Jenny McCarthy's path ran from MTV host to America's loudest vaccine sceptic
A Chicago cheerleader who called herself an outcast became a Playboy Playmate in 1993, an MTV dating-show host two years later and, eventually, a co-host of The View. Along the way Jenny McCarthy became famous for something else: insisting vaccines trigger autism, a claim critics labelled dangerous and reckless.
McCarthy was born on November 1, 1972, in Evergreen Park, Illinois, just outside Chicago, into a working-class Catholic family, the second of four daughters; the actress Melissa McCarthy is her cousin. She cheered for two boys' high schools yet says she was bullied, and she spent two years at Southern Illinois University. In 1993 Playboy paid her $20,000 for its October issue. Hugh Hefner said her wholesome Catholic-girl image set her apart from 10,000 hopefuls, and the shoot upset her home neighbourhood.
Television followed fast. MTV hired her in 1995 to co-host Singled Out, and that year she even appeared at WrestleMania XI as a valet for Shawn Michaels, then left the ring on the arm of his victorious opponent, Diesel. A short-lived sitcom bearing her name aired on NBC, and film work included BASEketball in 1998 with Trey Parker and Matt Stone and a part in Scream 3. From December 31, 2010, she spent about a decade reporting from Times Square for the ABC New Year's Eve broadcast, joined The View on September 9, 2013, and became a panellist on The Masked Singer when it launched on January 2, 2019.
In May 2007 she revealed that her son Evan had received an autism diagnosis in 2005. Her book Louder than Words appeared that September, and she argued on Larry King Live in 2008 that vaccines can set off autism. She also claimed chelation therapy, which is a quack remedy, helped cure him, and she was a spokesperson for the group Talk About Curing Autism from June 2007 to October 2008.
Journalists described her as the country's most prominent anti-vaccine voice, and critics called her campaign uninformed. In 2014 she said Evan, then 12, no longer met the diagnostic criteria for autism, though seizures had left him with some brain damage.
Source: Jenny McCarthy
