DDT and the Rise and Fall of Polio
I love watching old black and white newsreels from the first half of the 20th century. It’s a fascinating period of history, and it’s one of the few in which we can go back and revisit almost as if we were there. There was a span of years immediately after World War II, however, that is particularly interesting, because it doesn’t normally get a lot of attention, compared to the war years and the “the fabulous ’50s.”
America’s ‘Good Medicine’ Mindset
The idea that you can give someone a disease, or something worse than that disease, by giving them a medicine designed to cure that disease or prevent the patient from contracting it and spreading it to others is so counter-intuitive, so unethical, so downright insane that it is unthinkable, unconscionable, unbelievable. After all, isn’t the first principle of medicine to “first, do no harm”? And yet… I think one of the greatest songs of all time is the one by…
Polio Wasn’t Vanquished, It Was Redefined
Perhaps the most egregious example of clever sleight of hand (and outright rewriting of history) on the part of public health officials in the United States occurred in 1954 when the U.S. government changed the diagnostic criteria for polio. It was the year that medical researcher and virologist Jonas Salk produced his inactivated injectable polio vaccine ((IPV). The vaccine was licensed in 1955 and began to be used…
How a Press Release Became a Media Measles Sensation
On July 2, 2015, the Washington State Department of Health issues a press release titled, “Measles led to death of Clallam Co. woman; first in US in a dozen years.” Within hours, the release began to be picked up by numerous media sources, including ABC News, BuzzFeed News, CBS News, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, NBC News, Reuters, Slate, the Detroit Free Press, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, the Puget Sound…
Doctors Give Flu Shots to Pregnant Women Despite Evidence of Harm to Fetus
Every year, during flu season, pregnant women in the United States are encouraged to get a flu shot. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), “Flu shots are a safe way to protect the mother and her unborn child from serious illness and complications of flu.” The CDC reassures that the flu vaccine is safe. It says…
The Nascent Conversation on Vaccines
The most common refrain you hear from many members of the government, medical profession, media and pharmaceutical industry who believe vaccines are either entirely or largely safe and efficacious is that those who don’t simply do not believe in science. It is a clever debate tactic which seeks to diminish the credibility of the other side so that those who do not agree with your…