As a follow-up to my recent Oprah post, here’s an open letter to Oprah asking her to reconsider giving Jenny McCarthy a voice on her own show. The money quote:

Surely you must realize that McCarthy is neither a medical professional nor a scientist. And yet she acts as a spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement, a movement that directly impacts people’s health. Claims that vaccines are unsafe and cause autism have been refuted time after time, but their allure persists in part because of high-profile champions for ignorance like McCarthy. In fact, ten of the thirteen authors of the paper that sparked the modern anti-vaccination movement retracted the explosive conclusions they made due to insufficient evidence. Furthermore, it is now clear that the study’s main author, Andrew Wakefield, falsified data to support these shaky conclusions.

Please, Oprah… read this. Childrens’ lives are at stake, without hyperbole. It would be absolutely reprehensible to let her spout her ill-founded beliefs to an audience as huge and as credulous as your own.