Tag: Jenny McCarthy

Who’s Who in the Anti-Vaccine Movement – 2019 Edition

We know that there will always be some folks who won’t vaccinate their kids.

“Although many may characterize all individuals who eschew vaccines as “anti-vaccine” or “vaccine deniers,” in reality, there is a broad spectrum of individuals who choose not to have themselves or their children vaccinated.”

Tara C Smith on Vaccine Rejection and Hesitancy: A Review and Call to Action 

Who are these people?

Who’s Who in the Anti-Vaccine Movement – 2019 Edition

We used to conveniently call them anti-vaccine, but that doesn’t really work.

Well, it still does, as long as you understand who you are talking about.

The thing is, the folks who don’t vaccinate their kids exist on a spectrum, from those who just need a little extra reassurance (the worrieds) or a lot of extra reassurance (parents who are on the fence or vaccine-hesitant), to vaccine refusers (will likely vaccinate during an outbreak, etc.) and deniers who likely aren’t vaccinating their kids in any circumstance and who might try to persuade others to avoid vaccines too – the vocal vaccine deniers.

So you don’t really want to bunch them all up one big anti-vaccine group, especially when you are typically talking about the vocal vaccine deniers, many of whom believe that they have a child who was injured or damaged by a vaccine.

We are still missing some folks though…

No, I’m not talking about those who like to claim that they are pro-safe vaccines, pro-choice vaccines, or vaccine skeptics, just because they don’t want to be labeled as being anti-vaccine.

Bob Sears appeared on Fox & Friends in 2010 for the segment "Vaccines: A Bad Combination?"
Remember when Bob Sears appeared on Fox & Friends in 2010 for the segment “Vaccines: A Bad Combination?”

We need to talk about the:

These are the folks who push misinformation about vaccines that scares parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

Who's to blame for low immunization rates and continuing outbreaks?
Who’s to blame for low immunization rates and continuing outbreaks?

Do you know who I’m talking about it? Have you noticed that these folks never seem to face any consequences?

Who else do we need to talk about?

I remember speaking with my mother about vaccines, and at one point in our discussion, she claimed a link existed between vaccines and autism. In response, I presented evidence from the CDC which claimed directly in large bold letters, “There is no link between vaccines and autism.” Within the same article from the CDC on their official website, extensive evidence and studies from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) were cited. Most would assume when confronted with such strong proof, there would be serious consideration that your views are incorrect. This was not the case for my mother, as her only response was, “that’s what they want you to think.”

Ethan Lindenberger

There are also the folks who are pushing an anti-science agenda, making you think that mainstream doctors are bad and that anything holistic and natural must be good. Until the damage these folks are doing is seriously addressed, it won’t matter if we get a few anti-vaccine folks off of Amazon, Facebook and Pinterest.

Learn to be more skeptical. Do real research. Vaccinate your kids.

More on Who’s Who in the Anti-Vaccine Movement – 2019 Edition

Six Degrees of Anti-Vaccine Separation

You know about the Kevin Bacon thing, right?

Six degrees of separation? The idea that most people are connected by six or fewer degrees of separation.

Six Degrees of Anti-Vaccine Separation

Not surprisingly, you don’t have to beyond a few degrees to see the connection between many anti-vaccine folks.

“Parents from around Southern California choose Gordon for his outspoken and controversial stance on vaccinations, driving from as far away as Santa Barbara and Long Beach.

They know he will lend a sympathetic ear to their concerns about the possible adverse side effects of childhood vaccinations — even though several large scientific studies have failed to find a connection.

His openness to alternative approaches has earned him an avid following. With thousands of patients, his practice is so busy that he no longer accepts new patients.”

Los Angeles Times on Doctor Contrarian

Especially the vocal anti-vaccine folks.

Few folks likely remember, but in 2000, just after Andrew Wakefield released his now retracted study, Dr. Jay Gordon and Cindy Crawford appeared on Good Morning America to discuss vaccines and how she had decided to delay vaccinating her baby.

After the segment, Dr. Gordon stated:

They edited the segment to make me sound like a vaccination proponent. We also have to understand the impact of a person as well-known as Cindy Crawford delaying vaccines for over six months.

March 1997 article in the LA Times describing how media savvy “skeptics” were attacking vaccines.

So while a lot of folks like to give credit to Bob Sears and Jenny McCarthy for starting the modern anti-vaccine movement, Dr. Jay and Cindy Crawford were on the scene far earlier.

Dr. Jay had even been featured in the LA Times before Wakefield published his paper!

Speaking of Jenny McCarthy, it is interesting to note that Jay Gordon was her pediatrician!

“Right before his MMR shot, I said to the doctor, I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autism shot, isn’t it? And he said, “No, that is ridiculous. It is a mother’s desperate attempt to blame something on autism.” And he swore at me. . . . And not soon thereafter, I noticed that change in the pictures: Boom! Soul, gone from his eyes.”

Jenny McCarthy

Well, Dr. Jay is almost certainly not the pediatrician that swore at her after giving her child an MMR vaccine.

“Yes, there have been cases of Disney spread from Measlesland. I will give MMRs to kids 3 yrs+ if parents are worried.”

Jay Gordon

But it’s not hard to guess where she got some of her ideas about vaccines.

“Would any scientist give SIX vaccines at once to a baby? Asking for trouble. One at a time makes so much more sense.”

Jay Gordon

It probably makes even more sense if it is your pediatrician saying it…

“My name is Brittney Kara and my husband and I are parents who have chosen not to continue vaccinating our children. After thoroughly investigating and carefully weighing the risks and benefits of each vaccine, we have concluded that the current vaccines are not safe for our children and that they are not required for the optimum health of our children.”

Brittney Kara

Especially when you have a pediatrician who has said “I think that the public health benefits to vaccinating are grossly overstated” and who recommends that parents “Wait until a child is clearly developmentally “solid” before vaccinating because we just don’t know which children will react badly to immunizations.”

Is that where Brittney “Why Aren’t Vaccines Mentioned in the Bible?” Kara got her ideas about vaccines?

“I began researching vaccines in 2007 when I was pregnant with our first child. Dr. Jay Gordon was my pediatrician growing up and since I have always held him in a high regard he was the first person I turned to. He was very cautious about the current CDC schedule and his research inspired me to start my own. I began following the work of Dr. Russell Blaylock, Dr. Joseph Mercola, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, and Dr. Suzanne Humphries, among others.”

Brittney Kara

What about Alicia Silverstone and Mayim Bialik?

How many celebrities got their ideas about vaccines from Jay Gordon?

Suspicions about the DPT were not confirmed. In fact, it was found that the DPT vaccine did not cause any of the neurological problems that folks claimed, something that seemed to trigger the anti-vaccine feelings in some pediatricians.

How many other people have been influenced by the anti-vaccine celebrities that Jay Gordon has inspired?

More on Six Degrees of Anti-Vaccine Separation

The Moral Outrage of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

It doesn’t take much to outrage folks these days.

It seems like there is always someone, someplace that is outraged about something.

Ironically, the latest faux outrage comes from anti-vaccine folks.

The Moral Outrage of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

What do anti-vaccine folks have to be outraged about, besides the idea that they think we are forcing them to vaccinate and protect their kids against life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases?

“Report this Doctor – Laughing At Injured is not acceptable”

Apparently, they think that a doctor was making fun of autistic kids during a flu shot clinic at a hospital:

T: So after this shot, am I going to be good at math, Z?

Z: You’re going to be really good, because you’re going to be fully autistic, instead of just partially….

Z: You know Tom, I’m wondering if we’ve just been hit with placebo, because I didn’t feel the needle, I didn’t feel the autism coming on. None of it.

This was similar to an unscripted routine Zdogg did last year:

Z: Thomas is getting autistic as we speak, because he is full of mercury right now.

T: I can do math now. It’s awesome.

Z: That’s right. He’s gonna go gamble on the strip and clean house.

In the videos, they also talk a lot about how the flu shot is a scam by the government to control our thoughts…

Are they making fun of autistic kids or adults?

“It was a dumb joke, probably in poor taste, but it didn’t occur to me at the time because it was a live show and we were trying to be funny.”

ZDogg

It wasn’t funny and I’m glad he took down the video, even if it was under pressure from hospital administration and not because he really wanted to.

Joking about vaccines causing autism is offensive and no one should be doing it, even if it is call out and making fun of the folks in the anti-vaccine movement who try and associate vaccines with autism and do actually hurt autistic families.

But did he mock the father of a child who died of SUDC, within a day of getting vaccinated? A father who was carrying a copy of JB Handley’s autism book, who claims that “there is no money in dead babies,” and who is banging on the studio window during his interview with Paul Offit?

No.

He is simply pointing out, and seemed a little excited, that he had anti-vaccine protesters at his studio for the first time.

At a screening for Vaxxed, Paul Thomas, MD, joked that kids with autism were brain damaged. And everyone laughed.
At a screening for Vaxxed, Paul Thomas, MD, joked that kids with autism were brain damaged. And everyone laughed.

But if anti-vaccine folks really feel outrage over this, why is it so selective?

Where is the outrage when the comments don’t come from someone who supports vaccines?

“I want to thank the warrior moms and dads. Those of you who have an autistic child, or a child who is otherwise damaged, you know the damage isn’t always clear-cut autism. Some times it is just some variation – your kids just not quite right.

That’s why I didn’t stand and say that I have an autistic child, because my kids, I tease them and say that they are brain damaged. Uh. Sorry son.”

Paul Thomas

I don’t remember any outrage over Paul Thomas’ comments or when Del Bigtree said “Eve is autistic, that’s right, otherwise, why would she have eaten the apple,” and made this statement on his show:

“When I go visit my grandma, why don’t I see any autistic people flapping in the corner of the room.”

Apparently, the idea of autistic adults doesn’t fit into their narrative that vaccines are associated with autism.

But that isn’t even the worse thing Del has been recorded as saying…

“But I would think when you have a child with autism, you know, or on the spectrum, you have no reference point. You have no…

I don’t want this to sound wrong, but it’s a little bit more like having a dog or a Doberman or something that you don’t understand how it thinks, you don’t know. I mean, I mean a better figure than animal reference except… you don’t have their brain.

Or you hear about stories of people that bring home of exotic you know of chimpanzee or something where they can’t, and this is not sounding right.”

At least he didn’t want it to sound wrong…

“They get the shot. That night they have a fever of 103. They go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

The anti-vaccine world is full of talk of autistic kids being broken and damaged, they push dangerous and expensive “cures” on parents, and spread propaganda to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

Dr. Jerry is a pediatrician who practices Translational Medicine and wrote the forward to Jenny McCarthy's autism book.
Dr. Jerry is a pediatrician who practices Translational Medicine and wrote the forward to Jenny McCarthy’s autism book.

And they hijack every disease, story, and tragedy to make folks think that everything is a vaccine injury.

As a physician, I assure you this story isn’t believable at any level. In my opinion, the “health officials” are conjuring meningitis fairy tales about an “unvaccinated” boogeyman to cover for the much more probable cause of this child’s death: VACCINES.

The much more likely cause is right in front of us: “The child had just received his 4-month-old vaccinations two days beforehand.”

Jim Meehan

Jim Meehan, for example, is so upset that he thinks Zdogg should lose his medical license, but he had no problem harassing the family of an infant who had just died of meningitis, claiming it was a cover up for a vaccine injury.

This is the modern anti-vaccine movement.
This is the modern anti-vaccine movement.

Have I mentioned that some of them lie about religious and medical exemptions to avoid getting their kids vaccinated and protected? And others sell those vaccine exemptions?

“A Clallam County woman in her 20s died this year from an undetected measles infection discovered only after an autopsy, state health officials said Thursday. The case is the first confirmed measles death in the U.S. in 12 years.

The woman was likely exposed to the highly contagious infection at a local medical center during a recent outbreak in Clallam County. She was at the site at the same time as someone who later developed a rash and was determined to be contagious for measles.”

Undetected measles led to death of Clallam County woman in her 20s

Where is the outrage when someone dies from a disease that could have easily been prevented by a safe and effective vaccine?

Those of us who understand the hypocrisy of the anti-vaccine movement know exactly where it is.

More on The Moral Outrage of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

Why Are You Still Worried About the MMR Vaccine?

We know why most folks got scared of the MMR vaccine.

Who's to blame for low immunization rates and continuing outbreaks?
Who’s to blame for low immunization rates and continuing outbreaks?

And most of us remember when most folks welcomed the MMR vaccine the end of endemic measles in the United States.

Why You Were Worried About the MMR Vaccine

Of course, that all changed when Andrew Wakefield spoke at the press conference for his 1998 Lancet paper and said:

“And I have to say that there is sufficient anxiety in my own mind of the safety, the long term safety of the polyvalent, that is the MMR vaccination in combination, that I think that it should be suspended in favour of the single vaccines, that is continued use of the individual measles, mumps and rubella components… there is no doubt that if you give three viruses together, three live viruses, then you potentially increase the risk of an adverse event occurring, particularly when one of those viruses influences the immune system in the way that measles does. And it may be, and studies will show this or not, that giving the measles on its own reduces the risk of this particular syndrome developing… the risk of this particular syndrome developing is related to the combined vaccine, the MMR, rather than the single vaccines…. People have been saying for some time, people on the periphery of autism, have been saying for some time that this may well be related to bowel damage.”

Although there was no evidence for any of that, vaccination rates went down and measles rates went up – the Wakefield Factor.

MMR vaccination rates had dropped below 80% by 2003, when the first measles outbreaks in the UK began. They didn't fully recover until 2012.
MMR vaccination rates had dropped below 80% by 2003, when the first measles outbreaks in the UK began. They didn’t fully recover until 2012.

But no, it wasn’t one person at a press conference that us lead down a decade of worry about the MMR vaccine.

“And then the nurse gave my son that shot. And I remember going, “Oh, God, no!” And soon thereafter I noticed a change. The soul was gone from his eyes.”

Jenny McCarthy on Oprah

Andrew Wakefield had plenty of help!

Not only from anti-vaccine celebrities, but from the media and their scare stories.

Why Are You Still Worried About the MMR Vaccine?

But that is all old news.

Over and over again, we see new studies that show that the MMR vaccine is safe and is not associated with autism.

Andrew Wakefield’s work was never replicated.

The MMR vaccine never contained thimerosal and doesn’t even contain aluminum, which I mention only because those are ingredients that some folks get scared about, not because they are harmful.

Vaccines are safe. The MMR vaccine is safe.

And more and more, as predicted, we are seeing why vaccines are necessary – more and more outbreaks.  Outbreaks that are proving to be deadly.

Why are you still worried about the MMR vaccine?

Because anti-vaccine folks are still scaring you away from vaccinating and protecting your kids!

Don’t listen to them!

More on MMR Vaccine Fears

“Pro-Safe Vaccine” Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

As a pediatrician who has always fully vaccinated and protected his own kids, I didn’t totally understand what it meant when my first parents told me that they were pro-safe vaccine.

If they were interested in safe vaccines, I thought, why not get their kids vaccinated and protected? After all, vaccines are safe! Their baby was due to get several very safe vaccines at her upcoming two-month checkup.

At a screening for Vaxxed, Paul Thomas, MD, joked that kids with autism were brain damaged. And everyone laughed.
At a screening for Vaxxed, Paul Thomas, MD, joked that kids with autism were brain damaged! And everyone laughed.

I eventually got an answer.

“You don’t have to dig far to know that vaccines have caused tremendous harm. Have they had benefits? Absolutely. Which is why I remain somewhat on the neutral side in saying that I am not anti-vaccine,” said Dr. Paul Thomas. “I’m pro-safe vaccines. I’ve progressed along to the point where I now don’t believe there is such a thing.”

Folks who say that they are pro-safe vaccines typically:

And they want new, safer vaccines that can’t possibly cause any kind of side effects.

Of course, these new, safer vaccines must be toxin-free, without any preservatives, stabilizers, and especially, no chemicals of any kind. They should also be free of gluten, antifreeze, thimerosal, vaginal spermicides, and heavy metals. Essentially, they would just be antigens, without other ingredients, because these folks don’t understand how vaccines are really made.

“Pro-Safe Vaccine” Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

Are you starting to see the problem with folks who say that they are pro-safe vaccines now?

“I’m not for starting an epidemic of another disease. We just want there to be some type of conversation, once. Sit down with our side, with our doctors and scientists, to take a look at what we’re talking about. We’re not an anti-vaccine movement. We’re pro-safe-vaccine schedule. Until we have that conversation, people are going to think it’s an anti- and pro- side.”

Jenny McCarthy

Who were these doctors and scientists that she had on her side?

“In our community we say, “Yeah.” We firmly believe the cause of the epidemic of autism is due to a vaccine injury and/or other environmental exposures — pesticides also. But what on this earth we all kind of share the most is vaccines.”

Jenny McCarthy

Right. So she is not anti-vaccine, but she thinks that vaccines injure people and have caused and epidemic of autism?

And that’s where her pro-safe vaccine schedule comes in…

And we’re saying: “Delay them. Delay them till age 2. Skip some that you might not need.”

Jenny McCarthy

Like all of the other alternative vaccine schedules out there, Jenny McCarthy’s pro-safe vaccine schedule had no evidence that it was safe or effective.

And that gets to the root of the issue. We don’t know what causes autism, so it must be vaccines.

“To our community, Andrew Wakefield is Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one.”

J. B. Handley

But what about the folks who have moved beyond listening to Jenny McCarthy and being concerned about autism?

They have the same goals and are still scaring parents with the same old messages that have been used by the anti-vaccine movement for hundreds of years.

And they just don’t believe the overwhelming evidence that vaccines are safe and necessary.

What Does It Mean to Be Pro-Safe Vaccine?

So what does it mean to say that you are pro-safe vaccine?

Essentially, it means that you are anti-vaccine, but don’t want to say that you are anti-vaccine.

More on the Pro-Safe Vaccine Movement

 

How to End the Epidemic of Bad Books About Autism

Looking for a book about autism?

There are a lot of good ones, including NeuroTribes and the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism.

Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of bad ones too.

How to End the Epidemic of Bad Books About Autism

Why are there so many bad books about autism?

That’s easy.

JB Handley is the latest to write a book about vaccines and autism, moving the focus to aluminum, now that it has become obvious that removing thimerosal from vaccines didn't affect autism rates.
JB Handley is the latest to write a book about vaccines and autism, moving the focus to aluminum, now that it has become obvious that removing thimerosal from vaccines didn’t affect autism rates.

Just about every anti-vaccine expert out there also thinks that they are an expert on autism. In fact, they think that they have all of the answers and can even help you cure and prevent autism.

That’s why there are books like:

  • The Autism Book: What Every Parent Needs to Know About Early Detection, Treatment, Recovery, and Prevention by Dr. Bob Sears
  • Preventing Autism: What You Can Do to Protect Your Children Before and After Birth by Dr. Jay Gordon
  • Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism by Jenny McCarthy
  • Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines – The Truth Behind a Tragedy by Andrew Wakefield
  • Vaccines, Autism & Chronic Inflammation: The New Epidemic by Barbara Loe Fisher
  • The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic by Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill

What do all of these books miss?

“Autism, as I see it, steals the soul from a child…”

Dr. Jerry Kartzinel writing in the introduction to Jenny McCarthy’s first autism book Louder Than Words

Besides the fact that there is no autism epidemic and that vaccines are not associated with autism, they miss that they are actually hurting autistic families.

“Doctors who first worked with children with regressive autism back in the early 1990s found that one of the biggest “wows” came from treating intestinal yeast overgrowth, and this benefit holds true today. Children whose diarrhea doesn’t go away with the GFCF diet usually show resolution with yeast medication.”

Bob Sears, MD on The Autism Book

From restrictive diets and antifungal drugs for yeast infections to bleach enemas and detox therapies, these books often push expensive, often unproven, sometimes disproven, and dangerous  non-evidence based biomedical treatments and cures on hopeful parents of autistic kids.

Don’t help them by buying or promoting their books.

Instead, look for better books by folks who are really helping autistic kids and don’t think they are damaged, or books by someone who is actually autistic.

What to Know About the Epidemic of Bad Autism Books

There are a lot of good books out there with helpful information if you think that your child is autistic, has been  recently diagnosed, or if you simply want to learn more about autism. It’s time to stop the epidemic of bad autism books.

More on the Epidemic of Bad Autism Books

Why Didn’t Everyone Die with Our 1980s Level of Vaccination Rates?

This is actually a real question that someone recently asked:

“Can someone please explain how we survived the 1980s with vaccination rates well below “herd immunity” thresholds and far fewer vaccines? Why didn’t everyone die?”

J.B. Handley

Mr. Handley even provides a nice chart to give his question some context.

Vaccination rates for 2 year old children in 1985.
The chart shows vaccination rates for 2 year old children in 1985.

So why didn’t everyone die?

That’s easy.

While vaccine-preventable diseases can be life-threatening, they certainly don’t kill everyone who gets them. They are not 100% fatal. Well, rabies usually is, but not surprisingly, rabies wasn’t on his little chart…

Deaths from Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, 1985

What else does Mr. Handley miss?

“Comparisons between rates obtained from immunization records versus the total sample (records and recall) conducted on data collected between 1979 and 1983 showed that the USIS, which accepted parental recall, underestimated the true vaccination rate in preschoolers by as much as 23% for some antigens.”

Simpson et al on Forty years and four surveys: How does our measuring measure up?

The vaccination rates he is citing were based on a phone survey that wasn’t thought to be very accurate, underestimating true vaccination rates. It was last used in 1985.

While vaccination rates weren’t great at the time, they just weren’t as horrible as he makes it seem, but we still had some deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. Not as bad as the pre-vaccine era though, when hundreds of people died with measles each year.

Here’s the data from the CDC for 1985:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/E/reported-cases.pdf

  • 23 deaths from tetanus
  • 4 deaths from pertussis
  • 4 deaths from measles
  • 1 death from rubella
  • 2 cases of congenital rubella syndrome

Unfortunately, it got worse. This was just before the large measles outbreaks from 1989 to 1991, when 123 people died. During those three years, there were also 28 deaths from pertussis, 6 deaths from mumps, 13 deaths from rubella and 77 cases of congenital rubella syndrome!

But then we learned our lesson and we got kids vaccinated. But most of the problems then were about access to vaccines, not parents who intentionally skipped or delayed vaccines for their kids.

Deaths from non-Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, 1985

The CDC Morbidity and Motality Weekly Report includes summaries of notifiable diseases in the United States.Many of the diseases on J.B. Handley’s chart weren’t yet vaccine-preventable in 1985. They were quite deadly though, which is why vaccines were being developed and were eventually added to the schedule to protect our kids from getting them.

But in 1985 (*or in the years before the vaccine was introduced), tragically, the CDC lists:

  • 80 deaths from hepatitis A
  • 490 deaths from hepatitis B
  • 68 deaths from chicken pox
  • 219 deaths from Hib meningitis in children and about another 45 deaths from Hib epiglotittis
  • at least 200 deaths from pneumococcal disease in children*
  • 257 deaths from meningococcal infections
  • 20 to 60 deaths each year from rotavirus infections*

Want us to Turn Back the Clock and go back to an immunization plan (the Jenny McCarthy schedule) that didn’t include vaccines against any of these diseases? We would end up back to when kids still died of meningitis, pneumonia, blood infections, severe dehydration, epiglottitis, and cancer from Hib, pneumococcal disease, rotavirus, hepatitis B, hepatitis A, chicken pox, HPV, and meningococcal disease.

And the answer to Mr. Handley’s question becomes even more obvious.

How did we survive the 1980s with vaccination rates well below “herd immunity” thresholds and far fewer vaccines?

Many people didn’t.

What to Know About Deaths and Vaccination Rates

Poor vaccination rates and fewer vaccines led to more deaths from now vaccine preventable diseases in the mid-1980s.

More on Deaths and Vaccination Rates