A Vaxxing Dilemma
Even so, on the vaxx issue, a new Pew Research Center poll finds the divide falls along lines of generations more than politics. While strong majorities across the board support vaccination, about one-third of Republicans and independents say parents should make the decision about immunizations, compared with 22 percent of Democrats.
Interestingly Pew found no such divide between Democrats and Republicans in 2009, the pollsters said.
That's a disturbing development on several levels. If vaccine denialism becomes like climate change and President Obama's birth certificate, issues to be divided by political leanings more than evidence, we are likely to see an increase in anti-vax refuseniks and a larger pool of vulnerable, unvaccinated children to spread more dangerous diseases.
Critics on the right point out that both Obama and Clinton raised questions in 2008 about a possible link between vaccines and autism. That's true. But two years later the only study that claimed such a link was retracted by the medical journal that published it and its author lost his medical license.
Yet the lie persists, partly because of something called "confirmation bias," a fancy way of saying that we believe what we want to believe.
New evidence is offered by major new study in the journal Pediatrics led by political scientist Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College. In testing four separate pro-vaccine messages, including three that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) use, the study found none of the messages increased the intent of parents to vaccinate their children -- and in several cases actually increased the unfounded belief that vaccines cause autism.
Such grim determination by many humans to believe the worst offers a tempting territory for politicians who are not above pandering to fears and suspicions. But when our elected leaders fear the criticism of anti-vax factions more than they fear for public health, it leaves all of us more exposed.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
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