# 3941
A referral today (hat tip @FluGov on Twitter) to this excellent article by David Shenk in The Altantic called The New Pandemic of Vaccine Phobia.
Shenk lists 6 recent articles including Amy Wallace's terrific piece in Wired Magazine that I highlighted a couple of weeks ago (see Referral: An Epidemic Of Fear), as he dismantles the vaccine phobias that pervade our society.
I’m especially pleased to see John Solomon’s excellent In Case of Emergency Blog on the list. John’s blog is listed in my sidebar, and I encourage you to visit his site.
With that, let me step out of the way and send you to David Shenk’s excellent report.
The New Pandemic of Vaccine Phobia
We no longer believe that witches control the weather or inhabit the souls of adolescent girls. We no longer believe that the earth is flat, and we have even held our ground against the pseudoscience of "intelligent design."
Now it is time for all who respect logic, rationality, and the scientific method to come together and say NO MORE to anti-vaccine demagoguery.
No one pretends that vaccines are perfect, or 100% risk-free. But approved vaccines work. They save lives. They do not cause mercury poisoning or autism. They carry very low risks -- risks almost always worth taking. And, to top it off, vaccines have become something of a civic responsibility: they work best when everyone takes them.
Six recent helpful articles:
• "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All" (Wired)
• "Nothing to Fear but the Flu Itself" (NYTimes)
• "One Vaccine Shot Seen as Protective for Swine Flu" (NYTimes)
• "The Fear Factor" (New Yorker)
• "More Antivax Distortion: The Swine Flu Version" (Discover)
• "A Public Health Expert on H1N1" (John Solomon's In Case of Emergency Blog)
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