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Actors are giving us advice on parenting and politics — and vaccines?
This article was originally published on June 20, 2019 in NYT Parenting.
In the second week of June, Jessica Biel graced the unglamorous halls of the California State legislature to oppose a bill that would create an extra layer of oversight for parents seeking medical exemptions to vaccines for their children. Jezebel broke the news that Ms. Biel, the actress, was lobbying legislators alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion and an infamous vaccine skeptic.
Ms. Biel was quickly excoriated for her efforts, and she defended herself on Instagram, stating that she’s not anti-vaccine, she’s for the rights of parents to make their own decisions (claiming “health freedom” is a common rhetorical tactic for people against vaccination).
Ms. Biel bolstered her argument against the bill by citing personal experience, not scientific expertise. “My dearest friends have a child with a medical condition that warrants an exemption from vaccinations, and should this bill pass, it would greatly affect their family’s ability to care for their child in this state,” she wrote.
Vaccines are safe and effective, and the vast majority of Americans vaccinate their children — but anti-vaccine sentiment and scientific misinformation has proliferated over the years, and clusters of parents refusing vaccines for their children are making experts worry that the current measles outbreak, the biggest in recent years, could turn into an epidemic. The percentage of parents who have concerns about vaccines has skyrocketed since 2000, in part because famous people who are parents, including Ms. Biel, Jenny McCarthy, Alicia Silverstone and Kristin Cavallari, have expressed skepticism about vaccines or lobbied against vaccine-related laws.
How did this happen?
As long as there have been widely recognizable celebrities, those celebrities have been getting involved in politics, said Mark Harvey, the author of “Celebrity Influence: Politics, Persuasion, and Issue-Based Advocacy” and the director of graduate programs at the University of Saint Mary.
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