This pediatrician has a stark warning about the risks of 'anti-science'

A pediatrician, author and co-inventor of a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine warns that the anti-vaccine movement has morphed into a political force that threatens the world's gains against deadly childhood infections like measles.

Dr. Peter Hotez, author of the new book The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist's Warning, says the movement is well organized, well financed and includes powerful organizations in the U.S. such as the Republicans' House Freedom Caucus, certain senators and what he calls "contrarian-" and "pseudo-intellectuals."

Some are now looking to target routine childhood and adult immunizations, he told White Coat, Black Art host Dr. Brian Goldman.

"We could … reverse all of the successes we've had in the last two decades around measles immunization or whooping cough," he said. "I'm worried about that."

Hotez says his previous book, 2018's Vaccine Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism, on the genetic roots of his adult daughter's neurodivergence, made him "Public Enemy Number One or Two" with a couple of anti-vaccine groups, which have long made debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.

More recently, he and Maria Elena Bottazzi, who are both co-directors of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, were co-nominated for last year's Nobel Peace Prize for their work developing Corbevax, a cheap vaccine to protect people from severe effects of COVID-19. It's already reached 100 million people in places such as in India, he said. 

He says he's been stalked at home and confronted outside a public talk, in addition to getting online threats.

The long-simmering yet mostly fringe resistance to vaccines became more politicized amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when adherents rallied around concepts of health or medical freedom, fanned by extremists on the far right such as the Proud Boys. 

The increasing hostility of what Hotez calls the "anti-science" movement worries him.

"They don't leave a lot of information in their emails when they say 'the army of patriots' is coming to hunt me down," he said of his most extreme critics. "But the nature of the attacks, in terms of its political references, leads me to think that a lot of it are based in extremism on the far right and their adherents." 

In the dedication of his latest book, Hotez lists law enforcement agencies helping to protect him, such as the Houston Police Department and security at his hospital. 

Hotez writes that the movement is globalizing beyond the U.S., including events like last year's trucker convoy in Canada.

"There's no question that the U.S. anti-vaccine movement made an effort to pile on and to exacerbate what was happening in Canada," he said in an interview. 

But Maya Goldenberg, a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph, views the anti-vaccine sentiment differently.