The Stop Mandatory Vaccination website and associated

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

group are some of the major hubs of the American anti-vaccination movement. It was established by anti-vaccination activist Larry Cook in 2015.

Reach

The total membership of the public

page and the private group reached 360,000 before it got closed down in November 2020. The website is owned by Larry Cook, who describes himself as a "healthy lifestyle advocate." A former sound technician and Executive Director of the California Naturopathic Doctors Association, he first used social media platforms to promote conspiracy theories and ineffective treatments for

autism Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing d ...

before he became a leader of the anti-vaccination movement although he has no medical background. He created the site in 2015, in reaction to California limiting exemptions to vaccination requirements in schools. Members used the Facebook group to disseminate

conspiracy theories A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...

, for example stating that news about

epidemics An epidemic (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of Host (biology), hosts in a given population within a short period of time. For example ...

are manufactured by governments to incite people to

vaccinate A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified. A vaccine typically contains an age ...

, that the public health measures taken to minimize the impact of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

aim at preparing mass forced vaccination or that the 1918 influenza epidemic was caused by vaccines. During the

, Cook used the group to oppose mask-wearing legislation in certain situations. Cook wrote that opposing mask-wearing is a precondition to opposing COVID-19 vaccines when they would become available. Both Facebook and Twitter removed the Stop Mandatory Vaccination accounts from their platform in November 2020, as part of their measures to limit the spread of

QAnon QAnon ( ) is a far-right conspiracy theories in United States politics, American political conspiracy theory and political movement that originated in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals kno ...

misinformation. After losing his Facebook presence, Cook created a website specifically about COVID-19, Qanon and parenting, but it has been growing slowly. During the 2022 monkeypox outbreak, Cook used his constellation of social media channels to spreads misinformation about the disease.

Interaction with grieving parents

The Facebook group was at the center of a controversy over the death of a four-year-old boy whose mother asked for advice from group members, rather than getting the

Tamiflu Oseltamivir, sold under the brand name Tamiflu among others, is an antiviral medication used to treat and prevent influenza A and influenza B, viruses that cause the flu. Many medical organizations recommend it in people who have complicati ...

(which can reduce symptoms and duration of flu) that she had been prescribed by a health professional for a bout of

Influenza Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These sympto ...

that left him

fever Fever or pyrexia in humans is a symptom of an anti-infection defense mechanism that appears with Human body temperature, body temperature exceeding the normal range caused by an increase in the body's temperature Human body temperature#Fever, s ...

ish and experiencing

seizure A seizure is a sudden, brief disruption of brain activity caused by abnormal, excessive, or synchronous neuronal firing. Depending on the regions of the brain involved, seizures can lead to changes in movement, sensation, behavior, awareness, o ...

s. The advice that she received pointed to various ineffective treatments popular with naturopaths, such as breastmilk,

thyme Thyme () is a culinary herb consisting of the dried aerial parts of some members of the genus ''Thymus (plant), Thymus'' of flowering plants in the mint family Lamiaceae. Thymes are native to Eurasia and north Africa. Thymes have culinary, medici ...

, and

elderberry ''Sambucus'' is a genus of between 20 and 30 species of flowering plants in the family Adoxaceae. The various species are commonly referred to as elder, with the flowers as elderflower, and the fruit as elderberry. Description Elders are most ...

. The child was later hospitalized and died. Along with other anti-vaccination activists like

Andrew Wakefield Andrew Jeremy Wakefield (born 3 September 1956) is a British fraudster, anti-vaccine activist, and disgraced former physician. He was struck off the medical register for "serious professional misconduct" due to his involvement in the fraudu ...

and Del Bigtree, he seeks to use testimonies of parents who lost young children to causes such as

sudden infant death syndrome Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), sometimes known as cot death or crib death, is the sudden unexplained death of a child of less than one year of age. Diagnosis requires that the death remain unexplained even after a thorough autopsy and ...

and accidental

asphyxiation Asphyxia or asphyxiation is a condition of deficient supply of oxygen to the body which arises from abnormal breathing. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which affects all the tissues and organs, some more rapidly than others. There are ...

but became convinced that vaccines were really to blame for the tragedy. Stop Mandatory Vaccination circulates a number of those stories, which are highly effective at growing both the revenues of both the anti-vaccination movement and the website. In some cases, grieving parents are contacted online by anti-vaccination activists, who suggest their infant's death to be linked to vaccination, and they then share links to the website or Facebook group. The Facebook group has been used by anti-vaccination activists to identify and issue threats against parents who encourage other parents to have their children vaccinated and to feed intimidation campaigns, which are waged on

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

. Grieving parents who discuss how their children died from complication of preventable diseases such as the flu report intimidation by anti-vaccination activists.

Doctors Doctor, Doctors, The Doctor or The Doctors may refer to: Titles and occupations * Physician, a medical practitioner * Doctor (title), an academic title for the holder of a doctoral-level degree ** Doctorate ** List of doctoral degrees awarded b ...

who promote vaccination online are also targeted. Cook says that he does not condone such attacks, but people promoting vaccination "can expect push back and resistance." In 2020, Cook created a more overtly-political group, Medical Freedom Patriots. The anti-vaccine group supports the Republican Party and aims at putting pressure on elected officials by mobilizing a far-right target audience. Cook claims that he received threats because of his online activities and that members of the Facebook group were visited by police officers.

Funding and advertising

Cook funds the site by donations, advertising, and the sales of his own book and of t-shirts. Since 2015, he has raised more than $100,000 through

GoFundMe GoFundMe is an American for-profit crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses. From 2010 to the ...

campaigns, which he used to buy Facebook ads bringing parents to his Facebook group. Other donations come in through

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

, website advertising, and his

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

storefront, where he gets a portion of the sales of the anti-vaccination literature that he recommends. In 2019, revenue from his

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

account dried up since the company stopped running advertising on anti-vaccination videos, and he had to find other platforms after GoFundMe canceled his account. Cook advertises that donations fund anti-vaccination initiatives, but the money is directed to his personal bank account and serves to pay his personal expenses. A study found that Stop Mandatory Vaccination was one of the major buyers of anti-vaccine Facebook advertising in December 2018 and February 2019, the other being Children's Health Defense. Heavily targeting women and young couples, the advertising campaign highlighted the alleged risks of vaccines and asked for donations. Advertising purchases by both groups contribute to

vaccine hesitancy Vaccine hesitancy is a delay in acceptance, or refusal of vaccines despite availability and supporting evidence. The term covers refusals to vaccinate, delaying vaccines, accepting vaccines but remaining uncertain about their use, or using ce ...

and ultimately to epidemics. According to an analysis by

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...

, the group is one of three major sources of false claims on vaccination shared on the internet, the others being both the fake news site Natural News and Children's Health Defense. In 2018, after it followed up on a parent complaint, the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

Advertising Standards Authority had Facebook ads from Stop Mandatory Vaccination taken down for making misleading claims and causing "undue distress." The messages said that vaccines kill children and that doctors often report those death as sudden infant death syndrome.

References

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