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A friend recently emailed asking my take on the upcoming Dateline program that addresses autism and vaccines.

Here's my take. It will not make much of a difference one way or the other. Let me rephrase that. It will be a feel-good piece for NBC that portrays them to be a "hard-hitting news organization" while at the same time helping advance the pharma mantra of “don’t hesitate – vaccinate!”

I saw Thoughtful House’s piece about why they are doing it and one of the reasons given was that Matt Lauer was a fair and balanced journalist. Dear god, what stories did Lauer ever break? He is a talking corporate head put in place for exactly the reason that people believe him to be fair and balanced.

Fair and balanced is the nonsense that got us into this trouble to begin with. One doesn’t arrive at the truth by giving each side equal access to the bully pulpit. A story has to have a point of view to mean anything. A story needs to begin with a premise and work to establish why one side speaks truth and the other side does not.

If anyone thinks NBC as part of GE is going to create a maelstrom that causes the vaccine tsunami any serious problems that person has got their head wrapped in aluminum foil and needs to stick it in the oven and cook it along with the baked potatoes.

GE has a fiduciary duty to its stockholders to constantly work to increase the value of the stock – not begin a campaign that halves its value. GE is so deep in bed with various pharma companies not to mention the amount of advertising pharma spends on NBC that one could better expect the Pope to declare himself agnostic than for NBC to do anything more than provide a spit and polish finish to the lies that are already out there.

It’s much ado about nothing; a red herring; a bone to the masses. We will not change anything until we have economic and political power.

It’s sad because many parents expect one story or one movie or one song to be the catalyst that is going to change everything. It’s not going to happen.

Pre-packaged, pre-digested and pre-approved Dateline stories are good for you the same way McDonald’s is. Spend millions promoting your product and in the end provide nothing of nutritional value, but people feel good for awhile after consuming it.