The Panic Virus: Fear, Myth and the Vaccination Debate by Seth Mnookin
There have been few parenting issues as emotive as the debate over vaccinations.
Ever since now-discredited doctor Andrew Wakefield published his paper linking the MMR vaccination with autism a growing number of parents have chosen to not vaccinate their children.
In Australia, the debate came to a head in 2009 when Toni and Dave McCaffery's daughter Dana died of whooping cough when she was just 32 days old.
Dana's parents were unaware that they were living in an area with one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates in Australia. They were also shocked to be on the receiving end of vitriolic emails and letters accusing them of lying about Dana's illness and colluding with pharmaceutical companies.
Their story and the media attention that followed features in the preface of Seth Mnookin's Australian edition of The Panic Virus: Fear, Myth and the Vaccination Debate.
Mnookin, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and former senior writer at Newsweek, felt compelled to write The Panic Virus after a dinner party conversation with an anti-vax friend of his who admitted he based his choice on what he "felt" rather than the available evidence.
"Anecdotes and suppositions, no matter how right they feel, don't lead to universal truths; experiments that can be independently confirmed by impartial observers do," he writes. "Intuition leads to the flat earth society and bloodletting; experiments lead to men on the moon and microsurgery".
So Mnookin began working on The Panic Virus the next day. First confirming that no link existed between childhood immunisations and developmental disorders then attempting to answer the following questions:
"Why, despite all the evidence to the contrary do so many people remain adamant in their belief that vaccines are responsible for harming hundreds of thousands of otherwise healthy children? Why is the media so inclined to air those views? Why are so many others so readily convinced? Why, in other words, are we so willing to believe things that are, according to all available evidence, false?"
To answer these questions, Mnookin looks at the history of vaccinations and takes the reader inside the anti-vaccination community.
He looks at the spread of the anti-vax movement and how it was propelled with the help of the internet and the decline in investigative science journalism.
The result is a well-researched, scientifically sound investigation of the emotive issue. A must read for anyone interested in the debate.
For more information about visit Black Inc Books
(* yes, I realise it is Tuesday but I wanted to keep the Friday Book Club name ...)
More useful links:
Read about the Australian vaccination schedule and clinics
Discuss immunisation issues on the Bub Hub Forum
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