What the Papers Don't Say About Vaccines

jamie tips an article in The Guardian's "Bad Science" column which highlights recent media coverage of the MMR vaccine. A story circulated in the past week about the death of a young child, which the parents blamed on the vaccine. When the coroner later found that it had nothing to do with the child's death, there was a followup in only one of the six papers who had covered the story. "Does it stop there? No. Amateur physicians have long enjoyed speculating that MMR and other vaccinations are somehow 'harmful to the immune system' and responsible for the rise in conditions such as asthma and hay fever. Doubtless they must have been waiting some time for evidence to appear. ... Measles cases are rising. Middle class parents are not to blame, even if they do lack rhetorical panache when you try to have a discussion with them about it. They have been systematically and vigorously misled by the media, the people with access to all the information, who still choose, collectively, between themselves, so robustly that it might almost be a conspiracy, to give you only half the facts."

Comments

Re:Parents ARE to blame

[Fzz]

but as a parent you don't care about who a vaccine is generally saving the whole of society if it is your own kid that is the 1% or 1/10th% who gets screwed over with a bad reaction to a vaccine. All you care about really is how it is going to impact your own children.

Well, I'm in the 1% who got screwed over from NOT having the vaccine. I got mumps when I was 12, and I'm nearly completely deaf in one ear as a result. Completely preventable. Needless to say, we did do the research when it came to vaccines for our kids, and they both did get the MMR.

By the way, some people don't really get too much of a choice. One requirement to get a US greencard is to prove you've been vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella.