Swine flu vaccine nonsense

Perhaps you, like me, think the anti-vaccination brigade are about as praiseworthy as Stalin. Yet you keep seeing and hearing trickles of nonsense from their corner, digested verbatim by concerned friends and family. If so, this article is for you. It is by the redoubtable Dr Harriet Hall, and deals with as many of the misapprehensions (and lies!) about the swine 'flu vaccine as she can bear to read. At times, things get really funny:

• Claim: Mercola says “Injecting organisms into your body to provoke immunity is contrary to nature.”
• Fact: Nature kills people. Doing something contrary to nature is what medicine is all about. It’s a good thing.
• Claim: “The potential for a weaponized vaccine to be the vector for a weaponized flu cannot be discounted.”
• Fact: Most far-fetched conspiracy theories are wrong. I have no trouble discounting this one. The potential may be there, but the likelihood is homeopathic.

I do enjoy "homeopathic" as an adjective meaning "astronomically improbable".