ABC is putting the lives of children at risk by choosing model/actress Jenny McCarthy as a cohost for its morning television program, “The View.” McCarthy has publicly touted her belief that vaccinations are dangerous and caused her son to develop autism. She’s part of a vocal group spreading that dangerously misinformed word. By giving her the status of cohost on a national network program, more people will learn her opinion, and more will accept it as an option. Some will make the mistake of not immunizing their children.
McCarthy wrote the foreword to a 2010 book on the subject, written by discredited British physician Andrew Wakefield. He was responsible for a study, published in The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to the development of autism. The story was retracted after an investigation revealed the study was falsified. The British medical journal BMJ concluded Wakefield “misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study.” No one has repeated the results in subsequent studies.
But after the bogus study was published, vaccination rates dropped in Great Britain. In the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than in any other year since 1997, and more than 90 percent of those infected had not been vaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown.
We still don’t know the cause of autism, but we do know that vaccinations save lives. It’s not opinion; it’s science.

Susan Thacker