Stopping Fear and Misogyny

Recently a story was published in Wired magazine by journalist Amy Wallace titled "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All". I've been vocal on Twitter for quite some time about my support for vaccination and I totally agree with Ms. Wallace and the vast majority of doctors and medical researchers that vaccines are safe, effective, and have probably saved more lives than any other medical advance. Vaccines wiped out the most horrific infectious disease of all time, smallpox, and has nearly wiped out polio.

This debate has recently become very personal to me and here is the reason why:

That adorable newborn is my nephew Joshua, as I'm writing this post he is a mere two weeks old. I shouldn't have to be scared that he'll contract whooping cough before he's old enough to be vaccinated. Unfortunately because of anti-vaccination fear mongering, based on faulty and anecdotal "evidence", mean that herd immunity is crumbling and he's in danger now.

It's also personal in another way. As I found out this week from Orac's blog (and reminded again by Dr. Isis) Amy Wallace has been the target of some really vile misogynistic attacks such as these:

I've been called stupid, greedy, a whore, a prostitute, and a "fking lib." I've been called the author of "heinous tripe."

 J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue, the anti-vaccine group that actress Jenny McCarthy helps promote, sent an essay title" "Paul Offit Rapes (intellectually) Amy Wallace and Wired Magazine." In it, he implied that Offit had slipped me a date rape drug. "The roofie cocktails at Paul Offit's house must be damn good," he wrote. Later, he sent a revised version that omitted rape and replaced it with the image of me drinking Offit's Kool-aid. That one was later posted at the anti-vaccine blog Age of Autism.

I've been the subject of this sort of attack myself and it generally rolls right off my back because it reflects more on the person writing them than it does on me. However it is a symptom of a disgusting aspect of our culture where insulting a woman's sexuality is often used to silence them. I don't want my nephew to grow up and see it as acceptable to do so. I know that his parents, grandparents, and I will teach him otherwise but we'd be blind to think there will not be other influences on him such as the media.