claims by Wakefield.
The doctor was struck off by Britain’s General Medical Council in 2010 when it ruled that he had acted dishonestly in his 1998 study on MMR.
Wakefield then directed the film Vaxxed, which accuses the US government of covering up a link between autism and vaccines.
The messages in support of the film, which can be watched for a fee online, included a call to ‘‘let the people see #VAXXED and decide for themselves’’.
The tweets that promoted the Wakefield film were identified for The Times by Renee Diresta, an expert in online misinformation who has advised the US Congress. Some of the accounts that posted the messages have been suspended.
A spokesman for Twitter said: ‘‘Twitter fights malicious automation strategically and at scale.’’
The messages that supported Wakefield’s film are part of a database of tweets identified as being from the Internet Research Agency by academics and published by the US website Fivethirtyeight.
Separate research published yesterday in the American Journal of Public Health offered fresh insight into Russian methods.
An analysis of about 200,000 suspected Internet Research Agency tweets showed that they backed both sides of the vaccine debate. Mark Dredze, of Johns Hopkins University, said: ‘‘By playing both sides, they erode public trust in vaccination.’’
Figures supplied by Russia to the World Health Organisation suggest the country has a high vaccine uptake. – The Times