Archive | 2006

Recovery Stories And A Dash Of Reality

13 Aug

Every now and again someone (usually Brad Handley) says that I’m wrong because they have recovery stories to prove they’re right. That the mercury poisoning that caused their child’s autism has been reversed.

My constant response has been ‘Really? Where are they? If any child recovered from autism it would be international front page news’. Nobody has ever replied to that question.

Generation Rescue

So I decided to go looking. As it’s Brad who usually bandies this assertion about I thought I’d start with the Generation Rescue site under the heading ‘success stories’. There are fifty-nine (59) ‘success stories’ on there in total which sounds pretty impressive until you actually read them.

Out of these 59 success stories, just 3 describe their child as having been reclassified as no longer meeting a diagnosis of ASD. That’s a ‘recovery’ rate of 5%. Interestingly, one of these cases states they did not use chelation at all. That puts the Generation Rescue chelation success rate at a little over 3%.

General Stories

NB: It should be noted I may be duplicating stories here. The GR site says it has gathered stories from around the web which _may_ include these other stories.

But maybe we need a bigger group of stories – not from Generation Rescue in other words – to try and get a bit of accuracy.

Let’s look at the ‘roll call of recovered kids on Autismnet and see what we can glean from it.

There are twenty three (23) kids listed in the table. There are four children who’s parents say they have lost their diagnosis. This is a 17% recovery percentage. Fascinatingly, only one of those kids (4%) used anything other than ABA. As far as _biomedical_ interventions go, that’s worse than the GR site.

Lastly, we’ll look at Dana’s view which also lists recovery stories. There are a lot of stories on this site but a careful look only reveals sixteen (16) that discuss kids on the spectrum – some discuss non-autism stories so were discounted. Towards the bottom of the page there are a number of duplicates (especially the videos and Scott Shoemakers son’s story is told twice) or kids I recognised from other pages. In the videos I watched, nobody really discussed diagnosis at all so I discounted those.

Of the 16 stories, one (1) says their child has lost their diagnosis to biomedical/non-ABA therapies. That’s a ‘success’ rate of 6%.

If we total all these stories up we get a total of ninety-eight (98) ‘success stories’ wherein a total of five (5) claim total recovery and their kids lose their diagnosis. That’s a recovery rate of 5.1%.

Other Methods?

By contrast, one ABA clinic reports a ‘success’ rate of over 50% whilst the original Lovass (1987) paper claimed a success rate of 47%. Even a more realistic and stringent look at Lovass’ (Smith et al 2000) revealed a success rate of over 13%.

The ‘recovery from mercury poisoning’ hypothesis ain’t doing so well in comparison.

Other methods that claim a good ‘recovery rate’ are AIT (from Bernard Rimland no less) and Son-Rise.

Then of course there are the uncounted kids who simply ‘recover’. In the introduction to his book Autism, Brain and Environment, Richard Lathe mentions three case studies of marked progression in kids. What’s notable about them is that their progress can be attributed simply time and the maturation process.

I further have no doubt that if I described my daughters typical day she would easily fit onto all of the ‘recovery/success’ stories’ web pages discussed. She wouldn’t be described as losing her diagnosis by any means but she easily meets or exceeds the progress made and attributed to chelation etc. Again, she’s simply growing and maturing.

Bottom line: a ‘recovery’ stat of 5% is meaningless in terms of indicating the ‘success’ of a theory. Turn it on its head and this means that its 95% unsuccessful.

There are no figures (or at least none I could unearth) that relate what percentage of autistic kids simply move off the spectrum without any fanfare – who just happen to be not autistic anymore – if anybody _does_ have some, I’d like to hear them. But here are a few interesting quotes from a variety of sources:

Mysterious spontaneous recovery. It hasn’t happened often, but *it has happened often enough for the phenomenon to be worth noting*: over the past 25 years I have received a handful of letters from parents which read something like this: “Please remove our address from your files. Our child has continued to improve so greatly—we don’t know why—that now he is no longer considered autistic.

Rimland.

It may be because of spontaneous recovery from whatever constituted their autism. I do remember meeting some older children and teenagers over the years who “used to be autistic”.

Donna Williams

This page states that:

Studies have shown that about 2% of the children will recover anyway, “spontaneous recovery” is the term used in these cases

But it fails to cite which studies claim this figure. However, its clear that:

a) Spontaneous recovery does happen
b) This possibility is not ruled out of the various ‘recovery/success’ stories.

A Blogging Catch Up

11 Aug

Over the last few months a number of bloggers have discussed some important and disturbing things happening in the realm of autism science. I want to provide a round up of the main features of these posts and discuss the implications for the thiomersal hypothesis.

Mady Hornig’s Rain Mouse

Briefly, Mady Horning conducted a study wherein she claimed to have developed a mouse model for autism which she then used to test how the model responded to the introduction of thiomersal. According to Hornig, the study showed that:

1. The mice they used are a good model for autistic people
2. The ‘vaccine’ schedule they used successfully mimicks childhood immunization programs
3. That the outcomes from Auto-immune disease sensitive mice were consistent with autism
4. That this indicates a genetically influenced sensitivity to thimerosal in autistic people

Autism Diva took this study apart when she pointed out that:

Did Dr. Hornig and colleagues find these features [diagnostic criteria for autism] in the ‘SJL Thim” mice?’ No.

Prometheus also had reservations about the design of the study:

So, the human experiences a maximum blood level of 1.63 (arbitrary units) and the mouse – since it is being dosed at a smaller fraction of its half-life – sees a maximum blood level of 2.61. In short, the mouse gets to a blood level 60% higher than the human……I found myself wondering, “Why didn’t they use the 50th percentile (50% weigh more than this weight, 50% weigh less – sort of an ‘average weight’)?” I have no answer – but I have an idea. By using the 10th percentile, they were able to give the baby mice an even bigger dose of mercury……So, by using the 10th percentile weights, the authors were able to give the mice about 15% more thimerosal. This goes nicely with the dosing schedule to significantly raise the dose the mice receive.

One of the big talking points from this study was reported by David Kirby in Evidence of Harm:

… putting up a photo of two mice. “He has groomed through the skull, and eventually destroys his partner,” Hornig said. Every parent of an autistic kid in the room could be seen grimacing in dark recognition of such destructive behavior.”(page 312)

Uh-huh, or maybe they were just grimacing as its not nice looking at mice chewing through the skulls of other mice?

Anyway, hyperbole aside, why did Hornig choose those particular mice? Here’s what else Autism Diva found out.

Why did Hornig pick the SJL/J mice in particular?….Besides being an “autoimmune disease-sensitive” breed what else is known about the SJL/J mice?

Good question. Diva found the answer highly revealing:

Behavior
1. High spontaneous fighting….
2. Severe fighting among males housed together, beginning at about 8 weeks.
3. Most males will be killed by 4-5 months unless caged separately….

Diva also found a separate source that showed that:

…some breeds do a kind of agressive grooming of other mice called, “barbering”

So, it seems that Hornig sourced a set of mice known to be aggressive, she then systematically overdosed them and then reported the fact that this aggression was indicative of autism. Right.

Holmes, Blaxill and Haley First Baby Haircuts

This study claimed that there were reduced levels of mercury in autistic children’s first baby haircuts. The authors claimed this was due to an inability to excrete mercury.

Prometheus took an initial look at this study and found numerous methodological errors that would question both conclusions. These problems included:

1. Storage of the hair in unknown conditions for a median of 5 and a half years.
2. The calculation of the mothers mercury exposure was made on the basis of recollection of events between 5 and 16 years in the past.
3. A formula derived from the data to calculate the amount of mercury the kids were exposed to in the womb.
4. The data they collected was used to come up with the formula they used to calculate the mercury exposure – which they then used to explain the data they came up with. Prometheus compared this to ‘a puppy chasing its own tail’.

Prometheus also noted that the conclusions in the paper referred to _measured_ exposures, which he noted never occurred – they _calculated_ remember? Prometheus went on to note:

[1] There are no data or citations provided to support the implied assertion that mercury is actively excreted in the hair. – The reason for [1] is that there are abundant data and studies showing that mercury enters the hair – in all studied species – passively from the blood, attracted by the sulfur-containing amino acids in hair. The only way to “impair excretion” is to cut off the blood supply to the hair – which causes it to fall out.

[2]There are no data citations provided to supports the assertion that mercury elimination in the hair is a significant means of clearing mercury in humans – especially infant humans, who have little hair relative to their body weight. – The reason for [2] is that humans, and especially human infants, have a very small mass of hair relative to their body weight – a much lower relative amount than many of the other species studied (e.g. rodents and primates). For this reason alone, excretion in the hair cannot be a major route of mercury excretion in humans.

Prometheus later went on to discuss more about this studies shortcomings.

[Holmes et al]….concluded that, since the autistic children had lower hair mercury than the controls, that autistic children were unable to excrete mercury….Mind you, they offered no data to support that startling (if not ridiculous) conclusion, nor does anything known about mercury “excretion” in hair support that line of “reasoning”. As far as I can tell, they just made it up rather than face what the data (such as it was) told them – that mercury had nothing to do with autism

Prometheus compared their hair/mercury findings with another hair study into autistic kids:

The autistic children in the Holmes et al study had over twice the mean hair mercury level of the NHANES group (of 838 children) and the Holmes et al controls had hair mercury levels of over sixteen times the NHANES level….the only conclusion that you can draw from that data is that the Holmes et al study is garbage. My suspicion is that their laboratory – Doctor’s Data – is the cause of the outrageously high levels of mercury found in the children – especially the control children.

Recently, Dad of Cameron has been looking long and hard at James Adam’s and discovered an intriuging paper written by him also about hair/mercury and autism.

In the discussion section of the Adam’s paper DoC found the following:

Overall, it appears that the children with autism do not have major differences in their levels of toxic metals compared to controls….Thus, our results are not necessarily inconsistent with the results of Holmes et al.

Hmm. Interesting. It seems to me to be the polar _opposite_ of the Holmes et al paper.

The crux of the issue is what is defined as ‘normal’ levels e.g. the control groups. The Holmes paper found that the autistic kids had a mercury level one eighth of the control group. However, when one compared the average to the control group of the much larger NHANES study then the Holmes results were very close to the NHANES normal level. DoC also found that the Holmes control group had a mercury level of over 15 times the NHANES control group.

When one also looks the Adams study then, as DoC says:

they had a level quite similar to, or higher than the NHANES average, and higher than the average of both typical and children with autism published in Adams et al. This probably suggests that the “inability to excrete mercury” hypothesis could possibly, if not more likely, be post hoc correction

Post hoc correction roughly means a desire to keep the hypothesis alive at all costs……or deriving the formula from the data. DoC concludes with:

It should be pointed out that mean values found by Adams et al. for typical children are nearly identical to the findings of the 1999–2000 NHANES study of 838 children – Adams et al. This does in fact suggest that the Adams et al. data is valid. It should also be pointed out that both Holmes et al. and Adams et al. apparently had hair samples analyzed at Doctor’s Data. It’s possible that both studies were even conducted around the same time (somewhere near 2002) presumably, or at least possibly with the same epuipment and methods too, yet they both got vastly different control group results…..it’s pretty clear that Holmes et al. probably didn’t find unusually “low levels” in baby hair. It would seem that what they found was an unusual control group.

In other words, there’s no ‘inability to excrete mercury’ on behalf of the kids in the Homes et al paper. There’s certainly nothing put forward to justify that hypothesis and there’s lots of good reasons to suspect the methodology Holmes et al employed and the near as dammit certainty that the Holmes autistic group ‘suffered by comparison’ to an abnormal control group.

The Geier’s Misrepresentations

If there’s one blogger who has approached blogging pulitzer prize status its Kathleen. Her in depth (and continuing) placing of the Geier’s under the microscope of basic honesty is simply stunning not just in its style but in the meticulous attention to detail and most of all the genuinely worrying implications for how the Geier’s have behaved.

Kathleen’s first post on the subject concerned the way that the Geier’s claimed an affiliation with George Washington University in at least one of their published works:

A Clinical and Laboratory Evaluation of Methionine Cycle-Transsulfuration and Androgen Pathway Markers in Children with Autistic Disorders. Geier DA, Geier MR. Department of Biochemistry, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA.

According to the conventions of academic publishing, this would generally imply that Mr. Geier is a member of the faculty at GWU, or a graduate student publishing with a thesis advisor or other faculty member in the same department; and that GWU is the venue at which Mr. Geier’s share of the research took place.

Puzzled and confused by this claim, Kathleen contacted Dr. Allen Goldstein, Chairman of the GWU Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology who …

…stated unequivocally that David Geier has never served on the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at GWU; that neither the “Institute for Chronic Illnesses” or its Institutional Review Board….are in any way associated with GWU; and that none of the research described in the article was sponsored by GWU or conducted in the GWU laboratories. He described the affiliation with the Department of Biochemistry in the Hormone Research article as “fallacious,” and stated that it conveyed a “significant misrepresentation” of Mr. Geier’s position in the field of biochemistry.

The Geier’s later claimed that this was a publishing error on the part of Hormone Research. However, when I emailed the Editor of Hormone Research, he refused to confirm this and stated that the Geier’s paper would be subject to an investigation.

Kathleen’s second post in the series showed how the Geier’s apparently gain ethical approval for their studies. A paper of their Kathleen was reading said:

The Institutional Review Board of the Institute for Chronic Illnesses approved the present study.

Kathleen had never heard of this IRB so she set out to investigate it.

Before I related what she found, its important that people understand just what an IRB is. For this I turn to surgeon blogger Orac who informs us that:

After the horrors of Nazi medical experimentation…it was clear that rules were needed to protect human research subjects from such abuses. A historic document in the development of such rules in the U.S. was the Belmont Report on Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research….This report identifies three essential and fundamental ethical principles for human subject research. It is essential reading for anyone doing human subject research in this country. In 1991, these regulations were codified into what is now known as The Common Rule. All institutions doing federally funded research are required to adhere to The Common Rule. Moreover, some states, such as Maryland (where the Geiers have their businesses) require that all human research, regardless of funding source, must conform to the Common Rule.

A key aspect of The Common Rule is the IRB. The IRB is in essence a committee that oversees all human subject research for an institution and makes sure that the studies are ethical in design and that they conform to all federal regulations. Basically, IRBs are charged with weighing the risks and benefits of proposed human subject research and making sure that (1) the risks are minimized and that the risk:benefit ratio is very favorable; (2) to minimize any pain or suffering that might come about because of the experimental therapy; and (3) to make sure that researchers obtain truly informed consent. Once a study is in progress, regular reports must be made to the IRB, which can shut down any study in its institution if it has concerns about patient welfare. Indeed, the IRB at my particular institution is like a bulldog; it’s utterly ruthless in how it deals with researchers.

So this is not just a piece of red tape to circumnavigate – it fulfils a vital ethical (and legally obliging) role. Here’s what Kathleen found out about the Geier’s IRB for the study in question. The IRB overseeing the Geier’s research is comprised of:

Mark Geier, Chair, David Geier, Lisa Sykes (Rev. Sykes is a mother of a participant in Dr. Geier’s study). Kelly Kerns (an anti-thimerosal activist and petitioner in vaccine injury complaints for each of her three autistic children). John Young (a newly-minted DAN! practitioner. Anne Geier (wife of Dr. Mark Geier and mother of David Geier. Clifford Shoemaker (A vaccine injury lawyer, a member of the Vaccine Injury Alliance, and a member of the Omnibus Autism Proceeding Petitioners’ Steering Committee. Dr. Geier has testified on behalf of his clients in Price v. Wyeth et al, Platt v. HHS, Jenkins v. HHS, Lewis v. HHS, Raj vs. HHS, Jefferies v. HHS, and other cases.). The address for the IRB is the Geier’s family home.

Kathleen concludes:

according to The Common Rule, Mark Geier and David Geier would be ineligible to vote on any of their own research proposals. Anne Geier would be ineligible to vote on any research proposed or conducted by her husband or son. Rev. Lisa Sykes would be ineligible to vote on any study in which her son is a participant. As a co-investigator with Mark and David Geier in their Lupron research, John Young, too, would be ineligible to vote on any IRB supervising that research. Of the seven members of the IRB, only a minority of two — Kelly Kerns and Clifford Shoemaker — would be eligible to vote on the research described in the article — and only if they are free of any personal or financial interest in its outcome.

But why would the Geier’s need to invent their own IRB? Kathleen tackles this in part three of her investigation.

By definition an IRB should have:

“the professional competence necessary to review specific research activities, […] to ascertain the acceptability of proposed research in terms of institutional commitments and regulations, applicable law, and standards of professional conduct and practice”

Now, its worth remembering this all this is taking place against the background of a Lupron study. Lupron was being used by the Geier’s to treat (according to them) Precocious Puberty (CPP). Neither of the study authors Geier Snr and Jnr have any experience whatsoever with this condition and hence an objective IRB would not allow them to proceed. Possibly this is why they needed their own personal IRB.

Why Precocious Puberty? Well, its not because these kids actually have it. The Geier’s claim to be treating 50 kids for this condition. However in a strange anomaly, Kathleen found that its a rare enough condition that:

European endocrinological research consortium found it necessary to pool data from The Netherlands, Italy and France in order to accumulate 26 male subjects for a study

Yet the Geier’s found 50 in little under 1 year. Amazing.

The rest of Kathleen’s entry deals with the way in which the Geier’s mangled the diagnostic criteria for CPP in order to justify diagnosing kids with it and hence justify prescribing them with Lupron.

As one participants parent put it:

[T]he labs, according to the Geiers are ONLY an attempt to determine CPP and get insurance coverage for Lupron Depot.

…which sounds very much like orchestrated insurance fraud to me.

And, surprise surprise, it must’ve seemed that way to a couple of other people to because Kathleen’s next instalment revealed some curious terminology alterations. Suddenly, the Geier’s scrubbed all mention of CPP and instead were referring to hyperandrogenicity. However, old habits die hard:

In spite of the new prominence of “hyperandrogenicity” in the Powerpoint presentation, a verbal slip during the lecture revealed Mr. Geier’s lack of familiarity with the term, and suggested that he regarded “hyperandrogenicity” and “precocious puberty” as interchangeable.“…and then we talk about clinical symptoms of premature or hyperandrogenicity in these children — premature puberty or hyperandrogenicity…”

and in a lovely catch, Kathleen noted that:

The header to Table 1 (of a supporting data table to a presentation) had been altered after it was originally prepared. “Hyperandrogenicity” had been inserted into a white space exactly large enough to accommodate the phrase “precocious puberty.”

All of these changes and inconsistencies raise the question — have Dr. Geier and Mr. Geier begun to use terms such as “hyperandrogenicity” and “testicular hyperfunction” in journal articles and public presentations about their testosterone hypothesis and the “Lupron protocol,” while they and cooperating doctors continue to enter the more reimbursement-friendly diagnosis of “precocious puberty” on their patients’ insurance claims?

Good question. In Kathleen’s next instalment she discusses how the Geier’s use a method of recruiting parents who are already allies of their’s and who are active on internet forums to their initial groups. they then let those parents spread their message to all and sundry, despite having no medical knowledge whatsoever.

Prominent amongst those people is Erik Nanstiel who once told me that chelation would cure his daughter in 18 months. he had no doubt about it whatsoever. He ‘knew’ this because the Geier’s told him.

Erik now sings a different tune.

The Geiers have recommended we take M[…] off chelation…for now. When we reported that the chelator caused regression away from the gains we got with Lupron alone… they looked at her chart and said that, consistently, her urinary porphyrins have been lower than most kids they treat. They think that it’s possible (POSSIBLE) that M[…]’s two years of DMPS chelation has depleted most of her toxic metals. We think Her regression could have been a result of the chelator feeding yeast in her gut and affecting nutrient absorption … and possibly not so much because it was stirring up a lot of heavy metals. They also mentioned to me that a LOT of the kids they treat are doing wonderfully on Lupron alone… without the chelator. So we’re going to try it.

So now the Geier’s say that chelation _won’t_ cure Erik’s daughter in 18 months (gasp!). No, now they say Lupron will.

Erik has also repeated the Geier’s verbiage that:

Testosterone and Mercury bind weakly end to end…and then go on to form sheets. The mercury is trapped in these lattices which hamper chelation. They claim to have verified that with x-ray crystallography imaging

Thats from March this year. In June this year he said:

The mercury/testosterone sheets was just a theory that isn’t panning out.

So in March its verified. In June its just a theory that isn’t panning out. Despite this tendency to fail to engage his brain before opening his mouth Erik feels fine about dispensing medical advice:

I can say with a great degree of confidence that your child has Precocious Puberty caused by autism

Same confidence that led him to state that chelation would cure his daughter in 18 months or that testosterone bound up mercury in sheets no doubt.

In part six of the series Kathleen uncovered some fairly obscure and disturbing relationships and possible beliefs of the Geier’s.

On June 23, 2006, Dr. Geier returned to Radio Liberty to discuss vaccines and autism, and to give an update on the progress of his research into the “Lupron protocol.”

As readers of my blog will know I’ve talked about Radio Liberty before. Dr Geier was interviewed by Dr. Monteith who also interviewed Dr David Ayoub in a segment entitled _’Linking mercury in vaccines to global population control.’_

Monteith, like Ayoub, believes that the global population is being controlled by the Illuminati partly by vaccines. It seems that Geier has similar beliefs:

And as you said, it [autism] not only destroys the kids’ lives, it destroys the family, it destroys the siblings, it destroys the neighborhoods, it destroys the educational system. And if we are not careful it’s going to destroy the United States, because it’s going to hard for us to be the number one nation in the world. What do we produce? What makes us number one? Is it our oil? Is it our nuclear energy? Is it our science? You know what it is? It’s our brains. And if we have one in six children, even using their figure, that have brain damage, and we end up, there’s three hundred million Americans, and we end up with one in six of them having brain damage, that’s fifty million Americans, we’re not going to be the number one country in the world anymore. And I have great fear for that. I love this country, and we’ve got to not let that happen.

Whereupon Dr Monteith replied:

Why are these things going on? Well, if you’d like to know why they’re going on, you need to get my talk on planned population reduction… And ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say this, but there really are people who want to hurt children… And if you doubt that, you need to get my book, Brotherhood of Darkness… Our government is poisoning us.

Right.

Moving swiftly on, Kathleen’s next part of the series discussed how the Geier’s were taking mainstream science and misappropriating it for their own ends.

Each of Dr. and Mr. Geier’s articles and presentations on the “Lupron protocol” have included references to the work of British researchers Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, John Manning and their colleagues on the possible relationship between fetal testosterone levels and the development of autism. From The potential importance of steroids in the treatment of autistic spectrum disorders and other disorders involving mercury toxicity:

The Geier’s said of this study that:

The authors demonstrated that the more severely affected the children were the higher the levels of prenatal testosterone.

In fact, what the Geier’s had actually done was take a graph that Baron-Cohen et al had used to demonstrate that it was impossible to directly detect pre-natal testosterone and _re-label the axis_ so that it ‘demonstrated’ their own pet theory.

Whereas the left axis of the chart had originally been labeled, “Mean 2D:4D,” Dr. and Mr. Geier had deleted that label and replaced it with “Lower testosterone/higher estrogen” and “Higher testosterone/lower estrogen.” The summary above the chart on Dr. and Mr. Geier’s Powerpoint slide stated unequivocally that the study reported in The 2nd to 4th digit ratio and autism had found a direct relationship between levels of fetal testosterone and the severity of autistic symptoms, when this was not the case; as noted above, the investigators in that study had clearly stated that it was impossible to directly test the prenatal testosterone levels of their subjects.

Kathleen contacted Professor Baron-Cohen about this misrepresentation. He replied thusly:

I am aware that the Geiers are citing our work to justify their treatments involving lowering testosterone levels in autism. I have never advocated for this treatment, and indeed am opposed to such treatments on two grounds: ethical (manipulating hormones affects many systems in the body and mind, many of which do not stand in need of ‘treatment’) and safety (such treatments may carry risks, many of which are unquantified).

Yesterday, Kathleen posted the latest in her series on the Geier’s. In this post she notes the curious similarities between whole swathes of studies of the Geier’s and other researchers.

Thomas Verstraeten, Robert Davis, Frank DeStefano and their colleagues, published _’Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases’_in November 2003. Advocacy group SafeMinds got hold of a 2000 draft of this study to show that the study had been ‘doctored’ to clear the reputation of thiomersal (of course it hadn’t). However, Kathleen noted something odd about this draft and a subsequent Geier paper.

From Verstraeten 2000 (p. 2-3)

We selected a cohort of infants from the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database. VSD was created in 1991 by the National Immunization Program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The project links medical event information, vaccine history, and selected demographic information from the computerized clinical databases of four staff model health maintenance organizations (HMO)s: Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound (GHC) in Seattle, Washington; Kaiser Permanente Northwest (NWK) in Portland, Oregon; Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program of Northern California (NCK) in Oakland, California; and Southern California Kaiser Permanent (SCK) in Los Angeles, California. HMO members have unique HMO identification numbers that can be used to link data on their medical services within the HMO. Vaccination data are derived from computerized immunization tracking systems that are maintained by each of the HMOs. Quality control comparisons of the computerized immunization data with information recorded in paper medical records have shown high levels of agreement. For medical encounters, each of the HMOs maintains computerized databases on all hospital discharges and emergency room visits; diagnoses from outpatient clinic encounters ard available from some of the HMOs for certain years.

From Geier 2005 (p. CR163)

In this study, the VSD database and CDC-VSD database research materials were analyzed. VSD was created in 1991 by the NIP of the CDC. The project links medical event information, vaccine history, and selected demographic information from the computerized clinical databases of four health maintenance organizations (HMO)s: Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound (GHC) in Seattle, Washington; Kaiser Permanente Northwest (NWK) in Portland Oregon; Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program of Northern California (NCK) in Oakland, California; and Southern California Kaiser Permanente (SCK) in Los Angeles, California. HMO members have unique HMO identification numbers that can be used to link data on their medical services within the HMO. Vaccination data are derived from computerized immunization tracking systems, maintained by each of the HMOs. Quality control comparisons of the computerized immunization data with information recorded in paper medical records have shown high levels of agreement. For medical encounters, each of the HMOs maintains computerized databases on all hospital discharges and emergency room visits; diagnoses from outpatient clinic encounters are available from some of the HMOs for certain years [17-19].

As Kathleen notes, aside from the first sentence and the manner in which the National Immunization Program and the Centers for Disease Control were identified, these two passages are identical.

Kathleen goes on to find _over ten more instances_ of near identical passages of text. She then goes on to note that the Rev. Lisa Sykes (IRB member and Mum to a child undergoing the Geier’s Lupron protocol) was very familiar with the 2000 draft of the Verstraeten paper having cited it numerous times in submissions of her own. She is also thanked by the Geier’s in the notes of the paper that bears such an uncanny likeness to the Verstreten paper:

Acknowledgement: We wish to thank Lisa Sykes for her kind efforts in helping us to review and edit our manuscript.

Incredibly, Kathleen has indicated that there is more to come.

Calling all autistic college students

10 Aug

A representative of the Autistic Social Action Committee mailed me to ask me to help draw attention to this. Happy to oblige.

Wanted: We are looking for independently communicating autistic individuals who are successfully attending an institution of higher education. Those classified as Asperger’s or any other type of autism are equally welcome. We hope to create a regularly updated blog of autistic individuals attending an institution of higher education for the purpose of changing public perception of autistics in the eyes of parents, professionals, the media, the general public and our own communities. In addition, we hope this blog will serve as a valuable resource for autistics currently in higher education or entering it in the future. We aim for readers who will follow our blog to leave with an understanding of the extensive possibilities of the autistic neurology.

Requirements:

Standard rules of English grammar and spelling will apply, according to either US or UK English (depending on location).
Weekly updates will be expected of all bloggers on the topic of their college experiences. The purpose of these updates are to provide an insight into the unique challenges autistics face in higher education, yet also the many successes that we can achieve. We are looking for bloggers who will provide an open and honest discussion of their experiences, celebrating and stressing their positive experiences while providing practical advice on how to deal with negative ones.
Bloggers must be currently attending an institution of higher learning as of the Fall 2006 Semester.

How to Apply:

Contact AutisticAction@gmail.com by August 22nd with:
A brief biography of yourself (no more than 250 words)
An example of a blog-type entry you have written in the past on any topic that conforms to standard rules of English
A 500-1,000 word description of how you feel about being an autistic and what your plans for the future are
A brief description of your current life situation including, but not necessarily limited to, name, what college or university you are currently attending, age and year in school, area of study, hobbies and personal interests and any current or past employment.
Any past involvement in autistic advocacy, neurodiversity or policy issues will be looked upon favorably and should be included in the application
Applicants should feel free to provide links and/or information about to any websites they maintain or to any of their writings or personal projects.

Who we are:

The Autistic Social Action Committee is a Manhattan-based advocacy and community organization for autistic individuals of all ages and interests. We seek a movement away from the paradigms of disease and epidemic, neither of which are accurate or conducive towards autistic success and prosperity. We believe that autistic individuals hold the inalienable right to live as they are and that their neurological type should be respected and honored along with other forms of human diversity, such as race, religion, skin color or national origin. Our goals include providing a forum for autistic adults to interact with each other and promoting the growth of autistic culture and community. It is our belief that any effective and meaningful venture to provide services for autistic individuals requires the consideration by and the involvement of the autistic community. In addition, we seek to ensure the best possible educational environment for autistics of all ages, noting with concern the proliferation of segregated and inappropriate placements and the difficulties facing autistics of all types in higher education. Finally, we seek to change public perception of autistics by fighting against damaging stereotypes and promoting the success of autistic role models and community leaders, both for the purposes of inspiring the autistic community and educating the general public.

Its The Mercury, Stupid! No Wait!

9 Aug

I predicted not long ago that we’d shortly begin to witness a move away from thiomersal/mercury language from the geniuses in the mercury militia due the ongoing science refuting the hypothesis and the total rejection of the accumulated body of science so far built to support the hypothesis.

Every quarter, as long term members of this debacle will know, California DDS release a set of figures that are used to indicate how many autistic people are receiving services in that State. These numbers have been hailed at various times and by various people from the mercury militia as ‘the gold standard’ or ‘incontravertible proof’ that thiomersal causes autism as the numbers seemed to rise in the latter part of the nineties when thiomersal was around and then drop when it was removed. In actual fact, this belief came about due to a total misunderstanding of the numbers. The numbers have never dropped. All that happened at some points was that the _rate of increase_ either dipped or rose. Especially in the core cohort of 3 – 5 year olds.

For more on this see Joseph’s excellent summation.

In short, CDDS numbers continue to rise in the age group that would show a dramatic drop if thiomersal was the culprit.

The last two quarters have seen ‘rises’ in the rate of increase and where once there was excited bandying about of this ‘proof’ we now have the embarrased silence of no dogs barking.

And yet….deep in the recesses of Anti-Vaccine Central aka The Evidence of Harm Yahoo Group….someone had the bad taste to mention this recently. The response was swift, predictable and as stupid as a celebrity reality TV contestant.

Yes, and I do believe that we need to look at ALL environmental factors, and not just mercury, including other vaccine components, the antigens themselves, the cross-reactivity of various vaccines, the timing of vaccine administration, environmental sources of mercury, the overuse of antibiotics, pesticides, pitocin, ultrasound (I have noticed some listmates stating that their NT kids had just as much ultrasound exposure as their ASD child and they’re fine — careful, that’s what the parents of NT kids say about vaccines!) and electromagnetic radiation.

You factor in all of the new vaccine recommendations over the last four years and there are plenty of things that could muddy the waters here. Not to mention live attenuated virus vaccines,

But…but…didn’t these people get the message from Rick Rollens that:

Decline [in CDDS data] coincides with the phasing out of mercury from childhood vaccines.

Yes I know there wasn’t really a decline but they believed it. They touted it as fact.

How about David Kirby’s ‘Gold Standard‘>

Stay tuned. If the numbers in California and elsewhere continue to drop – and that still is a big if — the implication of thimerosal in the autism epidemic will be practically undeniable.

So, now that we know that _they never dropped_ is the opposite ‘practically undeniable’?

Let’s not forget what David Kirby told Citizen Cain:

if the total number of 3-5 year olds in the California DDS system has not declined by 2007, that would deal a severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis

What shape will that ‘severe blow’ take do you think? Will it be a full and frank admission from Mr Kirby that he maybe should’ve asked around outside of the circle of geniuses headed by Rollens regarding prevalence in CDDS data? That maybe he’s jumped the gun quite substantially? Will we see retractions from Brad Handley and Generation Rescue who might have to redefine their incredibly simplistic, premature and wilfully misleading categorisation of autism? Will we get some injection related sense out of more than a few people? Will Moms Against Mercury rename themselves? How about SafeMinds?

What does Lenny Schafer think? In recent years, the SAR has become little more than an anti-thiomersal polemic. What does he say about all this as the Moderator of the EoH group?

The fact is that if the problem is mercury and mercury has been greatly reduced in vaccines, we should see numbers either dropping, or the rate of increase dropping. Maybe the later is true, I can’t tell from this one chart alone. These reports have always come with caveats about how they are not properly controlled for a variety of factors that could affect the actuals, like the CDC recommendations for mercury flu shots or their aggressive push for early (and more) diagnosis. We (not just Christine) can’t one day point to these numbers and say: “see, they support the mercury hypothesis” when it suit us, and then later say “you really can’t trust these numbers” when they don’t.

At least a nod towards honesty. But he needs to understand why Kirby is correct to say that it is numbers dropping that’s important not changes in the rate of increase.

Slowly but surely these people are moving towards a position of wholesale anti-vaccination. Of course, its been there all along, but as the veneer of credibility the thiomersal hypothesis had when we lacked data is stripped away so is the thin veneer that reveals the depths of their ignorance.

When they finally abandon thiomersal, never forget their adamancy that it was thiomersal. Never forget that their ‘common sense’ trumped their ability to see what was under their noses. Thiomersal is a neuropoison QED, thiomersal causes autism. That’s the sort of logic that resulted in their recent spectacular own goal of the US Senate refusing point blank to put vaccine specific language in the recent Combating Autism Act. Wake up geniuses: They don’t trust you because you’re zealots. Your future is plain to see for them and me. Thiomersal to aluminium, aluminium to live virus, live virus to some other vaccine related ingredient. That’s why the ASA, CAN, Autism Speaks etc were happy to ditch the vaccine language. They want to distance themselves from you. Is it any wonder?

Welcome to EoH visitors! I see you have an amusing long thread where you all talk about how unbothered you are about me – with *lots* of contributions from various familiar faces. I would like to correct one small point you seem to have picked up: There is only one side of this that believe that the Illuminati is involved or even actually exist: That is your side. As represented by John Scudamore (owner of whale.to) and Dr David Ayoub of FAIR Autism Media. Hope thats clear enough for you to grasp :o)

PHP/Ajax File Browser Part II (Plus Linux Testing)

7 Aug

An age ago I wrote about a AJAX/PHP File Browser and it seems, confused the crap out of people. It was a rather hastily written blog piece, its true.

Anyway, I’ve written an example which you can find here. Simply click the ‘browser HR documents’ link to get going. You can grab the source from there too if you want. I even wrote a little readme to allow you to set up exactly what I’ve got working on that page.

But thats a pretty meagre blog entry so I’ll pass on a little tip for getting an easy Linux browser testing environment running in Windows – no OS intalls required.

First, download Damn Small Linux – just the ISO. Its only about 50mb or so, hence the name. Once you’ve grabbed it, put it somewhere out the way.

OK, now download the free Microsoft Virtual PC app. Won’t take long.

When this is downloaded, install it as per normal.

When its installed launch it.

First click ‘new’ as we’re going to create a new virtual PC.

1) Choose ‘create a virtual machine’
2) Give it a name and choose a location to save it to. I called mine ‘DSLinux’.
3) From the list of OS’s choose ‘other’.
4) Allocate RAM as required.
5) Choose ‘a new virtual disk’
6) Specify location or accept defaults. Up to you.
7) Click ‘finish’

That’s the machine set up. Now we need to setup our Linux ISO.

Your new virtual machine should be listed in the Virtual PC window’.

1) Choose ‘start’
2) When the box pops up choose ‘CD’ and then ‘capture ISO image’
3) Browse to the location you put your Damn Small Linux ISO in
4) You might need to choose ‘Action’ and then ‘reset’
5) The Linux setup starts – job done! Wait for it to complete.

You’ve now got a functional, web accessible Linux package to test sites in.

Stupid Eugenics

5 Aug

I’ll try not to Godwin this post too soon but I suspect its going to be hard as its one of those rare occasions when the subject does feel vaguely fascist. Actually, more than vaguely.

In June this year the Times ran a story about a team of British doctors who were:

….preparing an application to the fertility watchdog that would allow them to screen out male embryos to reduce significantly the chance of a couple having an autistic child.

As boys are four times more likely to be born with autism than girls, couples with a family history of the condition want to ensure they have only girls.

This is objectionable on two levels. Firstly, it gives legitimacy to the idea that autistic people are of less worth than non-autistic people. Writing about similar plans in Business Week, Elizabeth R. Schiltz said:

Imagine the public outrage that would greet the publication of a study calculating the cost of not terminating pregnancies if it were broken down into a category such as family income. Although most of our civil rights laws now include “disability” in the litany of prohibited bases for discrimination – along with race, gender, and ethnic origin—our enlightened liberal commitment to diversity appears to go only so far. While we are willing to mandate accommodation to make jobs or public transportation accessible to a person with spina bifida, *the social cost of accommodating her birth is increasingly being seen as exceeding her worth*

This same idea was expressed another way in the not to distant past:

[A] philosopher told me about a Nazi propaganda film he’d seen, called “Freedom through Death”. It featured golden haired youths clad in white, wheeling drooling [non]persons around in wheelchairs while the audience was asked to consider how much labour was being wasted on keeping the droolers alive.

Dinah Murray

The British Council of Disabled People also are concerned.

Simone Aspis, parliamentary and campaigns worker for the British Council of Disabled People, said: “Screening out autism would breed a fear that anyone who is different in any way will not be accepted. Screening for autism would create a society where only perfection is valued.””

Cost and perfection. Is that what we’ve been reduced to as a species? How much money we’re worth and how close to Brad and Angelina we all look like? Consider the following from Ballastexistenz

I was accompanying a friend to the doctor a couple weeks ago, and we were sitting in the waiting room, both of us using wheelchairs. We had the following conversation, or something very like it (I won’t get the details right, but this is the gist):

Her (to my staff): We need to find you a place to sit down. I forgot, you’re chair-impaired.

Staff: Actually I’m okay standing.

Her (gesturing around the waiting room): Just look at all this furniture devoted to your special needs. Hospitals must spend thousands of dollars buying chairs for the… uh… chair-challenged. They require assistive technology wherever they go.

Me: Yes, as a matter of fact, you and I can take our chairs with us, but those poor walking people all have to find places to sit. Must be such a drain on society…

Funny how you can find truth in humour don’t you think? We all have a cost. Not just financial. To decide to attempt to eradicate people based on financial or labour costs is ridiculous.

One of my favourite (series of) book/s is Dune which, aside from being (alongside Lord of the Rings) the greatest fantasy/Sci-Fi books ever written, are also a study in how political power and the ‘power’ of absolute inflexibility and non-diversity inevitably leads to the stagnation of the species. We need change – as a species we _require_ it. Our success as a species was _born_ from our ability to adapt. To adapt we need new skills and new ways of being. Without them we have no flexibility and an ever dwindling series of options.

Now, aside from the incredibly stupid idea that ‘weeding out’ people we have no understanding of is a good thing, there is also the rather more practical point that this patent is based on the flimsiest and most ramshackle logic ever. The science team basically want to screen for male embryos in families that have a history of autism and if they find one, to abort it.

In essence then, this isn’t even an anti-autism piece of ‘science’ – its an anti-male piece of ‘science’. Just to put this idea into some kind of numerical perspective, here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

For families that already have one autistic child, the odds of a second autistic child may be as high as one in twenty

So a woman may have to go through twenty abortions to get her desired NT offspring. And even then there’s no assurances that the girl child won’t be autistic. Mine is. My great Aunt was. Lots are. Lorna Wing is on record somewhere as stating she believes female autistics are historically very under diagnosed.

Mike Stanton pointed out that even the process itself is fraught with peril. And for what? Absolutely no guarantees whatsoever. In fact there is good evidence to suggest that IVF increases the ‘risk’ of autism.

To make another comparison: How about aborting black children to reduce Sickle Cell Anaemia? Who in their right mind would stand for that? How about aborting the children of people who are hypertensive just in case they develop heart disease?

I’m not anti-abortion per se but this is utterly ridiculous. I know that Mike has corresponded with the lead author, Professor Joy Delhanty, in his official NAS role. I would like to add something pretty unofficial:

Professor, this is without doubt the dumbest and least humanistic application of medical science I’ve seen in quite awhile. Please stop and think about what you are doing.

Dr David Ayoub – Hidden Agenda and Stone Cold Certainty

1 Aug

In a world seemingly obsessed with celebrities and the status of famous people, each cadre of existence have their own celebs – even autism research has its own budding superstar league. The top ten elites probably command good money from conference fee’s and parental recommendations from the big forums on the Yahoo Group lists so it can pay to get to be an Autism Superstar.

Just outside the elites are the triers – the ones who never seem to reach the giddy heights of a Wakefield or a Rimland. For these guys, cracking the top ten can mean an endless round of strident press releases, foaming at the mouth invective and slightly less fashionable talking shops.

One of the newer ‘triers’ is Dr David Ayoub. He’s (fairly) new to the scene but already he’s caused a stir with a typically brash ‘triers’ entrance to the market.

David Ayoub – Autism Specialist

I first remember hearing the name David Ayoub on the website of Erik’s FAIR Autism Media where Ayoub is listed as the Medical Director. One would suppose that the Medical Director of an autism organisation that believes thiomersal causes autism would be an expert in either autism or maybe toxicology. In actual fact, Ayoub is neither. He’s a Radiologist.

David Ayoub, MD, is a radiologist at the Memorial Medical Center in Springfield, Illinois

Source

So what does Radiology have to do with autism? Well, nothing.

What medical skills could Ayoub, as a trained Radiologist, bring to the field of autism? None.

No matter, maybe Ayoub has published some good science about autism or mercury?

Well, no – Ayoub MD, has (count ’em) five entries on PubMed, none of which touch on either autism or mercury. His last paper (on digital imaging) was published in 1997.

Whilst the irony of having a trained radiologist on the board of directors of an organisation that seems to think radiology is not necessary to diagnose Precocious Puberty is at least marginally amusing, what’s more amusing is the Ayoub Wikipedia entry. It’s written in breathlessly idolising fashion – headings are entitled ‘Track and field phenom’, ‘Science Prodigy’ and ‘Vaccine education crusader’. This is the online CV of a real ‘trier’, I think you’ll agree. Only a ‘Science Prodigy’ like Dr Ayoub could become Medical Director and ‘Vaccine education crusader’ at an organisation that specialises in subjects he knows nothing, medically speaking, about.

David Ayoub – Definitely Maybe

Perhaps Ayoub’s most famous contribution to the autism = thiomersal debate is his vanity piece written by Evelyn Pringle. Entitled David Ayoub – Thimerosal Definite Cause Of Autism, this article seemed to say a lot but actually said nothing at all beyond the title. Let’s not beat around the bush here. Just like Brad Handley, David Ayoub is stating that thiomersal _definitely_ causes autism. Pretty strong words. Let’s take a look beyond the title of the article though and see what the man himself says to back that up.

Well, the short answer is (of course) nothing. The longer answer starts off with:

I can state that the certainty of the science supporting mercury as a major cause of autism is probably more overpowering than the science behind any other disease process that I studied dating back to medical school.

This is the same science, formulated by the same scientists, that was recently rejected by a court Daubert hearing don’t forget. And not rejected by some legal trickery, but rejected as it was crap.

But David Ayoub, the ‘Science Prodigy’ can state that the same science is ‘certain’ and is ‘more overpowering than the science behind any other disease process’ that Ayoub has studied since medical school.

Possibly a good time to remind ourselves that David Ayoub is a radiologist with five papers to his name, none of which concern disease process, let alone autism or toxicology. I think its safe to assume that the last time Ayoub studied disease process was actually in medical school. I also think it’s safe to assume that Ayoub’s ‘certainty’ might very well be all the evidence the more credulous amongst us might need but I’m far from impressed at Ayoub’s experience, qualifications and bombastic pomposity.

But Ayoub isn’t done yet. The ‘Science Prodigy’ has more stone cold certainties to lay on us:

A growing number of experimental, epidemiological and biochemical research, has unequivocally shown that mercury is directly linked to the development of autism spectrum disorders

They have? Maybe someone could point these out to me? I seem to have missed them. Somewhere along the line I think our ‘Vaccine education crusader’ has concentrated more on the crusading than the research.

I really don’t see the need for more research to prove causality.

Well, of course he doesn’t – did he ever? The whole of the mercury militia have never been overly concerned with trifling matters like research to back up their beliefs. That’s why all the accumulated science to date was thrown out of court and will, barring fresh evidence, continue to be thrown out of court.

Next up in Evelyn’s little thumb nail sketch:

Ayoub is the Director of the Prairie Collaborative for Immunization, an organization that is self-funded, which aids organizations, journalists, and legislators obtain accurate information to assist their work.

Obtain accurate information eh? I really, really doubt that.

So, let’s go see what the Prairie Collaborative thinks is accurate information. Well, under the heading ‘Science’ we have ‘papers’ from Bradstreet, Bernard, Holmes and LOTS from (you guessed it) Geiers. Even Ken Stoller pops up, bless his HBOT heart. So this dross is the ‘accurate information’ that ‘unequivocally’ shows that ‘mercury is directly linked to the development of autism spectrum disorders’. It’s a roll call of the scientists and science that the recent RhoGAM hearings threw out as being rubbish.

He also links to the 2005 DAN Consensus paper – you know the one – it begins with:

This monograph is not intended as medical advice. Its intention is solely informational and educational. Please consult a qualified medical or health professional if you wish to pursue the ideas presented.

Nothing fills you with confidence as much as a strongly worded, legally enforceable medical disclaimer eh?

Recently, David Ayoub has been on a media frenzy. Flushed with the promise of cracking the elite top ten, he’s been commenting on news sites and to reporters left right and centre.

David Ayoub – Darling of the Press

After the killing of Katie McCarron, David Ayoub was revealed as a confidant of Karen McCarron, Katie’s killer.

Dr David Ayoub said he met with Karen McCarron shortly after her daughter was diagnosed with autism.

“She was very dedicated to trying to get treatment for her daughter,” Ayoub said. “I’ve met with a lot of parents who are dealing with autistic children, and she was one of the most loving mothers. This is a story that’s been played over and over again. Homicide, suicide. The families just don’t have the support”

David Ayoub was very vocal on how much of a tragedy this was for poor ‘loving mothers’ like Karen McCarron. Oddly, he had no words of compassion for Katie herself, Katie’s sister, Katie’s Dad, Katie’s Grandparents, Katie’s Uncle and Aunts, her friends or her teachers all of whom had to live with David Ayoub’s barely concealed plea for services.

As a side note, I see today that Karen McCarron’s lawyers are considering an insanity plea. I strongly urge those representing Katie to contact David Ayoub as, based on the above quote, he can easily testify to Karen McCarron’s loving and dedicated nature. That should be enough to establish she was far from insane. I’m sure as a ‘Science Prodigy’ his opinion will carry much weight.

As recently as last month, David Ayoub was again demonstrating his ‘Science Prodigy’ status in a news blog in answer to a Doctor who doesn’t believe the MMR/thiomersal hypothesis. Displaying his keen sense of ethics and science, Ayoub began with:

Dr Ehmke’s comments about parents concerned with vaccine safety is an insult to anyone with any knowledge of the science surrounding this debate. His letter was filled with misinformation, errors and just plain foolish dribble.

Well, no actually Dr Ayoub. What’s actually insulting is your own rabid insistence in the face of no actual _evidence_ , let alone proof, that thiomersal or MMR cause autism.

Ayoub then pointed out Ehmke’s sole error:

MMR vaccine never contained thimerosal. This blunder set the tone for the rest of his letter.

Interesting. Possibly no one told Boyd Haley or Liz Birt this little fact.

I have been working with Boyd Haley since September 2000 who testified at the recent Congressional hearing. Your source is incorrect. I have Boyd’s testing results and there is mercury in MMR. He did not find as much as what was in Hib, Hep B and DTaP. However, IT IS THERE.

I guess we can await Dr Ayoub’s denouncement of Boyd Haley as a foolish dribbler with interest. Other gems from that piece include:

The epidemiological studies refuting the claim of a link to vaccine mercury have all been refuted as flawed studies.

There are at least 4 published papers that demonstrated autistic children have a lower, genetically determined ability to eliminate mercury due to lower levels of glutathione

There are hundreds of physicians breaking rank with their own organizations such as the AMA and AAP and admitting that mercury in vaccines was indeed a major cause of a variety of developmental disorders

I would discourage parents from having too much trust in what their pediatrician will tell them

Basically, its a (poorly formatted) rant based on nothing more that our resident ‘Science Prodigy’s’ belief in his pet hypothesis. There’s no actual science in there at all.But what turns a respectable radiologist, just beginning a career in his field and a career as a published scientist in his field into a what we see – an absolutist who’s stone cold certainty based on no decent science has led him to his current position as Medical Director of two organisations widely regarded as anti-vaccine in agenda?

David Ayoub – A Hidden Agenda?

On the 3rd of January of this year David Ayoub was a guest on Radio Liberty. Radio Liberty is an online radio station that specialises in talkshows about fringe conspiracy theories. Other interview subjects that month included John De Jacomo who gave a talk on:

The prophetic significance of world events today. People are looking for peace; will this usher in globalism – or pave the way for the reign of the anti-Christ?

And Caryl Matrisciana who addressed the burning issue:

The Chronicles of Narnia movie is being touted as a great Christian movie. Is there a possibility that the New Age is being dressed in Christian clothing?

Fascinating, relevant and deeply scientific questions, I think you’ll agree.

So what was our ‘Science Prodigy’, Dr David Ayoub there to discuss?

Linking mercury in vaccines to global population control.

Unfortunately, I can’t find an mp3 of this interview anywhere but believe me, I would _love_ to hear David Ayoub’s thoughts as a ”Vaccine education crusader’ on how vaccines are used to control the global population. Maybe he could upload this interview to the Prairie Collaborative site in order to aid ‘organizations, journalists, and legislators obtain accurate information’ about how vaccines are used to control the global population.

Now, being an avid fan of nutty conspiracy theories I thought I’d check out Erik’s others friend’s (John Scudamore) website (whale.to) to see what I could find about the global population control theory.

Well, its not good news I’m afraid. Apparently, the global population are Targets of the Illuminati and the Committee of 300. They’ll get us like so:

Unemployables in the US, in the wake of industrial destruction, will either become opium-heroin and/or cocaine addicts, or become statistics in the elimination of the “excess population” process we know of today as Global 2000.

To cause, by means of limited wars in the advanced countries, by means of starvation and diseases in the Third World countries, the death of three billion people by the year 2050, people they call “useless eaters”. The Committee of 300 (Illuminati) commissioned Cyrus Vance to write a paper on this subject of how to bring about such genocide. The paper was produced under the title “Global 2000 Report” and was accepted and approved for action by former President James Earl Carter, and Edwin Muskie, then Secretary of States, for and on behalf of the US Government. Under the terms of the Global 2000 Report, the population of the US is to be reduced by 100 million by the year of 2050

Not good. But it seems that as long as I _don’t_ go to America and I _do_ have a job, I’ll be safe from the Illuminati! Hurrah!!

Evidently, Dr David ‘Science Prodigy’ Ayoub believes that vaccines are yet another weapon in the vast, nefarious arsenal that the Illuminati can bring to bear on us. Eeeek!

What Happened to Dr David Ayoub?

At some point, David Ayoub clearly stepped off the mainstream science path and started his journey into conspiracy theory driven belief. That’s fine as far as it goes. He can believe whatever the hell he likes.

What’s not fine though is how his attempts to see through his global population control anti-vaccine agenda have latched onto autism. He deals in unverified absolutes and needs to be thought of in the context of what he really is – an antivaccinationist with a disturbing set of political beliefs.

Jennifer unearthed a truly disturbing presentation from David Ayoub regarding his population control conspiracy theory. It’s an ‘interesting’ read!

Progress/No Progress

22 Jul

It’s fascinating to me how things seem to go in circles, an idea is challenged, is rejected, you think you’ve moved on and then you find that same idea being used as a strawman argument against you.

In recent days following the massively successful petition regarding the ‘Autism Every Day’ video and the flurry of blog posts regarding the murder of William Lash IV I’ve seen a remarkable return of an idea I thought long dead from the mercury militia – the ‘my problems are worse than yours’ gambit.

Numerous people have tried to insinuate that everyone who has either signed the petition or denounced the murder of William Lash IV are people who’s kids must be ‘high functioning’ and that therefore we cannot have any real understanding of how difficult it is to parent a ‘low functioning’ child.

This is fallacious for numerous reasons. Mostly though its fallacious as its simply untrue. From speaking with a lot of the parents who these people are referring to its clear that they do not have ‘high functioning’ kids. Like my own child, they are considered ‘low functioning’. These are kids who used to smear faeces on walls, run into traffic, have meltdowns at excess noise/smells/tastes/light quality, bang their head against the wall, not communicate, not be toilet trained etc etc. The only difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ is what we chose to do to move forward. In terms of the challenges, pitfalls, low points and stress we know _exactly_ where ‘they’ are coming from. Parenting a special needs kid is bloody hard work.

The goals for us as parents for _all_ our three kids are as follows: that they are happy, confident and respectful of others. That’s it. If they are happy, confident, respectful of others and rich then that’s great. If they are happy, confident, respectful of others and using a keyboard to communicate then that’s great too.

So how do we do that? I believe that a happy child is a child that is loved unconditionally, that _knows_ it is loved, that _knows_ it is valued exactly as they are. That is engaged first and foremost as a child. I don’t believe you can do that – honestly and totally do that – unless you can genuinely accept that child. That is _not_ to say that some parents don’t love their kids. I believe Erik loves his daughter. I believe JB loves his son. But it seems to me that they see their kids first and foremost as a medical puzzle to solve. No child should be the battleground for their parents hurt and anger.

So – acceptance – that’s the same as doing nothing right? Hardly. Acceptance (to me) means accepting that one’s child has a) a way of perceiving the world that necessitates a parent to alter their teaching and parenting methods and b) that that different perception is equally as valid a state of existence as any other. It seems obvious to me that an inability to see one’s child existence as valid can only result in a child not feeling valued or confident.

Acceptance is just the start. The child still requires teaching and parenting. That means they can be cute, naughty, rude, hilarious, moody, loving and silly. All these states require handling as a parent but for us the approach we take stems from the concept of acceptance.

But I am not suggesting it is not hard work and depressingly difficult sometimes. Of course it is. My objection to the ‘Autism Every Day’ video was not that it showed the bad things. Its that it _only_ showed the bad things and it had to stage manage the situations in order to show those bad things. Nothing good can come from dishonesty.

Sorry but I’ve removed some bits of this post dealing specifically with my daughter. Upon reflection I guess I’m still not comfortable putting out things about her to the whole internet.

Autism Diva: Kelloggs Just Trying To Help

22 Jul

_The following is taken word for work from Autism Diva’s blog. I’ve turned off comments here and strongly encourage you to comment at Diva’s place._

If you follow autism news and/or gossip you may have heard that Autism Speaks is working with the Kellogg’s cereal folks to promote Autism Speaks as a mainstream authority in matters autistic and to alert parents of young children to early signs of autism. Of course, anything coming from Autism Speaks will be agitprop slanted toward invoking fears of the faux-epidemic of family-destroying body-snatched-children. Autism Speaks both promotes and denies the faux-epidemic out of alternating sides of it’s corporate mouth. The Kellogg’s cereal folks are doing their part by donating space on the sides of their cereal boxes to an Autism Speaks ad.

The ad reads:

Do you know what autism is? Autism is a neurological disorder that impairs communication, behavior, and social skills. It’s the nation’s fatest growing serious developmental disorder, with a new case diagnosed every 20 minutes.

(Apparently they left out this part: We here at Autism Speaks are hoping to get that number up to one every 10 minutes so we are alerting parents to the early signs of autism since many autistic children are really not obviously autistic so that they don’t get diagnosed until after they enter first grade … so much for the unmissable “train wrecks” hype.)

More from the cereal box ad:

Do you know the early signs? No big smiles or joyful expressions by 6 months. No babbling by 12 months. No back and forth gestures, such as pointing and waving by 12 months. No words by 16 months. Any loss of speech or babbling at any age. These are just a few of the possible early signs. If you have any concerns, speak to your doctor about screening your child. Please…Don’t wait.

And then there is some stuff about tax deductible donations, trademarks belonging to Autism Speaks and Copyright (c) 2006″ and the website’s address again.

(This is a screenshot of the homepage after the introductory flash animation thing–accompanied by some sorrowful nursery-like music–where you can read about how their orgnization presumes to speak for autistics who can’t)

It’s a frightening thought that people will read those possible early signs of autism and the ominous sounding statement of how autism is such rapidly growing phenomenon on the side of a cereal box and actually go to the Autism Speaks website and there be terrorized by that disgusting video “Autism Every Day,” among other negative propaganda.

If the cereal box reading parents do go to the website and watch that video, they will learn that in time their now lovable (if odd or silent) toddler wil become someone who along with thousands of others just like them have the potential to destroy the very fabric of society, not to mention the mom’s status as owner of a perfect star of a child. Ladies-who-lunch will learn that they should forget those days in the upscale neighborhood coffee shops wherein they can brag about how smart, gorgeous and advanced their child is. Other moms who never had that as a goal, they should forget about everything sweet and good related to having a child period. To elaborate on David Kirby’s fave expression, Autism Speak’s message is: “Moms (and dads)! Welcome to the ‘hell that is autism’.” Is that really the introduction to autism that parents of young children not yet diagnosed, that may not even be autistic need?

The website has links to “resources” available on the web for parents, even a page with links to blogs: here. Unfortunately for the parents none of them are Autism Hub blogs where the bloggers tacitly announce that they “don’t need no stinking cure” for themselves or their children, but they do want understanding and support for the complex problems that often surround autism. One of the three blogs linked to on the Autism Speaks site, one run by a serious mercury mom, has been inactive for quite a while.

Of course, in the view of mercury grand-dad Bob Wright and his mercury daughter the site would be remiss if it didn’t give some space to promoting the USVICTMS (Ultra Sneaky Vast International Conspiracy to Thimerosal Manufacturers Shield) and they do so by linking to various thinly veiled antivaccine organizations and other spreaders of conspiracy theories, such as “Coalition for SAFE MINDS.” Autism Diva believes that it’s the Mr. Wright’s mercury daughter on the video who implies that there was something evil and preventable that “stole” something from her child. Please check Kevin Leitch’s recent article on conspiracy theories and the mercury parent paranoid worldview.

One of the pages on the Autism Speaks site has a button that says, “Email us your thoughts.” It’s a link to an email address: editors@autism speaks.org. Feel free to email them your thoughts. Short clear, respectfully worded thoughts will probably have the greatest effect.

A group of autistic advocates and calling themselves the Autistic Social Action Committee would like you to consider writing to the the Kellogg’s folks. Autism Diva is not a member of the committee, but is placing their request here.

If you would like to tell the Kellogg’s people that you think they’ve made an error in linking themselves to Autism Speaks and it’s openly negative and thinly veiled paranoic view of autism and it’s causes–that could do great harm to many people, autistic or not–you could write to:

Kellogg Co.
One Kellogg Square
PO Box 3599
Battle Creek, MI, 49016-3599

A representative of Kellogg’s has politely answered a question from an autistic advocate regarding the cereal boxes. That representative said that the boxes have already been printed.

Autism Diva found the following name and address that might be useful to those who wish to register disappointment at Kellogg’s association with Bob Wright and his badly misnamed organization as well as its close ties to antivax conspiracy mongers.

Tim Knowlton, Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility
Phone: (269) 961-3799
E-mail:media.hotline@kellogg.com

Please, if you call, email or write to Autism Speaks or Kellogg’s, use your polite “voice” and present your concerns with dignity and show that you are interested in ethical and accurate representations of autistics, young and old.

Stalling For Time, Mainstream Death, Underground Immortality

21 Jul

A few days ago I posted about how bad a time the autism = mercury poisoning via thiomersal/vaccines believers were having of late. There was the Fombonne study which revealed yet more lack of correlation between vaccines and autism, then there was the first legal try-out of the quality of the science and the scientific experts accumulated to demonstrate the relationship between thiomersal and autism which was dismissed due to the terrible quality of both. This was followed by the state of Hawaii refusing to ban thiomersal as there was no scientifically sound reason to do it and just as a nasty kick in the teeth, the latest quarterly reports of autism cases in California reported that there was still no drop in the figures despite the long term removal of thiomersal from mainstream vaccines.

Possibly then its no coincidence that on the 18th July, the Petitioners in the Autism/Vaccine Omnibus court cases filed a request to delay the deadline for submitting their case for general causation. The deadline (which has already been adjusted for petitioners several times before) was the end of 2006. Petitioners now want it extended to June 2007. They say this is to ensure the expert academics don’t have to curtail their teaching duties and also (because its in the summer holidays) allow families to attend.

Well, that’s one opinion. My personal opinion is that the RhoGAM case was a pretty large wake-up call and people suddenly realised that the ‘expert’ witnesses were _far_ from expert and that the body of science was shoddy in the extreme.

The petitioners also make some amusing requests regarding how this case is followed. Firstly, they want the court to allow for all 5000 families to attend in a central location such as Houston or Chicago. Maybe a resident of one of these cities can suggest a legal arena with a 5000 seat capacity?

They also suggest that the whole thing is played out via live web casts for those unable to attend in person. Strikes me that these requests are simply there to provide argument and thus stall for more time. In short, petitioners legal team are actively trying to turn this into a media circus, not a trial.

Most tellingly of all, petitioners want to _limit_ the amount of time each expert can be cross examined for. I wonder why. Well, no, I don’t. If I had Haley or the Geier’s in my corner I’d want to limit the amount of time they can speak too.

I feel sorry for the Special Master here. If he lets them have the extra time then he knows he’s setting a precedent. These petitioners have had ample time to prepare their case. If he refuses the request then he’ll be savaged and no doubt be painted as a Big Pharma Shill.

So is this the rag tag end of the thiomersal hypothesis? Yes and no. In scientific terms there’s still no evidence whatsoever to indicate a causative link between thiomersal/MMR/vaccines and autism. This aspect never really got off the ground at all. When we turn to epidemiology (is there a positive numerical correlation between thiomersal and autism?) then what we hear, as Holmes once famously explained to Watson, is the sound of no dogs barking.

Every quarter for the past two or three years, Rick Rollens has compiled the quarterly data from the CDDS without fail. David Kirby describes it as ‘the gold standard’ of numbers relating to autism. Every quarter, as caseload (as defiend by Rollens) grew it was trumpeted as proof that the thiomersal in vaccines caused an increase in autism…..except for the first time I can remember, Rollens has not compiled these stats this quarter. Kirby has not announced them on the Huffington Post blog. Schafer has not mentioned them in the SAR. No dogs bark this quarter. Why? Because thiomersal use is almost gone in vaccines and yet still the autism numbers rise.

Lenny Schafer recently said:

Myself and other autism activists believe there is enough evidence to support a causative relationship between mercury and autism in a court of law, in front of a jury, where standards of evidence are different than that of the narrow focus of scientific findings. And if you can convince a jury, you can convince the public.

He’s, of course, wrong as the recent RhoGAM hearing indicates. The standard of determination for scientific hypothesis’ is still, and always will be, science. I’ll close this first part of this post with a quote from one of my favourite poets – Yeats.

_Turning and turning in the widening gyre_
_The falcon cannot hear the falconer;_
_Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;_
_Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,_
_The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere_
_The ceremony of innocence is drowned;_
_The best lack all conviction, while the worst_
_Are full of passionate intensity._

*~Second Coming.*

I’ve long been fascinated by conspiracy theories. How they grow, how they operate etc. The autism/vaccine hypothesis has mutated into a conspiracy theory now as it fulfils many – if not all – of the sociological and psychological requirements to be deemed as such.

When conspiracy theories combine logical fallacies with lack of evidence, the result is a world view known as conspiracism. Conspiracism is a world view that sees major historic events and trends as the result of secret conspiracies. Academic interest in conspiracy theories and conspiracism has identified a set of familiar structural features by which membership of the genre may be established, and has presented a range of hypotheses on the basis of studying the genre. Among the leading scholars of conspiracism are: Hofstadter, Popper, Barkun, Goldberg, Pipes, Fenster, Mintz, Sagan, Johnson, and Posner, from whom the following list is synthesized.

Wikipedia.

Let’s work through some of ‘diagnostic criteria’ for conspiracies:

  1. Initiated on the basis of limited, partial or circumstantial evidence; – TRUE Began after FDA asked for review of mercury in ’97..
  2. Addresses an event or process that has broad historical or emotional impact. – TRUE ‘Poisoning’ children is a highly emotive subject. Appeals to emotion are constantly made.
  3. Reduces morally complex social phenomena to simple, immoral actions – TRUE Instead of seeing institutions as error-capable they are painted as evil
  4. Personifies complex social phenomena as powerful individual conspirators; – TRUE Continued belief that those ‘in power’ at the CDC/FDA/AAP ‘know’ whats going on
  5. Allots superhuman talents or resources to conspirators;
  6. Key steps in argument rely on inductive, not deductive reasoning;
  7. Appeals to ‘common sense’ – TRUE Lacking science, the fallback position is common sense.
  8. Exhibits well-established logical and methodological fallacies; – TRUE One word – Geier.
  9. Is produced and circulated by ‘outsiders’, often anonymous, and generally lacking peer review – TRUE Not sure about anonymous outsiders but definitely lacks peer review
  10. Is upheld by persons with demonstrably false conceptions of relevant science; – TRUE Geier, Kirbys, Olmsted, Handley, Bernard, Schafer….etc etc etc
  11. Enjoys zero credibility in expert communities; – TRUE
  12. Rebuttals provided by experts are ignored or accommodated through elaborate new twists in the narrative;
  13. The conspiracy is claimed to involve just about anybody; – TRUE FDA/CDC/me/George Bush/Every doctor on the planet
  14. The conspiracy centers on the “usual suspects”; – TRUE Big organisations. CDC etc.

So we can see that the autism/thiomersal/vaccine hypothesis more than qualifies as a conspiracy theory. The believers also fit the descriptions perfectly. Many autism/vaccines believers also believe in other related conspiracy theories. As an example, Kathleen recently posted another in her ongoing fascinating series of posts on the Geier’s where they were interviewed on radio. The host said:

Why are these things going on? Well, if you’d like to know why they’re going on, you need to get my talk on planned population reduction… And ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say this, but there really are people who want to hurt children… And if you doubt that, you need to get my book, Brotherhood of Darkness… Our government is poisoning us.

There really are people like Judy (sic) Gerberding and others at the CDC, who know exactly what they are doing, and they are evil. I’ve been to the CDC, I’ve met many of these people when I was back there, and of course, not the same people, I’m sure those people have gone on and probably been richly rewarded working for the drug companies or working elsewhere now, very prosperous after doing all the harm… We’re up against organized evil. We’re in a battle for the souls of men, and the survival of Christian civilization.

This is a vocalisation of the ‘human farming’ conspiracy theory. The host believes that:

some of our leaders have dedicated their lives to destroying our nation (US)

<source .

I have also heard conspiracy theories that state that (somehow) the 11/9 WTC attacks are (somehow) part of the autism/vaccine theory and that autism is a ‘disease’ constructed with the sole purpose of selling more pills.

Evidence of Harm also has a new member – John Scudamore of whale.to who’s site is a haven for conspiracy theories such as The Illuminati, Depopulation control, Big Brother, Black Ops. Charmingly, John has an entire section devoted to rubbishing medical charities:

the purpose of cancer research is not to find a cure for cancer but to perpetuate the cancer industry consisting mostly of research and chemotherapy

Another supporter of the theory (and in particular Generation Rescue) is David Icke who once declared himself as the Son of God and who believes that we are controlled by all powerful lizards.

It’s almost a necessity that the thiomersal/autism hypothesis becomes a conspiracy theory – it ensures its life beyond the point when the rest of the world has moved on (and we are very close to that point now) and gives people a reason to explain what they perceive as the bad in their life. Maybe these people are more to be pitied than argued with but their conspiracy theories affect my kids life directly. They still need challenging lest they sink into the same murky excuses for genocide that the recent re-painting of the holocaust as an event that never occurred occurs here too.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →