When I first approached the vaccine question, I actually did so from an *anti* perspective. I'd been pretty inundated with that attitude on the Mothering boards, and as I agree with so much else there... I really assumed I'd wind up agreeing with that too, once I started digging. But there were a few things right off the bat that turned me off.
1) The fact that if you question an anti-vaccine resource (many anti-vaccine websites are run by individuals with no medical training or background whatsoever), you get slammed, demeaned, belittled, and accused of not doing any research.
2) When you ask for verifiable facts regarding statistics, 9 times out of 10 you are sent to one of those anti-vaccine websites.
3) That the authors who write books about how terrible vaccines are have not done any original research, but distort results from the research of others... carefully choosing which studies they will use and trying to find the most flawed studies. (Because yes, of course, scientists do make mistakes and not every study is perfect.) Also these authors usually spend all their time quoting one another so that the entire thing is circular. "Anti-vaccine guy A says vaccines are horrible!" This gets repeated over and over by all the other anti-vaccine folks until it is accepted as a verifiable fact, when really it is just an *opinion.*
4) It seems the majority of anti-vaccine folks do not understand even what I mean when I ask for a verifiable fact. They think they do. They seem to think that if someone put something on a website, that makes it a verifiable fact.
5) The conspiracy theories! Oh the conspiracy theories! I think there is a reason that people tend to roll their eyes at conspiracy theorists. I simply cannot imagine how anyone could believe that every government in the world, every doctor in the world, every SIDS organization in the world, every Autism organization in the world, are ALL in on the conspiracy to harm people with vaccines. Not to mention the very bizarre idea that Bill Gates would somehow make a profit from donating free vaccines to third world countries. How does that work again?
6) A lot of these people don't seem to understand that not only can anyone write a book (especially a self-published book, like "Just a Little Prick," which I can't help laughing at every time I think of it), but anyone can much more easily post a website. (Yes, I include myself in that statement. Did you think I was giving medical advice? I am not. It's just a blog, people.) Anyone can make it *look* official and *sound* official if they try and have a decent education. That doesn't make the information found in the book or website reliable.
I mean really, if Ann Coulter can write a book and be taken seriously... *anyone* can!
7) The fact that anytime you present any study or studies disproving what the anti-vax community claims, the response is... "That study is bogus!" They don't ever give a reason why the study is bogus. They just say it over and over again in hopes you'll eventually shut up. It's easy to believe that you have all the information if you just completely disregard anything that conflicts with your opinion. But why? Who would want to make medical, life or death decisions for their families that way? I don't understand.
8) The homeopathy connection. Homeopathy, if you don't know, is basically an alternative medicine practice which involves giving a person a tiny amount of a toxin, to somehow balance their system and cure whatever the problem is. Yet somehow, the anti-vaccine community does not see how protesting against the toxins in vaccines (Picture a needle, and the TINY amount of fluid in the needle, think of the many ingredients in that needle and try to figure out just how tiny an amount we are talking about. REALLY tiny!), while ingesting toxins from homeopathy, are in conflict. I recently saw a strident anti-vaccine activist discussing taking homeopathic doses of arsenic... while pregnant. So arsenic in homeopathics is ok, but formaldehyde in a vaccine that could save your child's life is not? Sorry... what was that?
9) Unverifiable quotes. Like this one.
"Dr. James R. Shannon, former director of the National Institute of Health reported in December, 2003 that “the only safe vaccine is one that is never used”.
Wow, that's pretty intense. Notice I don't give a citation for it, though. That's because there is no citation for it. You can find it on every anti-vaccine website out there on the wide world of the 'Net. But you won't find (or at least, I have been unable to find, and I tried) an original source or citation for this quote. When I pointed this out on an anti-vaccine message board, I was told that it came from private correspondence between Dr. Shannon and another Dr. That some anti-vaxer had somehow gained access to this private correspondence, quoted Dr. Shannon, and thus it is a verifiable fact, just not verifiable to anyone but that first person. Hmmmmmm....
There are lots of these quotes out there, this is just one example.
10) The insistence that mercury is still in our vaccines even though thimerosal was removed from vaccines years ago. (Aside from one incarnation of the flu vaccine. There are thimerosal free versions of flu vaccine available.) The insistence that thimerosal causes autism even though numerous studies have shown there is no connection between the two. The total crazy hysteria over thimerosal while people munch away on their tuna sandwiches.
So... ten reasons for me to be turned and completely swayed by the anti-vaxers themselves, to go the other way. I prefer living in the land of reality where I can verify things via solid medical research, personally.