Vaccination Disinformation

This piece is both a “newsy” item and a saga about battling media disinformation, specifically vaccination disinformation. The first point is that I chose the word “disinformation” intentionally. Willful dissemination of false information is not misinforming. It is dis-informing. Here is the story: There is new, very very bad news for believers in pertussis vaccination. You might recall my postings about the ineffectiveness of the whooping cough vaccine (pertussis) here or on Facebook over the last several years. You might also recall my other efforts to combat vaccination disinformation, including comments about mandatory vaccination and measles vaccination. My previous comments about the pertussis/whooping cough vaccine were generally about the vaccine’s proven inability to prevent spread through the community, confirmed by the FDA. In the last few weeks a Kaiser study here in California demonstrated that the whooping cough vaccine simply does not work. As little as four years after pertussis vaccination, only nine percent of children studied retained immunity to whooping cough. That is simply horrible, as even the authors’ purposefully restrained comments expressed. The following is a quote from the study itself (which won’t be published until next month): “Routine Tdap did not prevent pertussis outbreaks. Among adolescents who have only received DTaP vaccines in childhood, Tdap provided moderate protection against pertussis during the first year and then waned rapidly so that little protection remained 2-3 years after vaccination.” Hang on to your hats. One response to this would be increasing the frequency of vaccination for pertussis/whooping cough. Considering these data, it is hard to imagine recommending pertussis vaccination any less often than EVERY YEAR OR TWO. Soon after the Kaiser pertussis study came out, the editor of my local paper wrote an editorial that galled me. I was upset because of the comments in this editorial regarding SB 277. As he has done before, the Editor of the Press Democrat blamed thoughtful parents for the rise in whooping cough: The law was needed because so many parents were failing to have their children vaccinated — either because of personal beliefs or procrastination — that school districts were losing what’s known as the herd immunity, resulting in a rise in preventable diseases such as measles and whooping cough. I was angry because the editor had the facts wrong and was disrespectful of parents who in this case were apparently better informed than he. Confronting ignorance combined with arrogant disrespect always disturbs me, much more so when the issue is medical. This Editor has become a fount of vaccination disinformation. So, I submitted the following letter to the editor: Monday’s...