Vox: How anti-vaxxers have scared the media away from covering vaccine side effects

"It was the most startling side effect I've ever come across." That's how Elizabeth Miller, head of the immunization department at Public Health England, described some recent vaccine research you've probably never heard about: Pandemrix, a shot designed to stave off swine flu, also appears to be causing narcolepsy in some children.

Public health officials — especially ones that work in the politically fraught field of vaccine safety — don't typically make emotive statements like that.

Then Miller told me about something that shocked her even more: The media didn't pick up on this story at all. In fact, she characterized the reception to her 2013 research about vaccines and narcolepsy as "radio silence."

I told Miller that I didn't find her news all that surprising, because I ignored the Pandemrix story, too. I've sometimes shied away from writing about uncertainty in vaccine science for fear that my stories might have horrible consequences for public health. It seems other reporters may have been doing the same.

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All this heavy skepticism is understandable. At the same time, scientists and journalists can't just ignore evidence around vaccines — especially if there are real risks involved.

In search of a better way, I reached out to various researchers and reporters to get their views on how we can better cover vaccine uncertainty. They offered up a number of good suggestions that have implications for other politically charged issues in science, too:

1) It's okay to be more skeptical of newer vaccines than older, established ones. Andre Picard, the public health reporter at Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, has navigated tricky questions around vaccines for more than 30 years. He says he still has trouble with this question. "How do you cover the side effects of vaccines without giving credence to antivax zealots? is a really good question," he wrote in an email.

Theoretically, he said, journalists should report on vaccines like any other drug: communicating both the benefits and risks. "With older childhood vaccines, that’s pretty easy," he says. "Lots of benefits, and negligible risks."

But he puts newer vaccines in a different category. As with all new drugs, there can be unknown side effects. "For example, when the rotavirus vaccine was tied to intussusception, that was an important story to cover even though it killed a vaccine with many benefits. And, thankfully, there is now a better version with fewer side effects," he says. Picard reported that story, and in 2011, the early findings about a potential narcolepsy side effect with the swine flu jab.

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http://www.vox.com/2015/7/27/9047819/H1N1-pandemic-narcolepsy-Pandemrix