Anti-vaccine leader tells parents to fight immunization bill

Former physician Andrew Wakefield speaks with students after a lecture at Life Chiropractic College West in Hayward Friday. Wakefield's discredited research linking autism and immunizations helped launch the modern anti-vaccination movement. less Former physician Andrew Wakefield speaks with students after a lecture at Life Chiropractic College West in Hayward Friday. Wakefield's discredited research linking autism and immunizations helped launch the ... more Photo: Erin Allday, The Chronicle Photo: Erin Allday, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Anti-vaccine leader tells parents to fight immunization bill 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Andrew Wakefield, the British scientist and former physician whose discredited research linking autism and immunizations helped launch a worldwide anti-vaccination movement, encouraged Californians Friday to fight back against a state Senate bill that would make childhood vaccinations mandatory.

Speaking at Life Chiropractic College West in Hayward, Wakefield told hundreds of students packed into two or three classrooms that they needed to be the “pitchforks and torches” in Sacramento demanding that state legislators reject SB277.

“Your rights are being ripped from you,” Wakefield said. “Parents are no longer going to be in charge of their own children. This is the fight that has to be taken to Sacramento.”

Wakefield’s lecture, full of dark warnings of what could happen to the state’s children and families if vaccines were made mandatory, marked his first foray into California’s political movement to end personal belief exemptions, a long-standing policy that has allowed parents to opt out of school-required immunizations for any reason.

Two senators wrote the bill to end those exemptions in response to an unprecedented outbreak of measles, which sickened more than 130 people in California in the first three months of this year. The size and severity of the outbreak has been blamed, by scientists and the public at large, on people who were not fully vaccinated.

SB277 passed a tough committee vote this week and moves on to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, where it faces a friendlier audience, including five Democrats who are either supporters of the bill or have already voted in favor of it. The bill may need further support from the Senate Appropriations Committee before moving to the full Senate.

Immunization backlash

On Friday, Wakefield warned his audience that if the bill passes, it will open a door toward mandatory vaccinations for people of all ages, and create a “society that is dependent on vaccinations.”

He had more threatening forecasts, too. If immunizations are made mandatory, he said, Child Protective Services could “take your children away, and they will vaccinate them. And then they will bring them back and leave it to you to pick up the pieces.”

Authors of the Senate bill — Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Benjamin Allen, D-Santa Monica — could not be reached Friday to respond to Wakefield’s comments.

Wakefield has been at the center of the anti-vaccination movement since his autism paper, published in the journal the Lancet in 1998, triggered the first major modern backlash against childhood immunizations. The paper was a case study of 12 children with autism who became symptomatic after getting the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, known as MMR.

Though the paper was vague and inconclusive as to whether there was truly a link between autism and vaccines, Wakefield immediately began to speak against childhood immunizations. Dozens of studies have repeatedly disproved Wakefield’s speculations, and in 2010 the Lancet retracted the initial paper. Wakefield’s medical license was revoked the same year, and he’s since moved to the United States.

But vaccine proponents say the damage was done as soon as that first paper was published. And now some are furious that he’s started speaking out against SB277.

“Andrew Wakefield is a discredited physician from another country who has come here, and now he’s meddling in our politics and our policies and jeopardizing the health of our children,” said Leah Russin, a Palo Alto mother who founded Vaccinate California, which promotes efforts to make childhood immunizations mandatory.

Russin said she knows of an infant, too young to be immunized, who got measles during this year’s outbreak and may have long-term vision problems now. “That’s crazy,” she said. “And that is Andrew Wakefield’s fault.”

But to parents and others opposed to vaccines, Wakefield is almost hero-like, and he presents himself as a martyr who keeps challenging mainstream science and medicine despite repeated attempts to discredit and disgrace him.

“It doesn’t matter if I go to the grave discredited,” Wakefield said Friday. “I don’t care what they say about me. In fact, I have nothing to lose now. This is such an important issue.”

Chiropractic students in the overflowing main auditorium gave him two standing ovations Friday and took turns pumping his hand and thanking him after the lecture. School President Brian Kelly told the audience after Wakefield spoke that he was considering hiring buses and canceling classes Tuesday so students could attend the next Senate hearing.

In an interview, Kelly said Wakefield’s speech wasn’t intended as a political gesture or to rally troops to fight the Senate bill. He said the school brings in a wide cast of lecturers with varying scientific backgrounds in topics that will interest his students. And just because Wakefield’s work has been disproved doesn’t mean he isn’t worth hearing out, Kelly said.

“A lot of people have been discredited in history,” Kelly said. “People who said the world was round were discredited.”

'Hero of sorts’ to skeptics

Dr. Art Reingold, a UC Berkeley epidemiologist who helped create national childhood immunization policy, said Wakefield has been a “hero of sorts” to the anti-vaccine community for so long that it’s going to be difficult to break that bond.

“At this point he goes around being a hero to those who are opposed to vaccination,” Reingold said. “Once something is stuck in people’s minds or makes an impression, the subsequent scientific work may not give them the proof they need. You can have a lingering effect that continues to really cause public health harm.”

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday