At least some of us do care about the facts. See Joanne Bamberger's column in today's USA today:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...ccine-hpv-jenny-mccarthy-column/3884785/

And the story about Katie's misstep with her producer continue to come out

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/...wider-scientific-illiteracy?detail=email

What a powerful story in the Dailykos! Love the reference to journalism schools and whether they teach statistics or how to tell evidence from coincidence. Reminds me of a class in Logic I took years ago. How these stories continue to come en masse. Maybe they will serve to pry open the eyes of some of the anti-vax groups.

The syndicated TV show "The Doctors" is broadcasting a segment today (check your local listings for time/station) in which two sisters, ages 19 and 20, are saying that Gardasil caused premature ovarian failure and left them infertile. More details on their claims here (article is from early November).

Great! Let the anti-vaccine ball build even more momentum. This should be a no-brainer to get immunized. Here in the land of choice, and everyone being entitled to their own opinion it saddens me to see this anti-vaccine push for the Guardisil shot.

Oh well, two steps forward and one step back happens with just about everything in life. Charm would be having a stroke over this.

Christine,
You are right, indeed!

Thanks for the smile as I thought about Charm .

The entire anti-vaccination movement needs to be viewed for what it is - BS and kooks! And you know there is no sense wasting time trying to have a rational conversation with them, so don't waste any time and energy on them. Keep the focus on educating those that subscribe to a science based approach to medical diagnosis and treatment.

Maybe I'm just a never-give-up type (and sometimes to a fault), but as I see it, those that are advocating the anti-vaccination movement like Mercola, Natural News, Sanevax, VAERS are doing it to promote their own agenda or product sales. They do it by changing or leaving out info to make their own version of "research" what they want it to be and they play on people's emotions, in order to accomplish this. When anyone is advocating something that is downright dangerous to one's health and life, especially any organization or individual that is in it for their own financial gain, or other advantage, they need to be exposed for what they are doing. If enough people or organizations take the time to do this, maybe the blindly following sheep will begin to see that they need to do their own checking. The FDA has ordered Mercola and its coalition members to stop making illegal claims. Others like Quackwatch and Skeptoid have also found it important enough to expose the anti-vax quacks. If they can do it, I can too and I will - every chance I get. I don't want anyone (not even the "kooks") to have to go through what my son did in surviving his oral cancer. I don't want any other mother to have the fear of losing her child or to see him (or her) suffer the unbearable torture that comes with surviving oral cancer.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing". This has been attributed to Edmund Burke, who actually never said this exact phrase, and has even been rewritten more succinctly as in "Evil only prospers when good men do nothing."

But in our modern world of the Internet, it carries a different meaning than when originally penned 200 years ago. Myth, misinformation, half-truths, outright lies, permeate the online information world. For the most part we all ignore most of nonsense that is out there; but what if someone less informed, less analytical, comes across an answer to an important question that is one of these fabrications?

In some instances, as pointed out by several of the high profile commentators of what occurred on this TV show, there is the potential for people to be hurt, even die. I disagree with Don respectfully. To allow this kind of misinformation to live is dangerous. We all know all to well, in our roles as cancer patients, caregivers, and survivors what the cost of all this might be.

While I agree that you likely cannot change the mind of a fanatic, it is important that the argument for the facts, the truth, be fought. Not necessarily in the comments threads after some article, those are the kinds of no-win situations that do not really change the dynamic. But every opportunity we are afforded to state the risks, to state what we know is backed by scientific evidence, to tell our stories of harm from this virus, of a battle with cancer that had we been vaccinated might not have been fought - we need to keep that quality information out in the world. To do nothing only allows this cancer of misinformation and innuendo to survive and prosper.

Great comments.

[quote]they need to be exposed for what they are doing.[/quote]
[quote]To allow this kind of misinformation to live is dangerous.[/quote]

What follows is more from the head rather than the heart.

If the overarching goal is to achieve awareness of the vaccine and convey the positives, then, given limited resources, strategies and tactics to accomplish this goal are defined and executed.

A few guiding principles:

1) limited resources,
2) achieve the greatest progress with the fewest resources,
3) understand success is less than 100% (population of target age) getting the vaccine,
4) existential threats will be defined and resources applied as necessary.

Number one is pretty obvious and especially relevant to specialty causes such as this. Given number one, getting the most progress with limited resources is critical. The common saying, "achieve 80% of the goal with 20% of the resources" means get all the low hanging fruit knowing some at the very top are left behind as too costly to retrieve. Number four means even if one of the fruits at the top of the tree can infect the whole tree and kill it, you must apply whatever resource you can apply to go get that one at the top.

I've not spent any time looking into the variations from this standard model as it applies to promoting and educating a potential lifesaving medical vaccine and certainly there are nuances requiring some adjustment of the basic business model to address this issue. I KNOW Brian thinks about this everyday, so I'd love to hear his take.

I'd love to hammer, stomp out, and totally discredit every false and misleading message just as much as you. But we are in the Internet and hyper mass media age and information flow is so accessible to all, it is impossible to stop all negative messaging.

If the Katie interview was deemed so detrimental to the cause then you may be obligated to address it head on and expend resources, maybe all of it, to go to war.

One would expect companies producing and profiting from the vaccine have more to gain if they can prevent the false messaging creating confusion in the market. The fact interviews like the Katie show go on indicates to me it is a battle they chose not to fight for whatever reason. With a battery of legal force at their disposal, it would not take much to file some action to disrupt the airing of that episode. Why they don't shut this nonsense down forces one to dig deeper. It it would provide a better balance between heart and mind.

Great dialog, don