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In summer 1975, my mom dropped me and my sister off to see "Bigfoot: The Mysterious Monster." The movie was presented as a documentary to convince you bigfoot was real, even if it meant exaggerating facts and re-enactments and pretty much ignoring the truth. At the age of 10, I believed it, and spent the next several nights wide awake and convinced bigfoot was coming to get me in modern suburbia.
In modern medicine, the rumored side effects of vaccines are the equivalent of bigfoot. Earlier this year, the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases reported that over a 13-year period, vaccines of any kind didn’t cause Guillain-Barré syndrome. But a quick search of Google finds plenty of sites claiming the opposite.
Vaccines and autism are the most fabled example. Despite overwhelming data showing otherwise, this myth persists in modern culture. Buoyed not by scientists and doctors, but by celebrities (yes, Jenny, I’m talking about you) and politics (yes, Rep. Bachmann). Years ago things like this would have been confined to a small group, but not today. The Internet allows rumors to become accepted as facts and gives voice and credibility to those who previously carried signs on street corners. Anyone these days can make an official-looking website and populate it with "facts" that have no basis in reality. And people who use Dr. Google stumble on them, and figure that if it’s on the Internet, it must be real.
As someone who’s spent many years learning to be a doctor, it’s frustrating how many people will ignore my advice, yet listen to that given by a B-list actress or the cashier at the grocery store. And those people aren’t at risk of being sued for it, either.
I am, by nature, a cryptid geek. I would love to someday learn that bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster really exists. But in reality, I don’t believe they do. And, like the boogeyman, the vaccine mythology needs to be seen everywhere as the myth that it is.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
In summer 1975, my mom dropped me and my sister off to see "Bigfoot: The Mysterious Monster." The movie was presented as a documentary to convince you bigfoot was real, even if it meant exaggerating facts and re-enactments and pretty much ignoring the truth. At the age of 10, I believed it, and spent the next several nights wide awake and convinced bigfoot was coming to get me in modern suburbia.
In modern medicine, the rumored side effects of vaccines are the equivalent of bigfoot. Earlier this year, the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases reported that over a 13-year period, vaccines of any kind didn’t cause Guillain-Barré syndrome. But a quick search of Google finds plenty of sites claiming the opposite.
Vaccines and autism are the most fabled example. Despite overwhelming data showing otherwise, this myth persists in modern culture. Buoyed not by scientists and doctors, but by celebrities (yes, Jenny, I’m talking about you) and politics (yes, Rep. Bachmann). Years ago things like this would have been confined to a small group, but not today. The Internet allows rumors to become accepted as facts and gives voice and credibility to those who previously carried signs on street corners. Anyone these days can make an official-looking website and populate it with "facts" that have no basis in reality. And people who use Dr. Google stumble on them, and figure that if it’s on the Internet, it must be real.
As someone who’s spent many years learning to be a doctor, it’s frustrating how many people will ignore my advice, yet listen to that given by a B-list actress or the cashier at the grocery store. And those people aren’t at risk of being sued for it, either.
I am, by nature, a cryptid geek. I would love to someday learn that bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster really exists. But in reality, I don’t believe they do. And, like the boogeyman, the vaccine mythology needs to be seen everywhere as the myth that it is.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
In summer 1975, my mom dropped me and my sister off to see "Bigfoot: The Mysterious Monster." The movie was presented as a documentary to convince you bigfoot was real, even if it meant exaggerating facts and re-enactments and pretty much ignoring the truth. At the age of 10, I believed it, and spent the next several nights wide awake and convinced bigfoot was coming to get me in modern suburbia.
In modern medicine, the rumored side effects of vaccines are the equivalent of bigfoot. Earlier this year, the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases reported that over a 13-year period, vaccines of any kind didn’t cause Guillain-Barré syndrome. But a quick search of Google finds plenty of sites claiming the opposite.
Vaccines and autism are the most fabled example. Despite overwhelming data showing otherwise, this myth persists in modern culture. Buoyed not by scientists and doctors, but by celebrities (yes, Jenny, I’m talking about you) and politics (yes, Rep. Bachmann). Years ago things like this would have been confined to a small group, but not today. The Internet allows rumors to become accepted as facts and gives voice and credibility to those who previously carried signs on street corners. Anyone these days can make an official-looking website and populate it with "facts" that have no basis in reality. And people who use Dr. Google stumble on them, and figure that if it’s on the Internet, it must be real.
As someone who’s spent many years learning to be a doctor, it’s frustrating how many people will ignore my advice, yet listen to that given by a B-list actress or the cashier at the grocery store. And those people aren’t at risk of being sued for it, either.
I am, by nature, a cryptid geek. I would love to someday learn that bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster really exists. But in reality, I don’t believe they do. And, like the boogeyman, the vaccine mythology needs to be seen everywhere as the myth that it is.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
