The health wars: за кризата в доверието към ваксините
The Health Wars: On the Crisis of Vaccine Confidence

Summary/Abstract: In early 2019, the World Health Organization identified vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health. At the end of the same year and in the beginning of 2020, a pandemic of the new coronavirus was announced. Despite the recognized and widely proclaimed success of the achievements of science and technology in the twentieth century, at the beginning of the new century vaccines and immunoprophylaxis – one of the greatest achievements of medicine and public health – became a target of mistrust. More and more parents in more and more developed countries are refusing to immunize their children, fearing that vaccines are not only unnecessary and ineffective, but also dangerous. Experts, for their part, believe that vaccines have become “victims of their own success”: when pathogens are not present in everyday life, thus gradually leaving the collective memory, the practical reasons for combating them are difficult to justify. Institutions and citizens are entering a battle for public and individual health. The article outlines the problem of growing distrust of immunization practices and vaccines in particular. It presents the genesis of anti-vaccination attitudes and movements and the points of tension between national and international health authorities, on the one hand, and citizens, on the other. It also suggests a possible interpretive framework for studying the phenomenon. At the centre of the analysis is the crisis of expertise in modern Western civilization.

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