Jenny McCarthy is NOT a Doctor

Jenny McCarthy is an actress, comedian, and a former Playboy Playmate. Regrettably, her son Evan was diagnosed with autism in 2005 (although the symptoms are more consistent with Landau–Kleffner syndrome, which is frequently misdiagnosed as autism). Shortly after the diagnosis, she published a book titled Louder than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism in which she stated that she felt her son’s vaccination was responsible for triggering her son’s autism. She reiterated this claim during her appearance on both Larry King Live and The Oprah Winfrey Show. On neither occasion were qualified physicians or scientists invited to speak to the issue. McCarthy has restated these claims on multiple occasions since. One might wonder precisely how she came to this conclusion.

Part of the confusion stems from the laymen’s inability to distinguish correlation from causation. "Correlation does not imply causation" is a phrase used in science and statistics to emphasize that correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one causes the other. In this case, autism has a tendency to surface at approximately the same time in life that children are getting their vaccinations. For many people, the automatic assumption was that the vaccinations were causing the autism. After this correlation was made by various observers, researchers decided the matter should be scrutinized more closely.
The supposed connection between vaccines and autism was raised in a 1998 paper in The Lancet, a respected British medical journal. Later investigation (particularly by Sunday Times journalist Brian Deer) discovered that the lead author of the article, Andrew Wakefield, had multiple undeclared conflicts of interest, had manipulated evidence, and had broken other ethical codes. The Lancet paper was retracted, and Wakefield was found guilty of serious professional misconduct in May 2010.

The claims in the Lancet article were widely reported. Vaccination rates in the UK and Ireland dropped sharply, which in turn led to greatly increased incidence of measles and mumps, resulting in a few deaths and some severe and permanent injuries. Following the initial claims in 1998, multiple large epidemiologic studies were undertaken by the world’s most recognized institutions. Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the UK National Health Service, and the Cochrane Library all found no link between the vaccine and autism. Each and every study concluded that “..the evidence of the safety and effectiveness of MMR in the prevention of diseases that still carry a heavy burden of morbidity and mortality justifies its global use”, and that the lack of confidence in the vaccine has damaged public health.

Currently, a total of 31 separate scientific studies have been conducted by the world’s most credible and esteemed institutions, and they have each concluded that there is no connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Jenny McCarthy seems wholly uninterested in the multiple, credible studies undertaken to assess the link between the MMR vaccine and autism. She would rather base her opinions on a single, fraudulent study, undertaken in 1998 by one (highly suspect) researcher who was caught manipulating data and routinely breaking ethical codes. She continues to use her fame to influence parents, convincing a sizable portion of them that properly vaccinating their children may leave them with autism. As a result, the percentage of parents vaccinating their kids has dropped sharply and the incidents of mumps, measles and other communicable (and occasionally deadly) has gone up.

Doctors, researchers and scientists are tasked with determining the best possible course of action with regard to our health and safety. They spend many years, often decades, in universities and institutions gathering the knowledge and experience required to responsibly make these judgments. Jenny McCarthy is not an epidemiologist. Nor is she a neurologist. She is not a doctor or scientist of any kind. She knows next to nothing about the science of modern medicine. Jenny McCarthy is an actress, comedian, and one time Playboy Centerfold who has taken it upon herself to convince hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of parents from getting their children the inoculations they need to stay healthy. Jenny McCarthy has revealed herself to be spectacularly arrogant, presumptuous, irresponsible, and most of all, stupid.

McCarthy is not the only one to blame, however. Part of the blame rests on the ignorance, laziness and gullibility of the parents themselves. Their complicity is based on their inability to think critically and objectively. Indeed, any parent who fails to vaccinate their kids based on the testimony of someone like Jenny McCarthy, Larry King or Oprah Winfrey, should probably not be trusted with children.
For responsible parents, the solution to this problem is really quite simple: Think. Ask questions. Do some research. Even a cursory examination of the facts of this case demonstrate that vaccinations are the best route to keeping your child healthy. If you are a parent and you are in need of guidance, ask your doctor. Read what the researchers themselves have to say. Get multiple opinions from multiple sources. Make an informed decision.

Mission Statement

The author of this blog is a white, middle-aged, middle-class American male. As such, he is not entitled to complain about anything. Still....
It should be noted that I am against blogging. Blogging, along with Tweeting, Facebooking, MySpaceing, Instant Messaging, and the myriad other high-tech "self expression tools" tend to give the services' users a rather unrealistic idea of the true worth of their personal opinions.
I would have never expected that one of the many results of having a "wired world" would be the unbridled arrogance and conceit I have seen throughout the web. Look at a few random MySpace pages, or read a few tweets, and you will see how users' most mundane thoughts can be artificially elevated to the status of epiphany. While bathing in one's own specialness may be therapeutic, perhaps it should be taken in moderation, lest the user's newly inflated ego exceed them.
Keeping this in mind, I will be using this blog to document my thoughts. Lest my ego exceed me, I will write these comments as a means to let off steam. I will consider this a place to bitch and moan in seclusion, in an effort to preserve my sanity (and indeed, the sanity of my wife). I will write as though talking to myself.
Some of the topics I will be covering are science and reason (good), politics and religion (bad), and whatever else may be pushing my buttons at the time (truth in advertising, bad drivers, gardening, astrophysics, etc.). I can already tell this is going to be the single best blog ever written since the invention of the written word.