Celebritarded: Our Ladies of Scientific Opinion
Okay. So.
Jenny McCarthy here is the voice for Generation Rescue, a nonprofit that researches the “causes and treatments for autism, ADHD, neurological disorders and chronic illness, while parent-volunteers mentor thousands of families in recovering their children.” And by “recovering” they mean exactly that — the organization believes that autism is not so much a genetic disorder as it is an environmental one, and therefore curable. Generation Rescue’s thesis is that toxins such as heavy metals build up in the body and cause autism. It’s not in the brain, see, it’s in the guts. And they further believe that these symptoms can be reversed through special diets, homeopathic remedies, and chelation, a World War I-era treatment designed to leach dangerous metals from the body. Chelation has since been re-purposed as a cure for a variety of things, including heart disease and autism — though the American Heart Association wants nothing to do with it and its effects on autism are … debatable. And sometimes fatal.
(Why should this come as a surprise to anyone? When has World War I innovation proved useful since? Fascism, trenches, and pointed helmets may once have been fashionable, but no one’s trying to recycle them as cancer cures.)
McCarthy and her crew support the theory that mercury, found in childhood vaccines, is to blame. And thus the great big screaming nasty angry War on Vaccines began. Not that the organization is against vaccination, they’re quick to point out, only what’s in them. And while the mercury was pulled from vaccines in the US in 2001, still McCarthy’s outspokenness has led to a drop in vaccination rates, which has led in turn to the return of ailments like whooping cough and mumps. Mumps!
Which might be fine, if there were any scientific evidence to connect vaccines to autism. Which. There. Ain’t.
(Now that doesn’t mean there’s not something still lurking in the environment that might exacerbate autism, but it means that a lot of trouble has been stirred up over vaccines that maybe shouldn’t have been. And still parents are afraid.)
But so here comes Amanda Peet.
Because the War on Vaccines was doing such a number on vaccination rates, the battle was met … with another organization: Every Child By 2, a group founded in 1991 by Rosalynn Carter to fight measles outbreaks. ECBT and the American Academy of Pediatrics realized it was losing ground due to Generation Rescue’s secret weapon: an outspoken, large-breasted blond. What American parent could resist? (What German army?) So ECBT developed its own celebrity weapon: Peet, whose first big salvo was to call McCarthy and the anti-vaccine parents “parasites” last year. That brought the suck.
And so it comes to pass that a major health debate of the last decade is waged by two women I’ve seen naked. Boobs and nethers both (shameless am I!). A conflict that could’ve gone quietly away after some well-considered research has come to the fore because of our obsession with celebrity. And it will continue now that there are two definite sides. It’s a problem we share. We’re quickly losing the point — that every concerned parent should be looking at all the situations rather than claiming a side and closing an ear. Fear has polarized us. Any progress will not be made as a whole, but incrementally, one side losing ground to well-publicized characters and flashy bestsellers and quietly mailed death threats. The real cause meanwhile slips into the background, an enemy forgotten and vital still.
It’s perhaps important to mention here that The Boy doesn’t care about celebrities (save for Jim Carrey and Arnold). He’s not going to be moved or offended by onscreen histrionics, the channeling of great emotion, or the social critiques of high-minded comedy. His movies must be full of explosions and hitting; actors are merely the vessels of sound and fury. And when he’s home, he mostly watches the Weather Channel and TLC’s A Baby Story, the latter almost entirely for the beaver shots.
That shameless bastard.
Oct 15th, 2009 1:10am
