Celebrities Kill More than Vaccines Do

When Jim Carrey and his girlfriend appear on Larry King Live spewing inanities about vaccinations and links to autism and presenting it as a legitimate threat to public health, you wonder what CNN segment comes next: “Tonight: the Holocaust — tragedy or myth? You decide.”

Recently, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet retracted a paper published twelve years ago by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. The paper linked the measles, mumps, rubella combined vaccine (MMR) that all children routinely receive to autism. The Lancet cited not only flawed research methodology, but massive conflicts of interest that Dr. Wakefield failed to report.

With the unsettling growth of the anti-vaccination crowd — despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines are safe — we must consider who is bolstering this epidemic of deliberate disbelief. The fact is that misguided parental advocacy groups can only go so far; it is celebrities who really add fuel to the fire.