Religious and political dogmas can often keep people from facing facts. This is particularly frustrating when these people portray their stubbornness as a fealty to “science” and accuse opponents of being “anti-science.”
This is probably the most popular self-serving canard of the Left today — those conservatives are so primative they oppose science, otherwise they’d be on board for our unprecedented curbs on energy use and other big-government policies!
These days, Rick Perry’s defenders are taking up the “pro-science” mantle branding criticism of his 2007 Gardasil mandate as “anti-science.” Sure, there’s some broad anti-vaccine talk floating around, but on this specific policy move, it seems Perry was the one with the anti-science bias.
He says “I hate cancer.” Good. Cervical cancer, which can be caused by HPV, against which Gardasil immunizes women, is particularly terrible. But hating cancer is an emotion, and it shouldn’t guide policy. Especially when the medical establishment at the time generally opposed a mandate.
The Texas Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics both said it was premature to mandate the vaccine — undetected side effects might still crop up. Jesse Walker at Reason spelled out the situation back then:
It’s important to understand that all the people and organizations I just quoted are enthusiastic about the vaccine itself, and that most of them will probably support a mandate a few years down the road. What alarms them is the rush. “In the past,” Vaccine author Arthur Allen pointed out earlier this month, “public health authorities usually waited a few to several years before requiring children to get a new vaccine. For example, Merck’s chickenpox vaccine, licensed in 1995, did not become mandatory in many states until 1999. The time between licensing and requirement allowed vaccine authorities time to view the safety and effectiveness record of the new vaccine before they ordered children to receive it. Even Jonas Salk’s celebrated polio vaccine, licensed in 1955, was not immediately required by any state — though almost the entire country viewed polio as a menace to be battled together.”
But, as I’ve written before, when folks have convinced themselves that they are on the side of science, well, sometimes they become impervious to evidence.
