Vaccine hesitancy

[48] According to Jennifer Reich, those parents who believe vaccination to be quite effective but might prefer their children to remain unvaccinated, are those who are the most likely to be convinced to change their mind, as long as they are approached properly.

[49] While some anti-vaccinationists openly deny the improvements vaccination has made to public health or believe in conspiracy theories,[12] it is much more common to cite concerns about safety.

[54] The overwhelming success of certain vaccinations has made certain diseases rare, and, consequently, has led to incorrect heuristic thinking in weighing risks against benefits among people who are vaccine-hesitant.

[74] Wakefield has been heavily criticized on scientific and ethical grounds for the way the research was conducted[75] and for triggering a decline in vaccination rates, which fell in the UK to 80% in the years following the study.

[89] An accompanying editorial in the same journal described Wakefield's work as an "elaborate fraud" that led to lower vaccination rates, putting hundreds of thousands of children at risk and diverting energy and money away from research into the true cause of autism.

[106] The aluminum in vaccines simulates or causes small amounts of tissue damage, driving the body to respond more powerfully to what it sees as a serious infection and promoting the development of a lasting immune response.

However, recent case-controlled studies have found no specific clinical symptoms in individuals with biopsies showing MMF, and there is no evidence that aluminum-containing vaccines are a serious health risk or justify changes to immunization practice.

Among the first articles of the online magazine Slate was one by Atul Gawande in which the required immunizations received by soldiers, including an anthrax vaccination, were named as one of the likely culprits for the symptoms associated with the Gulf War Syndrome.

Slate continued to report on concerns about the required anthrax and smallpox immunization for US troops after the September 11 attacks and articles on the subject also appeared on the Salon website.

[120] The 2001 anthrax attacks heightened concerns about bioterrorism and the Federal government of the United States stepped up its efforts to store and create more vaccines for American citizens.

A review of nearly 1,400 adolescent girls found no difference in teen pregnancy, the incidence of sexually transmitted infection, or contraceptive counseling regardless of whether they received the HPV vaccine.

[2] There remains a disproportionate rate of HPV-related cancers amongst LatinX populations, leading researchers to explore how messaging may be made more effective to address vaccine hesitancy.

[2] An analysis of tweets from July 2014 through September 2017 revealed an active campaign on Twitter by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll farm accused of interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, to sow discord about the safety of vaccines.

The study found that vaccine hesitant or resistant respondents in the two countries varied across socio-demographic and health-related variables, however, they were similar in range of psychological factors.

[186] Some people in groups experiencing medical racism are less willing to trust doctors and modern medicine due to real historical incidents of unethical human experimentation and involuntary sterilization.

[199] Opposition from some religious groups continues to the present day, on various grounds, raising ethical difficulties when the number of unvaccinated children threatens harm to the entire population.

[206] Hundreds of madrassas in the state of Uttar Pradesh refused permission to health department teams to administer vaccines because of rumors spread using WhatsApp.

[57] Despite many educational interventions attempting this approach, ample evidence indicates providing more information is often ineffective in changing a vaccine-hesitant person's views and may, in fact, have the opposite of the intended effect and reinforce their misconceptions.

[57] A New Zealand-based General Practitioner has used a comic, Jenny & the Eddies, both to educate children about vaccines and address his patients' concerns through open, trusting, and non-threatening conversations, concluding [that] "I always listen to what people have to say on any matter.

For example, pollster Frank Luntz discovered that for conservative Americans, family is by far the "most powerful motivator" to get a vaccine (over country, economy, community, or friends).

In the United States, the majority of anti-vaccine Facebook advertising in December 2018 and February 2019 had been paid for one of two groups: Children's Health Defense and Stop Mandatory Vaccination.

[252] Opinion on this is divided, with the largest professional association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, saying that exclusion of unvaccinated children may be an option under narrowly defined circumstances.

William Rowley published illustrations of deformities allegedly produced by vaccination, lampooned in James Gillray's famous caricature depicted on this page, and Benjamin Moseley likened cowpox to syphilis, starting a controversy that would last into the 20th century.

[262] Societies and publications were organized by the middle classes, and support came from celebrities such as George Bernard Shaw and Alfred Russel Wallace, doctors such as Charles Creighton and Edgar Crookshank, and parliamentarians such as Jacob Bright and James Allanson Picton.

[12][261] These were not easy to obtain in towns where magistrates supported compulsory vaccination, and after continued protests, a further act in 1907 allowed exemption on a simple signed declaration.

Jefferson encouraged the development of ways to transport vaccine material through the Southern states, which included measures to avoid damage by heat, a leading cause of ineffective batches.

[276] John Pitcairn, the wealthy founder of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (now PPG Industries), emerged as a major financier and leader of the American anti-vaccination movement.

At the same time, according to Renée DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, anti-vaxxers began networking with Tea Party and Second Amendment activists in a "weird libertarian crossover".

[314] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the three biggest outbreaks of measles in 2013 were attributed to clusters of people who were unvaccinated due to their philosophical or religious beliefs.

[321] By July 2016, a three-month measles outbreak affecting at least 22 people was spread by unvaccinated employees of the Eloy, Arizona detention center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility owned by for-profit prison operator CoreCivic.