Anthroposophy, Politics, Science: A Warning

commentary by Richard G. Fried, MD

Although the 2020 presidential election is over, the deep divide in the fabric of American society will likely persist for years to come. The greatest risk to our future lies in the erosion of truth as a basis for finding common ground in almost all areas of public and private life in America. Due in part to the growth and proliferation of social and broadcast media, some of which have deliberately caused widespread confusion and dissention by promoting conspiracy theories as a substitute for truth, what was once more or less a fringe movement has metastasized during the past four years, and we stand at the brink of the destruction of our social contract, risking a lapse into Trumpist neo-fascism. The seventy million Americans who voted for Trump and still support his agenda will not go away soon and, many having found their racist, nativist, and white supremacist views legitimized, are feeling emboldened and angry, while others, neither racist nor white supremacist, are intentionally or unintentionally complicit with their silence.

Anthroposophy is not a political movement, and welcomes people from disparate political persuasions. However, there are political movements whose basic tenets are so antithetical to core anthroposophical principles that we are ethically compelled to make a stand in support of basic human values and fundamental truths. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that Germans were placed in a similar situation in the 1930s, and it is my understanding that the overwhelming number of anthroposophists, (but sadly not all,) did make such a stand.

This divide is affecting our anthroposophical community as well, and poses a very real threat to our movement, just at a time when our country and its citizens need more than ever the kind of spiritual guidance and clear, objective thinking which are hallmarks of Steiner’s philosophy. Unfortunately, I am witnessing with great concern as some of our medical doctors and other leaders are slipping into support for unscientific, indeed anti-scientific and conspiratorial theories having little to do with the core principles of anthroposophy. This is especially evident in two critical areas: our response to the Covid pandemic, and our statements and attitudes towards childhood immunizations. Please allow me to address them individually.

There is no longer any legitimate doubt that the coronavirus spreads through respiratory droplets and aerosols, and that transmission rates can be greatly reduced by following universal recommendations for social distancing and wearing facial masks. There are simply no legitimate reasons for not adopting these simple and relatively benign measures, and there is nothing un-anthroposophic about wearing a mask. Some people worry about the negative effect on children from having faces masked, which are certainly legitimate concerns. But children under two are anyway generally exempted from the mask recommendations. Overall, when we consider the hardships which previous generations (and millions of families currently) have had to endure, including homelessness, refugee status, war, displacement, bombings, natural disasters, famine, and food insecurity, it just seems that wearing masks in school is pretty trivial, and easily mitigated outside of school hours.

Another source of resistance comes from those in our midst who would still deny the relationship between viruses and disease. I am well aware that Rudolf Steiner said that microbes are more likely the result and not the cause of illness. For his time, he was remarkably prescient in his emphasis on the importance of what we now know as the immune system. Nevertheless, science has progressed in the last 100 years, and it is foolish to deny the role that viruses and bacteria play as a cause of illness. I am convinced that if he were alive today, Steiner would be appalled that we were still taking his ideas from 100 years ago as gospel truth. It is wrong to confuse clairvoyance with omniscience, and Steiner would—and did—reject any kind of deification.

The issue of immunizations is much more nuanced, and deserves careful consideration. One reason for the general opposition by most anthroposophists to immunization stems from comments Steiner made regarding smallpox, and the role of fear in susceptibility to illness. By 1921, vaccines against smallpox, rabies, cholera, pertussis, and tuberculosis (BCG) had been developed, but smallpox was the only widely available vaccine. The other objection has to do with routine vaccination against what used to be considered “usual childhood illnesses.” Here, Steiner spoke at great length about the benefit certain diseases can play in child development, specifically in helping the child to remodel his or her inherited body into a more fitting instrument for the unfolding individuality.

Regarding fear, much research has accumulated since Steiner’s time, corroborating his idea that fear and anxiety play a significant role in the complex question of why we become ill. Nonetheless, few would claim that freedom from fear, if anyone is fortunate enough to achieve that state, is anything like a guarantee against infectious disease. Regarding the coronavirus, it appears that immunological factors related to age and metabolic disease, in addition to viral exposure load, are the most important determinants of risk. Poverty and systemic racism certainly play a role here too.

While the so-called anti-vaxx movement seems currently focused on possible harmful trace ingredients in vaccines, anthroposophic medicine has traditionally been concerned rather with the beneficial effect of childhood diseases on child development. And while it is true that measles, mumps and chicken pox in childhood are generally benign, few would argue that polio or infant meningitis, or whooping cough in the first year of life, are basically good for children. Whooping cough in infancy, which I have witnessed numerous times, is an eight-week nightmare for parents and presents a genuine risk of serious complications and even death. Polio and infant meningitis are terrible, devastating illnesses. As a small child growing up in New York, I experienced the fear that gripped the entire city in summertime during polio epidemics. You could be playing in the street with a kid one day, only to hear the next day that he’s in an iron lung. During medical school and residency, prior to the availability of vaccines for meningitis, I was involved in the care of many two-year-olds with meningitis. The lucky ones became deaf; those less fortunate had lifelong brain damage and seizure disorders. As these illnesses have become a thing of the past, people have often tended to focus more on potential harmful effects of the vaccinations than the illnesses themselves. The case can indeed be made that skeptical attitudes towards these vaccines are directly due to their extraordinary success.

In reality, the current anti-vaxx movement bears, in my view, only the thinnest veneer of science. Decades ago, the movement was appropriately focused on risks from the older pertussis vaccine, which did have rare serious side effects. When that vaccine was replaced with a much safer, acellular vaccine, the focus immediately shifted to small amounts of mercury in vaccines. This, too, was a legitimate concern, and the use of mercury as a preservative was mostly eliminated. Good subsequent retrospective studies have since shown that this form of mercury was not toxic (remember that methanol is deadly, but ethanol is quite enjoyable!), but it is still a good thing that it was eliminated.

Instead of reassurance, attention immediately turned to bogus theories linking the MMR vaccine (which never contained mercury) to autism. Despite overwhelming evidence that there was no connection, many anti-vaxxers still cling to this idea. And now it is small quantities of aluminum and formaldehyde (a natural product of human metabolism) which have become their focus. Few laymen understand that these trace substances are essential for ensuring that the vaccinations are safe and effective. Regardless of where one stands in this ongoing debate, (and I have serious concerns about the number and frequency of administered vaccines, especially those recommended for infants and small children), the behavior of the anti-vaxx crowd has convinced me that with every advance, there is a new fallback position. Some people are simply against vaccines, but it is disingenuous to use pseudo-science to try to legitimize their beliefs. It is an interesting social phenomenon that vaccine opposition, long associated with the new-age movement, has more recently become associated with the right-wing crowd, and it saddens me to see many anthroposophical doctors espousing these same arguments.

It cannot be denied, of course, that there are rare cases of children being harmed by vaccinations. However, allow me to share experiences I have had as Medical Director of Camphill School for over 35 years. Many parents claimed that their child became epileptic, brain damaged, or autistic as a result of an immunization, but most of these claims were scientifically doubtful. Simple arithmetic shows us that if vaccinations are generally given at two month intervals during the first six or more months of life, there is a 50% chance that a totally unrelated event such as a seizure or developmental regression will occur within four weeks of a vaccine, and a 25% chance within two weeks. Nonetheless, the human mind naturally seeks to make a causal link even if there is none.

Even if we would wish our children to get diseases such as measles and chicken pox, the reality is that with immunization rates of 90% or more, withholding vaccinations is very unlikely to offer children the opportunity to get them. That time is over, and we need to acknowledge it. The resourcefulness of the human ego will, and has, found other means to achieve its ends. Whooping cough, tetanus, and meningitis still exist however, and the risk of opposition to all vaccines is not only that we are putting our children at risk, but also that it places us all too close to the growing anti-vaxx movement, which stems from a mistrust of and denial of basic science, a central feature of Trumpism, rather than any concern about the unfolding of the human Ego.

Much of this mistrust, in our circles, stems from very legitimate concerns about the materialistic basis which underlies modern medicine, and the toxic influence of the pharmaceutical/industrial complex and financial interests on medical practice and research. With these concerns I am in full agreement. Indeed, volumes can and have been written about this problem. But we must not throw out the baby with the bathwater. There is good and bad science, and good science does not mean science that happens to confirm our beliefs, but science and research which is conducted and applied according to the best possible objective standards, free from financial, philosophical, or personal bias.

In an earlier lecture (GA #75, p. 189 in the original) Steiner spoke positively about modern developments in natural science, including immunizations. He speaks about the reduction in infectious diseases which has been brought about through necessary hygienic public health measures, including immunizations. He also speaks of the anti-vaxxers of his time, so-called Impfgegner, (literally, opponents of immunization), as being groups who, although they are unable to deny the effectiveness, nonetheless have a certain irrational psychological resistance to the methods of immunization.

To my great dismay, I am witnessing reluctance on the part of some leading anthroposophists, right up to the Goetheanum, toward the use of masks and social distancing to reduce spread of the coronavirus. We all wear a seatbelt in the car, not because we are obsessed with the fear of being injured in an accident, but because it’s the right thing to do, and because not wearing a seatbelt is much more likely to provoke fear. Yet I remember the reluctance of many, including Camphill co-workers, to wear seat belts when they first became mandatory. Of course there are instances where you are better off in an accident not wearing a belt; but of course these risks are very rare compared to the benefits. Wearing a mask is still much more compelling, because it not only reduces our own risk, but those to our fellow human beings as well.

The argument has been made that the Swedish experiment of trying to achieve herd immunity would be a better way to handle the pandemic. First of all, this country, along with most others, has chosen to try to reduce transmission. So even if you believe that the Swedish model would be better (a dubious conjecture), this country has chosen otherwise, and it makes no sense to try to impose one’s own approach. We lack a coherent medical system and centralized allocation of resources such as ICU beds. We also have a population very resistant to authority. And our infection rate is much higher than almost all other countries. Furthermore, I do not know of a single example of an infectious disease which has been controlled by herd immunity without a vaccine. So yes, I trust the thousands of epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists who are recommending masks and social distancing.

Trumpism is based upon the substitution of lies and conspiracy theories for truth when it is convenient and suits one’s belief-system. Thus, many may consider my concern about possible association of anthroposophists with Trumpism to be a gross exaggeration, offensive, and even a betrayal. I am certainly not suggesting that anthroposophy as a movement in general is taking on fundamental attitudes associated with extreme right-wing ideology. Certainly, there exists a middle ground regarding childhood vaccines. There is, I believe, legitimate concern that the widespread use of multiple, combined immunizations, especially in conjunction with the overuse of antipyretics and antibiotics, is suppressing healthy inflammatory responses in children which can negatively affect health later in life, and possibly predispose to certain chronic and autoimmune conditions.

But there is a danger in the rise within our circles of distrust in science which belies our core principles and runs the risk of having us seen as an anti-science cult in league with attitudes associated with Trumpism. We cannot allow this to happen, or it will be the death-knell of our movement.

Richard G. Fried, MD (richardfriedmd@gmail.com) is Past President, Physicians’ Association for Anthroposophic Medicine; a founding member, American Board and American College of Anthroposophically-Extended Medicine; Medical Director, Camphill School, 1980-2015; and Director & Founder, Kimberton Clinic for Sustainable Medicine, 1993-present.

Author’s note: My thanks to several colleagues who have read and critiqued this manuscript and added valuable perspectives, including Drs. Alicia Landman-Reiner, Christian Wessling, Peter Hinderberger, and Peter Heusser; and Diedra Heitzman.