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nwhikerJust finished listening to Seth Mnookin's book on the anti-vaccination movement, The Panic Virus and it's excellent.
To be clear, I listened to the book. I have it on hold in book format, because there are parts I want to revisit. The audiobook was excellent, the reader was very good. Two issues. One is that the book appears to have "Notes" at the bottom of the page. These are read with a "Note" blah blah blah blah, but he doesn't indicate when he's going back to text, which confused me a few times. The other issue is the tone. This is a partisan book. It is very obvious that Mnookin isn't too impressed with parents who don't vaccinate because they don't understand the issues and have been hoodwinked by Wakefield and his cronies. The reader conveys contempt of those people in his tone, in a way that is very clear, and at times jarring.
A bit over a year ago I did a review of Autism's False Prophets, and I'd say this is a companion book to that, not totally redundant, but probably not books you'd want to read one right after the other (I have Paul Offit's new book Deadly Choices on hold at the library, so I'll be doing something almost like that.)
Offit's book was remarkable, in my opinion, in that he told the whole story. I knew all the bits and pieces, because all this was happening while I was having kids and getting them vaccines etc, but the book was very good about laying out the timeline, and showing the connections between the various factions and theories. Mnookin's book is even more so.
The books goes in a lot of different directions at first, but doesn't feel disjointed. From the early development of vaccines to the polio vaccine, the Cutter fiasco, and the beginning of vaccine litigation. He talks about the genesis of the anti-vaccine movement, and more about the people and what made them tick.
That is one of the better parts of the book: Mnookin talks about psychology and why we beleive the things we beleive, how we re-enforce those beliefs, and gives a credible shot at explaining how the anti-vaxxers can be so deluded and completely impervious to the evidence, which is pretty clear.
The other strong point of the book was the discourse on the scientific method. I felt Offit, in his book, hadn't paid enough attention to it. Mnookin does, explaining scientific method with concrete examples, talking about the null hypothesis, and the impossibility of proving a negative. I also liked his explanations on the different kinds of scientific studies, how they differ, and how this impacts the reliability and validity of their results.
Mnookin is very clear that the media bears a heavy responsibility for letting the anti-vax crap out there, often without any fact checking or opposing view points. Sad parents make for better radio/TV than sober pediatricians trying to explain things that are complex. We shy away from complex ideas, from bothering to understand the basics in science that we need to evaluate things like risk for example. We've become, I sometimes think, a society in which we all think, like Barbie, that "Math is hard!". Sigh...
Anyhow, the media responsibility, the "mommy instinct" vs hard science, and the callous selfishness of un-vaxxers are all well covered.
A word on Dr Sears. I should say Sears père and Sears, fils. I used Attachment Parenting to raise my kids. There were many things in his Dr Bill Sears's books that make me uncomfortable, and that I disliked but overall, I think he made sense, the concept of making sure a child is well attached, secure that mom/dad/caregiver has their back before sending them out into the world. His son? Is an asshole, an anti-vaxxer pretending to be "reasonable" and pushing his idiotic "alternative vaccine schedule" which is pure bullshit. I'm very sad that this has happened. I practiced AP with my kids, but no longer have much respect for the movement.
Bad to Mnookin and The Panic Virus. One of the issues that the anti-vaxxers have going for them in the media and in the court of public opinion, is that these are devastated parents, whose kids have autism, who have no idea what to do next, and whose lives are difficult, to say the least. On the other, you ave scientists saying that no, ethyl mercury and methyl mercury aren't the same, and no scientific study has show even the slightest causal link etc. The emotional vs the hard science. What Mnookin does is show the emotional other side. The side of the parents whose babies died or almost died because some selfish parent decided their kids were too speshul to be subjected to vaccinations. The stories of children who are injured or killed because of someone else stupid choices need to be told too, and I hope they are, all the while wishing they didn't ever have to be.
To be clear, I listened to the book. I have it on hold in book format, because there are parts I want to revisit. The audiobook was excellent, the reader was very good. Two issues. One is that the book appears to have "Notes" at the bottom of the page. These are read with a "Note" blah blah blah blah, but he doesn't indicate when he's going back to text, which confused me a few times. The other issue is the tone. This is a partisan book. It is very obvious that Mnookin isn't too impressed with parents who don't vaccinate because they don't understand the issues and have been hoodwinked by Wakefield and his cronies. The reader conveys contempt of those people in his tone, in a way that is very clear, and at times jarring.
A bit over a year ago I did a review of Autism's False Prophets, and I'd say this is a companion book to that, not totally redundant, but probably not books you'd want to read one right after the other (I have Paul Offit's new book Deadly Choices on hold at the library, so I'll be doing something almost like that.)
Offit's book was remarkable, in my opinion, in that he told the whole story. I knew all the bits and pieces, because all this was happening while I was having kids and getting them vaccines etc, but the book was very good about laying out the timeline, and showing the connections between the various factions and theories. Mnookin's book is even more so.
The books goes in a lot of different directions at first, but doesn't feel disjointed. From the early development of vaccines to the polio vaccine, the Cutter fiasco, and the beginning of vaccine litigation. He talks about the genesis of the anti-vaccine movement, and more about the people and what made them tick.
That is one of the better parts of the book: Mnookin talks about psychology and why we beleive the things we beleive, how we re-enforce those beliefs, and gives a credible shot at explaining how the anti-vaxxers can be so deluded and completely impervious to the evidence, which is pretty clear.
The other strong point of the book was the discourse on the scientific method. I felt Offit, in his book, hadn't paid enough attention to it. Mnookin does, explaining scientific method with concrete examples, talking about the null hypothesis, and the impossibility of proving a negative. I also liked his explanations on the different kinds of scientific studies, how they differ, and how this impacts the reliability and validity of their results.
Mnookin is very clear that the media bears a heavy responsibility for letting the anti-vax crap out there, often without any fact checking or opposing view points. Sad parents make for better radio/TV than sober pediatricians trying to explain things that are complex. We shy away from complex ideas, from bothering to understand the basics in science that we need to evaluate things like risk for example. We've become, I sometimes think, a society in which we all think, like Barbie, that "Math is hard!". Sigh...
Anyhow, the media responsibility, the "mommy instinct" vs hard science, and the callous selfishness of un-vaxxers are all well covered.
A word on Dr Sears. I should say Sears père and Sears, fils. I used Attachment Parenting to raise my kids. There were many things in his Dr Bill Sears's books that make me uncomfortable, and that I disliked but overall, I think he made sense, the concept of making sure a child is well attached, secure that mom/dad/caregiver has their back before sending them out into the world. His son? Is an asshole, an anti-vaxxer pretending to be "reasonable" and pushing his idiotic "alternative vaccine schedule" which is pure bullshit. I'm very sad that this has happened. I practiced AP with my kids, but no longer have much respect for the movement.
Bad to Mnookin and The Panic Virus. One of the issues that the anti-vaxxers have going for them in the media and in the court of public opinion, is that these are devastated parents, whose kids have autism, who have no idea what to do next, and whose lives are difficult, to say the least. On the other, you ave scientists saying that no, ethyl mercury and methyl mercury aren't the same, and no scientific study has show even the slightest causal link etc. The emotional vs the hard science. What Mnookin does is show the emotional other side. The side of the parents whose babies died or almost died because some selfish parent decided their kids were too speshul to be subjected to vaccinations. The stories of children who are injured or killed because of someone else stupid choices need to be told too, and I hope they are, all the while wishing they didn't ever have to be.
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