Autism activism and views on vaccines In May 2007, McCarthy announced that Evan had been diagnosed with
autism in 2005. McCarthy wrote that he was gifted, a "crystal child", and that she was an "
indigo mom". In a 2014
Daily Beast article she said that her son, then 12, was doing okay: "Evan's amazing, ... He doesn't meet the diagnostic characteristics for autism. He definitely has quirks and issues from the seizures. He has a little bit of brain damage due to his seizures. He doesn't qualify for any more services, but he does have issues in his school." McCarthy served as a spokesperson for
Talk About Curing Autism (TACA) from June 2007 until October 2008. She participated in fundraisers, online chats, and other activities for the
non-profit organization to help families affected by
autism spectrum disorders. Her first fundraiser for TACA,
Ante Up for Autism, was held on October 20, 2007, in
Irvine, California. She was a prominent spokesperson and activist for
Generation Rescue and served on its board of directors . McCarthy was president of the organization when it ceased operations in December 2019. McCarthy's book dealing with autism, ''Louder than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism
, was published September 17, 2007. She said both in her book and during her appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show'' that her husband was unable to deal with their son's autism, which led to their divorce. In 2008, she appeared on a
Larry King Live special dedicated to the subject and argued that
vaccines can trigger autism. As of 2008, her son's physician was vaccine critic
Jay Gordon. In an April 27, 2010, PBS
Frontline documentary, she was interviewed about the debate between vaccine opponents and public health experts. In addition to conventional, intensive
applied behavior analysis, McCarthy prescribed for her son a
gluten-free and casein-free diet,
hyperbaric oxygen chambers,
chelation,
aromatherapies,
electromagnetics, spoons rubbed on his body,
multivitamin therapy, B-12 shots, and numerous prescription drugs. "Try everything", she advises parents. "It was amazing to watch, over the course of doing this, how certain therapies work for certain kids and they completely don't work for others... When something didn't work for Evan, I didn't stop. I stopped that treatment, but I didn't stop." She has denied that her son was misdiagnosed. McCarthy has claimed on talk shows and at rallies that
chelation therapy helped her son recover from autism. The underlying rationale for chelation, the speculation that
mercury in vaccines causes autism, has been roundly rejected by scientific studies, with the
National Institute of Mental Health concluding that children with autism are unlikely to receive any benefit to balance the risks of heart attack, stroke and cardiac arrest posed by the
chelating agents used in the treatment. McCarthy's public presence and vocal activism on the
vaccination-autism controversy, led, in 2008, to her being awarded the
James Randi Educational Foundation's
Pigasus Award, which is a
tongue-in-cheek award granted for contributions to
pseudoscience, for the "Performer Who Has Fooled the Greatest Number of People with the Least Amount of Effort". Randi stated in a video on the JREF's website that he did sympathize with the plight of McCarthy and her child, but admonished her for using her public presence in a way that may discourage parents from having their own children vaccinated. In 2019
Rolling Stone magazine published a list of seventeen anti-vaccination celebrities, from which according to
Stuart Vyse McCarthy was one of the most active anti-vaccine celebrities. was based on manipulated data and fraudulent research.
The BMJ published a 2011 article by journalist
Brian Deer, based on information uncovered by
Freedom of Information legislation after the British
General Medical Council (GMC) inquiry into allegations of
misconduct against Wakefield that led to him being struck off from the medical register (and thus unable to practice medicine in the UK) and his articles retracted, saying that Wakefield had planned a venture to profit from the
MMR vaccine scare.
Generation Rescue released a statement saying that the "media circus" following the revelation of Wakefield's fraud and manipulation of data was "much ado about nothing", which led
USA Today to report that McCarthy had "taken a beating on Twitter".
Mary Elizabeth Williams responded to Generation Rescue's statement: "It's high time the woman who once said that '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' took a step back and reconsidered the merits of that increasingly crackpot stance. And it's time she acknowledged that clinging to research that's been deemed patently fraudulent does not make one a 'mother warrior.' It makes her a menace." In January 2011, McCarthy defended Wakefield, saying that he had listened to parents, reported what they said, and recommended further investigation: "Since when is repeating the words of parents and recommending further investigation a crime? As I've learned, the answer is whenever someone questions the safety of any vaccines. For some reason, parents aren't being told that this 'new' information about Dr. Wakefield isn't a medical report, but merely the allegations of a single British journalist named Brian Deer." Having written three books on the subject after her son was diagnosed with the syndrome, "by dint of sheer energy and celebrity, McCarthy became the nation's most prominent purveyor of anti-vaxxer ideology",
Jeffrey Kluger, senior writer at
Time, has criticized McCarthy several times. In an open letter article referring to their past conflicts, he reproved her and rejected her denials: "Jenny, as outbreaks of measles, mumps and whooping cough continue to appear in the U.S.—most the result of parents refusing to vaccinate their children because of the scare stories passed around by anti-vaxxers like you—it's just too late to play cute with the things you've said. You are either floridly, loudly, uninformedly antivaccine or you are the most grievously misunderstood celebrity of the modern era. Science almost always prefers the simple answer, because that's the one that's usually correct. Your quote trail is far too long—and you have been far too wrong—for the truth not to be obvious." One month later in May 2014, McCarthy published an op-ed addressing her position on vaccines, which specifically mentions Kluger: "I am not 'anti-vaccine.' This is not a change in my stance nor is it a new position that I have recently adopted. For years, I have repeatedly stated that I am, in fact, 'pro-vaccine' and for years I have been wrongly branded as 'anti-vaccine.' ... Blatantly inaccurate blog posts about my position have been accepted as truth by the public at large as well as media outlets (legitimate and otherwise), who have taken those false stories and repeatedly turned them into headlines." During a subsequent
Daily Beast interview she said: "I am not anti-vaccine, ... I'm in this gray zone of, I think everyone should be aware and educate yourself and ask questions. And if your kid is having a problem, ask your doctor for an alternative way of doing the shots. ... The ironic thing is my position has always remained the same. People just never listened to it."
Objections to appointment on The View McCarthy's appointment to
The View called forth many protests. Amy Pisani of
Every Child By Two wrote a letter to
The View's
Barbara Walters and
Bill Geddie saying that McCarthy's "unfounded claims that vaccines cause autism have been one of the greatest impediments to public health in recent decades", and that McCarthy's assertions "[have] spread fear among young parents, which has led to an increased number of children who have not received life-saving vaccines." David Freeman, senior science editor for
The Huffington Post, wrote about the concerns of
Bill Nye who said: "I believe Ms. McCarthy's views will be discredited."
Alex Pareene also protested and published a letter to ABC in
Salon, entitled "Anti-vaccine conspiracist and 'View' co-host Jenny McCarthy isn't just quirky—she spreads lies that hurt people."
Michael Specter, writing in
The New Yorker stated: "Jenny McCarthy... will be the show's first co-host whose dangerous views on childhood vaccination may—if only indirectly—have contributed to the sickness and death of people throughout the Western world. McCarthy, who is savvy, telegenic, and pulchritudinous, is also the person most visibly associated with the deadly and authoritatively discredited anti-vaccine movement in the United States."
Brendan Nyhan, writing in
Columbia Journalism Review, commented: "ABC's announcement yesterday that actress/comedian Jenny McCarthy will become a co-host of
The View brought forth a torrent of condemnation from doctors, science journalists, opinion writers, and even entertainment commentators who oppose giving the anti-vaccine activist a high-profile platform to spread misinformation." After an extensive review of news coverage of the hiring, Nyhan concluded that "[t]here is no perfect way to cover McCarthy's hiring, of course, but giving 'balanced' coverage to fringe beliefs is the worst approach to covering misinformation."
Toronto Public Health officially denounced the appointment and "launched a Twitter campaign to get... McCarthy fired from the ABC show
The View", tweeting "Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccine views = misinformation. Please ask
The View to change their mind", and "Jenny McCarthy cites fraudulent research on vaccines & it's irresponsible to provide her with
The View platform."
Katrina vanden Heuvel, member of the
Council on Foreign Relations and Editor of
The Nation, objected to the appointment and wrote about "Jenny McCarthy's Vaccination Fear-Mongering and the Cult of False Equivalence": "One of the most prominent promoters of this falsehood [that vaccines cause autism] is actress Jenny McCarthy, who was recently named as Elisabeth Hasselbeck's replacement on ABC's hit daytime talk-show,
The View. Once she's on air, it will be difficult to prevent her from advocating for the anti-vaccine movement. And the mere act of hiring her would seem to credit her as a reliable source. ... By giving science deniers a public forum, media outlets implicitly condone their claims as legitimate. ... False equivalency is one of journalism's great pitfalls, and in an effort to achieve 'balance', reporters often obscure the truth. What's the merit in 'he said, she said' reporting when he says the world is round and she insists it is flat. Indeed, there is an enormous cost to society when the truth could save lives." McCarthy finished as co-host of the show in 2014, nine months after her debut. Psychologist
Stuart Vyse in an article for
Skeptical Inquirer regarding the false cause between vaccination and autism and also the false cures said: "McCarthy became the face of the anti-vaccination movement, and the subsequent rise in vaccine hesitancy has been called "The Jenny McCarthy Effect" (Dominus 2011). It is important to recall that correlation does not mean causation, but the Google Trends[...] data shows a sustained increase in Google searches for "autism & vaccines" following McCarthy's book launch media blitz. It's also impossible to know who was searching and why, but for a time Jenny McCarthy was the undisputed leader of the anti-vaxx movement." == Personal life ==