A reader named Jeannie has sent me the following email:
The Somalis are concerned about autism and anti-vaxxers brought in Andrew Wakefield to caution them.
In the light of your recent essays on free speech, what would you do about this sort of thing where the message of anti-vaxxers is causing the illness of so many. Andrew Wakefield is unrepentant. Could you address this on your website?
And yes, Jeannie, I’ll respond briefly. First, though, some data. Here’s the vaccination rate in Minnesota as reported by the Post; the decline in the non=Somali rate is likely statistically insignificant (they don’t say), but the rate in the Somali community is surely significant:
and a bit of the article:
Salah [a Somali-American whose two unvaccinated children got measles, with one becoming seriously ill] no longer believes that the MMR vaccine triggers autism, a discredited theory that spread rapidly through the local Somali community, fanned by meetings organized by anti-vaccine groups. The activists repeatedly invited Andrew Wakefield, the founder of the modern anti-vaccine movement, to talk to worried parents.Immunization rates plummeted, and last month the first cases of measles appeared. Soon there was a full-blown outbreak, one of the starkest consequences of an intensifying anti-vaccine movement in the United States and around the world that has gained traction in part by targeting specific communities.
. . . Minnesota’s Somali community is the largest in the country. The roots of the outbreak there date to 2008, when parents raised concerns that their children were disproportionately affected by autism spectrum disorder. A limited survey by the state health department the following year found an unexpectedly high number of Somali children in a preschool autism program. But a University of Minnesota study found that Somali children were about as likely as white children to be identified with autism, although they were more likely to have intellectual disabilities.
Around that time, health-care providers began receiving reports of parents refusing the MMR vaccine.
As parents sought to learn more about the disorder, they came across websites of anti-
vaccine groups. And activists from those groups started showing up at community health meetings and distributing pamphlets, recalled Lynn Bahta, a longtime state health department nurse who has worked with Somali nurses to counter MMR vaccine resistance within the community.
At one 2011 gathering featuring Wakefield, Bahta recalled, an armed guard barred her, other public health officials and reporters from attending.
Fear of autism runs so deep in the Somali community that parents whose children have recently come down with measles insist that measles is preferable to risking autism. One father, who did not want his family identified to protect its privacy, sat helplessly by his daughter’s bed at Children’s Minnesota hospital last week as she struggled to breathe during coughing fits.
I think you can guess my response to Jeannie’s question. Yes, banning the discredited Wakefield from speaking could have reduced the rate of measles infection. But you can’t ban Wakefield from speaking and at the same time not ban the many anti-vaxer websites. It is in fact the public rise of anti-vaxer sentiments that has led to counterspeech asserting, with data, that the preservative thimerosal is not a danger to children (it’s not even in most vaccines), and that vaccination doesn’t cause autism.
If we ban Wakefield’s anti-science sentiments, we must also ban the faith-healing sentiments of Christian Scientists and other groups who claim that disease is a result of either impure thoughts or bad thoughts. Many children have died from following this form of faith healing, as I show in Faith Versus Fact. (This doesn’t mean, of course, that doctors have to withhold medical care from children of such parents, though it’s allowed in a distressingly larger number of states.)
If you ban Wakefield because of possible harm, you must ban all “hate speech”, including Holocaust denialism, because it might lead to future harm, like the killing of Jews. You must ban climate-change denialists because, in the end, acting on their beliefs could destroy our planet.
There is nobody we can trust to decide which speech should be banned because it’s “harmful”. The best thing to do is allow people to say what they want (of course, nobody is obliged to give Wakefield a platform), and counter anti-science sentiments with good science. If people went to the Centers for Disease Control site, for instance, they’d quickly find that vaccination is safe. Likewise, virtually all doctors will tell parents to get their children immunized.
My position on freedom of speech has never altered, and it’s the position taken by the U.S. courts. Nobody should be banned by the government from saying anything they want so long as it isn’t calling for immediate violence. Nor can speech lead to a climate of harassment in the workplace. Finally, this doesn’t mean that anybody can set up a soapbox anywhere and give speeches. There are procedures and permits for such public speech.
It also does not mean that colleges must give a platform to every Nazi and crackpot, nor that newspapers or the media must allow such people to write columns. It does mean that if groups in a state university or other public organization invites a speaker, it is unconstitutional for those who did not extend the invitation (like a college administration) to rescind the invitation. Even private organizations shouldn’t do that, for nobody can be trusted to decide what speech should be censored or who should be “de-platformed”.
Further, there are good reasons to allow even some crackpots to speak. I’ve long said that Holocaust denialists can and should be allowed to speak at colleges, for hearing their arguments is the best way to inspire you to find out why they’re wrong. I myself have benefited in this way. Hearing views you think are too odious to even be countenanced—like no woman should be allowed to have an abortion, or that gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry—still allows us to examine our own opposing beliefs and refine and strengthen them. (And sometimes change them, as happened during the U.S. civil rights movement.) For an example of someone who has refined her pro-choice thinking in light of anti-abortion sentiments, I draw your attention to Judith Jarvis Thomson’s incisive article, “A defense of abortion.”
In the end, if speech that seems odious takes place, we always have the right to publicly demonstrate or produce counter-speech. Censorship of Andrew Wakefield won’t stop anti-vaxers from circulating their lies, which are best fought by public counter-reaction. Censorship does not end harmful or bigoted thoughts; it only drives them underground.
In this respect America is lucky—and unique. As Neil Gaiman said:
The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don’t have that.
Readers are of course invited to disagree civilly, giving their own views of what speech should be censored.
