Busy day at the Trib for vaccines

Aug 27 2008

According to the Chicago Tribune’s “On This Day In History“, on this day in “1906 Albert Sabin, the Polish-American doctor who developed a polio vaccine, was born”.

Coincidentally, the Tribune had a couple of pieces on vaccines in the past few days. The main story, Kids’ vaccinations face risky resistance discusses how fears over vaccines and autism are causing a drop in uptake. This is worrying doctors given this year’s outbreak of measles in the U.S. The authors note:

Doctors say worried parents tend to find scientific data less persuasive than the horror stories they hear about vaccine side effects online or from friends. One expert said attitudes are likely to change eventually, but only after children start dying again of diseases parents have come to think of as obsolete.

Or, to put it another way:

“I think people have a hard time separating out what’s reliable information and what’s not reliable,” Dr. Ruben Rucoba, a Wheaton pediatrician. “What gets attention is not the statistics, but the story. All it takes is one friend of a cousin of a neighbor who they can point to who says, ‘My child got an immunization, and now he has a problem.’ “

Another page listed “Common Vaccine Beliefs“. Number one on the list being:

1. Vaccines cause autism.

The issue usually raised is thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative formerly common in vaccines. It has since been removed...

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