I very much agree, because you’re right. But to put my own opinion in juxtaposition with yours, just replace the last two words with “stupid anti-vaxxers.” And if you wanted to put my opinion in to the title of this thread, just replace the first five words with “BB hero Anderson Cooper”.
Given that we seem to be repeating history in regards to mercury (every single claim being made regarding mercury today was also made regarding lead, within my own lifetime) I feel it’s important to draw a line. So when a TV talking head literally starts propagandizing people to believe that mercury is perfectly OK because mother’s milk is contaminated I can’t let that slide. When bOINGbOING makes statements that appear to support that TV talking head I won’t let that slide either.
In an enlightened country, activists would try to reduce the contamination of mothers’ milk. Here, we’re apparently willing to celebrate it, because we can use this disgusting manifestation of our willful disregard for our environment* as a way to attack feckless anti-vaxxers. And maybe that kind of behavior - the subtle misrepresentation of science by media in order to shape public behavior - is a big part of why anti-vax sentiment has been growing. Scott Adams has a humorous take on that (please do remember that Mr. Adams is not a serious writer, though - his job is to provoke, not to inform).
* As previous noted by @Shaddack, volcanoes and forest fires make a significant contribution to environmental mercury. However, all regulatory and medical authorities agree that the main source of methyl mercury in human bodies is industrial pollution. Anyway, volcanoes and forest fires also contribute a significant amount of fire and burnination to the human environment - yet this is not a valid argument for purposely increasing the number of women with burned breasts, nor is it a valid pretext for injecting live coals into children. Again, we do not know the true effects of small doses of mercury, and we do not need to use it in vaccines. It’s a fallacious argument to state or imply that natural contributions to the human baseload of mercury invalidate stringent precautionary limitations on childhood exposure to toxins of unknown effect.
