Skeptic Check: Vaccines: Give 'Em Your Best Shot

Podcast Episode Summary

As the anti-vax campaign rages, parents are just saying “no” to vaccines. But now the incidence of childhood diseases such as whooping cough are on the rise.

A number of studies have refuted the link between vaccines, autism and other chronic conditions, yet the anti-vaccine movement continues. Find out why. Also, how the media have irresponsibility framed the debate.

Plus, we panic over plague, sweat about swine flu, but don’t think twice about jumping in a car and roaring down a crowded highway at 70 mph. Discover why most of our health worries are overblown.

It’s Skeptic Check… but don’t take our word for it!

Guests:

• Paul Offit – Pediatrician, Chief of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and author of Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure
• Steven Novella – Assistant professor of neurology at Yale School of Medicine and co-founder and editor of sciencebasedmedicine.org
• Philip Alcabes – Professor of urban public health at Hunter College, and author of Dread: How Fear and Fantasy have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to the Avian Flu