Article content continued

McCarthy says she’s not an anti-vaxxer, she’s a pro-safe-vaxxer, but that term in itself keeps alive the belief that there’s something unsafe about the MMR vaccine that schools and hospitals offer.

Dr. Peter J. Hotez, a pediatrician who directs the vaccine development centre at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, says no one has ever shown a link between vaccine and autism. Yet his article in The New York Times two weeks ago carried a pessimistic headline, “How the Anti-Vaxxers Are Winning.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics produced a 21-page paper making the same point. But there are many people who don’t believe it — so many, in fact, that the number of unvaccinated children is reaching a dangerous level in the U.S. Hotez believes that an American epidemic of measles is not far in the future. In the young, measles is a lethal disease, a hard point to remember. It kills roughly 100,000 children around the world every year. And once set free in any population, it proves ferociously hard to stop. After someone coughs or sneezes, virus particles can live as much as two hours on doorknobs, hand rails, elevator buttons and in the air.

An epidemic could be a disaster created by parents who refuse vaccination. Forced to consider either their fear or the advice of science, they choose to be guided by their fear. “What we’ve learned in the last five years,” according to Seth Mnookin, a science writer at MIT, “is that once you scare someone, you can’t just unscare them.”

In his campaign, Donald Trump suggested that this issue may require federal guidance. He met recently with a notable anti-vaccine activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Afterward, Kennedy said he’ll likely be appointed chair of a national vaccine safety commission. Trump said that wasn’t his plan but didn’t say what course he would follow.

It’s doubtful that a commission could help resolve such an emotion-charged conundrum. For the moment it’s clear that in this medical controversy ignorance and pseudo-science have vanquished intelligence.

National Post

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca