The hypotheses continue to shift. The first hypothesis, which, you know, people bought into long and hard, is that the combination measles, mumps, rubella, or MMR vaccine, cause autism. Twelve epidemiological studies showed that that wasn’t true.

Then the hypothesis shifted to thimerosal, an ethylmercury-containing preservative that was in vaccines, that’s no longer in vaccines, except for some multi-dose preparations of flu vaccine, that that caused autism. And that clearly has been shown not to be true.

So now this is classic for pseudo-science, is you just keep moving the goalposts. So now the goalpost is, “No, we didn’t mean actually MMR caused autism or thimerosal caused autism, we just meant vaccines in general cause autism.”

…These students who sat in that room were much more likely to believe something they had seen on YouTube from a Washington Redskins cheerleader than they would have believed something that they would have heard from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the American Academy of Pediatrics. That’s a little frightening.

…If a certain percentage of the population is vaccinated, that will stop infections from spreading because most of the people around that child are vaccinated, so therefore, the virus can’t really spread. However, when a critical number of people aren’t vaccinated, when there’s a critical drop in herd immunity, then the viruses can spread. And not only are those children who aren’t vaccinated at risk, but those who can’t be vaccinated are at risk.

…When enough people don’t vaccinate, herd immunity begins to crumble. The first to suffer are vulnerable populations, those who because of age or illness can’t be vaccinated. 

…The more immunity we have in a community, the better it is. Fifty percent is better than nothing, and 100 percent— it’s like building a brick wall around a city and protecting it against an enemy. It’s excellent protection against something entering our community that could cause illness.

…Parents don’t have unlimited rights with respect to the welfare of their children. You can’t put them at risk of fatal disease. You can’t put them at risk of devastating disability.

You know, the ethics isn’t just on the side of the critics. The ethics is also on the side of those who say, “Do good in the name of children. Do good in the name of public health.”

The Vaccine War – Transcript | FRONTLINE

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