I respect Jenny McCarthy's message: Be an advocate for your child. As a mother of four, the wife of a man with a severe autoimmune disease, and the daughter of a man with polio, I advocate for my children by not allowing anyone without flu shots or up-to-date immunizations into my home. Furthermore, I will no longer allow my children to play with or visit children who do not have current vaccinations. While I was pregnant last summer, my dearest friend's family exposed my family to whooping cough. She thought the vaccine booster was unnecessary because her family is healthy and that there were too many vaccines on the schedule. Her belief germinated from the media hysteria that I partially blame on Ms. McCarthy. My friend's family was quarantined, and we went through the worst 60 days of our lives, worrying about the exposure of my unborn baby and my husband. It all worked out, but it taught me a lesson: I will chose my family over friendships and playdates from now on.
—Elizabeth Smith, Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania
We need a paradigm shift in the way we view autistic individuals, and I refuse to let the media and celebrities frame this debate unchallenged. Groups like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (AutisticAdvocacy.org) have a goal that autism advocacy should not be aimed toward a world without autistic people; instead it should be a world in which autistic people enjoy the same rights and opportunities as the rest of society. Raising an autistic child is not a tragedy for our family. Autism is a part of our family and plays a role in how we interact with society. We want society to accept him, not pity him. We feel our job as parents is not to change the core of who our child is but, instead, make him as comfortable in the world as he can be. We work on making him as independent and happy as possible. As it stands now, there are no cures and honestly, we don't care. If there were no autism, there would not be our son, Michelangelo. And we would never want that.
—Dana Commandatore of Rethinking Autism
Jenny McCarthy is the kind of person who really scares me. While she has no medical education, training, or even a college degree, she is perfectly content scaring to death other mothers about the "dangers" of vaccinations based on her child's experience. The interesting thing to me is that her son has now "recovered." I am a speech-language pathologist, and in my 10 years of experience, I have never seen a child recover from autism. I have seen them become quite high functioning, but they were usually the children whose autism was pretty mild to begin with. Obviously, I have never worked with McCarthy's son, and I have no medical degree myself, but it seems to be the logical assumption that her child was misdiagnosed with autism in the beginning. It sounds as though he had multiple other health problems and symptoms of autism. She says no one was talking about a gluten-free, casein-free diet in 2005, but I can tell you she's wrong: I worked with kids whose parents were already taking those steps. His language improving so drastically just from the change in his diet, again, does not point to autism but to food allergies or intolerances. I think the most dangerous thing McCarthy does is to take her experience with her child and shout it all over the world, as though it applies to all other children with autism and their vaccinations.
—Emily Smith, Columbia, Missouri
I just want to thank you for your article featuring Jenny and Evan. I am a mother of a child with autism, and Jenny continues to do something for me that no one else has—she gives me hope. And for moms of kiddos with autism, sometimes a little bit of hope is all we need to get through another day. I've heard Jenny misquoted over and over again. Thank you for allowing her to give her point of view in your magazine.
—Dawn Neufeld, Frisco, Texas
I am disappointed at your magazine's choice for its cover story. Medical advice should not be coming from entertainers who have no educational or professional background in the subject. Having a child with autism does not make Ms. McCarthy into an expert, much the same as my paying taxes every year does not make me an accountant. Ms. McCarthy has a constitutional right to state her opinion, but I expect your magazine to be responsible in its reporting and to obtain information—on any matter, but especially those that have life-threatening consequences—from reliable experts.
—Stephen Reingold, M.D., Highland Park, New Jersey
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