Brent council (among many other councils in England) had to start an awareness campaign to motivate parents to start vaccinating their children again! Thanks to some idiots who *still* promote the idea that vaccines cause autism (despite the mountains of evidence collected in recent years), measles have been on the rise again and people are now facing the consequences.

The anti-vaccination crowd is constantly moving the goalposts in order to cling to their favorite idea that somehow vaccines cause autism and other neurological disorders. In the beginning it was the mercury in vaccines (in the form of the preservative thimerosal). Then, when it became evident that this was not the case (partly because of the scientific studies showing not even a correlation, secondly because thimerosal had been removed from most vaccines yet autism still continued to rise), they switched to aluminium; the too many toxins in vaccines; and the overwhelming number of vaccines that overloads the “underdeveloped” immune system of infants. Of course they always fail to provide evidence for aluminium and metal-poisoning from vaccines; they never mention which toxins and why would they affect the immune system in such minute quantities; and they just conveniently bypass the studies showing the huge capacity of the “underdeveloped” immune system to tolerate and fight millions of pathogens of all kinds.

These people have managed to scare enough parents so that measles is now endemic again in the UK. Measles cases have been constantly rising in response to the constantly falling vaccination rates. There have even been deaths due to measles. Vaccines have been the victims of their own success: parents (and even physicians) have forgotten what measles looks like and what terrible results can have on their children.

The outcomes of this anti-vaccination campaign are obvious: more sick children, more deaths, less educated parents, more money spend on treatments and hospitalization, and now more money have to be spend in order to educate people on the very basics again! To raise awareness for diseases that should have been eradicated! To undo the damage done by the lunatics! To get their children vaccinated for crying out loud! The most basic and easiest preventative measure they can get!

A couple of weeks ago, I received a typically stupid comment in one of my posts from an anti-vaccinationist, which generated some heated discussion with a reader, Chuck. Chuck was repeating the same old, tired, and refuted arguments and logical fallacies in a dead-end discussion. Go read it and have some fun.

So my question is this: what is the problem of the anti-vaccination lunatics? Is it:

1. an obvious incapacity to understand simple physiology?
   
   
2. an obvious incapacity to accept solid scientific evidence against their beliefs?
   
   
3. a dogma so hard embedded in their peanut-sized brains that is impossible to reason them out of it?
   
   
4. a tremendous susceptibility to pretty much all of the cognitive biases and logical fallacies Carl Sagan could ever think of?
   
   
5. all of the above?

I am waiting for your answers in the comments… [this is more like a rhetorical question really -as sciencebitches has also noted...]