Taken from http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/118686794.html
Hodan Hassan of Minneapolis understands why some parents are afraid to have their children vaccinated. Until recently, she was one of them.
But today, Hassan will be one of the featured speakers at a Somali community forum designed to allay fears about vaccines in the midst of a measles outbreak.
“[I] read about how the world used to be without the immunization program,” said Hassan, who has four children, including a daughter with autism. “This generation doesn’t understand the benefit, and the importance, and how lucky they are having an immunization program in place.”
So far, 11 cases of measles have been confirmed in Hennepin County since February, five in Somali children who had not been vaccinated. Experts say that vaccine rates have dropped in the Somali community, along with other groups, because of unfounded fears of a possible link to autism.
Now, Somali physicians and state health officials have joined forces to counter what they say are widespread misconceptions about vaccine safety, which has left many children vulnerable to preventable diseases. The concern has grown in the last two years, since a Health Department study confirmed that there were an unusually high number of Somali children in the Minneapolis schools’ autism program.
In Hassan’s case, she stopped vaccinating her children after she learned that her daughter, Geni, now 6, had autism. At the time, she said, she was desperate for answers. Medical experts could not explain what caused her daughter’s condition, a severe communication and behavior disorder. But she quickly learned about the autism activists who blame the vaccines, in spite of medical assurances to the contrary. She began reading their books and attending their conferences, she said, and the fear took hold.
In December, she said, she turned out to hear Andrew Wakefield, the hero of the anti-vaccine movement, at a Somali community meeting in Minneapolis. Wakefield conducted a now-discredited 1998 study suggesting a link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
‘I was shocked’
Later, Hassan said, a local doctor challenged her to do her own research on Wakefield, who was accused of scientific misconduct in connection with the study, and ultimately stripped of his medical license in England.
Now she is one of his biggest critics. “I was shocked when I found out people used to die [of measles],” she said. Many still do in her native Somalia, she noted, and in other in parts of the world where vaccines are not available.
“If we could all go back in time, we would have appreciated it,” she said.
Just this week, Wakefield returned to Minneapolis for a private meeting with Somali families. Members of the news media were barred from Wednesday’s gathering, which reportedly drew only about a half-dozen Somali parents.
But one of the organizers, Patti Carroll of Shoreview, said she doesn’t believe parents are worried about the measles outbreak.
“They’d rather have them get the measles than deal with the effects of unsafe vaccines,” said Carroll, a volunteer with Generation Rescue, an autism advocacy group.
Health officials warn that measles is highly contagious and extremely dangerous. So far, six people have been hospitalized in the current outbreak, most of them young children. All are said to be recovering.
This week, Hassan circulated an e-mail inviting members of the Somali community to tonight’s forum at the Brian Coyle Center in Minneapolis.
“Our community has been misled about MMR causing autism,” she wrote. “Vaccines don’t cause autism and the benefit [outweighs] the risk.” She added: “We are very much against an unlicensed doctor to make our community his scapegoat.”
Left Brain Right Brain 
Just passing ..a more balanced blog..
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/118547569.html
Good for you Hodan Hassan.
What a charlatan. If he had one shred of integrity he would stay away and tell them that any study in which he was involved would be unpublishable in any credible journal. There is no name more toxic than his.
@Brian, I agree. It is hard not to consider that Wakefield’s motivation was to ingratiate himself into a community he presumed knew little of him and his reputation. The closed door/no media aspect is particularly troubling. One would think Andy would be all for transparancy if he wished to claw back any skerrick of perceived credibility.
“One would think Andy would be all for transparancy if he wished to claw back any skerrick of perceived credibility.”
If he was a rational thinker, yes. But I’m not sure he is rational anymore. As in, if he ever was rational, he isn’t now.
Giving him too much credit you think David?
Mr Deer, I thought you were a journalist? The referent in your post is not qualified. (that is also an ambigous statement so I will qualify)
You refer to a charlatan, but you fail to disclose who is the charlatan you are referring too. One could equally suppose it to be Hassan or Wakefield, one can only infer to whom you are referring by prior knowledge of your writings.
A less informed writer may well determine that your accusation refers to Hassan.
Of course if the referent in your post is indeed Wakefield then that allows my initial statement for all it’s ambiguity to hold true both in the intended sense (you failed to qualify who you were refering too) and the alternative reading – the person to whom you were refering to is not qualified, or at least has had his primary qualification as a Dr revoked.
Well done, Hodan Hassan.
Laurentius Rex:
Except Brian Deer referred to a “he”, and the only “he” in the article is Wakefield. The other people, Hassan, her daughter and Carroll, in the article are all “she”s. Minor point I know.
“Giving him too much credit you think David?”
I think giving him any credit is giving him too much…
If Wakefield is losing / has lost respect in this relatively isolated community, what’s left for him? I know the correct answer is ‘nothing’ but where can he go from here? I understand Colorado City, (AZ?) is as backward a place as might be found in the US. Polygamy and shunning of many things modern. Wakers might want to visit although they don’t take well to strangers….
Anyone who does research on Dr Andrew Wakefield will find that he is too hot to handle.
Propaganda works well.
But no one here has addressed the issue of teratogenic rubella live virus in the measles vaccine.
Why not plain unadulterated measles vaccine?
Or are teratogens like thimerosal, plutonium and rubella the exposures that we can expect more and more of?
While people don’t die of polio or measles in the USA, I note MND/ALS which is often mistaken for polio has risen from around zero to double and treble levels of the 1950’s.
I too was shocked to find increasing numbers in 2011 dying from breathing problems when it was not a problem in yester year.
This includes the under ones who coincidentally have had several rounds of vaccines many of which are repeating the same ones.
Do vaccines work if we need to give them every month to little babies?
AWOL, this is a clear troll. We are all well aware of how much you like to steer any and all conversations to a discussion of Brian Deer. The idea of an Andrew Wakefield supporter arguing conflicts of interest is so clearly ridiculous that you are almost guaranteed to derail a conversation while everyone piles on with the multiple examples of Andrew Wakefield’s proven COI’s.
I said almost. And I mean almost. I am not going to let that happen here.
AWOL,
As I said, you aren’t doing the “AWOL wants to talk about Briand Deer” thing. Comment deleted.
John Fryer Chemist:
Simplicity, fewer shots so cheaper; fewer visits to the Paediatrician’s Office so cheaper and more convenient; one jab not three so child has less unpleasantness. Just off the top of my head.
John Fryer Chemist:
The quick definition of your new-found word is “any agent causing defects.” Thimerosal has not been shown to be one such. It has been tested safe despite your fears.
Plutonium is an interesting addition to your screed. Do you mean that some vaccines contain it or that the increase in radiation from the Japanese disaster is worrying you?
Is the injected attenuated measles used in vaccines somehow homeopathically magnified and more dangerous compared to the live contagion loose in the now under-protected communities due (in large part) to Wakefield’s fraud?
AWOL would like everyone to know that there is a Hodan Hassan who works in a medical office in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, using this link:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Hodan/Hassan
To which the answer must be a resounding..”so?”
@Chris point taken, Laurentius is so obsessed with catching a Deer in his headlights that he wasn’t looking where he was going.
Is Charlatan a gendered noun I wonder.?
@AWOL by proxy, given the rule of 6 degrees of separation, everyone is connected to everybody it’s just a matter of deepening those facebook links, one is only one click away from the likes of Waker’s who is definately no friend of mine.
My thoughts precisely Kev.
JFC (Jobbie-Fried Chicken, anyone?): “Anyone who does research on Dr Andrew Wakefield will find that he is too hot to handle.”
What he really means: “Anyone who does research on Dr Andrew Wakefield will find that he is an obnoxious, greedy arse-hole.”
There, John. Fixed That For You!
Sure AWOL would 🙂
Thanks Sullivan.
David, LOL!
To MikeMa
Yes, the plutonium leak from Fukushima is just one more proof that modern science is not 100 per cent perfect.
To be blunt not necessarily autism but uranium is turning up in unhealthy infants coincidentally but unrelated to vaccines and any harm.
It is not the time to discuss the role of nuclear pollution when so small compared to other toxic materials but this catastrophe has already excluded another 2 000 square kilometres of our world from safe occupation for the next few hundred years.
I find it disturbing for future generations that in 11 days some of this stuff can find its way across the two great oceans and the american continent and arrive in measurable amounts in France and Europe.
One side effect of plutonium is MND which has similarities to polio and also a need for the modern Iron Lungs in vastly greater numbers than the real ones of the 1940’s and 50’s..
In another message I’ve held back, AWOL states:
This is pretty classic behavior. I’ve been clear: I will not allow this thread to be hijacked by an obvious troll attempting to make the conversation about Brian Deer. My opinion is that AWOL has seriously abused the hospitality of this site. Further, he/she has 325 comments so far, largely focused on Mr. Deer. It’s a bit much to argue that I won’t allow the discussion.
It hasn’t been addressed because rubella vaccine virus is not teratogenic; wild-type rubella virus, however, is.
And Mr. Fryer, we cannot address any of your opinions because you just pull them out of thin air. They are not real or factual.
@Julian: “David, LOL!”
Pleasure!
@Chris: “And Mr. Fryer, we cannot address any of your opinions because you just pull them out of your arse.”
FTFY. YW. Nothing can be pulled out of thin air; but plenty can be pulled out of an arse. 😉
AWOL – you are not alone in being censored, even though Sullivan and Kev usually deny it.
Century has been told repeatedly about the spam filter and the moderation queue. We all experience this from time to time due to the content of various posts.
Only Century sees the need to view an ordinary and common feature of blog comments as evidence of a conspiracy.
Each and every single incident of them claiming to have been censored has turned out to be a case of them misunderstanding the nature of moderation.
Well lets be honest I ought to have been spam outed for my comment focusing on Mr Deer rather than the triple six who ought to be in those headlights, for this is a serious issue that I can be accused of flippancy thereunto.
The point I am (was) trying to make nonetheless is that it doesn’t matter whether a journalist is on your side, or on your enemies, they share more in common than the difference between their opinions, they do not write with the same circumspection that is supposedly required of the academic writer.
Grub Street eh, where Addison and Steele rub shoulders with the sweary lexicographer and Fielding quoffs with quim in mind, Defoe notwithstanding.
Nah it’s not my scene, which makes me to wonder just what I am doing posting anything here at all in the popular media where celebs are tried by popular opinion and not fact.
I think I am at the tail end of things, the blogging phenomenon is petering out, guttering like a candle as newsnet did before.
The action has moved on, and where do we have to go to really challenge the bogeys now?
Science mum
Can you cite where the teratogenicity of rubella is not shown for rubella vaccine virus?
You seem to accept that science is correct in saying rubella virus is teratogenic.
I seem to remember that thalidomide (also teratogenic) was the safest drug of the 1950’s until they found it was a teratogen in the formulation of that time.
Mr. Fryer, you really should do better research. Because you keep trying to rewrite history. You have done it so much it is just assumed you are making it all up.
Mr. Fryer, wild-type rubella virus can be teratogenic if the mother acquires the primary infection during the first trimester of pregnancy, but the young children inoculated with attenuated rubella virus are most assuredly not pregnant–just so you know.
Of course: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16510217
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17721380
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10745249
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2732617
Why shouldn’t I? There isn’t any doubt whatsoever that maternal rubella infection within the first 2 trimesters is teratogenic. Surely you agree; in fact, I would daresay that your assumption that the vaccine does the same is because of the clear evidence of what the wild-type virus does.
You should also know that thalidomide was never approved for use by the FDA or any other countries’ drug oversight, in pregnant women. You should also know that rubella vaccine effect (or lack thereof) upon foetal development has been demonstrated. Yours is not an apt comparison.
Rubella caused more birth defects in one year during a single epidemic in the United States than thalidomide did during its entire time on the world market. [TERATOLOGY 58:13–23 (1998)] I suppose that’s one reason why those who are truly concerned about teratogenicity tend to support vaccination against rubella.
Unfortuntately, John Fryer Chemist, you are wider than the mark than even we thought. If you “remember that thalidomide (also teratogenic) was the safest drug of the 1950’s” then you need to accept that you are losing it.
Thalidomide was not approved in the United States, where drug safety were regulated following the elixir sulfanilamide incident, and in Europe led to the establishment of drug safety regimes. In the UK, for example, there was no required safety assessment of drugs prior to marketing. It was the thalidomide catastrophe that led to that.
So, unfortunately, you are just making it all up as you go along.
Get help.
Hi Brian
I have read the SUNDAY TIMES book on THALIDOMIDE, so thanks for that precision.
In those days the Sunday Times was a recognised influential newspaper that sadly has descended bit by bit to propaganda and lies.
If I remember I gave it up when they denied the Jews had been gassed to death and a long time before people wrote that being injected with mercury was good for the babies.
So if it’s good enough for the Sunday Times to make up things this doesn’t mean I am.
From that good old USA saying:
TWO WRONGS DON’T MAKE A RIGHT
Insults seem to be the norm here but that is possibly the other wrong?
Science Mom
Thanks for the references and the assurance of those workers on the safety of rubella vaccine live virus.
My knowledge of MMR dates only back this year so its a steep learning curve.
There are lots of questions unanswered.
Follow up was for one year. How many babies have a diagnosis of autism in one year?
The vaccines in most cases were not indicated. This of course means if tragedies can occur then they will.
Transmission or shedding is proven so we are accepting non-teratogenicity from a handful of cases.
There are more direct ways of proving or disproving teratogeniciity.
On a completely different note (thats how my brain works) they say only 20 people died after Chernobyl. How is this possible and if its wrong then it tells us to beware of statements that seem impoossible.
However attenuated and however these results indicate safety it is necessary to have safety checks done in advance and not by serendipity afterwards.
Surely someone, somewhere tested this stuff before injecting it?
Brian says:
Rubella caused more birth defects in one year during a single epidemic in the United States than thalidomide did during its entire time on the world market. [TERATOLOGY 58:13–23 (1998)
I would be much happier to know teratogenicity safety checks were done in advance and not after the event with this time a happy result for all.
Congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) isn’t just autism and CRS is evident from birth.
I’m not sure what you mean here. The vaccines were indicated as they were targeting a rubella-naive population and women of child-bearing age. They took advantage of a natural experiment that occurred by vaccinating women who didn’t know they were pregnant.
Shedding occurs rarely in a vertical fashion, with no adverse effects. It is an acceptable price for halting the spread of rubella.
Brian Deer:
This is why I accuse Mr. Fryer of being a history revisionist.
Last summer we spent a few days in Victoria, BC, which included a bus tour to the Butchart Gardens. As we waited for everyone to board the bus back to the hotel the driver was telling us about the one hundred most notable Canadians (he had it from a news article). When he finished I asked him if he knew about Frances Kelsey, who had prevented the thalidomide tragedy in the USA and was from Vancouver Island. He added her to his list.
Different Brian here, but this one would be grateful to John Fryer Chemist for citation backing this claim about the Sunday Times:
“If I remember I gave it up when they denied the Jews had been gassed to death …”
I don’t know who you are AWOL, and I would not normally respond to people who do not identify themselves. But this is a public domain site and I have never subjected anyone, let John Fryer, whose identity is known, to paranoid abuse. Would whoever runs this site please remove the latter allegation and put AWOL where he or she belongs, which is either permanently moderated or, absent with leave.
I rather think that John Fryer actually knows me better than that, with me as a long standing investigative journalist who has only ever been attacked by those I have exposed for their unethical medical conduct – and I do know what merits that term, believe me.
You could have checked me out AWOL, and if I can I will find out who you are, a person who thinks it’s OK to accuse me of paranoid abuse.
Brian Morgan,
I’ve put the comment in moderation for the time being while I sort this out.
I much appreciate your rapid and moderately expressed response.
Brian Morgan.
after deleting a “if the hat fits wear it” statement by AWOL in response to this discussion, I’ve decided to bid AWOL goodbye. He/she will no doubt cry “censorship”. Of course that will occur somewhere else.
Geez this thread is getting a bit Monty Pythons Life of Brian isn’t it? I feel like shouting “I’m Brian and so is my wife”. Sorry, I couldnt resist.
Sharon, I thought we were all Bonnie Offit–you can tell by our feminine style of writing.
Hi: To Brian Morgan
Look for THE HITLER DIARIES printed in the Sunday Times and the work of David Irving which from memory also got to the Sunday Times.
The remark about the Sunday Times was merely to show it has a history of selecting the very worst kind of journalism and the ability of any intelligent person/newspaper to turn fact into fiction and truth into lies and wage a campaign counter to all sense, reason and honesty. The reasons are still not clear to me but the propaganda continues with help from both the BMJ, the Lancet and Merck.
The demolition of Andrew Wakefield is one such modern example. An author with 13 others producing work done by a leading London Hospital on a minor issue blown up and studied at great cost and without evident means of where the money to support such expensive study came from in the period 1998 through to 2008. Most of the work repeating earlier work done more than a decade before.
For a very long time people have tried to deny the Holocaust and the Sunday Times bought the Hitler Diaries and published them as genuine. Probably making me go more ballistic than the current debate on using teratogenic vaccines.
The cost of 400 000 pounds for this fiction reminds us again of more recent stories spread by the Sunday Times where 400 000 payments automatically producedcries of foul even though more than this was paid to one single participant in the complete series of studies and dwarfed of course by payouts by Merck to the BMJ, the Lancet and very well known personalities close to our dear hearts.
It is difficult to imagine how anyone could believe this fiction that the Jews were not gassed without mercy but the Sunday Times did and its eminent Director Hugh Trevor-Roper in particular. This was around the early 1980’s and a check on Wikipedia etc shows it today in a rather clinicised form but it was a slur on the Jews and their torment and shows how propaganda can work.
Today we see the same kind of stunt attacking Andrew Wakefield who is certainly not an anti vaccinist and advocates the single measles as absolutely called for as soon as possible.
I would suggest without proof that like me he might think the teratogenic rubella live virus originally given in the UK at 11 to 13 more appropriate than the USA system of giving it at 12 months of age.
Rubella Vaccine failure and how we get killed for want of real vaccines for real killer viruses that really do work
Click to access jhyg00089-0147.pdf
This study shows platelet destruction in all vaccinated persons.
Unrelated to known teratogenic rubella vaccine it shows a problem not yet resolved or even recognised.
A 20 per cent reduction of platelets – what does this mean as we know measles vaccine has a similar effect?
Is it additive, synergy or no extra damage?
Is it something to worry about?
It is obviously not to the vaccine experts?
How does this square with experts claiming many vaccines at once are fine?
Ifyou look carefully you see that the platelets do over recover but then are destroyed once more.
This shows a huge hole in vaccine science which is that after several weeks and sometimes as little as 4 hours side effects, adverse effects even death are deemed the fault of the patient or the last person ( not a doctor or nurse ) to have contact with the victim.
Add to this recent knowledge that harm occurs BEFORE the spleen and it looks almost like cancer trying to take hold.
Note at this date there had been no proof that the vaccines teratogenic property was attenuated or lost.
When this vaccine was tried in the USA it caused a serious side effect or adverse effect for which the outcome is not clear but seemed permanent.
The study was on mature adults so the effect on a child or baby is expected to be worse.
To give a vaccine at such an early age does not seem proper especially as pressure in epidemics is brought to lower the age of vaccination.
I agree with Andrew that these vaccines need to be used in an appropriate way.
This vaccine has at least a 25 per cent adverse or side effect of joint pain and other problems.
The technical name for this condition is ITP but canlead to bleeding often again blamed by medical experts as SBS and in the past MSBP, suffocation etc.
Vaccines are valuable, do save lives, do prevent people getting distressing conditions but at what cost if every scientific concern is automatically a red card for the complaining doctor or life behind bars for mom, dad or carer?
Perhaps after such a long time all these issues have been addressed?
I note suggestions of taking out the spleen? Not a good idea if the damage is already done before its involvement.
I did see long term use of cyclophosphamide ( an organophosphate)for which my sister had for treatment and for which I told her it would kill her inside 2 years. Sadly I was wrong; she died an awful death in 1 and a half years. The alternative drug now very, very cheap was denied her. This drug works without killing the patient.
The illness was breast cancer which seems to be epidemic also in our society but not all societies.
What lengths we go to to stop one person getting measles and dying.
And where are the vaccines for those 30 million dead from another virus and not a mild 3 day and you are over it such as rubella? (AIDS killing in epidemic amounts and in France alone 7 000 more cases each year which comes out at the same level as autism or 1 in 100 if you take a yearly view of numbers of new people joining the sexual community every years ie 700 000 or so)
“And where are the vaccines for those 30 million dead from another virus and not a mild 3 day and you are over it such as rubella? ”
What an ignorant statement. If you wish to discount the harm caused by Rubella infections, please do so somewhere else.
Well, John C Stone (and others at AoA) keep suggesting that I’m Brian Deer…
Hi Sullivan
The 3 day illness is a lift from a health site.
As a person who got rubella, Ican tell you for me it was a non event.
Now measles hit me hard but I got through with no harm. I now suspect the doctors treatment was what nearly killed me. Use of mercury containing powders! I remember going to the doctors with no serious problems until I took the medication.
Iactually remember refusing the stuff after instinctively linking it to my deteriorating state.
I agree any illness can be harmful but for the most part this illness is only bad as far as we know if pregnant women get the illness andagain it doesn’t harm themat all andnot all the time the foetus and its affect is like thalidomide from zero to catastrophic according to the day andstate of development.
And yes a vaccine at 10 to 13 is an appropriate thing to take.
But to take it at 1Z months or younger when platelets are destroyed and shedding to a mother to be is not appropriate and has never been.
Here I believe the UK experience is the better compared to a now accepted US protocol.
Can you supply details of serious harm to fit and well nourished people in UK or USA?
“Can you supply details of serious harm to fit and well nourished people in UK or USA?”
Why in the USA or UK? Recently the Age of Autism blog used as a source a man working in West Africa. His work shows there that measles deaths are not related to sanitation and nutrition, but to the exposure levels.