Jenny McCarthy wins JREF Pigasus Award

[mr blur]

Every year, on the appropriate date of April 1, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) gives out the Pigasus Awards, a dubious honor to people or organizations that have done their best in the past year to snuff out science and promote irrationality. The award is named after the beloved mascot of the JREF because, after all, when paranormal powers are proven, pigs will fly.

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4) Jenny McCarthy is well known as a model and actor, but in recent days she's getting far more publicity for her stance that vaccines cause autism. She has a son who may be autistic, and of course we are sympathetic to her plight. But that can only go so far when Ms. McCarthy appears on endless chat shows, is interviewed in magazine articles, and even writes books encouraging people not to vaccinate their children.

Numerous, well-done studies have shown conclusively that there is no causal link between vaccines and the onset of autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) - the claim that they are connected is spurious, based on anecdotes and the fact that vaccines are given to children around the same time that ASD symptoms begin to appear.

The antivaccination movement has been directly linked with outbreaks of various vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, and there have been numerous illnesses and even deaths associated with these outbreaks. The facts are in, and have been for quite some time: vaccines are an overwhelming modern medical success story, having eradicated such scourges as smallpox, and hugely lowering rates of other diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, polio, influenza, and diptheria. The evidence is also overwhelmingly against any link between vaccines and autism as well.

Yet all that evidence has been overturned in the public's mind with ease and alacrity by Ms. McCarthy, so she wins the Pigasus award for her contribution to the country's ill-health.

NOTE: At The Amaz!ng Meeting 7 in Las Vegas on July 9, we will be sponsoring a vaccination clinic to help the children in the area get the shots they need to stay healthy. Las Vegas has some of the lowest vaccination rates in the US, and this clinic is critically needed. To find out more, please go to our events page.

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http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/jref-news/500-pigasus-awards-for-2008-announced.html

[bluedawg12]

1. Shouldn't this come as a matched set?

With the Darwin award? :P

[semillama]

3. Sadly, the applicability of the Darwin award here is secondary

It is not the actions of the parents that threaten to remove themselves from the gene pool, but rather their innocent children.

[bluedawg12]

5. Darwinian in that they have affected the ability of their kids

to reach reproductive age,the gene line withers on the vine.

[JitterbugPerfume]

2. speaking as someone who remembers polio

and my parents remembered smallpox, This makes me more sad than angry

The last outbreak of smallpox the USA as in Texas in 1949 . That was in my lifetime .

[onager]

4. Back to the good old days...

A semi-relevant post from an amateur car geek, with a morbid interest in antique ambulances and hearses:

Back when the infant mortality rate was high...i.e., before VACCINATION...higher-class funeral homes often invested in a pathetic contraption called a "child's hearse." It had a shorter body than regular hearses, since it carried smaller coffins, and was painted white instead of black.

You can see a picture of one here, a 1929 Studebaker:

http://www.halloweentownstore.com/page/HS/PROD/MD117

A Google will find you pictures of the same sort of vehicle used in Victorian times, when it was horse-drawn.

The child's hearse happily disappeared about the same time that vaccination became common. But it could make a comeback yet.

[Djinn]

6. always wanted to ask Ms McCarthy

and her deluded band of followers if they would have preferred it if their kids died of meningitis rather than having ASD.

Even if you do throw science out the window and proclaim vaccines cause ASD, surely they agree that these vaccines DO prevent fatal illness, what would they prefer no autism but massive child deaths as preventable illness cuts a swathe through the playground?

[TZ]

7. Here's the thing with the not too bright

Antivaxxers...they have convinced themselves that these childhood diseases are "harmless" and that the vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases! I've even seen woos try to claim that measles was dying off BEFORE the vaccine was introduced. If we ever have a health emergency here that requires mass vaccination I fear for us. These people are a threat to the health of this country

[trotsky]

8. Some even take it one step further.

And assume that since their relatives weren't vaccinated, and survived things like measles and polio, that somehow they are better "stock" and worthy of living on - unlike the weak and infirm who would be slaughtered by the return of disease. Yes, Virginia, modern-day Nazism and Eugenics live on in the minds of certain anti-vaxers.

[Djinn]

10. nice reasoning they have there

my great grandfather smoked 3 packets a day from the age of 12, he lived to 98, so I guess I can smoke away with impunity - clearly my gene pool is resistant to lung (etc) cancer. Woo Hoo!

[Orrex]

11. As a matter of fact...

You'd better start smoking three packs a day; I conclude that that's why he lived so long.

[bluedawg12]

9. There is a community in Penn. that was/is against vaccines

I am sorry I don't have any links, I half heard it out of one half ear the other night as I was half listening to TV.

Anyway, they had some leading experts in the field discussing it and some antivaccine people. The upshot is that someting like 13 kids have perished recently in this Penn. community that was anti-vaccine. I mention this to see if anyone has heard of this story?

I understood them to discuss the number of vaccines kids get at an early age and the concern over that.

The former head of the Red Cross, a physician, was on the show and she agreed that we need to do more quality research, but, that is not the same as knowing what if anything is causing autism, especially say vaccines versus other envirnmental factors. She was very clear, whether kids get the right amount of vaccines or too many is one issue, but the other, that therefore this causes autism is unfounded.

[TZ]

12. The Amish

The woo-woo antivax brigade here on DU like tho cite them as a population with no Autism because there is no vaccinations. Yeah, like everything else is exactly the same. Plus I highly doubt they have "no autistics". I would say no DIAGNOSED autistics is probably more accurate.

[LeftishBrit]

13. Don't know how accurate this is...

but according to some sources the Amish DO vaccinate.

autism.about.com/b/2008/04/23/do-the-amish-vaccinate-indeed-they-do-and-their-autism-rates...