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Vaccinations: The politics of the 14th century – coming to an election near you

Vaccinations: The politics of the 14th century – coming to an election near you

An unexpected issue has risen up from a child’s vacation at Disneyland to roil the waters of the lead-up to the struggle for the Republican nomination for the presidency. J. BROOKS SPECTOR takes an incredulous look at this astonishing event.

It is just within the writer’s earliest childhood memories of the news of a major polio epidemic and the ensuing national panic. Municipal swimming pools were closed all around the US on an emergency basis, and there were the pictures of those dreadful iron lungs that polio victims might spend the rest of their days in – if they came down with the illness. But, fortunately, Dr Jonas Salk, and then Dr Albert Sabin, discovered two effective inoculations against polio. The two treatments were first used in 1955 and 1962 respectively to great success.

Across the US, in virtually every school district in the country, children lined up obediently for these preventative measures. Parents were sufficiently frightened about the possibility their children might become polio victims that almost every child was protected, except, perhaps, for the children of Christian Scientists and the Amish, who objected to this on religious grounds. Within just a few years, polio essentially became a relic of history in America – and largely throughout most of the world as well, except for a few isolated populations in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

When a recent exhibit at the Wits Art Museum featured an iron lung as an historical artefact, younger seemed puzzled by that hulking, mysterious thing. What in the world was it for, and who would use such a thing, was the common comment. This bit of equipment, of course, represented an excellent tangible argument for vaccinations against childhood and other nasty diseases – vaccinations that have dutifully come along over the years, including generally effective shots against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, diphtheria, pertussis, typhoid, tetanus, and probably a couple more – it’s been a while since the writer was the parent of young children who had to remember them all. The Centers for Disease Control have a handy-dandy set of schedules for children (and their parents) for those in need of re-familiarisation with all these preventative measures.

Along the way, there have always been a few parents who opposed vaccinating their children on those religious principles (the Amish, the Christian Scientists). But, in a national, largely protected population where the vast majority are immunised, it is hard for a disease to gain a real foothold. But, in recent years, fuelled by a now thoroughly disavowed article (the doctor who wrote it has been dropped from the British medical register and the publication that published it has now rejected the paper’s purported conclusions) that linked the growth in autism with routine childhood vaccines, a growing number of parents in the US have eschewed childhood vaccinations for their families for fear of encouraging the occurrence of autism.

Ironically, this non-vaccination position has come to take hold among people who support what they believe to be a thoroughly considered and researched, exhaustively managed, healthier, more natural lifestyle. This position has increasingly become the elective province of better-off, better-educated families, living in the lusher suburbs and peri-urban areas of the country’s more up-market cities. This is in stark contrast to the more usual pattern in the rest of the world where it is the poorest, most isolated, least educated who are not being vaccinated – and who thus continue to be the global reservoirs for many of those diseases.

In the most recent outbreak of measles, reaching across fourteen different states in the US, it turns out that the original vector seems to have come from a family visiting Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Disneyland, of course, has visitors from pretty much everywhere in the world within its sylvan spaces on any given day of the year, given its role as a kind of secular Mecca for pleasure for the world’s children – and their families. But, given measles’ extreme communicability, it probably should not be surprising it has spread so quickly – and the panic about this epidemic seems to have spread even faster than the disease itself.

Now, hold onto those thoughts about childhood vaccinations for minute as we shift the spotlight to the contemporary political arena, before bringing the two themes together. In American political life, for generations, there has always been a segment on the “right” that has deeply mistrusted the government, believed the government was out to take unreasonable control of their lives, and then burden them with an unbearable weight of illegal or immoral restrictions on their individual liberties. This long-lived sensibility has sometimes shaded into the kind of paranoid right (the classic explanation of this in Richard Hofstadter’s essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” that has argued vociferously that such seemingly mundane things as fluoride-treated water was a plot to sap a nation’s health in advance of an imagined imminent communist takeover of the country.

Sometimes, such views were aligned with a kind of anti-Catholicism or anti-immigrant feeling, or views about the debasement of the currency as a plot by evil bankers that have been the motive power in minority political parties. But, more and more, people who hold such conspiratorial positions have been coming together with those who would reject scientific explanations for such things as the origins of life and evolution, the reality of human influence on global warming and climate change, along with their opposition to the common core standards in the nation’s schools and the propriety of sex education.

Meanwhile, the deceptions that seemed at the core of the US effort in Vietnam, as well as more recent things such as those non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have continued to fuel a left critique of the government, paralleling that on the far right. Increasingly, these suspicions of government have come to be important to the strata of society that puts so much store on eschewing processed foods and regulations on health – and on taking personal care for the creation of a better lifestyle in the face of environmental pollution as well as the industrialised lifestyle.

But there is a distinction between the two subcultures. On the right – and thus with some of the Republican Party’s most active partisans and participants in the political presidential nomination process – the “anti-vaccinationists” have fused together with what those who would be candidates for the presidential nomination have themselves come to believe are the activists who can make or break a candidate with supporters and their public zeitgeist. By contrast, politically active Democratic Party supporters, even those with strongly left views, by contrast, seem not to have made vaccinations a key element of their political worldview. Any conceivable Democratic candidate is almost certain to say they’re in favour of childhood immunisations. Period.

As a result of this entirely unexpected politically potent issue, would-be Republican presidential candidates have been tripping over themselves, trying to thread their way around an issue that seems to threaten to swallow campaigns even before they formally begin. And this is an issue on no candidate’s radar just a few weeks ago – before that Disneyland’s measles outbreak. These would-be candidates’ challenge, therefore, is to find out how to tap into all that rage and suspicion about an intrusive government, but without sounding like an out-and-out flat Earther, someone who buys into the sentiments of someone like former congresswoman Michele Bachmann who earlier insisted on a direct link between vaccinations and mental illness.

In summarising the state of play, the Associated Press noted, “For a pair of first-time presidential hopefuls, the sudden injection of the childhood vaccine debate into the 2016 campaign is a lesson in how unexpected issues can become stumbling blocks. Long-held positions can look different under the glare of the national spotlight.

“New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, both weighing bids for the GOP presidential nomination, struggled this week to articulate their views on the emotionally charged vaccination controversy. The matter has taken on new resonance amid a frightening measles outbreak that has sickened more than 100 people across the U.S. and in Mexico.

“Paul pushed back on criticism of his initial assertion that he was aware of ‘many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.’ He issued a statement Tuesday denying immunisations cause disorders, saying they were just ‘temporally related.’ He also posted a photo on Twitter of himself getting a booster for a vaccine. Christie, in the midst of a three-day trip to the United Kingdom, took a different approach, cancelling plans to speak to reporters Tuesday after his comments a day earlier caused a stir. ‘Is there something you don’t understand about “No questions”?’ Christie snapped at reporters on Tuesday.

“The measles outbreak has revived the discussion about parents who choose not to vaccinate their children, some out of fear that vaccines can lead to autism and developmental disorders — a claim that has been vigorously debunked by medical researchers.” At the beginning of his overseas trip before he changed his mind, Christie had said, parents “need to have some measure of choice.”

Meanwhile, in response to media questioning, Texas Senator Ted Cruz said that “of course” children should be vaccinated, but added those universal weasel words that such decisions should be left to the individual states. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry’s spokesman issued a statement on behalf of the ex-governor that Perry “strongly believes in protecting life and has sought to improve the health and well-being of Texans in a variety of ways, including increased immunisation rates,” thereby threading the needle without tipping his hand at all. And inevitably, gadfly real estate developer Donald Trump, a self-promoted possible candidate, shoved the vaccination controversy over to his own favourite issue, immigration, saying to reporters, “Are all the illegals pouring into our country vaccinated? I don’t think so. [It’s a] Great danger to [the] U.S.” Still other would-be candidates are probably continuing to parse the question and check the polls thoroughly before figuring out just how to come down on an issue that has, without warning, come at them from the amusements of Disneyland.

Of course at this early date, it is not possible to determine if this issue will have a seriously durable shelf life, or whether it will just be a quick flash in the pan, forgotten in the tumult of the campaign. But analysts are pointing to this little contretemps as precisely the kind of thing that could be a bellwether of how wannabe candidates can handle, or mishandle, an unanticipated issue, and whether they can put it away with a knock-out, or if it becomes a nagging wound they simply can not get themselves clear of, going into the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary at the beginning of 2016.

The authoritative Pew Research Center in its survey on the topic last year noted just over two-thirds of all Americans believed vaccinations should be required for all children, while some 30% answered parents should be allowed to decide instead. The Pew Center found Republican supporters were slightly more strongly in favour of letting parents be allowed to decide – but that position has been growing in strength. 34% supported parental choice now, but that figure was eight points up from five years ago. Only 22% of Democrats agreed with that same position.

In trying to explain how to deal with an issue like this, Robert Gibbs, one of key figures in both Obama presidential races told the media, “Every day you want to go out with a message to voters, and every day there are a dozen trapdoors you don’t want to fall into. If you look at Chris Christie and Rand Paul, they fell into the trapdoors yesterday.” In Christie’s case, it was the timing of the issue that was most problematic for him. He is now in a tug-of-war with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush for the GOP’s big-money, establishment donors. But his comments on vaccinations have been a distraction from his obvious intention to polish up his (rather skimpy) foreign policy expertise and develop some visible connections with world leaders during his visit to the UK.

While Christie and Paul got themselves needlessly twisted into that question, Florida Senator Marco Rubio managed to say there was “absolutely no medical science or data that links vaccination to autism,” and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal averred it was “irresponsible for leaders to undermine the public’s confidence in vaccinations that have been tested and proven to protect public health.” And Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s office said the governor believed parents should have children vaccinated – just as he had done. But perhaps the damage has already been done for the Republican nomination process. The question is now out there for them to keep tripping over – and all of the candidates are likely to be badgered repeatedly by both the media and anti-vaccination political activists to either pick a fight with a key segment of their base, or unequivocally tell parents (and voters) to do the right thing by their kids and get them to take every shot recommended by the CDC.

Then, in an early riposte from Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic frontrunner for her party’s nomination issued something that might well be a harbinger of an agile campaign that is already in-the-making. In response to this nonsense, the former senator and secretary of state tweeted, “The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let’s protect all our kids.” Indeed; but that should have been a no-brainer for all the others in the first place.

(For the record, in the interests of full disclosure, when the writer’s children were young, they received every vaccination available, including those merely recommended but not specifically required – but we were living in Southeast Asia at the time. The writer also believes in evolution, the heliocentric solar system, the germ theory of disease and other interesting and well-studied scientific facts.) DM

Photo: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie talks with reporters in Littler Ferry, New Jersey, USA, 29 October 2014. EPA/JUSTIN LANE

Read more:

  • If It Happened There: Traditional Beliefs and Distrust of Authority Fueling Disease Outbreak at Slate
  • Vaccine debate tests first-time White House hopefuls at the AP
  • Daily Beast editor to Rand Paul: ‘F— you’ at Politico
  • Rand Paul on vaccines: He’s a believer at Politico
  • Where 2016 GOPers stand on vaccinations at Politico
  • What to do? Some questions and answers about measles at work
  • Your feelings about vaccines don’t trump another child’s medical reality at the Guardian
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