Vaccine denialism and related issues is something that I took a great interest in many years ago with the publication of Laruie Garret’s “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance,” a book which presaged a great deal of later popular and more technical literature on diseases. My interested was piqued in connection with an interest in so called “emerging diseases” that came from my work at that time in emerging disease land (the northeastern Congo forest). (Yes, these are all linked in various ways. But my interest in writing about these issues has been dampened since joining Scienceblogs.com.The reason for this is because I find myself surrounded by a number of individuals who have more than an interest in these areas, who are in fact experts. You’ll get more from reading Orac’s blog, for instance, and I’ll probably just screw up.But, of my 11 or 12 readers, almost half live in the Twin Cities area or nearby Wisconsin, so I write today to alert you to an opportunity to send your letters to the editors of a local newspaper as part of the ongoing battle for truth and justice. Or at least, truth.Orac writes about Serious antivaccinationist stupidity in Winona, MN. Winona is the county seat of Winona County, and lies between Rochester (medical city) and LaCross, WI. Winona (weh-no-nah) might have been a local native chief. The first white person to record anything about Winona was a man looking for the source of the Mississippi. He started his search at what would later become Winona.I’m sure you knew all that. What you might not know is that Winona is known as the Stained Glass Capital of the United States of America. And, it is the home of the dumbest crap anyone has said about vaccines lately, according to Orac, in the form of a

…particularly dumb guest editorial Think twice before you vaccinate your child in the Winona Daily News, which is packed full of antivaccinationist lies and pseudoscience…

I suggest you read Orac’s post and then you’ll know what to do.

Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:

In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
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