April 19th, 2011 → 12:02 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Exhibit A in why Robert MacNeil’s “Autism Now” series has been reckless and irresponsible is a press release issued by Alison MacNeil and SafeMinds* titled, “Daughter of Journalist Robert MacNeil States that Son Regressed Into Autism After Vaccines.”
Notice that it does not say “Alison MacNeil believes that son regressed into autism after vaccines,” or “Family member featured on Newshour believes son regressed into autism after vaccines.” Instead, it invokes a trusted, even revered, newsman and links his name to the “statement” that a child’s autism was called by vaccines.
The rest of the press release contains a drum-beat of half-truths presented as fact (the U.S. has the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the world, the U.S.’s vaccine schedule is a “grand experiment”), either-or fallacies and rhetorical sleights of hand (“are we trading the elimination of childhood disease for a lifetime of disability?”), non sequiturs (“one-fifth of all U.S. children take at least one prescription medication”), and scare tactics (“I have never met a family willing to sacrifice their child for the good of the herd”).
Obviously, any group (or person) has the right to release a statement that makes all sorts of claims. The problem here is that by framing the first hour of his autism special the way he did, Robert MacNeil opened himself (and Newshour) to charges that he’s actually promoting a scientifically disproven (and dangerous) theory. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of this in the days to come.
* SafeMinds is an acronym for Sensible Action For Ending Mercury Induced Neurological Disorders. It is a parent-advocacy group founded in the wake of fears that an ethyl-mercury based preservative used in some childhood vaccines was causing autism. That preservative, thimerosal, was shown in numerous studies not to cause autism; it was also removed from childhood vaccines a decade ago.
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April 18th, 2011 → 10:25 pm @ Seth Mnookin
The fact that so many people still believe vaccines cause autism is due to many factors — but ultimately, I think it’s a failure of communication on virtually every level.
Today, Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, unintentionally provided another example of how the medical infrastructure in this country has a lot to learn in that department. In what was intended to be a partial antidote to the embarrassing PBS Newshour series “Autism Now,” Pediatrics released 18 vaccine-safety reports for free. As far as scientific journal articles goes, they’re fairly easy to understand…but compare Pediatrics‘s point of entry: (more…)
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April 18th, 2011 → 10:09 pm @ Seth Mnookin
PBS’s Newshour is currently in the middle of a multi-part special on autism. The series brings Robert MacNeil back to the show for the first time in 16 years. If it turns out to be MacNeil’s swan song, it’ll be an embarrassing coda to his career.
The series kicked off with an episode titled “Autism Now: Robert MacNeil Shares Grandson Nick’s Story.” Here’s MacNeil’s introduction:
I’ve been a reporter on and off for 50 years, but I’ve never brought my family into a story, until Nick, because he moves me deeply. Also because I think his story can help people understand his form of autism and help me understand it better.
The rest of the hour-long program shows in spades why MacNeil would have been well-served by sticking to the principles that he’d followed for so long. (more…)
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April 7th, 2011 → 12:46 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Kim Stagliano is one of the best-known figures within the anti-vaccine autism advocacy community. She can be brash, funny, and blunt. (If the National Vaccine Information Center’s Barbara Loe Fisher is the movement’s TV-ready super-ego, Stagliano is its id.) In November, she published a book titled All I Can Handle: I’m No Mother Theresa, which details her experiences raising three daughters with autism. (Jenny McCarthy wrote the introduction.) (more…)
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April 6th, 2011 → 12:37 pm @ Seth Mnookin
One of the most painful chapters to write in The Panic Virus was the story of Danielle and Ralph Romaguera, whose infant daughter, Brie, died of a pertussis infection when she was less than two months old. (In January, I recorded a Vanity Fair podcast with that chapter of the book.) Whooping cough is a scary, scary disease — as the Romagueras, or the parents of any of the ten infants who died of pertussis last year in California, can attest. (Nine of those children were under six months old, which is the age at which a child following the CDC-recommended vaccine schedule would be fully vaccinated.) (more…)
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March 31st, 2011 → 5:01 pm @ Seth Mnookin
For years, CBS News’s Sharyl Attkisson has been one of the least responsible mainstream journalists covering vaccines and autism. Again and again, she’s parroted anti-vaccine rhetoric long past the point that it’s been decisively disproved. To take but one recent example: In January, she posted (and then removed) a story claiming that a study in the Archives of Neurology said almost precisely the opposite of what it actually reported.
She’s at it again: A few hours ago, she posted a story under the heading, “CBS News Investigates.” The piece starts out thusly: (more…)
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March 12th, 2011 → 9:09 pm @ Seth Mnookin
I’ve been traveling a lot over the past week, which has translated into lots of activity in the real world and very little in the virtual one. Instead of a bunch of mini-posts, I’m going to do a couple of catch-all updates; this one has links to news about some of the events I did on the road, and over here you can see some recent interviews and articles about The Panic Virus. (more…)
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