ALERT: Demand That CBS Not Air Outdoor Anti-Vaccine Ad!

[**Update (4-15-11): The American Academy of Pediatrics has requested that CBS pull the anti-vax ad.]

[**Update (4-11-11): It seems the ads have already started to run.  Here’s more information from Elyse Anders over at Skepchick on this developing situation.  Please take action now!]

Okay folks, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get skeptically active.  I have found out that CBS plans to air an anti-vaccination ad on the Jumbotron at 42nd Street in New York’s Times Square starting on April 28th.  The sponsoring organizations are the notoriously anti-vaccinationist Mercola and National Vaccine Information Center. These are a couple of the biggest groups out there promoting the falsehood that, among other things, vaccines cause autism (they don’t, btw).  And while their ad gives the impression that they want to simply inform people about their “vaccine choices”, what they are really about is spreading flagrantly non-scientific, incorrect, and fear-mongering bilge about vaccines.  If you’d like to see some accurate info on vaccines, check out this link to the Hug Me, I’m Vaccinated website.

Folks, we have to do something to stop this.  Why?  Simple: because vaccines save lives.  Period.

Thus I propose that we not only light candles in the gathering darkness, I propose that we start up a huge frakkin’ bonfire!  So what can we do about this nonsense?  Elyse Anders of Skepchick has a few ideas on that…

… Right now we need to be promoting vaccines. Right now real people are at risk because of unfounded vaccine fears. Right now measles should be eradicated in the US.

Right now this ad could cost people their lives.

I’ve attempted to contact CBS myself. They have not yet responded. (They have, however, emailed me the opportunity to take a survey to win an iPad. Not kidding. )

Now it’s your turn. You need to contact CBS; you need to ask them to refuse to run this ad.

Please sign this petition at Change.org.

If you are feeling especially ambitious, sign the petition and email CBS Outdoor Customer Relations and CBS Outdoor CommunicationsVP to let them know how you feel.

And Tweet @CBSOutdoor and use #VaxCBS to tell them that these ads are unacceptable.

Hopefully, CBS will understand that encouraging the spread of deadly diseases is at least as embarrassing as employing a self-professed Fucking Rock Star From Mars with tiger blood.

Well said, Elyse!

Read the Change.org petition, sign it, and pass it on.  But I’ll go one step further, because I think it may be necessary.  I propose that if CBS doesn’t pull this bogus & dangerous ad from the Times Square Jumbotron then we get as many people as possible to start boycotting them.

And boycotting a TV station is easy, folks: you just turn the dial to another channel!

Not only that, but I propose that you talk to every single doctor, pediatrician, nurse, licensed health care worker, and hospital/clinic volunteer to get their professional organizations to get on board with some kind of public condemnation of this ad.

It’s April 8th now, and the ad runs on the 28th.  We have 20 days, folks… a LOT can happen in 20 days.

Get moving.