Dear Parents, You are Being Lied to By Living Whole, Avicenna, A Million Gods, April 11, 2014

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to make the same mistakes. I predicted that an anti-vax backlash would occur when the anti-vax got so successful that they destroyed the herd immunity of a western nation to the point that common diseases could return. If you won’t learn by the carrot then unfortunately it is the stick. The price of Andrew Wakefield and the likes of Sherri Tenpenny, Mercola, Adams was increased disease. We are seeing record increases in common diseases that we were on the verge of eliminating.

How to Talk to Vaccine-Hesitant Parents, Keith Kloor, Discover, April 8, 2014

The smart folks at ThinkProgress seem to have missed all the media coverage of this recent study, which found that, for those already suspicious or concerned about vaccines, images of sick children and dramatic, cautionary narratives “actually increased beliefs in serious vaccine side effects.” This is a known as the “backfire effect,” a phenomena defined concisely here:

When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

Jenny McCarthy, Who Still Promotes Misinformation About Vaccines, Now Says “I Am Not ‘Anti-Vaccine,'” Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, April 13, 2014

McCarthy rejects the science — and thinks she deserves credit for just asking questions. Even though those questions were answered a long time ago and she just wasn’t happy with the responses. If Jenny McCarthy is not “anti-vaccine,” then Ken Ham must be the greatest advocate of evolution we’ve ever seen. In the meantime, the Jenny McCarthy Body Count will continue to rise until she comes to her senses and rejects the harmful beliefs that she still holds.

GOP Lawmaker Compares Abortion To Buying A Car, Laura Bassett, Huffington Post, April 9, 2014

A Republican state lawmaker in Missouri defended his controversial bill forcing women to have ultrasounds before abortions by comparing abortion to purchasing a new vehicle. “In making a decision to buy a car, I put research in there to find out what to do,” state Rep. Chuck Gatschenberger (R) told colleagues at a hearing on the bill Tuesday. *** The major problem with Gatschenberger’s analogy, of course, is that people are not required by state law to do research before buying a car. State Rep. Stacey Newman (D) told Gatschenberger that his car analogy was “extremely offensive to every single woman sitting in here.”

Photo credit: Not credited. May be work of U.S. Public Health Service (1918 ad via [1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.