Archive | 2007

Guest Blogger on CDDS

31 Jan

Manipulating CDDS - guest blogger Dr Nick Riviera

Hi Everybody!

Wow! OK, so here I am again – I’m Dr. Nick Riviera, and I will perform any major operation for just 129.95!

So today I’m supposed to tell you about CDDS data and how, just like VAERS, you can use it to say anything really. And hey – if there’s any Autism Omnibus lawyers reading – You don’t have to make up stories here. Save that for court.

Now there’s this guy called David Kirby who once said that CDDS was the gold standard of autism epidemiology (long word friends – just means numbers) but it seems that now, after the numbers started to disagree with his hypothesis (long word friends – it just means any old thing you want to make up) that they’re suddenly not so important. That makes perfect sense to Dr Nick friends – who wants to be caught right? In fact, Mr Kirby – did you go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College too?

So, I wanna show you some more number examinations from CDDS – see what you think of them friends.

OK, so, the autism epidemic is thought to be demonstrated by the ever-increasing number of entries to the 3 – 5 age group (side note: the sci-guys only had 1.9% of mercury containing vaccines available by Feb 2002 and the 3 – 5 year olds are still increasing….even Dr. Nick can make the obvious conclusion from _that_ fact friends).

Those people who think that there _isn’t_ an epidemic say that the increase is just due to diagnosis catching up to the actual rate.

Those who say there _is_ an epidemic (man this is tiring) say, if that’s true where are all the older autistics? Some say there can’t be any autistic people over 75 as Eli Lilly invented autism in 1931.

Dr. Nick presents his first graph – ta da (click for bigger version)!

CDDS numbers for 62 - 99 year olds

This is 62 – 99 year old autistic people in CDDS from 1992 – 2005. First thing that seems pretty clear, even to Dr Nick, is that having a reporting category that goes up to 99 years old takes care of the claim that autism was invented by Eli Lilly in 1931.

But _man_ look at that graph – look at that rate climb! Just for your information friends, what you’re looking at there in the 62 – 99 category is a 16 times increase. Woah.

OK! Next graph friends – (click for bigger again, you get the drill right?)

CDDS numbers for 52 - 61 year olds

So this one shows 52 – 61 year olds in CDDS. Another pretty impressive climb there friends! This one shows a 15 times increase. Phew!

So what about the 3 – 5 year old category? They key category? Well this is where Dr Nick gets a bit confused friends. Here’s the graphs (clicky!!)

CDDS numbers for 03 - 05 year olds

So this one shows a climb too but – I dunno – what about the rate of increase? Well, unlike the 62 – 99 year olds which showed a 16 times increase (the biggest of all categories) and unlike the 52 – 61 year olds which showed a 15 times increase, the 3 – 5 year olds showed a 12 times increase.

So from what Dr Nick can _tell_ – it would seem that the age category that’s made the biggest gains since 1992 would be the 62 – 99 year old group.

Damn, Dr Nick just had a delivery of sun cream to put into medicinal looking bottles as well.

An Echo of Evil

29 Jan

Its one of the cliché’s of the web – invoking the shadow of the Nazi’s and many times it is overused and trite.

Not this time though. This is chilling stuff courtesy of Christschool, maker of some truly great videos.

David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part III

24 Jan

“It’s understood that Hollywood sells Californication”
~ Red Hot Chilli Peppers

In this section I want to look at Kirby’s presentation regarding what he terms as the first of seven skeptical rebuttals to the autism/thiomersal hypothesis. He says that skeptics say:

Hmm. Not really. I think most people are agreed that autism is a ‘mix’ of genes and environment. However, this is a popular and recurring strawman from the anti-thiomersal hypothesisers – that thiomersal and environment are interchangeable. They’re not. Maybe ice cream is the environmental trigger for autism. What science _is_ pretty sure about however, is that thiomersal (i.e. one _possible_ environmental ‘trigger’) is _not_ in the frame. So straight away we can see the Kirby is proceeding from a misleading position. If his argument is so strong, why does he feel the need to do this I wonder?

However, the point Kirby is (misleadingly) making is to try and push the idea of there having been an epidemic. Lets see how he does this.

(A lot of the next section has been amply covered by Mike – I won’t repeat his work)

NB: The years Kirby refers to here are between 1988 – 1992.

Guess what else happened around that time?

In 1987, one year before the time period Kirby is talking about, the DSM (III-R) was published. This was a revision to the previously published (1980) DSM (III). Here’s what the DSM (III) criteria was for what it called ‘Diagnostic criteria for Infantile Autism’- this is in full by the way:

A. Onset before 30 months of age

B. Pervasive lack of responsiveness to other people (autism)

C. Gross deficits in language development

D. If speech is present, peculiar speech patterns such as immediate and delayed echolalia, metaphorical language, pronominal reversal.

E. Bizarre responses to various aspects of the environment, e.g., resistance to change, peculiar interest in or attachments to animate or inanimate objects.

F. Absence of delusions, hallucinations, loosening of associations, and incoherence as in Schizophrenia.

So that is the sole and only reference for autism in 1980. Next up, this is the 1987 revision – DSM (III-R):

Diagnostic Criteria for Autistic Disorder

At least eight of the following sixteen items are present, these to include at least two items from A, one from B, and one from C.

A. Qualitative impairment in reciprocal social interaction (the examples within parentheses are arranged so that those first listed are more likely to apply to younger or more disabled, and the later ones, to older or less disabled) as manifested by the following:

1.Marked lack of awareness of the existence or feelings of others (for example, treats a person as if that person were a piece of furniture; does not notice another person’s distress; apparently has no concept of the need of others for privacy);

2. No or abnormal seeking of comfort at times of distress (for example, does not come for comfort even when ill, hurt, or tired; seeks comfort in a stereotyped way, for example, says “cheese, cheese, cheese” whenever hurt);

3. No or impaired imitation (for example, does not wave bye-bye; does not copy parent’s domestic activities; mechanical imitation of others’ actions out of context);

4. No or abnormal social play (for example, does not actively participate in simple games; refers solitary play activities; involves other children in play only as mechanical aids); and

5. Gross impairment in ability to make peer friendships (for example, no interest in making peer friendships despite interest in making fiends, demonstrates lack of understanding of conventions of social interaction, for example, reads phone book to uninterested peer.

B. Qualitative impairment in verbal and nonverbal communication and in imaginative activity, (the numbered items are arranged so that those first listed are more likely to apply to younger or more disabled, and the later ones, to older or less disabled) as manifested by the following:

1. No mode of communication, such as: communicative babbling, facial expression, gesture, mime, or spoken language;

2. Markedly abnormal nonverbal communication, as in the use of eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, or gestures to initiate or modulate social interaction (for example, does not anticipate being held, stiffens when held, does not look at the person or smile when making a social approach, does not greet parents or visitors, has a fixed stare in social situations);

3. Absence of imaginative activity, such as play-acting of adult roles, fantasy character or animals; lack of interest in stories about imaginary events;

4. Marked abnormalities in the production of speech, including volume, pitch, stress, rate, rhythm, and intonation (for example, monotonous tone, question-like melody, or high pitch);

5. Marked abnormalities in the form or content of speech, including stereotyped and repetitive use of speech (for example, immediate echolalia or mechanical repetition of a television commercial); use of “you” when “I” is meant (for example, using “You want cookie?” to mean “I want a cookie”); idiosyncratic use of words or phrases (for example, “Go on green riding” to mean “I want to go on the swing”); or frequent irrelevant remarks (for example, starts talking about train schedules during a conversation about ports); and

6. Marked impairment in the ability to initiate or sustain a conversation with others, despite adequate speech (for example, indulging in lengthy monologues on one subject regardless of interjections from others);

C. Markedly restricted repertoire of activities and interests as manifested by the following:

1. Stereotyped body movements (for example, hand flicking or twisting, spinning, head-banging, complex whole-body movements);

2. Persistent preoccupation with parts of objects (for example, sniffing or smelling objects, repetitive feeling of texture of materials, spinning wheels of toy cars) or attachment to unusual objects (for example, insists on carrying around a piece of string);

3. Marked distress over changes in trivial aspects of environment (for example, when a vase is moved from usual position);

4. Unreasonable insistence on following routines in precise detail (for example, insisting that exactly the same route always be followed when shopping);

5. Markedly restricted range of interests and a preoccupation with one narrow interest, e.g., interested only in lining up objects, in amassing facts about meteorology, or in pretending to be a fantasy character.

D. Onset during infancy or early childhood

Specify if childhood onset (after 36 months of age)

Slight difference huh? Of key importance – in 1980 we only had ‘infantile autism’. In 1987, we had ‘autistic disorder’.

The DSM (III-R) is a quantum leap in diagnostic precision (far from perfect of course and as we all know the DSM (IV) came along in 1994 and the DSM (IV-R) came along in 2000) but surely it is blindingly obvious what a massively more accurate and precise set of criteria must mean – better recognition. More diagnosis.

Now Kirby says that this increase ties in to the ‘spike in mercury in vaccines’ over the same time period. Could be. But lets _also_ not forget that – as Kirby says in this debate – you need clinical science to support a clinical idea such as thiomersal causing autism.

Nine years now and there is _not one_ paper that even suggests that the symptoms of autism can be attributed to thiomersal (or MMR, or both together come to that). Nine years. In terms of science this hypothesis has four papers that might be considered of publishable quality. One shows that if you take a strain of mice known for aggressiveness and severely overdose them with thiomersal then they get more aggressive. Another shows that if you take a control group high in mercury levels and compare them with new born babies then the babies will look like poor excretors of mercury. The third shows that ethyl mercury and methyl mercury cannot be used to represent each other. The last one shows that thimerosal might cause methionine synthase dysfunction (MSD) – a condition that bears no resemblance to autism.

So here we are with the thiomersal hypothesis resting squarely and solely on epidemiology. Once upon a time, Kirby said CDDS epidemiology was ‘the gold standard’ – now he says its not enough. However, make no mistake. Epidemiology is all this hypothesis has.

So what is the state of this epidemiology? Is it of good quality? Well, no. As Mike has shown (see link above) Kirby’s presentation numbers are awful. As I have shown, his opinion of CDDS fluctuates depending on whether the numbers work for him or not and as Jospeh has shown, his new source is equally as badly reported on as his initial take on CDDS was.

Another example of the epidemiology not only not working for Kirby but being actively manipulated is this:

Have a close look at that graph. Remember in the previous slide Kirby said that the biggest increase in thiomersal was between 1988 and 1992. Take a close look at the dates in _this_ slide. They start in 1993. That’s pretty misleading Mr Kirby. Tut-tut-tut.

Also in this slide I want you to notice that according to this data that Kirby is using, the numbers are continuing to climb in 2001, 2002 and 2003. However, we know from a recently discovered CDC set of meeting minutes that according to a survey, in September 2001, only 5.6%1 of _all vaccines_ contained thiomersal. By Feb 2002, only 1.9% of _all vaccines_ contained thiomersal.

So apparently, Mr Kirby is happy to use data from two sources that shows an increasing amount of autism. CDDS and IDEA data. Both show climbing autism against a backdrop of miniscule amounts of mercury in the general population.

Danger, Will Robinson. Does not compute.

(More Californication to come soon….stay tuned…)

David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part II

22 Jan

Once upon a time, there was a man called David Kirby and he came to believe in a certain hypothesis so much that he wrote a book called ‘Evidence of Harm: _MERCURY IN VACCINES AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY_’ and this man wrote lots of blog posts that he never discussed on his blog and eventually he also agreed to a debate and this debate was called ‘Vaccines and Autism, Is There A Connection’.

The man made an opening statement which outlined his beliefs and these were….

Woah there…._’both in vaccines and in the environment’_ ? Where did that come from? How did this man who wrote a book who’s strapline talks solely about vaccines and who is participating in a debate who’s title refers solely about vaccines suddenly think it was OK to start talking about ‘the environment’.

Now, don’t get me wrong – he may be right, he may be wrong. That is not the point. The book and the debate are about the _vaccine_ hypothesis. Didn’t this debate have moderators?

Woah!!!! What the hell…? The first part of that little soliloquy is fine, but then….ah, lets look at it written down:

_”I’m not here to say thimerosal causes autism, I’m not here to say thimerosal is the only cause of autism. We don’t know what causes autism. But there’s evidence to suggest that **mercury** is one of the culprits in at least one of the cases…**and that’s what we’ll be looking at today.**”_

So David Kirby, all by himself, has abandoned the agenda and decided to stop talking about vaccines in particular and start talking about mercury in general. Did anyone stop him? Didn’t this debate have moderators?

This is getting ridiculous. Why are ‘we’ talking about four different types of mercury. This debate is about _vaccines_ (or that’s what I once thought – that’s what the PDF advertising said – it did, didn’t it? I didn’t hallucinate it did I?) and that means just _one_ type of mercury. Thiomersal. Thimerosal. Ethyl. That’s it. One. Not four. Hello?

Well, kudos for saying it publicly Mr Kirby. In future parts of my look at this debate I’ll be seeing why it doesn’t matter……oh wait….wait, here we go:

Now lets make sure we understand this. In July of 2005, Kirby wrote a Huffington Post entry that talked of these same California numbers in rather different terms:

The Golden State, however, is said to operate the gold standard of autism epidemiology, having always tracked “full-blown” autism only, as defined by the DSM-IV manual. In other words, children with milder forms of the disorder, such as PDD and Apserger Syndrome, need not apply for services. This means that nearly two decades of rising cases in California cannot be attributed to wider diagnostic criteria. The autism epidemic is real.

Hmm. So in 2005, California epidemiology (the gold standard according to Kirby) is good enough to declare ‘the epidemic real’ but in 2007, its not enough to disprove the epidemic when the numbers don’t go your way.

So why is the drop in numbers such a potential bombshell? Because children entering the system today were born in 2001 and 2002, soon after the mercury-based preservative thimerosal began to be phased out of pediatric vaccines in the United States. In California, fewer children with full-blown autism entered the system in 2003 than in 2002……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.

Hmm. So in 2005, if the numbers ‘continue to drop’ then ‘the implication of thimerosal will be practically undeniable’, but in 2007 when its quite clear the numbers are not dropping and never actually did then the reverse implication – that thiomersal is _not_ implicated in autism -cannot be true.

Weird. Some people might call that hypocrisy.

The next section of the debate has been expertly blogged by Mike. Go have a read. You should also read Joseph’s demolition of David Kirby’s latest epidemiology and Dad of Cameron’s look at Kirby’s grasp of science.

Kevin Barry and dumbing down science

20 Jan

Kevin Barry’s Ethics

Kevin Barry used to be deputy (or something) to Brad Handley’s Sherriff at Generation Rescue. He announced to the EoH Yahoo Group on 21st Nov 2006 that:

As of December 1st, I begin work as a consultant to Autism Speaks. In order to avoid any conflict of interest, I am resigning as President of Generation Rescue.

What a decent guy – wanting to avoid any conflict of interest.

End of story? Of course not. Never is with these goons.

Yesterday, it was noted that one Heidi Roger had made a post to the EoH group exhorting members to flood the Autism Speaks website who had asked for opinions on ‘Unstrange Minds‘ (which you may recall is skeptical regarding a vaccine initiated epidemic).

Except, Heidi had forgotten to strip out the message she had got from the person who had sent her this news. Good old conflict-of-interest avoider, Kevin Barry:

Hi Heidi, Confidential. I am not allowed to comment on the Boards. Would you post this to the EOH board as if you can upon it yourself? It is a page where people can comment on the epidemic “debate”. It would not hurt if Autism Speaks heard more feedback from EOH parents. Thanks, Kevin

Oops (screenshot attached).

So, here we have the moral and ethical finery of Generation Rescue and militia members on show. It seems that Barry is keen only not to get caught. I hope he gets fired. He should be.

Dumbing Down Science

Some fascinating legal developments in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings (OAP). Firstly a quick recap:

A bunch of people decided thiomersal caused their kids autism and decided to sue various people. By doing this, they stepped out of the opportunity to go down the Vaccine Program route which would allow them to contest their beliefs in a very much less stringent legal environment. However, the vaccine makers would suffer no liability and the plaintiffs would gain only a set amount (I think US$100,000) should they win their case.

They eschewed this process and decided they wanted to go down the full, legal shenanigans route. I’ve read invective from various blowhards who talk about taking the vaccine makers to account publicly and making sure that they are vindicated in a proper court of law (and of course the unspoken promise of megabucks).

OK, so fast forward a couple of years and we come to the RhoGAM/autism/thiomersal case in which the vaccine causation hypothesis was utterly demolished under the (totally appropriate) legal principle of Daubert. The take home quote from that case was:

This Court must find more than the “hypothesis and speculation,” engaged in [by Dr. Geier] in this instance….

The science was so bad, the case never even made it to trial. It was dismissed as a total waste of time.

Now you can bet the legal team for the OAP petitioners (numbering some 4,700 claims by now) were watching this closely and on Jan 9th this year, a new document was submitted which detailed how the Petitioners thought the trial should be conducted.

First of all, they want to use a ‘test case’ i.e. a handpicked petitioner from the 4,700 who would:

…serve as a representative case for a significant number of children who claim that a combination of thimerosal exposure and the MMR vaccine caused injury.

and then followed by cases solely addressing thiomersal and cases solely addressing MMR.

Okaaay. Also in this document was a reminder in this document that:

they needed ‘more time for the science to crystallize.’

Heh – you can say that again. Has the ‘crystallisation’ occurred? Maybe the overall intent of this document will tell us.

On page six of the document I have linked to above, the petitioners start to argue that the same legal rules that govern the Vaccine Program (described above) should be used to ‘judge’ the OAP proceedings. They repeat the arguments that led to the setting up of the Vaccine Program originally touching on how vaccines were a national health priority and that supply should not be endangered. The purpose of this legislation therefore was to try and limit the number of civil cases against vaccine manufacturers so that the health of the nations children was never compromised (see pages 6 – 7) .

In order to do this, it was accepted that the burden of proof would be substantially less. It was also noted that from time to time, people who’s kids weren’t actually damaged by vaccines would be awarded compensation. As the petitioners define the statute it reads:

As enacted the vaccinate act has a unique evidentiary standard, a unique standard, one that facilitates resolution of cases in the Vaccine Program and discourages the diversion of cases to the civil arena. It does not require a petitioner to prove his or her case with scientific certainty. It does not require ‘truth’. It does not require a petitioner to show ’cause in fact’

So why is all this lead up to the vaccine program necessary? Because the petitioners – who eschewed their option to go down the vaccine program option if you recall – now want their cases to be tried under these same ‘relaxed’ standards. They want their _civil legal cases_ to be tried under conditions that do not require the truth.

Wow. Just wow. The bare faced, cowardly effrontery of it defies belief.

Let us recall that at the start of these proceedings, plaintiffs stated they required time for their science to crystallize. Now they want to their omnibus case to be tried under a standard that doesn’t require scientific certainty or indeed, truth. That tells its own story about how good the state of the ‘science’ is underpinning the OAP case.

But what really galls me is that here are these people who had their opportunity to go down the route of the vaccine program and follow the same set of rules as described above and refused. They wanted to make a big song and dance about it and parade their science. Now that its apparent that their science is crap, they want their cases to be tried under the same legalities as the vaccine program cases are. Talk about wanting your cake and eating it.

If it was up to me, I’d tell them to go away and accept the consequences of their actions.

UPDATE: Please scroll down and read Anne’s comments on the _actual_ status of the OAP. It seems a whole lot of people who are part of the Omnibus are badly mistaken as to the nature of it and I’ve duplicated their misunderstanding.

David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part I

15 Jan

ACIP Meeting Minutes, Feb 2002

It’ll be Part I because after the debate video is released I’m sure there will be more to come. This post will concentrate on the pre-debate interview involving both people on Fox and the words of several audience members.

OK, so, first lets look at the joint interview on Fox.

When asked what the issue was with vaccines Kirby replied that it was because up until _”very recently”_ , _”most”_ vaccines contained thimerosal. This is incorrect. Unless your definition of ‘very recently’ is five years ago and your definition of ‘most’ is between 2 and 5 % then its incorrect. Note that I am choosing to believe Kirby is simply incorrect and a sloppy researcher rather than a good researcher who knew about a document we’ll discuss shortly and elected to suppress his knowledge of it.

Kirby’s next error is when he makes reference to the ‘epidemic’ – he says in the the 90’s we start to see the number of autism cases really start to climb and that it ‘almost tracks exactly’ with the addition of thiomersal containing vaccines. This isn’t an error. Kirby knows this isn’t the case. He knows the ‘science’ that argues this hypothesis is poor, published in non peer reviewed, bad quality journals by people who utilised poor data sources.

However, this sentence also damns Kirby to sticking with those sources. If he wants to quote them to back up his points then he needs to realise you can’t simply abandon them when they don’t – and one of those sources is CDDS, and CDDS has very recently contradicted Kirby.

Kirby then proceeds from one error to another. He states that the symptoms of mercury poisoning are very similar to the symptoms of autism. They aren’t.

At what point do these errors that are stacking up become outright lies and dishonesty? I’m not sure but its a pretty fine line.

About a minute and 40 seconds into the interview, Kirby debuts his new adjusted hypothesis. He mentions all the ‘environmental mercury’ and makes special mention of California in order to challenge the CDDS stats I would assume.

Now excuse me if I’m wrong but isn’t the strapline to Kirby’s book _”MERCURY IN VACCINES AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY”_?

It is. So what’s with the sudden interest in ‘environmental mercury’. This interview was booked regarding the upcoming debate with Arthur Allen about the _vaccine_ hypothesis – the hypothesis Kirby made the central subject and content of the book. In this context I’m utterly uninterested in this new, competing theory. Stick to the subject would be my message and stop building convenient strawmen. More about this later too.

About three and a half minutes into the interview Arthur Allen gives Kirby a bit of a shock. He mentions the 2% figure I mentioned at the top of this post.

Let’s make sure we know what we’re talking about here. To do that we’ll skip forward to some remarks made by an EoH Yahoo Group member who attended the debate. These are her words about what Kirby had said.

We do not know when 25 mcg infant vaccines really made it off the shelves. When the CDC says the supply was down to 2% in 2003 (I think that was the stat) it was not official. They called vaccine providers and asked what was in the fridge — not a definitive answer.

First off I urge caution – the video’s not been made available yet so this person could be in error but lets assume for now its not.

This proclamation by Kirby is wrong on many levels.

We _do_ know when the vaccines made it off the shelves, the supply was down to 1.9% in 2002, they did _not_ ‘call vaccine providers and ask them what was in the fridge’. Here’s what actually happened (you can download the document at the top of this post to see for yourself if you want to).

In Feb 2002, a meeting was held by the CDC to discuss many aspects of vaccine policy and supply, one of which was the thiomersal issue. Here are the main points (see page 51 of the document):

1) The thiomersal update was made regarding paediatric vaccines. Babies and kids.
2) There was a _survey_ conducted from Sept 2001 to Feb 2002
3) The survey was performed using site visits from public health officials
4) In September 2001, 225 sites were canvassed, and 447 by February 2002.
5) The decline in thimerosal-containing vaccine went from 5.6 percent to 1.9%, from 33,500 doses out of 63,600; to 2,796 doses out of 149,147
6) Of the 447 interviews, 83.5 percent reported no thimerosal-containing vaccines in stock at any time since October 2001.

Make no mistake, this is a bombshell to the thimerosal hypothesis. When examined in context with the CDDS data which shows _no decline in autism_ this is the smoking gun that kills the thiomersal hypothesis stone dead.

To make it crystal clear – by 2002 thiomersal containing vaccines made up 1.9% of supply. Autism numbers are still rising. Reconcile if you can.

Anyway, back to David Kirby. Not a stupid man, he can see the writing on the wall. So what does he do? He makes up something else to ‘plug the gap’. Now its not ‘mercury in vaccines – a medical controversy’ now the writing is on the wall something else is needed. back to our EoH attendee:

Calif has had horrendous forest fires over the last 5 years (much more so than the previous 20), and pregnant women are breathing the fumes. Forrest fires release a lot more mercury than even coal fired power plants.

The horrific coal generated mercury pollution from China (as we have been reading) is getting worse and the mercury by-product is brought into CA (particularly So Cal) from the jet stream. These coal fired power plants have expontially increased since 2000.

Aha – here we have it. The prelude to Kirby’s second book methinks – he’s going to go all Al Gore on us and expound on the evils of environmental pollution.

Let’s be clear here: this is a de facto admission that the vaccine hypothesis is dead in a ditch. the minute that he reneged on his ‘severe blow’ of 2007 and the minute he went against the strapline of his own book he became openly hypocritical and wrong.

_You cannot have a thiomersal supported ‘epidemic’ when there is no thiomersal and increasing autism_.

I’m not suggesting that mercury has not increased with forest fires and (maybe) from China but to attribute these things as autism causation? Please. First off, the CDDS numbers are collected from regional centres. The data from each varies wildly – if Chinese mercury is an issue why are these numbers so disparate?

Are we also expected to believe that as thiomersal tailed off, the mercury from forest fires and China neatly and exactly dovetailed on in ever increasing amounts year on year until it carried on producing such a flat line increase? Were there no forest fires during the 90’s? Did China not spew mercury in the 90’s?

But all this is way besides the point of the debate – did the debate moderators call Kirby on this? None of this has anything at all to do with vaccines or thimerosal.

I’ll say it again: _You cannot have a thiomersal supported ‘epidemic’ when there is no thiomersal and increasing autism_.

I look forward to the release of the undoctered video.

Guest blogger on VAERS, gastric issues and autism

13 Jan

Manipulating VAERS - guest blogger Dr Nick Riviera

Hi Everybody!

OK, now I wanna talk to you about how good VAERS is for showing stuff. Now I know there are some so called ‘Doctors’ who _didn’t_ get their qualifications via mailorder (yeah, right! As if that were even possible) who think VAERS ain’t so good:

…the VAERS database is designed only as an early warning system for reporting adverse events thought to be due to vaccines. It is not designed to track the incidence or prevalence of vaccine complications.

…the database has been corrupted by litigation, with a dramatic increase of entries linked to litigation claiming that thimerosal caused the plaintiff’s child’s autism.

Hey! So what right? As I once said to a patient of mine: _”Now by the morning you’ll be good as new. Or dead. The important thing is, we’ll know.”_

So, these two guys once showed how VAERS can be made to say whatever you want and as part of my duty as a doctor I want you to know how you can do it too! Hey, maybe I should charge for this – I once gave a guy a triple bypass and let me tell you, the most rewarding part was when he gave me my money.

So, some people say that the MMR vaccine gave their kids measles in their tummies (sorry for the medical jargon friends!) and that it makes them poop or get bunged up (more medical jargon friends – sorry! I have to use it though. Medicine is nasty. A friend gave me a copy of Gray’s Anatomy…that’s how we look like inside? It’s disgusting! Whoa! It had a picture of a lady who’d swallowed a baby!).

Now these same people gave some Doctors lots of money to try and prove a link between vaccines and autism and they used VAERS like a couple of diva’s!

So here’s my take on using VAERS and how you can use it yourself to prove anything you want! Really! But remember, if something should go wrong, let’s not get the law involved.

If you go to this page on the intrawebnet you can get all the numbers you need to get what we doctors like to call ‘numbers’. These ‘numbers’ are like who did what and told VAERS about it.

Anyway, I got this guy to download them for me and I asked him to import them into MS Access so I could analyse the numbers – just like this dad and his little boy did – anyway, after he finished laughing, he explained to me that using MS Access to analyse data is like trying to paint the Forth Road Bridge with a toothbrush so he did this computery thing he called ‘merging the tables’ and then imported them into what he called ‘an _actual_ relational database – MySQL.

I gotta be honest friends, I don’t know what the hell he was talking about but he told me he’d handwritten _’all the Queries in the command line interface’_ so – cool. I guess. Whatever.

Anyway – here’s my first graph for you. Using VAERS data we can show that out of a total (up to Nov 2006) of 202,011 submissions to VAERS, 1003 mentioned the word ‘autism’ as a symptom.

Out of our sub-group (I’ll go easy on the medical terminology friends, Dr Nick promises!) of 1003 identified as reporting autism as a symptom, a total of 84 used the word ‘Diarrhea’ as a symptom and a total of 5 used the word ‘constipation’. Have a look at the graph I drew (OK, OK, did in Excel):

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers Now that means that, just like my good friends the Geier’s, I have _used VAERS to prove something _ – that 92% of people who have autism have no gastric issues at all! Now, where’s my money?

What? More? Oh OK – Dr. Nick loves you all!

We could also _prove_ that 53% (486 vs 428) of people reporting autism didn’t have the MMR jab. I guess that means nearly half of people who think MMR caused their kids autism are full of pooh-pooh (its a family show kids).

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers

And if we delve even deeper we could _prove_ that 89% of people who are autistic and who have had an MMR jab have no gastric issues at all – look at this doozy of a graph!

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers

How cools is _that_?

The computery guy wanted me to tell you that ‘%gastro%’ is like a wildcard search where the percent signs could be anything before or after the phrase ‘gastro’. Whatever, right?

Dr Nick Riviera

Just remember these things next time someone tells you VAERS is a good source of data. Its _so_ not, but in the right hands, it can make you a pot of money friends! And remember….you need help? Call 1-600-DOCTORB! The “B” is for BARGAIN!”

Bye Everybody!

Stat-tastic!

12 Jan

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…..total cases among 3-5 year olds, not changes in the rate of increase is the right measure.

David Kirby, Nov 2005.

Time’s up Mr Kirby. The last quarter numbers for 2006 are now in.

Jonathon even took the trouble to highlight on his graph where the Geier’s made asses of themselves declaring an early decrease in their 2006 paper. As can be seen from Jon’s graph (and even more clearly on Dad of Cameron’s) – _the numbers are still going up_.

A severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis has been dealt.

Jospeph tells us what to expect in the coming months in the way of excuses from Kirby. Something I also discussed in April 2006. In short, the militia will argue that there’s still TCV’s sitting around waiting to be used up (rubbish, but even if true, would be a very, very minimal amount, click the link to my previous post to see Sallie Bernard of SafeMinds struggling to locate TCV’s in June 2001), they will also argue that the flu shot supports the ‘epidemic’ (again, rubbish. Are we really comparing mandatory TCV administration culminating in 187 ug Hg with optional flu vaccines, administered in one season of the year, culminating in 25 ug Hg?). They will also argue that RhoGAM was a contributing factor (but as we all kow, that one’s got no legs.). They may also try and argue that some other vaccine/environmental ‘thing’ comes into play. This takes us right back to square one and is a virtual admission that thiomersal doesn’t do a goddamn thing except act as a preservative.

In fact, that process is already under way from the Big Cheese himself. In a post on Jan 9th 2007 to his munchkins on the EoH yahoo group, Kirby said:

I believe this puzzle will be solved by looking at TOTAL “environmental” toxic burden from ALL sources, including other chemicals, and, of course, thimerosal in vaccines,

Oh, of _course_ ;o)

This prompted a bit of controversy: H Coleman replied:

Please stop it- you’re all giving me a headache.

And Robert Krakow replied:

I disagree somewhat with the emphasis of your message. I don’t know anyone who focuses on the vaccine issue who believes that other environmental exposure is unimportant. To suggest so underestimates the intelligence of most of the members of this list.

‘Most’ obviously not including John Best, Rescue Angel, who said on that same group:

I view any talk of mercury in the air as a problem as utter nonsense. It’s just propaganda to deflect blame from pharma and I don’t buy one word of it.

See Robert? There’s more than a few idiots who need things spelled out to them on EoH.

Anyway, the impact of Kirby’s statement has not been lost amongst the rank and file militia members. They know he’s trying to move on. Memo to Mr Kirby: it would be quicker and more painless to just fess up: _A severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis has been dealt._

Two items of interest for US folks

8 Jan

There will be a debate titled “Vaccines and Autism: Is There a Connection?” between David Kirby and Arthur Allen. The debate will take place in San Diego, California (UC San Diego Price Center, 9500 Gilman Dr. La Jolla CA 92093) on Saturday, January 13, at 10am:

Admission is free, provided you register with TACA before January 10. (Be prepared to give out a mailing address). Or you can pay $10 on-site.

Sponsors include Generation Rescue, SafeMinds, TACA and the Autism Research Institute so as you can imagine, the quackery quotient will be high – anyone who favours a bit of reality and is in San Diego should go and give Mr Allen some support as I think he’s going to need it – the audience sounds like it will be partisan to say the least. Apparently some mercury mum or other has suggested wearing t-shirts with pictures of their autistic kids on them. Sounds like it’ll be conducted on a sound scientific footing.

The other thing regards the NIH which, not being ‘merican I’m not up to speed with so I’ll quote Diva:

Would you like to have a voice in how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) spends it’s autism research dollars? The NIMH may be getting a windfall of cash for autism research by way of the “Combatting Autism Act.” Whether or not they get that windfall, money will continue to be spent on autism research. Whether that research will benefit humanity to a greater or lesser degree depends on how the money is spent.

Many people shudder at the thought of science driving a big eugenics campaign where every last unfavored gene is scrubbed from the gene pool by culling or sterilizing the genetically defective, though it should be noted that not all studies of genetics are aimed at eugenics. If prenatal testing for autism sounds bad to you, for instance, or if another kind of research bothers you, what kinds of sensible research can be done with all that money? And how can you have a say in how the money is spent?

Go read this petition that will be sent to the NIH/NIMH, and if you agree with it, sign it. Signatures are needed before January 16th, it would probably be better to sign it by the Friday the 12th as that would give someone a chance to send the petition to the NIMH properly by the Tuesday the 16th. A few hundred or a thousand signatures would be really great.

Spread the word as quickly as possible :o)

Andrew Wakefield backs down

4 Jan

A quick catch-up: After Andrew Wakefield did his MMR thing, journalist Brian Deer published a report in the Times that highlighted Wakefield’s dodgy involvement in the whole scandal.

When 13 doctors from London’s Royal Free hospital, including Andrew Wakefield, announced the research in the Lancet at a heavily-promoted press conference in February 1998, it triggered a slump in immunizations and a rise in outbreaks of infectious diseases. But the key finding was a sham: laundering anonymized allegations against MMR by claimants in a multibillion lawsuit against the vaccine’s makers – which Wakefield, behind the scenes, was backing

Brian uncovered a shocking amount of misconduct from Wakefield, so much so that Channel 4 television’s ‘Dispatches’ investigative program launched a special that showed that amongst other things, Wakefield had applied for a rival patent to MMR.

Please visit his site for all the truly shocking shenanigans.

Wakefield’s response was to launch libel suits against Brian Deer, Channel 4 and The Times during which time he was steadfast, as his wife describes:

‘Whatever his enemies may hope, he’s not going away,’ she vows.

In November 2005, it became apparent that Wakefield was beginning to ‘go away’. He had applied for a stay of one action (a pause in proceedings) and, as I blogged at the time, was trying to use this stay as a cudgel to beat down people reporting on the Times/Channel4/Deer investigation – this was sent to the Cambridge Evening News by Wakefield’s legal team:

You should be aware that proceedings in defamation have already been commenced against The Sunday Times in respect of the article published by Mr Brian Deer on 22nd February 2004. Your article has gone even further than the allegation in The Sunday Times which are currently being litigated and allege impropriety on the part of Mr Wakefield to receive money from lawyers to achieve a predetermined outcome…

However, the actual story was that Wakefield had also applied for a stay in these proceedings too. Justice Eady who was presiding over the decision to stay proceeding said this of the attempt to browbeat the Cambridge Evening News:

In my view that paragraph was misleading. Mr Browne (Wakefield’s QC) argues that, even if the circumstances had been set out more fully and accurately, it would have made no difference to the outcome. The editor would still have acknowledged that he had got his facts wrong. That may be, but the important point at the moment is that the editor was given a misleading impression. Because of the stay, to which I have referred, the allegations in The Sunday Times were certainly not “currently being litigated”. They were stayed pending the outcome of serious allegations of professional misconduct against the Claimant, to which no reference was made. It thus appears that the Claimant wishes to use the existence of the libel proceedings for public relations purposes, and to deter other critics, while at the same time isolating himself from the “downside” of such litigation, in having to answer a substantial defence of justification.

Justice Eady declined Wakefields request to stay further proceedings:

I have come to the conclusion, bearing all these considerations in mind, that the interests of the administration of justice require that the Channel 4 proceedings should not be stayed pending the outcome of the GMC proceedings. I appreciate that there will be an increased workload for the Claimant’s advisers, but I do not have any reason to suppose that the firm is incapable of absorbing that extra burden. It is, after all, their client who chose to issue these proceedings and to use them, as I have described above, as a weapon in his attempts to close down discussion and debate over an important public issue

Quite.

Of course, the poor old Cambridge Evening News, being a small local newspaper had already issued a retraction. Brave Mr Wakefield read the retraction out to wild applause at the 2005 Power of Truth rally.

However, its not been the best start to 2007 for Andrew Wakefield. On 31st December 2006, Brian published an article in the Times that demonstrated that Andrew Wakefield had been paid approaching half a million pounds to conduct his MMR investigation for lawyers. This runs contrary to the bottomless claim by Wakefield’s apologists who told the BBC he hadn’t.

And now it seems like its going to be an ‘annus horribilis‘ for Wakefield – the man who once claimed that there would be an established proven link between MMR and autism in 2002 – as Brian has now received news that, contrary to the claims of his wife, Wakefield has indeed, ‘run away’.

Following Brian Deer’s Dispatches investigation of November 2004, reporting facts about Andrew Wakefield and his campaign against the MMR vaccine, which a judge described as “of considerable public interest and concern” that “went to the heart” of the British former surgeon’s “honesty and professional integrity”, Wakefield initiated libel proceedings. Two years later, after the disclosure of a mass of documents, including medical records, he dropped his claim, and agreed to pay the defendants’ costs

Amazing how a sudden disclosure of documents can prompt such a turn around isn’t it? I wonder what his supporters will find as an excuse for this hasty change of mind?

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