Antivaccines in front of school

Vaccines are one of mankind’s greatest inventions, and they have a fascinating history.

We meet there for example, in the United States in the eighteenthe century, Onesimus, an African slave. He tells his master how he is not afraid of having smallpox, a disease that has killed and will kill countless people, because he was deliberately inoculated under the skin of a small dose. This practice, he says, is common in the region of Africa where he comes from. It is certainly not without risks for the patient, but since it is effective, it is gradually spreading.

In 1798, in the same country, a doctor (Edward Jenner) noticed that farm workers to whom he wanted to inoculate a small dose of smallpox did not develop it. Information taken, he learns that they have all contracted a disease transmitted by the cow. This causes pimples and makes you sick, but is not fatal. Eh yes ! This cowpox immunizes against smallpox. “Cow” is said cow in Latin, and this is the origin of the word “vaccine”.

Then, as everyone knows, then came Pasteur and his attenuated vaccine.

An opposition that is not new

I take this detour because we also learn from history that opposition to vaccination was manifested from the start. It has not stopped since and has deployed arguments that we still hear today.

Vaccines would be more dangerous than the disease against which they claim to protect, especially for children; they would be unnatural, preventing the disease from taking its natural course until it is cured; they would create new diseases; and their imposition on everyone (the compulsory vaccine) has been denounced as an extreme form of tyranny and an attack on individual freedom. Today, there is also the evocation of a vast conspiracy orchestrated by the pharmaceutical companies and the government. Well-known personalities have promoted these ideas, sometimes even renowned scientists: to cite just one example, the co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of evolution, Alfred R. Wallace, was anti-vaccine.

The 1998 publication by Andrew Wakefield (in The Lancet) of a fraudulent article linking vaccines and autism has revived the controversy, punctuated today as yesterday by ostentatious and noisy demonstrations, but also by violent acts (and sometimes criminal) which even made deaths.

In our country, some opponents of vaccination or the health passport demonstrate in front of schools. We just passed a law forbidding them – I limit myself here to this aspect of the said law. It will be controversial, since it involves all these highly politically charged questions of the freedom to have opinions, to express them and to demonstrate, as well as its limits.

The transmission of knowledge

But what can we say about it if we look at the point of view of the school, of those who do it, who attend it or who send their children there?

These demonstrations in front of schools testify first of all to a lack of knowledge – even to a contempt – of what this institution is, which is a place of disinterested transmission of knowledge to children and young people and which should as much as possible to be sheltered from certain lively controversies which could lead it to become propagandist and indoctrinate.

The school is neither the family nor the civil society. It is a special place, sheltered from (most) of the debates that run through both. Wanting to impose a doctrine on it is unacceptable, whether it is done from within or by demonstrating loudly in front of it.

The school therefore transmits knowledge, for example, precisely on the history and the functioning of vaccines, which helps to guard against the conspiracy that permeates the universe of anti-vaccines at the moment. But it also transmits habits of thought relating to knowledge – epistemic virtues, as they are called – which prepare to enter into dialogue with others on controversial subjects. There is one that I would like to draw attention to because it is making sense right now.

The mathematician and philosopher WK Clifford (1845-1879) argued that there is such a thing as a responsibility for our beliefs. We should never, he says, believe without having good arguments to support our belief and we can be held responsible for the consequences of beliefs we hold, especially if we have adopted them without sufficient proof. This idea has given rise to vast ethical and political debates centered on our individual responsibility which I will not go into here.

On the other hand, the period we are going through reminds us to what extent our beliefs have collective effects, for example when we share and disseminate them, especially on social networks. In front of a school too, they undoubtedly have negative effects, in particular on the children, but also on the parents, the teachers – without forgetting the mission of the school.

In addition, during a pandemic, their dissemination in person, through the contacts it involves, can also have unexpected effects and that we did not want on crowds of people. Certainly these people do not believe in it, but it is reasonable to ask that they consider this possibility before appearing in front of a school.

I argue that all this should convince them to demonstrate as much as they want and wherever they want, but not in front of schools.

Suggested reading

Françoise Salvadori and Laurent-Henri Vignaud, Antivax. Resistance to 18th century vaccinese century to the present day, Editions Vandémiaire, Paris, 2019, 351 pages

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