Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Anti-Vaccination Propaganda - Who's Guilty

I found a very interesting analysis of the current anti-vaccination propaganda movement, and its implications on the health of our children:

In the 1919 Supreme Court case of Schenck vs. United States, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr. famously wrote "The most stringent protection of free speech would
not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." By
"falsely," Justice Holmes clearly meant shouting fire while not believing there
to be a fire. It goes without saying, shouting fire in the event of an actual
fire would never be a cause for punishment. It appears that shouting fire while
holding a mistaken belief that there was a fire, a terrible and possibly lethal
error, would likely be no cause for punishment, either. But what if that belief
was based on no good evidence?


Article: Shouting Fire

No comments:

Post a Comment