So, a panel of pediatricians releases a consensus report saying that there is no evidence that autistic children benefit from special diets.

ABC News wanted to get an expert from the other side to weigh in on this issue, so naturally THEY CALLED JENNY MCCARTHY.

See, she’s an expert because her kid has autism, she used to be in Playboy, and she has anecdotal evidence! God, why won’t the scientists listen to her anecdotal evidence?!? It’s so convincingly anecdotal!

Here’s the clip.

Between this and the argument I got into with climate change deniers on Facebook this morning, I’m feeling a little sad about the future, iSlate or no iSlate.

via Forbes

Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys.

41 replies on “Don’t Listen to Jenny McCarthy, Either”

  2. If anybody ever needed convincing that people on the crunchy granola Left were just as likely to be taken in by emotionally charged anecdotes and pseudoscience as their counterparts on the Right, the groundswell of support for McCarthy’s anti-vaccination movement should be all the proof they need.

    Anti-science hysteria and Policy by Wishful Thinking™ — not just for climate change deniers anymore!

  3. That is a shame:
    “bla bla…until doctors start listening to the anecdotal evidence like, this is work-ING…”

    How embarrassing to have her for a spokesperson.

  4. I went to an Oprah show taping a couple of years ago that happened to be about autism. The primary guest was a mom whose kid had autism… toward the end, Oprah had a doctor who was an autism specialist in the audience, basically saying there’s been no link between vaccines and autism. And the “rebuttal” was esentially, the mom saying, but I know for my child it was a factor.

    Now, I’m not wading into the vaccine issue here (lord knows I think the standard vaccine schedule for infants has its problems), but I just was struck by how it was set up like “science” vs. “one mom’s gut feeling”. As if those two points of view were equally valid.

  5. I am sorry we aren’t all lemmings that inject our precious children with some such without question. I admire her for standing up. I also think that not vaccinating children is a deadly mistake. I grew up right after the great polio epidemics. So question, sure, but then move on. Autism is a sad and terrible illness. But I just don’t believe it’s caused by Thimeresol.

  6. I genuinely like Jenny McCarthy (She’s definitely proven herself much smarter than the average Playmate) and am sympathetic to her situation WRT raising an autistic child but sweet Jesus do I ever cringe whenever she starts talking about this issue.

  8. @Vince,

    I’m not sure what questions you need answers for. We have tons of scientific evidence that vaccines are safe and effective, and the arguments against are a few studies that have shown to be fudged and anecdotal evidence. How can science better answer your questions?

    @Julie in Eugene,

    What exactly is your problem with the vaccine schedule? There doesn’t seem to be any scientific reason to oppose it.

  9. @Proteus,

    Left wing anti science nuts tend to make me madder than the right wing ones. With the right wing ones I can at least understand their motivation for opposing science (money and power), but what’s the benefit of killing kids by not vaccinating them? How exactly does Homeopathy benefit anyone but Homeopaths and those selling the remedies?

  10. Anti-vaccination people are so funny – up until the point when they expose us all to deadly microbes because their children are walking Petri dishes…

  12. Unfortunately, science will always have to deal with people who don’t understand what real evidence is. We live in a world where not everyone has the time to understand everything.

    But wouldn’t it be nice if they at least knew enough to but out of areas where they don’t belong.

  15. I have a theory, it’s totally based in bullshit, but here it is:

    Women are used to being dismissed by their doctors when they present a list of symptoms that are seemingly unrelated (“Doc, I’m depressed and anxious, my period’s irregular, my skin is dry and my hair is falling out.” “Hmm, let’s put you on the pill and see if that helps your PMS.”). So when they bring in their child who is not developing “normally” and they are looking for a fix but are told a) there is no problem or b) there is no cure, they don’t believe the doctor because the doctor has never been much help to begin with.

    But then you go to the Acupuncturist or the Massage Therapist or the Naturopath, and they take you seriously and they have an answer (“Your chi is stagnant.” “You have calcified ligaments in your joints.” “You need to take these supplements and eat a dairy-free diet.”). And you trust and believe in Western Medicine and science even less.

    Anti-vaccination groups are simply attractive to these women for the same reasons, I think.

  17. Augh.

    I don’t know at what point this false standard of “balance” became part of mainstream journalistic doctrine, but it’s been the worst thing to happen to news, especially science news, in… well, in the entire era of modern journalism.

    Look, media chuckleheads: you don’t need to find some fruitcake spaz to disagree every single time there’s a health or science story. You really, really don’t. I don’t know what they taught you in journalism school but there genuinely aren’t two equal sides to every story.

    For fuck’s sake.

  18. @8 – I honestly haven’t done the full research on the topic that I would need to do once I do have kids (or, if I did want to jump fully into the vaccine discussion). So, I’m not going to whip out a bunch of studies or links. But, I’ve heard/read a bunch of things about newborn vaccinations that just don’t make any sense to me.

    For example, in Illinois it’s mandatory that all that newborns receive the Hepatitis B before leaving the hospital (unless parents sign documents opting out). But, the primary sources of Hep B transmission are (1) sexual activity, (2) passed from mother to baby. So… why does a newborn baby need the vaccine within a day of being born, if the mother doesn’t have Hep B? Why couldn’t it wait until they are a little older? I mean, I understand that this may be the right thing from a public health perspective, but if I, as a mother, have tested negative for Hep B, why is the vaccine immediately necessary? I’m absolutely pro-vaccinations, but I am also the type of person who would put some thought/research into things to make sure that I’m taking the best approach.

  19. We actually do autism research. Most parents of an autistic child just plain stop having any more kids, even if they thought they wanted them all their lives.

    Look, when we find something useful, we’ll tell you.

    And then the media will distort it and you’ll think that autism is caused by doing hot yoga near glaciers when we said it was caused by running marathons and drinking pink sugar’d iced tea.

  21. @18 I know this sounds gross and really fucked up….but there are crazy people out there who fuck small children…..

    just sayin’

  22. Sometimes vaccines are given simply because it might be the optimum time for the body to receive them. There are shots you can get as a child that would require many more booster shots if you received them as an adult, for example.

  23. So a google search for the hep b question shows me that hep b shots for newborns is a HOT topic for vaccine naysayers.

    But think about this…in adults, Hep B can be passed in ways similar to HIV. Bodily fluids.

    Ever played “blood brothers” as a kid? I did. Imagine if that other kid had Hep B. I might be stuck with a chronic illness early on. Maybe I’d wind up with a serious illness early on as a result. A newborn babies immune system is awfully strong and the child is not in danger from a viral infection because only pieces of the virus are used.

    Add to that the fact that newborns don’t even receive mercury shots anymore and I can’t really understand the qualms. Your kid is at more risk from medical issues via circumcision.

  24. They got her because there ARE NO reputable scientists that believe vaccines cause autism. The scientific evidence is that strong.

    And most scientists/members of the medical community want to do what’s best for our children. Which is protect them from deadly diseases.

    Not vaccinating your child is a selfish act. The health of all our children (and especially those with immune deficiencies) depends on herd immunity.

  25. Can someone explain to me (no, really) how my vaccinated child is endangered by someone else’s unvaccinated child?

    Is it because vaccinations aren’t 100% effective, so the fewer unvaccinated child my child is around, the better?

  26. Your vaccinated kid is probably safe for the most part, but, for whatever reason, not every kid can or is vaccinated for everything and it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault.

    For example, when I was born they found out I had a terrible allergic reaction to the pertussis vaccine. This is a disease that’s awful for young children if they do get it but my body was simply allergic to it for one reason or another. Fortunately, almost every OTHER child WAS vaccinated for the disease so I wasn’t at much risk.

  27. Correct- vaccines aren’t 100% effective for the individual. One of the main goals of vaccination programs is actually to achieve “herd immunity”; making enough members immune that there are not enough disease carriers to hold and spread the disease in the population. This protects those with weaker immune systems, infants too young to receive vaccines, and also older individuals who are vaccinated but may not have had a recent booster.

  28. Part of the anti vaccine movement has an agenda to push “alternative” medicine as the answer. Some of them push disproven crap like homeopaty (distilled water sold at high prices.) Their agenda includes a vapid contempt for modern medicine.

    When alternative treatements are proven to work we just call them medicine. There is not now and never has been an effort by western medicine to suppress alternative medicine. Alternative medicine should be brough under the same regulation as Rx medicine. Why should it be given a free pass merely becaue it is called alternative? Make no mistake about it Big Alternative is driven by profits every bit as much as Big Pharma.

    By definition modern (western) medicine has not been around as long as other nedicines, but modern medicine has saved and improved more lives than all other forms of medicine combined over all of history.

  29. @9 [“How exactly does Homeopathy benefit anyone but Homeopaths and those selling the remedies?”]:

    Homeopathy saved Billy Joel’s and Christie Brinkley’s daughter because she tried to kill herself by OD’ing on homeopathic “pills.”

  32. Just general info. I am glad that Joel and Brinkley’s daughter is okay. Sh could have taken 1000 homeopathic pills and been just fine. When you think about the “theory” behind homeopathy one would need to take the lowest possibe concentration of a preparation to have a suicidial effect.

  34. Smallpox was eliminated by vaccinating a high enough percentage of the population that it went extinct. We drive species to extinction all time by destroying their environment. Diseases work the same way: if hosts are spread thin enough, it dies out.

    That’s why polio has been pushed to the edge of extinction in the developed world.

    But I guess we can forget about eradicating mumps and whooping cough and rubella and measles and all those other diseases. Because some kook thinks they made a discovery that dumb old science couldn’t figure out. Thanks, fuckheads.

    You morons are also the reason we had a swine flu vaccine shortage instead of increasing the supply like we could have: because Americans are ignorant rubes. Stupid fuckers.

  35. @20 – I read your link and it still doesn’t give (to me anyways) a satisfactory answer to why the hep b vaccine should be given at birth for a negative mother, vs. some later time (say at 6 weeks or 3 months when their immune system is more fully mature).

    I think it’s a little disingenuous to imply that yep, doctors have this whole vaccine thing completely figured out and the current standard schedule is totally perfect, when, frankly, other countries recommend different schedules (e.g., New Zealand, because it was the first google result, recommends the first Hep b dose at 6 weeks if the mother is negative).

    I’m a full believer in doing what’s correct for public health (hence, why I’m pro-vaccination), but if it makes sense to modify the recommendations based on my (hypothetical future) kid’s specific situation, then I’m going to do so (e.g., not a vaccine issue, but if I’ve tested negative for gonorrhea and chlamydia why should my newborn have silver nitrate put on their eyes?, etc.).

  36. “Can someone explain to me (no, really) how my vaccinated child is endangered by someone else’s unvaccinated child?”

    It’s not your child. It’s your baby. Many people have babies or toddlers who aren’t fully (or haven’t yet been) vaccinated. You go to pick up your older (vaccinated) at school and your toddler interacts with the non-vaccinated kid. Who gives them chicken pox or measles or polio. You’ll have a pretty sick child.

    Wait! I know, polio? Measles? Guess what? They are back in action in some countries in Africa. And Seattle has many African immigrants from many countries and a lot are in Seattle public schools.

    My three oldest siblings had polio; one was paralyzed for 6 months when she was 4.

    And fyi, if your child doesn’t get vaccinated for meningitis, you have a very, very short window of time to save their life.

    It’s not a game. And just remember, those parents whose kids aren’t vaccinated are counting on those kids who are (in large numbers) to be the buffer against their kids getting sick.

  37. We have chosen a slightly modified vax schedule for our child. I didn’t think he needed Hep B vax at birth. We’re delaying the chicken pox vax for later, as well as Hep A (apparently WA is a big state for Hep A).

    Some of my reasoning for delaying certain vaccines comes directly from the anxiety of parents of autistic children that plays into my own anxiety. It is difficult to make the decision when you know personally or see in the media, distraught parents of autistic children saying that their child was fine when they went for their vaccine and came out autistic.

    Just one parent’s experience.

  38. Regarding soupytwist’s comment #15 above, the Complementary and Alternative Medicine/Integrative Healthcare providers dispense “The Three T’s” that are not well delivered by allopathic “Western medicine” doctors/providers, and as a result, these Three T’s compel a vulnerable patient to seek and trust these agents and systems of care:

    1) Time (ie, they spend un-rushed time with patients)
    2) Touch (ie, their methods of therapy involve comforting or other physical touch)
    3) Talk (they talk to and listen to their patients)

    I’m a pediatrician. Allopathic providers (myself included) and advocates in policy would likely benefit from understanding the influence of these Three T’s.

  40. I believe that Jenny McCarthy is a Narcissist. Her beauty and charming personality make whatever she says very seductive and believable, and it’s only natural that a vulnerable person would be captivated by what she says. Narcissists are so convincing, and their lack of empathy for others makes them very, very dangerous. Narcissists have an insatiable need to portray themselves as “humanitarians” making their victims even more unaware of their true motives. They only care about themselves, and in so doing they ruin lives without remorse–in fact, they make it appear that it is the victim’s fault. The fact that a newsperson as well-respected as Diane Sawyer cannot see this, and would choose to interview Jenny McCarthy just proves how desperate the news media has become for ratings. I am embarrassed for Diane, and was relieved to see that others are as distraught about this as I am. It is my fervent prayer that people will see Jenny McCarthy for who she really is, and that her 15 minutes of fame will be over so that she can’t continue to destroy lives with her misinformation.

  41. I just read through the linked consensus report above. It seems that their main conclusion was that there isn’t conclusive evidence through controlled studies to prove that autistic children benefit from autistic children. This doesn’t mean that it’s not true, it just means that there need to be studies in that area. So, if you’re using this as proof against, it’s not.

    Ian

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