From Cookie mag: Jenny McCarthy is on a mission about the realities of mothering, romance, and of course, vaccinations

For one month cut sugars and high processed foods from your child's diet, put them on a regular bedtime schedule and I am confident you will see a difference! Eat from the earth, you and your children will feel better!

You never heard of autism when I was younger. Was it around then too? Misdiagnosed, or not diagnosed? Makes you wonder. Are they so sloppy with the vaccine making now, and were better back when I was young? I doubt it. I wonder if it could be environmental, instead of the vaccine. Because we take so many short cuts today. Everything is microwaved, processed, and so on. I would fight too, though, if I believed as Jenny does that the vaccine is the cause.

Medical science has show that there is no link between vaccinations and autism. If you refuse to believe this, you might as well throw out the rest of medical science - get rid of all the medicines in your cabinet, don't go to the hospital in an emergency, etc. Medical science isn't like a belief system, you can't pick and choose what to believe and what not to believe. Medical science has improved so much of our lives in the past century - life span is almost 80, people no longer have to die from simple diseases like the flu, and almost every baby that is born survives. Read accounts of what it was like 100 years ago and be glad that you don't have to worry about these medical issues and then thank science.

People say that vaccines should be a parent's choice, but remember diseases affect other people as well. There have been several cases where babies who are too young to have been vaccinated yet have caught diseases that should have been eradicated a long time ago, like whooping cough. The reason? Some older children weren't vaccinated and spread their illnesses. When something can affect a whole community, parents shouldn't be selfish.

ok seriously people...vaccines are safe..you need to get over what celebrities are saying and listen to people who have studied hundreds of years of medicine...there is still not a known cause of autism and although I do believe it is a sad thing for any parent to go through it was not caused by vaccinating your child there is no correlation between vaccines and autism in any medical study in any country. the only thing not vaccinating your child will do is predispose them to developing very deadly infections believe what you want to believe but when your child dies from polio dont blame your doctors for that one

I agree KC.....it is not necessary to lose it like that. Grow up!!!!

GB - thimerosal is no longer in childhood vaccinations. They were taken out of all pediatric vaccinations (except the flu shot) since 2001 throughout the US. Here in California thimerosal was taken out of the pediatric flu shot as well.

Here is another example of how misinformed the anti-vaccine lobby is.

Z - like I said earlier, I have read papers saying that there is a vaccine-autism link, and have yet to find real science-based evidence. What I am asking from you is a real piece of evidence. What in these papers makes you believe that vaccines cause autism.

And I have to ask you why you want to expose children to life-threatening diseases when there is a vaccine for them? There is actual, science-based evidence showing that vaccines are extremely beneficial, so you are suggesting we go back to the stone age. I recently spoke to a doctor who worked in 3rd world countries for years, and he tells me that if people visited these places, they would come back to the US thanking their lucky stars for these vaccines.

And yes, of course there are vaccine-related injuries. There is absolutely nothing in this world that is 100% safe. However, the benefit so greatly outweighs the risk. This is the problem with most of these "papers" saying that vaccines are bad. They only look at the risk, but not the benefit.

Oh, one more thing. You haven't mentioned the VAERS database, but I'd like to mention that this is an open database. Anytime someone get sick after getting a vaccination (even several weeks after), you can put this in the database. Anybody can add to the database, but nothing ever gets taken out. That is, even if, in a particular case, it is proven that the vaccine did not cause the issue, it will stay in the database. The reason the database is so open is to allow as much information to be added, and then to look at patterns. Kids get sick a lot, and most of these turn out to be non vaccine-related. A lot of anti-vaccine people read the database as if each is a confirmed vaccine-related injury, which is absolutely not true.

Oh, and as for the Hannah Poling case. Remember that the vaccine court is set up to greatly favor the plaintiff. All that needs to be proven is that a vaccine may have caused the injury. In Hannah's case, her illness was triggered by a fever. If she ever had a fever in her life, she would have gotten this illness. All that had to be proven was that vaccines can cause fevers (which is true).

DATTY: You need help!

Science mama...do you think it should be mandated that everyone is vaccinated?
If not, do you think it is ethical for medical doctors to turn away patients that are not vaccinated?

Vaccines are not safe. I think people want a "quick fix" when it comes to their health and by having a vaccine they think it's a cure all. I think our society today is weak and vaccines are not a cure all and it could even result in DEATH!!!I am 22 years old and to this day I have NEVER been vaccinated. I am rarely ill, and what people don't realize is that medicine (even though it can save your life) kills the bad and GOOD bacteria that you need, in-turn making it a much longer recovery. My motto- Be Healthy and Happy and skip all the drugs :)

There are so many Jenny haters, or at least that is what I have read on Shine.

I have found that people who do nothing and have no real causes in life take the stance that McCarthy is a zealot. At least she speaks out and does her homework, whether you agree with her or not.

My girlfriend has as autistic son who is 5. She decided to take a different route and overhaul her son's diet. I saw the boy yesterday at a softball game I was playing in. The boy was driving a golf cart from one sport activity to another. A year ago he would not been able to even sit still in the cart.

Is it coincidence? Maybe......maybe he has grown and matured a little.

So if what McCarthy preaches is complete nonsense to some, if it gives even one parent and one child hope then I respect what she has to say.

The last time this topic came to surface on Shine the haters came out in droves. I think we need to walk in her shoes and have a little compassion for the amount of work she has put into regarding thimerisol and vaccinations and her research into autism.

The same was said about Suzanne Somers and Bio-identicals.

I think she has a good head on her shoulders and I give her credit for standing up and questioning what happened to her child and how to make things safer for our kids. I admire her greatly.

I also agree with her - my child has not been vaccinated because I have seen what happens. And, I'm sure I'll be told I'm endangering my child, and questioned as to what kind of mother I am - same things that I'm asked when I tell people I had my child at home.

And, I'll tell those people the same thing I tell everyone - each parent makes the choices they believe are best for their child. And, we live in America, so luckily I have the freedom to make those choices.

My daughter is "on the spectrum", and I have gone with my gut and had her vaccinated because if you know anyone who had Polio as a child, it's devastating. Children in the modern world have been protected until recently, when old diseases are making comebacks. No, vaccines are not safe for everyone, but they did not cause my daughter's disorder. Life has risks, but the risks of sustaining a vaccine injury are minimal compared to the many children who had polio in the middle of the last century. You are gambling with your child's health. My daughter has improved dramatically over the years, not through diet, or alternative medicine. She has received great services through her school, and has attended social skills groups. She is fully mainstreamed now, has typical friends. Many children overcome mild autism, as Jenny's child has done, and as mine has done. Don't let people scare you into not vaccinating your child, it doesn't cause autism, neither does diet. I know so many parents of children with autism, and the diet has not made one iota of difference in their behavior, unless they truly have Celiac disease or a gluten allergy.

Science mama, I was born in Romania and these are all the vaccines I got: polio, pertussis, diptheria, tetanus, meningococcal, and rotavirus. From my vaccination papers, I only got a couple booster shots when I was older. I got a couple as a baby and the rest were during kindergarten and grade school. I got chicken pox and measles during my "tween" years. I had to get hepatitis B vaccine when I started nursing school because I didn't get it as a baby, which I don't believe any low-risk baby needs to have a hep B vaccination.

These are a far cry from the total of 25 shots a baby gets in the USA.

Here's the deal people...we need to figure out a way to SAFELY vaccinate our children. I've said it before, there are enough parents watching their children experience a post-vaccination regression into autism that something needs to be done. Enough of the greed, enough of the denial. This is happening. The empirical data all of the non-believers speak of--who exactly is conducting these studies? Who is responsible for publishing these papers? That's right--it's the physicians, the pharmaceutical companies, and the government behind the scenes. And they'd like to keep it that way.
Vaccines are important to prevent outbreaks of deadly diseases, but in the interim we are subjecting innocent little victims to other potentially preventable disorders (ie-autism) by exposing them to chemicals/toxins being directly injected into their little bodies. There are a majority of kiddos who are able to excrete these toxins (ie-mercury in the past, aluminum now both used as preservatives to mass produce the vaccines) and there are the rest of the kids whose bodies can't process and excrete these toxins. These are the kids who are affected.
So, let's try to be understanding here. If it's not about the money (which I firmly suspect it is) then let's remove the toxins--produce the vaccines in smaller doses, removing the need for these preservatives which appear to be the culprit. Let's try to find a screening procedure to identify which kiddos might be affected by the vaccines, and reconsider how/when they should be vaccinated. Why are people so uncaring and so close minded that no one wants to listen to these parents--they are not imagining this. It is not a coincidence. Please help our children.

Seriously, she needs to go away right now. Please everyone, remember that when her son was first diagnosed with autism, she insisted that he was not autistic, but rather that she was an "indigo mother" and her child was a "crystal", a highly-evolved being that was misunderstood. She went on like this for years. Only after this did not get her enough attention did she start saying that, yes, he was autistic and that the MMR vaccine caused it. The amazing thing is that now she insists that she could tell immediately after her son got this shot that the vaccine gave her son autism. hmm.

And she is indeed anti-vaccination. She will only accept a vaccine that has absolutely no side effects. That is impossible. Everything has a side effect. (Even breathing.) Also, no matter how much evidence is presented to her, she insists on this vaccine-autism link. She was on some show recently where she was presented with evidence, and she responded with an incoherent rant involving the f-word many times. Obviously not someone who is confident in what she believes.

Vaccine development is one of the greatest things that has occurred in public health. Her push against vaccines, and the fact that some people are listening to her, is truly tragic for the children who are affected.

Sunbeachrose: You may take a beating for your post but I, for one, agree with your stance. WHY not give it a try? Parents refuse to believe that food could possibly effect their child's behavior, their physical problems, their weight and their social abilities.

I can't believe that parents are putting frozen Kids Meals in plastic containers into the microwave to heat them. These people are killing their kids but are too lazy to care.

Eliminate HFCS and ALL processed foods for one month is a great idea. It won't happen, though!

As much as I hate the McDonald's concept at least they had the common sense to rid their restaurants of Styrene containers for food and hot drinks, unlike Dunkin' Donuts.

Stephanie - you are right, Jenny did not start this, but her celebrity status has caused this idea to spread with no scientific basis.

What exactly do you find disgusting?

In a previous post you say that more kids are being diagnosed with autism today and there are more vaccines, so that must be causing it. That is correlation, not causation. You could pick anything that has changed and say that would be the cause also.

I previously wrote about the changing criteria for autism being one big reason for the increase. What do you think about this?

um, let's see. How about a birth certificate showing that he was born in the US? Which has been presented over and over again. Like anti-vaccination folks, the people saying that Obama was not born here think that, by screaming it over and over again, people will believe.

Now I understand, you are just one of those people who love conspiracy theories. Since you tried to figure out who I was, I figure it was fair that I do the same.

She is intelligent enough to back up her opinions with facts.I heard her speak and was duly impressed. Plus what works for the majority may harm a select few. I had my son vaccinated and luckily all is well. I am of the 2nd and 3rd medical opinion school.But I am a firm believer in vaccines.