Public health workers need to be as vigilant against one-sided media coverage of vaccination as they were against the disinformation spread by the tobacco industry
( come again? It was doctors spreading the tobacco industry disinformation. I'm sure I have somewhere, a jpg of my favourite doctor recommending smoking for the good of ones health)
On 22 May news broke that 25 girls at a Catholic high school in Melbourne who had just had their first injection of Gardasil, the vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV), presented to the school's sick bay with symptoms that included headache, nausea, and dizziness. CSL, the vaccine's Australian developer, reports that four pupils were sent to hospital for further examination. It said, "One had chest pain and palpitations; she had a past history of these symptoms. She was discharged the same day. The second had hyperventilation paraesthesiae and was sent home the same day. The third and fourth had neurological symptoms and were admitted. The fourth girl had reported progressive muscular weakness. Overnight both got better and were seen by the neurologist in the morning who diagnosed non-organic illness."
Other than the mother of one girl, who dismissed suggestions of the episode's psychogenic origin as "absolute rubbish" during a television interview, no one has since disputed this summary. (perhaps people have better things to do with their time) The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's Stephen Downes argued in the Australian online media service Crikey that the incident indicated "mass sociogenic illness" (www.crikey.com.au, 28 May, "Gardasil, nausea and the power of the mind"), the medical euphemism for mass hysteria, whereby contagion transmits by "line of sight," rumour, and anxiety (Drug Safety 2003;26:599-604).
As news coverage of the incident took off (24 reports in Australian
national and state capital newspapers between 23 and 31 May
and eight television reports), the stock price of CSL, which had
unfalteringly doubled in a year, began to dive—from $A96.67(Oh is
that how it is then? That's the important issue is it?) (£41;
60;
$81) to $A87.31 by 1 June), wiping an estimated $A1bn off the
company's market capital. The swift market reaction was possibly
boosted by publicity of claims on a US "you
can't trust government" website, Judicial Watch, that
Gardasil was implicated in three deaths in the United States (www.judicialwatch.org/6299.shtml).
A quotation in the article from the president of Judicial Watch
set the tone: "The FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] adverse
event reports on the HPV vaccine read like a catalog of horrors."
However, the FDA's reports on two of the three cases found that
significant pre-existing health problems
were relevant in each death (all of which goes to
prove my point in JALP, that the vaccines are tested in healthy people only,
and then let loose on anyone no matter their health condition.)(www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2007/GardasilVAERSDeaths.pdf).
The report on the third death, that of a female patient of unknown
age who died from thrombosis allegedly "three hours after being
vaccinated," contained the clarification that the patient had
not been vaccinated by the reporting agency. Investigations
into whether she had in fact ever been vaccinated continue
(Ah, so we have a medically incompetent agency then. Why would any parent
want their child vaccinated by someone who couldn't even report it
correctly).
Sombre television reports in Australia repeatedly recycled the same footage of a Melbourne girl who was said variously to have "totally collapsed," been "temporarily paralysed," had her "legs and arms paralysed," or had been "left paralysed for six hours." The rapidly recovered girl's claim on national television that her classmates had been "dropping like flies" was repeated in four bulletins. Medical and government authorities who were interviewed consistently explained the incidents as commonplace anxiety reactions to vaccination ( so how come we don't see these sorts of common place reactions in the school MMR programmes then?).
Gardasil has attracted opposition from extreme elements on the religious right, who argue that it might encourage adolescent sex, and a number of Australian schools have refused to administer the vaccination (www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph, 23 May, "Promiscuity fears killing a lifesaver"). Christian promoters of the "virginity pledge" have been joined in their opposition by the ever vigilant antivaccination lobby, which opportunistically opposes all vaccines, and by a self declared feminist duo comprising an anti-abortionist and a founder of the now defunct Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, whose opinion piece in the Melbourne Age referred readers to the official sounding United States National Vaccine Information Center, a citadel of antivaccinationist advocacy (www.theage.com.au, 25 May, "Why are we experimenting with drugs on girls?").
Interest groups with a variety of agendas can amplify trivial incidents into major news stories (Epidemiologic Reviews 2003;27:107-14), undermining public confidence in vaccines, diverting the efforts of public health authorities, bringing about serious share market reactions, and, occasionally, resulting in confused or risk averse local government and educational authorities suspending their support. In the field of tobacco control the tobacco industry's highly orchestrated public efforts over decades to dissemble the risk of smoking (BMJ 2000;321:371-4) has now virtually disappeared, thanks to major efforts at exposing and discrediting this "vector" for public disinformation. Public health officials would do well to give the same sort of serious attention to researching the nature of the anti-immunisation "vector" for disrupting national vaccination campaigns (Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 1998;22:17-26).
(See News doi: 10.1136/bmj.39237.424537.4E.)
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Gardasil has attracted opposition from extreme elements on the
religious right, who argue that it might encourage adolescent
sex
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Competing interests: SC owns 150 shares in CSL.