The Paper Heard “Round the World”
How a Debunked 1998 Paper Linking Vaccines to Autism Continues to Fuel Vaccine Skepticism Today
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the C.D.C has reported a one percent drop in childhood vaccinations, resulting in 35,000 fewer vaccinations. We have all observed the explosion of the anti-vax movement over the past two years, but anti-vax rhetoric is nothing new. In fact, NYTimes Mag reports that “in 2019, even before the pandemic struck, the World Health Organization listed growing vaccine hesitancy as one of its top 10 threats to global health.” But where did this all begin? Who is responsible for this mistrust? And what tactics of persuasion are used to lower people’s confidence in evidence-backed life-saving science?
“‘During the pandemic, the antivax movement was able to springboard to the mainstream,’ Koltai says. ‘I don’t think it’s that taboo anymore to be vaccine-hesitant.’”
The Origin
One of the most widely-known conspiracy theories links the MMR vaccine (an immunization most of us received as kids to prevent measles, mumps, and rubella) to an increased risk for autism. I find this conspiracy theory interesting because of its strange origin story. I’m sure that many of us picture conspiracy theories to be crafted online by incels that live in stinky basements. While that is true in some cases, a lot of conspiracy theories arise from reputable and trustworthy sources of information. Think politicians, medical researchers, journalists, and industry professionals. The idea that the MMR vaccine is associated with autism stemmed from a widely debunked 1998 paper published in the Lancet, a highly respected medical journal. According to Reuters, “concerns about a potential link between the MMR vaccine and autism have persisted for two decades.” The paper was written by Andrew Wakefield, who still defends his research despite “at least 16 well-designed epidemiological studies by different researchers around the world” that “have failed to find a link between vaccines and autism.” Even after Britain’s General Medical Council revoked his license to practice medicine in 2010, Wakefield still sits at the forefront of the anti-vax movement.
The 2015 video featured below from PBS NewsHour gives a solid overview of the 1998 paper which would become the origin of the autism & vaccine conspiracy and the anti-vax movement as a whole. It also highlights the 2015 uptick in measles cases following a small outbreak at Disneyland, just one example of the harmful implications of Wakefield’s paper.
The Irony of Vaccine Success
According to Moises Velasquez-Manoff, “some scientists regard vaccines as the single greatest medical advance in human history.” The ironic caveat to this is that their effectiveness in preventing the hospitalization and death of infected people is what drives peoples’ skepticism of them. Velasquez-Manoff explains,
“[O]nly a small portion of the population has seen the death and suffering caused by the diseases of eras past; vaccines, in the minds of many, have come to pose a greater threat than the diseases that they have helped nearly vanquish.”
The medical advances of vaccines in the 21st century provide us with a unique perspective on vaccines. We are privileged to never have had to live through the times of polio and other devastating and catastrophic pandemics. But this has created a blind spot. Never having to experience what life is like without vaccines leaves ample room for people to question their efficacy and safety. This perspective is also what fuels the credibility of anti-vax voices like Andrew Wakefield and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. These leaders in the movement employ propaganda techniques, also called persuasion tactics, to spread the message that vaccines are dangerous. These methods work by combining politics, persuasion, and fear to gradually lower people’s trust in credible evidence-based medicine and science.
Weaponizing Communication
Propaganda has several definitions and applications, and not all are necessarily negative. But for our purposes in this discussion, we can define propaganda as “intentionally designed communication that invites people to respond emotionally, immediately, and in an either-or manner, emphasizing its capacity to undo more reasoned habits of mind.” The thing to keep in mind about the relationship between conspiracy theories and propaganda is that those who wish to convince others into believing these theories are engaging in at least one or more propaganda techniques. Breaking down what techniques are at play in this example can help us identify messages using propaganda in the future.
Politics, Propaganda, & Public Health
There are a number of persuasive techniques used to further the claim that vaccines cause autism. These include card stacking, cause vs. correlation, group dynamics, experts, scientific evidence, and fear–to name a few. All of these techniques are defined in this resource from the New Mexico Literacy Project and by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. The main method associated with the autism conspiracy is cause vs. correlation. The research in Wakefield’s disputed paper is based on a faulty correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism. But it is important to remember that correlation does not mean causation. The fact that a number of children given the MMR immunization were then diagnosed with autism does not mean that the vaccine caused the autism. This type of faulty logic is what makes people jump to conclusions before reviewing the facts and research. 2020 saw the politicization of medicine and science. This is an example of group dynamics. Now that major right-wing voices like Fox, Trump, and RFK Jr. have adopted vaccine skepticism, it is now part of the conservative identity. The harm in this is that it has influenced “an erosion of confidence in medical expertise generally.”
Lasting Effects
Velasquez-Manoff said it best in his NYTimes Mag piece when he wrote “his [Wakefield’s] words still reverberate around the world.” Sadly, many people still subscribe to the anti-vax rhetoric spewed by Wakefield. And his platform has evolved into discrediting a number of vaccines, including the MMR and Covid mRNA, for several baseless reasons not based on any sound scientific research. It’s unlikely the anti-vax community would have garnered as much traction as it did following the covid pandemic had it not been for the anti-vax movement created from the debunked 1998 paper. The paper planted a seed in people’s minds that vaccines were harmful and dangerous. This highlights an important implication of misinformation. Even after it is debunked, people continue to believe it. And this is alarming in situations when “reputable” and trustworthy sources are the disseminators of harmful and misleading information. Arming ourselves with the ability to identify persuasion tactics helps us decipher propaganda from reliable, fact-driven information–leaving us less susceptible to conspiracy theories like those linking vaccines to autism. The resource I have posted below from the World Health Organization lists several behaviors they suggest should be employed by consumers of media interested in preventing the spread of harmful and misleading content.
