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Neurological diversity

28 May

It is a common tactic of some people who believe that autism should be cured at all costs to state that ‘the neurodiverse’ are a small minority of adults with Aspergers Syndrome, intent on preserving themselves at the expense of their ‘low functioning’ cousins.

Take a recent post from Harold Doherty railing against Andrew Solomon’s piece in New York Magazine:

The Alleged Autism Rights Movement isn’t much help for the severely autistic, the truly severely autistic….. like my son Conor who wondered (sic) across a busy main street oblivious to the dangers of traffic; or those like the 10 year old severely autistic boy in North Carolina who was struck by a train and killed Saturday half an hour after police received a report he was missing from his home. [Or] like the 50 year old autistic woman who could not communicate to tell the world she was being abused by staff in the residential care facility in which she lives in Long Island…

The sad fact is that, if Harold Doherty would allow himself to see it, no-one from ‘neurodiversity’ is suggesting that people like his son, the 10 year old boy he describes or the 50 year old woman he describes, should not be helped to the fullest possible extent. The trouble is, that Harold (and people who hold similar views) are so caught up in what they _think_ they never actually _see_ . The other fact is that the basic tenet of neurodiversity as _I_ understand the term is that people like Conor Doherty deserve respect. The whole ‘cure’ thing is a fairly trivial side issue. Respect is what comes first.

There is no cure for autism. Does this mean then, that we should not fight for the rights of autistic people of _all_ ages, abilities and expressions? That because they are not neurotypical they do not have rights? or deserve respect?

_That_ is what (to me and I think to very many people) neurodiversity is about. Take Alex Barton – the five year old voted out of his class. That is a _lack_ of respect. There is absolutely no justification for that teacher to behave in that way toward a five year old child. Neurodiversity says ‘this little autistic boy deserves to be treated as if he were the same as anyone else in terms of his right to belong’. I fear that some people who call themselves autism advocates think the problem is easily remedied by curing Alex Barton’s autism (hypothetically of course). I think that that entirely misses the point. People used to look for cures for homosexuality – that was wrong too. The _person who is autistic_ deserves as much of a chance to be judged for who they are with their own set of unique abilities, shortcomings and character as the person who is not.

Does this mean we should ‘leave the autistic child as he/she is’? Of course not! That is the largest of red herrings. If someone cannot communicate, you help them communicate. If someone cannot use the toilet, you help them to learn.

And then, when they have reached the upper limit of the potential for learning on each of these subjects, you accept that that is who they are. For some, that might mean they can now speak. For some it might mean they can barely use one Makaton sign. The _amount_ they have learnt is not the measure of how much respect they deserve. They deserve respect regardless. So we must all work to make the environment safer for young autistic children. We must all work harder to make autistic adults living arrangements safe. These are basic human rights.

It should also be noted that, far from being an autism related term, neurodiversity touches on a whole range of things. Of course, they’re not all called ‘neurodiversity’ but well….

Are voices a symptom of illness or a variety of human experience?

Research has shown that there are many people who hear voices, some of whom cope with their voices well without psychiatric intervention, it has also been found that there are many people who hear voices who can cope with their voices and regard them as a positive part of their lives. Neither is it the case that voices have always been regarded as a negative experience.

Throughout history and even today there are people who hear voices who find their voices inspirational and comforting. These are facts that on the face of it are hard to square with the extremely negative way that the experience is regarded by psychiatry. The researchers, practitioners and involved voice hearers believe it is mistaken to regard voice hearing as part of a psychopathic disease syndrome. Rather, they consider it to be more akin to a variation in human experience – if you like, a faculty or differentiation – something like homosexuality, that it is definitely not open to cure.

Thats taken from a page on Hearing Voices from the Mental Health Foundation. I would suggest that you go read that entire page. Like neurodiversity, some members of the hearing voices community acknowledge that their condition (or the condition of a loved one) can be disabling and distressing. However, they all realise that their can be a unique benefit and comfort in knowing who they are. They believe that who they are can be best expressed as a variation in human experience.

A little closer to home (for me anyway), there is something called Mad Pride which is a movement again neurodiversity in all but name. Its a loose conglomeration of self advocates who are (or have been) diagnosed with mental illness:

About 5.7 million Americans over 18 have bipolar disorder, which is classified as a mood disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Another 2.4 million have schizophrenia, which is considered a thought disorder. The small slice of this disparate population who have chosen to share their experiences with the public liken their efforts to those of the gay-rights and similar movements of a generation ago.

Just as gay-rights activists reclaimed the word queer as a badge of honor rather than a slur, these advocates proudly call themselves mad; they say their conditions do not preclude them from productive lives.

The people in all these movements are autistic, manic depressives, schizophrenics, tourettes and many more. None of us deny the bad things that being the way we are can bring. But we do not believe that the fact that we are the way we are means that we are second-class or fodder for nothing more than quack therapies and misplaced pity.

All these peoples – and many more – are the neurologically diverse. The Neurodiverse. Belonging to neither nation, nor politics but simply belonging to the simple idea that everyone is _not_ equal but everyone can advocate best for themselves if supported and respected:

“Broken down it means ‘speaking for yourself’, ‘communicating in other ways’, but it’s personal. For me it means that I can speak for myself. It means I’ve got a voice and even without a voice I can communicate in other ways. It means yes and no- most important- ‘No, I don’t want tea, I want coffee, I don’t want sugar’- all the things we take for granted. It means people must listen to me, I can take a risk, I can have a relationship, that can be hard. I can think for myself, I can go to the shop with support and if I need help, people can help me….

Jackie Downer, Down’s Syndrome Self Advocate.

Dr. Johnson testifies in the Autism Omnibus Hearing

24 May

Dr. Johnson’s testimony was fabulous and I think it’s safe to say that it wreaks more devastation on the petitioners'(the parents) case. As of this moment, I can’t give you a lot of detail about Dr. Johnson’s qualifications, unfortunately. For some reason a portion of the audio recording (MP3) that would have included Dr. Johnson’s statement of his qualifications is missing.

One thing I think is important to point out here is that the respondents experts’ (written) reports, and even the list of the respondents’ experts has not been posted to the Autism Omnibus docket. The parents’ lawyers (the Petitioners Steering Committee, or PSC) do have their experts list posted to the docket. Some time ago (I think it was more than a year ago) the Department of Justice attorneys asked the Special Master if the Federal Court would refrain from posting the lists of the respondent’s experts for fear that their experts would be subjected to harassment. That request doesn’t seem to be on the docket now, but it used to be. It’s likely that after the experts were listed the first time the experts for the government were harassed. This would be in keeping with the way different experts, and even parents such as myself and Kevin Leitch and others, have been harassed by “mercury parents” or their friends. You can see from the Autism Omnibus Proceedings Docket Here: http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/node/2718 that the there are no more postings of lists of respondents’ experts after mid 2006. There’s an entry from March of 2007 that is called, “Respondent’s Notice of Expert Witnesses,” but there’s no document now linked to that entry.

The point I’m trying to make about the missing expert list is: I can’t pull up the list of expert witnesses for the respondents (the US government, essentially) for this hearing because it’s not available. So I can’t find out easily who Dr. Johnson is, though he is a professor at university, and has a lab, and has published on neurophyisology and neurodegenerative diseases, and he uses tissue slides and tissue cultures. Worse, “Johnson” is a very common name so if you go looking for experts named Johnson who publish in neurodegenerative diseases, you’ll find 3 or 4 of them in pubmed. The DoJ lawyer here is one of Mr. Matanoski’s team of attorneys. As far as I can tell the junior attorneys on the team are Bo (Beau?) Johnson, Ms. Ricciardella, Ms. Renzi and Ms. Espinoza (Espinosa?).

I don’t know which lawyer is examining Dr. Johnson. From her voice, I’m guessing (again) that it’s Ms. Renzi. Again this is my transcribing of what was said, some of it is word for word, some of it is a close paraphrase of what was said you can find the following somewhere around 8 minutes 43 seconds on the second MP3 file from Day 7 (May 20). Here is some of the very interesting testimony from Dr. Johnson:

Ms. Renzi: Dr. Deth cited a paper by Mady Hornig in support of his arguments. You mentioned that the mouse strain Dr. Hornig used was selected because it had a stronger immune response, but took issue with Dr. Deth’s explanation of the rationale behind the use of the strain. … Deth said hers was a mouse strain harboring genetic deficits in redox related enzymes… What strain of mouse was used?

Dr. Johnson: It was an SJL-J mouse. (Dr. Deth) was inferring that there was a redox enzyme differential, or some kind of differential (in this strain) and that’s absolutely not true. The mice have a this increased immune response and that’s why they were selected. … There’s absolutely no data supporting the fact that there is a redox enzyme differential. Now I can understand the reason that it’s in there because it supports his hypothesis… but it’s not an accurate representation of these mice.

Renzi: Do you have confidence in Dr. Hornig’s reported results?

Johnson: Uh, no.

Renzi: Part of that has to do with the hippocampal sections, correct?

Johnson: The quality of the images,… I’ll point this out, (the sections from the Hornig paper) .. What you can see is when you look at these images–to me these images are absolutely awful, now the staining here is hematoxylin and eosin, and it’s supposed to stain for architecture and cell integrity and a variety of other things. The pictures are diffuse, there’s no clear neuronal fields. Right here there is weak staining. … If you look here, the cells that are dark right there, those are the neuronal fields. The quality is just extremely low. … Quality of the sections themselves are low. … Let’s put it this way, I’ve seen this in my lab before. I’ve seen people come to me with sections stained like this. I’ll say: Something’s wrong. OK? The tissue wasn’t prepared right. There’s something definately wrong here. Because these do not maintain the nice cellular architecture that you should see if the experiment is done right and the tissue is harvested correctly.

Renzi: Problems with these slides led you to doubt the findings of the Hornig paper? Has a recent paper contradicted Hornig’s findings? …

Johnson: The… comparable fields in the Berman paper. To me they are absolutely beautiful. … It looks very, very, very good.

Renzi: … What dose of thimerosal was used in the Berman paper?

Johnson: …They also used a does that was 10 times higher…

Renzi: Did both studies (stain with antibodies)?

Johnson: There is a distinct difference between Berman and Hornig studies’ slides… If you look at the architecture of the tissue in the Berman study…. (there is) nice staining in the hippocampus….

Special Master:… (interrupt for clarification)

Johnson: … Berman sections are the two sections on the left side… What you can see is there’s very nice staining in the field, the neuronal field are not staining intensely (which is what they are expected to show)

Now if you look at the upper 4 panels on the right side these are from the similar panels from the Hornig study. The first thing that I want to point out is that if you look at the tissue, it’s full of holes… Look at this enhanced image right here, the bottom two panels C and D from the Hornig. You can see that the tissue almost looks like it’s disintegrating, It’s breaking down. There’s holes all over in the tissue.

I know from experience when you see tissue like this the amount of nonspecific staining by antibodies could be intense.

Basically, if someone came to me with this kind of staining in my laboratory I would say to go back and do the whole experiment again,… I would not want… for one these are unpublishable to me, and two the potential for artifactual data to be generated from this kind of (poor quality tissue) is extremely high. … This is very important. You know, you can do whatever you want after you’ve got the tissue, but it’s the process of getting the tissue so that the quality is extremely good. You need to start with high quality tissue.

… The Berman tissue was absolutely perfect. … The sections are beautiful.

One thing I took away from Dr. Johnson’s testimony is that there’s no way that the Hornig paper should

have made it past a competent peer review and into a “peer reviewed” publication. The Hornig paper has a few other problems that have been discussed before, but these problems never been reported in into a letter to the journal that published that paper, Molecular Psychology, as they should have. (Click here to download a copy of that paper from the SAFE MINDS website.)

Hornig wrote that paper with her main squeeze, Ian Lipkin, and with David Chian. This research was funded by the UC Davis MIND Institute, SAFE MINDS and by part of an NIH grant of Ian Lipkin’s. Surely someone knew how bad those tissue slides were even before it was submitted to the journal. Surely someone at the journal should have had a person with some kind of expertise review the article. Surely in 2004 some person with expertise would have noticed the problems with the degraded and uninterpretable tissue slides in the Hornig paper. I didn’t notice any problems with the slides when I read the paper because I don’t know what stained tissue of mouse hippocampus is supposed to look like and neither would most of the mercury parents who have tried to use this paper to show that their own child was made autistic by vaccines containing thimerosal.

The MIND Institute scientists must have seen the problems with Mady Hornig’s study, but they invited her to come speak about her thimerosal-causes-susceptible-mice-to-become-mindlessly-violent-killers hypothesis at the conference I call the “MIND’s mini-DAN!”. Video of her speaking at that conference is still available on the MIND’s website here: http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/mindinstitute/events/toxicology_recorded_events.html

And you can see video of John Green speaking there, too. He was described in the most glowing terms by Dr. Robert Hendren. Maybe Dr. Hendren didn’t know about the “earthworm eggs” and “fecal implantation enemas” that Dr. Green had prescribed to some of his patients. After Green spoke, Dr. Hendren knew about the problems with Green’s citing of a provoked urine toxic heavy metals lab result from Doctor’s Data Inc that was in Dr. Green’s slides, because I told Dr. Hendren about the problem with that lab report. As far as I could tell, Dr. Hendren wasn’t particularly worried about that. The video of Dr. Green “explaining” what that lab test meant to him is still on the MIND’s website. I have a problem with that, since parents can watch those videos and make poor treatment decisions for their children based on them. On the other hand, those videos seem to stand as a testimony to something less than scientific that seems to be going on at the MIND Institute. To UC Davis’ credit however, the Berman (2008) study that totally contradicts the Hornig (2004) study was also conducted at UCD.

Dr. Johnson has plenty of interesting things to say about Dr. Richard Deth and his neuroblastoma cell line experiments. Apparently, Dr. Deth will be back to testify again in the autism omnibus. Perhaps he will explain why he seemed to cut his experiments short (time-wise) and why he called neuroblastoma cells “neronal cells” when they should not be called neuronal cells, and why he didn’t show critically important “dose response curves”.credit: taminsea

I may have to devote a separate post to the issue of Deth taking data from (but not citing) a 1958 paper (pdf) that reported the level of cystathionine in duck brains (besides duck, also, human, cat, rat, guinea pig, horseshoe crab, chicken, cow and monkey).

Should Parents With a Stake in Vaccine Litigation be Disallowed From Commenting?

17 May

As I’d imagine most readers would agree, no, parents with a stake in vaccine litigation should not be disallowed from commenting simply on the basis that they have a conflict of interest. It doesn’t matter if the conflict of interest runs in the millions of dollars. Should Jon Poling, for example, be disallowed from commenting? I don’t think so in the least. In fact, some of us wish he’d be more forthcoming with information about his daughter’s case.

So why am I bringing this up? Apparently, Kim Stagliano does think it is a good idea for people with conflicts of interest in this debate to shut up, judging from a recent post of hers.

DR. OFFIT’S CONFLICT OF INTEREST SHOULD DISALLOW HIM FROM COMMENTING

(See also Orac’s take)

For those who aren’t familiar with Kim Stagliano, she’s the parent of two autistic little girls, one of whom, I understand, has never been vaccinated. Some call Kim the poster child of autism genetics. But I digress.

All of this got me thinking about conflicts of interest, though, and I’ve come to the conclusion that not all conflicts of interest are created equal. Let’s take monetary conflicts of interest, for starters. I can identify 3 groups in the autism community that do not have monetary conflicts of interest.

  1. Parents with no stake in vaccine litigation.
  2. Autistic people with no stake in vaccine litigation (which would include all autistic adults).
  3. Scientists and professionals who do not make a living from research or litigation on autism or related matters.

This is a rough characterization, of course. It’s always possible for parents or autistic adults to have conflicts of interest through their employment, for example. I doubt this is usually the case, nevertheless.

Some might say I’m biased, as I have basically identified the Autism Hub and friends as not having significant monetary conflicts of interest. Be that as it may, I believe it’s a roughly accurate characterization, and I’m willing to listen to arguments to the contrary.

But let’s face it. None of us are free of conflicts of interest in general. We might oppose attempts to stigmatize us, especially if said stigmatization is based on almost certainly false claims. We might have a huge emotional investment in the outcome of our kids. We might see litigation-motivated alt-med as a threat to the integrity of science, and so forth.

The point is that if Kim were right, then none of us, from any side of the debate, should be allowed to comment. Beyond arguments about freedom of speech, this is obviously nonsensical. Kim Stagliano should reconsider her statement.

A secondary point is that there are conflicts of interest and there are conflicts of interest. It seems to me that someone attempting to make millions in court, or someone who has been actually payed nearly millions to produce evidence of causation (which is not speculation on my part) has a much bigger conflict of interest than, say, someone who is employed by the government or someone who has served in the advisory panel of a pharmaceutical company. But again, none of this should disallow someone from commenting. It can be used to make a judgement about trustworthiness, sure.

The Autism Epidemic Meme is Behind Almost All Autism Woo: A Call for Additional Research

13 May

After learning former US president Bill Clinton had indicated he believes that “the number of children who are born with autism [is] tripling every 20 years” (hat tip Orac), an understandable reaction might be to point out his ignorance. Understandable, yes, but I think we are looking at a bigger problem than lack of scientific literacy or political pandering in this case; a problem that is going to have to be addressed in a manner that is clear and generally convincing.

A lot of the discussion in the autism community centers around the anti-vaccination movement. It is true that anti-vaccination could potentially become a major problem for the world as a whole, and it is also true that it is a source of stigma for autistics. Some of us have taken it to be our fight, even though it should probably be the CDC’s or the WHO’s fight, if they were not, as it seems, asleep at the wheel. Nevertheless, I think the persistent autism epidemic meme is a much bigger issue as far as the autism community is concerned. Not only is the notion of an epidemic stigmatizing, but it results in ideas that are more than just theoretically harmful to autistics, such as the idea that autistic adults don’t exist. These ideas will be around regardless of the existence of an anti-vaccination movement.

In my regular blog I have discussed the evidence against the notion of an autism epidemic at length. If I may say so myself, I might have even managed to half persuade a few people from the other side of the debate.
What I want to do here, however, is to essentially critique the evidence I’ve discussed thus far. Let me explain why.

Those of us who are immersed in scientific discussions involving autism are well aware, for example, of diagnostic substitution, of an apparently high prevalence of autism in adults, of the changing characteristics of autistics over time, of regional prevalence differences that resemble time-dependent differences, of the stability of cognitive disability as a whole, of the stability (even the decline) of institutionalization rates, of what went on in the past, and so forth. Taken as a whole, this evidence is overwhelming and convincing to someone such as myself who has studied and perseverated on it for years. Fundamentally, though, it is evidence that has a number of problems: It is too numerous, complex, disjoint and most importantly, lacking in precision; none of it is decisive on its own. We are talking about many bits and pieces of evidence that need to be put together and thought through in order to arrive at the conclusion that there is no such thing as an autism epidemic. I don’t expect someone such as Mr. Clinton to be aware of this evidence, understand it, or think through it, much less be able to analyze some of the publicly available data that is not yet available through the scientific literature.

You see, there’s no such thing as an IOM report on the autism “epidemic.” While I’m personally not that fond of basing my beliefs on what authority tells me I should believe, I think a pronouncement by major authorities on the matter would help inform the general public of the state of the debate and the evidence. For this, however, I believe additional research that specifically addresses the matter in a clear way is needed. Allow me to propose some avenues of future research that could potentially answer the remaining questions once and for all. I encourage readers to propose their own ideas.

1) Replicate Lotter (1967). We know that the prevalence of autism as currently defined is relatively high. We also know that the prevalence of autism as defined in the 1960s was relatively low (4.5 in 10,000). What we don’t know is whether the prevalence of autism ascertained using Lotter’s operationalized criteria and methods is still relatively low in 2008. I think it should be feasible to replicate Lotter’s methodology and criteria today and find out the prevalence, not of DSM-IV autism, but of autism as it was thought of in the past. Without meaning to be disrespectful, this should preferably be done while Lorna Wing is still with us. She claims to know which kinds of children Vic Lotter considered autistic and which he didn’t.

2) Determine the prevalence of autism in adults. This one is non-trivial, as there are some ethical issues to consider, but it seems they will attempt it in the UK. I hope it’s not another case of trying to find how many adults are diagnosed with autism or receiving services under an autism category. This wouldn’t teach us anything new and would just be fodder for David Kirby’s blog. I also hope they don’t assume all autistics must be psychiatric patients, for example. They should find a lot of autistics in the general population, and there is evidence they should find many who might not be diagnosable with autism despite meeting criteria, for various technical reasons. Of course, they also need to look in institutions and group homes, since a ready rebuttal will be that “low functioning” autism must therefore be what’s rare in adults.

3) Determine if regional differences in prevalence are real. When you study administrative databases in some detail, one thing that immediately jumps out is that there are huge disparities in the administrative prevalence of autism between certain regions, be it states, regional centers or counties. I have reasons to believe these differences are not real. If these differences are not real, I’d suggest it would be reasonable to hypothesize that time-based differences in administrative autism prevalence are of the same nature. I have suggested, for example, screening children with mental retardation from different regional centers in California to determine, at the very least, if there are real discrepancies in the prevalence of autism within the population with mental retardation. Another question that needs to be answered is why population density correlates so well with administrative prevalence (independently of things like environmental pollution, as I’ve recently found).

4) Explain the changes with a mathematical model. The plausible mechanisms that explain the rise in diagnoses of autism have been discussed at some length. They might include increased awareness, changes in official criteria, an increased availability of specialists, an increased availability of certain services, changes in cultural beliefs, and so on. I have even discussed the internet as a potential driving force behind increased awareness, particularly in the 1990s. But let’s face it, these are all essentially unproven mechanisms. No one has done a multivariate analysis that gives us a coefficient for each variable. Granted, some things are hard to quantify. It would be a lot like trying to quantify word of mouth. But some of this should be doable.

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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

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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

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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.

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Mainstream Media & Autism

25 Feb

Autistics like Baggs are now leading a nascent civil rights movement. “I remember in ’99,” she says, “seeing a number of gay pride Web sites. I envied how many there were and wished there was something like that for autism. Now there is.” The message: We’re here. We’re weird. Get used to it.

Amanda Baggs

Mottron draws a parallel with homosexuality. Until 1974, psychiatry’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, described being gay as a mental illness. Someday, Mottron says, we’ll look back on today’s ideas about autism with the same sense of shame that we now feel when talking about psychology’s pre-1974 views on sexuality. “We want to break the idea that autism should definitely be suppressed,” he says.

Laurent Mottron

….she went on an information-devouring rampage. “There’s such a variety of human behavior. Why is my kind wrong?” she asks.

Michelle Dawson

All this from The New Autism which you can download from the Wired website – or buy in its offline format.

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.

From Mike McCarron to the Autism Hub

27 Jan

What follows is the text of an open letter, Mike McCarron, grandpa of Katie McCarron wishes to pass on to Autism Hub members.

An open letter to members of the Autism Hub.

I wish to thank each of you for your words; both about Katie and about people with special needs in general. In a world where differences easily become reasons to devalue people, your words have always conveyed respect, dignity and love for those with special needs.

I know that each of you from time to time question if you should express yourself and wonder if you are making a difference. Your opinions and descriptions of your travels in life have made a big difference to one grandfather and I suspect to many other parents.

In the days following my granddaughter’s death I was very upset. As I read comments from autism “advocates”, I moved from upset into anger. Many wanted to twist what happened to fit into their own agendas. All of you know the dialogue. I began to feel that all reason and common decency had been beaten out of society and replaced with hysterical and illogical screaming. Every time I would read some “advocate” say they could understand how a person could kill a child with autism I would bristle and await their self serving monologue of martyrdom. I even viewed a film clip that turned my stomach but it was receiving wide acclaim.

Then I encountered a different film, one of a little girl bouncing on a trampoline and I met Kevin. Next I found Kristina and the rest of your sites followed at different times mostly by reference from one of these two. During the extremely long trial process of twenty months I have visited your sites, some almost daily. Sometimes I would comment under a pseudonym but most of the time I just read and drew strength from your thoughts and your love. My interest in your posts varied by topic but I was always gratified and reassured by the love you expressed for your children and the respect shown for all people with differences.

I have had the pleasure of meeting some of you in person, I have corresponded with some of you, and still others I know only through your words on the internet. But words are so vitally important. The words used by some are frightening, intended solely for shock value, but are very divisive in the long term. Every time an “advocate” classifies autism as a fate worse than death they not only display the weakness of their own mind, but they do a terrible disservice to every autistic person. Your words and posts, firmly grounded in respect and love, foster the understanding needed for social movement toward improvement.

I sincerely hope that parents new to the autism community encounter the hub and your sites long before visiting many others. I find it strange to recommend sites that value human dignity; every site should, but too many don’t. That is what makes your sites so valuable. It seems that autism falls prey to every kind of con artist, they need to be exposed. It also seems that anything can be said about people with autism if the person saying it claims it was done to create awareness, they need to be set straight. Please continue to lead by example, do it as time permits but do what you can and what you already do so very well.

Sincerely,

Mike McCarron

Autism is a trait

6 Oct

Tyrin RencherDriving yesterday evening, I passed a bus stop with a United Way advertisement with the slogan, “Autism is a trait, not a debilitation.” Obviously, when I made my way back online, I tried to find out a bit more about this United Way Campaign.

Through Google, I found a link to the campaign on the United Way website. Unfortunately, when I tried the link I received a 404 error. Hopefully it comes back up soon.

There was also a link to a story in the Belleville (Illinois) News-Democrat about the spokesman of the campaign, Tyrin Rencher (pictured at right).

He is on posters, pamphlets and television screens all around the St. Louis region as one of the many faces of the United Way fundraising campaign this season.

Most people probably recognize Tyrin Rencher as the smiling young man in a red apron standing in the kitchen at Pasta Fare in Fairview Heights beneath the slogan: “Autism is a trait, not a debilitation.”

Rencher, 27, of East St. Louis, has autism. He was diagnosed with autism at 2 1/2 years old and was enrolled in the Illinois Center for Autism in Fairview Heights when he was 3. He still receives services through the organization and was selected as a spokesman for the United Way campaign this year and as a spokesman for the Illinois Center for Autism.

The article also gives a bit of bit of Tyrin’s history and what he’s up to today (besides being a “celebrity”):

He is currently a junior at the University of Missouri St. Louis, where he is working toward a degree in business administration.

When talking to Rencher, a person quickly learns that he’s a man determined to fulfill his dreams, in spite of the autism, and he is an example of the slogan over his head on the United Way posters.

“A lot of the stuff I planned is coming true and I’m speechless that it is all happening,” he said. “I want to open up a restaurant with my degree. Something small, like (Pasta Fare.)”

He is thankful the Illinois Center of Autism was around when he was diagnosed when he was a toddler.

“Without them, I would be lost,” he said. “I really wouldn’t be in a position to go to college right now.”

He is learning to live on his own for the first time, something that he sometimes finds difficult.

“But I’m learning, it’s tough, but I’m trying to adjust to living on my own,” Rencher said. “One of the things my family has taught me is perseverance, and I do that every day.”

I love to see “good news” stories about autism, and this is one of the “goodest” I’ve seen in a while: it shows an autistic adult making his way in the world, it shows that an autistic person’s dreams and life aspirations are just like the rest of ours, and it shows an organization dedicated to helping people make their way in the world AS THEY ARE instead of trying to fundamentally change them.

Why investigating Wakefield matters

1 Aug

I occasionally get emails or blog comments along the general lines of:

Why do you do this? These people [Wakefield, DAN, whomever] are trying to help autistic kids!

The (il)logic train is very simple to these people: X listened to their ideas about vaccines and autism, X tries out never-seen-before-treatments on autistic patients therefore X is a hero. When X gets examined with disdain from mainstream medicine X becomes a martyr.

There is a bizarre disconnect at work here. Somehow we have progressed from an idea that scientific enquiry adds to the general body of scientific knowledge to the idea that its just about OK to do anything to patients irrespective of what’s actually ‘wrong’ with them in order to advance a poorly supported hypothesis.

Here’s why this matters to me and why Andrew Wakefield is a prime example of all that has gone bad in the small but very vocal subset of autism parents who believe MMR/thiomersal/vaccines in general causes/triggers autism.

First and foremost is the basic injury done to the scientific objective truth. This is, I agree, an entirely abstract concept but it has implications in our every day real-world lives. Science is what brought us the nice cubes of ice in our whisky and also brought us the Nuclear bomb. Whatever we personally think of these results, science has prevailed in both cases. The _truth_ has prevailed.

The people I and others refer to as the Mercury Militia (referring to the anti-vaccine/autism/parent activists) are not interested in the truth. This is not an opinion, it simply is. From the National Autism Associations deliberate and outright lies about what science has revealed about autism, to their supporters attempts to silence the debate via threats of violence and encompassing Lenny Schafer’s admission that there is not enough science to support the idea of a vaccine hypthesis and their only chance of ‘winning’ is via a legal route with vastly lower standards of evidentiray proof as well as David Kirby’s refusal to fess up to the terms of the hypothesis he himself set.

What people need to grasp is that this basic dishonesty permeates the entire autism/vaccine hypothesis. Time after time, when presented with more attempts to establish the truth, they never fail to act dishonestly and lie to support their beliefs.

As far as scientific objectivity and a search for the _actual_ truth is concerned – forget it. This is a set of people who are simply uninterested. If a story/hypothesis emerges that doesn’t embrace vaccines as causative agents then they will attack it. And what they will attack it with is mostly lies.

I have a question for them and people who believe and trust them – and I know they read this blog. The question is this: how good do you think the quality of any information/data is that emerges from the mouths of people who lie, evade and threaten? How good do you think the science is that originates from people who plagiarise other peoples work? How accurate do you think advocacy groups that lie to the media about what they believe are?

At some point there has to be a time when even self-denial cannot support these people. As we have seen, recent attempts to coerce the media have resulted in humiliating climbdown after climbdown. How far can denial continue to power the majority of the new soccer-mom, middle-class powered anti-vaccine movement of the naughty noughties?

Let’s take an example that touches on the title of this blog – Andrew Wakefield. His hypothesis regarding MMR and autism was discussed at length during the recent Autism Omnibus hearings (Cedillo, June 2007).

Andrew Wakefield is seen as a pretty much a demigod amongst the Mercury Militia. His word is taken on pure faith. Why? Because he agrees with certain parents that the MMR jab caused/triggered their child’s autism. The basic hypothesis is as follows:

1) Child is injected with MMR
2) Measles virus (MV) travels to gut causing various gastro issues
3) MV carries on travelling to the brain causing autism symptoms

ergo – MMR causes autism with associated gastro issues.

The whole hypothesis stands or falls on finding vaccine strain MV in the guts of autistic children. Wakefield (and others) claim they have. However, the facts tell a different story.

Wakefield (and all others) used a technique called PCR to ‘find’ MV in their subjects. During the afore-referenced Cedillo hearing, Dr Stephen Bustin gave testimony. Bustin is possibly _the_ world expert on PCR. Not only does Bustin use PCR every day, he has 14 papers in the peer reviewed literature on PCR, over 8 book chapters and is personally the author of the A to Z of Quantitative PCR. which is considered ‘the bible’ of PCR. One of his papers has been cited over 1,000 times. Another has been cited over 500 times. He both organises and speaks at international PCR conferences.

Basically, when it comes to PCR, the technique Wakefield (and others) used to ‘find’ MV – this is the guy.

NB – this whole section of evidence I blogged extensively, including quotes. Please read for more detail.

Bustin was first and foremost concerned that:

1) The technique that utilised PCR and employed by Wakefield (and others) was essentially useless. No controls were used. This is a serious scientific omission and makes comparing the data accurately impossible.
2) The technique failed to outline procedures for dealing with contamination of data
3) There were mismatched and misrepresented data designs

These items raise very grave questions over the _methodology_ used. The next set of concerns reveal the full extent of the scientific shambles of the entire MMR/autism industry.

This is a vital point to understand before we discuss these things. It is vital that we remember that, aside from one unpublished poster presentation (Walker 2006), _all_ , I repeat _all_ science that has claimed to find vaccine strain MV in the guts of autistic patients used the same lab to get its results – Unigentics, the lab of Professor John O’Leary. It is also vital to remember that Stephen Bustin did not just examine for afar. He spent over 1,5000 hours in the O’Leary lab before coming to his conclusions.

His conclusions were devastating.

1) The O’Leary lab had failed to take necessary steps. This omission made it impossible they were detecting MV.
2) The O’Leary lab was contaminated.
3) It was the contamination that O’Leary’s lab was detecting, not MV. Its worth quoting Bustin at this point:

So all of this evidence suggests very, very strongly that what they are detecting is DNA and not RNA. Because measles virus doesn’t exist as a DNA molecule in nature, they cannot be detecting measles virus RNA. They are detecting a contaminant.

It cannot be any clearer. According to the the man who is the recognised world expert on the technique that *all published science claiming to find MV in the guts of autistic kids* lab utilised, it is simply not possible that this lab could’ve detected MV. Without MV, there is no MMR/autism hypothesis.

And what is the response of Wakefield’s supporters to all this? I will quote John Stone, who fancies himself the cool calm voice of the MMR branch of the autism/antivax movement. When presented with Bustin’s testimony, he said:

I do not think there is much to be gained by arguing about the contents of a test tube….

This tells us all we need to know about the levels of denial that operate in this arena. Stone resorts to saying that the Cedillo case was not settled yet, which is true. However he evades the point that Bustin’s testimony is not dependant on legal justification. It is dependant on scientific accuracy. Given that it is *documented by O’Leary’s own lab procedure* that they omitted key parts of the process necessary to establish the presence of MV, I really don’t know what else there is to say on the matter.

Secondly is the effect all this anti-vaccination rhetoric has on the health and safety of public citizens. News stories that are accumulating started circulating a year or so ago on dropping immunisation rates and rising deaths and injury from vaccine-preventable illness:

In the course of 10 days, officials confirmed four pertussis cases, including the hospitalization of one child to treat respiratory symptoms. All of the cases afflicted children under 5 years old, and one in an infant just a couple of days old, according to Ravalli County Public Health Nurse Judy Griffin…..There have been more than 450 cases of pertussis in Montana so far this year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The infection rate is much higher than average years, when about 30 cases are reported….”Parents should check immunization records and make sure they’re up to date,” Nurse Judy Griffin said.

Ravalli Republic.

(Columbia) The state health department said yesterday that an infant has died from whooping cough. It is the first death reported in South Carolina from the disease in nearly three years….The health agency said it’s important children receive pertussis vaccinations on schedule.

WLTX News.

A whooping cough epidemic has hit Deschutes County. Health officials say that in the past six weeks, 18 cases of pertussis have been identified in the county. In all of 2004, there were only two cases of pertussis in Deschutes County.

KATU 2.

An increase in cases of the highly contagious whooping cough is prompting state health officials to urge stricter compliance with childhood immunization schedules….Cases have increased annually from 22 statewide in 1996 to 120 last year…Oklahoma’s childhood immunization levels continue to lag behind those nationally, officials said.

RedNova News

Kids are dying again. And in some areas of the US the disease causing those deaths is at epidemic (real epidemic as oppose to autism epidemic) proportions. And thats just one disease that vaccination removed the sting from for many years. In my country (UK) we’ve recently had a Mumps epidemic.

Vaccine uptake rates of this vaccine in the UK have fallen to amongst the lowest in Europe:

Take-up rates of the jab dropped throughout the UK, down to less than 70% in some areas, after a small-scale study published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr Andrew Wakefield suggested a link to autism.

Source.

In 2004, mumps cases in the England and Wales rose from 4,204 in 2003 to 16,436 in 2004, nearly a four-fold increase.

And in the first month of 2005, there were nearly 5,000 cases. Most were among young adults born before 1988 and who would, therefore, not have been offered MMR as a child. In the second paper, Dr Ravindra Gupta, from London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’, working with colleagues from King’s College London, found cases have also occurring in very young children who would have been eligible for the MMR – measles, mumps and rubella – vaccine…..Dr Gupta (…) said uptake of MMR among two-year-olds in the UK fell from around 92% in early 1995 to around 80% in 2003/4.

Source.

In October 2004, experts predicted that due to falling vaccination uptake, the UK would start to suffer from ‘small outbreaks’:

The medical newspaper Pulse has warned that there could be a measles epidemic this winter on a scale last seen in the 1960s. It said that lowering levels of immunity meant as many as 12% of children and 20% of adults could be hospitalised if infected by measles.

Source.

And now, last year, 18 months after these warnings, we have the UK’s first measles induced fatality in 14 years.

The 13-year-old who died last month lived in a travellers’ community. It is thought that he had a weakened immune system; he was being treated for a lung condition. The boy died of an infection of the central nervous system caused by a reaction to the measles virus. The Health Protection Agency described his death as shocking.

Source

The Times also says that of the 72 reported measles cases in that last month, 9 required hospitalisation – this tallies almost exactly with the 2004 prediction of a hospitalisation rate of 12%.

This is real evidence of harm. Never forget it can be traced back to a man with absolutely no evidence at all to support the science of his claims.

Thirdly is the effect all of this has on autism and autistic people like my daughter. The vaccine induced blind panic that the people behind these hypotheses and their media agents at the NAA, SafeMinds, Treating Autism and Generation Rescue have done their best to inculcate is having a toll on autistic people. Here’s a passage from an email I received a few months ago:

…when I said he was autistic, they told me I shouldn’t bring him to a school, that vaccines had made him ill and that their kids could catch that illness….after all, these women reasoned that if it [autism] could be caused by vaccines, it could be caught and passed on to other kids….

This is frightening. Autism as a condition has a lot of stigma to deal with already. The fact is that any hypothesis that has gone on now for over 10 years without any scientific support, as the vaccine/autism one has, needs to shut up and move on. No good can come of creating more stigma for no benefit.

In 2004, the BBC discussed a report from the Institute of Child Health, the National Autistic Society and the Parents’ Autism Campaign for Education that looked at the state of autism research. One of its conclusions was that:

….the row over a possible link with the MMR jab has over-shadowed the fact that little is known about the behavioural disorder….

This has led to a situation wherein:

…It showed almost 60% of UK autism research only looks into the symptoms, while just 22% is dedicated to the causes, 8% to possible interventions and only 5% to the effect of family history.

So, a dwindling 8% of all autism research fundings looks into interventions. The marketing of the MMR hypothesis has meant that this pathetic 8% is all that autistic people can expect in terms of educational research, programs for adults – basically if it will have some tangible impact on the lives of autistic people then it comes out of this 8%.

This then, is the legacy of the autism/vaccine hypothesis and its supporters. Bad for the truth, bad for science, bad for public health and bad for autistic people.

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