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UPDATE: Al Sharpton, National Action Network Cancel Anti-Vax Forum Amid Mounting Pressure from Physicians, Scientists
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Oct 15, 2019
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By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Oct 15, 2019
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UPDATE: This event was canceled late Tuesday night, according to NAN spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger who said that NAN had anticipated the forum would offer multiple viewpoints but when it determined that wasn't the case it cancelled.
The Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network are set to host a “vaccine forum” next Saturday in Harlem featuring prominent anti-vaccination activists, to the collective chagrin of scientists and pediatricians, just a month after the city declared an end to the largest measles outbreak in nearly 30 years.
Scheduled for the morning of October 19 at the National Action Network’s headquarters on 145th Street, Sharpton is slated to welcome guests, alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmental attorney turned anti-vaccine proponent whose group is suing New York State over its repeal of religious exemptions to vaccines.
An organizer and speaker at the event, Curtis Cost, is described as the President of the National Action Network’s Scholars Committee and though he has no medical or scientific background, according to his biography, he did write a book called Vaccines are Dangerous: A Warning to the Global Community. In it, he argues that vaccines don’t work, polio and tetanus are not serious illnesses and HIV doesn’t exist.
Rachel Noerdlinger, a spokeswoman for the National Action Network said the forum was supposed to cater to, “all sides of the issue and NAN has not taken a public position.” She did not specify which one of the several panelists would speak in favor of vaccines, though she added she was awaiting some last minute changes to the event.
Dr. Oliver T. Brooks, a pediatrician with a specialization in immunology, and the president of the National Medical Association, a network for African-American physicians, called it “harmful” for a respected figure like Sharpton to host a forum featuring anti-vaccine activists.
“There is already a distrust in the African-American community of government, of pharmaceutical companies and of general research due to things that have happened..that are legitimate concerns,” said Dr. Oliver Brooks, citing the federal government’s decades-long Tuskegee study where African-American men were deliberately infected with syphilis and denied treatment. “So now this directly taps into that distrust. They did this to us before, now they’re trying to do something to us now.”
Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, and a regular critic of anti-vaccine activists, said he was disappointed by Sharpton. Hotez has occasionally appeared on Sharpton’s MSNBC show as a guest to discuss his research on Zika virus and Ebola.
“His organization should not be hosting this event,” he said. “He should not be appearing at this event. This is an event which is intended to deliberately work towards depriving kids in Harlem of their life-saving vaccines and to make parents question the safety of those vaccines.”
Dr. Sean O’Leary with the American Academy of Pediatrics also expressed dismay over the upcoming event.
“Just when we get done with the measles outbreak, actions like this threaten the public’s health by starting another measles outbreak,” he said, referring to the recent measles crisis in New York City that sickened 645 people. “Here, in another part of New York City, we have folks ready to go into a community and spread more misinformation and pseudoscience.”
The National Action Network hosted a similar panel in 2010 at the Harlem Branch of New York Public Library, also with Curtis Cost. And Cost and Sharpton’s relationship extends even further back; they hosted forums about HIV/AIDS Harlem in the 1990’s, questioning the scientific consensus about that virus, according to the New York Times. Panelists at that event argued the World Health Organization was committing intentional genocide of black people by spreading HIV.
Just last month, New York City just emerged from its longest measles outbreak since the 1990s, one that sent 52 people to the hospital, most of whom were unvaccinated children from the Orthodox Jewish community. Public health officials laid the blame at the feet of anti-vaccine activists, some within the Orthodox community and some outside it, for spreading fear about vaccines through massive symposiums, robocalls, hotlines and printed booklets distributed door to door.
“During the 2019 epidemic, they paraded around with yellow Jewish stars, fake Holocaust imagery,” said Hotez, referring to one anti-vaccination activist's evocation of Nazi Germany during the measles outbreak. “Now I’m worried... they’re going to be calling vaccines the next Tuskegee experiment. I’m very concerned.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated when the forum was cancelled. It was cancelled late Tuesday night, not Monday night.
Tagged
al sharpton
national action network
anti-vaccine
robert f kennedy jr
vaccine
Gwynne Hogan
Gwynne Hogan is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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