The Controversy over Pediatric Vaccination Policies Among Scientists and Experts. the Italian Case

Most literature about vaccine hesitancy has been focused on parental attitudes. Less attention has been devoted to both scientists and experts (general practitioners, pediatricians, health care professionals and science journalists) who raise criticism about immunization policies. This consideration aims to balance the current emphasis in the literature on parents’ attitudes about vaccination, offering a complementary angle to reframe and widen the controversy.

Focusing on scientists and experts (who can shape and feed parents and people’s attitude), an unattended complex picture of multiple attitudes towards vaccines and vaccinations has been discovered through a qualitative content analysis of texts (appeared in the Italian press, TV and pop-science blogs) related to the harsh public debate, held between March 2017 and November 2018, triggered by the legislative proposal of making ten vaccinations mandatory for children.

Unlike oversemplications reproduced by misleading dichotomies (such as orthodox and heterodox positions, Western science/medicine versus alternative medicine), the analysis reveals 9 different positions along the continuum of immunization attitudes, ranging from radical acceptance of vaccinations (both compulsory and recommended) to radical rejection, which constitute a fuzzy set. These positions are related by distinct and sometimes opposite or non-negotiable motivations and definitions of disease and freedom, patient, community, and individual empowerment.

Hence, the data suggests that the conflict is only superficially between ‘pro-vaxxers’, hesitants, pro-choice vaxxers or antivaxxers but amid standard versus contextual and personalized medical approaches to health, both having scientific foundations, in which the vaccination act should be asses disease by disease, case by case, vaccine by vaccine, community by community, and country by country. In addition, they sustain that the modality of vaccines administration, the age for vaccination, the genetic constitution and individual history of the receiver etc. should be carefully assessed. Hence, the criticism of immunization policies cannot be framed as simply anti-scientific or ideological.