Just ran across this from Steve M and it’s a scary thought:
I’m glad that (apart from Donald Trump) the anti-vaccine movement isn’t really linked to the right. Can you imagine if vaccine skepticism were seized on by the right-wing noise machine? It would spread like wildfire. A third of Americans simply wouldn’t vaccinate their children, insisting that the health effects of vaccination are just a “theory.” Every Republican in Congress would have to sign an anti-vaccine pledge. There’d be movements to make vaccines illegal in the red states, and dispensers of vaccines would be defunded in those states, and their offices would be shut down. Right-wing billionaires would bankroll documentaries linking vaccination to Hitler and eugenicism, and the Fox/talk radio crazies would flock to those documentaries, which would break box-office records. Half the books on the bestseller list would have covers depicting Democratic politicians as Dr. Mengele.
I sometimes wonder if our nation can possibly survive having a population that includes a highly organized, completely insane 27% with its own media and politial party.
Scott S.
That actually is kinda scary. Would red-state parents really be willing to gamble with their kids’ lives, though? I kinda expect that they can swallow a lot of bullshit because it’s either very abstract stuff or because it doesn’t impact their lives at all…
nitpicker
Sometimes I wonder if everyone falls into their own “27 Percenter” category.
ranchandsyrup
It isn’t linked to the right, but the statistics from the CA whooping cough epidemic show that there is a higher incidence in high income, predominantly white areas. This overlaps with the statistics regarding parents who seek a waiver of the immunization requirement that skew higher in higher income, predominantly white areas.
rlrr
Don’t give them any ideas…
yam
Dude, two words: herd immunity
fbihop
Remember Michele Bachmann?
DougJ
@ranchandsyrup:
Places like Marin County, yes.
gnomedad
Fortunately, the resources required to produce vaccines and gasoline are reasonably disjoint.
Chuck Butcher
What makes you think it has?
Southern Beale
Well, I have a feeling after Romney loses the election and the Senate stays in Democratic hands and a few key House Rethugs lose (praise Goddess make it so), the GOP puppeteers (cough*coughKOCHcough*coughAILES) are gonna realize they haven’t done their causes any favors by creating an echo chamber that only serves to make their base ever more radical, wingnutty and isolated from the population at large. They’ve made it virtually impossible for a Republican politician to win a national election or for Republican ideas to gain national traction. They’re marinating in the crazy, creating a conservative ideological reduction that is too wackadoodle in flavor to appeal to more moderate palates.
Umm … I think it’s dinner time …
Gromit
The anti-vaccine movement definitely has adherents on the right. My impression is it tends to be Christian fundamentalist homeschoolers and maybe survivalist types, but they are out there, they just don’t participate in mass media the way some of the anti-fax celebrities on the left do.
Mnemosyne
@ranchandsyrup:
I remember seeing a story in the LA Times during the San Diego measles epidemic that had some rich asshole basically saying that she shouldn’t have to immunize her kids just to protect everyone else from disease. Because apparently she was able to psychically erect a magical immunity bubble around her own children and they would never get sick from someone else’s unimmunized kid.
I wanted to reach through the article and punch that bitch in the throat.
David in NY
Why do we still have fluoride in the water then? Isn’t that a Communist plot?
ranchandsyrup
@DougJ: here’s a link: http://voices.yahoo.com/californias-whooping-cough-epidemic-centered-rich-7179958.html?cat=5 discussing the perception that the cause of the epidemic was latinos but the stats show otherwise.
I chalk some of this up to standard wanna-be Galt narcissism. These galtparents think that their kids won’t get the disease.
? Martin
@ranchandsyrup:
Yep. Job creators know better than doctors and everybody else.
kindness
Wait a minute. Michelle Bachmann made vaccine hysteria a part of her campaign back in Iowa.
How is it that this is an issue of the left? Or is Michelle now just another RINO?
jl
Follow the money. Enough corporations make enough money off of enough vaccines, that the corporate backed part of the wingnutosphere would shut that stuff down before anyone heard about it.
Though, saying that does not in anyway endorce nutcase conspiracy theories about vaccines. And there is a lot of that from the search I just did on the business side of vaccines.
And some some vaccines are not profitable enough, or profits not reliable enough to prevent shortages.
Lee
I’ve been trying to troll my wingnut friends into only using penicillin as an antibiotic as to not support evolution.
As far as I can tell none of them have taken me up on it.
But honestly, I’m pretty sure this anti-vaccine thing would be a much easier sell to the wingnuts. I’m pretty sure we could troll them into it.
Chyron HR
@kindness:
Michele Bachmann was a lone wacko, completely unaffiliated with the Republican party. That’s their new story, and they’re sticking to it.
gene108
@Southern Beale:
Have you ever stopped to think the Koch’s, Ailes, Mellon-Scaife, et. al. really do believe in the truth of what they are selling?
I’ve read a few articles about how Fox News is run and one article’s take away is Ailes believes in what Fox News is putting out there.
Rich billionaires, from what I’m gathering, aren’t the introspective types. Especially, when you are a trustfund baby like Koch or Mellon-Scaife and the world’s waited on you hand and foot, since you were born.
I don’t see it happening.
They really do believe they are bold job creators and everyone else is a sycophant taking their money, either through taxes or the ludicrously high paychecks their workers take home, thanks to the minimum wage.
sm*t cl*de
Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul that whole John-Birch-Society-Redux Mises-Institute wing of libertarianism strongly oppose vaccination. Also fluoridation. The argument is basically “these are public health programs, and it would be embarrassing if they worked because public health programs = S0C1AL1SM, so therefore they don’t work.” Because the universe is designed in order to reduce some libertarian’s cognitive dissonance.
The same guys are convinced that Cold Fusion is a working technology, suppressed by Big Science.
They also pride themselves on their dispassionate, unsentimental objectivity.
Roger Moore
@yam:
And if it happened specifically to conservatives, you’d have two more: natural selection.
Chris
They’re betting it will because they count on the rest of us to bail them out.
They count on the scientific community, which is chock-full of liberals, to go on developing the things that make the twenty-first century possible while they go on grousing about pointy-headed “intellectual elites.”
Just like they count on the federal government, backed by the East and West Coasts’ pocketbooks, to pick up the tab when they drastically cut their public services (see the firefighting in Colorado). Just like they count on Democrats and other non-crazy people to protect their Social Security and Medicare (“oh, we know these crazy candidates of ours want to destroy the safety net, but don’t worry, it’ll never pass anyway!”) Just like they count on illegal immigrants to do the things they’d never do themselves, even while making life as miserable as possible for all of them.
To borrow from the TV show cited in the last thread, the total tonnage of things wingnuts expect the rest of us to pick up the tab for while they go right on fucking things up would stun a herd of oxen in its tracks.
lol
@kindness:
Anti-vaccine is *big* with the left-wing woo woo types that embrace homeopathy and other “alternative medicines”. If it gets embraced by any politicians, it’s usually fringe Green Party types.
I’m frankly surprised the right-wing hasn’t picked it up more before now because it plays into their anti-science conspiracy nonsense.
Mnemosyne
@ranchandsyrup:
IIRC, part of the reason why the deaths happened in Latino families was that they were more likely to have an infant who was too young to be immunized in the house, not that they were being infected at a higher rate. But, hey, why should the media let facts get in the way of a little immigrant bashing, amirite?
ShadeTail
Morbid but amusing thought:
If this actually caught on, the red states would suddenly start suffering vast epidemics of otherwise easily treated diseases. Flu, whooping cough, measles, maybe even old time theoretically-eradicated diseases like polio and smallpox. Many thousands, maybe even *millions*, would die. Maybe enough so that their share of the American electorate would plummet, and we’d start winning at the ballot box by default.
ranchandsyrup
@Mnemosyne: I remember that too and I would have been in line behind you for the slapping like that scene from Airplane.
Got a new GP this morning and he was asking when my last whooping cough/TDAP shot was. We had a short discussion about the Jenny McCarthy’s of the world who push non-immunization. He was not pleased.
Ash Can
Steve M definitely has a good point. That is a scary thought, especially for us parents.
@Southern Beale: Unfortunately, no matter how badly the rest of the Republicans may get trounced, and even if the GOP PTB try to tell them otherwise, the House Republicans won’t give a shit about anything but their own personal power trip, and won’t hesitate to keep the government shut down, throw the country’s credit rating out the window, etc. Nothing else will matter to them except creating their own reality, in the recent radical-Republican tradition. That’s why even if Obama absolutely buries Romney, Sweet Fuck All will get accomplished if the House doesn’t get flipped at the same time.
dmsilev
@Roger Moore:
It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in evolution. Evolution believes in you.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
@gene108:
And it’s worth noting that Mittens felt perfectly comfortable ranting about the worthlessness of the lower classes to a room full of rich people.
The think to keep in mind is these clowns like Kotch and Mittens know they haven’t done crap to earn their privileges. They have to come up with some excuse in their minds.
Waldo
Not sure I want to see the map divided into Blue States and Jim Jonestowns.
Mnemosyne
@kindness:
Yes, but Bachmann’s crazy was specifically directed at a vaccine that helps prevent people from dying of God’s just punishment for having S-E-X, not a “real” vaccine like the one for measles or mumps.
Mnemosyne
@ShadeTail:
Unfortunately, viruses tend not to respect borders and if the disease in question is rampant enough, even people who were properly vaccinated can get it.
So while theoretically the red states might be the first to go, California and New York would be close behind.
Dennis SGMM
Anyone in their mid-to-late sixties remembers how it was before Dr. Salk came up with the polio vaccine; people in iron lungs, children hopelessly crippled, and the fear that would sweep the community ig someone was diagnosed with the disease. Anyone who would voluntarily return to that is stupid beyond belief.
Mayken
@Scott S.: Oh, they’ll do just what they do with abortion – sneak in the back way and get them vaccinated anyway while forcing the rest of the populace to go un-vaccinated. Nothing new under the sun…
Bubblegum Tate
@lol:
Yeah, this.
And anti-vaxxers are terrifying enough, as is. But if they had the right-wing noise machine behind them? Good lord.
roc
If they actually seized on the anti-vaxxer nonsense, they would quickly *not* make up 27% of the … living populace.
Not even abstinence-only sex education could make up for the disease surge that would follow such a high opt-out rate.
Maude
@ShadeTail:
It isn’t them so much as it’s their children that will suffer.
Cruelty is cruelty no matter which side wishes something horrible on the other.
trollhattan
Plenty of anti-vaxxing among the California escape-to-the-hills RW cohort. Like an ironic vaccine, it’s there among them and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see it joining Adam and Eve on the ridin’ dinosaur.
After all, it’s one more “get the gummint out of mah Freedumz(tm)” issue.
quannlace
Welcome back, Mr. Polio! Or his more formal name, Infantile Paralysis.
My mother remembers the terror she and other parents felt in the summer months, back in the 1950’s. There was an outbreak in our town; she called our pediatrician and asked was there anything she could do. His answer: Pray.
When the first polio vaccine came, she had me and my sister almost first on the list.
roc
@David in NY: Not sure if I’m lost in the sarchasm or not, but the nutters actually *have* been re-arguing the fluoridation thing. Sadly enough.
The Other Chuck
@ShadeTail: That’s a pretty heartless and twisted definition of “amusing”. I’m certainly not laughing.
Maude
@quannlace:
I didn’t get to know my aunt because she dies of Polio when she was thirteen. Quite a few years before I was born and the Salk vaccine was developed.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
I have serious doubts about that. But even if it’s true, any attempts to nudge the conservative herd back in a slightly less insane direction, “compassionate conservative” style, will trigger a full blown backlash against them, and some other, dumber billionaires will step into the gap and become the new Koch/Ailes.
Conservatism cannot fail. It can only be failed. Millions upon millions of conservatives truly believe this and anyone at any level who tries to point out that that’s not true will simply be treated as a case in point. It’ll take a lot more than two lost election cycles to change that.
Anne Laurie
Look, just be grateful enough of the dread Public Health Services survive that there hasn’t been a nationwide outbreak of whooping cough or measles recently. There’s a proud historical tradition of blaming epidemics on the local brand of “those people” — Jews, Gypsies, immigrants (our Irish ancestors, as I’m sure you know, were blamed for bringing cholera to New York & Boston as recently as the 1920s), and tenant farmers in the postbellum South. Without the medical networks identifying & ringfencing local outbreaks, how long do you think it would take for Fox News viewers to start arresting public-housing inhabitants and other insufficiently pale and/or powerful people for “suspicious behavior” like coughing in a public place?
Reputed right-wing “intellectuals” like WFBuckley greeted the start of the AIDS epidemic with calls for interning every person identified with “disease-causing” behavior, such as being gay or Haitian. Their more “tolerant” fellows thought tattooing (suspected) carriers on the face or the back of their hands would be adequate… for the moment. Fear makes people mean & stupid, and M&S is the target market for the current GOP.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Steve is wrong. Some of the most virulent anti-vaxxers I’ve ever met are wingers.
pat
Just like the “raw milk” crowd. One of the first things you learn in any biology class is what a tremendous boon it was to human health when what’s-his-name invented Pasteurization.
And now the nuts claim it “destroys flavor” or something. Yeah, brucellosis and e. coli taste great all right.
R-Jud
@ShadeTail:
Fixed that for you, schmuck. Most of the dead would be kids. And many of those children would be tiny infants who are too young to be vaccinated. Friends of mine watched their weeks-old baby struggle for life after contracting whooping cough; it’s not something I would wish on anyone.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Waldo: You’re twenty years too late. We’re just waiting for the final act of the play at this point.
Me, I’m on the edge of my seat.
MikeJ
@Anne Laurie:
Washington has a big whooping cough problem right now.
sparrow
@David in NY: Not a communist plot, but it is completely unnecessary. (Do you think there are lower rates of cavities in communities with flouride? No one knows, because the last studies were done decades ago, and were flawed). Fluoride that is dumped into the municipal water supplies in this country is a waste product from chemical manufacture that would otherwise have to be paid for to dispose of properly. Some people have developed a sensitivity to fluoride such that ingestion of even small amounts of tap water gives them severe rashes (fluoroderma).
Not to mention, my teeth are fine. Why the hell are we giving everyone medicine that only some people (children, maybe?) need? No thanks.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Waldo:
Now you can get that big house in the country that you always wanted, cheap.
Mnemosyne
They’re trying to pass a bill in California where parents will need to basically get a note from their child’s doctor saying that the doctor explained vaccines to them and they still opted not to have their child vaccinated, but apparently even that is a horrible infringement on a parent’s right to live in ignorant bliss. Because, really, who should parents trust more when it comes to their child’s health, their pediatrician or Rob Schneider?
Steve
Anti-vax, like homeschooling, is one of those places where the far left and far right tend to meet. Maybe on the far left it’s a corporate conspiracy and on the far right it’s a government conspiracy but really, it’s not even worth it to figure out why. It just is.
Aimai
@Forum Transmitted Disease: I agree with this. Anti vacx goes hand in hand with all kinds of Bircher stuff and anti govt suspicion. The attacks on gardasil and in the aca are both branches of right wing anti vacx hysteria. There is an out break of whooping cough right now in wash state. The reason it’s not being blamed on ” the other” or specific ethnic groups is that the ” explanation” in an ethno science sense revolves around the assertion that the vaccines–all vaccines–are both dangerous and ineffective. Medical science and pharma are the scapegoats. People who refuse to vaccinate don’t think the illness is actually controlled by the vaccine do every reported case confirms their conviction that there was no point vaccinating.
Mayken
@ShadeTail: If it were possible to limit the damage only to people who make the conscious choice not to vaccinate themselves, I’d share your morbid amusement. The problem is, anti-vaxers are making choices for their own innocent kids, kids and adults who do vaccinate but for whatever reason immunity doesn’t take, kids who cannot be vaccinated due to age or medical condition. Etc.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Mnemosyne:
Bah, did lepers in the Bible infect all of Jerusalem? When one of the great unwashed rides through town, The Great Twitter will warn us and we’ll retreat to our elite, sanitized government buildings.
Brachiator
The anti vaxxers are plenty stupid on their own and spreading fairly well without the need of extra oomph from Right Wingnuttistan.
And boy, do the anti-vaxxers hit the sweet spot of looniness.
These people need to slapped, alright.
Hungry Joe
@lol:
Maybe the left-wing woo-woo types’ embracing of the anti-vax crock immunized the right wing against it?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@pat: It does. You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted raw milk. It’s seriously fucking delicious.
That being said, I drank it once (on the farm, knew the farmer) and will never do it again unless it’s the same set of circumstances, because I don’t make a habit out of exposing myself to diseases that can kill me.
Stoic
On the other hand, such a movement would thin out the herd in a Darwinian sense. But I kid. Really…..no, really.
sm*t cl*de
Lew Rockwell interviews struck-off anti-vaccine scam artist
DrAndy Wakefield about VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM and the evil medical establishment’s efforts to SUPPRESS THE TRUTH:http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2012/05/22/278-the-autism-vaccination-connection/
So it’s a big thing with (some) libertarians. Along with denial of AIDS and climate change. Right-wing Lysenkoism.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chris:
__
A few days ago Rachel Maddow had on Frank Rich as a guest to talk about an article he’d just written about his impressions from a week which he (Frank Rich) had spent immersed in grassroots (i.e. not Fox) conservative media. IIRC it was the week of the RNC or so. One of the takeaways was that the folks in grassroots conservative media don’t trust Fox and suspect them of being corporate sellouts and closet big government supporters, and more generally of being not conservative enough.
So if Fox gets too squishy, bye-bye Fox. They’ll leave Fox and watch something else which feeds them what they want. Where there is a demand for product, the free market will provide it. In other words, the monster has escaped from Dr. Frankenstein’s castle, and even its creators cannot control it anymore.
JGabriel
__
__
Steve M:
I’m not really seeing the downside here. I assume we can set up charities & job centers to help relocate people who want vaccines. In fact, I think we should make vaccines mandatory in blue states and let wingnuts make them illegal in red states.
After all, state’s rights make the states an experimental democratic laboratory for such initiatives. And while I may not agree with red states that wish to do away with vaccines, I will protect to their deaths the right to do so!
.
Stoic
@David in NY: I live in Pinellas County, FL and the County Commissioners voted against putting fluoride in the water. It’s a done deal.
Jay in Oregon
@kindness:
Huffington Post—not really a bastion of right-wingers—went crazy for the anti-vax stuff for a while (and may still be, AFAIK).
Dennis SGMM
@pat:
Brucellosis? Isn’t he in “Looper”?
Jay in Oregon
@MikeJ:
And wasn’t there a big story about a TB outbreak in Florida, just in time for the GOP convention?
lovable liberal
It can’t. So… We need to arm ourselves and figure out how to make money off the lunatics.
Then we can build something decent off the corpse of the old order.
Unless… Against all odds, I’m starting to feel optimistic about the election. Can we put the House in play? Can we convince the timorous Democrats to fuck the filibuster?
Chris
@gene108:
Exactly.
Repeated from a few times before: the 1%ers are just as crazy as the rest of them. They’re not Machiavellian schemers brilliantly manipulating the herd with carefully selected lies and distortions. They’re the lunatics-in-chief, whose only qualification for ending up there is that they had more money than the other lunatics (usually due to being born with it).
swbarnes2
Thought I’d put this out here, since pertussis was a topic:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-problem-of-waning-pertussis-immunity/
Some key quotes:
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Aimai: Lucky you. Our outbreak of pertussis is being blamed 100% on Latino migrants – who, as it turns out, are far more likely to be immunized than the rich white women complaining so bitterly about their presence in our school system.
R-Jud
@swbarnes2: It can also affect people in their later 20s-early 30s. I’m in that group: I had it earlier this year.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
California has had several infant deaths from pertussis, but fortunately not in the last year. Some states have pretty startling rates, with Wisconsin leading the way.
http://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/outbreaks.html
SatanicPanic
@Steve: Conspiracy theorists are people just smart enough to figure out that the bad things in the world may have causes, but not smart enough to figure out what they are.
General Stuck
Not so much the 27 percenter maniacs are near a majority of Americans, as it is more than 50 percent of the GOP. So the really crazy wingnuts scare the other less crazy wingnuts, into doing and saying really crazy things. Especially the ones elected to positions of power.
It goes without saying this is some really crazy shit, not only because it contradicts the general philosophy of states rights, these morons yammer on about morning noon and night. It is also the fact that GOP governors were the ones that requested the waivers in the first place. And now, a chamber of congress known as the peoples house, has passed a law agin it. Which, like all the other crazy laws they pass there, is just another way of saying “Obama sucks”.
This shit can’t go on forever and no way to run a country, unless it is into a dystopian ditch. Something will have to give, sooner, rather than later.
James Hulsey
@Roger Moore: @Jay in Oregon:
HuffPo is a font for incredible amounts of woo. See the section entitled Woo here: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Huffington_Post#Woo
Essentially, don’t trust anything even remotely science-based from them. I wouldn’t trust much on the politics side either, given Ariana’s shifting loyalties.
Chris
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I didn’t know this, but I’m not surprised. Every now and then I have heard the occasional mutter on RWNJ websites about how Fox is going to the dogs. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before they, like George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and so many others, are summarily excommunicated as not-conservative-enough. Maybe after Ailes or Murdoch die.
And yeah, Frankenstein’s monster is the right analogy. I suspect that some of the elites did used to know better and thought they could control them (like, among the people who helped mainstream them back in the seventies), but at this point the nuts have taken over the nuthouse at every level, including (maybe especially) the top.
Lancelot Link
Ross Douthat’s an anti-vaxxer, too. Just in case anyone needed another reason not to like him.
Maude
@General Stuck:
Some days I don’t think there is a rat hole big enough all these rats.
RaflW
I joke about leaving the US, but if we abandoned herd immunity at that scale, I really would leave. A woman my partner works with got whooping cough this spring. Took months to clear (and for some it can be fatal).
It really would be a national emergency, and the govt-haters wouldn’t care and yet would blame libs for all the destruction. Yikesville.
Mnemosyne
@R-Jud:
They roll whooping cough in with the tetanus booster now (aka Tdap — tetanus, diptheria and pertussis) so I was covered prior to the California epidemic thanks to gouging my thumb with a potato peeler and giving myself a nasty enough cut that they gave me a tetanus shot.
mai naem
I actually have an idea what is going on here. There is a total fcuking lack of knowledge of history in this country. Everybody’s so busy trying to get teaching math, english and sciences correct that social sciences get left behind(and, yeah the arts and P.E. too.) This is the main reason people don’t understand the history of contraception and abortion. Women have no fcuking idea what they would have to do without contraception and abortion. Same with childhood diseases. People don’t know crap about whooping cough, measles and chickenpox killing kids. I lump in predatory loans in the same bag. People don’t know about how there used to be usury laws. My sister’s kids take social studies and it blows me away how little they learn and they are going to good schools.
Roger Moore
@Dennis SGMM:
I don’t think anyone wants to return to that. They’re just so ignorant that they don’t realize that giving up on vaccination risks returning us to that. Ignorance can kill you just as dead as stupidity.
trollhattan
@Lancelot Link:
Srsly? What does chunky Reese think? I hope the NYT is getting their money’s worth. What a hump.
Joel
@ShadeTail: Not amusing.
pk
.
The whole movement will last as long as it takes the first few babies to die and an outbreak of some long forgotten disease. The thing about reality and nature is that it does not give damn about human fantasies. Then they will rush to the clinics with their brats stomping on others en route
Mnemosyne
@pk:
You’d think so, but we’ve had multiple outbreaks of measles, mumps and pertussis (whooping cough) here in California and fucking idiots still refuse to vaccinate their precious little snowflake babies. Because bad things only happen to The Poors, not to nice upper-class people like them.
Central Planning
@yam: You do realize, “dude”, that herd immunity only works when there are a rare few people who don’t get immunized (due to allergies, compromised immune system anyway), not a significant portion of the population that decides to “opt out” because they think it’s chic?
Joel
@pat: I’m going to make a (small) stand for raw milk here; pasteurization (especially high-temp pasteurization, commonly used to further extend shelf life) affects cheese-making in a significant fashion.
this is part of the ban on french soft cheeses that stands in this country.
AHH onna Droid
@Joel: Guess what, the ‘French’ are banning them too, a Quebec et en la France. A local official in France opined that he would have no more children die for raw cheese.
The stuff is proliferating so quickly here among local purveyors in the american South that I must struggle to find the pasteurized stuff, or just settle for Vermonts finest. What a damn shame.
Oh, and food nuttery crosses political boundaries.