In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. And among those diseases could be COVID-19.
Unfortunately, Republican politicians and conservative media figures are increasingly joining up with the anti-vaxxers. Even before COVID, they were fighting vaccine mandates and other public health measures.
The anti-vax movement has a great deal of overlap with MAGA, QAnon, and old-school conspiracy theory.
At the Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal, Peter Hotez has an article titled "Global Vaccinations: New Urgency to
Surmount a Triple Threat of Illness,
Antiscience, and Anti-Semitism."
I am both a vaccine scientist and parent of four
adult children, including Rachel who has autism and
intellectual disabilities. My book, Vaccines Did Not
Cause Rachel’s Autism, detailed and summarized
the evidence showing conclusively that there is no
vaccine–autism link, while offering an alternative
narrative: through whole-exome genomic sequencing, Rachel’s autism gene was identified and compared with others like it.12 The backlash from antivaccine groups was rapid and severe. They launched
a media campaign against me on the internet, encouraging threats through email and social media.
Since I make no secret that I am Jewish, I eventually
experienced first-hand multiple anti-Semitic statements and threats online (see Figure 1 for examples). Two themes predominated. First there were overt threats or expressions of hatred because I was
Jewish. More frequently, however, there were hurtful attempts to accuse me (as well as my colleagues
who vaccinate) of perpetrating crimes equivalent to
those committed during the Holocaust. Antivaxxerslove their Nazi analogies, and I was ultimately compared to the infamous Dr Mengele because I am a
scientist who conducts vaccine research, and
because I “experimented” on my daughter by ensuring that she still received her recommended vaccinations despite an autism diagnosis. Later emails
appearing in my inbox openly expressed their desire
to see me hang after some sort of new-age
Nuremberg tribunal (Figure 1, top left). I was not
alone—a pattern emerged in which Jewish physicians and scientists who conducted vaccine research
or advocated for vaccinations were singled out and
targeted with Nazi imagery.13,14
Nevertheless, our scientific community’s efforts
to debunk vaccine and autism assertions may have
had some beneficial impact, at times even taking
some of the wind out of the sails of the antivaccine
movement. But this also meant that, to continue,
antivaccine groups needed a new angle, and they
found it through extremist or libertarian politics. By
invoking health freedom or medical freedom propaganda they found a political home and donor support.15 Although it may have begun in California
with the passage of Senate Bill 277,15 which outlawed
exemptions to school immunization mandates,
health freedom propaganda found its greatest welcome in Texas where an antivaccine political action
committee (PAC) formed, and vaccine exemptions
escalated.16 In time, health freedom and antivaccine
sentiments were embraced by many mainstream
conservatives or their elected leaders.
1 Robbins JB, Schneerson R, Anderson P, Smith DH.The 1996 Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards.Prevention of systemic infections, especially meningitis, caused by Haemophilus influenzae type b. Impact on public health and implications for otherpolysaccharide-based vaccines. JAMA 1996;276:1181–5. CrossRef
2. Hotez PJ. “Vaccine diplomacy”: historical perspectives and future directions. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 2014;8:e2808. CrossRef
3. Hotez PJ. Immunizations and vaccines: a decade ofsuccesses and reversals, and a call for ‘vaccinediplomacy’. Int Health 2019;11:331–3. CrossRef
4. Wiesel E. A Jew Today. New York, NY, USA: VintageBooks; 1978.
5. Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, et al. A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. N Engl J Med 2002; 347:1477–82. CrossRef
6. Smeeth L, Cook C, Fombonne E, et al. MMR vaccination and pervasive developmental disorders: a casecontrol study. Lancet 2004;364:963–9. CrossRef
7. Jain A, Marshall J, Buikema A, Bancroft T, Kelly JP, Newschaffer CJ. Autism occurrence by MMR vaccine status among US children with older siblings with and without autism. JAMA 2015;313:1534–40. CrossRef
8. Uno Y, Uchiyama T, Kurosawa M, Aleksic B, Ozaki N. Early exposure to the combined measles-mumpsrubella vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines and risk of autism spectrum disorder. Vaccine 2015; 33:2511–16. CrossRef
9. Taylor LE, Swerdfeger AL, Eslick GD. Vaccines are not associated with autism: an evidence-based metaanalysis of case-control and cohort studies. Vaccine 2014;32:3623–9. CrossRef
10. Madsen KM, Lauritsen MB, Pedersen CB, et al. Thimerosal and the occurrence of autism: negative ecological evidence from Danish population-based data. Pediatrics 2003;112:604–6. CrossRef
11. Olive JK, Hotez PJ, Damania A, Nolan MS. The state of the antivaccine movement in the United States: a focused examination of nonmedical exemptions in states and counties. PLoS Med 2018;15:e1002578. CrossRef. Erratum in: PLoS Med 2018;15:e1002616. CrossRef
12. Hotez PJ, Caplan AL. Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2018. CrossRef
13. Orac. Can antivaccinationists knock it off with the autism Holocaust analogies already? Respectful Insolence. May 30, 2013. Available at: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2013/05/30/can-antivaccinationists-knock-it-off-with-the-autismholocaust-analogies/ (accessed October 1, 2022).
14. Orac. Holocaust misappropriation by antivaxxers: a form of Holocaust denial. Respectful Insolence. June 2, 2021. Available at: https://www.respectful insolence.com/2021/06/02/holocaustmisappropriation-by-antivaxxers/ (accessed October 1, 2022).
15. Hotez PJ. America’s deadly flirtation with antiscience and the medical freedom movement. J Clin Invest 2021;131:e149072. CrossRef
16. Hotez PJ. Texas and its measles epidemics. PLoS Med 2016;13:e1002153. CrossRef