‘Shot In The Arm’ Shows How Disinformation Can Be Deadly

In 1920, over 469,000 people in the United States were infected by morbillivirus and 7,575 individuals died. This highly infectious disease – which wreaked havoc in isolated communities such as the Faroe Islands and Hawaii – was associated with encephalitis, a serious complication that could lead to brain damage, vision loss and death. Through heroic efforts of John Franklin Enders and his team, the first vaccine against this illness—hailed 100% effective—was licensed for public use in 1963 (an improved version with fewer side effects was created in 1968 by Dr. Maurice Hilleman). The name of this global infectious disease nightmare? Measles.

This was the start of Shot in the Arm, which had its world premiere at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 6^th. It’s a riveting documentary detailing the rise in vaccine-preventable infections such as measles, polio, chickenpox and Covid-19.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), measles vaccination prevented an estimated 31.7 million deaths globally. Unfortunately, despite vaccine safety and efficacy, measles outbreaks are threatening the health and safety of people all over the U.S. and the world.

“We’re seeing a big outbreak in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in a closed community of Hasidic Jewish people who did not vaccinate their children to … keep the blanket of protection over the community,” stated Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was featured in the film.

As an internal medicine physician, public health professional and former biomedical researcher who has spoken on air and written about all types of medical conditions and evidence-based treatments, I can tell you that no class of medication has undergone and passed more rigorous safety and efficacy studies than vaccines. The CDC has declared vaccines to be “one of the greatest success stories in public health,” eradicating smallpox, nearly eliminating wild polio virus and significantly reducing cases of diphtheria, pertussis (a.k.a. whooping cough) and measles. Until now.

Vaccine Hesitancy and Hostility

So, why is there so much apprehension and outright hostility regarding immunizations which have saved the lives of so many children and adults worldwide?

“Mostly because the anti-vaccine movement in the United States has shifted its focus to health freedom propaganda and politics,” explains Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, and Co-Director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. “It first geared up around phony autism claims, and that’s how I got involved.” Dr. Hotez wrote a book about his daughter’s experience with autism titled, Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.

Shot in the Arm also explores the erosion of the sanctity of science and specifically the dissolution of trust in scientists, experts and public health professionals who have devoted their careers to the pursuit of medical innovations to keep people safer and healthier. “Vaccines have been a victim of their own success,” states director, Scott Hamilton Kennedy, pointing out that people today have not witnessed the devastation of smallpox or polio. While skepticism in science is not new, the Covid-19 pandemic created a fertile breeding ground for social and technological phenomena to join forces and amplify both disorder and distrust.

“Data doesn’t matter. It’s the culture,” states Paul Offit, MD and Director of the Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Offit, an internationally recognized expert in virology and immunology and advisor to the CDC, was featured throughout the documentary, sharing memories of his own lonely childhood in a polio ward (he had a different illness). “When the polio vaccine came out, people universally embraced it. Now … [vaccine refusal] has nothing to do with safety. We live in a more cynical and divisive time. People don’t trust institutions.”

Much of this mistrust, as Hamilton Kennedy and executive producer Neil deGrasse Tyson painstakingly detail, is fueled by a relentless campaign by anti-vaccine propagandists like Robert Kennedy Jr. and Del Bigtree. Both have partnered with disgraced gastroenterologist and researcher, Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 Lancet paper hypothesizing a connection between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism was retracted (albeit eight years post-publication). Unfortunately, the damage had already been done – despite 18 different studies published after Wakefield’s paper debunking any link between autism and MMR immunization. What Wakefield did – and Kennedy and Bigtree continue to do – is the “lowest of the low,” as Dr. Offit declares in the film: “He took advantage of a desperate parent’s desire to help their child.”

As the film demonstates, parents still believe that vaccines are not only associated with autism but with multiple other harms, none of which have been proven to be true. Shot in the Arm shows footage of Bigtree – a tech-savvy television and film producer with no formal medical training – using public comment, large-scale protests and his website to spread fear, misrepresent research results and encourage vaccine-hesitant parents to distrust health professionals. Much like how an untreated abscess can fester, ooze pus, infect the bloodstream and kill the host.

Tyson shared his frustrations as a science educator. “What concerns me most is when people learn just enough about a topic to think they’re right, but not enough to know they’re wrong,” describes the astrophysicist and host of the podcast, StarTalk. “An hour-long Google search does not make you an expert.”

The filmmakers take efforts to not vilify people who are not vaccinating their children. “Not everyone who is vaccine-hesitant is a conspiracy-theorist. Many are looking for answers or are unsure,” explains Karen Ernst, Director of Voices for Vaccines, who considers vaccine hesitancy its own infectious disease. “Manipulation of the truth has been extremely frustrating,” admits Hamilton Kennedy who revealed at the post-screening Q&A that at a Christmas party hosted by Robert Kennedy, Jr., the outspoken anti-vaxxer required that all attendees be vaccinated.

There’s Hope

The film follows Ernst, host of the podcast, Vax Talk. A passionate parent-activist, Ernst has lobbied before elected officials in an effort to “inoculate people against misinformation by teaching them how [vaccines] work.” Knowledge is power.

“We now have several strong vaccine advocacy groups working to get out appropriate information to counter anti-vaccine activism,” says Dr. Hotez, who discusses the rise in mistrust in his upcoming book, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: How Health Freedom Propaganda Endangers the World.

Dr. Offit sees “lots of rays of light, like Ala Stanford.” A Black, female pediatric surgeon born to a teenage mother, Dr. Stanford not only recognized the disparities in care among Black communities at the start of the pandemic, she took swift action: she left her surgical practice to ensure vaccination of marginalized neighborhoods and started the Ala Stanford Center for Health Equity.

“In the worst of times, you find the best of people,” reflected Dr. Offit.

Hamilton Kennedy also reminds us that, by the numbers, MOST people support science including vaccinations: “The majority respect expertise, the majority respect Dr. Fauci working in real-time to give us the best information.”

New York and Beyond: My Take

Film footage of body bags and makeshift morgues in New York – the global epicenter of the pandemic in April 2020 – brought back painful memories. It’s the city where I oversaw medical services at COVID isolation and quarantine sites for SARS-CoV-2-infected homeless patients. Watching those devastating clinical images juxtaposed with Bigtree spewing harmful, anti-public health vitriol – “What are we wearing masks for? What are we locked down for?” – made my blood boil. Any individual who actively discouraged masking, distancing, vaccination and other data-driven mitigation measures indirectly (or directly) caused severe disease, hospitalization and death of thousands of people, as well as to the burnout of thousands of frontline healthcare workers – almost half of whom plan to leave their position by 2025.

Health-related misinformation can be deadly, and we must actively combat it. Healthcare professionals need to partner with finance, fashion, sports, media and entertainment industries to promote vaccines and science in general. Celebs like Hugh Jackman, Gayle King and Julia Roberts proudly – and publicly – promoted their Covid-19 vaccinations. I also believe that a politicized problem needs a political response: elected officials – guided by health experts – need to create policies to protect the public, as they did with seatbelts, air bags and bike helmets. Lastly, people who actively promote lies about science and medicine need to be held accountable. As a physician, if I lied to patients and withheld lifesaving treatments for their thyroid cancer or lupus, I would lose my medical license. Similar punitive action must be applied to people who actively propagate egregious lies about YOUR health and safety. Shot in the Arm is really the kick in the pants we ALL need to preserve the sanctity of science and protect the most vulnerable among us. Go see this film.