National Press Foundation Vaccine Webinar Series

VACCINE CONTROVERSIES

Seth Mnookin November 22, 2011

Anti-Vaccine Fears: As Old as Vaccination Itself

Smallpox • Epidemics recorded for

over 3,000 years

• Inoculation may have begun 2,000 years ago

• 1st effective vaccine: 1796; resistance ensued

Successes and Failures

• New vaccines in 20th century save millions of lives …

• But contaminated yellow fever vaccine infects 300,000 GIs in World War II

Polio

• Only the atomic bomb scared Americans more in 1950s

• More people knew about Salk vaccine trials than knew President Eisenhower’s full name

Polio Vaccine: Good News – and Bad

• April 12, 1955: Nationwide celebration

• April 26, 1955: First reports of paralysis from vaccines manufactured by Cutter Laboratories

Pertussis and “Vaccine Roulette”

• Leading childhood killer tamed by vaccine, despite side effects

• 1982 TV program sparks parents’ movement

Andrew Wakefield Measles and Autism

Thimerosal

• The Bundaberg Tragedy and thimerosal

• Ethylmercury versus methylmercury

• Robert Kennedy “Rolling Stone” article – later retracted

HPV Vaccines

• Cervical cancer vaccine becomes embroiled controversies over lobbying, parental rights, and social conservatism

• Presidential politics and HPV

International Vaccine Issues

• Nigeria – rumors in 2003 about polio vaccines led to decrease in vaccination, increase in cases, spread to more than 10 neighboring countries

• Vaccines and catching Osama bin Laden?

Causation Versus Correlation

• Correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one causes the other

• Does drinking milk cause cancer?

• Do vaccines cause autism?

The Role of the Media

• What is a “controversy”? Are there two sides to every story?

• Giving scientists and “the University of Google” equal time

• Stories that don’t get told