Historical Context

The modern Democratic and Republican parties’ political platforms stems from the end of the 1800s. Before, Democrats had favored limiting the federal government’s power, while Republicans favored governmental expansion. However, after the United States expanded further into the West, both parties needed to secure the large new group of voters. The Democratic party began to advocate for increased government power to ensure social justice, appealing to Western voters unhappy with the Republicans’ railroad programs favoring banks and industrial farms. Though for some time, both parties remained on the same side regarding government power, Republicans eventually took the counter-stance. Today’s Democratic party favors expansion of government power for the cause of social justice, whereas today’s Republican party favors small government with just enough power to regulate behavior.

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Because the Republican party favors limited government power, politicians who stick close to the party platform may reject the reform efforts that science demands — such as vaccinating the entire population and regulating the United States’ industry to combat climate change. The association between climate change denial and the Republican party in particular stems from the Republicans' historical pro-business stance. Large fossil fuel corporations have a history of climate change denial. As early as the 1980s, scientists at oil companies such as Exxon knew that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels would raise global temperatures. However, the oil industry instead emphasized the “uncertainty” around climate science, spreading disinformation and lobbying against climate reform treaties to protect their own profits. Now, decades later, billions of people around the world are facing starvation, displacement, and disease because of corporations’ greed.

The modern anti-vaccination movement is the product of Andrew Wakefield, a (former) scientist who promoted a link between autism and the MMR vaccine (a combined vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella). His fraudulent paper, and subsequent media campaign, spread a fear of vaccines to parents across the UK and into the United States. However, though Wakefield’s legacy is of anti-vaccination, his original interviews did not discredit vaccines as a whole, but only the combined MMR vaccine — instead advocating that people buy a separate measles vaccine that he held the patent for. Additionally, Wakefield had been paid nearly $1 million in today’s money by a lawyer to fabricate a study linking vaccines and autism, which would serve as basis for a lawsuit that they hoped would earn them both millions. Wakefield and his collaborators prioritized their economic interests over scientific integrity, many of the public took his research at face value, and today, because vaccination has become unnecessarily politicized, preventable diseases such as measles have resurged.