If you think that issues regarding vaccination should be part of the Democratic Party Platform

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18. We should never resort to name calling...

But if someone is anti-vaccine for all occasions - it's not name-calling to call them antivax. Just as it's not name calling to call someone a 'birther' a 'prepper' or a 'truther' if it is the school that you belong to - then it is not name calling.

I agree that the assumptions people make can lead to some ugly accusations, but some of the things that the hard core antivax folk hang their hat on - can really get annoying.

For one thing - there is no connection between resparatol and autism. If young people were showing 'autistic symptoms' and they believe that it is because of the mercury in resparatol - then they would have mercury poisoning (which has symptoms similar to autism) and not autism. There are tests for mercury poisoning.

For another if they believe that there is a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism - they need to acknowledge that if, in fact, it is the MMR vaccine causing the autism it is not the resparatol because they discontinued resparatol in vaccines in 1999. Autism rates continued to rise after the resparatol was discontinued. If they want to posit a different theory, then I'm listening.

When you point that out to an antivaxer (the absense of resparatol) - and they don't respond, but later continue to repeat the same nonsense - it's difficult to maintain any respect for them.

Again, I'm basing my critique on conversations that I have had on Facebook, but I expect that's where a lot of the assumptions come from - there are key words, triggers that you recognize when you are engaged in a discussion that you've had before. I expect that others recognize those key words and assume their 'opponent' is carrying all that baggage.