idiots!

jenny mccarthy is an idiot.

first of all, she’s a lame-ass excuse for an ‘actress,’ but i can often forgive that for the sake of our delicious american pop culture. the real reason she sucks is that she’s a (minor) celebrity fueling the anti-vaccination movement.

i’ve been pretty much PRO-vaccination my whole life. i tend to trust science, and doctors, even though scientists and doctors are not Gods and are quite fallible. i don’t think science threatens our morality or religious faith, unless your morality and faith are on shaky ground already. i’m most certainly not a conspiracy theorist (though it is tempting), not because i believe in the inherent good of our government or secret societies or something, but more because i think any large group of people, particularly those involved in government, wouldn’t be able to conspire past the tips of their noses for very long.

er, anyway, so here we have vaccinations, science-recommended, government-supported. statistically, they keep kids from dying or suffering from a host of illnesses. who doesn’t want to prevent illness if it’s possible? well, the anti-vax folks. there are numerous reasons why they believe what they believe, but the latest movement is that vaccinations cause autism in kids.

now, exactly why would the government want children to be autistic?

i feel bad for the parents of autistic children. i feel bad for the parents of any child who will have difficulty in life because of a difference in their brain that society can’t quite deal with. there’s a lot of scary things that make me not want to ever be a parent. a lot of parents find it difficult to deal with. a lot of parents find courage and strength and do the best they can. that’s pretty cool, when you think about it. i think it says a lot about the good in modern mankind.

so back to the locus of my wrath. there is no science, no study (let alone plural) to uphold the idea that vaccinations cause autism. there are plenty of anecdotes, and angry parents, who can’t accept an unlucky fate for their child, but no facts to support stopping vaccinations. there are actually studies to show that these selfish, misguided people, egged on by jenny mccarthy, are hurting OTHER children. that because they will get whooping cough, they will expose other children, who, even though they are vaccinated, still have a small chance of contracting whooping cough (or measles, etc.). and these are childhood diseases that can be fatal.

so because anti-vax parents are ignorant, they have made the choice for other families that another child might die of a COMPLETELY PREVENTABLE DISEASE.

sure, some people say ‘gee, i got whooping cough when i was a kid and i survived.‘ the kids who don’t survive it aren’t around to tell us about it.