Another day, another Republican saying something out loud that you thought only drunk people said at an embarrassing family dinner. On Tuesday, Professor Peter Hotz, MD, who has written extensively about vaccines and debunking anti-vaxxer myths, tweeted this out.
It was in response a report on the growing number of children not being vaccinated against infectious diseases like measles and chickenpox, both diseases having historic outbreaks this year. The pediatrician, scientist, and vaccinologist as “alarmed,” and told The Washington Post, “We have more than 64,000 kids not getting vaccinated in the state of Texas, and that doesn’t account for the over 300,000 home-schooled kids.” Hotz says he gets his fair share of anti-vaxxer lunatics trolling his social media feed but he had a new troll on Wednesday. Republican State Rep. Johnathan Stickland decided it was time to bring a special brand of stupid to the public health discussion.
You’ll notice that science is in quotations. Because, that’s not science according to Rep. Stickland, it’s “sorcery.” Serious. Like wizard magic “sorcery.”
This of course led to one of the great Twitter responses of all times.
It’s hard to take anyone seriously who calls science “sorcery.” In fact, if you watch a movie or television show about some long time ago past, and a character calls some early scientist a “sorcerer,” the joke is that that person is ignorant. But fictional characters in fictional make-em-ups get a pass because they’re usually in a pretend time when people believed in actual wizardry. Sadly, this is on-brand for Stickland, as you can read all about how dumb a man he is here. You might also remember Rep. Stickland for his controversial “constitutional carry” law that was scuttled when people began showing up at his home actually constitutionally carrying firearms the way he suggested.
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Anti-vaxxer idiocy has led to breakouts of childhood diseases thought to be virtually eradicated only a decade ago. The science behind the anti-vaxxer movement does not exist. It is based on repeatedly debunked bad science, and the only people making big money off of vaccinations these days are the people fighting the established science of vaccinations.