The special master further concluded that the unpublished and preliminary findings of the Walker group should not be accorded significant weight.

It’s interesting to see Walker’s 2006 abstract raised again, despite the fact that the preliminary work reported there remains unpublished four years later, just as the 2004 IMFAR abstract from Walker, Wakefield, and others that reported the presence of measles virus in the cerebral spinal fluid of children with ASD remains unpublished. Those preliminary reports have been cited as support for the discredited MMR-causes-autism meme, especially with respect to the “Uhlmann” paper from Wakefield and others.

Perhaps the work of Stephen Bustin, an internationally-recognized expert in the PCR reaction that is the basis for Walker and Uhlmann’s research, can suggest why neither of those PCR-based investigations has been reported. In the first paper listed below, Bustin uses the Uhlmann paper as an example of how NOT to use PCR in clinical investigations, and in the second Bustin completely dismantles the Uhlmann paper, step by step. As Bustin said of the MMR-autism connection, “There’s nothing in it.”

One of the most astonishing examples of the enormous implications for the health and lives of [misapplications of PCR] is provided by the controversy surrounding the triple MMR virus vaccine. RT-qPCR data appeared to demonstrate the presence of measles virus RNA in children with developmental disorders, which was interpreted as providing hard scientific evidence for a link between MMR, gut pathology, and autism. However, detailed analysis of the raw data underlying that report . . . revealed a catalogue of mistakes, inaccuracies and inappropriate analysis methods as well as contamination and poor assay performance. The assay had been detecting DNA, and since the measles virus is an RNA-only virus, the RT-qPCR data had been erroneously misinterpreted. Interestingly, a recent paper that included two of the authors from the initial [Uhlmann] report was unable to reproduce the original findings and concluded that there was no link between autism and enteropathy.

http://www.gene-quantification.....n-2009.pdf

In a detailed critique of the Uhlmann work that involved analysis of the techniques, equipment, and raw data, Dr. Bustin concluded that “there is no credible evidence of either [measles virus] genomic RNA or mRNA in the GI tracts (or blood samples) of any patient investigated [by Uhlmann et al.] Consequently, this finding excludes any link between [measles virus] and, by extension, the MMR vaccine and autism.”

http://www.badscience.net/wp-c.....rp_mmr.pdf

Is there any wonder that work reported in Walker’s abstracts, which supposedly supported the conclusions reported by Uhlmann, remains unpublished?