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[MonkeyHead]

That comic looks unfinished. I'm not sure what the weird circle in panel 3 is supposed to be.

Charles Darwin, I think.

A very disillusioned Charles Darwin.

I thought it was a floating butt, but if you're sure...

It's an understandable mistake; they are very similar, after all.

Ah, and his famous publication: On the Origin of the Faeces.

[Sirus]

Pros of anti-vaccers: Self terminating once herd immunity goes under critical limit.
Negative: Plagues are not good things.

Maybe someone should tell her about polio.

No don't! We're culturing the anti-vaccers so they get the diseases and the diseases don't evolve to infect the vaccinated people.

You realize that some people are allergic to vaccines and can't get them even if they want to, right?

[Darvi]

There's a thing called herd immunity. It would also protect the anti-vaccers, but you can't always win.

[MonkeyHead]

Letting natural selection take its course might not be very humane.

[Flying Dice]

Silly, the anti-vaccers probably don't "believe in" evolution either. 

[Loud Whispers]

Pros of anti-vaccers: Self terminating once herd immunity goes under critical limit.
Negative: Plagues are not good things.

Maybe someone should tell her about polio.

No don't! We're culturing the anti-vaccers so they get the diseases and the diseases don't evolve to infect the vaccinated people.

The only way to end disease is to completely eradicate it. Right now the best we can do is wipe out entire strains.

...Unfortunately with the rise of antibiotic-resistant diseases brought on from the over zealous application of aforementioned antibiotics and the deliberate resistance towards eradicating diseases, a great deal of them still exist today.

Anti-vaccers help ensure diseases survive.

[Xantalos]

Pros of anti-vaccers: Self terminating once herd immunity goes under critical limit.
Negative: Plagues are not good things.

Maybe someone should tell her about polio.

No don't! We're culturing the anti-vaccers so they get the diseases and the diseases don't evolve to infect the vaccinated people.

The only way to end disease is to completely eradicate it. Right now the best we can do is wipe out entire strains.

...Unfortunately with the rise of antibiotic-resistant diseases brought on from the over zealous application of aforementioned antibiotics and the deliberate resistance towards eradicating diseases, a great deal of them still exist today.

Anti-vaccers help ensure diseases survive.

I can only offer horrible solutions, so I won't.

[PanH]

What are even the arguments against vaccins ? "I don't want to pay, so I'll rather die and keep my money in my grave !" ?

[SomeStupidGuy]

What are even the arguments against vaccins ? "I don't want to pay, so I'll rather die and keep my money in my grave !" ?

No, it's 'They cause autism!' Or some other alarmist crap.

[Sirus]

Most of the arguments are of the uninformed kind. Like, people are told that vaccines contain mercury, or cause autism, or don't actually do anything, or vaccines are the devil's work because disease is God's plan, or whatever.

[Aviator CJ]

If I remember correctly, some doctor or scientist published some paper or article saying that vaccines caused autism. Lot's of laypeople got all upset about vaccines, and now we have the anti-vaccine groups.

The thing is, the guy who said vaccines cause autism was talking out of his arse (ass to the Americans out there) and had his qualifications revoked as a result of the whole kerfuffle.

[Vattic]

It also doesn't help that the press absolutely loved the story.

Said scientist wasn't just talking out of his arse for no reason either; There was a huge undeclared conflict of interest with him being paid by a group representing parents of children with autism to find a connection. I'm not sure if it was true but he apparently had tried to file patents for a vaccine that focused on the same viruses.

[Reelya]

A lot of the immunization/autism belief seems to be related to the fact that there are immunization shots which occur about the same time parents start noticing signs of autism, so inevitably a fair percentage of parents will start noticing the autism signs right after the immunization shots. Finding patterns where are none is a very old human foible.

This has also been shown to occur in lab animals, where a random food dropping device is erroneously believed by a lab animal to be connected to a lever. The animal develops the false belief and thereafter persists in pressing the lever and looking for food, even though there is zero correlation. This shows the tendency to notice when there is a coincidental correlation, and ignore the times there was no correlation.

[Valid_Dark]

Pros of anti-vaccers: Self terminating once herd immunity goes under critical limit.
Negative: Plagues are not good things.

Maybe someone should tell her about polio.

No don't! We're culturing the anti-vaccers so they get the diseases and the diseases don't evolve to infect the vaccinated people.

The only way to end disease is to completely eradicate it. Right now the best we can do is wipe out entire strains.

...Unfortunately with the rise of antibiotic-resistant diseases brought on from the over zealous application of aforementioned antibiotics and the deliberate resistance towards eradicating diseases, a great deal of them still exist today.

Anti-vaccers help ensure diseases survive.

 Biologists play reverse Pokémon, trying to avoid putting any one team member on the front lines long enough for the experience to cause evolution.

[alway]

Said scientist wasn't just talking out of his arse for no reason either; There was a huge undeclared conflict of interest with him being paid by a group representing parents of children with autism to find a connection. I'm not sure if it was true but he apparently had tried to file patents for a vaccine that focused on the same viruses.

Yep. Though it's actually worse than that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

Four years after the publication of the paper, other researchers' results had still failed to reproduce Wakefield's findings or confirm his hypothesis of a relation between childhood gastrointestinal disorders and autism.[4] A 2004 investigation by Sunday Times reporter Brian Deer identified undisclosed financial conflicts of interest on Wakefield's part,[5] and most of his coauthors then withdrew their support for the study's interpretations.[6] The British General Medical Council (GMC) conducted an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Wakefield and two former colleagues.[7] The investigation centred on Deer's numerous findings, including one that autistic children were subjected to unnecessary invasive medical procedures,[8] such as colonoscopy and lumbar puncture, and that Wakefield acted without the required ethical approval from an institutional review board.

On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found three dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children.[9] The panel ruled that Wakefield had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant", acted both against the interests of his patients, and "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his published research.[10][11][12] The Lancet immediately and fully retracted his 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC’s findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified.[13] Wakefield was struck off the Medical Register in May 2010, with a statement identifying dishonest falsification in The Lancet research,[14] and is barred from practising medicine in the UK.[15]

In January 2011, an editorial accompanying an article by Brian Deer in BMJ identified Wakefield's work as an "elaborate fraud".[1][16][17] In a follow-up article,[18] Deer said that Wakefield had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation driven testing".[19] In November 2011, yet another report in BMJ[20] revealed original raw data indicating that, contrary to Wakefield's claims in The Lancet, children in his research did not have inflammatory bowel disease.

but in December 2006, Deer reported figures obtained from the Legal Services Commission showing that it had paid £435,643 in undisclosed fees to Wakefield for him to build a case against the MMR vaccine