Rambling Thoughts for a Sunday

Seth Mnookin has written The Panic Virus, a study of broad public acceptance of a vaccine-autism link.

Here is the Amazon page for the book.
I've written on this and related subjects before in this blog, the first time almost four years ago now, when I was as I said at the time only vaguely aware that there was a controversy underway.

When I first heard about this, though, my thoughts focused on the name "Seth Mnookin." Who the heck is he? It took some wracking of the brain but I eventually realized where I had first encountered that name. He wrote a (fascinating) account of the Jayson Blair scandal back in 2004. Here's a review of that book, by Michael Getler.

Getler called Mnookin's book "a must-read for anyone interested in this episode and what it says about the larger issues of journalism today."

Going back a bit further, Mnookin is a former heroin addict. Not long after the Jayson Blair book had made Mnookin famous he recounted his experiences along that line in SLATE.

He tells in that article for example about the time he was thrown out of the "hard-core treatment center in Boca Raton" for having sex with one of the other patients there (that's a no-no? even though she was 18?) and tells of being "given two black Hefty bags filled with my clothes and told I had 10 minutes to get off that property." Fortunately, things headed up for him from there.

So, what does Slate have to say about Mnookin's latest? You can find out here.

Even before all of that, Mnookin was a writer for Addicted to Noise, an online music magazine. You can read about A to N here.

I was planning to bring all this back to the issue of an alleged vaccine/autism link. Really I was. But now I'm thinkiing ... to heck with that. Enjoy your Sunday, everyone.