The interesting thing about this one was the diversity of those that fell hard for it, and their reasons for doing so. I'm not talking about those who umed and ahed about getting their kid a shot, I actually understand that, and suspect that my very cold eyed assessment of the risks might not fully withstand the subject being my own child.
I'm talking about those who went off the deep end all over the internet. There's quite a strong anti-medicine sentiment out there, plenty of my friends have major aversions to doctors, my brother's girlfriend had a chest infection and a fever before Christmas and had to be cajoled into taking paracetamol. There's the Big Pharma conspiracy that runs the political spectrum, particularly the left as strain of anti-corporatism. The libertarian right and the personal freedom angle. The earth-mothers, and the she-bear mothers. There's a lot of suspicion of science in general too, but not a suspicion that lasts in the face of one study with 12 subjects that confirms everything they ever suspected. Also suspect that we massively underestimate the amount of conspiracy theorists out there, the persistence of such myths as 'methadone was invented in Germany in 1937 and was called dolophine and was named after Hitler' demonstrates that.
If you're at all interested it's worth perusing the posts on the matter that Orac at Respectful Insolence has made.
As far as the perception angle, not the stats, goes - Bridgewalker is right about de-institionalisation too. I've heard the comment about there being more disabled people out there, especially kids. Well, that's because many more of the kids are going to more mainstream schooling, and the adults aren't residing in places like Lea Castle (old place near me that I believe at one point was the biggest disabled institution in Europe). I've got several colleagues who might well have been institutionalised a generation ago. I'm doing a piece of work at the moment with some people who have lost a charity run day centre, real old fashioned sit and colour in type place, well meaning though. They're now finding that those sorts of daycentres don't exist any more, and for better or worse they'll have less provision and more time in the community.
Always tell people that if they want to truly understand how much disability is out there they need to go to cheap warm cafes on workdays. Go to the same one a few times and you'll see the same faces, and you'll quickly spot less obvious disabilities, including a lot of mental health issues. Those people aren't generally out in the evenings, or the weekends when the rest of us are.
