The Stop Mandatory Vaccination website and associated Facebook group constitute one of the major hubs of the Americananti-vaccination movement. The private Facebook group has 178,000 members. The website is owned by naturopathLarry Cook, who describes himself as a "healthy lifestyle advocate". A former sound technician and Executive Director of the California Naturopathic Doctors Association, he first used social media platforms to promote conspiracy theories and ineffective treatments for autism before becoming a leader of the anti-vaccination movement. He has no medical background. Members use the group to disseminate conspiracy theories, for example stating that news about epidemics are manufactured by governments to incite people to vaccinate, that the public health measures taken to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic aim at preparing mass forced vaccination or that the 1918 influenza epidemic was caused by vaccines. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cook used the group to oppose mask-wearing legislation in certain situations. Cook wrote that opposing mask-wearing is a precondition to opposing COVID-19 vaccines when they would become available.
Interaction with grieving parents
The Facebook group was at the center of a controversy over the death of a 4 year-old boy, whose mother asked for advice from group members rather than getting the Tamiflu that she was prescribed by a health professional for a bout of Influenza that left him feverish and experiencing seizures. The advice she received pointed to various ineffective treatments popular with naturopaths, such as breastmilk, thyme and elderberry. The child was later hospitalized and died. Along with other anti-vaccination activists such as Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree, Cook seeks to use testimonies of parents who lost young children to causes such as Sudden infant death syndrome and accidental asphyxiation, but got convinced that vaccines are really to blame for the tragedy. Stop Mandatory Vaccination circulates a number of those stories, which are highly effective at growing both the anti-vaccination movement and the website's revenues. In some cases, grieving parents are contacted online by anti-vaccination activists suggesting their infant's death is linked to vaccination and they then share links to the website or Facebook group. The Facebook group has been used by anti-vaccination activists to identify and issue threats against parents who encourage other parents to have their children vaccinated, feeding intimidation campaigns that are waged on social media. Grieving parents, who discuss how their children died from complication of preventable diseases such as the flu, report being intimidated by anti-vaccination activists. Doctors who promote vaccination online are also targeted. Cook says that while he does not condone such attacks, people promoting vaccination "can expect push back and resistance". In 2020, Cook created a more overtly political group, Medical Freedom Patriots. The anti-vaccine, pro-Republican group aims at putting pressure on elected officials by mobilizing a far right target audience. Cook says he received threats because of his online activities and that members of the Facebook group were visited by police officers.
Funding and advertising
Cook is funding the site through donations, advertising and the sales of his own book and t-shirts. Starting in 2015, he raised more than $100,000 through GoFundMe campaigns. Other donations come in through PayPal, website advertising and his Amazon storefront, where he gets a portion of the sales of the anti-vaccination literature he recommends. In 2019, revenue from his YouTube account dried up when the company stopped running advertising on anti-vaccination videos and he had to find other platforms when GoFundMe cancelled his account. While Cook advertises that donations fund anti-vaccination initiatives, the money is directed to his personal bank account and also serves to pay his personal expenses. A study found Stop Mandatory Vaccination was one of the major buyers of anti-vaccine Facebook advertising in December 2018 and February 2019, the other being Children's Health Defense. Heavily targeting women and young couples, the advertising highlighted the alleged risks of vaccines and asked for donations. Advertising purchases by these groups contribute to vaccine hesitancy and ultimately to epidemics. According to an analysis by NBC News, the group is one of three major sources of false claims on vaccination shared on the internet, the other two being the fake news siteNatural News and Children's Health Defense. In 2018, following up on a parent complaint, the British Advertising Standards Authority had Facebook ads from Stop Mandatory Vaccination taken down for making misleading claims and causing "undue distress". The messages said vaccines kill children and doctors will often report those death as Sudden infant death syndrome.
