The Nemesis List: Vaccine Haters

Subject: Medical science deniers.

Occupation: Using debunked and unproven fears to create alarmist anti-vaccine attitudes.

Crime: Reversing centuries of progress in medical science.

Nemesis Reach: A 2010 national poll conducted by C. S. Mott’s Children Hospital found “vaccine safety” was parents’ number-one priority in children’s health research.

Recent Offender:  “A woman came up crying to me tonight,” said Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. “She said her daughter was given the vaccine [against human papillomavirus]. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result. There are very dangerous consequences.”

Consequences of Bachmann’s Offense: University of Minnesota scientists offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who can verify a single case of mental disability caused by the HPV vaccine. The money has not been claimed.

Typical African Nemesis: Some voodoo practitioners of Benin have proposed a connection between childhood vaccinations and “the evil eye.”

African Nemesis at Work: Vaccine-preventable diseases kill more than 1 million people in Africa per year.

Typical Sub-Asian Nemesis: Pakistani Taliban commander Maulvi Faqir Mohammed has declared that polio vaccines are against Islam, claiming they are made with “extracts from bones and fat of an animal prohibited by God—the pig.”

Sub-Asian Nemesis at Work: Pakistan has the world’s highest incidence of polio.

Typical American Nemesis: American parents who choose not to vaccinate their schoolchildren tend to be affluent and educated.

American Nemesis at Work: In 2011, the United States was hit with the largest measles outbreak in more than a decade. The Centers for Disease Control reports that 90 percent of those infected had not been vaccinated.

Nemesis Roots in Academia: Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner, founder of the Waldorf educational method, also developed anthroposophical medicine, which encourages adherents to decline vaccinations.

Academia Nemesis at Work: In April 2011, Roanoke, Virginia’s Blue Mountain School—a “Waldorf-influenced” institution—closed temporarily when 23 of its 45 students contracted pertussis, a highly contagious bacterial disease that causes uncontrollable, violent coughing. All of the children with whooping cough were unvaccinated.

American Nemesis Fallout at Home: Parents who refuse to vaccinate their own children and put babies too young for vaccines at risk (pertussis killed nine California children under 6 months old in 2010) are said to “have very particular concerns around the health and welfare and schooling of their children.” There are other words for it.

Nemesis Fallout in Developing Countries: In 2010, anti-vaccination movements in the rest of the English-speaking world led many South Africans to refuse the MMR vaccine. Hundreds of children died in the subsequent measles outbreak.