Some commonalities of pro- and anti-vaccination rhetoric

Within the con­text of the con­tem­po­rary vac­ci­na­tion debate, nei­ther side has a monop­oly on a par­tic­u­lar kind of argument.

As just one exam­ple, many vac­ci­na­tion oppo­nents focus on poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est by researchers, espe­cially when researchers may be influ­enced by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and the poten­tial prof­its such com­pa­nies may enjoy through the use – espe­cially the man­dated use – of vac­cines they manufacture.

These “[a]ccusations of hav­ing engaged in mer­ce­nary prac­tices” are intended to reduce the author­ity of sci­en­tific experts. Many anti-vaccine Web sites, accord­ing to a 2002 study pub­lished in Archives of Disease in Childhood, take the accu­sa­tion fur­ther, cast­ing doc­tors and sci­en­tists as either “will­ing con­spir­a­tors cash­ing in on the vac­cine ‘fraud’ or pawns of a shad­owy vac­cine com­bine.”

Conflict-of-interest crit­i­cisms are also used by pro­po­nents of vac­ci­na­tion when they eval­u­ate and review claims. For exam­ple, crit­ics of vac­cine oppo­nent and sci­en­tist Andrew Wakefield, author of a now-retracted study pub­lished in The Lancet, accuse him of being “paid big bucks by trial lawyers” and of not reveal­ing this “con­flict of inter­est.”

Most pro­po­nents of vac­ci­na­tion see them­selves, in the words of Dr. Paul Offit, as “sci­ence advocate[s],” not “vac­cine advocate[s].” A major cri­tique they make of vac­ci­na­tion oppo­nents is that they ignore or dis­tort sci­ence, equate cor­re­la­tion with cau­sa­tion, or fas­ten on pre­lim­i­nary or poorly-conducted stud­ies as the final word on a subject.

Current oppo­nents of vac­ci­na­tion also seek to align them­selves on the side of sci­ence. Even as they crit­i­cize the main­stream sci­en­tific per­spec­tive on vac­ci­na­tion, nonethe­less, “in what appears as a para­dox, the appeal to sci­en­tific exper­tise” remains:

In the con­text of a con­tro­versy, any group which attempts to present its case and to par­tic­i­pate in the crit­i­cal assess­ment of alter­na­tive view­points with­out appeal­ing to any sci­en­tific exper­tise puts itself in a very vul­ner­a­ble position.

Despite this appeal to sci­ence, exper­tise in the vac­ci­na­tion debates remains a con­tested issue. Sharon Kaufman, a pro­fes­sor of med­ical anthro­pol­ogy at the University of California, San Francisco, says that with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of “experts” on the Internet, “many par­ents see even the most respected vac­cine experts’ per­spec­tive on the issue as just one more opin­ion.”

Vaccination oppo­nents often com­bine ref­er­ences to sci­ence with a pow­er­ful emo­tional hook. Citing the 2002 study men­tioned ear­lier, Liza Gross writes, “The bulk of anti­vac­ci­na­tion Web sites present them­selves as legit­i­mate sources of sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion, using pseu­do­sci­en­tific claims and emo­tional appeals.”

The National Vaccintion Information Center site, for exam­ple, com­bines a “Memorial to Vaccine Victims” with a “Doctor’s Corner” con­tain­ing mate­ri­als writ­ten by physi­cians.  Gross adds that, on many anti-vaccination Web sites, intu­itive views about vac­cines were ele­vated above “cold, ana­lyt­i­cal sci­ence,” and accounts of chil­dren “maimed or killed by vac­cines” were com­mon – a find­ing that may help explain why those who advo­cate immu­niza­tion receive death threats.

This com­bi­na­tion of sci­ence plus emo­tion – val­i­dat­ing the intu­ition of par­ents while pro­vid­ing alter­na­tive exper­tise to back up their beliefs – is a com­pelling one.

Scientific knowl­edge – or, at least the appear­ance of such knowl­edge – remains key on anti-vaccination Web sites. This is vis­i­ble in “informed choice” rhetoric, for exam­ple, and is a key theme of the NVIC site.  It is also, per­haps obvi­ously, a key com­po­nent of pro-vaccination rhetoric as well.

For more spe­cific com­par­isons of pro– and anti-vaccination Web sites, see Markers of Trust: How Pro– and Anti-Vaccination Web Sites Make Their Case on SSRN.

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