My view on The View, Jenny McCarthy and my disease susceptible kids.

I can’t imagine you haven’t heard that The View has confirmed rumors that Jenny McCarthy has been selected as the newest host for the show beginning its 17th season in September.

While other celebrities annoy me, none has sent such fear into me as Jenny McCarthy because being a co-host will allow her a greater platform to spread the anti-vaccination campaign and in effect, making it more dangerous for kids like mine and millions of other people living with immune suppression. There are thousands of preventable illnesses that medical advances have allowed the world to slow or stop and the campaign to stop vaccinations – as Jenny McCarthy has been extremely vocal about – will undo the good those advances have afforded us because her platform will be widened.

In 2011, a review by the Institute of Medicine of more than 1,000 research articles showed that “there are no links between immunization and some serious conditions that have raised concerns, including Type 1 diabetes and autism.” A 2013 study in the Journal of Pediatrics, likewise “found no connection” between vaccines and autism.

From US News & World Report Pat Garofalo’s article

I care about a lot of things related to medicine. I hope for more affordable healthcare, insurance plans that do what they’re supposed to do, I hope for there not to be such a disparity between healthcare quality between the economic classes. I wish for parents and caregivers to get the services they need to help their children and adults who need support to be a part of our society. I care that decisions other people make impact the masses, both typically healthy people and people with compromised immune systems, just like Gage and Quinnlin.

Here’s another great look at why hiring Jenny McCarthy is dangerous for the world. I don’t care what kind of PR spin ABC or The View puts out there that she wasn’t hired for her personal platform — the fact is that the profile of Jenny McCarthy will rise as a co-host and in turn give her dangerous beliefs a voice.

Alexandra Petri on The Washington Post wrote yesterday,

If it were just your kids who were affected, that would be sad and awful for your kids, but, I guess, within your rights as a parent. But one reason vaccination is so effective is because it produces herd immunity — that’s to say, the fact that there are so few people left to whom a given disease can spread helps protect children too young to be vaccinated, people with cancer, and others who would otherwise be vulnerable. When the vaccination rate drops because people have decided they would prefer to listen to Jenny McCarthy (a survey found that 24 percent of parents considered celebrities to be a reliable source of vaccine information) that leaves the children of parents who did not make the asinine choice of listening to Jenny McCarthy open to infection. And that’s just unfair.

Do I have to keep my kids away from the general public, keeping them from enjoying life? I won’t do that because I want them to live a life of quality. Do I have to add “Do you vaccinate your kids?” to the list of things I need to know about the parents of the kids my kids play with? Probably.

I shuttered a little bit when I read “and others who would otherwise be vulnerable.” You know those others? They’re my vulnerable kids. My beautiful, amazing, resilient, preventable disease susceptible kids.