Research Guides: Pandemics, Epidemics, and Vaccines: History, Science, &amp; Controversies: Vaccine Hesitancy

Resources

The discredited doctor hailed by the anti-vaccine movement
Riveting biography of Andrew Wakefield is a cautionary lesson in the legacy of hubris.
The media fuels vaccination myths – by trying to correct them
In recent years, misinformation about vaccines has discouraged parents from having their children vaccinated, which puts their own children – as well as their neighbors’ children – at risk.
The thinking error at the root of science denial
Currently, there are three important issues on which there is scientific consensus but controversy among laypeople: climate change, biological evolution and childhood vaccination. On all three issues, prominent members of the Trump administration, including the president, have lined up against the conclusions of research.
Vaccine Hesitancy Named Threat to Global Health
"Have vaccines become victims of their own success?" asks CCP's Executive Director Susan Krenn. "Have we forgotten how many people used to become sick and die from these diseases?"
Why vaccine opponents think they know more than medical experts
One of the most contentious areas of health policy over the past two decades has been the safety of vaccination. Vaccines prevent the outbreak of diseases that used to be widespread, like polio, and scientific consensus strongly supports their safety. Yet many Americans refuse or delay the vaccination of their children out of fear that it could lead to autism, even though scientific consensus refutes this claim.
Why your child still needs vaccines, even if you may not know someone with the disease
At the turn of the 21st century, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published an article about the 10 greatest public health achievements over the past 100 years, from 1900-1999. One of them was vaccination, which likely has saved millions of lives over the past 100 years.

Research & Reference

The Anti-vaccination Movement: A Regression in Modern Medicine
There have been recent trends of parents in Western countries refusing to vaccinate their children due to numerous reasons and perceived fears. While opposition to vaccines is as old as the vaccines themselves, there has been a recent surge in the opposition to vaccines in general, specifically against the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine, most notably since the rise in prominence of the notorious British ex-physician, Andrew Wakefield, and his works.
The anti-vaccination infodemic on social media: A behavioral analysis
Vaccinations are without doubt one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine, and there is hope that they can constitute a solution to halt the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, the anti-vaccination movement is currently on the rise, spreading online misinformation about vaccine safety and causing a worrying reduction in vaccination rates worldwide. In this historical time, it is imperative to understand the reasons of vaccine hesitancy, and to find effective strategies to dismantle the rhetoric of anti-vaccination supporters.
Vaccine hesitancy in the U.S.
This dossier presents key facts and figures about vaccine hesitancy in the United States. Vaccine hesitancy refers to vaccine reluctance or refusal, usually due to misconceptions about the safety or effectiveness of vaccines. The anti-vaccination movement has grown in recent years in places such as the United States and Europe, despite overwhelming evidence of the effectiveness of vaccinations.

The Pathological Optimist

This film explores the controversial Andrew Wakefield, who was stripped of his medical license for his infamous study suggesting a link between vaccines and autism that sparked one of the biggest firestorms in modern medicine.

Source: Kanopy

Perspectives

Vaccine Hesitancy

The public has voiced concern over the adverse effects of vaccines from the moment Dr. Edward Jenner introduced the first smallpox vaccine in 1796. The controversy over childhood immunization intensified in 1998, when Dr. Andrew Wakefield linked the MMR vaccine to autism. Although Wakefield's findings were later discredited and retracted, and medical and scientific evidence suggests routine immunizations have significantly reduced life-threatening conditions like measles, whooping cough, and polio, vaccine refusal and vaccine-preventable outbreaks are on the rise. This book explores vaccine hesitancy and refusal among parents in the industrialized North. Although biomedical, public health, and popular science literature has focused on a scientifically ignorant public, the real problem, Maya J. Goldenberg argues, lies not in misunderstanding, but in mistrust. Public confidence in scientific institutions and government bodies has been shaken by fraud, research scandals, and misconduct. Her book reveals how vaccine studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry, compelling rhetorics from the anti-vaccine movement, and the spread of populist knowledge on social media have all contributed to a public mistrust of the scientific consensus. Importantly, it also emphasizes how historical and current discrimination in health care against marginalized communities continues to shape public perception of institutional trustworthiness. Goldenberg ultimately reframes vaccine hesitancy as a crisis of public trust rather than a war on science, arguing that having good scientific support of vaccine efficacy and safety is not enough. In a fraught communications landscape, Vaccine Hesitancy advocates for trust-building measures that focus on relationships, transparency, and justice.

The Doctor Who Fooled the World

Investigative reporter Brian Deer exposes a conspiracy of fraud and betrayal behind attacks on a mainstay of medicine: vaccinations. 2021 IPPY Book Award Winner (Gold) in Health/Medicine/Nutrition, Recipient of the Eric Hoffer Award for Nonfiction in the Culture Category From San Francisco to Shanghai, from Vancouver to Venice, controversy over vaccines is erupting around the globe. Fear is spreading. Banished diseases have returned. And a militant "anti-vax" movement has surfaced to campaign against children's shots. But why? In The Doctor Who Fooled the World, award-winning investigative reporter Brian Deer exposes the truth behind the crisis. Writing with the page-turning tension of a detective story, he unmasks the players and unearths the facts. Where it began. Who was responsible. How they pulled it off. Who paid. At the heart of this dark narrative is the rise of the so-called "father of the anti-vaccine movement": a British-born doctor, Andrew Wakefield. Banned from medicine, thanks to Deer's discoveries, he fled to the United States to pursue his ambitions, and now claims to be winning a "war." In an epic investigation spread across fifteen years, Deer battles medical secrecy and insider cover-ups, smear campaigns and gagging lawsuits, to uncover rigged research and moneymaking schemes, the heartbreaking plight of families struggling with disability, and the scientific scandal of our time.

Anti-Vaxxers

A history of the anti-vaccination movement, from its nineteenth-century antecedents to today's anti-vax activism, offering strategies for refuting its claims. Vaccines are a documented success story, one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there is a vocal anti-vaccination movement, featuring celebrity activists (including Kennedy scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and actress Jenny McCarthy) and the propagation of anti-vax claims through books, documentaries, and social media. In Anti-Vaxxers, Jonathan Berman explores the phenomenon of the anti-vaccination movement, recounting its history from its nineteenth-century antecedents to today's activism, examining its claims, and suggesting a strategy for countering them.

Bad Science

Have you ever wondered how one day the media can assert that alcohol is bad for us and the next unashamedly run a story touting the benefits of daily alcohol consumption? Or how a drug that is pulled off the market for causing heart attacks ever got approved in the first place? How can average readers, who aren't medical doctors or Ph.D.s in biochemistry, tell what they should be paying attention to and what's, well, just more bullshit? Ben Goldacre has made a point of exposing quack doctors and nutritionists, bogus credentialing programs, and biased scientific studies. He has also taken the media to task for its willingness to throw facts and proof out the window. But he's not here just to tell you what's wrong. Goldacre is here to teach you how to evaluate placebo effects, double-blind studies, and sample sizes, so that you can recognize bad science when you see it. You're about to feel a whole lot better.

Vaccinophobia and Vaccine Controversies of the 21st Century

Vaccinophobia and Vaccine Controversies of the 21st Century Archana Chatterjee, editor Once hailed as a medical miracle, vaccination has come under attack from multiple fronts, including occasionally from within medicine. And while the rates of adverse reactions remain low, suggestions that vaccines can cause serious illness (and even death) are inspiring parents to refuse routine immunizations for their children--ironically, exposing them and others to potentially serious illness. Vaccinophobia and Vaccine Controversies of the 21st Century explains clearly how this state of affairs came into being, why it persists, and how healthcare professionals can best respond. Current findings review answers to bedrock questions about known adverse events, what vaccine additives are used for, and real and perceived risks involved in immunization. Perspectives representing pediatricians, family practitioners, nurses, parents, pharmacy professionals, the CDC, and the public health community help the reader sort out legitimate from irrational concerns. In-depth analyses discuss the possibility of links with asthma, cancer, Guillain-Barre syndrome, SIDS, and, of course, autism. Included in the coverage: Communicating vaccine risks and benefits The vaccine misinformation landscape in family medicine Perceived risks from live viral vaccines The media's role in vaccine misinformation Autoimmunity, allergies, asthma, and a relationship to vaccines Vaccines and autism: the controversy that won't go away The conundrums described here are pertinent to practitioners in pediatrics, family medicine, primary care, and nursing to help families with informed decision making. In addition, Vaccinophobia and Vaccine Controversies of the 21st Century should be read by trainees and researchers in child development and maternal and child health as the book's issues will have an impact on future generations of children and their families.

Dr. Golem: How to Think about Medicine

A creature of Jewish mythology, a golem is an animated being made by man from clay and water who knows neither his own strength nor the extent of his ignorance. Like science and technology, the subjects of Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch's previous volumes, medicine is also a golem, and this Dr. Golem should not be blamed for its mistakes they are, after all, "our" mistakes. The problem lies in its well-meaning clumsiness. "Dr. Golem" explores some of the mysteries and complexities of medicine while untangling the inherent conundrums of scientific research and highlighting its vagaries. Driven by the question of what to do in the face of the fallibility of medicine, "Dr. Golem "encourages a more inquisitive attitude toward the explanations and accounts offered by medical science. In eight chapters devoted to case studies of modern medicine, Collins and Pinch consider the prevalence of tonsillectomies, the placebo effect and randomized control trials, bogus doctors, CPR, the efficacy of Vitamin C in fighting cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, AIDS cures, and vaccination. They also examine the tension between the conflicting faces of medicine: medicine as science versus medicine as a source of succor; the interests of an individual versus the interests of a group; and the benefits in the short term versus success rates in the long term. Throughout, Collins and Pinch remind readers that medical science is an economic as well as a social consideration, encapsulated for the authors in the timeless struggle to balance the good health of the many with vaccinations, for instance with the good health of a few those who have adverse reactions to the vaccine. In an age when the deaths of research subjects, the early termination of clinical trials, and the research guidelines for stem cells are front-page news, "Dr. Golem" is a timely analysis of the limitations of medicine that never loses sight of its strengths."

Pandemics, Epidemics, and Vaccines: History, Science, & Controversies: Vaccine Hesitancy