Vaccines

Click here for the Plain Langauge version

[Image description: a duck wearing a white lab coat crossed out with text that reads "no quack zone"]

Thumbnail image retrieved from mimithewonderpoodle on Flickr

The Anti-Vaccine Movement (Anti-Vaxx for short) is a group of people who are against the use of vaccines. This includes but is not limited to people who are entirely against vaccination, people who are skeptical of how frequent the current immunization schedule is, people who are against some Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccines but ok with others, and people who do not trust the mainstream vaccines and are more supportive of alternative vaccines. Vaccine hesitancy is part of the Anti-Vaxx Movement, but not everyone who is hesitant of vaccines is necessarily part of the movement against vaccines. Anti-Vaxxers have historically collided with the Neurodiversity Movement because of the supposed link between childhood vaccination and autism, a connection that was popularized by Andrew Wakefield in 1997, who published a now discredited study that falsely equated the rise in autism diagnoses to the increased use of vaccines. This popularized the vaccine-autism link. You can read more about how the Anti-Vaxx Movement has not only impacted the autism discourse but also how it has made allyship with the far right here.

Over the years, autistic people and allies have attempted to counter the many misinformation campaigns that the Anti-Vaxx Movement has spawned, some even going so far as to infiltrate online forums where Anti-Vaxxers turn to dangerous and often fatal treatments in order to save autistic children from them. Here you will find a history of vaccine hesitancy as well as work that corrects vaccine misinformation as it pertains to autism. 

Vaxxed Protests

Autistics 4 Autistics (A4A) protested the screening of a film called Vaxxed. You can view images here.