Keeping the media honest
“Merck accused of stonewalling in mumps vaccine antitrust lawsuit,” a Reuters article by Brendan Pierson published Thursday, appears to be the first time a mainstream media outlet has covered explosive accusations that Merck falsified test results on its mumps vaccine. Today, the Wall Street Journal followed suit with coverage of its own, “Lawsuit Claims Merck […]
In the US, Canada and the rest of the English-speaking world, questioning vaccine safety is a taboo subject, one the mainstream press fears to touch, let alone to debate. Not so in France, which enshrined the right to freedom of thought in its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 […]
“Whooping Cough Vaccine’s Protection Fades Quickly,” reports Lisa Aliferis, State of Health Editor at KQED in Northern California, one of America’s most watched prime time public television stations. Aliferis yesterday reported on a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics that confirmed what many had suspected — the vaccine for whooping cough is a failure: […]
Kiwanis Clubs throughout North America are campaigning to raise funds for Unicef’s Eliminate Project, designed to vaccinate women of childbearing age in five Third World countries. This do-good project is being avidly promoted through a media bandwagon, mostly in small town newspaper and radio outlets but also in big city papers such as the Chicago […]
“Vaccinate the boys, too: Preventing HPV in males would save lives — and money,” read the headline in an editorial last week in the National Post. The basis for the Post’s assurances that vaccinating boys would save the Canadian health system money? A study published this month in the journal Cancer that itself offers no […]
Jeanne Whalen knows how to get to the bottom of a story — until recently she honed her skills getting the scoop on CEOs and politicians alike at The Wall Street Journal’s London and Moscow Bureaus. But now that she’s the Journal’s Deputy Bureau Chief for Health and Science, she sometimes more resembles a stenographer, as […]
“Measles vaccine kills 3 more kids,” reports The Nation, a leading Pakistani daily, bringing the number of deaths to six since an anti-measles vaccination campaign began April 13 in Balochistan province. Other children are in critical condition. Parents report that the children, who had been healthy, fell ill shortly after receiving the vaccine. The deaths, […]
When Discover Magazine was launched by Time in 1980, graced by columnists such as Stephen Jay Gould, it was a marvel to behold. That era of excellence in its illumination of science is no more. Over the years Discover was sold and resold several times, dumbed down, and now it runs pieces by blogger Keith Kloor such […]
After the New York Times eviscerated Paul Offit’s new book, Bad Faith: How Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine, the world of journalism was on notice that something was seriously amiss with Offit’s faith-based case for vaccination — at the very least that his word could not be taken as Gospel. “Offit’s book is more a […]
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