The intensity of the mob mentality surrounding the vaccine debate is reaching a crescendo. The reaction of virtually everyone I’ve come into casual contact with where the subject has come up has not been one of a fully-formed human mind capable of critical thinking and at least a partially functioning B.S. detector. Instead, it has been the slightly horrified expression of someone held utterly in thrall to a superstition. If there has ever been documented a facial expression for a silent accusation of “heresy!” or “blasphemy!”, I see it when the topic of vaccines arises, at least in a mild way. It’s scary, but also sad, in the sense that, for many people, vaccines have reached the “it’s beyond debate” area of the brain, usually reserved for a god, a government, or the Hale-Bopp comet’s Space Jesus.
My take on the issue, when in the presence of someone else, is vanilla in the extreme: I wonder aloud what could be the cause of the autoimmune/autism epidemic that sprung up seemingly out of nowhere sometime around 1990. I wonder aloud why lifetime chronic illness affects one-in-three children born after 1990. I bring up the fact that many vaccines are manufactured by Merck, the same company that knowingly manufactured and sold a pain medication that induced fatal heart attacks, and ended up killing over 55,000 U.S. citizens. For some reason, these people don’t mind that I criticize Vioxx, or Merck. But vaccines are a different story altogether. I sense the psychic equivalent of a hand reaching for a crucifix at the mere mention of them in a tone that suggest they are something slightly less than an immaculately conceived gift from God.
I’m not even trying to convince anyone, I’m only raising questions. But it’s the reaction to any type of questioning that is disturbing to me. Openly raise a slight objection to vaccines and the air suddenly leaves the room. Every mouth within earshot transforms into a thin line. If there was a censorship Czar close at hand, I’d be reported. And it is so easy to see how quickly we slip into tyranny. In a sense, we are predisposed towards it. Something inside us just loves watching a heretic burn, and we want to be the one to have put them on the pyre.
We are not nearly as evolved, or “modern”, as we think we are. We think that, because we use a laptop, use a mobile phone, drive electric cars, and believe in “Science”, we aren’t susceptible to the same superstitions that destroyed countless lives and civilizations before us. We go about our day-to-day lives with all our gods lined up nice and neat in our mind, whether we are aware of it or not. One could say that that very unawareness of our insidious ability to deify is all the more dangerous, since we wouldn’t know the danger of what we created until it was already raising up armies, passing laws, and sacrificing children.
There is a feeling that we as a society are backpedaling into a cult of Science, with the flames stoked by pharmaceutical corporations, politicians with a price tag on their integrity, and the legion of well-meaning useful idiots that inhabit every level and feverishly spread the Dispensation.
If we are to preserve liberty, and civilization itself, every aspect of our existence should be subject to questions and cross-examination, nothing should be allowed to fossilize into dogma.
