# Another Worthless Celebrity Anti-Vaxer

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worthless-celebrity-anti-vaxer/683734>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [March 14, 2014, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worthless-celebrity-anti-vaxer/683734 "2014-03-14T23:57:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 116

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**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\
**Post date:** [March 19, 2014, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worthless-celebrity-anti-vaxer/683734/116 "2014-03-19T15:52:13Z")

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> [@Maeglin](#):
>
> Cool my jets? Unlikely. Whether she _really_ wishes it or not is immaterial. I will not cool my jets until we collectively stop imagining that having an autistic child is some sort of curse inflicted upon parents. People don’t _really_ mean it when they say they hope Jerry Sandusky gets raped in prison, but this statement is underwritten by a belief that it is would be _real_ and much deserved punishment.
> 
> When you say you hope that parents end up with an autistic child but backpedal _because you really don’t wish it on the kid_, you’re showing that you think autism really is a sort of punishment visited on parents where the kid is just collateral damage. That belief yields parents who never see the inside of a jail for murdering their autistic children because actually caring for them is such a curse and who wouldn’t crack under the strain.
> 
> If autism is a punishment, it’s for autistic people who have to live in a society where, deep down, people don’t value them as human beings. Deep down, people just pity them, viewing them as albatrosses around their poor parents’ necks.
> 
> When that stops, the jets cool.

It’s a sort of sick irony, when you really get down to it, that this is part of the problem with the antivaccine movement. The implication that autism is the most awful thing that can happen to a child, and of course that it’s worse than the chance of dying from infectious diseases. This utter devaluation of the life of autistic children which is so characteristic of those within the movement.

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