The topic of vaccines and aggressive vaccination policies is no longer a subject discussed only amongst small groups of people. It’s a topic that’s made its way to mainstream media and television. In many cases, proponents of mass vaccination are continually portrayed as saviors of the people, while those wanting greater transparency from government and big Pharma, are shown to appear as unscientific cultists, radicalists and fanatics, and uneducated religious nuts. Then there is Ron Paul.

Eli Stone Series Premiere on Thursday, January 31 has some pediatricians apparently throwing temper tantrums. The anticipated series premiere of this legal drama, which features actor Jonny Lee Miller in the role of Eli Stone, debuts with a story involving the topic of vaccines, the mercury-based preservative known as thimerosal, and a drug company cover-up.

Health-care related topics are reported to be one of the most researched topics on the internet, especially when one suspects they have symptoms of a particular disease or condition. A brief scanning of today’s health related news returns headlines related to carcinogens, bird flu, cancer risks, over-the-counter drug safety questions, prescription medication safety concerns, breast cancer and chemotherapy, vaccine recalls, reports of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in hospitals, and stories of mercury found in eye products like eyeliner and mascara. Nearly every major media web site features at least one health section that provides original health-care related content, or aggregates syndicated content from other popularly known health resources.

Each flu season between 5 and 20 percent of the population suffer symptoms of flu-related illness. Flu seasons come and go, and occasionally the flu shot is a “good match” with laboratory-confirmed influenza. Participation in the flu shot program has grown sharply during the past thirty years, but the death rate from flu-related illness has remained virtually unchanged the whole time.

My wife was bitten on the finger by a rattlesnake late this August. She was reaching for the perfect tomato nested in the weeds beneath a large tomato plant in the garden where we live in the foothills of Southern California. We named it the $64,000 tomato.