Help correct the damage from the media’s irresponsible coverage of the cervical cancer vaccine
I’ve pointed out that parents using Google to research the cervical cancer jab (in the tragic wake of a schoolgirl’s death) see a mass of negative and inaccurate information linking her death to the vaccine.
She died of an unrelated tumour. But Google’s results will give parents second thoughts about letting their daughters be vaccinated, even though the injection will save hundreds of lives a year. You can help however.
YOU can help do something about this.
If you publish web pages …
Google’s results are influenced by two things - links to a page, and the text that’s used to link.
So, please, if you can publish a web page (a blog, say), then link to these URLs:
- http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/hpv-vaccination/Pages/Introduction.aspx
- http://www.immunisation.nhs.uk/Vaccines/HPV
- http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/09September/Pages/Cervical-cancer-vaccine-QA.aspx
Ideally, use text like cervical cancer jab or cervical cancer vaccine to link to those pages, like this: cervical cancer jab and cervical cancer vaccine and cervical cancer vaccine Q&A.
The more of us who link, the better in Google’s results these pages will do, counteracting the ill-informed scaremongering.
If you can tweet, or you have a friend with a blog
Why not publicize this plan? Tweet it or ask friends with blogs to add a link to the relevant NHS pages.
If you’ve already blogged about this
Already published something about this online? Why not go back to that post and add links to the NHS pages. If you’ve linked to a misleading news story in your outrage, add rel = “nofollow” to your link. That stops Google counting your link as a ‘vote’ for the page.
Look in the HTML view and change something like this:
<a href=”http://tabloid.com/misleadingstory”>cervical cancer jab</a>
to this:
<a href=”http://tabloid.com/misleadingstory” rel=”nofollow”>cervical cancer jab</a>.
At the moment, many angry bloggers link to the scaremongering tabloid stories, giving them a boost in google’s results. Adding nofollow like this will avoid this problem.
If you need any help
Leave a comment if you want some advice on the best way to help deal with this. You can see all my posts charting the history of this media scaremongering here.
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
Jon
If someone could talk to my wife on this one id be greatful.
More seriously the difficult truth is people believe what they wish to believe.
If someone is pre disposed to beliveving that innoculations are harmful they will belive that about the story whatever the truth of the matter is.
I can tell you that the post mortem results will be seen as the ‘drug companies arranging a cover up’, or the ‘goverment covering its backside’
Oct 2nd, 2009
ana
you might appreciate this from Information is Beautiful:
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/how-safe-is-the-hpv-vaccine/
Oct 12th, 2009
gamma knife
malcolmcoles, yeah really you share the gr8 topic here………i think media should be play the responsible role toward the disease like cancer.
Mar 18th, 2010
Reply to “Help correct the damage from the media’s irresponsible coverage of the cervical cancer vaccine”