What Is The Anti-vaccine Movement?
The anti-vaccine movement has existed since the appearance of the first vaccines. It is a dangerous movement, since it has no scientific basis and puts public and individual health at risk, with children and immunosuppressed individuals being the main affected.
How did the anti-vaccine movement emerge?
The anti-vaccine movements could be defined as a group of people who for different reasons (religious, political, philosophical, health …) believe that vaccines and the act of getting vaccinated are more damaging to their health than the possible benefit they can obtain from vaccination .
The origins of the first vaccine date back to the year 1796, when Edward Jenner, an English country doctor, discovered the ability to prevent the spread of smallpox by putting healthy individuals in contact with the secretions of a pustule from a smallpox patient.
At that very moment, detractors of the vaccines appeared, even within the medical community itself. From that moment to date, many countries have suffered outbreaks of preventable diseases associated with the influence of anti-vaccine movements.
One of the best known articles, which unfortunately has made the anti- vaccine movement take hold, was the one published in 1998 in the scientific journal The Lancet, which associated vaccination (MMR vaccine) with autism and other colon diseases.
Six years later, the lead author of this article, Andrew Wakefield, was shown to have financial conflicts of interest, and that he modified the results of his study for his own benefit.
Several co-authors of the same retracted the conclusions obtained but, unfortunately, the damage had already been done. This fraudulent article created a state of panic that led to a decrease in immunization rates, with consequent outbreaks of these diseases.
What is the anti-vaccine movement based on?
Different studies have analyzed the content offered by the web pages of the anti-vaccine movements. Some of the arguments they expose can be grouped into:
- Religious beliefs. According to certain religions, vaccines have an external and unnecessary influence on the body.
- Philosophical questions. They consider that the vaccination obligation (present in some countries) represents a violation of the rights of the individual.
- Lack of efficacy. They believe that the decrease in the incidence of vaccinable diseases is due solely to socio-economic improvements, and not to vaccination itself.
- Risks and consequences of vaccination. They focus on possible side effects, and on the relationship between vaccination and the occurrence of certain diseases, especially idiopathic or immunity-altering ones.
- Economic business. They focus on the business it represents for manufacturers, the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare … They allude to a lack of transparency of all those involved in the vaccination chain.
- Other arguments. They refer to the discomfort of punctures or possible consequences of poor administration technique.
What are the benefits of vaccines?
Vaccines represent one of the greatest advances in the history of medicine, and it is scientifically proven that vaccines prevent millions of deaths each year.
In the same way, millions of people die in the world each year due to diseases preventable with vaccines, because they do not have access to them.
These are just some of the most important characteristics of vaccines:
- Vaccines are safe. They are one of the safest medical products out there, and they undergo multiple security checks.
- They do not produce the disease for which they immunize.
- Vaccines do not cause autism.
- The possibility of adverse effects is never ruled out, since the risk, or not, exists, but the benefit-risk balance is very high.
- Vaccines work widely.
- Its protection is long-lasting, although some vaccines may require booster doses.
- They are necessary to maintain individual and population protection.
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The protection of children’s health constitutes an ethical principle with an inescapable moral value.
- Independent scientific evidence supports the use of vaccines.
Other benefits of vaccines
There are currently no alternative options that have been shown to be better (or even close to) the level of protection that vaccines confer. In many states, vaccination is not mandatory, except in certain circumstances that pose a collective risk.
Despite this, there is a civic and moral obligation to protect children from parents, which allows us to build a better society in which we help protect ourselves and especially those who do not have the opportunity to be vaccinated.
We are not aware of the relevance of many childhood diseases precisely because vaccines prevent us from witnessing them and, although improvements in hygiene have clearly influenced the decrease in their incidence, the role of vaccines in this regard cannot be denied.
