Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Okay, okay, fine. I'll do the autism vaccine thing.

Vaccines do not cause autism!


Does that cover it?

I feel I should express support for the author's valiant effort at convincing people with evidence. If nothing else people like me have something to link when talking to people who're still "on the fence."

As far as the really die-hard anti-vax folk, though... I think it was Jonathan Swift who said, "you can't reason a man out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place." The problem is not that the evidence is unclear on this subject. The problem is that anti-vax fanatics didn't come to their conclusions by looking at evidence. They got there by getting scared and latching onto that fear.

My real curiosity here is why people are so attached to that fear, to the constant paranoia that their children are the targets of a deadly assassin: the medical community! When the alternative is something with proven benefits, why leap to something that's going to endanger your child?

Can we say "Munchausen by Proxy?" Maybe that's caused by vaccines, too...

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