Tribeca Film Festival, Robert De Niro Pull Anti-Vaccination Film

theodp writes: USA Today reports that one day after defending the scheduled screening of a controversial documentary linking vaccinations to autism, Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Robert De Niro announced that the film is being pulled from the event. The film, Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, was scheduled to debut April 24. It is directed by Andrew Wakefield, known to many as the father of the anti-vaccine movement. Wakefield authored a 1998 report on vaccinations and autism that was later retracted, He also had his medical license revoked. The decision to include the film in the festival resulted in outrage from many who are upset that the film's inclusion could offer legitimacy to a study debunked by leading scientists. "My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family," said De Niro, who has a child with autism. "But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for."

Comments

Doing the ecological epidemiology

[Baldrson]

Locating by-State prevalence of autism stats over a decade ago, I started collecting by-State stats on hundreds of variables including vaccinations, mercury, diseases, econometerics, demographics, etc.

Three things stood out: 1) The best single-variable ecological correlation was mother's age at first live birth. 2) The best two-variable ecological correlation was Finnish ancestry and immigration from India. 3) Of all the variables, autism averaged the least powerful correlations with the wide range of by-State variables I had collected.

The mother's age at first live birth was a lower level of correlation than the 2-variable one, but it was more "robust" -- meaning that the scatter of points followed what you would expect from a "normal" distribution.

That was clear back in 2004.

I'm no pro, was not funded and didn't even have a relative with autism spectrum at that time (I do now). The fact that the CDC hasn't conducted an all-out statistical assault of like this at the county level given all the time, money and "big data" available is damning. They just don't care -- or don't want to know.

Re:Doing the ecological epidemiology

[Anonymous Coward]

That was clear back in 2004.

I'm no pro, was not funded and didn't even have a relative with autism spectrum at that time (I do now). The fact that the CDC hasn't conducted an all-out statistical assault of like this at the county level given all the time, money and "big data" available is damning. They just don't care -- or don't want to know.

Your post was great until you got to the CDC. I work with them; your post assumes that they're job is to find the answers to all related health problems in the US. While that is partially true, it also doesn't change the fact that they are a government organization subject to the whims of politics. Case in point: it's extremely hard to get anything out of them over the past 6 months because half of the organization has been told to drop everything and focus on Zika. Years of research is now stalled because of the flaring up of a disease that is not even fatal, but it's huge in the news because it has been correlated to young moms and babies being born that have issues. There's been like 20 cases of this issue with Zika and none in the US, yet massive resources have been diverted this way ignoring the fact that 4,000 people die from TB every day, that TB and Measles and syphillis, diseases though eradicated from the US, are returning due to illegal immigration and poor vaccination efforts amongst the poorer immigrant neighborhoods, that autism is a major issue, etc.

The CDC is still a government organization and is still subject to the whims of politicians, who are influenced by their voters who are influenced by a scare-mongering media.

Re:In other words...

[sudon't]

I don't see the problem with showing the film in the first place. It would only bring attention to it so pointing to the fraud could be easily countered and illustrated when people start to fall for it.

Or is there a problem pointing to where it is wrong and illustrating that?

Yeah, I'm a little leery of censorship. I know how gullible people can sometimes be, yet ideas should be able to live or die on their own. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It seems a bit paternalistic, an implicit assumption that people won't be able to think for themselves. It certainly bothers me when people with unpopular ideas are prevented from speaking on college campuses. I'm not sure this is any different.