“Better a prison cell than a poisoned child” was one of the slogans of the first anti-vaccination movement born in Leicester, United Kingdom at the end of the nineteenth century, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets opposing mandatory vaccination against smallpox. There were arrests and fines and some people were sent to prison. Those were times when no one could estimate how successful all vaccines would later be, especially in the 20th century. Smallpox killed approximately 500,000 people every year in Europe, and destroyed entire indigenous groups in Africa and America. Of those who survived smallpox, known as the “spotted beast” because of its distinctive pimple-like rash, a third were blinded. Another consequence is the appearance of clear signs on the body. These were times without information, with high rates of illiteracy and a social predominance of belief in faith and idols rather than belief in science. Smallpox has killed millions since the Middle Ages.
But in 1798, the scientist Edward Jenner, a doctor from Gloucestershire, succeeded in proving the validity of the traditional belief that inoculating a person with a low dose of cowpox provided protection against smallpox. Soon all of Europe took up its “vaccine” and implemented it, reducing infection rates in a proven manner. However, the vaccines at that time were not safe and were improved over time, but Jenner found the beginning of the solution so that humanity could keep smallpox at bay over the years.
Despite this success, Anti-vaxxers are organized and opposed, for religious, social and political reasons. There are documents from some “anti-vaxxers” that indicated that vaccines were designed to produce ethnic cleansing, and others to kill the lower class because the lack of work showed that there was no place for everyone. These discourses caught fire in certain sectors, but they were by no means the majority. But they always had something to say, even with empirical evidence against it, when statistics on viral diseases declined year after year.
Vaccines seemed to eliminate measles, E. coli, rubella, mumps, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, mumps, and HPV, and we could even say, as witnesses of the time: Covid control. Their opponents were born of religious fanatics or pagan superstition mongers, whose extremist beliefs came together on a common point: opposition to vaccines. These “movements” reached the “uneducated” sectors: Access to formal education to vulnerable sectors has helped a lot in generating confidence in vaccines.
Vaccines have always been among us, and have been most deeply rooted in countries in the Northern Hemisphere. His reckless preaching could have been responsible for every outbreak of one of these diseases, such as measles, that spread during the Covid pandemic, fueled by a lack of confidence in vaccines being put on the market in an emergency and without the necessary tests, as happened in other cases. Protected by unfounded rhetoric and false theories, such as the one that the measles vaccine causes autism, which have already been disproved by science but have caused damage to public opinion. A false theory that appeared in the prestigious Popular Science magazine The scalpelwhich in 1998 published preliminary research saying that twelve children vaccinated against measles developed autistic behaviors and severe inflammation of the intestine. The proponent of this theory is Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who opened a controversy that lasted years and brought the author into a “commercial conflict of interest”: he was behind a patent for a laboratory, to the point that the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom ruled in 2010 that Wakefield was “unfit to practice” and described his behavior as “irresponsible,” “unethical” and “deceptive.” For its part, the magazine said: The scalpel She retracted the study published a decade ago, asserting that its conclusions were “completely wrong.” Wakefield himself admitted his mistake. However, the stubbornness of anti-vaccine fanatics makes them cling to and spread the lie.
Anti-vaxxers are not the only ones responsible for the decline in vaccination and confidence in it. Rather, they are the spokesmen for chaos. Things happen in the world, even when its best people rise to positions of power and become dangerous. When Donald Trump became president of the United States, he appointed Robert Kennedy Jr., perhaps that country’s most famous anti-vaxxer, as health secretary. In December 2024, before taking office, Trump held a dinner with pharmaceutical businessmen, telling them that Kennedy “would not take on his bigoted, radical anti-vaccine role.” However, Kennedy just eliminated nearly $500 million in funding for research into messenger RNA technology and strengthened restrictions on the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendations on who should receive booster doses of the Covid vaccine. He made political decisions, replacing all the members of the Vaccine Advisory Committee to put people he liked in their place, including disreputable members of the anti-vaccine movement. On Capitol Hill there is a demand for clarification from Democratic and Republican members of Congress – united in concern – who do not trust Kennedy They fear their decisions will cause irreparable harm to Americans’ health. It is hoped that President Milley’s fanaticism and following of Donald Trump will not lead to imitation of his health policies or mentors. The national government is doing very little to spread the need to vaccinate us, and a statement and a post on the networks are not enough, other than celebrating its supportive position.
Today the world should be more concerned than ever about these moves, but Argentina is more concerned. Between 2019 and 2024, mandatory coverage in Europe decreased from 92% to 91% with the second dose of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. From 95% to 93% with the third dose of the DTP (triple bacterial) vaccine. From 95% to 93% with the third dose of polio vaccine. This has led, for example, to an increase in measles cases. According to the World Health Organization, 11 million infections were discovered in 2024, about 800,000 more than before the pandemic. Earlier this year, the agency said there would be more than 120,000 measles cases in Europe and Central Asia in 2024, the highest level in more than 25 years.
Why should Argentina worry more? Because the decline in the vaccination rate is alarming, even compared to countries where anti-vaccine movements date back more than 150 years. The Argentine Pediatric Society revealed that in 2024 none of the vaccines evaluated reached the programmatic target of 95% necessary to ensure herd immunity. What’s more, it didn’t reach 50% last year. This is a country that has known how to have one of the most important and accessible mandatory (free) vaccination schedules in the world. But there is another, more alarming fact: the triple viral vaccine, the one that knew how to eliminate measles, rubella and mumps, which is administered at the age of five – just before entering the first grade of school – has seen its coverage drop by 44%, reaching 90% between 2015 and 2019. Last year only 46% of those eligible were vaccinated, and this is very dangerous, because according to the SAP, it encourages a serious risk of a resurgence of measles. And German measles in the country. The decline in vaccine use is occurring with other injections as well, such as the polio booster vaccine, which is administered at age five, which has fallen from 88% to 47% also in the last five years, while the three-cell bacterial vaccine, also given at that age, has fallen from 88% to just 46%. Data that reflects the potential harm we can cause to ourselves.
In this context, a few days ago an anti-vaccine meeting was held in the House of Representatives. There, a man revealed his torso and showed how the Covid vaccine turned him into a “magnetic” person. This same character had already participated in television programs, long before the spread of the epidemic, where he presented a show explaining how his body attracts metals without this having anything to do with vaccines. A circus-like show in which no scientific evidence is presented, which reduces the quality of parliamentary activity and introduces, in an ugly and rustic way, a topic that is unfortunately already present in the public conversation, such as the efficacy of vaccines.. Controversy settled in the 20th century: Vaccines, drinking water, and penicillin are the scientific advances that have nearly tripled global life expectancy. However, there are those who, fanatically and irresponsibly, They want to drag us into a conflict from which nothing good can come.