Amanda Erickson
In Australia, there used to be widespread agreement that vaccinating children against fatal diseases was a good thing. Kids got shots, and the rate of childhood diseases plummeted.
But then things changed. In 1994, a group calling itself the Australian Vaccination Network launched a campaign claiming the risks of vaccines (which are essentially nonexistent). Its core mission: “to ensure that vaccinations are never made compulsory for Australian children." (Years later, the group was forced to change its name to the Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network, or else be de-registered.) The group seized on a fraudulent, wholly discredited paper linking the MMR vaccine to autism.