The gravamen of Nick Paumgarten’s article in the New Yorker on the measles vaccine is his argument that the people he derisively terms “anti-vaxxers” are irrational since the risks of vaccines are so low and the rewards so enormous. In my experience, virtually all so called “anti-vaxxers” are parents of vaccine-injured children whose personal tragedies provoked them to look closely at the complex science supporting that risk/reward assertion and to rationally conclude that government officials – with well-documented conflicts of interest with the $50 billion vaccine industry – systematically obscure the risks while exaggerating the benefits of vaccines including the MMR.