In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. And among those diseases could be COVID-19.
Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong.
Half of COVID vaccine rejectors think that vaccines in general cause autism.
Andrew Wakefield, who appeared on Larry Elder's radio show, bears much of the blame.
Abstract
Background
Efforts to trace the rise of childhood vaccine safety concerns in the US often suggest Andrew Wakefield and colleagues’ retracted 1998 Lancet study (AW98)–which alleged that the MMR vaccine can cause children to develop autism–as a primary cause of US vaccine skepticism. However, a lack of public opinion data on MMR safety collected before/after AW98’s publication obscures whether anecdotal accounts are indicative of a potentially-causal effect.
Methods
We address this problem using a regression discontinuity framework to study change in monthly MMR injury claims (N = 74,850; from 1990–2019) from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) to proxy concern about vaccine safety. Additionally, we suggest a potential mechanism for the effect of AW98 on vaccine skepticism, via automated sentiment analyses of MMR-related news stories (N = 674; from 1996–2000) in major television and newspaper outlets.
Results
AW98 led to an immediate increase of about 70 MMR injury claims cases per month, averaging across six estimation strategies (meta-analytic effect = 70.44 [52.19, 88.75], p < 0.01). Preliminary evidence suggests that the volume of negative media attention to MMR increased in the weeks following AW98’s publication, across four estimation strategies (meta-analytic effect = 9.59% [3.66, 15.51], p < 0.01).
Conclusions
Vaccine skepticism increased following the publication of AW98, which was potentially made possible by increased negative media coverage of MMR.
Significance
Childhood vaccine skepticism presents an important challenge to widespread vaccine uptake, and undermines support for pro-vaccine health policies. In addition to advancing our understanding of the previously-obscured origins of US vaccine skepticism, our work cautions that high-profile media attention to inaccurate scientific studies can undermine public confidence in vaccines. We conclude by offering several recommendations that researchers and health communicators might consider to detect and address future threats to vaccine confidence.
