The Issue

Here’s the issue. Jenny McCarthy, ex-Playboy model and actress, claims that her son developed autism from the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. She has been speaking out as a progressive, concerned mom, and as a result parents around the nation have opted out of vaccinating their kids. 

Jenny McCarthy has authored multiple books about her son’s experience with autism and how he recovered from it a few years later. 

TIME magazine interviewed McCarthy shortly after her fifth book, Healing and Preventing Autism, here’s an excerpt of the interview: 

TIME: Your book points out that autism rates between 1983 and 2008 have climbed in lockstep with vaccination rates, yet childhood obesity, diabetes and even cell-phone use have soared since then, too. Why do you find causation in one and not the others?

McCarthy: I’m not saying it’s only the vaccines. But children are given so many shots from the moment they’re born. They get multiple injections all at once, and if they fall behind, doctors put them on a catch-up schedule. Babies get the hepatitis B vaccine immediately after they’re born and the only way for a newborn to contract that disease is if the mother is a carrier. Why not just screen the mother? Evan was handed to me pre-vaccinated with a Band-Aid on his foot.

TIME: Most people who blame autism on vaccines point to the mercury in the shots, yet mercury has been removed from most vaccines and autism rates continue to climb.

McCarthy: We don’t believe it’s only the mercury. Aluminum and other toxins also play a role. The viruses in the vaccines themselves can be causing it, too.

TIME: You write in your book that when your son began to emerge from the worst of his autism he said that having the condition felt like being buried alive. What’s the most important thing a parent can do to help draw a child out?

McCarthy: Just remember that there is a very alert, bright, loving sweet child in there who simply looks like he doesn’t care and can’t hear you. They very much know what’s going on. Evan has repeated things to me that I said to him when he was three and in his worst state.

My Opinion

Obviously this is not a new problem and is the least newsworthy thing I could write about, but I have been harboring this opinion in my hate-filled heart for quite some time. Here’s my raw, most likely unpopular opinion. Keep in mind that I am not an autism expert, nor am I a doctor fluent with the ins and outs of vaccinations. 

Jenny McCarthy is full of garbage. There is no way that I can logically believe her when she says that a vaccination gave her son autism. There is no way that I can ever believe it. Ever. How would that even happen? Autism is not a blood disease. It’s not even a disease. It’s a disorder. Saying that you got autism from a vaccination is like saying you got schizophrenia from kicking a soccer ball. It’s completely unrelated. 

I would bet that Jenny McCarthy’s son had autism his whole life (like every child with autism) she just didn’t recognize the “red flags” of autistic children. This isn’t hard to comprehend, since parents tend to put their children on pedestals and deny anything is wrong with them. I’m sure that Jenny McCarthy was put in a difficult position when her son was diagnosed and was looking for someone to blame, which is a very normal thing to do. People do it all the time. When your car gets broken into you say. “someone broke into my car,” instead of “my car was broken into.” It’s only natural to look for somebody to blame. 

I have enough faith in the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) to believe that the vaccinations they create and approve are safe for the everyday human being. It is much easier for me to believe in a government agency such as the CDC over an ex-Playboy model like Ms. McCarthy. 

As corrupt as you may think the government is, I seriously doubt that they would devise a vaccine that gave people autism. The vaccines undergo rigorous testing before they are allowed to be distributed. Additionally, why would anyone do that? I’m not trying to say that our government doesn’t have issues –because it does –but there is no way that they could benefit from a bunch of kids getting autism from vaccines. There’s no advantage to it. 

Another issue that makes it difficult for me to believe Jenny McCarthy’s misinformed story is the fact that millions of other children have gotten the same vaccine –the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) shot –and they don’t have autism. If every child who got vaccinated was diagnosed with autism it would make a very compelling case. But that isn’t what happened. 

Jenny McCarthy caused an unnecessary vaccine scare. Sure, her cause is noble. But it makes parents afraid of getting their kids vaccinated. 

Take a look at what happened in Ashland, Oregon. In 2008 the amount of children who were not immunized reached a sky-high 30%. To put this into perspective, this is over seven times the state-wide percentage and almost twelve times over the national percentage, according to a 2008 article by MSNBC. Why? Because they were afraid of vaccine-related disorders… like autism. 

What happened in Ashland? A measles outbreak happened. A bunch of the un-immunized children came down with measles and the CDC had to document every case. Every. Single. Case. All because some paranoid parents didn’t want their kids vaccinated like the remaining 99% of the country. 

Let me tell you something. 99% of the United States does not have autism or a vaccine related issue. It is completely ridiculous to put your children in danger of getting a disease like measles, mumps, or rubella, just because you’re afraid they might come down with a problem. The damage that can be done from getting a disease that a vaccine prevents is much less than the damage that could possibly be caused by getting inoculated. 

As if this wasn’t enough, Jenny McCarthy’s scientific back-up turned out to be falsified. Andrew Wakefield is an English scientist who conducted the study that concluded that the MMR vaccine indeed can causes autism. Jenny McCarthy seemingly had all of the evidence she needed until it turned out that nobody could replicate Wakefield’s studies. In fact, those who did attempt to replicate his study came up with opposite results. There is literally no supporting evidence that vaccines can cause autism. The New York Times said in their 2011 article, “The British Medical Journal concluded that the research was not just unethically financed but also ‘fraudulent’ (that timelines were misrepresented, for example, to suggest direct culpability of the vaccine).” 

The article went on to say that Andrew Wakefield used excessive amounts of scientific jargon to confuse the listeners of his presentation and avert their attention away from his falsified data. 

I say that Andrew Wakefield is directly responsible for the MMR vaccine scare. It is embarrassing that a scientist of his stature would falsify data and cause an unnecessary panic amongst concerned parents that could potentially do damage to their own children. 

We have vaccines for a reason. Do you know why? Because nobody wants to get measles, mumps, or rubella. 

In short, I think Andrew Wakefield is a scum bag for conducting a fraudulent study and I think Jenny McCarthy is tragically misinformed. I don’t think she’s stupid (well maybe I do), but I think that her celebrity status accompanied by the trauma of her son being diagnosed with autism and Andrew Wakefield’s bogus study caused a nation-wide freak out that didn’t need to happen. 

Did I mention that she said her son recovered from autism? Weird, right? Sounds fishy to me.