Talk to anti-vaxxers
The science and evidence couldn’t be any clearer. There’s no need to fear vaccinations.
“Vaccines did not cause Rachel’s autism.”
Those words were spoken by Dr. Peter Hotez last week at a breakfast hosted by the American Leadership Forum. Hotez serves as director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, and Rachel is his adult daughter.
Why does this parent of an autistic child and foremost expert on vaccinations in Texas, if not the world, feel compelled to speak about his daughter’s condition before one of the city’s preeminent nonprofit leadership groups?
Because vaccines, a miracle of modern medicine, are the subject of an antiscience smear campaign. It started 20 years ago, when a doctor published a study purporting to show a link between childhood vaccines and autism. His data was later found to be falsified, the study was retracted and the doctor lost his medical license, but the virus of vaccine hesitancy began to spread.
In the last decade, the number of non-medical exemptions for school vaccine requirements in Texas has grown to 52,000 students, kindergarten though high school.
This figure does not include the vaccine delinquent or any of the high number of children who are homeschooled and who are not legally required to be vaccinated.
Given the surge in numbers, Texans can no longer take for granted their right to safely take a baby too young to be vaccinated into the public. This ominous trend is especially troubling for children with true medical exemptions who are too ill to be vaccinated and now risk exposure to serious childhood diseases.
During the breakfast, Hotez referenced research showing how the developmental patterns in the brains of children on the autism spectrum occur during pregnancy long before children are either vaccinated or typically diagnosed with autism. But it turns out that citing irrefutable science disproving any link between vaccinations and autism may not be the most effective way to change minds or encourage the vaccine hesitant, a reality acknowledged by Hotez and others on the ALF panel.
More scientific information can even cause a backlash by parents with the least favorable attitudes toward vaccines, and a further decrease in their intention to vaccinate their children, according to experts.
The way forward is for Texans to talk openly about their decision to vaccinate their children and to show their neighbors and fellow parents that vaccinations are the social norm.
If challenged on social media by an anti-vaxxer, Dr. Lindy McGee, a pediatrician and panelist at the forum, said the best response is to say something along the lines of: “I believe in vaccinations. I’ve linked to some accurate information. I’m happy to talk to you in person.”
In the year 2018, promotion of vaccinations seems a throwback, but modern medicine is the victim of its own success. The relative rarity of outbreaks of measles and mumps provide families with a false sense of security.
Parents of today’s young children weren’t living in the 1960s, prior to widespread vaccination, when a typical year meant 4,000 cases of measles encephalitis, which leads to permanent neurologic complications, deafness and death.
Whatever the reasons for the antiscience fervor, it’s clear that it’s not abating.
In state Rep. Sarah Davis’ Republican primary race, Gov. Greg Abbott backed challenger Susanna Dokupil, who had the full-throated support of Texans for Vaccine Choice, a group that favors non-medical exemptions for vaccines.
While Davis won her Houston-area seat, Republican state Rep. Jason Villalba, who had introduced legislation to shore up Texas’s lagging vaccination rates, lost his Dallas primary race to Lisa Luby Ryan.
Anti-vaxxer groups claim that vaccination is a parental rights issue, but the consequences of their decisions aren’t limited their own families.
“[T]he right to swing your fist in America ends at my face,” Villalba told the Texas Observer before the primary race. “If we don’t do something quickly, the blood of our children will be on our hands.”
Unfortunately, there’s no vaccine against fraudulent information, which spreads like a pernicious disease, and often faster than reliable information. The only antidote is for Texans who vaccinate their children and who believe in science to start speaking up.