Has the anti-vaccine movement affected vaccination rates?

Vaccines have been hailed by virtually all medical experts, as well as medical historians, as the among the greatest triumphs of public health to occur in the past two centuries. Yet since Jenner first proposed vaccination for smallpox using the vaccinia, or cowpox, virus there have been both skeptics of its effectiveness and people who thought it was dangerous. That is, they had the risk/benefit ratio of vaccination exactly backwards, believing risk high and benefit low. They also often ridiculed the entire procedure, even from the beginning, as this 18th-century cartoon shows; Jenner is the fat gent kneeling by the cow. Against this constant background of vaccine denial, things changed two decades ago when Andrew Wakefield published his now notorious claim of an association between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. The claim has not only been soundly refuted in a large number of well-controlled population studies, but Wakefield himself has been stripped of his U.K. medical license for unethical and fraudulent practices related to his publication. The paper itself was retracted by the journal Lancet, an extraordinary thing. Wakefield left the U.K. and moved to Texas. But the damage had been done. Vaccine hesitancy increased, not just for MMR but for all vaccines. The rise of social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, appears to have amplified the effect. But did it? We do know there is more anti-vaccine noise, but has this resulted in decrease...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Conditions Pediatrics Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs