It’s no surprise that folks will debate issues they feel passionately about when they’re online, and one of the issues folks will debate most fervently online is vaccines.
But, folks, it’s hard to imagine a stranger exchange than the one that happened between an elected representative and a professor of infectious diseases.
This is Jonathan Stickland, a self-described “Christian Conservative Liberty Loving Republican.”
Stickland represents District 92, which includes the Fort Worth suburb of Bedford, in the Texas State House. He also runs an oil and gas consulting business.
When he was on Twitter recently, he went all-in with his thoughts on vaccines, and science in general, with language that wouldn’t leave anyone in doubt about his feelings.
It started when Dr. Peter Hotez weighed in on a rise in vaccine exemptions in Texas.
Hotez is a professor of infectious diseases at Baylor, with a list of titles and publications as long as your arm. He’s also a pediatrician, and father to a daughter with autism.
He wrote a book about it: Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism . It would be more than fair to call him something of an expert on the subject of vaccines. He’s fighting the war against vaccine misinformation, trying to prevent unnecessary, preventable suffering and possibly death in kids.
And so, Hotez was trying to spread the word that vaccine exemptions were creating a dangerous situation in Texas.
State law in Texas allows for conscientious objections to vaccines and, with measles outbreaks popping up across the nation, there are now 64,000 kids in the state who haven’t been vaccinated thanks to that law. So, Hotez is justifiably worried about the safety of Texas schools.
In his tweets, Hotez called for state legislators and leaders to take action about the vaccine exemptions.
And Stickland apparently heard Hotez’s call to action and felt it deserved a response, although not the sort that Hotez was hoping for. It should be noted that Stickland has no medical background and is not an expert on vaccines.
Replying to Hotez, he first suggested that the professor somehow has a financial stake in children’s wellness.
He also made the argument for parents’ rights to make decisions for their children.
Hotez fired back , denying that he received any money from the “vaccine industry,” and saying that develops “neglected disease vaccines for the world’s poorest people. And as a Texas pediatrician-scientist, it is most certainly my business.”
But Stickland wasn’t going to let facts rule the day when he could get downright medieval.
Yeah, he referred to vaccines and modern medical science as “sorcery.”
Hotez must have seen just what kind of person he was going back and forth with at that point, because he stopped tweeting at Stickland, which seems like a great choice for both his time and his sanity.
However, many of Hotez’s followers were more than happy to take up Hotez’s mantle and fight for vaccines.
And Stickland stuck around as well, tweeting things like “Vaccines are dangerous , don’t you agree,” and “Look, another guy in a white coat who thinks he’s a better parent than everyone else!” when another doctor chimed in.
As discourses go, it was not the most collegial, civil, or productive.
And, in staking his ground around parental rights, Stickland showed just how much he cared for the lives of his constituents’ kids.
Honestly, if vaccines are indeed some kind of sorcery, then they ought to be a welcome form of magic for their life-saving abilites.
