It’s odd to turn it into an issue of rights in that way. At best that’s like giving a first-amendment defense for referring to Ukraine as “the Ukraine.” Except worse, because you are messing with another person’s life. Parents have a right to let their kids sit on the couch watching Ridiculousness and eating yogurt from tubes all day. In a lot of ways, parents have a right to be bad parents. Last year a German boy named Micah died because of a measles infection. Too young to be vaccinated himself, he contracted measles from a willfully unvaccinated child in their pediatrician’s waiting room. One family’s free choice not to vaccinate resulted in the death of another’s boy.

And then, in some further misappropriation of concerns, McCarthy wraps up the column in a very strange, straw-man way: “Should a child with the flu receive six vaccines in one doctor visit? Should a child with a compromised immune system be treated the same way as a robust, healthy child? Shouldn’t a child with a family history of vaccine reactions have a different plan? Or at least the right to ask questions?”

Closing with these provocations deflects attention from her real argument, but the answers are no, no, possibly, and yes. Addressing these variables, all, is standard practice. Any medical professional is expected to take them into account. It’s counterproductive and polarizing to imply otherwise. When we say vaccines are safe, it doesn’t mean physicians give them at will, without regard to a patient's unique medical conditions. Vaccines are safe, but we don’t give them to kids while they are more than mildly ill with another infection. Bowling is safe, but if your arm is freshly broken it's not the best idea to bowl with it.

Whenever I write on stories like this, people ask me why I give it the time of day. I wrote about a neurologist who says that eating carbohydrates is the cause of most mental illness, because his book was number one on The New York Times bestseller list. As long as Jenny McCarthy has a popular talk show and a newspaper column that can get shared on Facebook seven thousand times like this column did, it’s worth taking seriously. Assume McCarthy isn’t purposefully deflecting to distract from the backpedaling; that she genuinely feels she can’t ask questions about vaccines. And other people feel that way, too. So some of them opt against vaccinating their kids. In that case being dismissive is a failure of health providers and medical journalists. Colasurdo’s prose in referring to “this tiny person you’ve brought into the world” is syrupy but gets to something real. The responsibility of parenthood can be overwhelming. It can stir suspicion and concern that supplant reason among reasonable people.

Exasperating as it can be for experts and journalists who hear about vaccine conspiracy theories and discredited research regularly, for years, concerns are still best addressed seriously. Dismissing concerned parents out of hand is dangerous to the culture on the whole. Go after the misinformation, not the misinformed. McCarthy is not an aberration, in that celebrities without medical expertise have and will continue to shape public health. Often for better, often not; either way it's powerful and the effects are pervasive.

In preventive medicine, there is so, so much we don’t know definitively. What’s the best diet? Minimize added sugar and trans fat, go high on fiber, plants, and omega-3 fatty acids, and that’s nearly all I can say. Should I be taking vitamin D supplements? Wasn't there just a study that said it will make me less likely to die? Well, you'll die, but maybe you should try taking them, in that getting more vitamin D might make you less likely to die of cancer or heart disease, but it’s not generally recommended; and it might accumulate in your organs and cause irreversible kidney damage. How many eggs should I eat? Ah probably not too many, but they’re not as bad as we once thought. How much wine? People say one to two glasses a day, but that is literally a 100 percent difference between one and two glasses. Just tell me the right answer.