anti-vaxxer

A person who rejects vaccines because they are under the mistaken impression that they are unsafe or useless.

Comparable to people who reject evolution, anti-vaxxers ignore the evidence that vaccines have saved millions of lives around the world. They dismiss the fact that diseases such as measles and diphtheria can kill, and do kill thousands of children who lack the privilege of easy access to vaccines.

The modern anti-vax movement was ignited by Andrew Wakefield, a surgeon who published fraudulent data in 1998 suggesting the MMR vaccine caused autism. The British media fell for it and stirred up a public panic. Vaccine uptake fell leading to an epidemic in Wales in 2013 affecting 1200 people, with almost 100 hospitalisations and 1 death.

Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register in 2010. Among other things, he had ordered unethical, invasive procedures on children including colonoscopies and spinal taps. Anti-vaxxers nevertheless treat him as a Messiah figure, only interested in children's welfare.

Many anti-vaxxers are part of the new age, pro-organic food brigade who rant endlessly about alleged toxins in vaccines yet will happily give bleach enemas or colloidal silver to autistic children to "cure" them.

Chiropractors, homeopathy advocates and other pseudoscientific or alternative health nuts are often anti-vaxxers. They say Big Pharma is only in it for the money before trying to sell you their measles-preventing coconut oil remedy.

That anti-vaxxer is so clueless they think the flu jab will give them flu

I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but I do think that polio isn't a serious disease and that vaccines destroy the brains of children making them autistic as part of a holocaust engineered by Bill Gates

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