The Greater Good (film)

The Greater Good
Directed by	Kendall Nelson, Chris Pilaro
Written by	Leslie Manookian Bradshaw, Jack Youngelson
Produced by	Leslie Manookian Bradshaw
Starring	Gabi Swank, Jordan King, and the Christeners
Music by	Stephen Thomas Cavit
Production company	BNP Pictures
Release dates	April 2, 2011 (2011-04-02) (Dallas Film Festival) October 14, 2011 (2011-10-14)
Running time	79 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Summary

The Greater Good is a documentary film about the risks vs. benefits of vaccines that originally debuted at the Dallas International Film Festival on April 2, 2011, and which then began playing in Los Angeles, California on October 14, 2011, which won awards from the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival as well as the cinematic vision award at the Amsterdam Film Festival.

Stories covered in the film include those of:

• Gabi Swank of Wichita, Kansas, who received an HPV vaccine and attributes a number of adverse reactions, including a seizure, to this experience,
• Jordan King of Portland, Oregon, who regressed into autism following routine vaccination, and was one of the test cases for the autism omnibus proceedings and whose case was rejected by the Special Master, and
• Victoria Grace Boyd Christener of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who died at the age of 5 months after receiving a vaccine.

Well-known vaccine experts who appear in the film include Paul Offit, Melinda Wharton, and Norman Baylor of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. The film was endorsed by Joseph Mercola on his website, as part of "Vaccine Awareness Week", a joint venture with the National Vaccine Information Center. Translating nutrition advice into a colorful pyramid is great way to illustrate what foods make up a healthy diet. The shape immediately suggests that some foods are good and should be eaten often, and that others aren’t so good and should be eaten only occasionally. The layers represent major food groups that contribute to the total diet. The problem with the US government’s original Food Guide Pyramid, released in 1992, was that it conveyed the wrong dietary advice. And MyPyramid, its 2005 replacement, was vague and confusing.

• Dr. Lawrence B. Palevsky
• Dr. John Green III, a fellow of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine
• Diane Harper, an investigator at one of the sites where the original clinical trials of Gardasil was conducted
• Kevin Conway and Clifford Shoemaker, lawyers who represented the families suing the government in the autism omnibus trial.
• Renee Gentry, a lawyer at Shoemaker's law firm
• Christopher Shaw, PhD, a professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of British Columbia.
• Barbara Loe Fisher
• Robert Sears (physician)

Airing

The documentary was aired on Current TV on 24 March 2012.

Criticism

From the medical establishment

• David Gorski criticized the movie in a blog post, lamenting that the film "which could have been a provocative debate about current vaccine policy based on asking which vaccines are necessary and why, in the end opts to be nothing more than pure anti-vaccine propaganda of the lowest and most vile sort."

From the media

• The New York Times criticized the movie, calling it "emotionally manipulative," and "heavily partial."
• Variety (magazine)'s John Anderson reviewed the film, saying that it is "swimming in ethical contradictions." Anderson also stated, with regard to the film's potential bias, "Admittedly, it would have been difficult for the filmmakers to show the other side of those scenes; how do you focus on subjects who haven’t died from smallpox, diphtheria or pertussis because they were immunized as children? But that would require an approach that doesn’t take advantage of the audience’s emotions." The conjecture presented in the movie that vaccines might cause autism is contradicted by all existing scientific evidence on the subject.