Inside the Labyrinth: Osler's Web Updates
WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE CHICAGO...

Copyright (C) 2010, Hillary Johnson, All Rights Reserved; Permission to Excerpt  Granted by Hillary Johnson

June 8, 2010

Trine appears to have begun her transition to science reporter in 2008-2009. She’s been writing a lot about autism treatments and autism doctors. She’s not sounding any alarms about the wildfire explosion of cases in the last twenty years, investigating plausible explanations, or exposing the Centers for Disease Control and its handmaiden, the Institute of Medicine’s, dismal failures to aggressively pursue that disease or their long history of dissembling on the matter. Instead, she’s published a series of stories about doctors who suggest medical and dietary protocols for autistic children that lack the Center for Disease Control’s seal of approval; and stories about autism parents who benightedly impose these therapies on their helpless, unsuspecting children.

It’s a form of journalism I will call quack-busting, it’s raison d’etre to protect the innocents. Unfortunately, the typical quack busting reporter also fails to educate herself in the actual science or history of what she writes about. Her reports lack context, a hallmark of the genre. Quack busters rarely even begin to deal with complicated stuff. They skim the surface, believing the answer to every complex medical question can be answered persuasively by dialing up the doc with most impressive Ivy League degree—Harvard being the ne plus ultra—or the government health official with the highest pay grade. It’s probably not surprising that autism parents and their national organizations look forward to Trine Tsouderos’s autism stories as they might a plate of gruel. Trine’s been missing the big stories in autism ever since she took it on.

Read the full post at: http://www.oslersweb.com/blog.htm?post=710020