Elsevier

Vaccine

Volume 28, Issue 17, 9 April 2010, Pages 3066-3070
Vaccine

“All manner of ills”: The features of serious diseases attributed to vaccination

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2009.10.042Get rights and content

Abstract

Anti-vaccination writings have linked vaccines with a wide range of negative outcomes. The majority of evidence negates such connections raising the question of what makes these attributions attractive. This research identified diseases and conditions which are claimed to have been caused by vaccines and identified their shared societal features. They shared an idiopathic origin; apparent rise in incidence; face-value biological plausibility of a link to vaccines; dreaded outcomes; and their onset having close proximity to immunisation. Any attempt to re-frame erroneous claims about vaccination first requires an identification of the deeper anxieties in which they are located.

Introduction

The anti-vaccination movement claim many negative consequences from vaccination. High profile controversies have promoted hypotheses that vaccines were responsible for serious and dreaded diseases or disabilities with uncertain causes. Examples include encephalopathy from the pertussis vaccine in the UK in the 1970s and, more recently in the UK, autism from the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and, in France, multiple sclerosis from the hepatitis B vaccine [1], [2], [3]. Previous studies have examined the content, specific claims, and appeals employed by anti-vaccination movements and websites [4], [5], [6].

Parental anxieties about fearful, mysterious diseases that threaten children foment receptive audiences for such claims. These causal attributions do not rely on the strength of evidence for asserting causal association but share a number of epidemiological and societal features in addition to the uncertain or idiopathic origin of the named diseases [4]. This analysis investigates some of the features of these diseases, in an attempt to gain further insights into the anti-vaccination movement's strategies. Part of any attempt to respond meaningfully to public scares about vaccines requires an understanding of the wider discourses in which they are embedded.

Section snippets

Methods

Previous research listed all explicit claims about vaccine-caused diseases made in Australian newspaper letters to the editor and quotes from anti-vaccination spokespersons [4]. Publications included all major metropolitan and suburban daily and weekly newspapers published in Australia between 1993 and 1997. We supplemented this with searches of anti-vaccination writings that might be encountered by a parent seeking information on the Internet. In Australia, 85% of Internet users use a search

Results

There was general stability in the attributions made over the analysis period. The majority of the diseases attributed to vaccination from the 1993 to 1998 newspaper data and 2001 Internet data remained in 2009. Sudden infant death syndrome links to vaccines became less prominent. Reproductive problems from the HPV vaccine were a new claim. Five characteristics were common to them: idiopathic nature (uncertain origin); an apparent rise in incidence of the disease; face value biological

Discussion

Independent panels have investigated hypothesised connections between vaccines and many of the conditions and diseases named in anti-vaccine writings. In 1994, the US Institutes of Medicine published a review of the evidence for adverse events associated with childhood vaccines. Guillain–Barré Syndrome was the only disease listed in this study to have an established causal connection [17]. Studies of possible causal associations are ongoing and will become increasingly important as vaccine

Acknowledgements

Conflict of interest statement: SC owns 450 shares in CSL Ltd. JL and SCCR are working in studies part-funded by Sanofi Pasteur. Funding: National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance is supported by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, the NSW Department of Health and The Children's Hospital at Westmead. This research was undertaken independent of any of its funding sources.

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