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- Apr 12, 2005
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Why is Oprah Winfrey promoting vaccine skeptic Jenny McCarthy?
Chastising a celebrity is an exercise in futility. You feel like a kitten being held by the scruff of its neck, scrabbling wildly in the air without drawing blood. Pointless as this may be, though, I will try to talk some sense into Oprah Winfrey, who has decided to go into business with vaccine skeptic Jenny McCarthy.
There is abundant evidence that vaccines don't cause autism. More than a dozen studies, as well as trend data from California and other states, show that neither the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal nor the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism. In March, a federal court dismissed both of these theories in a most definitive way after hearing weeks of testimony and gathering thousands of pages of evidence.
Jenny McCarthy begs to differ. McCarthy dropped out of nursing school in 1993 to become a Playboy bunny and later starred in an MTV show that focused on her bodily functions. She believes that vaccines made her 7-year-old son autistic—and that she "recovered" him with alternative therapies, as she details in her parenting books. McCarthy has appeared regularly on Larry King Live and Oprah to blast the medical establishment, and last year she led a march on Washington to demand that children get fewer vaccines.
:roll:
I just hope stupidity isn't contagious as we don't have a vaccine for that yet.
Chastising a celebrity is an exercise in futility. You feel like a kitten being held by the scruff of its neck, scrabbling wildly in the air without drawing blood. Pointless as this may be, though, I will try to talk some sense into Oprah Winfrey, who has decided to go into business with vaccine skeptic Jenny McCarthy.
There is abundant evidence that vaccines don't cause autism. More than a dozen studies, as well as trend data from California and other states, show that neither the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal nor the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism. In March, a federal court dismissed both of these theories in a most definitive way after hearing weeks of testimony and gathering thousands of pages of evidence.
Jenny McCarthy begs to differ. McCarthy dropped out of nursing school in 1993 to become a Playboy bunny and later starred in an MTV show that focused on her bodily functions. She believes that vaccines made her 7-year-old son autistic—and that she "recovered" him with alternative therapies, as she details in her parenting books. McCarthy has appeared regularly on Larry King Live and Oprah to blast the medical establishment, and last year she led a march on Washington to demand that children get fewer vaccines.
:roll:
I just hope stupidity isn't contagious as we don't have a vaccine for that yet.
