I don’t know any rational person who could truly be anti-vaccine, because the benefits
are so profound. —LOUIS COOPER, MD

fully vaccinated and living in a generally unvaccinated community than if you are unvaccinated and living in a highly vaccinated community.

The assumption that unvaccinated children put others at risk has led to widespread criticism of vaccine-hesitant parents in the mainstream press. “People think you’re really selfish,” said JoNel Aleccia, a health writer for MSNBC.com who interviewed me. 11 And it’s not only news media that criticize parents. In an episode of ABC’s Private Practice that aired on January 8, 2009, an unvaccinated boy infected with measles in Switzerland creates a huge health scare in the doctor’s office, then dies. The mother had chosen not to have him and his younger brother vaccinated because her oldest son had slipped

into autism after receiving vaccines. At the end of the episode, a doctor from the practice forcibly vaccinates the mother’s youngest son.

This episode of Private Practice was not only sanctioned by the AAP, it was created in close collaboration with them. According to an AAP newsletter sent out to members a month after the show aired, 12 several AAP members had helped craft the storyline. Attached to the newsletter is a letter from AAP president Dr. David T. Tayloe, Jr. thanking Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, for ABC’s thoughtful depiction of what can happen when children are not vaccinated: “This episode depicts the serious consequences that can occur when parents choose to skip or delay giving vaccines to their children for reasons

Above: Dr. Louis Cooper, photographed in his home in New York City

[March 2005]: www.niaid.nih.gov/dait/pdf/ADCC_Final. pdf.) The CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Net work estimates that one in every 150 eight-year-olds in America has an autism spectrum disorder. (CDC, Autism Information Center, “Frequently Asked Questions—Prevalence,” www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/ faq_prevalence.htm) According to the CDC, 6. 7 million children currently suffer from asthma. (CDC, Fast Stats, “Asthma,” www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/asthma.htm)

7. Personal communication with Dr. Robert W. Sears, MD ( 10 February 2009).

8. These are terms that Martin G. Myers and Diego Pineda use throughout their book, Do Vaccines Cause That?! See, for example, Chapter 5, “Misinformation and the Return of Infectious Diseases” (Galveston, TX: Immunizations for Public Health, 2008), 76–110. 9. This and subsequent quotations: personal communication ( 5 February 2009).

10. S. van den Hof et al., “Measles Epidemic in the Netherlands, 1999–2000” Journal of Infectious Diseases 186, no. 10 ( 15 November 2002): 1483–1486. 11. JoNel Aleccia, “Vaccine-Wary Parents Spark Public Health Worry: More Opt Out for Fear of Reactions, But Do They Endanger Everybody Else?,” MSNBC ( 22 August 2008): www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26291109/. 12. “AAP Assists in Pro-Immunization Story Line on ‘Private Practice’ ” AAP News OnCall 4, no. 8 (February 2009).