Bad Publicity Is Still Publicity: The AAP and ABC’s Eli Stone
January 28, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
We don’t have a TV (thank heavens for the internet, so we could watch Barack Obama’s victory speech in South Carolina). So maybe I shouldn’t be shaking my head at ABC’s new legal drama, Eli Stone, which is set to premier January 31st. The first episode features lawyer Stone suing his former client, a Big Pharma-type company, on behalf of a mother who believes that her son became autistic from a vaccine containing the mercury-based preservative thimerasol, which is instead referred to as “mercuritol.” Being TV-less, I won’t be able to watch the courtroom drama and compare what Stone says with what the lawyers have been saying in vaccine court,the hearings for 4,800 claims filed by parents of autistic children who believe that their child’s autism was caused by the U.S. government’s vaccine program. Nor will I be able to consider how the kind of Julia Robert-esque actress (Laura Benanti) playing the autism mother acts her part (I tend to be over-sensitive to such Hollywood portrayals, me being an actual mother of an actual autistic son). And our TV-less state means that I won’t have to cringe, sigh, maybe nod, maybe frown, at a child actor’s portrayal of a child with autism (are the tilted head and half-shaded eyes of the boy in this photo mean to convey “AUTISM”?).
But should the show run? The American Academy of Pediatrics, in understandable concern about the misinformation that Eli Stone might spread about a link between autism and vaccines, has sent a letter to ABC executives and requested that the show be cancelled. If the show still runs as scheduled, the AAP has requested that a disclaimer be run that there is no scientific link between vaccines and autism.
Censorship, cries journalist David Kirby, whose Evidence of Harm portrays some mothers of autistic children as veritable Erin Brockoviches.
Censorship, cries J.B. Handley on Age of Autism and tells the AAP that it is “morally reprehensible,” that it is “pouring salt in a growing wound” and that there is an “underground railroad of pediatricians” who are “wary of the vaccine load on our children.” “The gloves are officially off,” Handley ends, mixing in so many metaphors that one feels a bit queasy.
Kind of seems that by Thursday, when/if “Eli Stone” does air, enough highly melodramatic statements, hot air, and unsubstantiated claims in the name of “science” will have been tossed ’round the Web that watching the actual, contested TV show will be anti-climactic, thanks to all the buzz pre-generated about one episode (somewhere, some TV executive is thanking Generation Rescue….). You can only imagine what words would be flying if ABC were to air an actual documentary based on “just the facts” (not the fantastically imagined conspiracies) about the autism-vaccine hypothesis.
Does anyone mention how they conveniently intercepted the AAP letter? Personally the letter is not a big deal to me. I would completely expect the AAP to react in such a way.
Didn’t plan to watch before. Don’t plan to watch now..
I’m impressed you don’t own a TV. Charlie might enjoy American Idol though.
“Underground railroad” is a pretty harsh metaphor to use and highly inappropriate in regards to autism. What else is new?!
Its Custer’s last stand, a final acknowlegement that all this mercury nonsence is fiction.
You a cultural analyst should understand where that is coming from, it is strapping the dead el Cid to his horse.
Drama didn’t do Wakers no favours, there was this hagiography on prime time Brit TV depicting him as this martyr for a noble cause. I am probably the only person in the country that even remembers it and as for Wakers, who remembers him any more than they remember mrs munch?
I just always want to think of some way to weave in a reference to the Vicar of Wakefield…….. or is that the dead horse of Athens that a certain philosopher refers to in the Apology
I think it is mostly ESPN that gets missed!
Well maybe the vicar of Bray would be more apposite considering the prevarications these folk go through.
A horse, a horse, go down to the Agora and I will maybe flog you one, no flies on me
Or the Vicar of Dibley.
A documentary that isn’t staged or with an agenda in mind would be different. Maybe that is insufficiently theatrical.
As for Eli Stone, I think that the AAP did the responsible thing, and it wasn’t necessarily the case that it was a slam-dunk that they would. But quel brouhaha at the Huffington Post and Age of Autism.
I have liked Jonny Lee Miller, but I’m not going to watch this show.
I never planned on watching the show before and I still don’t now. My mother might and I told her if she does I DO NOT want to hear about it.
Honestly, Kirby and Handley remind me of two kids having tantrums because someone isn’t play nice – in other words playing by their rules and they don’t like it.
What makes me sad is that the original script had nothing to do with vaccines.
Today’s New York Times reports on the AAP’s letter and describes the Eli Stone character (played by a British actor, Jonny Lee Miller), as a “prophet-like lawyer.” Was such a characterization necessary? WQAD in Iowa puts it bluntly: ” Doctor Renee R. Jenkins, president of the influential Elk Grove Village, Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics, says the show is the height of reckless irresponsibility.”
Hey, at least Handley actually made me laugh. Some rather… interesting metaphors. First he’s trying clumsily to make comparisons to self-injury (?), civil rights, and boxing, and even though none of them really added up in the first place, they look comparatively well used against that third one (it’s as if he was trying to directly talk about vaccines amounts, but ended up talking about children who transport large amounts of vaccines, a population which (I believe) fails to exist). I wonder what the next controversy will be discussed in (but I’m taking bets in automobiles, the American revolution, and baseball).
Ok, enough of that fun for me. I’m not going to watch this, and I’m not concerned. It’s not the only oddity of the series, so I doubt people will take it as seriously as one might expect.
Cliff
Bollocks. That letter is not intended as “censorship.” It’s not requesting that ABC cancel the show for reasons of religion or politics or personal morality, but for reasons of public health. I wonder how the president of ABC would feel about a chain reaction of events like this one: Pregnant mother watches show. Pregnant mother develops uninformed leeriness about vaccines. After the birth, mother decides not to get earliest vaccinations for child. Child contracts pertussis from grandparent at age three months because of waning immunity in that age group and increasing pertussis cases in many communities. Child dies after tiny lungs burst.
Yep, that’s totally worth a stupid TV show right there.
I didn’t make that scenario up, by the way. A very similar scenario actually happened here where I live.
I guess we will see.
I don’t know whether Cliff’s view that folks will see that it’s only TV is correct or not,even with the fantastic premise, although one can hope. I have within memory occasions of having to ARGUE and and then drag out the books to show that something in a fictional program was, in fact, not fact or even based in fact.
I might say that in isolated cases it might make people believe the plot line, but if you are uninformed in the issues, it may actually seem to be totally whole cloth, in the same way any TV conspiracy might be created. We’re from the position that knows that people had this view in real life, if you weren’t aware of that it’s not particularly distinguishable from other such creations. HOWEVER, people may well believe that kind of conspiracy anyway, but that’s sort of another issue (because it’s broader and less deep, regarding the creation of conspiracy on television).
Cliff
Just planting any seed of a vaccine-autism connection seems to go a long way towards people believing in such a connection. I feel extremely cynical, but why this plotline (a vaccine-autism link) out of other possible plotlines about autism? Cynical me thinks that the network wanted for the most controversial angle.
Of course the most controversial angle was chosen, that’s what sells.
But the thing that makes me not worried is that, framed as “Substance X that is being openly plied by the government causes disease Y (with the potential modifier of “to get money”)” is going to be reacted to with a “yeah, right”, in the same respect that “Judges from place X all conspire to lock up Y population”. If you didn’t hear that some people were otherwise out in the media speaking of this fact, it comes off as blunt conspiracy for fun, not a seed of anything. Now, there is a limited population that would believe both things if presented as such on TV, but they’re not half the population of others.
Cliff