Archive by Author

Enforced Vaccination

11 May

I don’t like this, I really don’t.

I know I advocate for the undoubted and scientifically established benefits of vaccination and will continue to do so, but the news that the influential Fabian Society have recommended a policy of enforced vaccination is not good.

In an article for the Fabian Society, leading public health expert Sir Sandy Macara called for child benefit to be linked with vaccination uptake.

And Labour MP Mary Creagh said children should have to prove they are vaccinated before they start school to improve uptake of MMR.

Call for vaccine opt-out penalty

I’m all up for improving the uptake of MMR, I think that is a worthy and vital goal. But is this – educationally and financially punishing children – the right way to do it? Because make no mistake, the parents won’t particularly care that their kids are home schooled. And the type of parent who doesn’t vaccinate (wealthy, white middle class) won’t miss the child benefit. But the child at the heart of these penalties may well miss scholastic education. As a home schoolers ourselves (less through choice than lack of any other option) one of the things we are keenly aware our child misses is the company of her peers in an educational setting.

For those who don’t know, the Fabian Society is a ‘middle-left’ think tank that recommends policy to Labour Party members, particularly influential whilst we have a Labour government (as we do now). They reached this recommendation apparently after:

A poll by YouGov for the Fabian Society suggested that the public would back government action on MMR to address large rises in mumps and measles’ cases. It found that 63% of the public felt that immunisation only worked if everyone was covered, and only 31%felt if was purely up to families to make the choice.

MMR press release

YouGov are a well thought-of (in terms of results accuracy) market research agency. I’ve little doubt the figures they collected are correct. I still don’t like it though. I think that something needs to be done, but this? The penalties seem targeted to ‘hit’ the kids. It also seems tantamount to admitting that attempts to utilise the excellent, freely available science that has killed the MMR hypothesis is pointless.

I’m also frankly disturbed by this quote from Fabian review author Sir Sandy Macara:

One ought to recognise that mothers have a responsibility for ensuring their children are protected.

Mothers? Not parents?

This seems ill thought out, knee-jerk-ish and guaranteed to play into the hands of the conspiracy theorists. We need to do better – much better – than this.

Autism and Mental Illness

10 May

So, the family have been away for four days on holiday – our first ever holiday! A very, very good time was had by all 🙂

But in the meantime it seems like the Autism News Juggernaut hasn’t even slightly slowed. I came back to a deluge of emails on subjects touching on autism but one really caught my eye.

This is the story about autism being linked to mental illness:

Parents of autistic children are twice as likely to have had psychiatric illness, researchers have discovered…A child’s risk of autism was 70% greater if one parent was diagnosed with a mental illness, and twice as high as average if both parents had psychiatric disorders, according to a report in the Pediatrics journal. The finding suggests autism and psychiatric problems may sometimes have a common cause and genetic link.

I’m trying to get ahold of this paper to read for myself but its totally unsurprising to me that this should be the case. As some of you know I have manic depression (bipolar as its known in the US) for which I have been receiving treatment for approaching 30 years. I have long suspected that there is an overreaching link between many flavours of mental difference – a hypothesis, born out in the scientific work of David Porteous who has been involved in pioneering science regarding mental illness and DISC 1 mutations. Long term readers of this blog may know that DISC 1 has a high association with autism too.

Indeed, last year, David Porteous gave a fascinating talk at last years MDF Conference in which he talked about the DISC1 connection to manic depression and included ASD amongst the constellation of ‘mental disorders’ that have some kind of interrelationship.

So, this news was no surprise to me at all. Yet to some others it seemed as if it was a slap in the face. A comment from a reader who saw this item reported at CBC said:

So what is being implied here? That mental illness in parents is an indicator /cause of autism in off-spring, or autism in children causes mental illness for their parents? On behalf of parents of autistic children I feel offended by this type of garbage research…

Which is a frankly bizarre way to look at this study. The study itself seems to be saying only what is presented in its abstract.:

This large population study supports the potential for familial aggregation of psychiatric conditions that may provide leads for future investigations of heritable forms of autism.

Its step one. Nothing about _cause_ has been discussed as far as I can tell from reading the abstract. Does that make it ‘garbage research’? Hardly.

Adults, Autism and Scotland

10 May

I have been thinking recently how nice it is that the online autism community has moved on from the quarterly analyses of the CDDS data. For those who are blissfully unaware–the California Department of Developmental Services (CDDS) publishes statistics on the people it serves. They do this every three months.

These data are a favorite of people who would like to promote the idea of an autism ‘epidemic’. Mr. David Kirby has a book and enough power point slides for three debates which are filled with (mis)interpretations of these data.

For the past year or so, every three months the CDDS publishes the data followed by people stating, “The CDDS autism count has gone up, this proves there is an epidemic” and “the CDDS autism count has gone down, this proves the epidemic”. Both seemingly contradictory statements being made on the same dataset. These were quickly followed by multiple bloggers pointing out that the interpretations made were incorrect.

Three things happened that made for a break. (1) Mr. Kirby declared that he was moving on from autism, (2) the CDDS is on a break while they rework the way they compile the data and (3) A case was conceded in the Autism Omnibus which shifted the debate (and ended item (1)).

I was very happy to see the CDDS phase of the autism discussion end.

Then, much to my dismay, the same arguments started up again. This time it is data from Scotland, not the CDDS being misused. Otherwise, it is the same old arguments and the same bad analyses. Well…almost. Some new bad analyses have been added.

Mr. Kirby has a discussion of the Scottish data on another blog. Let’s avoid the conceptual mistakes (such as assuming that somehow everyone is properly identified and receiving services). Before we get to the real implications of this, let’s take a break and look at the math errors, shall we?

Mr Kirby takes this graph of data from the Scottish report:

And states:

Let’s look at the numbers. There are approximately 34,000 young people with autism in Scotland, born during the 16 years from 1987-2002. That is an average of 2,125 cases per birth cohort. But among older people, born during the 31 years between 1955 and 1986, there are only about 600 reported cases, or just over 19 cases a year.

Based on this, he has determined that if the true incidence of autism is constant, about 1 in 110 of the adults are missing from the count.

OK, go back and click on that image for me. I know you skipped over it, but, go take a look at the bigger version.

Did you see it? Yep, the number is not 34,000, but 3,400 adults with autism in the Scottish survey. A factor of 10. Don’t worry if you missed it. Mr Kirby (who spent some time ‘analyzing’ the data) and at least 20 people who responded to his post missed it too.

At this point, I can hear the screams of “So what, that’s just a small mistake. You are trying to distract us all from the big picture.” Because, in the end, even though Mr. Kirby is off by a factor of 10 and there aren’t 100 times more kids than adults receiving services with an autism label in Scotland, there is a roughly factor of 10 difference in the administrative prevalence of autism.

A factor of 10 is still big. I’d argue it’s huge. In fact, I’d scream right back at the people who are trying to use this for political gain.We can argue back and forth whether it’s real. But, consider some of the possibilities for the Scottish survey:

  1. the numbers are correct, all autistics are correctly counted.
  2. People are getting appropriate services, but some are under the wrong label (e.g. intellectual disability).
  3. Some people are getting the wrong services because of an incorrect label (e.g. schizophrenia).
  4. People who really should be getting services and supports are not getting any.

Let’s face it, if there’s a chance that people are getting the wrong services, we should be looking. And, yes, it is a very real possibility. Remember the big stink some people made when it was implied that some adults with the label of Schizophrenia might actually be autistic? Well, David Mandell is scheduled to talk about this at IMFAR this year in his paper: Evidence of autism in a psychiatrically hospitalized sample.

A £500,000 project to look for adults with Autism in the UK has been recently announced. To quote one of the researchers on this project:

“Adults with autism and Asperger’s syndrome are too often abandoned by services with their families left to struggle alone. Equally, people are frequently missaprorpriately referred to either mental health or learning disability services

“This study will inform the development of a national strategy designed to ensure that adults with autism and Asperger’s syndrome are supported to have full lives.”

“We still don’t know enough about autism, but we do know that left unsupported, it can have a devastating impact on those who have the condition and their families. One of the key gaps in our knowledge is simple – we don’t know how many people have the condition in any given area. That is why I am ordering a study to address this. “

It sounds like a really tough project. I don’t know if this study can really be accomplished. But, I have hopes that it could help improve the lives of adult autistics.

Now, as long as we brought up the Scottish survey, why not look at some of the details that were missed by others?

One question was how many of the individuals had “other behavioural or biomedical conditions?”. For the adults, this was 30% of the total. For the children, this was 3% of the total. Is this an indication that the kids being identified today actually have less severe symptoms than the adults? Even without that, only 1% have “other…biomedical conditions”?!? Where are all the kids with all the conditions like bowel problems that some groups claim define autism?

Another interesting fact from the survey is that over 50% of the children are in mainstream schools.

Yet another factoid: about 32% of the children in the survey have Asperger syndrome. Of those, half are listed as having ‘no learning disabilities’. For adults, only 14% are listed as having Asperger syndrome.

Surveys of those getting services are prone to a lot of errors–as has been discussed in the past for the CDDS data many times. So, these data should not be taken as hard epidemiological counts of the actual number of people in Scotland with autism. However, these data do not support the idea that the younger generation of autistics have greater challenges than the adults had to overcome.

I am actually glad that the subject came up of autism in Scotland. Why? Because in looking for some of these data, I found the website for the National Autistic Society Scotland. I particularly liked this page: I Exist: the message from adults with autism in Scotland.

For me, I have just finished a box of McVitie’s HobNobs while writing this. I don’t know if they are Scottish, but I love them. Perhaps I’ll open the other box to celebrate a study of adults with autism.

Additional

Sullivan’s catch of David’s maths error is good but I thought to myself as soon as I heard about this Scottish report that I’d heard about it before. I had. I blogged on this audit three years ago. One of the most fascinating aspects of the paper was when local authorities were asked for their opinions on the following question:

Research tells us that prevalence rates of autistic spectrum disorder represent an underestimate. To what extent do you consider the numbers above to be an accurate reflection of all those who live in your area?

The answers were very interesting. About 45% of the areas questioned said that the prevalence for adults was grossly underestimated, badly reported and that a lot of these adults exist without diagnosis. For example:

Argyll & Bute Council
It is believed that the figures represent a significant under-representation of those with ASD in Argyll and Bute. This was thought to be due to a historical under-diagnosis and the absence of clearly defined referral pathways and multi-agency assessment processes for adults.

East Renfrewshire Council, NHS A&C and Greater Glasgow NHS

…as a result of changing patterns of diagnosis over recent years there are likely to be substantial numbers of adults with ASD who are not known to services and are not diagnosed as having ASDs.

AYRSHIRE AND ARRAN
It is apparent that information collection and collation for adults is almost non existent.

DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY
There is little doubt that this number is far short of the actual number of adults in Dumfries & Galloway with ASD.

GRAMPIAN
There is low diagnosis for longstanding clients, whom workers are aware have autism as well as a learning disability.

HIGHLAND
It is believed that these figures comprise a significant underestimate due to the lack of a diagnostic process particularly for adults. It is believed that the figures for younger children are accurate due to the development of diagnostic tools for children are accurate due to the development of diagnostic tools for children and the establishment of multi-disciplinary partnerships which include education.

LANARKSHIRE
The estimated numbers provided for the pre-school and primary school ages are thought to be a reasonably accurate reflection of the true picture. However the estimated number of secondary school children is less accurate and the estimated number of adults with ASD is likely to be a considerable underestimate of the true prevalence.

ORKNEY
Figures for children are an accurate representation of needs. One or two children may yet be diagnosed. Figures for adults are under estimated as diagnosis has not been made and access to specialists is variable.

Perth & Kinross Council
Figures for adults reflect the national findings that the numbers known to services/diagnosed represent a significant underestimate of those individuals likely to be affected. For example day centre managers locally consider a number of people to be on the spectrum who have had no formal diagnosis.

Pretty interesting stuff I think you’ll agree. This means that about 45% of the areas questioned said that the prevalence for adults was grossly underestimated, badly reported and that a lot of these adults exist without diagnosis. The two really stand out quotes for me were:

There is low diagnosis for longstanding clients, whom workers are aware have autism as well as a learning disability……day centre managers locally consider a number of people to be on the spectrum who have had no formal diagnosis.

So as well as the excellent points Sullivan raised, I’d also like to ask how it is possible to place any kind of interpretation of the data when the fact that adult prevalence is grossly under-reported is so well established?

Age of Autism Excels Itself

4 May

It’s my opinion that the blog Age of Autism has not ever once published a post that has contributed anything to the sum of human knowledge in a general sense, nor has it ever published a post that is designed to actually help autistic people live their lives.

However, every once in awhile, it publishes a post that is so monumentally stupid that I literally think the worse of myself for wasting time reading it. And here I am actually blogging about one. Sigh.

Such a post appeared today. It is entitled ‘CDC triggers measles outbreak’. The author of this post, ex-UPI journo Dan Olmsted says:

I’m starting to think we should rename the CDC the Centers for Disease Contagion. You’ve all seen the news that there are suddenly more measles cases in the United States and the CDC is blaming it in part on the increasing reluctance of parents to vaccinate their kids.

But it’s the CDC’s fault, and no other. Getting the “measles shot” means getting the MMR, and the MMR is “the autism shot” in the minds of many, many parents.

So, let me get this straight. It is the CDC’s fault that measles is making a return across the US? I see.

Its not, for example, the fault of the non-vaccinating upper-middle class soccer-mommies and daddies, for example:

Of the 64 people infected by the measles virus, only 1 had documentation of prior vaccination. Among the other 63 case-patients were 14 infants who were too young to be vaccinated. Many of the cases among US children occurred in children whose parents claimed exemption from vaccination due to religious or personal beliefs, or in children too young to be vaccinated.

Hell, no. _That_ couldn’t be the issue, right? Its obviously the CDC’s fault. Damn them for providing the vaccines and a schedule that has led to serious measles epidemics being held at bay in the US and the UK prior to the last 10 years of utter complacency and idiocy.

And why is Dan Olmsted happy to blame the CDC?

Let me tell you one reason why I’m not shy or circumspect about squarely blaming the CDC for this — because Jon Poling, Hannah’s dad, predicted something like this, or much worse, just a few week ago

And as we all know:

Dr, Poling is the real deal, educated at Johns Hopkins, devoted both to his daughter and his patients, tempered by reality. He’s mild-mannered. He’s mainstream. He’s credible.

Riiiiight. This is the same Jon Poling who was recently described by his co-authors as ‘muddying the waters’. The same Jon Poling who’s wife has been a subscriber to the vaccine hypothesis since at least 2001. The same Jon Poling who knowingly uses incorrect epidemiology.

I’m afraid that Jon Poling is right now in the process of extricating himself from the mainstream. And also from any concept of credibility. His refusal to approve access to information that would provide more accuracy to public statements members of his clique have made about the situation is testament to a man who is not governed by any reality other than a desire to push a pre-conceived agenda.

But really, the attempt to point the finger elsewhere by Dan Olmsted is nothing more than a childish ‘It wasn’t me! Its not my fault!’ when both logic and morality show quite clearly that if people decide to eschew something that might not only save their kids lives but the lives and/or well-being of the society in which they live then the finger of responsibility can only point in one direction.

Association Between Autism and Environmental Mercury Exposure Disappears Once Population Density is Controlled for

2 May

california-pollution-autism-analysis

[Correction 5/4/2008: Please see this comment. The trends and conclusions don’t change. The scatter of the graphs is not affected in a way that is noticeable, but the Y ranges do change. The adjustment formula also changes. See the corrected spreadsheet for details.]

This is a critique of Palmer et al. (2008), a recent study claiming to associate the administrative prevalence of autism in Texas school districts and proximity to coal-fired power plants, as well as mercury emissions. Normally I would just point out the likely problems of the paper, but this time I will go further and test a key hypothesis of my critique using California data in a way that is straightforward enough for readers to verify.

Background

Palmer et al. (2008) is not the first study of its kind. Palmer et al. (2006) claimed to document that “for each 1000 lb of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.” The more recent paper by Palmer et al. does not result in such remarkable estimates, considering its finding that “for every 1,000 pounds of release in 1998, there is a corresponding 2.6 percent increase in 2002 autism rates.”

Windham et al. (2006) is a case-control study done in the San Francisco Bay Area which claims to associate autism with emissions of Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs).

Then we also have Waldman et al. (2007), which I consider a study of the same type, except it associates autism with precipitation (as a proxy of television exposure) instead of environmental pollution.

My primary criticism of these types of studies is that they are attempting to find a cause for an epidemiological phenomenon that could very well not require an environmental explanation. That is, administrative data (special education data in particular) is not equipped to tell us if there are real differences in the prevalence of autism from one region to the next. No screening has ever demonstrated that substantial differences in administrative prevalence between regions are not simply diagnostic differences.

That said, the studies have been done, and they have found statistical associations. This usually means they either found a real effect or they have failed to properly control for some confound.

As I have noted repeatedly over the last couple of years, the glaring confound that most likely mediates these types of associations is urbanicity. The association between urbanicity and autism was documented even before these studies were carried out. It is plausibly explained by a greater availability of autism specialists in urban areas and by greater awareness in the part of parents who live in cities.

Palmer et al. (2008) does control for urbanicity, which might be one of several reasons why its findings are underwhelming compared to those of Palmer et al. (2006).

Is the control for urbanicity in Palmer et al. (2008) adequate?

There are two main problems with the control for urbanicity, described in the paper as follows.

Urbanicity. Eight separate demographically defined school district regions were used in the analysis as defined by the TEA: (1) Major urban districts and other central cities (2) Major suburban districts and other central city suburbs (5) Non-metropolitan and rural school districts In the current analysis, dummy variables were included in the analysis coding Urban (dummy variable 1, and Suburban (dummy variable2), contrasted with non-metro and rural districts which were the referent group. Details and specific definitions of urbanicity categories can be obtained at the TEA website http://www.tea.state.tx.us/data.html

.

1. It is too discrete. Within the set of urban districts, some districts will be more urban than others. The same is true of rural districts. Palmer et al. (2008) is effectively using a stratification method to control for urbanicity, but this method is limited, especially considering the paper looks at 1,040 school districts. A better methodology would be to use population density as a variable.

2. Modeling for distance. The paper models autism rates based on distance to coal-fired power plants. It follows that a control variable should model distance to urban areas rather than urbanicity of each district. Granted, this would not be easy because, as noted, urbanicity is not a discrete measure. But it needs to be noted as a significant limitation of the analysis. Consider school districts in areas designated as “rural” that are close to areas designated as “urban.” Such proximity would presumably provide access to a greater availability of autism specialists than would otherwise be the case.

California Analysis

This time around I thought it would be a good idea to run some actual numbers in order to test this population density confound hypothesis that up to this point has been simply theoretical. I will use county-level data from the state of California, which was fairly easy to obtain on short notice. The data used is the following.

  • Special education autism caseload data at the county level for 2005 was obtained from a California resident who had requested it from the California Department of Education.
  • County population and density data for 2006 was obtained from counties.org.
  • Atmospheric mercury concentration data was obtained from the EPA’s 1996 National Air Toxics Assessment Exposure and Risk Data for 2006.
  • All of the raw data, intermediate data, formulas, and resulting charts can be found in this spreadsheet which I am making available for readers to verify and tweak as needed.

Population Density vs. Autism

Autism prevalence was calculated by dividing the special education autism caseload of each county by its population (Column G). This is not a precise determination, of course, but it should not affect the analysis. In any given California county, the population under 18 is roughly a fifth of the total population of the county.

A first attempt at modeling population density vs. autism prevalence (Chart A) suggested the relationship was logarithmic. So I modeled log(population density) vs. autism prevalence, which resulted in the clear correlation you see in Figure 1 (Chart B).

Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

Figure 1: Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

–

This is as expected. You will note, however, there is one significant outlier in the lower-right quadrant. That is San Francisco county. Presumably, because of its peculiar geographic characteristics, its population density is the highest in the state. Nevertheless, San Francisco is an important data point since it is a significant urban area which happens to have a relatively low special education prevalence of autism. Let’s leave it in and see how it affects things.

I will use a simple standardization method of adjustment for population density. Basically, I will standardize autism prevalence in each county, such that population density is no longer a factor. Think of it this way. If the population density of each county grew such that its log were now about 3.5, how would we expect autism prevalence to be affected? The following formula is what I came up with.

Adjusted(Y) = Y + 7 – 1.93 * X

The fact that the adjusted prevalence (Column H) is not dependent on population density can be verified graphically (Chart C). Readers can click back and forth between Chart B and Chart C to better understand the effect of the adjustment. I will come back to this adjusted prevalence.

Mercury Exposure Concentration vs. Autism

I obtained atmospheric mercury exposure concentrations for each county from 1996 EPA data (Column I). More recent data would’ve been better since our population density data is from 2006, but it is not clear if newer data is available. I learned of the 1996 data because that is what Windham et al. (2006) uses. I’m working under the assumption that changes in population density in the last decade have been roughly uniform across the state.

Let’s first look at Figure 2 (Chart E), a graph of log(mercury exposure) vs. autism prevalence, without adjustment for population density.

Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

Figure 2: Mercury Exposure vs. Autism Prevalence

–

There is a graphically noticeable trend in Figure 2, which is not surprising. The question is, does the trend remain after adjustment for population density?

Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

Figure 3: Mercury Exposure vs. Autism Prevalence Adjusted For Pop. Density

–

Figure 3 (Chart D) is a graph of log(mercury exposure) vs. standardized autism prevalence; that is, autism prevalence adjusted for population density as previously calculated. In this figure we see there’s no longer a graphically discernable correlation between environmental mercury and autism. In fact, Excel produces a linear fit that indicates there’s somewhat of an inverse correlation between environmental emissions and autism prevalence.

Granted, if we were to remove San Francisco as an outlier, the trend would be pushed upwards. But then in this graph there appear to be two additional outliers in the middle upper part of the graph, Orange county and Los Angeles county. Keep in mind we have not adjusted for wealth. Regardless of how we might adjust the analysis, I fail to see that the graph would support a statistically meaningful association between mercury exposure and autism.

Further Confirmation

So far I have provided evidence that, in California, an association between environmental mercury exposure and autism disappears once we control for population density. This is clear to my satisfaction, but I thought it would be a good idea to attempt an inverse exercise as an illustration of the adjustment method. That is, let us try adjusting prevalence for mercury exposure, and see if the correlation with population density remains.

This is similar to what I did previously. A linear model is discerned from the correlation between log(mercury exposure) and autism (Chart E). This is used to derive an adjustment formula (Column K) whose validity can be verified graphically (Chart F). The new adjusted prevalence (Column K) is used in a new graph of log(population density) vs. autism: Figure 4 (Chart G).

Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

Figure 4: Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence Adjusted For Mercury Exposure

–

What Figure 4 (Chart G) tells us is that even after we control for mercury exposure, there is still a clear correlation between autism and population density. In other words, population density wins bigtime – I believe that is the epidemiological term.

Conclusion

An analysis of California data suggests that correlations between the administrative prevalence of autism and environmental mercury emissions are fully mediated by population density. Palmer et al. (2008) suggests there is a real effect in Texas, but its results are not convincing primarily because its control for urbanicity is limited and inconsistent with the hypothesis the paper tests.

Tags: , ,

What Makes You Smile?

2 May

This post is dedicated to a wonderful woman I know on another site who is terminally ill. She wants to be remembered for being happy and to go out with lots of shoes and a bang. So this post is just about being happy. Specifically, some of the things that makes Tom happy.

Tom loves the colour blue

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/Picture002.jpg

 

He loves icecream

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/ghost028-1.jpg

 

And walks

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/ghost030.jpg

 

He loves his little brother

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/ghost035.jpg

 

And he likes water

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/radio010-1.jpg

 

He adores lifts

http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/?action=view&current=cooking015.flv

 

And he loves singing and action rhymes. He also loves looking at himself in the mirror, which is what he’s doing during these three clips.

http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/?action=view&current=082.flv

 

http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/?action=view&current=083.flv

 

http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/?action=view&current=084.flv

 

 

US Reports Biggest Measles Outbreak Since 2001

2 May

The biggest U.S. outbreak of measles since 2001 is unfolding in 10 states, with at least 72 people ranging from infants to the elderly becoming ill — most of them unvaccinated, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said none of those who caught the highly contagious viral illness has died, but at least 14 people have been hospitalized, most with pneumonia triggered by measles.

Lets hope that none of these 14 actually get any worse or (god forbid) die. Lets hope that no one else gets sick. The last time people dies of measles in the US was 1991, the year before that pesky vaccine schedule was strengthened – not that that has any bearing on the matter I’m sure.

1989 to 1991, when 55,000 people got measles and 123 died.

On this recent outbreak, the CDC said:

Of the 64 people infected by the measles virus, only 1 had documentation of prior vaccination. Among the other 63 case-patients were 14 infants who were too young to be vaccinated. Many of the cases among US children occurred in children whose parents claimed exemption from vaccination due to religious or personal beliefs, or in children too young to be vaccinated.

Anti-vaccinationists inflict the coolest things on their kids. Illness, hospitalisation, death….

I wonder if any of these things will make it onto the no doubt completely rational signs the parents attending the ‘Green our vaccines’ rally will be waving around. After all, when the organiser of the event says:

I am surely not going to tell anyone to vaccinate. But if I had another child, there’s no way in hell…….for my next kid—which I’m never going to have—there’s no way.

Then you can rest assured that this will in no way be an anti-vaccine event.

Right?

Poling vs HHS – Something is definitely beginning to smell

30 Apr

Back in March I wrote a post highlighting my suspicion that we weren’t getting the whole story regarding the Poling’s. They had – at that time – failed to give permission to Dr Andrew Zimmerman to discuss the case, despite the fact that he was deply involved in the treatment abd diagnosis of Hannah Poling. He has still – to the best of my knowledge – not been given permission by the Poling’s to speak.

I also blogged Jon Poling’s own words on the subject of document release:

The HHS expert documents that led to this concession and accompanying court documents remain sealed, though our family has already permitted release of Hannah’s records to those representing the almost 5, 000 other autistic children awaiting their day in vaccine court.

and pointed out the strange incompatability with what the _court_ said:

in the case that is the subject of the media reports, if the parties who supplied documents and information in the case provide their written consent, we may then be able to appropriately disclose documents in the case.

where it is made crystal clear that the Poling’s had not in fact provided written consent to release their documents.

Further documentation from the courts has now been released which touches on this issue in more detail.

I want to thank M who can choose to name themselves further if they feel like it for helping explain these and for highlighting them in the first place.

The basic gist of this document is that *the Poling’s do not want all the information to be released* despite their oft-repeated claim to the contrary. What information do they not want released – and why?

Respondent points out in the filed Sur-Reply to Petitioners’ Motion for Complete Transparency of Proceedings (R’s Sur-Reply) that while petitioners “did undertake initial steps
necessary to permit discussion of their case before the Special Masters presiding in the Omnibus
Autism Proceeding and before representatives of the Petitioners’ Steering Committee[,] *[i]n fact,
it is respondent who first approached and asked for petitioners’ consent to permit the Secretary of
Health and Human Services to disclose medical information regarding this case* in order for the
Secretary to address inaccurate statements that were being made publicly concerning respondent’s position in this case.”

Now _this_ is a bombshell. It was _not_ the Poling’s who first wanted to release documents, it was HHS. They asked for the Poling’s consent to permit HHS to disclose medical information in order to ‘address innaccurate statements that were being made publicly’.

Well, well.

And there’s more. HHS had also heard aboout the press conference the Poling’s intended to hold:

Having received no response from petitioners, respondent contacted petitioners’ counsel to inquire about the proposed consent form and to “inquire whether press reports were true that petitioners were planning press conference for the following day.” Petitioners’ counsel replied to respondent, and represented during a status conference in this case, that the reports of a planned press conference were not true…….and two days later they held a press conference and appeared in
nationally televised and print interviews discussing the case.

So they lied about the press conference too. Petitioners Counsel is, of course, one Clifford Shoemaker.

What is going on here? Granted there are pre-conditions HHS also wanted placed upon the release of information but why won’t the Poling’s let key medical details that would ‘address innaccurate statements that were being made publicly’ be released right now? Why do they claim that they are asking for complete disclosure when it is clear they are not? Why did their counsel blatantly lie about the press conference?

This is very much an example to me of the ‘muddying of the waters’ that John Shoffner talked about recently.

Alexander Krakow – The Next Bombshell

27 Apr

And so, the next twist in the Autism Omnibus is revealed. Writing in Spectrum Publications in a piece rather hopefully entitled ‘The Next Hannah Poling’ David Kirby writes:

….the boy who was selected to replace Hannah Poling as the first-ever thimerosal “test case” in so-called Vaccine Court, has just been found with many of the same unusual metabolic markers as… you guessed it, Hannah Poling.

……..

….the court announced that the replacement thimerosal test case was also being withdrawn, in order to “proceed to an individual hearing on a different theory of causation.”

……..

“We want to pursue an additional theory, not a different theory,” the boy’s father told me. “We are by no means abandoning the thimerosal theory of causation but, in the context of the test case, the thimerosal theory would have eclipsed our other evidence, including evidence of metabolic dysfunction,” such as impaired mitchondria and low cellular energy.

The boy is Alexander Krakow, son of EoH regular, lawyer Bob Krakow. Up until very recently, lawyer Bob could be heard trumpeting the evils of thiomersal to the exclusion of just about everything else (MMR aside of course). Now, however, the Krakow’s have a new hypothesis (DK refers to ‘theory’ through his article but it isn’t a theory) – but note they still give a shout out to thiomersal anyway.

Now, much as DK and the Krakow’s might want to think this is important, it really isn’t. This situation is in no way similar to Hannah Poling’s. In that scenario, HHS said she was vaccine damaged (but again, despite what DK says, there was no concession she had been made autistic by her vaccines – an opinion the medical evidence and mitochondrial experts agree with) and they recommended awarding damages uncontested. In Alexander Krakow’s case, his _parents_ have withdrawn him from the Omnibus. No science has been presented, HHS have not said anything at all about his medical conditions. All we have so far is the Krakow’s opinion that their son has a mitochondrial disorder.

This is especially interesting in the light of the report of the Krakow’s own hand-picked medical expert, DAN doctor Elizabeth Mumper – not only _a_ DAN! doctor but the ‘Medical Director’ of ARI.

This report prepared by Mumper states:

In my best professional judgement…..it is more likely than not that the thimerosal in the childhood vaccines Alexander Krakow received was a substantial contributing factor to his neurodevelopmental problems.

So the ARI medical director blames thiomersal. What did she have to say about mitochondria?

Well, nothing. The word ‘mitochondria’ is not mentioned once in the whole report.

In his article DK talks about Alexander Krakow having the same ‘markers’ as Hannah Poling. He neglects to say what they are however, or how he concludes they are markers. He also neglects to mention how the DAN! medical director singularly failed to detect any of these so called ‘markers’.

Perhaps the biggest mark against Alexander Krakow having ‘mito induced autism from vaccines’ is the fact that his medical report (which stated the thiomersal dunnit) made no mention of a fever or raised temperature. If I recall correctly, it was a key part of the Hannah Poling scenario that the vaccines had given her a fever and it was this which aggravated her underlying mitochondrial disorder and in turn caused her autism. Alexander Krakow’s medical report mentioned no fever at all.

David must also be aware of the fact that the ‘markers’ he refers to are, at best, markers of mitochondrial issues. Lots kids with mito issues have them. They bear no relation to vaccine injury. I was disappointed to see this issue being talked around but I have some hopes that later this year – towards the autumn maybe – this issue will be made abundantly clear.

So, all in all I am deeply puzzled as to how this is ‘the next bombshell’ or even how Alexander Krakow can be considered to have any kind of mitochondrial related autism issue. The HHS definitely did not concede this case and my guess is that they will be more than happy – given Bob Krakow’s own expert medical report into his son – to contest when their case comes up separately.

My further guess is that we will see some more people switch horses sometime fairly soon. I’m also guessing that – like the Krakow’s – it will be done against their lawyers advice.

Rashid Buttar should ‘be prohibited’

26 Apr

Late last year, Kathleen posted about a disciplinary action being taken against Dr Rashid Buttar. The charges against him included claims that he:

provided therapies that were unproven and wholly ineffective;

charged exorbitant fees for his ineffectual therapies,” and dunned widows and survivors of his deceased patients for thousands of dollars;

order[ed] numerous tests and lab work… that had no rational, medical relationship to the Patients’ cancer diagnosis… in an attempt to drive up costs;

treated [patients] on an indistinguishable or arbitrary protocol regardless of their individual diagnosis… All Patients received frequent, expensive treatments that had no recognized scientific evidence of any validity whatsoever on almost a daily basis without any evidence of sustained improvement

Long term readers of this blog will know that Rashid Buttar has been the subject of blog posts once or twice, including the statistic that of the ten US board certifications claimed by Rashid Buttar, none of them are actually recognised by the American Board of Medical Specialities and the fact that _even parents who do extreme biomed_ think his procedures invasive and his rates ‘obscene’.

Rashid Buttar used to have the fact he testified to Congress emblazoned across at least one autism/vaccine groups website. Leading members of several extreme biomed groups had their children seen by him. They lauded him publicly and parroted his ideas.

Today, a report in the Charlotte Observer details the latest chapter in Rashid Buttar’s professional life:

A panel of the N.C. Medical Board recommended Thursday that Huntersville’s Dr. Rashid Buttar be prohibited from treating children or patients with cancer because his alternative medicine practice is below accepted medical standards in North Carolina.

All three board members on the hearing panel expressed doubts about the validity of Buttar’s treatments.

“Doesn’t it strike you as a little strange that every patient that comes through your door has heavy metal toxicity?” Dr. Art McCulloch, a Charlotte anesthesiologist, asked Buttar’s nurse practitioner, Jane Garcia.

To Buttar, he said: “There’s no basis for what you’re doing, in my opinion.”

The next step is that the board makes a judgement based on the panel’s recommendation. The Observer says that:

Of the half-dozen disciplinary cases that have been heard by a panel, the medical board has accepted every recommendation.

If the board _do_ agree with the panel then the children (including all the autistic children) of North Carolina can rest easier.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →