A smiling, toothless, army-trench-wearing Merlin hawks Real Change newspapers at 6th and Olive in Downtown Seattle, near my office. We started a friendly banter not too long ago because even from the 14th floor, I can hear him hollering (and breaking my concentration!) like the old school hawkers–and I told him so; he bested me by saying someone on the 17th floor can hear him, too.  This week, “for my troubles,” he insisted I take the latest issue because it was a good one.  The headline story opened a scab for Vashon, just a little. It was entitled “Living in a State of Denial,” and the story’s first two words were “Vashon Island.”

Micheal Specter was the center of the article. This author of his recently published book, “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens Our Lives,” rekindles the national sensation caused by reporter and colleague Donald McNeil seven years ago in his story for the New York Times citing a fact that 20 percent of Island parents declined to vaccinate their children. 

In the Real Change interview, he goes on to call the autism-vaccination link total misinformation, and those who buy into it “willfully ignorant” and the notion “very damaging to the kids.”

Other topics in Specter’s interview (and book)  include medical advancements and the role of race in genetic predispositions, the aversion to genetically modified food and imminent starvation based on population growth (and the need to yield more from the land we already have), and Big Pharma’s persuasive direct-to-consumer advertising, among others. Sounds a little like Raj Patel’s “Stuffed and Starved” to me mixed with other hot button issues.

Check it out!