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The University of Oprah

Has anyone in the country--in the world--got an educational platform as large as Oprah's? Her power is enormous. She banks on the understanding that what women know determines how society rolls. A continuation of that concept is that the better educated women are, the better off society is.

Unfortunately, education at the University of Oprah can be iffy at best when it comes to accuracy in science and medicine.

Newsweek just published a huge article about the World According to Oprah. The O is fond of guests who speak to the spiritual in our lives, who seek to combine an understanding of the spirit with an understanding of the more material aspects of science and medicine. And that's great. However, it seems that this understanding comes sometimes at the price of misinformation. And sometimes, that misinformation isn't just a harmless recommendation to use a likely ineffectual skin cream. Sometimes, it's a matter of life or death.

One of the O's latest acolytes is Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy, a self-proclaimed graduate of Google U, has likely done more damage with her peddling of medical misinformation than just about any other celebrity. I won't get into the reasons why being a celebrity does not grant you medical expertise or why self-conferring a degree from Google U doesn't do the trick either. But McCarthy has gained notoriety in many well-informed circles because of the questionableness of a variety of her claims, most of them related to a debunked putuative link between vaccines and autism. Her claims have done serious damage to the efforts of public health officials to promote childhood vaccinations. It's a dangerous path to follow, one that currently leads in no vague way ultimately to avoidable deaths.

And Oprah now wants to give Ms. McCarthy her own show.

Scientists have done some excellent work, real research, exploring the mind-body connection. It's intriguing, it's valid, it's worth pursuing. But jumping the shark with the likes of Ms. McCarthy, whose sole contribution to such research is that she once considered her son to be an Indigo Child, is not the way to take advantage of the world's largest educational platform. Oprah does a disservice to women and society when she gives this kind of dangerous misinformation her show as a megaphone. The onus is on her to use her power for good. Especially for good information.

Emily Willingham, PhD