Jenny McCarthy Strikes Back At Amanda Peet On Child Vaccinations
It's ON!
Filed under: babies and bumps, healthy living — Michael d'Estries @ 4:40 pm
September 30th 2008
This summer will remembered for a lot of things (ah, Real Girls Eat Meat) — but one of the more contentious was the debate on vaccines for children. It kicked off with Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey attending a “Green Our Vaccines” rally in D.C., followed by actress Amanda Peet slamming parents who do not follow standard child inoculation schedules, passionate debate, and then relative calm.
Until now.
Jenny McCarthy is firing back at Amanda Peet in a new interview in Spectrum Magazine. The 35-year-old actress and mother of an autistic child said, “(Peet) has a lot of [nerve] to come forward and be on that side, because there is an angry mob on my side, and I like the fact that I can say she’s completely wrong.” She added, “I look at (Peet) now and say to myself, ‘That was me before I had autism in my life,’ and until she walks in our shoes, she really has no idea.”
Oh, snap!
In addition, the national autism advocacy group Autism United is calling for a boycott of all of Amanda Peet’s movies. “We want to send a clear message to her,” says Executive Director John Gilmore. “Our community will not support the continued misinformation that is funneled into the media by organizations like ECBT and the American Academy of Pediatrics. We are not against vaccines, rather we are for safe vaccines. Until they understand that, we won’t back down. Ms. Peet’s comments are deplorable and an apology will not suffice. We applaud Jenny McCarthy’s continued efforts and for speaking up for our community.”
[Update: Welcome Scienceblogs readers! Welcome Age of Autism Readers! Yes, the below poll has been influenced by many different sites -- and as such, it serves as a very poor feedback item. As some have mentioned, the best course of action going forward is to scrap polling on a topic like this one in favor of comments only. Thank you all for your insights on this. I also want to thank those from both sides who are commenting respectfully and listening to what people have to say.]
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Tagged: amanda peet, jenny mccarthy, jim carrey
Here is yet another parent’s account of post-vaccine regression into autism followed by recovery with biomedical treatments. This kind of story should receive so much more attention from those who are (or should be) investigating causes of and treatments for autism. http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/10/flu-shot-nightm.html
What percentage of autism is like this case? I don’t know, and unfortunately neither do the “experts” who should be studying these cases. But I do know that there has been a tremendous increase in autism during the past 25 years, which cannot be explained by genes alone.
We do not currently have 1 in 150 adults with significant mental disabilities — whether called autism or misdiagnosed as something else. This “hidden hord” theory is without basis in fact. I have already recommended the thorough discussion of this issue in Dr. Bryan Jepson’s book “Changing the Course of Autism”.
Below is a quote from http://www.generationrescue.org/misinformation.html
“The Department of Developmental Services in California is considered to have the best data on the number of autism cases. Their 2002 report slammed the door on the theory that the rise in autism cases is the result of better diagnosis. Excerpt:
‘There is no evidence that a loosening in the diagnostic criteria has contributed to increased number of autism clients…we conclude that some, if not all, of the observed increase represents a true increase in cases of autism in California…a purely genetic basis for autism does not fully explain the increasing autism prevalence. Other theories that attempt to better explain the observed increase in autism cases include environmental exposures to substances such as mercury; viral exposures; autoimmune disorders; and childhood vaccinations.’”
In response to some comments made above: I do not believe that vaccines are “evil” and I have never ever recommended to anyone that they forgo vaccines.
Every time concerns are raised about vaccine safety, vaccine defenders try to twist the issue into a question of whether we should do away with all vaccines. That is NOT the question. The questions are, how can the vaccine schedule and ingredients be made safer, why are adverse reactions occurring, how can the number of adverse reactions be reduced, do the benefits outweigh the risks for every one of the dozens of vaccines currently on the schedule, and how can adverse reactions be treated.
Many appear to believe that we should not even discuss the problems because then peole will be afraid of vaccines. But parents are not content to sit quietly and wait for these problems to be addressed (as in the song “Do nothing ’til you hear from me — and that will be never”). We must discuss these problems and advocate for more research and better solutions.
No, actually anti-vaxers seem to do a good job at that themselves.
You know what’s so sad…something is causing these children to get sick. Could it possibly be that the chemicals in these vaccines are reactive to some kids? SOME children react to different medicines, that’s why they have side effects listed on most meds. There are small sub-sets of the population that can’t handle all 36 recommended shots. People, stop this nonsense and grow up! Let’s focus on the recovery, if Jenny has a potential recover, then listen to her. She’s not talking about anything too radical. You have a choice by the way, vaccinate if you want to.
Why should we listen to her?
So she claims to have a “cure”. So do homoeopaths, and snake oil salesmen.
Would you listen to someone who is peddling unsubstantiated bullshit?
Olivia, why does whatever is “causing children to be sick” have to be anything to do with vaccines? I have posted evidence concerning the genetic basis for autism, and there is the possibility that in a minority of cases there is a furhter external trigger for precipitating the clinical features. But the list of potential triggers is large, so why do vaccines have to feature at the top of everyone’s most wanted list?
It takes only a modicum of common sense to realise that the number of individual antigenic vaccine components have significantly reduced in number over the last 40 years, although the number of individual injections may have risen. This makes a cause-effect relationship from vaccine components or antigens causing immune overload very unlikely.
The vaccines today are much “purer” in immunological terms than in the past. Other vaccine constituents are present in such tiny quantities that any real effect from these compared to other environmental exposures to the same chemicals must be quite negligible.
So why must it always be the vaccines which are to blame? One reason I can see is that many parents describe a regression following a vaccine reaction, but this we are told can be delayed and not immediate, so it is subject to considerable recall and confirmation bias. Someone once calculated in the UK that given the predicted background incidence of ASD within a given year of life (1-2yrs) over 80% of people would report that their child had shown first signs of ASD within 3 months of a vaccination. So the link is likely to be purely coincidental and not causative in the vast majority of cases. I am not saying vaccine reactions may not be a trigger (eg Hannah Poling), but it is likely to be rare. We also know that infections, fever etc could be triggers, so it is theoretically possible that vaccination might actually prevent some kids getting more unwell through from the natural infection and developing ASD. Infections pose a more serious and wide-ranging challenge to the immune system than does a vaccine (even when there is a reaction).
Instead of vilifying vaccines, which have tremendous and undeniable health benefits, why not start a crusade against tuna, or baby milk (or even breast milk for that matter, seeing how it’s full of mercury?) Is it because vaccines are such an easy “target”, because people like Jenny can always whip up a bit of “evil money-grabbing pharma” conspiracy to accompany her ignorant utterances on vaccines, and because blaming vaccines is one way through which people can get a degree of emotional closure and release from any lingering feelings of guilt, along with the possibility of financial settlement through compensation?
Wow… I read this and went “Yay Jenny McCarthy” but then started reading people’s comments and my heart just broke.
I have a child cursed with Autism and guess what people, vaccinations played their part. Many children get the MMR, it builds antibodies and then the body sheds the vaccination… nope, not some… my child was tested and 5 YEARS later, still had the MMR VACCINATION stored in his CSF!! Guess what people, the vaccinations done one by one at a later age is great for many kids but for some, it changes their life in a way that you could never imagine!!
I do understand where you’re coming from… I mean shoot! It irritates me that they want my child in a car seat at 4, 5, 6, 8 years old BUT I get it! Somebody somewhere lost their child in an accident and now they’ve fought for this. I don’t agree with it and personally hate it but I GET IT! I don’t plan in getting in an accident just as much as you don’t plan on your child’s vaccinations hurting him
please educate yourselves before STABBING your child..adding unknown stuff into the bloodstream never made sense.. Go Jenny!!!!
Renee, the instant you call Autism a curse you are outside reality. Autism is what you make of it. It’s only a curse if you want it to be.
And if the MMR is still in your child’s system it means there was something wrong with your child’s specific vaccination – not all of them. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your child’s Autism.
Jenny McCarthy is no hero. She’s a villain participating in the world’s biggest hoax in the mental health system – the idea that Autism is not genetic and is caused by vaccines. This has already been proven to be wrong. Read the posts just above by Dyce about “The Genetics of Autism”.
Dyce/ The reason vaccines are at the top of most peoples list is because sooooooo many parents watched their child get vaccinated, spike a fever either right there or soon after, seize, and never speak again. For a lot of these parents it’s not days later it’s the day of. These parents are told it’s a coincidence, but there have been so many parents with the same story. Do they all have the same story, of course not. However so many do. That is why vaccines are at the top of the list.
As all drugs are not one size fits all neither are vaccines.
I do not vaccinate my children and probably never will. However I would NEVER tell another parent not to vaccinate their kids and I have heard Jenny say the same thing. My decision was made long before Jenny ever said anything. Any parent that doesn’t vax just because Jenny said so is ignorant just as any parent that vaxes because Peet says so is also ignorant. We should do our own research, pray if you believe, and then make the decision you think is right.
Amanda – perhaps you should educate yourself before claiming vaccination is like “adding unknown stuff to the bloodstream”.
The constituents of vaccines are quite well known. They are not “toxic”, despite Jenny’s lame attempt to say they are. They are not delivered “into the bloodstream”, but into muscle tissue from where they are slowly taken up into the circulation over several hours to days.
On the other hand, every time your child scrapes his knee, or brushes his teeth, he will have a substantial load of antigenic foreign proteins and other unknown material as well as several thousand antigenic components of various skin, environmental and mouth bacteria directly administered into his blood stream.
Phew! I hope his immune system can cope with the strain.
Rochelle, I understand many parents associate events with the administration of a vaccine. All I can do is point out that this is a rare event, and when studies look at everyone who is vaccinated, instances like this register as only a tiny blip. They cannot possibly explain all the cases of autism, which we are now being informed is as common as 1 in every 100 kids.
Perhaps the Finland experience with MMR might be enlightening. Prior to MMR introduction, the health authorities did a blinded cross-over study with 1200 twins (one got MMR the other didn’t), and this showed no adverse reactions of any significance. The study was criticised by those who said it was too small to pick up rare reactions.
The authorities responded by introducing a country-wide intensive surveillance programme covering the introduction of all MMR vaccine in Finland. Health visitors, GPs, parents etc were involved and carried out monitoring of every single child who was immunised.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11144371
“RESULTS: Immunization of 1.8 million individuals and consumption of almost 3 million vaccine doses by the end of 1996 gave rise to 173 potentially serious reactions claimed to have been caused by MMR vaccination. In all, 77 neurologic, 73 allergic and 22 miscellaneous reactions and 1 death were reported, febrile seizure being the most common event. However, 45% of these events proved to be probably caused or contributed by some other factor, giving an incidence of serious adverse events with possible or indeterminate causal relation with MMR vaccination of 5.3 per 100,000 vaccinees or 3.2 per 100,000 vaccine doses.”
Even allowing for non reporting of minor events, and a degree of under-reporting of significant events (which the authors did not feel was a problem) this gives an indication of how rare any serious events were. Fully two-thirds of the “neurological events” described were classified as “febrile seizures”.
Of course this study was also criticised, with some saying it did not continue for long enough to pick up instances of “delayed” neurological damage (So much for the “instantaneous”, same day regression then that “sooooooo many parents” report…..)
In Finland (which is quite a bit smaller than the US) there might be potentially hundreds people saying the vaccine triggered something in their child, perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly. My point is that because “sooooo many parents” have described a reaction or an event, this does not necessarily make that event frequent or common when viewed in totality.
DO YOUR RESEARCH!
healthfreedomusa.org
infowars.com (vaccinations)
Henry kissinger openly talks about population control. You got to look at who is behind the pushing of mandatory vaccinations. The pharmaceutical companies who have a vested interest in this. The more vaccinations they can sell, the more people they can make sick and the more medicine they will need to sell you. The more money they will make. What a perfect plan!
Health Freedom USA – the ultimate paranoid conspiracy generator!
Do us all a favour, Renee. Do some proper research along the lines of what Dyce was linking to.
And where’s the medicine for Autism? Nowhere! Defeats the point of your quote doesn’t it?
And infowars is widely respected for it’s knowledge about things…
Renee, I am so sorry for your child who has autism because of the vaccinations s/he was given.
I honestly wonder why some of these people are still posting here weeks later. They seem so passionate about supporting drugs that have known links to diseases like autism. Maybe they’re just all drug company reps? Who knows, but it’s very disturbing.
I think, weeks later, its’ time they go back to their pro drug company ass kissing boards and away from ecorazzi.
e
No, we won’t, because Renee child is not Autistic because of vaccines. No one is. Autism is NOT a disease and never will be. It is a neurological difference.
If it’s time for anything, it’s time for people like you, E, to wake up and smell the roses. You’re being conned by conspiracy theorists who want quick answers to something beyond their comprehension (and there isn’t one) and feed off panic stricken parents being let down by a third world mental health system like that of the United States.
Good can come for Renee, if she is prepared to work very hard 24/7 and do the right thing by her child. Treated her child as diseased is the wrong thing.
I totally support Jenny McCarthy as she is standing for making vaccines more green not to totally take away vaccines.. If there is a link which is found in autism from taking vaccines then it is up to us as parents and the community as a whole to be able to have a choice in our children’s life and not lead a life that is dictated to us… Gee whiz people stand up and let your voice be heard and SPEAK… It is easy to write here but you try having the GUTS to stand up and be heard.. It takes passion and experience and knowledge to be able to publicly address autism that has been pushed on many a backburner until now.. We need more support within the schools systems, doctors and politicians before we have more undiagnosed children out there that continue to struggle in the real world.
Written by a mother who has a teenage son that has Aspergers.
Anna, if you want support for people like your teenage son – get onto your government about fixing up the mental health system. Vaccines have nothing to do with that battle. It’s a useless distraction.
1980’s autism 1 in 10,000
Today autism 1 in 150.
Why isn’t every single Pediatrician working to tell us why families are RUINED by this?
Oh yeah, it’s because of the sacred cows: vaccines, antibiotics and processed food.
Lord knows those couldn’t be causes so let’s not study them. Ergo, it must be better diagnosis, yeah that’s it. We missed those thousands of autistic kids all around us in the 80’s.
Give ‘em hell, Jenny!!
My son’s mama
Do you mean “Autism” as in the specific brain development disorder, or “autism” as a catch-all for “autism spectrum disorders”?
Yawn. What a stupid argument. The funny thing is that scientists have been studying autism. You could just use Google Scholar and find peer-reviewed papers instead of relying solely on anti-vaccination sources.
Hell, there were a bunch of studies done when the claim “thiomerosal causes autism” came out, and they all found that, in fact, it doesn’t.
Also, have you even considered that the reason for the higher number of autism cases in the US is just that more children have autism? And that is because autism is genetic not environmental?
Maybe more parents are seeing if their children are autistic because of the lawsuits against vaccine companies, and that would increase the number of diagnoses of autism?
It’s extremely simplistic to just put it down to “better diagnosis”. When in fact it might be a combination of factors.
Please people read the book “Unstrange Minds” by Roy Grinker, the anthropologist.
http://www.amazon.com/Unstrange-Minds-Remapping-World-Autism/dp/0465027644/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224493867&sr=1-1
In it he eloquently describes the compelling story of how he came to terms with his own daughter’s autism, and he
extends his clear and incisive vision to aspects of autism in different cultural settings and discusses the history of autism and its epidemiology. It is well researched and it convincingly demonstrates that much of what people call the autism epidemic derives from reclassification and changes in diagnostic coding.
As the mom of an autistic child, I am totally on Jenny’s side. I know that my son was normal till he had his 18mos “necessary” immunizations!!! If trying to prevent this from happening to other children makes me a “parasite”, then, hey, I am proud to be one!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yawn.
Conner’s Mom, correlation does not imply causation. It never has and never will.
And funnily enough, you aren’t a parasite. Basically because you got your son immunised.
The parents that don’t are parasites, because when their kids get sick from the diseases that were supposed to be immunised against, they use up resources that could have been used elsewhere.
All i will say as a mother of a child that has suffered the ignorance of so many…. is Thank You Jenny…….Hilary
OK, JENNY MCCARTHY IS NOT, I REPEAT NOT AGAINST VACCINES. SHE IS JUST WANTING TO SEE THEM CLEANED UP. UNITL THEN, SPACE OUT THE SHOTS. THERE ARE MANY KNOWN TOXINS, NOT JUST ONE INGREDIENT THAT CAN NOT EXIT THE BODY AND DO DAMAGE TO THE BRAIN AND NEUROLOGICAL SYSTEM. JENNY IS NOT IN ANY WAY SAYING THAT EVERY CHILD WILL GET AUTISM FROM VACCINES… SHE IS SIMPLY STATING THAT FOR THOSE VERY YOUNG CHILDREN WHO MAY HAVE UNRECOGNISED WEAKENED IMMUNE SYSTEMS OR THEIR GENETIC MAKEUP CANNOT WITHSTAND THE VAST OF VACCINES, THEY NEED TO BE GENTLER, CLEANER, GREENING OF VACCINES. ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL!!! WHEN WE HAVE TO TAKE A MEDICATION FOR AN ILLNESS, DO WE ALL TAKE THE SAME MEDICINE? THE SAME DOSE? THE ANSWER IS NO. AMANDA, I KNOW YOU MEAN WELL, BUT YOU WILL NEVER KNOW UNTIL IT EFFECTS YOUR CHILD. THERE ARE THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF US, THAT OUR CHILDREN COULD NOT STAND UP TO THE TOXICITY. WE DO NOT DISCOURAGE, WE WANT THOSE CHILDREN TO BE PROTECTED, NOT HARMED. WE HAVE NO WAY OF TELLING IF OUR CHILD IS IN ONE OF THE THOUSANDS THAT IS VULNERABLE UNTIL IT IS TOO LATE. THERE IS NO TEST TO DETECT. YOU CANNOT TAKE JENNY’S WORDS OUT OF CONTEXT. SHE NEVER SAYS “CURE” SHE SAYS RECOVER. SHE NEVER SAYS SHE IS “ANTI-VACCINE”, SHE IS FOR GREENING OUR VACCINES. WE HAVE A LOT OF PEOPLE THAT ARE ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN WHO HAVE NOT BEEN PERSONALLY TOUCHED BY AUTISM (THEIR OWN CHILD), THEY ARE OUR PROOF. IT IS SOOOOOOOOO EASY FOR SOMEONE WHO HAS NOT SEEN THEIR OWN CHILD DETERIORATE AFTER RECEIVING A VACCINE TO LISTEN TO HEAR-SAY AND PLACE JUDGEMENT OR COMMENTS ON A TOPIC THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.
SINCERELY,
SHAUNA-FOUNDER
TOGETHER IN AUTISM
http://WWW.TOGETHERINAUTISM.ORG
I just like having the last word.
Perhaps you all don’t remember the tobacco industry giants testifying that nicotine wasn’t addictive? Corporate motives can change everything. New diagnostic criteria? Seriously, that makes no sense. Autism doesn’t hide–if there is no increase in autism, where are all the autistic adults?
Whether you like Jenny or believe her, I just don’t understand how those of you who have autistic children aren’t interested in her recovery program. It WORKED for us. Read the facts at http://www.generationrescue.org
No, Wildy, I must insist that I have the last word….
has it ever been scientifically proven that vaccines cause autism? no! has it been proven that they dont? no! boycotting stuff just because of one comment is a little extreme, especially when the comment cannot be proven right or wrong (yet). if there is a history of autism in your family and you think it may have to go with a certain vaccine, then don’t give your child that shot. it’s that simple. autism is a very sad condition and i think people should focus more on treatment and less on blame.