CIDRAP In consulting rooms across America, physicians face a challenge that no medical school prepared them for. A parent arrives with a list of concerns gathered from social media, podcasts, and well-meaning friends. The questions sound scientific. The language borrows from immunology. The citations reference real studies. And yet the conclusions are wrong.
These parents are not ignorant. Many are educated, thoughtful, and deeply invested in their children’s health. They have encountered a sophisticated ecosystem of misinformation that exploits legitimate parental instincts: protect your child, question authority, demand evidence. The problem is not that these parents are asking questions. The problem is that they are receiving false answers.
The current moment has made this worse. The head of the Department of Health and Human Services has spent decades promoting vaccine skepticism and has now revamped the US childhood immunization schedule to have one-third fewer recommended vaccines. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which guides the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has reversed long-standing recommendations without presenting new safety data. Measles, a disease eliminated from the United States in 2000, has returned at levels not seen in decades.
The information environment has never been more polluted, and the stakes have never been higher.
The most persistent myths about childhood vaccines dissected below and in part 2 are not fringe theories. They are the claims that appear most frequently in my clinical practice and in the broader public discourse.
Each has been studied extensively. Each has been refuted. And yet each persists, because misinformation travels faster than correction and because these myths tap into fears that are genuinely human.