There are many reasons I have for being vocal about my objections to Jenny McCarthy. Public health, that’s obviously a big one. Making the rest of the world look at the “autism community” as a bit of a joke, well that’s another.
With a hat-tip to Brian Steinberg of Examiner.com, cue the comic strip “Soup to Nutz”.
It isn’t like they don’t know who is most responsible for giving Jenny her platform either:
Mr. Steinberg closes his post so well I just have to quote it as my closing:
Look, it’s one thing to make fun of the president or a prominent politician, or even make reference to a big-name movie star or starlet. But it’s quite another to take on a celebrity with a pet cause or peeve. Mr. Stromoski is on firm ground taking on Ms. McCarthy’s credentials. I just wonder if her fans will treat him courteously.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Nice! I doubt Jenny McQuacky fans will be courteous, but we need more loud voices willing to counter the nonsense that vaccines cause autism.
I wonder where Temple Grandin would be today if instead of devoting her energy to helping her child, Eustacia Cutler devoted her resources to fighting against vaccines. The obvious source of my son’s autism is his genetics. My reaction is this. I have one child and he has autism. My focus is clearly to help my son achieve his full potential. Heaven help those with the Jenny McCarthy mentality who try to get me off track, and I don’t want them to sidetrack reasearch funds either!
So who would you rather trust – Jenny McCarthy, who has used her fame to give a voice to independent doctors and statisticians who have strong evidence about a link between vaccines and childhood diseases, or Merck and the CDC, who make billions of dollars a year by trying to force the entire world population to be vaccinated at birth?
If you’re calling the link between vaccines and autism “nonsense”, I suggest that you do a little more unbiased research. The only people who claim that there is no link between the two are people who have direct monetary ties to pharmaceutical companies that produce vaccines. If there is truly no link, as you suggest, then why does the U.S. Government pay out millions of dollars every year to parents who are able to successfully prove IN COURT (which is virtually impossible, given the legal resources of the government and the drug companies) that their child’s autism was directly linked to a vaccine? Or do you think that the government just pays out million-dollar settlements because it “feels bad for those poor people”. Come on.
You sound like the tobacco company shills who claimed for decades that “there is no direct link between cancer and smoking”. The fact is that, just like cancer, autism can occur naturally. But the unbiased evidence shows a strong possibility that autism can also be caused by external events. To ignore that evidence because you’ve been brainwashed by a billion-dollar marketing campaign is just naive. And to ignore a potential epidemic of disease because you “don’t want them to sidetrack research funds” is ludicrous – ANY research that helps determine what may or may not cause autism (including whether autism can be caused by vaccines or their preservatives) will help determine if their is a cure or viable therapy for it.
Steve,
you will note that I didn’t use the word “nonsense” in this post.
If you want to pull the “tobacco company” gambit, keep in mind that one of the “shills” in the battle against exposing the dangers of second hand tobacco smoke is Dr. Bernadine Healy. She is one of the few voices right now calling for research into the vaccine/autism link.
Are tobacco shills reliable when they say what you want to hear?
“But the unbiased evidence shows a strong possibility that autism can also be caused by external events.”
Yes. It gets discussed a lot on this blog. Many events–almost all prenateal–have been linked to autism. One of them is congenital rubella syndrome. Yes, if a pregnant woman gets rubella, a vaccine preventable disease, her child has a very high chance of being diagnosed autistic. That is if the child actually survives until birth.
I could go on with your comment, bit by bit. Is there a reason to? Was this a “drive by” comment?
To Steve,
No company makes “billions” on vaccines. For example, Merck’s vaccine sales in 2008 were “only” 3.6G, and its unlikely more than a third of that translated into actual profit. The economic reality is that vaccines are among the least profitable of pharmaceuticals, characteristically making modest sales at best and at worst actually losing money. A further wrinkle is that, in the US and other countries with public vaccination programs, manufacturers make most sales to the government, at prices likely to be artificially low. Therefore, what people SHOULD be concerned about is not manufacturers conspiring to protect “profits”, but either making lower quality products to cut costs or deciding not to make vaccines at all.
Are you sure about your data?
http://news.icm.ac.uk/business/swine-flu-boosts-gsk-profits/2826/
The vaccine sales figures are added up from a report at merck.com. I get the one-third figure from what the same report says about the company as a whole: Merck’s total sales and total earnings for were about $24G and $8G respectively, and if the vaccine division performed at the same level (which I think very doubtful) it would have earned 1.2G in 2008. I have an article about this at my own site, also cover it an ebook nobody’s bought yet.
My investigations have left me frustrated and suspicious about the lack of transparency in Merck’s reporting. There may well be a “coverup” in effect, but experience should tell us that what corporations are most likely to hide is their losses.
In the 1980s it was 1 in 10,000 children that were autistic. Today it’s 1 in 65. It’s obvious something is going on wether it’s the environment, Vaccines, or free glutamic acids in processed foods and vaccines that are the cause, the point is something is causing the deformed gene. This is turning into an epidemic.
Amanda:
Your figure on autism is much higher than any significant study I know of. As for the rest, vaccines, processed food and most of the chemicals one could name have been around since ca. 1950 or even earlier. And what on Earth do you mean by “causing the deformed gene”? It doesn’t take any recent development to account for a mutation, or its increased expression over time. Also, investigations of autism as genetically based seem to have given up on a single gene being responsible for it.