New Republic writer Julia Ioffe came down with whooping cough at the age of 31. So far, pertussis has caused her 72 days of hacking misery and counting. Unlike some people we could name, Ioffe’s parents had the sense to vaccinate against pertussis as a child. The vaccine doesn’t last forever, but until recently, it hasn’t been necessary for adults to get whooping cough booster shots because parents had the good sense to vaccinate their children against this onetime mass-killer of infants. As vaccination rates have fallen, pertussis incidence has more than tripled in 21 states between 2011 and 2012.

Jenny McCarthy, aka “The Girl with the Whooping Cough,” is a B-movie actress turned anti-vaccine crusader who, unaccountably, co-hosts The View on ABC. She has become the most recognizable face of the anti-vaccination movement. McCarthy has done more than anyone to hype baseless theories about the non-existent link between vaccines and autism. (The original “Girl With the Whooping Cough” was a 1910 farce about a woman who spreads pertussis to all the men she kisses, until her victims finally drag her to court. Imagine the pitch: It’s like Typhoid Mary, but funny!)

The anti-vaccine movement wraps itself in the mantle of “personal choice,” but Ioffe reminds us that their choices endanger other people. The most vulnerable population are infants who are too young to be vaccinated, but who can’t write eloquently about their misery. Babies are dying because anti-vaxxers are imposing their crackpot theories on society by allowing their medically neglected children to become tiny vectors for disease. 

Join us on Dec 2 for a lively panel discusion on the future of the union movement with guests Bruce Raynor, Andy Stern, Rich Yeselson, and Sarita Gupta, and moderator Raj Goyle.

Panelists will discuss Yeselson’s controversial prescription for the union movement, outlined in his essay Fortress Unionism, and Stern and Raynor’s counter-proposal, spelled out in their essay, Build Bridges, Not Fortresses. The panel will also discuss how campaigns by low-wage workers in the fast food and big box retail are reshaping the labor movement. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Sidney Hillman Foundation and the Rubin Foundation. 

What: The Changing Face of Unionism: New ideas for labor in the 21st Century

When: Dec 2, 6-8pm. 

Where: 17 W. 17th St, Manhattan, NY. (8th Floor)

RSVP: alex@hillmanfoundation.org

The Best of the Week’s News

• The 5th Circuit just put up to one third of the abortion clinics in Texas out of business.

• Coal-company-funded doctors deny black lung compensation to dying miners.

• Dodgy dealings in America’s non-profits.

• Food stamp cuts start today for millions of Americans.

Breathless media claims about the stateside spread of a cut-rate heroin substitute known as “krokodil” may have been overblown, according to the Chicago Tribune. The drug is notorious for causing leathery skin lesions that can degenerate into gangrene. The lesions are caused by toxic byproducts of the synthesis of krokodil (desomorphine) from coedine, and maybe by residual traces of gasoline or other solvents used in the synthesis. 

Despite a handful of highly publicized case reports, there is little firm evidence that krokodil is being widely sold in the United States. The drug got its name from the skin lesions that heavy users develop around their injection sites. However, skin lesions are a perennial risk for all kinds of injection drug users, and some U.S. reports of “krokodil” lesions in heroin addicts turn out to be ordinary infections mistaken for krokodil toxicity. 

Krokodil caught on in Russia a decade ago because impoverished addicts were unable to afford heroin. Krokodil seems unlikely to catch on in the U.S. market because heroin is cheap and widely available. 

[Photo credit: Melissa, Creative Commons.]