Polio vaccine delusion
Reader comment on item: A Conspiracy Theory Spreads Polio

Submitted by Elliott Vizel (United States), May 25, 2005 at 14:23

It's amazing how people are susceptible to such audacious fabrications! Like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Passover libels, and superstitious nonsense, some people, even whole populations, swallow such garbage without question. As the Nazi propagandists knew well, the bigger the lie, the more people seem to believe it.

I have concluded that these phenomena fall under the classification of Social Psychosis - a delusional belief system held by a socially identifiable group. Holocaust denial is another such example. This phenomenon exists, just as individual cases of psychosis do (clinical paranoid schizophrenia, eg.). As to the exact pathophysiology of the phenomenon, this has yet to be elucidated - but the empirical fact of the phenomenon is indubitable.

E. Vizel MD
North Carolina, USA

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