It’s a relief to hear an article from the mainstream media that makes Jenny McCarthy sound like the frickin’ idiot that she is. NPR had a piece on Morning Edition today; an entirely factual piece that makes no concessions to the whackaloonery spouted by the likes of Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. In his intro, Steve Inskeep basically starts off by saying that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. The following article actually uses the phrase fear-mongering with regard to the coverage of the supposed controversy surrounding vaccines. The only frustrating thing is that the only thing that makes them take notice is that the “pro-vaccine forces” now have their own celebrity, in the form of Amanda Peete. One of the best things she does as a celebrity spokesperson is to explicitly say that she is not and expert and if people want to know about science, they should talk to a scientist. In this vein, she has teamed up with Dr. Paul Offit, author of Autism’s False Prophets, who provides some great commentary in this article.
I suggest you listen to the actual article, the text on the website appears to be a paraphrasing of the audio.
For some background on this whole subject, ScienceBlogs recently held a book club around Dr. Offit’s book, in which I was fortunate enough to participate. It’s a terrific source of factual information about the manufactuversy surrounding the vaccine-autism “debate”.
I’m hoping that this means that we have turned a corner and are starting to put the wingnuts like McCarthy back out on the fringes where they belong. It’s about time that the MSM has begun to embrace fact over fiction in this area. Let’s see if it’s catching.
