She's sure come a long way from that Candie's ad where she was sitting on the toilet.

Or maybe not so far...

Boy, I miss Singled Out.

Are you a vaccinist, Mrs. Pareene?

I got a tour of Playboys offices a few years ago by a friend that worked there. The "gift bag" contained the Jenny Videos CD. Her Catholic schoolgirl outfit striptease made me act all "autism like"! I couldn't speak and jerked around for a long time.

But seriously Autism is really fucking tough on parents, I have an autistic cousin and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemys.

Jenny may be no rocket scientist, but more people should call bullshit on the medical profession in general and question their doctor. What's certain knowledge today may be rubbished in a few years.

I'm not eager to stand in the picture with goofball theories, but let's just hold our horses in placing great faith in the pronouncements of "medical science," particularly when so much of its "research" is paid for by the pharmaceutical industries that have a stake in the results.

Can I haz vaccine?

I like her.

@IndianSlipper: Well, honestly, if a genie appeared and gave you a wish to use on your worst enemies, and you were like, "Uhhhh...autism!" everyone would be like, "Lame." Even locusts would be cooler than autism.

I really don't think that this argument will be settled until the price of getting a perosnal genome sequence drops to reasonable rates will we know for sure. Essentially, everybody would need to have a senquincing done at birth (before vaccination), and then again after diagnosis. A comparason of those results should be quite telling.

I'm with Karenuhoh.

I love her now more than I did before. Which was a lot.

@PandoraSpocks: @KarenUhOh: @Heather Fink: I agree.

Medicine 2.0 is very confusing. As a parent of a young child I have no fucking clue who to listen to.

Wait, you can say 'shit' in CNN now? I find it hard to believe that Larry isn't on a 7 second delay.

oh i'm all for calling bullshit on experts but every single argument i've ever read for a link between autism and vaccination has quite obviously mistaken correlation for causation.

i'd rather call bullshit on a hysterical, anti-intellectual, anti-science newsmedia than, like, peer-reviewed medical research.

Jenny, you're glib.

There's a lot of space between "died" and "went into cardiac arrest for two minutes." (Yes, technically you are dead when your heart stops). Hey Jen, let's see how yer yung'un deals with pneumonia, pertussis, rubella, etc. Then we can talk about death with/without vaccines

There is no evidence of the empirical kind that supports a linkage with autism disorders and vaccinations. Jenny McCarthy's finger pointing, potty mouth (and bizarre 'do) notwithstanding.

Even the anecdotal evidence is weak.

I should now like to nominate Jenny and her boyfriend, Jim Carrey, as the most obnoxious and annoying couple in all of Hollywood, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, the San Fernando Valley, and anywhere they might reside now, or in the future.

Did Jenny buy that wig in Borough Park?

I've noticed that vaccination opponents don't have a lot to bring to the debate other than screaming "Bullshit" in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Very few people are anti-vaccine. The idea is to make sure that vaccination and the vaccines themselves are safe.

For an autism expert, she has an incredible rack.

I just can't take medical theory when it's given to me by someone with the Posh Bob.

@mathnet: @Heather Fink: @KarenUhOh:

Read the literature (from the CDC). My money says we'll look back at these people in the same light as people who question the HIV->AIDS connection. They're wasting our time to make progress against a debilitating public health phenomenon.

@Pareene: Peer-reviewed medical research is funded by someone. "All is well" brought to you by your good friends at Pfizer.

@Pareene: Anti-vaccination is the new Creationism.

If a celebrity wants to actually do something with their fame and contribute to society other than walk red carpets and go to swag spots, I'm all for it. King, though, needs to retire.

@Nard38: EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG. FOLLOW THE MONEY. NAFTA SUPER-HIGHWAY. 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.

@TheRightHonourablePrimeMinister: Oh, great, now we're skeptical of creationism???

That guy was asking to be punched with the whole "Jenny, let's take this down just a notch here" nonsense. Never say that to an angry woman!

@Pareene: I'm just glad I don't have kids because unlike other conspiracy theories, this one worries me.

@Pareene: Absolutely right.

And maybe it's just me but when I look at my kids' pediatrician somehow I don't see a soulless tool of big pharma.

It had to be tough for those doctors to go on TV next to a woman they've probably fantasized about a couple hundred times, and then turns out she's a raving loon who's trying to cast doubt on their life's work.

@Nard38: That "someone" is very often the government.

In every prestigious medical journal, authors are required to disclose all conflicts of interest, and when they don't, it's generally a scandal (e.g., the recent lung cancer study that was found to have been funded by an agency of cigarette companies).

Are you suggesting that's not enough?

@drugman: I think it's the whole personal-experience-as-indisputable-proof that puts people off. Instead of shouting "bullshit," perhaps JM should've mentioned that literature herself.

So we're all agreeing that sewing giant bags of chemicals into your tits is FINE for your baby?

I don't have a dog in this fight. I've heard McCarthy and her ilk--I hear parents struggling to come to grips with a horrible hand their kids and they were dealt. Like the ridiculous "cures" suggested to me for helping care with my parents' cancer, their "solution" often seems as hopeless, and sometimes as cruel, as the problem.

But anyone who places blind faith in a "science" underwritten by one of the most profitable of global industries--that profits by having things its way--is every bit as deluded, and perhaps--depending on results of "further research"--more so.

Jenny McCarthy claims that if kids are de-yeasted, chelated, de-glutened, and unvaccinated, then "recovery" from autism is possible. She wonders why scientists aren't beating a path to her door to examine her son's miraculous recovery from autism....What she refuses to accept is that her son wasn't autistic in the first place. There are all kinds of developmental disabilities that are mistakenly diagnosed as autism due to the early intervention trend - and those diagnoses get refined and reversed as some of these kids get older.

My stepdaughter is profoundly autistic. Her parents tried all these alternative therapies when she was younger - "recovery" wasn't going to happen. Autism damages the brain cells and you can't get that back - you can build NEW neural pathways but you can't do much with damaged tissue. As for vaccines, most haven't contained mercury in 10 years; and in those 10 years the number of autistic kids has increased. It's clearly not vaccine-related.

My brother is a pediatrician with four children. All of whom received their vaccinations.

@McCheeburger: Did Jenny buy that wig in Borough Park?

Oh, sure, blame it on the Jews.

Autism is tough on people. You know what else is tough on people? Smallpox and TB. Get your kids F'n vaccinated unless you want to hear them wheeze out their sad last words while fluid fills their lungs: "Mommy, the darkness is coming, and I'm afraid."

Whenever you pull " my son died card," card and the kid isn't dead....you lose a fair amount of credibility. Think she means well though.

Watch the new HBO documentary on Autism....pretty compelling.

@Nard38: that someone is very often not pharmas or have you never heard of the f'ing nih before?

Jenny, and her anecdotal research need to go the fuck away. A study with an n of 1 is really useless, Jenny.

Sure, corruption in research exists. Crap. Welcome to the real world, if you don't realize that. But citing anecdotal evidence for challenging an established medical practice is, in her words, bullshit. If she doesn't want to have them, fine. But when these diseases that have been controlled return, where will she be?

She does have nice tits, though.

I wanna know what Trudeau thinks of this. Oh wait. Maybe not.

"Jenny may be no rocket scientist, but more people should call bullshit on the medical profession in general and question their doctor. What's certain knowledge today may be rubbished in a few years."

I think the major point here is that nobody really fucking knows and might not want to point fingers at people who are trying to find out. I am not downplaying the horrible impact of autism, it is obvious and widespread. But just because parents `think' vaccines are the culprit here does not mean they are the cause. It doesn't mean they aren't either. It just means you might want to pay attention to the empirical evidence, or conduct studies yourself, before yelling at people who don't immediately confirm your gut feelings.

@PickleTitsTurner & allyzay: When did we stop swearing here?

That "Let's bring it down a notch" fucker, totally told her to keep her Playboy posin' trap shut. Hard to validate her expert stance on vaccines when I'm old enough to remember her on MTV's Singled Out.

It's the connection between autism and vaccination that THEY don't want you to know about!

This is an EXTREMELY simplified explanation but it is believed that the preservative thimerosal formerly used in vaccines contributed to autism. It's mercury based. One theory is that exposing a developing neurological system to mercury at a young age could cause autism. There was a point in time when kids were bombarded with multiple vaccinations when they were extremely young. While the use govt. never said that thimerosal was bad they did end up suggesting that its use be limited.

In July 1999, following a review of mercury-containing food and drugs, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked vaccine makers to remove thiomersal from vaccines as quickly as possible, and it was rapidly phased out of most U.S. and European vaccines.[5] The precautionary principle assumes that there is no harm in exercising caution even if it later turns out to be unwarranted, but this 1999 action sparked confusion and controversy that has diverted attention and resources away from other efforts to find the causes of autism.

Due to continued public concern, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked the National Academy of Science's (NAS) Institute of Medicine (IOM) to establish an independent expert committee to review hypotheses about existing and emerging immunization safety concerns. In 2001 the committee reported:

"The committee concludes that although the hypothesis that exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines could be associated with neurodevelopmental disorders is not established and rests on indirect and incomplete information, primarily from analogies with methylmercury and levels of maximum mercury exposure from vaccines given in children, the hypothesis is biologically plausible. The committee also concludes that the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between thimerosal exposures from childhood vaccines and the neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, ADHD, and speech or language delay."[11]

@Dolomite: I agree. People don't know and they have to find someone to blame. She has breast implants, which if they are silicone may have affected the health of her child. Or who knows, maybe her husband did a lot of drugs and bunked his sperm.

After taking microbiology last semester and learning all the various ways you were likely to die before vaccines came about, let me tell you they were mighty unpleasant. Vaccines have done far more good than harm.

@Goldielox: yep; put me down for "we don't know yet"

also, mercury in vaccines is just a bad idea

Let's declare war on science. All science. and let's start with that evolution thing. so suspect.

But seriously, hasn't pharma removed thimerosal (the mercury-based preservative that was suspected as a possible cause of autism and other neuro disorders) from most vaccines already?

@Sassafras: right; curious to see 10 years out if there is a drop in autism correlating with the phaseout of mercury in the vaccines; that would be the control and test

A good point made above: that if this wasn't a woman who'd gotten over primarily on boobage, she wouldn't have the platform. And that's a total media suckploy.

But, you know, getting any person on-air who wants to ask tough questions to the medical field, even yell a little bit, I got no problem with that. There's a lot to yell about.

"Next on Larry King Live, Charo will be here to discuss the ramifications of NAFTA."

@stew: i just choked on my lunch laughing at that one.