As soon as the screening of the anti-vaccine documentary Vaxxed was announced at Robert De Niro’s festival, experts joined forces to oppose it

Within half an hour of Robert De Niro’s Tribeca film festival posting on Facebook that it had scheduled an April viewing of Vaxxed, the highly controversial anti-vaccine documentary, a well-oiled network of scientists, autism experts, vaccine advocacy groups, film-makers and sponsors cranked into gear to oppose it.

At the center of the network was a listserv group email list of more than 100 prominent individuals and science research bodies run out of the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) based in St Paul, Minnesota. The listserv acts as an early warning system that sounds the alarm whenever the potent conspiracy theory that autism can be caused by vaccination surfaces.

Through the listserv, conference calls were quickly organized among top scientists across the country to discuss how to respond to the news that what was seen as a scurrilous and misleading film was to be given a high-profile airing. Leading figures in the documentary world were also enlisted to add their objections to the showing of Vaxxed, the film directed by the disgraced former British doctor Andrew Wakefield, who was struck off from medical practice in 2010 for serious professional misconduct.

Having learned lessons the hard way in the past, this time the scientific community was ready for the fight. “Four or five years ago we weren’t as well organized and people didn’t realize the importance of responding quickly and strongly,” said Alison Singer, the president of the Autism Science Foundation and a member of the IAC listserv.

“Today, we know that we have to respond to every incident however large or small, because if you leave any of these discredited theories unchallenged, it allows people to think that there’s something still to be discussed,” she said.

By Friday, De Niro, a founder of the Tribeca film festival, was already feeling the blast of criticism over the decision to offer a platform to Wakefield’s work. The former gastroenterologist first published his conjectures in the Lancet medical journal in 1998, where he explored a possible connection between the triple vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella and autism.

The paper, based on just eight case studies, was thoroughly debunked and retracted by the Lancet in 2010, and at his removal from medical practice that year, Wakefield was censured for dishonesty and for abusing his position of trust. But it was too late to stop the suspicion that there might be a link between vaccines and autism from spreading like wildfire, driving down vaccination rates and contributing to outbreaks of measles and other potentially serious diseases.

Why did De Niro promote an anti-vaxx film? | Rebecca Carroll Read more

Between 1996 and 2004, vaccination rates in the UK plummeted from about 92% to 80%, leading to a spike in measles cases in later years. A similar pattern of behavior was seen among American parents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrew Wakefield addressing the media outside the General Medical Council headquarters in London. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

In his first statement on Friday, De Niro attempted to justify the decision to show Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. As the father of an autistic child, he said, “this is very personal to me and my family”, adding that he wanted the causes of autism to be “openly discussed and examined”.

But by Saturday the force of the scientific blowback unleashed in part by the listserv proved overwhelming and the scheduled viewing of Vaxxed was cancelled. In his second statement on the subject, De Niro said that after reviewing the issue with the Tribeca film festival team and “others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for”.

For the members of the listserv and for experts in the fields of autism and vaccination, it was a vindication of their longstanding fight against unproven and unscientific fear-mongering. It was also a sign of their new collective strength.

“It showed the weight and heft of the scientific community when it comes together,” said Singer. “It’s wonderful that we are now seeing science triumph – to me that was the message of what has happened: science won.”

The supremacy of the scientific process has been under attack in this presidential cycle, in which several leading Republican candidates have expressed their doubts about the science of climate change, or even denied evolution. The GOP frontrunner Donald Trump directly raised the spurious link between vaccines and autism during a televised presidential debate.

At such a febrile time, there was a palpable sense of relief among experts that in this case, respect for science was reinforced. Amy Pisani, executive director of Every Child By Two, a pro-vaccination group co-founded in 1991 by the former first lady Rosalynn Carter, said she was thrilled by the decision to pull Vaxxed.

“Robert De Niro said he wanted the conversation about vaccines and autism to happen. But that conversation has already happened – it has shown there is no connection. He just wasn’t paying attention,” she said.

William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt university medical center, said the campaign to stop the viewing of Vaxxed had notched up an important victory. Had it failed, Wakefield would have enjoyed a degree of validation from the festival.

“That would have been very dangerous – his views have already caused a slump in immunizations and created skepticism about vaccines without basis in science,” Schaffner said.

By Monday, conspiracy theorist websites were portraying the decision to pull Vaxxed as an act of censorship perpetuated by the “vaccine mafia”. Wakefield and the film’s producer Del Bigtree put out a statement saying: “We have just witnessed yet another example of the power of corporate interests censoring free speech, art, and truth.”

Alison Singer rejected the argument of censorship. “This is not about free speech; this is about dangerous speech. The question of whether there is a link between autism and vaccines has been asked over and over again, and the answer is always the same – no. We don’t discuss whether the world is flat or round any more.”