JENNY MCCARTHY, a celebrity who introduced herself to the world on the pages of Playboy 20 years ago, is the proud owner of a Pigasus award, bestowed every April Fool’s day on “the performer who fooled the greatest number of people using the least talent”. Ms McCarthy, an anti-vaccination campaigner, says she is not opposed to vaccination. But she has defended debunked claims that jabs can trigger autism, and reckons her son was cured of his autism through vitamins and diet. More recently the anti-vaccination cause has been taken up by Alicia Silverstone, an actress whose name may now forever be linked to “Clueless” (pictured), a 1995 update of Jane Austen’s Emma in which she starred.Whooping cough (pertussis), a contagious bacterial infection that is deeply unpleasant for adults and can be fatal for small children, was supposed to have been largely eradicated from the United States, thanks to widespread vaccination. Infections fell from 222,202 in 1941 to 1,010 in 1976. But lately it has made an unwelcome return. In 2012 48,277 cases were...
from The Economist: United States http://ift.tt/1mxdLCn
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