Stop Press: Microsoft Can Be Good

While it would be extremely difficult for me to come up with anything positive to say about microsoft, windows, or internet explorer (use open source!), I wholly endorse this speech.   http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/02/03/gupta.gates.vaccines.world.health/index.html

The critical paragraph, for me:

“Dr. Wakefield has been shown to have used absolutely fraudulent data. He had a financial interest in some lawsuits, he created a fake paper, the journal allowed it to run. All the other studies were done, showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. So it’s an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn’t have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts — you know, they, they kill children.”

Freedom of speech can never be allowed to mean freedom to publish lies as truth and not be held accountable.

But – and this is critical – education *must* focus on teaching people how to think for themselves, how to look for information, how to spot bias. If we refuse to train people in critical thinking we get, among other things, the return of killer diseases that should have been eradicated.

People who do not vaccinate should be held accountable.  See earlier post:  https://thinklovesurvive.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/money-talks-where-reason-fails/