In a recent NY Times health blog by Tara Parker-Pope was the following:
Dr. Parikh says it is a lesson pediatricians have already learned. He notes that doctors weren’t paying attention in the late ’90s, when patients were just beginning to go online en masse and theories about vaccines and autism were first circulating.
“We weren’t paying much attention until parents started to refuse vaccines. When we looked, we realized that many parents were exposed to story after story on autism Web sites and in chat rooms about the dangers of vaccines. That echo chamber of opinion became a reality despite our best efforts to prove otherwise…. Would things have been different if we had engaged our patients from the get-go by providing them with alternative Web sites, scrutinizing and rebutting anti-vaccine “science,” or posting studies demonstrating vaccine safety in the public domain? I would answer, emphatically, yes.”
To Parker-Pope, in other words, everybody knows — or at least every sensible person knows — that “anti-vaccine ‘science’” wasn’t really science and that vaccines were safe. Not quite. Further examples: NYT vs. business reality. NYT vs. political reality.
Nothing is completely safe. Vaccines have risk. Having a significant portion of the population unvaccinated has risk.
The optimal situation for parents is not to vaccinate their child, so they bear no risk from the vaccination, and for every one else to vaccinate their child, so there is no one to catch the disease from.
Of course, if many parents try to choose the optimal situation, the disease can infect many unvaccinated children.
The choice isn’t between vaccine and no vaccine; the choice is between different methods of preserving vaccines: with or without mercury.
If you ignore the data, that’s a fair statement. Yes, a majority vs. a minority. I don’t think the data should be ignored. They paint a very different picture. Not only the paper I mentioned earlier but also this:
https://www.jpands.org/vol11no1/geier.pdf
Lo and behold, when mercury is removed from vaccines autism rates decline, at the predicted time. Nothing prevented Parker-Pope from reading this paper. I believe NYT journalists should do more than simply repeat what experts tell them; they should actually look at the research. Had Parker-Pope done so, she might not have been able to figure out that “the expert consensus” was wrong; but she could have surely realized it might be wrong.
I don’t think the data should be ignored.
Good point, Seth, and yet Tara Parker-Pope is so much better than Kolata and Brody that’s it’s not even funny. In TPP’s recent blog on Cholesterol, you can actually see her POV shifts as the comments spur her to do more reading on what she’s writing about.
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/will-cholesterol-pills-save-your-life/#comments
And TPP clearly respects Dr. (Malcolm) Kendrick, who will not be appearing in Brody’s blog, I guarantee you.
In a recent post in her Times “science” (!) blog, Brody covers a similar subject with absolute Ancel Keys-rigidity.
https://science.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/a-new-you-jane-e-brody-on-nutrition/
One thing that’s fascinating about Brody’s blog entry is that she concludes her final comment by defensively discussing what has clearly been a blizzard of comments about Gary Taubes…yet, if you look at comment’s she’s approved for posting, only ONE of them mentions Taubes.
In other words, she’s gotten an onslaught from readers demanding she respond to Taubes’ research, and has censored it all! And then she forgets that she has done so!
Quote:
And since so many queries and comments concerned Gary Taubes, I think a final word is needed. While it is true that the saturated fat/cholesterol hypothesis about heart disease has never been put to an incontrovertible clinical trial, there is at least decades-long experience with it that has found absolutely no hazardous effect and strong indications of benefit.
The idea that carbs (and I don’t mean the refined and sweet ones, at least) are the real cause of obesity and heart disease is thus far just an idea. Although in short-term tests — about a year — the high-fat, low-carb diet has improved measurements of cholesterol and diabetes control, it has never been followed for decades in any population group except the Eskimos and some Greenlanders, whose main source of fat is not from red meat and dairy but from creatures from the sea. So, to my mind, the jury is very much still out on the long-term safety of a diet that gorges on red meat, high-fat cheeses and other sources of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol.
End Quote
Sure enough, she hardly let any of those through moderation (though she did let lots of “pat on the back, requires no response” err “questions”).
I’d have posted a link back to this thread, or a copy of the above post, but comments were closed.
Seth,
It is extraordinarily difficult to disentangle what is going on in the autism field. You could easily spend several months full-time just trying to sort out the players and agendas. It makes Taubes’ book look simple by comparison.
You might want to read this article:
https://quackfiles.blogspot.com/2005/03/mark-geier-untrustworthy-autism.html
Bear in mind that at least some autism is hereditary and any theory would need to explain that. FAAASS (Families of Adults Affected by Asperger’s Syndrome) has a number of stories of parents (typically fathers) who were only diagnosed as a result of their child’s diagnosis since AS wasn’t well-recognized a generation ago.
https://www.faaas.org/
Another note in Tara Parker Pope’s favor — in the comments for the blog entry I linked to above, I urged her to look into the Cochrane Collaboration, and just days later it figures prominently in today’s article.
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/antidepressants-dont-ease-back-pain/
IMHO, a policy of engagement is probably in order with most journalists, who are very harried and doing their best in most cases. There will certainly be exceptions like Brody who are actively censoring science out of their papers (even the paper of record!), but most will want to hear the truth.
Unfortunately, they are not hearing the truth, and if they need a quote on a deadline, they have a long list of rent-a-docs on big pharma’s retainer who are ready to return their “I need a quick quote” calls immediately.
But if we want better science reporting, rather than deploring first, why not at least try to educate first?
I am a producer with WCBS TV working on a story about vaccination controversy…would love to speak to some parents who are not vaccinating their children…
Call 212 975-7953 or e-mail…ptighe@cbs.com
Thank you!
Pam Tighe