The progressive war on science

[Valin]

Toronto Globe and Mail:

MARGARET WENTE

Nov 29 2014

 

An epidemic of whooping cough has broken out in California. Not long ago, this ancient scourge had been banished by modern medicine. But now it’s back, thanks to people who believe modern medicine is dangerous.

 

These folks are not ignorant backwoods hicks. Many of them have advanced degrees. They live in some of the nicest neighbourhoods on Earth – places like Marin County, Napa and Malibu. But they believe that vaccines cause autism or worse. Immunization rates in some of the more fashionable California schools resemble those in the more backward parts of Africa. At the Valley Waldorf City School in Lake Balboa, for example, 88 per cent of students don’t have the standard vaccinations.

 

Nearly 9,000 people in California have come down with whooping cough this year, and a handful have died. Repeated pleas from public health officials have gone unheeded. “Children are the victims of our ignorance,” vaccination expert Paul Offit wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “An ignorance that, ironically, is cloaked in education, wealth and privilege.”

 

Yet it’s conservatives – religious, less educated, less wealthy and certainly less liberal – who are generally condemned for dogmatically refusing to embrace science. After all, they’re the knuckle-draggers who believe that evolution is just a story and that global warming is a crock. In Canada, a week is not complete without another denunciation of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s so-called war on science.

 

(Snip)