IT'S not difficult to push buttons on certain topics.
Alternative health, 1080, fluoride, global warming and immunisation. At the Times-Age, we like to get our share of buttons.
The concept of cutting benefits to beneficiaries whose children are not immunised touched on the powerful resentments and fears of parents who nonetheless share a common goal: they want their children to be healthy and okay.
The Times-Age story was aggressively debated on social media, with a number suggesting it was no bad thing to penalise those who didn't get children immunised. I've seen stronger arguments in the past, with people arguing that lack of immunisation is a form of child abuse.
But one poster made a very telling statement. She suggested that declining to immunise children was not the culture of those on benefits, and thus the targeting of beneficiaries was wonky. Instead, she argued it was a malaise of the middle class.
The clue to that is the anger that erupted among the posters over our historical reference to the now-discredited idea that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism in children. I was in England at the time Dr Andrew Wakefield brought out this notion, and it split the country.
What is fascinating is, despite Dr Wakefield being discredited as a fraudster five years ago, and struck off for deliberately falsifying his work, the non-existent relationship of autism and MMR has lingered like an ugly rumour in the mindset of society.
It isn't true, but that over-used, honky phrase of smoke and fire, keeps this notion warm.
It lingers with the middle class - in England, they're called the "refuseniks".
They're people who like to consider themselves well-read on the supposed risks of vaccinations.
There's a lot of literature out there, just as there's literature of what 1080 in our waterways will do to trout.
Vaccines are a miracle of science, and it is incredible it took one doctor in the late nineties to nearly derail decades of life-saving work with vaccines. Choosing not to immunise might be a middle-class principle, but it's middle-class luxury - because all the other kids are immunised.