For this article I’m skipping over the COVID debacle because it’s a bit more complicated and deserving of its own article
Why do they exist? Anti-vaxxers, though they are misguided, hold a view founded in very real issues: pharmaceutical corruption and legitimate research on the risks of some vaccines. Rather than putting these issues into context, anti-vaxxers will take this information and form a whole opinion based on half of the facts. Add the extremely polarizing nature of social media, and becoming an anti-vaxxer is shockingly easy.
Pharmaceutical Corruption
Pharmaceutical companies are not known for honesty and good ethics. Purdue Pharma lied their way through the FDA to put oxycontin, a deadly opioid, on the market. Insulin costs patients north of 20 times what it costs to produce. And pharmaceutical companies love to test new drugs in underdeveloped areas of the world, because people usually don’t mind cruel medical trials as long as they happen on another continent. It is abundantly clear that pharmaceutical companies do not value human life too much and will do whatever they can get away with. But that does not necessarily mean their medicine is bad. In a way, this is an extreme version of separating the art from the artist. Though many pharmaceutical companies have a history of unethical practices, at the end of the day, they make life saving medicine that works (most of the time). Usually, medicine is made by scientists who care but is sold by executives who crave money.
Health Risks
One of the most widely known and cited studies on the side effects of vaccines is the 2005 Burbacher study. In the study, infant monkeys were compared after being exposed to mercury either through ingested methylmercury or vaccines containing thimerosal, a preservative made with ethylmercury. The study was significant because at the time, thimerosal was an ingredient in childhood immunization vaccines and the flu shot, causing concern over mercury exposure. These were the results of the study: in the autopsy of the monkeys, researchers found measurable levels of mercury in the brains of the monkeys from the thimerosal group. Was it enough mercury to cause concern though? The general consensus is no, though the study suggests that mercury levels accumulate if multiple vaccines are taken in close succession, which could have an elevated but still minimal risk of mercury poisoning in the brain. Since the 2000s, vaccine manufacturers have slowly removed thimerosal from every vaccine formula but the yearly flu shot (at least in the US).
Maybe if I lived under a rock and the contents of these two paragraphs were all I knew of vaccines, the anti-vaxx argument would make sense. But, as a person who can see things and read, I know that at the end of the day, vaccines work. Science works. We’re the longest living and physically healthiest humans in history because of modern medicine. I don’t know why pharmaceutical companies have to be so weird about it, but the stuff they come up with has saved a lot of lives. Statistically speaking, I would have died of something by now if it weren’t for modern medicine.