Event Title
The E-mother and Alternative Truths: Is There a Role for the Historian to Tell the History of Measles Vaccination?
Panel
3B: History, Origins and Digital Histories
Abstract
Historians of health often find themselves bridging the gap between the past and the present, introducing research about past findings of health management to present day crises. Part of my work trying to explain the changing landscape of childhood disease in 20th century Ireland becomes entangled in 21st century controversies on the internet about measles vaccination. The publication of an article linking MMR vaccination and a small group of children with autistic-spectrum behavioural problems by Andrew Wakefield and others in The Lancet in February 1998, had quite a dramatic effect. Fears about the links escalated through the internet. News and social media and academic studies alike describe vaccination rates as ‘plummeting’ in many countries as a result. Even though Wakefield et al’s article has since been retracted, and his evidence discredited, the antivaccination lobby has gained credence to the extent that there were 600 cases of measles in the United States in 2014, a country where the disease had previously been declared eradicated. Over 22,000 measles cases have been reported from 7 countries in Europe in 2014 and 2015, again an escalation in case numbers.1 ‘How do we get worried new mothers to listen to us? How can we convince them of our expertise, when they have spent hours researching vaccination on the internet, trying to find the best thing for their precious baby?’ A vaccination manager voices the difficulties of persuading new mothers to let their babies have the MMR. For some new parents, the digital world carries an authority they don’t necessarily understand medical workers they encounter in real life to have. The internet provides an opportunity for parallel worlds of information, with alternative authorities, alternative sources and alternative facts, which are cleverly designed to look authoritative to parents. So how can that be countered? This paper explores the parallel ‘facts’ of vaccination conundrum, and looks at how I want to use my research with statistics and oral histories to tell the story of the relative success of measles vaccination, pointing to the numbers who used to die before vaccination was possible, and to the lasting damage caused to many survivors.
The E-mother and Alternative Truths: Is There a Role for the Historian to Tell the History of Measles Vaccination?
Historians of health often find themselves bridging the gap between the past and the present, introducing research about past findings of health management to present day crises. Part of my work trying to explain the changing landscape of childhood disease in 20th century Ireland becomes entangled in 21st century controversies on the internet about measles vaccination. The publication of an article linking MMR vaccination and a small group of children with autistic-spectrum behavioural problems by Andrew Wakefield and others in The Lancet in February 1998, had quite a dramatic effect. Fears about the links escalated through the internet. News and social media and academic studies alike describe vaccination rates as ‘plummeting’ in many countries as a result. Even though Wakefield et al’s article has since been retracted, and his evidence discredited, the antivaccination lobby has gained credence to the extent that there were 600 cases of measles in the United States in 2014, a country where the disease had previously been declared eradicated. Over 22,000 measles cases have been reported from 7 countries in Europe in 2014 and 2015, again an escalation in case numbers.1 ‘How do we get worried new mothers to listen to us? How can we convince them of our expertise, when they have spent hours researching vaccination on the internet, trying to find the best thing for their precious baby?’ A vaccination manager voices the difficulties of persuading new mothers to let their babies have the MMR. For some new parents, the digital world carries an authority they don’t necessarily understand medical workers they encounter in real life to have. The internet provides an opportunity for parallel worlds of information, with alternative authorities, alternative sources and alternative facts, which are cleverly designed to look authoritative to parents. So how can that be countered? This paper explores the parallel ‘facts’ of vaccination conundrum, and looks at how I want to use my research with statistics and oral histories to tell the story of the relative success of measles vaccination, pointing to the numbers who used to die before vaccination was possible, and to the lasting damage caused to many survivors.