Friday 6 February 2015

catchpenny or clickbait

What is it driving this Anti-Vaxxer phenomenon? I too am, I think, healthfully skeptical of the pharmaceutical lobby when it comes to rigour, transparency and the production of medicines as lifestyle accessorisers (potions to counter all those self-inflicted ailments), but I don’t feel that we ought to take for granted the science that’s really enabled population health in manner that’s seen little precedence in human history and risk resurgence of otherwise preventable diseases.
I feel that this anti-science drift, for what it’s worth, which includes the climate-change deniers—and no, questioning does not belie conspiracy but I think rather than educating themselves, some go along with the propaganda they know and see the counter-arguments as mere propaganda, too, evidence fabricated and institutions manipulative—has parallels in the last wave of worry—which although far from hysterical can and has been displaced by this movement of distrust for drugs and doctors. Americans were passionate about being spied upon—though the lack of outrage when they bought the lie that such eavesdropping activity was limited to overseas solicits little sympathy, and the tantrum subsided rather quickly. I am not sure how the revelation was received that the intelligence agencies are not staffed with savants and are bound by the same laws of mathematics that allow encryption to work and remain virtually imperviously to prying, and it was only that the big telecommunication conglomerates giving the secret agents the secret-knock that allowed them to get inside. Service providers may not have willingly surrendered to government pressure but certainly did not disclose the scale of collaboration either, and they managed to escape suffering too much damage to their reputation over public ire. We of course tell on ourselves too, and refrain passing judgment on the real peddlers of snake-oil.