The Great Debate

[Guest guest]

The keepers of truth: Seth Mnookin on fear and the vaccine wars

Whooping cough. Measles. These diseases, once thought almost gone, are creeping

back into schools and hospitals around the country. The reason? Parents are

refusing to have their children vaccinated, because they’re afraid that the

shots can cause autism.

This ideas stems from a 1998 study in the medical journal The Lancet, in which

British doctor Wakefield suggested the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella)

vaccine may be linked to autism.

The journal has since withdrawn the study, Wakefield lost his doctor’s

license, and the British Medical Journal declared it fraud. But that hasn’t

stopped celebrities such as McCarthy from declaring that there’s a link.

The problem comes from our idea of truth, says Seth Mnookin, author of the newly

released The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear. Who’s

easier to believe? Scientists and doctors you don’t know, or your neighbor

with the autistic son, who said his symptoms started right after a booster shot?

“When it comes to decisions around emotionally charged topics, logic often

takes a back seat to what are called cognitive biases — essentially a set of

unconscious mechanisms that convince us that it is our feelings about a

situation and not the facts that represent the truth,†Mnookin said in a

recent essay in The Atlantic.

Mnookin, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of two previous

books: Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for

American Media; and Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a

Team to the Top, a book about the Boston Red Sox.

For his new book, he spent more than two years investigating the alleged link

between vaccines and autism. As it became clear to him there was no such link,

the book became a hard look at who decides what’s true, why we believe what we

do, and why fear can trump logic.

Join us at noon Eastern Tuesday for a conversation between Mnookin and Reuters

Health executive editor Ivan Oransky. They’ll discuss these thorny issues, and

you’ll have a chance to ask questions.