Jenny McCarthy: Anti-Vaccine Scare Monger? Not in Louder Than Words, But She's Become One Later

Jenny McCarthy's book, Louder than Words, describes the story of her poor son Evan's first three years of life, beginning with terrifying seizures and end with a diagnosis of autism.  She's become very outspoken against vaccines, even in light of new information that the study that "proved" the link had falsified data.  However, she doesn't step so far over the line in her first book.  In Louder than Words she does a great job of describing the terror of not knowing what is wrong with your pre-verbal toddler.  I understand her pain and the fear of trying to reach beyond your child's level to figure out his illness, and she also describes the truly useful autistic therapies that help autistic children develop communication strategies.  In particular she briefly describes Applied Behavior Analysis.  If parents can find a program and afford it, it is the best known method for developing cognative work-arounds that allow autistic children to continue to grow.  She also mentions her belief that her son may have been genetically predisposed to reacting poorly to immunizations and therefore developed autism from his vaccinations due to a poor ability to develop antibodies properly.  She's partially right: her son may have been genetically predisposed to autism due to Fragile X syndrome. 

Fragile X syndrome is a chromosomal abnormality where the X chromosome is overloaded with repeats of the nucleotides, where a normal chromosome can have up to 24, a Fragile X can have more than 200.  While Fragile X is only considered accountable for 5% of all autistic cases, it does suggest that scientists may continue to find genetic predeterminates that manifest in autism. 

Unfortunately she wrote the book before the link between Fragile X and autism was clarified.  Now we know: there is a genetic component to autism.  There are two research and aid foundations that you should contact if your child is autistic: the FRAXA Research Foundation and The National Fragile X Foundation.

Here's a video with the stories of autism and Fragile X from the FRAXA Research Foundation.

More info for you:  http://www.stopjenny.com/WhyJennyIsWrong.html

Here is more on the science of Fragile X.