Summary:
Stuck
was
published shortly before the Covid pandemic when the American vaccine wars,
with all their hostility, misinformation, and political baggage, lay more than
a year in the future. In Stuck, Heidi J. Larson, Professor of
Anthropology and Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London
School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, approaches vaccine rejection as a
complex moral and cultural phenomenon, rather than as a simple issue of ignorance
or a marginal point-of-view. In a sense, anti-vaccine rumors are the tip of an
iceberg, reflecting and perpetuated by deep underlying concerns, like perceived
threats to personal or cultural values, distrust of government, misperception
of risks and benefits, or a combination of these. The claim that compulsory
immunization violates personal freedom is especially prominent today.
Rumor is a major source of vaccine rejection.
The author discusses in detail the case of Andrew Wakefield and his contention
that MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine causes autism. This belief, based on
a 1998 paper in The Lancet (later retracted) has been shown to be false
by numerous large-scale studies, but is accepted by perhaps millions of people
throughout the world.
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