Both Age of Autism and David Kirby have recently reported on a new review paper with Age of Autism describing it as ‘pretty interesting’ and David repeating a part of the abstract:
Documented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis following vaccination.
So, should we all in the skeptic camp be reaching for our humble pie and our knife and fork? Not exactly. Lets take a look at the contents of this paper. Lets start here:
The vaccine organism itself could be a culprit. For example, one hypothesis of the cause of autism is that the pertussis toxin in the DPT vaccine causes a separation of the G-alpha protein from retinoid receptors in genetically at-risk children (Farfel et al., 1999; Megson, 2000). The pertussis toxin creates a chronic autoimmune monocytic infiltration of the gut mucosa lamina propia and may disconnect the G-alpha protein pathways, leaving some G-alphamodulated pathways unopposed. In turn, the non-specific branch of the immune system is turned on and, without retinoid switching, cannot be down regulated.
Wow, blinded with the cool science yet? No, me neither. Go back to line one where it says ‘one hypothesis’. All that follows from that point is mere opinion. There’s no science to back it up.
Another organism of suspect is the live measles virus…
Yeah except its really not. The issues with the Wakefield hypothesis are so many and so thoroughly debunked, it really isn;t worth my time or yours going through them again and again.
There is evidence that Thimerosal (which is 49% ethyl mercury) is indeed harmful. Since the 1930s, Thimerosal has been extensively used as an antibacterial agent in vaccines (Geier et al., 2007). Thimerosal has been implicated as a cause of autism. Not only is every major symptom of autism documented in cases of mercury poisoning but also biological
abnormalities in autism are very similar to the side effects of mercury poisoning itself (Bernard et al., 2001)
Oh dear. Reliance on more thoroughly debunked rubbish in the form of well, anything by the Geier’s and the ridiculous Bernard ‘paper’. I’m happy to go through why these are rubbish but I think I’d be preaching to the converted.
The rest of the paper is a rogues gallery of debunked and fringe science. Helen Ratajczak cites the Geier’s numerous times, DeSoto and Hitlan, Nataf and Rossignol to name but a few. This isn’t a paper so much as an advert for the sort of poor science that was examined in the Autism Omnibus proceedings and roundly rejected by the Special Masters. For goodness sake, she even cites David Ayoub of the Black Helicopter infamy.
When it comes to this paper – handle with extreme caution. Its toxic rubbish.
Left Brain Right Brain 
@Dawn: ” so you and I are contemporaries age-wise….we got every vaccine recommended for Us citizens”.
Well, I don’t know where you got the notion that you and I are contemporaries! You should probably rethink that dear. And while you may have been busy getting ” shot up” with all the US vaccines I was safely tucked away in rural South Africa, getting minimal at best ( or worst, depending upon ones perspective) exposure to the ” latest and greatest” of pharmaceutical
” knowledge and protection”.
@Chris: so which is it then? on the one hand you hyperventilate for the cites, and in the next you dismiss pubmed as an ” index” ( AFTER I had pointed out MY feelings on the matter, at that !)
@ Sharon:while I have empathy for you as an ASD mom, you clearly have NO empathy for someone whose child does not exhibit the SAME symptoms as yours, as if that makes the diagnosis somehow suspect !! For heavens sake, being a closed mind does everyone a disservice and peppering the net with your version of truth does not make it a stone tablet Sharon, but it does obfiscate the issue. If you believe that I am arrogant because I don’t follow your half baked notions and strict adherance to fraudulant science that insists on blind faith of a ” literate few” with enforcement by a grey order of little men in suits, then I am proud to adorn the mantle of ” arrogant” in defiance of such blind adoration of the grey man with the big stick.
Amandla !!!
freedom to the people. Freedom of speech and freedom to think of independent speech instead of being a mouthpiece for ” the stick”. I think you can use your imagination to get where I am going with this stick.
@JL….well done ! but you missed 4! no matter.
Gives Sullivan a chance to come back and place another bet….
last and least @CBS: go and kiss your boss quickly now….
because If I were YOUR boss….
your ass wold be on the sidewalk darlin’.
Dinah Everett Snyder
dinaheverettsnyder@hotmail.com
I sort of lost interest in this when I became convinced that Ms Snyder was a Poe.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
But I just saw this, and I have to respond!
Ms Snyder said: “There are vaccines I believe in:
…
flu vaccine…not so much
current flu vaccine? hell no!”
What!
I have mentioned this miracle before on other boards (a clever person could probably track down my secret identity through these little crumbs of information):
My severely autistic son was non-verbal as at 5 1/2 years (he could use laboriously rote-learned simple phrases – he was as verbal as a budgie).
We had had an early diagnosis, due mainly to the severity of his symptoms, and started EIBI at the age of two. But although we managed to curb self-injurous behaviors and even won the toilet-training and poo-smearing battle at 5 yo, nothing sank my heart as much as the communication barrier.
Then, we all had our yearly flu shots last year, and the kids had their second booster shots a month later, in the last week of the school holidays. A few days later (I wasn’t counting, it was before school started) my baby came up to me as I was reading something and said
“Come and fix the computer please Mummy!”.
A novel sentence he had never learned or heard before, although he had learned or heard bits in different contexts of course. I can’t adequately describe how I was affected by that one sentence. The technical term is ‘generative recombination’. A significant milestone.
Other sentences followed. To the point that my present post has been repeatedly interupted by requests for playdoh, and for me to read out all the names of the Thomas The Tank Engine Friends on his new poster. I am happy to comply. Nearly a year later, my baby is still very autistic, but is verbal! And not like a budgie. And the future looks so much brighter than it did a year ago.
Following the reasoning of many on the interwebz, I should attribute his significant, life-changing, shift to the medical intervention applied a few days earlier.
The 2010 flu vaccination made my baby talk!
@McD says “I can’t adequately describe how I was affected by that sentence”. You don’t need to even try. I imagine many of us posting here can understand how profound that moment was. It makes me tear up just thinking about it.
Vaccine/Autism Denialist Seth Mnookin Caught With Pants Down
http://tinyurl.com/4xxu64g
We wonder what Seth will have to say in answer?
Maybe he will do a Brian and keep quiet?
interesting how Kev erased the previous to next post that submitted duplications of Dr Wakefields GI inflammation study.
For all that ye all so badly wanted to see the duplications of it cited. Tsk tsk Kev old boy, was that an itchy trigger finger or a little denialism from the mainstream?
@McD: I am truly so happy for you, really, I am. Your story is unique, as is your child. My story and child are different, to you and yours, as is the child now suffering seizures from his flu vaccine, up to 100 a day, with a heart condition after a stroke as a reaction from the medications used to TRY and treat his seizures. This is not a simple issue, and by no means do I want to detract from the joy you must be feeling. But it is a conundrum wouldn’t you say?
and Poe? I think not!
Dinah Everett Snyder
dinaheverettsnyder@hotmail.com
Dinah Everett Snyder,
just to make things clear: if/when I start to delete your comments, I’ll let you know. Don’t try to make something more out of your comments being held back than is reality–they got sent to the spam queue. There are 1600 comments there right now. I don’t spend a lot of time any more trying to fish comments back out. Ask McD, he had comments in there too.
I barely read your comments, much less take the time to filter them. Sorry to be so blunt, but after reading statements you made elsewhere on the web playing the “I’m going to deny that so and so actually has a diagnosis” I gave up on your integrity.
If you posted it on his blog, why have you posted it here?
Because he’s a troll, Kev.
McD, acute resolution of autism symptoms with acute immune system activation has been described before. There was a paper on it in Pediatrics by Andrew Zimmerman a few years back. That was a prospective study which I blogged about in the context of nitric oxide physiology.
http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2008/01/resolution-of-asd-symptoms-with-fever.html
Chris asks (and is not answered):
I believe I may have part of the mystery solved. The citation:
Pardo CA, Vargos DL, Zimmerman AW Autistic Disorder and Viral Infection. Journal of Neurology 2005 Immunity, Neuroglia and Neuroinflammation in autism.
is a chimera of two different citations:
Pardo CA, Vargas DL, Zimmerman AW. Immunity, neuroglia and neuroinflammation in autism. International Review of Psychiatry. 2005 Dec;17(6):485-95.
and:
Libbey JE, Sweeten TL, McMahon WM, Fujinami RS. Autistic disorder and viral infections. Journal of Neurovirology. 2005 Feb;11(1):1-10.
The bit that Ms. Snyder quoted was from the latter article, Libbey et al (2005), which is a review article. Would you care to guess whose articles the authors used as the support for that quote (which was in the abstract, BTW)?
You guessed it! None other than AJ Wakefield. In other words, the support for that conclusion was based on bogus publications. I haven’t had the time to go over the rest of Ms. Snyder’s references, but I will if there is an interest.
Sorry for being a bit late with that information; life happens and all that.
Prometheus
Her paper points to multiple reasons not just vaccines.
Prometheus wrote:
Prometheus, in fairness to Libbey et al. (and contrary to the point that those who selectively quote the abstract are straining to make), the authors note that “numerous groups have not been able to replicate these findings.”
Wow, circular citations!
The evidence supporting Wakers et al. (1998) is really piling up now, what with Wakers et al (1998, cited in Libbey et al 2005).
We’ll be simply suffocating under all the data soon with the publication of further evidence for the MMR-Autism link this year (Wakers et al., 1998, cited in Libbey et al., 2005, cited in Everett Snyder, 2011)
Yep McD, the proof of how corrupt medical publishing has become can be seen from a long list of citations of medical journal papers claimed to be evidence vaccines are safe and do not cause autistic conditions.
Fortunately numerous US Government agencies have confirmed vaccines can cause autistic conditions.
You can read more here:
“Unsafe Vaccines & Corruption In Medical Journal Publishing”
http://tinyurl.com/3znajyo
So Kev and Sullivan, why is your blog called an Autism Blog when it is really an anti-vaccine safety blog.
@ McD : you are so quick to bite at Dinah Everett Snyder that you neglected to actually go back and refresh yourself on what the premise of this article and discussion is all about.
I want to remind you that I never claimed a hardcore relationship between MMR and vaccines, but you don’t seem to care, you just want to shred me apart. That is too bad, for you and for people who are interested in really talking about the problems of autism and the GI issues that some of those kids have. Yes, some, not all, again I doubt that you care because for you it seems to be about silencing opposition, not looking for answers.
Anyway, here are some cites that support the reality of GI issues in autistic kids then, and if Kev would stop censoring
Dinah Everett Snyder on his sites I would be willing to address your questions,
@ Kev : convenient of you to block me old chap, and then parry and dig at me for not replying…
My book, not even published yet, is generating a buzz, unlike your friend Seth who must be feeling quite humiliated after writing his vapid supposed expose’ on the whole vaccines and autism thing, only to have his complete lack of research integrity exposed, yes, quite humiliating. Some buzz he must be having/ feeling.
cites:
Balzola F,et al. Autistic enterocolitis: confirmation of a new inflammatory bowel disease in an Italian cohort of patients. Gastroenterology. 2005;128: Suppl. 2;A-303 ( Italian replicaton)
McGinnis WR. Mercury and autistic gut disease. Environ Health Perspective 2001:109:A303-4
Nicolov,RN et al Gastrointestinal symptoms in a sample of children with pervasive developmental disorders. J Autism Dev Disord. 2009;39:40-13
Kawashima H et al. Detection and sequencing of measles virus from peripheral mononuclear cells from patients with inflammatory bowel disease and autism. Dig Dis Sci. 2000;45:723-9
The last one is interesting because somewhere else I gave out some cites about the history of measles amongst other things but there was so much word verbage going on that no one went to even try and connect the dots that I laid out for the brains…I was right about pinprick focus, and this is only to the detriment of kids everywhere, because you all are making far too much noise about all the wrong things.
ah yes, the pardo cite….indeed I have already addressed my access to that, and well done on finding all the bits, which I never had to begin with. If any of you recall, I was given that by someone in Stellenbosch, as an aside to a discussion and it’s most interesting that it has gotten so many of you in such a lather for no aparent reason considering all the really juicy cites and much more relevant materials that I have put out into cyber world. You are all turned on by the darndest things if you don’t mind me saying so.
Sifu Amandla
Dinah Everett Snyder
dinaheverettsnyder@hotmail.com
yes kev, I have been wondering why exactly your blog is called Autism Blog, since you don’t seem to ascribe to the real notion thereof! Further, you seem to block dissenting voices when they get irritated at you, or post cites that you simply cannot argue with. This then is fraudulent journalism, but , as a friend of Seth Mnookin schmookin you are cut from the same cloth no doubt.
Amen
DES
dinaheverettsnyder@hotmail.com
Maybe you guys could have a look at the last 10 entries and tell me which ones either aren’t about autism or are about vaccines?
Funny how people who only comment on vaccine related posts claim this blog is only about vaccines.
Ms. Snyder, you are back? Ever plan on answering this question?
Mr. Stone, Mr. Miller and Ms. Snyder, which of the following LBRB posts (cut from the front page) are on vaccines:
On Autism Awareness Day
Release of the IACC Summary of Advances in ASD Research and Updates on Autism Awareness Month Activities
Loving Lampposts video clips
Autism supplement in yesterdays Independent
Sexual abuse allegations by children with neuropsychiatric disorders
Loving Lampposts: synopsis and director’s statement
Loving lampposts
Robert MacNeil returns to PBS NEWSHOUR to report on Autism Today
Wired: iPads Are Not a Miracle for Children With Autism
Social-sexual education in adolescents with behavioral neurogenetic syndromes
DES:
And a perfect example of the “begging the question” fallacy. There is no hard evidence that vaccines cause autism.
[LBRB say] Sloppy science… So, should we all in the skeptic camp be reaching for our humble pie and our knife and fork?
[Julian Frost say] There is no hard evidence that vaccines cause autism.
first full disclosure: i am not now and never have been a communist nor an anti VAXer…do not believe VAXs cause autism…but much of the current rhetoric is all too familiar…eg;
“There is no hard evidence that cigarettes cause cancer.”
sloppy science (promotional science, promoted ignorance) is too oft SOP…might consider a piece of humble pie…
stanley seigler
“There is no hard evidence that cigarettes cause cancer.”
Bad example. There was plenty of evidence in the 1950s (even noted on page 113 of Offit’s Autism’s False Prophets). What you might remember are the tobacco companies ad campaigns that directly countered the actual data. The book Emperor of All Maladies explains it quite well:
The author goes into great detail on the studies showing that tobacco cause cancer. Even one of the British researchers was so compelled by the preliminary surveys, he quit smoking.
Next time you try to throw humble pie, make sure you actually know what you are throwing.
@ChildHealthSafety, I checked out your link. What a joke. If you weren’t part of an insidious movement happy to cause children unnecessary pain, suffering and death on occasion, in order to score points and feed a manfactroversy for the financial benefit of the lawyers and autism-‘experts’ buzzing around the self-licking ice-cream that is the US vaccine court, I would probably laugh.
This paragraph summed up your whole site, really:
“We reproduce here the full list of papers posted on Mnookin’s blog. If you want to see how poor these journal papers are as evidence of anything, check out the CHS article on just one of them – the Honda/Rutter paper.”
Using your own reasoning, I am pre-judging your entire site on the extremely poor logic displayed in this one paragraph, and can safely ignore everything else you have to say.
@ Chris” Pardo, answer this question, did I miss that”…..
yes Chris, you missed my explanation of where I got THAT….
too busy horsing around with all the one up manship- the LOT of you !
@ Dawn: you and I are NOT contemporaries, by a long shot ( in the arm)I grew up in rural South Africa, the ward of a very distrustful grandmother not prone to believing much from either the medical establishment or govt, and I have my old vaccine card to prove my sheer lack of the regimen, though it was skeletal at best compared to what todays children are expected to roll up their sleeve for.
@ Promethius: Kev is the one responsible for my lack of response thusfar, he has a nasty habit of censoring dissenters…
Have any of you noticed that Helens paper ponts to multiple issues, not just vaccines? just curious…
@McD: “circular citations”…you sort of missed the boat on the context and the thrust of that conversation completely…
Also, Pardo is a moot point, I have already explained that cite, curious that I raised so many other possible avenues of discussion and…were this really truly an “Autism Blog” dedicated in any way, shape or form to autism discussion of any merit, any one of you would have questioned the direction of the other cites I discussed. You did not. Having perused some of Kevs
and Sullivans writings, and comments by Sharon, Chris and the other magnets I can again only conclude my observation that this is fraudulent journalism, focused only on silencing any opposing viewpoint to the strict dogma of mainstream medicine which does a disservice not only to children of autism but to sufferers of cancer, diabetes and autoimmune illness.
You are perpetuators of lies, each of you. But carry on, nobody is really listening to you anymore beyond this narrow blog world. Out there, in the real world, people are listening to those willing to give equal airtime and truly focus on the issues, not the strategic importance of one upmanship as is found here and over at RI….his day too will come, and not a day too soon for the sick and fearful who have been subjected to the slash and burn of cancer treatments.
Now, if you would like a discussion beyond dogma, we may converse, if not…then continue your mindless chatter without me.
Dinah Everett Snyder
dinaheverettsnyder@hotmail.com
McD April 3rd, 2011 22:42:55 said “I …. can safely ignore everything else you have to say.”
Snore. You picked the papers you say prove your case.
Bit miffed are you that your big list of evidence is shown to be junk science?
We picked an example showing the papers you cite are junk science. Notably, you do not contest that Honda/Rutter is junk science.
But you are not satisfied.
So let’s look an another paper – the Tozzi paper. We took it apart here:-
“US Research Fraud, Tax Dollars And Italian Vaccine Mercury Study”
http://tinyurl.com/d6hljo
Not just junk science but evidence of US CDC fraud. Two examples of junk science and/or CDC fraud aren’t enough for you?
“What a joke.”
Shame you seem to be “part of an insidious movement happy to cause children unnecessary pain, suffering and death”.
I just looked up a few figures for a post on Seth Mnookins’ blog (so a bit of a cross-post), and I would like ChildHealthSafety’s comments on the following:
Since 1999, autism-related claims have made up 67% of vaccine court cases. Before 1999, the percentage was 0.
Since 1988, autism cases have made up 41% of the vaccine-court lawyers’ case-load over-all.
Since 1988, vaccine court has paid out $2,183,595,780.77.
Of that, $48,604,511.80 was paid in attorneys fees for DISMISSED cases alone – a significant proportion of which will have been autism cases. And as payments lag a few years behind hearings, this doesn’t even include the 400-odd dismissed cases in the past two years.
You can see the stats here: http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/statistics_report.htm
1) If the vaccine-autism link is so obvious that parents are reliable reporters of the phenomenon, why did no parents report it before 1999?
2) Vaccine-court lawyers and their expert witnesses, like the Griers, are paid whether they win or lose. It is in their best interests to simply churn through cases regardless of the facts. Based on the figures above, autism parents are a significant portion of the vaccine-damage industry’s revenue stream. Do you think it is ethical to misrepresent science and encourage a baseless false belief just to pad out one’s case load at public expense?
3) And, of course, once the parents are invested in the process they will disseminate the false-belief for you. Talk about a self-licking ice-cream alright. Have you declared any COIs on your website CHS? Do you have any links to the vaccine-damage industry?
[chris say] Bad example
there are no good egs of sloppy science…its just too sloppy…as is too much science…ms dawsons misbehavior of ABAers essay comes close to good…
there is no doubt cigs cause cancer…is there any ANY doubt VAXs cause whatever…
oh/and people are still smoking…cig companies did a fabulous job promoting ignorance with science…and how aboot that big pharma (BP not oil).
BTW re: “throw humble pie”…not throwing “scientific” humble pie just questioning those who worship at the alter of science…
BTWbtw those who worshiped there once said the sun revolved around the flat earth…which should give pause to the current worshippers.
stanley seigler
McD April 4th, 2011 03:22:46 says: “I just looked up a few figures ….. and I would like ChildHealthSafety’s comments on the following”.
Typical. This is just a game of “Whack-a-mole”. McD’s entire case was knocked out quickly and efficiently. So instead of lying down and dying it is 1) body-swerve and 2) “and now for something completely different”.
No McD. It is time for you to answer. Do you deny numerous US government agencies and officials and the Federal Court have confirmed vaccines cause autistic conditions.
Do you deny Honda/Rutter and Tozzi are junk science.
Simple questions. The answers are known. McD will deny regardless of the proof produced to show s/he is wrong.
“BTWbtw those who worshiped there once said the sun revolved around the flat earth…which should give pause to the current worshippers.”
Again, a bad example. It has been known since the time of Eratosthenes the this planet is a approximate a sphere, though it took a bit longer to resolve the rotation (that took Copernicus).
Which has what relevance to to vaccines and autism?
I regret that I do no quite understand what you are trying to say. Please try again using standard English grammar and rhetoric.
“There is no hard evidence that vaccines cause autism.” said Julian Frost April 3rd, 2011 17:47:02.
Glad to see you agree there is evidence even if it is not “hard” enough for you. That is something of a concession from someone on Kev/Sullivan’s blog.
ChildHealthSafety,
do me a favor. Stop using this blog to drive traffic to your blog. Stop trying to make the conversations here about your blog posts. Whatever facts you believe you have proven in your blog can be discussed there. If people chose, as I do, to not read your blog, allow us that right. If our reasons are (a) that your posts are not well written and (b) your logic is often very poor and (c) your clear biases are painfully obvious, respect that those are valid reasons to not want to participate on your site.
Also, would you be so good as to stop the baiting? Seriously, it gets old. I can’t help it if you either can’t read this blog for accuracy or if you chose to mischaracterize it. I can ask you to take your baiting elsewhere.
I find it highly ironic that you are once again making demands of people. Since you dodge and weave when presented with requests to back up your own illogical statements, you have no standing to make such requests of others.
You have abused the hospitality of this site in the past. I don’t intend to allow you as much leeway this time around. If your goal is to test how far you can go before being asked to leave, just leave now. You can go around the blogosphere and claim bragging rights that I censor you.
OK. Just to humor you, I read that last link.
Surprised? Someone actually read it in detail? Well the first section of it anyway.
Did you not think anyone would bother clicking on the links and spend ages fiddling around with the browser to get the fricking thing at a readable resolution (because you sure made that bloody difficult) so they could, by squinting and peering at it sideways, work out that you
completely, deliberately, misrepresent what is said.
The email in question (crickey you must have had to troll through piles of boring emails to find that something you could almost but not quite twist into ammunition against the study)states:
“The maximum exposure is indeed relatively low if that was the only T containing vaccine used. My estimate would be that you need at least >50 by 3 months OR >100 by 6 months to see an effect if there is one, which you barely make (50 at 2mo and 75 at 4 mo in the UK)”
The table you present from the study clearly shows that the Higher Thimerosal group received 100u at 6 months, from TWO vaccines. The concerns the scientists were discussing during the planning stages of the study were resolved.
Your first lie is when you state “What the US public were not told is that the study was certain to be unable to detect any effect.”
you follow this up with “…the dose applied by the age of 3 months had to be more than 50 millionths of a gramme of mercury AND more than 100 millionths of a gramme by the age of 6 months.”
Note the use of the word AND (my emphasis). Look at the quote from the email. The scientist said OR. You can make a big lie with a little word, and so you go on to apply your now false criteria to the study:
You then state: “Table 1 of the paper shows Italian children received by the age of 3 months two thirds of that minimum amount; no more 37.5 millionths of a gramme. By 4 months they had only three quarters of that minimum: 75 millionths of a gramme and the maximum by six months
was 100 millionths of a gramme, not enough to hit or exceed the threshold needed.”
Liar.
by using AND, you created a false criterion. The kids needed to have reached 50 by 3mo OR 100 by 6mo. They reached 100 by 6mo.
There is nothing wrong with the research design, the intentions and integrity of the scientists concerned are sound.
You have falsely and maliciously misrepresented research in such a way as to deter well-meaning parents from providing adequate medical care to their children.
You are actively committing fraud.
You make me sick.
Thank you McD for not denying that numerous US government agencies and officials and the Federal Court have confirmed vaccines cause autistic conditions: McD April 4th, 2011 06:31:40.
But then you shower abuse on us – accusing us of lying when what we have said is correct. Your case is wrong [ie whether you use “and” or “or”]: McD April 4th, 2011 06:31:40. In neither age group was the level of mercury/thiomersal dose achieved to observe any measurable effect.
What you call “the scientist” was none other than Robert Verstraeten of the US CDC – whose research resulted in the secret Simpsonwood conference about mercury in vaccines.
He was clear there had to be a dose exceeding 100 microgrammes by 6 months or more than 50 microgrammes by 3 months. None of the age groups in the Tozzi study were above those levels. And there were numerous other confounding factors on top which you do not even mention.
Nothing left to say – end of debate.
To Sullivan @ April 4th, 2011 04:59:48.
Whenever someone comes here and wins the argument against your POV, the comments from you and others get angrier and angrier. Many have been subjected to repeated and sustained abuse on this blog so don’t try accusing the abused of being the abuser.
We have abused nothing here but anyone can see you and “McD” abusing us particularly in recent comments.
So very clearly, our points made and are proven – nothing left to say – end of debate.
Thankyou ChildHealthSafety for not denying that a virtual conspiracy of vaccine-damage lawyers and ‘expert’witnesses are manipulating parents into acting as vaccine-damage shills through investing them in the outcome of baseless claims with slim to no chance of prevailing against genuine science; and all to ensure to the ongoing padding of vaccine-damage case-loads with publically funded false vaccine-autism cases.
Who is Robert Verstraeten? Do you mean Thomas Verstraeten, the actual author of the initial ESTIMATE for design purposes, at obviously a very early stage, discussed in the emails. The name of the parties to the email is irrelevant, they were clearly discussing research design matters in an open and nonevasive fashion, with a clear intent to produce good science. Hey, why not make available all the emails you must have hauled up. Then we’ll see what sort of people these science wonks are (quite nice people too, I am quite sure)
Are you really trying to claim that because the children reached 100u at 6mo that they did not reach the “>100u at 6mo” ESTIMATED for the study to detect an effect. Do you really think there would have been a whopping change in the results, or the significance if each child had received 101u. An extra 1 millionth of a gramme. What sort of idiots do you take us parents of autistic kids to be, exactly?
Your second paragraph gives it away of course: “In neither age group was the level of mercury/thiomersal dose achieved to observe any measurable effect.”
Sour grapes. The study didn’t find the effects you wanted to see, so you claim they didn’t give enough thimerosal (the logic of this is stunning, given your scare-mongering over thimerisol in any dose, you must have a head full of pretzels).
You are splitting hairs to the nth degree over the amount of 1 millionth of a gramme that you appear to be the only one mandating as necessary over and above the accepted 100u in the first place. You are playing science like a debating game. You are being a fundamentally dishonest arsehole.
And then, whose computer has a frickin key for “equal to or greater”? Like everybody else, Tom would just used the > key in an email between colleagues. If bang-on the number were not sufficient, he would not have then directly used the following phrase “which you barely make (50 at 2mo and 75 at 4 mo in the UK)” If bang-on 50 ‘makes’ >50, then bang on 100 ‘makes’ >100 in this context.
Most of the rest of your so-called ‘critique just warms over the comments the researchers made themselves, on the difficulties of doing this sort of research; and of course your stunning assessment of the two significant differences found in the battery of tests, revealing a profound ignorance of the issues pertaining to multiple testing (which the authors did discuss but you chose to ignore).
Given the blatant dishonesty and sleight-of-hand demonstrated with this one paper, I will not be wasting any of my time on any others. I remind you of your statement:
“If you want to see how poor these journal papers are as evidence of anything, check out the CHS article on just one of them”
Done that. It was evidence of poor reasoning, dishonest arguments, and pathetic misrepresentation of science on the CHS site.
ChildHealthSafety,
You are committing a fallacy when you say “Glad to see you agree there is evidence even if it is not “hard” enough for you.” Saying that there is no hard evidence of something is not the same as admitting there is evidence. There is no hard evidence that a unicorn runs round the office when nobody is there.
Your points are neither made nor proven. It is not abuse to call you a liar when you have been caught in a lie, as McD has. And if you have to resort to logical fallacies and lies to bolster your argument as you have, then your case is very poor indeed.
“It is not abuse to call you a liar when you have been caught in a lie, as McD has.” Julian Frost April 4th, 2011 11:27:09
None of the children covered by the Tozzi paper received the dosage of mercury the CDC knew was needed to measure any effect. That is true and documented and McD knows that.
So who is the liar? Certainly not anyone at CHS.
Thanks for the abuse. You agree it is abuse to call someone a liar who is not. And now you seem to have taken over from McD, who also got it so very wrong.
“Tag” team?
“Saying that there is no hard evidence of something is not the same as admitting there is evidence.” Julian Frost April 4th, 2011 11:27:09
Yes it is. It implicitly admits there is evidence and that it is not “hard”. Otherwise you would just say “there is no evidence”. You cannot say that of course because there is.
But we also see you are not denying that numerous US government agencies and officials and the Federal Court have confirmed vaccines cause autistic conditions.
And of course that is evidence and it is “hard”.
I think I’ll just repeat what McD said.
“by using AND, you created a false criterion. The kids needed to have reached 50 by 3mo OR 100 by 6mo. They reached 100 by 6mo.
There is nothing wrong with the research design, the intentions and integrity of the scientists concerned are sound.
You have falsely and maliciously misrepresented research in such a way as to deter well-meaning parents from providing adequate medical care to their children.”
You did lie. And you are now trolling.
Julian Frost,
You are seeing classic ChildHealthSafety behavior. Read his comments–he’s in this to win arguments. Not to discuss facts. He will never admit to having been caught in a mistake, no matter how obvious it is to all reading. He will just turn around and bait you and claim that he has won some point in a game only he knows about.
Check recent discussions–he asserts that this blog is only about vaccines. Given ample evidence to the contrary, he just ignores it. The current discussion of him misrepresenting information–been there already. He quoted (and misquoted) only those sections of the Wakefield GMC transcripts to make his points. When the full quotes came to light, he just acted as though it never happened.
He can take himself down the path of pseudoscience if he wishes. But he’s promoting it to others. That’s what gets frustrating. And, when no one reads his blog, he takes his junk arguments over here so he can have a battle and win some points in his game. I’m disinclined to allow this to go on very long. As noted above, he’s already abused the hospitality of this site. He thinks LBRB spends too much time on vaccines. The quickest way to change the course is to send him back to his own blog.
“by using AND, you created a false criterion. The kids needed to have reached 50 by 3mo OR 100 by 6mo. They reached 100 by 6mo.” Julian Frost April 4th, 2011 12:37:50.
Cut the rhetoric and address the facts:-
1) it does not matter whether we used “and” or “or”;
2) in either case none of the doses received by the children concerned exceeded the 50 or 100 microgramme limits respectively by the ages of 3 or 6 months;
3) that is what the CDC knew explicity was necessary in order to be able to measure any effect.
Ergo, no falsely and maliciously misrepresenting of research – just another research fraud by the US Centers for Disease Control. Naturally, we are not suggesting Tozzi knew any of this but the US CDC did know.
McD makes all sorts of arguments here: April 4th, 2011 10:58:53 to try to get out of the facts:
1) s/he has made accusations of lying when wholly untrue:
2) the levels of exposure to thiomersal in the Tozzi paper were too low for any effect to be measurable.
It is noticeable that McD’s post was made an hour before our last post timed @12:46 but it appears on the blog 3 hours later.
The post also relies on conspiracy theories, which is scraping the bottom of the barrel a tad.
CORRECTION TO LAST POST:
“McD’s post was made nearly two hours before our last post timed @ 12:46 but it appears on the blog 3 hours later.”
““McD’s post was made nearly two hours before our last post timed @ 12:46 but it appears on the blog 3 hours later.” ”
As already noted, he had at least one post in the spam queue. It’s his place to complain about that, not yours.
What we are seeing here [Sullivan April 4th, 2011 18:34:09] is classic LBRB/Sullivan behaviour.
When your arguments or those who support you fail and they make serious mistakes you fall back on comprehensive irrelevant and wide-ranging attacks on your opponent in the debate and accuse them of making mistakes when they have not.
This approach has the effect of provoking all sorts of responses on irrelevancies and distracting from the issues being debated.
Nice body swerve Sullivan but it just does not work.
ChildHealthSafety,
nothing works with you. We can go around and around (and around and around) all day. It’s all a game to you. Please find somewhere else to play your debate games and “win” your arguments. I’d really rather not play your games.
ChildHealthSafety,
I forgot–you will take any discussion to the n’th degree to try to get the last word in. It gets old. If you have something substantive to say, do so. If not, go to your own blog. You can tell all your online friends you “won” again and got put back into the moderation queue.
It was clearly illustrated to CHS where and what his mistake with the Wakefield transcripts was. He was inarguably selectively quoting from the available information to make a point he knew, or should have known, was totally unsupportable in light of the full clinical context. This demonstrates either a high level of dishonesty or an inability to understand the clinical context.
To make it worse for him, he actually changed his arguement over time to include data he had been embarrassed into being unable to deny, yet at no point did he admit to any error or possibility of error.
That he now denies the mistakes (which were proven to have occured with direct references) simply compounds his mistakes, it does not answer the numerous concerns that have been put to him multiple times.
Everyone on this blog recognises the unethical, unprofessional, slightly unhinged and factually false behaviours of Doherty, AWOL, Snyder, Stone et al.
They all blame the reaction to their misbehaviour on everyone but themselves, and try to claim their repeated shoutings of oft-rebutted arguements as somehow some form of winning.
There is only one response to them that is justified: total and absolute banishment from any and all serious discussion about autism or vaccines.
Dedj:
I suspect that CHS is Clifford Miller. He and Doherty have one thing in common: they are both lawyers.
Chris,
if someone wants to use a pseudonym, let them. Clifford Miller is open about his involvement with the self-styled ChildHealthSafety blog. Otherwise I’d pull the comment.
I suspected as much, hencewhy I regard their behaviours as worthy of having them reported to their professional associations.
I will not do this as I am utterly unconvinced that my real world identity will not ‘somehow’ be released to the wrong people, as you cannot make anonymous complaints.
After what happened to ORAC, Rebecca Fisher, Deer and Kim Wombles and many others, I do not regard them as worthy of all the problems the grunt level entities in the vaccine skeptic movement would be willing to cause.
I regard CHS as now and forever a waste of time, I will be unlikely to respond to any further discussion on this topic here or elsewhere.
I’m okay with that. Sorry.
[chris say] I regret that I do no quite understand what you are trying to say. Please try again using standard English grammar and rhetoric…Which has what relevance to vaccines and autism?
the relevance is to science. and how science has gotten it wrong…since time immemorial…some 2000 years fr Eratosthenes to Copernicus…
more bad examples how science got it wrong: bettelheims theory; a 9 ft seawall will stop tsunami flooding; a blow out preventer will prevent oil spills, etc, etc…
the rhetoric relavence: “there is no hard evidence cigs cause cancer” is similar to VAX rhetoric: “there is no hard evidence VAXs cause autism”…actually it’s not a bad example of how the tobacco companies denied the effects/deaths with their promotional science…and tobacco is to cancer as VAXes are to autism.
please note as said previously: i am not now and never have been an anti VAXer…do not believe VAXs cause autism…i do believe “hard evidence” is not always hard evidence…perhaps shouldn’t have said anything, as it is a painfully obvious statement.
stanley seigler
Sullivan you are sensitive about being asked to identify yourself.
Similarly, David Gorski blogged for years as ORAC without identifying himself. Many others do the same, including those who post comments here.
You seem to think you know who posts here as ChildHealthSafety: [your comment here: April 4th, 2011 20:01].
Here is the deal. If you and Chris cannot find anywhere where those who post as ChildHealthSafety have identified themselves openly, do you agree to disclose openly your own identities: who you are, what you do and in which city you live?
Sounds fair to us. How about it?
ChildHealthSafety,
I have made it clear a number of times that I use a pseudonym for privacy. In specific, the privacy of my kid. As you would no doubt know if you read more than just the vaccine related articles here, I don’t discuss details about my family here.
The example of Orac is quite interesting. As you no doubt are aware, a campaign was mounted to get the man behind Orac in trouble with his work over his blogging. The effort involved a piece which attempted to create a false conflict of interest plus an email campaign.
“If you and Chris cannot find anywhere where those who post as ChildHealthSafety have identified themselves ”
How about here. In a piece written by Clifford Miller on the Age of Autism blog, it is stated:
“In a new post on ChildHealthSafety Clifford Miller explores the background to the study and analyses supplementary data supporting an association between vaccination and autism”
I take that as Mr. Miller identifying himself as being a writer for ChildHealthSafety.
If you read my statement, I said, “Clifford Miller is open about his involvement with the self-styled ChildHealthSafety blog. ” The statement is accurate, as noted from the above blog post on the Age of Autism blog. Whether or not Mr. Miller or another member of ChildHealthSafety is posting here (or multiple people under that pseudonym) I can not say. Nor do I really care.
Also, it is worth noting that John Stone has also made it public that he writes for the ChildHealthSafety blog. Here is an example.
Note that it is not just a copy of a post on the Age of Autism blog, but was posted by John Stone himself on ChildHealthSafety “Posted on March 30, 2011 by johndstone ” Mr. Stone has his own username for the blog. Found with a simple google search.
“If you and Chris cannot find anywhere where those who post as ChildHealthSafety have identified themselves openly”
Perhaps you are not familiar with the blog? If so, perhaps you should not be using that pseudonym nor should you be linking back to that blog.
“Sounds fair to us. How about it?”
ChildHealthSafety,
you offered nothing in return for me providing the information where at least two members of your blog have openly disclosed their identities. Having now done so, here’s the deal: no more baiting on this site. No more diverting the conversation to subjects on your blog. No more discussion of who may be behind commenters on this blog.
Mr. Sigler, the Science Was Wrong Before Fallacy is not appropriate, especially when used with erroneous examples (including the use of engineering failures do to forces they were not designed for). You are welcome to your own beliefs, but not to your own facts. At the present there have been dozens of studies showing no casual relationship between autism and vaccines. so please stop using that particular fallacy until you can back it up with some specific facts on vaccines..
Mr. Seigler, I apologize for spelling your name wrong.