It's been a particularly busy month for health journalism in Canada. There's the ongoing standoff in Ontario around doctors' billings, the legislation around physician-assisted death that's apparently pleased nobody, and the struggle to control provincial budgets in oil-producing regions of the country. Still, it was with a huff of dismay that this issue, which we all thought was settled years ago, reared its ugly head once more:
all that much going on, and the data was readily available for public access. Moreover, the journal that published Dr. Hooker's article promptly retracted it, citing questions of validity and previously-unmentioned conflicts of interest. Nevertheless, conversations between Thompson and Hooker spawned a "tell-all" book and the documentary VAXXED.
Which brings us to Robert DeNiro, who had intended to show VAXXED at his Tribeca film festival, but backed off in the wake of public pressure. Still, he let his feelings be known in a televised interview, science be damned.
And that's what we're left with. Robert DeNiro joins Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey as a modern-day Three Stooges, peddling the false equivalence between what they know and what science has proven, consequences be damned.
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| Curly, Larry, and Moe |
I honestly don't know where the public health community can go from here. Revisiting and re-reporting the science clearly hasn't done much. Likewise with comedians' public shaming of the anti-vaccine movement.
From the standpoint of health policy, we need to strengthen the laws around immunizations. Let's do away with nonsensical objections and give a mightier stick than a school suspension. Immunization should be the law, a societal obligation rather than a personal choice. When objections arise, policymakers should treat them the same way they do any other conspiracy theory--by dismissing them out of hand.
It's also time to fight fire with fire. All the data in the world can't compare to a really compelling story. Let's remind any confused member of the public (and the anti-vaccine crowd) that failure to immunize can have real, devastating health outcomes, endangering the lives of at-risk children.
Once upon a time, peddling unproven medical nonsense really was a job for Three Stooges. Let's remind the public that still holds true today.
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Monday, April 18, 2016
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epidemiology,
health policy,
immunization,
MMR,
public health,
science,
vaccines
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