The origins of the anti-vaccine movement

Key Takeaways

we've been hearing a lot about antivaxers in the news lately but they've been around since the beginning of vaccines vaccines date back to the research of Edward Jenner a doctor who was working in rural Britain in the 1700s he noticed that on the farm the milkmaids didn't get small poox in the way everyone else around him seemed to so one by one he started scraping puss from sick cows into the skin of his family members and miraculously they didn't get sick his Discovery led to the small poox vaccine and later the world's first and only infectious disease eradication this child has what we call active immunity he has acquired this active immunity by actually having the disease fortunately there's a safer way to get immunity this is through vaccination Edward Jenner was basically ostracized from his community people thought it was disgusting that he would inject his family with pathogens from a sick animal fast forward to today and the same kinds of concerns continue we do not need the that many vaccines people overly generalize about them as if they're only great doctors have to ask brand new parents to give otherwise Healthy Babies dozens of needles based on the promise that they'll avoid some future abstract disease one discredited paper made many many parents think that there was a link between the measles mum Bella vaccine and autism the parents understand it they get it because they've lived the message from the bmj could not be clear or more shocking wakes fille research they contend has been a fraud and we have other antivaxers today who aren't only worried about autism there are the delayers like Ram Paul we sometimes give five and six vaccines all at one time I chose to have mine delayed there are deniers of all Stripes They're the Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn they're the parents of children with medical conditions who have to opt out they're even unvaccinated kids visiting Disneyland the majority of last year's massive uptick in measles cases actually involved the Amish of Ohio more than 350 people there were infected by one man who had traveled to the Philippines these outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases in the US typically happened just like that an unimmunized person travels to a place where one of these diseases is circulating and then returns to a community with other similarly unimmunized people and boom we don't remember what measles or polio or Hepatitis B look like and felt like these vaccines work so well that the memory of these diseases has faded viruses and bacteria don't know any borders all it takes is a single traveler to spark an outbreak even in the happiest place on earth [Music]