Es tut mir leid

I always seems to rant. In fact, I do little else. So for that I apologise. But some things need to be ranted about. This morning, or, indeed, yesterday morning, given it's now gone midnight, there was some woman on the radio, being asked to talk about MMR and autism. Except that it wasn't some random woman. Oh no, she's some sort of anti-MMR campaigner. Now that's her proactive, and I'm sure it's all fine and good, but when she starts coming out with lines like [in response to being told that the latest Japanese study casts further doubt on the already flimsy MMR-autism link] "Well, it's all just statistical rubbish". So how, then, are we expected to determine the truth or falsity behind many of these claims, if not by "statistical rubbish"? She then went on to admit that nothing would convince her that there wasn't a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. In which case, why was she asked to talk about these things on a radio show? Surely a debate is meant to be an exchange of opinions. She did say that she saw her child slowly degenerate after being given the MMR vaccine. Which is of course very sad. But simply because event one happened after event two doesn't mean that it was caused by it.
A certain degree of detatchment is required to comment upon these issues - people who have already made up their minds, and then say that no amount of evidence would convince them to change them, are not reliable witnesses...