More than 300 cases of the measles have sprung up in B.C. in a six-week-long outbreak that has turned attention and criticism to the anti-vaccine crusade of some parents in the mid-2000s.

Famously, actor and Playboy model Jenny McCarthy became the face of the anti-vaccine movement after she said her son developed autism from vaccines as a child.

That causal relationship has since been widely de-bunked, but there are those people who will continue to stalwartly believe in the anti-vaccine message.

Somewhere in the last 20 or 30 years, celebrities went from actors and nude models to parenting experts, doling out pages of advice on the “right” way to rear kids. Some of that advice is harmful, such as McCarthy’s anti-vaccine crusade, but some of it is controversial because it is quite … unusual.

Take actor Alicia Silverstone’s recently released parenting book The Kind Mama, which promises to be your go-to guide for “supercharged fertility, a radiant pregnancy, a sweeter birth, and a healthier, more beautiful beginning.” That’s the subtitle!

The Clueless star advocates against diapers, eschewing them for letting little ones do their business freely in the grass.

The pages of her book also call the uterus the “baby house.”

Oh, she’s anti-vaccination too, citing “anecdotal evidence” that kids are “never the same” after they’re immunized.

Some of her more extreme advice is balanced out with advice to live a healthy lifestyle, which includes eating plenty of plants and getting lots of sleep.

But notice that the title of the book, which is selling well on Amazon, contains a loaded judgement word: kind. Within its pages, Silverstone seems to be implying that parents who don’t follow her advice, which includes co-sleeping, are unkind.

Her parenting style isn’t for everyone, and she is allowed to believe what she believes — but so are other parents. Sharing a bed isn’t for everyone.

Actor Gwyneth Paltrow has a similar lifestyle blog called goop. It includes all kinds of health, parenting and, oddly, shopping advice, as well as some interesting euphemisms (“conscious uncoupling” instead of divorce could give “baby house” a run for its money).

Celebrities from all the lists, from A to D and beyond, write this kind of stuff because people will always buy into it. Or, at the very least, people will buy it.

Celebrities: they’re just like us! They have babies!

But they’re also not like us. They have much more money, hired help, bigger houses, faster cars, more Botox.

I don’t think any of those qualifications make celebrities “better” at parenting than, say, a poor single mother who works two jobs, lives in a tiny apartment and has wrinkles galore. I think it just gives them more access to a platform from which to spew their “expertise.”

I don’t have kids, I don’t have parenting experience, and I have no advice for parents, famous or otherwise. But if we’re looking for associations between vaccines and health conditions, there’s a much clearer link between those who aren’t vaccinated and the increased risk of spreading diseases just like measles among young children, seniors, and people with compromised immune systems.

Clueless, indeed.