A great post over at Change.org asks the question and delivers the right answer – yes, yes they did. It also targets the right org as being responsible – Barbara Loe Fischer’s anti-vaccine group NVIC.
Whooping cough is making a comeback. This summer, the highly contagious upper respiratory infection struck more than 6,000 people in California — the most cases since 1950. Ten people died, all infants.
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The stubborn belief that vaccines are harmful to a child’s health show just how damaging — even deadly–unscientific movements like the NVIC’s are. And how wrong.
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…not vaccinating children erodes the “wall of immunity” that keeps all kids safe from life-threatening diseases. When infections have fewer potential hosts, there is less of a chance that those infections will be able to spread from child to child. When kids are vulnerable to nasty germs — because their parents don’t immunize them — they put their friends and classmates at risk, too.
Change.org have a petition up to deliver the untasty truth to NVIC – it caters to non-US residents from all over the world. Please sign it, tweet it or retweet this post, Facebook it, blog it and email it. These people need to be held accountable for their actions.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Sheldon has a good post there. We just don’t have the evidence, at least yet, to be able to point at the precise reason(s) why California has accumulated the pertussis numbers they have. I also cringed at the author’s incorrect assignation of virus to the pertussis bacterium, not to mention a ‘resurgence of smallpox’ due to vaccine refusal.
Sorry Kev, but Change.org is engaging in histrionics and not an evidence-based argument.
Some articles I’ve been reading about the whooping cough outbreaks seem to indicate that most of the occurrences are at private schools and surrounding upper-middle class areas. This would seem to fit in with the anti-vaccination crowd. Of course, it’s not scientific, just an apparent not-so-randomness in the outbreaks.
Have to agree with Science Mom here, that article was nothing but an opinion piece, devoid of facts to back up the claim. The outbreak may or may be related to the anti-vaccination movement, but that article certainly did not give us any evidence to that effect.
agree w science mom and tam. keep opinions as opinions, not facts. the real epidemic is AUTISM. 1 in 110????
Julie comments (apparently unaware of the irony):