Still Standing: Antivaxx Groups Fail to Intimidate Hotez
‘I’m hoping the worst is behind us, but I have no evidence of that.’
On Feb. 1, 2022, Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, was nominated, along with a colleague, for the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to design and distribute a nonproprietary, free COVID-19 vaccine to impoverished nations globally. The very next day Hotez received an email with the subject line: “You will hang for crimes against humanity.”
This was the price Hotez paid for advocating COVID-19 vaccinations, much as he always had encouraged other immunizations in his writings, talks, and media appearances as the co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development in Houston. Hotez is a professor of pediatrics, molecular virology, and microbiology, as well as the founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine.
The night he was nominated for the Nobel, former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson labeled Hotez a “misinformation machine constantly spewing insanity.”1
It should be noted that for being an “ardent defender of biomedical science in America,” Hotez also won the 2023 Anthony Fauci Courage in Leadership Award by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “That has been great and it is really important to have the support from scientific societies,” he says. “Though it really seemed to set the antivaccine forces off.”
Hotez recently documented this harassment and attempts at intimidation in his new book, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning. How effective was an antivaxx message that became a political line of demarcation? Hotez estimates that about 200,000 people died of COVD-19 after willfully refusing a widely available vaccine. Some who survived likely developed long COVID.
“We have not even begun to imagine the scope and scale of the mental health devastation that will result from long COVID, loss of parents and other caregivers, and heightened levels of anxiety from a traumatized American public,” Hotez writes in the book.2
The book is somewhat of a call to action, but the intent primarily is to document the current situation while warning that the antivaxx movement is metastasizing and will threaten other cutting-edge aspects of science, such as genetic editing.
“You see in the mainstream media this is still being reported like it’s just ‘misinformation’ or an ‘infodemic’ — some random junk out there on the internet,” he says. “My findings were, ‘No, it is not that.’ It is an organized, predatory, deliberate, politically motivated, and well-financed enterprise that is specifically designed to denigrate science and scientists.”
In the book, Hotez traces the roots of the modern antivaccine movement, including the infamous withdrawn Lancet paper that tried to link the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to autism.3 Having an adult daughter with autism, Hotez took on this thoroughly debunked notion, writing a book explaining that autism is not caused by vaccines.4 In researching his new book, he cites the work of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which famously identified about a dozen individuals and groups who use the Internet and social media to spread lies and twisted half-truths to incite public fear of vaccines.5
“My premise is you can’t solve the problem until you really understand it,” Hotez says.
In that regard, the book opens with a quote from Louis Pasteur, “A known enemy is already half disarmed.” It also speaks volumes that among those thanked in the book’s acknowledgments are police officers and security personnel. Hotez was flanked by two guards when he spoke at the 2023 conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
Q & A
Hotez agreed to an interview with Hospital Infection Control & Prevention (HIC), which has been edited slightly for clarity and length.
HIC: Some of the solutions you propose at the book’s conclusion include founding an organization like the Southern Poverty Law Center to protect biomedical scientists and the establishment of a legal defense fund, as was done for climate scientists.
Hotez: The recommendations I came up with are sort of weak, quite honestly. As a scientist I don’t know what to do because these are politically motivated attacks. Simply throwing more science at it and trying to educate the public is necessary but not sufficient to really take this on. This is where we really need help from the political scientists, economists, social scientists, et cetera.
The way I see this is that there are three issues that need to be solved. Think of the three circles of the Venn diagram, each partially overlapping [the other]. Circle 1 is we need to improve science communication. Circle 2 is we need to knock down the disinformation, and circle 3 is we need to do a better job protecting scientists so they don’t get hauled in front of C-SPAN cameras to be humiliated by far-right witch hunts and that sort of thing.
With regard to the first two circles, there is a new organization that has started — The Coalition for Trust in Health & Science.6 That’s going forward and that’s good. The third piece of protecting the scientists — I’ve been very intrigued by the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. It’s a small organization, but it has handled about 50 cases defending climate scientists against these attacks, frivolous lawsuits and that sort of thing. The question is, would there be an opportunity to expand that mission to also defend medical scientists with a new organization? My colleagues and I are kicking around ideas on what that would look like.
Michael Mann, PhD, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, and I are partnering on a new book project to compare and contrast the attacks on climate science — which have been going on about a decade — with the these more recent attacks on biomedicine. We are noticing they come from a lot of the same sources and actors. (Editor’s note: As this report was filed, Mann won a $1 million defamation suit against two right-wing bloggers, who accused him of manipulating data and compared him to a convicted child molester.7)
HIC: Regarding vaccines, it seems the next battle on this front will be to preserve herd immunity though childhood vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently has issued alerts about measles outbreaks. You predicted this in your book. How much vaccine progress is going to be undone by all this?
Hotez: This is not going to stop with COVID immunizations. It is going to spill over into other aspects of biomedicine. One of them is clearly childhood immunization. We are already starting to see the return of measles in outbreaks in the U.S. Measles is often the first one you see because it is the most highly transmissible of all the viruses. But it is not going to stop there. What I see happening now is the kind of doubling down by the same groups that had a role in causing people to lose their lives. Now they are trying to say it was the COVID vaccines that killed Americans, which is ridiculous. Or they are trying to say the scientists invented the virus, which is equally ridiculous.
HIC: Were you surprised at the number of healthcare workers who have resisted SARS-CoV-2 vaccination?
Hotez: This is one of the more disheartening aspects of this. It is one thing to have antivaccine activists do this, but within the healthcare professions — even among physicians, who are espousing antivaccine [rhetoric]. That’s very demoralizing. I guess it just goes to show you that anyone can go down the rabbit hole. Watch [right-wing media] every night and falsely believe that vaccines are something sinister.
HIC: You have been falsely vilified by haters and compared to Nazi concentration camp doctors in their anonymous emails. Yet, there are a few favorable signs. Are you optimistic that science can prevail over the anti-science threat?
Hotez: I’m always optimistic and that’s why I keep at it, but I don’t know that our darkest days are past us. There are so many unknowns, as we head into this election season, of what could happen. I’m hoping the worst is behind us, but I have no evidence of that.
REFERENCES
- Creitz C. Tucker Carlson slams COVID ‘nutcase from Baylor’ Peter Hotez for ‘discrediting American medicine.’ Fox News. Published Feb. 1, 2022. https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-covid-peter-hotez
- Hotez PJ. The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist's Warning. Johns Hopkins University Press; 2023.
- [No authors listed]. Retraction—Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 2010;375:445.
- Hotez PJ. Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad. Johns Hopkins University Press; 2018.
- Center for Countering Digital Hate. The disinformation dozen: Why platforms must act on twelve leading online anti-vaxxers. Published March 24, 2021. https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/210324-The-Disinformation-Dozen.pdf
- Coalition for Trust in Health & Science. https://trustinhealthandscience.org/
- Grandoni D. Famed climate scientist wins million-dollar verdict against right-wing bloggers. The Washington Post. Published Feb. 8, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/08/michael-mann-bloggers-defamation-trial/
On Feb. 1, 2022, Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, was nominated, along with a colleague, for the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to design and distribute a nonproprietary, free COVID-19 vaccine to impoverished nations globally. The very next day Hotez received an email with the subject line: “You will hang for crimes against humanity.” Hotez recently documented this harassment and attempts at intimidation in his new book, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning.
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