Vaccine hesitancy is a delay in acceptance, or refusal, of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services and supporting evidence. The term covers refusals to vaccinate, delaying vaccines, accepting vaccines but remaining uncertain about their use, or using certain vaccines but not others. The scientific consensus that vaccines are generally safe and effective is overwhelming. Vaccine hesitancy often results in disease outbreaks and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. Therefore, the World Health Organization characterizes vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten global health threats.
Generation Rescue is a nonprofit organization that advocates the scientifically disproven view that autism and related disorders are primarily caused by environmental factors, particularly vaccines. The organization was established in 2005 by Lisa and J.B. Handley. Today, Generation Rescue is known as a platform for Jenny McCarthy's autism related anti-vaccine advocacy.
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), founded under the name Dissatisfied Parents Together (DPT) in 1982, is an American 501(c)(3) organization that has been widely criticized as a leading source of fearmongering and misinformation about vaccines. While NVIC describes itself as the "oldest and largest consumer-led organization advocating for the institution of vaccine safety and informed consent protections", it promotes false and misleading information including the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism, and its campaigns portray vaccination as risky, encouraging people to consider "alternatives." In April 2020, the organization was identified as one of the greatest disseminators of COVID-19 misinformation on Facebook.
A vaccine adverse event (VAE), sometimes referred to as a vaccine injury, is an adverse event believed to have been caused by vaccination. The World Health Organization (WHO) knows VAEs as Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI).
Paul Allan Offit is an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases, vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine. Offit is the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, former chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases (1992–2014), and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Claims of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism have been extensively investigated and found to be false. The link was first suggested in the early 1990s and came to public notice largely as a result of the 1998 Lancet MMR autism fraud, characterised as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". The fraudulent research paper authored by Andrew Wakefield and published in The Lancet falsely claimed the vaccine was linked to colitis and autism spectrum disorders. The paper was retracted in 2010 but is still cited by anti-vaxxers.
Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a British anti-vaccine activist, former physician, and discredited academic who was struck off the medical register for his involvement in The Lancet MMR autism fraud, a 1998 study that fraudulently claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. He has subsequently become known for anti-vaccination activism. Publicity around the 1998 study caused a sharp decline in vaccination uptake, leading to a number of outbreaks of measles around the world. He was a surgeon on the liver transplant programme at the Royal Free Hospital in London and became senior lecturer and honorary consultant in experimental gastroenterology at the Royal Free and University College School of Medicine. He resigned from his positions there in 2001, "by mutual agreement", then moved to the United States. In 2004, Wakefield co-founded and began working at the Thoughtful House research center in Austin, Texas, serving as executive director there until February 2010, when he resigned in the wake of findings against him by the British General Medical Council.
Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure is a 2008 book by Paul Offit, a vaccine expert and chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The book focuses on the controversy surrounding the now discredited link between vaccines and autism. The scientific consensus is that no convincing scientific evidence supports these claims, and a 2011 journal article described the vaccine-autism connection as "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years".
Bruce Harold Lipton is an American writer and lecturer who advocates various pseudosciences, including vaccine misinformation. By his own admission, Lipton's ideas have not received attention from mainstream science.
Warnings About Vaccination Expectations NZ (WAVESnz), formerly the Immunisation Awareness Society (IAS), is a New Zealand anti-vaccination lobby group.
Robert William Sears, known as Dr. Bob, is an American pediatrician from Capistrano Beach, California, noted for his unorthodox and dangerous views on childhood vaccination. While Sears acknowledges the efficacy of vaccines—for instance, he supports the claim that Chicken pox, measles, whooping cough, polio, diphtheria have all disappeared because of vaccines—he has proposed alternative vaccination schedules that depart from accepted medical recommendations. His proposals have enjoyed celebrity endorsement but are not supported by medical evidence and have contributed to dangerous under-vaccination in the national child population. While he denies being anti-vaccine, Sears has been described by many as anti-vaccine and as a vaccine delayer.
Diane Medved Harper is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan. Her area of expertise is human papillomavirus (HPV) and the diseases associated with it, as well as colposcopy, and she was one of the investigators in the clinical trials of Gardasil and Cervarix, vaccines against HPV.
Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver is a 2007 book by freelance writer Arthur Allen. The book describes the history of vaccination, beginning in 1796 when the smallpox vaccine was pioneered by Edward Jenner, and including mandatory vaccination policies during World War II in the United States military. It ends with a discussion of the vaccine-autism controversy.
John Barthelow Classen is an American immunologist and anti-vaccinationist. He received his M.D. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 1988, his M.B.A. from Columbia University in 1992 and obtained his medical license in October 1997. He is best known for publishing research concluding that vaccines, in particular the Hib vaccine, cause insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, a hypothesis he proposed based on experiments he conducted on mice in 1996. His views are disputed and considered unverified.
Trace Amounts: Autism, Mercury, and the Hidden Truth is a 2014 anti-vaccination biographic film by Eric Gladen, who claims to have experienced mercury poisoning after receiving a tetanus vaccine. In the film, he presents his investigation on the cause of his condition, argues that vaccines should be made without mercury, and claims that mercury and aluminium content of vaccines is linked to autism, a claim that is contrary to the scientific consensus. The film questions a 2011 journal article which described the vaccine-autism connection as "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years".
Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe is a 2016 American pseudoscience propaganda film alleging a cover-up by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of a purported link between the MMR vaccine and autism. According to Variety, the film "purports to investigate the claims of a senior scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who revealed that the CDC had allegedly manipulated and destroyed data on an important study about autism and the MMR vaccine"; critics derided Vaxxed as an anti-vaccine propaganda film.
Texans for Vaccine Choice (TFVC) formed in February 2015 in response to HB 2006, a bill filed during the 84th Texas legislature which aimed to remove religious exemptions from vaccinations for students. A band of parents and legislators worked together diligently to fight off this and 16 other bills that were proposed that session that attempted to mandate vaccines, limit liberties due to personal medical choices, override parental/guardian consent, and increase tracking.
Extensive investigation into vaccines and autism spectrum disorder has shown that there is no relationship between the two, causal or otherwise, and that the vaccine ingredients do not cause autism. Vaccinologist Peter Hotez researched the growth of the false claim and concluded that its spread originated with Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent 1998 paper, with no prior paper supporting a link.
Medical Racism: The New Apartheid is a 2021 video production that promotes conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines. Distributed by the anti-vaccination group Children's Health Defense, it alleges the COVID-19 vaccination efforts are a cover to conduct experiments on the African American and Latin communities. Public health communication experts say the video presents past injustices committed against African Americans in order to make debunked anti-vaccination claims more believable.
Virulent: The Vaccine War is a 2022 documentary produced by Laura Davis and directed by Tjardus Greidanus which explores the history, dangers and impact of the anti-vaccination movement in the United States at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
