“The great and irrational MMR panic”
On May 28th, I noted the rush by the media to report on the yet-unconclusive research published by Dr. Stephen Walker. Brendan O’Reilly writes about the “skewed reporting” by journalists about a possible MMR/autism link in today’s Guardian:
A study by the Cardiff University School of Journalism in 2002, at the height of the MMR panic, found that skewed reporting confused and panicked parents.
It took a sample of coverage and found that when parents appeared as sources in newspaper stories, 37 were anti-MMR and 7 were pro-MMR; on TV the balance was 10-3 and on radio it was 5-0. Even though by that stage almost all scientific experts rejected the idea that there was a link between MMR and autism, the Cardiff team found that only 23 per cent of those whom it surveyed were aware that the bulk of evidence favoured supporters of the MMR vaccine rather than its vocal opponents.
The authors of the study concluded that media presentation of the MMR issue “appears to have led to a loss of confidence in the vaccine in Britain”, the potential public health consequences of which will be “very serious indeed”. We can see those consequences in yesterday’s revelation that measles is on the rise.
In March, a thirteen-year-old boy who had not received the MMR vaccine died of measles in northwest England: He was the first person in 14 years to die from the measles in the UK. O’Reilly ends his commentary by noting that “historians of the future will not look kindly upon the role played by journalists in the great and irrational MMR panic”—-nor ought historians, and journalists, and the autism community, of today. What is autism fact and autism fiction?
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