Aaron Traffas Band

Dude.

Is this whole vaccination debate really a thing? I haven't seen anything in the news about it.

I miss Studio 60, too!

Yeah, it's been getting play by McCarthy and Carey on one side and the scientific community on the other. Amanda Peet joined the scientific community and I thought I'd praise her for it.

Here are some relative links if you're interested.

http://skepchick.org/blog/?s=autism

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/02/mccarthy.autsi...

http://www.randi.org/forumlive/tags.php?tag=autism

Is their argument a bad thing?

As I understand it from your links, these stupid women are telling other stupid women to decrease the likelihood that their children will survive.

Won't this problem take care of itself?

I love the Darwinism, but the issue is about herd immunity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

If an extremely high percentage of a population is immune to a disease, then that disease can't easily spread through those immune members of the population to those few members who are vulnerable.

Because there are members of our population who have some legitimate reasons that they can't be vaccinated, such as an allergic reaction or other adverse response to vaccines, it's important that everyone else be vaccinated to help them.

As we have some crazy celebrities arguing against vaccinations, their children then rely on that herd immunity. They then become the 'parasites', as Amanda Peet referred to them in one of her quotes, who are surviving on the vaccinations of others.

Lack of vaccinations also increases the spread of the diseases they guard against. Nobody wants to fear measles and small pox, but if we stop vaccinating - especially when there is no credible scientific reason to - then we're going to have those diseases to worry about.

Is there any indication that McCarthy and Carey are having a significant impact?

The bullshit abounds, my friend.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=4987758

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/385209...

http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2007/09/...

There are a ton of people who watch Oprah and read tabloids. Those people don't usually include you and me, so we don't see it. Those people also tend to be less-inclined to be skeptical about what the see on that kind of TV show and what they read in tabloids.

I honestly wouldn't have known about it if I didn't keep up with the skeptical movement, though since learning about the issue I've heard of people in the area who actually believe the propaganda.