Back in February I wrote a post about how to quantify risk. One of the examples I gave was of friends who refuse to inoculate their children against measles, mumps and rubella, preferring homeopathic treatments instead.

For some reason, their choice gets under my skin. Perhaps it was the bogus science or perhaps it was the feeling that they were getting a free ride from everyone else’s inoculation.

Of course, it’s absolutely taboo to criticise the way people bring up their children. In addition, as a society, we place a higher value on individual freedom than we do on the common good. Still…

My interest is in the way people think and how we communicate complicated information. I’m also interested in why I’m so bothered by this issue.

This is why I was fascinated to read an article in the New York Times today (Public health risk seen as parents reject vaccines) that made me think about this question in a different way.

According to the article, 242,000 children die from measles each year. In 2000, it was more like one million. Measles inoculations save the lives of about 750,000 children each year. Wow! Science delivers another miracle.

Now imagine going back in time to 2000 and insisting that, under no circumstances, should we immunise children against measles because of the (unproven) association with autism. Such a decision would condemn millions - MILLIONS - of children around the world to an unnecessary and avoidable death.

It’s obviously not a straight choice between child mass murder and homeopathy but there is definitely some muddled thinking and bad information out there. I wonder if the NY Times might have chosen a different headline. “Confused parents endanger children” comes to mind.

PS There’s an interesting article on Slate that covers the alleged links between autism and the MMR vaccine: Why there’s no dispelling the vaccine-causes-autism link