Vaccination silliness

Slate runs a useful article on how the far Left and far Right both circle around and bump into each other when it comes to silly reasons to distrust vaccination. Some of the history is interesting:

Indeed, there's nothing more universal than fear of shots. "I just think there are people wired that way," says Gregory Poland of the Mayo Clinic. "They operate on the basis of emotion and anecdote—what they read at the University of Google—rather than a fact-based or data-driven point of view." In the 19^th century, people thought the cowpox vaccine would cause pieces of cow to grow out of their arms. Canadian medical giant William Osler was widely mocked when he urged British troops at the beginning of World War I to get inoculated against typhoid fever. The French government stopped offering vaccinations for hepatitis B in schools in 1998 while it investigated the relationship between shots and multiple sclerosis. (Subsequent studies found no causation.)

As for some of the loopier bits of paranoia about the swine flu:

Several Web sites have suggested that H1N1 is a vehicle for the government to implant microchips in our bodies to detect "bio-threats." At least one site posits that the vaccine contains a "Bible Code" connecting swine flu to prophesies in the Book of Revelation.

It's all clear to me now.

UPDATE: Well, well. One of the vaccination doubters is none other than smug know-it-all atheist and alleged comedian Bill Maher. What a maroon.