Michael Hiltzik: Scientists are paying a huge personal price in the lonely fight against anti-vax movement

In the preface of the new book by vaccine expert and pro-science crusader Peter Hotez, there are several acknowledgments of a kind that may never have appeared before in a book like it.

There, Hotez expresses gratitude to the Houston Police Department, the Texas Medical Center Police Department and the security force of the Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine.

These are all places where Hotez plies his profession. He thanks all those departments "for keeping my family and me safe during this time of aggression."

These words tell a story all their own: how the anti-vaccine and anti-science movements have incorporated physical threats into their despicable arsenals. I wrote nearly two years ago that, unable to produce scientific support for their views, they had turned to stalking and intimidation to discourage critics.

Things have only gotten worse since then, as Hotez reports in his new book, A professor of pediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor and a courageously outspoken advocate for public health, Hotez documents how agitators on the extreme right have graduated from trying