Mellman: The new vaccine politics

When I was three years old and my sister was a newborn, my mother contracted polio. Her doctor, making a house call (yes, it was a different day) sternly warned me to stay away from my mother before she was taken to the hospital, where she lay for months in an iron lung. 

My sister and I were hustled off to live with our grandparents, while my mother slowly convalesced. After extensive physical therapy she emerged mostly unscathed, but we became part of the story of America’s most feared disease. 

In the 50s, American’s greatest fear, other than nuclear war, was polio. In our household, and in millions of others, the names Salk and Sabin (the discoverers of polio vaccines) were revered. In 1954, Gallup found that more Americans knew about the polio vaccine trials than could give the full name of President and former allied commander Dwight Eisenhower.

{mosads}Our family eagerly rushed to the doctor’s office to take both versions of the vaccine. Only 53 percent then thought it was likely to be effective, but fear of polio was so deep and widespread that almost everyone who could get vaccinated did.

So it’s difficult for me to understand the anti-vaccine mania now gripping some in the Republican Party. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul both felt compelled on multiple occasions to give succor to those huckstering wildly inaccurate claims about the negative effects of immunizations while advocating greater parental power over vaccinations. 

Interestingly, neither Republican grounded his objections on philosophy. Even the most inveterate libertarian acknowledges that “your rights end where my nose begins.” You have no inherent right to infect my children with deadly or debilitating diseases.

Rather, both these putative GOP presidential contenders appealed to pseudoscience in justifying their objections. Echoing Arizona Sen. John McCain in his 2008 campaign for the presidency, both alluded to a long discredited study linking vaccines with autism. 

A single (fraudulent) study in the British medical journal The Lancet purported to demonstrate such a link. However, the journal has formally retracted the article, describing it as “utterly false” and saying the journal had been “deceived.” Moreover, 14 studies involving millions of children since then have demonstrated no link, McCain, Paul and Christie not withstanding.

Yet, 50 percent of Americans claim familiarity with the original fraudulent study, and only half of those know it has been debunked. Thus, about one in five still believes there is a link between vaccines and other maladies. 

In important measure because of such fears, a recent Pew poll found 30 percent saying parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children. Interestingly, this view exhibits only a modest tie to partisanship. It is, however, closely related to age, with those under 40 nearly twice as likely to put the power in parents’ hands than those over 65.

This is exactly what some risk research would predict. Those who remember the polio and measles epidemics of the past understand the risks of those diseases, while those who came of age in an era when they had been largely eradicated significantly underweight the risk of children remaining unvaccinated.

In addition, studies show human-made risks evoke more fear than those emanating from natural sources, while those that are uncontrollable (like autism) generate greater concern than the seemingly controllable. 

Perhaps more frightening, research suggests that false information persists in influencing attitudes, even after people have been exposed to the corrections. Thus, proving the original study was falsified is not sufficient to eliminate its impact.

While the resistance of a minority to vaccinations is perhaps understandable in the context of research on perceptions of risk, it is also dangerous, and politicians who pander to this segment deserve our opprobrium, not our votes. 

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has worked for Democratic candidates and causes since 1982. Current clients include the minority leader of the Senate and the Democratic whip in the House.