Kristen Bell’s Strict Medical Requirements For Holding Her Baby
Want to hold Kristen Bell’s baby? First, make sure you’ve had your shots. The mother insists that friends get vaccinated before holding her baby. Considering California’s growing anti-vaccine population, dubbed “anti-vaxxers,” her rules might be justified.
Kristen Bell talked to the Hollywood Reporter about her health check requirements for friends.
“When Lincoln was born [in March 2013], the whooping cough epidemic was growing, and before she was 2 months old, we simply said [to friends], ‘You have to get a whooping cough vaccination if you are going to hold our baby.'”
Now the vaccine debate centers on measles, and Bell’s vigilance seems more relevant than ever.
As previously reported by the Inquisitr, a measles outbreak that started in Disneyland has spread to at least 16 states and continues to find unvaccinated victims. Some people – like infants under 12 months old or children with serious medical conditions – can’t get the vaccine, leaving them vulnerable to measles carriers.
Kristen Bell’s second daughter Delta, born last December, is one of those people, and Bell maintains the same stringent protections.
She added, “It’s a very simple logic: I believe in trusting doctors, not know-it-alls.”
And Bell works in a town filled with “know it alls” according to another article from The Hollywood Reporter.
Dr. Nina L. Shapiro from UCLA said, “the epidemic of whooping cough is about along the level of the epidemic in the 1940s. We have gone back almost 100 years as far as our vaccine prevention.”
The Daily Beast also noted Hollywood’s acceptance of the anti-vaxxer movement in an article called Blame Hollywood For Anti-Vaxxers. In it, the article lists off anti-vaxxer celebrities, making it seem like Kristen Bell might well be outnumbered in her own industry.
To many people, Jenny McCarthy is considered the face of the movement, telling Oprah how the MMR shot (rubella vaccine) gave her child autism.
“Right before [my son’s] MMR shot, I said to the doctor, ‘I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autism shot, isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘No, that is ridiculous. It is a mother’s desperate attempt to blame something,’ and he swore at me, and then the nurse gave [Evan] the shot. And I remember going, ‘Oh, God, I hope he’s right.’ And soon thereafter—boom—the soul’s gone from his eyes.”
Still, mainstream science agrees with Kristen Bell’s line of reasoning. Major medical groups have yet to be able to prove a connection between autism and vaccines. In the meantime, 62 cases of measles have been confirmed in California alone.
The question is: if Jenny McCarthy could become the face of anti-vaxxer movement, could Kristen Bell be the voice of pro-vaccine parents? Seems like they need a celebrity endorsement, too.
[Image Credit: Getty Images]
