The Letter to the Editor that Almost Was.

Last Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a lengthy article about the success of the polio vaccine.  For reasons known only to their confessors, they decided to also run an op-ed by Jenny McCarthy, the face of ignorance on the subject of vaccines.  In what may be an encouraging sign of where the public discourse is going, Ms. McCarthy (falsely) claims that she is not anti-vaccine.  She even had the temerity to title her article "The Greay Area on Vaccines."  You can read her article here, but you won't learn much of anything if you do.

I dutifully wrote a letter to the editor.  Yesterday I was pleased to receive a call from the Sun-Times informing me that my letter had been chosen for publication in today's (April 16th) paper. This morning I bought a copy of the paper and saw that my letter had not been published.  I called the aforementioned employee, hoping to hear that my letter would appear the next day.  I was told that it would not.  Apparently this employee had been out for a couple days and didn't realize that they had already run letters responding to McCarthy. (These letters must have appeared in Monday's edition, which is the only edition since Sunday that I did not read.  But they are not preserved on the Sun-Times web site.)  

So my 15 seconds of print edition fame were not to be.  That is personally disappointing of course.  I was excited to have my letter printed because I think it makes some very salient points.  I reproduce it here, where it will reach a much smaller and more sympathetic audience than the readership of the Chicago Sun-Times.  Enjoy.

"Jenny McCarthy's attempt to recast her position on vaccines as moderate is dishonest. First she carefully avoids mentioning that she championed the false claim that vaccines cause autism. That claim has been thoroughly debunked by the scientific community. Her new position is that children should receive only one shot per visit to the doctor. But she offers no evidence as to why the vaccine schedules should be changed. She just has a gut suspicion that this would be better for children. That is not how medical science works. There is no "gray area" when it comes to vaccines. There is science and there is superstition. Ms. McCarthy continues to peddle ignorance on this subject and she should not be taken seriously."

 Well, I'm sure that letter would have resolved the issue forever.  But it was not to be.  But don't cry for me. There are plenty of people who had worse days than me.  This guy, for example, is about to ruin the next five or six years of his life.