From the transcript of Larry King’s interview of Jenny McCarthy last night on CNN:
KING: What is autism?
MCCARTHY: Wow! Well, it differs for a lot of people. But — or opinions. But I believe that’s — it’s an infection and/or toxins and/or funguses on top of vaccines that push children into this neurological downslide which we call autism.
McInfection?
McToxins?
McFungi?
Vaccines?
Since she’s not talking about what autism “is”, rather, what might be speculated about with regard to etiology…maybe it can be the smoke. I’m not saying it is, just suggesting that it’s one possibility.
As all of you know, being a mother changes you in ways that you never thought you could imagine. I went from chain smoking and eating cheeseburgers to Hepa air filters and eating vegetarian after my son was born.
Emphasis mine. Here’s a couple of mildly interesing abstracts (in the links) for Jenny.
“The risk of autism was associated with daily smoking in early pregnancy (OR = 1.4; CI = 1.1-1.8)”
“Maternal smoking during pregnancy is linked to high fetal testosterone (FT), and an increased risk in offspring for autism…”
Left Brain Right Brain 
I was wondering … what if it’s hypoxia that she’s suffering from now.
But yeah, no way could it be that Jenny was “chosen by God” after her kid was born and she realized she might have damaged him with heavy smoking during the pregancy.
No denial there. Nope. No need for a pile of crystals to fortify one’s defense mechanisms. Noooo.
Oh, and Jenny would be pushing McFunguses, not McFungi.
“Everybody watch out, here comes a scary monster.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: We’re back with Jenny McCarthy. …”
What do they know that we don’t?
Hi Ms. Clark
The title was supposed to subtly communicate the same.
Hat tip to Autism Diva for the source of the McIndigo chain smoking article.
Well,
TACA Bell has now joined forces with McAutism.
Smoke leading to autism is actually really interesting to me, personally. I have some autistic-like traits (well, most NT people do!) but certainly more than my younger brother, which is mildly unusual as a first-born girl. My mom smoked while pregnant with both of us, but more with me.
If there is not only a spectrum of austism and related disorders, but a whole continuum from NT to profound autism, two things jump out to me. First, there is even less reason to discriminate against autistic people; if as with skin colour or IQ or any other abitrary human trait there is a whole range of possibilities, many of them only subtly and minutely different from the next, it can make it hard to have a cut off of who falls into ASD and also who doesn’t. I would think that this would ultimately be better (I think that if more people accepted a continuum theory of sexuality, too, there’d be less gay-hating–as a bisexual/lesbian myself–so maybe this is just a pattern of thinking for me), though I see the extreme challenge then of fighting for extra benefits and help that many autistic children need in schools and such. Anyway, the second thing that jumps out is that this might be less scary for parents (and result in less of a need to ‘fix’ the kids) if they can picture the whole spectrum of neurological set-ups (autism being a single band/continuum within that). Um. I don’t think I’m expressing myself well, and I think my synaesthesia is getting in the way.
You can read my thoughts here;
http://timelordphil.bigblog.com.au/post.do?id=170688
Who needs science when we have Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy to tell us what autism is.
Then again, “Evan is my science.”
And beware any “expert” that starts out a descriptive sentence with “Wow!”
Did she let out a big sigh, bat her eyes and flip her hair like I mentally see her doing when I read that quote?
McNonsense!
McRidiculous!
McMuzzle Her!
It’s McScience thanks to studies at McUniversity which gives out McPhD’s.
Has anyone read her new book “Louder than Words”? I finished it last night and she points out repeatedly she is not an expert or a doctor. She details what she did to help her son, treatments that are definitely alternative but she stated she witnessed improvements. I read her book because I was interested in reading a mother’s first hand account. I have two children under two years old and autism is very frightening. Everyday I am looking for any warning signs. My oldest is speech delayed and I am concerned this may be a warning sign of autism. I am working with her pediatrician in improving her speech skills (including reading to her, social playgroups, Montessori school and sign language). Jenny McCarthy’s book is her testimony of her experience, just like her other books. I am glad I read it, but I went into it knowing it was not written by a medical expert but by a mother who is living it.
No one can hold a Candle to Jenny. Not even McCandless
Gina, read this review:
http://mommydearest1514.blogspot.com/2007/09/there-is-cure-for-autism.html
And I would suggest that you read this very helpful book by a real speech/language therapist, Patricia McAleer Hamaguchi:
_Childhood Speech, Language and Listening Disorders, What Every Parent Should Know_
It details different kinds of speech and language issues, plus it has a list of of resources in the back for both the USA and Canada. I believe this book should be given to any parent whose child first diagnosed with speech and language issues.
Not all of those issues are related to autism. My oldest son has oral motor dyspraxia with functionaly dysarthria and some dysphasia. He had a total of ten years of speech therapy (several through Rite Care, a charity that provides free therapy), and is presently in community college with disability services. My younger son had a language delay, dysphasia. He had a couple of years of language therapy before entering kindergarten, he is now a high school honor student.
I would also suggest you read:
_No Time for Jello_ by Berneen Bratt
_Not Even Wrong_ by Paul Collins
_Deaf Like Me_ by a pair of Spradleys
Frankly, I am still amazed at what manages to get front stage on television today.
Whats next, PeeWee Herman talking about radioactive decay?
“Not all of those issues are related to autism. My oldest son has oral motor dyspraxia with functionaly dysarthria and some dysphasia.”
It’s great HN that your son was properly diagnosed, but maybe someone should train the rest of the medical community, insurance companies, school systems and governments that there is more to autism than—autism, many will misdiagnose, deny services, misplace children and misappropriate funds based on the misconception that the ‘axias’ and asia’s’ are just part of the or ARE autism.
You guys have to give Jenny a break, she’s not a genius, she’s just a working actress, and even the second part is in question!
I repeat: Not all cases of delayed or disordered speech and language are autism.
My son was diagnosed over 17 years ago at a Children’s Hospital that is associated with a research university that has (surprise, surprise) a department on speech and language pathology. There were (and still are) active researchers in children’s speech and language development that had offices at that hospital’s clinic.
Perhaps it was luck, but it would be the “luck” of geography. Also, because of his history of seizures a developmental problem was not a surprise. AND… when he was born I signed up to track his speech development for a university researcher. It became clear when I could not mark any of the expected words from the list when he was 2 years old that he was way over on the wrong side of the bell curve!
It is also one of the universities that participates in the NIH Studies to Advance Autism Research and Treatment (STAART) Network. So there is an Experimental Education Unit that is a preschool researching autism education, plus lots of other research. When my younger son was 3 years old he participated as a “normal” child to research autism evaluation tests. (actually, it is fun to participate in these research studies… and they often include a small bit of payment — nice to take advantage of good bits when living close to a university, while being annoyed at students parking in on our street!)
But you do point to one of my pet peeves about the last decade of “autism awareness”. It seems that a large brush is being used to paint everything over with an “autism” tone. So that kids like mine, and others are lumped into one label… that may or may not fit.
I much prefer the “good ol’ days” of just a bit over a decade ago when the diagnoses were more specific.
My son’s preschool had kids who had labels like Aspergers, CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder), hyperlexia and hypertonia (oh, and one child had a condition where his scull had adnormal growth, he actually had three dangerous surgeries to remove excess bone). They were all different, except that they shared a difficulty in producing speech.
Several of these kinds of issues are dealt with in Hamaguchi’s book. So ignore Jenny, and go to your libary and check out a very helpful book by a real speech/language pathologist:
The other thing I think we need to get distiguished is that, IMHO, autism and things like apraxia, dysphasia, dyspraxia SHOULD be segregated from autism, since, from what I can see they are distinct in their treatments and their apparent uniqueness within the spectrum (unclear to me whether they are more prevelent in autism, I imagine so).
We now return you to you regularly scheduled McCarthy-isms…
“Has anyone read her new book “Louder than Words”? I finished it last night and she points out repeatedly she is not an expert or a doctor.”
I don’t think that really requires pointing out, do you Gina?
When you have a chance, read the second linked article in the post.
Then, please ask yourself, and answer here:
What do you think happened to Jenny’s proclaimed life mission and all of the Indigo Moms stuff from just the middle of last year? Do you think Jenny might secretly consider Indigo Moms failed marketing?
“McCarthy is only the latest blonde to build a formidable post-Playmate career, following Anna Nicole Smith and Pamela Anderson Lee. But while the Playboy esthetic travels well globally, American networks and film studios have traditionally viewed Playmates with trepidation. To that end, “Jenny McCarthy’s Surfin’ Safari” is part of Manzella’s plan to distance McCarthy from her Playboy roots and establish her in the ostensibly hipper firmament of MTV’s college-bound set.
“How my management company got involved with managing former Playmates was not what I envisioned for myself,” says Manzella, who 10 years ago left his job as a stockbroker.
He is spooning granola into his mouth one breezy morning at Gladstone’s 4 Fish, a tacky tourist joint on the Pacific Coast Highway not far from the one-bedroom house he shares with McCarthy. “In the past, I had a stigma,” says Manzella, starting to mimic the simpering voice of an imaginary client: “‘I don’t want to go with him. He handles Vanna White. I’m a serious actor.”‘ Manzella pauses. “Now, with Jenny being a serious actor, I can see my portfolio being upgraded by very serious actresses being attracted to getting a hold of me.” Manzella says this without a trace of humor.
McCarthy sits several booths over, giving another interview. Wearing overalls, she stops by on the way to the bathroom and raises two fingers behind Manzella’s head. She flirts and mugs compulsively in real life, much like her character on “Singled Out,” on which she serves as a hyperactive ringleader for a flock of hyperamorous teen-agers.
The show features 50 guys and 50 girls who crowd into “the pit,” answering questions from potential dates about their height, nose size, attitude toward commitment, body hair and “package.” McCarthy’s first day in the pit with the guys, she says, “was one gigantic penis talking. They’d say, ‘Hey baby, why don’t you come over and sit – oh, baby.’ I was standing there shaking. Finally, I realized that I was going to just throw this right back at them.” Thus was born her girls-rule shtick, in which McCarthy, dressed in one skimpy get-up after another, corrals the contestants, slapping, tugging and occasionally spanking the male ones, calling them “dorks” in a high-pitched squeal.
Although pummeling teen-age boys probably does not qualify as a feminist act, McCarthy presents herself as the first post-modern Playmate. In her Catholic high school in Chicago, she learned that if the boys love you, the girls will hate you; she also learned that women are the key to mass TV popularity.
So McCarthy tempers her sex-bomb image with a careful combination of kookiness and Oprah-style empathy. She especially likes to reveal the star-making machinery’s smoke and mirrors. On “The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” for instance, she explained how her CD poster had been digitally altered. “I’m doing this to show all those young girls at home,” she told O’Donnell, “that when you look at a poster and you look in the mirror, you want to cry and kill yourself because you don’t look like that. I’m going to show you what I looked like that day for real. …”
http://www.nytimes.com/specials/magazine4/articles/mccarthy.html