Though I neither have nor ever wanted children, I am interested in all the anti-vaccination arguments. If nothing else, it's interesting how so many people, as with the Climate Change debate, will place emotional feelings — what they want to have be true — ahead of or on an equal footing with overwhelming scientific consensus.
There's a certain kind of skepticism towards What The Experts Say that is healthy and which should be encouraged. Where I have a problem with Skeptics sometimes is when they start with — and refuse to budge off the presumption — that the Popular Opinion or the government's position are lies just because they're the Popular Opinion or the government's position. Many lifetimes ago, I spent some time amongst Kennedy Assassination Buffs who were willing to consider absolutely any theory of J.F.K.'s killing — a few even involving Martians — as long as it wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald as lone assassin.
That one was off the table. It was automatically wrong because "they" believed it. If you asked some of these folks what day it was, they would have checked the newspaper, seen it said Monday and then told you, "It's any day but Monday. You're a fool if you think it's Monday!" I thought some of them just felt hipper and smarter than the masses if they didn't believe what the masses believed. Personally, I think that it's fine to believe Popular Opinion is wrong but you need a better reason than just that it's Popular Opinion.
I can imagine a rational anti-vaccination argument. Some doctors (probably a lot more than a few) could come to the conclusion that a given vaccination is ineffective or has bad side effects that outweigh its benefits. At least on the cable news shows, I'm not hearing any of those. They seem to be trotting out parents who think that if their kids never get a shot, they'll never get a sickness. Or you get the old "If the government says so, it's wrong" argument. We should remind those people that it's the government that tells us what day to vote. Maybe that'll make them go to the polls a week too late to cast ballots.
My friend Paul Harris has announced he will never watch Bill Maher again due to Maher's anti-vaccine statements. I don't know if Paul saw the show last night when Maher seemed to be walking back certain of his assertions on this topic but I share some of Paul's view. I haven't reached the stage yet of not watching but I do think people should be getting their medical advice from doctors they trust — preferably, in one-on-one relationships — rather than from talking heads on cable channels. Hell, I'd even concede that Bill Maher's advice could be absolutely right for Bill Maher's body. That doesn't mean it's right for everyone who tunes in his show because they think he's funny.