According to a report in TIME from 2010, “Vaccination rates among toddlers [in the UK] plummeted from over 90% in the mid-1990s to below 70% in some places by 2003. Following this drop, Britain saw an increase in measles cases at a time when the disease had been all but eradicated in many developed countries. In 1998, there were just 56 cases of the disease in England and Wales; by 2008 there were 1,370.” In the U.S., research found that vaccine skepticism increased because of Wakefield’s paper,
Per the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, the MMR vaccine is highly effective in preventing measles, helping to protect the child who is vaccinated, as well as “those unable to be vaccinated who are most vulnerable to serious disease such as immunocompromised patients and infants too young to be vaccinated.” The NFID is clear in its messaging, that “the most important thing parents and others can do to help protect their families and communities from measles is to make sure that everyone who can be vaccinated is vaccinated against measles.” And, MMR vaccination rates across the U.S. have been and continue to be fairly high — though often falling short of the 95% threshold.
To this day, many parent advocacy groups continue to defend Wakefield, despite the retraction of the critically flawed study, and that no large study has ever replicated his findings. Generation Rescue, a group founded by actors Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey rose in the wake of this study, dominating the public conversation around autism, while offering debunked and potentially harmful methods to “treat” autism. At one point, Generation Rescue’s board members included figures like Katie Wright, daughter of Bob and Suzanne Wright, the founders of influential and controversial advocacy group, Autism Speaks.
While MMR vaccination rates have slightly fluctuated over the years, the COVID-19 pandemic breathed new life into vaccine hesitancy and skepticism, prompting another drop in the number of children getting their MMR vaccines.
The Guardian reports that “influencers who gained large followings during the pandemic – including those at the forefront of sowing doubt about the COVID vaccines – appear to have refocused some attention on MMR.” An increasingly politicized topic, misinformation and conflicting messaging continues to about in current mass communication.
As recently as March 2025, Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has been criticized for his purported connection to the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 — outlined a strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas in a wide ranging interview with Fox News, largely drawing on fringe theories about prevention and treatment. Despite extensive research to the contrary, he also suggested vaccination injuries were more common than currently known. Bizarrely, the known anti-vax secretary simultaneously called for vaccinations in the affected community.
Conflicting messaging surrounding MMR vaccine conspiracy theories particularly targets parents on social media. Parents are especially vulnerable — they may be concerned about protecting their child from a vaccine that they see as potentially harmful, or they may be searching for a reason their child was diagnosed with autism. But, autism is not caused by vaccines, and there is no one known cause or reason for it.
