Why I won’t be live-tweeting “The Vaccine War” from Frontline on PBS
By: Rene F. Najera, Mph
Tags: Publishing, Social Media, Vaccines

Back in 2010, PBS put out a documentary called “The Vaccine War” as part of their “Frontline” show. It wasn’t a bad documentary. It looked at the different reasons why parents refuse to vaccinate their children as well as at the science that has proven time and again that vaccines are far, far more beneficial than detrimental to our health.

Yes, there are those who have had vaccine reactions that could be classified as “detrimental,” no one worth their salt will deny it. But the number and proportion of these reactions is much lower than what “antivaxxers” will have us believe. Also, there is no association between vaccines and autism, no matter what people like Andrew Wakefield or Brian S. Hooker want you to believe.

Yesterday, I received an email from Shauna Stuart. She identified herself as being associated with Frontline. She emailed me to see if I wanted to live-tweet during the updated version of “The Vaccine War” on Tuesday (March 24, 2015). While I do engage people on social media about science in general and vaccine science in particular, I have mixed feelings about being involved in this.

First, I’d be giving PBS and Frontline free advertising. I have a little over 1,500 followers on Twitter. While not all of them would likely be reached by my tweets, many of them would. They would then be tempted to check out the show and, thus, drive more viewers to the show. After all, it is a television show, and it is funded in part by the number of people watching it. By live-tweeting the show, I’d be driving up their viewership… For free.

Second, television shows like these (documentaries or not) are quick to invite members of “the other side” to discuss these issues. When it comes to vaccines, the science has been settled. We have in place a system whereby vaccines that come to market do so after rigorous testing. Once they’re out to the public, we have a system for tracking adverse events. We also have a legion of epidemiologists (from governments and public/private institutions) looking at the effect(s) of vaccines on the diseases they’re intended to prevent.

Inviting people from “the other side” only muddies the waters and makes informed decisions harder by injecting fantasies and fears into the discussion. Parents and individuals who may be “on the fence” about vaccinating might actually give credence to an antivaxxer — no matter how outlandish their claims — because, hey, they were on Frontline. PBS wouldn’t have invited them if their claims didn’t have some truth to them, would it?

I’m yet to see a PBS show about the Apollo Moon landings where people who deny the landings are given ample opportunity to spread their theories. There has been no PBS show that I know of where people who believe in the Reptilian Conspiracy when there is a show about politics or the British Monarchy. And I am sure that shows about HIV/AIDS in Africa has not included AIDS denialists… Or, if they have had such shows, I haven’t watched them.

You see, things like these need to be settled through education. They cannot be settled through television shows. Can we have a discussion about it? Sure, but including the “other side” on such a serious issue can have consequences. Allowing Jenny McCarthy or Andrew Wakefield to tell a wide audience that vaccines cause autism has demonstrably led to lower rates of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination. Allowing similar people to tell us that autism is a “horrible” disease (or even just a disease) where children are “lost” or “dead” or something similar has demonstrably led to autistic children being treated like less than human. There have been cases where autistic children have been killed by their parents or caretakers because “lost” or “dead” children don’t have a future, in their minds.

No, PBS, I will not be live-tweeting your show. I’m not even going to tune in. The “Vaccine War” is not a fair war when conspiracy theories trump evidence. When antivaxxers can accuse people like me of serious crimes and threaten to take away my livelihood, and then you give them an enormous stage to continue to spread their bullshit, you are complicit in making the war even more unfair. A fair war would be to allow science and evidence and reason to guide the discussion, not the fear and misinformation spread far and wide by antivaxxers.

I’d rather spend that time studying for my doctoral oral exams. That will benefit public health 100 times more than a television show where antivaxxers are given a voice.