Health officials in Silicon Valley are increasingly worried that kids in the region are going to unnecessarily suffer from crippling child-hood illnesses because their parents believe in fake science conspiracy theories.

Children attending day care facilities affiliated with prominent Silicon Valley companies have not been completely vaccinated against preventable infectious diseases.

The California Department of Public Health, which tracks the vaccination rates at day care facilities and preschools in the state. We selected more than 20 large technology and health companies in the Bay Area and researched their day care offerings. Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that's half—have below-average vaccination rates, according to the state's data.

These are the sort of figures you expect in backward anti-science regions where it is believed that holding a crystal is all you need to protect your kid from measles and anyone who tells you otherwise is part of a big conspiracy from big pharma.

Fifteen years ago the Centers for Disease Control declared measles eliminated in the United States yet a measles outbreak that began in December at Disneyland has spread to 121 people in 17 states. The CDC hasn't identified the source of the epidemic, but measles is voraciously contagious, and children under age 5 are at greater risk for complications from the disease—including pneumonia, encephalitis, and death.

Three-quarters of the new cases are in California. The state requires children to be immunized for some infectious diseases to get certain immunizations, but parents can skip their children's shots for medical or religious reasons, or if they claim a "personal belief exemption," or PBE. In 2000—the year the CDC declared measles a goner— 95.4 percent of kids entering kindergarten had received their MMR jabs. Today in California that number is 92.6 percent.

Yet at one Google Day Centre less than half of the children are completely vaccinated. Looks like some of the brightest minds in the world are also the dumbest. Still the world has enough humans, so eventually the traite towards this sort of stupidity will be weeded out of the gene pool.  Let us not forget that the anti-science movement killed Steve Jobs, who believed his perfectly curable cancer could be treated holistically until it could not be treated at all.