“Americans have witnessed an increase in hospitalizations and deaths from diseases like whooping cough, measles, mumps, and bacterial meningitis,” writes Paul Offit, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, “because some parents have become more frightened by vaccines than by the diseases they prevent.”22 We noted in chapter 1 that people often hold on to a belief long after they know rationally that it’s wrong, and this is especially true if they have taken many steps down the pyramid in support of
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