Why Washington hosts the nation's fastest growing population of so-called "refusers."

Showing off his spacious rambler on Bainbridge Island, perched just above Puget Sound, Michael Belkin seems in many ways a typical affluent yet alternative-minded Northwesterner. As a self-employed financial analyst, he's got a home office and flexible hours. In his kitchen, he greets his wife Lorna, a willowy portrait painter and stay-at-home mom who's preparing a crustless quiche for a staff lunch at their kids' private school, which encourages every child to fulfill his or her "unique destiny."

Belkin rustles around and produces the health-conscious items he gives to his 10-year-old son, Sebastian, and 7-year-old daughter, Viola: fish oil, probiotic supplements, and so-called "perfect food," made up of grasses and algae. Then he heads downstairs to a daylight basement that allows him to indulge his own creative side. Fifty-seven years old, with a spiky haircut and chunky dark glasses that give him the look of an older Ira Glass, Belkin spent 10 years in Los Angeles trying to make it as a guitarist and songwriter before heading to Wall Street, where he worked for a time at the investment bank Salomon Brothers.

Over the past year, he's built a professional-quality recording studio, with top-notch digital equipment, foam insulation, and a vocal booth, on a little patio outside. From here, he's been producing a CD by a band he's put together, in which his son plays drums.

His completely unvaccinated son, it should be mentioned. Because the thing that makes Belkin unusual—although far less so than public-health officials would like—is that this suburban dad is a nationally known advocate for what he terms vaccine "choice" and what most others call the anti-vaccine movement.

He speaks at public events, posts news updates on a blog, and has written an essay for a just-released book called Vaccine Epidemic, which he'll be signing at the end of this month at Bastyr Unviversity, the school of alternative medicine in Kenmore, just northeast of Seattle. Belkin sees his band, pointedly called the Refusers, as akin to the antiwar protest-music bands of the '60s and '70s. The group's music combines a toe-tapping, funk-rock beat with lyrics meant to convey the Nazi-like horror—as he and his allies literally portray it—of this country's vaccination policies. "Vaccine Gestapo" is the name of one song. In a music video for another, his daughter Viola (also completely unvaccinated) portrays a scared Alice-in-Wonderland figure being chased by a mad doctor wielding a needle.

The reason Belkin is so passionate on the subject can be discerned from yet another song, "Stole My Baby Away." It's about his infant daughter, Lyla, who died a day after receiving the Hepatitis B vaccine shot 13 years ago. He wails in the song: "That evening, she stopped breathing/Her face turned blue/Oh Lord, her face turned blue."

It's a story that resonates deeply with other parents suspicious of vaccines—and what they see as collusion between government and Big Pharma to force parents into immunization. "He's experienced the ultimate sacrifice," says J.B. Handley, the Portland-based founder of Generation Rescue, a prominent anti-vaccine group.

Like many stories in the anti-vaccine movement, though, Belkin's is murkier than it may seem to true believers—and he doesn't make it easy to verify crucial details. For that matter, the movement as a whole is based upon theories that are not only unproven but, in key respects, directly contradicted by the past decade of scientific research.

But the anti-vaccine movement is about more than science. It's about the heartache of sick children, the norms of certain subcultures, and the debate over what the government can compel us to do for both our own health and that of the populace at large. And judging by the number of parents opting their children out of vaccinations, the movement is getting stronger. Nowhere is that more the case than in Washington state, which has become a battleground between pro- and anti-vaccine forces.

 

In 1998, a British physician named Andrew Wakefield published a paper suggesting a link between the combined measles/mumps/rubella vaccine, known as MMR, and autism. It was an "A-ha!" moment for the legions of vaccine skeptics who already blamed mass immunization for the country's spiraling autism rate, as well as assorted other illnesses. That Wakefield was a respected doctor, publishing in the preeminent journal Lancet, demanded a response.

A chorus of scientific papers subsequently refuted the purported connection between MMR and autism. Meanwhile, a British journalist exposed financial ties between Wakefield and lawyers looking to sue vaccine manufacturers. Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine, saw Lancet retract his paper, and faced new accusations—published earlier this year by the British Medical Journal—that his research was fraudulent. (Representative of just how far his star has fallen, Wakefield's most recent public appearance came during a rally last week in Dublin, Ireland, where he spoke alongside 9/11 Truthers and those who believe in a coming New World Order.)

Yet Wakefield, now living in Austin, Texas, is more revered than ever by vaccine skeptics, his vilification seen simply as more proof of a conspiracy. "As far as we're concerned, Andrew Wakefield is a hero," says Belkin's wife Lorna. "He's been lynched."

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2011-06-15/news/the-anti-vaccine-epidemic/