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Health & Medicine |
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National Press Foundation Vaccine Webinar Series
VACCINE CONTROVERSIES
Seth Mnookin November 22, 2011
Anti-Vaccine Fears: As Old as Vaccination Itself
Smallpox • Epidemics recorded for
over 3,000 years
• Inoculation may have begun 2,000 years ago
• 1st effective vaccine: 1796; resistance ensued
Successes and Failures
• New vaccines in 20th century save millions of lives …
• But contaminated yellow fever vaccine infects 300,000 GIs in World War II
Polio
• Only the atomic bomb scared Americans more in 1950s
• More people knew about Salk vaccine trials than knew President Eisenhower’s full name
Polio Vaccine: Good News – and Bad
• April 12, 1955: Nationwide celebration
• April 26, 1955: First reports of paralysis from vaccines manufactured by Cutter Laboratories
Pertussis and “Vaccine Roulette”
• Leading childhood killer tamed by vaccine, despite side effects
• 1982 TV program sparks parents’ movement
Andrew Wakefield Measles and Autism
Thimerosal
• The Bundaberg Tragedy and thimerosal
• Ethylmercury versus methylmercury
• Robert Kennedy “Rolling Stone” article – later retracted
HPV Vaccines
• Cervical cancer vaccine becomes embroiled controversies over lobbying, parental rights, and social conservatism
• Presidential politics and HPV
International Vaccine Issues
• Nigeria – rumors in 2003 about polio vaccines led to decrease in vaccination, increase in cases, spread to more than 10 neighboring countries
• Vaccines and catching Osama bin Laden?
Causation Versus Correlation
• Correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one causes the other
• Does drinking milk cause cancer?
• Do vaccines cause autism?
The Role of the Media
• What is a “controversy”? Are there two sides to every story?
• Giving scientists and “the University of Google” equal time
• Stories that don’t get told