article about the current anti-vaccination trend

[tenar]

Wired is running a really interesting series of articles on the causes and effects of the current anti-vaccination trend. It's US-focused, but I'm sure that lots of it would apply here. There are some really interesting comments in the follow-up pieces about autism. Things I've not thought about before, anyway.

There are also some interesting (in that depressing way) discussion about what happens when a woman science author posts something controversial (she's received, it seems, a great many nasty and sexist comments - comments critical of her person rather than of her writing or reasoning).

This is the original article:
An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All | Magazine

You'll get the follow-up pieces here, in reverse order of when they were posted (ie to get the series in order, read from the bottom up). Many of these are responding to people's comments on the original article or the whole vaccination debate. Interesting reading.
Vaccine | Magazine

I'm sure that some of the details of individual vaccines are different in the US to in Australia, though it certainly seems like a lot of the same social trends are going on.