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Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 15
Anti-science bills hit statehouses, stripping away public health protections built over a century
By MICHELLE R. SMITH and LAURA UNGAR The Associated Press,October 21, 2025
More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections — vaccines, milk safety, and fluoride — have been introduced in statehouses across the US this year, part of an organized, politically savvy campaign to enshrine a conspiracy theory-driven agenda into law.
An Associated Press investigation found that the wave of legislation has cropped up in most states, pushed by people with close ties to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The effort would strip away protections that have been built over a century and are integral to American lives and society. Around 30 bills have been enacted or adopted in 12 states.
Trump administration officials are directing activists to push anti-science legislation in the states, where public health authority rests, with the ultimate goal of changing laws and minds nationally.
The effort normalizes ideas fueled by the anti-vaccine movement that Kennedy has helped lead for years. His Make America Healthy Again agenda masks anti-science ideas while promoting goals such as making food more natural or reducing chemicals. Meanwhile, vaccination rates continue to fall, allowing the infectious diseases measles and whooping cough to make comebacks as Kennedy has sought to broadly remake federal policies on public health matters including fluoride and vaccines.
The Associated Press found anti-science bills in 43 states legislatures in 2025. The bills targeted vaccine, fluoride, and milk safety laws.
Kennedy’s allies dispute that their agenda is anti-science or driven by conspiracy theories, but many experts disagree.
“The march of conspiracy thinking from the margins to the mainstream now guiding public policy should be a wake-up call for all Americans,” said Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, who has tracked the anti-vaccine movement for decades. “People are literally going to die from it as a result.”
Ashlee and Erik Dahlberg of Lowell, Ind., lost their 8-year-old son, Liam, to a vaccine-preventable disease in April.
“I thought having the vaccines would protect our children,” Erik Dahlberg said. “Unfortunately, it did not because other kids, other adults, need to be vaccinated as well in order for it to work.”
Liam was particularly vulnerable because he had severe asthma and allergies. He was vaccinated against Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib, but the disease caused his brain to swell and killed him less than two days after he complained of a headache. Hib is transmitted by respiratory droplets, often spread by coughs and sneezes. Doctors said Liam’s case likely stemmed from someone unvaccinated, Ashlee Dahlberg said.
With two other children, the Dahlbergs worry about living in one of the many US communities with low immunization rates. State statistics show one in five kindergartners in their county don’t meet vaccination requirements.
“There’s no pain that is worse than the pain of losing a child,” said Ashlee Dahlberg, who brings an urn with Liam’s ashes on family camping trips so he won’t be left out. “I do not, and can’t, live through the loss of another.”
The Dahlbergs and others are fighting a strong anti-science movement that stresses “health freedom” but disputes proven health measures.
Experts say global vaccine efforts have saved more than 150 million lives since 1974, cavities have declined dramatically since community water fluoridation began in 1945, and milk pasteurization has saved millions from foodborne illness.
Despite those successes, activists spread false conspiracy theories, some dating back decades, that safe vaccines injure or kill large numbers of people, that fluoride is used to poison the population, or that pasteurization makes milk less nutritious and primarily benefits the dairy industry.
In its analysis of legislation, AP focused on these three public health policies, which have clear medical evidence behind them and are targets of the Make America Healthy Again movement. AP searched 2025 legislation in all 50 states, analyzing more than 1,000 bills collected by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the bill-tracking software Plural for whether they undermined science-based protections for human health.
Anti-vaccine bills — 350 of them — were by far the most common. They come at the issue from various angles: barring discrimination against unvaccinated people, creating the criminal offense of vaccine harm, requiring blood banks to test for evidence of vaccinations, and instituting a 48-hour vaccine waiting period.
Legislators acknowledge they sometimes draw inspiration from other states: Bills in numerous places target mRNA vaccines, which were credited with saving millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two bills in Minnesota falsely designate them as “weapons of mass destruction.”
Since vaccines became more politicized during the pandemic, more extreme vaccine bills have passed, said Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at UC Law San Francisco.
“At times of uncertainty and trouble, conspiracy theories have more of a wedge,” Reiss said.
Most bills haven’t passed — some died and others are pending — but at least 26 anti-vaccine laws have been adopted in 11 states this year.
Most of those bills were supported by at least one of four national groups connected to Kennedy: MAHA Action, Stand for Health Freedom, the National Vaccine Information Center, and the Weston A. Price Foundation.
The groups also opposed dozens of science-driven bills, including one that would protect people by tightening rabies vaccine requirements for pets.
There’s a web of connections among the groups and Kennedy. MAHA Action has been run by people close to him, including his longtime book publisher, Tony Lyons, and former campaign staffer Del Bigtree. Stand for Health Freedom was cofounded by Sayer Ji, who now advises the group and volunteers with MAHA Action.
The group Kennedy used to lead, Children’s Health Defense, was a sponsor of conferences held by NVIC and Weston Price. Kennedy has been a featured speaker for both groups. When Kennedy purged the federal committee that advises on vaccines, he picked NVIC’s research director as a new member.
While the groups don’t always agree or coordinate efforts, they sometimes work together. NVIC, Stand for Health Freedom, and Weston Price collaborated on a June letter to President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, asking that the federal government stay out of state public health lawmaking — including religious exemptions for vaccines.
Anti-vaccine activists have noticed the tide turning away from science-driven legislation, and there has been a reversal: NVIC said that in 2015, it opposed six times as many bills as it supported. Last year, it supported more than twice as many bills as it opposed.
In an email to AP, NVIC leader Barbara Loe Fisher called the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic heavy-handed but a wake-up call in state legislatures, where “lawmakers understood the danger to liberty posed by vaccine mandates in a way they had not understood it before.”
No. of Recommendations: 2
Ashlee and Erik Dahlberg of Lowell, Ind., lost their 8-year-old son, Liam, to a vaccine-preventable disease in April.
“I thought having the vaccines would protect our children,” Erik Dahlberg said. “Unfortunately, it did not because other kids, other adults, need to be vaccinated as well in order for it to work.”
Liam was particularly vulnerable because he had severe asthma and allergies. He was vaccinated against Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib, but the disease caused his brain to swell and killed him less than two days after he complained of a headache.
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Lets summarize. Liam's parents knew Liam was particularly vulnerable...
Liam's parent sought and received the vaccination for Liam....
Liam dies two days later....
Since there is no mention of HHS or anybody else preventing Liam's parents from getting the vaccination for Liam, how does this anecdote support a claim of anti science bias?
No. of Recommendations: 14
Lets summarize. Liam's parents knew Liam was particularly vulnerable...
Liam's parent sought and received the vaccination for Liam....
Liam dies two days later....
Since there is no mention of HHS or anybody else preventing Liam's parents from getting the vaccination for Liam, how does this anecdote support a claim of anti science bias?
Seriously?
You only excerpted three short sections from the piece.
The second section literally answered your question. Community vaccination rates are now too low.
No. of Recommendations: 4
>>Since there is no mention of HHS or anybody else preventing Liam's parents from getting the vaccination for Liam, how does this anecdote support a claim of anti science bias?<<
Seriously?
You only excerpted three short sections from the piece.
The second section literally answered your question. Community vaccination rates are now too low. - Velcher
========================
Seriously. Including an anecdote about someone who received the vaccination does not bolster your point that "Community vaccination rates are now too low."
No. of Recommendations: 10
Seriously. Including an anecdote about someone who received the vaccination does not bolster your point that "Community vaccination rates are now too low."
Our reading comprehension rates ain't doing so great, either.
No. of Recommendations: 6
Liam's parent sought and received the vaccination for Liam....
Liam dies two days later....
Since there is no mention of HHS or anybody else preventing Liam's parents from getting the vaccination for Liam, how does this anecdote support a claim of anti science bias?
First, this is deceptive because it implies Liam died two days after the vaccination. Not true. He died two days after getting a headache indicating he contracted the disease.
And..
We've gone over herd immunity ad nauseam here.
"Herd immunity refers to enough people being immunized to a disease that the infection can't spread easily from one person to another. This lack of movement protects those who aren't immunized, or vulnerable. Vaccines are one way that we can become immune to dangerous diseases."
For some diseases you need a 95% vaccination rate to protect the vulnerable. Rumor has it that Vaxx separatists have established Tierra NonVaxia in Tierra del Fuego, but you have to parachute in. :)
No. of Recommendations: 8
During the 2024-25 school year, coverage for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTaP), polio, and varicella vaccines decreased among kindergartners. MMR vaccination coverage was just 92.5%, well below the 95% threshold needed to prevent transmission of measles virus. State-level coverage for MMR vaccines varied, ranging from 78.5% in Idaho to 98.2% in Connecticut, and only 10 states had coverage above 95%. These immunization gaps have led to measles outbreaks in multiple states and the highest number of measles cases since the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.
Any questions, Mike? Ask AI. :)
U.S. childhood vaccination rates (kindergarteners)
Polio: 92.5%
MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella): 92.5%
DTaP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis): 92.1%
Chickenpox (Varicella): 92.1%
Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b): 80.0% (primary series + booster)
Hepatitis B: 91.4% (3+ doses)
Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV): 81.4% (4+ doses)
Combined 7-vaccine series: 69.7%
Trends
Kindergarten vaccination coverage has decreased for all routine vaccines since the 2019-2020 school year.
The overall coverage for the combined 7-vaccine series is lower than for individual vaccines.
Non-medical exemptions for vaccines have reached an all-time high of 3.4% among kindergartners, which is associated with lower vaccination coverage, notes the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In the U.S., approximately 286,000 kindergarteners were unvaccinated against measles as of the 2024-2025 school year. Any questions,
No. of Recommendations: 10
It's kinda sad, really.
When 1poormom was a girl, there were very few vaccines. She knew people who were crippled by polio, and died of other diseases you never really hear about today. When she had kids, and vaccines were available, she made sure we had them all.
Now the generation that is raising primary school aged kids has no memory of those diseases, and believe all the conspiracy theories and pseudoscience nonsense about vaccines, and aren't getting their kids inoculated. When their children start getting sick (already happening) and dying (not yet, but it's likely coming), it will be a tragedy of their own making. They will have failed to learn from history.
We, as a species, seem to have to relearn everything for ourselves. As kids we didn't listen to our parents when they warned us about stuff (because they had already "been there", but we thought they were out of touch). As adults, we pay no heed to history, and then are surprised when we repeat the old patterns and get the same results that history told us we would get. Don't get the MMR and Tdap and polio vaccines? Expect your kids to suffer, and sometimes die, because of those diseases.
No. of Recommendations: 6
bighairymike wrote:Liam's parent sought and received the vaccination for Liam....Liam dies two days later....
Have you ever been tested for dyslexia?
No. of Recommendations: 11
Don't get the MMR and Tdap and polio vaccines? Expect your kids to suffer, and sometimes die, because of those diseases.
I remember reading an account of a teenager who was the son of anti-vaxx parents, and, upon turning 18 was going through the process of getting all the shots he'd missed because his parents had had control over his vaccines. It looked like it might take him 18 months to two years to complete all the shots and get the spacing right. It was profound, because he had to keep track of everything and he was out of high school, getting ready for college, wasn't fully protected like most of us, and had some medical people help him think his risks through. I'm glad I had sane parents.
