Why do people choose not to vaccinate?

     In the article “Regarding the Rise in Autism: Vaccine Safety Doubt, Conditions of Inquiry, and The Shape of Freedom” by Sharon Kaufman, various reasons for vaccine refusal are cited. Kaufman interviewed 22 parents, each with at least one child with a developmental delay, and discussed their interview results to better understand the reasons for the refusal (Kaufman 2010). The two main reasons why parents chose not to vaccinate their children, were that parents either did not believe in the safety of vaccines as well as it’s potential to cause autism or because their children had a developmental delay. This article discusses that while all studies showing any connection between autism and vaccines have been disproven, people still believe in its validity. Because this information is still on the internet, people continue to believe that there is a connection between vaccines and developmental delays.

    The safety of vaccines was also called into question in Kaufman’s interviews. Thimersol is a mercury-containing compound used in vaccines as a preservative (Kaufman 2010). At one time, the amount of thimerosal in vaccines exceeded the recommended amount of mercury that infants less than 6 months old should be exposed to, though this is not the case today (Kaufman 2010). Further, those who were interviewed did not completely trust the expertise of medical professionals (Kaufman 2010). Kaufman summarized her article as such: “The case of vaccine safety doubt invites ethnographers and analysts to consider subjectivity in several ways at once: as a site for the anxieties and sensibilities of risk calculation amid uncertainty; as an illustration of the consequences of the embodied, troubled relationship between knowledge and ignorance; as emergent identity shaped through cultural forms; and as a mode of linking self‐awareness, ethics and social participation.” (Kaufman 2010).