(If you haven't yet heard the first episode of the new Point of Inquiry, you can listen here, and I also strongly encourage you to subscribe via iTunes from the same page.) Perhaps the most alarming part of my conversation with Paul Offit came when he argued we're already seeing many scary diseases return, thanks to reduced vaccination rates in certain communities around the U.S. I wasn't sure whether there was clear evidence of this yet (save the obvious case of the measles in the UK). But Offit certainly sounded sure. I asked him the following question, "The public health fear is that diseases that were once vanquished or rare will return. How much evidence is there that that's happening?" Here is his reply around minute 25:30:
Abundant evidence. I would have said ten years ago it was theoretical. And certainly, if we had immunization rates that dropped from 98 ...
