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Dec. 11th, 2003 11:37 amThe other night, Lise and I were talking about the dangerous way in which the media feeds off the fears of its public and how their spinning of a story can create an overly-exaggerated public feeling for or against someone or some theory. Specifically, we were talking about the Soham case and gun crime in America, but it also applies to various other stories, including the hoo-hah surrounding the MMR Vaccine. There's a good article in today's Guardian that discusses this.
I know nothing of the science and I'm not a parent, but I do have a three year old niece who still hasn't been vaccinated because her vaguely intelligent father is worried about the risks. Personally, I would be more worried about diseases other than autism, as she certainly isn't autistic and she'll be going to school shortly, where she'll be exposed to more children than ever before. It also worries me that with this, as with many other stories, public opinion is blindly led by the Daily Mail and dramas on Channel Five.
It's so easy to spend time on the Internet and find a fact or figure that either convinces you of an argument or makes you think of something in a different way. For instance, if those people who were desperate to remove the old man down the street had looked, they would have found that the majority of child murders or cases of abuse are committed by someone in the child's family or someone that they know very well, not a stranger waiting to swoop down at the first opportunity. (They could probably have found out what the word paediatrician means as well.)
Is it lack of education or a pure laziness to learn? In this information-spoon-fed time we live in, I'm inclined to think the latter. Either way, it worries me that people never want to expend any energy discovering both sides of a story and I really don't see what can be done about it.
I know nothing of the science and I'm not a parent, but I do have a three year old niece who still hasn't been vaccinated because her vaguely intelligent father is worried about the risks. Personally, I would be more worried about diseases other than autism, as she certainly isn't autistic and she'll be going to school shortly, where she'll be exposed to more children than ever before. It also worries me that with this, as with many other stories, public opinion is blindly led by the Daily Mail and dramas on Channel Five.
It's so easy to spend time on the Internet and find a fact or figure that either convinces you of an argument or makes you think of something in a different way. For instance, if those people who were desperate to remove the old man down the street had looked, they would have found that the majority of child murders or cases of abuse are committed by someone in the child's family or someone that they know very well, not a stranger waiting to swoop down at the first opportunity. (They could probably have found out what the word paediatrician means as well.)
Is it lack of education or a pure laziness to learn? In this information-spoon-fed time we live in, I'm inclined to think the latter. Either way, it worries me that people never want to expend any energy discovering both sides of a story and I really don't see what can be done about it.
