Last year, RFK Jr published his shlock piece Deadly Immunity.
Its been taken apart more times than a Lego castle (a good list exists on Skeptico’s site) and was so bad that it contained more than five factual corrections, posted after initial publication.
One of the more amusing bits of idiocy that Kennedy spouted was that:
Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries – some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics.
This prompted a flurry of comments from the more credulous element on my blog:
John Best:
Maybe the genetic stuff you found has to do with susceptibility to mercury. I heard from a couple of people in China but it was a long time ago. I didn’t hear back from their government.
We’ll get better information on China someday and they’ll be jumping all over us when they figure out we poisoned them with thimerosal. Maybe that’ll start WWIII.
Sue M (attempting levity):
This is Julie Gerberding. I really need Anders Hviid to make a trip to China ASAP. We really could use some help over there. Yes, the sooner the better. Denial it ain’t just a river in Africa…
(and quoting David Kirby from EoH):
Autism has rarely been reported outside of industrialized countries, at least until recent years. A good example is China, where companies such as Merck and Glaxo-SmithKline have begun an aggressive pediatric marketing campaign, selling millions of dollars in vaccines to the Communist Government†– David Kirby
What do you want to do, start injecting children all over again with the large quantities of thimerosal that we have seen in the past? Oh, wait, we’re actually doing experiments like that overseas. I guess we can just wait and see how those turn out. Not so good, so far as seen by the rates of autism in China.
Erik Nanstiel:
The World Health Organization is distributing vaccines with the full amount of thimerosal all around the world. For the first time ever, China is seeing fast-growing numbers of autistics…
See what’s happening in China, Africa and the Middle east? Their autism numbers are growing at an alarming rate…but only since the WHO began distributing thimerosal-laced vaccines in those countries.
So here’s all these people lapping up every word RFK Jr rehashed from David Kirby….oh if only someone had thought to ask the Chinese. Luckily, they came to us:
There are an estimated five million autistic residents in China, including some 650,000 with serious symptoms, said Jiao Min, doctor with the Zhengzhou Children’s Hospital. Nearly 800,000 are below 14 years old.
Now, wait, wait just a minute….if I take 14 away from 2006, does that come to 1999? Hmmm – no. How very odd.
And – hang on here – apparently 800,000 from a population of 5,000,000 are under 14. That leaves 4,200,000 who are over fourteen.
Listening to grandstanding politicians and bad journo’s can be very bad for your credibility.
Left Brain Right Brain 
That bit about there being no autistic Chinese before 1999 is the sort of preposterous claim you might assume only someone like JB Jr. would make.
And it’s obvious why the third world would have a lower prevalence of *diagnosed* autism, catching up to the industrialized world. It’s no different to why rural areas have a lower prevalence than urban areas – and catching up. It has simply to do with availability of specialists and availability of information.
These hacks (Kirby and Kennedy and Nanstiel) and their adoring followers jumped in with both feet when *Evidence of an Author Making Stuff Up*, came out especially, and started making outrageous comments like knowing for a fact that thimerosal was causing massive waves of autism in China and Africa.
LIES.
LIES that they won’t come back and be accountable for.
How many people decided not to vaccinate a child based on those hysteria inducing lies? A few one would suppose.
People need accurate information to base their choices on, you sure aren’t going to get accurate information from anyone within the mercury mom camps or from their hired flacks. A few(psycho) people are more interested in undermining the credibility of the CDC and in destroying the vaccine program than in truth.
Hard to know what’s going on in China but there was certainly no shortage of autism prior to 1999.
http://english.eastday.com/eastday/englishedition/nation/userobject1ai2493264.html
China has at least 100,000 autistic children but there is a lack of adequate professional treatment available, an expert said today.
“According to the statistics from the second China National Sample Survey on Disability, there are 100,000 autistic children in China. But the real number is much bigger than that,” said an official surnamed Li with the Beijing Rehabilitation Association for Autistic Children (BRAAC).
“Beijing alone has about 80,000 autistic children,” Li said.
A report by China Central Television (CCTV) said China has at least 1.8 million people, including 400,000 children, suffering from autism.
One of the more amusing bits of idiocy that Kennedy spouted was that:
Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries – some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics.
It would appear that Kennedy is NOT a well read man.
Author, Nobel Laureate, Pearl S. Buck wrote 40 something books. In any of her books there is a character with symptomology of an *unknown* condition.
In the 1950’s, Ms. Buck wrote a short story about her biological daughter. Her article was later turned into a book titled The Child Who Never Grew Up. At the time, people from all over the world drove to her home in Bucks County, PA with loved ones and questions. Ms. Buck also adopted 8 or 9 other children from China. Her adopted kids displayed all sorts of spectrum symptomology as well as stuff like Tourettes Syndrome etc.
There are pictures and whatnot of Pearl S. Buck with Leo Kanner.
Pearl S. Buck is also the person who said you can’t test her children and the children the same way you test every child. Hence the Vineland Tests are tributed to Pearl Buck.
Last, but not least, Pearl S. Buck, was a humanitarian. She is credited with 40,000 to 60,000 Chinese chidren being internationally adopted. These children were considered “as the children nobody wanted”. She used her fame and fortune to help children with *an unknown/untermed condition* to find homes.
It would appear that Kennedy needs to visit a library or a bookstore and read the classics i.e, The Good Earth, which also won the Pulitzer Prize.
Ms. Buck started writing about China and China’s histor around 1910.
How you doing Kevin?
Donna
I’t amazing how well China can get a census of it’s 8,000,000 autistics, when no other country in the free and less-than-free world can accurrately count their population without…ESTIMATION! I agree that to saddle autism on thimeresol exclusively is ludacris (is that the spelling or have I beed rapped?). But to immediately dismiss there is a possibility that thimeresol plays a small role in a subgroup of, especially severe, autistic children is hiding behind mountains of data and sweeping generalizations made be RFK, Kirby and crew. We need 5-10 years, IMO to get these kids properly classified and to analyze what removing thimeresol from these subgroups does, as well as finding other potential toxins exaserbating the autistic spectrum. Not that China has ANY problems with toxins…;)
Bill
This is really about RFK and his claims along with the others in the mercury militia. I don’t really think toxins are a great thing either – but that doesn’t validate fairy tales to try and prove a point. The nonsense is that China NOW has autism like they didn’t previously along with the rest of the world until the advent of vaccines with thimerisol and of course them being imported from the US. China along with many industrialized parts of the world has been having serious issues with toxic chemicals to the point where you would really expect to see lots of things. That doesn’t really shed any light on a conspiracy and I think would actually lesson the case for thimerisol in vaccines if you are living in a toxic waste dump. How does this compare with heavily industrialized parts of Eastern Europe?
Bill,
I doubt very much this is a census or in any way accurate at all. It should however serve as a gentle reminder to those who like to (what’s a polite word for ‘make stuff up’?) that numbers aren’t only accurate when they support ones position.
I’d also note that the number Kirby and RFK Jr relied came from a survey conducted by the media. I think after witnessing the various debacles that Kirby, Olmsted and Pringle have led us on we might understand why a media-led investigation probably isn’t all that reliable.
This latest report however quotes a doctor who works with autistic people. That might not make his numbers even 75% accurate but it certainly makes him more accurate than a media led survey.
How are things in Russia? They would be the ones I’d like to compare to China. The thing that leads me to beleive that China is worse off is all the STUFF made there, all that cheap labor, quick cheap manufacturing, and maybe to a lesser extent, the communistic approach to society; forced everything: population control, vaccination, conscription, socialized medicine. The best of worlds and the worst of worlds. Europe (I think) is past all this.
I know it’s about RFK and Kirby and their accusations, but I really hate it when EVERYTHING is thrown out just because one makes an outlandish statement. Wakefield and gut issues is always my example. I’ll elaborate if someone pushes the right button…
Bill
“Here’s a button push: Wakefield is completely and utterly full of dung.”
Yes, but that does not negate my daughter’s gut issues. I don’t give a rat’s ars what caused it, just acknowledge that my daughter and many autistics have gut issues (more than the standard population) and we can walk away from the body of Lord Wakefield…
Bill, you’re quite right that this one thing doesn’t kill of everything RFK Jr said – or Kirby – but this is simply one amongst _many_ things they have claimed that turned out to be wrong.
The simple truth is that both the MMR and the thimerosal issues were concocted by lawyers, who then hired various doctors to make their case.
Lawyers have a duty to construct cases to their client’s best advantage, however the actual evidence may stack up. I mean, in the famous Simpson case, the late Johnnie Cochrane didn’t suddenly turn round and say “Well, your honour, there IS the bloody glove, so I guess our client is guilty.” That’s not how an adversarial legal system works. Contrary evidence is suppressed, and no matter how flimsy a case, the lawyer will make it.
I’ve recently been in court and realized (call me slow if you want), that even the most brilliant advocate can’t just say, “Well, fuck you then,” and walk out, or all the things we do in everyday life. They have to stand there and construct an argument, no matter how ludicrous. I’ve seen arguably Britain’s top libel advocate doing this, when practically the whole court – him included – is trying not to laugh.
Those who purport to be scientists, however, have a different duty: to the truth. That is the basis of the scientific method: generally advancing through the falsification of hypotheses. But in the anti-MMR and thimerosal campaigns – where the scientific method has been subsumed under the legal process – these guys are being paid by the claimant/plaintiff lawyers – often very large amounts of money – to make the case (again no matter how ludicrous).
When a scientific case is poor or nonexistent, lawyers are obliged to hire low calibre, greedy or plain dishonest scientists to make their case. The really smart people either refuse to get involved, or are snapped up by the drug industry, who can afford the #1 specialists in any discipline. So you get – broadly – a bunch of clowns on one side, and the most eminent panel of experts on the other.
But how is the public to judge the calibre or integrity of the people we’ve seen being hired by the lawyers to attack children’s vaccines? What’s the measure of Bradstreet and Krigsman, or Wakefield and Geier?
So it’s THEY say this, and THEY say that. That’s all these folk need to do, and they’ll make a big pile of dough.