The current measles outbreak bothers me for reasons that might not seem obvious.  Well, there are the obvious reasons, too.  When I was a kid, I remember standing in long lines.  I didn’t know what was up but the whole family was there at some local school waiting in line to get into the “multipurpose” room.  It turned out, the “purpose” in this case was to stick us with needles, injecting us with life sustaining vaccines.

The big, bad evil government provided the vaccines.  Science provided the reason.  People stood in line.  I think mine was (or should have been) the last generation in which kids could (and did) meet actual people who had contracted Polio.  In 2000, Measles was declared eliminated in the United States.  Now it’s 2019 and Measles is back with a vengeance.  I wonder how long it will be before hospitals have to start setting up Iron Lung Wards again…

The return of Measles can be laid squarely at the feet of a single guy, Andrew Wakefield, who wanted to sell a product.  He was a doctor, once.  He noted that the symptoms of Autism begin to appear around the age vaccines are administered and pretended one caused the other.  He blamed the stabilizers in vaccines.  He wanted to sell his own.  A few people got scared and stopped getting vaccinations – but it only takes a few.  As it happens, inoculations are “herd protections.”  MOST people have to have them in order to work.  People who COULD get them didn’t.  Measles came back.

Science tried to push back, of course.  OTHER doctors explained Wakefield’s position was false, his “study” dangerously flawed.  The General Medical Council of the UK said Wakefield had acted with “callous disregard for the distress and pain the children might suffer” and revoked the evil doctor’s license.  Too late.  Fear replaced reason, as fear does.  Actors started coming out against vaccines.  Actors are people adept at pretending to be other people.  They are not, by and large, physicians.  But that doesn’t matter.  The damage continues…

Perhaps “anti-vax” celebrities never met anyone who had to rely on crutches because they had contracted Polio.  People forget when they don’t have to actually live the lives of the past.  But I see the return of Measles as a symptom of the worst of so-called “Free Market” Capitalism.  See, people know the Capitalists are allowed to lie in order to sell a product.  More to the point, people know the Capitalists WILL lie – aggressively – in order to sell a product.  We KNOW that Capitalism will kill, for real, in the name of profit – and then blame the VICTIM for being killed.

But that uncertainty means that the science of “this will protect your baby” can be offset by the question, “Who profits from the vaccine?”  Private industry lied about lead additives in gasoline and it took YEARS for science to get the correct information out and stop – or a least slow – the damage.  Private industry lied about Chlorofluorocarbons and it took YEARS for science to get the correct information out and stop – or a least slow – the damage.  Private industry lied about cigarettes and it took YEARS for science to get the correct information out and slow the damage.  Private industry is currently lying about climate change and it has taken YEARS for science to try to get the correct information out…

The whole “anti-vax” fraud bothers me because it can be so easily traced back to a certain, single source – one that has been thoroughly debunked.  But I understand how people come to be confused.  Capitalism, it seems, thrives on confusion.  I’ll tell you this, though: living through the reintroduction of suffering in the name of Capitalist profit is a bit heart wrenching…