And the spin continues on the Omnibus decisions. Anyone surprised?
This time, Safe-Minds has chimed in on the Omnibus decisions with:
Federal Vaccine Court Rules Against Autism Families: Government’s Refusal to Fund Sound Science Stacks Deck Against Vaccine-Injured Children.
One more reason to distrust the government’s vaccine program, says SafeMinds
The main theme is a rather contradictory one:
The denial of reasonable compensation to families was based on inadequate vaccine safety science available to the court.
How many times have we all heard from groups like SafeMinds that the science is very conclusive?
If the science is inadequate, why are groups such as SafeMinds and Generation Rescue recommending chelation as a therapy for autism?
As a friend of mine used to say to other drivers while driving down the highway, “Pick a lane, buddy”. Either you got the science or you don’t. Seems like you don’t.
SafeMinds perseverates on the IACC. I do to, so I can’t blame them for that. I can blame them for misrepresenting what happens in IACC meetings:
Last month, the government-dominated Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee blocked critical vaccine-autism research studies from moving forward even though they had been requested by their own scientific advisors and autism advocates.
Uh, one of the BIG problems with the proposed vaccine research was precisely the fact that they were not recommended by the scientific advisory subcommittees. Nice spin, though.
and, again on the IACC, SafeMinds states:
The director of the NIH institute in charge of autism studies, Dr. Tom Insel, has admitted that HHS has a conflict of interest preventing NIH from allowing autism-vaccine science due to the court cases.
Uh, no. He raised the question of whether there is a conflict of interest. He didn’t “admit” to any conflict of interest.
I am actually getting very tired of this claim made about the vaccine court:
Many of these cases were quietly settled by the government so the public is not aware of them.
Sounds oh so conspiratorial.
Of course the government is quiet in the decisions. Quiet in they don’t advertise or call press conferences. What they do is put them on a public website. That is appropriate.
Is it the government’s fault that the vaccine-autism “advocates” never checked? Seriously, you are working on cases costing many millions of dollars and no no seems to have gone through the previous cases searching for the word “autism”?
Is it the government’s fault that the lawyers who worked on the previous cases involving autistics who were injured by vaccines weren’t savvy enough to think of communicating that fact to the Omnibus lawyers? C’mon, at least one of them is working on the Omnibus proceeding!
SafeMinds, you and your sister organizations found out about the other cases from Kathleen Seidel! That’s who is doing your homework.
Even leading vaccine proponents have accused the CDC of carrying out safety research “on the cheap,” and two major systematic reviews of vaccine research by the world renowned Cochrane Collaboration have found studies to be of “poor quality” and “inadequate.”
Who are these “leading vaccine proponents”? And, how many “leading vaccine proponents” think that a lot of time and money is spent on vaccine safety research?
That last sentence is why “..and the whole truth” is included in swearing in witnesses. How many studies did they find to be “poor quality”. The way it is phrased, SafeMinds is trying to make it seem like all the research is substandard. Ironic given that SafeMinds still has the Hornig mouse study on its website with no mention of the MIND study that refuted it.
That said, the Special Masters who wrote the decisions for the Omnibus hearings made it very clear that they had good evidence, good studies to work from.
Here’s a comment that goes to the heart of the future problems:
“The government must fund an extensive vaccine safety program, including studies of the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated groups,” stated Sallie Bernard, executive director of SafeMinds. “Trust in immunization will continue to deteriorate without the perception of a fair hearing. It is time for a neutral agency to oversee vaccine safety.”
Ms. Bernard: this was a fair hearing. The petitioners were given many years of extra time to get the research that they needed. Much research was done on vaccine safety in regards to autism in that time, and it only helped the defendents.
Also, trust in vaccinations may continue to deteriorate because of the publicity campaigns you and your sister organizations are putting on. Own the responsibility for your own actions.
Left Brain Right Brain 
The Petitioners picked the theories for which they thought they had evidence for, they picked the most representative test cases amongst their 5000+ plaintiffs, they had years to prepare their case, and still they came up way, way short in the scientific evidence.
This was their *best* shot.
About a year ago I had a conversation with a vaccines-cause-autism proponent, and we discussed the Omnibus hearings. I asked her if she would accept the decisions when they came down, no matter which side they favored. She said, “If the hearings are fair–and that’s a big IF–I’ll accept the results.” So these people already had their plan: if the plaintiffs win, the court was fair. If the plaintiffs don’t win, the court is corrupt and most likely in the pocket of Big Pharma. Not a surprising tack, really, coming from people who firmly believe in huge, sweeping vaccine-related conspiracies, covered up by hundreds of individuals worldwide.
Of course.
I expect as we speak, members of certain autism/antivax groups are combing through the histories of the Special Masters in an effort to find something even faintly damning. A picture of one of them shaking hands with Dubya or somesuch.
Fact-based refutations of the magical thinking, hysteria and outright quackery fueled by xenophobia are (quite possibly) one of the dominant motivations for wanting to cure autism. Those who wish to “cure autism” in the very worst way seem to have serious challenges in dealing with any dispassionate evaluation of matters of fact.
I’d be the first to admit that I have profound deficits in regard to emotional reasoning and that these amount to a handicap. What I resent is the utter lack of recognition that people clearly as far from a neurological balance between the two forms of reasoning are clearly as profoundly disadvantaged as I.
Great job of deconstructing the spin.
Looking quickly at Cochrane, there’s one study on flu vaccination which points to the need for study of safety of administering to children under age 2, but a Cochrane study of MMR found no evidence of a link between MMR and autism – no mention of safety failings.
Click to access MMR_final.pdf
It also notes “people arguing for or against the use of any therapy need to make sure that they base their conclusions on carefully collected evidence, not just on biased opinion, speculation or suspicion.”
Small quibble: I would have omitted “just” from that sentence.