In prior posts, I have presented evidence that many individuals have participated in campaigns of deliberate disinformation, in order to sway public and/or political opinion about some of the important issues of our time. Most of the information that we receive or access, when we try to form an opinion about an issue, comes to us through public media: newspapers, talk shows masquerading as news shows, and internet sites.
In this post, I want to look at the MMR vaccine hoax from the perspective of the role played by the British news media in promoting Andrew Wakefield's false evidence of the connection of the vaccine to autism, and further to the role that a popular television show (Oprah) in the United States played in bringing that misinformation across the Atlantic to create a fear of vaccination among American parents.
To review briefly, in 1998 a British physician, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, published data in a well-regarded peer-reviewed medical journal, The Lancet, claiming a causal relationship between the measles vaccine and autism in children.
It was later proven that he had been paid substantial sums of money by lawyers to make these claims, thus providing the lawyers with clients suing drug firms and hospitals associated with providing the vaccine.
Who is responsible for this hoax? Do we hold an unethical physician, Andrew Wakefield, solely to blame?
In this post, I want to look at the MMR vaccine hoax from the perspective of the role played by the British news media in promoting Andrew Wakefield's false evidence of the connection of the vaccine to autism, and further to the role that a popular television show (Oprah) in the United States played in bringing that misinformation across the Atlantic to create a fear of vaccination among American parents.
To review briefly, in 1998 a British physician, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, published data in a well-regarded peer-reviewed medical journal, The Lancet, claiming a causal relationship between the measles vaccine and autism in children.
It was later proven that he had been paid substantial sums of money by lawyers to make these claims, thus providing the lawyers with clients suing drug firms and hospitals associated with providing the vaccine.
Who is responsible for this hoax? Do we hold an unethical physician, Andrew Wakefield, solely to blame?
We get a strongly worded answer to this question from Dr. Ben Goldacre, a British writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor. Dr. Goldacre has written a book entitled "Bad Science," which examines a number of pseudo-medical devices and claims and provides advice for those of us who might be attracted by advertisements or articles that prey on our desire to make good decisions about our health.
In a long article (published in The Guardian) entitled “The Media’s MMR Hoax,” Goldacre summarizes his conclusions regarding the MMR hoax and what he regards as the primary cause of its longevity, long past the time that good medical research has debunked the connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.
You can read his evidence and arguments at this site.
Dr. Goldacre places the blame on the media.
In a long article (published in The Guardian) entitled “The Media’s MMR Hoax,” Goldacre summarizes his conclusions regarding the MMR hoax and what he regards as the primary cause of its longevity, long past the time that good medical research has debunked the connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.
You can read his evidence and arguments at this site.
Dr. Goldacre places the blame on the media.
I'm going to summarize Goldacre's arguments with just two paragraphs from his article, cited just above with this link.
The MMR scare created a small cottage industry of media analysis. 2002 was the peak of the media coverage, by a very long margin. In 1998 there were only 122 articles on MMR. In 2002 there were 1,257. MMR was the biggest science story in Great Britain that year, the most likely science topic to be written about in opinion or editorial pieces, it produced the longest stories of any science subject, and was also by far the most likely to generate letters to the press, so people were clearly engaging with the issue.
Any member of the public would have had very good reason to believe that MMR caused autism, because the media distorted the scientific evidence, reporting selectively on the evidence suggesting that MMR was risky, and repeatedly ignoring the evidence to the contrary.
Dr. Goldacre's point, supported in detail in his article cited above, is very simple: Dr. Wakefield's false and deceptive article, though published in a leading peer-reviewed medical journal, would have gone largely unnoticed or ignored by the medical community. The British new media took the "evidence" at face value, ignored subsequent medical research that showed there was no basis for fear of the vaccine, and created a news "frenzy" that preyed on the fear of the public for the safety of their children.
This summarizes the vaccine scare in Britain. Now we turn from Britain to the US.
The MMR “scare” or “hoax” might have been confined to Britain but for the enormous power of one television celebrity, Oprah Winfrey, and her promotion of Jenny McCarthy as the voice of the alleged dangers of the MMR vaccine.
McCarthy insists that her son, Evan, developed autism from the MMR vaccination he received as a baby. McCarthy’s campaign drew near-viral coverage in the Fall of 2007 after she was invited by Oprah to promote her first book about “curing” autism. Oprah’s power to influence public opinion lies clearly in the fact that her syndicated talk show has roughly forty million viewers weekly.
McCarthy’s "theory" went virtually unchallenged as Oprah lauded McCarthy for her bravery, and she did not invite a physician or scientist to represent the many studies contradicting the vaccine-autism link. Oprah merely read a short statement from the Centers for Disease Control stating that there is no science to prove a connection and the problem is under continued government examination.
McCarthy responded, “My science is named Evan, and he’s at home. That’s my science.”
The MMR “scare” or “hoax” might have been confined to Britain but for the enormous power of one television celebrity, Oprah Winfrey, and her promotion of Jenny McCarthy as the voice of the alleged dangers of the MMR vaccine.
McCarthy insists that her son, Evan, developed autism from the MMR vaccination he received as a baby. McCarthy’s campaign drew near-viral coverage in the Fall of 2007 after she was invited by Oprah to promote her first book about “curing” autism. Oprah’s power to influence public opinion lies clearly in the fact that her syndicated talk show has roughly forty million viewers weekly.
McCarthy’s "theory" went virtually unchallenged as Oprah lauded McCarthy for her bravery, and she did not invite a physician or scientist to represent the many studies contradicting the vaccine-autism link. Oprah merely read a short statement from the Centers for Disease Control stating that there is no science to prove a connection and the problem is under continued government examination.
McCarthy responded, “My science is named Evan, and he’s at home. That’s my science.”
It is far easier to criticize the spreaders of false information than it is to actually take action. A good example of taking a proactive approach when public opinion overcomes well-documented facts is the work of Dr. Roger Bernier.
Roger Bernier is a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is a federal agency under the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
The CDC focuses national attention on developing and applying disease control and prevention.
Dr. Bernier turned his attention and energy to emphasizing the public-engagement aspects of the MMR vaccine problem after hearing one parent declare that any new government research on the topic would be “dead on arrival.” In other words, once the public's mind is made up, new evidence is discounted and viewed with suspicion.
The central problem that Bernier has confronted is: how to deal with a situation in which so many parents are unswervingly convinced that their children have been harmed, but in which they could be harming their own children even more by making decisions that are based on dangerous misinformation.
“There’s no end to the kind of noise people can make about vaccines,” he observes. “And so if you’re in the vaccine community, [which is where the Centers for Disease Control sits,] what’s the best approach to this? I don’t think it is ignoring people.”
Instead, Bernier has headed up a series of award-winning projects that bring together average citizens with scientists and policymakers to reach joint recommendations on vaccines, holding public dialogues across the country to break down boundaries between the experts and everybody else, literally putting multiple perspectives around a table. His example suggests that while science’s first and greatest triumph in this area was to develop vaccinations to control or eradicate many diseases, the challenge now—not yet achieved, and in some ways even more difficult—is to preserve public support for vaccine programs even, and especially, after these diseases have largely vanished from our everyday lives.
Instead, Bernier has headed up a series of award-winning projects that bring together average citizens with scientists and policymakers to reach joint recommendations on vaccines, holding public dialogues across the country to break down boundaries between the experts and everybody else, literally putting multiple perspectives around a table. His example suggests that while science’s first and greatest triumph in this area was to develop vaccinations to control or eradicate many diseases, the challenge now—not yet achieved, and in some ways even more difficult—is to preserve public support for vaccine programs even, and especially, after these diseases have largely vanished from our everyday lives.
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