In an interview for the SGU Christopher Hitchens told me that typically, after publishing a story, only then do people contact him that he should have spoken to in the first place. My humble blog has nothing of the reach of Hitchens’ writing, but it is still occasionally the case that after posting a blog I am contacted by people I really wish I had spoken to before I finished writing it.

For example, on Friday I discussed the case of Desiree Jennings, the 25 year old woman who claims to have developed dystonia 10 days after receiving the seasonal flu vaccine. I reported that all of the neurological experts who viewed the videos of Jennings that were made public (including me) are of the opinion that she does not have dystonia. Rather, the signs she displays are more typical of a psychogenic movement disorder, and therefore not due to the vaccine.

There is another angle to this story, however, that I was not aware of. I was mostly interested in the vaccine angle, as the Jennings story has been exploited by the anti-vaccine movement to further scare-monger about the flu vaccine. There is also a dystonia community, and they were not happy about the Jennings affair either. In particular, a woman by the name of Rogers Hartmann, who suffers from dystonia, and who has been one of the main faces of dystonia activism to the media, contacted me.

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