For credibility, the antivaccine movement needs antivaccine pediatricians, such as Dr. Jay Gordon and Dr. Bob Sears. Meet the pediatrician who is the latest rising star in the antivaccine movement, Dr. Paul Thomas. He even claims to have his very own “vaxed vs. unvaxed” study.
Quackery has thoroughly infiltrated medical academia in the form of “integrative medicine.” So what’s worse than Harvard offering an acupuncture course? It might be Duke offering a reflexology and reiki course.
In the US, there is an unfortunate attitude that the parents own their children. When the parents are religious zealots belonging to a church like the Followers of Christ, which believes in prayer instead of medicine, the results are tragic. Unfortunately, we as a society value religious freedom more than children.
Nearly six years ago, I learned of parents who treated their children’s autism by feeding them “Miracle Mineral Solution”—or even giving it to them in enemas. It turns out that MMS is a strong bleach. I had thought this cult of bleaching away autism had gone away. I was wrong. Incredibly, parents are still giving their children bleach enemas and tearing up their colons.
There is a type of “vaccine injury” story promoted by the antivaccine movement that is particularly pernicious, a narrative I call “death by Gardasil.” The stories, which use tenuous connections between vaccination against HPV to prevent cervical cancer and the unexpected death of a teen or young adult, are always tragic, and you can’t help but feel incredible empathy for the parents. However, none of these stories constitute compelling evidence that Gardasil kills young people. Basically, antivaxers exploit the grief of these parents and their understandable desire to find a cause for their child’s demise to demonize HPV vaccinations as dangerous and deadly.
