[rebelmouse-image 24748023 original_size="294x408" expand=1]Sorry to come from an on-and-off Netroots Nation plus moving-inspired break to write about vaccinations again, but seriously, there is something screwy going on with the anti-vaccination crankery out there. At Netroots Nation, the most expensive booth---easily the most expensive booth---in the exhibit hall was an anti-vaccination booth. It was tall, and they had a set of volunteers in matching uniforms, and the booth had a number of widescreen HD TVs blasting anti-vaccination crankery about how mercury in vaccinations causes autism. It doesn't. I'm sure other baseless assertions were being tossed around, because the first sign of crankery is that when the argument is proven completely false, hang onto your conclusions (in this case, vaccines cause autism) and change the arguments. Lawrence Lessig called out the anti-vaccination cranks during his speech, and castigated them for exploiting the vulnerability of the parents of autistic children, so I'm glad they were confronted in some way. I thought about it, but couldn't for the life of me think of what such a confrontation would look like, or what results it would produce.
