In the past, I have criticized Oprah Winfrey for her promotion of Doctor Mehmet Oz due to his support for pseudoscience and quackery. Keep in mind, I don’t like to criticize Oprah. She comes across as a very generous person who cares about people very much. She built a school in South Africa, gives people free cars and home makeovers, and sometimes does a lot of good by shining the spotlight on things that need attention. The problem I have with her is her promotion of pseudoscience. In addition to Doctor Oz, she has promoted psychic detectives, past life regression, many kinds of alternative medicine, “The Secret,” and many others forms of woo-woo. I’m sure in her mind she genuinely believes in these things and thinks they are wonderful. I just wish she would stop to consider the enormous harm that these beliefs can cause. But now, she has done something that has crossed the line. I am speaking of Oprah’s decision to give anti-vaccination advocate Jenny McCarthy her own show.
This is a public health hazard, it is irresponsible and dangerous. Thanks to vaccinations, children are now safe from many horrible deadly diseases that were common just a couple of generations ago. If enough people listen to Jenny McCarthy, children will die. It has already happened in the United Kingdom where a discredited study wrongly linked MMR vaccine with Autism. Consequently, there have been outbreaks of the measles in that country. Ms. McCarthy is now claiming that she is not anti-vaccine, but I don’t believe her. If she was not against vaccines, she would not be out there spreading misinformation about them. She is now claiming that the vaccines are full of toxins, but her assertion is based on a lack of understanding that a high school chemistry class would easily cure. Contrary to what she says, vaccines do not contain ether, anti-freeze, or aborted human fetal tissue. Even though her claims have been debunked over and over, she still keeps repeating them. And she has stated herself in a recent interview with Time Magazine 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. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their f***ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s s***. If you give us a safe vaccine, we’ll use it. It shouldn’t be polio versus autism.” There it is, she actually acknowledges that these diseases are going to come back. I wonder if she and Oprah Winfrey have really thought about what that means: the death of children.
Maybe to them those deaths are just statistics. I wonder if putting a human face on this travesty might help. You see, anti-vaccine propaganda in Australia has recently claimed the life of a four week old baby. Little Dana McCaffery was going to be vaccinated, but she was still too young. Her parents were unaware that the community they were living in had lost herd-immunity due to low vaccination rates for whooping cough. I want Jenny and Oprah to go to her website, read what happened, look at her picture and realize that she is not just a statistic. She was a person who spent her very short life suffering and gasping for air until she died. I myself saw this video on Phil Plait’s blog, and it has haunted me ever since. The anti-vaccination cranks in Australia actually sent them hate mail. What kind of a sick people send hate mail to a couple whose baby just died? Words fail me, they really do. Pseudoscience kills. For the sake of public health I really hope Oprah reconsiders her decision.
