Search results for '"John Stone"'

John Stone/Polly Tommey claim oversight

26 Sep

The first official sounding of the death knell for the ‘hidden horde’ hypothesis of autism (it must be vaccines because there aren’t 1 in 160/150/100 adult autistics) was recently sounded (as reported by Anthony) when an NHS study announced that the rate of autism amongst adults was 1% – exactly the same as for kids.

Fully aware of the implications for their beloved anti-vaccine hypothesis John Stone and Polly Tommey write/star in a recent post on that repository of all things bullshitty – Age of Autism.

NHS Autism Report suggests the increase in autism in recent years was all down to an oversight

Says John Stone, trying to reassure his readership theres still life in the terminal old dog of the hidden horde hypothesis. And why does he say this?

“Are we really able to believe all that we hear on such important subjects, or is there a stronger hand with adifferent agenda behind it?”

Ahhhh, of course! When a piece of science/news story doesn’t support your point of view then it _must_ be the work of….oh, whoever – Illuminati? Out of control government? GAVI? Take your pick.

But surely Stone and Tommey have better reasons than that…? Don’t they?

Well no, not really. They didn’t like the perfectly valid Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule that was used. Although they don’t refer to it by name, instead they cherry pick questions to try and demean the validity of the test.

The report was based on adults living in households throughout England and the assessments were done in two stages. Stage One asked individuals to rate how well they agreed with 20 statements about their likes, dislikes and abilities – such as whether they preferred going to ‘libraries’ or ‘parties’.

…If the full range of ability had been included in the NHS report, alongside the verbally fluent, high functioning adults living at home, there would surely be far more than 1 in 100. So, either there are more adults than children with an ASD and autism is on the decline(!?) or there is something wrong with the report.

A quick glance at many mainstream autism orgs claim on prevalence would show Stone that yes, there are more autistic adults than children. This report could indeed be interpreted to show a decline in autism.

People will claim that thats counter intuitive but it really isn’t. As autism has become more recognised, better diagnosed and there are more centers worldwide for its early detection, child numbers have not risen but have become more apparent. This is true across the whole ‘spectrum’.

Taking the NAS numbers on prevalence They say that at a rate of 1 in 100 children gives a total of around 133,500 kids with an ASD. This leaves 366,500 adults. A rate of 0.8%.

So the estimate prior to the new report was 0.2% out. But Stone was right, there are now (and always were) more ASD adults than kids. Thats because there are more adults in the general population than kids. In terms of whether the _rate_ of autism has decreased there’s no research to compare this to but an estimate of 0.8% is pretty damn close to 1%. In real terms the NAS were only out by 733 adults. So I would say that this report reflects reality – with no doubt regional variance and other factors, the adult rate is (and always was) around 1%.

But the stoopid continues apace:

One thing is clear, however, the report has no relevance to children withautism like my son Billy and the many thousands like him.

Quoth Polly Toomey who somehow missed the point that this was a study of adults and thus was never going to have much relevance to her children.

We’re then treated to the science of Carol ‘try me shithead‘ Stott who personally received over £100,000 of legal aid money to prop up the dead MMR hypothesis. She claims (after further digs at ADOS) that a ‘further detailed critique’ will be appearing in that robust science journal AutismFile….owned and operated by one Polly Tommey.

So there we have it. This new study, which whilst far from 100% perfect is also far from the dead dog portrayed by the purveyors of science at The Autism File and Age of Autism. They think theres a conspiracy to ‘big it up’ and refuse to see the statistical truth. ASD hasn’t ever been in epidemic, theres been a stable rate for a long time. These dealers in anti-vaccinationism will just have to deal with that.

To all who use Paul Offit’s 10,000 vaccine paper to scare others–put up or shut up. And that means you, Age of Autism and all your team.

6 Oct

I’ve generally stopped countering the misinformation by the Age of Autism blog. They are pretty much irrelevant now that they lost their star power, now that Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey have dropped out of the picture. They still cause harm, but on a much smaller scale than in the past.

That said, I recently saw one of the Age of Autism contributors in an online discussion. And as is typical, the conversation devolved into throwing around the usual tired arguments. For example–

The notorious Offit 10,000 vaccine paper (we might add 10,000 vaccine doctrine) was written to be re-assuring to parents. The reality is that 1 vaccine might kill an infant. But what is the rhetorical effect of saying 10,000 vaccines (or 100,000 vaccines originally) are “theoretically safe”. It really says that if we give them 10 at time and hundreds over a childhood it is no big deal. What we are really on to here is the hit and run strategy. It doesn’t matter egregious the effects of the ever extended and mandated schedule are you can always insist that it wasn’t vaccines (which are theoretically safe). And you can flood the media with people like you deriding the experience of actual rather than theoretical families who have found that products are not necessarily that safe after all. And you can claim that everything you say is thoroughly scientific (hoho).

Now, this is a new way to misrepresent what Dr. Offit wrote. So far off that one wonders if the author of the comment (one John Stone) has actually read the original. He claims that the Offit paper’s claim is ” It really says that if we give them 10 at time and hundreds over a childhood it is no big deal.”

Really?

Nope. Not even close.

Here’s the section of the paper that that is being referred to:

Studies on the diversity of antigen receptors indicate that the immune system has the capacity to respond to extremely large numbers of antigens. Current data suggest that the theoretical capacity determined by diversity of antibody variable gene regions would allow for as many as 109 to 1011 different antibody specificities.38 But this prediction is limited by the number of circulating B cells and the likely redundancy of antibodies generated by an individual.

A more practical way to determine the diversity of the immune response would be to estimate the number of vaccines to which a child could respond at one time. If we assume that 1) approximately 10 ng/mL of antibody is likely to be an effective concentration of antibody per epitope (an immunologically distinct region of a protein or polysaccharide),39 2) generation of 10 ng/mL requires approximately 103 B-cells per mL,39 3) a single B-cell clone takes about 1 week to reach the 103 progeny B-cells required to secrete 10 ng/mL of antibody39 (therefore, vaccine-epitope-specific immune responses found about 1 week after immunization can be generated initially from a single B-cell clone per mL), 4) each vaccine contains approximately 100 antigens and 10 epitopes per antigen (ie, 103 epitopes), and 5) approximately 107 B cells are present per mL of circulating blood,39 then each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10 000 vaccines at any one time (obtained by dividing 107 B cells per mL by 103 epitopes per vaccine).

The paper merely states that an infant’s immune system can respond to the antigens in 10,000 vaccines.

So here is the challenge to Mr. John Stone (who wrote the above comment), the Age of Autism blog (where he writes, but not the above comment.) and everyone else who claims that the 10,000 number is wrong.

Prove it.

Prove the claim is wrong.

What in the above calculation is wrong? Is it the biology? The assumptions? The math? State clearly what is inaccurate in that calculation.

The answer is that many who cry out about “10,000 vaccines” haven’t read the paper. Or they have and they don’t understand it. Or, in rare cases, they understand it and are willfully trying to use it to scare people.

I have posted this challenge before on various internet discussions. And it is always, and I mean always, met with silence.

Notice that Dr. Offit doesn’t say that an infant can take 10,000 injections. But that “each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10 000 vaccines at any one time (obtained by dividing 107 B cells per mL by 103 epitopes per vaccine).” I.e. that an infant can respond to the challenge posed by the antigens in 10,000 vaccines.

But that’s not scary. And fear and doubt is what people are trying to create when they claim that Paul Offit’s 10,000 vaccine paper is “notorious”.

So, go ahead anyone and everyone that uses the 10,000 vaccine statement to scare people about vaccines. Back up your complaint. I’ve been waiting for years and expect to continue waiting.

—
by Matt Carey

Online discussions discussing the recent CDC data “reanalysis” story

1 Sep

Educator/writer Liz Ditz often keeps a running summary of online discussions of trending topics. Below are some of her links. They are a few days old, but this gives you a starting place in case you wish to read multiple sources.

Posts discussing Hooker’s allegations, excluding anti-vaccine sources .

Timeline

August 8, 2014: Hooker paper published online

August 18, 2014: Focus Autism Press Release published online

August 18, 2014: Andrew Wakefield’s Autism Media Channel Video Alleging a CDC Whistleblower published online

August 22, 2014: Andrew Wakefield’s Autism Media Channel Video Naming William W. Thompson as “The CDC Whistleblower ” published online

  1. August 22, 2014,  Orac Knows at Respectful Insolence:  Brian Hooker proves Andrew Wakefield wrong about vaccines and autism

    Of course, the key finding in Brian Hooker’s paper is that Wakefield was wrong. Indeed, in this video, Wakefield even admits that he was mostly wrong about MMR and autism. Let that sink in again. He admits that he was mostly wrong about MMR and autism. OK, he says we were “partially right,” but the flip side of that is that he must have been mostly wrong.

  2. August 22, 2014, Reuben Gaines at The Poxes Blog: Andrew Jeremy Wakefield plays video director while African-American Babies die, or something

    Hooker is wrong in his assertions because the DeStefano paper did not leave out African-American children on purpose. Children were excluded from the analysis because of very legitimate and scientific reasons. They either were not the right age, did not have autism but some other neurodevelopment disorder, or were born outside of Georgia. Even if they were tossed into the analysis, DeStefano et al used a statistical analysis that took into account things like birth weight and mother’s age when analysing the data. They wanted to make sure that what they were seeing was most likely because of the MMR vaccine and not because of some other factor associated with autism.

  3. August 23, 2014,  Ren at Epidemiological: Directed Acyclic Graphs and the MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism.

    I’m very skeptical that Dr. Hooker’s simplified statistical approach can be better than DeStefano et al’s approach of conditional logistic regression. Conditional logistic regression has the advantage of being able to control for a multitude of confounders and effect modifiers.

  4. August 24, 2014, Liz Ditz at I Speak of Dreams: L’affaire CDC-MMR: Hooker, Wakefield, and Focus Autism Accuse African-American Senior CDC Researcher of Being A Race Traitor

    According to Hooker, Wakefield, and Focus Autism, a respected senior African-American physician-researcher is a race traitor and a mass murderer.

  5. August 25, 2014, Orac Knows at Respectful Insolence: The central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement 

    I can imagine three main possibilities for what happened. The first possibility from what I know is that Thompson had some sort of disagreement with his co-investigators, made the incredibly stupid—yes, stupid—decision to unburden himself to Brian Hooker, who, he must have known or should have known, is an antivaccine crank associated with Andrew Wakefield, and is now paying the price for that decision… The second possibility is that Thompson wanted to correct something Hooker was doing with the data and somehow let himself be drawn into saying things that could easily be taken out of context. The third, and (I hope) much less likely, possibility is that Thompson’s gone off the deep end and gone antivaccine.

  6. August 25,2014, David Gorski MD at Science Based Medicine: Did a high ranking whistleblower really reveal that the CDC covered up proof that vaccines cause autism in African-American boys?

    “What [Hooker] has done, apparently, is found grist for a perfect conspiracy theory to demonize the CDC, play the race card in a truly despicable fashion, and cast fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the CDC vaccination program, knowing that most of the white antivaccine activists who support hate the CDC so much that they won’t notice that even Hooker’s reanalysis doesn’t support their belief that vaccines caused the autism in their children. Meanwhile, there is no evidence, at least none, submitted by the antivaccine propagandists flogging this conspiracy theory, that there really was a CDC conspiracy to hide anything.

  7. August 25, 2014, ToddW at Harpocrates Speaks, Andrew Wakefield Tortures History

    I want to focus on some statements made by one Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor who committed scientific fraud, resulting in the full retraction of his 1998 case series study on MMR and the stripping of his medical license. Wakefield boldly added himself to the list of not only torturing science, but now adds to his accomplishments torturing history and ethics (granted, we already knew he was ethically challenged). You see, in his videos (here and here) about the alleged “whistleblower”, William Thompson,Wakefield compared the purported “cover-up” to the Tuskegee syphilis debacle. It’s a false comparison used simply to inflame people and claim the race card.

  8. August 25, 2014, Michael Simpson at Skeptical Raptor, Great CDC Coverup–suppressing evidence that MMR vaccines cause autism? cross-posted at at Daily Kos

    It’s clear what’s happening here. Thompson, through sheer ignorance or total incompetence may have had a conversation with Hooker. Given the fact that the antivaccination gang lacks any serious scientific evidence supporting their dogma that vaccines cause autism, they jump on anything, however tenuous, that makes it appear that all of the evidence that refutes their dogma should be thrown in the garbage.

  9. August 26, 2014, Orac Knows at Respectful Insolence: Hey, where is everybody? The “CDC whistleblower” manufactroversy continues apace

    Here it is, Tuesday already, and the antivaccine underground is still on full mental jacket alert over the biggest story the antivaccine movement has seen in a while. Fortunately, it’s a story that’s been largely ignored by the mainstream media, which tells me that maybe, just maybe, the mainstream media has figured out that it shouldn’t give undue credence to cranks.

  10. August 26 2014, Sullivan (Matt Carey) at LeftBrainRightBrain Autism, Atlanta, MMR: serious questions and also how Brian Hooker and Andrew Wakefield are causing damage to the autism communties

    A study relying largely on a small group of subjects (about 20) with the conclusion that more work is needed. Sounds vaguely familiar. And, as we will see, Mr. Hooker has teamed up with Andrew Wakefield to put out a video where they jump past the whole this indicates more research is needed through this is absolute evidence of MMR causing autism directly to the CDC are engaging in a racist experiment sacrificing children to autism. It’s like the events around Mr. Wakefield’s 1997 Lancet paper cranked up to 11.

  11. August 26 2014,Lisa Lightner at Grounded Parents: the CDC vaccines/autism/coverup theory {spoiler alert-it’s not true!}

    a friend, a friend that I consider to be intelligent and reasonable….first posted a link to a CNN article. Correction–it’s iCNN…which is VERY different. ANYONE can post ANYTHING there. You can, really. It’s a crowdsourcing platform. Shame on you CNN for whoring out your name for page views. Because this is what happens–people will post just about anything…..

    I wish we knew the causes of autism, I really do. But vaccines ain’t it.

    Fear sells, don’t buy it.

  12. August 26, 2014, Reuben Gaines at The Poxes Blog: How to end a scientist’s career with some fancy editing

    As much as the anti-vaccine activists have been demanding that Dr. Thompson come out into the open and make some sort of a statement, no one seems to demand that Andrew Jeremy Wakefield and his team publish the entire recorded conversation between Brian Hooker and Dr. Thompson. All we get are lies and innuendo. We have operatives like Ginger Taylor writing on Twitter that CDC deliberately didn’t look at birth certificates for African-American babies in the DeStefano study.

    August 26, 2014: Anti-Vaccine Group The Thinking Mom’s Revolution Hosts a #CDCWhistleblower Twitter Party

  13. August 27, 2014 Karoli Kuns at Crooks and Liars: Rob Schneider’s Anti-Vax Crusade Now Enters Alex Jones Territory

    There’s nothing like a good conspiracy theory to get the creative juices flowing. For actor Rob Schneider, that means getting your dander up over your incorrect belief that the CDC altered data to bury the “fact” that MMR causes autism.

  14. August 27 2014, Sullivan (Matt Carey) at LeftBrainRightBrain Autism: Discussions of the recent MMR/autism paper (and why the study isn’t what the author wants you to believe it is)

    Below are a selected list of discussions about Brian Hooker’s recent paper and the highly irresponsible way he and his team are promoting it. Let me know if you spot one I should add to the list.

  15. August 27, 2014,  Orac Knows at Respectful Insolence: The CDC “whistleblower” manufactroversy: Twitter parties and another “bombshell” e-mail

    … just how desperate the antivaccine movement is to have Brian Hooker’s incompetent “reanalysis” of a ten year old vaccine safety study and Andrew Wakefield’s despicable race-baiting video gain traction in the mainstream media. The failure of this conspiracy theory to do so is driving antivaccine activists into ever-greater fits of lunacy online.

  16. August 27, 2014, Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy, Slate: No, There Still Is No Connection Between Vaccines and Autism

    There’s a conspiracy theory going around that the CDC covered up a link between autism and vaccines. From what I can tell, this conspiracy theory is on the same level as the one that NASA faked the Moon landings. And you know how I feel about that.

  17. August 27, 2014, ToddW at Harpocrates Speaks, Anti-vaccine Activists Throw Twitter Tantrum

    … the hashtag #CDCwhistleblower to do what really amounted to the social media equivalent of a temper tantrum, whining about how the mainstream media is not reporting on the study. It was really a sad display, as they simply all copied and pasted from the same list of talking points, not even adding their own interpretation.

    August 27, 2014, in the morning: The Journal Translational Neurodegeneration removes Hooker’s paper from the public domain

  18. August 27 2014, Sullivan (Matt Carey) at LeftBrainRightBrain Autism:The Brian Hooker article “…has been removed from the public domain because of serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions”
  19. August 27, 2014, Adam Marcus at Retraction Watch: Journal takes down autism-vaccine paper pending investigation

    An article purporting to find that black children are at substantially increased risk for autism after early exposure to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine has been shelved, amid claims that a CDC whistleblower has accused health officials of suppressing information about the link.

  20. August 27, 2014, Reuben Gaines at The Poxes Blog: Even the bottom-feeding journals seem to have some sense

    ’m still left wondering how this paper got through peer review, or who did the peer review. They seem to not have bothered with checking the biostatistics or with looking back at the DeStefano paper.

    August 27, 2014, at approximately 2:30 pm, PDT, attorneys for William W. Thompson, the CDC employee, publish Thompson’s statement

  21. August 27, 2014: Ren at Epidemiological Dr. Brian S. Hooker gets the Andrew Wakefield treatment.

    My problem with Dr. Thompson’s statement is that the data were not omitted willy-nilly. There was a protocol that was established, and it excluded from the analysis children of different ethnicities, not just African Americans. In that exclusion, a vaccine-autism signal that was confounded by different factors was lost. It wasn’t lost out of bias but out of properly adjusting for different factors.

  22. August 28, 2014, Sullivan at LeftbrainRightBrain Andrew Wakefield betrays another “whistleblower” with Brian Hooker helping

    Apparently Mr. Hooker is unaware that the secrecy of confession is absolute. Priests, real ones, not self appointed ones like Mr. Hooker, have been known to go to jail rather than divulge what they’ve been told in confession. Real priests don’t record confessions so they can betray another.

  23. August 28, 2014, Debra Goldschmidt, CNN, Journal questions validity of autism and vaccine study

    Dr. Frank DeStefano, lead author of the 2004 study, said he and his colleagues stand by their findings. DeStefano said all the study authors, including Thompson, agreed on the analysis and interpretation before the study was submitted for publication 10 years ago. However, he said he plans to review his notes and will decide whether to run another analysis on the data.

  24. August 28, 2014, Reuben Gaines at The Poxes Blog, Autism is not death, unless you want it to be

    While the black ribbon can mean different things to different people, it’s main use is for grieving or remembering the fallen, the dead. The way that these people have used it is to try to bring attention to their cause by equating autism with a death or a loss.

  25. August 28, 2014, Orac at Respectful Insolence A bad day for antivaccinationists: A possible retraction, and the “CDC whistleblower” issues a statement

    Betrayals within betrayals. This can’t all be laid on Wakefield. Thompson was played. Big time.

Posts discussing Hooker’s allegations from anti-vaccine sources and those believing Hooker’s allegations  .

Timeline

August 8, 2014: Hooker paper published online

August 18, 2014: Focus Autism Press Release published online

August 18, 2014: Andrew Wakefield’s Autism Media Channel Video Alleging a CDC Whistleblower published online

  1. August 18, 2014, Jake Crosby at Autism Investigated: CDC Whistleblower Reveals Yet More Research Fraud
  2. August 19, 2014 Age of Autism at Age of Autism: Whistleblower Says CDC Knew in 2003 of Higher Autism Rate Among African-American Boys Receiving MMR Shot Earlier Than 36 Months
  3. August 20, 2014, Mike Adams at Natural News: Vaccine bombshell: CDC whistleblower reveals cover-up linking MMR vaccines to autism in African-Americans
  4. August 20, 2014, Age of Autism at Age of Autism: Senior Government Scientist Breaks 13 Years’ Silence on CDC’s Vaccine-autism Fraud
  5. August 20, 2014 Jon Rappoport at Jon Rappoport’s Blog Breaking: Breaking: MMR vaccine, autism, CDC coverup 
  6. August 21, 2014 Jon Rappoport at Jon Rappoport’s Blog: Vaccine-autism connection: US Congressman stonewalled by the CDC
  7. August 21, 2014 Jon Rappoport at Jon Rappoport’s Blog: Advice for the secret CDC vaccine whistleblower
  8. August 21, 2014: Mike Adams at Natural News:  CDC refuses to turn over documents to Congress: Evidence linking MMR vaccines to autism intentionally withheld from investigators
  9. August 22, 2014, Ethan Huff at Natural News, CDC whistleblower confesses to publishing fraudulent data to obfuscate link between vaccines and autism
  10. August 22, 2014, metamars at My Firedog Lake: CDC refuses to turn over documents to Congress showing MMR vaccines caused autism in black children (note: metamars’ blog post, not an official Firedoglake post)

    August 22, 2014: Andrew Wakefield’s Autism Media Channel Video Naming William W. Thompson as “The CDC Whistleblower ” published online

  11. August 22, 2014 Jon Rappoport at Jon Rappoport’s Blog: CDC whistleblower revealed: William Thompson
  12. August 22, 2014 Jon Rappoport at Jon Rappoport’s Blog: What CDC whistleblower William Thompson needs to do now
  13. August 22, 2014 Jon Rappaport at Jon Rappaport’s Blog Breaking: CDC whistleblower Thompson in grave danger now
  14. August 22, 2014, at TMR at Thinking Moms’ Revolution: CDC Whistleblower William Thompson Blows the Lid on Malfeasance and Fraud at the CDC
  15. August 22, 2014, Jake Crosby at Autism Investigated, Andrew Wakefield Betrays CDC Whistleblower
  16. August 23, 2014, Inquisitr CDC Whistleblower’s Claims Cause Uproar In Autism Community
  17. August 24, 2014 Jon Rappoport at Jon Rappoport’s Blog CNN iReport on CDC whistleblower spreads like wildfire, then censored
  18. August 24, 2014, Jon Rappaport at Jon Rappaport’s Blog Rob Schneider says he has smoking gun on CDC vaccine-autism fraud  (For beginners: Rob Schneider is an actor who has in the last few years become an anti-vaccine activist. Why he would have access to sensitive information is an open question.)
  19. August 24, 2014, Sally Colletti, Examiner:  Autism and The CDC: Now What?
  20. August 25, 2014, Kent Heckenlively, Age of Autism: A Break in the Wall – William W. Thompson
  21. August 25, 2014, Ethan Huff at Natural News: CDC whistleblower exposes massive autism cover-up perpetrated by government agency
  22. August 25, 2014, Mike Adams at Natural News: CDC whistleblower’s secret letter to Gerberding released by Natural News as mainstream media desperately censors explosive story
  23. August 25, 2014, Mike Adams at Natural News CNN caught red handed covering up CDC medical genocide of African-American babies (much handwaving over open-source reports at iCNN being changed or deleted.)
  24. August 25, 2014, Zorro at Thinking Moms’ Revolution: Stop Calling Us Crazy: Autism, MMR, and Institutional Gaslighting
  25. August 25, 2014, Megan Heimer at Living Whole CDC Whistleblower Comes Out and They All Play Dead
  26. August 25, 2014, Age of Autism at Age of Autism: Rob Schneider Demands Answers on CDC MMR Fraud
  27. August 25, 2014, Jon Rappoport at Jon Rappoport’s Blog CDC vaccine-autism fraud: what victory looks like
  28. August 25, 2014, Jon Rappoport at Activist Post: CDC whistleblower, watch out; here come the mothers
  29. August 25, 2014, Kelly Brogan at Kelly Brogan MD CDC: You’re Fired. Autism Coverup Exposed.
  30. August 25, 2014, Patrick “Tim” Bolen at the Bolen Report The CDC Whistleblower… The Story Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want To Run…
  31. August 26, 2014, JB Handley at Age of Autism: Knock-out Blow Needed: Dr. Thompson Must Speak Out on MMR African American Autism Connection.
  32. August 26, 2014, John Stone at Age of Autism:CDC Frauds: Connections Between the DeStefano Paper and the Thorsen Affair.
  33. August 26, 2014, Celia Farber, Epoch Times:  Whistleblower Reveals CDC Knowingly Put Children at Risk of Autism, Media Remains Silent (Video)
  34. August 26, 2014, Jon Rappoport at Jon Rappoport’s Blog CDC whistleblower is just the tip of the iceberg
  35. August 26, 2014 Mike Adams at Natural News EXCLUSIVE: Bombshell email from CDC whistleblower reveals criminality of vaccine cover-up as far back as 2002
  36. August 26, 2014, Age of Autism at Age of Autism: CDC Whistleblower on Thimerosal in Pregnant Women (note: video interview with Brian Hooker, not William W. Thompson)

    August 26, 2014, in the evening: Anti-vaccine Activists at The Thinking Moms’ Revolution Host a #CDCWhistleblower Twitter Party

  37. August 27, 2014, “Bobby Dee” at Gianelloni Family: Erased by a Birth Certificate
  38. August 27, 2014, John Stone, Age of Autism: The CDC: the Detective Agency Which Could Never Find Anything<
  39. August 27, 2014, Anne Dachel, Age of Autism: CDC Whistleblower Story: Danke to Franchi
  40. August 27, 2014, Marcella Piper-Terry, CDC Whistleblower and Probability of Post-MMR Autism Diagnosis
  41. August 27, 2014, Marcella Piper-Terry at Thinking Mom’s Revolution How Many African-American Boys Have Autism as a Result of the CDC’s Lies?
  42. August 27, 2014, Ethan Huff at Natural News: Congressman Posey discusses autism, vaccines and lack of CDC transparency in interview with Dr. Brian Hooker
  43. August 27, 2014 Mike Adams at Natural News: Media conspiracy to bury CDC whistleblower story protects vaccine makers at the expense of human life
  44. August 27, 2014, Jon Rappoport at Jon Rappoport’s Blog Update: CDC whistleblower in touch with members of Congress

    August 27, 2014, in the morning: The Journal Translational Neurodegeneration removes Hooker’s paper from the public domain

  45. August 27, 2014 Mike Adams at Natural News: Scientific journal censors Brian Hooker’s analysis of CDC vaccine data; the Church of Science orders ‘burning of books’
  46. August 27, 2014, Age of Autism at Age of Autism: Translational Neurodegeneration Removes Vaccination Timing Article

    August 27, 2014, at approximately 2:30 pm, PDT, attorneys for William W. Thompson, the CDC employee, publish Thompson’s statement

  47. August 27, 2014, Age of Autism at Age of Autism: Statement from William Thompson, RE Pediatrics MMR African American Males Data
  48. August 27, 2014 Mike Adams at Natural News: BREAKING: CDC whistleblower confesses to MMR vaccine research fraud in historic public statement
  49. August 27, 2014, The Event Chronicle at The Event Chronicle: CDC whistleblower confesses to MMR vaccine research fraud in historic public statement
  50. August 28, 2014 Celia Farber, Epoch Times Vaccinegate: CDC Whistleblower Admits Claims of Data Fixing Were True, Complains at Being Recorded and Outed

Other links

Autism vs Symptoms of Autism Part II

25 May

If this is the case it is rather hard to see what we are arguing about. With all the semantic ingenuity in the world children on the autistic spectrum are surely autistic and so are children who have autistic behaviour.

So states John Stone on Age of Autism.

Its meant to point out to us the linguistic convolutions some people go to in order to seperate people who have autism and people who display autistic symptoms. We’re meant to roll our eyes on this stupidity.

But I can’t. Because its not stupid. Because there _is_ a difference between having enough of the symptoms to qualify for a diagnosis of autism and _not_ having enough of the symptoms of autism to qualify for a diagnosis of autism. In one scenario a person has autism as medically defined. In the other scenario, they don’t.

Far from John Stones ‘semantic ingenuity’, what we are in fact talking about is ‘semantic precision’. Lots of people display some of the symptoms of autism yet simply don’t have enough to get a diagnosis. This phenomenom has even got a name: Broader Autism Phenotype. In a paper from as long ago as 1997, the authors states:

Studies of families ascertained through a single autistic proband suggest that the genetic liability for autism may be expressed in nonautistic relatives in a phenotype that is milder but qualitatively similar to the defining features of autism.

Note the use of the word qualitatively there. In that, people with enough symptoms have autism share qualities with those who don’t.

Autism has a long and painful history of being sculpted into a set of beliefs that reflect the position of the believer rather than the objective truth of the matter. The thing is, we _have_ an objective (if medical) truth on the matter, its set down in the DSM or the ICD, pick your poison. John Stone is merely the latest in a long line of people who want autistic people to be ambiguous enough to reflect their beliefs. However, by its very definition, you cannot _be_ autistic (again medically speaking) if you don’t meet the criteria, or even _enough_ of the criteria.

I see nothing of semantic igenuity in this. Stone is, of course, attempting to whip up support for the latest terrible study – this one legal – that claims to have found 83 people compensated for autism via vaccine injury. When you apply John Stone et al’s loose, ambiguous definition of what autism medically is then they’re quite right. Thing is, I suspect I, John Stone and various others could all show _some_ symptoms of autism. Much trickier is to display _enough_ symptoms of autism to be diagnosed as autistic. Something I think about 1% of these 83 were. In other words, no different in amount than the rest of any other population.

Andrew Wakefield – What happens next?

31 Jan

So Andrew Wakefield has been found proved guilty of the vast majority of the accusations against him and been found dishonest and acting irresponsibly with both the children under his ‘care’ and the not inconsiderable sums of public money he had occassion to recieve and ‘manage’.

None of this would have come as a surprise to anyone who had taken the time to carefully read Brian Deer’s thorough works on the subject. That it was a major shock to the John Stone’s and Martin Walker’s of this world tells you more about their capacity for self delusion than how shocking the findings regarding Wakefield were.

So whats next for Andrew Wakefield? Now that the official findings have been made public, the GMC must consider:

…whether those facts found proved or admitted, were insufficient to amount to a finding of serious professional misconduct. The Panel concluded that these findings, which include those of dishonesty and misleading conduct, would not be insufficient to support a finding of serious professional misconduct.

Yeah, pointless double speak aside (would not be insufficient??) the panel are basically saying that Andrew Wakefield’s behaviour could easily constitute serious professional misconduct.

So what can result from that? Brian Deer, writing in the Times Online provides a possible answer:

Lawyers have told me that any one of the more than 30 charges that were proved against Wakefield would typically lead to his being struck off. His days as a medical practitioner will soon be history…

And so what is the next step?

In the next session, commencing 7 April 2010, the Panel, under Rule 28, will hear evidence to be adduced and submissions from prosecution counsel then Dr Wakefield’s own counsel as to whether the facts as found proved do amount to
serious professional misconduct, and if so, what sanction, if any, should be imposed on his registration.

From April 7th then Andrew Wakefield will be fighting for the right to refer to himself and be referred to by others as ‘Doctor’. That will be a victory for anyone concerned with patient care in the UK.

What do corrupt politicians tell us about autism policies in the UK?

26 May

One strand of thinking in those who promote the autism-MMR vaccine hoax in the UK is that the political system is corrupt. At the worst level this leads to conspiratorial thinking, as in this statement from an Independent leader from February 24th 2004:

Are we wrong to detect the distant whirr of the same spin spin machine that so recently set about destroying the reputations of David Kelly, Andrew Gilligan and others?

John Stone, an active JABS (the UK’s leading anti-vaccine site) activist who now writes for Age of Autism, recently posted a call to arms by Alison Edwards on the MPs’ expenses controversy. Her post reminds us that much of the controversy about MMR vaccine is possibly displacement activity after struggles to obtain help and support. After a go at MPs’ expenses, she draws her inspiration from her son.

My son is my inspiration, he has no idea of the anger I harbour at what I have been forced to endure since the day his MMR left him unable to control his bowels. Not to mention the other battles for services and therapies, the list of refusals is a familiar one to anyone caring for an autistic or disabled child. All we can do it watch as our young morph into adults before our eyes. Yet our claims to assist the most vulnerable with their most basic needs, go unheard.

WE, THE PEOPLE, DEMAND THE DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT.

Being angry about MPs expenses is a reasonable position, but there are many other issues others have been fighting for, and they should feel equally aggrieved. Think of any lobby group, and you can probably come up with a reasonable view that more attention should have been paid to it, than were paid to the acquisition of LCD TVs, the cleaning of moats, and other such pathetic squandering of taxpayers’ money.

The corruption is spread throughout the parties, and throughout MPs of all views within them. For example, Julie Kirkbride is a UK MP who has expressed views on MMR vaccine, to the detriment of an autism campaign launch; a microcosm of the general effect the MMR-vaccine-autism hoax has had on autism awareness in the UK:

she had chosen the same day to hold her own conference at Westminster to highlight alleged links between autism and the controversial MMR vaccine.

“I am furious that a conference that could have been held yesterday or could have been held tomorrow is being held on the day that we are actually trying to focus, for once, on the needs of autistic people instead of this debate over MMR,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“This is the first major conference of autism awareness year. It has been organised for months. To detract attention from it today of all days is, I think, pretty silly.”

Julie Kirkbride is now under intense pressure over expenses. Does this have any bearing on her position on MMR vaccine? Not all all.

The expenses saga may remind us of the sense of entitlement of UK MPs and their failure to police their own behaviour, but it tells us nothing about public policy on autism or vaccines.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen Speaks

22 Apr

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University’s autism research team wrote a piece for New Scientist recently about media distortion:

WHEN media reports state that scientist X of Y university has discovered that A is linked to B, we ought to be able to trust them. Sadly, as many researchers know, we can’t.

He talks about the Observer debacle of 2007 and how that paper made a total hash of leaked data. At the time Baron-Cohen said:

The draft report, he says, “is as accurate as jottings in a notebook”

The big furore was that the paper was working on prevalence rates and mentioned a few rates of autism from 1 in 58 to 1 in 200. Guess which one the Observer decided was the more newsworthy? Baron-Cohen again:

Baron-Cohen says their study of Cambridgeshire children, which has been running for five years, comes out with a range of figures from one in 58, to one in 200, depending on various factors. The draft report, he says, “is as accurate as jottings in a notebook”. He adds that the data is with public health officials, who are crunching the numbers.

So it was really a total non-story. Some scientists were working on a paper about prevalence and had some unadjusted figures. At that point, someone in the team decided to leak the unadjusted report to the press who swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

Fast forward to last month and the Daily Mail runs a story:

Researchers now believe as many as one in 60 children has some form of the condition.

Up and down the blogosphere at the more credulous blogs and news pages the 1 in 60 figure is touted about. Indeed, only yesterday on the Age of Autism John Stone was claiming Baron-Cohen’s silence about the Daily mail article in his New Scientist piece as proof definite that the 1 in 60 figure was accurate:

The most significant thing about Simon Baron-Cohen’s recent New Scientist grouse about media irresponsibility and science (HERE) was that he did not mention the publication just a few days earlier in the Daily Mail of his latest – if long delayed – figure for the prevalence of autism in the UK school population of 1 in 60….

Given the importance of this figure – a true rate 66% higher than formerly acknowledged – the long term reticence of Baron-Cohen and the study’s sponsor Autism Speaks UK is dismaying – indeed Science Media Centre and Autism Speaks UK were still apparently trying to deny it to the Mail ahead of publication of the article.* But the silence of all these parties, and most particularly of Baron-Cohen after the Daily Mail article came out suggests that they did not have a leg to stand on.

When John Stone speaks with certainty in his voice, that is a certain clue that something is not as it seems. So I decided to email Professor Baron-Cohen to get his take on the Daily Mail. After a chat about what it meant he obliged me with an exclusive quote:

The Daily Mail was irresponsible in reporting on the results of our study before it was published in a scientific, peer-reviewed journal and where the details of the study are publicly available for scrutiny. The study will be published in the British Journal of Psychiatry on June 1st 2009.

My own opinion based on the discussion we had and that quote is that the paper might not be quite what it appears from the abstract posted at IMFAR. At any rate Professor Baron-Cohen is right that the Daily Mail have – just like the Observer – acted very irresponsibly. So are those that are reporting a UK prevalence of 1 in 60. Irresponsible and very previous.

The most bizarre conspiracy theories yet

17 Sep

Two new conspiracy theories this week. The first one is an eye-roller. The second is an eye-popper.

The first one is the alleged hacking of Ray Gallup’s Vaccine Autoimmunity Project. I came across this email from JABS regular John Stone:

Unincidentally, I was appalled to hear today that VAP website has been hacked into and is likely to be down for an extended period.

If this is how people like Offit, not to mention Berners-Lee [more on this later – Kev] and Ghosh (see my previous post) think the future should be, our politicians ought to consider what is tolerable in an alleged free society.

As the poet Heinrich Heine noted in 1823: “Where they burn books, they will in the end burn people”.

“Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.”

These people already have the advantage of media domination, but they will not allow a word of dissent. If their science is so perfect, why cannot they discuss it?

So, following Stone’s train of thought, he seems to be stating that Paul Offit thinks that its OK that websites are hacked? I really doubt that.

But the really pointed allusion is in his last paragraph. He seems to be suggesting that ‘they’ (Offit et al) ‘will not allow’ oppositional views.

Did Paul Offit put out a contract on VAP? Somehow I really, really doubt it.

Ray Gallup’s reply was even more paranoid.

John,

Thank you very much.

I suspect that certain people had a hired gun to do this virus thing to VAP like I’m sure you have the same suspicions. Lots of PharmaMafia people out there that want to silence VAP by screwing up the VAP website with a virus including their surogates at such sites as Neurodiversity.com, etc.

Ray Gallup

My, my. Ray thinks someone from Neurodiversity.com (i.e. Kathleen or Dave) trojaned the VAP website.

I’m going to go out on a limb and go for user error. The server error (Directory Listing Denied) does not speak of a hack to me. Hacks are usually defacements of the original page which are non-destructive. This looks more to me like ahem, ‘someone’ has accidentally deleted the root file. If that is the case, simply asking the host (ixwebhosting.com) to restore the page from a backup (assuming they take them) would sort the problem out immediately. You can thank me later Ray.

So, thats the eye-roller. The eye-popper is way better.

On Monday, inventor of the web Tim Berners-Lee said:

Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation.

……..

The use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth particularly concerned him, he said. In a similar vein was the spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine given to children in Britain was harmful. Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.

Ooooh, you can imagine how well _that_ went down in certain quarters, right? A few hours later, the following was posted to EoH:

Group With Big Pharma Ties Wants to Shut Down Vaccine “Conspiracy Theories”

So, first inaccuracy: Sir Tim didn’t mention ‘shutting down’. He mentioned providing a label for trustworthiness.

But anyway, I was intrigued as to who this ‘group with Big Pharma ties’ were. So I read on:

Kingpins of Military-Industrial complex say they will “brand” websites they consider “trustworthy and reliable sources of information” A foundation populated by the giants of business, banking, government and military wants to “vet” websites and limit the spread of information that it says creates “conspiracy theories”. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), fronted by Internet creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, says it is worried about the way the web has been “used to spread disinformation”.

Wait…what? W3C??? Kingpin of Military-Industrial complex???

For those that don’t know W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C’s mission is:

To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

In my job as a web developer I have a lot of dealings with the standards developed by W3C. They helped develop the code that that is used in _all_ websites and they helped develop the ‘rules’ that allow web browsers such as the one you are using right now to view those websites.

Those ‘rules’ help make sure that code is used responsibly. It made Microsoft behave and develop the vastly improved browser of IE7. Its code is responsible for the fact that many, many more websites are accessible to people with disabilities than they used to be.

In a nutshell, what they do is draw up standards for code use for people like me and people like software developers. The idea of them being a ‘Kingpin of Military-Industrial complex’ is hilarious.

Here’s the full member list. Being a member ensures you one thing and one thing only: a say in how the standards of the future are shaped. I assure you there are no Illuminati lizards running around in Black Helicopters.

In all of the utterly crazy conspiracy theories I’ve seen so far, this one is right up there at the top of the tree.

MMR Smoke and Mirrors

8 Feb

In the days following the latest in an increasingly long line of studies repudiating the MMR/autism hypothesis, adherents to this belief system have clung wildly to the flotsam and jetsam that is pretty much all that is left to hang on to.

On the ADC Online forum, John Stone encapsulates this position with a letter I’ll go through point by point:

Of the original 1770 Special Educational Needs (SEN)cases in this study 255 were Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Of the 1770 735 dropped out, then a further 780 were excluded for reasons which are not transparent. 255 were left (a different 255 from before): some ASD, some just SEN but we do not know in what proportion. Then, exactly 100 were excluded because of inadequate blood tests. Of the remainder 101 had ASD (less the 40 per cent of the original 255 autistic cases). None is reported to have bowel disease (the sub-group of Wakefield’s study) or adverse reaction to MMR.

This is numerical hoopla and means nothing. The key to Stone’s frustration is the last sentence of this paragraph and the first one of the next:

It is not clear what the scientific purpose of this study is…….None is reported to have bowel disease (the sub-group of Wakefield’s study) or adverse reaction to MMR. This, of course, makes this a distinct group from the children referred to Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues at the Paediatric Gastroenterology department of the Royal Free Hospital in the 1990s and slighlty beyond.

Stone is arguing that because none of the ASD subjects were found to have bowel issues that disqualifies them as being like Wakefield’s subjects.

Methinks someone has missed the point.

The issue is one of clinical science. Wakefield claims to have found a clinical link between the measles live virus component of the MMR which causes bowel issues with associated autism. However, the Cedillo hearings drove a rather large nail into that particular coffin.

Professor Stephen Bustin is the worlds foremost PCR expert. Bustin uses PCR every day in his work, he has 14 papers in the peer reviewed literature on PCR, over 8 book chapters and is personally the author of the ‘A to Z of Quantitative PCR’ which is considered ‘the bible’ of PCR. One of his papers has been cited over 1,000 times. Another has been cited over 500 times. He both organises and speaks at international PCR conferences. His testimony regarding the Unigentics lab used to find the measles virus in the guts of these autistic kids was invaluable.

Bustin examined the Unigentics lab findings and procedures in great detail (spending over 1,500 hours in the lab itself) and found that the lab (which has now gone bust as a business) made a fairly basic error of science when looking at Wakefield’s samples:

“…Now, these are from samples that should have been discarded according to the SOP from Unigenetics because there was no GAPDH present, i.e., the RNA is degraded. If you look at the Cts for the F-gene which they reported as positive you can see they’re the same. Now, if this is degraded RNA yet I’m getting the same Cts for my F-gene target this can’t be RNA because it would have been degraded.

That’s what the GAPDH showed me. Now, if it isn’t RNA it has to be DNA. If it is DNA it can’t be measles virus it has to be a contaminant.”

In other words, the samples Wakefield provided to Unigentics were useless because Unigenetics own documented lab procedure says they were. But they used them anyway. The results were a bombshell. If the RNA is useless (which the lab process defines it as being) it can’t actually be RNA. If its not RNA then it must be DNA and if its DNA then it can’t be measles virus because measles virus doesn’t exist as DNA.

What the Unigentics lab detected in Wakefield’s samples were contaminants. There’s no way that Unigentics could possibly have been detecting measles virus.

This was backed up by Chadwick who checked Wakefield’s work (at his request). He also did a PCR test.

Q. What results did you receive from the gut biopsy materials for measles RNA?
A. They were all negative.

Q. They were always negative?
A. Yes. There were a few cases of false positive results, which I used a method to see whether they were real positive results or false positive, and in every case they turned out to be false positive results. Essentially all the samples tested were negative.

Q. Did you inform Dr. Wakefield of the negative results?
A. Yes. Yes.

So not only are the samples Wakefield provided useless, the testing he asked Chadwick to perform showed they were useless. And yet he went ahead anyway.

Its also worth noting that every subsequent piece of MMR science (save one unpublished poster presentation) went through Unigenetics lab and went through the same process as Wakefield’s.

So lets be frank – the idea that Wakefield found measles virus in the gut of autistic kids is plain and simply wrong. He screwed up.

The issue then becomes one of probabilities: given that there is no scientific reason to believe MMR causes autism with bowel disorders, it is nonsensical to only look at autistic kids with bowel disorders. And in answer to Stone’s question ‘It is not clear what the scientific purpose of this study is…’ the answer is plain – it has scientifically illustrated that autistic kids had exactly the same measles antibody response as non-autistic kids. No difference. At all.

Stone continues to attempt to muddy the scientific waters:

There is presently not enough consensus about the etiology of ASD to assume there is any single origin, nor anything to rule out ASD subjects having gut symptoms which justify on occasion invasive procedures. The NAS apparently consider that there is a sub-group which is being denied sympathy, investigation or treatment, and this is in itself troubling. It also suggests that this study is not representative since no such cases are included, and it does not address their problems.

This is slipperiness taken to almost artistic levels. Stone is quite right there is no consensus about etiology of autism. That does not mean we cannot say what doesn’t cause it though. And based on the available science, MMR ain’t it.

The paper further does not attempt to claim that autistic kids don’t have gastric issues and Stone’s implication that it does and his attempt to gain the mainstream ground by invoking the name of the NAS is grasping and dishonestly representative of the NAS’s statement. They do _not_ claim, infer or consider that there is any such sub-group. What they suggest is that the MMR debacle has led to some doctors dismissing some parents fears about their kids bowel issues as hysteria. This is, of course, unacceptable but Stone is simply attempting to manipulate the NAS statement for his own ends.

“The NAS warning relates to the GMC hearing involving doctors Wakefield, Walker-Smith and Murch which is set to resume on 25 March approaching. I do not think it is being unduly cynical to query the publication of this study at the present time as a media event, bearing in mind that it seems to have been carried out five or six years ago.”

This is either again deliberately misleading or an example of conspiracy hysteria. From what I can tell the study was commissioned five/six years ago. Not carried out.

Stone concludes:

Meanwhile, the plight of autistic children with gastro- intestinal symptoms is excluded both from the study and public attention, as if they did not exist. The NAS statement warned of “creating further confusion” and this is precisely what this study and its media exposure has done.

Children with gastro issues and autism were not ‘excluded’ they just weren’t found. Maybe they really don’t exist? Maybe Stone would’ve preferred that the study authors fabricate a few subjects?

The bottom line of this gastro/autism issue is that there is no science to back up the opinion Stone has. On the other hand there is plenty of science that indicates there is no link between MMR and autism. Far from this study creating confusion, it has simply shown up the shortcomings of Wakefield’s bad science and Stone and his ilk are in reality the people desperately attempting to create enough confusion for Wakefield to escape unscathed.

Why investigating Wakefield matters

1 Aug

I occasionally get emails or blog comments along the general lines of:

Why do you do this? These people [Wakefield, DAN, whomever] are trying to help autistic kids!

The (il)logic train is very simple to these people: X listened to their ideas about vaccines and autism, X tries out never-seen-before-treatments on autistic patients therefore X is a hero. When X gets examined with disdain from mainstream medicine X becomes a martyr.

There is a bizarre disconnect at work here. Somehow we have progressed from an idea that scientific enquiry adds to the general body of scientific knowledge to the idea that its just about OK to do anything to patients irrespective of what’s actually ‘wrong’ with them in order to advance a poorly supported hypothesis.

Here’s why this matters to me and why Andrew Wakefield is a prime example of all that has gone bad in the small but very vocal subset of autism parents who believe MMR/thiomersal/vaccines in general causes/triggers autism.

First and foremost is the basic injury done to the scientific objective truth. This is, I agree, an entirely abstract concept but it has implications in our every day real-world lives. Science is what brought us the nice cubes of ice in our whisky and also brought us the Nuclear bomb. Whatever we personally think of these results, science has prevailed in both cases. The _truth_ has prevailed.

The people I and others refer to as the Mercury Militia (referring to the anti-vaccine/autism/parent activists) are not interested in the truth. This is not an opinion, it simply is. From the National Autism Associations deliberate and outright lies about what science has revealed about autism, to their supporters attempts to silence the debate via threats of violence and encompassing Lenny Schafer’s admission that there is not enough science to support the idea of a vaccine hypthesis and their only chance of ‘winning’ is via a legal route with vastly lower standards of evidentiray proof as well as David Kirby’s refusal to fess up to the terms of the hypothesis he himself set.

What people need to grasp is that this basic dishonesty permeates the entire autism/vaccine hypothesis. Time after time, when presented with more attempts to establish the truth, they never fail to act dishonestly and lie to support their beliefs.

As far as scientific objectivity and a search for the _actual_ truth is concerned – forget it. This is a set of people who are simply uninterested. If a story/hypothesis emerges that doesn’t embrace vaccines as causative agents then they will attack it. And what they will attack it with is mostly lies.

I have a question for them and people who believe and trust them – and I know they read this blog. The question is this: how good do you think the quality of any information/data is that emerges from the mouths of people who lie, evade and threaten? How good do you think the science is that originates from people who plagiarise other peoples work? How accurate do you think advocacy groups that lie to the media about what they believe are?

At some point there has to be a time when even self-denial cannot support these people. As we have seen, recent attempts to coerce the media have resulted in humiliating climbdown after climbdown. How far can denial continue to power the majority of the new soccer-mom, middle-class powered anti-vaccine movement of the naughty noughties?

Let’s take an example that touches on the title of this blog – Andrew Wakefield. His hypothesis regarding MMR and autism was discussed at length during the recent Autism Omnibus hearings (Cedillo, June 2007).

Andrew Wakefield is seen as a pretty much a demigod amongst the Mercury Militia. His word is taken on pure faith. Why? Because he agrees with certain parents that the MMR jab caused/triggered their child’s autism. The basic hypothesis is as follows:

1) Child is injected with MMR
2) Measles virus (MV) travels to gut causing various gastro issues
3) MV carries on travelling to the brain causing autism symptoms

ergo – MMR causes autism with associated gastro issues.

The whole hypothesis stands or falls on finding vaccine strain MV in the guts of autistic children. Wakefield (and others) claim they have. However, the facts tell a different story.

Wakefield (and all others) used a technique called PCR to ‘find’ MV in their subjects. During the afore-referenced Cedillo hearing, Dr Stephen Bustin gave testimony. Bustin is possibly _the_ world expert on PCR. Not only does Bustin use PCR every day, he has 14 papers in the peer reviewed literature on PCR, over 8 book chapters and is personally the author of the A to Z of Quantitative PCR. which is considered ‘the bible’ of PCR. One of his papers has been cited over 1,000 times. Another has been cited over 500 times. He both organises and speaks at international PCR conferences.

Basically, when it comes to PCR, the technique Wakefield (and others) used to ‘find’ MV – this is the guy.

NB – this whole section of evidence I blogged extensively, including quotes. Please read for more detail.

Bustin was first and foremost concerned that:

1) The technique that utilised PCR and employed by Wakefield (and others) was essentially useless. No controls were used. This is a serious scientific omission and makes comparing the data accurately impossible.
2) The technique failed to outline procedures for dealing with contamination of data
3) There were mismatched and misrepresented data designs

These items raise very grave questions over the _methodology_ used. The next set of concerns reveal the full extent of the scientific shambles of the entire MMR/autism industry.

This is a vital point to understand before we discuss these things. It is vital that we remember that, aside from one unpublished poster presentation (Walker 2006), _all_ , I repeat _all_ science that has claimed to find vaccine strain MV in the guts of autistic patients used the same lab to get its results – Unigentics, the lab of Professor John O’Leary. It is also vital to remember that Stephen Bustin did not just examine for afar. He spent over 1,5000 hours in the O’Leary lab before coming to his conclusions.

His conclusions were devastating.

1) The O’Leary lab had failed to take necessary steps. This omission made it impossible they were detecting MV.
2) The O’Leary lab was contaminated.
3) It was the contamination that O’Leary’s lab was detecting, not MV. Its worth quoting Bustin at this point:

So all of this evidence suggests very, very strongly that what they are detecting is DNA and not RNA. Because measles virus doesn’t exist as a DNA molecule in nature, they cannot be detecting measles virus RNA. They are detecting a contaminant.

It cannot be any clearer. According to the the man who is the recognised world expert on the technique that *all published science claiming to find MV in the guts of autistic kids* lab utilised, it is simply not possible that this lab could’ve detected MV. Without MV, there is no MMR/autism hypothesis.

And what is the response of Wakefield’s supporters to all this? I will quote John Stone, who fancies himself the cool calm voice of the MMR branch of the autism/antivax movement. When presented with Bustin’s testimony, he said:

I do not think there is much to be gained by arguing about the contents of a test tube….

This tells us all we need to know about the levels of denial that operate in this arena. Stone resorts to saying that the Cedillo case was not settled yet, which is true. However he evades the point that Bustin’s testimony is not dependant on legal justification. It is dependant on scientific accuracy. Given that it is *documented by O’Leary’s own lab procedure* that they omitted key parts of the process necessary to establish the presence of MV, I really don’t know what else there is to say on the matter.

Secondly is the effect all this anti-vaccination rhetoric has on the health and safety of public citizens. News stories that are accumulating started circulating a year or so ago on dropping immunisation rates and rising deaths and injury from vaccine-preventable illness:

In the course of 10 days, officials confirmed four pertussis cases, including the hospitalization of one child to treat respiratory symptoms. All of the cases afflicted children under 5 years old, and one in an infant just a couple of days old, according to Ravalli County Public Health Nurse Judy Griffin…..There have been more than 450 cases of pertussis in Montana so far this year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The infection rate is much higher than average years, when about 30 cases are reported….”Parents should check immunization records and make sure they’re up to date,” Nurse Judy Griffin said.

Ravalli Republic.

(Columbia) The state health department said yesterday that an infant has died from whooping cough. It is the first death reported in South Carolina from the disease in nearly three years….The health agency said it’s important children receive pertussis vaccinations on schedule.

WLTX News.

A whooping cough epidemic has hit Deschutes County. Health officials say that in the past six weeks, 18 cases of pertussis have been identified in the county. In all of 2004, there were only two cases of pertussis in Deschutes County.

KATU 2.

An increase in cases of the highly contagious whooping cough is prompting state health officials to urge stricter compliance with childhood immunization schedules….Cases have increased annually from 22 statewide in 1996 to 120 last year…Oklahoma’s childhood immunization levels continue to lag behind those nationally, officials said.

RedNova News

Kids are dying again. And in some areas of the US the disease causing those deaths is at epidemic (real epidemic as oppose to autism epidemic) proportions. And thats just one disease that vaccination removed the sting from for many years. In my country (UK) we’ve recently had a Mumps epidemic.

Vaccine uptake rates of this vaccine in the UK have fallen to amongst the lowest in Europe:

Take-up rates of the jab dropped throughout the UK, down to less than 70% in some areas, after a small-scale study published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr Andrew Wakefield suggested a link to autism.

Source.

In 2004, mumps cases in the England and Wales rose from 4,204 in 2003 to 16,436 in 2004, nearly a four-fold increase.

And in the first month of 2005, there were nearly 5,000 cases. Most were among young adults born before 1988 and who would, therefore, not have been offered MMR as a child. In the second paper, Dr Ravindra Gupta, from London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’, working with colleagues from King’s College London, found cases have also occurring in very young children who would have been eligible for the MMR – measles, mumps and rubella – vaccine…..Dr Gupta (…) said uptake of MMR among two-year-olds in the UK fell from around 92% in early 1995 to around 80% in 2003/4.

Source.

In October 2004, experts predicted that due to falling vaccination uptake, the UK would start to suffer from ‘small outbreaks’:

The medical newspaper Pulse has warned that there could be a measles epidemic this winter on a scale last seen in the 1960s. It said that lowering levels of immunity meant as many as 12% of children and 20% of adults could be hospitalised if infected by measles.

Source.

And now, last year, 18 months after these warnings, we have the UK’s first measles induced fatality in 14 years.

The 13-year-old who died last month lived in a travellers’ community. It is thought that he had a weakened immune system; he was being treated for a lung condition. The boy died of an infection of the central nervous system caused by a reaction to the measles virus. The Health Protection Agency described his death as shocking.

Source

The Times also says that of the 72 reported measles cases in that last month, 9 required hospitalisation – this tallies almost exactly with the 2004 prediction of a hospitalisation rate of 12%.

This is real evidence of harm. Never forget it can be traced back to a man with absolutely no evidence at all to support the science of his claims.

Thirdly is the effect all of this has on autism and autistic people like my daughter. The vaccine induced blind panic that the people behind these hypotheses and their media agents at the NAA, SafeMinds, Treating Autism and Generation Rescue have done their best to inculcate is having a toll on autistic people. Here’s a passage from an email I received a few months ago:

…when I said he was autistic, they told me I shouldn’t bring him to a school, that vaccines had made him ill and that their kids could catch that illness….after all, these women reasoned that if it [autism] could be caused by vaccines, it could be caught and passed on to other kids….

This is frightening. Autism as a condition has a lot of stigma to deal with already. The fact is that any hypothesis that has gone on now for over 10 years without any scientific support, as the vaccine/autism one has, needs to shut up and move on. No good can come of creating more stigma for no benefit.

In 2004, the BBC discussed a report from the Institute of Child Health, the National Autistic Society and the Parents’ Autism Campaign for Education that looked at the state of autism research. One of its conclusions was that:

….the row over a possible link with the MMR jab has over-shadowed the fact that little is known about the behavioural disorder….

This has led to a situation wherein:

…It showed almost 60% of UK autism research only looks into the symptoms, while just 22% is dedicated to the causes, 8% to possible interventions and only 5% to the effect of family history.

So, a dwindling 8% of all autism research fundings looks into interventions. The marketing of the MMR hypothesis has meant that this pathetic 8% is all that autistic people can expect in terms of educational research, programs for adults – basically if it will have some tangible impact on the lives of autistic people then it comes out of this 8%.

This then, is the legacy of the autism/vaccine hypothesis and its supporters. Bad for the truth, bad for science, bad for public health and bad for autistic people.