To be sure, West Nile is deadly serious, just as Lyme Disease is. No one is saying we should go all holistic here and let the Hellstrom Chronicle (the movie that argued insects will inherit the Earth) unfold. But there have got to be ways to stop the threat without potentially triggering new ones. This dynamic is deeply embedded the sad and usually unwritten history of medicine and chemistry, and so often pesticides are at the heart of it. In our book The Age of Autism, Mark and I trace the first cases of autism to a new mercury compound in vaccines and pesticides -- in fact, the first three cases in the medical literature bear a clear link to pesticides; two of those three fathers were a plant pathologist and a forestry professor, and the third family built its wood house at the same time and place that organic mercury was first used as lumber preservative.

And we believe that another pesticide, lead arsenate, triggered the first wave of polio outbreaks around the turn of the 20th century, by giving the polio virus access to the nervous system where it triggered poliomyelitis. The much bigger wave following World War II tracks with the introduction of DDT.

The Age of Polio: How an Old Virus and New Toxins Triggered a Manmade Epidemic

The most dangerous words in science, it appears, are "we know better this time."

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This week's "From the Editor" posts included:

DEATH WISH: Army suicide rate doubles from June to July in most heavily medicated military ever. It's way past time for an urgent review of a possible link between meds (anti-depressants, anthrax vax, Lariam, etc.) and deaths. 

What’s missing, other than a sophisticated understanding of this issue, is any mention of Hannah Poling, Bailey Banks, or the “unanswered questions” posed by investigators who found a striking number of cases of autism mysteriously popping up among children given vaccine damage awards – bi-directional co-production, you might call it.

 Nor is there mention of the $2 billion shelled out by the contrary and adversarial vaccine injury compensation program. In Kirkland's piece, they come across as nice people trying to give deluded parents a fair shake they'd never get in a real-live court of law.

 Perhaps the most idiotic point in the paper is Kirkland’s supposed insight that after they were defeated in court, autism parents began attacking the court system:

 “Instead of continuing to fight on the scientific merits of the theory, critics – the losing families and the vaccine critics who support them – pivoted instead to a procedural justice argument against the vaccine compensation program.”

 Well, I think they, and we, are continuing to fight on the scientific merits of the theory. But pointing out the flawed nature of the vaccine justice system is hardly a “pivot.” Suppression of the truth, whether in a court or in insipid ninth-grade-level social studies reports like this, is the point. --d.o--

TV SLEAZE: From a strictly financial point of view, the best thing that can happen to this country's cable companies and networks is for a new and widely presecribed drug to start killing and maiming lots and lots of people very, very slowly. And then for the government to belatedly figure that out, and for the victims and their survivors to have a really strong legal case against the drug manufacturer.

The ad revenue would be fabulous! First you get the overhyping and overprescrbing of the new drug (I'm thinking Peggy Fleming whining about her ankle being all achy and how only Vioxx could help. Instead it killed tens of thousands who never needed it.) Then you get the ads from all the law firms telling you if you've ever taken the drug and dropped dead, you should call them right away (Vioxx, every diet pill ever invented, etc). Sometimes if you're lucky (you being the aforementioned TV network), the government will force a manufacturer to revise its excessive ad claims (I'm thinking of Yaz, the birth control pill) and replay the ad. Then you get the ad that was false, the ad that tidies up after the false ad, and the revenue from all the people who got sick or died believing the information in the false ad.

Ka-ching!

And sometimes you get both the ad for the product and the ad for the lawyers running at the same time -- I'm thinking Pradaxa, where a grinning real doctor over-enunciates "Pradaxa is progggg-ress," and there's another ad running now that says if you've been harmed by Pradaxa, call this number. The Pradaxa doc even tries to lure viewers away from an older drug (which, by definition, has a longer and in this case stronger safety record), even as new studies show, as they so often do, unrecognized issues with Pradaxa that only pop up during the benignly named post-marketing surveillance (read: people keeling over and bleeding to death).

Does anyone at the network/cable office ever think, "Wait, we're making money from the ad shilling this drug, and making money correcting the ad shilling the drug, and making money from the lawyers looking for clients harmed by the drug. Maybe we shouldn't be running ads for things that can kill you in the first place, things that our viewers are in no position to evaluate and their doctor can give them if they really need it?"

Doubtful. The USA and New Zealand, I believe, are still the only two developed countries that allow such direct-to-consumer ads, and the gravy train has left the station. But more people are starting to notice, and to realize that propping up the media with Big Pharma Bucks -- just like allowing the highest spenders to control campaign messaging on TV -- is hazardous to our health.

In the current issue of Washington Monthly, a magazine wise to the ways of lobbyists and money-grubbing mega-businesses, Charles Peters writes a short item titled "Department of Missed Connections":

"Have you noticed how many of the commercials on cable television are by manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices? And aren't you just a bit troubled by how many of the other commercials are from law firms injured or sickened by these products?"

It seems almost pointless to moralize here, but this is exactly why these kind of ads don't appear in other countries. And it creates a whopping conflict of interest in the reporting choices made by these same outlets -- are you going to bite the hand that pops the pills that pay the bills? Merck makes and heavily advertises the shingles vaccine -- would you be inclined to double-check on that whole MMR-autism thing (which Merck also makes) if you worked for CNN or ABC (Anderson or George)? For that matter, how about the strong evidence linking the rise in shingles to the chickenpox vaccine, also made by Merck?

Similarly, the airwaves are now flooded with Super-Pac ads in the wake of Citizens United. Whatever one thinks of that ruling, the networks are again the beneficiaries, and burdened by another massive conflict. In the current Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson notes that for the networks and cable companies, "the profit motive stifles critical coverage of top donors and meaningful reforms, such as public financing of elections. 'Broadcasters have an incentive not to see the system changed,'" one critic tells Dickinson.

So when it comes to a couple of the worst problems facing our country at the moment -- rampant health-care costs fueled by excessive and expensive medications, and the skewing of the political agenda by special interests -- the picture of what's really happening is pretty clear. You might even say it's Hi-Def.

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Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.