Foolishness is deadly...

…and it’s apparently contagious, too, spreading absurd belief systems around the world. After seeing a story on NBC news about recent cases of measles in the U.S., I ran across this article about what are purported to be record high numbers across Europe. Now according to the CDC, the number of measles cases in the U.S. is about the same as last year and within the expected range of infections—about 124. 

Europeans, however, are concerned with what they are calling record high numbers in 2018 so far, or around 41,000. This is almost double the numbers from 2017. And the most disturbing statistic, though, is that in 2016 there were 5,273 cases.

The World Health Organization is now calling on European countries to take action on this matter. As well they should, obviously, as the high volume of global travel now makes the spread of diseases so much faster. According to the CDC, many of the American cases of measles can be traced to travel to foreign countries.

But the underlying problem in this matter, according to both the CDC and the WHO, is the growing number of people who are refusing vaccinations. And all of this is still tied to one 20-year-old paper by a discredited and de-licensed British physician named Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield claimed to have found a causal connection between autism and the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. Although, again, discredited, withdrawn and disowned by Wakefield’s co-authors, the effects of this one paper just don’t want to die. It gave rise to an ever-more aggressive anti-vaccination movement around the world and their elaborate, paranoid conspiracy theories about a dark, sinister collusion between drug companies, scientists, governments, and the media. 

So when a friend of mine recently asked me about why I feel so strongly that conspiracy theorists need to be recast in the popular imagination from principled – if goofy and eccentric – outsider heroes to dangerous cranks and charlatans, I find few better examples for my argument than the vaccination controversy. These numbers out of Europe are a travesty. We are talking about a disease that had been all but eradicated. And now it’s spreading in record numbers around the world! What’s going to be next? The return of small pox? Polio outbreaks? Are we indeed heading back to the Dark Ages in the 21^stcentury? Measles is making a comeback and we have regular conventions (around the U.S. at least) dedicated to the belief that the Earth is flat. 

These types of conspiratorial fantasies, this attitude that there is no consensus reality, that each and every person has to right to create their own reality and to reject the notion of empirical facts and truths need to be treated as a dangerous epidemic. Yes, scientists and academic journals need to do their absolute best to present only reliable, well-proven, peer-reviewed data. But the rest of the educational establishment needs to do its part as well in ingraining in students from a very early age that facts matter, that there is a truth with a capital “T,” and not all opinions are equally valid. As the late science fiction author Harlan Ellison once said, “no, you are not entitled to your opinion! You are entitled to your informed opinion.”

I usually start the semesters of my class on conspiracy theories with that quote from Ellison. Hopefully by the end of the class there will be fewer anti-vaxxers, “crisis actor” believers, and 9/11 truthers out there.

So yes, I am after the minds of young people and I’m trying to influence them!!