Idiocracy marches on:
[Via Only in it for the gold]
The New York Times reports on a genial, diligent MD who is afraid to go on a book tour:
“I’ll speak at a conference, say, to nurses,” he said. “But I wouldn’t go into a bookstore and sign books. It can get nasty. There are parents who really believe that vaccines hurt their children, and to them, I’m incredibly evil. They hate me.”
Dr. Offit, a pediatrician, is a mild, funny and somewhat rumpled 57-year-old. The chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, he is also the co-inventor of a vaccine against rotavirus, a diarrheal disease that kills 600,000 children a year in poor countries.
“When Jonas Salk invented polio vaccine, he was a hero — and I’m a terrorist?” he jokes, referring to a placard denouncing him at a recent demonstration by antivaccine activists outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Of course, he is accused of being in it for the gold.
Should we care? Of course we should. Is this our fight? Of course it is.
[More]
A sustainable world is one where infectious disease is held to a minimum. The fact that a researcher, one who developed a vaccine that saves hundreds of thousands of lives, is accosted in public by ignorant parents is disconcerting.
A sustainable world will not come about due to anti-science world views. Attacking science will not help create a world run on green energy. I really hope this is only a fringe group. Otherwise we could be in real trouble.
Technorati Tags: Health, Sustainability
