“We’re embarrassed”: US is close to losing measles-elimination status

It's utterly incredible and amazing the damage wrought primarily by 2 people at the initial seed stage of this baffling Anti-Vax movement:


1) Andrew Jeremy Wakefield, a British doctor who pretty much started this whole anti-vax thing, by maliciously faking and falsifying vaccination data entirely.

2) The Three's Company actress Susanne Summers, buying into pseudo-science and mind manipulation, and greatly/dramatically furthering the anti-vax cause in its early stages by using her star power to promote fake science. Of all the things she could have used her star power to promote... and this is what history-future-generations will record her as doing...


Essentially, Andrew Jeremy Wakefield and Susanne Summers have literally become mass murders in my books, and so many people fail to understand this concept, in terms of the shear amount of lives lost by their actions, and many more lives lost to come.

It's going to take science several decades to undo the damage they have inflicted to civilization, sadly, which is just... again... astounding... because right at the very moment and cusp of us permanently eliminating those diseases, they unleashed their pseudo science on a significant scientifically-illiterate portion of the population.

I guess cut backs to education also played a strong role in this.

You want to cut funding to education and schools... then this is just the tip of the iceberg of consequences our civilization will have to face and deal with in the future.

/r/Health Thread Link - arstechnica.com