(Simon & Schuster, $27)
“It takes guts to write a book informing aggrieved parents that they’re wrong about the source of their child’s disorder,” said James E. McWilliams in The Austin American-Statesman. In The Panic Virus, journalist Seth Mnookin takes aim at the enduring myth—believed by about a quarter of U.S. parents—that childhood vaccines can lead to autism or other developmental disorders. While he’s “consistently respectful of the emotional pain that autism can cause,” Mnookin “pulls no punches” when assigning blame for the vaccine scare. He’s mounted a devastating case against various opportunists—from journalists to doctors to personal-injury lawyers—who’ve profited from playing on parents’ fears. Yet his work might be most interesting when it explores why “so many well-educated Americans” have proved susceptible to the autism myth.
The principal profiteers are fairly easily dispatched, said Susannah Nesmith in The Miami Herald. Chief among them is former British surgeon Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 study linking vaccines to autism continues to be disseminated despite the fact that it’s been thoroughly discredited and was eventually retracted by the medical journal that first published it. Wakefield “stood to gain millions” on an alternative vaccine, and just last month a rival journal released investigation results indicating that he had actually falsified key data in his study. Mnookin is “unsparing” in his critique of the media’s role in keeping debate about the issue alive, said Sandra G. Boodman in The Washington Post. Even as evidence for the safety of immunization shots became overwhelming, “ratings-hungry” producers treated the argument as unsettled. Unvaccinated children have died as a result—of mumps, whooping cough, and other diseases that vaccination once defeated.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Mnookin rightly identifies a larger cultural trend as the true cause of the immunization panic, said John Wilkens in The San Diego Union-Tribune. In the Internet era, studies like Wakefield’s never die and conspiracy theories flourish: “The like-minded find each other and form communities online, reinforcing their biases and their certitude.” Mnookin calls the trend “cognitive relativism,” and shows us how it’s creating a world in which facts and true expertise can’t win arguments against fears and suspicions. When one consequence is that the population at large is now threatened by the return of 19th-century diseases, Mnookin’s warning is “a message too important to ignore.”
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”