I think the anti-vaxxers are close to beneath contempt. I know several people who recovered from getting polio and IT CAME BACK when they got to middle age (like the chicken pox virus, it can hang out undetected and inactive in nerve tissue).

This goes sort of hand-in-glove with people I know who believe that anything “natural” is superior to anything “chemical.” A friend switched to herbal tea when she became pregnant because she didn’t want “caffeine or other chemicals” to hurt the baby. What she chose to drink was a tea blended with white mint, aka pennyroyal–a known abortifacient. She almost lost the baby, and felt a powerful sense of betrayal: the natural herbs had turned out to have chemicals in them too…

Here is an interesting article from Microbe magazine on the percent of the population that would need to be vaccinated in order to obtain “herd immunity” from measles:

http://forms.asm.org/microbe/index.asp?bid=44732

As Michael pointed out, government, academic, and medical establishments bent over backwards, spending a LOT of money to examine the claims of anti-vaxxers. This is not “writing them off as fruitcakes.”

Anecdotal claims are not the basis for making policy decisions. They often are, though, the basis for starting serious investigations into a possible effect and that’s what happened.

When people maintain their position in the face of well-established contrary evidence they have certainly walked over the line into fruitcake land but we should definitely continue to discuss the claims, not the people.

Madeleine,

I would actually disagree that parents have the right to make stupid medical decisions about their own children. A recent case in Australia resulted in the death of an infant whose parents continued to treat eczema with homeopathic cures. This for a condition easily treated by evidence-based medical practices. We’re talking a horrible death. Parenting has responsibilities as well as privileges.

This is a far more extreme example than deciding not to vaccinate your kids and I know it’s not what you meant. However, even deciding not vaccinate ones own children has effects on other peoples kids as those unvaccinated kids become vectors to, as you noted, people with weaker immune systems.

Like most things, there’s got to be a balance between our own parental rights and our parental responsibilities, and a balance between our rights that the rights of others.

(I’ve jumped on your sentence to make a point, but I’m pretty sure you agree with me on most of this.)

Years ago I had a friend whose mother went on an anti-vaccination kick. His sister got tetanus, something rare enough that no one recognized what it was until she was too sick to save. Thereafter the mother was firmly in the pro-vaccination camp, but that’s a hell of a lesson to learn.

It is interesting, too, how often people who don’t buy the whole creation and afterlife myth and see organized religion as pinheaded are very quick to toss the baby out with the bathwater. There are social norms and principles of behavior there that have been good for mankind. That doesn’t mean I need or want the vatican, John Hagee, or Mohammed messing up the government – that is best left to the professionals who have been doing that job very well over the last hundred years or so. But, we don’t need to discount that 10% (or less) that is good and useful there. Same with the anti-vaxxers (but probably not the moon landing deniers), it is mostly hype and hysteria, but there may be some nugget in what they say that actually has a basis in reality. Completely writing them off as fruitcakes is easy. The hard job is finding out whether or not there is a nugget there worth the effort of uncovering it.

Finally, Strunk & White tell me you might have a little typo there – affect vs effect. It is minor and hyper picky, but it somehow jumps out there.

As for Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccine zealots, I know that when I want sound medical advice I always choose the chick who shows her titties off in Playboy over say, an actual doctor.

Nice to see the blog active again.