Is Jenny McCarthy Afraid Of The Truth About Autism?

[HuckleB]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/iris-lee/who-indeed-is-afraid-of-t_b_515783.html

"My aunt will never forget that day in 1975, when her 20 month old daughter woke up from a nap, crying petulantly. The child seemed to be having difficulties supporting her body and couldn't walk. The following day, the left side of her sweet little face had become strangely contorted, and she was completely unable to move her left arm or leg. Terrified, her mother took her to the hospital where the family spent the next five weeks in agony and fear until doctors finally discovered what ailed the child. Little Kristín had mumps, which in the 1960s before vaccination was available (in Iceland not until 1989), infected millions of children every year. The virus usually causes a chipmunk face and fever, but occasionally it penetrates the brain and spinal cord linings, causing seizures, meningitis, paralysis, and in some cases, death.

In Kristín's case, the mumps virus had infected her brain, leaving the left side of her body paralyzed.

The agony caused by mumps, measles, polio and other diseases that science had, until recently, largely succeeded in eradicating with vaccines is unimaginable only because we haven't had to know these diseases existed. But thanks to anti-vaccine zealots like Jenny McCarthy, we will sooner than later become familiar with the horrors of viruses that spread faster and surer than even lies and propaganda.

Measles have now become endemic in the UK as a result of the decline in vaccine coverage, 14 years after the disease had practically vanished. In Dublin in 1999, the year after Andrew Wakefield's "trial-lawyer funded, an incompetent, and quite likely scientifically fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper," more than 100 children were hospitalized with measles. Three of them died. In 2006, rates of whooping cough - a highly contagious, and for babies and young children, potentially fatal, bacterial infection of the respiratory system - were almost 90 percent higher in US states where parents can exempt their children from vaccinations for personal beliefs than in states that allow exemptions only for medical or religious reasons. In 2008, five Minnesota children became ill after an outbreak of the bacterial infection H. influenza type b (Hib, Haemophilus influenzae type b, a bacterium that causes meningitis and other serious diseases. Hib vaccine became available in 1990; before that Hib infections resulted in about a thousand deaths every year) three of these -- including one who died -- were infants whose parents had refused to vaccinate them. All these diseases will come back in greater numbers with mounting casualties as more parents choose not to vaccinate their children.

..."

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I am amazed that HuffPo has now published two pieces based in the real world/real science universe in the past month. If only they didn't simply publish these as reactions to the goofiness they publish otherwise.

Still, it's a fair piece on the issue.

:hi:

[ninjanurse]

1. Polio

I know polio survivors my own age. I was lucky to get the vaccine instead of the disease.

[HuckleB]

2. My wife's uncle was a polio survivor.

And, yeah, I'm glad I got the vaccine instead...

:hi:

[murielm99]

3. It was a big deal for my generation.

In the fifties, polio was more common than divorce. We all knew kids who had survived polio. Only a few of us knew kids from single parent homes.

Nearly every class I was in had a kid or two with a brace or crutches after having polio. We all knew what iron lungs were. I survived whooping cough.

I would never want my children or grandchildren to live through the fear my generation did.

[Warpy]

7. I had the disease when I was two

and had to learn how to walk all over again.

I was lucky. All I needed were fugly, high topped shoes. I went to school with a lot of kids in leg braces. Those were lucky, too. The unlucky ones lived the rest of their lives in "iron lungs," their respiratory muscles permanently paralyzed.

I've also cared for adults who survived the epidemics and were on permanent mechanical ventilation, everything from the neck down paralyzed.

I lost a friend to measles. I almost died from measles.

People who didn't live through those diseases have no idea how bad they really were. Only an ignorant fool who mistakes a seizure disorder for autism can possibly shrug them off and say the vaccines are worse.

Vaccines save lives. Ignorance kills.

[Inspired]

4. I don't think she is against vaccinations. Isn't it the Thimerosal that she is against?

I could be wrong but I thought Thimerosal was the problem and that is was an ingredient in compounded vaccines like the MMR.

[Warpy]

10. No, it's the vaccines themselves

especially since somebody finally managed to inform her that the MMR has never contained thimerosol in the US and other vaccines except the influenza injection have since eliminated it with no drop in autism cases.

McCarthy is an idiot.

[Inspired]

11. I wouldn't call her an idiot. She is the mother of an autistic child.

She is trying to make sense of it all. Not everyone is an idiot just because they take a stance that is controversial.

[Warpy]

12. It's more likely her kid had a rare seizure disorder, Landau-Kleffner Syndrome.

SHE is the one who decided vaccines are evil. SHE is the one who needs to educate herself.

Ignorance like hers kills. Shame on her for trying to spread it around.

(Yes, LKS is occasionally misdiagnosed as autism. However, her kid fits the profile.)

[uppityperson]

16. I don't see Warpy calling "everyone..controversial" an idiot. Just this one person

who wants to blame the wrong source for her child's autism

[roguevalley]

21. the trouble with her is that she won't even acknowledge the evidence

that vaccines are safe and she is influencing people not to got them. Kids are going to die. I lived through polio too and unless y0u have a terrible disease that came with summer through fall every year and could kill you, you cannot know.

[mzmolly]

14. She advocates for "green vaccines" and an alternate vaccine

schedule. Her own son was vaccinated because she believed in vaccinating.

[HuckleB]

15. And since then she's been pushing ignorance upon the general public.

There is no excuse for the crap she pushes. She lives in an alternate universe.

http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2010/02/jim-carrey-jenny-mccarthy-definitely-not-anti-vaccine/

[mzmolly]

17. McCarthy vaccinated her son.

Wakefield also promoted the Measles vaccine, single jab version.

[HuckleB]

18. So what?

Neither of those little items excuse the behavior of either of those individuals.

[mzmolly]

19. Their behavior needs

no excuse.

[HuckleB]

20. I beg to differ.

Their behavior has misled many people, and it very well may have led to suffering. I find that to be abhorrent.

And that is being kind, IMO.

I won't be responding again.

[HuckleB]

13. She is anti-vaccination to the core.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/27/jenny-mccarthy-still-thinks-vaccines-cause-autism/

Further, she will follow any conspiracy theory to keep her beliefs as she wants them to be.

http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2010/02/is-wakefield-being-shut-up-or-are-jenny-and-jim-trying-to-get-publicity-for-his-research/

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

5. My Mom always used to say that the vaccine for polio

was one the greatest things to have happened in the 20th century.

I was born in 1953 but there were kids I went to elementary and high school with that had polio. In fact one of my brother's best friend was a survivor of polio.

I had chicken pox and measles when I was a kid, but not the mumps or whooping cough. I remember I wasn't too sick with the chicken pox, but the measles were something else. I remember laying in my darkened bedroom for two weeks, wondering why I couldn't read or watch television.
My grandmother said it was because your eyes could be affected if you were in bright light while you were recovering from the measles.
Don't know if that's an old wives tale or not, but I remember it well.

[ejpoeta]

6. i had chicken pox but not anything else. i am 37, so... but i didn't even know

there was a vaccine for chicken pox until my daughter needed one before kindergarten. my 4 year old will need one and is scared and hates shots. i told her better the small pain of a needle than to be sick. i hesitated on the h1n1 vaccine, but ended up having the two in school get them to protect my 6 month old (who was not 6 months at the time). though bob and i couldn't afford to get it ourselves. but that's another story.

[dhill926]

8. yes, I remember the same thing with measles.......

being in a dark room and all. Hadn't thought about that in a LONG time. Diseases were indeed very scary back then.......

[frebrd]

9. I went to high school a few blocks from a Sister Kenny......

Polio Rehab clinic. We had quite a few kids in the school walking around with braces and crutches. They were the lucky ones.

There were also two former classmates of mine who ended up in iron lungs with very little hope of ever recovering.

The people who constantly diss vaccines simply have no idea what they're talking about!