{"id":2955,"date":"2015-01-27T09:44:47","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T16:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=2955"},"modified":"2015-01-27T09:48:04","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T16:48:04","slug":"the-war-on-science-anti-vaxxers-trump-the-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/27\/the-war-on-science-anti-vaxxers-trump-the-right\/","title":{"rendered":"The War on Science? Anti-Vaxxers Trump the Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Vaccine<\/a>
\nWe’ve all been ranting about “The Republican War on Science<\/a>: anti-climate change, anti-evolution, anti-God-knows-what-else: all those conservatives refusing to see what’s in front of them.<\/p>\n

Well, my friend Erin Kotecki Vest<\/a>, whose immune system is seriously compromised, posted on Facebook yesterday from a pharmacy where she’d gone to pick up a prescription. \u00a0Next to her was a man who had brought with him his son,\u00a0who has whooping cough<\/em>! \u00a0That’s kind of the equivalent of waving a gun at her.<\/p>\n

Whooping cough (Pertussis) can usually be prevented through a DPT injection; although this kid’s vaccination status is unclear, the more people who \u00a0refuse to vaccinate their kids, the less safe the rest of us are. \u00a0This is not an observation, it’s an epidemiological fact.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, measles is haunting California<\/a>, from Disneyland to affluent Marin County and other Northern California communities*. \u00a0And the folks fighting the science? \u00a0We have met the enemy and they are us: \u00a0<\/em>Whole Food progressives <\/a>who refuse to accept hard evidence that the “vaccines cause autism” research was a fraud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Imagine how scary this is for those of us in California (which always leads the way for the rest of the country by the way, so don’t write this off as California crazy.) I have three grandsons under four; two of them are under 6 months old. They can’t have MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) immunizations under 12 months. So here we are: Daycare at the gym? Children’s concerts? Family restaurant dinners? \u00a0Story time at the library? \u00a0Would you go?<\/p>\n

What I want to know is, if it’s wrong to deny the theory of man-made climate change and wrong to deny the theory of evolution – both of which have been repeatedly found to be true by researchers, why is OK to risk the lives of entire communities of kids when the decades of research have proven these vaccines to be safe and reliable? \u00a0What’s the difference? \u00a0And which side’s “war on science” is doing the most damage to us and our families — and threatening our children and grandchildren — \u00a0right now, today?<\/p>\n

*The \u00a0chart above is from the Council on Foreign Relations via the\u00a0LATimes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve all been ranting about “The Republican War on Science: anti-climate change, anti-evolution, anti-God-knows-what-else: all those conservatives refusing to see what’s in front of them. Well, my friend Erin Kotecki Vest, whose immune system is seriously compromised, posted on Facebook yesterday from a pharmacy where she’d gone to pick up a prescription. \u00a0Next to her … Continue reading The War on Science? Anti-Vaxxers Trump the Right<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,42,2889,9,98,60],"tags":[3148,3157,1527,3163,3161,3164,3165,3151,3160,3162,3147,3166,3152,3155,3153,3150,3154,2905,3158,3159,3156,2994,3149],"class_list":["post-2955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-family","category-grandparents-2","category-politics","category-religion","category-science","tag-anti-vaxxer","tag-autism","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-change-denier","tag-creationism","tag-disneyland","tag-disneyland-measles","tag-dpt","tag-epidemiology","tag-evolution","tag-immunization","tag-marin-county","tag-measles","tag-mmr","tag-mumps","tag-pertussis","tag-rubella","tag-vaccine","tag-vaccine-autism-connection-fraud","tag-wakefield","tag-war-on-science","tag-whole-foods","tag-whooping-cough"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-LF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2955"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2968,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions\/2968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}