Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Monday January 24, 2011
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THE PANIC VIRUS: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear
Seth Mnookin
Simon & Schuster
ISBN 978-1439158647
429 pages
$26.99
Reviewed by Sandra G. Boodman
A few years ago while reporting a story on attention deficit disorder, I asked an affluent young mother why she was spending thousands of dollars on a dubious therapy, rather than on treatment proven to be effective. "I did my research on the Internet," she replied, citing a handful of pseudoscientific websites that advocated the "natural" approach she favored and warned against immunizing her preschoolers against childhood diseases because the shots contained toxic ingredients.
I thought of her while reading "The Panic Virus," journalist Seth Mnookin's disturbing and well-told chronicle of the childhood vaccine wars in the United States and England. While Mnookin traces the history of vaccines beginning with smallpox, his focus is on the specious but remarkably persistent myth that the current roster of shots children receive to prevent diseases such as measles, whooping cough and hepatitis B can cause autism or other serious problems -- a "fact" well-known to government officials, pediatricians and vaccine manufacturers, who have conspired to cover it up.
A contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Mnookin became interested in the subject in 2008 shortly after getting married and becoming part of a community of young professionals who drove Priuses, shopped at Whole Foods and decided against vaccinating their children, which they considered to be a health-conscious choice. Some didn't trust the medical establishment, while others were swayed by media reports about the possible dangers of vaccines or felt that the number given to children is excessive.
Ironically, immunizations have been victims of their own success, eradicating from public memory the devastating aftermaths of once common pediatric illnesses: deafness caused by mumps, blindness after measles, and paralysis brought on by polio.
Mnookin documents how these vaccines, a cornerstone of modern public health, have become targets of fear and misinformation.
He draws on interviews with anti-vaccine activists and public health officials, scientific literature, media accounts and research into the psychology of risk. His view of the media's role is unsparing; he illustrates the way ratings-hungry news and entertainment shows kept the debate alive, even as evidence for the safety and effectiveness of the shots became overwhelming.
Opposition to childhood vaccines simmered mostly on the fringes until 1998, when London gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield co-authored a study in the medical journal Lancet linking autism to the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot. Although his research was immediately challenged, it was not until last year that the study was retracted and Wakefield was stripped of his medical license. Two weeks ago the British Medical Journal published an investigative article on the study as well as an editorial calling it "an elaborate fraud" based on falsified data. The influential journal reported that crucial details in the case histories of the dozen children included in Wakefield's report had been altered or were misrepresented.
In the dozen years following Wakefield's study, the anti-vaccine argument gained significant traction, especially on the Internet, which has become an important source of health information. As a consequence, immunization rates on both sides of the Atlantic dropped, outbreaks of measles, pertussis and mumps increased, and some children died of vaccine-preventable diseases.
Even though study after study failed to find a link between the ingredients in vaccines and autism, health officials in the United States and England seemed unable to effectively refute anti-immunization arguments, for reasons that remain puzzling.
Mnookin's contention that the controversy would not have achieved staying power without uncritical or at times blatantly irresponsible reporting by numerous media outlets -- including NBC, the Huffington Post, Rolling Stone and The Washington Post -- is persuasive.
Too often, he writes, journalists display "a willingness to parrot quack claims under the guise of reporting on citizen concerns."
Much of the coverage failed to adequately explain the fundamental but essential difference between correlation and causation.
Simply because a child received a vaccine and soon after began showing signs of autism does not mean the shot caused the disorder, only that the two events are linked temporally. Nor can scientists ever say categorically that vaccines do not cause autism; it is impossible to prove a negative.
Television talk shows also provided a platform for vaccine opponents to make their case, largely unchallenged. During an appearance on "Oprah," actress Jenny McCarthy blamed the MMR shot for her son's autism, proudly telling the audience, "The University of Google is where I got my degree."
This book effectively documents the isolation and anguish faced by parents raising an autistic child, and it's hard not to feel that these families are victims of a battle that has squandered significant resources. A former leader who has broken with one prominent autism group over its anti-vaccine stance said it best: "At some point, you have to say, 'This question has been asked and answered and it's time to move on.'"
Sandra G. Boodman, a former staff writer for The Washington Post, writes about health and medicine. She can be reached at boodmans(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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CLARA AND MR. TIFFANY
Susan Vreeland
Random House
ISBN 978-1400068166
405 pages
$26
Reviewed by Eugenia Zukerman
The beauty and opalescence of authentic Tiffany lamps have charmed people for more than a century. Until recently, it was believed that these creations were solely the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, but in 2005, a group of art historians discovered that, in fact, the designer was a woman: Clara Driscoll. This revelation shook the art world and inspired the best-selling author Susan Vreeland to imagine the life and times of the spirited Mrs. Driscoll.
"In 1893 the name of Louis Comfort Tiffany will be on the lips of millions!" Louis brags to Clara in Vreeland's novel. He's a short man with a lisp and an Oedipal desire to outdo his father, the renowned jeweler. Wildly talented, deeply driven and self-indulgent, Louis is a leader of many contradictions -- allowing Clara to expand her department of "Tiffany Girls," while refusing to hire married women; encouraging Clara's artistic creativity, while forbidding his own daughters a college education.
Set in New York City at the tumultuous turn of the 20th century, "Clara and Mr. Tiffany" is about art and commerce, love and duty. Peopled with characters both imagined and historic, it is also a study of New York's ultra-rich and desperate poor, its entitled men and its disenfranchised women. And it is the story of one extraordinary woman's passion and determination. As the book opens, Clara's husband has died, leaving her without any money; she rents a room in a boardinghouse and returns to Tiffany Studios, where she had been a valued employee before her marriage.
When she comes up with an idea for making lampshades of leaded glass, Tiffany's enthusiasm thrills her, until she realizes that he has appropriated her invention as his own. "The idea was mine!" she mourns. "The process is mine!" And yet, despite feeling betrayed, Clara will later say of her boss: "I adored him. He and I (were) artistic lovers, passionate without a touch of the flesh. He made me thrive."
The book brims with fascinating information about Tiffany's glassmaking and about New York as its gilded age gives way to a more progressive era. Clara stands at the story's center as a woman ahead of her time, a female artist who mentors others and demands equality. When, because of jealousy, the men of the Glaziers and Glass Cutters Union threaten a strike unless Tiffany shuts down the women's department, Clara leads her "girls" into the fray with Susan B. Anthony's words: "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less." Vreeland's ability to make this complex historical novel as luminous as a Tiffany lamp is nothing less than remarkable.
Eugenia Zukerman is a flutist, the author of four books, an arts administrator and the founder of ClassicalGenie.com.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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