Follow the Story
The crusading, hydra-headed anti-vaccine movement deserves more consistent coverage in the media. Here’s the title of today’s press release from the American Academy of Pediatrics:
How the anti-vaccine movement threatens America’s children
Paul Offit, a pediatrician and the author of “Autism’s False Prophets,” (who didn’t tour bookstores because of death threats he received from the anti-vaccine community) will be the plenary speaker today at the American Academy of Pediatrics conference in San Francisco. According to the press release, here are the themes he will touch on:
- The origins of religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccines in the U.S.;
- The impact of those exemptions on vaccine rates and the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases;
- The delicate balance between individual freedoms and societal good.
Says Offit:
Parents are bombarded with false stories about the dangers of vaccines, and the result is that some are backing away from vaccinating their children. This is tragic, because it leaves children vulnerable to deadly diseases, and it lowers the immunity of the entire community.
Offit is the subject of an excellent 2009 story in Wired magazine by Amy Wallace. Shortly after the piece was published last Fall, Wallace got slimed with all manner of vitriol from vaccine opponents and sued by a charismatic leader of the anti-vaccine movement. The suit was later dismissed.
At an NYU event last Thursday, I heard Wallace talk about the jarring experience. She seems to have taken it in stride and good humor. (It probably helps that Conde Nast–Wired’s corporate parent–was highly supportive and paid all her legal bills.) As this event was geared towards journalists covering science, much of the discussion (which was moderated by Robert Lee Hotz, a WSJ science columnist), focused on how Wallace went about reporting and writing the story.
Wallace’s meta description of the interrelated themes explored in her piece strikes me as fertile territory for editors who want to follow up:
I see this as about a movement in our culture, about people afraid to vaccinate their kids, and about distrust of experts.
At one point, Hotz asked Wallace: “How do you continue the journalistic discussion” of this story? In response, she said that “deluging people with data” on the safety of vaccines wouldn’t work. Instead, she suggested that narrative story-telling was the only thing likely to cut through all the misinformation and distrust of science.
But that means editors and writers have to be creative and dogged in pursuing those stories.
Back in the 80s I was asked to write a script for a documentary on Satanic cults organising child abuse. I talked to the FBI and a lot of people, and very quickly realised it was all garbage and turned down the offer.
One of the people I talked to was Eugenie Scott, who has spent her career fighting creationism and defending evolution. I was mightily impressed with her and it sounds like Wallace is of the same breed.
Later, much later, I started feeling really depressed thinking about what Eugenie Scott might have been able to do with her career if she hadn’t felt it necessary to devote it to defending a theory that in every other part of the globe, including the Vatican, is so casually accepted as non-controversial.
And it is something I keep in my mind when I write about climate change, although I’m sure there are some who would dispute that…
Tom,
Why did Eugenie feel compelled to so devote her career? People believe, or not, what’s the big deal? Others belief in creationism harms her how, exactly?
Is it you’re expectation that all should agree. On what exactly? Who gets to decide which beliefs should be purged and which are OK? You? You and five friends?
Ms. Scott either founded or was director of a foundation that fought organised efforts to get evolution thrown out and creationism shoehorned into education. There were some concerted campaigns to do just that, and I think Scott just felt she had to stand up to them.
I think she was largely successful. My personal belief is that I don’t particularly object to creationism being introduced in classes, but not as science–they do discuss comparative religious beliefs in schools and that’s where it belongs.
Christian Group: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming…
http://www.theonion.com/video/christian-groups-biblical-armageddon-must-be-taugh,17491/
Fighting to have evolution heard is noble. Fighting to have creationsim not heard is ignoble. Niether is “fighting against creationism”, which would seem an odd thing to do anyway.
If this organization was her passion, so be it. Not sure who you are to feel pity (be depressed) – seems inappropriately judgemental.
“Fighting to have creationsim not heard is ignoble. ”
Are you really saying that it’s bad to prevent public schools from being used for religious indoctrination? Or fighting efforts to have religious ideas taught in science class as if they were science? Or object when teachers and groups lie to our school children about the current science regarding evolution? Because this is what her fight has been about. It seems like a noble cause; fighting for honesty, integrity, and freedom from religious indoctrination within the public school system.
[…] made me a think of a sideline conversation I had with Robert Lee Hotz last week. It was after the Amy Wallace talk at NYU, which Hotz, a science columnist for the WSJ, moderated. We were were chatting about the […]
kdk33 wrote:
“Fighting to have evolution heard is noble. Fighting to have creationsim not heard is ignoble. Niether is “fighting against creationism”, which would seem an odd thing to do anyway.”
You’re either clueless or being disingenuous.
The fight was and has always been against having creationism taught *as an alternative to evolutionary biologyh* *in science class*.
Creationism is free to be taught as a part of courses about religions and myths, and no one objects to that…except religious believers.