TORONTO – Turns out Toronto isn’t immune to global vaccination debates.
The vaccination debate came to a head in Toronto this week after Toronto Public Health called for Jenny McCarthy, the newest co-host of The View, to be booted off the show for her anti-vaccine view.
McCarthy has long been known for her vocal claims that vaccines cause autism – claims that were scientifically disproved years ago. Public Health officials say the fear McCarthy stoked, and subsequent reluctance for parents to vaccinate their kids, has meant diseases persist that should be eradicated.
An article posted on the Global News Facebook page sparked intense debate on both sides:
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“One day, vaccinations will be recognized for what they are, an 18th century procedure causing way more harm than believed,” Danielle Rene wrote.
“I will never watch a show with Jenny McCarthy, she is self promoting and has misguided uneducated viewers for years,” Brenda Craner Moberly wrote.
Brandie Weikle, Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Family Magazine, suggests McCarthy’s star power gives her a pedestal for opinions that may not otherwise influence the general population.
“People who are going through a difficult diagnosis like autism obviously want to find a reason,” Weikle said. “I think people point to what they can figure out what might be a root cause even if that isn’t based in fact.”
Much of the anti-vaccine movement is traced back to a 1985 report by British medical researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield, published in the medical journal The Lancet, suggesting there was a link between vaccines and the development of autism.
The report has been widely discredited and the journal eventually retracted the study.
The Centers for Disease Control in the United States, Toronto Public Health, and Health Canada also dismiss claims that vaccination can cause autism.
But one parent who chose to delay vaccinating her three children said making that choice can mean public shaming for parents.
“You definitely can get that health feedback, especially from some health professionals,” said Jodie Peacock, a naturopathic doctor and mother of three.
Peacock oldest son Maddox is three years old and has yet to be vaccinated. But not because she thinks the vaccines cause autism. Instead, she said, she chose to delay it until her son’s immune system was more fully developed.
“I talked with my husband about it beforehand and basically we looked at the risk around each of the diseases we vaccinate for and what his potential for exposure would be in the early years of his life and decided that it would be something we delay when he was born,” she said. “Starting at such a young age, two months, vaccinating for eight different diseases, it’s pretty overwhelming for the immune system.”
She plans to revisit the possibility of vaccination when her child is closer to five years old.
And she says, she can understand the vitriol of debaters on both sides of the vaccine debate.
“In certain communities where that fear is there, that just raises the level of debate around what you’re doing,” Peacock said.
But, she added, there may be a reasonable middle ground.
“I think blanketing to say ‘don’t vaccinate,’ or blanketing everyone to say ‘do vaccinate,’ I don’t think either side is right,” she said. “I don’t think she should get fired from a job because she has a certain view of things.”
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