Pseudoscience can kill

Glenn Reynolds reports on how a disease previously considered eradicated, pertussis or "whooping cough" ("kinkhoest"), is now making a comeback. Why?

The short answer is media hysteria and alternative-health shysterism. As Hoyt reports, dubious studies were seized on by anti-vaccination activists (described by Hoyt as "religious groups whose opposition was based on religious or moral grounds. . . [and] followers and practitioners of homeopathy, chiropractic, and natural and alternative medicine.") Those groups discouraged vaccination with scare stories, and the media picked up isolated cases of vaccine side-effects and -- by drawing a lot of attention to them, while paying little or no attention to the vaccine's benefits -- left people more afraid of the vaccine than the disease.

The result is that large numbers of people -- mostly children -- who might have stayed healthy have instead sickened and sometimes died. This is because some people were crazed, or dishonest, or hysterical, and others were stupid enough to believe them. (And it's not just in America and the West, or with whooping cough: Africa is facing a resurgence of polio as Islamic leaders encourage a boycott based on conspiracy theories.)

But there's plenty of blame for stupidity to go around, because in our world peddling quackery and scare stories is far safer than making drugs or vaccines that save lives. Drugmakers get sued for defective products; "activists" and sensational journalists do not.