Stacy Mintzer Herlihy

Antivaccine activists attack Allison Hagood using Facebook

Allison Hagood is a professor of psychology and a public advocate for science and public health, particularly vaccines. She co-authored the book, “Your Baby’s Best Shot: Why Vaccines Are Safe and Save Lives” (with co author Stacy Mintzer Herlihy and a foreword by Paul Offit, MD). Recently, antivaccine activists attack Allison Hagood using Facebook to push their agenda.

Hagood is very active in social media, administering several Facebook pages, including the Anti Vax Wall of Shame (AVWoS), a page created to document, track and mock comments made by anti-vaccine activists. In the past, AVWoS has been the target of concerted attacks from anti-vaccine activists, and these attacks continue today. It has not let up for over a year.

Last month, Facebook banned Ms. Hagood for 30 days, for posting an image that “violates community standards”. The image, with a caption Allison added, is shown below. This was her third ban in a row.

Ursula K. LeGuin is Not an Anti-Vaxxer–Or Why the Omela Argument Fails

Guest blog by Stacy Mintzer Herlihy. Ms Herlihy is a New Jersey based writer, mother of two daughters, Champion for Shot@LIfe and the co-author of the book, Your Baby’s Best Shot: Why Vaccines Are Safe and Save Lives.

Ursula K. LeGuin is one of great voices of contemporary science fiction. I love her so much I once named a cat in her honor. UrseCat was a grouchy but gloriously pretty long hair we adopted from the North Shore Animal League. Much to Ms. LeGuin’s gracious delight, I brought Miss Ursula Cat to meet the writer when she showed up for a reading in midtown Manhattan.

So it was to my utter shock and disbelief, that I opened up a book with a clear anti-vax agenda and found that it was organized around one of her very best stories. The book in question is Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children by Louise Kuo Habakus, Mary Holland and Kim Mack Rosenberg.

In Ms. LeGuin’s much lauded story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, we are greeted with a society where all is well but for one particular fact. A single child must be always kept in misery in order for the city to function and for the citizens of the society to be happy. Most citizens learn to cope with fact and accept it. However, some people walk away from the Omelas and from utopia.Read More »Ursula K. LeGuin is Not an Anti-Vaxxer–Or Why the Omela Argument Fails

Failure of vaccine denialism–most US kindergarten students are vaccinated

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) for August 24, 2012 reported that most kindergartners in the United States received their recommended vaccines for measles and other diseases during the 2011-12 school year but that unvaccinated clusters continue to pose a health risk. Overall, 47 states and DC reported 2011–12 school vaccination coverage, median MMR vaccination coverage was 94.8%, with a range of 86.8% in Colorado to 99.3% in Texas. Four states reported <90% MMR vaccination rates: Colorado, Idaho, Kansas and Pennsylvania.Read More »Failure of vaccine denialism–most US kindergarten students are vaccinated