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The madness, because that is what it is, began in earnest in 1998 with the publication in the respected British medical journal The Lancet of a study purporting to establish a link between autism and MMR — the vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella.
The lead author of the study was Andrew Wakefield (he’s no longer “Dr.” Wakefield, for reasons that will shortly become obvious), at the time a surgeon on the liver transplant program at a London hospital and a senior lecturer and consultant in experimental gastroenterology.
The reaction to the study, especially in the UK, was one of panic. Immunization rates dropped from 92 percent to 73 percent, well below the level that creates herd immunity, and were as low as 50 percent in some parts of London. Otherwise-sane journalists, the parents of young children, wrote anguished pieces for usually responsible newspapers demanding to know what the government was concealing from them.
Slowly, however, it all began to unravel. Suspiciously, other researchers were unable to replicate Wakefield’s results. It then emerged that he had business interests in the diagnosis of autism-related conditions, that he had falsified some of the study results and that he had applied for a patent for a single measles jab. Most of his co-authors withdrew their names from the study, The Lancet retracted it and the General Medical Council, the UK regulatory body, conducted an investigation. It found that Wakefield had been dishonest in his research and falsified the results, and had acted against his patients’ best interests, mistreated developmentally delayed children and “failed in his duties as a responsible consultant.” He was struck off the medical register.
You might think that exposing a mendacious charlatan would have been enough to lay the matter to rest. But sadly not
Ross Anderson
You might think that exposing a mendacious charlatan would have been enough to lay the matter to rest: in 2022, Wakefield’s study appeared on a list of the 11 greatest lies in history, coming in at a creditable No. 8, somewhere between the Dreyfus affair and Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. But sadly not. Wakefield fled the UK with his tail between his legs and settled in Austin, Texas, where he continued to be involved in research into autism and continued to claim that there was a link with the MMR vaccine.
This would be the same Texas where, last month, a schoolgirl died from measles — and this in a country where measles was considered to have been statistically eliminated 25 years ago after a nationwide vaccination campaign. The girl had not been vaccinated, but antivax paranoia has reached such a nadir in rural west Texas that many believe she was given the vaccine and that it killed her.
According to news reports, one local resident thought public health officials had been “scaremongering” with warnings about measles. A second, a church pastor, said his members “don’t necessarily trust the medical field.” A third declared: “We don’t believe in vaccines, as part of the research I’ve done. It’s your choice.” And she was a schoolteacher.
The denial of science in the US, much like measles in Texas, is approaching epidemic proportions. A government is under no obligation to protect people from the consequences of their own folly and those who believe that vaccination programs are a conspiracy by Bill Gates (or possibly George Soros, it depends on which deranged internet rabbit hole they have disappeared down) to engineer population control are fully entitled to do so. But when a principal exponent of the folly is an actual member of the government, matters become murkier.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US health secretary, is not a conventional politician, which is perhaps not wholly surprising for someone whose father and uncle were both assassinated. Kennedy has been an anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist for much of his life. He founded the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense, his nomination as health secretary was opposed by more than 75 Nobel laureates and 17,000 doctors, who described him as a danger to national healthcare, and one eminent epidemiologist said giving him the job was like putting a flat earther in charge of NASA.
The denial of science in the US, much like measles in Texas, is approaching epidemic proportions
Ross Anderson
Kennedy also has other issues to deal with: the system over which he presides is arguably the world’s most dysfunctional, with health outcomes in inverse proportion to the gargantuan sums spent on delivering them. It spends nearly $13,000 a year per person, twice the average of every other developed country, but has the worst record on life expectancy, infant mortality and safety during childbirth of any high-income country.
Since his appointment, Kennedy has moderated his public statements on vaccines. He now denies (despite all previous evidence to the contrary) being a vaccine skeptic and insists that all his own children have been vaccinated. Maybe someone told him that, when you are a maverick politician, you can utter whatever drivel you like and no one will pay much attention, but when you are health secretary your words can have consequences.
So, rather than look at his words, let’s look at his deeds. Kennedy could have ordered a full-scale vaccination program in response to the measles outbreak in Texas. Instead, he advised parents that they could protect their children from the virus with a healthy diet and doses of vitamin A, which is medical nonsense.
Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health last week withdrew about 40 grants to researchers trying to find out why vaccination rates in the US are falling so precipitately. The organization said its policy was “not to prioritize research activities ... gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment.” The government member responsible for the National Institutes of Health policy is ... well, you hardly need me to tell you.
The consequences of this combination of public ignorance and high-level official ineptitude are being felt every day in west Texas, where the number of children with measles passed 220 this week. There will be more. Cases have also been reported in New Mexico and Oklahoma. What a pity there isn’t a vaccine to immunize against stupidity.
• Ross Anderson is associate editor of Arab News.