Nothing will bring Katie back and nothing will make it not have happened but tonight my hope is that for the first time in a long, long time the McCarrons can mourn for their daughter/granddaughter/sister/niece without the shadow of yet another court date where they will have to look at or deal with her murderer.
Archive by Author
Paul Offit causes a stir
1 AprOn 31st March, Dr Paul Offit wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled Inoculated Against Facts in which he discussed the recent Poling situation.
In response to this, David Kirby wrote a blistering response entitled Lies My New York Times Told Me (Or, Why Trust a Doctor Who Says 10,000 Shots Are Safe?).
Offit says:
An expert who testified in court on the Polings’ behalf claimed that the five vaccines had stressed Hannah’s already weakened cells, worsening her disorder. Without holding a hearing on the matter, the court conceded that the claim was biologically plausible.
To which Kirby responded:
no one “testified in court” in this case, as confusingly stated by Dr. Offit, who also writes that, “Without holding a hearing… the court conceded.”
My take on what Offit said was that any document submitted as part of a legal process must, by definition, form part of a courts records and thus be considered testimony. I think there’s a difference between ‘heard in court’ (heard as part of a legal proceeding) and ‘a hearing’ (discussed in open court)
Kirby also says:
It was a medical concession, not a legal decision. Dr. Offit and the New York Times know this.
Its also (as I understand it) part of the process that the Special Master could’ve refused to accept the so-called concession. This makes the fact they did a legal decision. The Poling’s could’ve elected to have their daughters case heard in a civil court (I think) in which case they really would’ve been held to a medical/scientific standard of proof. They chose not to do so.
Kirby goes on:
This statement, too, is misleading: “Even five vaccines at once would not place an unusually high burden on a child’s immune system.”……Hannah received five shots, but nine vaccines.
Which, to be fair to Dr Offit is exactly what he said:
In 2000, when Hannah was 19 months old, she received five shots against nine infectious diseases.
I think this is merely a semantic misunderstanding as to what constitutes ‘one’ vaccine.
Kirby goes on:
More importantly, Dr. Offit’s statement contradicts the second HHS concession (for epilepsy) in the Poling case, to wit:
The cause for autistic encephalopathy in Hannah “was underlying mitochondrial dysfunction, exacerbated by vaccine-induced fever and immune stimulation that exceeded metabolic reserves.”
Now, lets be honest – nobody aside from David Kirby has actually _seen_ this second HHS ‘concession’. I can’t help but note that the part that Mr Kirby quotes from this second report does not contain the phrase ‘autistic encephalopathy’ (and what exactly _is_ ‘autistic encephalopathy’?). I also think its a little unfair to expect Dr Offit to be a mind reader and know what an unreleased report says.
I further think that in a piece that asks why we should just trust, Mr Kirby (with all due respect to him) asking us to do the exact same thing is a little incongruous.
We really need this issue sorted out by either releasing this document that directly ties a diagnosis of autism _directly_ to vaccines, or by applying the same rules to everyone.
Mr Kirby then goes on to challenge Dr Offits most (in)famous statement:
“Our analysis shows that infants have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at once”
This is slightly disingenuous as this really has no bearing whatsoever on the Poling case. Its also – as stated by Dr Offit – a _theoretical_ scenario. No one is seriously suggesting any infant has 10,000 shots. The paper from Dr Offit used this calculation to respond to the idea that vaccines can overwhelm the immune system.
And lets be clear. This is science. Good science. To the best of my knowledge no-one has refuted it in any reputable journal. If anyone has an issue with the overall idea (vaccines not overwhelming the immune system) or the maths involved, then they should submit it to a reputable journal for peer review.
However, one of the most disturbing aspects of this turn of events is the response to Dr Offit’s piece on the EoH Yahoo Group. I should note that David Kirby has _no control or ownership of this group_ before I continue.
Within a few hours of Dr Offit’s piece being published, Ginger Taylor took it upon herself to send Dr Offit’s phone number to the EoH group at large, as part of an email conversation she had had with Dr Offit. Thus drew a number of responses from her list mates such as:
Oh no….. His phone number on EOH? Lord help him!
Quite. Although the group moderator was quick to ask people not to harass Dr Offit, he stopped short of deleting this very ill-considered post.
Lets not forget that Dr Offit (and his children) have been the subject of severe harassment from those who believe in an autism/vaccine hypothesis:
….as Paul Offit, a vaccine expert who served on the committee, tried to make his way through the crowd, one of the protestors screamed at him through a megaphone: “The devil—it’s the devil!” One protester held a sign that read “TERRORIST” with a photo of Offit’s face. Just before Offit reached the door, a man dressed in a prison uniform grabbed Offit’s jacket. “It was harrowing,” Offit recalls.
….
He has since received hundreds of malicious and threatening emails, letters and phone calls accusing him of poisoning children and “selling out” to pharmaceutical companies. One phone caller listed the names of Offit’s two young children and the name of their school. One email contained a death threat—”I will hang you by your neck until you’re dead”—that Offit reported to federal investigators.
Knowing this, why Taylor saw fit to do this at all is puzzling. However, when she was asked how she felt about communicating with Dr Offit, she also saw fit to comment:
The whole thing actually creeped me out and I just dropped it.
My personal opinion is that a considered reply from Dr Offit to Taylor which included a friendly invitation to contact him again is not creepy at all. What _is_ creepy (to me) is publishing the phone number of a man who has been subject to vicious abuse – as have his children. To me, it is irresponsible in the extreme.
A blast from the past
28 MarThe following comes directly from Kanner (1965):
Questions have arisen, however, with regard to the ease with which the diagnosis was suddenly bestowed upon a relatively vast contingent of patients. Bender, who in 1942 had, as she said, “not seen very many cases in which we could make a definite diagnosis,” announced later that by 1951 “over 600” schizophrenic children had been studied in one single psychiatric unit, that of the Bellevue Hospital in New York. By 1954, she had as many as 850 cases on her list, which means an addition of about 250 in the short span of three years. It is highly improbable that all of them would be acknowledged as being schizophrenic by many other experienced child psychiatrists, and yet it cannot be denied that Bender has made careful investigations and has conscientiously adhered to her established criteria.
Out of this emerges a rather disturbing dilemma. We seem to have reached a point where a clinician, after the full study of a given child, can say honestly: He is schizophrenic because in my scheme I must call him so. Another clinician, equally honest, can say: He is not schizophrenic because according to my scheme I cannot call him so. This is not a reflection on anyone in particular. The whole concept has obviously become a matter of semantics.
It’s an interesting paper where a lot of the same ideas you’d hear today about autism are expressed about schizophrenia, a practically forgotten construct nowadays.
The Next Big Autism Bomb?
28 MarOver on the Huffington Post, David Kirby has posted about The Next Big Autism Bomb. Its a very long post so take a sammich.
The gist (with apologies to Mr Kirby) of it is that there was a conference call to discuss the autism/mito issues:
On Tuesday, March 11, a conference call was held between vaccine safety officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several leading experts in vaccine safety research, and executives from America’s Health Insurance Plans, (the HMO trade association) to discuss childhood mitochondrial dysfunction and its potential link to autism and vaccines.
The purpose of the call was:
“We need to find out if there is credible evidence, theoretically, to support the idea that childhood mitochondrial dysfunction might regress into autism,” one of the callers reportedly told participants.
To that end, Mr Kirby mentions four studies throughout the rest of his piece. Three are accessible but the fourth is a total mystery. This is unfortunate as it is this fourth one which the majority of his blog post relies upon for its conclusions.
The first three are discussing what the prevalence of mito _within_ autism might be. Kirby states:
CDC officials were made aware of a Portuguese study, published last October, which reported that 7.2% of children with autism had confirmed mitochondrial disorders. The authors also noted that, “a diversity of associated medical conditions was documented in 20%, with an unexpectedly high rate of mitochondrial respiratory chain disorders.”
There is a slight point of confusion to clear up here. The figure of 7.2% is from a 2005 study ‘Mitochondrial dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders: a population-based study‘.
The study (by the same author) that Kirby mentions as being published last October is ‘Epidemiology of autism spectrum disorder in Portugal: prevalence, clinical
characterization, and medical conditions‘ declares a 4.1% figure.
The reason for this is that the lead author re-examined his data from the 2005 study and adjusted it downwards in the 2007 study. So Kirby is not correct to state that the authors believe that the rate is 7.2%. The latest figure from these authors is 4.1%.
The third study that discusses prevalence is referenced by Kirby as:
They also know that some reports estimate the rate of mitochondrial dysfunction in autism to be 20% or more. And the rate among children with the regressive sub-type of autism is likely higher still.
Kirby links to a web page that is the web interface to a mail list.
Upon searching for this paper I couldn’t find it anywhere. It is not in PubMed or Google Scholar and in fact I can only find three references to it online at all.
It since transpires that this paper is not in fact a paper at all and has not been published anywhere. It is in fact a summary for attendees of a 2003 LADDERS conference in Boston, USA. Therefore it has not been subject to any kind of peer review. That’s not to say the figure is wrong, merely that it hasn’t been verified or undergone any kind of the usual scientific checks and balances a published piece of work must undertake to ensure quality.
Its also been explained to me that the percentage of “mitochondrial autism” reported by any group will vary with the percentage of regressive autism in their ASD population. So it is not true that the summary states a differential between autism and regressive autism. Rather that “mitochondrial autism” exists _within_ regressive autism.
And so we move on to the fourth study.
One doctor reported his findings from a five-year study of children with autism, who also showed clinical markers for impaired cellular energy, due to mild dysfunction of their mitochondria.
The biochemistry of 30 children was studied intensively, and in each case, the results showed the same abnormalities as those found in Hannah Poling, participants said. Each child had moderate elevations or imbalances in the exact same amino acids and liver enzymes as Hannah Poling.
All thirty children also displayed normal, healthy development until about 18-24 months of age, when they quickly regressed into clinically diagnosed autism (and not merely “features of autism”), following some type of unusual trigger, or stress, placed on their immune system.
……….
But what causes the stress? That is a very big question.
Apparently, in only two of the 30 cases, or 6%, could the regression be traced directly and temporally to immunizations, and one of them was Hannah Poling. In the other cases, there was reportedly some type of documented, fever-inducing viral infection that occurred within seven days of the onset of brain injury symptoms.
Mr Kirby makes this study the raison d’etre of the rest of his post.
I have some major concerns about this. Who is this doctor? What is this study? Where is it published? Where can we _read for ourselves_ what this study says? Without wishing to question the honesty with which Mr Kirby is posting, its obvious that – even in this post as I discuss above – errors and misinterpretations have crept in.
Lets be honest here. These are some *major* claims being made. Firstly that all 30 kids in the study regressed into clinically diagnosed autism as opposed to features of autism. All 30? That’s incredible.
Secondly that 6% of the regressions into clinically diagnosed autism are traced directly from immunisations. That’s big. That is about as big as it gets. I would really like to see this study.
I have asked (twice) in the comments section of Mr Kirby’s post to be pointed to this study. So far, no answer has been forthcoming from anybody.
However. I note that Mr Kirby states that one of the 6% is Hannah Poling. If this is so then it is not true to say that:
the…[autistic]…regression…[can]… be traced directly and temporally to immunizations
(insertions mine for clarity).
As I’ve discussed before, none of the listed symptoms attributed to immunisations can accumulate to a diagnosis of autism. So unless we can actually see this study, know who the author, see what checks and balances this paper has undergone, we’re in a bit of a limbo.
Maternal antibodies involved in aetiology of autism(s)
26 MarA new study released by John Hopkins indicates that maternal antibodies may play a role in the aetiology of autism:
[a]…possible explanation involves the transfer of reactive antibodies from the mother through the placenta to the fetus.
To investigate the latter, the team measured the antibody-brain reaction in blood samples from 100 mothers with and 100 mothers without a child diagnosed with autism.
Mothers of children with autism had a stronger reactivity or more areas of reactivity between antibodies and brain proteins compared with mothers without an autistic child. The presence of maternal antibodies also correlated with having a child with developmental regression, a primary feature of autism.
Things to note. No one, repeat no one is assigning _blame_ to mothers. I have no doubt there will be an attempt in some quarters to twist this into an attack on the sainthood of autism parents but its really not. Biology is biology. C’est la vie. Nobody in this study had the last name Bettlehiem.
Its a fascinating hypothesis though. Along with the latest cutting edge science that has found a genetic basis in approximately 40% of autism this hypothesis utilises good ideas in a rigorously scientific way. Of course, it may well turn out to be wildly wrong, but its a nice change to see some science that’s not about cure or vaccines but just interesting in and of itself.
Dear CDC
26 MarI read with interest Dr Schuchat’s opinion piece in the AJC today.
Whilst it is gratifying to see someone of Dr Schuchat’s calibre responding to previous claims regarding vaccines in autism I would like to make a few points to Dr Schuchat and the CDC in general.
Firstly, this level of response is around eight years too late. What have you been doing on the media/PR front over the last eight years? I’ll tell you what your ‘opponents’ have been doing – they’ve been conducting protests outside your offices, outside the offices of the AAP etc. They’ve been setting up and organising vaccine/autism groups and heavily marketing them via the use of organic and paid for web based advertising.
The only people who have made any kind of attempt to counter these groups and the misinformation (deliberate or not) they publish is people like myself. I am not attempting to aggrandise myself at all. I am attempting to convey to you how one sided the ‘battle’ has been over the last few years.
Where were you? You were needed. You could’ve helped. Instead you sat back and hoped this would all go away. It didn’t. It won’t.
Secondly, the level of Dr Schuchat’s response is very close to condescending. Simply stating that:
Kirby’s column included many inaccuracies related to childhood vaccines. As such, it illustrates that when it comes to immunizations, child development and specific medical conditions, the best source of guidance is the child’s health care provider.
is patronising in the extreme. The level and quality of the debate has moved on in the last eight years. Bland assurances won’t cut it. You need to be specific and offer evidence. Autistic people, parents of autistic people and interested professionals are smart enough to know and understand a certain level of science these days.
Don’t be shy about providing people with science. You have some truly excellent science on ‘your side’ as I and others have attempted to blog about in the last five years to no small effect. For example, Googling mmr autism displays, amongst others, the blog of a friend of mine – also the parent of an autistic child and also convinced of the need to blog about the bad science surrounding the various vaccine/autism hypotheses. Googling thiomersal autism brings up _this_ blog. We’re doing your job for you!
You’re being left behind in this debate. Its time you caught up.
How to create a disease
25 MarThis piece is once again guest written by ‘Nigel’, a scientist working in the field whos real name is not actually Nigel ;o)
Followers of Andy Wakefield may not have come across a little spat which took place in the correspondence section of the journal “ Histopathology” last year. It is all to do with “ autistic enterocolitis”, the alleged inflammatory bowel disease described by Wakefield and colleagues in 1998 in the infamous Lancet paper. It is worth remembering that although the MMR-autism link garnered all the publicity, a key intermediate in the link was that measles persisted in the gut, resulted in enlarged lymphoid follicles, which then somehow caused this “ autistic enterocolitis”. At Thoughtful House in Austin, Texas, Wakefield and his acolyte Artie Krigsman, are now trying to make a buck out of treating this condition.
Professors Tom MacDonald and Paola Domizio from Barts and the London School of Medicine in London were experts for the defense in the UK MMR litigation against the vaccine manufacturers out of which Wakefield trousered one million dollars. MacDonald is a pre-eminent gut immunologist with an international reputation and was recently awarded the President’s Medal of the British Society for Gastroenterology for his scientific achievements. Domizio is an extremely well known gut pathologist and is also a senior figure in the Royal College of Pathologists in the UK.
The gist of their article (Histopathology. 2007 50:371-9) was that autistic enterocolitis does not exist. In a forensic dissection of the key paper by Wakefield and colleagues in the Am J Gastroenterology in 2000 (Am J Gastroenterol. 2000 95:2285-95), MacDonald and Domizio clearly showed that the so-called enterocolitis was due to Wakefield incorrectly deeming enlarged lymphoid follicles in the gut as pathological abnormalities, and that he had also created new and unsubstantiated pathological abnormalities to give the impression of gut pathology. The image of enterocolitis in an affected child shown in this paper was an extremely highly magnified picture of a small piece of tissue, which may in fact have come from one of the original Lancet 12 (in order to bump up the numbers of patients studied, Wakefield just reported the original Lancet 12 again). This is a familiar Wakefield tactic, his “representative” images are always taken at an extremely high magnification on the microscope, presumably to hide the fact that the rest of the tissue is normal. MacDonald and Domizio also shredded other Wakefield papers of the same ilk in their article.
Key to this piece of detective work by Domizio and MacDonald was a table in the Am J Gastro paper where these invented histological abnormalities were shown. In his response ( Histopathology 2007 50:380-4) Wakefield did not address any of the substantive points raised by MacDonald and Domizio, but stated that the pathological descriptions in the table were nothing to do with him, but were the work of Prof A Dhillon at the Royal Free Hospital in London, who was not an author of the paper. Unfortunately for Wakefield, Dhillon also wrote to the journal to say that it was nothing to do with him either (Histopathology 2007 50:794). Dhillon showed his version of the table, which unsurprisingly, because Dhillon is a bona fide pathologist, contained none of the new invented abnormalities. So we have an impasse, though not enough of an impasse to stop Wakefield publishing another paper in 2005 (Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol 17:827-36) showing the same table again, and remarkably, reporting the Lancet 12 for at least the third time! Wakefield produced no response to MacDonald and Domizio’s suggestion that since the histopathology slides from the autistic children seen at the Royal Free Hospital in London are available, it would be a straightforward exercise to have these analysed in an anonymous and independent fashion to put this question to rest.
In response to Wakefield’s defence of his work, the editor allowed MacDonald and Domizio a final say, where they demolished Wakefield again (Histopathology 2007, 51, 552–3).
Although all of this might seem highly technical, histopathological diagnosis of gut disease is a highly skilled art, with extremely high standards, and it is scientific vandalism for non-pathologists such as Wakefield to create new and non-existant abnormalities and then use them to burden children and parents with a life-long inflammatory bowel disease. The best example of this sleight of hand is his definition that a tissue section from the gut of an autistic child was abnormal if it contained a lymphoid follicle. However when the gut biopsies were taken at colonoscopy from autistic children, lymphoid follicles were specifically targeted for sampling because they wanted to look for measles in these tissues. So it is obvious that all will have pathology if one uses this invented criteria.
Throughout this saga, Wakefield has traded on the fact that autistic children do have real gut problems. However instead of attributing these problems in the majority of children to a combination of chronic and severe constipation, fecal impaction, unusual diet, diarrhea, bloating, parasites, gas etc, he had to find a new disease! However the pediatric gastroenterologists in charge of these children at the Royal Free knew what the problem was, when they wrote in the Lancet in 1998, that following cleansing of the colon needed for colonoscopy, many children underwent rapid symptomatic improvement which was maintained if constipation was avoided ( Lancet 1998;351:908). So there you have it, an inflammatory bowel disease treatable by cleansing the colon!
An interesting post-script to all this is that when challenged with the fact that the alleged “enterocolitis” in autistic children is not different from the mild changes and ileal lymphoid hyperplasia seen in chronically constipated, developmentally normal children, Wakefield and Krigsman are now saying that the constipation in autistic children is different! Give us a break !
PS. MacDonald was also an expert witness last year in the Hazelhurst versus HHS case in the USA. In his testimony MacDonald re-iterated in some depth the extent of Wakefield’s rogue and junk science, going back all the way to his identification of measles virus in Crohn’s disease using reagents which were not specific for measles virus. However he picked up yet another deception in the Am J Gastro paper. Much of the paper deals with the alleged lymphoid hyperplasia in the ileum of autistic children, graded by Wakefield on a score 0-3, with 0 being no follicles and 3 allegedly an undefined “severe” lymphoid hyperplasia. To illustrate the colonoscopic appearances of grades 0-3, a panel of photographs purportedly showing the different grades is included as Figure 1 of the paper. The date and time each photograph was taken is reproduced in figure. The image of alleged grade 0 ileal lymphoid hyperplasia (ILH) was taken on the same day and only 1 minute 54 seconds before the image of alleged grade 3 ILH. It is impossible to remove a colonoscope from 1 child and scope another child, reaching the ileum in 1 minute 54 seconds. Therefore the grade 0 and grade 3 images were taken from the same child; the grade 0 image most probably from the caecum ( the part of the colon just after the ileum) and the grade 3 image from the terminal ileum.
Kirby continues to get basic maths wrong
23 MarAs I’ve pointed out, Kirby has messed up his maths on the Huffington post blog. He’s now done much the same in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article (clearly, their Editor does not check for mathematical errors, or general stupid). Kirby’s article is titled “Give us answers on vaccines”: I don’t expect any answers from Kirby, but correct sums would be a start.
Kirby argues that:
Most striking is how typical Hannah’s cellular dysfunction [mitochondrial disorder] may be among children with autism. While extremely rare in the general population, at two per 10,000 people, it seems unusually common in autism — with estimates up to 2,000 per 10,000.
To go over these figures again – a 2,000 per 10,000 incidence of mitochondrial disorder among people with ASDs is and incidence of 1/5. If 1/5 people with an ASD has mitochondrial disorder, and only 2/10,000 people have mitochondrial order, then if everyone with mitochondrial disorder has an ASD only 1/1,000 people would have an ASD. Clearly, not everyone with mitochondrial disorder has an ASD, so the actual incidence that Kirby is estimating would be considerably lower.
Age of Autism linked the blog post on Kirby’s article, and there are (at time of writing) over 170 comments. Oddly, though, it seems that no-one has picked up on Kirby’s basic error. Haven’t they noticed their hero’s issues with maths? Or don’t they care?
Statement on autism, vaccines and mitochondrial disease
22 MarThe following was posted on the blog of the Mitochondrial Disease Action Committee yesterday.
The recent headlines concerning the potential links between autism, mitochondrial diseases, and vaccinations are evidence of the need for better understanding about mitochondrial disease. It is conservatively estimated that one in 4000 individuals are affected by mitochondrial disease, although specialists agree that the disease is under-recognized in the general population. The presentations and severity of symptoms of mitochondrial disorders clinically vary and affect both adults and children.
Vaccinations are critical in protecting the health of our children. All children, even those with suspected or known mitochondrial diseases, should receive the recommended vaccinations. The risks of these communicable illnesses outweigh the risk of vaccine-related reactions. Any causal relationship of thimerisol to incidence of autism has been disproven by observing the incidence of autism before and after eliminating this form of mercury from the vaccines. MitoAction encourages parents to talk to their pediatrician about these concerns.
David Holtzman, MD, PhD, a Pediatric Neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA, notes, “Mitochondrial Disease may present with the clinical features of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Several recent studies have documented biochemical evidence of abnormal mitochondrial functions in at least 30% of children with ASD.”
Awareness and attention to mitochondrial disorders will bring greater understanding of the impact of environmental and physiologic stressors on both autism and mitochondrial disease. Further research may explain how autism can be an expression of mitochondrial diseases and could be prevented.
Reality Bites Back
22 MarSo many times I have heard it said by the anti-vaxx/autism believers how they are ‘the mainstream voice’ – *the* autism community.
Today, they got a bit of a reality check.
The New York Times discussed an NYT article in which parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids say:
I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good,” said Sybil Carlson, whose 6-year-old son goes to school with several of the children hit by the measles outbreak here………….Ms. Carlson said she understood what was at stake. “I cannot deny that my child can put someone else at risk,” she said.
This piece was written in the wake of a measles outbreak in San Diego:
In a highly unusual outbreak of measles here last month, 12 children fell ill; nine of them had not been inoculated against the virus because their parents objected, and the other three were too young to receive vaccines.
These are the same people who claim that measles is a ‘nothing’ disease – that they had it as kids and it never did them any harm. An argument that reminds me of the one elderly smokers wheel out that they smoked every day of their lives and it never did them any harm as they cough what remains of their lungs up and continue infecting the air with second hand smoke.
Lets be honest here. What these people are doing is very much akin to selfish smokers. They’re wandering up to you and effectively pissing in your face.
Here’s an article from Jan last year in New Scientist.
Deaths have fallen from 873,000 during 1999 to 345,000 by the end of 2005,” said WHO director-general Margaret Chan, on Thursday. “This is a 60% reduction.” And the news is even better in Africa, Chan said. “Deaths there declined by 75%, so Africa is leading the way.”
Measles deaths in children under five fell from 791,000 to 311,000 over the same period, globally.
The new figures estimate that, altogether, measles vaccinations have prevented 7.5 million deaths between 1999 and 2005, and 2.3 million of these were attributable to the intensified programme.
In 2005, 345,000 people *died* from measles. This is down from 873,000 people who *died* from this ‘nothing’ disease that never does anybody any harm. Are people really so purposefully stupid?
And what helped achieve this 60% drop in *deaths* – was it Jenny McCarthy doing chat shows? Was it a whole bunch of people deliberately misrepresenting what happened to a nine year old girl?
No. It was *vaccines* .
Anyway….
In the NYT thread, several stalwart commenter’s from the Age of Autism blog have turned up trying to make their points. The replies to them/before them/after them quite nicely demonstrate how isolated from the mainstream they actually are and how well informed the average person on the street has become both about the need for vaccines and about these people in particular. I do worry that they might start seeing every parent of an autistic child as an anti-vaxx loon but on the positive side, it has shown up very, very publicly how small the autism/anti-vaxx group actually is numerically as well as how little the average person believes them.
By the way, I am well aware that there is another discussion going on in another US papers comments section but I will not link to that as it contains comments about an individual that I want to distance myself from totally and will deny any knowledge of or participation in. Please do not allude to, link to or name either this individual or the newspaper in question.
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