Heather Whitestone is well known for being the first deaf Miss America, winning the Miss America pageant in 1994.
What is little known about Heather Whitestone, now Heather Leigh Whitestone McCallum, is that her mother once blamed the DTP vaccine as having caused her deafness.
The true story is that her deafness resulted not from the DTP vaccine, but from an antibiotic (gentamycin) that was given to treat a Hib infection, a now vaccine-preventable disease.
Not surprisingly, the true story, that her deafness wasn’t caused by a vaccine injury, didn’t get nearly as much media coverage.