Medical Community Response to Irresponsible Media
It’s encouraging to see what can be accomplished when we insist on accurate vaccination messages.
Earlier this week, a concerned parent who frequently comments on our Vaccinate Your Baby Facebook page, alerted us to an article on The Discovery Channel’s TLC site entitled “5 Things to Consider When Deciding to Vaccinate Your Child”. Unfortunately, the article contained numerous inaccuracies and ignored a great deal of scientific evidence regarding vaccines. Since the average parent is not especially well-versed on this issue, the concern was that this type of reporting could misled readers into forming negative opinions of vaccines based on false information. Every Child By Two shared their concern with various health related organizations and their consensus was that something needed to be done to correct the false information and ensure parents received scientifically accurate evidence about vaccines. The AAP offered to draft a letter of concern and multiple organizations signed on in support.
The letter that they delivered to The Discovery Channel last night read as follows:
One of the most important decisions parents make to ensure their children’s health is the decision to vaccinate them against potentially deadly, vaccine-preventable diseases. To do so, parents need accurate, complete information about immunizations – which they often look for online. So we were astounded when we found an article on a Discovery Company website that perpetuates dangerous myths and untruths about vaccines. We cannot understand how a company that celebrates the latest in scientific achievements would feature an article so inaccurate and wholly biased against science.
The article, “5 Things to Consider When Deciding to Vaccinate Your Child” by Josh Clark begins with the claim that medical science has already “conquered” diseases like polio and pertussis, or whooping cough. Polio is still endemic in parts of the world, and pertussis is killing infants here in the United States. Several states have declared epidemics of pertussis this year. Measles, too, is making a comeback, with more cases in the U.S. in 2011 than in 15 years. These diseases pose real threats to children who are unprotected by vaccines.
As with all medications, vaccines do carry some risks, most commonly fever and pain at the injection site. These risks are tiny compared to vaccines’ benefits. But instead of an honest discussion of the facts, Josh Clark perpetuates false and misleading notions. A few errors were corrected in the second version of the article posted May 16, but we cannot understand how they ever made it through your review process. It would have been easy, for example, to learn that the vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella does not and never did contain thimerosal, and thimerosal has been removed as a preservative from all other childhood vaccines in the United States, except for some influenza vaccines.
The fallacies don’t stop there. Read more…
Concerned Parents Call Out Irresponsible Media
Modern culture is often reflected in everything from the skewed view of popular reality shows and viral YouTube videos, to the personal discussions friends have on Facebook and in online chat rooms. Since we are bombarded by such a wide variety of media, today’s parents must constantly navigate the popular messages and decipher between that which serves to entertain, versus that which is intended as news and information. The challenge is that this is becoming increasingly difficult to do – especially when it pertains to parenting and children’s health.
Recently, one of our Vaccinate Your Baby Facebook friends discovered an online article entitled Why Shouldn’t We Vaccinate Our Children , which appeared in the Family Health section of Discovery’s “The Learning Channel” site. The author is a senior writer at HowStuffWorks.com, co-host of the Stuff You Should Know podcast, and posts on Facebook at the official Stuff You Should Know page. While one may read his article in hopes of learning how “stuff” (like vaccines and our immune systems) work, the article fails to deliver anything but broad generalizations and unsupported suggestions. Rather than providing parents with a clear understanding of the science behind vaccines, the article is a disappointment that suggests parents be concerned about vaccines without offering any solid evidence.
If The Learning Channel were truly committed to helping people “learn”, and the author wanted to write about “stuff you should know“, then the article should have included information from those who do know stuff. Specifically stuff about vaccines. That’s not to say that the writer must be an infectious disease specialist in order to present accurate information on immunizations. But it would have been better if an expert was actually consulted on the article. Without any specific references or resources to refer to, this author’s piece is completely unsubstantiated, yet disguised as something that some may consider credible. Even though he suggests that people do “independent research on this issue,” he fails to direct readers to reputable sources where they can gain further information.
Fortunately, several members of the Vaccinate Your Baby Facebook page were quick to raise concern. Read more…
Moms Who Vax Are Speaking Out
Last week I heard about a woman, opposed to vaccines, that presents business cards to random strangers, like the pregnant teller at the bank. The card directs people to information that is intended to deter them from immunizing their children. While this woman is a prime example of the vocal minority, the truth is that the majority of parents vaccinate their children as recommended. They just don’t feel the need to advertise it to strangers. But perhaps it’s time for this to change.
The Moms Who Vax blog is an excellent representation of parents who are speaking out in favor of immunizations. With increasing cases of vaccine preventable diseases, along with growing numbers of intentionally unvaccinated children, some parents are becoming more vocal in their immunization advocacy efforts. Parents, like Jessica Parker, have decided to speak out – on blogs, on Facebook threads, in mommy chat rooms, directly to their members of Congress and, most importantly, to other parents who are faced with decisions concerning their children’s health and immunizations.
Jessica explains why she has become so passionate about this issue;
“I never even knew of the pro-/anti-vax battleground until I had children. It was never something I questioned, and it was never an option to consider not protecting them. The mere list of symptoms and long-lasting effects of preventable diseases was enough to convince me to vaccinate my kids. Then, when I got pregnant with my second child, a friend gave me an anti-vax book in hopes that I would change my mind. I’ll admit, it made me angry. The outright lies were easy to see through. All it did was fuel my passion to educate others on vaccination.”
Recently, Jessica returned from a trip where she made a surprising discovery. A disease, which is now vaccine preventable, had impacted her family in ways she had never known. Her story appears on Moms Who Vax to remind parents of the differences vaccines have made in our lives today – for us, as parents, as well as for our children.
How Measles Made a Mark on My Family, by Jessica Parker
I’m sure many mothers can relate when I say that family is my world. My extended family tells me where I came from. My parents helped shape who I am today. My sister was my first friend. My husband is my teammate. My children are my legacy. Family is one thing I will never tire of investing in (though I do have my moments of needing a break), and my children are one thing I will always fight to protect. Read more…
Evaluating Vaccines Requires Critical Thinking
Most of the topics I post about on this blog are intended to encourage conversation about solutions to immunization challenges. However, more often than not, the comment section on each post is inevitably derailed by those who wish to discredit the value of vaccines. These visitors often make repeated claims about the thoroughly debunked vaccine/autism link, or they suggest that the immunization industry is plagued with corruption, or even that there is some large government conspiracy in which they claim that toxins in vaccines are intended to poison us all. This is not to say that this blog is the only place where this type of conversation occurs. Sadly it is not. In fact, for every article that attempts to credit vaccines in some way, you can pretty much bet that there will be negative comments in response.
Fortunately, there are plenty of well-educated people out there who spend a great deal of time and effort diligently responding to these inaccurate claims. They consistently defend the science that supports vaccinations and try to correct the logic of those who consistently criticize vaccines. They are much more eloquent than I and no doubt, have far greater patience.
But I must acknowledge that there are also a great number of people who read these posts, and lots of other immunization information, in an effort to learn more about vaccines. They may be curious about something they read elsewhere online, or they may be concerned about something they heard from a friend or family member. They may even be inquiring about an immunization recommendation they received from their doctor. Each of these readers have valid concerns and questions and we hope that this blog will help them get the information they are seeking.
However, as I was recently reviewing the varied comments on this blog, I realized that many comments may be confusing to those who don’t engage in immunization conversations on a daily basis. Then, as I was discussing critical thinking with my high school daughter the other day, I remembered these insightful videos that a friend shared with me. As basic as they may be, I believe they can offer us some points to consider as we read through the various comments on this blog.
Take for instance this first video, which expands upon the way in which we use logic in formulating an argument.
The second video introduces how broken logic, or “logical fallacies”, can easily be mistaken for logic. Read more…
The Cost of Containing An Epidemic
We already know that there is a pertussis epidemic in Washington State. But here’s the update today.
The Governor is tapping into an emergency fund to help contain the epidemic and encourage residents to get vaccinated.
Perhaps this is a prime example of how it can be more costly to address an epidemic of a vaccine preventable disease than to first attempt to minimize the impact of disease through immunizations.
The Seattle Times and various other news sources have provided the following specifics in regards to the Washington state of affairs:
- Governor Chris Gregoire is making $90,000 in crisis cash available to help strengthen a public awareness campaign about the need for vaccination.
- The campaign will include radio ads, public service announcements, Facebook and Google ads, and possibly some bus and billboard ads as well.
- The state has received approval from the federal government to divert federal funds for the purchase of 27,000 doses of vaccine that will be made available to the uninsured.
- The state has already recorded 1,132 cases of pertussis so far this year, which is about 10 times more than last year.
- The state has been seeing about 400 cases per month, which is four times more than the threshold for what is considered “epidemic”.
- The Secretary of Health Mary Selecky and State Senator Maria Cantwell plan to ask the CDC to send investigators and epidemiologists to help the state study and contain the epidemic which will assist state health officials with their response and identify why the epidemic is growing so quickly.
So, what are your thoughts about this? Do you think it will work, or is it too little, too late? Read more…
Pertussis Problems Persist
Not enough can be done to ensure people are educated about the dangers of pertussis (also known as whooping cough). That’s why I wanted to highlight a few of this week’s articles that focus on issues related to pertussis.
Brady’s Battle Proves Pertussis Can Present in Unexpected Ways
CommonHealth writer, Rachel Zimmerman, was familiar with Brady’s story that we highlighted on Shot of Prevention last week. She recently wrote an article (located here) which addresses specific questions regarding whooping cough with detailed responses from the CDC. She also included highlights from a recent interview she conducted with Dr. Ben Kruskal, a pediatrician and director of infection control and travel medicine at Harvard Vanguard and director of infectious diseases at Atrius Health. When she asked what clinicians should do when confronted with infants like Brady, who had contracted pertussis, but didn’t exhibit the “classic” violent cough or whooping sound, Dr. Kruskal said this:
“Actually it turns out that most people who have whooping cough don’t show the classic signs of whooping cough. It’s really a substantial minority but still a minority of people who have it who have the classic clusters of cough that are so closely spaced that the patient has to take in this deep breath at the end of this cluster which produces the characteristic whoop.”
Accurate Diagnosis of Pertussis is Challenging
It’s probable that many cases of pertussis go undiagnosed and unreported, which makes this particular disease difficult to identify and therefore difficult to manage. Since this particular bacterial infection often presents like a bad cold many people simply don’t realize they are infected, and they unknowingly expose others to this contagious disease. While the symptoms may linger, which is why pertussis is often referred to as ”the 100 day cough”, most people will eventually recover. However, whooping cough is especially devastating for infants and young children, whose small bodies have difficulty fighting off the persistent bacteria.
So when should you seek help for a cough? You’ll want to bookmark today’s post on the PKIDS (Parent’s of Kids with Infectious Diseases) blog. It has been written by Dr. Kristen Feemster, who is not only an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Pereleman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, but also an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She provides a thorough analysis of pertussis to include a detailed background of the disease, what symptoms parents should look for in infants, young children, adolescents and adults, as well as details about testing. Read more…
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