The Autism Action Network is steaming mad at Bill Gates

Great stuff. Letter of congratulations on the Gate’s good work sent.

Mike Stanton

Knowing that measles often leads to vitamin A loss, if Africa’s high death rates from measles is also connected with vitamin A deficiency. To test this, children hospitalised with measles in Tanzania were given vitamin A capsules. The measles death rate fell by half.

The fact is that very high living standard lowers the population growth rate, and it just happens that very high living standard goes in hand with low child mortality – look at the EU or USA? where we struggle to have 2 babies per couple, and frankly have around 1.7 – the direct result of high standard.

You do not have to kill babies through vaccines(as Bill admits to) to reduce the population growth.

And btw. we have to reduce the population, don’t you agree Mike?

One paragraph of the proposed letter really bothered me. Actually, they all bothered me, but this one more than the rest:

‘The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has, as one of its stated goals, improving vaccine safety. How is that different from the goal of the vaccine safety advocates you described as “baby killers?”’

The goal may be the same, but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation goes about by using science and ethical methods.

The “baby killers” go about it in a way that is counterproductive, doesn’t actually achieve the goal, and uses fraud.

It’s akin to the difference between black and white.

@AWOL, why on earth would anyone in the ASD community care what Trump thinks? I couldnt give a rats arse what he thinks about this issue. When he decides to put some of his money into Autism research then I might be more inclined to listen to his opinions.

What is really troubling, whether some here wish to dismiss such concerns as “concern trolling” or not, are the current strategies of attacking people with claims of fraud and causing deaths unproven in a court of law or before an administrative tribunal with appropriate level of authority and due process.

The answer there Harold is to ensure your activities aren’t fraudulent and don’t directly or indirectly lead to the death and injury of people. Stop hiding behind this ‘due process’ bullshit. If people are anti-vaccine, are members of anti-vaccine groups and/or coerce others into not taking vaccines, then they are in point of fact, not law, anti-vaccine. By its very definition of existence being anti-vaccine puts other peoples lives at direct and indirect risk.

You seem to be repeating more and more anti-vax talking points these days Harold. I’ll ask you a question you avoided answering on the EoH Yahoo group where you post.

Knowing what you know now, would you vaccinate your son again from birth and in line with Canadian recommended schedule?

“If my comments are not addressed on their merits it is because those resorting to cheap insults can not answer them on their merits.”

Or – and get ready for this Harold – it could be because people are responding to your comments with the same level of effort and quality as is found within your comments.

Your behaviour has been pointed out to you repeatedly, yet you have made no clear effort to address it, instead choosing to blame your behaviour on the responses to it.

The idea that people are treating you with the intellectual contempt that you are so obviously treating everyone who does not agree with you does not appear to have occured to you.

You may not swear (although you do use cheap insults and are routinely dismissive and condescending) but that doesn’t mean you are deserving of any form of effort.

I am not impressed though with the research used to assert the dubious proposition that vaccines have been proven to “not cause” autism. You know both Dr Healy and Dr. Gerberding (now with Merck) have said, for example, that comparative autism studies of existing vaccinated and nonvaccinated populations could and should be done.

You can’t prove a negative but we can say that the data do not support a vaccine-autism causation. You want absolutes and you aren’t going to get them so you can continue to reject the preponderance of the evidence. You really need to stop invoking Healy and even Gerberding because they were both talking out of their asses. All it is is an appeal to empty authority.

What is really troubling, whether some here wish to dismiss such concerns as “concern trolling” or not, are the current strategies of attacking people with claims of fraud and causing deaths unproven in a court of law or before an administrative tribunal with appropriate level of authority and due process.

Ah, but people like Barbara Loe Fisher and Andrew Wakefield have directly affected vaccine uptake, which has in turn, affected some disease prevalence. But even more importantly, you’re a hypocrite because you defend the groups that carelessly claim that vaccines cause autism “unproven in a court of law or before an administrative tribunal with appropriate level of authority and due process.” Hell with law, they can’t even provide a single shred of scientific evidence.

These strategies will I believe be counterproductive and will encourage more resistance to vaccine uptake. They will also prevent research which MIGHT show that in some cases .. perhaps of vaccines given to expecting women whose children are subsequently shown to have been genetically predisposed … some vaccines might have triggered one of the variations of autism disorders.

Spare the persecution complex. It has been the claims of fraudulent researchers and the caterwauling of mummies and their ‘gut-science’ that has deterred more productive autism research. You can’t identify genetically-predisposed children without genetics research, a field of study which the groups you defend are patently against.

Here’s my letter:

Mr. Gates:

Autistic children and their parents all owe you a debt of thanks for your straightforward repudiation of the lies that are told about them. Thank you. Please keep up the good work in saving lives, both by funding the extermination of disease, and by forthrightly disagreeing with those who resist your efforts to do so.

@AWOL, “scared yet” Oh what? I live in Australia so what Trump does or thinks is of no consequence to me.

Sullivan,

The statements by Drs. Healy and Geberding about researching the (mythical) “vaccine-autism connection” need to be put in proper perspective. Both were referring to the possibility of a small subset of children – too small to be detectable by epidemiological methods – that develop autism as the result of vaccines.

There are problems with using these statements in support of the “vaccines-cause-autism” hypothesis:

[1] Epidemiological studies have shown no connection between vaccines and autism.

[2]The only data (such as they are) supporting a “vaccine-autism connection” is the temporal relationship between increasing numbers of vaccines and the increasing prevalence of autism (i.e. the “autism epidemic”).

[3] If vaccines cause autism in – as Drs. Healy and Geberding speculated – a small subset of children with autism, then vaccines couldn’t have caused the “autism epidemic” because – by definition – the number of “vaccine-caused” autism cases would be too small to detect by epidemiological methods.

Let me make this simple for those not familiar with basic epidemiology:

IF vaccines caused the “autism epidemic”, their impact would have been easily detected in studies done to date – no such effect has been found.

IF only a small subset of people with autism became autistic because of vaccines, then vaccines couldn’t have caused the “autism epidemic”.

AND since the “autism” epidemic” was and is the only thin reed of data supporting the “vaccines-cause-autism” hypothesis AND since vaccines clearly didn’t cause the “autism epidemic”…

THEN the “vaccines-cause-autism” hypothesis is dead.

If I may, I’d also like to parse out and answer Mr. Doherty’s initial comments (which were stated in the form of questions, ala “Jeopardy”):

“Who are these ‘people’?”

Although this question would be better asked of Mr. Gates, I heard his statement to mean “the people who make false statements about vaccines”, such statements including (but not limited to) “vaccines cause autism” (the available data do not support that statement – see above), “vaccines haven’t been tested in combination” (demonstrably false, as each new vaccine is tested in combination with all vaccines commonly in use at that point) and “vaccines overwhelm the immune system” (also demonstrably false).

“Does asking questions about vaccine safety, vaccine effects constitute ‘anti-vaccine efforts’?”

This is part of Mr. Doherty’s “just asking” ploy – truly asking questions (i.e. asking for information) isn’t “anti-vaccine” any more than asking what sort of gasoline mileage a car gets is “anti-car”. However, as Mr. Doherty should know, there are often statements that are phrased as questions, such as “Have you stopped beating your wife?” and “Why haven’t vaccines been tested for safety?”.

Saying “just asking” doesn’t magically change a statement into a question. At best, the repeated asking of a question that has already been answered is a passive-agressive way of saying “I reject your reality and substitute my own!”. At worst, it is an attempt to call the answer into question without actually having any evidence that it is wrong.

If you have data supporting your position, Mr. Doherty, by all means, let’s have it! If all you have is a deep dissatisfaction with the answer, then you really aren’t “just asking”.

“On what data, research, studies and sources have YOU concluded that questioning vaccine safety has killed children?”

Deaths in California due to pertussis, deaths from measles, re-emergence of polio in sub-Saharan Africa…should I go on? Again, it’s not about “asking questions” for information, it’s about making false or misleading statements disguised as questions.

“Should free speech be abolished in order to promote increased vaccination compliance?”

No. Has anyone suggested that? If not, this is a typical “straw man”, used to deflect attention from weak arguments.

“Do you recommend criminal charges be commenced against all those asking questions about vaccine safety?”

No. Has anyone suggested that? If not, this is another “straw man”, used to deflect attention from the weakness of Mr. Doherty’s arguments.

“Just asking.”

So, Mr. Doherty, are you in favor of a re-emergence of epidemic measles, polio, pertussis, etc.? Do you like seeing children suffer and die (and become disabled) from vaccine preventable diseases? What exactly do you have against children, anyway?

Just asking.

Promtheus