[jcape]

The anti-vaccination groups didn't exist at the time, so it's quite likely that Wakefield was just as startled by paranoiac monster he'd nurtured as anyone else. No member of the public (before or after Wakefield) actually knows anything about vaccines, other than the story about the Swine Flu vaccine killing more people than it saved... since any individual member of the public does not need to care about vaccines very often in their lifes, and therefore has little direct personal advantage in knowing more, vaccine safety is a very fragile exercise in blind trust.

Ironically, those who have lived and breathed vaccines for years (i.e. experts) seem to know nothing about that enormous trust placed in the vaccination process by the public---the public assumes it works and assumes it's there to keep you safe, but knows so little about them that even simple questions of safety will be translated into "vaccines bad."