The Panic Virus

November 29, 2010
In this searching exposé, the recent hysteria over childhood vaccinations and their alleged link to autism be-comes a cautionary tale of bad science amplified by media sensationalism. Journalist Mnookin (Hard News) treats the belief that autism is caused by common vaccines as an epidemic, tracing its origin to a young British doctor's dubious research into Crohn's disease and measles in the early 1990s. This "panic virus" spread through online communities of parents desperate for answers; fueled by mainstream media, it has created a growing reluctance on the part of parents to vaccinate their children, which, Mnookin warns, results in an increased rate of children dying from preventable infectious diseases. Crucial to this virus's spread was the unwillingness of reporters to parse complex health statistics and their embrace of a populist story line about feisty "Mercury Moms" challenging a corrupt and covert medical establishment. Mnookin presents a thorough and lucid debunking of the claims of a link between vaccines and autism and the charlatanism and profiteering of those who publicize it. The result is a hard-hitting contribution to the debate and a troubling portrait of a public sphere that elevates intuition and emotion above reason and evidence.

January 1, 2011
Over the last three decades, the incidence of autism spectrum disorder, better known simply as autism, has risen dramatically in the U.S., from approximately 1 in 1,000 children to 1 in 110, arousing widespread concern among parents and psychiatrists alike. A few of the many potential possible culprits scientists have targeted are faulty genes and thimerosal, a mercury-laced preservative in vaccines. Former Newsweek senior journalist Mnookin focuses his masterful investigative skills primarily on the latter, highly controversial possibility, illustrating how the current, misguided anti-vaccine movement can be blamed almost equally on panic-driven parents, sensation-hungry media, and PR-challenged health authorities. In making his case, Mnookin covers a wide swathe of medical history, from polio outbreaks to the scare tactics of fringe British researcher Andrew Wakefield, who first forged the dubious vaccine-autism link. While Mnookin dismantles this link convincingly, his argument that multivaccine cocktails have been proven safe is ultimately less persuasive. Still, hes an able, engaging wordsmith, and this cautionary tale about misinformed medical alarmism is thoroughly compelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2010

Does vaccinating a child cause autism? In the face of a considerable lobby arguing in the affirmative, Vanity Fair contributor Mnookin (Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top, 2006, etc.) replies with a resounding no.

Vaccination has had its critics since the days of Edward Jenner and cowpox, but the autism scare is fairly new, gathering force with the declaration of a British gastroenterologist named Andrew Wakefield, in 1998, that a gut disorder was linked both to the MMR vaccine and to the onset of autism. Wakefield's alarm echoed widely. As Mnookin notes, it seems to have been heard particularly clearly in wealthy communities and "left-leaning, well-educated enclaves," among them Ashland, Ore., and Marin County, Calif. In these affluent areas, children are not being vaccinated, with the result that "an entire century's worth of medical advances have effectively been reversed." Some readers may suspect hyperbole, but the author has the numbers in his favor. Mumps, measles, whooping cough and other illnesses once thought conquered have returned, far more dangerous than the statistical risk of any mishap attributable to vaccination. Mnookin ties the current anti-vaccination fervor, which vastly outstrips earlier campaigns against vaccination (and its close cousin, fluoridation), to the flourishing of the anti-science mood generally, relating it to, say, the Kentucky legislature's insistence that evolution be treated as a mere theory on par with creationism. But bad science and its champions are one thing, Mnookin adds; quite another is the spreading of fear and alarmism via "media outlets that eschew nuance and depth in favor of attention-grabbing declarations." In all of these areas, the author names names--to the point that one wonders whether we'll be hearing more about his worthy book in the legal news.

A solid work of popular science, and sure to court controversy.

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