Birds on the Brain

So don’t judge McCarthy because she posed nude. Judge her because she continues to defend disgraced vaccine researcher Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield lost his medical license after his 1998 paper on MMR and autism was exposed as a fraud. He was secretly working for a lawyer who hired him to concoct a justification for a class action lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer. Generation Rescue, an autism nonprofit headed by McCarthy, even featured Wakefield on the program of its conference this spring.

And judge her because she gives a platform to quacks who prey on the parents of children with autism. Speakers at her conference touted treatments ranging from the ridiculous (camel’s milk) to the downright dangerous (chemical castration). McCarthy got good press by inviting parents to attend the conference for free, but many of the speakers charge for their dubious remedies.

McCarthy gives her critics so much legitimate ammunition. Let’s not get sidetracked by her breasts.