Trump energizes the anti-vaccine movement in Texas
Fucking frustrating article to read...
AUSTIN — The group of 40 people gathered at a popular burger and fish taco restaurant in San Antonio listened eagerly to the latest news about the anti-vaccine fight taking place in the Texas legislature.
Some mothers in the group had stopped immunizing their young children because of doubts about vaccine safety. Heads nodded as the woman giving the statehouse update warned that vaccine advocates wanted to ”chip away" at parents' right to choose. But she also had encouraging news.
”We have 30 champions in that statehouse," boasted Jackie Schlegel, executive director of Texans for Vaccine Choice. ”Last session, we had two."
Now they also have one in the White House.
President Trump's embrace of discredited theories linking vaccines to autism has energized the anti-vaccine movement. Once fringe, the movement is becoming more popular, raising doubts about basic childhood health care among politically and geographically diverse groups.
Public health experts warn that this growing movement is threatening one of the most successful medical innovations of modern times. Globally, vaccines prevent the deaths of about 2.5 million children every year, but deadly diseases such as measles and whooping cough still circulate in populations where enough people are unvaccinated.
In San Antonio, 80 miles southwest of the state capital, Texans for Vaccine Choice convened a happy hour to encourage attendees to get more involved politically. The event was among dozens of outreach events the group has hosted across the state. The relatively new group has boosted its profile, aided by a savvy social-media strategy, and now leads a contentious fight over vaccines that is gearing up in the current legislative session.
The battle comes at a time when increasing numbers of Texas parents are choosing not to immunize their children because of ”personal beliefs." Measles was eliminated in the United States more than 15 years ago, but the highly contagious disease has made a return in recent years, including in Texas, in part because of parents refusing to vaccinate their children. A 2013 outbreak in Texas infected 21 people, many of them unvaccinated children.
The modern anti-vaccine movement is based on a fraud. A study published almost 20 years ago purported to show a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The data was later found to be falsified, and the study was retracted.
Scores of large-scale, long-term studies from around the world since then have proved that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. But the suspicion lingers. Its strongest form is a stubborn conspiracy theory that doctors, scientists, federal health agencies, vaccine-makers and the worldwide public health community are hiding the truth and are knowingly harming children.
A leading conspiracy theorist is Andrew Wakefield, author of the 1998 study that needlessly triggered the first fears. (The medical journal BMJ, in a 2011 review of the debacle, described the paper as ”fatally flawed both scientifically and ethically.") Wakefield's Twitter handle identifies him as a doctor, but his medical license has been revoked. The British native now lives in Austin, where he is active in the state and national anti-vaccine movement.
Trump has met with Wakefield, who attended an inaugural ball and told supporters afterward that he had received ”tremendous support" for his efforts and hoped to have more meetings with the president.
Peter Hotez, director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, predicts that 2017 could be the year the anti-vaccination movement gains ascendancy in the United States. Texas could lead the way, he said, because some public schools are dangerously close to the threshold at which measles outbreaks can be expected. A third of students at some private schools are unvaccinated.
”We're losing the battle," Hotez said.
Although the anti-vaccine movement has been strong in other states, including California, Oregon, Washington and Colorado, experts say the effort in Texas is among the most organized and politically active.
”It's a great example of an issue that has a targeted, small minority but an intense minority who are willing to mobilize and engage in direct action," said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.
The vast majority of parents in Texas and across the country vaccinate their children. Most people have never had to think much about this basic preventive-medicine practice.
But now immunization advocates are realizing that they can't let vaccine critics go unchallenged, saying they need voices other than scientists and experts to make the case. They are recruiting teachers and grass-roots groups to explain how immunization protects families and communities.
Jinny Suh, 39, runs one such group, Immunize Texas , from her Austin home, where she lives with her husband and two young sons. Their house is about three miles from the Austin Waldorf School, a private school where 158 students — more than 40 percent of the school population — are unvaccinated, and tuition costs more than $14,000 a year.
Suh worries about the risk that the school's unvaccinated children pose to her 4-month-old, who is too young to be immunized. ”I'm sure there are people I go to the grocery store with and go to the park with" who have unimmunized children, she said. ”This is a public hazard. You can't see germs."
Those who oppose vaccination are driven by fear, even though it is misguided, and that fear drives passion, she said. But parents who support vaccination ”need to step up our passion and speak up for science — and for children," she said.
Fucking frustrating article to read...
