I learned that, because of the 1986 Act, parents of seriously injured or deceased children must sue the federal government’s health department, instead of the company that profited from the product that harmed their children. From that one data point, my journey regarding vaccines began. What I have uncovered along the way has frequently been unbelievable.
This journey, spanning over a decade of litigating vaccine lawsuits of all stripes across the country, has been unique. This is partly because, unlike doctors, who can appeal to their credentials, I do not get to just say, “trust me.”
I need to prove claims I assert with real data. Real proof. Something that will hold up in court. Non-authoritative science will not do. Unreliable data will not do. This means my vaccine litigation work requires me to study the primary sources and carefully review and scrutinize the studies and data that support each claim.
In the course of that legal work, I have worked with well over a hundred immunologists, infectious disease doctors, pediatricians, and other medical professionals. I have deposed these specialists as well, including the world’s leading vaccinologists.
This work requires an understanding of vaccinology, immunology, infectious disease, and pediatrics, among other disciplines, with regard to these products. Want to talk about any other drug, medical procedure, etc.? I am not your man. But vaccines, those I know.
Incredibly, most of the information needed to understand vaccine safety is freely available on federal government websites and public databases. Most doctors and parents
never bother to look or don’t know it exists. Those who do know and look often learn things they cannot unlearn.
Parents Who Do Not Vaccinate
According to the CDC and public health authorities, parents who choose not to vaccinate their children are typically highly educated. CDC data reflect that half of American children are not fully vaccinated, and at least 1 in 88 toddlers in America are completely unvaccinated. Why would the parents of these children, constituting a large part of the nation’s brain trust, choose not to vaccinate their children?
After all, parents who choose not to vaccinate are, as the CDC laments, typically very highly educated. They are often scientifically literate. Many are medical professionals. Leading scientists. What is it that they have learned or experienced that convinced them to forgo what many believe is the greatest medical achievement of all time?
The answer, I have found, is that they often have had an experience which caused them to scratch below the surface of common conclusory statements about vaccines. They seek the substance that underpins these statements. What they then learn, they cannot unlearn. Cannot unsee.
As an ardent vaccine promoter, Emily K. Brunson, MPH, PhD, explains about those who choose not to vaccinate: “I think we need to avoid the trap of thinking that information or knowledge is enough, because for a lot of the people, and when you look at hesitancy and parental vaccine hesitancy in the US, the group who is most likely to purposefully choose to not vaccinate are highly educated.
In speaking with them, these are people who have read the primary literature themselves, and they’re correctly interpreting it, so it’s not a misunderstanding. ”1
Keep in mind that for those who choose not to vaccinate, that choice often comes with serious consequences. Including expulsion from school. Exclusion from social circles. Being labeled anti-science or worse. It also requires overcoming powerful, almost crushing societal pressure to vaccinate one’s child, and rejecting the near-universal advice of public health agencies. Choosing not to vaccinate is not for the faint of heart and, in my experience, is rarely a decision made lightly. Meaning whatever these parents learned, it must have been powerful enough to overcome incredible social pressures and penalties.
This also comports with my experience that in many cases, parents do not choose to not vaccinate. They choose to stop vaccinating. Their completely unvaccinated children often have an older sibling who is partially vaccinated. But, even among those with a personal experience, it is those who carefully investigate vaccine products who typically reach the conclusion to not vaccinate with sufficient intellectual rigor and confidence to overcome the powerful societal pressures and penalties of not vaccinating.
Other than knowledge and experience, I have found that those choosing to not vaccinate hail from nearly every demographic, race, ethnicity, religion, and walk of life. They are scattered almost haphazardly across all verticals and horizontals of American life, with the only real predictive clustering being around those who use their intellect to research these products.
Vaccine Zealots
There is something else I found surprising in my journey regarding vaccines. The popular conception is that those who do not vaccinate are fanatics. Anti-science. Irrational. Emotional. Zealots. But my experience has generally been the opposite.
To be sure, there are some who take issue with vaccines who meet the foregoing description. They are also the ones who can often be the loudest. But they are, in my experience, the very tiny but vocal tip of the iceberg. The remainder—submerged silently and quietly under the water, not wanting any publicity of any kind, and who do not dare speak their views in mixed company—make up the vast majority of those who choose not to vaccinate. These folks, as a group, are highly knowledgeable and educated about these products. They can speak rationally about them. They are typically science-literate and put that ability to good use in researching these products. They are far from zealots. They are just parents seeking to make good decisions for their children.