I had thought this argument defunct and buried, but talking to my friend Cameron, and watching the Colbert Report on Monday brought it back to light. Do people really still believe that giving children the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella) is linked to diseases like autism? Is Jenny McCarthy really more convincing than millions of doctors? I know her son has autism, but since when does that make her an expert? Just because you have a dog doesn't make you a veterinarian! Would you presume to tell millions of dog owners everywhere how to take care of their pet? And if a dog owner shouted at you about what to do for your pet, would you take their self-righteous shrieks seriously? I doubt it.

The earliest mention of the autism-vaccine link appeared in 1998, via a "study" done by the British Dr. Andrew Wakefield. He studied twelve children who, one month after receiving the MMR vaccine, developed autism. To someone who has never taken statistics, or perhaps someone without common sense, this may appear to be a convincing argument that the MMR vaccine has a causal relationship with autism. However, there are clearly issues. Twelve children? Does that sound remotely statistically significant? All of them had received the MMR vaccine (about 90% of children in Britain did, at the time). Did Dr. Wakefield find children in the other 10% to balance his study? No.

To continue his track record, in 2002 Dr. Wakefield linked the measles vaccine to autism. He looked for the virus genome in patients both with and without autism this time. Good for him. However, he made no effort to distinguish between the natural measles genome and the vaccine type measles genome, even though the capacity to do so existed. In addition, the sample wasn't done blindly (in which the researcher doesn't know if the sample comes from the control group or the test group), which probably led to false positives. One step forward, two steps back. Either way, he's still a horrible scientist.

But Jenny McCarthy didn't care. She latched onto his findings and began preaching the dangers of vaccination, starting in about 2007. She even wrote a book about it. It made no difference that multiple other scientists had done studies and written papers both denouncing Wakefield's findings and proving that no such link existed. And now hundreds of children each year aren't being vaccinated. Since then, over 600 children have died completely preventable deaths.

It was so bad that they investigated Wakefield and struck him from the medical record. In addition, Dr. Paul Offit wrote a book called "Autism's False Prophets". It's pretty good. And also accurate, which is more than can be said for most of the crap Jenny McCarthy had someone pen for her.

To sum it up; vaccinate your children, people. Children are dying of whooping cough. Whooping cough! What year is it, 1945? Vaccines have been proven effective for decades, and false advertising from Hollywood blondes moms shouldn't be setting us back 60 years.



I used some sources for this post, even though I have infinite knowledge. If you want to educate yourself and become one iota closer to reaching my level of omni-intelligence, check out these sites! http://www.aap.org/immunization/families/autismwakefield.html
http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny_McCarthy_Body_Count/Home.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7134893.ece