Frontline: The Vaccine War

“Why are we giving children so many vaccines?” Jennifer Margulis, introduced in The Vaccine War as a writer with a PhD in English literature and a mother of four, poses an earnest question. Noting that her kids are expected to get four times the number of vaccines she had as a child, she declares, “I’m not afraid of my children getting chicken pox. There are reasons people get sick. Getting sick is not a bad thing.”

Paul Offit, a doctor who developed a vaccine against rotavirus, has a different perspective. He says vaccines have “increased our lifespan by 30 years,” that before today’s robust schedule of vaccines, getting sick could be a very “bad thing,” as people regularly died of or were permanently disabled by H flu disease, polio, and diphtheria. “The benefit of vaccines,” he asserts, “is clear.”

In laying out these opposite views in an hour, Frontline can’t possibly do either justice. But The Vaccine War has raised particular objections from one side of the so-called “parents versus science” debate. According to Jenny McCarthy, this very opposition is flawed, because, she writes in writes in the Huffington Post, the show leaves out “the doctors and scientists who support our community and support the idea that vaccines may be a trigger for autism.” She reveals that she only agreed to be interviewed by Frontline if producers would also talk to the pediatrician Jay Gordon: apparently they did conduct this interview, and then omitted it from the program now airing on PBS and available online.

What The Vaccine War does do is begin with a look at Ashland, Oregon, which the CDC has identified as one of several “certain communities where parents are hesitating to vaccinate their children.” After a couple of parents, including Margulis, explain their reasons, a doctor, Donna Bradshaw Walters, says, “The possibility of an outbreak is real here in Ashland.” This lays the ground for the documentary’s primary focus, that is, on the growing distrust of “science” (read: authorities, doctors, government, drug companies) that is exacerbated by media, including, and maybe especially, the internet, which helps users to believe they have control of or access to information not made available by mainstream or “official” sources. The program does not specify the many ways that wrong information can also also disseminated, but it does note the one rather notorious case of a renowned official medical journal correcting what it perceived as a mistake: The Lancet published Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study that linked autism to vaccines, then, in early 2010, retracted it.

As the debate over autism goes on, all “sides” perceive and distribute potentially helpful as well as specious information using a range of sources. Media are, the program suggests, both problematic and constructive, sometimes simultaneously. It’s worth noting that The Vaccine War is now part of this mediating process, by definition. As such, it organizes information in a way that reflects and ignites controversies already in motion. For one thing, it underlines a moral and political aspect in vaccination, namely, that it is perceived as an individual choice in “certain” American communities and a social obligation in others (and, the program suggests, in non-U.S. locations). “Why is it so hard for some Americans to accept this communal aspect of vaccines?” asks the narrator. Here Anthony Fauci, a familiar and usually reassuring face, speaks in favor of vaccines, while acknowledging that drugs do have side effects (some severe) and patients do have allergic reactions (again, some severe). Still, the narrator notes, “Some Americans have become more concerned with the risks posed by vaccines.”

As these risks are made public — announced, questioned, debated, asserted, worried over — in media, autism is among the most sensational cases. A flashpoint for the divide — however true or false — between “parents and science,” autism’s causes remain mysterious and frightening, even as the number of diagnoses is increasing. The program uses McCarthy as one example of how media are affecting the controversies over autism. Introduced here as “Former Playboy bunny,” she describes her own research on the net following the diagnosis of her son Evan. Her story is echoed by those told by other parents, all looking for information not provided by their doctors or other medical authorities.

Unsurprisingly, as The Vaccine War reports on the dearth of answers, it doesn’t offer its own. It does suggest the questions might be reframed. It’s worth remembering that drug companies are not necessarily looking out for users, and that many doctors are, in fact, dedicated their patients’ health. As Bradshaw Walters puts it, she feels as if “It’s me as the pediatrician against the media, the world.” Her formulation is telling: the media do seem like the world, at times, but they are reflective, refractive, and not always reliable surfaces. Thus it is crucial to understand — or at least keep exposing — media’s multiple roles in all this, at once disseminating information, vying for “eyeballs” or ratings, and supporting various “sides” for various reasons. If such caveats make deciphering media more difficult, they might also help us to ask more and better questions.