Thread: The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, & Fe

Book review: 'The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear,' a look at the vaccine-autism controversy

by Seth Mnookin

A 1998 paper by Dr. Andrew Wakefield linking the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism was later retracted by The Lancet medical journal.

Sara James/SIMON & SCHUSTER
Seth Mnookin Vanity Fair writer uses several angles.

By James E. McWilliams
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Published: 7:52 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011

With the possible exception of the 1960s, never before have so many well-educated Americans been so deeply skeptical of established power. Whether the target is agribusiness, Big Pharma or the government, citizens who benefit most from "the system" are concluding not only that it's broken, but also that it's out to harm us as well.

Seth Mnookin (pronounced ma-noo-kin) became intrigued with this paradoxical social phenomenon after attending a dinner party in 2008. At this gathering he listened to a first-time father explain that he was delaying his infant's measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine on the grounds that he felt it was unsafe. According to what system of logic, Mnookin wondered, would an otherwise sensible man with absolutely no medical authority feel vaccination was unsafe? And why were so many intelligent people who "lived in college towns like Ann Arbor and Austin" eschewing standard pediatric procedures based on gut feelings rather than hard evidence?

Mnookin's answer is "The Panic Virus," a brilliant, meticulously researched investigation into the popular belief that certain vaccines can cause autism. Combining narrative talent with assiduous reporting, Mnookin, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine, explores "a manner of thinking" that not only runs "counter to the principles of deductive reasoning," but also threatens those of us who maintain enough faith in the medical establishment to vaccinate our kids.

It takes guts to write a book informing a group of aggrieved parents that they're wrong about the source of their child's disorder. While Mnookin is consistently respectful of the emotional pain that autism can cause, he pulls no punches. Balancing sensitivity and science, he makes a devastating case that parents who reject vaccines for fear of autism are "casualties of a war built on lies."

Mnookin tells his story from an impressive number of angles, but his primary emphasis centers on the social-psychological processes underscoring the widespread misperception that vaccines cause autism. At the core of his analysis is a basic scientific truism, one that we tend to forget: It's virtually impossible to immunize millions of people without experiencing a small percentage of random adverse reactions. Put simply, some kids are always going to react badly to their "jabs." Sometimes very badly.

Enter perhaps the largest villain in a book full of villains: the media. No matter how minor the negative reaction to a vaccine, these exceptional dramas became, in Mnookin's words, "catnip for journalists." The press, seduced by the cheap allure of victimization (and seemingly uninterested in noting how many lives were saved by vaccines), routinely exploited the emotional aspect of vaccine-related mishaps to great effect, foregoing "nuanced explanations" and "necessary context" in favor of scare-mongering and high ratings.

A classic example was "Vaccine Roulette," a report that aired on an NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C., in 1982. The piece, although "rife with mistakes and misrepresentations," went viral (as much as anything could go viral in 1982) with shocking but unsubstantiated assertions of "vaccine-induced brain damage, mental retardation and permanent neurological damage."

The emergence of the Internet, as they say, changed everything. By the late 1990s, grass-roots organizations of concerned parents had — due largely to the "connective power of the Internet" — converged on a single, gallingly unverified claim: thimerosal — an ethylmercury compound used as a vaccine preservative — caused autism.

One cohort of "amateur epidemiologists" — dubbed the "Mercury Moms" — gave this claim unprecedented exposure, clogging the Web with scientifically dubious blogs, poignant testimonies and decontextualized medical reports. "Instead of amassing evidence to prove a conjecture," Mnookin writes, they "used the conjecture itself as evidence."

But conjecture, you will recall, makes for good catnip. A "prototypical media landslide" followed the thimerosal charge. Pervasive fears inspired a kind of "knee-jerk populism." A "panic virus" was soon proliferating. "Vaccine deniers" were coming out of the woodwork.
All these developments, meanwhile, rolled roughshod over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's comparatively underreported (and comparatively dull) conclusion that "the body of epidemiological evidence favors the rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism."

No matter what the CDC had to say, several bad actors in Mnookin's drama weren't going to allow the truth to get in the way of a good opportunity. Indeed, opportunists abound in "The Panic Virus." David Kirby, a journalist who penned fear-mongering reports for places such as The Huffington Post, is hit hard by Mnookin for his sloppy reporting and overwrought rhetoric. But nobody comes in for a more serious drubbing from Mnookin than Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a London gastroenterologist who claimed to have found the biological pathway linking the MMR vaccine and autism.

Wakefield initially made his case in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet in 1998. His report was later debunked and retracted, and eventually called "the worst paper that's ever been published in the history of" The Lancet by a dean at the London School of Medicine.

As Mnookin notes, the mounting criticism against his work hardly stopped Wakefield, who had attained a kind of guru status among parents of children with autism. He moved to Austin and in 2005 co-founded the Thoughtful House Center for Children, which treated autistic children and researched autism. Wakefield resigned as the center's executive director early last year . A few months later , he was banned from practicing medicine in Britain.

With Wakefield's imprimatur, not to mention The Lancet's, the vaccine-autism hypothesis evolved from an online conspiracy theory into a full-fledged legal controversy. It wasn't long before many millions of dollars were at stake. In what is perhaps the saddest section of the book, Mnookin documents the attempt by desperate parents to attain legal compensation for the harm that Wakefield had convinced them was perpetrated by the medical establishment on their children.

These myriad legal battles culminated in the Omnibus Autism trial, which began in 2007 in Washington. Two years later the verdict came down: Any and all claims of a connection between vaccines and autism "have been very wrong." As for physicians or activists who suggested otherwise? They were, according to the judge, "guilty \u2026 of gross medical misjudgment."

After delivering his decision, the judge added a personal note expressing his "sympathy and admiration" for parents of autistic kids. But, he added, "I must decide this case not on sentiment, but by analyzing the evidence." Mnookin's fine book reminds us that, when we fail to follow the judge's advice in our daily lives, one tragedy can compound another.
James E. McWilliams is an associate professor of history at Texas State University and the author, most recently, of 'Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.'

http://www.statesman.com/life/books/boo ... 90078.html

I don't buy the vaccines cause autism scare. When you look back you will find there alot less of it even though almost all kids were vacciniated. I believe that it is the chemicals in our food and drinks. Back 30 years ago or more we ate food that had alot less chemicals or that was even gentically modified. Many of us had parents who had vegetable gardens and relatives with fruit trees. There were also alot of local farmers who sold fresh fruit and vegetables at farmers markets. This was before the mega farms we see today.