A new show debuts this week, Eli Stone, from the creative team of Greg Berlanti (Brothers & Sisters, Dirty Sexy Money) and Marc Guggenheim (Law & Order, Brothers & Sisters, The Practice). It looks a little like an Ally McBeal rip-off and a little bit of a lame philosophical show along the lines of Saving Grace.
In the news today, pediatricians are upset over an element in the pilot:
The premiere episode of Eli Stone, in which a mother wins a $5.2 million lawsuit charging her son got autism from a vaccine, is stirring controversy before it airs.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is calling on ABC to cancel the show, saying in a statement that it leaves audiences “with the destructive idea that vaccines do cause autism.”
ABC Entertainment rejected the request in a statement Monday, reminding viewers that the show is fictional: “The story line plays on topical issues for dramatic effect, but its purpose is to entertain.”
I love this part, from the AP story:
The show’s co-creators say they’re not anti-vaccine and would be upset if parents chose not to immunize their children after seeing the show.
Greg Berlanti, a co-creator of the show, said the episode is fictional but designed “to participate in what is a national conversation” about a controversial subject. He said the boy who plays the autistic child has autism, but that the show’s producers have no connection with advocates involved in the autism debate.
“We would be deeply upset” if parents opted against vaccination because of the episode, Berlanti said.
Marc Guggenheim, who helped create the show, said the first episode shows how a fictional company covered up a study that raised questions about its product, and that the message is really about “the downside of the corporatization of America.”
It is true that people should not make medical decisions based on fictional television dramas. It’s also true that TV producers should not put inaccurate information in TV medical dramas.
We would be deeply upset if parents decided not to vaccinate their children just because we created an episode that told them not to.
This is the critical point: Do vaccines cause autism?
This article acknowledges concerns, but then says:
This is despite study results released this month in The Archives of General Psychiatry by California’s State Public Health Department, which show further evidence against any link. Researchers found that the autism rate in children rose continuously in the study period from 1995 to 2007; the preservative, thimerosal, has not been used in childhood vaccines since 2001 save for some flu shots.
This U.S. News & World Report article says genes may be the cause:
Two major new studies grapple with the conundrum at the core of autism, the often-devastating disorder that can make it difficult for children to connect with their fellow humans. This news brings us two big steps further down the path of understanding this complex, enigmatic disease. And it reassures all parents that childhood vaccines do not appear to increase the risk of autism.
On Thursday, scientists reported that 1 percent of people with autism share a variation on chromosome 16. Several other genes have been previously implicated in autism, but this study in the New England Journal of Medicine is the first to find a consistent genetic variation in such large numbers of people. The researchers, led by the Boston-based Autism Consortium, scanned the dna of members of 751 affected families looking for shared clues.
The article also cites the California study and then adds:
It echoes studies in five other countries, including Canada in 2007, that failed to find a link between the use of vaccines or thimerosal and autism.
And five years ago, a Danish study was characterized as quite comprehensive, as in this article in Time:
The latest study exonerating the MMR [measles, mumps and rubella] vaccine comes from Denmark, where investigators looked at the health records of every child born from 1991 through ’98, more than 537,000 children. No matter how researchers analyzed the data, there was no difference in the autism rates of children who received the MMR vaccine and those who did not.
Other epidemiological studies over the past four years have come to similar conclusions, but none has been so large and so complete as the Danish study. Indeed, the accumulated evidence is strong enough to convince even onetime proponents of the MMR-autism link…
According to the AP story above, in the episode, the lawyer hero argues in court that a flu vaccine made a child autistic. It is revealed that an executive at the fictional vaccine maker didn’t allow his own child to get the shot; consequently, the jury rules for the plaintiff, giving them a huge award.
Are the producers being irresponsible? This NY Times article says not:
Greg Berlanti, a co-creator and executive producer of the series, said that executives at neither ABC nor its ABC Studios production unit had any qualms about the episode, which he said he believed showed both sides of the argument.
Most public health organizations believe there is only one side, however. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization are among the organizations that have studied and rejected possible links between autism and the preservative in vaccines.
Ah, yes! The old We Show Both Sides defense! Added to the It’s Just Entertainment defense.
It is just TV, I agree. But if you’re going to strive for relevance and rip straight from the headlines, you better be prepared to get it right. Otherwise, I’d stick to making crap up. (Seriously, if your point is corporatization, make it a fictional drug and a made-up disease.]