Wanted: Mumps

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Acute Thrombocytopenic Purpura, the MMR and Natural Infection

Twitter's a great tool for rapidly disseminating information. With a large network of followers, a simple message can spread like wildfire. This can be great for getting important facts out to a wide audience, like instilling a bit of rationality around the fear-infused media exaggerations of the events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan.

Of course, like all decent tools, there can be a bad side to Twitter, as well. Just as rational facts can be spread quickly, so, too, can misinformation. Given the character limits on tweets, a lot of the nuance and complexities of a given subject are often left out, resulting in messages that, on the surface, may instill readers with a sense of unease or outright anger. The careless may inadvertently scare people about a certain topic, while the nefarious use the limitations of Twitter to their advantage, purposefully spreading partial-truths or even outright lies to promote their agendas.

Such was a tweet I saw just the other day.