More than 400 readers have responded to my Wired story on vaccine panic. (Read part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.) Here's a new blog post on misogyny and J.B. Handley/Generation Rescue.
Meanwhile, this just in: Three studies find pregnant mothers’ flu shots make for healthier babies. Read it here.
Okay, back to the mail bag. There’s a new development over the past few days: a campaign to send me the same letter again and again. So far, I’ve had it forwarded to me 15 times. It is from a mom who describes herself as “a tad cranky.” I have to hand it to her: The woman can write.
“Most of us on this tumultuous ride don’t have time to run around shouting death threats and sending hate mail to Mr. Offit,” she says. “Most of us use our precious few free moments to sleep, or earn extra money, or try like fools to get reimbursed by our insurance companies for the loads of cash we’ve already kissed goodbye.”
She was insulted by the story, she says, because she is smart and committed and she doesn’t believe vaccines are safe. She says the studies that have found no link between autism and vaccines are inconclusive. Oh, and she thinks I have a crush on Dr. Paul Offit: “Now, real quick, let’s talk about Paulie. Do you like, love him, or do you loooooove, love him? A cozy car ride, ‘seat belts on’? The blatant plugging of his new book and his hopes for its ‘cinematic, visually riveting’ on screen potential, I am assuming?”
“Well,” she continues, “for all your efforts, I hope he like, likes you back.”
Sigh. First J.B. Handley says Offit raped me. Now, this woman turns that inside out: I’m in love with Offit. Not to beat a dead horse, but I can’t help but think if I were male, I’d be spared all this innuendo about love and sex.
From Canada, a mom of twin 9-month-old girls said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been defending my right to vaccinate my kids to some family and friends, who all bow at the feet of Jenny McCarthy."
A reader in Colorado says my piece in Wired isn’t really even about vaccines: "It’s about what Tom Friedman calls the modern American ‘dumb as we wanna be’ attitude, which combines stunning intellectual laziness, the erroneous concept that all information is equal, and the Internet to create a witches brew we’re using to commit national suicide. Vaccines are just the tip of the iceberg. The same mentality has led to catastrophic stasis—or at best tepid action—on the key issues of our time: climate change and health care reform.”
I also heard from a Tennessee M.D., who says while doing his residency, he visited the home of Dianne Odell. Odell was believed to be the nation's oldest survivor of polio to have spent almost all of her life inside an iron lung. Last year she died at age 61, when a rainstorm cut power to her home and her family couldn't start a temporary generator. She was three years old when she contracted polio. Says this doctor: “Those stories NEED to be told over and over again.... doctors need to be re-educated over and over again." For a story on Odell, look here.
From a reader in New Mexico: “I am old enough to remember a measles outbreak at the elementary school I attended. Two kids never came back: one died and the other suffered severe brain damage. No way could my kids have evaded their various vaccinations.”
Heard from a veterinarian who says thank you, "because people are scared to vaccinate their pets just like they are their kids!!!"
From a father who disliked the story, a wrenching illustration of why it's so vital that research dollars not be wasted. People need help: “My son was born in 2001. He was diagnosed with autism at 26 months. He is eight years old now and still in diapers. We have to lock the doors, and I have to sleep in front of the front door in case he gets up and tries to leave (he loves to wander). His rages are sometimes so violent that we have to force his sisters to leave the room in case he tries to attack them. He can, in the throes of his anger, lift his 6'4", 230-lb father off of the floor,” says this father, who is sure that the MMR and DTaP vaccines caused his son’s suffering. “There is no other explanation.”
Until there IS another explanation, vaccines will be vilified.
From Pieter, respondent #433 to my Wired story about vaccine panic: "About the poo-flinging you're undoubtedly a victim of, there's an African proverb: 'When you throw a rock into the bush and hear a lot of noise, you've hit something.' "
