This is a rush transcript from "On the Record ," June 6, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
JAMIE COLBY, GUEST HOST: Jenny McCarthy already well-known for her beauty and her winning personality. But there is another side to the star. When he was two and a half years old, Jenny's son was diagnosed with autism and since then the actress has become an advocate in the fight against the disorder, helping not only her son but thousands of other kids and their parents.
Well, on Wednesday she and boyfriend Jim Carey were in Washington to lead the Green Our Vaccines march and rally and while Jenny was in town, she went "On the Record" with Greta.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: So, Jenny, what brings you to Washington? I should say welcome to Washington, too.
JENNY MCCARTHY: Thank you. Welcome back, right? Huge rally. The most rally will be of my lifetime but something I came up with about two months ago called Green Our Vaccines. It's something that's really important, really meaningful to me. My son Evan was diagnosed with autism in 2005 and since September, since my book came out, I've been traveling across the country and I've hit about two cities a week through September. Talked to about 50,000 parents face to face and their stores were so similar to mine that I said it's time for a rally for people to see the true faces of autism and to turn the lenses on them.
Watch Greta's interview with Jenny McCarthy
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, now you've got the shirt on, "Green Our Vaccines", what exactly is that? What does that mean?
MCCARTHY: Green our vaccines, people get so confused that we're an autism community, that we are anti-vaccine and I kind of came up with a slogan to say, no, we are a very intelligent group of people that understand that vaccines save lives. But we're also saying that vaccines are sometimes harmful to some kids and a lot of the ingredients, like the mercury, the aluminum, the ether, the antifreeze, we think need to be removed and a lot of people say the mercury has been removed since 2002 and I beg journalists to go online and look at the FDA Web site, look at the CDC Web site and count the 11 shots that still contain mercury.
Every time I hear it I go, why are they lying, it's the same kind of cover- up story, we believe, because we witnessed firsthand the effects of certain toxins and certain live viruses on our kids and the other part of the slogan was "Too Many, Too Soon" because in 1983 the shot schedule was 10 vaccines given and today there are 36 shots given. With the escalation of shots, with the escalation of autism. Literally.
VAN SUSTEREN: Autism is a whole sort of range, a whole spectrum and it's so terrible for the child and the family and if you're at the bottom range. And if you can't afford it and you've got the pressure on the marriage, people don't really understand how horrible and how you love a child so much and it is completely disruptive to the child and the family. It is incomprehensible.
MCCARTHY: I can tell you what's even more incomprehensible. It's having a perfect child. A child that says mama and wants to hug you and be held and love you and then all of the sudden that child is gone in front of your eyes. It was like every mom explains, it's like a spaceship came and stole the child's soul. I had a child that was smiling and hugging me and calling me mama and no longer knows I'm there. Like that.
VAN SUSTEREN: How old is Evan?
MCCARTHY: Evan is now - he just turned six years old.
VAN SUSTEREN: And in the spectrum, where is Evan?
MCCARTHY: Evan was undiagnosed with autism.
VAN SUSTEREN: So if I met Evan?
MCCARTHY: You would never know in a million years.
VAN SUSTEREN: So how does it manifest itself?
MCCARTHY: Autism?
VAN SUSTEREN: No, Evan's autism.
MCCARTHY: It doesn't.
VAN SUSTEREN: I wouldn't know Evan is autistic?
MCCARTHY: No, when I take him to neurologists - this is another - there's like two controversies with autism. It's how they got there and the possibility of recovery. Recovery, the real thing, it's not a cure, a really great analogy I give is autism is like getting hit by a bus. You can't be cured but you can recover all those lost things that you once had.
VAN SUSTEREN: Relearn the skills?
MCCARTHY: Relearn but also you might have a booboo here and there but Evan, once I looked into how this generation of moms have been healing lots of their kids, there's thousands and thousands of recovery stories. I follow those people and the reason why the medical community doesn't support is because us moms aren't treating autism, we are treating a vaccine injury. And when you treat the vaccine injury, the autism goes away, minimizes or disappears. When Evan goes to a neurologist now because he still has seizures, the main thing they keep saying to me is he never had autism to begin with. He never had autism.
Well, really, he was diagnosed by UCLA and the California state where he had in home therapy for 40 hours a week for an entire year. You're damn right this kid had autism. This kid had no language, two to three words, and now he's completely conversational because I detoxed his body, I did the diet, all the things the medical community doesn't support.
And you can imagine what these moms are going through because we're going through how this kid became autistic and how to heal them are completely two controversial things.
VAN SUSTEREN: So what is the most direct thing people can do to help now? What can help?
MCCARTHY: You can call your congressman.
VAN SUSTEREN: OK.
MCCARTHY: You can walk to your pediatrician's office and demand an alternative schedules.
VAN SUSTEREN: For the vaccinations.
MCCARTHY: For the vaccines because really my main goal right now is to stop the increase of autism and I really do believe by delaying the vaccine schedule, separating them, do not give eight shots at once. Hanna Polling (ph), that federal court case that was just conceded, her autism was triggered by vaccines due to a visit where her doctor gave eight shots at once.
Don't do more than one shot in a visit. Do you see what I'm saying? Not to not vaccinate. Space them out, ask for mercury-free. Make sure your child is not sick before you vaccinate. Your child does not have a good immune system. How is it supposed to detox the vaccine? Test your child for an immune system. Make sure they have really good glutothion. Glutothion is your body's naturally antioxidant to detox these things.
So you can go in and I want people to go in empowered, to take safety of their children back into their own hands, ask questions and demand things.
VAN SUSTEREN: So at the rally, how many people there? Do you have a guess?
MCCARTHY: We had about 8,000 people from across the country, pretty much every state.
VAN SUSTEREN: And Jim Carey, of course, is helpful, he has put his name on this, helping out.
MCCARTHY: Well, Jim has been there through the whole journey. He started with - we started dating not too long after Evan was diagnosed but he saw a kid that was completely unresponsive to him. That didn't care that Jim Carey was in the room, let alone anything. And he watched me kind of heal Evan and watched me change his diet and detox him and watch Evan go crazy through detox and witness this firsthand and he saw all these other people coming up and saying the same stories and he finally said, I can't be a silent supporter anymore, I need to go to this rally and speak from my heart. And I said, you go, man.
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, I have to tell you. He was quite proud of what you've been doing. I just talked to him a minute out there and he was very proud that you are heading this.
Anyway, thank you and good luck.
MCCARTHY: Thank you.
VAN SUSTEREN: Because it is very serious with a lot of families.
MCCARTHY: It is. Terrible problem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLBY: And a lot of useful information for families there, too. In the interest of being fair and balanced, "On the Record" also spoke with the American Academy of Pediatrics about this story. The AAP saying they understand the struggles, of course, of parents whose children have autism go through, but they also advocate the use of vaccines.
Their president, Dr. Renee Jenkins, said in part in a statement we got, "It is clear the benefits of vaccines far outweigh the risks. As pediatricians our job is to take the best medical care possible of all children and that includes continuing to do all we can to make vaccines as safe as possible. Vaccines," they continue to say, "go through extensive and rigorous scrutiny before approval. After licensure, studies are performed to look for possible rare adverse events and a system is in place for health care providers and parents to report any problem that occurs in a child after vaccination. The vaccination schedule is constantly reviewed," they say, "for safety and effectiveness and it is adjusted whenever scientific studies show there is a need. The AAP and your child's pediatrician base vaccine recommendation on the best, most up-to-date information available and many parents have never seen the devastating diseases that vaccines prevent. It is our goal as pediatricians to make sure that they never do."
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