SocraticGadfly: Measles outbreak – doorknob justice would hit measles parties parents

May 01, 2008

Measles outbreak – doorknob justice would hit measles parties parents

About six weeks ago, I blogged about the latest nuttery in California: measles parties.

That’s where parents who indulge in various conspiracy theories, either autism-type ones against vaccinations specifically, or broader alt-medicine type ones against the “medical establishment” in general, refuse to get their kids inoculated, and instead take them to a party to deliberately expose them to someone with measles.

(I also added that I’m surprised we don’t have more of this stupidity here in Texas since Tejas, like California, lets parents exempt their children from vaccination on non-religious as well as religious grounds.)

Anyway, maybe the chickens are coming home to roost, courtesy of the biggest measles outbreak in seven years. No deaths yet here, but globally? About 500,000 measles deaths a year, primarily in countries where they can’t get or can’t afford vaccines. (That’s excepting places like the Muslim-majority portion of Nigeria, where you have other conspiracy theory peddlers saying vaccines are created to make people sterile.)

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