In celebration of the Polio vaccine pioneer’s 100th birthday, Google unveiled a special Jonas Salk doodle today. At The Guardian, Pete Etchells compares the eager social climate that supported the polio vaccine’s development to that of today’s creeping vaccine skepticism:

One other aspect of Salk’s story still plays a vital role in the development and use of vaccines today: public support. In many ways, the 1954 field tests of the polio vaccine are a major success story in public health and scientific engagement – according to some sources, a Gallup poll that year showed that more Americans knew about the trials than could give the full name of then president, Dwight Eisenhower. In short, it appeared that there was unprecedented support for the vaccine.

It is therefore a sad and strange irony that there now appears to be a growing backlash against vaccines in the US and UK – particularly the MMR vaccine. Since Andrew Wakefield published a fraudulent paper in 1998 purporting to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, incidences of measles and mumps have risen greatly. Despite this, and despite studies showing clear costs to society when vaccine rates drop, antivaccinationists still insist on ignoring the evidence when it comes to immunising children. It therefore seems like the celebration of Salk’s 100thbirthday is an apt time to remember how hugely important vaccination is – not just on an individual level, but for public health as a whole.

Reuben at The Poxes Blog notes that significant amounts of money have been donated by anti-vaccination activists to Representative Bill Posey (R-FL 8th District). The movement has long been known to donate significant amounts of money to representatives.

Rep. Posey has recently been sympathetic to anti-vaccination voices. Last month he ordered an investigation into the disproven claims of the so-called “CDC Whistleblower.” Last year, Posey introduced the Vaccine Safety Study Act (H.R. 1757) which would mandate an (unethical) study be conducted comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated populations for rates of autism, a long-held demand of the anti-vaccine movement.

Worryingly, Rep. Posey also sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, including the Subcommittee on Oversight. In recent years the committee and its members have  held hearings and arranged briefings entertaining anti-vaccine voices and conspiracy theories.

Jennifer Larson, who sits on the board of the “Autism Recovery Foundation” and is a big anti-vaccine activist who seemingly loves to defend Andrew Jeremy Wakefield, gave $1,000 to Bill Posey. I could be wrong, but Ms. Larson doesn’t live in Florida’s 8th. So you do the math on why she’s giving him what to a family with a special needs child would be a windfall.

Mark Blaxill, who is not a scientist and not a journalist, also donated $1,000 to Representative Bill Posey. Why if not to win favor with Representative Bill Posey?

J. B. Handley also gave $1,000. Mr. Handley is a very wealthy man who seems to be convinced that vaccines and nothing but vaccines caused autism in his child. He is so convinced that he is happy to see public health in the United States on the decline.

And then there is Barry Segal, who also gave $1,000. He sits on the board of Focus Autism, the organization which funded the hilariously inept “study” (more like back-of-the-napkin miscalculations of numbers) by BS Hooker, who also sits on that board.

Head to The Poxes Blog for the full story.

A Milwaukee medical examiner has found that an antihistamine overdose, not a reaction to the HPV vaccine, caused the tragic death of a 12 year old girl there last June.

The girl’s mother, Rebecca Prohaska, told the news media in early August that she believed her daughter may have had an allergic reaction to the human papillomavirus vaccine, also known as HPV, about six hours after the vaccine was administered in a doctor’s office.

The mother’s speculation was reported by several television stations and the Journal Sentinel, and was picked up by opponents of childhood vaccinations across the country as inaccurate evidence that the vaccine can kill.

The HPV vaccine, given in three doses starting at age 11 or 12, is the only vaccine currently available to prevent any type of cancer. HPV vaccination is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.

After a torrent of online criticism from pro-science activists, State Farm has dropped a series of ads featuring noted anti-vaccine proponent Rob Schneider. PR Week reports:

State Farm has pulled an ad featuring anti-vaccine activist Rob Schneider after a social media campaign urged the insurance company to end its affiliation with the actor.

Social media pages Food Hunk, Science Babe, and Chow Babe, all of which refute pseudoscience claims, started the anti-Schneider campaign last week, questioning how a company that sells insurance could hire a celebrity spokesman so openly against vaccinations.

The activists have encouraged consumers with State Farm policies to get involved by contacting their agents and telling them that “someone who publicly states dangerous opinions should not be a spokesperson for a health insurance company.”

Schneider has long supported the anti-vaccine cause, including fighting against California bill AB 2109, which made obtaining a vaccine exemption more difficult—by requiring consultation with an actual medical professional. He has also lent his voice to the Canary Party, an anti-vaccine organization whose stunningly misinformed propaganda video, narrated by Schneider, was screened at a legislative briefing on Capitol Hill last year.

Pediatrician Paul A. Offit, winner of the CFI/CSI 2013 Balles Award in Critical Thinking, took to the Wall Street Journal today to warn of the current anti-vaccination epidemic and surging diseases that have resulted:

We simply don’t fear these diseases anymore. My parents’ generation—children of the 1920s and 1930s—needed no convincing to vaccinate their children. They saw that whooping cough could kill as many as 8,000 babies a year. You didn’t have to convince my generation—children of the 1950s and 1960s—to vaccinate our children. We had many of these diseases, like measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. But young parents today don’t see the effects of vaccine-preventable diseases and they didn’t grow up with them. For them, vaccination has become an act of faith.

Perhaps most upsetting was a recent study out of Seattle Children’s Hospital and the University of Washington. Researchers wanted to see whether the whooping cough epidemic of 2012 had inspired more people to vaccinate their children. So they studied rates of whooping cough immunization before, during and after the epidemic. No difference. One can only conclude that the outbreak hadn’t been large enough or frightening enough to change behavior—that not enough children had died.

Because we’re unwilling to learn from history, we are starting to relive it. And children are the victims of our ignorance.

Anti-vaccination beliefs are contagious like a disease, argues Malia Jones and Alison Buttenheim in the Washington Post:

How do these clusters of exempted kids form? We think that the idea of vaccines being unsafe or ineffective or unnecessary spreads—like a disease itself—from person to person within social networks.  Parents talk to their friends, other parents at their child’s school, and to their neighbors.  Normal social processes produce clusters of vaccine refusers in the social landscape.  When it’s time to enroll in school, like-minded parents are drawn to certain schools—and this is especially pronounced when parents have the resources to be choosy about their child’s education.  Soon, there are schools and communities where vaccine refusal is not an anomaly; it is the norm.