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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Jenny McCarthy on CNN: The stupid burns out the Intranets

I guess that since my resistance failed, and I couldn’t resist posting yesterday about the burning stupid that is Jenny McCarthy and her arrogance of ignorance in claiming that vaccines caused her son’s autism and her campaigning to “Green Our Vaccines” (in reality, a smokescreen to hide her antivaccinationism), I thought why not go whole hog and get it out of my system? Let’s just take in a concentrated dose, as the more Jenny talks the more she discredits the antivaccine movement among anyone with a lick of scientific literacy:

Jenny’s on fire with stupid! She starts right out saying “without a doubt in my mind I believe that vaccinations triggered Evan’s autism,” and it goes downhill from there, going on about being a “firsthand witness” to Evan’s regression. It’s all there, including the “evil pharma” gambit, in which she says there is “such a huge business in pharmaceuticals.” The piece de resistance?

In response to a quote about children dying from vaccine-preventable disease, Jenny says:

People are also dying from vaccination. Evan my son died in front of me for two minutes. So you ask any mother in the autism community if we’ll take the flu, the measles over autism, any frickin’ day of the week. So I think they need to wake up and stop hurting our kids. And we’re not telling people not to vaccinate. I don’t understand why it’s so frickin’ hard to comprehend we deserve safe shots and a safer schedule.

Here we go again. I have a message for Jenny: We do have safe vaccines. The current vaccination schedule is safe. The science supporting that contention is overwhelming. You rely on nothing other than pseudoscience and quackery to back up your claims, as you do when you make your claims that Evan was “healed” with biomedical treatment. If he was “healed,” why is it that you said you planned on chelating him a few months back?

Of course, Jenny thinks the medical community doesn’t want you to know about these “cures”:

The reason the medical community has such a problem with this is because we are treating and healing a vaccine injury.

She then blames “greed” for the vaccine schedule. It’s again the same old tired whine.

You know, if anything, I think Jenny McCarthy in 2008 is even dumber–if that’s possible–than the Jenny McCarthy from one year ago. She’s drifted even further into quackery and paranoia; she’s in Whale.to country now, and it’s not pretty. I show this mainly to demonstrate just how painful it is to watch her arrogance of ignorance these days. Normally, I wouldn’t care that much if she were just subjecting herself to such quackery, but she’s subjecting an innocent child to it. Not only that, she’s urging thousands of mothers eerywhere to subject their children to it as well, while denying them the basic medical care of vaccines.

No, I don’t believe for a minute her claim that she is not “anti-vaccine.” She’s said explicitly that if she ever has another child she won’t vaccinate ever. She can’t articulate what it would take to “green” vaccines enough to persuade her that vaccines are safe. The reason, of course, is that it’s what’s in vaccines that actually does the job that scares her.

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By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

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