Oprah and Anti-Vaccination

Of all of the pseudosciences plaguing us today, the one that scares me the most is the anti-vaccination movement.

It’s old news in the skeptical community, but Oprah has signed “vaccine skeptic” Jenny McCarthy to her media franchise and is giving her a show. Oprah’s website has a form, asking viewers to submit questions for Jenny and suggests topics for her to talk about.

Sometimes the world seems so overran with irrationality and superstition. It can feel like we’re fighting a losing battle. It isn’t very often that lay skeptics like myself are given a platform where we can speak out. I would encourage everyone to take advantage of this opportunity and let Oprah know exactly how you feel about Jenny McCarthy and the rampantly ignorant lies she peddles.
This is what I wrote to Oprah:

I want Jenny McCarthy to interview by the multitude of scientists who disagree with her beliefs about vaccines, autism, and “toxins.” I want to see her taken to task for spreading such awful, dangerous, deadly misinformation. I want her to have to confront the mountains of evidence that vaccines do not cause autism, the kind of evidence she is so great at ignoring. I want to see the TRUTH discussed.

But most of all, I would like to see Jenny interview the parents of Dana McCaffrey, the four-week old baby who died of whooping cough. She was perfectly healthy, just too young to be vaccinated against the terrible virus. The area in Australia where she lived has very low vaccination rates, thanks to fear-mongers like Jenny who falsely tell people that vaccines are toxic and can damage their babies. Because of the low rate of vaccination, there were outbreaks of whooping cough. Dana contracted the virus and died a terribly painful and premature death. She died from a preventable disease. If parents in her town had vaccinated their children, preventing them from getting the disease, they would have also protected poor little Dana, who was too young to be vaccinated. Vaccinations do not only project a parent’s own children, but everyone’s children. They especially protect newborn babies and children who have compromised immune systems from these terrible diseases.

(For more info on Dana McCaffrey: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/04/26/the-australian-antivax-movement-takes-its-toll/)

Unless Oprah is interested in seeing babies die, I would suggest that she not allow Jenny to spread her lies about toxins and vaccines on the air. We know that Jenny doesn’t care if a few babies die. In the interview in Time Magazine she said as much, “I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe.” What Jenny is willfully  ignorant of is the fact that vaccines ARE safe. They are one of the safest treatments in all of scientific medicine. They do not cause autism, and this has been demonstrated in countless studies. Jenny doesn’t care if a few babies die in order to “further” her fake cause, but I’d hope that Oprah does.