Hey, The Atlantic has lost it. At least for me. The evidence is in two parts. First, the flu vaccine. I kind of hate this topic. But I’m going to write about it anyway because it is upsetting me.
Until not many years ago I had never had the flu vaccine and didn’t really understand much about it. Maybe I still don’t but I think I’ve gathered this much – the flu vaccine, as vaccines go, sucks. It’s pretty hit and miss year to year because of inaccuracies in predicting what strains will be prevalent and it doesn’t help old people, who really need it, as much as the young and healthy (because it depends on a strong antibody response). But saying the flu vaccine sucks compared to other vaccines isn’t saying much because vaccines have contributed more to human health and happiness more than any other feature of modern medicine except perhaps antibiotics. The flu vaccine, while imperfect, is probably a really good idea. Certainly it is safe compared to getting the flu. It’s safe compared to leaving your house, for that matter. This topic upsets me right now for few reasons, one of which I’ll share. This week I overheard a conversation between a mother of two young kids and a pregnant woman. The mother said she was going to the store after work to get some “Airborne” because there was no way she was going to let her kids get the flu vaccine. The pregnant woman concurred saying that she wouldn’t get it either even though her doctor really wants her to. Well, fuck. Her doctor wants her to get vaccinated for a very good reason – it could be because he’s a tool of the medical industrial complex but it’s more likely because pregnant women are much more likely to die from influenza than the normal, unpregnant population. And, yes, so are young kids more likely to die from it too. I’m not going to provide any references for that assertion because they are easy enough to find.
So, on to the stupid Atlantic article.
“Tom Jefferson has taken a lot of heat just for saying, ‘Here’s the evidence: it’s not very good,’” says Majumdar. “The reaction has been so dogmatic and even hysterical that you’d think he was advocating stealing babies.” Yet while other flu researchers may not like what Jefferson has to say, they cannot ignore the fact that he knows the flu-vaccine literature better than anyone else on the planet.
The article paints Jefferson as a brave maverick fighting against conformity and complacency. It’s more likely that he’s kind of a crank. Or at least flirts with them. Two Science Blogs, by separate authors, do the take down.
Journalists sink in The Atlantic article on vaccines
There is nothing judicious about Jefferson, whose problem was described by one of my colleagues as “methodolatry,” the profane worship of the randomized clinical trial as the only valid method of investigation. In this case his evidence base isn’t even relevant, because we aren’t dealing with seasonal flu but pandemic flu.
Framing an issue as arguing that conventional wisdom is wrong and highlighting a couple of “lone voices in the wilderness” warning, Cassandra-like, of impending disaster represent a time-honored journalistic trope, not to mention a story structure that goes back thousands of years to, well, Cassandra at least. Add a healthy dollop of “skepticism” about big pharma and the government, and you definitely have a winner. I can see why the editors of The Atlantic bit.
