Ableism in the Anti-Vaccine Movement

By Ryan Hassan MD, MPH

Autism has long been intertwined with the anti-vaccine movement. Autistic people experience the world differently than others. They often don’t have the same understanding of social cues and communication, and might be more sensitive to their environment. Sometimes they also have delays in development. As any parent of an autistic child knows, autism is not a death sentence or a crippling disease; it is a term to describe people who are different from others in specific ways. Every autistic person has their own unique set of strengths and challenges, just like everyone else.

The anti-vaccine movement has caused immense harm to autistic people. By continuing to push the disproven narrative that vaccines are related to autism, the anti-vaccine movement encourages more and more frivolous studies to further disprove the claim.  The more time and energy we waste on this, the less time and energy we have to invest in looking for the actual causes of autism. As Dr. Paul Offit describes, this is like losing your keys and then looking for them in your purse a hundred times instead of moving on to look for them somewhere else. More importantly, perseverating on the causes of autism shifts the focus of autism research away from the more important work of understanding neurodivergent people and the best ways to create a world that meets all of our needs.

Perhaps even worse, anti-vaccine rhetoric routinely characterizes autism as a terrible, debilitating illness that needs to be eradicated and prevented at all costs. This rhetoric dehumanizes autistic people, and often blames their parents for their diagnosis. Children getting sick with preventable diseases and being demeaned because of the way their brains work are tragedies. An autistic child is not a tragedy.