Submitted to a Candid World

Is this a good idea? From The Hollywood Reporter:

Jenny McCarthy is poised to become the next star in Oprah Winfrey’s media empire.

McCarthy has inked a multi-year overall deal with Winfrey’s Harpo Prods. to develop projects on different platforms, including a syndicated talk show that the actress/author would host.

The first collaboration under the pact is a blog by McCarthy on Oprah.com, which launched on Friday. Like other Winfrey proteges-turned-TV moguls, including Rachael Ray and Dr. Phil, McCarthy has been a frequent guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

(From 30-minute meals to escaping bad marriages to curing autism … Oprah, YOU GO, GRRRRRL!!!!!!!!!!)

McCarthy has authored three books available on Amazon with thrilling titles like:

• Healing and Preventing Autism: A Complete Guide
• Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism
• Mother Warriors: A Nation of Parents Healing Autism Against All Odds

I have empathy for McCarthy. My family is not untouched by autism. It is a painful, devastating, heartbreaking disorder. As a mother I understand her passionate desire to want to make her child better, to give her child the perfect life she no doubt envisioned for him.

But also very much understanding the painstaking effort by family members spent in developing new communication skills, learning new behaviors, working in special-education classes, I bristle at the thought a $17 self-help book, a gluten-free diet, and an Oprah-sponsored blog can seriously “cure” autism.

As if autism is like cystic acne. Or a bad case of dandruff.

I wonder, too, how many parents are hysterically self-diagnosing their toddlers. Note one of the comments from the Amazon page for McCarthy’s Healing and Preventing Autism book (bold mine):

This is the book I wish I had when my son was a baby. I have this painfully vivid memory of going to our local bookstore when my son was a year old. He sat in his stroller (fixated on the fluorescent lights on the ceiling and chewing vigorously on his pacifier) while I went through every book on the shelves looking for answers to what was happening to my baby. I knew he was slipping away even though I had been told repeatedly by his doctor that he was just fine. Back then there were no books on the shelves about autism (the explosion in material has only happened in the last 2-3 years). Had this book been on the shelf I would have been able to identify what was happening to my child (the onset of regressive autism), why it was happening and what to do to reverse it and prevent it from happening from any more of my children. We could have halted his illness extremely early and had less of an uphill battle to climb toward recovery.

This makes no sense to me. Of course, this is an anonymous comment offering very incomplete information. Notwithstanding these limits, I don’t doubt the woman’s concern for her child, but one-year-old toddlers zone out in public places and fixate on things like lights and colors and shapes. Further, if she didn’t trust her doctor, why did she not seek a second opinion, and since when does a self-help book substitute for the aforementioned second opinion?

Ultimately, parents must decide what is best for their children, but that doesn’t mean I won’t weep for the autistic children whose parents are getting all of their advice from Oprah-backed Jenny McCarthy or whose parents subscribe to the idea that mother always knows best. As for our family, we have decided to rely on rigorous, peer-reviewed science and to understand (1) the entire scientific and medical communities have not united to conspire singly against us and (2) disorders are never “cured,” but can be conscientiously managed in loving, nuturing, open, and accepting environments.