Replies

Gardisil aside, it's not contagious like the flu and smallpox are contagious, butmass vaccinations are a good thing. There really were children in leg braces and even some in iron lungs when I was little.

And if you don't want to vaccinate your child, you can keep him home and away from the other school children.

Just before you fly off the handle, look around and think about how so many children did not make it to adulthood just a couple of generations ago.

There is an exploitation to the hysteria surrounding a lot of anti-vaccine attitudes. I had a friend who was convinced that pertussis vaccination caused his child to be autistic because of one journal article in the Lancet that later turned out to be sheer fraud. There was no reaching this friend and I didn't even try, because some emotion had taken ahold of him and he was so relieved to find someone to blame for the inexplicable affliction.

Sort of like having a witch in the village to blame everything on.

I've seen a few of these mass hysteria come and go. I remember a particularly awful episode in the Clinton years when suddenly there were daycare centers that practiced child abuse and satan worship--ya, ya, ya--and innocent people spent years in jail. I wonder if Janet Reno will get what's coming to herm...