Two years ago, the vaccine conspiracy theorists at WorldNetDaily refused to blame a measles outbreak on anti-vaxxers like itself but, rather, on President Obama and immigrants. It’s happening again.
Leo Hohmann writes in an April 28 WND article, under the clickbait headline “Quran blamed in new U.S. disease outbreak”:
An outbreak of measles is sweeping through a community of Somali refugees in Minnesota and the growing number of cases may be starting to test the limits of the Hennepin County healthcare system.
According to reports from the health commissioner’s office, there are now 30 cases of children in Hennepin County who have been diagnosed with measles, and 28 of them are Somali children who have not been vaccinated. All of the cases involve children 5 years of age and younger.
[…]Measles were declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, But Minnesota and other states see sporadic cases, typically linked to international travel and the influx of Third World refugees and asylum seekers.
At no point in his article does Hohmann specifically make the headline’s claim that the Quran says not to vaccinate people. He does, however quote an anti-Muslim activist suggesting something similar:
Dr. Andrew Bostom, M.D., an academic internist specializing in general internal medicine who has also authored several books about the history of Islam, said Muslim communities often prove difficult to convince that vaccinations are appropriate for their children.
“The case against vaccinations is first an Islamic one,” he said, citing a 2011 article by Dr. Majid Katme, spokesman for the Islamic Medical Association in the United Kingdom.
“We are giving our innocent children haram [forbidden] substances and harmful chemicals that destroy their natural immune systems, causing disease, suffering and death,” Dr. Katme wrote.
But as blogger Richard Bartholomew points out, Hohmann is conflating Somali Americans with Somali refugees. He also notes WND’s anti-vaccine attacks, adding:
Further, in 2007 WND‘s tie-in print publication Whistleblower ran a special issue on “Scary Medicine: Exposing The Dark Side of Vaccines”. Contributors included one Dr Sherri Tenpenny, who is on the board of directors of the “International Medical Council on Vaccination”. The council has a website, which includes among its resources… the very screed by Majid Katme quoted by Hohmann and Bostom!
Oops. Is WND renouncing its previous anti-vaccine activism? Or is it only doing so when it can blame someone other than anti-vaxxers for outbreaks? Given WND’s history of fundamental dishonesty and Hohmann’s obsessive hatred for Muslims, it’s likely the latter.