In a terrific recent piece, Columbia Journalism Review's Curtis Brainard takes apart the history of media coverage of false claims linking vaccination to development disorders such as autism. Brainard doesn't mince words about the...
Category: vaccines
In a terrific recent piece, Columbia Journalism Review's Curtis Brainard takes apart the history of media coverage of false claims linking vaccination to development disorders such as autism. Brainard doesn't mince words about the frequently shoddy coverage of the issue: "The consequences of this coverage go beyond squandering journalistic coverage on a bogus story. There is an evidence that a fear of a link between vaccines and autism, stoked by press coverage, caused some parents to either delay vaccinations for their children or deny them altogether."
In his four-page piece, Brainard acknowledges the central role of researchers, such as the now debunked work of Andrew Wakefield, whose (now retracted) 1998 Lancet paper is often considered the starting point for the recent wave of anti-vaccination fervor. But he doesn't let Wakefield's own behavior excuse that of...
Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced vaccine critic who claimed to link vaccines to autism and helped create a worldwide anti-vaccine movement, was featured prominently on the front page of a British newspaper over the weekend.
Wakefield's paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was...
Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced vaccine critic who claimed to link vaccines to autism and helped create a worldwide anti-vaccine movement, was featured prominently on the front page of a British newspaper over the weekend.
Wakefield's paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was later retracted. An investigation has accused him of fraud. And numerous studies have failed to find any evidence that vaccines cause autism. Yet a press release that he issued was reprinted by Britain's The Independent as if it were an Op-Ed comment.
In the press release, Wakefield, who may have done more than any other individual to discourage parents from vaccinating their children, blamed the government for a measles outbreak in the UK that has afflicted nearly...
When the Chicago-Sun Times said it was hiring Jenny McCarthy--Playboy playmate, actress, model, ex-girlfriend of Jim Carrey, and notorious proponent of a vaccine-autism link--to write a lifestyle blog, it rekindled the ferocious debate over vaccines and autism. (Admittedly, it...
When the Chicago-Sun Times said it was hiring Jenny McCarthy--Playboy playmate, actress, model, ex-girlfriend of Jim Carrey, and notorious proponent of a vaccine-autism link--to write a lifestyle blog, it rekindled the ferocious debate over vaccines and autism. (Admittedly, it doesn't take much to stoke that debate.)
When I posted on the hiring four days ago, the Sun-Times emailed me to say that her blog and column would not be merely about parenting, but that they would also deal with "lifestyle issues," including "family, dating, relationships, fitness and yes, parenting as a single mom."
The paper did not address the vaccine issue in that email. But now it has.
In an email today, a spokeswoman for the Sun-Times said, "Jenny McCarthy has signed on to share her special brand of humor with fans through her...
Jenny McCarthy--yes, that Jenny McCarthy, Playboy playmate, actress, model, ex-girlfriend of Jim Carrey, and notorious proponent of a vaccine-autism link--has been hired by the Chicago Sun-Times to write a daily blog on parenting, dating, and "family issues,"...
Jenny McCarthy--yes, that Jenny McCarthy, Playboy playmate, actress, model, ex-girlfriend of Jim Carrey, and notorious proponent of a vaccine-autism link--has been hired by the Chicago Sun-Times to write a daily blog on parenting, dating, and "family issues," the paper reports.
McCarthy's blog will run Monday through Friday. In addition, she "will debut a cheeky weekly advice column called 'Ask Jenny' inside the Splash print edition," the Sun-Times says. "Splash" is the paper's Lifestyles section, which runs daily online and is where McCarthy's blog posts will appear. (I'll have more to say about Splash in a moment; it has serious problems of its own.)
Knowing nothing about McCarthy's personal life, I'll grant that she is a mother who cares about her child; I don't have any reason to...
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Let me begin here by acknowledging that I am big fan of Matthew Herper's medical reporting at Forbes, enough so that any day now I may charter a Madison, Wisconsin based fan club and start passing out leaflets and lapel pins.
His work on the business of big pharma and how it works, his insights into the actual pharmaceutical products are clear, rational,...
As anyone who writes for a living knows, one of the most important decisions a writer makes...
As anyone who writes for a living knows, one of the most important decisions a writer makes is one a reader never sees: the decision to do one story rather than another--or to do no story at all. Critics who like to deconstruct articles to show a writer's bias might not realize that such biases are often more clearly revealed in story choices than in anything a writer writes. A decision, for example, to do a perfectly balanced, objective story on the hazards of nuclear power in the wake of Fukushima, will send a message that nuclear power is dangerous. Or a writer could decide not to do a story--a writer who, perhaps, thinks a detailed examination of Fukushima would unfairly tar nuclear energy, no matter how the writer tried to balance the story.
In the...
"Swine flu rates declined for the fifth straight week, with the lowest number of reported hospitalizations and deaths in more than two months, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
That's Tom Randall's...
"Swine flu rates declined for the fifth straight week, with the lowest number of reported hospitalizations and deaths in more than two months, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
That's Tom Randall's Friday afternoon lede (update 2) on Bloomberg. So what happened to the swine flu vaccine? Do we still need it?
Randall takes a little too long to tell us, and what he says isn't entirely clear. There are 73 million doses of the vaccine "now available to the states, the CDC says," according to Randall. Meaning what, exactly? They're at the CDC? On the FedEx truck? In the dead letter office at the P.O.? The real question...
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