Jenny McCarthy Joins 'The View': A Look Back At Her Most Controversial Moments

Quite fittingly, McCarthy entered into pop culture with controversy. As a young, 21-year-old from a staunch Catholic family, McCarthy surprised family and neighbors when she decided to pose for Playboy dressed as a schoolgirl. The star suffered backlash in her Illinois neighborhood after its publication, fielding taunts and warnings from religious friends and family. They hardly held McCarthy back, though — she laughed in the face of criticism with a cool $100,000 deal as Playboy's Playmate of the Year. Image: Playboy

The best way for McCarthy to sell shoes? On the toilet. The star appeared in a series of ads that played up her penchant for potty humor, foretelling just how well she and future boyfriend Jim Carrey would get along. Image: Candie's

You'd know which we were referring to... if you ever saw Dirty Love. (And we know you didn't, because who did?) In one scene, McCarthy is featured in a puddle of her own menstrual blood. Suddenly, those Candie's ads seemed as classy as afternoon tea. Image: First Look Pictures

In 2007, McCarthy released a parenting memoir, Louder than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism. What began as a chronicle of coping with a son with autism transformed into a debate about vaccinations, which McCarthy claimed were directly responsible for her son Evan's condition, with various members of the media. Health experts fought back, pointing to the lack of evidence to support the claims, but McCarthy continued in her fight, even writing a forward in a book about vaccinations and autism by Andrew Wakefield. Too bad Wakefield fielded controversy himself for fraudulent information in his papers. Image Credit: Plume

Making the media rounds to discuss her theories on autism in 2008, McCarthy appeared on Larry King Live to critique doctors' vaccination schedule, claiming it directly coincides with autism. During the interview, the star said doctors deliver "too many [vaccines] too soon. When I was on this show before, I said we need an alternate schedule. This is too much. We need to get rid of the toxins, the mercury — which I am so tired of everyone saying it's been removed. It has not been removed from the shots ... Aluminum, ether, antifreeze — these are toxic ingredients in shots that need to be removed." Image: CNN

During the same interview, McCarthy countered critiques of her medical know-how by claiming that "parents' anecdotal is science-based information." Still, medical professionals continue to claim there is no truth about vaccinations affecting or causing autism. Image: CNN

McCarthy faced criticism again after penning a 2008 editorial with boyfriend Jim Carrey that claimed her son, Evan, was in recovery from autism thanks to a new diet that offset "yeast overgrowth" in his system, which she claimed was fueling his condition. "Evan is now 5 years old and what might surprise a lot of you is that we've never been contacted by a single member of the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, or any other health authority to evaluate and understand how Evan recovered from autism," she wrote. "When Evan meets doctors and neurologists, to this day they tell us he was misdiagnosed — that he never had autism to begin with. It's as if they are wired to believe that children can't recover from autism."

After both Carey and McCarthy spent the first five years of their relationship promoting McCarthy's theories on vaccination, the couple parted ways, leading to a nasty feud following their split. McCarthy claimed Carrey refused to see Evan even though "my son still asks" about him, but Carrey fought back, releasing a statement, "I will always do what I believe is in the best interest of Evan's well being. It's unfortunate that Evan's privacy is not being considered. I love Evan very much and will miss him always."

In a 2010 TIME

magazine interview, McCarthy talked about her son's possible misdiagnosis, claiming that medical professionals failed to notice that he might have had neurological disorder Landau-Kleffner Syndrome. In the piece, McCarthy urged that parents try several different treatments for children with autism, like electromagnetics and oxygen chambers. "Try everything ... It was amazing to watch, over the course of doing this, how certain therapies work for certain kids and they completely don't work for others ... When something didn't work for Evan, I didn't stop. I stopped that treatment, but I didn't stop."

Despite the fact that medical professionals still say there's no evidence that vaccinations cause autism, McCarthy's fight has worked for her side of the argument — many parents have refused to vaccinate their children in fear that shots would cause autism. Unfortunately, the move has hardly helped — the decreased vaccination rates have led to an increased number of children suffering from the highly contagious measles and whopping cough. So maybe it is fair that many professionals have singled out the Singled Out host.