In a cover story in Wired magazine, writer Amy Wallace says vaccine deniers like Jenny McCarthy are exploiting public anxieties over autism to create a climate in which children are dying of diseases that could be prevented.

The war on vaccines, she says, amounts to a challenge to traditional science that is being stoked by instant communication and easy access to information that is often erroneous.

People are clinging to the illusions of pseudo-science, Wallace says, because science has yet to find the precise cause of autism and pseudo-science offers consolation. Pediatrician Paul Offit is fighting to restore rationality to the vaccine conversation, but Wallace says his effort is “probably a losing one.”

“There will always be more illogic and confusion than science can fend off. Offit’s idea is to inoculate people one by one, until the virus of fear, if not fully erased, at lease recedes.”

See also:

The misinformants: Prominent voices in the anti-vaccine crusade — Wired

How to win an argument about vaccines — Wired

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