McCarthy and the autism demon

Jenny McCarthy has long campaigned against vaccination because her son “acquired” autism after being immunised, and lost the ability to speak. She has since claimed that she has managed to give him (non-medically recognised) therapy that has improved his abilities. She has convinced many credulous people of this.

Except, it turns out, her son may not have had autism after all, but a neurological disease called Landau-Kleffner Syndrome, which, you guessed, sufferers improve as they age – it appears to be a developmental problem of neurological maturation. As this site says: “Most children outgrow the seizures, and electrical brain activity on the EEG usually returns to normal by age 15.” In other words, the entire basis for her campaign was false. She doesn’t appear to be apologetic for the thousands if not tens of thousands of children who have suffered and died as a result of her campaign, though…

[H/T Bora Zivkovic]