Vaccines don't cause autism. Vaccines, instead, prevent disease. Vaccines have wiped out a score of formerly deadly childhood diseases. Vaccine skepticism has helped to bring some of those diseases back from near extinction.

The idea that vaccines are a primary cause of autism is not as crackpot as some might wish. Autism's 60-fold rise in 30 years matches a tripling of the U.S. vaccine schedule.

There have been deadly outbreaks of waterborne diseases and in every emergency of this type you're always looking to prevent that second wave of diseases, which adds to the tragedy.

Vaccine conspiracies, like so much modern cult conspiracy culture, perpetuates itself and lives on indefinitely thanks to the community-building and archiving of the Internet.

The difference is that with Ebola, it is such a devastating disease, and there is still no cure. They're still working on vaccines. The fact of the matter with polio, there is a cure; there is a vaccine.

If some modern-day David Brock wanted to defect from the conservative movement and write a tell-all focused solely on the financial chicanery of the entire right-wing nonprofit/think tank/publishing sphere, I would read the absolute heck out of it.