1 Awesome.

2 I'd say an apology would be great, but the damage she's done has moved well beyond the 'oops, sorry!' level of penance.

3 Many thanks

4

Her mistake is understandable -- she didn't want to believe she could have a kid just as stupid as she is, so she figured it must be autism.

All the same, I have little sympathy for anyone who believes anything out of the mouth of celebrities, especially something as important as medical diagnoses.

5 One of the things I completely agreed with Chuckles J over at the Green Gulag as he descended into madness was his mockery of Jenny McCarthy and the anti-vax crowd's rampant stupidity. Look at how many gullible housewives who would see her on Oprah bought the shit she sold and put their children at risk.

6 I think the best part of that whole fucked-up interview is that she still wants to be the voice of autism. 

I want to be the voice of all those unheard rocket scientists out there.  Never mind that not only am I sorely unqualified to be a rocket scientist, but my statements that if I eat enough beans, I can light a fire under my ass that will shoot me to the moon pretty much disqualify me from any sort of rocket-scientist credibility. But not as much as Jenny McCarthy has disqualified herself as being the voice of autism - at least I understand that you need fuel and fire to make a rocketship go, she doesn't even have that basic of an understanding of autism or vaccines.  I'd be more qualified to be the voice of rocket scientism than she is about autism if I claimed that if we just drove to the horizon fast enough, we'd launch into space.

7

I think that you are underestimating the scientific and academic gravitas that comes with displaying your genitals in a major pictorial publication.  Let's compare the epidemioloigcal credentials of the opposing views here.  Number of times the staff at John Hopkins Childrens' Hospital has appeared naked in Playboy magazine: 0.   Number of times Jenny has shucked off her cloths for a check from Hugh Heffner: 2.  The science is settled; the debate is over.

 

8 My comment should have been "one of the few things..."

9 Bless you.  The damage, the DEATHS this woman has probably caused...
If there is a Hell, I hope it has a Jenny McCarthy wing.

10 But not as much as Jenny McCarthy has disqualified herself as being the voice of autism - at least I understand that you need fuel and fire to make a rocketship go, she doesn't even have that basic of an understanding of autism or vaccines.

Well, truth be told, autism is a lot more complex than rockets. To make a rocket go all you need is a fuel and an oxidizer, a properly shaped nozzle, and the ability to pump both out of their tanks fast enough (shut up about solid fuel rockets, liquid was good enough for Werner von Braun and it is good enough for me).

The brain, on the other hand is made up of billions (I think it is over a trillion, but I don't want to overstate it) of nerve cells. We have very little idea how any of them work, much less what happens when they don't work.

So yeah, this dumb ass took on a discipline that is more complex than rocket science without even taking a freshman level biology course. And people listened to her!

11 This is specifically the problem I have with the "autism scale".  By the modern definition, my nephew is on the "autism scale".  The boy talks, interacts, and generally acts like any other kid.  He's got some developmental problems, but to call him autistic is like calling me a Marine combat infantryman, because about thirteen years ago I was in Army Intel and that's kinda sorta almost like being a Marine, right?

Look, they like to throw out scare statistics on autism these days (1 out of 100 kids by the most recent estimate) and claim that it's an epidemic because we never had these numbers twenty years ago.  The reason, which goes unmentioned of course, is that they abandoned the actual definition of autism and lumped in every kid who had any form of social developmental problem in as "on the autistic scale".  Well, if you lump every solder, sailor and air force member in with the USMC it suddenly goes from our smallest service to the biggest service in the history of the United States since WWII.  It would be lying by definitions.

Yes, autism is a serious problem and deserves research money and such.  But by lying about what autism is to get attention, you're GOING to get cases like this and it will hurt the cause overall.