Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

And there were always individuals who were anti-vaccination.

But I think it got a lot worse with Wakefield. There had been some worries about the safety of the pertussis vaccination in the early 80s, which led to a reduction in uptake as well as to some changes to improve the safety of the vaccination; but I don't think the same degree of paranoia was involved.

I think with the Wakefield/MMR episode several things converged:

(1) The government really had tried to deceive us about the safety of beef at the beginning of the BSE scandal; so that people were ripe for any suggestion that the government were concealing medical dangers. The converse of crying wolf, I suppose.

(2) The Daily Mail and other elements of the right-wing press took up the scaremongering in a big way.

(3) The great reduction in infectious diseases led to a generation of parents who had grown up without fear of, or much exposure to these diseases, and who did not therefore always have earlier generations' awareness of the dangers of these diseases.

As regards links between Wakefield and the American anti-vaccine movement - no, not initially at all. In fact, the main vaccination critics in the UK and USA focused on different issues: here it was the MMR itself; in America it was mercury added to vaccines. Eventually, there was increased collaboration between the two; and of course Wakefield eventually saved his career by moving to America - apologies for THAT export!