thedailybeast.com

Measles is on the rise in the U.S. for the exact opposite reason it is dropping globally. Here, as well as in Europe and other resource-rich places, many people hate vaccination. Almost all of the 2011 U.S. cases developed in or were spread by unvaccinated Americans traveling to Europe and elsewhere, or about-to-be-sick travelers visiting the U.S. from abroad.

The number of vaccine-averse people is difficult to estimate, but only 90 percent of the U.S. population is vaccinated according to specification. In that other 10 percent is a mix of those who forgot, those whose doctor forgot, and those who spurned their shots outright. Many refuseniks cite side effects as their primary concern, yet their worry does not diminish when such connections are disproved, as with autism. Nor does the reappearance of a near-vanquished infection in under-vaccinated communities ring a reality-based bell.

For these folks, and their 200-year-old forebears, vaccines are bad because they are not “natural.” This is true, but isn’t the point of civilization to rise above the blunt cruelty of nature? To arrive at some higher ground where we, and not Mother Nature, can call a few shots? Those wanting pure nature might prefer to watch a lion shred a wildebeest for lunch, or chase a tornado as it levels mobile homes in Oklahoma. That’s nature at its purest: disinterested, timeless, unfazed by suffering.

Science and reality have a liberal bias!