Comments on: Media Coverage Influence on MMR Vaccination Rates

By: Science-Based Medicine » When “investigative reporting” becomes anti-vaccine propaganda

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:02:01 +0000

[...] Media Coverage Influence on MMR Vaccination Rates [...]

By: nlucas

nlucas — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:40:07 +0000

Using Google trends for “autism” and “vaccines” it seems to be some correlation between autism and vaccines searches:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=autism%2C+vaccine&ctab=0&geo=US&date=all&sort=0

And more marked in the UK:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=autism%2C+vaccine&ctab=0&geo=GB&geor=all&date=all&sort=0

Off course this is very far from a scientific method, but I would expect autism searches to be something that would be decoupled from the vaccine searches if the media/internet wouldn’t be sensationalizing the controversy.

By: Orac

Orac — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:53:45 +0000

Give the new round of antivaccinationist propaganda time. Jenny McCarthy's going to lead an antivaccinationist protest in Washington on June 4. Oh, sure, she and its organizers claim that they want to "green our vaccines" (God, what amazingly brilliant propaganda) and to get rid of the "toxins" (when in fact the only "toxins" they fear are the very ingredients that make the vaccines work). They claim they are not "antivaccine" but "pro-safe vaccine" (God, what another amazingly briliant bit of propaganda) when it reality is and always has been all about the vaccines. Give us a chance in the U.S. We'll soon be seeing the same decrease in vaccination rates and and increases in vaccine-preventable diseases that the U.K. saw after the Wakefield scare and is only now starting to recover from.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:20:45 +0000

I wonder if google has data from that time frame on internet searches that it would be willing to have reputable epidemiologists analyze to see what can be learned about which websites people were searching for.

Web searches for vaccine information might have a better time correlation with vaccine refusal in the context of Wakefield’s now discredited (and probably fraudulent) work.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:01:12 +0000

And now my eyes can see. Thank you, sir.

By: Steven Novella

Steven Novella — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:19:20 +0000

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:17:54 +0000

This is another symptom of the problem of media sensationalizing still premature stories, often chosen specifically because they know it will create controversy (and sell more ad-laden copy).

I’d love to see interested, capable parties (Novella MD, Barrett MD, Posner MD, et al, hint hint) establish an org with an online presence that takes up the task of providing the public skeptical, critical, evidence-based information on this and all other health issues.

Numerous orgs take on portions of it -general anti-quackery, chiro, alt-med, etc., but I’m unaware of a single, comprehensive endeavor.