Archive | 2007

The Wakefield Legacy

18 Jul

A report in the online Times about the appalling practices of Andrew Wakefield, revealed what will be his true legacy. Sickness, hospitalisation and (God forbid) death.

We know now after the Cedillo hearings that not only was Andrew Wakefield using a contaminated lab that couldn’t possibly have located measles virus but that at the time he was writing his Lancet paper he knew that what he was saying was false. He knew his positive results were actually not positive at all. And still he went ahead.

There is yet another measles outbreak in London at the moment:

City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust says that there have been 32 cases in Hackney since May and 13 in the past week. Most of the cases were among the Orthodox Jewish community.

Let us all hope that none of these people come to any serious harm. And whilst we hope we should be horrified by the unmissable implications of measles data from England and Wales:

Of 133 cases in England and Wales last month, only six were in people who had been vaccinated.

That is about the clearest signal I can imagine that what not vaccinating leads to is illness. Over 95% of the measles cases in England and Wales last month are happening to non-vaccinated people. This is very, very worrying.

This is the real legacy of Andrew Wakefield’s antivax stance. Looking at a possibility never hurt anyone. Researching a hypothesis never hurt anyone. Refusing to see the inevitable when study after study fails to establish a link is hurting people.

The bottom line is this – MMR doesn’t cause autism. There is no evidence to suggest it does. Those who perpetuate the belief that there is or who continue to cry shamefully for ‘just one more study’ share responsibility for these outbreaks and the people who get hurt in them. For the sake of your conscience’s alone, I hope no real harm comes to any of these people.

Ben Goldacre

18 Jul

The MMR scare that wasn’t….Read More

Straight outta Compton

18 Jul

What is Rick Rollens up to….Read More

Dr Scott Speaks

17 Jul

In the aftermath of the Observer debacle, one of those described in the original piece as being an MMR believer responded in the comment thread of The Guardian readers editor page. Her words are very telling and show, once more, what a shoddy and deliberately misleading piece of work this was:

DrFJScott. July 16, 2007 11:31 AM

I feel, given that I was one of the two ‘leaders in the field’ (flattering, but rather an exaggeration) reported as linking MMR to the rise in autism, that I should quite clearly and firmly point out that I was never contacted by and had no communication whatsoever with the reporter who wrote the infamous Observer article. It is somewhat amazing that my ‘private beliefs’ can be presented without actually asking me what they are. What appeared in the article was a flagrant misrepresentation of my opinions – unsurprising given that they were published without my being spoken to.

It is outrageous that the article states that I link rising prevalence figures to use of the MMR. I have never held this opinion. I do not think the MMR jab ‘might be partly to blame’. As for it being a factor in ‘a small number of children’, had the journalist checked with me it would have been clear that my view is in line with Vivienne Parry of the JCVI. The ‘small number’ was misrepresented by being linked inappropriately and inaccurately with ‘rise in prevalence’, leading readers to arguably infer that it is in fact NOT a small number!

I wholeheartedly agree with Prof Baron-Cohen, and many of the posts and responses received to date, that the article was irresponsible and misleading. Furthermore I reiterate that it was inappropriate in including views and comments attributed to me and presented as if I had input into the article when I had not (and still have not)ever been contacted by the journalist in question. I am taking the matter under advisement.

It is frankly incredible that The Observer ever though they could get away with reporting the ‘private thoughts’ of a person when that person had never actually been interviewed. Shame on them for playing autism for their own private games.

Mike Fitzpatrick at Spiked

17 Jul

Mike Fitzpatrick reveals the three key elements to a fiasco….Read More

National Autism Association – More Lies

16 Jul

I am beginning to wonder if National Autism Association are actually capable of discussing autism without lying any more. Its becoming more and more blatant. Today, they have released a press release of support for Andrew Wakefield which is simply bizarre:

Parents and advocacy groups around the globe are asking England’s General Medical Council (GMC) to cancel the “fitness to practice” inquiry that begins today against Dr. Andy Wakefield, and Professors Walker-Smith and Murch. Advocates say the GMC should instead be asking why so many kids are sick, especially in light of an apparently suppressed analysis showing that autism rates in England are as high as 1 in 58. The medical establishment is being criticized for doing little to find the cause, treat the kids, or prevent new cases.

Uh, no, no they’re not. Parents around the world (of whom I am one) are _not_ asking the GMC to cancel the hearings against Andrew Wakefield. I have read numerous letters, comments in blogs and on forums from parents who are quite happy to see the GMC conduct an inquiry into Wakefield’s behaviour.

An what the hell is this ‘suppressed analysis’ rubbish? Its not suppressed at all. The leaked study was not published and according to the lead author:

So, what are the facts on autism? Does the one-in-58 figure hold up? Baron-Cohen says their study of Cambridgeshire children, which has been running for five years, comes out with a range of figures from one in 58, to one in 200, depending on various factors. The draft report, he says, “is as accurate as jottings in a notebook”.

The NAA – and anyone who really seriously believes this twaddle – really need to take a long hard look at their motives. Why are they doing this? They _know_ the claim that the data from Baron-Cohen’s study is suppressed is rubbish. What this press release is is simply propaganda. Why are the NAA purposefully lying?

And they continue:

In the first of 5000 cases to be heard in a special vaccine court in the US last month, evidence presented demonstrated that 12-year old Michelle Cedillo began regressing into autism just a week after her MMR vaccination at 15 months. The plausible cause was a persistent measles infection which took hold through an immune system weakened by mercury in vaccines administered prior to the MMR.

Well, the NAA must’ve been reading a different set of transcripts to me. The evidence presented, utilising the video evidence, and interpreted by one of the worlds leading diagnostic authorities on autism clearly showed Michelle Cedillo was autistic way before she had her MMR jabs. It was also clearly demonstrated that the evidence presented to support the assertion that MMR was a ‘plausible cause’ of autism was a joke. The MMR/autism theory revolves around the idea of measles from the MMR travelling to the gut then the brain and causing damage that results in autism. Without measles being present, there is no MMR/autism hypothesis.

Here’s the sworn testimony of Stephen Bustin, _the_ world expert in the technique Wakefield’s lab of choice screwed up:

What I immediately observed was that they had forgotten to do the RT step…….If you detect a target that is apparently measles virus in the absence of an RT step by definition it can’t be measles virus because it has to be DNA. It’s a very simple concept. At least it is to me. It’s not to everyone else……[b]ecause measles virus doesn’t exist as a DNA molecule in nature, they cannot be detecting measles virus….

We need to be absolutely clear about this. This isn’t an _opinion_ Bustin was expressing. These were findings. He was in the O’Leary lab for (if I recall correctly) about 1,000 hours.

Wakefield _never found measles virus_ .

Then it gets really surreal:

The charges originated from internet blogger Brian Deer, who many parents have suggested may be linked to the pharmaceutical industry. “This is nothing more than a witch hunt brought against scientists willing to undertake ground-breaking research challenging the assumption that autism is an inherited untreatable psychiatric disorder that cannot be prevented. Implicating the safety of vaccines such as MMR isn’t acceptable to drug companies or government officials who want to protect the vaccine program itself at the cost of the health of children,” said Mr. Bono.

Brian’s an internet blogger? Weird. last I hears he was a freelance journalist. Certainly the readers of his Times pieces and Channel 4 television reports would think so.

Mr. Bono also needs to internalise a few basic facts.

1) The MMR hypothesis has been on the table since ’97. So far there has been absolutely no valid research supporting the idea that MMR causes autism or contributes to the development of autism in any way. If there was, why was it not presented at the recent Cedillo hearing?

2) Since ’97 the MMR uptake fell to nearly 80% at one point. If, as the NAA suggest, autism has skyrocketed to 1 in 58 then how is it that MMR uptake has plummeted whilst autism rates have skyrocketed.

3) I would ask these many parents that the NAA know to back up their allegation that Brian Deer is linked to the pharmaceutical industry. I’m a parent. I don’t think Brian is a big pharma shill. I also think its a particularly pathetic whiny little stab.

4) This is not a witch hunt. This is a look at a man who _has_ put the health of children at risk. Measles and Mumps have increased four fold since ’97. One English child and several Irish kids died from Measles. Approx 12% of measles sufferers required hospitalisation.

Andrew Wakefield hid the results that he didn’t like. Here is Nick Chadwick on the original Lancet paper:

Q So you personally tested while you were in Dr. Wakefield’s lab gut biopsy material, CSF and PBMCs?
A Yes, that’s right.

Q And all the results were either negative, or if they were positive it always turned out that they were false positives?
A Yes, that’s correct.

Q Did you inform Dr. Wakefield of the negative results?
A Yes. Yes.

Andrew Wakefield conducted poor science. He hid the results that he knew would scupper his poor science. Children have died and have been hospitalised as a result of this appalling dereliction of medical duty.

Meme time again

15 Jul

Anyone ever notice that ‘meme’ is spelt (well, constructed) ‘me-me’. I merely mention it in passing ;o)

Steve tagged me. The rules are:

1. Let others know who tagged you.
2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

I’m not going to tag anyone. Consider this an open invitation to participate should the mood take you.

OK. Bloody hell. Eight.

1. I lived in France for nearly a year. It was great apart from one time I got an abscess in one of my wisdom teeth and had to have it pulled. The first dentist I went to answered the door wearing a bloody apron and stinking of nasty table wine. We parted company immediately. The second one only used a local anaesthetic during the procedure (a root canal). When I got out I drank the best part of a whole bottle of Eau de vie.

2. I once met Lars Ulrich, the drummer from Metallica. He was speeding very badly at the time and he talked even more than usual. I went from awed star-struckness to thinking ‘what a twat’ in the space of 20 mins.

3. Whilst I’m name dropping, last year I literally bumped into Simon Pegg and Nick Frost on the concourse at Birmingham New Street station. It was a Monday a.m. and I was in my usual pre-work, pre-coffee grump and I was just about to snarl something typically Kevy at them when I noticed who they were. They were very pleasant guys (doing the promo tour for the release of Hot Fuzz I assume) and I totally forgot to take a picture of them on my phone. Gah!!

4. My favourite horrible indulgence is dunking bourbon biscuits into tap water and then slurping the whole mess back. Not a pretty picture.

5. I believe book burning is a crime against humanity except in the case of Jeffrey Archer where it would be criminal not to.

6. I proposed to my wife outside a Halfords. We were both sitting on a bench at the time. Its my opinion that the romantic possibilities of car-parts sellers are often overlooked by potential grooms. But even so, the mundanity of the surroundings didn’t distract from her beauty in one single way. And they never have since.

7. My first teacher (I was five) was called Mrs McCabe. She was unbelievably hot.

8. When Anthony (my now 15yo son) was 2 I forgot to tighten up a stairgate properly and he managed to push the whole thing – himself included – down the stairs, riding it like a toboggan all the way down whilst screaming. I ran down after him, heart pounding in horror and guilt and picked him up expecting to be confronted with a mentally scarred, terrified toddler. Turns out he’d been laughing, not screaming. ‘AGAIN, AGAIN’ he yelled as my blood pressure reached Chernobyl velocity.

CDDS and full syndrome arseholes

14 Jul

Every god-damn quarter, without fail. Every single one. The CDDS data gets released – Rick Rollens releases his usual ‘full syndrome’ crapola and tells us how autism is still skyrocketing and does his best Chicken Little impression and David Kirby chews at the edges of the data to try and find something that will support the idea that thiomersal plays any kind of role in autism.

Its getting really, really old.

Please let me say it to you one more time.

CDDS is not good source data for epidemiology. They say so themselves.

When CDDS refer to ‘full syndrome autism’ they are not, repeat, not referring to classical autism. See this form here? CDDS use it to record autism. It was designed in the 1970’s. The version in use today was last updated in 1986. Don’t believe me? Ask them.

Item 23 is where the term ‘full syndrome’ is used. This term is today utterly without meaning. It is the only place to record autism at all.

If we trun to this document and go to page 71 we can see the section dealing with autism. In terms of _having_ autism, a person either can, can’t or have autistic-like symptoms associated with mental retardation. Its not until page 77 that we get to any kind of recording of degree of severity. *Note that this has no bearing on whether a person _has_ autism* . That is already indicated.

Here is what CDDS passed on to me. I promised not to attribute this quote so I won’t but if anyone wants to double check then an email to CDDS would back me up:

The current CDER was written in 1978 and updated in 1986, which is why the language is so out of date ( e.g., Residual Autism). California has clinicians in the field who are, of course, using modern criteria in their assessments but then they have to go backwards and try to fit those kids into the 1986 CDER. So you are going to have Aspergers kids, PDD-NOS kids in both categories 1 and 2. Categories 1 and 2 are called “Autism.” But because there are so many clinicians, using lots of different techniques for evaluation, there is a lot of inconsistency and enrollment figures should not be misused as epidemiological data.

You might also be interested in a quote from Rita Eagle PhD of the California Dept. of Developmental Services (DDS) to Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol. 34, No. 1, February 2004:

To many clinicians, it appears that more and more children who, in the past, would never have been referred to the regional centers–for example, bright but anxious and slightly socially inept kids with average or better IQs and children who, in the past, had been or would have been diagnosed as ADHD, OCD, ODD, anxiety disorder, learning disabilities, psychotic, and so forth—are now being diagnosed wit high-functioning autism and/or Asperger syndrome and referred to the regional centers for services.

I really don’t know how much clearer this information can possibly be. And yet we still have full syndrome arseholes like Rick Rollens sending out emails that contain:

As stated many times before in these Reports, the numbers being reported by DDS only reflect those children that have received a professional diagnosis of full syndrome DSM IV autism, and do not include those with any other autism spectrum disorder such as PDD, NOS, Asperger’s, HFA, Retts, etc

So Rick:

a) Its impossible for a document/process written in 1978 and updated in 1986 to reflect the DSM IV.
b) The numbers quite clearly _do_ contain PDD-NOS, Aspergers Syndrome and Rett Syndrome.

And hey, if CDDS data is good then how would the following be explained?

It’s now 2005. Mercury started to be removed from vaccines roughly in 2001, we don’t know exactly when as the FDA won’t tell us, but kids entering the system now, four year olds for example in California entering the Dept of Developmental Services [CDDS] were born in 2001. So those kids theoretically get less mercury on average than kids born in 2000. So we should see fewer cases entering the system this year than we did last year.

– David Kirby

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

Late 2006 should be the first time that rates go down,” said Handley. “If they don’t, our. hypothesis will need to be reexamined.

– JB Handley

Kassiane needs help

14 Jul

Please read.

The Observer – Liars

11 Jul

A story in the Times reveals the full extent of the utterly vacuous weekend report published by The Observer:

One of the two team members reported as resurrecting the discredited theory that MMR causes autism is Dr Carol Stott, a developmental psychologist who once worked at ARC. Baron-Cohen says she left ARC some time ago. She is now listed as a member of staff at Thoughtful House, a research centre in developmental disorders in Texas. Thoughtful House is run by Dr Andrew Wakefield, the gastroenterologist who first raised the possibility of a MMR-autism link in 1998. The other figure named as having revived the MMR-autism link was Dr Fiona Scott, who still works at ARC as an honorary research associate and runs training courses on how to diagnose autism. Scott has issued a statement denying that she privately believes in any link between MMR and autism.

Baron-Cohen says the news story is alarmist and wrong. He does not believe that MMR has anything to do with autism. “We are gobsmacked, really, at how this draft report has got out,” Baron-Cohen says. “It was only in the hands of the authors – about half a dozen people. There are three professors listed, including me, and none of us was contacted. It was also seen by two PhD students for whom I have the utmost respect because they are very careful scientists.

Be gob-smacked no more SBC. I’m betting it was Carol Stott, scaremongering on behalf of her employer Andrew Wakefield.

The draft report was leaked a week ahead of their GMC appearance. Baron-Cohen puts it like this: “We think it [the report] has been used. They’ve picked out the one figure that looks most alarmist.” Cambridge University is now trying to hunt down the source of the leak.

So, what are the facts on autism? Does the one-in-58 figure hold up? Baron-Cohen says their study of Cambridgeshire children, which has been running for five years, comes out with a range of figures from one in 58, to one in 200, depending on various factors. The draft report, he says, “is as accurate as jottings in a notebook”. He adds that the data is with public health officials, who are crunching the numbers.

About as accurate as jottings in a notebook. A phrase that could equally apply to the whole Observer piece.

And as I and others discussed at the weekend, the methodology utilised to reach the figures:

….does not provide a diagnosis and is known to result in a high number of false positives. Around half the children flagged up by CAST as possibly having autism turn out not to.

Simon Baron-Cohen closes with:

Research is sometimes slow but it is better to go slowly and get it right. Now things have been taken out of our hands and it’s very dismaying.

It certainly is.

Lets make no mistake about this. This was a calculated attempt by Andrew Wakefield’s supporters to utterly falsely bring the validity of MMR into question again just ahead of his GMC hearing. The figure of 1 in 58 has no basis in accuracy and is about as reliable as a chocolate teapot. The Observer contacted none of the three professors on the team and it seems that at least one of the people quoted as privately believing their is a link between autism and the MMR actually doesn’t and has issued a denial to that effect.

This leaves us with Carol Stott. A woman who is obviously about as familiar with truth, reliability and common decency as a frog is familiar with the works of Daphne du Maurier.

The Observer, in my opinion, got suckered by this woman who seems determined to do everything she can – including deliberately placing children in harms way by scaremongering false associations between MMR and autism – to save her bosses neck at the GMC.

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