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Who Needs Science Or Feminism When There's Jenny McCarthy?
New York, 10:38 AM
Wed Nov 11
68 posts in the last 24 hours
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Who Needs Science Or Feminism When There's Jenny McCarthy? |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
12/30/08
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[www.cispimmunize.org]
[www.ajc.com]
[www.time.com]
For those not upset by photos: [www.aap.org]
The Sears schedule says you can delay measles until 3, but measles is becoming increasingly common in the US. The point of the Sears book was to convince anti-vaccine parents to eventual vaccinate at least partly(good goal), but it isn't based on scientific and epidemiological evidence the way the CDC/AAP chart is (even if you disagree with that schedule, it is examined every year by a team of experts).
12/29/08
12/29/08
But very few people in the comments seem to have grasped that Jenny McCarthy isn't a non-vaccination proponent. Which kind of makes this entire post a bit of a misleading potshot against her, doesn't it?
12/29/08
12/29/08
It's a shame, because we could've been caterwauling over the fact that "most" of the anti-vaccinating crowd are the fundies who would LURVE to set women back a generation or so. Instead, we're, I think, off track.
12/29/08
I agree that editing is in order! Jenny has done so much for raising the awareness of autism spectrum disorders and different treatment options for children and adults with the disorder.
It also amazes me how many people were ready to attack her just because she's posed in playboy--they assumed she was stupid & not well-informed...not very feminist, huh?
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And frankly, in my book, anyone who gets the word out about autism can't be all bad. She's using the tools at her disposal, and if that happens to be her controversial celebrity status, so be it.
12/29/08
12/29/08
again respectfully, her authority led her to claiming she "cured" autism with chelation therapy and a gluten-free diet, and making public appearances as an authority, on a panel with public health professionals that may be described as "fuzzy" about her stance on vaccination.
i mean no disrespect to you personally, especially if you are caring for a child or relative with austism, but private opinions, led by a non-professional with questionable judgment are having an impact on the larger community, and the larger community has a right to speak up.
wapner. wapner. peoples court.
(yeah, rainman was saccharine and overly-simplistic, but it did get autism talked about and put on the map, which i agree is a good thing).
12/29/08
@FourInchHeels: I used to volunteer with an autistic boy as part of a Son-Rise program and the mother was very, very up on the research, as were the other women I met in that situation. But the problem is that it is pretty hard to tell the difference between good and bad studies unless you are science literate. There is a reason we make doctor spend years studying with better doctors.
12/29/08
I mean, considering that chemicals found in plastics are now so prevalent that they've turned up in the breast milk of Eskimo women, to zero in on something that has saved untold number of people to the exclusion of all other possibilities seems extremely short-sighted to me.
12/29/08
Parents don't want to hand over their children to doctors, but frequently they don't have the health literacy you really need to make these decisions. Jenny McCarthy's book shouldn't be given the same weight as Dr. Sears's book. The distrust of doctors among anti-vaccine folks is a big part of the problem.
I think before opting to skip or greatly delay vaccination, parents should read about parents who lost their children to diseases we can prevent. Your average 90 year old probably thinks these young anti-vaccine mothers are crazy because she's lived through all these diseases.
12/29/08
KING: What are you going to do, ban vaccinations?
MCCARTHY: Heck, no. I am completely for them.
KING: No.
So what do you do?
MCCARTHY: I would like the CDC to get a better schedule. Thirty- six -- I would like to see them clean up the ingredients. I would like for parents to feel safer by offering the families the test for their baby to see if their immune system is strong enough to handle these. I would love the CDC to give a piece of paper before they gave my a Hep B shot in the hospital saying here are the possible side effects for each shot. I think parents would feel a lot safer and they're not right now.
[transcripts.cnn.com]
12/29/08
12/29/08
when you apply to have the flu shot, tetnus, etc. you are provided with a very very long piece of paper detailing the vaccination, possible side effects and complications, etc.
seems to me that if such a piece of paper wasn't provided, the person receiving the vaccination should request it first. a parent should request the info from the pediatrician. the documents exist.
12/29/08
12/29/08
And while you are provided with vaccine shot info with side effects and complications, you also MUST have your kid vaccinated before they can enroll in school. So it really isn't a choice at all, when it comes down with it. I am ALL for vaccinations. However when it is mandatory (for schooling) and there is evidence that something (something!) is going on, I don't think it's crackpotty (crackpotty!) at all to ask for more research on how to better what we have now. Isn't that how progress is made?
12/29/08
;0)
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12/29/08
i had chicken pox as an adult and wanted to die it was so awful. some die. once you get chicken pox you can get shingles and my mom died in intense pain from complications of shingles. she also tried to kill herself once before, she was in such agony.
12/29/08
i am genuinely sorry that chicken pox has caused so much pain for you--particularly in the case of your mom. it just scares me that more people could get shingles. and it bothers me that someone has figured out a way to make money without necessarily preventing deaths, but instead making it sound like by taking it you can avoid an inconvenience. the more i read about it it sounds like a marketing scam. hopefully it will result in less deaths from chicken pox and it won't increase shingles. i'm still not sure what i'd do if i had kids of my own, but all that i've read makes it all sound a bit suspicious.
12/29/08
chicken pox is an infection of herpes zoster virus. as children the outbreak is usually mild, but can be moderate to life threatening for adults and infants.
many parents, before the CP vaccine, had their children play together with one who had CP to allow or a measure of prevention of adult variety. bthis is still an option if you are extremely wary of vaccines but then the person in question will be susceptible to shingles.
shingles is a reappearance in more virulent form, of the same virus that causes chicken pox. the herpes zoster virus burrows into your body and remains dormant until immune systen becomes compromised by age, illness, or stress in general. it comes back as as a severe rash that may cause blindness (my mom), brain or organ damage, or post-herpetic neuralgia, a pain so severe and so resistant to pain-management or cure that many commit suicide. this is nothing to fuck around with.
you only get a shingles vaccine if you've already had chicken pox. th4e vaccine is to prevent an outbreak, much like valtrex if you have genital herpes to prevent an outbreak after initial infection. it keeps it dormant. if it were in pill form rather than vaccine more palatable? because you aren't complaining about valtrex, are you
CP vaccine - tiny chance of mild chicken pox but no chance of shingles, and no need for shingles vaccine
vs
no vaccine - moderate to high chance of chicken pox and need for shingles vaccine and the whole thing over again, plus passing virus to immunodeficient people and the community.
i'm suspicious of big pharma too, but your suspicions of greed driving treatment on unsubstantiated correlation of of "hey they are making money - that must be why it's made and recommended" is going too far.
12/29/08
That said, there most certainly may be environmental factors that can contribute to the onset of autism in those genetically predisposed to it. It's safe to say that until the underlying genetic markers for autism can be discovered, it will be very hard to tell what environmental factors may trigger it. In the meantime, to call for the reduction, alteration, or avoidance of vaccines because of a possible but tenuous link to autism is ridiculous. The repercussions of non-vaccinated individuals running in larger numbers through the general population, providing new vectors for diseases currently under control, in a world where any disease can traverse the planet in as little as 24 hours, are staggering.
12/29/08
*vigorous applause*
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12/29/08
Also, this: [scienceblogs.com]
12/29/08
Also, FWIW, my sister gave me J McCarthy's pregnancy/baby books to read, and I'm sure she's just playing up the character, but she really does sound like a grade-A moron. I don't recommend them, unless you are specifically looking for inane pg/baby advice wrapped in unfunny anecdotes.
12/29/08
I've read a couple of interesting articles written by doctors that basically said vaccines are a victim of their own success. Parents today don't know what it's like to have an outbreak, to have their kids seriously ill and die from things like measles, to have to quarrantine, etc. The problem is that the diseases haven't magically vanished and we will be vulnerable without the vaccines, even more so probably because of the decades of protection.
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12/29/08
[www.webmd.com]
"We found that for every 1,000 pounds of mercury released by industry, there was a 17% increase in autism," Palmer tells WebMD. "This is one of the most highly toxic [nerve-damaging substances] on earth. So when we talk about 50 pounds, 1,000 pounds, 2,000 pounds released into the environment, this is a tremendous amount of potential exposure. But we do not know how these exposures get into the body."
thanks a lot, jenny.
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