Archive | April, 2008

Vaccines = bad, vitamin supplements = good

17 Apr

A fascinating mini-storm has been quietly bubbling away in the UK over the last couple of months concerning the vitamin and mineral supplement industry. It has a tie in to autism these days as one of the features of the more extreme forms of biomed is an increase – sometime to megadose levels – of vitamin and mineral supplements.

Here’s a video from BBC News yesterday. And if you can’t get the video, here’s the online report.

A review of 67 studies found “no convincing evidence” that antioxidant supplements cut the risk of dying.

Scientists at Copenhagen University said vitamins A and E could interfere with the body’s natural defences.

“Even more, beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E seem to increase mortality,” according to the review by the respected Cochrane Collaboration.

The report reported a neutral finding for Vitamin C but it already established that mega-doses of Vitamin C:

….can cause nausea, diarrhea, kidney stones and inflammation of the stomach lining (gastritis).

These vitamins and minerals are routinely recommended by extreme biomed practitioners for autistic children. There is no scientific evidence of any kind that they do anything to alleviate any autistic symptoms.

I blogged yesterday about a paper called ‘Trusting blindly can be the biggest risk of all’: organised resistance to childhood vaccination in the UK which whilst fascinating in its own right, makes mention of attitudes towards vaccines as risks ‘of the unknown’.

The Vaccine Critical groups rely heavily on a discourse of unknowns in order to challenge and undermine the rationality of vaccination. For example, a majority of the groups make the argument that we do not know the effects of vaccination because of insufficient safety trials, both pre- and post-licence.

And yet, these same groups are more than happy to ply themselves and their children with supplements that have also had little to no safety trials.

There is a huge cognitive dissonance at work here that is worth a sociological study in its own right. Why is it OK to administer some things with no trials and not others? Another idea that anti-vaccine groups tend to espouse is the idea that because ‘we’re all different’ we need to tailor what we’re given to us individually.

We’ve got to actually make sure that what we’re giving is right for the individual child. The Department of Health are not good at determining whether a child shouldn’t have something. They treat them all as exactly the same (JABS).

And yet, once again, we seem to have non-individualised plans (such as the so called Yasko diet, or the GFCF diet or the recommendation to take huge doses of mineral supplements) when it comes to biomed. Why is it OK for one set of treatments and not others?

I think there is more going on here than the authors of the ‘Trusting blindly…’ paper realise. I genuinely believe that for some people it really is a pathological hatred of vaccines . There is no rhyme or reason for it but I’m sure it is there.

Anti-vaccination and autism

16 Apr

I need to reproduce this comment from Amy Tuteur, MD on Autism News Beat. Its perfect.

“How does Dr. Tuteur explain parents who fully vaccinated and trusted the vaccination policy and then became disenchanted with it only after seeing their children seriously injured?”

Disenchantment is not the standard. The scientific evidence is the standard. It is not as though this hasn’t been studied. The purported link between vaccines and autism has been studied extensively and repeatedly. The scientific evidence indicates no difference in the incidence of autism between those who are vaccinated and those who are not. There is also no difference in the incidence of autism between those who received vaccines containing thimerosal and those who did not.

We’ve looked and the link simply isn’t there. That’s not surprising when you consider that the classic descriptions of the onset of autism, elucidated long before the use of multiple vaccines, is exactly the same as the onset of autism today. Vaccines do not increase the incidence of autism. Thimerosal does not increase the incidence of autism. The natural history of autism has not changed since the introduction of vaccines. It cannot be any clearer than that.

The conspiracy theories are a bunch of baloney. In order for there to be a conspiracy, someone must be hiding information. Doctors are vaccinating their children. Vaccine manufacturers are vaccinating their children. Immunologists are vaccinating their children. Who, precisely, is conspiring to keep information from the public and are we really supposed to believe that they would sacrifice their own children just to preserve the conspiracy?

Moreover, it isn’t as though doctors, immunologist and vaccine manufacturers are denying that vaccines have risks. It is well known that vaccines can and will cause small numbers of deaths and cases of brain damage. We have set up a compensation system precisely because we know about and acknowledge these risks. If doctors, immunologists and vaccine manufacturers are forthcoming about the risk of DEATH, isn’t it a bit absurd to suggest that they would hide the risk of autism?

One thing is certain, vaccine rejectionists do not understand immunology. Immunology is extremely complicated, so it’s not surprising that many people don’t understand it. However, the fact that they don’t understand it tells us nothing about immunology or vaccines, just like the fact that most people do not understand Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity tell us nothing about whether they are true.

Autism is a very serious problem. To the extent that we waste time, money, attention and effort on something that is not causing autism, we are diverting time, money, attention and effort from finding the real cause for autism. That is the saddest aspect of this incredibly sad situation.

I also recently read ‘Trusting blindly can be the biggest risk of all’: organised resistance to childhood vaccination in the UK which has some fascinating things to say on the anti-vaccine movement and their history. Consider this:

There is a small but fascinating social history literature which looks at the birth of resistance during this period in the form of groups like the Leicester Anti-Vaccination League and critical publications like the Vaccination Inquirer . Several of the accounts demonstrate the successes of organised campaigns which inspired marches of up to 100,000 people, riots, public burning of effigies of Edward Jenner, and the celebration of martyrs (Beck 1960, Porter and Porter 1988, Durbach 2000)…..Other accounts of this period stress the impressive ability of the anti-vaccinators to harness the power of the press (Howard 2003) and the important role of key individuals in pushing forward the movement.

Sounds familiar huh?

An Open Letter To The Poling’s

12 Apr

Dear Poling family,

Let me first start by saying that your little girl is beautiful. I am father to two girls (as well as one boy, young man now actually) so I know how great it is to have such wonderful little people around.

I read Jon Poling’s commentary in the AJC and I have to say that I was very disappointed by the level of accuracy in the piece. For example, he says:

On Nov. 9, 2007, HHS medical experts conceded through the Department of Justice that Hannah’s autism was triggered by nine childhood vaccinations administered when she was 19 months of age…

Now I have taken a keen interest in your families case since it became clear what the situation was. I _think_ I have read most of the newspaper reports available online as well as (more importantly) the HHS document itself and (even more importantly) the case study co-authored by Andrew Zimmerman and Jon Poling.

Nowhere, I repeat, nowhere, have I seen anyone from either the HHS, CDC, US Government, or even the Zimmerman/Poling case study say that ‘Hannah’s autism was triggered by nine childhood vaccinations’.

I have seen David Kirby refer to this several times. I have heard lots of people refer to these statements as if they are true and now I hear you doing it too.

But where is this concession?

In what legal, scientific or medical document does it state unequivocally that ‘Hannah’s autism was triggered by nine childhood vaccinations’?

You are a family on the cusp of storm. You need to take more care with your statements. People all over the world are listening. The *fact* as of right now is that no one has conceded ‘Hannah’s autism was triggered by nine childhood vaccinations’. Simply stating it as if it were true does not make it true.

The HHS expert documents that led to this concession and accompanying court documents remain sealed, though our family has already permitted release of Hannah’s records to those representing the almost 5, 000 other autistic children awaiting their day in vaccine court.

Now this confuses me on two levels. Firstly, Special Masters have already said that:

….in the case that is the subject of the media reports, if the parties who supplied documents and information in the case provide their written consent, we may then be able to appropriately disclose documents in the case.

It sounds to me like Dr Poling is trying to turn something around onto the HHS without justification. Maybe your legal team haven’t told you about this news. I understand they’re very busy of late.

The second part of Dr Poling’s statement that confuses me is the allusion to the records being released ‘to those representing the almost 5, 000 other autistic children’.

I thought that you wanted your documents to be made entirely public? Are you now saying you only want the legal teams of the other omnibus lawyers to have access to them?

I would also like to draw your attention to the email I sent to Terry Poling on March 5th asking why the Poling family had not cleared Dr Andrew Zimmerman from speaking publicly about the case. Does the Poling fmaily have any intention of lifting that embargo any time soon?

Dr Poling goes on:

Emerging evidence suggests that mitochondrial dysfunction may not be rare at all among children with autism. In the only population-based study of its kind, Portuguese researchers confirmed that at least 7.2 percent, and perhaps as many as 20 percent, of autistic children exhibit mitochondrial dysfunction. While we do not yet know a precise U.S. rate, 7.2 percent to 20 percent of children does not qualify as “rare.” In fact, mitochondrial dysfunction may be the most common medical condition associated with autism.

This is very disingenuous Dr Poling. I am not sure if you are purposefully distorting the truth or simply not as knowledgeable as you think. In point of fact the figure of 7.2% is from a 2005 study ‘Mitochondrial dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders: a population-based study‘. This is _not_ (as you state) ‘the only population-based study of its kind’. It was in fact a precursor to a _second_ follow up study by the same lead researcher correcting his own data.

This second study (published October 2007) is called ‘Epidemiology of autism spectrum disorder in Portugal: prevalence, clinical characterization, and medical conditions’.

This study declares a 4.1% figure. It is disingenuous in the extreme to refer to old science when newer, more accurate science exists on the subject (and by the same author no less!).

Further, as far as I can tell, the figure of 20% has but one source – a non published summary for attendees of a 2003 LADDERS conference in Boston, USA. Therefore it has not been subject to any kind of peer review. That’s not to say the figure is wrong, merely that it hasn’t been verified or undergone any kind of the usual scientific checks and balances a published piece of work must undertake to ensure quality. This is not ’emerging science’ Dr Poling. Its a set of program notes.

Further, as I understand it from talking to people involved in all three of these different items, the percentages you talk about are expressed percentages _of regressive autism only_ . Now I might have that wrong but I’m pretty sure that’s what was communicated to me.

Taking this into account, when Dr Poling states that:

In fact, mitochondrial dysfunction may be the most common medical condition associated with autism..

and he goes on to suggest population numbers between 10,000 (1%) , 72,000 (7.2%) and 200,000 (20%) of the autistic population he estimates at one million in the US, he is incorrect.

However, if I have understood what is said to me then we need to look at regressive autism numbers only, which are estimated to account for 25%-30% of autistic people. Therefore we are looking at not 7.2% or 20% (one is incorrect, one is not scientifically justified) of one million. We are actually looking at 4.1% (the only scientifically valid number) of between 25 – 30% of one million. Lets take the upper figure of 30%. This gives us a population of 300,000 for regressive autism. Applying the 4.1% estimate we can see that – at best and only if this data is all correct – mitochondrial autism may affect about 13,000 autistic people – 1.3%. If we took the lower range of 25% for regressive autism, we barely get over 1% (10,250).

Secondly, it should be noted that approximately 40% of autism can be accounted for genetically. This already makes it the single largest established cause(s).

Dr Poling goes on to say:

Today there is no doubt that mitochondrial dysfunction represents a distinct autism subpopulation biological marker.

This is true. However, prefacing this sentence with the word ‘today’ gives the highly misleading impression that autism has been associated with mitochondrial disorders and/or dysfunctions only since Hannah Poling came into out collective conciousness. This is far from the case. I can find instances in the scientific literature going back to 1986, over 20 years ago discussing mitochondria and autism and a PubMed search for ‘mitochondrial autism’ yields 34 quality papers published over a 20 year period. This is hardly a new thing Dr Poling.

As a neurologist, I have cared for those afflicted with SSPE (a rare but dreaded neurological complication of measles), paralytic polio and tetanus. If these serious vaccine-preventable diseases again become commonplace, the fault will rest solely on the shoulders of public health leaders and policymakers who have failed to heed the writing on the wall (scribbled by my 9-year old daughter).

I fear that this is projection. You are very close to pushing an anti-vaccine agenda Dr Poling and indeed Terry Poling was active an the Yahoo Group ‘Recovered Kids’ from at least Summer 2001 where she says things like:

Really, the only way to obliterate a disease is to vaccinate everybody – or at least so “they” say

Sept 2001.

Had I told the hospital staff she was autistic they would not have believed me. The same held true for a (sic) educational consultant who came to evaluate hannah the day before the fever started. She said in her report she saw absolutely no autistic behaviors.

Nov 2001.

She has mitochondrial disease which causes her autism.

March 2004.

I do know docs that speak for drug companies but they cover all the meds for a particular disease in their talks with other docs. If they do not agree that the drug is best for certain conditions on the whole they say so.

Feb 2003.

…it [autism] is a DSM set of symptoms. When the symptoms disappear you cannot say the child still has autism…..

Oct 2001.

So Dr Poling when you try to lay the blame for vaccine preventable injuries increasing at the foot of those agencies assigned to try and stop them reappearing I think that is farcical. To me it is clear that the main responsibility lies with those who shun what are by and large safe safe vaccines on the strength of a hypothesis that is nowhere _close_ to scientific truth. I urge you to read this article and the comments left by readers. Its clear who they see as responsible. For example:

Don’t want to vaccinate your kids? Fine with me. Just don’t send them to school where they then put my kids at risk because of your decision.

You are deluding yourself if you think you can turn responsibility for shunning vaccines back on health agencies Dr Poling.

All in all Dr and nurse Poling I think that your public use of misinformation and erroneous science to make your point will serve you no good in the long run. I also continue to be puzzled by your refusal to ‘ungag’ Andrew Zimmerman. I hope you can start to realise that what has ‘happened’ to Hannah is far from remarkable. Best wishes from one autism parent to another.

Wakefield on Ethics: “I’m perfectly willing to accept my understanding was wrong.”

11 Apr

Remarkably, Wakefield has now admitted that he may have ‘misunderstood’ the ethical guidelines for research on children. Apparently, Wakefield “was not aware of ‘detailed guidance’ on the treatment of children provided by the British Paediatric Association” and is “perfectly willing to accept [his] understanding [of ethics] wrong”. Wakefield thus seems to be claiming ignorance of the fact that that certain research practices – such as when he allegedly “paid children at party £5 to give blood samples” – are unethical. Partly because of Wakefield’s apparent violation of ethical guidelines, he is accused “of acting against the clinical interests of the children who took part in his trial.”

This is bizarre. Frankly, one wonders as to how a researcher could not realise that practises such as paying kids for their blood at a birthday party might – just perhaps – be a teeny bit ethically problematic. But, even putting that aside, one should remember that Wakefield has been quick to claim [PDF] that

My actions were at times taken in the best interests of children potentially damaged by the MMR vaccine….I remain dedicated to helping these children and resolving the issue of whether vaccines are involved in this disorder or not. I will not be intimidated or coerced into stopping this work prematurely.

If Wakefield was doing this research ‘for the children’, one would have expected him to pay more attention to the ethical guidelines for research on children – and thus to the interests of the children involved in his research. Continue reading →

Autism and diagnostic substitution

11 Apr

As we all know, one of the planks underpinning the platform of the vaccine/autism hypotheses is the idea of an autism epidemic. This ‘supporting idea’ says that there was a sudden, massive increase in the amount of people with autism. This is as opposed to a sudden massive increase in the amount of people _diagnosed_ as autistic, or even more accurately, a sudden, massive increase in the amount of people _eligible_ to be diagnosed.

This was all in and around 1992 when two things happened. The first thing is that the vaccine schedule was altered. The second thing is that the DSM was altered, widening the criteria and allowing in many more people to collect an autism diagnosis then pre-1992.

The first idea – that there was a de facto increase in the amount of people with autism – is the one favoured by those who think autism is caused by/triggered by vaccines. Personally, I feel that numbers two and three have more validity. But the anti-vaccine people need to have an epidemic in order for the vaccine hypotheses to hold water. No epidemic = no sharp rise = no need for an obscure hypothesis to account for it.

However, as Professor Grinker points out in Unstrange Minds:

Doctors now have a more heightened awareness of autism and are diagnosing it with more frequency, and public schools….which first started using the category of autism during the 1991 – 1992 school year are reporting it more often….Epidemiologists are also counting it better.

Unstrange Minds, Page 4

Five big pieces of the awareness puzzle started to come into play. Another one (and yes, I’m stretching this a bit) is what’s called the ‘Rainman‘ phenomenon. This refers to the first real emergence of autism in popular media which purportedly led to many more people becoming aware of autism within their own communities.

As part of Unstrange Minds, Grinker went to Korea and looked at the autism experience there. This is part of what he found:

When [Milal School] was being built in the mid-1990s, some of the wealthy residents of this quiet neighborhood south of the Kangnam River in Seoul picketed the site, cut the school’s phone lines, physically assaulted school administrators, and filed a lawsuit to halt construction, because they believed that the presence in the neighborhood of children with disabilities would lower property values. The school opened in 1997, but only with a compromise. It was required to alter its architecture so that the children were completely hidden from public view. Some of the protestors were brutally honest. They said they didn’t want their children to see or meet a child with autism.

Its my opinion that this sort of thing was not too uncommon in the not-too-distant-past of the West. I know from my own experience that offering services for some forms of mental illness are protested against by residents close to the proposed services in the UK. People fear what they don’t understand.

In the case of autism, I think we in the West are past Korea’s point. We are very much more accepting of autism as an existing state and thus people are more prepared to see it and more people _do_ see it. Would you have wanted to take your autistic child out for a walk to the shops if you lived in Korea in the mid-90s? No, me neither. In this country in 2008 I do so with no worries at all.

But believing these things are accurate and having evidence to support that belief are two different things.

Professor Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University led a team to study:

whether some children who previously had other diagnoses are now being diagnosed with autism. We applied contemporary autism diagnostic criteria to adults with a history of developmental language disorder, to discover whether diagnostic substitution has taken place.

The results were eyebrow-raising. In total, 12 (31%) of the participants would’ve been diagnosed as being on the spectrum, of which 8 (21%) would have been diagnosed with ‘classic’ autism.

Bishop et al are quick to point out that:

….it would be rash to conclude that increasing prevalence of autism is entirely explicable in terms of broadening diagnostic criteria

which is very true but it also an inescapable conclusion that, in the words of some of the anti-vaccine believers, these kids were ‘missed’. Or as Bishop et al put it:

….this study provides direct evidence of diagnostic substitution, indicating that many children who were diagnosed with severe language disorders in the 1980s and 1990s displayed behaviours that would be regarded as meriting a diagnosis of ASD according to contemporary criteria. This appears to be a direct result of changing diagnostic criteria from DSM-III through DSM-IIIR and DSM-IV.

One aspect of the study has already caused it to be ignored by the anti-vaccine believers. The fact that Professor Bishop is a Wellcome Research Fellow. I wanted to talk to her about this and find out what that meant. She replied that:

The Wellcome Trust is not involved with manufacture of pharmaceuticals – that’s a common misperception….

And she attached a brief commentary on the subject that is produced by the Trust.

We do not make pharmaceuticals.

The Wellcome Trust is frequently and erroneously thought to be a drugs company, or to have been the charitable arm of a drugs company.

The confusion stems from the fact that from 1936 the label ‘Wellcome’ was shared by two entities, both founded by the same man:

1) the Wellcome pharmaceutical company (confusingly known as the Wellcome Foundation Limited in the UK)
2) the Wellcome Trust.

The Wellcome Trust (the charity) was established by the will of Henry Wellcome to be the sole shareholder of the pharmaceutical company, and to use the profits for charitable aims. Until 1986, the Wellcome Trust was the sole owner of the pharmaceutical company, which generated all of the charity’s income.

In 1986, the first of two share sales created a public limited company, Wellcome plc, which owned the Wellcome pharmaceutical company. The second sale took place in 1992, reducing the Wellcome Trust’s shareholding to around 25 per cent of Wellcome plc. Further asset diversification resulted from the 1995 merger of Wellcome plc with Glaxo plc, creating Glaxo Wellcome plc, which subsequently merged with SmithKline Beecham plc to create GlaxoSmithKline plc.

The Wellcome Trust maintains a small stake in GlaxoSmithKline, as part of a broad portfolio of investments that includes equities, property and other forms of corporate investment. It has always made all of its funding decisions completely independently of the pharmaceutical company.

Professor Bishop is the first to point out the limitations of this study – its small sample size. But this is, as she states, direct evidence of diagnostic substitution and, should the percentages be mirrored elsewhere, somewhere between 20% – 30% of the ‘epidemic’ could in fact be attributed to diagnostic substitution.

A little something for Autism Awareness Month

10 Apr

 The invitation for the birthday party arrived a couple of weeks before the date. I use the couple of days before the party to try and explain things to Tom. We watch  an episode of Something Special where Tom gets a refresher course on birthday cakes and Happy Birthday and Bullet gets a refresher course on ensuring that if you are going to watch a dvd to death, don’t pick a beloved one that can only be got via mail order. I ask Tom what his friend likes to play with . He pauses and then announces.

 “W bread and Tom bread!”

  I am tempted to buy a loaf of Warburtons, but decide it probably wouldn’t go down well as a good present for a five year old.

  After rejecting musical instruments (too noisy), baby toys (too patronising perhaps), drawing things (what if he has motor difficulties) and playdough I opt for a set of toy kitchen scales. Upon getting home and trying to wrap it I realise it wasn’t the greatest idea to pick something that is almost impossible to cover with ease. The difficulties involved in the logistics of this are solved by passing it to my husband to sort out. I am secretly gratified when he returns it to me with a small tear at the top, “because it wouldn’t wrap well.”

 We arrive at the village hall where the party is about ten minutes before it was due to start, thanks to traffic being worse than we anticipated. I kiss Jacob goodbye, asking his dad to take him somewhere nice whilst the party is going on and I then walk with Tom into the room. He is very quiet and stands stock still, not moving. The mother of the birthday lad steps forward to greet us.

 “Tom” I say and sign “say “hello”

 He looks towards the fire extinguisher (I will be compelled to read the instructions and manufacturing information on this extinguisher later) and addresses an “ErHeh” to that. The mother smiles at him. Then there is a flurry of movement and a small lad comes racing up.

 “Oh!” he announces happily. “Here is Tom! I been waiting for Tom and now he’s here!”

 Tom appears to ignore him. I ask him to say “hello” to the lad and get no response. I point out the balloons (much loved by Tom) and step back.

 Five minutes later he has picked up a balloon and is running round following the birthday lad, the pair of them giggling and racing round the room. There is no conversation, no set games, just two little boys who like each other and want to run as fast as they can. When Musical Bumps is announced Tom sees this as another opportunity to run round and likes that part so much he keeps running long after the music has stopped and all the other children have sat down.

 A few days later we are in town. As we walk up the street Tom pulls in one direction.

“A go a number 20!” he announces. This is what he calls the shopping centre. “A number 4!”

 “Ok” I tell him “We shall go to the shopping centre. We shall go in the lift.”

 He is quiet for a minute and then announces.

 “A balloon! A W candle a Tom balloon!”

 The party, it seems, was a great success.

Doing the right thing

9 Apr

David Kirby and Dan Olmsted that is. Kudos to them. See Orac’s blog for details.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

8 Apr

I got email from Ginger Taylor today. She’d read one of my posts on the ongoing Poling/HHS scenario.

I wanted to make sure you had see this from the VICP table.

It is part of the description of what vaccine induced encephalopathy is:

(1) A significant change in mental status that is not medication related; specifically a confusional state, or a delirium, or a psychosis;
(2) A significantly decreased level of consciousness, which is independent of a seizure and cannot be attributed to the effects of medication; and
(3) A seizure associated with loss of consciousness.

(D) A “significantly decreased level of consciousness” is indicated by the presence of at least one of the following clinical signs for at least 24 hours or greater (see paragraphs (2)(I)(A) and (2)(I)(B) of this section for applicable timeframes):

(1) Decreased or absent response to environment (responds, if at all, only to loud voice or painful stimuli);
(2) Decreased or absent eye contact (does not fix gaze upon family members or other individuals); or
(3) Inconsistent or absent responses to external stimuli (does not recognize familiar people or things).

As a matter of fact, I _had_ seen the table. Why Ginger wanted me to read it again I’m not sure. It doesn’t add anything new to the list of symptoms that both the HHS document and the Case Report document and thus we’re still no nearer a diagnosis of autism.

Anyway, after that she carried on:

That is an exact description of what most of us observed in our children when they regressed. When I went into my peds office with my son hanging limp in my arms and not responding to external stimuli, with absent eye contact, and dramatic change in mental status and a very marked decreased level of consciousness, and told him it all started after his vaccines, he should have diagnosed him with encephalopathy. A medical condition, that my medical doctor was charged with diagnosing.

But pediatricians are not taught to look for vaccine injury. Only autism. Because no one is responsible for autism. So instead he sent him to a speech therapist and a psychologist that diagnosed him under a DSM IV code of autism. He passed the buck because if he had done his diagnostic job correctly, he would have indited himself and the vaccine program.

And my doctor was a good doctor. He was not a shlub.

He would’ve indicted the vaccine program for what? Indicating a known vaccine injury was present? Huh?

This to me is the crux of the title of my post – meet the old boss, same as the old boss. People such as Ginger are not interested in _autism_ . They are not interested in being advocates for _autism_ . What they want is either a recognition that their docs screwed up and diagnosed their kids with the wrong thing (this is fine by me. The sooner these people are off the autism communities back the better) or for autism itself to be redefined to meet their own children’s symptoms. This is not fine with me.

This is nothing new. Way back in 2001, Bernard et al published Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning which attempted the same ‘trick’ as is being attempted here – redefine autism to meet your own beliefs rather than see if what you believe fits the already established facts. As we have all been witness to, time has not been kind to the thiomersal hypotheses. Neither has it been kind to the MMR hypotheses.

Anyway, Ginger carried on:

Things are changing VERY quickly Kevin. The atmosphere here is much different than from what i understand is happening in the UK. Major networks are not ready to report on it yet, but they are listening to us now. Calling and asking questions even. Main stream docs were talking to me about integrating DAN methods into their practices before the AAP’s announcement last week. All of the sudden parents are getting their phone calls returned very quickly from sources that have blown them off for a long time. And I can’t keep up with my email.

I thought this would be a decade or more of fighting all this, but it looks to be more like the cascade of events when the Soviet Union fell. It is gaining speed. The Polings were the first major crack in the dam and now huge chunks are coming out faster and faster.

Kirby was right, the debate is over.

I had a quick grin at the sheer arrogance of comparing the autism/vaccine hypotheses to the collapse of communism in the old Soviet block but really, this again is nothing new. If I had a pound for every time someone had posted on here that ‘this is it, its all over’ I’d be richer by a fair few pounds. Of course, they always come to nothing.

The devil is in the details. And in the science. Mito connections to autism are nothing new. Attempts to ‘talk up’ and muddy the wide picture whilst failing to look at the details are nothing new. The media talking to people is hardly anything new (I had an interview myself recently and have had several in the past). Attempting to twist autism away from what is already known about it into something new to make it fit into yet another set of beliefs is not new.

I’ll say it again as I have before. Its a very exciting time for the media and bloggers as we have lots of cool stuff to talk about. However, none of that stuff is new science. And when it comes to vaccines causing autism that’s what is needed. Science.

David Kirby is right (and wrong)

6 Apr

David Kirby has an excellent title for his blog post: ‘CDC Has Lost Control of the Autism Argument’.

I happen to to think he is 100% gold-plated correct. In fact I would go even further than that – the CDC, the FDA and the AAP have become, on this issue, little short of a laughing stock. They have bungled, mismanaged, failed to address and not known how to retort at just above every step of the process.

Controversially perhaps I think a lot of it has to do with the bureaucratic nature of these monoliths – they need to reform their way of working. They’re slow and outdated in their PR and media handling. That is not to say that the people working within these systems are terrible useless people – clearly they are not – but they operate within a system that cannot seem to effectively communicate the scientific truth behind the various vaccine hypotheses.

And now we truly _do_ have various vaccine hypotheses. Once it was ‘….nothing more than mercury poisoning.’. Then it was the MMR too. Then it was a combination of both. Then it wasn’t _just_ mercury in vaccines it was all the other ingredients too.

Now we have another twist: the mito/autism/vaccine hypothesis which I have no doubt has sent scores of parents all over the Western world forking out for yet another set of tests and will no doubt prompt yet another set of questionable treatments repackaged and rebranded for autism.

I think its worth while remembering at this point that, despite the furore over the last few weeks, one thing has not changed: *the science* .

All the talk shows and Larry King appearances and cloak and dagger leaked reports are all very exciting and good blogger fodder for people like me and David but the bottom line is this: no new science has been added to the equation regarding any vaccine/autism hypothesis. So, when I read the Larry King transcript and saw David snapping ‘the debate is over!’ I raised an eyebrow as I couldn’t recall any new science being brought along that night (or any other night) that had caused the debate to be over.

Anyway, back to David’s HuffPo entry. Now, I’ve swapped very courteous emails with David Kirby and whilst I have also posted quite angrily about him too I think he cares about people. Which is why when I read a paragraph such as the following I get perplexed. Here’s David:

A recent government decision to award nine-year-old Hannah Poling taxpayer dollars for her multiple vaccine-induced autism, has left parents anxious and alarmed….

A recent government decision. Hmm. Lets see what the Special Masters who are overseeing the Autism Omnibus (of whom Hannah Polings case was until recently a part of) said:

….reports have erroneously stated that the Office of the Special Masters has recently issued a “decision,” “opinion,” or “ruling” concerning the issue of whether a Vaccine Act claimant’s autism symptoms were caused by one or more vaccinations. The OSM has not issued any such decision, ruling or opinion.

No decision.

And David Kirby also refers to Hannah Poling’s ‘multiple vaccine-induced autism’. Lets see what the OSM says:

this court has issued no decision on the issue of vaccine causation of autism

But maybe by ‘government’ David means the HHS? Not the courts? If thats so, can David – or anyone else – point out to me where in any HHS statement they note that have decided to award Hannah Poling money for ‘vaccine-induced autism’?

Or maybe David means someone else when he refers to ‘government’?

And lets also be clear. Not only has the OSM _nor_ the HHS referred to ‘vaccine-induced autism’, neither has any aspect of the medical literature written about Hannah Poling (or any other claimant).

So yes, I find David’s over-exuberance perplexing on occasion. I am also concerned that paragraphs such as the above are muddying waters that need to be crystal clear right now. We serve no one by misleading them either intentionally or not.

Kathleen Seidel

5 Apr

There’s no point at all in my rehashing what has happened to Kathleen. We all know. The blogging communities response has been swift and fierce – rightly so. I don’t imagine the lawyer in question has made many friends in his profession over the last couple of days.

I wanted to write a blistering, thundering post too because, believe me, that’s how I felt after reading the subpoena Kathleen received. I consider her a friend and ally of a good many years now – as I do Dave. They both do what they do because they care. They care about their own autistic children and they care about all of our autistic children and they do what is right – they question what is suspicious and they support what is worthwhile.

But I can’t write a blistering, thundering post. The last few weeks have been something of an education for me on how the world works. I am even having to be incredibly careful about how I write this post, a tribute to the tenacity of my friend Kathleen.

Where my American friends can rest easy in the knowledge that their law supports them in their right to speak freely, mine does not. Where Kathleen can put together such an excellent response, I – and all other British bloggers – cannot. Unless we are very rich, or insured or employed by a paper that is insured, we are totally stymied.

Please rest assured that I have very recent knowledge of this process. To the extent that whilst I can say that I have first hand knowledge I cannot discuss it, I cannot (and will not) name names. I don’t like this but I have no option. This is modern Britain. Bloggers can be silenced. I hope that Kathleen is never, ever silenced. The world needs truth and integrity.

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