Generally I can take a kind of absurdist attitude towards most kinds of woo-woo, including religion. But medical quackery is one of my "hot buttons'. I've known too many people who were seriously harmed by it -- including some family members -- to just let it slide.
THIS pisses me off on multiple levels.
It's bad enough that we have been seeing a
resurgence of
childhood diseases that we thought we had licked -- and should have had licked -- 20 years ago. And it sucks that what this guy is probably doing is pandering to the religious right to get elected (unless he really
did have a ridiculous "change of heart"). Political pandering I expect, and can deal with.
But even though physicians aren't necessarily "scientists", most of the public sees them as such, or at least sees them as representatives of the scientific establishment. Having a perceived
scientist take a position like this does a huge amount of damage by feeding the anti-science sentiment in this country that's been growing for the last 30 years. "Antivax" sentiment isn't a left/right political issue; it's found all across the political spectrum. If it becomes any more pervasive it has the potential to seriously threaten us all.
What especially tweaks me is that line about "strong alternative medical beliefs". WTF does that mean?
People who believe you can cure cancer
and dandruff with the right combination of crystals and incense?
People who believe that swinging a dead cat around your head in a graveyard at midnight cures warts?
Or does it mean people who believe that they should never take their child to a doctor, because if they pray right, and are worthy, "God" will heal them directly?
We have people like that in the state, right now. People who denied medical care to sick kids, and over two decades had so many of them die -- often in agony -- that a law needed to be passed to remove the "religious exemption" for medical treatment from state statute, where children were concerned. A law sponsored, in part, by
an evangelical Christian legislator, who was so appalled when the facts were laid before him that he felt morally obligated to remove the exemption.
If people want to do stupid things to themselves, that's one thing. When they inflict them on others, including children, that's something else altogether. Unless someone is living as a hermit in a cave somewhere, they have a responsibility to the community they inhabit.
Arrgh. Make me want to whack someone upside the head with a 2x4.
I wasn't going to vote for this clown, anyway, but I really wasn't very involved in this election at all, before this. Now I will be actively supporting the opposition, just to spite this guy on this one issue.
Fucking dumbass jerk.
(Sorry, I don't often rant so seriously ... )
