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| Vaccines in the News |
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| Media coverage about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases |
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| Book reviews |
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Bringing Science Back into America's Sphere |
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| Los Angeles Times |
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| August 22, 2009 |
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| "Chris Mooney, author of
'Unscientific America,' talks about the significance of Pluto's demotion
from planet, the belief that vaccines are linked to autism, and the role
played by religion. 'Science has become much less cool,' journalist Chris
Mooney writes in "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens
Our Future" (July 2009, Basic Books). Mooney, author of the 2005 bestseller
The Republican War on Science, and his coauthor Sheril Kirshenbaum, a marine
scientist at Duke University, seek to explain how Americans have come to
minimize science in a time when, they assert, we will need it most -- as
global warming, advances in genetics and the possibility of large-scale
engineering of the Earth's climate loom in our future..." |
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| Young Writer Takes a Shot at Vaccines |
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| Bucks County Courier Times |
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| July 21, 2009 |
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| “Morgan Thomas was 9 years old when she got her second chicken pox vaccination. The experience, which included what seemed like a never-ending wait in the doctor's office, left a lasting impression. A few months later, she put those feelings onto paper. Now, the 11-year-old is a published author. ‘The Saturday Shot’ was published in May, more than a year after Morgan's mom secretly sent her daughter's manuscript to Tate Publishing & Enterprises LLC, a mainline publishing group in Mustang, Okla..." |
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| Henderson Led WHO's Effort to Rid the World of Smallpox |
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| USA Today |
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| June 30, 2009 |
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| “One day in 1947, two cases of smallpox turned up in New York City. One day in 1947, two cases of smallpox turned up in New York City. An investigation identified more cases. The outbreak's source turned out to be a visitor from Mexico who stayed in a hotel with 3,000 guests from 28 states. Health workers raced to vaccinate each one. And they didn't stop there. Over the next four weeks, to make sure smallpox didn't take hold in the USA, health workers vaccinated 6 million New Yorkers, all to contain a 12-person outbreak with just two deaths..." |
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Book Review: Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and
the Search for a Cure |
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The New England Journal of Medicine |
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March 12, 2009 |
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"In recent years, the public has been increasingly concerned about
adverse events that have been attributed to vaccines. Although such
safety concerns have existed since the days of Edward Jenner, modern-day
opponents of vaccines are waging a particularly aggressive and personal
campaign against advocates of vaccines. Paul Offit notes in the opening
lines of his book that he has been the target of such personal attacks,
partly because of his public support for the safety and efficacy of
vaccines and partly because of his relationship with the pharmaceutical
industry in the licensure of his rotavirus vaccine..." |
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Evidence Supports Vaccines |
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| Joliet Herald News (IL) |
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| March 11, 2009 |
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| "A new book defending childhood
vaccines, along with a recent court decision affirming that there seems
to be no connection between vaccines and autism, should calm the nerves
of anxious parents, physicians say. The book, 'Autism's False Prophets,'
by pediatrician Dr. Paul Offit, is meant to shoot down celebrities and
the handful of physicians Offit calls, 'fringe scientists' who believe
childhood vaccinations, or the mercury preservative once used in them,
cause autism in children..." |
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Vaccine Book Brings Out Hidden Support: Author |
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| Reuters (UK) |
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| February 18, 2009 |
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| "When the letters and e-mails started
to pour in, Dr. Paul Offit braced himself. The pediatrician and vaccine
inventor is a prominent defender of childhood vaccines, tackling those
who have argued that immunizations can cause autism. His book, 'Autism's
False Prophets,' takes on British researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield, whose
now-debunked 1998 study in the prestigious Lancet medical journal linked
the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism. It also criticizes
organized groups that advise parents to avoid vaccinating their children
for fear the vaccines may cause autism. The issue is at the center of a
vociferous and often vicious debate, despite the preponderance of
scientific opinion in favor of vaccination..." |
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| Blog: Autism and vaccines, Chapter 10,000 |
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| Los Angeles Times Blog: Booster Shots |
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| October 1, 2008 |
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| "Haven't read enough about autism lately? Even if you have -- and we're betting that you have -- you might nonetheless head on over to Scienceblogs.com for their ScienceBlogs Book Club, which right now is a multi-blogger review of a new book on the vaccine-autism brouhaha. 'Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure' by Dr. Paul A. Offit (Columbia University Press, 2008) examines the rise of the autism-vaccine theory after the (later-debunked) research of the British surgeon Dr. Andrew Wakefield (you can read a summary of that research here) and a second assertion, by parent advocacy groups, that use of the mercury preservative thimerosal in vaccines was to blame for a rise in autism cases. Offit, who is chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, says that he was driven to write the book after study upon study failed to find an autism-vaccine link -- and yet, as a result of those studies, the press took the matter up and continues to present the issue as if it were a controversy. It's not, he says -- at least not a scientific one..." |
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| Charlatans to the Rescue |
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| Wall Street Journal |
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| September 23, 2008 |
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| "Ever since psychiatrist Leo Kanner identified a neurological condition he called autism in 1943, parents whose children have been diagnosed with the most severe form of the illness -- usually in the toddler stage, before age 3 -- have found themselves desperately searching for some way not to lose their children to autism's closed-off world. Unfortunately, such parents have often found misguided doctors, ill-informed psychologists and outright charlatans eager to proffer help..." |
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| Inside the Vaccine-and-Autism Scare |
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| Salon.com |
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| September 22, 2008 |
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| "Early in Dr. Paul A. Offit's new book, "Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure," he describes a threatening letter he received from a man in Seattle. The threats against him and his family have come not from antiabortion advocates, but rather from anti-vaccine crusaders who believe that vaccines cause autism. Offit, it turns out, has been targeted by them because he helped to develop a vaccine that prevents rotavirus, a serious gastrointestinal infection in children, and because he has been staunchly pro-vaccine in a time when there are many doubts about their safety. Offit begins by tracing the history of the anti-vaccine movement to its roots in England in 1998..." |
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| Defending Vaccines in the Autism Debate |
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| Philadelphia Inquirer |
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| September 21, 2008 |
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| "Next to clean drinking water, vaccines are arguably the most important advance in public health in the last 300 years. Thanks to vaccines, we have eradicated smallpox, wiped out polio virus in the Western hemisphere, closed in on measles, and brought many other once fatal or debilitating diseases under control. But despite the indisputable track record of vaccines in lowering mortality and morbidity here and around the world, the American public has been embroiled, over the last decade, in a heated debate about whether vaccines are safe. In particular, the notion that vaccines cause autism has taken hold of the public imagination and refuses to let go, even in the face of growing scientific evidence to the contrary. In Autism's False Prophets, Paul A. Offit, co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and chief of infectious disease at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, helps to explain why..." |
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| Washington Post Investigations: Measles on Rise as Parents Question Vaccine |
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| Washington Post |
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| August 28, 2008 |
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| "Reports of measles are on the rise, with health experts attributing the increase to the decision by some parents to forego vaccinations for their children out of fears the shots could trigger diseases...The American Academy of Pediatrics says extensive reports from several leading researchers have found no 'proven association' between autism and measles vaccines. Experts recently told the Chicago Tribune that autism 'tends to emerge at the same age children receive their shots, leading to a false sense of cause and effect...' Many parents of children afflicted with autism continue to argue that a link exists, pointing to a legal dispute in Georgia between the family of 9-year-old Hannah Poling and the federal government...At the time, several researchers -- including Dr. William Schaffner, professor and chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, and Dr. Ira Rubin of Naperville Pediatrics in Naperville, Ill. -- said legal action does not equate with scientific proof of a link between vaccines and autism..." |
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| New Book Aims to Provide Vaccine Answers: AMNews interviews Martin Myers, MD |
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| AMED News |
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| July 7, 2008 |
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| "Physicians also may benefit from summaries of vaccine research as well as tips on communicating effectively with parents..." |
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| Immunization Action Coalition • 1573 Selby Avenue • Saint Paul, MN 55104 |
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| tel 651-647-9009 • fax 651-647-9131 |
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