I, Fearmonger (Part 2)

A very interesting thing happened over the last few weeks after I published my articles on examiner.com on Desiree Jennings, a woman from Virginia who claims she got dystonia (a neurological condition) from a seasonal flu vaccine. Anti-vaccine agents came out of the woodwork and attacked me in all sorts of manners. While I didn't have an entire blog post dedicated to me, like others have, I did get plenty of hate mail and not-so-well-wishing messages. One commenter on this blog, on other blogs, and on my YouTube channel, who is convinced that vaccines are a plot by Jews to depopulate the Earth, is particularly pesky, trollish. Others accuse me of all sorts of things, from being paid-off by big pharma to being part of a conspiracy to kill children.
The really troubling part is that they can launch all of these accusations without any evidence. In fact, anything they accuse me or others in Public Health of doing has not, and will not, stand up in court. Yet we are left to throw arguments at them with all sorts of evidence because, well, that's how we were trained. We in public health were taught that an argument without evidence is not worth it. You have to back up what you say. I just wish the anti-vaccine crowd would learn to provide just a touch of supporting evidence to their assertions.
I mean, it's not that hard. If you have time and energy to have a blog here, here, here, here, and here, then you must have time and energy and money to conduct your own clinical trial into the so-called damages vaccines cause. (Wait, that last blog is about 14 studies that point to "no evidence" of vaccines causing autism. Let me go read it... Okay, I'm back. Nothing to get worked up about. They just back up the obvious.) I mean, Jenny McCarthy alone (okay, with Jim Carrey) should have enough cash to hold some big study into the whole damn thing.
The question to ask is a fair one: Who is the fearmonger? Me or the anti-vaccine groups?
I don't tell anyone that their children will die a horrible death or suffer irreparable damage from vaccines. I don't march families before the media to prove a point. (Though there are a million healthy people for each person "injured" by vaccines.) I definitely don't use fear in any of my messages. (Or have I?)
Yet this is one of the many fights I've chosen to take on, despite the consequences... Or maybe because of them.