Archive by Author

Please Support Autism Science

8 Feb

You may be aware that the anti-vaccinationists have been conducting a smear campaign both publicly and privately against Dr Nancy Minshew lately because she stated quite rightly it was time for the autism community to move on.

I thought it might be nice if she had a few supportive emails land in her inbox as well as the wall of hate she’s no doubt getting from elsewhere.

I’ve set up a simple form letter requiring a signature from you. The email will be checked by me and then forwarded on to Dr Minshew.

Cloud Nine

7 Feb

 I should have realised when the noise of jumping and running and general mayhem stopped and everything went quiet, but I made the mistake of presuming that, at  10.30  at night and after a busy day at school, he might actually be tired. He’s been in a mischevious mood all night though ,the last time I checked on him he covered my face with my hair and then threw some megablocks down my top.

 As I walk into the room the first thing I see is him drawing happily, his head bent down, his hands busy scribbling away. I breathe a sigh of relief. Then I look around and notice the wall by one of the beds and his younger brother’s mattress (younger brother has moved the sheets up with his sleeping kicks). In the fifteen minutes since I last checked on him he has been busy drawing suns and rain and happy little clouds on said walls and mattress. Then he looks up and I see, judging by the way he has been covering his face with blue felt tip that he has been probably trying to make himself into a happy little cloud as well.

 My first instinct is one of calm. I know he has a tendency to get the felt tips everywhere and to draw on himself – and his brother sometimes – which is why I always get him the super washable ones, a quick wipe of the flannel and he’s clean. Of course, it would have been better if I’d have remembered to take the pens out of his room, but too late to fret about that now. I call my husband to come and help by cleaning him up and then set to work trying to clean the walls and wipe clean mattress.

 At about the same time a dawning horror of realisation strikes both my husband and myself. My husband announces it first.

 “It’s not coming off!” he calls out, a note of desperation in his voice.

 “It’s coming off very very slowly on the walls” I reply as I look at the pens, suddenly remembering that they were a recent gift from the lads’ grandad, who does not see them very often and is not fully aware that it is prudent to always buy the super washable pens. The felt pens he got them are not washable. They are far from washable. As ever futile attempts are made to clean up the budding artist, a very incomplete success is made in that some, but by no means all comes off his face and I am forced to accept an uncomfortable fact.

 My son is going to head off to school the next day looking like a smurf. 

 The next day further attempts at cleaning prove futile and I write an apologetic note explaining the blue streaks on his face. Nothing is said about it, possibly because the teacher cannot hold her pen for laughing. Upon his return I run a bath and during it wash his face several more times. This is not easy, since he hates having his face washed and clings to me like a limpet, in a “if I’m going to have my face wet, you can get covered in water as well” type of silent statement. Eventually the pen is mostly removed, the tiny bit remaining will come off in the next day or so.

 He is in a giggly mood, clambering onto my shoulders once he is out and dressed in his pyjamas, pulling on my hair and jumping on the bed and moving my chin up and down, thinking it’s hilarious to see my jaw moving about. After a few minutes of this he decides to tell me something.

 “It not yellow” he announces.

 “Erm, what colour is it?” I reply, wondering what he is talking about.

 “It ‘maller!” he tells me confidently.

 “Ok,” I answer,  looking around the room for inspiration.

 “It bigger!” he shouts out happily, leading me to wonder if he is channelling the spirit of M C Escher.  

 “It not an animal!” he states finally and as I continue to look round the room I spot the Bob the Builder toy that comes complete with a guessing game on it and that his younger brother was playing with earlier. All makes sense now.

 “Go and get a story” I tell him directing him to the bookcase. He knows this part of the bedtime routine very well and returns with an “In the Night Garden Book” an epic tome entitled “Iggle Piggle’s Lost Blanket”. His younger brother wanders over and climbs onto my lap to see the story as well. As they both look I recount the saga of the missing piece of material, with the added anticipation of various flaps being lifted up to reveal other objects and characters. The book is about five pages long with one or two short sentences to each page. Makka Pakka had the blanket in the end.

 “Who had Iggle Piggle’s blanket?” I ask and am answered with a “Who had Iggle Piggle’s blanket?”. Younger brother is lying down, eyes half closed, making little attempt at trying to stay awake. I go for an easier option.

 “Did Makka Pakka or Upsy Daisy have the blanket?” pointing to both characters on the page.

 “Upsy Daisy!” comes the answer.

 I carry him into his bed in what will probably turn out to be a futile attempt at getting him to understand that yes, he really is tired. Honestly.  He looks up at me and gives me a big smile. Then he leans forward and grabs my hair, playing with it once more. He stops and looks fully at me then announces:

 “Give kiss a mummy” and places one on my forehead. I say thank you,  give him a goodnight kiss on his forehead and walk out of the room. The hair pulling, the pen escapades, nothing seems to matter. I’m on the ninth cloud.

Brad Handley Offers Us A Chance To Evaluate

6 Feb

A couple of days ago, Brad Handley wrote a blog entry on Age of Autism called ‘DR. NANCY MINSHEW & ME: WHO’S CRAZY?’.

Let us instead examine Brad’s criteria for deciding on who is crazy and who is not between Dr Minshew and he.

I disagree with almost every single thing you have written or said about autism. Since we both can’t possibly be right, one of us has to be crazy. I’m scared to death it might be me. As a psychiatrist, I thought you could help.

Says Brad to Dr Minshew in an email. He then continues with:

It is maddening for parents like me that our “experts” can’t agree on the most fundamentally important and critical data point in the entire field of autism: is prevalence truly rising or not? This very binary notion impacts everything else. If it’s growing, it’s the environment. If it’s not, it’s genetics. From you perspective, “The increase in number of cases reflects the increase in recognition of verbal children.” I was confounded by this point, because I can’t find a single sentence in the scientific literature to support this. What I do look to is the following:

OK, lets pause. Brad says there’s no scientific literature to support the idea that there isn’t an epidemic. We’ll come back to that. Firstly, however, he cites a few bits and bobs to support his hypothesis that there is.

First off he cites:

[1]Report to the Legislature on the Principle Findings from The Epidemiology of Autism in California: A Comprehensive Pilot Study MIND Institute, UC Davis, Oct 2002.

This is not in the scientific literature. It is not peer reviewed. According to Brad’s own specified criteria of utilising the scientific literature, he cannot cite this document.

The second (and last) paper he cites is:

[2]National Autism Prevalence Trends From United States Special Education Data. Pediatrics, March 2005. Craig J. Newschaffer, PhD..

Using Special Education data has been debunked in a paper published four months after that Newschaffer paper. The author (James Laidler) says:

Many autism advocacy groups use the data collected by the US Department of Education (USDE) to show a rapidly increasing prevalence of autism. Closer examination of these data to follow each birth-year cohort reveals anomalies within the USDE data on autism……These anomalies point to internal problems in the USDE data that make them unsuitable for tracking autism prevalence.

and Shattuck says:

The mean administrative prevalence of autism in US special education among children ages 6 to 11 in 1994 was only 0.6 per 1000, less than one-fifth of the lowest CDC estimate from Atlanta (based on surveillance data from 1996). Therefore, special education counts of children with autism in the early 1990s were dramatic underestimates of population prevalence and really had nowhere to go but up. This finding highlights the inappropriateness of using special education trends to make declarations about an epidemic of autism, as has been common in recent media and advocacy reports.

So thats the sum total of Brad’s ‘science’ regarding the autism epidemic. A non-science report and a twice debunked study.

Is there actually anything in the scientific literature that suggests the ‘epidemic’ is not anything of the sort?

Variation in the administrative prevalence of ASD is associated with education-related spending, which may be associated with better-trained educational staff who can recognize the problem, and more and better trained in-school specialists who can provide screening. It is also associated with the availability of health care resources. Increased access to pediatricians and school-based health centers may lead to improved recognition of ASD. Interstate variability in the identification of ASD should be taken into account when interpreting the results of prevalence studies based on administrative data and the associated system characteristics taken into account by policy makers working to improve the recognition of ASD.

David S. Mandell, ScD; Raymond Palmer, PhD

The incidence of research-identified autism increased in Olmsted County from 1976 to 1997, with the increase occurring among young children after the introduction of broader, more precise diagnostic criteria, increased availability of services, and increased awareness of autism. Although it is possible that unidentified environmental factors have contributed to an increase in autism, the timing of the increase suggests that it may be due to improved awareness, changes in diagnostic criteria, and availability of services, leading to identification of previously unrecognized young children with autism.

William J. Barbaresi, MD; Slavica K. Katusic, MD; Robert C. Colligan, PhD; Amy L. Weaver, MS; Steven J. Jacobsen, MD, PhD

We observed dramatic increases in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder as a primary special educational disability starting in the 1991-1992 school year, and the trends show no sign of abatement. We found no corresponding decrease in any special educational disability category to suggest diagnostic substitution as an explanation for the autism trends in Minnesota. We could not assess changes in actual disease incidence with these data, but federal and state administrative changes in policy and law favoring better identification and reporting of autism are likely contributing factors to the prevalence increases and may imply that autism spectrum disorder has been underdiagnosed in the past.

James G. Gurney, PhD; Melissa S. Fritz, MPH; Kirsten K. Ness, MPH; Phillip Sievers, MA;Craig J. Newschaffer, PhD; Elsa G. Shapiro, PhD

Brad continues:

You say vaccines are proven to not cause autism and that parents should vaccinate their children.

Dr. Minshew, you are either being intellectually dishonest on this point or it is outside of your expertise as a psychiatrist to understand the vaccine-autism issue, Let me explain:

Brad _seems_ to be basing this belief on the news article he quotes:

Dr. Nancy Minshew, Director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Excellence in Autism Research, says it’s time to end the debate [about vaccines and autism] because research overwhelmingly proves there’s no connection and parents don’t need to worry about that anymore. Minshew says it’s time real experts dispel the rumors for concerned parents. “They deserve to hear the evidence, the real evidence. So I thought, ‘Enough is enough,'” she said. Minshew says people’s lives are at stake because some kids aren’t getting vaccinated for life-threatening diseases due to incorrect information. Since Thimerosal, an ethyl mercury preservative, was banned from most childhood vaccines in the U.S. seven years ago, autism rates have continued to increase – disproving the link. Minshew says it’s only a coincidence that toddlers are vaccinated around the same time autism is usually diagnosed.

Minshew did _not_ say ‘vaccines are proven to not cause autism’, that is what the article she was quoted in says. You can tell the bits she actually said as they will be surrounded with quote marks.

– Thimerosal was not banned from vaccines as you are quoted as saying, so this is a falsehood.

Minshew was not quoted as saying this. This is a falsehood.

– Thimerosal did not come out of vaccines seven years ago as you are quoted as saying, so this is a falsehood. In fact, it’s still in the overwhelming majority of the flu shot supply at full dose- the flu shot was recently added (2004) to the CDC’s recommended schedule.

Once more, Minshew was _not_ quoted as saying thiomersal came out of vaccines seven year ago. This is a falsehood. Your statement that it is still in the overwhelming majority of the flu shot is speculative and without foundation – unless you have something to back that up….?

And in *fact* – although Minshew never claims it, a CDC meeting reported on a study that said:

N.I.P. estimated the amount of thimerosal in provider vaccine inventories in a survey conducted September 20, 2001 to February 20, 2002. The targets were a convenience sample of providers getting site visits from public health officials across the country. Inventory counts were done of all refrigerators for D.T.a.P., Hib, and hep B pediatric vaccines. The thimerosal classification was based on the lot number information, which was verified by the manufacturers. In September 2001, 225 sites were canvassed, and 447 by February 2002…..During the visits, the providers were surveyed about thimerosal-containing vaccines in their inventories. Of the 447 interviews, 83.5 percent reported no thimerosal-containing vaccines in stock at any time since October 2001.

and

in September 2001, only 5.6%1 of all vaccines contained thiomersal. By Feb 2002, only 1.9% of all vaccines contained thiomersal.

(NB: The 5.6% figure seems to be a typo in the report. It should be 56%. From 33,500 doses out of 63,600; to 2,796 doses out of 149,147)

– If you believe that focusing on a single ingredient in vaccines (mercury) exonerates vaccines in totality, that’s an impossibility. We have grown our vaccine schedule from 10 vaccines in the early 1980s to 36 today. Yet, we never test the “combination risk” of so many vaccines. No one, except Generation Rescue, has ever studied unvaccinated children and looked at their autism rates. We never look at the aluminum that replaced thimerosal, the live viruses, or the many other toxic ingredients in vaccines at all.

So, Brad says that its not just mercury. Which is weird because in Feb 2005 (click the first video) he was saying:

What we immediately realised – and I think this is something that is a surprise to lots of people – um that autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning. If you line up 100 symptoms of mercury poisoning and 100 symptoms of autism they are exactly the same

So, to borrow a phrase, both can’t be true….is it a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning or is it the combination of vaccines?

– The parent reports of children going upside-down and developing autism right after vaccination continues unabated. Will you ever listen to them?

People such as Minshew have done nothing _but_ listen. Generation Rescue keep promising something for them to listen to but keep failing to provide it.

Brad continues:

It strikes me, and perhaps I’m crazy for saying this, that now that you have publicly reassured parents that vaccines are safe, that you may well be the last person on earth, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, to concede that vaccines are in fact playing a role in autism.

That, my friend, is called ‘projection’. Now you have publicly hemmed and hawed about what vaccines role is in autism and now all your projections and predictions have singularly failed to materialise (read the rest of that blog entry with the video for details), even with an overwhelming lack of any evidence whatsoever you will be the last person to ever admit you were plain old wrong time and time again.

And yet there’s more.

You never mention recovered children.

In all the writings and quotes of yours, Doctor, I didn’t read one thing about children who have recovered from autism. Have you ever met a recovered child? Would you like to? Would you care to scan their brains and see how they look? I heard a noted neurologist mention an idea that we should scan the brains of children newly diagnosed with autism, let their parents who want to treat the children biomedically, and then re-scan the brains of any children who have recovered. Does that strike you as an interesting idea?

Ah, the famous recovered children. I wrote about this awhile ago. The upshot of it is that when actually looks in detail at the kids Generation Rescue claims as recovered, kids who no longer have a diagnosis account for about 5-7% of the total he presents as recovered. Its a con trick. I even managed to get my own daughter listed as a recovery story on his website.

Brad continues:

As a courtesy, I forwarded the above piece to Dr. Minshew one day in advance of posting it on Age of Autism. What follows is a short email exchange between us:

———————

Dr. Minshew:

What’s written below, by me, will be posted at The Age of Autism blog tomorrow. As a courtesy, I’m sending it to you first.

I have no issues with you personally. In fact, reading that you lost a child makes me very, very empathetic.

That said, it is my heartfelt belief that you are actually part of the problem with autism, rather than part of the solution. I’m sure that’s a comment you disagree with profoundly, but I really believe history will be a harsh judge of scientists like you who continue to deny the existence of a rising prevalence of autism and mistakenly reassure parents that vaccines are safe – a topic you can’t possibly be an expert on, by the way.

I also thought your email to Mr. —- reeked of intellectual arrogance in a very close-minded sort of a way. There are many well-credentialed scientists who would take exception to almost everything you believe about autism, but you speak with sweeping generalizations like you are in the only camp that actually knows where truth lies. I also found your continual reference to a court case in Maryland, while 2 tests cases before the Vaccine Court remain WIDE OPEN, to demonstrate either ignorance on your part or a case of selective fact gathering. What if the test cases in D.C. rule in favor of the plaintiffs?

So, I don’t expect us to be pen pals anytime soon, but I’m including the open letter to you below.

Sincerely,

JB Handley

——————–

From: Nancy Minshew
To: J.B. Handley
Sent: Mon Feb 04 11:50:31 2008
Subject: RE: Nancy & Me: Who’s crazy

Mr. Handley none of you have permission to share emails that i have sent to you as individuals with anyone besides the intended receiver nor do you have permission to quote me publicly. Unlike the newspaper which was public, private emails to individuals sent confidentially are not for public quotation.

——————–

From: J.B. Handley
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 11:54 AM
To: Nancy Minshew
Subject: Re: Nancy & Me: Who’s crazy

Says who?

And, tough shit.

J.B. Handley

——————–

Nice guy huh?

And also further example of Brad’s hypocrisy. Our very first online set-to Brad commented (in the comment section) about me publishing part of an email he sent me:

Mr. Leitch sent me an email on my private email account, I responded, and he put my comments on his blog without asking me.

Which wasn’t strictly true but anyway – if I’d known how Brad would chop and change his mind I would’ve just said ‘tough shit’.

Anyway, Brad concludes:

This is my world, Dr. Minshew, it seems clear as day. It’s so different from yours, I really, really need to know: which one of us is crazy?

Lets recap. In Brad’s world science isn’t science unless he says it is. He can chop and change his mind without it invalidating his earlier, contradictory beliefs and its OK to be a massive hypocrite. Are these the actions of a crazy man?

Dore offers treatment for ASDs – but where is their evidence? And what about the ethics?

5 Feb

Dore is a business promoting a startlingly expensive exercise programme – which they have previously claimed can treat conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD. Now, Dore seem to think that they have stumbled on a great new treatment for Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). However, their research seems to be rather lagging behind their beliefs.

Dore has been talking up a research project of theirs: they claim great results from “working with 1,000 patients suffering from the symptoms of high-functioning autism”, although only 56 people with a “formally diagnosed” ASD. Like all revolutionary new research, this was announced on the Dore Internet forum and published in – um – a local newspaper.

Now, I would argue that a trial with an n of 56 with formally diagnosed ASDs is – even if well-conducted, something that has been a problem for Dore in the past – too small to allow one to roll out a treatment programme based on the results. Certainly, it’s hard to discuss this research until it is published in a proper, peer-reviewed journal (presumably as a pilot study, investigating whether more research in this area is worthwhile).

However, when asked about the research, Dore’s Dr Roy Rutherford has decided on an unusual approach, stating that: “Dore is in preliminary discussions to work with some of the leading researchers in the UK in autism. I cannot tell you who this is yet”. This sounds rather like Dore has decided to first promote their ‘treatment’ for ASDs – even for the 1,000 people with ‘symptoms’ of ASDs included in the ‘research’ discussed in the local press, the fees for the Dore ‘treatment’ would have ran into millions of pounds unless waived or discounted – and only then do some credible research. If so, this is horribly unethical. One should also bear in mind that Dore claim to have spent £5m on research: if so, it is rather unfortunate that they have had to publish their ‘research’ on ASDs in a local newspaper, and not a proper journal.

It is often argued that ‘non-drug’ treatments such as Dore are necessarily harmless and benign. It might seem that – even though most of the children in Dore’s research on ASDs did not have a formal diagnosis – this does not matter so long as the parents believed that there were problems. This is false. While there are a number of risks, I’d like to end by pointing out some of the negative perceptions of those with ASDs and specific learning difficulties that can arise from Dore’s approach. One mother on the Dore forum – who put their child through Dore – states that:

L has none of those [autistic] traites left now and is a normal 12 year old, a relief after a learning needs worker told me prior to Dore that L would never make a life for herself, would never be independent because to her L was severely autistic. Pity the experts who tested her could not see it, but then again it doesn’t matter, L is no longer the struggling child she once was, Dore changed all that.

Firstly, there are clear benefits from a diagnosis of an ASD from a qualified professional – instead of a ‘learning needs worker’ or a Dore employee looking for ‘Cerebral Developmental Delay’. It can be useful to know whether someone does meet the diagnostic criteria for an ASD, and it is important to get an informed account of what their ASD means – for example, any competent professional will know that autistic people can often live independently and clearly do have lives.

Secondly, a proper diagnosis can be useful in order to assess the benefits (or lack of them) of any treatments. If a mother is lead to believe that her child will never be independent or have a life if allowed to develop untreated, it will be too easy to attribute the natural development of a growing child to the miraculous powers of the Dore treatment (or whichever other treatment is being used at the time).

Thirdly, this type of perception and (non)diagnosis impacts upon the lives of people with ASDs. If they are assumed to be helpless without Dore or some other ‘treatment’ (for example, the local newspaper piece on Dore claims that “a patient who has been unable to communicate throughout his life” went through the Dore programme – something that would have been impossible unless the ‘patient’ was able to follow instructions) this will not help to build an inclusive society.

With Dore, then, we see another expensive, unproven, ethically problematic ‘treatment’ for ASDs. Nothing unusual there – but this company has a lot of money behind it, and seems to be trying to expand. There is a real need to challenge this and to insist on an acknowledgement of the complex realities of ASDs and specific learning difficulties – in contrast to Dore’s tendency to reduce everything to ‘Cerebral Developmental Delay’ and to declare fabulous results which turn out to have been limited by Dore’s own apparent Research Development Delay.

MMR Still Doesn’t Cause Autism (and never did)

4 Feb

Yet another study will shortly be published that yet again shows no link between autism and MMR:

There is no evidence for a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) jab and autism, finds research published ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The authors took almost 250 kids born between ’90 and ’91. 98 were ASD. 52 had special needs with no ASD. 90 had no special needs and were developing within ‘normal’ parameters. All the children had been vaccinated against MMR, but not all of them had been given both doses.

The team took blood samples and found no persistent measles infection, no abnormal immune response.

Results of the blood sample analysis showed that there was no difference in circulating measles virus or antibody levels between the two groups of children.

Tellingly, it didn’t matter which of three groups the team looked at – none of them exhibited any ‘bad blood’ whether they’d had both MMR shots or not. Or if the autistic kids had experienced regression or not.

The team further found no evidence of any kind of so-called ‘autistic enterocolitis’ – in fact no evidence of any bowel disorders of any kind were found among the autistic kids.

The alst line of the news report is very pointed:

The authors point out that theirs is now the third, and largest, study that has failed to show a link between the MMR jab and autism.

Quite.

Repeat after me – MMR doesn’t cause autism. It never did.

Awhile ago I wrote a piece on the history of the MMR hypothesis. You can read it here.

Mark Blaxill Thinks Bloggers Are Mean

4 Feb

Mark Blaxill, the token man of the mercury moms at SafeMinds, has written a lip-trembling post over on Age of Autism about how mean bloggers can be. Lets have a bit of fun with it shall we?

The rapid evolution of the Internet has created a host of fascinating, exhilarating and occasionally despicable new things. The Age of Autism is a blog and we’re proud to be a part of a new phenomenon called the blogosphere……But as one might expect with any new form of cultural expression, there’s a bizarre variant of the blogosphere out there. It’s a strange hybrid: it looks like a regular low end blog, based almost entirely on opinion, a dressed up version of the typical online discussion groups and chat rooms….In a disturbing way, this new hybrid has found its way into the debates and controversies around autism science…..Often connected with the so-called “neurodiversity” movement, many of these game players seem to define themselves by their own “autism”

So if I’m understanding Marky Mark, the blogosphere is a ‘new phenomenon’ upon which the light of the countenance of the Age of Autism has charitably fallen.

This ‘new phenomenon’ actually was first realised nine years ago Marky Mark. I await with bated breath Marky’s breathless announcement come 2017 that Age of Autism has discovered a ‘new phenomenon’ called Facebook. Truly the interweb is a wondrous thing. A piece of advice though Mark – never, ever type ‘Google’ into Google.

And these ‘low ends blogs’….my, my whomever could he be referring to? Surely not Autism Diva’s blog with a Google PR of 5 on the home page and over 1,150 Google backlinks to it? Or maybe Orac’s with a PR of 7 for the home page and which has over 6,100 Google backlinks to it? or maybe my own which has a PR 6 on the home page of the blog and over 2,700 Google backlinks to it.

Or maybe ‘low end’ might refer to a blog which has a PR of 3 on its home page and Google link operator can find no back link data for. I wonder, can anyone suggest a blog with user stats that low end?

Anyway, Marky Mark has a point to make and by god he’s eventually going to get around to making it dammit! Even if he has to rhetoricise our asses into verbal comas!!

But unlike people that engage in the blogosphere using their real names and identities, these avatars all have one thing in common.

They’re cowards.

Hmmmm, really? Is that why some people choose to blog anonymously?

I really hate to break this piece of news to Marky Mark but passing opinions online predates the web. Why go back to the old BBS’s and you’d find a whole bunch of people chatting away with (gasp!) fake names. In fact, I hear tell that some CB radio enthusiasts use fake names too!! The dirty cowards!

There’s a damn good reason why some people blog anonymously Marky Mark as I have good reason to know about – people who espouse similar views to you Marky Mark, target their children. People like John Best for example are very good reasons for preserving anonymity. Here’s what happens when one of his friends annoys him. What do you suppose he has in store for my child?

But who Marky Mark is really pouting about is Do’C and Interverbal, two bloggers who took the time out to look at a recent paper that Marky Mark was counting on to support his kook hypotheses. So annoyed by these two ‘low end’ bloggers (PR 5 on each of their blogs) that he elected to censor out the name of the blog they wrote at!

“Unfortunately, the main bloggers of [censored wackosphere site name] have taken the time to respond to almost all of the other blogs about this article

‘wackosphere’ (tee-hee!!) is the name Marky Mark has bestowed upon autism related blogs more popular than his it seems. That’s a lot of blogs.

So shocked was I at this blatant censorship that I nearly contacted the Ever So Important Editor on Age of Autism to ask if they would write a piece about this – after all they penned 10 blog entries last week decrying censorship – they must really hate it!

In fact so grasping does Marky Mark become that he actually says:

In fact, at a deeper level, there’s a widespread pattern of scientific intimidation and censorship underway in autism science that relies on a wide range of attack dogs…

Hey yeah – I know what you mean Marky Mark like what happened to Dr Paul Offit at the hands of the mercury militia:

….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.

Or Paul Shattuck, also from the mercury militia:

One person said, “Don’t be surprised if you get a knock on your door in the middle of the night and I’ll be there.” Another message said it was easy in the age of the Internet to find out where people live.

Shattuck also had various utterly untrue allegations made about him by the NAA.

Or how about Arthur Allen and Professor Roy Grinker who have also been on the receiving end of threats of violence:

these people need to be horse whipped…

Or how about Ray Gallup, Director and co-founder of the Vaccine Autoimmune Project? here’s what he had to say recently:

Dear ****:

Since you seem to follow what is going on with the Leitch list let me know if Leitch, Deer and the others get hit with a fast moving truck or bus that leaves their carcasses mangled and bloodly on the street.

I will be devotely praying night and day that something like this happens to them and their followers. Especially since these creeps say such hurtful things to parents. They deserve all the best in something terrible happening to every last one of them and I will pray daily.

I usually pray for good things for families that suffer but in their case I will make a big exception.

Ray Gallup

Or what about this Marky Mark?

A-YEAR-and-a-half ago, a vaccines expert in the eastern US received a phone call at home. The man on the line did not identify himself; he simply stated the names and ages of the researcher’s two children and the schools they attended, then hung up. The threat was shocking, but not a surprise. “I get hate mail every day,” says the researcher, who asked not to be named.

Many vaccine scientists in the US have received similar threats in recent years. They are thought to come from a hard core of parents who, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, are convinced that small amounts of mercury in vaccines have made their children autistic. What’s more, they believe that researchers are complicit in the scandal.

How about what EoH member and mercury militia jackass Brian Hooker did to Dr Sarah Parker? He harasses her to the point her campus security services had to get involved and she sent this email to Hooker – which he proudly displayed online:

Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 14:03:17 -0600
From: Sarah Parker
Subject: Re: Sarah Parker on the show “To The Point”
To:
Cc:

I have received your phone messages (yesterday evening and today) and emails. I would like to inform you that due to your previous threat to me in November and the tone and content of these current calls and emails I consider these as threats/harassment as well and am documenting them with the campus police department. I respect your right to disagree and wish you would respect that same right with me. Please do not contact me again in the future.

Sarah Parker

How about Brad Handley of Generation rescue saying to me:

If we were on a rugby pitch, Kev, I’d put my boot in your eye and twist…

Marky Mark is quite right that there are wacko’s in the online autism community. All he has to do to find them is look to his left and right. He closes his diatribe with:

We need to defend some minimum standards for how people are permitted to participate in a public debate. At the top of the list of these standards should be this: if anyone wants to participate in a debate about autism, put your real self on the line: your real name, your actual body of work (if you have any) and your professional accomplishments and reputation. Put the things that really matter — your family’s future and your personal career prospects — out in public for everyone to see if you want to exercise the privilege of participation in civil society. If you’re willing to do that, then you have a right to be heard. If you’re not, then you should go back to your game and keep playing with yourself. Let serious people do serious work.

And he’s serious. He means it. How he:

a) Expects to set himself up as the arbiter of whats acceptable online and;
b) Expects people to be comfortable using their real names when he stands alongside the people listed above

I really can’t imagine. Believe me, if I’d known that pond scum like John Best shared a planet with me I would never have used my real identity. Its also quote clear that Mark Blaxills friends and colleagues hold no compunctions about besmirching reputations with groundless attacks and or threats of violence upon them or their children.

Look around you Marky Mark. That rarefied air you’re sucking down? Its the polluted air of the real wackosphere. A land where threats against children is fair game and where killers and paedophiles are welcomed in with no checks and open arms and the leaders of the many antivaccine kook organisations encourage and salivate after violence against anyone who disagrees with them.

Saint Stone of Kooks and the Removal of Gloves

2 Feb

The Eli Stone thing is very closely following the ‘fallout’ trajectory of the MMR/Wakefield program (Hear The Silence)over here a few years ago in that the protagonists were virtually canonised and the evil medicos painted as uncaring, duplicitous swine.

If the path of trajectory continues to be followed then Eli Stone’s canonisation should enjoy a brief, bright blaze followed by a long slow loss of interest from the general public and he will be relegated to one more point of disagreement that only matters to Age of Autism readers.

However, I do wonder if the Legal Editor at Age of Autism might be coming ever so slightly detached from reality:

Thanks to Eli Stone, our new patron saint of autism, we are no longer “Lost” to the mainstream media.

Well now I consulted my Reality Editor and they reminded me that Eli Stone is a fictional TV character. Maybe my Reality Editor needs to have a word with Age of Autism’s beloved Legal Editor. Then again, reality is not the strong suit of these guys.

Back in the real world:

Nancy J. Minshew is finally ready to take off the gloves.

After years of sitting back and hoping the science would speak for itself, the director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Excellence in Autism Research has decided it’s time for her to take a personal stand.

Autism is not caused by vaccinations, she says, and those who continue to push that theory are endangering the lives of children and misdirecting the nation’s scarce resources for autism research.

“The weight of the evidence is so great that I don’t think there is any room for dispute. I think the issue is done,” said Minshew, who runs one of nine top autism research centers funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Good for her. Its about time the scientific establishment stopped leaving this up to one or two public figures like Paul Offit or Eric Fombonne and started addressing the issues in the real world.

The evolution of Eli Stone

1 Feb

This is a Guest Blogged piece written by new bloggers from Hollywood Spectrum.

For those who don’t know (I wish I were one of you), there is a TV show about to premiere called "Eli Stone". It was likely going to be a pretty run-of-the-mill premiere. Possibly, it was going to be a total non event.But, the plot includes autism. Not only does it include autism, but it involves a lawyer doing what has never happened in real life-he win’s a case about how mercury in vaccines caused autism in a child. This led to a number of news stories, internet discussions and blog posts.

Well, after the initial press on this, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) sent a letter to ABC/Disney asking them to pull the show since it could erode confidence in vaccines.  Somehow this was characterized as big-bad AAP trying to bully ABC/Disney.  Now, Disney is a company that has revenues of nearly $9B per quarter.  Yeah, AAP was twisting their arm by giving them free publicity.

Did anyone really believe that ABC/Disney would pull the show?  I mean, really, they just got a lot of free publicity for what was likely to be a pretty forgettable show.   How can I say this was going to be forgettable?  Because the original script was something worth forgetting.  Consider when Eli Stone visits a Chinese acupuncturist (who somehow brings about visions in Stone).  The good Dr. Chen was given such amazing lines in pigeon English as:

"You go regular doctor? Dr. Chen not MRI."

and

"I have patient, you come back half hour."

and

"No good hate dead people. Relah. Think good memory father. Dr. Chen help ungrateful son" 

OK, so, the dialogue was lame.  And, believe me, this isn’t the only example.  A whole blog post could be devoted to it, but this is an autism blog not a TV critic blog.  Maybe Dr. Chen is  supposed to be "comedy".  But, is it OK to stereotype for comedy?  If so, how about stereotyping (incorrectly) autism for drama.  Let’s look at how about the "autism" part of the script is portrayed. Here is their stage direction for the William character from the script:

William doesn’t smile. His autism doesn’t permit it.

What?!?  Autism "doesn’t permit" smiling?  So, people who smile aren’t autistic?  That should bring down the autism "epidemic"!  Just reject the diagnosis for all the people with autism who smile.  My guess is that it would be a pretty rare condition then. 

In the original script, the fight is with an insurance company who won’t pay for the treatments of the young "William", who is autistic.  The first mention of the word "autism" comes when the mother is describing this situation:

My son has autism. He needs Risperidone every day..

Whoa.  Was that about mercury?  Nope.  It’s about Risperidone.  Yep, instead of mercury causing autism, the story was about how the fictional kid needed an off-label prescription for an antipsychotic drug and the insurance company wouldn’t pay.

How does that jive with the writer’s idea of autism?  Well, the mother describes the value of Risperidone as:

After a month on the drug, he actually smiled.

For the record, Risperidone is pretty serious medication.  It has been shown to benefit some people with autism.  But, "smiling"?  I guess that scripts don’t need science advisor approval before being approved.

Somewhere between first and, let’s face it, lame final draft and premiere, the story shifted to vaccine/mercury caused autism.  A story line guaranteed to generate controversy.  A story line guaranteed to get publicity.

It’s too bad.  Yes, the reliance of the original script on Risperidone might have caused some consternation amongst the autism community.  Yes, the stereotype of the kid "whose autism prevents him from smiling" was lame at best, damaging at worst.  But, insurance coverage for autism is a big deal right now.  A good presentation of how insurance companies deny claims for autism could have actually helped people and families with autism.

Autisms Poor Excretors

31 Jan

Pediatrics released a study refuting the autism/thiomersal hypothesis early yesterday. They said that they did it to counter the upcoming Eli Stone pilot (of which there will be more to speak of soon). If that’s true then we need to thank the creators of Eli Stone for prompting the early release of more science debunking the anti-vaccine stance.

I don’t have this new study yet so I want you to bear in mind that I can only go on what’s in the news reports. This isn’t ideal but there are numerous quotes from the study authors over the news.

Basically, this study refutes the idea that autistic kids are poor excretors of mercury. Obviously, a lot of Hub bloggers have already taken this silliness apart but this is (IIRC) the first science paper to do so.

A proviso of this study would seem to be that it was done on NT kids rather than ASD kids but there’s no real scientifically valid reason to use ASD kids particularly anyway.

“….Now it’s obvious that ethyl mercury’s short half-life prevents toxic build-up from occurring. It’s just gone too fast,” Pichichero said.

To illustrate, researchers cite that infants in the 6-month-old group — who, in their lifetimes, had encountered more total ethyl mercury that any other group studied — still had the same pre-vaccination blood-mercury levels before their checkups as most 2-month-olds had before theirs. This suggests that, before each round of shots, the mercury has plenty of time to be cleared.

Source

Now, a group of people we all know are going to claim that the Burbacher et al showed that this was becuase the ethyl-mercury was going into the brain. This isn’t strictly accurate. Though total levels in the brain were lower for the thimerosal group, a higher ratio of inorganic mercury was noted. The anti-vaxxers tried to link this to Vargas because inorganic mercury is alleged to cause microglial activation.

But Burbacher detected no neuroinflammation. He should now know if there is neuroglial activation in his primates however. This paper was due some time ago but seems to be having trouble finding a publisher. Its pure speculation on my part that this would either be because his sponsors (SafeMinds) didn’t like the results and pulled the plug, or the science is bad and can’t find a journal to be published in.

Anyway, here’s this new paper that demonstrates that thiomersal is very quickly eliminated from the body. What is the typical mercury militia response to this?

And if it’s not thimerosal, then it must be some other vaccine-related interaction, said Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center.

……

“Mercury doesn’t belong in any product,” Fisher added. “Mercury doesn’t belong in vaccines whether it’s proven or not proven that mercury is a problem in vaccines.”

You see? Its not even really about mercury to these geniuses. Its about vaccines. Always. Even when it isn’t. And when it is mercury it doesn’t matter if its actually dangerous or not. What a shame there’s no vaccine for stupidity.

Note: Bart Cubbins has done an excellent video on some of the shortcomings of the Burbacher study.

Ah, what the hell

30 Jan

It may be temporary, it may be less frequently updated but for now you can consider LB/RB open for business.

EDIT:

When I closed in October 2007 (well spotted Kristjan!) I got literally inundated with email expressing sorrow, frustration, remonstration that I was giving in and lots of warm wishes. I hope I managed to reply to everyone, if I didn’t then I apologise but it was (if you’ll excuse the self-referencing humour) manic. The day after I shut, I woke up to find GMail reporting 76 unread emails.

I was taken aback at how strongly people felt and immediately began to feel a bit guilty but I was convinced I was right to do it and I’m still not unconvinced 100%. I cannot let my kids become targets.

However, a few weeks ago a friend of mine who lives in the same town I do and who is also a manic depressive took it upon himself to become my ‘protector’ and started posting under a pseudonym to various blogs hostile to the stance of mine. Even now I still don’t know how many blogs he posted on. But anyway – the point of me telling you this was that it immediately started up again from ‘certain quarters’ (no prizes for guessing and no need to mention the blog or name in question) and I realised that it didn’t really matter if I was posting or not – it was still going to carry on.

With that in mind, the biggest reason for stopping seemed a bit pointless.

However, I’ll be honest, I’ve enjoyed not blogging. I won’t ever again get so caught up in it. It was nice to sit down and read a book for pleasure after the girls were in bed and so I intend to not lose that. It was nice not to have endless blah-blah wars with Brad Handley running into gajillions of comments so I’m going to be applying a very simple rule to comments: if they annoy me in any way I will simply delete them. If anyone doesn’t like that then boo-hoo. Get your own blog. My priority in doing this is my own peace of mind.

No more family mentions at all. Pics of the kids have been removed from Flickr. The videos of them are gone from YouTube. That’s a high price to pay, especially considering that one of those videos did one of the best things I could imagine – reached a man in need and helped him.

I’ve had a few questions reach me since yesterday. I’ll deal with them here:

1) What about the Group blogging?
Amanda (who is unavailable right now) has set up a fantastic resource called GreyMatter/White Matter which has all the LB/RB team bloggers on it. I am more than happy for bloggers to post here again if they want to but I would like to talk to Amanda first as GM/WM is her project.

2) Might you shut again soon?
I might, yeah. I really don’t know. I don’t want to. I enjoy writing and this grand old lady has been around for five years now but I have to have a bit of perspective. Its not up to me fight every battle going. Family, health, peace of mind, meals, then blogging.

So – lets get to it 🙂

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