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Contend in Vain?
Author: Will in Chicago    Date: 2014-03-15 10:51:56

I am a person who believes in many things, including science and my faith.. owever, facts are things that should not be denied in pursuit of ideology -- particularly when such denial endangers public health such as the anti-vaccination movement.

Major American cities are now facing outbreaks of measles, not from unvaccinated people from foreign countries spreading the disease, but from children's whose parents do not provide shots. ThinkProgress examined this phenomenon on Friday.

Measles Is Spreading In Our Largest Cities Because People Aren’t Vaccinating Their Kids
By Tara Culp-Ressler

Many of the measles outbreaks here in the U.S. originate after an unvaccinated individual has traveled abroad and contracted the disease there. Then, when they return to this country, they can spread measles among pockets of other unvaccinated people. This isn’t an issue if most people simply get the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella. That’s why San Francisco didn’t experience a larger outbreak after the recent public transportation scare there — the rates of MMR vaccination in that city are high.

But, thanks to ongoing anti-vaccine propaganda, that’s not necessarily the case everywhere. An increasing number of parents are choosing to forgo their kids’ MMR shot based on scientifically inaccurate claims that it can lead to autism. The actress and model Jenny McCarthy, who’s a prominent anti-vaccine activist, has a lot to do with that. By 2008, about one in four adults reported they were familiar with McCarthy’s views about vaccines, and 40 percent of them said her claims led them to question vaccine safety. This issue hasn’t died down since then; just this week, Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler and his wife, former reality TV star Kristin Cavallari, said they won’t vaccinate their kids over fears about autism.

Federal health officials have already been able to connect the dots here. Last fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a report warning that anti-vaccine beliefs have fueled a rise in measles cases. Researchers noted that 2013 saw the highest number of measles cases in nearly two decades, and 80 percent of those cases occurred among unvaccinated people — most of whom cited “philosophical differences” with the MMR vaccine.

“I hope that those who are vaccine hesitant or vaccine avoidant realize there are consequences to their actions,” Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University who partnered with the CDC to publicize the release of that report, said back in September. “None of us lives in isolation.”


A great deal of research has shown no support for the claims of the anti-vaccine activists, but a few celebrity figures can carry a great deal of weight with the public. I don't agree that we should based conclusions on evidence, rather than finding evidence to fit with preconceived conclusions.

Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has commented on this in terms of creationism, but it applies to science in general.

In an interview with the Inquiring Minds podcast, astrophysicist and Cosmos star Neil deGrasse Tyson claimed that those who “cherry pick science,” like climate change deniers, “simply don’t understand how science works.”

“That’s what I claim,” he continued, because “if they did, they’d be less prone to just assert that somehow scientists are clueless.” He also said that he wouldn’t debate anti-scientific people — as Bill Nye famously did last month — because “I don’t have the time or the energy or the interest in doing so. As an educator, I’d rather just get people thinking straight in the first place, so I don’t have to then debate them later on.”



Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, a German playwright, philosopher, poet and historian, has a famous saying about stupidity from one of his plays.

Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield!
Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain.
Exalted reason,
Resplendent daughter of the head divine,
Wise foundress of the system of the world,
Guide of the stars, who art thou then if thou,
Bound to the tail of folly's uncurbed steed,
Must, vainly shrieking with the drunken crowd,
Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss.
Accursed, who striveth after noble ends,
And with deliberate wisdom forms his plans!
To the fool-king belongs the world.

Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans) (1801), Act III, sc. vi (as translated by Anna Swanwick)


(You can find more quotes from von Schiller's writings here. I particularly like what he has to say about hope.)


Mister von Schiller, I would like to present evidence that the fight against stupidity still continues and is perhaps being won as vaccine denier Jenny McCarthy has been countered on Twitter. In mentioning von Schiller and a celebrity game show hos, I may have literally gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I would like to thank Mondo and Scoopster for inspiring me yesterday to write this.
 

3 comments (Latest Comment: 03/15/2014 18:56:17 by Will in Chicago)
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