If you think I’m hardcore when it comes to my disgust at antivaccination advocates like Dawn Winkler, you should check out House, M.D.:
[House walks away. Cut to the clinic and House is in an exam room with a young mother and her baby.]
Young Mother: No formula, just mommy’s healthy natural breast milk.
House: Yummy.
Young Mother: Her whole face just got swollen like this overnight.
House: Mmhmm. No fever, glands normal, missing her vaccination dates.
Young Mother: We’re not vaccinating.
Young Mother: [Takes a toy frog and starts to make frog sounds] Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. [Giggles]
[Baby smiles and giggles too]
House: Think they don’t work?
Young Mother: I think some multinational pharmaceutical company wants me to think they work. Pad their bottom line.
House: Mmmm. May I? [He takes the frog and starts to do the gribbit noise with the baby]
Young Mother: [Whispered] Sure.
House: Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. [The baby laughs] All natural no dyes. That’s a good business: all-natural children’s toys. Those toy companies, they don’t arbitrarily mark up their frogs. They don’t lie about how much they spend in research and development. The worst a toy company can be accused of is making a really boring frog.
[Young Mother laughs and so does House. The baby giggles again]
House: Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. You know another really good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins. You can get them in frog green or fire engine red. Really. The antibodies in yummy mummy only protect the kid for 6 months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think that you’ll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove them wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they’d rather let their kid die then cough up 40 bucks for a vaccination, believe me, prices will drop REALLY fast. Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit.
Young Mother: Tell me what she has.
House: A cold.
[Cut to House leaving the clinic.]
Of course, no doctor would ever actually say this to a patient, with rare exceptions.
