Measly Muslims make Minnesotans miserable

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/u...-vaccines.html

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... the community was “targeted” by members of the anti-vaccination movement, adding that vaccination rates in the community had been as high or even higher than those in the white population, but that began to change in 2008.

Members of the community came to believe incorrectly that they had an unusually high rate of autism and that the cases were related to vaccines. But later studies showed that their autism rates were not out of line with those of the state’s white population, he said.

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More in-depth article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...86f_story.html

I don't know what's more depressing, that this vulnerable population has fallen prey to the machinations of one of the most harmful movements in the West today, or that xenophobic and racist groups--about as likely to count anti-vaxxers among their ranks as any enclave of middle-class Californian moms might be--are using this as yet another way to attack refugees.

Yes, free speech is great. You are allowed to spout forth lies and then indirectly kill and maim people through your bullshit.

Where. . . do you get the notion that xenophobic or racist groups targeted the Somali-immigrant/refugee population?

Going by the WaPo article, I got the impression that the community made the first overtures. The anti-vaxxers responded strongly, sure, but they didn't originate it. And sadly, with the claim that vaccines cause autism out there, we're going to keep seeing this. The line that struck me was this one.

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While scores of studies from around the world have shown conclusively that vaccines do not cause autism, that is often not a satisfactory answer for Somali American parents. They say that if science can explain that vaccines do not cause autism, science should be able to say what does.

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This isn't going to go away until we can actually solidly explain why children develop along ASD lines.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

This isn't going to go away until we can actually solidly explain why children develop along ASD lines.

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Right. Because anti-vaxxers have been so rational when it comes to explanations on how vaccines actually work. Remember, we know very well what vaccines do and how they work and we still get the bullshit from them that "if the body does gets the illness 'naturally' then it is better than the vaccine!"

What exactly makes you think that those idiots will listen to any logical explanation of autism?

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

Where. . . do you get the notion that xenophobic or racist groups targeted the Somali-immigrant/refugee population?

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I was referring to the groups that are blaming these filthy disease-ridden Somalis for importing measles to the US. I know you steer clear of social media by this is the kind of stuff that's currently making the rounds:

http://www.barenakedislam.com/2017/0...ther-diseases/

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This isn't going to go away until we can actually solidly explain why children develop along ASD lines.

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It won't go away even when/if we can do that.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

I was referring to the groups that are blaming these filthy disease-ridden Somalis for importing measles to the US. I know you steer clear of social media by this is the kind of stuff that's currently making the rounds:

http://www.barenakedislam.com/2017/0...ther-diseases/

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Ah. Reading comprehension fail on my part then. I thought you were saying that racist anti-vaxxers were trying to persuade the Somalis not to get vaccinated as some kind of xenophobic plot.

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It won't go away even when/if we can do that.

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Not completely no. You can always count on outliers. But I think that when we can solidly explain where autistic spectrum behavior does come from that it won't be able to make inroads into communities like this. It'll remain limited to the people on the far sides of the statistical curves.

A very naive train of thought.

It worked so well with Homeopathy.