The anti-Vaccine movement’s poster woman and spokesperson, Jenny McCarthy, is still attempting damage control. She recently told The Daily Beast that she is not anti-vaccine. This is a similar point she made in an op-ed published in the Chicago Sun Times in April.
Jenny McCarthy came out in support of the anti-vaccine movement in 2005 when her son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism she claims was the result of receiving multiple vaccine inoculations. Now, after the claim made by her and the anti-vaccine movement that vaccines cause autism that claim has been thoroughly refuted, the credibility of people, like Andrew Wakefield, have been disgraced rather than admit she made a mistake McCarthy resorts to trying to cover her tracks. Back in 2009, she told TIME Magazine that autism resulted from the Measles Mumps and Rubella vaccine.
During her Daily Beast interview, McCarthy said:
I’m in this gray zone of, I think everyone should be aware and educate yourself and ask questions. And if your kid is having a problem, ask your doctor for an alternative way of doing the shots”—for example, fewer vaccination doses at the same time.
She went on to say:
Literally, throughout the years, I have said the same thing over and over again. But people will only read headlines instead of looking back and seeing what I’ve been saying.
Buzzfeed News posted a list of eleven comments made by her including this comment she made on Larry King Live during 2007:
Moms and pregnant women are coming up to me on the street going, ‘I don’t know what to do’… And I don’t know what to tell them, because I am surely not going to tell anyone to vaccinate. But if I had another child, there’s no way in hell.
Nice try, Jenny.