The modern way of knowing things for sure is through formal truth-seeking exercises.
…For these systems to work, they need to be fair and honest.
But 40 years of rising inequality and industry consolidation have turned our truth-seeking exercises into auctions, in which lawmakers, regulators and administrators are beholden to a small cohort of increasingly wealthy people who hold their financial and career futures in their hands.
…Why don’t we agree on the urgency of climate change? Because of a moneyed conspiracy to make us doubt it. Why did we let a single family amass riches greater than the Rockefellers while peddling OxyContin and claiming it wasn’t addictive? Because of a moneyed conspiracy. Why do some 737s fall out of the sky? Why are our baby-bottles revealed to be lined with carcinogenic plastics? Why do corrupt companies get to profit by consorting with the world’s most despicable dictators? Conspiracies.
You can see the link: we say vaccinations are safe, because they are. But we were told for a very long time that all kinds of things were safe, and they were not.
I’m not immune to this. For example, having seen the way certain newspapers print lies and misinformation about subjects I know in depth, I find it hard to trust their reports on anything else. If they are demonstrably lying about X, why should I trust them about Y?
In extreme examples, we start believing extreme things. Doctorow:
We can never be sure whether our beliefs are true ones, but unless we can look where the evidence leads us – even when it gores a billionaire’s ox – our beliefs will tend toward catastrophic falsity.
The Guardian is in trouble this week for an editorial about David Cameron in which it suggested that while the death of his son was tragic, Cameron’s pain was somewhat reduced by his privilege.
The editorial, now removed, suggested that Cameron’s experience of the NHS would have been considerably worse “had he been forced to wrestle with the understaffed and overmanned hospitals of much of England, or had he been trying to get the system to look after a dying parent”.
Callous? Undoubtedly. But it’s true. As a rich man Cameron has been protected from some of the stress other parents have to go through. Losing a child is horrific, and no amount of money can cushion the horror. But what money can do, what money does do, is cushion you from the cruelties and stresses that poor people face when they’re caring for terminally ill children or grieving their loss.
Here’s an example of that, on a much less dramatic scale. My son is currently in the Children’s Hospital in Glasgow (no need to write in; he’s okay now after a scary week). Because I’m a self-employed media type with a supportive family I don’t have to worry about work: I can survive the loss of income from a week-plus of hospital days and nights, and I don’t have a boss or the DWP breathing down my neck. I drive, so I don’t have to navigate public transport to and from the hospital or shell out for taxis because buses don’t run near where I live. And because I’m not estranged from Adam’s mum neither of us is having to navigate this as a single parent.
I don’t have Cameron’s money or connections, but I have it much easier than many of the other parents of children in the same ward, and of the families of the adults in the main hospital it’s connected to.
And the wider point of the editorial is true too. Cameron has suffered, but his government has made many people suffer more – people who don’t have his money, people who aren’t insulated from the wider consequences of caring for sick family.
I don’t doubt Cameron suffered a horrific loss, or that he grieves any less than any other bereaved parent. But most parents aren’t in a position where they can help lessen the suffering of others. Cameron was.
It didn’t start but it has certainly contributed to the worsening of the NHS, especially in England, especially in adult care.
And the Brexit car crash Cameron instigated is a disaster for the NHS. If no-deal goes ahead, we face a shortage of life-saving medicine; the government is secretly stockpiling extra body bags (and here in Scotland our government is doing the same).
The Spectator – no link, because Spectator – criticises the Guardian and says of Cameron:
The knowledge of pain breeds an empathy deeper and more enduring than political fashion.
Where is the evidence of that in Cameron’s case?
Update
On Twitter, Jess Moxham talks about Cameron’s book and how the personal does not appear to have influenced the political.
After coming to power Cameron began a programme of austerity which saw the steady reduction of all services for disabled children. My son was born in 2009. Our experience of parenting him has aligned with the reality of austerity, and for us it has meant less of everything.
I have never (like him) had a social worker come round and talk to me about the help that is available. We no longer have access to the kind of respite stays at a hospice that he describes. There are longer waiting lists for equipment and therapies. There are fewer therapists.
This is nothing to do with Cameron’s grief, which is personal and painful and not my business, but everything to do with his experience of looking after a disabled child.
I find it hard to understand how he can recognise the importance of the care and support his son and his family received without acknowledging that those resources are no longer available.
…Cameron was in a position of power and he ensured that all of the families with disabled children that came after his got less than his family got.
The Sunday Times published its usual collection of anti-trans scaremongering at the weekend. One story in particular managed to demonstrate everything that’s wrong with the former paper of record: it was based primarily on the comments of an anti-trans activist, and it presented fake science as fact.
This is the same newspaper that told its readers AIDS was a PR move by the homosexual lobby, remember.
Yesterday’s story once again attempted to conflate puberty blockers with cross-sex hormones, trotted out the completely discredited idea of “rapid onset gender dysphoria” which only exists in the minds of bigots, and presented Michael Biggs as an impartial expert.
Professor of Sociology and Fellow of St Cross College Michael Biggs has been posting transphobic statements online under the Twitter handle @MrHenryWimbush, The Oxford Student can reveal.
The Twitter account, named Henry Wimbush and still online at the time of publication, has been tweeting statements such as “transphobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons†since first Tweeting in January.
Biggs is a contributor to Transgender Trend, which is linked to the US Christian right and advocates dangerous and discredited conversion therapy.
The paper, The Australian, is owned and its editorial policy steered by one Rupert Murdoch.
Guess who owns and steers The Times.
Today, The Sun warned its readers about the national census being queered by the “transgender agenda”.
Guess who owns The Sun too.
Update:
Incidentally, The Sun’s piece is based entirely on the false claim that trans people want to change the way the census records their gender. They don’t. As the Equality Network points out, the demand for change is coming from anti-trans academics who want to change the government’s guidance.
Anti-trans bigots are the climate change deniers of gender: despite overwhelming scientific evidence that they’re full of shit, they continue to lobby against life-saving action and push long-discredited pseudoscience.
One of their favourite conspiracy theories is the idea that being trans is contagious, that it’s a conscious choice and that you can be persuaded to become trans through peer pressure. This social contagion conspiracy theory has been debunked endlessly, but it still persists – so this report by the Australian Psychological Society won’t change any bigot’s mind.
The APS isn’t mincing its words here.
“Empirical evidence consistently refutes claims that a child’s or adolescent’s gender can be ‘directed’ by peer group pressure or media influence, as a form of ‘social contagion’,†APS Fellow Professor Damien Riggs said.
“To say that there is a trans-identity crisis among young Australians because of social media pressure is not only alarmist, scientifically incorrect and confusing, but is potentially harmful to a young person’s mental health and wellbeing.
“There is no evidence to suggest that such approaches work in terms of changing a person’s gender. What such debunked ‘therapies’ do produce, however, are high levels of shame, disrespect and distress.
Belief in “social contagion” goes hand in hand with belief in conversion therapy, the dangerous and discredited “pray the gay away” so-called cure that’s caused incredible damage to so many LGBT+ people: if you believe that being LGBT+ is a choice, then you’re likely to believe that people can be persuaded not to be LGBT+.
Of course, it doesn’t work like that. But bigots’ feelings don’t care about facts.
What conversion therapy does do is persuade LGBT+ people to kill themselves. The latest study into such “therapy” demonstrates yet again that there’s a strong link between it and mental health problems, including suicide attempts. Exposing transgender people to conversion therapy makes them twice as likely to attempt suicide.
The bigots don’t see that as a problem, though: to them, one less trans person in the world is a result. These are people who are currently crowing about the prospect of Brexit-related medicine shortages cutting off trans women’s HRT supplies. Who cares if diabetics don’t get their insulin or cancer patients don’t get essential medicines? If it hurts (or better still, kills) trans people, it can only be a good thing.
You don’t need to wear a swastika to be part of a hate group. Some of the most hateful people in modern society could be your neighbours.
Here’s an example. The crowdfunding site GoFundMe has finally pulled down the page raising money for campaigns against inclusive education in schools (but not before they raised thousands). Here’s one of the key groups who campaigned for the page’s removal, the British Humanist Society:
‘This homophobic crowdfunder was in support of protesters who have been holding disruptive and intimidating rallies that have absolutely no place near a school. There is strong evidence that the protesters involved in these demonstrations have been uttering outrageous homophobic slurs and even calling members of school staff paedophiles which surely was in breach of GoFundMe’s terms.’
The backlash against LGBT+ equality encompasses trans rights and relationship education at schools. It is co-ordinated and well funded and originates in the US. OpenDemocracy:
At the London meeting of Christian conservatives this summer, our reporter – posing as a prospective teacher, to learn what these campaigners were telling teachers about sex education – found an energised opposition movement.
In a room filled with LGBTIQ children’s books, tea and biscuits, the keynote speaker argued that equalities legislation “is not all-powerfulâ€. Rather, he said it can be limited to protect “health and morals†of other students or teachers.
This was Roger Kiska, in-house lawyer at the Christian Concern group that organised the event. He previously worked for Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian right ‘legal army’ and one of a dozen US groups that openDemocracy revealed have spent millions of dollars in Europe.
Christian Concern, you’ll be amazed to discover, is a great believer in the efficacy of conversion therapy. Their communications manager claimed in late 2018 that conversion therapy is “just about any practice that offends the taste of social liberals” and added:
If ‘conversion therapy’ means anything at all, it should surely refer to a process that treats people with cross-sex hormones, damages fertility and cuts up their bodies to portray them as something other than what they really are. In other words, gender reassignment.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly the same argument – using exactly the same words and phrasing – that the anti-trans activists use.
The much-hyped Boston event took place this weekend and proved that – surprise! – it’s a front for the far right. To all intents and purposes it was a Make America Great rally, complete with police pepper-spraying counter-protestors.
David here at the Boston Straight Pride Parade has been going on for the last 10 minutes ranting about how the Jews faked the holocaust, rule the world and created the LGBT movement to destroy America pic.twitter.com/awkkds7AAd
Bigots cannot count on a silent majority to look the other way anymore, so how do they continue to dig in their roots?
Easy. Construct a parade in direct contrast to Pride, tapping into the homophobic leanings of those not quite convinced to join the alt-right. After all, if LGBTQ people get their day, why shouldn’t straight people? Claim straight people as an “oppressed majority†facing discrimination from the city of Boston. Claim that denying straight people their right to parade in the street is unconstitutional. Gather the wavering masses under a single umbrella and disseminate the us-and-them mentality from there. When fascism can’t take hold through overt means, move it underground. Create a system of cycling dog whistles. Enmesh bullied kids into a toxic echo chamber of propaganda and build a new generation of fascists. Easy.
There will be other Straight Pride events, because what these rallies do is tell racists and bigots three things. One, you are not alone. Two, you are in the right. And three, the police and the state are on your side.
Here’s how that pans out elsewhere.
In Poland, July’s gay pride march was watched by spectators from over 30 anti-LGBT, mostly far right groups who outnumbered the marchers four to one. Those spectators didn’t just watch. They attacked the marchers with rocks. Dozens of LGBT people were physically assaulted before, during and after the event. Journalists were spat on and beaten. The police, while present, didn’t appear to do very much.
Both the Catholic Church and the Polish state actively work to create a hostile environment for the gay community.
…The ugly scenes in Bialystok were not an isolated incident. Several Polish regional parliaments have declared their districts to be “LGBT-free zones†in recent months…
…Officially the government decries the violence seen in Bialystok, but at the same time hints that LGTBQ groups are out to provoke. The education minister Dariusz Piontowski has questioned whether such marches should be allowed since they “awaken resistance†in the wider public.
The government stance is also backed by a powerful conservative media that has loaded Poland’s newstands with brazenly anti-LGBTQ magazine covers. One publication, Sieci, warned of a “Massive attack on Poland comingâ€, while another, Do Rzeczy, showed a mocked up prime ministerial podium flanked with rainbow flags.
A third, the Gazeta Polska, went even further, printing a cover warning that the LGBTQ movement wanted to “destroy their civilisation†and giving readers a “LGBT-free zone” sticker showing a black cross over a rainbow flag.
This is happening throughout Eastern Europe and in Russia, but it’s also happening elsewhere. Anti-LGBT sentiment is being deliberately stoked by right-wing politicians and media in Western Europe and in North and South America too. And that’s what Straight Pride marches are all about. They’re organised by the far right; the marchers are from the far right; their banners and memes and outfits are from the far right. And their claims of being oppressed, of being silenced… they’re from the far right too.
Let’s not play their game and pretend Straight Pride marches are about sexuality, or about gender identity. They’re about white supremacy.
As Anthony Oliveria put it on Twitter:
reviewing all the footage from the Straight Pride Parade hey so quick question I don’t spend much time at straight events are there always so many swastikas when we gays aren’t around or
Corinne Engber believes that the strategy is ultimately doomed.
Ultimately, this recruitment attempt will fail before it begins as the environment of the country leans toward support for Jewish people, people of color and LGBTQ people.
Jessica Valenti, a consistently superb writer, describes a Twitter spat that went out of control. It’s about a New York Times columnist called Bret Stephens, a fierce advocate of unfettered freedom of speech.
When a university professor made a mild joke about him, he attempted to get the professor sacked and then wrote a column in a national newspaper comparing the experience to the Holocaust.
This is someone who mocked sexual assault survivors for wanting a break room with counselors during a debate on rape culture, a writer who questioned the “moral proportion†of firing sexual harassers. Is targeting a professor’s job for a barely seen quip morally proportional? Are high-profile columnists more deserving of a “safe space?â€
This is not in any way unusual. For example, Piers Morgan frequently rails against touchy “snowflakes” who apparently can’t take criticism. If you criticise Morgan on social media, he’ll immediately block you. Other high profile free speech defenders such as millionaire comedians take a similar approach, often orchestrating social media pile-ons against anybody who dares question their great wisdom.
The Venn diagram of successful men who rail against “the woke left”, “snowflakes” and “safe spaces” vs men who bully others online or in print is a near-perfect circle.
What these men – and it’s mainly men – advocate isn’t freedom of speech. It’s the protection of their own status and privilege. They want to punch down without anyone of lesser status being able to punch up.
Valenti:
The real snowflakes aren’t rape survivors who request trigger warnings or students who’d like that we use their correct pronouns — they’re people with power who can’t abide even the slightest criticism without using their influence to demand consequences.
There’s been a lot of publicity over a new study into the so-called “gay gene”; the study reports that although there doesn’t appear to be a single genetic marker for gay people, there may be several. Similar studies have attempted to find a genetic marker for trans people.
Here’s why that’s scary.
This image was posted by Antony Tiernan, and in response the writer Huw Lemmey noted the context: “over a million British people still buy this paper every day.”
Let’s be optimistic and believe that nobody would choose to abort a baby whose genes suggested they might be gay or trans. That doesn’t mean genetic screening for LGBT+ people couldn’t happen, or couldn’t be misused.
The problem with any kind of genetic screening is that it’s a guide. For example, I’ve just had my genes analysed and I have a slightly raised risk of pulmonary disease. That doesn’t mean I will get it. It just means there’s a higher likelihood than perhaps you have.
One of the things I was screened for is abnormalities relating to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which we know are implicated in many cancers. I’m clear – but the screening only checked a small proportion of the thousands of potential variants. I could still have a difference in one of those genes that means I’m more likely to get cancer.
Now imagine I’d been screened for genes linked to being trans. The same thing could apply: you could check for 100 different anomalies, and that could come back negative – but there could be hundreds upon hundreds of other genetic variations that you don’t check for, and which have contributed to me being the fabulous trans woman you see today.
Why does that matter?
It matters because if we developed a genetic test for LGBT+ people we might decide to use it in asylum claims, because one reason people claim asylum is because they face persecution for being LGBT+ in intolerant countries. Imagine: we could easily differentiate between the real asylum seekers and the fakers!
Far-fetched? Last week a British judge rejected an asylum seeker’s application because he didn’t seem gay enough. He contrasted the man’s demeanour with that of another man who “wore lipstick” and had an “effeminate” manner.
In that case, the judgement was appealed and has been sent back for review. But what if the judge had rejected the applicant because his genes “proved” he wasn’t gay?
It could also be used to “prove” that people are lying about their sexuality or gender identity in other circumstances. There’s already fierce and often malicious debate over whether some trans people are “trans enough”, so for example anti-trans bigots are keen to differentiate between “true” trans people, who they pretend to care about, and “fake” trans people – people like me who haven’t had surgery – whose human rights they want to curtail and whose healthcare and support services they want to defund.
Could failing genetic testing mean I’d be denied NHS treatment such as hormone therapy?
In the early 20th Century, out of context IQ testing was used to justify the forced sterilisation of black and hispanic people.
the notion of feeble-mindedness, at least partly determined by IQ tests, was used as a justification for the Supreme Court’s notorious Buck v. Bell decision, which allowed forced sterilization for “insanity or imbecility,†mostly among the population of prisons or psychiatric hospitals.
One of the links in that article goes to a study of pseudoscience on women’s suffrage.
many scientists supported the antisuffrage argument of “physical force,†claiming that women lacked inherent energy needed to physically enforce laws and should be excluded from voting. A secondary argument claimed that such cyclic elements as menstruation and menopause made women too irrational to vote.
More recently, halfwits in Silicon Valley have been pushing the bullshit theory that men are better suited to tech jobs because of exposure to “prenatal testosterone”.
Sexuality and gender identity are complicated and multifactorial, and they are normal variations in human behaviour and biology. That means there can never be a reliable genetic test for being gay or being trans, and we should be scared of anyone who wants to create one.
As TIME’s Jeffrey Kluger writes:
…as long as there is science—which means forever—there will be people willing to misuse what it teaches.
Those who feel blood pressure rising at the idea a person or a thing might be scrutinised for its racism believe themselves to be personally and deeply maligned by a world in which other people matter, and which they have to share.
…All perspective is lost, and phone-ins pander to self-centred hysteria. Imagine if white people perpetually clinging to the past faced the societal exclusion others actually do on a day-to-day basis, rather than merely experiencing challenge to views that are anti-social and hateful?
Waddell isn’t suggesting we ban The Magic Faraway Tree (which she loved, and which my daughter loved too) or the Famous Five. But reading is hard, it seems. The first response to her on Twitter claimed that by stating that a racist was racist, she was in fact a racist.
There’s a bleak joke here in Glasgow about old buildings: they have a strange tendency to set themselves on fire.
I live just across the road from one such example, the historic Scotway House building (pictured). It was a drawing office for the shipyards and when developers wanted to knock it down to make room for student flats, they were told they couldn’t. Shortly afterwards it burned down. The first fire didn’t destroy it completely, so it was burned down again; police say both fires were set deliberately.
Today, there are flats on the site where it once stood. An imitation of the former structure is now “ultra-modern, high tech student accommodation”.
As the excellent A Thousand Flowers blog noted in 2016:
When news of the fire broke after 9pm on Friday, many were quick to comment that it’s not the first case of a prominent listed building in the city, on a site primed for development, going up in flames. “Somewhere in the city, developers are popping the champagne corks, and rubbing their hands with glee†commented the popular Lost Glasgowpage on Facebook.
The Scotway House fire was predicted in the not entirely tongue in cheek, years-long “‘not in any way suspicious’ buildings gutted by fire thread” on the Skyscraper City site in 2015.
There’s a huge problem in Glasgow going back many years where beautiful buildings are being lost. The most high-profile example is of course the Glasgow School of Art, which has suffered not one but two catastrophic and apparently completely avoidable fires.
Glasgow doesn’t do a great job of protecting its architectural heritage, one of its greatest strengths: we tell visitors to look up because there’s so much beautiful detail in our old buildings. But all too often we lose them to mismanagement or neglect. For example in Union Street, right across from the busy Central Station, the Egyptian Halls – considered by many to be Alexander “Greek” Thomson’s masterpiece – are rotting away. The cost of bringing the Halls back to their former glory are skyrocketing.
Here’s what they looked like before the scaffolding blocked them from view.
Scotway house was destroyed by two distinct, deliberate fires.
And when there isn’t neglect, there’s fire.
The second art school fire in 2018 did serious damage to another Glasgow wonder, the former ABC cinema. The ABC started life in the 19th century as the Diorama, became the Panorama, and changed again to become Hubner’s Ice Skating Palace in the late 1800s. It then became the Hippodrome, and then Hengler’s Circus. In 1929 it became a dancehall again. It was a cinema for a couple of decades and became a music venue in 2002.
And now, it looks like it’s going to become flats.
I love the ABC. To my mind it was Glasgow’s finest music venue, and it’s of great architectural interest too. It’s been closed since 2018, but it’s not beyond repair. Nevertheless, a developer wants to demolish it completely to construct more student flats.
the same property developer who was twice refused permission for controversial student flat proposals is now seeking to raze the fire ravaged ABC venue.
…A dispute over the structural integrity of the ABC building is central to what happens next. The developer maintains that the building is beyond repair, unsafe, and needs to be flattened. Glasgow City Council’s Building Control – who have permitted the reopening of the street directly below the boarded up facade – are, however, satisfied that the building is secure for the moment. Historic Envronment Scotland have stated that while the roof has been gutted, the main areas of architectural and historic interest – namely the front facade, entrace foyer, and auditorium walls, are largely intact and capable of repair.
The developer says it wants to bring the ABC back as a world-class music venue but hasn’t submitted any plans or attempted to preserve any of the historic building. As Historic Scotland, hardly a raggle-taggle bunch of anti-capitalist activists, put it: “It is our view that the applicant has not made an adequate effort to retain and preserve this C-listed building (or any part of it), and has therefore not met the tests for demolitionâ€.
ATF:
A decision will now be made by council planners. If the owners are granted permission to flatten the ABC, how long will it be before the student flat proposals for the neighbouring block emerge out of the ashes?
I’m not optimistic. Again and again we’ve seen Glasgow’s planning officials green light pretty much anything developers wants, no matter the collateral damage; they recently gave a death sentence to Glasgow’s proposed Crossrail project by granting planning permission for 700 flats on a crucial site.
It’s funny how things in Glasgow tend to follow the same pattern. A developer wants to build a bunch of student flats; a beautiful old building means they can’t; the beautiful old building goes on fire; the proposals for the flats come back again. I’m not suggesting that the developers of any properties mentioned here are in any way implicated in the destruction of these buildings, but then again I’m not going to suggest that any developer gives a shit about saving old buildings. History, art and architecture may gladden the heart, but they don’t show up on developers’ balance sheets.
UPDATE
Within a few hours of posting this, I saw the news of a major fire in a listed building on Scotland Street. The building and outbuildings stand in the way of a new development of flats.
Maybe I’m too cynical after years of spontaneous listed building combustion. David emails:
I agree in general about “mystery fires” but not sure about Scotland Street – they’ve already got permissions and have drawn up the plans and the architect has a track record of working with old buildings – The Lighthouse, Kelvin Hall, Glasgow School of Art, Kelvingrove Bandstand…
They’re very high profile so they will have cost a fortune. I can’t imagine that at this point the savings of having removed the listed buildings would outweigh the costs of that firm doing new plans. Not in that area of town. I don’t think they were intending on keeping any more than the facades either.
If you’ve ever walked past the Howden’s factory it’s in a chronic state of disrepair and is held up by load-bearing graffiti.
Asked by regional BBC station to discuss falling vaccination rates – grand, except they wanted me on against someone claiming vaccines are dangerous. Explained this was textbook false balance, unethical, & against BBC trust guidelines. They wouldn’t budge, so I’m not doing it.
Grimes isn’t bashing the BBC here. As he says, it’s a problem across the entire mainstream media.
There is no debate on vaccination. There are not two sides. There is one side, which is where all the facts are, and then there are cranks. To pretend that both sides have equal value costs lives.
Vaccines against preventable illnesses like measles, tetanus, mumps and rubella are safe and effective, but healthcare professionals still find themselves having to push back against vocal anti-vaccination campaigns.
…The problem facing medicine is global, where disinformation about vaccines is readily accepted as having equal or greater value than the work of scientists who have spent their careers fighting disease.
As Grimes wrote previously in The Guardian:
This is the crux of the issue with false balance – no matter how noble the intention of media outlets, presenting science and pseudoscience in an adversarial format gives a false impression that an issue is scientifically contentious. Worse again, it gives free rein for dubious motivations to masquerade as scientific opinion. Whether the issue is vaccination, climate-change, alt-med or anything else, presenting an evidence-free belief as being on equal footing with an established scientific understanding is corrosive to public understanding.
I’ve encountered this too, and refused to go on air with people who flatly deny established facts, or who – often wilfully and maliciously – attempt to mislead listeners about science or the law.
I’ve made this joke before, but: imagine if there was a news story about owls, and the programme demanded the RSPB debate someone who refused to accept that owls exist. We’d be appalled, and yet the only damage that “debate” would do is waste a bunch of people’s time. When people deny settled science, when they scaremonger about things (or people) that are perfectly safe, these so-called debates can lead to very serious consequences. In the case of vaccination, they can kill.
Grimes again:
it’s irresponsible and lazy to contrive a debate over something that has a real human cost.
