Sometimes watching TV can be a very upsetting experience.
One evening last month on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, there was a panel discussion about the issue of vaccination and the "anti-vaxxers," those who oppose the vaccination of children.
The spark for the discussion was a much-read, much-covered news story about the rapid spread of measles among people who had recently visited Disneyland in California. Local health officials suspected the outbreak was linked to pockets of people who refuse vaccinations. Later, a closer study provided evidence to back up that theory.
The panel discussion was revelatory, and horrifying. The level of ignorance among the talking heads – all showbiz and media types – was stunning.
The Canadian Michaela Pereira, a McGill graduate who hosts a morning show on CNN, declared that condemning parents who refuse to vaccinate children is "judgy." That is, who are we to judge them if they believe they have real concerns? It was enraging. And it reminded me of a cogent but bleak joke made by Jimmy Kimmel during the same period: "Parents here are more afraid of gluten than they are of smallpox."
Go figure. Exactly how this situation – a war about vaccinations – came into being is beyond belief. While we are, as a culture, horrified by fundamentalism that wants to take the world backward, back beyond the Age of Enlightenment, we have tended to tolerate those in our culture who reject modern medicine and, essentially, plan to take public health back by decades.
The Vaccine War (PBS, 10 p.m. on Frontline) is an update of a Frontline program that aired in 2010. What is astonishing is that the circumstance described then has gotten worse. There is still a "war" between public-health officials and anti-vaxxers, and there are casualties.
The program opens with reasonable assertions: "Vaccinations have increased our lifespan by 30 years." And "Diphtheria was the most common cause of death for teenagers in the 1920s, and it's gone."
Soon, however, there is a stark look at that now notorious Disneyland catastrophe. And catastrophic it was. The tracking of measles is enormously complicated, time-consuming and expensive. It's money wasted when it's caused by a handful of people who decline to have their children vaccinated and then allow those kids to mix freely with others.
Seth Mnookin, co-director of MIT's graduate program in science writing, says, "A single person infected with this disease can have implications that go on for months. The efforts to contain it are incredibly expensive." Mnookin is one of those who is deeply frustrated by the myths and half-truths that are part of the debate about vaccination.
Little wonder. In the program we are told by some experts that arguments about vaccination are "emotional" and, since parents of young children are involved, people have to be sensitive to the emotions expressed.
And then we meet Jennifer Margulis, a mom with a PhD in English whose skeptical article about vaccination for the magazine Mothering became part of the core text for the anti-vaxxers. Among her other assertions is this: "There are reasons that children get sick. Getting sick is not a bad thing."
After the original version of this program aired in 2010, Margulis was livid. As was Jenny McCarthy, the model and actress who was a leading member of the anti-vaxxers. They heaped abuse on it, claiming it was biased and did not give enough time or fair play to parents concerned about alleged connections between vaccination and autism.
What's enraging about The Vaccine War is that five years later, what was sowed is now being reaped. And still there are deniers; still there are those who cite the "emotion" of the debate as a reason to coddle parents who decline to vaccinate their children. Meanwhile, doctors worry that parents may unwittingly bring back diseases that have not been seen for decades. It's only a matter of time, some say.
Even after outbreaks of chicken pox and measles, there are deniers; there are parents who are out to undermine public health. One mother in the program says, "Public-health officials are looking out for the good of all. But a mom is looking out for the good of their one child. That's the most important thing." For that mom, health is a personal, private matter, and others, the community, do not matter. The implications are more than upsetting. They are horrifying.