A person made a post there with a news story about an outbreak of measles. (As of late last month, the outbreak was continuing to slowly grow.) Interestingly, in one follow-up comment later, said person did not come off as anti-antivaxxer, but rather, a "let's talk" stance that, at end, is less productive than being an open antivaxxer, let alone than being an open sound-sciencer.
The Green Party's unenlightened stance on GMOs, officially on paper, vs. the SPUSA adopting a more enlightened, science-informed vision in its most recent platform update, has been in my mind on a possible realignment of sorts for some time.
On antivaxxerism, the 2016 election was the start of a tipping point.
Contra Dems in general and Donut Twitter in particular, I don't think Jill Stein herself is an antivaxxer. (Besides, with the California Democratic Party officially endorsing chiropractic as "medicine," organized Democrats don't have a lot of leg to stand on with alt-med issues.)
But, the antivaxxer portion of Green voters is high enough that Stein playing the Just.Another.Politician role when the issue came up in 2016, rather than coming down firmly in favor of vaccines on the medical side — while also dismissing the more wild claims against Big Pharma on the business side (vaccines, compared to something like a new cholesterol drug, are a small, small part of the pharmceutical world's revenues and an even smaller part of its profits) only added fuel to the belief system fire of Green antivaxxers.
And, it IS a belief system, which acceptance of sound science is not.
In fact, in my last comment, I said antivaxxer parents are little different than parents who reject medical doctors in favor of faith healings. They are the ones inflicting a belief system on parents, not me. And, by the links that others posted in trying to justify their claims, it is a belief system. One was from a person who was a Moody Bible College graduate with no medical training. When antivaxxerism meets the Religious Right, then gets shouted through a Green megaphone, we're really in trouble.
I've already taken an initial step in this. I've put the SPUSA website on my links list. And, it's a notch ahead of Greens.
Given that Greens are that much bigger than the SPUSA, I would prefer to see internal reform.
But, beyond this, this issue of state "paper parties," and said parties exploiting the "decentralization" plank of the GP's Ten Key Values, how this relates to Ralph Nader vs David Cobb in the Green Party's 2004 presidential nomination process and other things, all leave me not holding my breath.
And, for those who wonder, under a somewhat similar name, antivaxxer protests go back to Edward Jenner's original smallpox vaccine.
Also, getting the measles vaccine helps keep a toddler and young child's overall immune system from being compromised. In addition, measles can lie dormant for years, then cause a fatal brain disease.
And, Feb. 10, mega kudos to this 18-year-old who defied his mom and got his shots.
Meanwhile, in Maine, the state Libertarian and Green parties have joined hands for a number of good civil libertarian issues in which they have common cause ... and end by jumping off the antivaxxer cliff.
Contra that, in other states, in legislatures, the anti-antivaxxer movement is gaining steam.
And, measles does kill. Maybe not much in the US, even in antivaxxer circles. But globally? In 2014, it killed 145,000.
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Greens aren't the only antivaxxers. Libertarians are big on it, per the link above. When you hear about disease outbreaks in SoCal? It's more likely to be in the libertarian Orange County than in stereotyped la-la land Hollywood.
The worst are pseudolibertarian Christians who don't want vaccines but don't want other women to have reproductive choice freedoms — and don't want most of America to have any freedoms that aren't on their approved list of freedoms.
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Orac now has the latest discussion on MMR vaccines not causing autism.
And, it's not just MMR or other common childhood vaccines. Antivaxxer parents in Oregon nearly killed (sic) their kid because no tetanus vaccine.
Orac now notes that YouTube and other places online are cracking down on antivaxxerism itself, though letting plenty of other pseudomedicine still run.
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