I love Dr. Nancy Snyderman of NBC

krelnik

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krelnik
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Dr. Nancy Snyderman is NBC's chief medical editor. This morning she did a profile of Dr. Paul Offit, author of the new book Autism's False Prophets.

The profile was pretty good, not great, it missed a few points. But check out what happened during the "outro" after the report. Dr. Snyderman had mentioned that she personally had been "physically ambushed" by anti-vaccine people, and then she totally got into Matt Lauer's face about referring to the vacccines/autism thing as "controversial."

It was a sight to behold:

Dr. Nancy Snyderman: Its time for everyone to redirect the questions toward finding the cause of autism. It is NOT, however, vaccinations.

Matt Lauer: Controversial subject, Nancy.

Snyderman: NOT controversial subject!

Lauer: Well but controversial for parents who still believe.

Snyderman: It is not controversial, Matt! It's time for kids to get their vaccines.

Lauer: If it weren't controversial you wouldn't be ambushed.

Snyderman: No! It's not controversial. I really mean that. The science is the science. We are going to start to see outbreaks of polio and measles in this country if we don't start talking about the real problem. It's NOT controversial.

Lauer: We will talk about it more here, Nancy, thanks.

Snyderman: You bet, Matt.

Lauer: We're back right after this.
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Kudos, Dr. Snyderman, kudos.
 
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...and she's pretty too.

Problem is she has a medical qualification. No one is going to believe her that vaccines are safe.
 
The video of the interview has been posted here. The quoted exchange starts after about 5 min.

I sent a note to Phil and Jeff. I think she would be a great speaker at TAM.

CT
 
The video was worth watching. She didn't back down, not for a second. The last few seconds are something to see, not just read about. I have someone else to add to my hero list now.
 
Offit was the doctor interviewed that mentioned in this post.

Nancy Snyderman is great. She cuts through the bull that so many sCamers and med woos toss out there.

Drew Pinsky is also great about going after alt-med on Loveline. He goes into this rant whenever anyone mentions "toxins".
 
February 12, 2008 Appearance

She was on the show again today, promoting her book Medical Myths That Can Kill You.

The topic of autism came up again, she talked about the latest Brian Deer report on Andrew Wakefield's data (indicating that some of it was faked). She called Wakefield a "fraud".

You can see her talk about it from 1:18 to 2:40 in this video from Today Show. Also of interest to skeptics, she talks about overuse of vitamins from 3:04 to 3:40.

Matt Lauer: In 1998 (I'm gonna read this and I'm going to get it right), the medical journal The Lancet published a report from a guy named Dr. Andrew Wakefield. He claimed that the cause of autism in children was due to the MMR vaccine.

So, do the measles vaccines cause autism?

Dr. Nancy Snyderman: No.

Now let me roll the clock back a little bit. Before he published this report, there were 56 cases of measles in Great Britain. Last year, over 1300 with several deaths.

And now the British medical authorities are going after him, saying that he in fact falsified his data. His belief was: you get the MMR vaccine, it stays in your gut, it goes to your body, it's a toxin, it causes autism. Now the medical authorities have shown that in the cases he had (except for one) those neurological symptoms were there before these kids got vaccines.

We're starting to see outcrops of Haemophilus infections (with deaths in Minnesota last year); measles outbreaks in this country; and what concerns people is that polio (which was considered wiped out in this country) we could start to see that.

So I want to tell parents, because you know I am a pro-vaccine doctor: get your kids vaccinated.

Lauer: Whatever became of Dr. Wakefield?

Snyderman: He's still in Britain, but I believe absolutely discredited. It's a real example that bad science can occasionally get in a reputable journal like The Lancet. But this guy is a fraud.
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Do you suppose we could get Obama to come out and pubically endorse vaccines? He seems to have a big following in exactly the sort of circles that reject the evidence on this issue.

Or...I seem to recall a decade or so back, there was a series of PSAs (Public Service Announcements) with George HW Bush and Bill Clinton, asking Americans to donate to relief efforts. Could we launch a similar, cross-party / political viewpoint campaign to urge people to vaccinate their children?

Since evidence is clearly not the driving issue in these folks' minds, maybe an appeal to authority would work??

Just thinking, Miss Kitt
 
I suppose it is appropriate to add this here on this old thread, because you can see above the apparent spark that led to this. You can also see that Matt Lauer (or his producers) don't really pay close attention to the meat of what Dr. Snyderman said in the two appearances.

This Sunday, August 30th on Dateline NBC, Matt Lauer is airing an hour-long piece called "A Dose of Controversy" which is being billed as an exclusive interview with Andrew Wakefield. They ran an excerpt from it this morning on the Today show. Lauer interviews Wakefield, and you see Wakefield being treated as a "rock star" at meetings of autism cranks. Fortunately Lauer does also interview Dr. Paul Offit, and Offit gets quite animated talking about the dangers of vaccine denial.

For some reason they did not post the clip on their website along with the other clips from this morning. Not sure why this is, you'd think they'd want as much promotion as possible for this thing.

Judging from the clip its not terrible, but it also looks like it might be one of these "false balance" type pieces that really does more of a disservice. It may be TV pandering to controversy and "exclusives" again, I'm afraid.

It airs this Sunday, August 30th at 7PM Eastern on NBC, check your local listings.
 
This is ridiculous. Wakefield was paid by lawyers and only used 11 kids in his study. That study has long been checked and written off as complete bunk. He then banked on his BS study by patenting single vaccines. He's a crank. Why are they giving him any media time? He should be tarred and feathered, not wooed by the woo woo loving media.

"A dose on controversay"??? Oh, that's rich. More like a dose of complete unethical bunk. I'd use stronger words...

This really steams my buns!!

This guy is still making money off his pile of smarmy bunk!
 
Miss_Kitt said:
Do you suppose we could get Obama to come out and pubically endorse vaccines? He seems to have a big following in exactly the sort of circles that reject the evidence on this issue.
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At which point Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would explain that vaccination is an evil Democrat plot to kill your children.

The net effect would be negative. When has well-meaning and well-founded comment from a Democrat ever outweighed screaming hysterical lies from wingnuts?

I don't know if you've noticed, but Obama has been trying to improve the nation's health lately. Look how that's been going. Apparently it's going to kill your grandmother and your babies. By giving them medicine. So how's the vaccination thing going to go?

[Oh, I just noticed that you posted this in February. Ah, we were all young and naive once, and didn't realized that a Democrat trying to supply the public with medicine was TRYING TO KILL US ALL omg!!!]

Or...I seem to recall a decade or so back, there was a series of PSAs (Public Service Announcements) with George HW Bush and Bill Clinton, asking Americans to donate to relief efforts. Could we launch a similar, cross-party / political viewpoint campaign to urge people to vaccinate their children?
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Could we?

It would be great if, for example, Obama and Palin did a commercial saying: "We may have disagreed on everything else ... but we have both vaccinated our children". But how do we get them to do it?
 
...And to highlight just how much we can trust politicians on this, Tony Blair, when Prime Minister of Britain (where the whole MMR lunacy started) point blank refused to confirm whether his youngest son had been given an MMR jab!!
 
Dateline NBC Sunday: Matt Lauer / Dr. Wakefield / Autism / vaccine

Sunday, Aug. 30
7:00 PM Eastern Time

Matt Lauer and Dr. Andrew Wakefield will be on Dateline NBC
Take a look at some of the show's details at:
'A Dose of Controversy'

This should be interesting to see how Matt Lauer will talk about autism/vaccines/controversy, this time.
 
They way practically everyone has eaten up the antivaccine codswollep that this year's swine version of H1N1 flu vaccine is "untested", I can only imagine! There's a strain of H1N1 in every vaccine every year! This novel strain is different, but the vaccine is the same every year-insert the varied strains they will cover that year.

Both LAIV and TIV contain strains of influenza viruses that are antigenically equivalent to the annually recommended strains: one influenza A (H3N2) virus, one influenza A (H1N1) virus, and one influenza B virus. Each year, one or more virus strains might be changed on the basis of global surveillance for influenza viruses and the emergence and spread of new strains.
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http://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/acip/composition0708.htm


The swine flu vaccine is NOT untested no matter what wingnut harps on it and no matter how many dimwits repeat the wingnut claim.
 
Ernie M said:
Sunday, Aug. 30
7:00 PM Eastern Time

Matt Lauer and Dr. Andrew Wakefield will be on Dateline NBC
Take a look at some of the show's details at:
'A Dose of Controversy'

This should be interesting to see how Matt Lauer will talk about autism/vaccines/controversy, this time.
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He was on the weekend "Today Show" this morning hawking this show, which is an unusual place for him to normally be on a Sunday.

He's, at the very least, promulgating the controversy. I'm beginning to believe that he's convinced that there might be something to this.

As far as Wakefield, dissenting opinion is welcomed and often encouraged in scientific matters, as it often helps frame the truth. Where, I believe, he has overstepped the bounds is that he will not entertain the possibility that he may be wrong. And, he's made quite a career for himself by giving, what I believe, false hope to many parents that he alone has potentially pinpointed a possible cause... and potentially scared others away from getting their children vaccinated, which is potentially far more dangerous to them.

I liken this "debate" (and I've said this before) to the "facilitated communication" movement for autistic children. People are so desperate to understand this condition that they are willing to give up rational thought in the process... which potentially points to and lends more credence to, at least superficially, the likelihood that this is indeed a primarily a genetic brain disorder passed down from the parents.

~Dr. Imago
 
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