Jenny McCarthy, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, is playing with science again. This time it is all about the “carnivore diet.”

Her first foray into the scientific arena was in 2005, when her son was diagnosed with autism. She began to “do her own research” that led to Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s publication in the Lancet, a prime medical journal, linking the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. That paper was eventually retracted, with Wakefield accused of submitting fraudulent data. His medical license in Britain was subsequently revoked, prompting a move to the U.S., where he found fertile ground for his anti-vaccine agenda.

McCarthy, with her then-boyfriend, Canadian actor Jim Carrey, became a vocal questioner of the safety of vaccines. She now insists, à la Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that she was never anti-vaccine; she was just in favour of delaying certain vaccines and reducing the “toxins,” such as the preservative thimerosal that some contain. This flies in the face of scientific consensus. One would think the plethora of scientific studies published since Wakefield’s deceitful paper that have found no relationship between vaccines and autism would have put the issue to rest, but sadly that is not the case.

Now McCarthy, 52, has opened another can of worms. Interestingly, the wriggling creatures would actually fit into the carnivore diet she currently advocates. Previously, she had been a vegan and even founded Formless Beauty, a “vegan, cruelty-free, gluten-free” cosmetic company. Why? Because she was “sick of putting toxic products on........

© Montreal Gazette