The Austrian city of Salzburg has been hit by a measles outbreak among private-school children. Measles are no laughing matter, and thankfully outbreaks like these are rare in the West these days thanks to vaccination. So it comes as no surprise that the school in question is the Rudolf-Steiner-Schule in Mayrwies, a Waldorf school run by anthroposophists. Anthroposophy is an old New Age movement based upon the supernatural visions of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Its current altie medical practices include a strong antivaccination ideology.
Said Steiner in the fifth lecture of his 1910 series Manifestations of Karma:
"Let us now assume that this personality before developing measles had succeeded in gaining such soul forces that he was no longer exposed to all kinds of self-deception, having completely corrected this failing. In this case the acquired soul force would render the attack of measles quite unnecessary, since the tendencies brought forth in this organism during its formation had been effaced through the stronger soul forces acquired by self-education. If we contemplate life as a whole and examine in detail our experiences, considering them always from this standpoint, we should invariably find that external knowledge will bear out in every detail what has here been stated. And what I have said about a case of measles can lead to an explanation why measles is one of the illnesses of child-hood. For the failings I have mentioned are present in a great many lives and especially in certain periods did they prevail in many lives."
Poor kids. They should have corrected their failings and gained soul forces and this would never have happened. Strictly karma.
Via Blue Collar Scientist and Physorg. See also Zooey and WeiterGen.
[More blog entries about skepticism, measles, Austria, vaccination, anthroposophy, waldorf, rudolfsteiner; mässlingen, Ãsterrike, antroposofi, vaccination, waldorf, rudolfsteiner, skepsis, skepticism.]
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That's some excellent additional information, Martin, thanks a bunch! I've updated my post to link here.
Martin,
tried to send you a trackback from scienceblogs.de on this article. Did not work for some reason.
Hence, here a manual trackback: http://www.scienceblogs.de/weitergen/2008/04/masernepidemie-in-osterrei…
Vielen Dank! Ich habe deinen Link schon am Technorati gesehen und einen weiteren Link zu deinen Blog gemacht.
Trackbacks are unfortunately broken on Sb US.
People think measles is a skin problem, but any parent whose child has come down with measles knows the first symptom: a dry, nasty cough. Measles hits the lungs. Reports of non-resistant populations (like American Indians) suffering from epidemics all stress the coughing, hacking, and spitting blood. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples suggests that measles was the vicious disease that ravaged second and third century Rome. It was very costly in lives for the Old World to build up measles resistance. It would be good to eliminate the disease altogether.
Grrr, this bullshit pisses me off to no end. My mother, my mother, recently sent momma and I, a copy of a full page, antivax propaganda ad. Mind, this is a women who has actually seen polio. She was concerned that I might not be aware of the "possibility" that vaccines are responsible for autism and could be making uninformed decisions about our newbies vaccine schedule.
On the up side, she also sent it to one of my nieces, who is now pregnant. After I had gone on a half hour tirade with her, I called my niece to talk to her about it and the importance of vaccines. Yeah for her, I needn't have.
One of the first families to contact us, when we started homeschooling our ADHD son, are antivaxers. Apparently, most of the families in Portland's homeschool community have basically shunned them. Thankfully, the very first family to make contact with us, had already warned us about them. They, ironically, have ASD twins and have become fast friends with my own family.
I wrote them a very long email, explaining exactly why I was dead set against having my family interact with their children. I was clear that I really did feel bad that few people are interested in allowing their kids to interact with their unvaccinated children, but that I am also unwilling to put my family at risk so theirs have someone to play with. Because of everything I have learned here at SciBlogs, I was also able to back my position up with a lot of evidence.
I support the rights of people not to vaccinate their children, though only with great discomfort. I do not, however, support their right to endanger mine, or anyone else's child with their bullshit.
I should also note that the cult practices that pervade the Rudolph Steiner education method, are very unfortunate. The system actually provides a very good education. It would be great if it didn't include a little too much woo.
> Poor kids. They should have corrected their failings and gained
> soul forces and this would never have happened. Strictly karma.
The potential for ideological abuse of such thought is self-evident. Blavatsky, founder of Anthroposophy's historical predecessor, Theosophy, has infamously claimed that "the jews brought it upon themselves" because their former incarnations had been "bad to animals"... :-(
In the comment section of one of your earlier posts about secularism and the declining role of the church in Sweden, one commenter remarked that the decline of Europe's state-churches will not lead to greater secularism, but to a rise of new-age esoteric cults especially among the middle and upper classes, thus just replacing one religion with another, possibly worse one.
Johannes, that's luckily not what I'm seeing in Sweden. Upper- and middle-class Swedes are largely secular, but they're not joining cults. Just buying Deepak Chopra books and altie diet supplements.
Email response from an angry anthroposophe plus a measles update:
http://www.scienceblogs.de/weitergen/2008/05/mail-von-den-anthroposophe…
Here's a new article about anthroposophical doctors http://ukanthroposophy.wordpress.com/
May the 'soul force' be with you. Whatever it is.