Comments on: Before the MMR science, the press conference

By: MMR and autism: new study | Autism Library

MMR and autism: new study | Autism Library — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:56:26 +0000

[...] has audio from the press conference, which is [...]

By: Science-Based Medicine » The worst of times for antivaccine believers: Yet another study fails to show any link between the MMR vaccine and autism

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:40:47 +0000

[...] about the O’Leary lab. (Note added after publication: The press conference can be found here.) I’ve also heard rumblings from the antivaccination underground that the talking point will [...]

By: Ringside Seat

Ringside Seat — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:22:25 +0000

Kirby plainly got straight on the phone to Wakefield to ask what to say. The standard of the response really is sad. They are trying to raise an argument for O’Leary’s previous claims to be taken seriously in the omnibus litigation, even though O’Leary himself wouldn’t attend to give evidence, and now Hornig, Buie, Bellini and O’Leary now join Wakefield’s previous collaborators, Walker-Smith, Murch and Dhillon in published denunciation of his claims.

Even so, Wakefield’s response to this paper is pitiful. Literally pitiful.

By: Ms. Clark

Ms. Clark — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:45:35 +0000

The problems with the O’Leary lab went WAAAY beyond forgetting to do the RT step.

They didn’t maintain the equipment which was obviously broken, not just that they had the settings wrong, it was broken. Then as I recall they also had equipment where the settings were wrong. Everything about the lab was like they had someone with a 6th grade education and no concern at all for doing anything proper running it. The place was contaminated with plasmids because they were making the plasmids right next to the lab.
The lab would need to be cleaned with like a “scorched earth” process removing everything and treating every surface including the ceiling for them to be able to use it again for PCR

By: OLeary was not exonerated

OLeary was not exonerated — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:02:35 +0000

Anyone trying to spin the current research into an exoneration of the lies that were done by the Wakefield team (one doesn’t “forget” to do the RT step unless one is a spaniel) is either stupid or a liar.

By: Sullivan

Sullivan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:06:24 +0000

It was interesting to listen to the whole thing. To put things in perspective, people were supposed to have one question, but most (if not all) squeezed two questions in. Mr. Kirby, however, asked and asked and asked.

In addition, he basically testified. His “question” about Hannah Poling was more of a statement/assertion, as were many of his other “questions”.

By: Ms. Clark

Ms. Clark — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:03:47 +0000

I think that David Kirby shows up at those press conferences (by phone) at the behest of antivaccine lawyers. His first questions were totally about the effect of this study on the outcome of vaccine cases and/or how a finding in a particular vaccine lawsuit might somehow contradict the findings of the study. I don’t think Kirby was there because he has some kind of burning interest in autism. I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t like or respect the mercury parents at all. It looks like he’s a paid mouthpiece, to me. His background is that he owned a PR business. He did PR for Liz Taylor when she wsa into supporting the AIDS community. Why shouldn’t we think that he was doing PR for anti-vaccine lawyers when he called in with his “questions”? He didn’t identify himself as a blogger. Which makes me wonder, if Kirby the blogger was allowed to ask questions, how about other bloggers? Pro-vaccine bloggers should have been allowed to ask questions of the researchers, too. I would have asked Hornig and Lipkin what they thought about thimerosal now … OK it would be off topic, but no more off topic than Kirby’s questions were.

By: brian

brian — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:03:31 +0000

“They forgot to do an RT step. Now I don’t know what that means but it was clear that it was a fairly serious (and basic) error.”

The RT stands for “Reverse Transcriptase”, an enzyme that makes a DNA copy of an RNA molecule.

Measles virus exists as an RNA molecule. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay amplifies DNA. Thus to detect an RNA molecule in a PCR assay, the RNA must first be copied (by the reverse transcriptase enzyme) into DNA, which can then be amplified.

Bustin showed that the O’Leary lab reported positive results even when they could not possibly have detected an RNA molecule because they had left out the step to copy that RNA into DNA. Thus the positive results reported for such assays were undoubtedly false positives.