Way back in the 1960s a back to nature movement spawned an awareness that all foods are not the same, that sugar may be bad for you, that pesticides may be bad for you. The organic food movement was started.

For me this makes sense, less pesticide in my food is probably good for me. Less sugar is also good for me. Vegetables are good for me. Less meat is good. All is good.

However the “all natural” movement in food has also led to a belief that “that which is not natural must not be good.” It is not a long leap to the belief that because vaccines are not natural, they must be bad.

I can understand the paranoid anti-government folks shunning a government program to vaccinate children. These folks are whacko in my opinion. Nothing they do would surprise me.

I can understand the Bible Thumpers, who believe GOD will take care of them and that it is GOD’s will if they get a disease and die. Whacko? Yes, but understandable.

This may be a gross overstatement, but for the most part the above two groups are relatively uninformed and under-educated (perhaps home educated).

What is most interesting and/or disturbing to me are the well educated people who by choice expose their children to Whooping Cough, measles, or other “eradicated” diseases. I can only figure they don’t believe the diseases are serious or they do not trust that the vaccines are safe (well they’re sure not “natural”).

There is a whooping cough epidemic starting in Texas and a number of cases in Marin County California. I don’t know about Texas, but Marin County is a very affluent well educated region of the San Francisco Bay Area. These people are neither anti-government nor buble thumpers for the most part and that makes the Whooping Cough outbreak here more tragic.

I guess where education butts up against belief, belief will always win out.

Ron