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Parents were protesting compulsory vaccinations 150 years ago. Some are still angry.

Author: Sheena McKenzie and Kara Fox
CNN
 / Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This Feb. 6, 2015, file photo, shows a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine on a countertop at a pediatrics clinic in Greenbrae, Calif.

More than a century before Facebook, anti-vaccination campaigners had another method for spreading their message — an eye-catching march through town with tiny children’s coffins emblazoned with the words: “Another victim of vaccination.

The year was 1885, and smallpox vaccinations were compulsory in the UK — reportedly inciting 100,000 people to demonstrate in the city of Leicester, England, one sunny March day.

Fast-forward to 2019 and the anti-vaccination campaign is a global, multi-faced beast — spurred by safety concerns, religious and political beliefs, preferences for homeopathic approaches and widespread misinformation.

But one issue that has endured for some 150 years is the backlash not simply against vaccinations — but against compulsory vaccinations. Today, rising populism in Europe and the United States is part of a new wave of anti-vaccine distrust in the establishment, say experts.

British parents in the 19th century didn’t take kindly to government-mandated smallpox vaccinations although the gruesome process — a series of deep cuts in the arms of the child — was a world away from today’s sterile practices.

But the anti-vaxxers of the time were also joined by libertarians, who believed the compulsory vaccinations violated their personal freedoms.

Today, that anti-government control sentiment “continues to be a thread in the anti-vaccine movement — particularly in this era of mistrust in government,” Professor Heidi Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told CNN.

Larson said populism and the anti-vaccination movement were “totally related,” adding that it was a “symptom” of “underlying distrust” in the establishment.

Vaccine hesitancy, is one of the biggest threats to global health in 2019, according to the World Health Organization.

“Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease — it currently prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.5 million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved,” WHO said.

But vaccine hesitancy, or the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines, “threatens to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases.”

This trend has been seen in a rising number of anti-vaccine groups in the United States and in some European countries.

Italy’s vaccination U-turn

Last August, Italy’s populist government shocked the scientific and medical community after it removed mandatory vaccination for schoolchildren.

The country’s Five Star movement and its coalition partner, the far-right League, claimed compulsory vaccinations — introduced in 2017 during a measles outbreak — discouraged school inclusion.

The ANSA news agency reported that League leader and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said in June 2018 the 10 obligatory vaccinations — which include measles, tetanus and polio — were “useless and in many cases dangerous, if not harmful.”

The law was first introduced by the Democratic Party a month earlier, amid an ongoing outbreak of measles that saw 5,004 cases reported in 2017 — the second-highest figure in Europe after Romania — according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Italy accounted for 34% of all measles cases reported by countries in the European Economic Area, the center said.

“Italy is part of a global trend of distrust in mediators — doctors and scientists — who can interpret and explain data,” said Andrea Grignolio, who teaches the history of medicine and bioethics at La Sapienza University of Rome.

“With the advent of the Internet, people have the illusion they can access and read data by themselves, removing the need for technical and scientific knowledge.”

Experts say the origins of Italy’s recent anti-vaccine movement can be traced to a 2012 court ruling that linked autism and the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccination. Although that ruling was overturned three years later, it added to the spread of anti-vaccination theories throughout the country — and the world.

Debunked ‘science’

Experts believe that the most modern anti-vaccination movement was reinvigorated by a paper published in 1998 in the respected Lancet journal by former British doctor and researcher Andrew Wakefield. It suggested a connection between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the development of autism in young children.

The claims have since been debunked, and the Lancet retracted the article 12 years later — its editor called it “utterly false.” But the repercussions had already rocked previously vaccine-wary communities on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the United States, that anti-vaccine resurgence has been amplified by actors Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy — who said they believed vaccines could have…

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