Natural News- Distorting Facts to Profit from the Naturalist Fallacy

This morning I’m parsing Facebook and find a post from a friend.  His post exclaims, “Institute of medicine safety report confirms vaccine dangers http://t.co/N5zWiFsw via @HealthRanger”.   I was intrigued.

HealthRanger is a pseudonym for one of the authors over at Natural News, a website that promotes allegedly healthy and natural products.  They do not just promote concoctions, supplements, complementary and alternative medicine that are scientifically unvetted, they go out of their way to bash science, technology and western medicine.

The former is no big deal.  While unethical, I’m glad that we are free to be suckered into nostrums and bogus concoctions that have alleged pharmacological properties, even in the absence of evidence.  The harm comes in when people forego legitimate science in pursuit of alternative practices and suffer from the consequences.  Most of these treatments don’t work (and can’t work, e.g. homeopathy) or they have biologically active compounds (like herbs and plant extracts) that can elicit some effects, yet are not pure, well quantified, or tested for side effects.  

It must be good stuff, it's natural.   So are dog turds, the AIDS virus, radon gas and arsenic.

Where I do have a serious problem is when Natural News attacks science.  In the note above, my friend writes that the Institute of Medicine (a solid source of good information that has always touted vaccine safety and efficacy) “confirms vaccine dangers”.  When you read the Natural News article, they use the same distortion in their title.  They also quote the report where it states, “relationship between certain vaccines and adverse health complications does exist”, cherry picking this nugget from the rest of the story.  Natural News also states that this "settles the argument".  They did get that last point right, but it settles it in a way that does not support their claims of danger.

You can read a synopsis of the findings here. 

The rest of the IOM report really echoes the incredible safety of vaccines and their awesome place in public health security.  In the true spirit of scientific discourse the report says that there are documented negative side effects of vaccination, and science has known this for some time.  These negative side effects are generally mild and are exceedingly rare.  When you read the list, they are typically confined to anaphylaxsis, except for rare instances of viral re-activation from Varicella (chicken pox) vaccine where the patient then gets the chicken pox they would have caught without the vaccine.  

Negative side effects, yes.  Less severe than the disease itself, absolutely. 

The report also supports rejection of the association between vaccines and diabetes, autism, Bell’s palsy, or asthma, the “risks” frequently touted by anti-vaxers.  Of course, Natural News seemed to miss this.

The take home message is that HealthRanger and Natural News are at best just poor connoisseurs of  scientific information, lousy readers and non-critical thinkers.  At the worst they are cherry-picking liars that distort legitimate data to promote a naturalist concept, where they are the profiteers.  

And they say that Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Science are all lying about their products to make a buck.   Take a look in the mirror Natural News. 

Even the untrained eye can see through this veil of deception.  All you have to do is read the report.  Once again, Natural News finds end-of-the-world danger where the objective, peer-reviewed, reproducible and accountable scientific community finds minimal risk.