The fee does not prick

AST publishing house stopped sales of a book about the dangers of vaccination due to criticism. Is this censorship?

In early February, one of the largest publishing houses in Russia, AST issued a book by the Israeli blogger and electronic engineer Anton Aantonio as an “Prime” editorial office-this is a pseudonym, the author refuses to call his real name because of the attacks of attacks from scientists of critics-under the name “To vaccinate or not to vaccinate, or, you think, an injection! Myths about vaccination. " The book was published by a small circulation of 2000 copies, but it was sold out in less than a day. At the same time, a public scandal broke out at the stage of preparing the book: part of the representatives of the science popularizers in Russia - among them, for example, the holder of the Enlightener Prize Peter Talents - hinted that they will no longer work with AST if the book is published. As soon as the book was published, several authors immediately announced the termination of cooperation with the publishing house. And under the pressure of the public "AST" decided to stop the book to stop.

What was so outraged by everyone?

Strictly speaking, the book of Aantonio is not a scientific publication in its purest form, but a compilation of its texts from the Scibook.org platform, where the author based on other works, including scientific ones, discusses the insecurity of vaccinations. The family situation pushed him to this, says Aantonio "New". “After my daughter was born, I wanted to understand what vaccinations she should do and which,” says the blogger. - I did not find a simple answer to this question, so I studied several scientific research. These studies shocked me so much that I could not stop and began to read hundreds of work with binge. I could not understand how so shocking scientific facts about vaccination are practically unknown to anyone. ” Aantonio recalls that the last time he himself was vaccinated in the army, and he had “some health problems that were probably caused by vaccinations”, but he cannot prove direct communication. This doubt, however, did not prevent him from creating a series of blogs in which the effectiveness of vaccinations seems to be not at all denied, but is called into question.

“It is believed that serious side effects as a result of vaccinations are extremely rare. One one hundred thousand, or even one per million. This is a lie, - writes, for example, Aantonio. - Since no one has conducted adequate studies of vaccination, it is difficult to assess the real number of side effects, but even with the most optimistic assessments, serious consequences are more often than one of fifty.

Half (!) Children in the USA have at least one chronic disease, and their number is constantly growing. Of course, not all diseases are related to vaccinations, but who knows how many are connected if no one explores this? ”

In other words, the author claims that almost all vaccinations in the world can be falsified

(may not be, but go prove it!)

And abundantly quotes works that question the effectiveness of vaccination to doubt. There are a lot of such works, but from the collection of Aantonio it seems that they can only be believed by them, and special cases of failures during the study of vaccinations or during vaccination in different countries were erected to the absolute. The problem of such “collections” is that the author adjusts specific research under his hypothesis, and automatically considers the rest to be incorrect, they say “new” science popularizers, who, in response to the news of the release of the book, raised a great public noise.

“These statements have already been repeatedly understood-even when this character began to massively issue anti-precipitory posts in his LiveJournal, pretending them for analytics,” says a scientific journalist and toxicologist Alexei Vodovozov. -If you follow the links that the author generously scattered, you can find either a very old publication (the years of the 60s, or even earlier); or a poor -quality publication (and the author does not understand the differences from a quality from a poor -quality in principle, because not a specialist); or withdrawn as not corresponding to the criteria of a scientific article; or with a content contrary to what the author claims.

That is, this is one big forgery.

Strictly speaking, this is the main claim to the book - not even its anti -infection orientation, but that hiding behind phrases of some kind of analysis, readers present a strange quality craft with unpredictable contents. ”

How, in this case, the book in general could go through publishing filters? The publishers themselves respond: everything is fine with filters, just enlighteners of science look at it as a scientific work, and this is a mistake - before us are “journalism”.

“According to the regulations of the Prime editorial office, books that are not positioned as medicine textbooks, but contain a journalistic material, can be written by authors without a medical education,” says Ekaterina Kozhanova, director of the Department of Strategic Communications of the Exmo-Ast publishing holding. - The author should immediately indicate who he is, what his education is, scientific experience, what is his approach to the problem - in order to immediately orient the reader and not mislead him. The author’s opinion should be based on analysis. His conclusions must be reasoned. As amended by Prime, the consultant is involved in books that are positioned as medicine benefits, contain specific courses. The journalistic material goes through ordinary editing. ”

And in general, Kozhanova adds, Aantonio himself also has a minute - there are no sufficient competencies in immunology, but "this is their position, which takes place and which we also respect."

The publishing house emphasizes in every possible way that the book stood a note “is not a textbook on medicine”, but this is definitely a manipulation, critics of Amantonio believe. “If AST were a socially responsible publishing house, it would certainly show this text to specialists who would definitely not recommend it to print it, because this introduction of readers under the guise of a medical book,” Alexei Vodovozov was indignant. - Notice: even a medical dressing gown is depicted on the cover.

In general, we are not talking about censorship, here is about elementary irresponsibility

And the disregard for readers who may well follow the “advice” of the author of this opus. ”

After the book was released, part of the authors of the AST publishing house announced to stop working with him, but in the holding itself they hope to return them after an open discussion. Actually, the bygone authors can indicate double standards: AST publishing house has already published ambiguous from the point of view of the texture of the book. In 2011, for example, journalists were sharply criticized by the children's popular science series “Miracles Stall” for a huge amount of actual errors like “The power of the magnet is proportional to its shape” and “The light is invisible because it has no color”. On the other hand, the publishing house did not happen to the publishing house on the other hand, although in the same series as the collection of Blogs Aantonio, a book was published about the benefits of visceral massage - that is, pressing on the stomach in order to restore cell nutrition.

But the approach itself, which the publishing house wants to reconcile everyone. AST offers a public discussion about the admissibility of censorship of books on medical (at least) topics. The publishing house wants to conduct a discussion in the format of a round table at a “one of the federal sites”. At the same time, the publishers are still offensive. “Can authors express their point of view if it is different from the generally accepted and does not violate the current legislation? Can readers with different points of view gain access to their information that interests them and make an independent choice? After all, the Constitution of the Russian Federation prohibits censorship. Or is there a range of issues that only specialists can solve? " - formulates the request of the publishing house Ekaterina Kozhanova. At a minimum, they intend to answer the first question in the State Duma: a member of the Health Protection Committee, Alexander Petrov, sent a deputy request to the prosecutor's office with a request to verify the book of Amantonio for compliance with Russian legislation.

The parties to the scientific and literary conflict in the discussion announced by the publishing house do not plan to enter the discussion yet. “There is excellent practice - scientific editing. This is not a panacea, of course, but a certain guarantee that the chances of letting into print not only obscurantists, but also potentially dangerous to health and life of people will be minimized, ”Alexei Vodovozov is categorical. “It's not about censorship, let the publishing house not be seduced, he will not be able to expose himself as a victim.”

The blogger Anton Aantonio himself caused a stir, as he himself claims, glad. “Initially, the suspension of sales, of course, upset me. But after a few hours I realized that from the point of view of popularizing the book, this was the best solution.

This unprecedented decision led to the fact that the whole country learned about the book, ”he says“ new ”.

At the same time, the blogger does not disclose the size of his remuneration and the details of the agreement with the publishing house, noting only that "no fees should have been paid yet, the book only came out." For a discussion instead, he intends to send "other people who will represent interests." And there will be no shortage of such people: both on the website of the AST publishing house and on Facebook by Aantonio, dozens of comments with the demand to return the book for sale. Supporters of the movement of anti -producers even launched the corresponding petition on the Internet: in two days it scored more than 15 thousand votes.

The problem of censoring such books, due to their possible harm to the health and life of readers, depends on the approach to the book business in general, says journalist and literary critic Anna Narinskaya: any book can be published in the USA, there are some barriers in Europe. But it is only a publishing house to decide whether to publish a book or not, based on our ideas about the norm, not society - otherwise we will quickly return “to the censor under the king or official censorship under Stalin”.

“We have produced a huge number of senseless and harmful books. There is no idea that book publishing should bring some benefit, there is a conversation that this is a business. If the book brings money, it should be published, - formulates the harsh laws of the book market in Russia Narinskaya. - The book about the dangers of vaccinations, of course, is harmful in itself. But literature of this kind, anti-scientific and explaining that it is better not to do anything instead of doing something, is everywhere in great demand. It seems to me that a person is characterized by stupidity, regardless of the country of his residence. ” This means that for a specific book of the Israeli blogger, advising in his social networks to bury the eyes of breast milk in the baby’s eyes, initiated by the publishers, the discussion may end deplorable. But to imagine that such books will never be published in Russia again is impossible even in principle.

With the participation of Ekaterina Batalova, New Gazeta.