The "Changing" Face of Anti-Vax

[HuckleB]

http://layscience.net/node/1106

"...

The three oft-repeated errors in ‘The Quest’ are argument from authority (there appear to have been plenty of anti-vax doctors willing to write), confusion of correlation with causation and conspiracy theories citing vested interests who were allegedly pushing vaccines for financial gains. Plus ca change, huh?

I’m not sure whether the vaccinations I received as a child were administered under a legal compulsion. It wouldn’t have made a difference though. My grandmother’s and mother’s generations saw whooping cough, polio and tuberculosis first hand. They couldn’t believe their luck that these conditions and others could be prevented safely and for free. But it seems we’re now taking our good health for granted. Despite the evidence that vaccinations are safer than outbreaks, anti-vax is on the rise in a generation which has not experienced much epidemic disease.

I love vintage publications and enjoy reading the voices from history. It's interesting to see that anti-vaxers have gone from being doctors (in Lady Montagu's day), to anti-federal individualists, some with religious interests (early 20th century) to middle-class worriers with benzadrine-type levels of Google usage.

But wouldn't it be nice if the anti-vax message of ‘The Quest’ wasn’t still so current?


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Yeah, I know you know all about this, but it's a fair piece, at least I think so amidst my Saturday morning haze.

[LeftishBrit]

1. Good article

I really like layscience.net in general.

The only comment that I'd make is that 'anti-federal individualists, some with religious interests' were by no means confined to the early 20th century, and we can see plenty of current evidence on DU! As the blogger is British, he may not have a great deal of exposure to the wilder shores of such attitudes; nonetheless the anti-science/anti-modern-medicine Right is a significant force in Britain as well, with a particularly strong presence in the Daily Mail.