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- Page navigation anchor for End of the road for the 'anti-vaxxer'?End of the road for the 'anti-vaxxer'?I am pleased to read Lawson’s editorial in BJGP highlighting the role of emotions in making decisions about vaccination.1 He writes we must ‘appeal to the elephant and not the rider’ when having conversations with patients who are hesitant about vaccination (or reject it outright).I suggest that part of this conversation must be the impact the label ‘anti-vaxxer’ has. Since its widespread use in the UK, vaccination has been met with opposition. In fact, the use of the term ‘conscientious objector’, which today is perhaps more linked with refusing to fight in military conflicts, originated in a British law of 1898 affording individuals the right to decline vaccination.2 In contrast to this long history, the term ‘anti-vaxxer’ is new: it first appeared in 2009.3The question bears asking: who are ‘anti-vaxxers’? It’s a provocative term. It calls to mind irrational, dangerous, risible individuals who fail to protect their children. ‘Anti-vaxxers’ are folk devils, who undermine the safety of the public – but this is not the whole story.We must recognise that the ‘anti-vaxxer’ label works to obscure the aetiologies of non-vaccination. It gives no space for the heterogeneity of anti-vaccination sentiment. For example, individuals may reject...Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.
- Page navigation anchor for Herd thinkingHerd thinkingThank you for your remarks on COVID vaccination in your October editorial 'Herd Thinking'.You are absolutely right that the positivist philosophical approach which some doctors might use to persuade patients of the benefits of vaccination is often not shared by the patients.
However, all is not lost. As I described in an article in your journal,1 the way forward is to identify the patient’s explanatory perspective and, having identified it, to respond within that perspective.This is a technique which every successful salesman has learnt and which I make no claim to have invented. In the case of immunisation many of the papers quoted in that article come from the WHO ‘Sociology and Immunisation project’ which has sponsored relevant research all over the world.Much has been written and well written about immunisation since,2 but I do not think that this basic point has been superseded,References
1. J Gervase Vernon. Immunisation policy: from compliance to concordance? Br J Gen Pract 2003; 53(490):399-404.
2. Heidi J. Larson. Stuck: How Vaccine Rumours Start ― and Why They Don't Go Away. OUP USA, 2020.Competing Interests: None declared.