I came across an article today by F. Edward Yazbak, MD, FAAP. He’s part of the loose coalition of people who support the MMR/Thiomersal/autism association. The article was mainly about how Thiomersal in Europe is displayed with a skull and crossbones. I may tackle that another time but for now I want to take issue with the following introduction:
In the United Kingdom, the issue of MMR remains in the forefront with a David and Goliath scenario unfolding for the last seven years: On one side, the mighty Government, the Prime-Minister personally, the Health authorities, the Press –some of it very ugly- and large useless epidemiological studies and on the other side, Andrew Wakefield with his study of 12 children and a small group of faithful devoted and informed parents.
There is enough scientific evidence to show that both the MMR vaccine and Thimerosal in other vaccines precipitate autistic regression in genetically-predisposed children, not withstanding the opinions of biased “experts,†a misleading IOM special committee report and obviously the CDC.
He also links to a more indepth article apparently but I can’t access it from the link provided.
Lets just tackle these statements as someone who _is_ British and lives in the UK.
The MMR issue is not in the forefront of anything. It remains sporadically in the news due to the efforts of Times journalist Brian Deer. Andrew Wakefield by comparison has fled the country and refuses to be interviewed by Deer. There is indeed a ‘small group’ of press and parents but whilst they are faithful and devoted, they are far from informed.
The facts of the matter are that Andrew Wakefield says he has found an autism related bowel disease in some autistic kids. He may well have, gastric issues are a known comorbidity in some people. There is however, _no link to MMR causing this condition_. No science exists that shows a causative link.
And far from there being just ‘large useless epidemiological studies’ to refute Wakefields claims there are actual ‘hard science’ studies that refute his work.
Firstly is the evidence of his _own lab_.
Even as Andrew Wakefield launched his attack on MMR in 1998, at a press conference and in a video, coinciding with a Lancet paper, he knew that his own laboratory had tested his theory: that the ultimate culprit for the children’s autism was measles virus in the vaccine. Royal Free researcher Nick Chadwick, carrying out sophisticated molecular analysis of samples from the children, using methods agreed by Wakefield, found no trace of measles virus.
And lately a new study (which will feature in a BBC documentary) shows that:
Scientists at Guy’s Hospital, in London, have been studying a large group of 100 autistic children. They examined their blood samples, looking for traces of the measles virus in their blood and in that of another group of non-autistic children. The samples were analysed in some of Britain’s leading laboratories, using the most sensitive methods available. The scientists found that 99 per cent of the samples did not contain any trace of the measles virus. Crucially, there was no difference between the autistic and non-autistic children
Its also worth noting that *all* of the co-authors of the original Lancet paper have rescinded their position leaving Wakefield standing alone. Next year he will face misconduct charges in the UK from the GMC.
Its further worth noting that at the time he began to criticise the MMR and implicate it in autism causation, Wakefield also claimed he had found another, safer way to vaccinate kids which he duly filed a Patent application for. He later denied this on a website and through his solicitors, however Brain Deer unearthed Wakefield’s Patent application for all to see.
F. Edward Yazbak talks of bias. We have a saying in the UK Sir – ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’.
Left Brain Right Brain 
More on Red Flags Weekly… It was founded by the Canadian journalist, Nicholas Regush. With this website, Mr. Regush wrote about the Hiv/Aids “Hoax” (http://www.actupny.org/alert/denialists2.html ), against vaccines, and against heart meds (like cholesterol lowering and hypertension meds).
He was called a “science journalist”, yet he wrote more than one book auras and psychic “potential”:
Also, his reporting has been described as “libel”, well at least by a court in Ottawa!:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/162/12/1735 , with this kind of reaction: http://healtoronto.com/wente.html
For all his “against the grain” reporting on the evils of medicine, from vaccines to heart disease you would think he would be living a very healthy life. But, alas! No. He died at age 58 of a massive heart attack:
http://www.redflagsweekly.com/regush/obituary.html
I’m just presenting this because I’ve been familiar with RFW for years. I do not consider it a reliable source of information and deserves its inclusion along with GenerationRescue in the http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles listing.
This is why they call him Edvard Yazquack
Nice one Jenny….
Blimey!
Lisa Blakemore-Brown She’s knee deep in with the merucry parents. I have no idea if she was right about the “cot deaths”, but she’d dead wrong about mercury. perhaps she caught the paranoia bug from folks like “generatesum revenu (for Buttar)” and “mercury moms against mercury” and “bad mercury! bad! I hate you!”
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A former government adviser who has controversially linked infant vaccines to autism in children claims she is the victim of a disciplinary action witch-hunt .
I’m being driven out says second expert to link autism and jabs
By Daniel Foggo
(Filed: 02/10/2005)
A former government adviser who has controversially linked infant vaccines to autism in children claims she is the victim of a disciplinary action witch-hunt”.
The child psychologist Lisa Blakemore-Brown believes that her outspokenness has made her enemies in the pharmaceutical business and in the Government. Ms Blakemore-Brown, 57, has expounded the theory that diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis innoculations routinely given to babies at two months could be linked to autism and a range of allergies. She is facing disciplinary charges after being officially accused by the British Psychological Society of being potentially unfit to practise and of being paranoid.
She says she is the victim of a “witch-hunt” and believes her situation echoes that of Dr Andrew Wakefield, the gastroenterologist whose research linked the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to a national rise in autism.
This resulted in a widespread campaign to discredit his work and culminated in his being forced out of his job.
Ms Blakemore-Brown has been ordered to attend a confidential hearing later this month where a panel will decide on her future.
Until last year, the DTP innoculations given to British babies contained a perservative called thiomersal, which is made of 50 per cent mercury.
Ms Blakemore-Brown has backed the stance of several scientists who claimed that excess levels of mercury in an infant’s body could be a precursor for autism.
She has also widely criticised the medical establishment for falsely accusing cot death mothers of murder.
She has denounced what she says is a tendency within health agencies to label the parents of genuinely autistic children as having Munchausen’s Syndrome By Proxy.
This is a controversial condition widely diagnosed by the now disgraced professors Roy Meadows and David Southall.
Between 1996 and 2002 Ms Blakemore-Brown repeatedly wrote to Tony Blair, the prime minister, and ministers warning that miscarriages of justice were happening to women convicted of killing their babies as a result of having MSBP, when in fact the fatalities were cot deaths.
A number of women jailed for this have now had their convictions overturned on appeal.
Now Ms Blakemore-Brown, who has works as an independent educational psychologist assessing the needs of children and adults with autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, says that a whispering campaign against her has caused her to lose business. As a member of the BSP – of which she is also an associated fellow – since 1987, if she is deemed unfit to practise she will be stripped of her chartered status and will in effect become an outcast within the profession.
“I have made enemies in the past 10 years, of that there is no doubt,” she said last night. “Things have gone on which seem beyond coincidence, such as people hacking into my e-mail account and some years ago a woman stole documents from my house and tried to access my bank account.”
The decision by the BPS to bring Ms Blakemore-Brown before a “fitness to practise” hearing stems from a complaint made by a client who alleged that she failed to liaise properly with her after assessing her son for ADHD. Last night, the BPS refused to comment.
—————–
I had a friend who suffered from parnoia, she was convinced that a man was following her and had broken into her house, bugged her car, that he followed her everywhere in multiple different cars wearing disguises. There was a massive inmaginary conspiracy to “get” her, and she was just a wife and mom. Just because Ms. Blakemore-Brown thinks someone stole something doesn’t mean it really happened… though who knows?
Zaffran
Any chance of getting a hold of BBC documentary of this subject here in the US. Thanks.
Kev,
The two pieces of “hard science” that you adduce for dismissing Dr. Wakefield’s claims are unconvincing.
First of all, Nick Chadwick did indeed fail to find evidence of measles virus in the guts of the twelve children in the 1998 study – something that Wakefield himself acknowledged at the time. However, the pathologist John O’Leary subsequently DID find such evidence.
As for the Guy’s Hospital study on the subject, this is, judging from your summary, in no way a replication of Wakefield and O’Leary’s earlier work which was done on GUT BIOPSIES. By contrast, the Guy’s work was, as far as can be ascertained, done on blood samples. On what grounds do you infer an absence of measles virus in gut tissue from an absence of measles virus in the bloodstream?
If you have news of any other clinical evidence I would be most grateful to hear it.
(Interest declared: father of a son with profound learning difficulties and ASD).
Kev, Another point. You may be interested to know that this thread carries a serious libel. The comment by “HN” refers to Dr. Yazbak defending a “murderer”, namely Alan Yurko. Mr. Yurko’s conviction for murder was actually quashed in 2004, a year before HN made his accustaion on your website. See: http://www.aapsonline.org/nod/newsofday85.htm
_”First of all, Nick Chadwick did indeed fail to find evidence of measles virus in the guts of the twelve children in the 1998 study – something that Wakefield himself acknowledged at the time. However, the pathologist John O’Leary subsequently DID find such evidence.”_
Wakefield attempted to dismiss Chadwicks findings as anomolous. He failed however to state convincingly why. What exactly do you find unconvincing about them?
_”As for the Guy’s Hospital study on the subject, this is, judging from your summary, in no way a replication of Wakefield and O’Leary’s earlier work which was done on GUT BIOPSIES. By contrast, the Guy’s work was, as far as can be ascertained, done on blood samples. On what grounds do you infer an absence of measles virus in gut tissue from an absence of measles virus in the bloodstream?”_
The study of blood samples reproduced O’Leary’s work right down to using the same make of equipment. I’m interested in why you feel its pertinent to differentiate between blood samples and gut biopses.
As for O’Leary, he has stated on at least one occassion that none of his work implicates MMR as causing autism. Its also interesting to note that claims his raw data did not tally with critical expert reports lead to this data to be forced to be handed over to the High Court dealing with MMR litigation.
As for HN’s comment, I can only suggest you take it up with HN. I’ve modded it for now until I can speak to HN myself.
Bill – some more info regarding Yurko:
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/yurko1.htm
His conviction was quashed on a technicality it seems. It also seems he’s been re-arrested.
bq.Bill – some more info regarding Yurko:
bq.http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/yurko1.htm
bq.His conviction was quashed on a technicality it seems. It also seems he’s been re-arrested.
Kev, I suggest you check out the article that “Ratbags” gives as the source material for his comments. This press article is shorn of Ratbags’ extensive conjectures, and consequently a great deal easier to follow. It quotes the trial judge as saying that the murder conviction was based on a completely discredited autopsy report and had to be thrown out – a technicality??
As for the re-arrest, “Ratbags” elsewhere says this is for possession of drugs: I don’t see it has any particular relevance as to whether Yurko committed child murder.
Kev wrote:
“Wakefield attempted to dismiss Chadwicks findings as anomolous. He failed however to state convincingly why. What exactly do you find unconvincing about them?”
Kev,
I have no quarrel with Chadwick’s findings. My objection is that you use them to dismiss Wakefield’s claims. Also I don’t know what you mean by “anomolous”. O’Leary’s technique was several orders of magnitude more sensitive than Chadwick’s, so it’s hardly surprising that O’Leary identified the virus while Chadwick failed to do so.
As for the Guy’s Hospital work, the point I was making is that just because a pathogen is not present in one body tissue, namely the blood, doesn’t mean it isn’t present in another body tissue. To give you but one example, all of us who have contracted chickenpox continue to harbour the virus in our nerve cells, where it manages to avoid detection by the body’s immune system. The blood by contrast is the seat of the body’s immune system, and any chickenpox virus that enters the body of someone who has acquired immunity to the disease gets gobbled up pretty quickly.
Still, the folks at Guys may have some clever line of reasoning as to why checking blood samples is sufficient to discredit Wakefield, but I would suggest we wait for the work to be peer reviewed and published, so that we can find out what this is. It seems to be taking a very long time for it to be published.
Finally, thanks for deleting HN’s contribution re Yurko until further notice. Having discussed the matter on this forum, I don’t intend to take the matter up with him/her personally.
Regards, Bill
Interests declared:
parent of child diagnosed with ASD, which I do NOT believe to be vaccine-induced.
_”I have no quarrel with Chadwick’s findings. My objection is that you use them to dismiss Wakefield’s claims.”_
I’m not using them to _dismiss_ exactly – one doesn’t cancel out the other – I’m trying to illustrate that the study that started the original furore has, using the same methods and in the same lab had the opposite conclusions reached.
_”Also I don’t know what you mean by “anomolousâ€.”_
That was apparently how Wakefield described Nick Chadwicks findings. I’m not really sure what he meant either.
_”O’Leary’s technique was several orders of magnitude more sensitive than Chadwick’s, so it’s hardly surprising that O’Leary identified the virus while Chadwick failed to do so.”_
Possibly so, but I was expressley pitting the orignal Wakefield hypothesis against the Chadwick hypothesis. I’m aware O’Leary used different equipment and environment.
_”As for the Guy’s Hospital work, the point I was making is that just because a pathogen is not present in one body tissue, namely the blood, doesn’t mean it isn’t present in another body tissue.”_
Granted. Whilst I won’t pretend to be anybodies scientist I do know a few and took this point to them after I read the original story. I’ll summarise their reply below:
_”I don’t believe MV will hide in nerve cells with any efficiency. It’s main receptors are not highly expressed in CNS cells and the vaccine strain has been selected/ passaged to utilize CD46 over CD150 which is the main target receptor for wild strain MV. In cases of SSPE and subclinical persistent MV infection the virus can be detected in PBMC with PCR, so it should be detectable through blood tests other than MV titers. Like everything else in the autism world the investigators try to claim exotic mechanisms prevent detection with traditional methods and tools”_
The upshot for me then is that what you say may well be true but there’s no good reason for supposing thats what happens.
_”but I would suggest we wait for the work to be peer reviewed and published, so that we can find out what this is. It seems to be taking a very long time for it to be published.”_
Agreed on both points.
Despite Bill’s opinion of the Ratbag’s website owner’s opinions… Yurko is still in jail and goes on trial next week:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-yurko0306mar03,0,2276687.story
As far as Wakefield is concerned… he and the lawyer who paid him for specific results is still responsible for this:
http://www.doncastertoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=786&ArticleID=1380006
Bill said:As for the Guy’s Hospital work, the point I was making is that just because a pathogen is not present in one body tissue, namely the blood, doesn’t mean it isn’t present in another body tissue.
Doesn’t make it any more likely to be there either. Dormant varicella is only problematic when reactivated in which case it’s completely detectable.
So your hypothesis is the measles virus is dormant to the point of being undetectable yet actively replicating to the point of causing multi-organ dysfunction?
You want to use absence of evidence as evidence.