Arin Parsa, 7th grade
I got interested in the vaccination debate by accident, albeit a lucky one! One night in March, this year, as I was scrolling through my YouTube feed, I chanced upon a video where [video_lightbox_youtube video_id="j1wGZKQObow&rel=0" width="800" height="480" anchor="Ethan Lindenberger"], an 18-year old from Ohio, was testifying to Congress about the dangers of anti-vaccination. It sparked a thought in me because I wondered how this type of ideology can still exist in today’s modern world. After watching the video, I began to read more about the current controversy and how vaccine resistance was resulting in measles outbreaks! My passion has always been history, public policy, and science, so through the months leading up to summer before the break, whenever I had free time, I found myself digging more into the issue.
For summer, my mom decided to take a break from California, and we spent nearly a month in New York City. I attended a history research camp and decided to use my time to research the origin of the anti-vaccination movement. The experience was an all-around transformative one for me!
When I informed my mom about the topic of my research for the camp, she was quite skeptical. She asked, “Why is this such a huge issue that it warrants research? What is the relevance of this archaic skepticism in today's world?” She can be hard to convince! We had a long chat and I showed her all the articles including the ones on CDC.gov, HistoryofVaccines.org, and many others. I told her about how measles was back with the outbreaks in Washington, New York and California. She got intrigued and said that she was clearly living under a rock!
I went on to explain to her about the journalist Brian Deer who exposed Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor who fabricated the autism-vaccine “link” in a fraudulent 1998 paper. It took some digging through citation rabbit holes of scholarly articles, but I managed to find the primary source for Andrew Wakefield's sentencing with proof of him being "dishonest and misleading" by the General Medical Council, an organization that contains the register for all physicians in the U.K. and has the power to suspend or revoke a medical license. Mom was shocked that it took more than a decade, 12 years to be precise, for the article to be revoked by Lancet and by then the damage was done: a new incarnation of anti-vaxxers was born, one that is now more dangerous due to prolific social media we have today.
My prelim research in NYC on origin of anti-vaxxers
Smallpox eradication in 1980 saves $1 billion+ annually. Primary source is a newspaper article found via vaxopedia.org
I spent bulk of my summer break trying to understand where the objections from today's anti-vaxxers were coming from. Many articles compared the anti-vaxxers of today with the ones in the past and most mentioned that the issues are largely the same. But in my opinion, there is a huge difference! The original anti-vaxxers that arose in Europe because smallpox inoculation largely concerned them because of religious sentiments. Their scientific skepticism was based on early mishaps. They did not have the wealth of scientific proof of complete eradication of diseases that we have today. Today's anti-vaxxers have a 100+ years of world wide data. We have eradicated smallpox entirely, polio has significantly been reduced worldwide, and rubella was eradicated from Australia after a diligent vaccination program. These are only a few examples. Vaccines on a broad scale have made a tremendous impact on humanity by not only saving lives but also bringing in huge economic savings once a disease is eradicated. To have a difference in opinion in how we can make vaccines better is totally valid, but to disregard the science altogether in the face of overwhelming proof is being irrational.
My parents are immigrants from India and mom mentioned that getting vaccinated was just something one did because they could see many children and adults with polio around them, those who couldn't get the polio drops due to lack of access. I believe that in the developed countries, the prevalence of deadly diseases isn't as top of mind. Perhaps a case of "out of sight, out of mind".
I learned that for highly contagious diseases like measles, all it takes is six people not vaccinated in a group of hundred to drop herd immunity to dangerous levels of less than 95%. In the olden days, people were not traveling across countries frequently, but now we do! Global travel has massively increased the risk of bringing infections back home. No wonder we have had so many measles outbreaks. My fun summer break in NYC turned out to be a time of intense research!
While we were still in NYC, I read about the incredible efforts of Vaccinate California, a parent advocacy group that was working tirelessly to get SB276 passed, a bill that was seeking to stop fraudulent doctors who were issuing medical exemptions without basis to get around the fact that California prohibited personal exemptions. This was causing vaccination rates especially in kindergartners attending schools to a dangerous low. I couldn't believe so much was happening in my home state. It was as much a charged environment as was in Rockland County in New York where emergency orders were passed due to measles outbreaks. The county was a couple hours by train from where we were staying in NY! It seemed surreal that so much was going on back at home in CA as well!
I had mom join VaccinateCalifornia and with guidance from Ms. Leah Russin, Founding Director, we signed the petition for SB 276 from NYC itself! We came back to California in late August and to my shock, I found that a vocal minority of anti-vaxxers were spreading false claims about SB276. For example, a false argument made was that the bill would take away the privacy between a doctor and patient. Another one was about how no such doctors existed when in fact six doctors were responsible for 57% of the exemptions! Some anti-vaxxers even resorted to violence. One angry protester assaulted the bill’s author, Dr. Richard Pan. Amidst this chaos, thankfully the bill passed on September 9th. Children in public schools and day care facilities would be safe from the threat of a measles epidemic, and the very few doctors who were granting the bulk of fraudulent medical exemptions would be brought under review.
Got my mom to sign SB276 in August while in NYC!
Dr. Richard Pan, author of SB277 & SB276, California Senator
As a student of history, I know that mandatory laws are not a long-term solution. The 1905 case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts lead to further polarization of the issue. However, during exigent circumstances, the state does not have an option but to protect the community at large. The personal story of Brooke Balck, a ten year old who has had a heart transplant at the age of two and can't take vaccines really moved me. We have a responsibility to be vaccinated to protect friends like Brooke who rely on us!
Exactly three days after SB276 was passed, on September 12th the first Global Vaccination Summit was held in response to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease occurring worldwide. As if this wasn’t alarming enough, on December 5th, the World Health Organization director called the measles epidemic in Samoa a “collective failure” !
Measles has infected nearly 10 million people in 2018 and has killed 140,000, mostly children, as devastating outbreaks of the viral disease hit every region of the world. Caption Source: The World Health Organization via Reuters
Dr. Ghebreysus's quote spurred me into action:
"The fact that any child dies from a vaccine-preventable disease like measles is frankly an outrage and a collective failure to protect the world's most vulnerable children."
I have a lofty goal of teens turning the tide on vaccine hesitancy! I envision "Teens for Vaccines" to be a community of teens who care about the world we live in, who care about the immunocompromised ones among us, and most of all are vocally active in their families and communities advocating for science and public policies to keep us safe.
I realize this post is way too long, but for those who are still reading, below are my findings for why I did not buy any of the anti-vax conspiracy theories of government and Big Pharma collusion, skepticism of why the compensation program in the U.S exists with a no-fault policy towards vaccine manufacturers, their claims that fetal cells are used in vaccines, and continued objections to adjuvants in certain vaccines especially those with pork derived products claiming these offend the sensibilities of major religions such as Islam and Judaism.
Big Pharma has a bad reputation and some companies are no saints. I knew about the opioid crisis and so I had kept an open mind when looking into these theories about government collusion and them, but the evidence I found made me more pro-vaccination than I ever was. I found that the allegations the much-respected Robert F Kennedy Jr. made about government hiding effects of thimerosal in vaccines and his 2005 paper was based on excerpts he chose to cut and paste from a CDC 2000 conference transcript to suit his narrative. Frankly, I found it really odd that an online publication Salon.com would publish him because Rolling Stone did some fact-checking. When did Rolling Stone become an authority on medical issues? If Rolling Stone did a review on a pop band, hey, I'm totally believing it, but a so-called expose' on a medical issue? That in and of itself was a shaky start. I found concrete evidence that Salon.com retracted the RFK article and regretted it, but took them six years to do so!
The fact of the matter is one needs to dig deep into science to understand what these substances mean and more often than not people don't have time.
Salon.com regrets not retracting RFK Jr. article sooner.
I read the CDC.gov page on the topic of thimerasol and its timeline in vaccines. On May 5th 2001, a risk assessment done and published in NCBI, nation's leading resource for medical studies, and many since then debunking no link between thimerasol and autism. Thimerasol I learnt contains a form of mercury called ethylmercury that can be cleared from the body very quickly. The more toxic form of mercury known as methylmercury is not used in vaccines. Furthermore, thimerasol was used as a preservative in vaccines that was meant to stop the growth of germs and wasn’t shown to have any negative side effects in vaccines in any study conducted. Though there was no link between the mercury in vaccines and any sort of autism, which was never true to begin with, it was taken out to ensure mercury levels in babies in their first six months of life don't exceed EPA recommendations as a preventative measure.
Even though Salon.com retracted the RFK Jr. article, much like the Lancet one by Wakefield irreparable damage was done to impressionable minds. It is not just print media that we can blame, even reputed television hosts have been irresponsible. In the name of first amendment and unbiased coverage, they have had celebrities give interviews. “The University of Google is where I got my degree from,” McCarthy said on the Oprah Winfrey 2007 show. The less I say about this, the better!
Jeffrey Kluger, Editor at Large for TIME magazine
Just when I was getting thoroughly disillusioned with the choices some media outlets had made, mom forwarded me an article from Mr. Jeffrey Kluger, Editor at Large at TIME magazine. It was in the context of getting a deeper understanding of why our government has set up VICP, compensation program for vaccines, and why the no-fault policy for vaccine manufacturers exists. I became a huge fan of his in-depth coverage. There is a reason why the man is editor at large at TIME! I vowed that when I launch Teens for Vaccines, I will have our Twitter account follow him for sure!
If only people took the time to read the TIME article by Mr. Kluger, they would understand that the no-fault policy is actually the government trying to keep vaccines affordable.
During a scare over the DTP vaccine, many parents sued the vaccine companies and a lot of burden fell on the insurance companies which in turn affected the vaccine manufacturers. Some didn't want to manufacture vaccines at all, and others could no longer make it at an affordable cost. We have a lot of underprivileged people in America and abroad and not everyone has affordable healthcare. If vaccine costs went up, the government cannot afford to have programs like the Vaccines for Children that pays for vaccines for families who cannot afford to pay.
Also, the government is not hiding any of its data around the compensation program either. It took me less than a couple seconds to find VICP and all the data! If you look at how the program is set up, the money is awarded even without a confirmation that vaccine is an underlying cause. People file for reasons as little as soreness on shoulders due to an injection. The clamoring that $4.2 billion has been paid so far doesn't bother to give a detailed picture and with broad brush strokes obfuscates the fact that for every 1 million doses of vaccine that were distributed, approximately 1 individual was compensated, and that too with the way the program is set up, it does not imply that deep scientific study was done to establish vaccine was the cause.
Now, for a well meaning vaccine hesitant parent, even those odds at 1 in a million can be scary. No argument there. My mom worries a ton about all types of uncertainties. Even on a bright sunny day, she will tell my dad not to drive too close to the hillside in case of a sudden muddy landslide! So, it is completely reasonable for vaccine hesitant parents to want more scientific assurance, perhaps more diagnostic testing of allergies and underlying medical conditions for their children before they make the decision. However, it is just not ok for anti-vaxxers to somehow look at the fact that the compensation program even exists and make vaccines out to be a monstrously scary prospect when they just aren’t. Even the VICP data proves it.
I painstakingly made this after watching the video ”The Journey of Your Child's Vaccine by CDC” because I wanted count the number of organizations the U.S government has for approval, oversight, and continuous monitoring. Which government who invests so much in an elaborate process as this with checks and balances will be in collusion? The mistrust of the anti-vaxxers runs so deep that they don't want to look at facts!
And finally, where the collusion argument falls completely flat for me is pure logic that drug companies make money on recurring sales. Vaccines unlike other drugs like insulin, anti-depressants are not needed on a highly frequent basis! In fact, the governments around the world want diseases to be eradicated so we don't need to spend money on vaccines. Remember how I mentioned smallpox eradication saves more than 1 billion in 1980 dollars.
I can't speak for vaccine approval and inspection processes outside the U.S., but when I watched the CDC.gov video on the entire chain of events from vaccine development to when it is added to our immunization schedule and the continuous monitoring after, frankly I couldn't remember half the names of the organizations involved in oversight! Mom gave me an idea! Pause the video every few seconds and take a screenshot of the org name and paste next to the step. I finally came up with the image on the left. I was fully convinced now beyond any iota of doubt that the collusion argument is a whole lot of nothing!
The final nail in the coffin against the anti-vaccine arguments for me was when the religious card was being played. In California, during the SB276 debate, I was stunned to see placards held by people claiming that aborted fetus cells were put into vaccines implying government was sanctioning abortions just to get vaccines made and that their churches are against vaccines. People were also posting on social media that government had no reverence for religions such as Islam or Judaism due to pork-derived products in vaccines.
When I researched the issue, I learnt that some vaccines contained aborted fetus cells from frozen lines of cells from 1960s that were donated to researchers. As a science student, the ludicrous idea of holding up signs to indicate abortions are being performed even today for purposes of creating vaccines bothers me to no end. The Pontifical Academy of Life, under the Roman Catholic Church in fact issued a statement in 2017 stating that Christians can use vaccines with these cell lines: "we believe that all clinically recommended vaccinations can be used with a clear conscience and that the use of such vaccines does not signify some sort of cooperation with voluntary abortion". On the topic of pork-derived products, the Dakar Declaration of 2017 from religious Islamic leaders from Africa allow their community to be vaccinated. Bikur Cholim of Los Angeles, Jewish Healthcare Foundation, wrote an open letter on May 3, 2019 to show support to California Senator Dr. Richard Pan in support of SB 276: "We are asking all synagogue Rabbis to publicly speak on the critical importance of vaccinations. On issues of health and public safety, decisions in Jewish law are based on the opinions of the majority of medical experts." Agudath Israel, an Orthodox Jewish order in the U.S has "proactively organized multiple, free vaccination clinics in NY.....also decried an anti-vaccination rally held amidst the outbreak, and the inflammatory and senseless musings shared therein.... and partnered with the NYS and NYC Departments of Health to disseminate critical information to schools and parents describing best steps to prevent this disease [measles]."
Through all my deep dives into the issues, I came out with three things clear:
1. There is no real fundamental truth to anti-vaxx propaganda on social media. Unlike other issues that our nation is dealing with whether it is gun violence, climate change, healthcare, or abortion rights for which leaders are engaged in a debate via the democratic process, I am yet to see a civil debate towards a common set of goals if any from the anti-vaxx activists.
2. Parents want the best for their children, even the vaccine hesitant parents.
3. The truly fanatic anti-vaxxers are a very small vocal minority. We can't make the mistrust against science or government go away for them but we can certainly make a huge difference with the hesitant majority who aren't and are only looking for answers to make an informed choice.
It is time teens are part of the solution not only because of a hope that parents may listen to their own child's data-backed voice, but also because we have rights. It is time teens are part of the pro-vaccine movement in a big way.