The Bottom Line
Pros
- Well researched, with 59 pages of notes for those who want to do more investigation.
- Debunks anti-vaccine theories.
- Offers theories why we are all so ready to believe things that aren't true.
- Reassurance for parents scared by misinformation about vaccine dangers.
Cons
- Could have included more statistics on recent outbreaks of vaccine preventable infections.
- Occasional tangents on global warming and other topics are a little distracting.
Description
- Includes many interesting facts, like how requirements for smallpox inoculations may have help win the American Revolution.
- Learn how anti-vaccine movements are not a new phenomena, and were even around when the first smallpox vaccine was developed.
- Provides a brief history of things thought to cause autism, including the discredited 'refrigerator mother' theory.
- Includes a cast of characters of all groups and individuals involved in the vaccine debate.
Guide Review - The Panic Virus Book Review
Seth Morkin's 'The Panic Virus' starts with a story that many pediatricians fear whenever they hear a parent choosing to not vaccinate - a child becoming critically ill with a vaccine preventable infection.
In this case, three-year-old Matthew develops epiglottitis caused by the Haemophilus influenzae type b. Before the introduction of the Hib vaccine in 1988, this bacteria caused 8,000 to 10,000 cases of Hib meningitis in the US each year, leading to 240 to 770 deaths in children, and an additional 6,000 cases of other serious diseases, including epiglottitis, pneumonia, cellulitis, and bacteremia.
Matthew didn't get his Hib vaccine though, because his mother, prompted by her chiropractor, was worried about the possible links between vaccines and autism and about mercury in vaccines, even though mercury had already been removed from vaccines a few years earlier.
In 'The Panic Virus,' Seth Morkin helps us to understand why this very real fear of getting sick with a vaccine preventable infection and continued evidence of vaccine safety isn't enough to convince some parents to vaccinate their kids. Learn about how the anti-vaccine movement got started, how the media keeps it going, and some very real mistakes in developing vaccines helped to build distrust among parents too.
Think the anti-vaccine movement started with Andrew Wakefied or Jenny McCarthy?
In addition to, and sometimes long before them, we had:
- Vaccine Roulette - a news special by Lea Thompson on a local Washington D.C. TV station in 1982 that claimed to link the DPT vaccine to 'some kind of neurological damage' that could leave your child 'rendered a vegetable,' despite relying on distorted conclusions, out of context quotes, and inaccurate statistics.
- Barbara Loe Fisher - who founded the National Vaccine Information Center after realizing that her own son must have had a reaction to his fourth DPT shot after she watched Vaccine Roulette.
- Jackie Fletcher - started JABS in 1992 to protect British children who had been injured by vaccines.
- David Kirby - wrote 'Evidence of Harm' about thimerosal in vaccines and the rising rates of autism
Although some of these people are influenced by each other and other people in the anti-vaccine community, we learn that the media and even health experts contributed too:
- troops in World War II who weren't even at risk being given yellow fever vaccine that was contaminated with hepatitis B
- Cutter Incident - in which children developed polio from contaminated polio shots
- news that a vaccine manufacturer knew that kids might be getting extra thimerosal from vaccines years before it was removed from vaccines
- the CDC and AAP worrying parents in the way they made statements when thimerosal was removed from vaccines
And perhaps most importantly, the lack of a strong response from health experts when someone makes claims against the safety and importance of vaccines on Oprah, the nightly news, or in a magazine article, and their unproved claims go unchallenged by the media.
