VOODOO AND ANTIVAX ACTIVISTS

One of the fake news surrounding vaccines is that they cause the disease they claim to prevent. Notably, this misconception concerns measles, which is alleged  to occur chiefly in vaccinated children. This fake news has a magic structure based on the conception of “homoeopathic magic”, say, the principle that one can affect a person through similarity. The principle of homoeopathic magic explains how it would be possible to affect someone else by performing some actions on an image of him (e.g., a drawing, a little doll, a figurine, etc.), on something which is part of (e.g., blood, skin, hair, etc.), or belongs to, him (e.g., garments, rings, ornaments, etc.). Voodoo-dolls are infamous examples of homoeopathic magic. The following article mixes spurious data on measles vaccination rate and disease incidence with the testimony of a Mr Nobody, presented as an expert “Dr Brian Hooker, a long time biochemical engineer who has been researching this topic and publishing multiple peer-reviewed papers on it for decades”; its main argumentative strength is to make appeal to homoeopathic magic to explain how measles vaccine can cause measles. Voodoo is the scientific horizon of antivax activists because they aim to evoke primordial fears in people. For this very reason, it is not enough to use scientific arguments against fake news on vaccines. Let’s not let antivax activists the power to shape the collective imaginary on vaccines.