Brainphreak

Here’s my new idea: the media should have to represent, in minutes aired, an amount of coverage proportionate to the percentage of people represented by that viewpoint. For example, for every 2 parents who speak out against immunizing children secondary to fears about vaccines, 98 parents would then have to be interviewed discussing how they followed the typical schedule and had all of the required/recommended vaccines by age 5.

Yes, this would make my job easier, but I’m also thinking of the scared new parents with tiny babies who come see me. These folks are hopped up, and it’s because Jenny McCarthy says they should be. ( A co-worker assures me that the answers to life’s great mysteries are written inside Ms. McCarthy’s breast implants, and that’s why we all pay so much attention to her.) If the information provided people were actually, quite literally, balanced, these folks would have a better, more tangible idea of how great the danger is.

This works for other stuff, too. The war in Iraq springs to mind, but I don’t have numbers for that like I do for pediatrics. Numbers like this: in the measles outbreak of 1989-91, 11,000 children were hospitalized and 125 died. Number of those hospitalizations and deaths that could have been prevented? 11,000 and 125, respectively.

Vaccines have not been proven to cause autism, diabetes, or SIDS. Ignorance, on the other hand, has been reliably and predictably related to irrational fear for centuries.