Roots of a Problematic Embodied Health Movement
In Claire Decateau’s research on “The Western Disease,” she discusses the necessary conditions for groups to form “embodied health movements”-- referencing the importance of a collective shared bodily experience that challenges existing medical and scientific knowledge, often in collaboration with health professionals. She discusses how these health movements often form on the basis of cultural and natural circumstances.
Pictured above on the right is Andrew Wakefield, the UK doctor responsible for releasing a fraudulent study on the correlation between autism and the MMR vaccine in 1990– fueling the anti-vaccination “movement” across the West. It was a long-thought belief that this study was legit and it was used as political mobilization for much of the anti-vaccine movement. Still, twenty years later, this movement continues to threaten global health– seeing as vaccines have been proven to reduce life-threatening and contagious diseases. This movement sits in the hands of a community of parents and children, unified in the belief that vaccines are at the root of the development of autism based on the information provided by this medical professional.
In this photo, those who are supporters of Wakefield’s claims stand in solidarity with him as he is forced to resign from his position on the UK Medical Register, expressing their strong beliefs in his theory and arguing that he is being used as a “scapegoat” to the vaccine industry– challenging mainstream science and arguing that they are being “governed by medical corruption” as displayed on the signs. This public display was aired on national television, serving as a platform for further mobilizing and spreading the group’s beliefs and experiences, something Decateau notes as being a crucial step in the stages of politicizing.
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