A reminder that failing to believe in well-supported facts, overwhelming evidence, and broadly accepted science comes back to cause real misery. That includes those who want to use climate change denial as a reason to keep altering the environment. And it most definitely, directly, and immediately applies for those unlucky enough to be associated with anti-vaccine activists.
The young mother started getting advice early on from friends in the close-knit Somali immigrant community here. Don’t let your children get the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella — it causes autism, they said. ... a discredited theory that spread rapidly through the local Somali community, fanned by meetings organized by anti-vaccine groups. The advocates repeatedly invited Andrew Wakefield, the founder of the modern anti-vaccine movement, to talk to worried parents.
Immunization rates plummeted and, last month, the first cases of measles appeared. Soon, there was a full-blown outbreak, one of the starkest consequences of an intensifying anti-vaccine movement in the United States and around the world that has gained traction in part by targeting specific communities.
What do anti-vaccine advocates have to say about providing information that has, so far, led to 41 cases of measles?
“The Somalis had decided themselves that they were particularly concerned,” Wakefield said last week. “I was responding to that.”
Anti-vaccine advocates exploited a vulnerable community, already isolated from neighbors by prejudice and rumors that Somali refugees are tied to terrorism. Wakefield used this situation to bolster his own importance and continue spreading information that’s both incorrect and harmful.
They organized meetings, handed out pamphlets, bullied those trying to correct their lies—and the result was a lot of sick kids.
Wakefield, a British activist who now lives in Texas, visited Minneapolis at least three times in 2010 and 2011 to meet privately with Somali parents of autistic children, according to local anti-vaccine advocates. Wakefield’s prominence stems from a 1998 study he authored, which claimed to show a link between the vaccine and autism. The study was later identified as fraudulent and was retracted by the medical journal that published it, and his medical license was revoked.
Thanks to the meetings with Wakefield and other anti-vaxxers, vaccination rates in the Somali community dropped by more than half. And the result of that was the largest measles outbreak in Minnesota since the vaccine was first deployed.
Anti-vaccine advocates didn’t just spread their lies to the community, they made sure no one was available to contradict them.
Activists from those groups started showing up at community health meetings and distributing pamphlets, recalled Lynn Bahta, a longtime state health department nurse who has worked with Somali nurses to counter MMR vaccine resistance within the community.
At one 2011 gathering featuring Wakefield, Bahta recalled, an armed guard barred her, other public health officials and reporters from attending.
Anti-vaccine advocates are directly spreading disease and misery. Their “advice” to parents is no more reasonable than if they suggested regular sessions of Russian Roulette as a fun family activity.