John, the Geiers don’t do real research because the real stuff isn’t much use in castrating small children.

A few decent case studies in top notch medical journals?

It is impossible to get any research article in your so called top notch journals simply because it would mean one more nail in the coffin for mercury vaccines and hopefully the abandonment of mercury in vaccines.

Pichichero publishes at an average rate of one paper every two weeks in top notch medical journals.

How does he do this?

If you look at some data on mercury he did for one paper it would take a dozen scientists about 6 months or so to get these figures on hundreds of animals.

He does two papers a month and ALL are acceptable to these top notch medical journals.

I just ask WHY?

One answer comes from Mark and David Geier who just wanted to point out that Pichero gets his funding from just about every vaccine company.

It took the Geiers 7 months to get a simple letter published.

Pichichero gets PAPERS published every other week and many are his own personal work on subjects vast wide and broad.

The message that your results gives is the limiting factor and no one would get a paper published easily unless it was CERTAIN and important for immediate health reasons and was at the same time double checked by the Pichichero’s of this world.

One example was way back when they discovered putting mutagenic additives to 1 month babies night ware was NOT a good idea. Professor Bruce Ames checked out their work and of course meant another year went by when kids were exposed to HARM.

Hauntingly this additive was ALSO like mercury a nerve destroying agent.

Thus, again in theory, changes in awareness and diagnostic criteria should have been relatively unimportant for this group. After all, they would all have such profound symptoms that they would be obvious to anyone!

That’s a mistaken assumption, Lisa. The issue is not whether they were identified by someone as being disabled. The issue is whether they were identified and given an “autism” label, and then registered with California DDS. That’s not the same thing at all.

That’s basically the difference with an exhaustive epidemiological screening. In the screening, they supposedly look at all potential cases, diagnosed and undiagnosed. With California DSS, it’s more passive.

Additionally, as Kev and many others will probably tell you, it’s not true that California DDS only has “severe” clients. Yes, there are restrictions on admission, but (1) it’s well known that children with Asperger’s and PDD-NOS do get into the system – the authors don’t exactly deny this; (2) The vast majority of autistics in California DDS at the moment do not have mental retardation – i.e. they are “high functioning” according to the official definition of the term. This wasn’t always so. Why is that?

Thus, logically, if the number of people served by the DDS has grown exponentially, it SHOULD be the case that the number of people with profound symptoms has increased – if not exponentially, at least significantly.

If you look at the number of autistics with a mental retardation assessment, for example, yes, it has increased, but not “exponentially.” Now, is it unusual that it has increased? Not necessarily. They might have been always there, receiving services, except without an “autism” evaluation.

Take a look at Shah et al. (1982) to see how that might work. (Note the year and the fact that it’s an adult study).

People with AS and PDD (in theory) are not provided with services through the CA DDS - because their symptoms are supposedly too mild to qualify.

Thus, again in theory, changes in awareness and diagnostic criteria should have been relatively unimportant for this group. After all, they would all have such profound symptoms that they would be obvious to anyone!

Even granted that the criteria HAVE changed somewhat, and SOME individuals with PDD and AS are accepted, there are obviously plenty of people with autism diagnoses in CA who are “too high functioning” to meet DDS criteria.

Thus, logically, if the number of people served by the DDS has grown exponentially, it SHOULD be the case that the number of people with profound symptoms has increased – if not exponentially, at least significantly.

If the number of people with those symptoms has increased significantly, there must be a reason.

If the number really and truly has increased, then there must be some new artifact in the universe that is causing that increase.

And I think that’s basically the point that’s being made.

I do remain skeptical. Your logic, and Kev’s – and my own – tell me that the DDS has not remained an unchanging variable, and that the researchers have exaggerated their claims. But setting aside the idea of an “epidemic,” is it not possible that there has been some significant increase in the number of people with diagnosable classic autism? If not – why not?

Lisa

Joseph’s commentary is helpful… but I have to say that as a non-statistician I find it very hard indeed to really compare Joseph’s #’s to the MIND #’s and KNOW who is right and who is wrong.

Lisa, the main criticism doesn’t have to do with numbers or statistics. It’s conceptual. For example, do you think using that Finnish epidemiological study to make inferences about how California DDS works makes sense? One is active, the other is passive. One only looks at a specific population of intellectually disabled children. The other is open to anyone.

Do you think the impact of awareness is insignificant?

Would the artifacts in the study subsume diagnostic substitution? This is non-obvious.

In my latest post (the Comment section) I go over all the issues in the paper that I know of. Yes, some are about statistics.

And oh, how I do lament the lack of professionalism in writers who do not proofread their submissions. (Nawt, it just makes their point very much more open to critical thinking.)

Joseph’s commentary is helpful… but I have to say that as a non-statistician I find it very hard indeed to really compare Joseph’s #’s to the MIND #’s and KNOW who is right and who is wrong.

I did call the folks at DDS in CA, and spoke to a lovely ass’t chief who could answer NONE of my questions. He just didn’t know whether kids with PDD or AS would be turned away at the door, or how they would be evaluated. He certainly couldn’t answer the question “how the heck would anyone know whether a developmentally delayed 2 year old would or would not be able to live and work independently at the age of 21?!”

Sigh. As always, more questions than answers!

Best,

Lisa (www.autism.about.com)

Why on earth would you think better of him than that?

Well, before now I can’t remember him making such crass statements as the one he made saying parents who don’t think vaccines cause autism don’t want their kids to ‘get better’. He usually stays away from such silliness.