Delivering the nation’s health care into the hands of anti-vaxxers is the wrong decision

When I was pregnant with our twins, I read stacks of books on “what to expect when you’re expecting.” (I’ve since discovered, with twins always expect the unexpected.)

One well-marked book in my stack was about childhood vaccinations. It was 2008 and new parents everywhere were terrified by a 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield in the The Lancet linking the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination to autism. The prestigious medical journal partially retracted the biased and fraudulent study in 2004 before completely retracting it in 2010, but by the then the damage already was done. Wakefield’s lies, and The Lancet’s lapse in judgment, had opened a Pandora’s box that still threatens public health decades later.

“Wakefield’s lies had opened a Pandora’s box that still threatens public health decades later.”

Having weighed the evidence and concluded vaccines are safe, the scientific community moved on. The community of mothers did not.

TV personality and self-proclaimed “mother warrior” Jenny McCarthy appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007 claiming her son contracted autism from the MMR vaccine. She credited her “mommy instincts” and the “University of Google” for her knowledge of vaccine science. No medical professionals were on the show to counter McCarthy’s statements.

At the time, Oprah was one of the most influential people in the world — 7.8 million people a day watched her show. Her endorsement of Barack Obama that same year won him a million votes in the Democratic primary. Pediatricians attending the American Academy of Pediatrics’ conference in 2008 complained that parents were refusing to immunize their children after watching McCarthy on Oprah.

The networks also kept the vaccine debate alive, continuing to interview Wakefield about his debunked research long after the UK had stripped him of his license to practice medicine. CBS’s 60 Minutes and PBS’s Frontline ran programs on the controversy, setting McCarthy, Wakefield and worried parents up against doctors and health officials like Anthony Fauci to argue their alternative facts, as if the science was not already settled.

Even McCarthy’s admirers admit it’s less about what she says (her data is inconsistent and unconvincing) than how she says it. She is confident and not afraid to question the experts and the evidence.

Junk science

The rise of the internet has made junk science like the Wakefield study accessible to masses of lay people, and Google searches present it as equal to information posted on the CDC website just a click away. Simultaneously, faith in doctors plummeted from 73% in 1966 to 34% in 2012. McCarthy herself claims she is not anti-vaccine; she just thinks everyone should “ask questions.”

While McCarthy was asking questions, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was pointing fingers. He wrote articles in 2005 for Rolling Stone and Salon accusing the government of hiding a connection between vaccines and autism.

Not only does no such link exist, but presenting autism as a catastrophe that “happened” to children and needs to be “cured,” rather than another way of being human, is just as wrong and problematic as blaming vaccines for “causing” it. Both Salon and Rolling Stone later retracted Kennedy’s articles, which were riddled with errors and had not been adequately fact checked by either outlet.

Trump weighs in

Never one to pass up a conspiracy theory, Donald Trump raised the question of vaccine safety, first in 2007, then in 2012 on Fox & Friends and repeatedly on Twitter before blaming vaccines for autism once again in the second GOP debate of 2015. His opponent, Ben Carson, trying to appeal to Trump’s anti-vax supporters, was reluctant to set him straight — even though Carson is a doctor.

“Conservatives exposed to Trump tweets expressing anti-vaccine opinions became more concerned about vaccine safety than they had been prior.”

Trump has an inordinate amount of influence on his supporters’ anti-vaccination views. Studies show conservatives exposed to Trump tweets expressing anti-vaccine opinions became more concerned about vaccine safety than they had been prior.

COVID hits

Childhood immunization rates already were falling when the COVID pandemic struck. In 2019, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported 1,282 cases of measles across 31 states, the largest eruption of the virus since 1992. Measles is so contagious it requires a 95% vaccination rate to prevent an outbreak.

“Whenever there is an erosion in vaccination rates, the first disease to come back is measles,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in an online interview. “It is the canary in the coal mine because it is the most contagious of the vaccine-preventable diseases.”

The pandemic derailed well-child visits and delayed vaccinations for many children. As schools reopened, the CDC issued a “call to action,” urging governments, parents and health care systems to redouble their efforts to get children immunized. Despite their best efforts, the vaccination rates for many diseases including measles, polio, whooping cough and chicken pox fell to a nationwide average of 93% last year.

Some of this decline may still be the result of a lag in record keeping from the pandemic. Pockets of the country, however, have significantly lower rates of immunization.

Idaho’s vaccination rate was 81%. The vaccination rate for the MMR vaccine in Minneapolis was 75%.

“Two years ago, you had a case of polio in Rockland County, N.Y. Now, that was in an area where the immunization rates were 30%. If we lower immunization rates enough, even diseases as remote as polio can come back,” Offit said.

Since 1981, all 50 states have required certain vaccines for children entering kindergarten. These vaccine mandates kept the overall immunization rate high in the U.S. In 2000, endemic measles was completely eliminated in the U.S. thanks to the MMR vaccine. However, Offit says, “Push back on school vaccine mandates, (and) you’re going to get to the point where we will see 1,000 or 2,000 cases of measles a year, at which point children will start once again to die from measles.”

Most Americans still have a favorable opinion of childhood vaccines. But during the pandemic, the fringe movement of vaccine skeptics partnered with political libertarians to oppose COVID vaccine mandates. Now they’re setting their sights on childhood vaccines.

Secret donors fuel conspiracies

Fueled by an influx of tens of millions of dollars from donor-advised funds whose investors are kept secret, anti-vaccine groups like Texas-based Informed Consent Action Network and Kennedy’s nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, are forcing changes in state immunization policy, whether citizens want it or not.

A judge in Mississippi ordered the state to allow for religious exemptions to school vaccinations thanks to a 2023 lawsuit brought by a group of parents and funded by ICAN. Considering some of the plaintiffs homeschooled their children and others had tenuous connections to the state through work or family, it was a blatant political maneuver.

“In parts of Florida, 50% of children have nonmedical vaccine exemptions.”

Mississippi already allowed for medical exemptions with a doctor’s letter, but organizations like ICAN are pushing for religious exemptions, which only require parents to complete a form. In parts of Florida, 50% of children have nonmedical vaccine exemptions. Exemption rates in Texas skyrocketed after Andrew Wakefield relocated to Austin and, with the help of donations from wealthy backers, established a media company to promote his dangerous beliefs about vaccines.

As they’ve gained political clout and libertarian money, the messaging of these anti-vaccination groups has shifted away from concerns over vaccine safety to demands for “medical freedom” and “parental rights,” making the movement more attractive to many Republicans. Among white evangelical Protestants, a majority of whom are Republican, 40% said parents had the right not to vaccinate their children even if it “may create health risks for others.”

In 2024, 26% of Republicans said they had skipped or delayed vaccinations for their children. The political action committee Texans for Vaccine Choice is supporting more than 20 bills to reduce vaccine requirements in the state, including making it easier to apply for school immunization exemptions. During the 2024 campaign, Trump himself threatened to withdraw federal funding from schools who require vaccinations.

A study examining pre-pandemic vaccine hesitancy found that, after race, Christian nationalism was the second strongest predictor of anti-vaccine attitudes, more so than religious or political identity alone.

When surveyed, Christian nationalists prioritized individual liberty or the economy over protecting the medically vulnerable and were least likely to take precautionary steps to protect others from infection. They also believed the lies that “vaccines cause autism” and vaccines do not “help protect children.”

The greatest barrier

Yet the greatest barrier to a higher vaccination rate in the United States is not Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories or even Jenny McCarthy. The greatest barrier standing between children and immunization in the world’s richest country is cost.

When tens of thousands of children contracted measles in 1989-1991, a CDC investigation found more than half those children had not received the MMR vaccine, even if they were under the care of a doctor, because of the cost of the vaccine.

In response, Congress created the Vaccines for Children Program in 1994 to provide free vaccines to children under the age of 18 who are enrolled in or eligible for Medicaid, in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or whose current insurance does not cover the cost of all vaccines. Native American or Alaska Native children also qualify for free immunizations through the VCP. As of 2024, the CDC says the program has prevented 472 million illnesses and 29.8 hospitalizations.

But even though 38 million children, more than half the number living in the U.S., are eligible for the VCP, too many are still falling through the cracks. Health officials in Louisville, Ky., told the CDC many doctors in their community don’t participate in the program because of bureaucratic hurdles, and many parents still struggle with finding transportation and time off from work to bring their children to the few providers who do. This disparity left one in five Louisville children without adequate vaccination coverage. The city is working to solve that problem by establishing VCP clinics in 160 schools to vaccinate children who qualify. However, Trump’s second administration may upend the city’s hard work.

Threat of RFK Jr.

Trump met with Wakefield in 2016 and Kennedy in 2017 about a “vaccine safety committee,” which the president’s advisers at the time rightly tabled. For his second term, Trump wants Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Having a noted anti-vaxxer who in 2013 equated vaccinating children to sending them to “Nazi death camps” in charge of immunization would be catastrophic for the country’s welfare.

Kennedy says he will downsize the NIH and refocus the organization’s $30 billion in research grants away from infectious disease. Kennedy also could prevent the FDA, which is also part of HHS, from approving new vaccines or call for a review of existing vaccines and demand changes. A government agency implying that America’s vaccines are not safe would be a death knell to the nation’s immunization rate.

As head of HHS, Kennedy would negotiate vaccine prices and oversee their distribution to centers like the Louisville school system’s VCP clinics. He would have the authority to disband or restaff the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The ACIP determines what vaccines are offered through government programs like VCP, Medicare, CHIP, Medicaid and to U.S. service personnel and their families. Private insurance companies are required to provide coverage for vaccines on the committee’s approved list.

Helping Kennedy transform the HHS into a wing of the anti-vaxx movement will be Trump’s nominee for head of the Center for Disease Control, David Weldon. A former congressman from Florida, Weldon also is a doctor, and, like Andrew Wakefield, he too is against vaccines.

“Having a noted anti-vaxxer in charge of immunization would be catastrophic for the country’s welfare.”

In his conspiracy-fueled documentary, Vaxxed, Wakefield interviewed Weldon, who doubled down on the claim the CDC is covering up the dangers of vaccines. As head of the CDC, Weldon could outright reject the recommendations of the ACIP. During his time in Congress, Weldon submitted a bill in 2007 to establish an independent agency in charge of vaccines. Project 2025 calls for restructuring the CDC and creating just such a group, as well as removing the CDC’s ability to recommend vaccines or vaccination schedules.

Trump already has signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization. One reason anti-vaxxers are so flippant about the dangers of measles, polio and whooping cough is because, thanks to the WHO, they’ve never seen deadly outbreaks of them in America. By supporting and coordinating with the WHO, the U.S. halts these infectious diseases and others before they come to America’s shores.

But just as they have in the U.S., global immunization rates have declined, leaving 2.7 million children un- and under-vaccinated, and countries below the threshold necessary to stop outbreaks. When vaccine-preventable diseases do return to the U.S., the predominantly wealthy, white anti-vaxx community, secure in their privilege, assumes they will have access to the necessary medical care to save their children. It will be the lower-income children and families in places like Mississippi and Kentucky who will suffer most if HHS drops its support for immunization.

I know what it’s like to be a nervous parent with two newborns, trying to make the right decisions for my children’s health. However, the anti-vaccine movement isn’t based in science, it’s rooted in fear. Delivering the nation’s health care into the hands of anti-vaxxers is the wrong decision and one that will hurt the country’s most vulnerable.

 

Kristen Thomason is a freelance writer with a background in media studies and production. She has worked with national and international religious organizations and for public television. Currently based in Scotland, she has organized worship arts at churches in Metro D.C. and Toronto. In addition to writing for Baptist News Global, Kristen blogs on matters of faith and social justice at viaexmachina.com.

 

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