The Rise of Anti-Vaxx, an Hypothesis
We like to blame the anti-vaxx (pro-disease?) movement on a few individuals like that one doctor who faked a link between vaccines and autism in order to sell his own brand of vaccines, one porn star that claimed the same link on daytime TV.
Lots of conspiracies have come and gone, so why did this one stick when others like time cube and lizard overlords and Area 51 and bigfoot haven't?
In a vacuum, this wouldn't have been enough fuel to spark an anti-science movement and keep it going to the point of protests and outbreaks of preventable diseases. The conditions for the anti-vaxx movement or something like it were set in place before, and it could even have gotten this far without Jenny McCarthy.
In the 50s, we had radium watches and were told these were perfectly safe. After that it was widespread use of asbestos, which we are still clearing out of buildings.
There were a couple of years in the 60s where birth defects due to thalidomide use were widespread, just do to small samples.
In the 70s we found that smoking was bad.
Since then we've found several times through bad reporting and misunderstanding science that eggs, red wine, and chocolate are both the best and the worst things you could possible have.
We were prompted to ask our doctors if Drug X right for us, and false-positive, unnecesary prescriptions exploded. Specifically, as the education system failed to keep up with the demands for attention from the rest of the world, children were fed ever greater amounts of drugs for attention deficit disorders they never had.
Expensive discovery processes and relatively short patent windows gave drug companies an incentive to get as many people on a drug as possible in the first few years before the long term, widespread effects are known, and sometimes these drugs are recalled in large, very public affairs.
The United States has a medical system that has inflated in cost while the life expectancy has stalled in the 2010's, and even fallen since 2017, making hospitals and doctors seem more like parts of a cartel than a profession meant to keep people alive.
Even nutrition guidelines have been compromised, with wheat, sugar, and milk lobbies successfully adding or inflating the daily recommendations for their products in the old food pyramid.
Recently we were told very loudly by authorities that weed and heroin and psylocybin and meth were all very bad things and only some of that was true. Now we're being told very loudly by authorities that vaccines are very good and some people have decided not to believe the authorities this time.
The anti-vaccine movement is threat to us all, but it didn't come from one crooked doctor and a few know-it-all moms, it came from the long-term abuse of the public trust in science.
Lots of conspiracies have come and gone, so why did this one stick when others like time cube and lizard overlords and Area 51 and bigfoot haven't?
In a vacuum, this wouldn't have been enough fuel to spark an anti-science movement and keep it going to the point of protests and outbreaks of preventable diseases. The conditions for the anti-vaxx movement or something like it were set in place before, and it could even have gotten this far without Jenny McCarthy.
In the 50s, we had radium watches and were told these were perfectly safe. After that it was widespread use of asbestos, which we are still clearing out of buildings.
There were a couple of years in the 60s where birth defects due to thalidomide use were widespread, just do to small samples.
In the 70s we found that smoking was bad.
Since then we've found several times through bad reporting and misunderstanding science that eggs, red wine, and chocolate are both the best and the worst things you could possible have.
We were prompted to ask our doctors if Drug X right for us, and false-positive, unnecesary prescriptions exploded. Specifically, as the education system failed to keep up with the demands for attention from the rest of the world, children were fed ever greater amounts of drugs for attention deficit disorders they never had.
Expensive discovery processes and relatively short patent windows gave drug companies an incentive to get as many people on a drug as possible in the first few years before the long term, widespread effects are known, and sometimes these drugs are recalled in large, very public affairs.
The United States has a medical system that has inflated in cost while the life expectancy has stalled in the 2010's, and even fallen since 2017, making hospitals and doctors seem more like parts of a cartel than a profession meant to keep people alive.
Even nutrition guidelines have been compromised, with wheat, sugar, and milk lobbies successfully adding or inflating the daily recommendations for their products in the old food pyramid.
Recently we were told very loudly by authorities that weed and heroin and psylocybin and meth were all very bad things and only some of that was true. Now we're being told very loudly by authorities that vaccines are very good and some people have decided not to believe the authorities this time.
The anti-vaccine movement is threat to us all, but it didn't come from one crooked doctor and a few know-it-all moms, it came from the long-term abuse of the public trust in science.
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