That There Measles Shot Dun Made My Kid Retarded, Oprah!
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007I was watching Oprah today (a momentary lapse in judgement) and Jenny McCarthy was on talking about her son’s autism.
“Coming up next: Jenny tells us what she thinks caused her son’s autism…”
If she says inoculations, I’m going to be very upset.
If she says inoculations, I’m going to be very upset.
If she says inoculations, I’m going to be very upset.
And then I was very upset.
She blamed the MMR (measle, mumps & rubella) vaccine and the use of thimerosal, which contains a tiny amount of mercury, for her child’s autism.
Her evidence? Her child became autistic some unspecified amount of time after the MMR inoculation.
The problems with her evidence?
- Thimerosal is no longer used in the U.S. and Canada in any childhood vaccines, except in some flu vaccines, yet autism rates are supposed to be rising. (In fact, it probably wasn’t used in her son’s MMR vaccination.)
- If small amounts of mercury cause autism, how come nobody ever blames fish?
- There are children that get the MMR vaccination after they have become autistic and people that are autistic that have never had any inoculations. What caused it for them?
- There have never been any credible studies that have found a link between vaccines and autism.
And now there are people that have watched Oprah that will not have their children vaccinated, because of Jenny’s socially irresponsible, anecdotal, bullshit “evidence” about autism.
I hate to think about children that could possibly contract a horrible disease and die because of this stupid stupid show. It might be none. It might be one.
One is way too many.
And to all people that still believe that vaccines will give your child autism, I offer to you my own personal belief:
It is better to live with autism than it is to die from measles.