“That’s poetic justice,” I thought when I learned that Massimiliano Fedriga (above), a member of the
right-wing, anti-vax Lega
Nord party, had been hospitalized with a ripping case of chicken pox. He’s home now and doing fine, or so he’s said
on social media. A pox on his house, say
I.
For years,
there has been widespread confusion over vaccines in Italy. Measles is a case in point. The measles vaccine was introduced in Italy
in 1976, and any child who wished to enroll in nursery or elementary school was
required to present a doctor’s certification that he or she had been vaccinated
against measles. The obligation proved very effective and by 1999,
the disease had all but disappeared.
But in 1998, the Lancet
published its since-debunked and ultimately retracted report linking the
measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. This caused a surge in distrust of vaccines, and many Italian parents stopped
vaccinating their children. An
unfortunate confluence of events then ensued.
Because measles had become rare, and because school officials assumed
parents were still getting their children vaccinated, they became lax in asking for proof. Things remained stable for a while and despite
the relaxation, by 2003, about 90% of school age children had been given the
MMR vaccine. Good news, but it
didn’t last, and the reason has everything to do with politics.
 |
| Anti-Vax Demonstrators in Rome |
Italy has
had 65 governments since the end of WWII.
Some of them have been worse than others, but three Prime Ministers and
their parties starting in the early 1970s and continuing until the present day
stand out for corruption and/or extremism: Giulio Andreotti, of the Christian Democrat
Party, was accused of consorting with la
Cosa Nostra and conspiring to murder a journalist. Silvio Berlusconi, of Forza Italia and later the People of Freedom Party (aka the Bunga Bunga Party), was also alleged to
have Mafia ties and was mired in a scandal involving an underage
prostitute. The current Prime Minister, Giuseppe
Conte, of the Independent Party, is anything but. He functions as a mouthpiece for the populist coalition
government of the Lega Nord and the
anti-establishment party, Cinque Stelle. In short, over the past 45 years, almost as
long as the measles vaccine has been around, corruption and extremism in Italian politics has systematically eroded citizens’ trust in government.
So between the Lancet fraud and bad government, it is no
mystery that by 2015 the percentage of children vaccinated against
measles dropped from 90% to 85%--which is below the “herd immunity” percentage
recommended by the World Health Organization.
Nor is it surprising that in 2017 the number of measles cases in Italy
jumped to 5,006 from 843 in 2016, the third highest per capita rate in the EU. This is no joke. Measles can cause blindness, brain
inflammation, pneumonia, and in some cases, death.
 |
| Beatrice Lorenzin, Former Health Minister |
The
center-left government that came to power in 2017 recognized the crisis and acted swiftly. Vaccination against 10
childhood diseases was made compulsory for school admissions and the requirement was enforced. The law was named after the Health Minister
at the time, Beatrice Lorenzin. However,
that center-left government was replaced last year by the current right-wing coalition,
which just as swiftly put proof of vaccination temporarily on the “honor
system.” From September 2018, children
were allowed to attend school as long as their parents attested that they had
been vaccinated or would be by March 2019.
No doctor’s certification was required.
When this 6-month temporary honor system expired on March 12th this year, hundreds
of children who lacked a doctor’s certification were turned away from their
classrooms and nursery schools. Chaos,
Italian style.
Italy’s
“No-Vax” movement has moved in lock step with the populist government, and its
adherents are both outspoken and “out there” on the subject. Per The
New York Times 20.09.2018:
 |
|
Beppe Grillo, Cinque Stelle, center
|
- A spokesman for a Veneto No-Vax group asked rhetorically, “No one ever said that a vaccine causes autism, but if a thousand people see a U.F.O., do we want to tell these people that they are crazy or do we want to find a solution?”
- An artisan who voted for Cinque Stelle said he resented the “arrogance” of scientists who presumed to understand something as complicated as the human immune system.
- Party members in Puglia invited people to a hearing with doctors who believe eating nuts is more effective than vaccines.
- Beppe Grillo, the co-founder of Cinque Stelle, insists that vaccines are linked to autism, and claims that the pharmaceutical industry has pushed them for profit.
- Matteo Salvini, the leader of Lega Nord, tweeted that it was “mad” to impose so many vaccines and insisted the choice be left to parents, adding that he was suspicious of multinational corporations promoting vaccines.
- And repeating the populist creed, a regional Cinque Stelle council member from Lazio said, “Politics come before science.”
 |
| Matteo Salvini |
Beatrice
Lorezin, the former Health Minister responsible for the compulsory vaccination legislation
in 2017, would agree. “It’s all part of
the anti-establishment drift. But
science is the last bastion, and when you have minimized the authority of
science, there is nothing else.”
All things
considered, I might get a chicken pox vaccination before we head to
Italy this spring. I’ll take science over nuts any day.
Keep it
real!
Marilyn
This is infuriating. Also happening on a large scale in the Pacific Northwest, where apparently all those too nutty for CA have floated to the top, soon to wash into Canada. These idiots not vaccinating their kids are too young to remember polio scares or seeing kids in iron lungs, like my colleague Barbara had to endure. My friend Elliott had had polio as a child that had affected his legs and led to his early death. Or maybe they would like to meet Barb's husband Paul, who was deaf because his mother had been exposed to measles while she was pregnant. I knew a woman, born in 1900, who was deaf in one ear because of diphtheria. Not ancient history, but long enough to obliterate the memory of kids permanently affected by "side effects," when families had to be quarantined so they didn't spread disease to everyone around them.
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