I have been a follower of the creationism/evolution thing for some time now. The loose community of skeptics on the nets that fight those battles share time with fights against other forms of nuttery as well. HIV/AIDS denialism, vaccine/autism quackery, UFOlogy, paranormal nonsense, and others.

I have managed to remain relatively unaware of the details of these. I mean, who has time to devote to learning about more than one completely head-whacking morass of ignorance? Well, I can no longer resist the pull of whackjob trainwrecks.

I decided that I would begin to educate myself in the history and arguments of the anti-vaccination “movement”. “Dear god, why?” you ask. Several reasons.

1. I am vaguely familiar with the descriptions of autism spectrum disorder and accepted interventions (long story).
2. We’ve struggled with the idea of subjecting our own kids to so many shots at a given time (that’s a pain calculation thing - we still get them all their vaccinations within the recommended timeframe).
3. I recall a question asked of the presidential candidates during the primary about the vaccine-autism link and wished that any of them had a) known enough to shoot it down or b) had enough sense to shut up if they didn’t.
4. I recently discovered a Huffington Post article (linked via Respectful Insolence via Phayrngula, I think) by Jim Carrey (yes, that one) that spewed a lot of nonsense.
5. It has come to my attention that the Huffington Post does this sort of thing quite a bit.

That last one put me over the edge. I’ve never been a big reader of the Huffington Post, but it’s politically in my comfort zone and that’s what really got me torqued. The anti-vaccination thing is principally a phenomenon of the left. That’s overly simplistic, but the media outlets that tout it are generally left-leaning and the locations around the country with lower rates of vaccination because of it tend to vote on the lefty end. Since I’m on the left and I like science, this does not sit well with me.

So off, I went. After some poking around, it seems that the go-to guy for Anti-vac stuff is Orac at Respectful Insolence. I started with this post:

Generation Rescue and “Fourteen Studies”

It’s long, but and excellent place to start. Lots of links to bounce off to. If you want to jump in feet first, that’s the one.

There are other resources that I intend to dive into soon as well:

Science-Based Medicine
Natural Variation-Autism Blog
Jenny McCarthy Body Count

Each of which is plump with links to other resources.

What I have not discovered is the anti-vac equivalent of the talk.orgins archive, which is a wonderful compendium of documents refuting every creationist claim that has come along. That doesn’t seem to exist for the autism/vaccine world.

So, what have I learned so far? Nothing surprising. The arguments of the anti-vaccination crowd are unfounded and display willful ignorance (par for the course in this sort of thing). The science has, in fact, been done and vaccines are safe. And most frighteningly, people can be convinced to risk their child’s safety by celebrities.

More on this as I learn more, I’m sure.

[A special note for fans of franco-slang mash: for the title, I also considered "merdestrom"].