Jenny McCarthy’s hiring on ‘The View’ raises public health concerns

After ABC announced plans this week to hire vocal anti-vaccine proponent Jenny McCarthy as a host on "The View," critics roasted the network for providing her a megaphone to spread misconceptions that are killing children.

McCarthy, a former Playboy model, is a loud supporter of Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor whose 1998 study linking the MMR vaccine to autism launched a decade-long debate over vaccine safety. Although Wakefield's study has been exposed as an “elaborate fraud" and a plethora of research has since debunked his ideas, McCarthy maintains that vaccinations caused her son to develop autism. She later claimed she cured the boy and wrote about it in her book, “Healing and Preventing Autism: A Complete Guide.”

Some worry that ABC’s backing will lend authority to McCarthy’s point of view. And their fears aren’t unfounded: in a poll conducted in 2008 in conjunction with USA TODAY, Gallup found about one in four adults are familiar with McCarthy’s views on vaccines. Forty percent of those said they were more likely to question vaccine safety because of her claims.

“I was not exactly a fan of the show before—giving a soapbox to someone like Sherri Shepherd, who wasn’t sure if the Earth was round or not, rather dampens my enthusiasm—but this secures my opinion of it now,” wrote science blogger Phil Plait, in an editorial for Slate. “Why? McCarthy’s views constitute, in my opinion, a threat to public health.”

Salon’s Alex Pareene put it more strongly. By endorsing McCarthy, he wrote, ABC “will kill children.”

“Vaccine skepticism isn’t just some ‘alternative viewpoint’ that is stupid but ultimately harmless, like “detoxing” or 9/11 trutherism,” he wrote. “Parents have been convinced by McCarthy and the people she works with and promotes. They have forgone vaccination for their children. The result has been the recurrence and spread of preventable diseases.”

Already, fears that vaccines cause autism has opened the door to a reemergence of disease. In the United Kingdom, for example, since Wakefield’s study came out, vaccination rates have plummeted from 90 percent to 54 percent, the Associated Press reported. At one point, the country recorded only several dozen cases of measles a year. This year, it had more than 1,200. It now has the second highest rate of infection in Europe, behind Romania.

The paranoia has also spread to developing countries, where vaccine-preventable diseases account for about 60 percent of child deaths.

At a meeting in Geneva in January, where representatives from 140 nations gathered to put the finishing touches on a treaty to minimize mercury emissions, Salon reported that a debate broke out over the safety of vaccines, some of which contain a mercury-based preservative. Although a number of epidemiological studies have failed to find a link between the preservative, called thimerosal, and autism, in 1999, the United States stopped using it in its vaccines as a precaution. Camaroon's delegate, Peter Ayuk Enoh, who joined a number of African nations in expressing concern about thimerosal, told Salon he wondered why the vaccines were considered OK to use in poor countries when they had been phased out of the United States and Europe.

In the end, Enoh said, “We had to compromise because we didn’t have any scientific proof that the administration of vaccines had any side effects.”

An article published in Columbia Journalism Review put partial blame for the spread of false information on the media’s shoulders. In the wake of ABC’s decision to hire McCarthy, many reporters resorted to “he said," “she said” style coverage, wrote Brendan Nyhan, an assistant political science professor at Dartmouth. As a result, reports “failed to make clear just how extreme and scientifically discredited McCarthy’s views are.”

The responsibility to promote truth extends to day-time television shows like “The View,” wrote James Poniewozik in a blog post for Time.

“For a show even remotely about news–and a career newswoman like Walters–to legitimize McCarthy’s dangerous anti-science because she will probably get crazy attention and ratings is irresponsible and shameful,” he wrote. “Because persuading parents that needed vaccines cause autism isn’t just a zany, oh-no-she-didn’t opinion. It’s wrong … And the fear of vaccines doesn’t just potentially harm the children whose parents forego vaccination, but other kids as well, by threatening the 'herd immunity' that we rely on to protect the larger population from disease."