About this episode
For many years, the threat of measles, a deadly disease that spreads more rapidly than COVID and regularly took thousands of lives a year, had been effectively eradicated in the United States due to the widespread acceptance of vaccination. The death of a child from measles in West Texas was the first in over a decade and it came as a shock to the American medical establishment that is now grappling with a disturbing reality: the chief public health bureaucrat is a bonafide anti-vaxxer. This episode will explore the genealogy of anti-vaccination beliefs in the United States and how they spread into mainstream politics. Sources: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1200696/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8802588/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1123944/ https://time.com/7205900/anti-vaccination-movement-history/ https://historyofvaccines.org/getting-vaccinated/vaccine-faq/vaccination-exemptions https://historyofvaccines.org/blog/timeline-of-vaccination-mandates https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-68106-1_2 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/rfk-jr-plandemic-funding-1235173801/ https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-02-02/rand-paul-on-vaccines-most-of-them-ought-to-be-voluntary- https://time.com/5175704/andrew-wakefield-vaccine-autism/ https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-evidence-on-vaccines-and-autism https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-bombastic-19th-century-anti-vaxxer-who-fueled-montreals-smallpox-epidemic/ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/plague-the-red-death-strikes-montreal-feature https://www.cascadepbs.org/2020/05/seattle-always-had-anti-vaxxers-even-during-smallpox https://www.cascadepbs.org/mossback/2025/02/history-vaccine-skepticism-1920s-seattle-rfk-jr See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.