I know I've been very, very harsh on Jenny McCarthy. After all, she has become the face of the anti-vaccine movement in America, and her activities are directly endangering children. Let's take a look back, oh, a few days to a video that she made in which she decried all manner of "toxins" in vaccines as the cause of autism, including aluminum (which is not toxic at the doses used in vaccines), mercury (which is no longer in most childhood vaccines other than in trace amounts), antifreeze (there is no antifreeze in vaccines), and ether (again, there is no ether in vaccines). Then look back a year and a half, to when she was doing the same thing, and just as dumb.
Yesterday on her blog, she writes under a photo of her getting her hair done:
Bleach and Aluminum, hmmm can I throw a few more toxins on there?
And then:
I guess this is what one might call a hypocrite. I talk about staying away from toxins, yet I bleach the hell out of my hair every month. It's tough to avoid everything that is not good for you. Yes, I have given up a lot so far, but I don't think I can ever let people see me with my original haircolor. Yuck. My hairdresser had just told me a couple of grays were seen. WHAT?!! Come on. I finally just got rid of my adult acne! Will my armpit hair turn gray one day too?
So let's see. Bleach and other "toxins" used to treat her hair? OK. Botox? Jenny loves injecting it into her face! In other words, to Jenny, it's perfectly fine to bathe in deadly "toxins" if it's done for beauty, but tiny amounts of substances that aren't toxic at the doses contained in vaccines represent a horror, even though vaccines prevent disease and have saved more lives than any other medical intervention ever conceived by humans. Anything for beauty but not even a 1 in a million risk is acceptable to prevent potentially lethal vaccine-preventable diseases, and Jenny makes a joke of it.
Hypocrisy is the least of her offenses. It still boggles my mind that this is the best the antivaccine movement can come up with. It boggles my mind even more that Oprah Winfrey would sign her up to spread her stupidity. It boggles my mind that denialists can still, after all the mountains of scientific, clinical, and epidemiological evidence that do not support their paranoid beliefs that big pharma and the CDC are conspiring to "poison" their children with vaccines to make them autistic.
I guess that even after all these years, I still can't understand such irrationality.
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this leads to the inevitable comment about the bleach seeping into Ms McCarthy's scalp and damaging her brain...
Should we be surprised that Jenny McCarthy turned out to be shallow? Honestly, what's the surprise here?
Hey, maybe we should propose to Oprah that the Jenny McCarthy show do a special on all the chemical crap she injects, as opposed to all the chemical crap in vaccines. Not that actual science will get an idiot of any caliber to change her mind, but it may help out some fence sitters in the audience.
Or maybe all the toxins she's exposed herself to over the years have simply made McCarthy retarded...
Jenny would probably say 1) she is past the point where these things would give her autism and 2) she is choosing to bathe in toxins, the guv'mint isn't forcing her to.
Not that this doesn't make her full of duku. Everytime I see or hear about someone getting botox all I can think is "weapons of mass destruction IN YOUR FACE".
As much as I hate defending Jenny McCarthy, I do have to point out that she's an adult, and can therefore give informed consent about injecting toxins into her own body. Besides, nobody's mandating that she get Botox.
Her arguments are nonsensical (not to mention, based on lies) but hypocrisy isn't really the issue.
Other people's children getting measles: acceptable
Jenny having gray hair: Come on now, that's barbaric! We live in a civilized society!
"Everytime I see or hear about someone getting botox all I can think is "weapons of mass destruction IN YOUR FACE"."
So you are saying there were WMD and the Bush administration just went looking in the wrong place?
I swore I'd never attack Jenny McCarthy, but this woman is a nitwit. I skimmed a few pages in her new book at Borders last week, (no way in hell was I going to shell out my hard earned cash to further her cause) and was shocked to discover that she still thinks administering Tylenol to kids to control febrile seizures is okay, even though it depletes glutathione, using the argument that it can always be supplemented.
(Jen, who is well aware that there is no science that conclusively links Tylenol to autism, just to be clear.)
jenny's motto appears to be "live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse."
though, she seems to want the "die young" part apply to unvaccinated kids and leaves the "beautiful corpse" part to herself.
I just looked at one of her vapid little blog entries:
âIâm glad to be back home. I missed Evan. I missed American food. It was amazing to watch the French eat though. Creams, breads, sorbets, smoking, drinking wine and the women were all skinny and gorgeous. What the hell is that about? Iâm hanging in there for no sugar. I hope you are too. The French might be able to get away with eating whatever they want, but at least American girls have bigger boobs. Hahaha.â
Has anyone bothered to let Jenny know that her boobs would be small, too, if they werenât big bags of saline? Yet another medical mystery that escapes her.
The point is not to dog on her because she's a bitter, petty trollop - which she sure sounds like - but to dog on her because she is in a position of scary power and using it very unwisely.
Guess all of us adults better get some booster shots soon, before all the little kiddies of bourgeois internet-educated parents who obey the power of Oprah start coming down with the plagues. Our vaccinated children should be fine, right? It's those of us who haven't gotten a shot in 25-35 years that are toast...right?
Actually i want Jenny on Oprah, simply because she is so vapid and stupid it can only hurt Oprah in the long run. Which now i think is a good thing.
Oh...The bleach it burns!
No wonder she can't feel the stupid.
@Danimal
Absolutely. How could they not know that the locus of biological warfare is Beverly Hills?
I'd use Orac's phrase of a "teachable moment." Accept for a moment that J.M. thinks that toxins will cause her some future harm, and observe that she'll put up with them for an immediate benefit of looking good. This is actually how most people make decisions in the face of abstract risks. It's the same thought process that leads some kids to smoke cigarettes, or some people to have sex without condoms, etc. Our decision-making process is shaped by science education and by the quality of available information. Both have to improve.
I hate to break it to her, but plenty of people have seen her natural hair color already and the carpet certainly doesn't match the drapes.
Might call a hypocrite Jenny? There is no might about it. Botox contains one of the deadliest human toxins known to science but *gasp* in minute quantities! Yet somehow the minute "toxins" in vaccines are terrible and will give our children autism even though all scientific evidence thus far has concluded that it doesn't . Will someone please think of the children!
If only vaccines were a cosmetic product Jenny would not have a problem with it. Keep fighting for your superficial treatments Jenny while actual children suffer from completely preventable diseases. Indeed a role model fit for Oprah.
She writes like a whiny 14-year-old who thinks she's witty. I would have thought that that alone would be enough for the supposedly "intelligent" anti-vax parents to disregard her, but apparently not.
I agree with comments #3 and #4. I can't imagine this would be a compelling criticism for the public whose hearts and minds we must win. The difference between mandatory injection of infants and elective use by a consenting adult is too stark for this amusing hypocracy to matter to any but us Jenny-haters.
"It boggles my mind even more that Oprah Winfrey would sign her up to spread her stupidity."
I'm not at all surprised, given the record of woo on Oprah's vapid show. And in case you haven't heard James Randi's story: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/sapient/atheist_vs_theist/5181
"I agree with comments #3 and #4. I can't imagine this would be a compelling criticism for the public whose hearts and minds we must win."
One would have thought that the fact that vaccines save millions of lives would be enough. Apparently not.
Isn't she afraid Evan will sniff her hair and get toxinated?
@Orac
aluminum (which is not toxic at the doses used in vaccines),
Exactly how do you know the aluminum is non-toxic in the doses contained in vaccines? Did a little voice tell you since it's never been studied.
Okay, I read it. All of McCarthyâs blog and insipid fawning comments have been read. I am now a martyr. You may pray to me and weep over the rot spots that have formed in my brain.
I was just trying to parse the incredibly compromised thought process she is using to reach her upside down conclusions. It was a lot like sorting the stomach contents of a hog that has foundered from eating a crate of Christmas fruitcakes.
In her bizarre construction of âhealthâ all adverse conditions are caused by the introduction of something and may be âcuredâ by removing that something or something else (which can be chosen at random).
Autism is caused by the introduction of vaccines
Autism is cured by the dietary removal of wheat and dairy products
PMS is caused by high fructose corn syrup (because red assed lady baboons, who also get PMS, have a lot of access to HFCS on the African veldt?)
PMS is cured by eliminating all sugar and HFCS
Heart Disease, Cancer, Strokes, Impotence, Obesity, Alzheimer's and Diabetes are caused by meat.
Etc.
This is an example of her piquant observations:
âI don't know why I've always loved talking about poop, but to me it is a great tool in detecting what's wrong in our bodies. I continuously monitor Evan's poop by sending it to labs to get tested to make sure things are all running smoothly (no yeast, no bacteria, no infections). Sometimes these things can exist without any physical manifestations, so I like to test for them to make sure he is in perfect health. I decided to take the test myself and see how my body was doing,........
Low and behold, my tests came back and I'm a mess!â
She blames it on yeast and other fungi because of the use of antibiotics.
While I donât doubt if I had dropped out of nursing school to pursue a career in porn and had spent the last decade as a doorknob for every has-been in Hollywood, I would probably develop unnatural obsession with disease. My concern however would be in a different location than my lower G. I. If you get my drift.
Oh well, maybe she will die of sepsis.
Hope they broadcast it live.
And be nice to Oprah. Thanks to her we have Barack the Science President, who, by restoring science to its "proper place", will allow scientists to both tame the raging oceans that threaten to sweep away humanity and harness the power of stem cells to cure every disease known to mankind.
I heard eating the consecrated flesh of Oprah will cause your body to flush out the toxins that cause fibromyalgia AND morgellons. It will also lower your mortgage payments while you sleep.
@Prometheus
I heard eating the consecrated flesh of Oprah...
Stop it, you're makin me hungry
Sid Offit:
It is one of the most common elements on this planet (third) and most common metal, and just by living you are ingesting more every other day than is in any vaccine. It would be like trying to study how toxic nitrogen is to a person's body (and aluminum is more common on this planet than nitrogen!).
Can I assume that you avoid aluminum at all costs? No aluminum cookware, no bubbly beverages in aluminum cans, no baking powder, no pickles (alum! --- which is added to home made playdough to keep it from going bad quickly), no toothpaste, no sand paper, no metal windows, no paint, and on and on. How do you do that? Live on another planet?
Oh, wait... Sid Offit probably thinks aluminum is a "heavy" metal!
@Chris
It astonishing how you men of science continuously point to something's presence in the environment as testament to its safety. If this were true you'd better tell Nancy Pelosi to stop trying to ban library books that contain trace amounts of lead and Obama's EPA who believe carbon dioxide, which I'm exhaling right now, is a pollutant
Oh and you forgot antacids - you know how those newborns love their antacids
@Chris
From the FDA:
If a vaccine contains more than 0.85 mg/dose, the sponsor must provide data to FDA demonstrating that the amount is necessary to enhance the antigenicity of the vaccine and that the vaccine containing this amount of aluminum is safe for the indicated use.
Why can't the manufacturer just say it's the third most common element on the planet???????
So how do you avoid aluminum?
@Chris
So how do you avoid aluminum?
I'm not eating as much sandpaper and paint chips as I used to
Curiously, I didn't post the comment above (#23). I wonder who did?
Prometheus
Gotta go
I didn't post comment #21, either.
Is somebody here confused or is there another person using the pseudonym "Prometheus"? If the latter, how about using something to distinguish yourself?
I was here first.
Prometheus
Sorry, I'm #21 and #23
I did not know there were Promethei
I'll use a different nom de guerre on Orac's Blog.
Epimetheus' Smarter Brother,
No problem - it's just confusing when two people use the same pseudonym. Fortunately, we are of like minds, even if your snarkiness is a fraction of a standard deviation greater than mine.
Prometheus (A)
To her credit, Jenny did get her boob implants removed, but the very idea that she bleaches her hair and injects herself with Botox is...mind-boggling. I've been saying it for awhile now: cognative dissonance is a wonderful thing.
Speaking of which, I found you rather too kind on your blog to the practitioners of Traditional Victorian Medicine. I just call them recycled seventh day adventists or neo-millerites.
It explains McCarthy's scat fetish.
Was wondering if you'd cloned yourself or were having a bit of a bipolar moment, Prometheus, when you talked about about J's poop again. :-)
Re: Irrational beliefs. An acquaintance recommended I read
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
to try and understand why people have irrational beliefs in the face of mountains of evidence, and why they cling to long disproven notions (we were discussing it in the context of evolution, but I'd imagine it must apply to antivaxxers). Not that it'll really change anything---can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into in the first place---but maybe it would help us understand their irrationality.
"It astonishing how you men of science continuously point to something's presence in the environment as testament to its safety. If this were true you'd better tell Nancy Pelosi to stop trying to ban library books that contain trace amounts of lead and Obama's EPA who believe carbon dioxide, which I'm exhaling right now, is a pollutant."
I admit I'm not a man of science -- I'm a woman of engineering. Hopefully that will do.
If you had read carefully, sir, you would have observed that he stated people ingest more aluminum on a given day than is in the entire vaccine schedule. Not merely that it is common in the environment, but that the amount found in vaccines is negligible compared to the environmental exposure.
It's a bit like being afraid of the radiation from your CRT: the amount is small, and utterly insigificant compared to what you get from the natural environment. What this means is not that the radiation is safe; what this means is that it really doesn't matter if you throw away every CRT on the planet. You'll still be getting basically the same dose. Same with aluminum. You get so much from the environment that completely abstaining from vaccines won't make any difference in your actual aluminum exposure.
I don't think it's fair to blame Jenny McCarthy for all this. She's just a mom and wants to do something.
I'm not sure where the entire idea about vaccines causing autism got started, but I've noticed people on website go CRAZY when it's mentioned. They HATE vaccines.
It's scary because I think vaccines are important, and not vaccinating is a terrible idea. You can't tell some people anything, though.
I have a daughter with autism, and I noticed signs that there was something going on early. I'm convinced it's genetic, and I'll be happy when they find the gene---but I doubt it will convince these people.
Even better, neither hypochlorite (laundry) nor peroxide (hair, typically) bleaches are particularly toxic.
Acidic and/or corrosive and oxidative, yes.
Toxic? Not especially. They'll burn you, not poison you.
One assumes that for Jenny, anything that's "bad for you" is therefore "toxic".
(Aluminum is, indeed, toxic... in doses far higher than Jenny will ever see unless she works in an aluminum plant or starts trying to deliberately poison herself.)
We have a simple word to describe the likes of Jenny McCarthy... "thick". I mean, she is very dim really - long on belief and very short on critical thinking. I s'pose the problem is she is famous (not for her brain) and her fans are often as thick as she is, or at least they aspire to be so. Same goes for her idiot husband(?) who seems to think his own celebrity invests him with intelligence. Very sad, the pair of them. And even sadder for their infant.
In light of her recent blog post, I would like Jenny to have a show on body image and aging naturally.
I think a lot of you are not hip to the fact that being misinformed, panicky and desperate does not mitigate using celebrity to destroy herd immunity through an international misinformation campaign to make you feel better about your precious snowflake and convince yourself you are in no way responsible.
Nope not at all.
She is a monster. Wake up.
Sid Offit @#20
"Exactly how do you know the aluminum is non-toxic in the doses contained in vaccines? Did a little voice tell you since it's never been studied."
Applied Heuristics.
Call Rockdale Texas. If anyone answers the phone, Orac wins.
Driving through Rockdale makes your fillings tingle. They probably crap bauxite nodules.
@ Karen You don't think it's "fair to blame Jenny McCarthy because "She's just a mom and wants to do something"!!!!!!!
Please go read her interview in TIME magazine...have you looked at her books??!!! Sorry my kids are not shadows-nor is death preferable to them..She is using her celebrity to sell woo cures (check out Handley website-her co-author) She is encouraging people to not vaccinate their children and she denigrates anyone on the spectrum!!!! She has the I.Q. of dryer lint! I am also a mom with two kids on the spectrum-I would like to do something as well..I'd like to tell Ms. McCarthy to please shut her mouth.
This is an example of what is commonly referred to in science as a "sanity check." Basically, if the amount of a substance is very small relative to background levels in the environment, the likelihood that it will have a large physiological or pathological effect is negligible. There are fundamental physical reasons for this. To put it as simply as possible, most biological and physiological interactions are approximately linear over a small percentage change: in other words, small percentage change in cause, small percentage change in effect. To have a small percentage change in a cause produce a large percentage change in effect, there needs to be nonlinear amplification, which is not something that arises easily--basically an organism has to literally work (invest energy) to make it happen.
There is a naive reaction among some scientific laymen that goes something like, "It's never been studied, so it's likely to be dangerous." But a lot of the time, the reason something has not been studied is that there is enough information available to make scientists conclude that it's not worth studying, because it is possible to deduce the answer from basic scientific principles.
Of course, invoking CO2 is a non sequitur, because the increased CO2 poses no more of a toxicity hazard than does aluminum. CO2 is considered to be a pollutant, not because of its biological toxicity (although like most things, it can be toxic at very high concentrations), but because it has well-established effects on climate effects that--while small on a global or physical scale (a few feet of ocean rise is not much compared to the depth of the ocean)--can be highly disruptive in terms of where people live, how they feed themselves, etc.
"i know I've been very, very harsh on Jenny McCarthy."
No, you haven't, and she deserves every bit of it.
Will my armpit hair turn gray one day too?
Yes, Jenny, it probably will. And the world will not end if it does. Besides which, as the Corporate-Approved Tool of the Patriarchy of the Week™, shouldn't you be shaving your armpits anyway? In which case, why the hell do you care what colour your armpit hair is?
So let me get this right:
Big-Pharma = BAD
Big-Cosma = GOOD
Calli Arcale: I admit I'm not a man of science -- I'm a woman of engineering. Hopefully that will do.
Nice one - I love it!
i should write oprah back and say i want to see jenny grow out long and luxuriant gray armpit hair -even though i wax mine!
or worse yet, see her with her real head hair color (as i've just spent a few years growing out and cutting off my own dyed hair, nothing is wrong with my natural light golden brown, right? it's fun to see it again...)
but i feel this would prevent her organization from taking my first input seriously, which i hope they might....
At #40,
Yes, she may be a mother, but she is spending waaayyy too much time trying to make money from her child's 'condition'. Books, blogs, campaigns, interviews, etc...... She is a scientific dolt and an opportunist, and unfortunately using her position in the media to promote ludicrous and dangerous ideas.
In a parallel universe, she would be using her position to raise funds for early diagnosis and intervention, education and inclusion, job opportunities, information and research, etc, etc. On the other hand, I probably still wouldn't listen to a word she had to say.
In MY perfect universe, she would spontaneously combust.
you can't convince the irrational with logic. get over it.
the anti vaccine movement isn't a problem, it is an opportunity. let people decide what is best for their offspring, and the problem will be gone. if you choose to foster and protect stupid, it will persist.
Yeah, Kaz. It's a nice idea until the wackjobs have so thoroughly eroded herd immunity that the diseases start killing off the smart ones.
Jenny McCarthy and Oprah Winfrey are basically my Ku Klux Klan. My most burning desire is to sit in front of Winfrey with Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg, and every autistic Child Of The '80s with me, and tell her directly to her face that to us, she is the Ku Klux Klan.
If America (and indeed the Western world) were to live up to its stated ideals of equal rights for everyone (not just normies), Jenny McCarthy would not be speaking in public because she would be getting sued on a daily basis for the infliction of emotional injury.
I have only one thing to say to McCarthy other than the above-indicated clarification. If she tries to "heal" me of what makes me different to the people who constantly abused me during my childhood to the point where I cannot even enter the uni I am studying at without PTSD symptoms, I will kill her.
M'lud:
Jenny McCarthy is BOGUS.
She willfully encourages and supports infant manslaughter.
The defense rests.
It's likely that another element in Jenny's chain of "reasoning" is that she is an adult, she feels she is well informed about the (minimal) risks of what she's doing, and that therefore it's OK to use a few "toxic" chemicals on herself.
However, vaccines are most commonly given to children. Children are deemed unable (in most cases) to provide informed consent, so parents or guardians or other responsible adults must do so on their behalf.
The power to make decisions on behalf of someone else is plenty scary. What if you make a terrible mistake? What if you ruin someone else's life? I can't help wondering whether this fear isn't a major contributor to the hysteria of anti-vaccinationists. They may feel that it's okay to take risks for themselves, but *any* possibility of them making a "wrong" decision on behalf of a child is so frightening as to be literally unbearable. That attitude is irrational, perhaps, but comprehensible.
Wow - a lot of bitter nasty comments on here. As the mother of 2 vaccine-injured children with pdd-nos, I commend Jenny's work and her thick skin to handle all the criticism. I hope she keeps at it. I follow her protocols thru one of the best DAN! doctors in the country. One of my children is nearly off the spectrum, the other has greatly improved. I wonder if anyone commenting has children who have been neurogically altered by vaccines. You'd sing a different tune if it happened to you.
Wow - a lot of bitter nasty comments on here. As the mother of 2 vaccine-injured children with pdd-nos, I commend Jenny's work and her thick skin to handle all the criticism. I hope she keeps at it. I follow her protocols thru one of the best DAN! doctors in the country. One of my children is nearly off the spectrum, the other has greatly improved. I wonder if anyone commenting has children who have been neurogically altered by vaccines. You'd sing a different tune if it happened to you.
Wow - a lot of bitter nasty comments on here. As the mother of 2 vaccine-injured children with pdd-nos, I commend Jenny's work and her thick skin to handle all the criticism. I hope she keeps at it. I follow her protocols thru one of the best DAN! doctors in the country. One of my children is nearly off the spectrum, the other has greatly improved. I wonder if anyone commenting has children who have been neurologicaly altered by vaccines. You'd sing a different tune if it happened to you.
Wow - a lot of bitter nasty comments on here. As the mother of 2 vaccine-injured children with pdd-nos, I commend Jenny's work and her thick skin to handle all the criticism. I hope she keeps at it. I follow her protocols thru one of the best DAN! doctors in the country. One of my children is nearly off the spectrum, the other has greatly improved. I wonder if anyone commenting has children who have been neurologicaly altered by vaccines. You'd sing a different tune if it happened to you.
Wow - a lot of bitter nasty comments on here. As the mother of 2 vaccine-injured children with pdd-nos, I commend Jenny's work and her thick skin to handle all the criticism. I hope she keeps at it. I follow her protocols thru one of the best DAN! doctors in the country. One of my children is nearly off the spectrum, the other has greatly improved. I wonder if anyone commenting has children who have been neurogically altered by vaccines. You'd sing a different tune if it happened to you.
You follow the protocols and medical advice of an actress that pretty much came to success for acting like a dumb bimbo? And you are proud of it? Wow.
Let me guess, it was that wonderful DAN! doctor that told you that your kids were "vaccine damaged" by running an array of expensive tests that told you they were high in heavy metals. That's what they always "discover".
You want a good challenge? Try finding any DAN! doctor that didn't find that a child was high in metals, vaccines or not.
Donna submitted her comment five times, which reveals her reading comprehension.
Really, folks, read the error message. Your comment posted, the system is just too busy to repaint the page. One reason the system is too busy are all you folks hitting the back arrow and clicking on the post button!