Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've noted WorldNetDaily's anti-vaccination scare tactics before -- Joseph Farah has even praised that Texas polygamist cult's refusal to have their children immunized, declaring that "mothers and fathers made conscious and well-informed decisions not to immunize their kids because of the potential for dire health risks." (Farah also appears to believe that these same parents marrying off their teenage daughters into polygamous relationships and kicking teenage sons out of the cult to reduce competition for women does not involve health risks are similarly "conscious and well-informed decisions.")
WNd keeps up the scare tactics in a July 7 article by Bob Unruh in which he asserts, based on the assertions of an unknown blogger with no apparent medical expertise (he describes himself as "retired from corporate"), that the nasal-ingested flu vaccine FluMist poses a great danger to children. While Unruh quotes from some MedImmune press release about expansion of flu vaccination recommendations, he does not give MedImmune any opportunity to respond to the attacks on its vaccine.
Unruh also quotes Jane Orient of the right-wing physicians group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- as is WND's wont, AAPS' political affiliation is unmentioned, let alone its anti-vaccination activism. We've previously noted AAPS' political activism; also the AAPS' journal is the one that published Madeleine Cosman's anti-immigrant screed containing false claims about illegal immigrants and diseases like leprosy. Indeed, that article remains uncorrected on the AAPS website.
It's the kind of substandard journalism we've sadly gotten used to from both Unruh and WND, who clearly don't trust their readers with the facts but intends to mislead them with only a censored version of the truth.
