Vaccine Misinformation Quotes

Smallpox is natural; vaccine ain't.

Getting the word out that, yes vaccines are great, the safety data's very, very clear, including any of these specific concerns, that's very important to our foundation.

In different places you run into myths around vaccination or around family planning. In the United States, one of the myths that existed for a long time, that has been completely debunked, was that autism was linked to a vaccine.

People think they're making individual decisions for themselves and their family not to get vaccinated. It's not just an individual choice - you're a hazard to society.

Vaccines are extremely well tested; their safety is well understood. The false allegations about vaccines causing autism have been disproven. But there are still echoes out there confusing people.

I am, and have been for years, a confirmed anti-vaccinationist...I have not the least doubt in my mind that vaccination is a filthy process that is harmful in the end.

I think a lot of parents who are smart, well-read - they're the ones who are choosing not to vaccinate. And oftentimes, those who may not be as well-read - they are vaccinating. So to say you just have a bunch of crackpots who are choosing not to do this to their children, I just don't think that's actually true.

I don't care if people get angry about that, believing the rubbish that vaccinations cause trouble or make the child worse or something. That's not what I believe. I think it's important for me to say.

If you Google some sites about the link between vaccines and autism, you can very quickly find that Google is repeating back to you your view about whether that link exists and not what scientists know, which is that there isn't a link between vaccines and autism. It's a feedback loop that's invisible.

In the case of Pakistan, the CIA actually used a fake vaccination campaign to try to locate Osama bin Laden, so now vaccination is associated with espionage.

I think there's a temptation to try to think of people who don't vaccinate as a homogenous community, but I'm not convinced that's true. I'm not even sure that the word 'community' is totally accurate there, you know.

Birtherism surely increased Americans' distrust of politics, though in ways that are hard to pin down. By contrast, when anti-vaxxers persuade parents not to vaccinate children, the result can be sickness and even death.

I talked to lots of people who are vaccine-hesitant, and I actually was one myself until I got further into this project, and most of them actually are in my demographic: so well-educated people with advanced degrees who are upper middle-class and have read quite a bit on the subject.

I would certainly use my voice to try and avoid anything that undermines confidence, so that parents are using vaccines fully.

Alongside the flat-earthers, 9/11 truthers and Obama birthers, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists have always had a special distinction: They can do immediate and specific damage in a way that the others can't.

Some of the old diseases that we think are gone - case in point, measles - are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we're getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you're going to get outbreaks and you're going to get death.

When I was researching the Victorian anti-vaccination movement, those activists often used a vampire as a metaphor for the vaccinator.

If you give us a safe vaccine, we'll use it. It shouldn't be polio versus autism.

What I saw when I was doing research is that in pursuit of a middle ground, people will kind of split the difference between the two extremes that they're hearing. And I think what's problematic is that people are seeing vaccinating on schedule, on time, as an extreme position.

The choice made by families not to immunize their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments.

It is true that there are some parents who have concerns about vaccines, but while we hear about these concerns a lot in the media, I don't want people to think that the majority of parents out there do not believe in vaccines and then most kids aren't getting vaccinated. In fact, it's exactly the opposite.

Vaccine conspiracies, like so much modern cult conspiracy culture, perpetuates itself and lives on indefinitely thanks to the community-building and archiving of the Internet.

There are pockets of liberal, affluent America where parents don't want their kids vaccinated.

Information's right at our fingertips, but so is what you want to believe. It's the classic thing of someone Googling 'autism vaccines' - they'll find what they're looking for, depending on what they think. You'll find lots of people who are just bolstering what they already think, bolstering their cultural attitude.

Why do people refuse to vaccinate their children against measles or whooping cough? In many cases, because they have never seen measles and have no idea what it might do.