The Real Deal with Vaccines and Autism

By: Christophe Lamontagne

I'm going to begin my exploration of good vaccine-autism books with a book in the cultural camp, Seth Mnookin's The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear. Mnookin is an editor for Vanity Fair, and his look at the anti-vaccination movement came out in early 2011.

Taking a broader view of the issue, Mnookin discusses how our Internet habits, both for surfing and publishing, can lend an air of false authority to sources. Intellectually, we all know that stuff published on someone's blog or website (including my own) isn't always guaranteed to be right. Yet when the message touches something within us, when it seems somehow to "make sense," then we're much more likely to believe it. We're also much less likely to go out and rigorously confirm the claims. Just the fact that someone else believes that same thing is vindication enough.

The problem isn't entirely limited to the Internet either; it's just more obvious there. Scholarly journals have faced this same issue historically, which is why the system of peer review and duplication of research evolved. Yet verification can take time, as it did with Wakefield's research. In the Internet age, the results of unproven research or even outright fraud can end up published online in a convincing form that members of the public are willing to believe.

In Mnookin's view, that was the main problem behind the MMR vaccine-autism scare. Add to that an intellectual climate in which celebrity endorsement and the feelings of parents receive greater credence than scientific fact, and we end up with a scenario like the anti-vaccine movement that has led to the deaths of young children across the country.

Mnookin's The Panic Virus is hard to put down. In addition to exploring the issue of how credibility is built up online, Seth Mnookin provides compelling anecdotes about real families and how the anti-vaccine movement affected them. You can hear Mnookin read an excerpt of that type in this video:

If you only chose one book to read on the anti-vaccine issue, Mnookin's is probably the best one. It covers all the bases, from the scientific problems with the anti-vaccine camp's claims to the culture phenomena underpinning their success.