HANDLEY: You haven’t done the research.
STORK: You’re antagonizing me. Why would you do that?
HANDLEY: Because my son was ...
J. B. Handley takes on Dr. Travis Stork on an episode of The Doctors, May 6, 2009. (Courtesy of The Doctors, Stage 29 Productions, and CBS Television Distributions.)
STORK: OK! Everyone wants to blame someone, right? What we’re trying to figure out here is how to help kids. But all you do when you yell at me on my stage, all you do is anger me.
HANDLEY: I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, but you don’t know the details.
STORK: I asked you to defend your stance, and all you did was attack me as an individual. Why would I want to listen to you when you do that to me?
On an anti-vaccine Web site, Handley boasted about his ability to take on doctors. “I’m not intimidated by any of these jokers,” he wrote. “Their degrees mean zippo to me, because I knew plenty of knuckleheads in college who went on to be doctors, and they’re still knuckleheads.”
Later in The Doctors program Stork revealed how, on the strength of McCarthy’s star power, she had rigged the show.
MCCARTHY: Go call the AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] and see if they’ll sit down with us and they’ll say, ‘No, tell them to write a letter.’
STORK: Let me just say this openly to everyone. You know, we wanted to have someone from the AAP here today, but you refused to allow them to come. So if you want to engage them in a debate, they would have been here.
Following the show, David Tayloe, a North Carolina pediatrician and president of the AAP, wrote to Lisa Williams, producer of The Doctors.
Dear Ms. Williams,
Once again, Jenny McCarthy has struck a blow to public health, and “The Doctors” have given her the loudspeaker. I was disappointed with the May 6 episode featuring Ms. McCarthy and her associates from the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue.
True ... Dr. Travis Stork revealed Ms. McCarthy’s hypocrisy over her unfounded claims that the American Academy of Pediatrics has refused to sit down with her. In fact, she is the one who refused to engage the AAP in an honest dialogue on the show. That only begs the question: Why allow her this platform at all? I do not understand why you granted a celebrity the power to veto a guest who is actually prepared to refute her unscientific claims. The casual viewer would not have known that the deck was stacked; every guest, including J. B. Handley ... plays a prominent role in Generation Rescue. This is a small, vocal minority. But a young parent watching your show would get the mistaken impression they represent the consensus on vaccines. This misinformation is costly. Unimmunized children are dying of vaccine preventable diseases in this country....
I fear you let drama and ratings trump sound medical advice. Sincerely,
David T. Tayloe, Jr., M.D.
President, American Academy of Pediatrics
Handley appears to embrace the legal aphorism “If the law is on your side, argue the law; if the facts are on your side, argue the facts; if neither is on your side, attack the witness.” The scientific evidence against him, Handley chose ad hominem attacks, arguably the lowest form of debate. His confrontation with Travis Stork was one of many:
• On January 31, 2008, Nancy Minshew, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Pittsburgh and director of a Center of Excellence in Autism of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), confronted anti-vaccine activists. In an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette titled “Pitt Expert Goes Public to Counter Fallacy on Autism,” Minshew said, “The weight of the evidence is so great that I don’t think there is any room for dispute. I think the issue is done.” Handley, who had become aware of an email exchange between Minshew and a parent of a child with autism, threatened to post it on an anti-vaccine Web site. Minshew was upset, writing, “Mr. Handley, none of you have permission to share emails that I have sent to you as individuals. Unlike the newspaper, which was public, private emails to individuals sent confidentially are not for public quotation.” Handley responded immediately. “Says who?” he wrote. “And tough shit.”
• In an interview with Cookie magazine in their August 2008 issue, actress Amanda Peet, who starred in 2012, A Lot Like Love, Martian Child, Something’s Gotta Give, Syriana, The Whole Ten Yards, and X-Files, talked about the importance of vaccines. Peet was worried about the growing number of unvaccinated children in southern California; worried about how it might affect her young daughter. “I was shocked at the amount of misinformation [about vaccines] floating around,” she said, “particularly in Hollywood.” Again, Handley resorted to threats: “Ms. Peet, I have a quick message for you: you have no idea who you are messing with.”
• On August 4, 2008, Handley attacked Every Child by Two (ECBT), a nonprofit organization founded by Betty Bumpers and Rosalynn Carter. Questioning their funding sources, Handley wrote, “By non-profit standards, ECBT is a rat-shit organization.”
• On September 10, 2008, after yet another study had found no evidence that MMR caused autism, Geri Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy organization Autism Speaks, sent out a press release reassuring parents about the safety of the vaccine. Handley’s response was personal: “Geri Dawson is either a blithering idiot or she is a corrupt partisan hack who so desperately wants the autism-vaccine thing to just die so she can get back to work chasing her genetic-psychological theories on autism that she will happily go along with the mainstream spin on a stupid little study.”
• On October 30, 2008, after NBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman appeared on The Today Show supporting the science showing no link between vaccines and autism, Handley called her “NBC’s pharma-whore in residence.”
• On December 15, 2008, in a blog entry titled “Some New York Times Reporters Are Just Ignorant,” Handley attacked Gardiner Harris, who had written an article exonerating vaccines as a cause of autism. Handley wrote, “There’s a reporter named Gardiner Harris who writes for the New York Times. I’ve probably talked to a hundred or so reporters in my time and he is unquestionably the biggest jackass I have ever encountered.”
• In November 2009, a freelance reporter named Amy Wallace wrote an article for Wired magazine titled “An Epidemic of Fear.” The cover of Wired featured an infant staring out from behind the word FEAR in three-inch high letters; the subheading read, “Vaccines don’t cause autism. But some panicked parents are skipping their baby shots. Why that bad decision endangers us all.” As he had done with Nancy Snyderman, Handley demeaned Wallace, a single mother living in southern California, with a sexual reference, implying that she had been intellectually raped using a date-rape drug. After Wallace described his comments on National Public Radio, Handley called her a “cry baby.” Wallace lamented “the way people like Handley use gender and sexuality as weapons to bully their opponents,” arguing that “the debate needs to be civil. That’s part of what I’ve been trying to participate in—a civil discussion of these issues.”
• On January 12, 2010, Handley went after those he believed were most responsible for causing autism—pediatricians: “If a doctor sticks six vaccines into a child while the child is taking antibiotics for an ear infection and Tylenol for a cold, he’s not a doctor, he’s a criminal, and should be hauled into jail on the spot for assault and battery. If the child also happens to have eczema, long-term diarrhea, and has missed a milestone or two, perhaps the charges should be attempted murder.”
Handley’s appearance on entertainment television didn’t end with The Doctors. On April 3, 2009, Handley, appearing on Larry King Live, said, “They [the AAP] rubber stamp every vaccine on the schedule. Dr. [Margaret] Fisher [representing the AAP on the show] never answered why so few companies have picked up varicella, flu, rotavirus. Meantime, AAP rubber stamps every vaccine, like Gardasil [human papillomavirus vaccine], which is damaging teenaged girls right now; which will likely be pulled from the market very soon.” Handley had mischaracterized the American Academy of Pediatrics, failing to account for the
enormous amount of work done by the AAP’s Committee on Infectious Diseases before recommending vaccines. Further, he implied that few companies manufactured vaccines against varicella (chickenpox), influenza, or rotavirus because they weren’t safe or effective. But that’s not the reason; only a few companies make vaccines because vaccines, compared with drugs, are enormously expensive to test and manufacture. Patricia Danzon, an economics professor at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, has publicly expressed surprise that more than one company makes any vaccine—given that they’re used only once or a few times in a lifetime. But Handley’s most outrageous comment was that Gardasil was not only dangerous (a contention refuted by careful study) but also about to be pulled from the market. This was clearly untrue. Given that Gardasil prevents the only known cause of cervical cancer—and given that at least some CNN viewers, believing Gardasil was about to be withdrawn, might have chosen not to give the vaccine to their daughters—Handley’s statement tested the bounds of free speech. Citizens of the United States are not allowed to shout “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater because it puts lives at risk. Arguably, Handley’s baldly inaccurate statement about Gardasil’s imminent withdrawal might have caused some parents to withhold the vaccine for their daughters, putting them at needless risk of cervical cancer.
Handley’s disregard for established science didn’t end with his comments about Gardasil. On the May 6, 2009, episode of The Doctors, he said, “As mad as we are—and we are mad and frustrated that we aren’t heard—we want to find common ground. We don’t want all these deadly childhood diseases to return, either. One of the recommendations that we’ve made to parents is go back to the 1989 schedule, before it became—in our opinion—overly commercialized.” Handley was asking to go back to a time when, every year, pneumococcus caused tens of thousands of cases of pneumonia and thousands of cases of meningitis, killing about two hundred children; when hepatitis B virus infected about sixteen thousand young children; when rotavirus caused seventy thousand babies to become so dehydrated that they had to be hospitalized; and when Hib caused twenty thousand children to suffer bloodstream infections, pneumonia, epiglottitis, or meningitis. Handley’s advice to return to a decade when hundreds of thousands of children were harmed by what are now preventable infections ranks as one of the most irresponsible, ill-informed statements ever made by an antivaccine activist.
Handley’s notion of a gentler, better time before vaccines wasn’t new. One month earlier he had made a similar suggestion. During his April 2009 appearance on Larry King Live, Handley, referring to the notion that babies were getting too many vaccines too soon, said, “Larry, we have no idea what the combination risk of our vaccine schedule looks like. At the two-month visit, a child gets six vaccines in under fifteen minutes. The only way to test that properly would be to have a group of kids who get all six and a group of kids who got none and see what happens. They don’t do that testing. They have no idea.” Handley was asking for a study of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. One result is certain: given recent outbreaks of Hib, measles, mumps, and pertussis, unvaccinated children would suffer and possibly die from preventable infections. It would be, of course, an entirely unethical experiment. No investigator could prospectively study children who are denied a potentially lifesaving medical product. And no university’s or hospital’s institutional review board worth its salt would ever approve such a study. Handley’s proposal harkens back to a dark time in our history when—between 1932 and 1972—investigators prospectively studied four hundred African-American men from one of the poorest counties in Alabama to see what would happen if their syphilis went untreated. It was called the Tuskegee Study. Withholding antibiotics that could have cured them, it was probably the most unethical medical experiment ever performed in America.
Another obvious difference between Jenny McCarthy and Barbara Loe Fisher is that McCarthy is a celebrity. It’s her celebrity that has landed her on shows like Oprah and Larry King Live. And it’s her celebrity that has enabled her to determine the guest list. McCarthy isn’t the first person to use fame to influence the public about vaccines. In the 1950s, the March of Dimes promoted polio vaccines using singers Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, and Frank Sinatra, comedians Jack Benny and Lucille Ball, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his puppet Charlie McCarthy, and actors Clayton Moore (the Lone Ranger), Mary Pickford (America’s sweetheart), and Mickey Rooney; even Mickey Mouse participated (“Hi ho, hi ho, we’ll lick that polio”). The tradition is still alive. In addition to Amanda Peet, actors such as Keri Russell (Waitress, August Rush) and Jennifer Garner (Juno, 13 Going on 30) have spoken on behalf of vaccines. So has Heisman trophy winner Archie Griffin. But unlike in the 1950s, many celebrities today use their fame to scare the public. In addition to McCarthy, Jessica Alba, Cindy Crawford, Matthew McConaughey, Doug Flutie, and Aidan Quinn have all said that vaccines are unsafe. But no actor has joined the fray more than Jim Carrey. Unlike McCarthy, Carrey is recognized by most Americans for his work in the popular comedies Liar, Liar; Ace Ventura: Pet Detective; and Dumb and Dumber as well as for his serious roles in The Truman Show and The Majestic. People know Jim Carrey as a warm and funny man; they trust him. So when Carrey started to date Jenny McCarthy, and to share her anti-vaccine passion, her star power and the impact of her message increased dramatically.
Jim Carrey exhorts crowd at an anti-vaccine rally in front of the Capitol, June 4, 2008. (Courtesy of Getty Images.)
McCarthy and Carrey were a compatible anti-vaccine couple, sharing the notion that vaccines are a conspiracy run by pharmaceutical companies. On April 3, 2009, on Larry King Live, Carrey said, “The AAP is financed by drug companies. Medical schools are financed by drug companies.” Carrey also doesn’t trust public health agencies. “I don’t think people that are charged with the public health any longer have our best interests at heart all the time,” he said. “Parents have to make their own decisions: educated decisions.” Unfortunately, like McCarthy and J. B. Handley, Carrey does little to educate them. On the same segment of Larry King Live, Handley noted that “twenty-seven countries chose not to vaccinate for the chickenpox.” Carrey knew why. “That vaccine doesn’t work,” he said.
Handley’s implication that chickenpox is unimportant and Carrey’s statement that the vaccine doesn’t work are inconsistent with the evidence. The chickenpox vaccine was first licensed and used in the United States in 1995. Although many people think of chickenpox as a benign disease—a simple rite of childhood passage—it isn’t; every year chickenpox causes children to be hospitalized and to die. The virus, which disrupts the skin with painful blisters, allows entrance of bacteria like Streptococcus pyogenes. Dubbed “flesh-eating bacteria” by the press, streptococcus causes serious and occasionally fatal diseases like necrotizing fasciitis (a deep-seated infection that dissects rapidly through muscles, necessitating emergency surgery) and pyomyositis (in which muscles liquefy from massive inflammation). The virus can also travel to the lungs causing pneumonia and to the brain causing encephalitis. Worst of all: you never get rid of chickenpox. Even after people recover from the infection, the virus lives silently in nerve roots, occasionally reawakening later in life causing shingles, one of medicine’s most debilitating diseases. Shingles is so painful that it has at times led to suicide. And shingles doesn’t only affect the skin; sometimes when the virus reawakens it causes strokes, resulting in permanent paralysis. Chickenpox is a disease worth preventing. And, thanks to the chickenpox vaccine, American children are now much less likely to catch it. Since the vaccine was released, twenty studies—performed between 1997 and 2006—have evaluated whether the vaccine works. Every one of them found that it did. Not surprisingly, the number of children with chickenpox—once totaling about four million a year—has declined dramatically. But Jim Carrey never mentioned these data. Rather, he declared to several million people on national television that the vaccine didn’t work—a statement that was entirely false and went comp
letely unchallenged.
In October 2009, during the swine flu (H1N1) epidemic, another celebrity threw his hat into the ring: Bill Maher, the popular host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. For those who followed him on Twitter, Maher advised that getting a vaccine to prevent swine flu was for “idiots.” On his television show, he debated Bill Frist, a heart surgeon and former Senate majority leader from Tennessee.
MAHER: Why would you let them [doctors] be the ones to stick a disease into your arm? I would never get a swine flu vaccine or any vaccine. I don’t trust the government, especially with my health.
FRIST: On the swine flu, I know you really believe that. And let me just ...
MAHER: You say that like I’m a crazy person.
Frist told the story of a healthy thirty-year-old man who had died of swine flu in his (Frist’s) hospital. Maher didn’t buy it.
MAHER: This is not a serious flu. Let’s be honest. There must be something more to this. I cannot believe that a perfectly healthy person died of this swine flu. That person was not perfectly healthy. Western medicine misses a lot.
Frist told Maher about two recent publications in the New England Journal of Medicine describing the high risk of fatal influenza in pregnant women.
FRIST: I know you don’t believe this, but I’m telling you the facts. Because if you send a signal out telling pregnant women not to get this vaccine ...
MAHER: I do.
Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All Page 18