Who are anti-vaccinators and why are they fighting with doctors?

About the anti-vaccination movement and anti-vaccination disinformation in the media
A.N.Matz, I.I.Mechnikov Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences

Vaccination is one of the most beneficial contributions of medical science to public health. However, the development of vaccine prophylaxis from E. Jenner and L. Pasteur to the present day has invariably been accompanied by incidents of reactions and complications in vaccinated. It was the fear of post-vaccination reactions and complications almost two centuries ago (immediately after the start of mass vaccination) that became the main cause of anti-vaccination moods.

Vaccines and their production technology have improved impressively over the past century. But the public anti-vaccination movement with propaganda misinformation and slander against vaccination continues to develop, multiply and consolidate internationally. Its purpose is to cause an anti–vaccination panic, to provoke a "vaccine crisis" as a mass sociogenic "disease" of vaccination refusals among the population, including among nursing staff and doctors.

Addressing the population, anti-vaccination fighters operate with a set of cleverly packaged false information that defames vaccination in general and individual vaccines in particular. It is thanks to the mythical nature of anti-vaccination disinformation that circulates in the minds of the population in spite of and at the same time with facts that refute it.

As a socio-ideological phenomenon, the anti–vaccination movement adjoins alternative and marginal paramedical retrograde trends - homeopathy, homotoxicology, osteopathy, naturopathy, healing, AIDS dissidence, anthroposophical and holistic medicine and valeology, as well as the utopian idea of creating a New Medicine without vaccinations, invasive interventions and pharmaceuticals.

Anti-vaccination propaganda tools are newspaper and magazine articles, brochures and books, television programs, videos and Internet resources. Books of pronounced anti-vaccination content periodically appear on the shelves of Russian stores among popular medical literature and are very actively sold out.

The peculiarity of the situation in Russia is that about two dozen web pages are near-church, "patriotic" and nationalist resources in which anti–vaccination ideas are presented on a religious, anti-Semitic and conspiracy lining.

Anti–vaccination fabrications are the main product of the anti-vaccination movement. In the form of slogans and myths, they are the essence of anti–vaccination propaganda addressed to the population and medical personnel. Like Pandora's box, anti-vaccination mythology is filled with a series of fictions that truly have no end.

The abridged text of the brochure "To doctors about the anti-vaccination movement and anti-vaccination disinformation in the media" can be read here.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru08.10.2009