Vaccine Opposition: Grifters, Cynics, and True Believers
▼ Summary
– Stanley Plotkin, 93, regrets living so long due to a perceived decline in vaccine acceptance.
– Anti-vaccine arguments have persisted since vaccines were first introduced, as shown in Thomas Levenson’s book *A Pox on Fools*.
– In the 19th century, about 40% of children died from infection before age 5, explaining low average lifespans.
– Smallpox inoculation campaigns in 1721 London and Boston faced immediate backlash on moral and religious grounds.
– Opponents claimed inoculation defied God’s will, viewing disease as divine punishment for sin.
At 93 years old, Stanley Plotkin,the scientist behind several lifesaving vaccines,recently voiced a devastating frustration: “I’m beginning to regret having lived so long,because we’re going downhill.” It is a sobering reflection from someone who helped shape modern medicine. How did we arrive at a point where vaccine confidence is eroding so deeply?
Perhaps the answer is that this battle never really began. The same anti-vaccine rhetoric that floods social media today has existed since the very first inoculations. Historian Thomas Levenson explores this in his new book, A Pox on Fools, whose subtitle neatly categorizes the opposition: “The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines.” The accusations these groups level against vaccines can be boiled down to three simple truths: they are wrong, they are bad, and they are intolerable.
Wrong
Levenson traces the roots of vaccination back to the early 1700s, when a handful of forward-thinking Westerners learned about smallpox inoculation from Ottoman women and an enslaved African. At that time, infectious disease was the overwhelming cause of death,as it had been for centuries. In the 19th century, roughly 40 percent of infants died from infection before reaching age five.
That statistic explains why historical life expectancy appears so low. It was not that people routinely died in their 30s. Most who survived childhood lived well beyond it. But the sheer number of young children dying pulled the average down dramatically.
When smallpox erupted in London and Boston in 1721, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Cotton Mather launched inoculation campaigns in their respective cities. The procedure was crude by modern standards: taking pus from a mild smallpox lesion, making a cut in a healthy person’s arm, and rubbing the pus into the wound.
The backlash was immediate and fierce. Critics argued that interfering with who lived or died was a moral transgression,only God held that power, and to challenge it was blasphemy. The subtext, Levenson explains, was that disease was divine punishment for sin, and the only true protection was a virtuous life. That same logic, repackaged for modern audiences, still fuels opposition today.
(Source: Ars Technica)
