ABC has been taking more heat than a Jersey Shore lifeguard in the past few days. The growing uproar began as soon as Barbara Walters announced Monday on the weekday talk show "The View" that Jenny McCarthy, whose acting career has been largely eclipsed in recent years by her campaign to link vaccines with autism, will become a permanent co-host in September.
The choice of Jenny McCarthy to co-host ABC's 'The View' talk show has alarmed medical professionals.
While the program is called "The View," and everyone has a right to his or her opinion, not everyone gets to share those views including some that have been branded "dangerous" with millions of people five days a week.
McCarthy believes that vaccines caused her now 11-year-old son Evan's autism and that chelation, among other alternative therapies, "cured" him.
The scientific community says she's dead wrong about all this.
"We've had multiple, multiple studies from different countries, from different investigators and none have shown a link between any of the vaccines and autism," says Dr. Margaret Fisher, president of the New Jersey Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "Our major concern is, this is a person whose track record has shown that she is very interested in spreading misinformation as well as opinion. Misinformation often leads to fear and may dissuade people from protecting their children by immunizations."
Fisher is equally concerned about McCarthy's views on autism treatment. "Unfortunately, many of the things to which she submitted her son are not safe therapeutic interventions," says Fisher, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch. "She is a very dynamic person, a very engaging person, and our concern is that people might give credence to her opinions for that reason."
Michael Tozzoli, CEO of West Bergen Mental Healthcare, says he understands "from an emotional perspective" a parent's "desire or hope to find a single, solitary reason" for autism, but adds, "There's probably 30 to 40 different types and varying degrees of autism, and so, to really point to one single, solitary factor probably isn't helpful."
Nonetheless, Tozzoli believes that McCarthy's joining the show could "open a dialogue, [and] any time we're able to talk about autism in the public sector, I think it's great. I don't really see a downside to that."
But Dr. Ari Brown, a Texas pediatrician who wrote the book, "The Baby 411," disagrees. "When you give a platform of 3 million viewers to somebody who has some very dangerous viewpoints when it comes to health care, and you're influencing the public by giving somebody that platform, I think that is dangerous," Brown says. "And I think that it's irresponsible."
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Commentary: ABC needs to offer answers in McCarthy controversy over autism