Earlier this week California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a contentious, but scientifically supported, bill enforcing strict school vaccination requirements!!! Following the signing, Jim Carrrey went on a rant on twitter raging against the bill.
California Gov says yes to poisoning more children with mercury and aluminum in manditory vaccines. This corporate fascist must be stopped.
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Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) July 01, 2015
They say mercury in fish is dangerous but forcing all of our children to be injected with mercury in thimerosol is no risk. Make sense?
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Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) July 01, 2015
I am not anti-vaccine. I am anti-thimerosal, anti-mercury. They have taken some of the mercury laden thimerosal out of vaccines. NOT ALL!
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Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) July 01, 2015
Carrey claims that he’s not anti-vaccine, just anti- ‘toxins’ in vaccines. Too bad the science behind these compounds being ‘toxins’ is about as good as the science showing that vaccines cause autism (hint- its not good science). Apparently no one ever sent Jim Carrey this meme showing the basic chemistry difference between mercury and a mercury containing compound. #SCIENCE
Carrey can claim that he isn’t anti-vaccine, but he is still clearly misinformed when it comes to vaccines and science.
A trillion dollars buys a lot of expert opinions. Will it buy you? TOXIN FREE VACCINES, A REASONABLE REQUEST! http://t.co/cCa6bKBxei
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Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) July 01, 2015
Turns out that the boy actually suffers from the disease Tuberous sclerosis, which has nothing to do with vaccines, but IS associated with autism. The boys mother couldn’t be more annoyed that her son’s image was misused by Carrey in such a way.
“Jim Carrey has a huge platform — a huge following — and is misrepresenting my son’s image by attaching it to his anti-vax rant,” Alex’s mother, Karen Echols, told BuzzFeed News by email.
Alex was born with a genetic syndrome called tuberous sclerosis, or TSC, which causes benign tumors to grow all over the body, including the brain. Many children with TSC have autism, including Alex.
Alex’s photo was removed from Carrey’s tweet on Wednesday night after Echols filed a copyright complaint to Twitter. (Echols’ first-ever tweet was to Carrey asking him to take the picture down.) The tweet had already been retweeted nearly 600 times.
Echols first found out about Carrey’s tweet when her brother-in-law posted it to her Facebook wall. Her sister, Elizabeth Welch, is also upset about Carrey using the photo out of context. “It kind of felt like he was mocking [Alex], and that’s what was upsetting,” Welch told BuzzFeed News.
“I’m very disgusted and sickened that a celebrity would use a photo like this that was used in the first place to spread awareness of Tuberous Sclerosis to mock him and and my sister for vaccinations,” Welch wrote. “Even if that was not his intended outcome, it is what happened.”
Apparently the hilarious, but scientifically misinformed, actor hasn’t learned the vaccines-cause-autism-etc-lesson from ex-wife Jenny McCarthy. Yikes!