For many years, the threat of measles, a deadly disease that spreads more rapidly than COVID and regularly took thousands of lives a year, had been effectively eradicated in the United States due to the widespread acceptance of vaccination. The death of a child from measles in West Texas was the first in over a decade and it came as a shock to the American medical establishment that is now grappling with a disturbing reality: the chief public health bureaucrat is a bonafide anti-vaxxer. This episode will explore the genealogy of anti-vaccination beliefs in the United States and how they spread into mainstream politics.

Sources:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1200696/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8802588/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1123944/

https://time.com/7205900/anti-vaccination-movement-history/ 

https://historyofvaccines.org/getting-vaccinated/vaccine-faq/vaccination-exemptions

https://historyofvaccines.org/blog/timeline-of-vaccination-mandates

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-68106-1_2 

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/rfk-jr-plandemic-funding-1235173801/ 

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-02-02/rand-paul-on-vaccines-most-of-them-ought-to-be-voluntary- 

https://time.com/5175704/andrew-wakefield-vaccine-autism/ 

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-evidence-on-vaccines-and-autism 

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-bombastic-19th-century-anti-vaxxer-who-fueled-montreals-smallpox-epidemic/

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/plague-the-red-death-strikes-montreal-feature

https://www.cascadepbs.org/2020/05/seattle-always-had-anti-vaxxers-even-during-smallpox

https://www.cascadepbs.org/mossback/2025/02/history-vaccine-skepticism-1920s-seattle-rfk-jr

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