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News Flash: Jenny McCarthy Is Not, In Fact, a Scientist
Filed under: Medical Conditions, In The News, Celeb News & Interviews
Jenny McCarthy speaks at a 2008 Washington, D.C., rally calling for healthier vaccines. Credit: Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images
All hail the chicken god!
This is the problem with observations and anecdotal evidence. They're not very scientific. Neither, say actual scientists, are Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey.
Leaders of the National Committee for Quality Assurance, a nonprofit health care organization, accuse the former celebrity lovers of using shoddy logic and scattered horror stories to spread the myth that childhood vaccines cause autism.
Committee officials tell CBS News that vaccination rates in the United States declined almost 4 percent in 2009. They got those numbers from data collected from more than 1,000 health plans coverings 118 million Americans.
Meanwhile, they add, vaccination rates covered by Medicaid continue to rise. So poor children are getting vaccinated, but more affluent children are not? What gives?
Fingers are pointing at a certain former Playboy playmate and her rubber-faced ex-boyfriend.
McCarthy has a son with autism and apparently believes in a purported link between autism and diet, metal poisoning and childhood vaccines. When she and Carrey were an item, he joined her in making speeches and otherwise crusading against vaccinations.
The thing is, they're wrong.
Study after study, including one by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fails to find any link between vaccines and autism. The consensus in the medical community is that original stories blaming vaccines were based on sloppy science.
A study recently published in Science Translational Medicine suggests autism may be a genetic condition caused by too many tight connections in frontal-lobe circuits and too few long-distance links between the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain.
In other words, people with autism are just wired differently.
Evidence for this study was collected by using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the types and strength of connections between brain regions.
Take that, Jenny McCarthy.
Seriously, though, is it fair to pick on McCarthy? What evidence do medical authorities really have that McCarthy, Carrey and other celebrities drive down the vaccination rate among middle- and upper-class families?
Plenty, it turns out. But it's all anecdotal.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
11-04-2010 @ 4:55PM
Michelle said...Jenny closed her school for autistic kids after it was proven that
vaccines are not the cause of autism, and that her son does not even
have autism! As if she really ever cared about all autistic kids anyway. And check out jennymccarthybodycount dotcom. Why anyone would have ever believed this bimbo instead of a real medical doctor or the FDA is beyond me. Now she never talks about autism or vaccines, and even has a new book out about something completely different to direct attention away from her foolish medical rants. I am, however, glad to see that the insanity has stopped!
Reply
11-04-2010 @ 8:52PM
sonja said...Not all people who aren't getting or are delaying vacc. are doing it because of autism, many are choosing not to give an infant up to 6 vacc. in a single well child-check up...I don't see the point in over-doing it in one visit, we space them out...that doesn't make us bad or stupid parents, just concerned about all the things we are putting in our children...
Reply
11-04-2010 @ 10:02PM
Alicia said...That's understandable Even doing research and opting out of certain vaccines isn't bad parenting. However, forgoing vaccines altogether is foolish and does more harm than good.
11-05-2010 @ 10:49AM
tony bateson said...Here is something else that is anecdotal. You don't have to be a scientist to observe that there are seemingly no unvaccinated autistic people. I have been observing this apparent fact with increasing disbelief for fourteen years. They are not there, they don't exist, there aren't any, is this anecdotal enough for you.
There should be, if any single claim from the pro vaccine lobby is to be believed, but there aren't and so their claims are junk. The only game in town for the autism/vaccine issue is whether there is such a thing as an unvaccinated autistic person - just one, only one might prove something but the absence of any seems to prove something else. Autism is only found in the presence of vaccination.
Tony Bateson, Oxford, UK.
Reply
11-05-2010 @ 10:59AM
Chris said...Tony Bateson, are you forgetting that you have been told several times that Kim Stagliano's youngest autistic daughter is not vaccinated, or that even Generation Rescue's silly phone survey found unvaxed autistic kids?
Um, yeah... and what was your response: "None of the five were substantiated, Kim Stagliano has not approached me, Generation Rescue has not approached me, several parents have not told me any such thing about having a next child who was unvaccinated."
From the LeftBrainRightBrain blog dated 13 Sept. 2010.
12-15-2010 @ 11:08PM
Nevyn said...There are studies that show NO difference between rates of autism between vaccinated or unvaccinated.
Your refusal to acknowledge them doesn't make them disappear, any more than pretending autism has anything at all to do with vaccines makes it true. There is no connection.
Stop lying to yourself and others, and take care of your kids. That includes getting them vaccinated.