Using AmazonSmile, the feature that allows you to donate 0.5 percent of the cost of your purchase to charity, might make you feel better about shopping with the big, bad internet retailer that’s swallowing up everything in sight and reportedly treating its workers quite poorly. Turns out, the program isn’t a great as it seemed. Among the charities Amazon will donate to on your behalf, the Guardian reports, are a number of anti-vaccination organizations.
The list includes the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), Learn the Risk, and Age of Autism. “Numerous other anti-vaccine organizations, including American Citizens for Health Choice (ACHC), National Health Freedom Coalition, Michigan for Vaccine Choice, Texans for Vaccine Freedom, A Voice for Choice and the Informed Consent Action Network are also listed by Amazon as eligible for the donations,” the Guardian also reports. Since 2013, AmazonSmile has donated $125 million, though the company has not disclosed how much of that pot went to the organizations in question. Which means it’s possible these anti-vax organizations aren’t actually receiving all that much money from Amazon. But still, the mechanisms are in place for you to donate to such organizations. And Amazon put them there.
News from the anti-vax front has been on the rise in recent weeks amid a measles outbreak in Washington state. Pinterest announced it would temporarily be blocking all vaccine-related content from search until it could get a handle on it’s anti-vax issues. An 18-year-old from Ohio will testify before a Senate committee this week about his experiences growing up as an unvaccinated child and how he used Reddit as a resource to help him figure out what inoculations he needed to get when he came of age and no longer needed his parents’ consent.
