Category Archives: vaccine denial

Vive la France and Team Science!

April 6, 2025 By in Greg Abbott, measles, smallpox, vaccine denial, vaccines Leave a comment

It was the Age of Reason, a time of Enlightenment, and a Golden Age of Science – and King Louis XVI of France was here for all of it. 

The young king’s father, Louis the XV, had recently died after smallpox swept through the golden halls of Versailles. Fifty people were infected, eleven (including Louis XV) died.

Smallpox was disfiguring and deadly, and greatly feared. The only prevention was a medical treatment called “inoculation.” Inoculation was popular in most of Europe and in the Middle East, but the French were holdouts.

Inoculation meant taking pus from an actual smallpox lesion and injecting it under the skin of a healthy patient. Ideally, the patient would develop a few smallpox blisters, feel crummy for a few days, and recover with full immunity to smallpox.

The procedure came with risk – a few inoculated patients contracted smallpox, but not at the 30% fatality rate of a full-blown infection. 

But Louis XVI was on Team Science, and he wanted to encourage his people to do the same.

The king, along with his two brothers and a sister-in-law underwent inoculation. In other words, the entire line of succession.

Daily health bulletins were publicly posted, documenting the King’s inoculation experience:

“The king had a good night. Fever continues and is moderate. Local smallpox.”

“The king had slightly more fever with slight nausea. The king, as well as the princes and princess, continue to walk in the gardens.”

The reports continued for three more days, until the king was fever-free and the blisters dried out. 

The king’s example made an impact. The people took up the banner and fashionable ladies sported pink-spotted “inoculation ribbons” pinned to their hats.

Oh, for a time when heads of state encouraged science and public health. Oh, for a time when leaders led by example.

Our leaders continue to downplay the surging measles outbreak – 500 cases in Texas alone. Yet, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has yet to say the words “vaccination” or “measles” in his responses to the ever-growing and spreading outbreak.

A Texas state representative recently filed a bill eliminating vaccination requirements for public school children. 

At the national level, our leaders recently cut funding and personnel supporting vaccination for uninsured children through a network of sixty providers.

In Dallas County, cuts meant the cancellation of 50 community vaccination events – many in areas with low vaccination rates.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.

And while we’re cutting funding for vaccinations, our national leaders decided to fund new “research” looking at autism and the MMR vaccine, despite six decades of evidence that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. 

Louis XVI eventually lost his head in the bloody French Revolution, taking the fall for the excesses of his father and grandfather, but he stood up for what was right and true in science. 

Oh, for leaders who stand up for science.

Oh, for leaders who stand up for public health.

NUMBER ONE

November 17, 2024 By in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., vaccine denial, vaccines Tags: , 2 Comments

In a perfect world, there would be no mistakes. But the world is not perfect, and mistakes – sometimes deadly – happen.

In mid-2018, two nurses in the island country of Samoa accidently reconstituted the measles vaccine with a muscle relaxant instead of water. Two infants died.

The Samoan government paused vaccinations to investigate the deaths. Within weeks, the error was discovered. But in a country with a measles vaccination rate already lower than recommended for herd immunity, parental fear spells disaster. 

That sound you hear? 

That’s the anti-vaccine cavalry riding in, led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

In 2019, RFK Jr. arrived in Samoa with his anti-vaccine message, embracing local anti-vaccine proponents. Months of parental fears stoked by RFK’s antivaccine message led to disaster: vaccination rates plummeted.

Three months after RFK’s visit, Samoa experienced a devastating measles outbreak. The government took action – mandating shutdowns and vaccinations. 

In 2019, there were almost 3,000 measles cases reported in Samoa. Thirty-nine people died, thirty-five of them children. 

RFK Jr. never updated his antivax website, Children’s Health Defense, regarding the cause of the original deaths. RFK Jr. denies his influence on the deadly outbreak.

RFK Jr. sometimes tries to back away from his antivax hot takes, like when he said Ann Frank had more freedom than people under vaccine mandates. Still, in a CNN interview just a year ago, RFK Jr. bragged about telling random parents with a baby “better not get him vaccinated,” in order to “save” the child. 

RFK Jr. has a long history of promoting health-related conspiracies:

HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. MMR vaccine causes autism. Chemtrails. Drinking raw milk is harmless. Chemicals in water are causing kids to be trans. COVID-19 was ethnically targeted to avoid infecting Jewish and Chinese people. 5G high speed internet harvests our data and controls our behavior. Fluoride in the water supply is harmful.

RFK Jr. is not a doctor or any type of healthcare professional, an epidemiologist, or a public health policy expert. 

I don’t know if RFK Jr. will be confirmed to lead Health and Human Services, but I DO know this: 

He was the number one choice of the president-elect.

First in line.

Only the best people, he promised. Only the best. 

Christian Nationalism and Science Denial

September 11, 2023 By in Christian nationalism, science denial, vaccine denial Leave a comment
Christian Nationalism and Science Denial

I grew up in a small city in Texas. Almost everyone I knew went to church somewhere, usually some version of an evangelical church. 

Currently, many Americans who self-identify as “evangelical” aren’t a part of a traditionally evangelical church. “Evangelical” doesn’t necessarily describe where you go to church, or even if you go to church at all.

In fact, more than one-fifth of Americans who want the United States to officially be a “Christian nation” are secular or belong to a non-Christian faith. In 21st century America, “Christian” is more a cultural and political identity, rather than a religious one.

In the wake of this evolution, the terms “Christian” and “nationalism” have married. Characteristic of this marriage is an idealized version of history – that our nation was better, more moral, more diligent in the past. 

Other societies and cultures have idealized the past. Societies that idealize the past have many things in common, including support of “strong man” style leaders and a return to a “law and order” approach to society. 

There’s a lot to unpack here, but I want to focus on another characteristic of cultures that idealize the past: anti-intellectualism that often manifests as anti-science attitudes. 

Christian nationalism, as well as a belief that the Bible is historically and scientifically literally true, tracks with a greater tendency to believe conspiracy theories. Both groups track with anti-vaccine attitudes. 

White evangelicals were the religious demographic most resistant to a COVID vaccine, and also the most resistant to masking and social distancing.

And it didn’t stop with COVID. Already we are seeing state legislatures considering rollbacks of childhood vaccine requirements for school children. 

Look just below the surface of disputes about “science and religion” and you will see that they are primarily conflicts about moral and cultural order. 

Read more in The God of Monkey Science: People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World – available now for preorder!

Facts are Boring: Bring on the Zombie Vaccine

July 17, 2023 By in Covid-19, vaccine denial 3 Comments
Facts are Boring: Bring on the Zombie Vaccine

Of all the alarmist vaccine side-effects predicted in the time of COVID, maybe this one wouldn’t be so bad.

This side effect would have you shredding an axe like Eric Clapton. 

Pre-COVID-vaccine and continuing through vaccine release, newly minted vaccine experts warned of tracking devices in the shot, a giant leap forward toward the goal of world domination via 5G chips.

There was genuine evidence, it seemed. Making social media rounds with viral speed was a technical-looking black and white schematic – the ACTUAL DIAGRAM of the 5G chip inserted into the mRNA COVID vaccines! 

And of course, if it looks science-y and is on the internet and it contradicts Anthony Fauci, it must be true.

Leave it to a couple of scholarly journals like Rolling Stone and Guitar World Magazine to debunk the story.

It was a guitar pedal. The viral image shared across the globe was the electric circuit of a guitar pedal. 

Three years into our COVID experience, and conspiracy theories have yet to die. 

When an NFL player collapsed unconscious on the field during a game, social media was buzzing with the diagnosis before the guy even arrived at the hospital. It was the vaccine!

It wasn’t, but all too often, the first story out becomes THE story. It’s true, myocarditis (almost always temporary), is a rare side effect of the covid vaccine. 

But do you know who is eleven times more likely to develop myocarditis? Unvaccinated people.

One in ten Americans still believe that mRNA vaccines change your DNA. Thirty-two percent of Americans are on the fence about it. 

The science is fairly simple – it’s high school biology 101: the mRNA in a vaccine directs the construction of a protein in the cytoplasm of a cell. DNA resides in (and never leaves) the cell nucleus.

Vaccine conspiracies about death, microchip control, and modified DNA are alive and well in 2023, but here’s the champ: thirteen percent of Americans believe that COVID vaccines cause infertility. Forty-two percent aren’t sure. There is no evidence, at all, supporting this claim, yet it persists. 

Facts are boring.

Controversies are interesting. Conspiracies are compelling. 

Can scientists GUARANTEE that a COVID vaccine won’t turn you into zombie in twenty years? No, but there is absolutely no evidence that it will.

Pseudoscience provides certainty. Science, on the other hand, is always updating, tweaking, and changing.

Science is a work in progress. We look at the best evidence we have. We look at the consensus of scientists working in a field. 

Unfortunately, confidence in science is on the decline in the United States. Even more unfortunate is the fact that confidence levels in both science and medicine are sharply divided along political lines.

Bring on the zombie apocalypse.   

Back to School Edition!

January 18, 2022 By in Covid, Covid-19, science, science and faith, vaccine denial, vaccine refusal 2 Comments
Back to School Edition!

Back to campus! Today I begin my 17th year of university teaching.

I’ve taught biology majors and non-majors, and I begin every first day of every semester the same way:

What is science?

We talk about what science is and is not. We talk about peer review. We talk about experimental design.

In the past, my examples were generic. Now, not so much.

The past two years of Covidness revealed a gaping hole in science education. At first, I was surprised, and then disappointed, and now, I’m worried. 

Much of the angst and misinformation surrounding All Things Covid finds its root in a misunderstanding of how science works.

I especially love teaching non-science majors. While non-majors are unlikely to be our research scientists, they will be our teachers, politicians, policy makers, pastors, school board members, and voters.

Our neighbors. Our community. 

Our citizens.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

September 28, 2020 By in Anthony Fauci, BioLogos, corona, Covid, Francis Collins, Michael Zimmerman, vaccine denial 2 Comments

It was a typical birthday party for a ten-year-old boy – balloons, cake, rambunctious kids. Oh, and party favors, too! 

But this was not your usual grab bag of gum and cheap toys. 

The loot bags also contained a British five-pound note, worth about $10.00 at the time. There was one small catch…

In order to get the party-prize, each little guest had to let the birthday boy’s dad draw a blood sample. 

Later, Dad laughingly recounted the hilariousness of the situation: “I lined them up and they stuck out their arms. Kids were fainting. One kid threw up all over his mother. It was just your standard 10-year-old’s birthday.”

And you thought bounce houses got out of control.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield used the blood samples he collected at his son’s birthday party in one of the most notorious medical studies in modern times. Wakefield’s study, published in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet, triggered a decades-long collapse of public confidence in one of the most significant medical advances in human history: vaccination. 

In his 1998 article, Wakefield claimed that in eight children, the onset of autism followed immunization with the MMR vaccine. Researchers all over the world tried to replicate his results, but no one could.

Still, vaccination rates plummeted in the UK and in the United States. 

The thing is . . . Wakefield made it all up.

The birthday party was just the beginning. In addition to an uncontrolled study with sketchy “volunteer” recruitment, he fabricated data. Before the Lancet article was published, Wakefield filed a patent for his own version of the MMR. Wakefield was also being paid for his “expert” testimony in a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers.

Twelve years after publication, the Lancet retracted the article and Wakefield lost his medical license. Decades of world-wide research and tens of thousands of cases demonstrate no link between autism and vaccination.

Unrepentant, Wakefield continues to travel and speak to anti-vaccine groups. Despite the loss of a “measles-free” status in the UK and multiple measles outbreaks in the United States, groups continue to pay Wakefield thousands of dollars for his “expertise”. To celebrities and everyday moms and dads who do not want to “poison” their children, Wakefield is a martyr. 

Unfortunately, the science behind vaccine safety is lost on those with an anti-vaccination mindset. Research shows that exposure to science evidence reenforces anti-vaccination perceptions of parents. Emotions trump evidence.

Welcome to 2020, and welcome to the flip side of the anti-vaccination coin. 

As the world awaits the release of one of several Covid-19 vaccines now in phase-3 trials, opposition to the vaccine is rising, and from a very surprising precinct. Anti-Covid-19 vaccine voices are getting louder, and one in particular caught the attention of NIH director Francis Collins. 

Michael Zimmerman is a biologist and the founder of the Clergy Letter Project, an effort demonstrating that religion and science are not in conflict. Zimmerman begins his essay by citing his Ph.D. in biology, his opposition to the pseudo-science of vaccine denial, and his generalized rejection of conspiracy theories.

Yet, Zimmerman declares his opposition to a Covid-19 vaccine – at least for the next three months.

Zimmerman and other newly-minted antivaxxers do not trust the current administration. Zimmerman fears the anti-science dogma touted by the Trump administration. Zimmerman and others fear political pressure on the CDC and the FDA will result in the release of a risky vaccine. 

Collins, in his public response to Zimmerman, is direct and uncharacteristically blunt. 

Shouldn’t you reserve judgement until you see the data? Collins asks. 

The vaccine approval process is transparent and is overseen by respected life-long scientists like Collins and Anthony Fauci. And unlike “America’s Frontline Doctors’” claims in their fifteen minutes of summer fame, legitimate science studies are transparent and published for critical review.

In response to Collins’ hope for a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of 2020, Zimmerman writes this: 

“I hope your prediction is off by a month and that approval doesn’t occur until after 20 January 2021 with a new administration in place.”

To which Collins replied:

“Be careful that you don’t end up hoping and praying for the vaccine to arrive after January 20 — when an earlier scientifically rigorous result would have potentially saved many lives.”

To those who are usually on Team Science but find themselves rooting against a Covid-19 vaccine: trust the process. If you don’t trust Trump, fine. Trust Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, two scientists with decades of stellar public health service and a history of withstanding political pressure from both parties. 

Recently, Fauci publicly took the CDC to task for an announcement made while he was under general anesthesia. Fauci lost no time in setting the record straight with his disapproval. And last week, Fauci scolded Senator Rand Paul in a congressional hearing for his repeated misrepresentations of Covid-19 evidence. 

Traditional anti-vaxxers and Covid-19 anti-vaxxers are two sides of the same coin. At their core, both groups mistrust science. Both groups are influenced by deeply held, emotional beliefs. 

Both traditional anti-vaxxers and Covid-19 anti-vaxxers threaten public health and the goal of herd immunity.

On September 25, 2020, Francis Collins was awarded the Templeton Prize for a lifetime of demonstrating harmony between modern science and faith. In his acceptance speech, Collins encourages us to return to our calling to love one another – both friends and enemies.

Loving our neighbor as ourselves means loving all our neighbors: our immunocompromised neighbors, our elderly neighbors, our newborn neighbors, our medically fragile neighbors, our neighbors undergoing chemotherapy. 

If you are medically able to be vaccinated, you are practicing love in a very real, very practical way. 

(Read the correspondence between Francis Collins and Michael Zimmerman here) 

And as You speak
A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath
Evolving in pursuit of what You said
If it all reveals Your nature so will I

(Hillsong United “So Will I“)

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