Since you have clearly used my work, you have an obligation to acknowledge the following corrections:
1. Offit’s “disclosure” was made to me, in response to a question about only the CHOP share. (To the best of my recollection, I already was aware of his connections to Wistar at the time.) It was not “partial” with regards to the question.
2. It is probable that Offit is receiving continuing royalties for Rotateq from Wistar. However, by the figures Olmsted has given, the combined income for 2007-2009 should be ca. $1M, not $1.6M as seems to be assumed. Also, the best reason to suppose Offit has been paid, that he held a position at Wistar around the time the patent was filed, has not been acknowledged.
3. That the CHOP share was distributed by an agreement between the inventors, rather than direct application of policy, is a possibility I initially considered, but rejected and retracted as of ca. August 18.
4. Offit’s disclosure, and other information relevant to the CHOP sale, was made available to AoA in August, which is far from “recent”.

I hope that they will “allow” it to appear.

“No one can say with any certainly whether there is or is not an’autism epidemic’ because no one can define ‘Autism’...”

I agree that the most accurate statement about whether the “autism epidemic” exists is “not proven”.

Although there has been a steady increase in the number of children classified as “autistic”, there is a lot of data showing that the majority (if not all) of this increase can be attributed to changes in the criteria for “autism” that have dramatically broadened the range of people who might be considered autistic as well as a greater awareness of autism. In addition, there has also been a shift in the classification of children who have an unclear diagnosis from “mentally retarded” to “autistic”.

As a result, we have no idea whether there has been a real increase in the prevalence or incidence of autism. The best interpretation of the available data seems to be that if there has been a real increase, it is relatively small.

How this fits into AoA’s shift from pretending that “It’s all about autism!” to “It’s all about vaccines!” is unclear. Perhaps the core cadre at AoA feel that they can get more support by broadening their “message” to include the anti-vax loons more generally.

Perhaps the anti-vax loons have taken over AoA from the inside.

Perhaps the folks at AoA are so fixated on their vaccines-cause-autism dogma and so angry that the media isn’t listening to them anymore that they have forgotten their original point.

Perhaps reptilian aliens have taken over the upper echelons of AoA and are trying to cause it to self-destruct in an implosion of irrelevancy.

Who knows? Only time will tell.

Prometheus

No one can say with any certainly whether there is or is not an’autism epidemic’ because no one can define ‘Autism’ as the Wisconsin twin study shows. The emerging concept of ‘Autism’ as a trait condition obscures the boundaries between a profoundly disabling neurological disorder and normal trait variants that extend broadly, not only within families, but across the general population.

for example from a paper I have under review::

“Plomin et al. (2006) have published what can be interpreted as tentative cutoffs for the prevelance of ALT’s in the general population, using questionnaires completed by parents, teachers or self report from a large sample of twins taken from a British twin registry, Plomin’s group has described the 5% highest scorers as possessing ‘extreme autistic-like traits’ and “Around 10% of all children showed only social impairment, only communicative difficulties or only rigid and repetitive interests and behavior, and these problems appeared to be at a level of severity comparable to that found in children with diagnosed ASD in our sample”( Plomin et al 2006), (Plomin et al 2006)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17003666?

http://www.psyc.bbk.ac.uk/rese.....Plomin.pdf

Any wonder why some parents who take a personality test like Baron-Cohen’s ASQ suddenly self diagnosis themselves as being ‘on the spectrum’

Plomin’s group appears to be one of the British Groups that eventually will arrive at a prevalance rate of autism as between 5% and 10 % (mean of 7.5%).

Pseudo epidemiology is practiced on both sides. Is there or is there not an autism epidemic? The answer comes from the Wisconsin twin project. An informative part of the study was to calculate concordance rates for ASD in twins by using various diagnostic schemes. Concordance rates using different diagnostic schemes produced wildly fluctuating results ranging from a high (MZ=77%, DZ=31%) using ADOS-spectrum scores to a low of MZ=50%, DZ=15% using a combined criterion of ADOS-spectrum cut-off and SCQ .

http://imfar.confex.com/imfar/.....r4692.html

‘Autism’ is a problem in search of a definition and epidemiology studies are basically worthless no matter which side is cherry picking studies that support their beliefs.

you reminded me with your comment:

“Hey, maybe Maalox or Tums would be good candidates for banner ads on their site! “If you’re having trouble ‘stomaching’ this stuff, click HERE for a free sample””

The recently pulled AoA post, “Pass the Maalox…” shows something interesting. No one there commented about Maalox, which has as medicinal ingredients:

Medicinal Ingredients: Each teaspoonful (5 mL) contains 200 mg magnesium hydroxide, 200 mg aluminum hydroxide dried gel (equivalent to 153 mg aluminum hydroxide) and 20 mg simethicone

Er…I thought aluminum was the new mercury?

I guess aluminum is only bad when it is in vaccines.

Hey, maybe Maalox or Tums would be good candidates for banner ads on their site! “If you’re having trouble ‘stomaching’ this stuff, click HERE for a free sample”