A loving ode to Jenny McCarthy from her good friends, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella:
Genius. That’s all I can say.
Thank you Brian Thompson, a.k.a. the Amateur Scientist. And to you, Jenny McCarthy, the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella offer their profound thanks for saving them from eradication in the U.S., just as they’ve offered their thanks to Andrew Wakefield for saving them from eradication in the U.K..
Bloggers, you know what to do. Spread this video far and wide. E-mail it to your friends. Even better, e-mail it to antivaccinationists. Let’s see if we can make this sucker go viral. (Hey, it’s worth a shot.)
60 replies on “The Jenny McCarthy Song”
Fantastic!
Great folk song, great sound, and great message.
I just saw this on YouTube and thought of Orac right away.
Don’t think any of my friends would get this. I do see it really racking up the views, though. Especially when the mommy militia and the conspiracy nuts arrive.
Brilliant! Sending it around as I write.
What’s the correlation ratio between models and stupidity? This is definitive proof that gene drift has no foresight.
He he. “go viral” and “worth a shot”
/humor appreciated
Will get this circulating
Killer measles, that’s hilarious
“Someone who picks their nose on MTV is more trusted than the doctors at the CDC”. Brilliant.
Sid Offit:
Yep, usually one out of a thousand. More recent research from Japan (where mumps vaccination is voluntary, therefore they have lots of mumps going around) shows that deafness from mumps is not as rare as they thought it was. From a study called An office-based prospective study of deafness in mumps:
So we have Jenny McCarthy to thank when kids start becoming deaf, blind and even dead because of reduced uptake of the MMR.
Priceless. I was just watching something similar – a discussion of the Darwin Awards. Maybe they need to come up with a Mommy Darwin Awards for Parents who exterminate children or just make the children sterile, due to the ignorance of the parent.
Chris
Sid Offit:
Killer measles, that’s hilarious
Yep, usually one out of a thousand.
That’s actually 1 in 10,000 since only 10% of cases were reported in the pre-vaccine era because the disease was so mild – that’s mild not deadly. Then realize these deaths were not even from the measles but related to the measles. Then factor in lifestyle related cofactors and medical errors – the same that kill 100K per year today. All that considered it’s actually more than hilarious to call the measles a killer. It’s like calling someone who hits one home run over a twenty year career a home run hitter. But I can understand how your undying love of vaccines clouds your perspective
“The incidence of hearing loss in children due to mumps was 7/7400 (approximately 1/1000 cases), which is higher than previously suggested. Prevention of deafness is another important reason for assuring universal immunization against mumps.”
1 in 1000 have hearing loss and that is tragic but the incidence of Autism is 1 in 150 or according to a new Cambridge University study, figures show 1 in 38 British boys have an autistic condition.
Yay, autism wins!
Sid,
And your undying love of Wakefield’s fraudulent research/profit scheme clouds your perspective. Even if your numbers weren’t a blatant guess your perspective is like a asking a pitcher to serve up a meatball to the pitcher on the other team when he comes up to bat hoping this won’t be the night’s ESPN lead in film.
A batter doesn’t have to be a home run hitter to smack it over the fence, so it is still a good idea to try and strike them out.
1 in 10,000 chance of death or 1 in over 1,000,000 chance of a serious reaction (usually fully recoverable) – your choice. If the MMR goes away and measles endemic again that is the choice. That doesn’t even count the unborn babies that die from Rubella. Or the serious disabilities caused by Mumps.
Moore,
Every single one of those autism cases is a result of vaccination? Hmm, you might want to let AoA’s Kim Stagliano know that her youngest must have gotten a vaccination in the middle of the night. Because as far as she is aware she is unvaccinated. And autistic.
Oh that’s right, they tend to hide those increasingly common cases that completely destroy the theory.
England and the US have rising numbers of unvaccinated. Autism rates continue to go up. Is this some kind of bizarro math they use in Antivax Land?
I am one of the 1000 in the statistics for developing hearing loss as a result of having the mumps. My parents didn’t vaccinate me or my siblings with MMR. I got to experience the pleasure of all three illnesses as a child.
I highly recommend a vaccine be given to every child to prevent the misery and after effects of the illnesses.
No you are not deaf Rowan. You’re a liar and I would bet my life on it that you’re not even Rowan. That would be way to convenient for you to stumble across this blog and refute the comments that were just made after ababa’s two comments at 1:00AM in the morning.
Sorry, but I ain’t buying it!
One of my friends tells the cautionary tale of his father who went deaf from the fever during measles. He hopes to counter all the celebrity anti-vaccination talk with a personal connection to someone who knows the measles is not a mild, harmless disease like a cold.
Kathryn
Moore Blvd: Hint, the Earth is spherical.
Also – I am Spartacus!
Kathryn, Sorry but this is a science blog and we can’t count personal connection or observation as real science.
I know what your friend told you probably seems real to you but it sounds like nothing more than pseudoscience.
Sid ;actually the numbers from WHO from 2004 suggest a mortality rate of even more than 1/1000 for measles so I’m not sure where you’re pulling your numbers from. Moore your happy to contest the legitimacy of Rowan but never addressed ababa’s posts.
Calling Poe on the regex known as Moore …
……riiiiight….that tactic only works on AoA…..
Ok Dr P Brain, I will address ababa’s post. “England and the US have rising numbers of unvaccinated. Autism rates continue to go up. Is this some kind of bizarro math they use in Antivax Land?”
Vaccinated children still get Measles, Mumps, and Rubella right? Herd immunuity right?
Maybe that same bullshit theory works in reverse? Maybe the vaccinated children spread these diseases instead of being protected by them?
Now that is really something to ponder. What if the vaccinated kids are responsible for the recent vaccine preventable diseases because the antigen they were injected with has gone awry?
@ Terracina:
“…Now that is really something to ponder. What if the vaccinated kids are responsible for the recent vaccine preventable diseases because the antigen they were injected with has gone awry?”
Wow, anti-vaxxer Bizarro-world.
Johannes9126: Quite.
You’d think that epidemiologists would have noticed that more occurrences of vaccine-preventable diseases than expected would be cropping up around vaccination sites – but presumably Big Pharma is using it’s Fog of Deceipt evil magic to hide this.
Johannes9126,
Is that really that Bizarre? I mean come on Johannes, do you think you can inject everyone with antigens and they will all be protected 100% without side effects?
Now pay attention because I am going to turn your absolute science world upside down with my reverse Herd immunity theory.
“Maybe the vaccinated children spread these diseases instead of being protected by them?”
Now that comment makes more common sense than anyone has ever posted on this blog.
As far as I know my child has never come in contact with measles, mumps, or, rubella, but, ….the vaccinated children can’t make that same claim,…can they?
Now I ask you…. how in the hell do you blame the unvaccinated for spreading diseases that there is no proof they have come in to contact with, when vaccinated children that are supposably injected with the antigen definitely have come in to contact with these diseases through vaccines? Who is more likely to spread MMR? Vaccinated or unvaccinated? Contact or no contact?
70
Thing is, most people buying this book will treat it as a ‘bible’ and Plimer the high priest (church of denial?). I guess it’s a lot easier reading a novel than reading something like AR4, which you won’t find at Walmart, Tesco, Big W or Target.
Moore: Can you please make up your mind viz your name?
To the meat of your point, such as it is – how in glubs name can you ‘prove’ that a given urchin has never been in contact with Disease X? Seal them in an airtight vault? Boil them in Domestos every day?
“Moore: Can you please make up your mind viz your name?”
Just trying to keep up with the Jones’s.
“You’d think that epidemiologists would have noticed that more occurrences of vaccine-preventable diseases than expected would be cropping up around vaccination sites”
“Vaccination sites” Would they?
Would they?
Er, that’s your premise.
No, that’s is your premise and what exactly are “vaccination sites”?
@ May:
Yeah, and the Big Pharma Magic is spreading stories about outbreaks in unvaccinated populations as well!
@ Moore:
“my reverse Herd immunity theory”
This is no theory. Not even a hypothesis (based on observation). It is only paranoid gibberish.
“As far as I know my child has never come in contact with measles, mumps, or, rubella, but, ….the vaccinated children can’t make that same claim,…can they?”
Tell that to the unvaccinated children (like f.e. in Switzerland or in Waldorf-schools) who get regular outbreaks. Unvaccinated =/= no contact.
OK, here comes the deliberate obtuseness. I forecast goalpost movement with occasional squalls of logical fallacies.
Anyway, it’s Friday night and I want a beer.
No. No it does not.
Sure you can put forth that ridiculous idea but can you back it up?
“…the incidence of Autism is 1 in 150”
Moore, you’re an idiot.
Moore: “As far as I know my child has never come in contact with measles, mumps, or, rubella.”
So you can SEE viruses coming at you with your naked eye? Fascinating!
Orac, you might be interested in following this story on the BBC News web site. Apparently authorities in South Wales are looking at a possible Measles outbreak with over 100 suspected cases.
Measles vaccination take up in some local schools (remember the UK has completely free healthcare for children) was as low as 15%!
All I can say is Please Please Please forward this! Jenny McCarthy has taken over the Autism community like some bad nightmare. All of us rational parents who believe in REAL science are being driven out in favor of her crazy treatments. It was bad when my son was diagnosed (2002) but it is getting worse. I can’t even go to a support group anymore!
Wow, Moore – conspiracy theory much? Peoples can read teh Interwebz after 1am Eastern? You mean everyone isn’t in the same timezone? Wow, thanks for giving us a good basis for your ability to reason – or are you just deliberately being dense?
You still haven’t addressed all of those unvaccinated autistic children. Dodge away!
And with all the name changing and bizarro world pontifications, there is no real evidence that the MMR has anything to do with autism.
It has been around since 1971, and not even used in some countries like Japan… and yet the autism numbers are still higher. Now measles and mumps are coming back, all because a lawyer paid publicity crazy gut doctor to cook up some “research”.
@Moore + Terracina:
It is important to note that an antigen is not the same as a pathogen. Antigens are not infectious, they are inert chunks of pathogens.
@ Moore and Terracina. I know that the antigen/ pathogen thing can be confusing, so I’ll try to make it clear with an analogy.
Let’s say that pathogens are giant Lego creations. For example, mumps might be a Star Destroyer. Now, I want to vaccinate myself so that the Star Destroyer doesn’t poke me in the eye (work with me here). So I get a vaccine. It’s a single, funny-looking Lego brick. Now, it looks like a Lego brick, but I’ve never seen one quite like this before. So I build a detector that exactly fits this one piece. That single brick is my antigen.
Then when I meet a Star Destroyer, my detector fits onto a part of the Star Destroyer that is shaped exactly like the piece I was given in my vaccine. So I am protected.
Now, since I only ever had that one part of the Star Destroyer, that single antigen, there is no way for me to make myself my very own Star Destroyer to share. Even if I had all the bricks, I don’t have the instructions to build it.
This is why an antigen cannot build a virus. Many vaccines now are a single antigen, rather than a whole dead virus, or a whole live virus.
I hope that helps you understand why “revers herd immunity” is impossible. Your body is not capable of building whole viruses and bacteria from single antigens.
I’m going to side-step all the troll dung here to comment on the video itself. I did not care for it, principally because I felt the message was diluted by the overwhelming attention paid to Jenny’s physique and career decisions.
I get the absurdity angle–millions of concerned parents are taking medical advice from an uneducated and vulgar celebrity. Do we need to repeatedly pan out from her generous decolletage in countless publicity photos to get that point across? Would it not have been more effective to show–at least in equal parts–the shrill, stupid ranting she’s become so infamous for on talk shows and at rallies? The dangerous idiocy of her words, and the ersatz platform of authority from which she delivers them, should be the focus. Suggesting that her message is flawed *because* she’s an attractively stacked woman (and thus obviously incapable of understanding science) takes a lot of the potency out of this video, imo.
@44 – agreed.
Perhaps a clip of her shrieking “STFU” at the other members of a panel because they don’t agree with her, inserted as a chorus.
Or just use stock footage from Jenny’s MTV days. Remind people of what she was doing when real doctors were treating patients, doing research and getting degrees.
I agree with @44, 45 and 46. Any number of other visuals could have been used. After the first “verse” I was getting really disgusted with the repetition. She isn’t even very good-looking for a model and since I’ve never seen her rant (don’t have T.V.–by choice), would like to have seen a bit of that. But I did like the song! Did she really pick her nose on MTV? And who is the father of her child? Does he have any opinions on all this?
Okay, I looked it up and actor John Asher is the father of Evan, but am still looking to see if he has a public opinion on all this or has Carrey just taken over?
I disagree with @44 et al. The video is amusing, and it doesn’t have to be high brow to make its point. The problem here is you are trying to tell the video what message it should have been making. And you clearly disagree with the author himself.
I can assure you I am 70% deaf in my left ear and 20% in my right. I was diagnosed with the hearing loss at nine years old. I had the mumps immediately followed by the chicken pox at the age of eight.
I also have tinnitus which sounds as if I am listening to multiple high pitched tones which are never ceasing.
My name is my own. I am sorry if you do not like it Moore Blvd. As for stumbling across this blog that is hardly the case. I read Orac daily and have done so for well over a year. I even post periodically in threads as you may ascertain for yourself.
Dude, low-brow can be hella funny. In this case, however, my opinion is that it’s used clumsily (and–however unintentionally–somewhat misogynistically) and thus risks detracting from the central, very important message.
Wrong. I and the others who have chimed in are making suggestions for the content of what we feel would be a more effective video–same ultimate message, different approach. And as far as I can tell, there’s no ‘problem’ here, unless you have an objection to free speech and constructive criticism.
I’m not sure which ‘author’ you are referring to–Orac or Brian Thompson–but if you have any doubts on where I stand w/r/t the vaccine issue, feel free to search ‘Danio’ comments on this blog.
I do realize this is just a silly YouTube video that probably took about an hour to make, and not an official AAP public service announcement. However, Orac’s enthusiastic support of it, and admonishments to make it go viral may elevate it to more than a joke montage. He’s an extremely powerful machine, after all.
Jenny has done plenty of idiotic, egregious things specifically relevant to her anti-vaccination stance in the last month alone, nevermind the past three years or so that she’s been screeching about this shit. Hence, with a veritable smorgasbord of germane idiocy from which to choose, highlighting her former bimbo status in an attempt to discredit her seems irrelevant and petty. I hate to invoke the dreaded F-word, but sometimes, at least in principle, it’s worth considering.
Jenny McCarthy: vacuous chucklehead whose main claim to fame is being photographed in various states of undress and picking her nose on television. Why are people granting this woman any level of credibility ?
@Kirsten
“Jenny McCarthy has taken over the Autism community like some bad nightmare. All of us rational parents who believe in REAL science are being driven out in favor of her crazy treatments. It was bad when my son was diagnosed (2002) but it is getting worse. I can’t even go to a support group anymore!”
You are so right. And they have taken over the online autism support groups as well. I quit the support groups around my area years ago (son also diagnosed in 2002) after mothers ranted in my face after I was asked to give highlights from a medical meeting in Boston arranged by Dr. Margaret Baumann (a real expert in autism). I was afraid for my kids, I was holding my weeks old infant and I thought one might hit me. One mother literally lost her sanity, ranting that vaccines cause autism. She wouldn’t stop when the LCSW running the group asked her. Never went back.
My roofer/contractor, who has a son with autism, has more critical thinking skills than JM. He said yesterday, “there is more mercury in a swordfish dinner than in vaccines”.
This whole video is based on a lie, Jenny and Jim went on record on Larry King that she supported going back to the 1983 schedule, which included the MMR. So you guys who claim to be “rational” and “skeptic” are lying, she doesn’t oppose the MMR. So you can keep creating straw men, or learn to stop lying.
@Cooder:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0804/03/cnr.04.html
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0904/03/lkl.01.html
April 2009 Larry King
Nice try, Liars.
CARREY: We are not saying don’t vaccinate. That’s the thing we want to get really clear right now with …
KING: Let’s make it clear. MCCARTHY: Yeah, we’re not.
CARREY: This is the thing. There’s a lot of misdirection going on. We hear the Campbell Browns and people like this that are saying, you can’t not vaccinate. No one has ever suggested not vaccinating.
MCCARTHY: Go back to 1989 schedule when shots were only 10 and the MMR was on that list. I don’t know what happened in 1990, there was no plague that was killing children that we had to triple the amount of vaccines.
Cooler, you assert Jenny & Jim’s position on the MMR based on the fact that they support the 1983 vaccine schedule which included the MMR. I’m going by her other public statements that measles is not a serious childhood disease and preferable to autism. Where is the lie?
Nice video. I will send this video to my face book friends.
A few notes on the growth of the diagnoses of Autism.
1) Autism includes five sub-disorders under the name autism spectrum disorder. This was not always the case. In the early 90âs the new definitions for âautismâ meant greater inclusion for children previously ignored (CDC 2007). The new Autism dx definitions allow for a much larger number of individuals with “autism”. Perhaps this scenario is more likely to explain the increases in âautismâ dx than the vaccination scenario.
2) According to a 2006 study (Shattuck), there is a correlation between the increased dx of âautismâ and the decrease of dx of mental retardation and learning disabilities. Perhaps the increase of âautismâ is that children previously considered MR and LD are now under the umbrella dx of âautismâ. This seems like a more likely scenario than the vaccination scenario.
3) The anti vaccination element have not really defined which spectrum disorder they believe is caused by vaccinations. Rhetts? Aspergers? Pervasive developmental disorder? These disorders do not present themselves similarly and it is unlikely the causation of the disorders is the same. Rhetts only presents itself in females, meaning that at least one form of autism is genetically related; Childhood disintegrative disorder onsets after three years of age, so this one is unlikely to be caused by vaccinations. Point being that you canât use blanket terms such as âautismâ and assume it includes all autistic children in the same boat, but it seems the anti vaccination element make no distinction when using âautismâ.
4) Increased dx of âautismâ is also directly correlated to the medical and educational communityâs greater understanding and increased knowledge regarding âautismâ. Perhaps the recent jump has more to do with this than it does with vaccination.
5) The age of onset âappearsâ around when these children get their vaccinations. This also corresponds approximately to the age children start developing socially. It is when you would start to notice bizarre social behavior which is an indicator of âautismâ
6) So when does a woman who got famous for being naked for money become an expert on anything other than getting naked for money? Anti vaccination clan please find someone with a modicum of knowledge about the subject for which he/she advocates. Having a child with autism makes you an expert about your child, not the disorder or other individualâs children.