The president’s support for skeptic is dangerous

Vaccination is by far the most successful public-health program ever conducted in the United States. This program may be endangered, however, by President Trump and some members of Congress under the influence of critics who push pseudo-scientific skepticism about the effectiveness and safety of vaccination. The new president has met with vaccine doubter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about establishing a panel to investigate the already scientifically disproved claims that vaccines cause neurological disorders, including autism.

This kind of doubt is dangerous. The false fears stoked by the vaccination critics influence many families to reject vaccination. That refusal to vaccinate accounts for a rising incidence of diseases that strike children disproportionately and that may be severely injuring or even fatal.

Here in California, for example, there were more cases of whooping cough reported in 2014 than in any year since 1947. In December 2014, an outbreak of measles at Disneyland in Southern California spread across the state and nation. These outbreaks of disease occurred primarily in California counties where vaccination rates had fallen below the herd immunity level (the level of inoculation required to protect a population against a disease).

Some of the vaccination critics, including Kennedy, say that they are not against vaccination but want only to ensure its safety. Safety, however, is already well established scientifically. A strong, evidence-based consensus exists among scientists and public-health experts that vaccination is an effective and safe instrument of disease prevention.

Vaccination has prevented a great deal of human suffering and saved millions of lives. Vaccination protects children and adults alike from previously devastating diseases such as measles, polio, smallpox, whooping cough and cervical cancer.

The claim that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine may cause autism was made in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield, whose research was later proved to be fraudulent and who lost his medical license because of it. Since then, numerous rigorous scientific studies designed to investigate any link between this vaccine and autism have failed to detect one. There is no evidence that the minute amount of mercury preservative (thimerosal) in vials containing multiple doses of flu vaccine causes any harm, except in very rare medical conditions that currently exempt individuals from vaccination.

We applaud the state of California for passing legislation in 2015 that eliminated the personal belief exemption that allowed unvaccinated children to attend school, where they endangered the health of others, especially children who for medical reasons cannot be immunized. California’s strengthening of vaccination standards was achieved by a coalition of parents and health care activists who met with legislators, talked with their neighbors, wrote letters to newspapers, and posted scientifically accurate information about vaccination on Facebook and other social media.

We’ll need to amplify such efforts and join with likeminded advocates in other states to protect immunization programs from the vaccination critics and their new allies in Washington.

Judith Grether is a retired epidemiologist from the California Department of Public Health. Wendy Bloom is an R.N. in pediatric oncology at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland. They are joined in this commentary by six additional members of the East Bay Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club.