The anti-vax "people" that tried to consult us weren't trying to "consult" you, they were trying to get you to join their side. That's what it's about - "sides." You're doing it now - "our side" and "their side." "Their side" is actually pretty militant when it gets down to it, by the way - the act of not vaccinating your kid is kind of a pain in the ass. I don't know if you had Jehovah's Witnesses who never got to go on field trips like I did, but if you don't have a vaccination on record with your school, you don't get to do a lot of shit.

Yeah, there are people who just "knew that vaccinations caused autism, period." These are the ones who can usually be flipped at the doctor's office in about thirty seconds. It goes something like this:

"Doctor, I don't want my kid to be vaccinated. Vaccines cause autism."

"Actually, they don't. The whole argument was started by an English doctor named Andrew Wakefield who published an article that has since been retracted. His license was rescinded for falsifying data and for failing to disclose his financial incentives for causing a vaccine scare. Jenny McCarthy's son doesn't even have autism and even she's backed off her claims. Meanwhile, Robert Kennedy's Rolling Stone article has been widely discredited and the agent he implicated - Thimerosal - had been completely absent from vaccines for six years when he wrote it, and that was seven years ago. And while there are still some people who believe that vaccines cause autism, there isn't anyone who thinks that vaccines cause autism. So - if you have religious objections against vaccines that's one thing but if you have intellectual objections against vaccines, by all means state them because I'm just getting warmed up."

If you've got an inkling that vaccines are bad, it doesn't take much to disprove it. But if you've got a firmly-held belief that vaccines are bad, being dismissive is exactly the wrong thing to do.