Fundamentalism makes me sick — and you, too

Fundamentalism — in any form, as an expression of any faith — isn’t wrong merely because it suppresses freedom of thought. It’s a danger to public health as well:

The last outbreak of polio in Canada and the United States, in 1978–1979, was the result of travel from the Netherlands, where an outbreak was ongoing, to Canada by members of the Reformed Netherlands Congregation, a religious group that refused vaccinations.

In the fall of 1984 followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who had purchased the small town of Antelope in Wasco County in north central Oregon, plotted to take over the county. They tested a plan to sicken many of the county’s voters on Election Day by contaminating 10 salad bars with salmonella in the county’s largest town, The Dalles. Although no one died, 751 people fell ill. The commune panicked and gave up the plan.

In Uganda in 1998, an outbreak of cholera killed 83, and the resurgence of the disease was blamed on members of a sect in Soono Parish who hid patients from medical patrols. The sect was called Red Cross (not to be confused with the international relief organization), a group that collects dead bodies in the belief that resurrection is imminent.

When cholera broke out in Zimbabwe in 2002, it spread quickly among members of the Johanne Marange Apostolic Faith sect who were resisting treatment.

Most disastrously, in March 2004 the Kano state government in northern Nigeria refused to take part in a United Nations-led campaign to vaccinate West African children against polio. Islamic clerics alleged that the vaccine had been filled with hormones as part of a US-led plot to sterilize African girls.

The fundamentalist mindset is the diametric opposite of reason and rationality. Evidence doesn’t matter, and facts are ignored. It’s one thing to endanger oneself with one’s own religious beliefs. It’s another matter entirely to be the cause of illness and death in one’s family and neighbors because of sheer, willful negligence.