Archive by Author

Richard Deth – gambling man

27 Apr

Maybe you don’t know, or have forgotten who Richard Deth (pronounced to rhyme with ‘teeth’) is.

He is:

Richard Deth, Ph.D., is a neuropharmacologist, a professor of pharmacology at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and is on the scientific advisory board of the National Autism Association. Deth has published scientific studies on the role of D4 dopamine receptors in psychiatric disorders, as well as the book, Molecular Origins of Human Attention: The Dopamine-Folate Connection. He has also become a prominent voice in the controversies in autism and vaccine controversy, due to his theory that certain children are more at risk than others because they lack the normal ability to excrete neurotoxic metals.

Deth became ‘hot property’ in the anti-vaccine autism groups after publishing a paper (with which there were numerous issues – see Bart Cubbins excellent video for details) that was funded by one of those anti-vaccine groups – Safe Minds. Interestingly, during an exchange with Kathleen documented at neurodiversity.com, it also came to light that Richard Deth was registered as a paid expert witness in the vaccine litigation omnibus proceedings. Professor Deth said:

“I thank you for alerting me to the fact that my name was included on that expert witness list. It was done so without my knowledge or permission. It might be related to a phone call from that law office that was logged to my office while I was away on vacation in February. I never returned the call.”

To which Kathleen replied replied:

“It was quite an oversight for the attorneys to fail to confirm your willingness to serve in that role prior to naming you as a plaintiffs’ expert in the Petitioners’ Initial Disclosure of Experts, and filing that document with the Court of Federal Claims. However, their certainty is understandable, given your indication during our brief telephone conversation that the lawyer with whom you discussed the matter was “Andy” Waters, lead attorney in the thimerosal cases.”

Deth didn’t comment any further. As many have discovered, if you want to go head to head with Kathleen you better make sure your i’s are dotted and your t’s are crossed.

One of the statements Deth made during their exchange stood out to me at the time.

…I would like to make a virtual wager that within the next 18-24 months scientific evidence will make the thimerosal-autism link a near certainty. If you are willing, I’ll let you name the stakes.

Deth sent his email on March 22 2006. Luckily for him, Kathleen took pity on him and declined his rather gauche offer.

So what does this mean? What does it prove?

Why, nothing. Nothing at all. I just wanted LB/RB readers to be perfectly clear that a strong _belief_ in a scenario doesn’t make one right. In fact, when we look at all the recent evidence for the various beliefs of the various anti-vaccine/autism groups – from the prediction that the Omnibus Autism cases would be a walkover for them, to David Kirby’s certainty that thiomersal causation would be vindicated by CDDS data in 2005, then 2007, to this example of ego from Richard Deth what we see is a clear picture of a set of people who are consistently and unerringly wrong. This is because they simply cannot see the science right in front of them. Even such an august figure as Richard Deth, Ph. D.

Jennifer Lopez adds vocal support

25 Apr

In an interview with ‘Good Morning America‘ Jennifer Lopez stood up for vaccinations by talking about a new campaign and website. The website is very accomplished and features Ms Lopez talking about how to protect your baby from Whooping Cough.

The interview itself contained the following on vaccines:

She’s also raising awareness about pertussis, the potentially fatal disease better known as whooping cough.

Visit www.soundsofpertussis.com to find out more about the vaccine.

Pertussis cases were virtually nonexistent in the United States after a vaccine was developed. Reported cases of whooping cough hit a low of about 1,000 in 1976. That number has been on the rise over the past 30 years, and in 2005, 25,000 cases were reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to a CDC study of the disease, Hispanic infants were particularly hard hit by the disease, though there is no clear reason why.

Immunization from the whooping cough vaccine wears off over time, usually between five and 10 years, so adults can spread the highly contagious disease to infants.

Lopez said babies most often contract the disease from their parents, and it can go undetected. “We’ll be OK, but it could be fatal to the babies,” she said.

The Sounds of Pertussis campaign educates adults about getting a Tdap booster shot, which protects against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis.

Lopez joins other responsible parents and celebs Jennifer Garner andAmanda Peet in making sure everyone knows that these vaccines are safe and available.

Nothing to do with us: Measles in Wales

25 Apr

The recent measles outbreak in Wales occurred near Swansea. The local newspaper in the area gave publicity to the autism-MMR vaccine hoax, and may have been behind the area’s relatively poor vaccination rate. Tammy Boyce’s Health Risk and News: The MMR Vaccine and the Media described an examination of the Swansea MMR uptake rates:

Mason and Donnelly (2000) examined coverage of the MMR/Autism story in the local Swansea paper The South Wales Evening Post (SWEP) and compared the Swansea MMR uptake rates with the vaccination rates across Wales. Since 1997, coverage of the MMR vaccine in the SWEP has primarily challenged the safety of the triple jab and supported Wakefield’s theories. Many stories, predominatly written by one journalist, covered the experiences of parents who claimed their child’s autism was linked to MMR vaccine.  Mason and Donnelly found the MMR uptake in the Swansea area declined by 13.6% compared to 2.4% in the rest of Wales, ‘a statistically significant greater decline in the distribution area of the SWEP’. They admit their conclusion cannot claim a causal relationship but they do suggest the newspaper ‘has had a measurable and unhelpful impact over and above any adverse national publicity’.

The newspaper concerned does not make the link between its reporting and reduced MMR vaccine uptake, when reporting the recent outbreak. On August 24th, 2007 the paper was reporting that the low uptake rates for MMR vaccine were a ticking time bomb.

SWANSEA is facing a ticking health time bomb, GPs have warned.
They say unless more mums and dads make sure their youngsters are protected by the MMR jab, the city could face a measles epidemic.
Latest figures show thousands of schoolchildren are being placed at risk because they are not fully protected by the MMR vaccination.
Health chiefs say around 10,000 youngsters aged under 15 are not completely covered because they have not had the full course of treatment. For the vaccine to be effective, children need two jabs. The injections should then protect youngsters from measles, mumps and rubella.
However, uptake in Swansea is among the lowest in Wales.

This can hardly be a surprise to the paper, since less than a month earlier the paper had published an article called “Doctor calls for truth on vaccines” (July 30th 2007) which provided free publicity for Dr Richard Halvorsen. The following extract will allow you to play “anti-vaccine” statement bingo:

Dr Richard Halvorsen, raises his concerns – warning that the Government “misleads us about vaccines”.
Author of a new book, The Truth About Vaccines, he claims that UK children are being used as “guinea pigs” and given “unnecessary” jabs for illnesses such as mumps, and a vaccine for whooping cough which has been “ineffective” in stamping out the illness.
Halvorsen is a GP who has spent five years researching vaccination.
He said: “Vaccine programmes are not the magic bullet cure that they are claimed to be, and bombarding children with a cocktail of vaccines could be causing some serious health problems, with hundreds if not thousands of children adversely affected every year.”
Dr Halvorsen points out that a child is supposed to have 25 vaccines by the time they are 15 months old.
“There remains uncertainty whether the growing number of childhood vaccinations is contributing to the rising numbers of children affected by asthma, diabetes and other immune related disorders,” he claimed.
[…]
“I have been told that there is no one study that can disprove that MMR may cause 10 per cent of autism cases in this country in susceptible children. Studies can show that MMR does not cause all autism.

The Mason and Donnlly paper cited by Boyce is here:

Mason, BW and Donnelly, PD (2000) ‘Impact of a local newspaper campaign on the uptake of MMR vaccine’, Journal of Epidemiological Community Health, 54: 473-474 [link]

Seven years after warnings about their reporting on MMR vaccine, SWEP continued to publish dangerous nonsense about vaccines.

Liar Liar

24 Apr

Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy are very critical of vaccines. They assert that vaccines cause autism.

Criticising vaccines is a dangerous business. Vaccines are arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, medical advances in history. Anyone whose causes people to stop vaccinating their children runs the risk of being blamed for illness, permanent injury and death if/when the diseases return.

Mr. Carrey seems aware of this. In his recent blog piece he made a point of noting:

We have never argued that people shouldn’t be immunized for the most serious threats including measles and polio

This statement bothered me enough that I discussed it in two pieces (here and here) about measles outbreaks in Wales and the US.

I wanted to highlight the fact that the website for Mr. Carrey’s organization (Generation Rescue) includes language specifically telling people to avoid the measles vaccine.

Even after blogging that, somehow Mr. Carrey’s statement statement still bothered me. Then I remembered why.

A year ago, Mr. Carrey’s movie, “Horton Hears a Who”, was in theaters. One group in New Mexico decided to offer a screening of Horton with an added benefit: free vaccinations for children who came.

This didn’t sit well with Mr. Carrey, who decided to put a stop to the free vaccination program. According to Lisa Akerman of TACA (Talk About Curing Autism, another group that has had Jenny McCarthy as a spokes-person):

Once word from the autism community (Who-ville in this case) got to the Carrey & McCarthy super team about this story of a New Mexico vaccination plot things got a brewing. After his morning coffee, Jim made a few calls this morning on behalf of the autism community.

Following a long discussion with his representatives at Fox Entertainment – Who-ville – once again through Horton – was heard. The New Mexico test market of drive thru vaccines while at the movies with your children was stopped. Halted by Horton himself…

So, Mr. Carrey doesn’t “argue” that people shouldn’t be immunized. He just stops them from being immunized.

Fallout of the vaccine-autism scare: Measles in Wales

24 Apr

Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy, Andrew Wakefield…what do these people have in common? They have all helped promote fear of vaccines–especially the Measles/MumpsRubella (MMR) vaccine–by claiming there is evidence vaccines cause autism.

To be fair, Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy relatively new to the scene, unlike Dr. Wakefield, whose flawed research really fueled the fear. Perhaps the actors could learn from the doctor’s lesson: you claim MMR causes autism, that reduces the number of people getting immunized and people get sick. Pretty simple logic.

Measles was considered basically wiped out in the UK until a few years ago when it returned, sickening thousands and killing a few. Last year, measles returned to the US, and it’s back this year. Now we see that the UK isn’t being spared int he 2008-09 season: Wales has approximately 60 cases of measles suspected or confirmed.

Nineteen cases are in Llanelli–that’s in the lower left corner of this map:

Map showing location of recent measles outbreak in Wales

Map showing location of recent measles outbreak in Wales

That’s a short ride from Swansea, Cardiff, Bristol…lots of high density population centers. Any reasonable person would find that scary.

We in the autism communities need to stand up against misinformation that leads to people being sickened and, in some cases, killed. The MMR-Autism link never had good evidence, and now there is good evidence that MMR does not cause autism Even people like the autism-is-vaccine-injury proponent Rick Rollens admitted it’s time to look beyond MMR (and here).

Jim Carrey seems to understand at least on some level that it is wrong to dissuade people from vaccination. He claimed (incorrectly):

We have never argued that people shouldn’t be immunized for the most serious threats including measles and polio…

Maybe there is some Clintonian logic about the words “We” and “argued”. But, on Larry King Live, Jenny McCarthy stated:

You need to find a doctor that can find an alternate schedule. Generationrescue.org has three of them on there.

Generation Rescue, aka “Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey’s Autism Organization” has alternate schedules on their website. The “favorite” of the three alternate vaccine schedules states, very clearly,

One should avoid vaccines that contain live viruses. This includes the combined measles mumps and rubella vaccines…

You’ve talked the talk, time to walk the walk, Jim. Pull that schedule off your website. Get your organization to make a clear statement about the value of vaccinating against measles.

I realize that I have concentrated a lot on Jim Carrey in this piece. But, there is a man who can make a difference in the future. That future will see people in the US and the UK sickened by measles. The question is how many. What Jim Carrey says could make that number larger or smaller, it all depends on whether he makes good on his sentiment that measles is a serious disease worth immunizing against.

Dr Jay Gordon, HIPAA violation? Really?

23 Apr

We’re back to the Huffington Post again and this time rather than Jenny McCarthy’s boyfriend, we’re talking about Jenny McCarthy’s son’s doctor Dr Jay Gordon.

He recently blogged about an LA Times piece by fellow medical man Dr Rahul Parikh. In his piece Parikh said:

One night, we admitted a 9-month-old girl who was having trouble breathing. She arrived with her parents — Mom in tears and Dad tense with worry. Her parents were movie stars from a Hollywood borough who…needed nothing. In a way, they had chosen “nothing” for their daughter from the time she was born — refusing all vaccines for her.

From this information alone Dr Gordon decided that Dr Parikh:

…commits ethics and HIPAA violations so egregious that the Medical Board must take him to task

Interesting, I thought as I read on…

Dr. Parikh is a well-published medical author and blogger and he speaks of a patient he saw as an intern in the year 2000 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. (His bio on many sites lets you know that year.) He identifies the parents, their unique profession and their child’s age and illness. This family can be identified by anyone who can use Google.

I was confused by now – Parikh hadn’t mentioned the year (in fact *Gordon himself* did!), he hadn’t identified the parents and as for their ‘unique profession’…how is being a movie star from Hollywood in any way unique? Surely Hollywood is full of movie stars? I mean, I’m a Brit so maybe I’m just buying into a cliché – are there really not many movie stars in Hollywood? And as for identifying the child’s age and illness – a 9 month old with a repository infection? Is that massively uncommon? I don’t think it is.

I stopped reading at that point as I have never been Dr Gordon’s biggest fan. He lacks the balls to tell Jenny McCarthy she’s wrong about there being anti-freeze in vaccines (silliness repeated by Jim Carrey yesterday) amongst other things. I was now more interested in this ‘ethics and HIPAA violation’.

False modesty aside I’m pretty good at digging at information on search engines and try as I could (and I really did try), based on the info in Parikh’s piece, I could not for the life of me identify who the movie stars were whos daughter was ill. I still can’t.

However, finding out what constitutes a HIPAA violation in terms of identifiable data was very much easier. I hit gold on my first search. According to the site ‘Lawyers and HIPAA‘ a violation occurs when health information is made public – here’s the paragraph on health information and its public release:

Individually identifiable health information is information that is a subset of health information, including demographic information collected from an individual, and:

(1) Is created or received by a health care provider, health plan, employer, or health care clearinghouse; and

(2) Relates to the past, present, or future physical or mental health or condition of an individual; the provision of health care to an individual; or the past, present, or future payment for the provision of health care to an individual; and

(i) That identifies the individual; or

(ii) With respect to which there is a reasonable basis to believe the information can be used to identify the individual.

I simply cannot see how Jay Gordon realistically believes that the information in Rahul Parikh’s LA Times piece meets that criteria.

Update: I see Autism News Beat has covered this also. In the comments Dr Gordon appears and says:

Good points. I’ve removed the nastier comments in the HuffPo piece. The Internet lends itself to false bravado and unpleasant ad hominem attacks [please see above 🙂 ] and I have to work on not being part of that problem.

I stand by my original unhappiness at the inaccurate proclamation of whooping cough

Yet when I return to Dr Gordon’s Huffington Post entry, I still see the references to HIPAA violations. Does Dr Gordon really believe that Dr Parikh’s article is full of HIPAA violations? Yes, I’m a Brit and no, I’m not a lawyer but my common sense tells me that Dr Gordon is playing with fire here. Lets hope for Dr Gordon’s sake that Dr Parikh is not going to sue for defamation. According to Autism News Beat that would be distinctly on the cards.

Fallout of the vaccine-autism scare: Measles in the US

23 Apr

I thought we dodged the bullet this year in the US–no measles outbreaks like in 2008.

Then I read the Baby411 blog. Today’s post:

Several states are reporting measles outbreaks across the country this week, but particularly on the East Coast.

The following states are reporting confirmed cases of measles:
Iowa
Pennsylvania
Washington DC
Maryland
Virginia

So far, six cases in the Washington DC area, for example.

A very valid question is, “why bring this up on an autism blog?” Unfortunately, the autism community is tied to the measles vaccine scare. So, yes, I hang some of the responsibility for this outbreak on Dr. Wakefield for his terribly flawed research.

I also hang responsibility on Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. Jenny McCarthy has been promoting her organization’s “alternative” vaccine schedule that gives no coverage for measles.

Here’s a quote from their “alternative”schedule:

One should avoid vaccines that contain live viruses. This includes the combined measles.mups and rubella vaccines…

Just today, her partner, Jim Carrey in a blog post denied this:

We have never argued that people shouldn’t be immunized for the most serious threats including measles and polio

Sorry, Jim, you can’t have it both ways.

Let’s hope this outbreak stays small.

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.

An open letter to Jim Carrey

22 Apr

Today on The Huffngton Post, actor Jim Carrey posted his thoughts about autism and vaccines. With his very first paragraph it became apparent how little Carrey understood the issues involved:

Recently, I was amazed to hear a commentary by CNN’s Campbell Brown on the controversial vaccine issue. After a ruling by the ‘special vaccine court’ saying the Measles, Mumps, Rubella shot wasn’t found to be responsible for the plaintiffs’ autism, she and others in the media began making assertions that the judgment was in, and vaccines had been proven safe. No one would be more relieved than Jenny and I if that were true. But with all due respect to Ms. Brown, a ruling against causation in three cases out of more than 5000 hardly proves that other children won’t be adversely affected by the MMR…

Point one Mr Carrey. The vaccine issue is only controversial to adherents of your belief system. Within scientific, medical, legal, autistic and parental circles its not even slightly controversial.

Point two, the three cases chosen were chosen – by the plaintiffs legal team – to represent their absolute best chance of winning. If they had won, there was an excellent chance all the cases that were suggesting MMR as causation would have just ‘won’ automatically. Thats why its called an Omnibus.

Point three, regarding the MMR, it has been firmly established that:

a) The data supporting the MMR hypothesis was fixed.

b) The science supporting the MMR theory was badly wrong – both badly done and exposed to contaminants.

You might also note that the court was not attempting to see if the children were ‘adversely affected by the MMR’, it was looking to see – using the three cases the legal team representing the families thought were the absolute best – if MMR caused autism. It didn’t. Thats probably why your Campbell Brown found it easy to say the MMR hypothesis was dead and buried.

You go to say Mr Carrey that:

Not everyone gets cancer from smoking, but cigarettes do cause cancer. After 100 years and many rulings in favor of the tobacco companies, we finally figured that out.

Yes, we did – and do you know how? With _good science_ – just like the science that established in the three MMR test cases that the MMR didn’t cause autism. And its fascinating that you bring up this parallel to the smoking issue and then later in your blog post invoke the name of Bernadine Healy. Healy – who’s ‘more sensible voice’ you say you’d rather listen to. Did you know Healy used to be a member of TASSC:

TASSC was created in 1993 by the APCO Worldwide public relations firm, and was funded by tobacco company Philip Morris (now Altria)….

According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in their article How Big Tobacco Helped Create “the Junkman”, one of the forerunners of TASSC at Philip Morris was a 1988 “Proposal for the Whitecoat Project,” named after the white laboratory coats that scientists sometimes wear. The project had four goals: “Resist and roll back smoking restrictions. Restore smoker confidence. Reverse scientific and popular misconception that ETS (passive smoking) is harmful. Restore social acceptability of smoking.”

[own inserts]

Is that what you consider a sensible voice Mr Carrey? Someone who supported the tobacco agenda?

Moving on, you say:

If we are to believe that the ruling of the ‘vaccine court’ in these cases mean that all vaccines are safe, then we must also consider the rulings of that same court in the Hannah Polling and Bailey Banks cases, which ruled vaccines were the cause of autism and therefore assume that all vaccines are unsafe. Clearly both are irresponsible assumptions, and neither option is prudent.

First and foremost, the vaccine court did not rule at all in the Hannah Poling case. HHS conceded. And what they conceded was that Hannah Poling was damaged by vaccines resulting in ‘autism like features’. In fact, when we look at the the one piece of medical science carried out on Hannah Poling (co-authored by her own father), we see that only three of the symptoms described as being the result of vaccine injury appear on the DSM (IV) diagnostic criteria for autism.

As for Bailey Banks, this is a perfect illustration of both how the vaccine court in the USA was designed to work and also how terrible the evidence was in the three MMR test cases.

The Banks ruling (subtitled ‘Non-autistic developmental delay’ by the way) drew a line of causation from vaccine to PDD-NOS. It is able to do this as the burden of proof for any science presented to the vaccine court is ‘50% plus a feather’. In other words, it just has to be plausible, no causation needs to be shown.

What doesn’t seem in doubt is that Bailey was injured by a vaccine which resulted in a condition called ADEM. The judge in the case then went on to accept the plaintiffs position that the ADEM in turn caused PDD-NOS. He did this seemingly because there was no evidence to the contrary – e.g. no evidence that ADEM *doesn’t* cause PDD-NOS.

In any scientific situation – including civil court in the US – this would never have been accepted. The plaintiff would have had to have demonstrated that ADEM *did* cause PDD-NOS. And a search of PubMed reveals nothing for ‘ADEM autism’ or ‘ADEM PDD’.

So, in the Banks case, because there was no evidence that ADEM does not cause PDD-NOS, they won. In every situation bar the vaccine court, the Banks’ would not have won their case. There is no science to support the idea ADEM causes autism.

Bearing this ‘50% plus a feather’ concept in mind it is clear just how utterly dreadful the evidence was to support the idea MMR caused autism. Not only could plaintiffs not provide any evidence that MMR causes autism, respondents produced reams of evidence to show it clearly doesn’t.

You carry on Mr Carrey to say:

I’ve also heard it said that no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism has ever been found. That statement is only true for the CDC, the AAP and the vaccine makers who’ve been ignoring mountains of scientific information and testimony. There’s no evidence of the Lincoln Memorial if you look the other way and refuse to turn around. But if you care to look, it’s really quite impressive. For a sample of vaccine injury evidence go to http://www.generationrescue.org/lincolnmemorial.html.

Your analogy is ridiculous. I could go to any library and find evidence for the Lincoln Memorial without ever seeing it. In fact, what your analogy does is demonstrate exactly how blinkered and able to only face one direction at one time you and your colleagues are.

The evidence you present as that being supportive of evidence between a link between vaccines and autism is equally ridiculous and blinkered. I simply don;t have the time to tackle the mountain of misinformation presented on the page you link to suffice to say there’s not a single section that doesn’t have a major error. Most of them have been tackled on this and other blogs over the years.

Next you say:

In all likelihood the truth about vaccines is that they are both good and bad. While ingredients like aluminum, mercury, ether, formaldehyde and anti-freeze may help preserve and enhance vaccines, they can be toxic as well. The assortment of viruses delivered by multiple immunizations may also be a hazard. I agree with the growing number of voices within the medical and scientific community who believe that vaccines, like every other drug, have risks as well as benefits and that for the sake of profit, American children are being given too many, too soon. One thing is certain. We don’t know enough to announce that all vaccines are safe!

Mr Carrey, *vaccines do not contain anti-freeze* – for goodness sake, even Jay Gordon, Evan’s Paediatrician knows that! Did you also know that (to quote myself):

There’s also Aluminium in breast milk so lets compare the two.

According to this paper (which is from 1990 – any more up to date papers welcomed) the amount of Aluminium in breast milk is 49 ?g/L. The average amount of breast milk expressed per day is 0.85 liters.

This means that 41.65?g Aluminium per day is in breast milk.

Now, according to this paper, there is between 125 – 850?g of Aluminium per dose in a vaccine.

So, for a 6 year old, total Aluminium is between 2,125 – 14,450?g.

In real terms this means that after between 51 and 346 days breast feeding, a 6 year old will have taken onboard the same amount of Aluminium as from the total US vaccine schedule.

Now I couldn’t find out what vaccines contained the lower amount or which contained the higher amount. Even so, this means that if every vaccine a 6 year old has that contains Aluminium contains the highest possible amount, within a year of breast feeding they will have matched that.

Or to put it another way, an anti-vax tree-hugger soccer mom who doesn’t vaccinate her baby will have given him the same amount of Aluminium he would’ve had in six years after one year of breast feeding.

And thats of course, not even touched on the fact that:

In the Earth’s crust, aluminium is the most abundant (8.13%) metallic element, and the third most abundant of all elements (after oxygen and silicon)

And is found naturally occurring in sea water, fresh water, the human body etc etc.

[Regarding Formaldehyde]…There’s also Formaldehyde in Apples, Apricots, Banana’s and….ah, I lost interest. Lots of stuff. Including the human body.

So – how much is in vaccines?

According to this and using it in combination with the US vaccine schedule referenced above, we can see that the total amount of Formaldehyde in vaccines from the vaccine schedule for a 6 year old child is 1.2016mg (again, do your own maths, correct me if I’m wrong).

For comparison to that 1.2mg in all vaccines for a 6 year old, 1 (one) banana contains 16.3mg Formaldehyde.

Mr Carrey, you’ve got to stop throwing these scaremongering nonfacts around. Its damned irresponsible for a start.

Lastly Mr Carrey, you say:

If the CDC, the AAP and Ms. Brown insist that our children take twice as many shots as the rest of the western world, we need more independent vaccine research not done by the drug companies selling the vaccines or by organizations under their influence. Studies that cannot be internally suppressed.

In terms of autism, if you want to make a big deal out of the fact that ‘our children take twice as many shots as the rest of the western world’ then please consider this – the UK has less shots than you. We also have a higher prevalence than you. 1 in 100 vs 1 in 150.

And please also don’t invoke silly conspiracy theories. Think about how science works. A study is done, funded by Eli Lily for example. It is peer reviewed and found to be good quality and it is published in, lets say NEJM. Now, *every single reader of that study* can see exactly what methods and means were used to reach the studies conclusions. I ask you Mr Carrey, how much more independent can you get? How much more transparent? Basically anyone, anywhere can try and replicate that same studies results. If they can and a few others can – the results are good. If nobody can (think Andrew Wakefield) then the results must be bad.

And for goodness sake man, grow up, who is ‘suppressing’ what study exactly? Have you _any_ evidence at all that any study ever has been internally suppressed? Or are you just throwing this stuff out to scare people?

Mr Carrey, I loved the Truman Show but this isn’t it. There’s no god like figure overseeing every aspect of your life and wanting to control it. I ask you – get in contact with an actual scientist and go through your concerns with them. At the very least they’ll be able to stop you saying silly things like there’s anti-freeze in vaccines.

Why Generation Rescue doesn’t need a seat on the IACC

22 Apr

Generation Rescue has been lobbying hard for a seat on the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee
 (IACC).

The IACC, as you might guess, coordinates research efforts amongst various government agencies. They do this by creating a “strategic plan” which puts forth initiatives that should be funded. For example, they f

For example, one “short term goal” listed on the Strategic Plan is

Launch at least two studies to assess and characterize variation in adults living with ASD (e.g., social and daily functioning, demographic, medical and legal status) by 2011. IACC Recommended Budget: $5,000,000 over 3 years.

Groups like Generation Rescue, Safe Minds, the National Autism Association and TACA would like to see the Strategic Plan state that autism is caused by vaccines and call for research on the topic. Well, that’s one opinion. One that is already well represented on the IACC. That is only one reason why adding an IACC seat for Generation Rescue would be a bad idea. Here are the ones that come to mind readily:

1) Generation Rescue’s position is already represented on the IACC.

I have never heard any complaints from the Generation Rescue team about Lyn Redwood. Lyn Redwood represents, quite vocally, the “autism is caused by vaccines” segment of the community. She pretty much dominates much of the discussion, steering it towards vaccines as much as possible.

So, if the Generation Rescue position is already represented, why give them an official position?

2) Just because there are multiple organizations, doesn’t mean that the IACC has to include them all.

Besides their position on vaccines, what do Generation Rescue, Safe Minds, TACA and the National Autism Association have in common?

You can’t join them and vote for their leadership.

Sorry, I just see these as different faces to the same overall autism group. Actually, I see them as mostly vaccine oriented advocacy groups, not autism advocacy groups, but the point is the same: why give each of these groups their own seat on the IACC.

Think for a moment–why should a few people be allowed to create an “organization” and ask for separate representation? If each subgroup wants to have control over their own budgets and give each member big titles, that’s just fine. But, when it comes to the IACC, why should every faction of what is, really, one big group be given a seat at the table?

Yes, this is much like item (1)–all of these groups already have their opinions represented by Lyn Redwood. There is no need or value in giving them more seats on the IACC.

3) This would lead to even more wasted time.

The IACC is a group that has very limited time to work on a research plan. Work being the operative word. Already, a LOT of time is taken up carefully crafting each and every phrase that might give credence to the vaccines-cause-autism story.

Imagine now if even more time were taken up in these discussions. Sorry, no. There is a great deal of expertise represented by the scientists on the IACC. We as taxpayers and as members of the greater autism community deserve to benefit from their expertise.

4) Generation Rescue has clearly demonstrated itself to be anti-science.

Generation Rescue’s recent “study” on vaccines and health outcomes around the world was, in a word, dishonest. The fact that they would promote such a manipulation of facts should disqualify them from sitting on a research based committee.

They either don’t understand research, or they are willing to misuse “research” to promote a political agenda. Either way, I don’t see why good researchers in the field should have to share a committee with Generation Rescue.

5) They don’t want their voice heard, they want to be able to outvote the scientists.

As noted above, Generation Rescue’s positions are very clearly communicated on the IACC already by Ms. Redwood. What Generation Rescue wants is a large enough voting block to outvote the scientists on the committee.

Read that again–they want to outvote scientists on a committee designed to coordinate research.

Sorry, you don’t vote down science.

6) They are rude.

The culture of Generation Rescue is not one of working as a team with others. You either agree with their position, or people shout “BullShit” loudly at you.

Yes, there is already rude behavior on the IACC. Mark Blaxill, for one, has spent considerable amounts of time calling anyone who disagrees with his untenable position on mercury “Epidemic Denialists”. We don’t need more of that, and Generation Rescue goes well past that level on the impoliteness scale.

Sorry, I just can’t find any advantage to having Generation Rescue represented on the IACC. I can see a LOT of disadvantages, though.

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