If you’re of millennial age, you probably remember the dating show “Singled Out,” wherein a contestant whittled down a pool of 50 prospective dates, ultimately landing on one winner to accompany them on a trip. You also likely remember their co-host, Jenny McCarthy, who would later go on to loudly claim that vaccines are linked to autism. Well, few people know that her crusade actually started way back in the mid-nineties. As such, here are five episodes of “Singled Out” that convinced me not to vaccinate my son Gerald.
- Season 1, Episode 8
Jenny gets right into it with this episode, as just after noting that only one of the 50 gathered suitors will win the contestant’s heart, she also mentions that the polio vaccine actually kills one out of 50 people who receive it. This was such a revelation to me that I immediately canceled Gerald’s appointment with his pediatrician, and he’s been doing fantastic ever since, so long as you discount his missing left calf muscle and the fact that he’ll be walking with crutches for the rest of his life.
- Season 1, Episode 14
Jenny must not have felt very subtle during the filming, because she immediately goes off on a 15-minute rant about the dangers of thimerosal, which delays the show so much that a winner doesn’t even end up being crowned. Well, that’s all I needed to be convinced, and if you can find a link between Gerald’s chronic lockjaw and his never having received a tetanus shot, I’d love to hear it.
- Season 1, Episode 36
Jenny must’ve gotten hold of the scripted questions for the “Keep ‘Em Or Dump ‘Em” round of this episode, because they all seemed to be centered around how vaccines overwhelm children’s still-developing immune systems. Quick question: do antibiotics overwhelm their immune systems too? I’m trying to decide whether I should treat the lingering skin infection from Gerald’s last bout with smallpox with this oxacillin.
- Season 2, Episode 2
Shortly after the sought-after stud in this episode clarifies that he’d rather have a “Cindy Crawford” than a “Cindy Brady”, Jenny arranges for the disqualified losers to hold up signs expressing the supposed dangers of vaccines’ aluminum content. Well, this scared the daylights out of me, and if Gerald wasn’t permanently quarantined from his elementary school, I’d have him tell all his classmates to relay this information to their parents.
- Season 2, Episode 25
The grand prize for this episode was an all-expenses-paid trip to Pfizer’s headquarters in Manhattan to protest their paying off doctors to claim that vaccines are safe for children. This doesn’t sound as fun as a tandem skydiving date followed by dinner at a posh LA restaurant to me, but what do I know? My family’s been blacklisted by every restaurant in town after word got out about Gerald’s measles, which is fine because I’m not terribly enthused about the seed oils many of them are using in their fryers, but that’s for another day.
