Politics is rarely simple. Our world is confronted by a multitude of issues, a multitude of theories about how to solve them and a multitude of critiques of those same theories. We debate most questions about economics, foreign policy and social services by considering factors which all parties agree on, and, after reviewing the data, ultimately deciding what we can deduce from it. Yet other issues—the issues that take  the longest to be addressed and often evoke the most passionate responses—simply come down to a single ideological question. 

Does life begin at conception or birth? Does capital punishment place the executioner on the same level as the criminal? If a dying patient asks a doctor to kill them, is it ethical for the doctor to comply? These are issues which people identify strongly with, to the point that one’s stance is considered not just a political opinion but a belief. We identify ourselves as pro-choice or anti-death penalty and argue vehemently with those on the other side, often with more anger than we have when we debate, say, governmental budget appropriation. These are deeply held beliefs by those who subscribe to them, and, even as we argue, we must be respectful of others’ choices. 

Yet what happens when this critical respect for differing opinions is applied to an issue that—well, shouldn’t exist? What happens when there is one clear conclusion to draw from the data, yet some will not recognize it and even take ideological issue against those who propagate it?

This is the situation we find ourselves in when analyzing the recent outbreak of measles nationwide. The rash of cases started in California—Disneyland, actually—and has since spread to 16 states with 155 confirmed cases, according to CBS News. And yes, you read that first sentence correctly; this is a case of the measles. The same disease whose vaccine was widely distributed in 1963, and which was nearly completely dead in the United States, is now placing children nationwide in hospital beds. About one in 1,000 children dies of the measles, but it can also lead to dangerous secondary infections, such as pneumonia. So how is this now an issue in one of the most medically advanced nations in the world?

The blame can be placed squarely on so-called anti-vaxxers. The anti-vaccination movement is a growing trend within American households as more and more parents are refusing to vaccinate their children on ethical principle. Most anti-vaxxers link their beliefs back to a 1998 paper written by British then-surgeon Andrew Wakefield. The paper claimed to identify a potential link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism: more specifically, it looked at an sample size of 12 children and posited that because the parents of eight of those children had noticed “behavioral  symptoms” of autism a few weeks after receiving the MMR vaccine, there was a clear correlation between the vaccine and autism. Again, this is only a correlation—they even say in the article that there is no causal link between the two. Only after the article became hugely controversial did Wakefield make public statements saying the vaccine directly caused autism. This study was recreated and retested in 1999, 2004 and 2012, and all of the recreations have shown absolutely none of Wakefield’s original results. His paper was partially retracted in 2004 after Sunday Times journalist Brian Deer published a series of investigative pieces on Wakefield’s process. By 2009, Deer had found that Wakefield was being paid $780,000 dollars by a law firm pursuing a suit against vaccine producers. The study was finally and fully retracted in 2010, the same year that Wakefield was struck from the United Kingdom’s medical register, the harshest punishment for a doctor possible in that country.

So what we have is a single, thoroughly debunked, biased study establishing a tenuous-at-best correlation between two concepts, without any sort of legitimate proof of causation between them. The rational response—the only rational response—is to ignore it. Even if Wakefield’s work hadn’t been completely and categorically disproved, this is not enough data for someone to act upon, and especially not to take an action that goes against decades-worth of reinforced medical thinking which has eliminated many diseases from being issues at all. When was the last time you heard of someone dying of polio in the United States? Isn’t that proof enough to be at least cautious about acting on a single, small study?

And yet, people continue to read and rally behind Wakefield’s work. Many current anti-vaxxers learned about Wakefield through model and actress Jenny McCarthy, who made a series of television appearances and wrote books promoting anti-vaxx ideology. Apparently, enough people listened to her that we’re now facing an epidemic of a disease that was nearly dead in the first world. How perversely privileged we are that we choose not to receive treatment that took the World Health Organization seven years to mobilize and distribute to sub-Saharan Africa in one of the greatest victories for public health in modern world history. 16 African nations now have higher measles vaccination rates than the United States, according to the 2015 Africa Survey. 

Even stranger, in the face of universal outcry from the Centers for Disease Control, medicinal leaders and the media, anti-vaxxers are not stepping down. Many question why they should be told how to raise and protect their children by pediatricians—people who spend years studying exactly how to raise and protect children. 

The issue has forced itself to become enough of an issue that Republican presidential hopefuls Rand Paul and Chris Christie made statements last week alluding to the anti-vaxxer argument—Christie said governments should “balance” parental choices about vaccines with public health, and Paul went so far as to say there have been “many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” Both later went back on these comments, but more extreme right-wing voices continue trying to appeal to the anti-vaxx demographic: Glenn Beck has equated anti-vaxxers with Galileo and called the very real measles cases in California a massive government hoax.

What we have here is a belief—a piece of blind faith—dictating how people live their lives in a profoundly negative way. This isn’t a belief which explains the unexplainable or which forms a set of ethics, such as a religious belief. It is a belief that has been categorically proven as entirely erroneous, yet people hold onto it because they want to think it is true. This blind and indignant faith is causing very real danger for many children, yet our current medical and governmental systems are structured in such a way that it cannot be stopped. Citizens can refuse treatment on ethical grounds, and activists can speak and protest freely in support of beliefs that are not merely detestable but are actually factually incorrect. The only way to end the anti-vaxxer movement is to convince its supporters that they are wrong, but this is looking less and less possible; a study from the journal Pediatrics—and yes, I checked to make sure this study’s methods were legitimate—found that anti-vaxxer parents exposed to CDC messages disproving their beliefs were actually more likely to be reinforced in their opinions. They say that people bond in the face of adversity. Unfortunately, this usually positive trait can sway both sides. 

I honestly do not know how to solve this problem. The potential consequences of changing our medicinal and governmental systems so that certain beliefs are allowed to be overruled is drastic. For now, we can rest somewhat assured in that the media backlash to anti-vaxxers has been so virulent and widespread. Anyone curious about anti-vaxxing will have to wade through dozens of articles and interviews categorically disproving the movement’s beliefs before they reach anything supportive. Hopefully, this will quell their curiosity before it evolves into a deeply held belief. Yet when rational argument doesn’t work and important loopholes in the system prevent anyone from stopping a false idea—not just a dangerous idea, but one that is flatly unsubstantiated—one has to ask hard questions about whether our beloved system of democracy functions as well as we say it does.