Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Amy Wallace and An Epidemic of Fear

I just sent Amy Wallace, the writer of the Wired article "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All", thanking her for writing the article.

In my opinion, it is a straight-forward, strong no non-sense piece that examines the skepticism surrounding present-day vaccines, with a focus on Dr. Paul Offit and the threatening reaction from a part of the autism community, including the personal threats made by phone and mail, and the attacking comments about him by celebrity anti-vax spokespersons. It also takes a look into the facts about vaccines and the claims of the vaccine-causation groups in an honest and clear manner.

As Kim has pointed out on her blog post Doing Something Right: Conniptions at AoA posts have been made on AoA encouraging harassing Amy Wallace for her piece, which I need to point out, does nothing to over turn the view of them made in the piece. However, given the amount of research Amy Wallace has made into the situation, I don't think that AoA will be too successful in intimidating her. (Yes, I know that AoA isn't on the list of anti-vaccine sites that Amy lists, but honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if many of the membership is the same).

Either way, I applaud Amy Wallace for her strength and courage in the article, in writing a well documented and researched piece that doesn't hold back in presenting facts. Congratulations and thank you!

2 comments:

  1. I have a new blog if you or anyone wants to come to it. http://thegodlysociety.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. She wrote an excellent article, the only ones who would argue with her are the radical anti-vax woo swallowers.

    ReplyDelete

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