America: We hate facts! And science! Just ask Paul Offit who, just a few years ago, before this country’s War On Reason (of, if you prefer, Operation We All Deserve To Die Because You’re Confused About Jesus), would have been not only patently uncontroversial but also most likely universally revered. Offit is the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His crime against New Christendom? Inventing vaccines. Vaccines which, in the World Of Reasonable People, have been credited with saving the lives of untold numbers of children. And as the debate rages on about vaccines — especially in this unholy H1N1 moment — Offit has found himself the focus of a level of anti-vaccine furor that would impress even the most hearty abortion-clinic bomber. In this lengthy profile in Wired, Moffit’s — and Reason’s — dilemma is outlined in great detail, but even the pullquote here will suffice: “This isn’t a religious dispute, like the debate over creationism and intelligent design. It’s a challenge to traditional science that crosses party, class, and religious lines.” And given that the debate puts the the wildly unsympathetic Big Pharma and the just-as-wildly-dumb Wingnut America in close quarters, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. As for Philly’s own Dr. Offit, all we can say is: Stay strong, brother, and know that you are in friendly quarters. For better or worse, Philadelphia intellectually seceded the Union a long, long time ago.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 2:14 pm.