Mandatory vaccination in Italy – a reaction mostly driven by the drop of immunization coverage threshold below 95% – has unleashed significant uproar in some political and social environment due to a spreading fear for adverse reactions, mostly fed by misinformation and populism. Although the vast majority of scientific community, as well as many other influential personalities, clinged together to convey the message of vaccines as a secure and well-validated prehemptive strategy to avoid some catastrophic pathologies and epidemies, clarifying that the risk of side effects is low and largely surpassed by that of infection-related complications (see here), many people are still reluctant to accept trustful scientifical evidences as a way to dissipate skepticism. In the perspective of promoting good information and avoid aberrant conducts driven by mythomania, however, the italian National Order of Biologists (Ordine Nazionale dei Biologi, ONB), seems to have preferred an “alternative”, paradoxical path.
ONB position on vaccines had already resulted quite controversial during the congress celebrating the 50th year of the ONB as Vincenzo D’Anna, president of the Order, invited several vaccine-skeptical spokepersons, but the list of arguable choices is way longer. Last september monthly ONB journal focused on the risks of vaccines, also including the well-known scientific fraud of vaccine-autism correlation among the possible dangers, and quoting studies that were published on predatory journals. Finally, only last week, Corvelva, an association well-known for its skeptical position against vaccination, announced that it had received 10.000 € from ONB to develop an “independent study” to investigate the safety of comonly used vaccines, a decision that several italian academics condemned.