In a report prepared in 2017, Abin (Brazilian Intelligence Agency) assessed that Donald Trump, then president of the United States and now again a candidate for the White House, revived the global anti-vaccine movement.
The same document stated that there were reports in the press about resistance to immunization in Brazil, but minimized the degree of articulation by national anti-vaccine groups.
“Such growth may be associated with the international resurgence of the anti-vaccination movement. However, the movement in Brazil is restricted to relatively few individuals and does not, to date, have the overt support of organizations, politicians or prominent personalities,” said the document obtained by Sheet via the Access to Information Law.
The intelligence report was prepared before the Covid-19 pandemic, when then-president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), elected in 2018, would become a vector of disinformation about vaccination.
Inspired by Trump, the Brazilian embraced hydroxychloroquine as a flag against coronavirus — the medicine is ineffective against the disease and would be left aside by the USA.
The intelligence agency pointed out that Trump, back in 2014, used false data to associate childhood vaccination with the development of autism.
“The global anti-vaccine movement has intensified since the elections of Donald Trump, who publicly defended the relationship between autism and vaccination and is critical of US vaccination policy. Other personalities from the American artistic and political world contribute to the movement’s increase in popularity”, he stated the agency.
Abin’s analysis is five pages long and entitled “the origins of the anti-vaccination movement in the world and the preliminary overview of the anti-vaccination movement in Brazil”. The document received a reserved stamp, becoming confidential for five years.
The Brazilian body said that Trump promoted the denialist argument of Andrew Wakefield, who had his medical license revoked due to a fraudulent study that linked MMR to autism.
“Trump reportedly met with Wakefield and other anti-vaccine activists shortly before being elected. The trailer for the documentary (Vaxxed, related to Wakefield’s article) promotes the anti-vaccine testimony of several politicians from the Republican Party, the same party as Trump. In addition to Trump , other personalities defend anti-vaccination arguments and help to proliferate the movement internationally”, said Abin.
Despite having minimized the strength of Brazilian groups that disseminated false data about vaccination, the agency pointed out that the movement “threatens the eradication of diseases such as measles, even in countries with high vaccination coverage, such as Brazil”.
“The Brazilian anti-vaccination movement is not organized and is restricted to a few open groups on social networks, but it involves a few thousand profiles that are supposedly sympathetic to the non-vaccination of children,” stated the agency.
Abin concluded that measures to reinforce mandatory vaccination in Brazil would be “effective against the expansion of the movement”.
The intelligence report was prepared in August 2017, during the Michel Temer (MDB) government, and forwarded to the GSI (Institutional Security Office) and the ministries of Health, Social Development and Education.
The report dedicates little more than a page to dealing with the anti-vaccine movement in Brazil. The agency pointed out that the members were organized in groups on Facebook. In one of them, with around 8 thousand members, there were testimonies from Brazilian parents who refused to vaccinate their children, according to Abin.
“In the group, tips are published, for example, on how to get around the requirement to present a child’s vaccination card at schools: ‘say you lost it and present a police report’. As children’s vaccination is required by the Child and Teenager (Law 8,069/1990), members of the group are clearly inciting non-compliance with a legal obligation”, the agency further stated.
Abin also supported two Brazilian groups against vaccination for HPV and rotavirus, with more than 5,000 members each. “Both show no connection with personalities or organizations that defend the cause.”
How to Sheet revealed, Abin criticized the Trump administration during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a March 2020 report, the agency said the US president “downplayed the severity of the outbreak and took limited steps to address it.”
Part of Trump’s supporter base is against vaccination. In 2021, the former president was even booed during an event after confirming that he had taken a booster dose of the vaccine.
In a video leaked in July 2024, Trump repeated conspiracy theories about immunization.
Brazil reversed the downward trend and expanded childhood vaccination in 2023. This caused the country to leave the list of the 20 countries with the most unimmunized children in the world.
