Jenny says....
If you read my blog, you know I don’t have much respect for the anti-vaccination movement, and I have contempt for Jenny McCarthy, JB Handley, Andrew Wakefield, Generation Rescue and others for the damage they have done to health care. One of my favorite blogs to read is Science Based Medicine, which has several physicians editors (and guest editors) who discuss medicine from a scientific perspective. I share their point-of-view on medicine, and since my background is from the industry perspective, I cannot obviate the need for good scientific reasoning for product development. In Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends: The Jenny and Jim antivaccine propaganda tour has begun, David Gorski, MD, tears apart, in about as civil a manner as he can, Jenny’s recent interview.
First, let’s watch the interview.
Read Gorski’s comments, he does a fine enough job in countering the fallacies presented by Jenny. There’s not much for me to add. Simply put, Jenny has studied at the University of Google, in which any quack or person with an agenda, can put information that ends up with a high google rank. It is not science and it is not ethical to continue to this anti-vaccination movement. Why is anyone listening to this former Playboy playmate?
The problem is that we (you know, scientists, rational parents, Big Pharma) is always playing catch-up. It’s a public relations problem in some sense. The attractive Jenny McCarthy starts a sad, very uninformed discourse on the evil of vaccinations. We (the bad guys) can only counter with science. And intelligence. And rational comments. I don’t have a picture of David Gorski, so he may well be photogenic, but Jenny just wins the day based on something that has nothing to do with good medicine. And in the world of public relations, the battle for the minds of the audience, propaganda starts the debate, and medicine needs to discuss the issues defensively.
I guess if we could predict the future (pseudoscience), we might have predicted this would happen, and we could have taken leadership in the debate. In 1995, no one was studying autism and vaccines, because there is no link between the two. Then Wakefield's lies became public, and it's been catch up for medical science ever since. So, if only we could go back in time, one of us would have published an article on how safe vaccines are, wrote a book about the all of the cute children growing up without measles, mumps, rubella, polio (you get the point), and how they were doing so well in school. Being a PR ploy exclusively, we find a beautiful actress who's child received all of the vaccines, and had her promote her new book: Vaccines and how they allowed my children to grow up. I guess we all sat around in the early 90’s thinking, “let’s cure cardiovascular disease.” Well, I was.
We lost the first rounds of the propaganda wars. But none of us lack courage and determination, so we’ll keep at it.
By Michael W Simpson
First, let’s watch the interview.
Read Gorski’s comments, he does a fine enough job in countering the fallacies presented by Jenny. There’s not much for me to add. Simply put, Jenny has studied at the University of Google, in which any quack or person with an agenda, can put information that ends up with a high google rank. It is not science and it is not ethical to continue to this anti-vaccination movement. Why is anyone listening to this former Playboy playmate?
The problem is that we (you know, scientists, rational parents, Big Pharma) is always playing catch-up. It’s a public relations problem in some sense. The attractive Jenny McCarthy starts a sad, very uninformed discourse on the evil of vaccinations. We (the bad guys) can only counter with science. And intelligence. And rational comments. I don’t have a picture of David Gorski, so he may well be photogenic, but Jenny just wins the day based on something that has nothing to do with good medicine. And in the world of public relations, the battle for the minds of the audience, propaganda starts the debate, and medicine needs to discuss the issues defensively.
I guess if we could predict the future (pseudoscience), we might have predicted this would happen, and we could have taken leadership in the debate. In 1995, no one was studying autism and vaccines, because there is no link between the two. Then Wakefield's lies became public, and it's been catch up for medical science ever since. So, if only we could go back in time, one of us would have published an article on how safe vaccines are, wrote a book about the all of the cute children growing up without measles, mumps, rubella, polio (you get the point), and how they were doing so well in school. Being a PR ploy exclusively, we find a beautiful actress who's child received all of the vaccines, and had her promote her new book: Vaccines and how they allowed my children to grow up. I guess we all sat around in the early 90’s thinking, “let’s cure cardiovascular disease.” Well, I was.
We lost the first rounds of the propaganda wars. But none of us lack courage and determination, so we’ll keep at it.
By Michael W Simpson