On Monday, yet another news story was released about a study that seemingly proves that a lack of MMR vaccinations was the primary cause of the measles outbreak that started in Disneyland California which has now spread to several states.
Karen Kaplan for the Los Angeles Times goes to great lengths to blame the anti-vaxxers while making absolutely no mention of the fact that Merck is still under investigation for lying about its testing methods and promoting and selling an MMR vaccine that does not always work. Worse yet, Kaplan’s article is about a study that is only based on mathematical statistics about herd immunity and not actual physical proof.
As pointed out in some of the article comments, Kaplan did not do her due diligence as a reporter to research this topic in full. Had she done so, she would have noticed that the study is based on data provided by a research tool funded by several Big Drug companies. She would have also found that California has one of the highest MMR vaccination rates in the country. People at Anastasia Date have found that, additionally, among those who initially contracted measles and were unvaccinated… 12 were babies that could not be vaccinated and only 18 out of the initial 37 purposely unvaccinated patients were non-infant children.
Some Americans are now beginning to wonder just how much of hold pharmaceutical companies like Merck have on the distribution of factual news.