That’s the question Alison Rose Levy poses on the Huffington Post. Here’s my answer.
Dear Alison,
We’re passionate because we love our kids, too, and don’t want them placed at risk for horrible diseases like polio, mumps, and measles that can blind them, render our boys sterile, or cripple them for life. We’re passionate because of the selfish insistence of the anti-vaccination crowd that vaccines cause autism, despite the lack of science behind the assertion, the utter lack of proof beyond anecdotes, and the self-indulgence of people like Jenny McCarthy who claim that not only can vaccines cause autism, but that autism is “curable”, again with no proof.
Anecdotes are not evidence. Anecdotes are like eyewitness identifications in criminal trials, unreliable, unfair, and filtered through the individual bias of the beholder. I repeat, anecdotes are not evidence. On the other hand, measles epidemics are real. And preventable.
Because we live in a society that requires us to interact with others, the refusal to vaccinate children imposes YOUR values on MY community. You devalue the benefit of vaccinations, putting us all at risk.
Now excuse me while I go make an appointment to get a measles booster since I had one of the early vaccinations, and grant me my passion, because until you can prove what you preach, I consider you a danger to society.
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