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excerpt:"Like other persistent untruths—the belief that Obama is a Muslim, say—the endurance of these vaccine scares is due to multiple, interconnected causes. The Internet, where no view is too outrageous to masquerade as fact, has played a role, as has the media's habit of giving every story "two sides" long after one has been discredited. There's also politicians' instinct to pander to their most vocal and strident constituents, and public officials' ineptitude at communicating with the public.
But whatever the cause, the result has been as tragic as it is predictable. In recent years measles outbreaks in California, Illinois, New York, and Wisconsin have cost tens of millions of dollars to contain. In 2009 six unvaccinated children in southeastern Pennsylvania were infected with Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib, a disease that was all but wiped out in America 20 years ago. Two of them died. In 2009 in California, there were more cases of pertussis (a.k.a. whooping cough) than in any year since 1947, before its vaccine was in widespread use. Ten children in the state died after being infected. Nine of them were younger than 6 months old.
A little more than a year ago, my wife gave birth to our first child. As I know all too well, the fact that he's fully up to date on his shots offers no guarantees: no vaccine is 100 percent effective. That's especially obvious today, when low vaccination rates threaten the immunity of whole communities. If only there were a shot for irrational fears.
