They’re the punchline of jokes on late night talk shows, subjects of memes and general scorn.
Along with flat earthers, people who don’t vaccinate their children—
dubbed anti-vaxers— are increasing in numbers and visibility. But I have some questions.
I mean, how did this movement even start? Why did it begin in the US?
And why does it seem like so many anti-vaxxers are women?
Where are the anti-vax dads?
Instead of complaining about women making bad choices, I’m going to look at how Oprah, Facebook and big pharma screwed up. Bonus: deconstructing Karen memes.
Also, if you’re after the science of vaccines, I’ve linked to some Ted Talks by doctors discussing this in the video description.
A crucial key to understanding anti-vaxxers is to realize:
It’s not that people don’t believe or understand the science.
It’s that they fundamentally do not trust it.
Which begs the question: why would a group of people stop believing in scientific research?
A great article in Medium by Wyatt Edward Gates explains why: My argument in summary
The core issue driving anti-vaccination attitudes is a lack of trust, rather than a lack of knowledge. Since most anti-vaxxers are women,
It’s likely this lack of trust is a direct result of well-documented mistreatment of women by the medical establishment
As a result of endemic sexism. These breaches of trust may explain why
A sane and rational mother would come to distrust medical science,
From which it is a short leap of logic to distrust vaccinations.
I’m also going to look at this claim: are most anti-vaxxers women?
First, we’re going to need some background for context. We need to understand the world’s oldest profession,
The natural result of when straight men and women are alone together.
I’m talking, of course, about midwives.
One: Women have historically ben left out of science and medicine.
I'm going to focus on
Europe in the 1600s to the 1900s. because it's been traditionally a job for women, I'm going
to use midwives to look at how sexism
has impacted women's health.
Childbirth has  been the leading cause of death of women for millennia and continuing
advances in medicine have been helping
to alleviate this. Since the 17th century in Europe,
there's been an increased emphasis
on the scientific method which involves
testing hypotheses and theories with
careful observation. However,  women were left out
out of this change in science, which is
 strange, considering that women have
been helping other women give birth for
centuries— and midwifery has had its own
system of teaching and apprenticeship.
From the 1600s, many
countries in Europe, such as England,
France, Germany, Netherlands and Italy had
various ways of licensing and training
midwives. Further, a few midwives even
wrote their own medical texts and offered
instructional classes. They weren't all
old women using old wives tales and folk
remedies. Midwifery was a necessary
and trusted profession. But, during this
time period, nearly all universities in
Europe would not admit . Women in medicine had other restrictions
placed on them. For
example, in the 1700s male surgeons and
doctors were allowed to use tools, such
as forceps, while female midwives could
not. It was believed that women didn't
have the mental abilities to be
scientists or doctors— a belief that
perhaps persisted well in the 1900s.
Echoing the popular thinking of his time,
English naturalist Charles Darwin had
complex views on the differences in men
and women. and while he thought that women
could, in practice, achieve the same as
men,
he wrote that “men has ultimately become
superior to women.” The average person's
views on women were less nuanced.
American doctor Edmund Hammond Clarke
published a book in 1884 called “Sex
education” where he argues that women
cannot attend university because they’d
become sterile and develop mental
problems due to the stress. Right! Even
famous physicist Marie Sklodowska-Curie
Faced professional roadblocks In 1911, the French Academy of Sciences
rejected her application because she was
a woman. “Women cannot be part of the institute of France,”
Wrote leading French physicist.
Even for the most determined, there were
institutionalized barriers preventing
women from advancing in science and
medicine. By the 20th century, male doctors
rose in popularity as the popularity of
midwives declined in Europe. This decline
Was particularly steep in the US,
especially as birth moved of the home
and the hospital. Over time, women began
to prefer male doctors over female midwives.
This, to me, is the beginning of the gap
between women and modern medicine While I’ve focused on midwives here,
there are other ways that women
have been left out of medicine.
For example, doctors ignoring woman's
complaints of pain or not taking them as
seriously, and women not being included
in clinical trials as often as men.
I’ve linked to some research about these
in the description. So this is our
background: women have historically been kept out of medicine and women’s health concerns
have historically been overlooked. Enter:
spiritualism and alternative medicine.
To understand the anti-vaccine
movement, we need to look at other times
The US was fascinated by bad science
mixed with faith. Enter: spiritualism a
religious movement. Think seances, mediums and being able to communicate
communicate with the dead. It first
became popular in the 1840s, and a lot of
prominent spiritualists were women, such
as the Fox sisters. In her book, Radical
spirits: spiritualism and women's rights
in 19th century” author Ann Braude argues
that spiritualism and women's rights
were linked in part because spiritualism
was a way for women to deft the
Victorian social conventions. We will
be moving further in the 20th century... after the rise of 1960s counterculture, there was
An increased interest in a loosely-held  group of beliefs called “alternative medicine.”
This ranged from everything from traditional Chinese remedies, like acupuncture, to
outright pseudoscience, like homeopathy. In the 1970s, there was also an increase in
home birth, fueled in part because of
second wave feminism. To me, this is where
A misplaced distrust of modern medicine
and a misplaced trust in alternative
medicine really began. Not that home
Birth is always better than giving birth
at a hospital, or vice versa! Or that the
increase in medical intervention in birth has always been good. However, making
any medical decision based more ideology
than facts is a problem.
Books like, “Witches, midwives and nurses,”
published in 1973, helped cement this
connection. Despite the fact that for
centuries, licensed midwives in Europe
were affiliated with the church and
they were sometimes called on to testify
and uphold church doctrine and morals...
like testifying in cases of rape, or to see if an infant had been
stillborn in cases of suspected
infanticide. The authors do a acknowledge a
discrepancy in the new edition: “we should clarify the role of the European medical
profession relative to church and state.”
This is a dangerous combination.
While medicine has failed women in
lot of significant ways, blindly putting
Trust in another system is not the answer.
Further, equating all traditional forms of
medicine as inherently feminists or woman friendly
is disingenuous. Just because something
is outside main stream medicine doesn't
mean that it’s some kind of innate, female wisdom.
and I'm saying this is as a herb burning,
candle lighting person who meditates in
front of her altar and puts her rocks out
in full the light of a full moon to be
cleansed. Just as not all Christians take
take prayer over chemotherapy, not all
New Agers take burning sage or the
scientific method.
Now, three: Oprah and new-age BS. She brought new age hocus pocus right into people’s living rooms.
Oprah introduced us to Dr.Oz, a guy with a title and lots of opinions about medicine and your
health. As for his reliability... well, this Slate article by Kurt Anderson sums up:
For a study in the British medical journal BMJ, a team of experienced evidence researchers
reviewers analyzed Dr Oz's on air
advice—80 randomly chosen
recommendations from 2013. Investigators found legitimate supporting evidence for
fewer than half. The most famous
physician in the United States, a man Oprah
Winfrey branded as :America's doctor” is a
dispenser of make-believe.” So I had some
fun looking at old clips of Dr. Oz's
videos on YouTube. sometimes it's pretty
innocuous, like this quote about avoiding cigarettes and... toxins.
You know, toxins. That extremely scientific word with lots of medical research to back
it up. and here's dr. oz talking about
green coffee beans can help you lose weight.
and here's dr. oz talking about
green coffee beans can help you lose
weight. This has got to be true, right? I
mean, the man has doctor in front of his
name! This isn’t utter quackery designed
to prey on people’s insecurities and make money!
Worse, Oprah gave Jenny McCarthy, patron saint
of the myth of autism and vaccines, a
platform to spout her nonsense.
In 2007, McCarthy was on Oprah show
talking about her son with autism, and
they had the following exchange: “First
thing I did —Google. I put in autism and I started my research. Thank God for Google.
I'm telling you
I’m telling you. Thank God for Google the University of Google is where I got my degree from.
This show is still up on Oprah's
website, without any acknowledgement of
the junk science it contains. This is a
screenshot I took of the website. Thank
someone for Google, so I could find this.
Granted, Oprah isn't the only celebrity
hawking weird new agey stuff, Here's Jim
Carrey with her at a rally in 2008 in DC.
Still, McCarthy is by far the most outspoken
and prominent celebrity spreading this
nonsense, even writing an introduction to
the book: “Callous disregard,” which is
written by Andrew Wakefield, the
Discredited British doctor who's bad
science and debunked research first
suggested the now-disproven link between vaccines and autism. In a bigger picture
sense, however, I think is important to
remember that Oprah and McCarthy
aren't outliers in promoting a blend of
anti science thinking with a sprinkle of
new agey-ness on top. For example here is Gwyneth Paltrow’s website Goop
With amazing stuff about cleansing
your skin of toxins. And here's Paltrow
getting sued for advising people to put
rose quartz eggs in their vaginas, for
very sound scientific reasons. To be fair,
this type of magical thinking isn't reserved
just for the new age. Here's Christian
evangelist Joel Olsteen
suggesting you can become rich just by
visualizing money. I'm sorry, this sounds
exactly like the wiccan books I used to
read in high school. Despite everything
I saw in the movie the Craft, I’m don’t think you can make objects materialize
Just thinking about them. So in this context, anti-vaxxers seem a bit more
understandable. They're part of a larger
landscape of people in the US who have
Been sucked into this very American idea that hard work is all you need and somehow
our thoughts can shape reality.  Kind of
like this “pull yourself up by your
bootstraps myth” created by Horatio Alger.
Also, this is the first time medicine and
belief have been mixed up with deadly
consequences. In 1875, Mary Baker Eddy wrote a book stating
that disease can be cured
through prayer alone. Christian Science,
the religion started from her beliefs, still has members that refuse
medical treatment for their children, instead letting their children die. Is it because
Americans have historically mistrusted authority figures, or often
brushed off education and academic as being stuck in an ivory tower?
Those are really good questions, but I
don't have time to answer— at least not
in this video. But here's a key to
understanding anti-vaxxers: their
distrust in the medical establishment
isn't entirely unfounded.
On one hand, a healthy sense of skeptism
about medical research fueled by
profit can be a good thing.
Advertising prescription drugs on TV, for
example, seems like a really blatant
confusion of medicine and profit.
For a personal example, I've
struggled with depression for years and
a big part of the reason why I didn't
try of depression medication earlier was that
I didn't trust my therapist and
doctors make unbiased, informed
decisions about my health. I mean, were
they recommending these things because
they truly believed it was the best
course of treatment, or her they just seen
a lot of prozac ads on TV? More recently,
with the opioid epidemic in the US,
pharmaceutical companies have been sued over
pushing doctors to overprescribe opiate
based painkillers, downplaying how
addictive and dangerous they are to
doctors. And anyone who's have ever had
to shop for or buy health insurance in
the US is also familiar with this. When
your access to medicine and treatment is
based on not whether you need, it but
whether you can afford, it it can be hard
to sometimes trust doctors and the
science behind them. Four: people make
money off of promoting bad science.
So, with a long history of women being
left out of medicine and scientific
research, the spread of junk science
through so-called alternative medicine,
thanks in part to Oprah giving people like Jenny McCarthy a platform to spout
her bad science... Enter: Facebook. Social
media is a platform that allows
anti-vaccine messages to spread like
wildfire
But, it's only coming from a few sources, as this February 2019 article in the Atlantic
shows. Most information about vaccines
comes from just seven different sites.
While social media platforms have moved
to block anti vaccine content already,
Or to keep it from showing up in searches.
After places like Pinterest and GoFundMe
stop allowing anti vaccine content on
their sites, Facebook followed suit. But
has proved too little, too late. From this Wired article: “the question is
why the company waited until it became the subject of media reports and criticism
from a lawmakers to finally act in.” In March of this year, 18 year old Ethan
Lindenberger was vaccinated against his
mom's wishes. When he appeared before the
Senate to testify, he told them that his
mother got her information about
vaccines from Facebook. And this is the
part that I wish got more airplay.
Someone is feeding people bad
information! It's not just a lot of moms
using Google over their doctor's advice.
 There are actual companies out there
trying to feed people bad science.
they're hiding behind Nice sounding buzzwords
like healthy green and natural. Heck, in a way, they're kind of
part of a larger movement in the US to be more ecological and buy local food.
In a  move that surprises no one, they're
hiding behind free speech to defend
their dangerous ideas. There's a lot a
lot of dubious science out there, often
tied with health. Vaccines affect
public health, but things like organic
food and GMOs don't. And there's plenty
of misinformation about organic food and
the benefits of it floating around out
there.
Again, I’m  not saying there’s anything wrong for preferring unprocessed foods over spam
Or soup in Keurig machines. But taking
medical advice from attractive vegan
bloggers over certified nutritionist or
actual medical professionals is a bad
idea. We all know that trusting memes or
cute sounding Facebook pages is a lousy
way to stay informed.
The problem is anti-vaxxers take a
reasonable idea, like getting a second
opinion about medical advice, and run
with it to a dangerously irresponsible
place. Remember Edmund Hammond Clarke?
The guy who said if women went to
university ,they'd go sterile? It'd be
nice to say this line of thinking is
outdated. But in 2005, Harvard University
present Lawrence Summers said that men are better than at women in sciences because of
biological differences. While the systemic
 barriers keeping women out of science
are gone, the old attitudes clearly
remain. Whew! That’s a lot of research. Let’s look at some
memes. Point 5: Karen memes and
blaming women. So last fall, I noticed
a lot of memes cropping up using different women's names. This was always a
specific type of woman: older, unlikable,
and, well
judgmental. Soon one name was selected
for this woman: Karen. On Reddit in
particular, this name became synonymous with certain with certain types of behaviors:
Complaining to the manager when needs
aren’t met; expecting special treatment for
having children; and, in general, an overall
sense of entitlement. Karen has now
Morphed into a distinct character:
complaining; using essential oils and
crystals; and strangely...
sometimes anti-vaccine. Where brings me back to one of my first questions: where are the anti-vax dads?
Watching news stories featuring interviews with anti-vaxxers,
we see it's almost always women being
interviewed. Studies have shown that
women are more active in the
anti-vaccine movement than men.
However, is it true that more people in
the anti-vaccine are women than men?
While it’s our perception at there are more
women anti-vaxxers than men, this isn't
necessarily true. A 2015 study by
consumer group Civic Insight from found
that more men and women hold
anti-vaccine beliefs. But, studies by the Pew
Research Foundation show that more men than more men and women distrust
vaccines, though by much smaller
percentage 11% of men to 8% of women. Some
Prominent anti-vaccines websites have been started by men
such as Joel Lord.
I am NOT suggesting women should defer
to their husbands or anything like that!
But, parenting is a team effort, or at
least it should be. And I think it's
telling, and a little sad, that we're
willing to let women take the take the
brunt of child rearing, even making all the
medical decisions of children,
while dads just take a backseat.
Heck, even die-hard Redditors have noticed the weirdness of using Karen as a catch all term.
“It's very refreshing to see an
entitled dad and have the mom actually
trying to defend the flight attendant,
saying honey please calm down, and
clearly the dad was not having it, and
not in a good way.
Have I ever really thought about a Karen
being a dad? I don't think I have, mostly
because of the gendered nature of the
name, I guess. But hey, it makes sense.
Anyone can be a Karen.” Which is why
anti-vaxxer is being framed as women  making
bad choices really rubs me the wrong way,
especially given the historical biases
woman has faced in regards to medicine.
As if men have always been rational and
never rely on superstition for anything.
Especially when anti-vaxxers are
guilty of something most of us do:
confirmation bias. In general, people
read and watch stuff that
enforces their own opinions. So to wrap
up, what can we do?
First, remember that anti-vaxxers are
parents.
Misguided parents who believe in bad
science. Listen without judging to people
who are hesitating about vaccines. Telling
people about the effects of vaccines
doesn't change their minds or make them
want to vaccinate their children, as
studies show. Instead let them talk. This
is not to validate their beliefs, but to
let them talk to someone outside the
anti-vaccine movement about their
concerns. Two: normalize autism. part of the fear of vaccines comes from a fear of autism, but that’s just awful
and judgmental. Kids with autism are... kids! There’s something really terrible about
Prereferring measles to autism. People with mental health issues, such as myself, or
people with autism, are still first and
foremost: people. Three: don't share insulting
anti-vaxx memes. Yes anti-vaxxers are
Wrong about the science. But remember: this
hesitancy comes from an understandable
place. They're not actually trying to
kill or maim their children. And by sharing
these memes, you're not going to win a
Prize for “most correct Person on the Internet award.
By far, the most the most effective way to
deal with problem is by not debating it.
Write to your state Congressperson, your state  governor,
And tell them you want vaccines to be mandatory in public
schools. Five, report or flag any anti vaccine propaganda you see. Remember the actual
villains here are people who are
profiting from spreading bad science. I
mean Facebook's reporting system is
pretty terrible, but it's worth a shot.
And remember how we got here. if there were as many female doctors as male ones, if
doctors overall took women’s health concerns as seriously as
men's, and if women were better represented in clinical trials, this issue wouldn't
be what it is. Sexism brought us here, and
fighting sexism
will get us out. Thanks so much for
watching! For reference, the books I used
were mainly “Inferior, by Angela Saini. For the history of
midwives, I used this one: “The art of midwifery, an extremely well researched book, with the
focus on midwifery in Europe. For the US, I
used this one: “Lying In.” My script advisor  was
Brianna Stallings, and there’s the links of the research I did in the
video description.
