The Death of Public Discourse and the Heavy Snow of Plausibility
By Louis Conte

WARNING: This Site is Hazardous to Those Who Promote Censorship

It is becoming apparent that all of the internet activity around vaccines and autism is frustrating those who support the scientific consensus that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. On January 23, Evgeny Morozov wrote an article for Future Tense called Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories which proposes the notion that search engines should label and flag websites that engage in discourse about the potential link between autism and vaccines. Morozov suggests that Google and Bing install a pop up message advising readers to check a previously generated list of authoritative resources before making up their minds. Morozovs support for censorship is particularly ironic given that he has written extensively on how authoritarian regimes have used the internet to further oppression.

This article was followed up by Commentary by Dr. Kevin Pho on KevinMD.com in an article titled Should Google censor anti-vaccine claims? Dr. Pho described Morozovs article as fascinating. Is censorship really fascinating? History doesnt usually record it that way. In fact, censorship is usually accompanied by oppression as Morozov notes. I suspect that those who have suffered oppression and censorship do not sit around wondering how fascinating the experience was.

Follow this link to the Age of Autism to read the rest of this spot-on article: http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/02/the-death-of-public-discourse-and-the-heavy-snow-of-plausibility.html