vaccines

The public sphere is inundated with malicious messages about those who are fearful of or resistant to vaccination. Low hanging fruit that includes name-calling to overtly aggressive, vicious attacks abound (e.g.

The media hits keep coming. Here's where we appeared in recent days.

By Stacie Kershner, Georgia State University;

The New York Times has done something that it very rarely does: It wrote an editorial in support of biotechnology.

By Matthew Motta, University of Pennsylvania;

We had a really bad flu season this year. The CDC just announced that about 80,000 Americans were killed.

The media trope “if it bleeds, it leads” is at play in undermining accurate messages with respect to the status of vaccine compliance. A fear-based technique intended to capture the audience by news outlets is, sadly, a tried-and-true one.

Making the rounds in the news media is a serious medical condition called acute flaccid myelitis (AFM). It predominantly occurs in children causing among other symptoms weakness in the extremities.

Anti-vaxxers insist that measles is just a harmless childhood infection. After the Disneyland outbreak, anti-vaxxers derided public health concerns by referring to it as "Mickey Mouse Measles." The facts indicate otherwise.

The MMR vaccine protects against three viral diseases: measles, mumps, and rubella, hence it's name.