A sad story (fortunately not one with a body count) about a family trip to Switzerland. I’m going to paraphrase the article, and then get all bitchy afterwards. While enjoying their holiday, their child (whom they chose to not vaccinate with the MMR vaccine, presumably because OMG IT CAUZE AUTISTIM) wound up exposed to the measles virus. Upon returning to the San Diego area, the child exposed 839 people to the disease, and 11 unvaccinated children contracted the disease. Of those, three were too young to have been vaccinated and one wound up in the hospital for three days with a 106 degree fever.

The price of this outbreak (which of course is not translated to the family who caused it through their negligence) is approximately $177,000, when one factors in everything from the cost of the direct medical charges to quarantining et al.

Essentially, that’s the short form of the article. Now it’s time for the bitchy part.

Moms and dads, I know you’re smart. You live in an age where information is available at the click of a mouse. I was just marvelling at this very thing a few minutes ago, talking to a software vendor in Arizona. He sent me a link to an update tool I would need, and the entire conversation and subsequent download lasted mere seconds. Prior to the internet, I would have had to wait for a courier to deliver a floppy disk, probably taking a few business days. Further back in time, it would have required a stage coach ride and a month of effort. Before that, I would have had to transcribe the zeroes and ones of the code from repeated smoke signals at relay points stretching from here to Arizona. So I get this whole ease of information thing.

I know that you’ve read Generation Rescue and Age Of Autism because you wanted to understand the bigger picture. You think this is the responsible thing, and you want to be the best parent ever. I applaud this. Honestly, I do. You are attempting to be a skeptical thinker. Some doctor tells you that you should get a vaccine, you don’t know what the implications are, so you poke around a bit and see this seedy underbelly of information that quite honestly frightens you. Words like vaccine injury roll across your screen. And you decide the right thing to do is save your child from this horrible disease.

But you’re wrong. I don’t mean to be a dick here, but you have to consider the source. Doctors go to school for years to figure this shit out. Jenny McCarthy is a former porn star who’s dating Jim Carey. Who’s more likely to know the truth about vaccinations? Who’s more likely to be a compelling orator? I’ll give you a hint, they ain’t the same person.

To understand, you need to look at the dearth of legitimate evidence. Someone saying “I happen to KNOW my child got autism from his vaccine shot” is not legitimate evidence. Study after study showing that there is no causal link between vaccines (and their constituent ingredients) and autism, that’s legitimate evidence.

But now you’re going to hide behind the Big Pharma demon. All of those legitimate studies are really just paid for advertising by gigantic megacorporations who own every single doctor on earth except Dr. Phil and Dr. Joe Mercola (and maybe Dr. Dre). These corporations have a committed evil conspiracy ploy to give everyone on earth autism.

Conspiracy theories are even stupider than the people who think them up. I live in Canada, where there in 2006 there were 62,307 doctors practicing in Canada. How much does it take to buy off a doctor, someone who devoted their lives to healing the sick, so that they will be the foot soldiers of Big Pharma? Let’s just pretend that this isn’t a ludicrous notion, and that each doctor in Canada would sell out everything they have ever done and thought for a meager $1000. In Canada alone, that’s 62,307,000. In 2003 in the US in 2003 there were 301,270 doctors which would require $301,270,000 dollars. That means just for these two countries, Big Pharma would have to pay out $363,577,000. Nearly a half a billion dollars. And we’re using the rather pitiful $1000 payout, and assuming that’s a one-time thing. There must be a better way to make money than spitting out half a billion dollars.

Please, continue to be skeptical. Just do it better. That’s all I’m asking.

Jim