Amy Wallace's "Epidemic of Fear": The case against the anti-vaccine movement

November 6, 7:49 AMDC Parenting ExaminerMaura Mahoney

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Vaccines seem to be on everybody's mind
AP Photo: Carolyn Kaster

Given all the attention to the H1N1 swine flu vaccine in recent weeks, to vaccinate or not to vaccinate has been the question on many people’s minds. The media has covered the topic thoroughly, from stories ranging from the helpful (the innumerable Q and As about H1N1 and the vaccine) to the goofy (the Washington Post’s recent article breaking the news that frat boys aren’t lining up to get immunized. What? Frat boys are cavalier about their personal health and hygiene? Yer kidding.)

So it’s not really surprising that the issue of vaccinating children in general – and the controversy over potential dangers in doing so – has returned to prominence as well. Earlier in the month, in Slate, Stephanie Tatel wrote “A Pox on You,” about her cancer-stricken son who can’t attend daycare because of unvaccinated children, and Amy Wallace argues for vaccination – and against the anti-vaccine movement -- in “Epidemic of Fear,” in the November issue of Wired.

Wallace’s article is rigorously argued and downright riveting. The article’s subtitle, splashed across the magazine’s cover, fires the first salvo: “Vaccines don’t cause autism. But some panicked parents are skipping their baby’s shots. Why that decision endangers us all.” Wallace tells the tale of 58-year-old pediatrician and co-inventor of a rotovirus vaccine, Paul Offit, who states in “speeches, in journal articles, and in his 2008 book, Autism’s False Prophets—that vaccines do not cause autism or autoimmune disease or any of the other chronic conditions that have been blamed on them. He supports this assertion with meticulous evidence. And he calls to account those who promote bogus treatments for autism—treatments that he says not only don’t work but often cause harm.”

As a result, Offit has earned the blazing enmity of the grassroots anti-vaccine movement, a movement whose numbers have increased exponentially in part thanks to a not entirely misplaced distrust of Big Pharma, and in part thanks to the Internet, which, Wallace says, “offers a treasure trove of undifferentiated information, data, research, speculation, half-truths, anecdotes, and conjecture about health and medicine.” Not surprisingly, Offit has received death threats.

The article includes a sidebar entitled “The Misinformants: Prominent Voices in the Anti-Vaccine Crusade,” and identifies Jenny McCarthy, the actress whose son has been diagnosed with autism, and who leads an organization called Generation Rescue devoted to finding a cure for the disease; her boyfriend Jim Carrey; Joe Scarborough, who stated that “intuitively” he is sure that thimerosal caused autism; Don Imus, who feels similarly; Robert Kennedy Jr., whose article for Rolling Stone in 2005 that claimed that mercury in vaccines caused autism was so widely discredited that the magazine had to issue not one but a series of corrections and clarifications; and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who warns parents to be “very careful in the application of vaccines.” Another sidebar is called “How to Win an Argument about Vaccines,” and delineates several “well-worn myths” that “the anti-vaccine crowd clings to” and provides their refutations.

Wallace does a terrific job of explaining how “despite the peer-reviewed evidence, many parents ignore the math and agonize over whether to vaccinate.” Motivated by love for their kids, they cling to the pseudo-science driving the anti-immunization movement because science has yet to determine the precise cause of autism. Paul Offit, who rejects the description of “vaccine advocate” in preference to “science advocate,” is fighting to restore rationality to the vaccine conversation.

For articles on the H1N1 vaccine: