Archive by Author

Surpise! Some people don't like Autism's False Prophets

13 Sep

There is some lively discussion amongst people who don’t like Paul Offit’s, “Autism’s False Prophets“. Many of the complaints are from people who haven’t read the book. But, hey, we can all admit that just given the title and the author, many people can accurately assess that they wouldn’t like the book.

I found Mr. Olmsted’s “review” interesting.

Kim Stagliano has given some advice in the comments:

Easy – sit at Barnes and Noble, browse a copy while you sip a latte (oopsie! don’t spill!) and then when you return the book to the shelf, tuck in a copy of Dan’s review…. And return it to the shelf labeled, “Eastern Aborginal Snail Mating Habits in the 15th Century.” Five years down the road, go back and give it a good dusting…

This is the face of vaccine-oriented autism advocacy in America.

Well, should I find a defaced copy in my bookstores, I can tell you what I’ll do: go to the front desk and see if I can purchase it at a deeply discounted rate. Then, I’ll forward the book, with a copy of that blog post and some of the comments highlighted, to someone involved with autism policy in the U.S. government. With a nice cover letter, of course. I’ll point out that, yes, I am one of the parents who are angry at the vaccine-activists co-opting the autism agenda. I’ll also point out who Ms. Stagliano is in relationship to AoA/Generation rescue. I’ll ask, “is this the sort of representation we need on a Secretarial Level autism advisory board to the secretary of HHS?”

Personally, I’m not waiting to possibly find a defaced copy. I’m sending a few copies out to some people in government.

You can too. Amazon.com (and other booksellers) allow you to send books to people other than yourselves. You can look up the address for your representative or senator online.

Consider putting “attention legislative analyst for healthcare” and follow up with an email (you can contact your Senators and Representative via their webpages). Feeling a little tight on cash? Send an email and ask your legislators to get the book for themselves and their healthcare legislative analyst.

There are, of course, many other people influential inside and outside of government who could use a copy of Autism’s False Prophets, so you don’t have to feel limited to the Congress and Senate.

It doesn’t hurt to check before sending: He/she may have already read it!

And, yes, I will remember this idea when the new government takes office in early 2009.

LB/RB and Neurodiversity.com nominated

12 Sep

We’ve both been nominated (by me, hehe) for some blog awards. They might sound trivial but unlike a lot of blog awards that seem to circulate almost daily, these carry some weight.

This blog has been nominated in the ‘Health’ category – Please vote for us if you have enjoyed or found anything useful on LB/RB over the past year. Annoyingly, it seems you have to register to vote, but please make the effort as it will help us reach new people.

Kathleen’s now (in?)famous blog has been nominated in two sections. ‘The Blogitzer – which is the blogging equivalent of the Pulitzer and Best Blog of all time, both categories it fully deserves to win in.

So – please support both of us in our efforts. Thanks!

Do you Tweet?

11 Sep

If you just asked yourself ‘Tweet? What the hell is he talking about’? then you may not. If you know exactly what I mean then this is for you 🙂

Left Brain/Right Brain now has a Twitter account which some of the authors that blog on LB/RB have access to and which will be used to post updates to the site, notify people of new LB/RB blog posts, notify people of interesting sites/stories we’ve found and want to share with you.

For those who aren’t familiar with Twitter, its what is known as micro-blogging. A user has 140 characters in which to make a post. I have my own personal Twitter account but I wanted to make a dedicated LB/RB account for the purposes described above.

You can track Twitter accounts by becoming a ‘follower’ (you can see the people I ‘follow’ at the bottom right column of my Twitter home page) and subscribing to the dedicated RSS feed or by checking the Home page every so often – or by using a desktop solution such as Twhirl, or via a Firefox extension like TwitKit. Obviously, you need to join Twitter in order to either follow others tweets (a message posted to Twitter is called a tweet) or post tweets yourself.

So, join up, or start following LB/RB!

Arthur Allen – vaccine skeptics vs your kids

11 Sep

Whilst, I’m not sure that the people Arthur is writing about are skeptics as I understand the term (having a scientifically valid basis for not accepting an argument or position), I know what he means. And he’s right that it is this group of people vs the health of people everywhere.

The sub-header is even more accurate ‘immune to reason’. One only has to take a look over at the recent rantings on a certain blog we all know about where the latest themes are:

1) Presidential candidate Barack Obama is now a big pharma shill because he told one of them: “I am not for selective vaccination, I believe that it will bring back deadly diseases, like polio.”.

2) The latest study in a long line of studies that show once more there is no link between MMR and autism is both flawed and exonerates one of their heroes.

3) Kathleen Seidel is wrong because….uh….well, no one knows why but she must be. Apparently.

Immune to reason indeed.

As Arthur points out, there is a great deal at stake:

…in the last trimester of her pregnancy, Helena Moran caught a cough that she couldn’t get rid of. She figured she’d picked up the germ—whatever it was—from one of her patients at a Boulder dentist’s office. But the real nightmare began after her daughter, Evelina, was born: The baby began to cough and cough, and then she’d curl up in a little ball and turn blue. At the emergency room, she was diagnosed with whooping cough. She spent the next five weeks in intensive care and suffered permanent lung damage.

Now, this isn’t *all* the fault of the so-called autism community, but as I’ve discussed before, I’m ashamed to say that a lot of it is.

….the movement got a huge boost from the controversy over the mercury-laden preservative thimerosal, which some theorized might be linked to autism. That link has been disproven—by, if nothing else, the fact that autism rates remained steady after pediatricians and public health authorities told manufacturers to stop making thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines in 1999. But the anti-vaccine movement has kept going, finding ever new reasons to distrust immunization.

The are a lot of zealots out there who have fed upon the autism community. A parent who might not believe vaccines case autism listens to horror stories and reads links sent to them from such places of quackery as whale.to who are nothing to do with the autism community but who market their own brand of ridiculousness (the owner of whale.to believes dolphins can manipulate gravity and has the pictures to prove it!) regarding vaccines and the autism parent greedily sucks it down.

Arthur discuss the practice of abusing ‘religious exemption’ by these people:

Right now, in many states, all it takes to get an exemption from vaccine requirements is signing a form. Some, including a group of doctors at Johns Hopkins University, have proposed making it harder—allowing a philosophical exemption only after parents demonstrate a good-faith effort to educate themselves.

But an article I read in yesterdays ‘Edmond Sun’ stated:

….a person “who has reached the age of majority and is mentally competent to do so may justifiably refuse immunizations for himself or herself, but may not impose this refusal on a child, who has no choice in the matter.” Courts have consistently upheld this principle.

That makes sense to me. Who would want to refuse such a simple thing that has no link of any kind to autism?

Arthur closes with the following:

But while questioning authority is healthy, facts are facts. If vaccines really were responsible for autism, it would be too much to ask parents to do the altruistic thing. But more than a dozen studies have failed to discover such a link—and not a single legitimate study has shown that one exists.

He’s spot on. All the celebs and all the money in the world cannot change that simple fact. We need to get past this. Those who believe autism is caused by vaccines need to put up or shut up. They are holding up progress on autism research and causing the health of our societies to suffer.

I urge readers to visit Arthur’s piece and read the comments. The first few demonstrate exactly the sort of mindset Arthur is talking about – the one’s who bring shame on the autism community. They truly are immune to reason.

The IOM and "completely expressed concerns"

11 Sep

If you’ve read my previous posts Dr. Bernadine Healy, you know I have some pretty serious concerns about how she represented the way the Institute of Medicine operated when they produced their report on Vaccines and Autism.  Those statements were made in interviews with Sharyl Attkisson.  Again, if you’ve been reading, you realize that Ms. Attkisson’s methods were a cause of concern for me as well.  I have voiced these concerns with CBS news via fax.

Dr. Healy made some pretty bold assertions, and Ms. Attkisson failed to even attempt to follow up on them.

The prime example is when Dr. Healy proposed that

…“There is a completely expressed concern that they don’t want to pursue a hypothesis because that hypothesis could be damaging to the public health community at large by scaring people. “First of all,” Healy said, “I think the public’s smarter than that. The public values vaccines. But more importantly, I don’t think you should ever turn your back on any scientific hypothesis because you’re afraid of what it might show.”

I’ve noted before, that a statement of that magnitude, calling into question the very methods and motives of the IOM deserved followup by Ms. Attkisson.  When someone makes a claim that an organization we all depend on to be independent and unbiased may have acted improperly, and unbiased reporter should make sure of the facts by checking with the real source before going ahead with the story.

Well, bloggers sometimes do the work that reporters fail to do.  In this case, AutismLibrary asked the IOM for comment on some of the way the IOM and its process in handling the 2004 Vaccines and Autism report have been portrayed.  Below (with permission) is the response that AutismLibrary received and blogged:

Thank you for your recent and very thoughtful message. As you know, the IOM’s Immunization Safety Review Committee most certainly did not suggest that scientific inquiry into the role of vaccines in autism should cease because the results could affect public perception of the value of childhood vaccinations. The public deserves better than that.

The committee’s 2004 report, Vaccines and Autism, states:

Determining causality with population-based methods such as epidemiological analyses requires either a well-defined at-risk population or a large effect in the general population. Absent biomarkers, well-defined risk factors, or large effect sizes, the committee cannot rule out, based on the epidemiological evidence, the possibility that vaccines contribute to autism in some small subset or very unusual circumstances. However, there is currently no evidence to support this hypothesis either.

After a paragraph in which the report follows that sentence with a discussion of the sparse literature regarding subsets of autism and the theoretical possibility of a vaccine-susceptible subpopulation, the report states:

While the committee strongly supports targeted research that focuses on better understanding the disease of autism, from a public health perspective the committee does not consider a significant investment in studies of the theoretical vaccine-autism connection to be useful at this time. The nature of the debate about vaccine safety now includes a theory that genetic susceptibility makes vaccinations risky for some people, which calls into question the appropriateness of a public health, or universal, vaccination strategy. However the benefits of vaccination are proven and the hypothesis of susceptible populations is presently speculative. Using an unsubstantiated hypothesis to question the safety of vaccination and the ethical behavior of those governmental agencies and scientists who advocate for vaccination could lead to widespread rejection of vaccines and inevitable increases in incidence of serious infectious diseases like measles, whooping cough, and Hib bacterial meningitis.

The committee urges that research on autism focus more broadly on the disorder’s causes and treatments for it. Thus, the committee recommends a public health response that fully supports an array of vaccine safety activities. In addition the committee recommends that available funding for autism research be channeled to the most promising areas.

Some readers have apparently failed to appreciate the full meaning and intent of the committee’s carefully written text. The report, as supported by the above-quoted paragraphs, clearly acknowledges the possibility that new information in support of hypotheses about susceptible subpopulations could emerge, at which time significant new research efforts might be appropriate. Whether the recent information about mitochondrial dysfunction will be the foundation for a major new research direction remains to be seen. The committee’s comment on the untoward consequences of discouraging vaccination was offered as an elaboration of their concerns about the unsubstantiated vaccine-autism hypothesis and not as support for their recommendations about an appropriate research agenda for understanding autism.

The scientists and clinicians on this committee evaluated the then-available scientific data in an unbiased manner. They reached their conclusions based on where the evidence led them. This principle—making recommendations only if supported by the evidence—guides all studies that IOM undertakes. I reiterate that the committee most certainly did not urge caution about pursuing the vaccine-autism connection in order to avoid frightening the public away from immunizations. The IOM stands ready to re-examine this issue should sufficient and relevant evidence emerge.

I almost put the entire last paragraph in bold for emphasis. Instead I’ll pull two lines out:

I reiterate that the committee most certainly did not urge caution about pursuing the vaccine-autism connection in order to avoid frightening the public away from immunizations

and

The IOM stands ready to re-examine this issue should sufficient and relevant evidence emerge

I read this as: there were no “completely expressed concerns” that affected the IOM’s study and that although they recommended rejecting the vaccine/autism hypotheses (thimerosal and MMR), they haven’t “turned their backs” on the subject. Should good research come forward (as with any subject in science) they will look again.

I do have one simple question: Shouldn’t Sharyl Attkisson approached the IOM for comment before going forward with this story?

IACC Strategic Plan: How can I understand what is happening

10 Sep

We have discussed the IACC Strategic Plan before. They are looking for feedback. We’ve looked at the issues of vaccines, and the first section “When should I be concerned” already.

The second major section of the IACC draft Strategic Plan looks at the question of understanding what is autism.

Again, I am only pulling out the “Research Opportunities” and the “Goals” sections to keep this brief. Please, take a look at the entire document if you have the chance.

That said, I will take the first paragraph from the introduction to this section:

One of the greatest barriers to progress in determining the biological bases of ASD has been the heterogeneity of the spectrum. A clear need exists to advance understanding of the many phenotypes of ASD, including studies that link genotype to phenotype, investigations of natural and treated history, analyses of genetic interaction with environmental exposures, and studies of co-occurring medical conditions.

It’s a big (BIG) undertaking. Here is an outline of how they are going about this. Take a look and, please, send them comments. The IACC website has details, but, basically, it boils down to email them (use the link, the subject line is already filled in!).

Research Opportunities

• Multi-disciplinary, longitudinal, biobehavioral studies of children, youths, and adults beginning during infancy that characterize developmental trajectories and identify ASD risk factors, subgroups, and potential biological targets for intervention. Such studies could include:
o High-risk siblings of children, youths, and adults with ASD, children without a family history of ASD, and typically developing children
o Multi-disciplinary assessments of brain imaging, metabolic and immune markers, microbiomics, electrophysiology, and behavior

• Research on females with ASD to better characterize clinical, biological and protective features.

• Human and animal studies that examine immune, infectious and environmental factors in the occurrence of ASD.

• An international public-private collaboration to expand current postmortem brain and other tissue resources (e.g., skin fibroblasts) to increase the acquisition, quality, type and availability of biomaterials relevant to studying the pathology of ASD.

Short-Term Objectives

• Establish an international network of brain and other tissue (e.g., skin fibroblasts) acquisition sites with standardized protocols for phenotyping, collection and distribution of tissue by 2010.

• Support at least four research projects to identify mechanisms of metabolic and/or immune system interactions with the central nervous system that may underlie the development of ASD during prenatal-postnatal life by 2010.

• Launch three studies that specifically focus on the neurodevelopment of females with ASD by 2011.

Long-Term Objectives

• Complete a large-scale, multi-disciplinary, collaborative project that longitudinally and comprehensively examines how the biological, clinical, and developmental profiles of children, youths, and adults with ASD change over time as compared to typically developing individuals by 2020.
_______________________________________

In many ways, I could see this section getting the least attention from people responding. At the same time, it is the cornerstone for future research. Really, if we understand what is autism (in its many forms) won’t we have a better idea of how to treat it and how it originates?

Take a look and, if you have any thoughts, say “this looks good” or “you should include XXX in this section, email them.

Dan Olmsted suffers by comparison

9 Sep

Ever since his unexplained sudden departure from UPI, Dan Olmsted has been working on his Magnificent Octopus entitled ‘Mercury Rising’.

He keeps his keen investigative journalism skills to the fore by writing the occasional blog piece for Age of Autism. These skills have included the scintillating exposé

“Where are the autistic Amish?” he asked. “I have come here to find them, but so far my mission has failed, and the very few I have identified raise some very interesting questions about some widely held views on autism.”

Except that Dan Olmsted never visited Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, where

Dr. Kevin Strauss, MD, a pediatrician at the CSC. “We run a weekly vaccination clinic and it’s very busy.” He says Amish vaccinations rates are lower than the general population’s, but younger Amish are more likely to be vaccinated than older generations.

Strauss also sees plenty of Amish children showing symptoms of autism. “Autism isn’t a diagnosis – it’s a description of behavior. We see autistic behaviors along with seizure disorders or mental retardation or a genetic disorder, where the autism is part of a more complicated clinical spectrum.” Fragile X syndrome and Retts is also common among the clinic’s patients.

This is backed up by the fact that in April of last year, a study was published that showed that the Amish vaccinate.

Responses were received by 225 (60%) of the 374 Amish households in the community with children aged <15 years. An additional 120 responses were received by households without children. A total of 189 (84%) households with children reported that all of their children had received vaccinations; 28 (12%) reported that some of their children had received vaccinations; and 8 (4%) reported that none of their children had received vaccinations.

Among all respondents who knew their own vaccination status, 281/313 (90%) reported that they had received vaccinations as children.

As we can see, Dan’s investigative journalism is of the highest order.

Today, he has decided to maintain his high standards by doing what he does best – speculating wildly. This time its an absolute doozy.

Determined to hang on to the thiomersal idea at all costs (despite the fact that thiomersal has been out of all paediatric vaccines since 2002 and autism rates are still climbing in the US, just like the UK and just like Japan), Dan takes every bit of evidence that someone once walked past the house of a man who’s first cousin worked at a paint factory as highly suggestive of metal poisoning. In order to justify his new tome (entitled ‘mercury rising’ – don’t bother looking for it anywhere) he _has_ to keep interest in mercury up. Despite the fact that its quite clear to anyone with an ounce of common sense that the thiomersal hypothesis’ time has come and gone, without it, he has no book, hence no book deal, hence no prestige.

So, back to Dan’s latest genius reportage. Dan has just finished reading Autism’s False Prophets and is quite clearly not pleased with the coverage given to Kathleen.

Kathleen, you see, is everything that Dan Olmsted is not. He is slapdash, she is thorough. She checks sources, he thinks they’re what you pour on your dinner. She uncovers _actual_ wrongdoing, he thinks wrongdoing is solely confined to anyone with the title ‘Dr’.

Offit describes Seidel moving to New York City “where she met her future husband, a guitar player. She worked for Project Orbis, a flying ophthalmalogic surgical teaching hospital. …”
Whoa. A flying ophthalmalogic surgical teaching hospital? I suppose it’s possible she just booked their flights and never set foot on the plane, but assuming she was part of the team, I strongly suspect Kathleen Seidel was exposed to thimerosal occupationally.

Ever the principled and thorough reporter, Dan utterly fails to do what any n00b reporter would know to do – check your facts. There was one easy way Dan could’ve saved himself a fair amount of embarrassment over this blog post: he could’ve (get ready for the novel idea Dan!) _asked Kathleen_ . And when he did, she would’ve told him that booking flights did indeed fall under her remit *as a Secretary*. So did dictation, typing and general filing. Knowing Kathleen’s pretty awesome taste in music, I suspect the closest she got to any kind of metal was attending a LedZep gig or two.

Olmsted goes on to say:

Laugh me off if you want, but I have spent a lot of time looking for plausible links between parents’ occupations and autism in their children, and I know them when I see them.

Please, join with me:

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Really bad blogging by Sharyl Attkisson

9 Sep

As I noted before, My fax complaining that Ms. Attkisson missed the big story in the autism/vaccine discussion just about the same time she was posting on exactly that story (the Hornig MMR paper).

Ms Atkisson’s blog post is titled

New Study Disproves Vaccine/MMR/Autism Link

Wow. I didn’t expect to see that from Ms. Attkisson.

Below is the full extent of Ms. Attkisson’s contribution to the piece

There’s a new study in the Public Library of Science regarding vaccine measles and autism which purports to disprove a vaccine/MMR/autism link.

Also, researchers at ThoughtfulHouse wrote an opposing analysis:

She then posts the ThoughtfulHouse press release. No kidding, of the blog piece, 90% (an estimate on my part) of the words are written by someone else! And, not even the researchers involved.

Dang. Recently we have seen a lack of homework on the Dr. Offit conflict of interest story, and now this.

At least there was some effort put into the story on Dr. Offit.

What happened to the CBS I grew up with? I can’t see Walter Cronkite getting paid for “Richard Nixon has resigned in disgrace. Now, here is Mr. Nixon’s press release verbatim.”

Another fax for Ms. Couric

9 Sep

Note: I didn’t do my homework–Ms. Attkisson has discussed the Hornig paper. She manages to do exactly what we would expect: toe the ThoughtfulHouse line. The blog piece by Ms. Attkisson was posted while I was finishing my fax, given the time stamp.

As you will read below, I didn’t find Sharyl Attkisson’s recent blog post to be what I expected. OK, I wasn’t expecting her to be convinced by the recent study by Hornig et al., (paper here) but I at least expected her to comment on it. Instead, she dodged the issue completely. Worse yet, her post boils down to (a) assuming that the government doesn’t do vaccine safety research then (b) apparently implying that she and Dr. Bernadine Healy are somehow responsible for a “new” effort by the government to study vaccine safety.

So, CBS news has two new pages in their fax machine (to go along with a previous fax). In an effort to save their staffers the time of forwarding the fax, I quote it below.

September 8, 2008

Katie Couric, Managing Editor
CBS Television Network
524 West 57th Street
6th Floor
New York, NY 10019-2902

VIA FACSIMILE

Dear Ms. Couric,

I have faxed you recently about my concerns with the reporting of Ms. Attkisson. I would love to be writing you now with word that things have improved. But, sadly, they have not.

Ms. Attkisson appears to have avoided the key story of the week (if not month) in vaccines and autism: the study by Hornig et al. which shows (again) a lack of a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. Instead, Ms. Attkisson ran a blog piece that perpetuates the myth that vaccine safety is not a high priority for the nation’s health researchers.

Hornig et al. is precisely the sort of study that Dr. Bernadine Healy (in an interview by Ms. Attkisson) claimed the research establishment was “afraid” to perform: a study looking not at large populations, but specifically at children with autism. In this paper, the study group critera were very narrow: children with autism who regressed and have significant GI problems. The study sought to answer questions raised by Dr. Wakefield’s flawed study, which has caused much distress in the autism community for 10 years. The study found that MMR is not linked to autism: a conclusion accepted by autism advocate Rick Rollens, one of the most vocal spokespeople for the autism/vaccine link.

You can imagine that, yes, I expected Ms. Attkisson to address this study in her blog or reporting. Instead I read with dismay her blog piece on September 4th, “Vaccine Watch”. In her introduction, she references her interviews with Dr. Healy, but avoids the issue of the Hornig MMR study. Instead, she discusses recent NIH grant solicitations in the area of vaccine safety, and presents them as though vaccine safety research is something new. As noted above, this perpetuates the myth that vaccine safety is not being studied.

In addition to the Hornig et al. study, there is another study soon to be released on autism and thimerosal containing vaccines. Again, a targeted study looking at the exact population of interest. I would hope that this one doesn’t escape Ms. Attkisson’s attention. Also, one need look no further than clinicaltrials.gov to find ongoing studies on vaccine safety and adverse events. It is difficult to find a way that will not appear sarcastic to point out that the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Office is a very clear example of the government’s ongoing commitment to tracking vaccine safety.

If you have any question of how important the Hornig study is in the autism community, take a look at the comments on Ms. Attkisson’s own blog post. You will find that, even though Ms. Attkisson avoided the study, the autism community considered the Hornig study to be the news of the week, not the NIH grant solicitations.

Accusations of media bias are often applied too quickly by readers who disagree with the stances taken on certain stories. However, in the case of Ms. Attkisson, I find it difficult to understand how she could avoid a story which not only was so important to the community, but also answered the precise questions she has posed in her previous reporting.

I appreciate your time in this matter, and will gladly clarify any statements above that may not be clear.

Sullivan
Autism Parent
LeftBrainRightBrain.co.uk
SullivansJourney@gmail.com

Strategic Plan: vaccines

8 Sep

I’ve already started a series on the IACC (InterAgency Coordinating Committe) draft Strategic Plan.  We have until the end of September to submit input to the IACC (but why wait?)

One hot topic is how to handle the issue of vaccines or immunizations. OK, this is a hot topic in the greater autism community in general, but many have made how the IACC handles the issue of vaccines into a big issue.

Given that, it is worth looking into how the Draft Strategic Plan address vaccines. Two sections mention vaccines. The first, under “What caused this to happen” the Draft Plan states:

Research on environmental risk factors is less well developed. An Institute of Medicine workshop held in 2007 summarized what is known and what is needed in this field (Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2007). Numerous epidemiological studies have found no relationship between ASD and vaccines containing the mercury based preservative, thimerosal (Immunization Safety Review Committee, 2004). Some samples have been collected throughout pregnancy and early postnatal life may be essential for detecting the interplay of environmental exposures and genetic factors that lead to ASD. As a complement to these large-scale studies, research on critical high-risk sub-populations (e.g., subsequent pregnancies in families with ASD, those with elevated exposure to specific environmental factors, older parents) could provide leverage in identifying genetic and environmental risk factors. Some parents, however, remain concerned that ASD is linked or caused by vaccination. In addition, a number of other environmental agents are being explored through research that are known or suspected to influence early development of the brain and nervous system. Recent studies suggest factors such as paternal age, exposure to infections, hormones, and other biological agents may confer environmental risk. These findings require further investigation and testing, some of which is ongoing through the CADDRE Program, the Norwegian cohort study, the CHARGE study, and the Children’s Centers for Environmental Health and Disease Prevention supported by NIEHS and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Also, one Research Opportunity under “What caused this to happen” states:

Monitor the scientific literature regarding possible associations of vaccines and other environmental factors (e.g., ultrasound, pesticides, pollutants) with ASD to identify emerging opportunities for research and indicated studies.

Reading that, one could argue that this is not a lot of discussion of vaccines. The idea that vaccines are put on a “Monitor the literature” seems appropriate. But, as we’ve seen, some groups are looking at this document and (a) claiming this is not enough and (b) working to get more statements inserted and (c) in my opinion, trying to make the Strategic Plan a political statement than a research plan.

Consider the idea of monitoring the literature for possible associations with autism. Isn’t that basically a given? Seriously, the Strategic Plan isn’t an IEP document. If something comes up–in any area–on autism causation, the NIH will respond. Why do we have to call out vaccines in particular?

You might ask, “then why care what the Plan includes under ‘monitor’?”

Take a look at how the Combating Autism Act is discussed now. Many would like to ignore the fact that major lobbying efforts were made to include statements about vaccines–and yet the Congress chose to leave mention out. The Act specifically does not include the word “Vaccine” or “immunization”. But, when it comes to vaccines, we are talking about the same people who are trying to rewrite the Hornig et al. study as a validation of Wakefield’s research. When it comes to the Combating Autism Act, these people point to the concept that “vaccines were discussed as part of the process” and point to drafts that they themselves wrote as if this has some official status.

Or, to put it more simply: People want to have vaccines be more prominent in the Plan. However, given that (a) they are already covered under the umbrella of the “environment” and (b) the past history of politicizing any government mention of vaccines and autism, should they be mentioned at all in the Plan?

Think about it. If you feel strongly about the idea of vaccines being included in the Strategic Plan, one way or the other, send them email .

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