I ended up ranting a bit in a vlog about anti-vaxxers. The person who started the current brouhaha was a Cleveland doctor who was advising his online readers to avoid “toxins.” Most of the time, talk of “toxins” is really about a superstitious moral purity. This person has the same superstitious aversion to formaldehyde that some religions have about certain foods. It’s not about physical harm (because harm is demonstrably absent). So it must be about some other principle.

Formaldehyde is toxic at high doses. So is salt. So is oxygen. Formaldehyde is produced at some level by the human body as a metabolite. The question is: what is the dose? Any doctor should know that the dose makes the poison.

Different compounds have different effects at different concentrations. Medical decisions should be made based on data not based on some vague superstition that chemicals are bad.

I gather that he is being disciplined by his employer. That’s something.