Re: Should spreading anti-vaccine misinformation be criminalised?
Dear Editor,
I agree with Melinda Mills when she says that misinformation about measles led to that disease's resurgence, and that it's an evil if people had to die due to misinformation.
But there's a far greater evil than that of spreading misinformation, and that evil is the assumption of unquestioned medical power of the state over the individual. So horrific and well-documented have abuses of medical authority been that I don't think I have to list any examples; eugenics by itself would yield countless examples.
We can remedy misinformation through teaching critical thinking and through refuting arguments, can't we? How do you remedy medical tyranny? Which is the greater evil, allowing people to state their opinions freely and to manage their own health, or shutting down opinions and medical decisions that disagree with the consensus view? Which has caused the most harm historically?
Let us never go down the road of medical tyranny or of censorship of open debate. Democracy is messy, while tyranny is straightforward and clean. Let us never lose sight of our humanity and our reason and our fairness, and let us not demonize those who hold opinions other than our own as imbeciles, morons, and idiots.
People who are opposed to the over-vaccination of our children have valid points. If they did not, intelligent, well-educated people wouldn't be agreeing with them. People who argue that we should have been using hydroxychloroquine long ago to fight Covid-19 have valid points. Calling something "misinformation" is one thing-- that's just a name. But giving our opinions the power of censorship is quite another, and is one more set of paving stones on the road to medical tyranny.
Rapid Response:
Re: Should spreading anti-vaccine misinformation be criminalised?
Dear Editor,
I agree with Melinda Mills when she says that misinformation about measles led to that disease's resurgence, and that it's an evil if people had to die due to misinformation.
But there's a far greater evil than that of spreading misinformation, and that evil is the assumption of unquestioned medical power of the state over the individual. So horrific and well-documented have abuses of medical authority been that I don't think I have to list any examples; eugenics by itself would yield countless examples.
We can remedy misinformation through teaching critical thinking and through refuting arguments, can't we? How do you remedy medical tyranny? Which is the greater evil, allowing people to state their opinions freely and to manage their own health, or shutting down opinions and medical decisions that disagree with the consensus view? Which has caused the most harm historically?
Let us never go down the road of medical tyranny or of censorship of open debate. Democracy is messy, while tyranny is straightforward and clean. Let us never lose sight of our humanity and our reason and our fairness, and let us not demonize those who hold opinions other than our own as imbeciles, morons, and idiots.
People who are opposed to the over-vaccination of our children have valid points. If they did not, intelligent, well-educated people wouldn't be agreeing with them. People who argue that we should have been using hydroxychloroquine long ago to fight Covid-19 have valid points. Calling something "misinformation" is one thing-- that's just a name. But giving our opinions the power of censorship is quite another, and is one more set of paving stones on the road to medical tyranny.
Competing interests: No competing interests