[lbo-talk] Liza Featherstone on the anti-vaccination crowd

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Mar 26 13:43:18 PDT 2007


<http://www.babble.com/content/articles/features/dispatches/ featherstone/shotdown/>

Shot Down by Liza Featherstone

Baby-proofed and bathed in natural light, the apartment had a lovely view of the Hudson River. The playgroup hostess had thoughtfully provided a packet of organic applesauce for each baby. The talk quickly turned, as it often does with new parents in the same neighborhood, to pediatricians. One mom had found one she liked — not easy in this era of managed care and brusque manners. "But what is her stance on vaccinations?" our hostess inquired anxiously. "Uh, she's all for them," the first mother replied cautiously. After an uncomfortable silence, the hostess revealed that her sister had "a lot of education" about vaccines, and she herself was not planning to inject her child with any of that poison. "What about when she goes to school?" we asked, trying not to sound judgmental. Our hostess was unruffled. By that time, she asserted, so many people will be refusing vaccines, that the state laws — which currently require children attending public school or licensed daycare to have up-to- date shots — will have to be changed. "People," she explained, "are beginning to wake up."

People who don't vaccinate their kids tend to talk in these terms. They used to be passive "sheeple," doing what the doctors and the experts told them. Once they informed themselves, they realized the full horror of injecting helpless infants full of toxins.

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