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David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part II

22 Jan

Once upon a time, there was a man called David Kirby and he came to believe in a certain hypothesis so much that he wrote a book called ‘Evidence of Harm: _MERCURY IN VACCINES AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY_’ and this man wrote lots of blog posts that he never discussed on his blog and eventually he also agreed to a debate and this debate was called ‘Vaccines and Autism, Is There A Connection’.

The man made an opening statement which outlined his beliefs and these were….

Woah there…._’both in vaccines and in the environment’_ ? Where did that come from? How did this man who wrote a book who’s strapline talks solely about vaccines and who is participating in a debate who’s title refers solely about vaccines suddenly think it was OK to start talking about ‘the environment’.

Now, don’t get me wrong – he may be right, he may be wrong. That is not the point. The book and the debate are about the _vaccine_ hypothesis. Didn’t this debate have moderators?

Woah!!!! What the hell…? The first part of that little soliloquy is fine, but then….ah, lets look at it written down:

_”I’m not here to say thimerosal causes autism, I’m not here to say thimerosal is the only cause of autism. We don’t know what causes autism. But there’s evidence to suggest that **mercury** is one of the culprits in at least one of the cases…**and that’s what we’ll be looking at today.**”_

So David Kirby, all by himself, has abandoned the agenda and decided to stop talking about vaccines in particular and start talking about mercury in general. Did anyone stop him? Didn’t this debate have moderators?

This is getting ridiculous. Why are ‘we’ talking about four different types of mercury. This debate is about _vaccines_ (or that’s what I once thought – that’s what the PDF advertising said – it did, didn’t it? I didn’t hallucinate it did I?) and that means just _one_ type of mercury. Thiomersal. Thimerosal. Ethyl. That’s it. One. Not four. Hello?

Well, kudos for saying it publicly Mr Kirby. In future parts of my look at this debate I’ll be seeing why it doesn’t matter……oh wait….wait, here we go:

Now lets make sure we understand this. In July of 2005, Kirby wrote a Huffington Post entry that talked of these same California numbers in rather different terms:

The Golden State, however, is said to operate the gold standard of autism epidemiology, having always tracked “full-blown” autism only, as defined by the DSM-IV manual. In other words, children with milder forms of the disorder, such as PDD and Apserger Syndrome, need not apply for services. This means that nearly two decades of rising cases in California cannot be attributed to wider diagnostic criteria. The autism epidemic is real.

Hmm. So in 2005, California epidemiology (the gold standard according to Kirby) is good enough to declare ‘the epidemic real’ but in 2007, its not enough to disprove the epidemic when the numbers don’t go your way.

So why is the drop in numbers such a potential bombshell? Because children entering the system today were born in 2001 and 2002, soon after the mercury-based preservative thimerosal began to be phased out of pediatric vaccines in the United States. In California, fewer children with full-blown autism entered the system in 2003 than in 2002……Stay tuned. If the numbers in California and elsewhere continue to drop – and that still is a big if — the implication of thimerosal in the autism epidemic will be practically undeniable.

Hmm. So in 2005, if the numbers ‘continue to drop’ then ‘the implication of thimerosal will be practically undeniable’, but in 2007 when its quite clear the numbers are not dropping and never actually did then the reverse implication – that thiomersal is _not_ implicated in autism -cannot be true.

Weird. Some people might call that hypocrisy.

The next section of the debate has been expertly blogged by Mike. Go have a read. You should also read Joseph’s demolition of David Kirby’s latest epidemiology and Dad of Cameron’s look at Kirby’s grasp of science.

Kevin Barry and dumbing down science

20 Jan

Kevin Barry’s Ethics

Kevin Barry used to be deputy (or something) to Brad Handley’s Sherriff at Generation Rescue. He announced to the EoH Yahoo Group on 21st Nov 2006 that:

As of December 1st, I begin work as a consultant to Autism Speaks. In order to avoid any conflict of interest, I am resigning as President of Generation Rescue.

What a decent guy – wanting to avoid any conflict of interest.

End of story? Of course not. Never is with these goons.

Yesterday, it was noted that one Heidi Roger had made a post to the EoH group exhorting members to flood the Autism Speaks website who had asked for opinions on ‘Unstrange Minds‘ (which you may recall is skeptical regarding a vaccine initiated epidemic).

Except, Heidi had forgotten to strip out the message she had got from the person who had sent her this news. Good old conflict-of-interest avoider, Kevin Barry:

Hi Heidi, Confidential. I am not allowed to comment on the Boards. Would you post this to the EOH board as if you can upon it yourself? It is a page where people can comment on the epidemic “debate”. It would not hurt if Autism Speaks heard more feedback from EOH parents. Thanks, Kevin

Oops (screenshot attached).

So, here we have the moral and ethical finery of Generation Rescue and militia members on show. It seems that Barry is keen only not to get caught. I hope he gets fired. He should be.

Dumbing Down Science

Some fascinating legal developments in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings (OAP). Firstly a quick recap:

A bunch of people decided thiomersal caused their kids autism and decided to sue various people. By doing this, they stepped out of the opportunity to go down the Vaccine Program route which would allow them to contest their beliefs in a very much less stringent legal environment. However, the vaccine makers would suffer no liability and the plaintiffs would gain only a set amount (I think US$100,000) should they win their case.

They eschewed this process and decided they wanted to go down the full, legal shenanigans route. I’ve read invective from various blowhards who talk about taking the vaccine makers to account publicly and making sure that they are vindicated in a proper court of law (and of course the unspoken promise of megabucks).

OK, so fast forward a couple of years and we come to the RhoGAM/autism/thiomersal case in which the vaccine causation hypothesis was utterly demolished under the (totally appropriate) legal principle of Daubert. The take home quote from that case was:

This Court must find more than the “hypothesis and speculation,” engaged in [by Dr. Geier] in this instance….

The science was so bad, the case never even made it to trial. It was dismissed as a total waste of time.

Now you can bet the legal team for the OAP petitioners (numbering some 4,700 claims by now) were watching this closely and on Jan 9th this year, a new document was submitted which detailed how the Petitioners thought the trial should be conducted.

First of all, they want to use a ‘test case’ i.e. a handpicked petitioner from the 4,700 who would:

…serve as a representative case for a significant number of children who claim that a combination of thimerosal exposure and the MMR vaccine caused injury.

and then followed by cases solely addressing thiomersal and cases solely addressing MMR.

Okaaay. Also in this document was a reminder in this document that:

they needed ‘more time for the science to crystallize.’

Heh – you can say that again. Has the ‘crystallisation’ occurred? Maybe the overall intent of this document will tell us.

On page six of the document I have linked to above, the petitioners start to argue that the same legal rules that govern the Vaccine Program (described above) should be used to ‘judge’ the OAP proceedings. They repeat the arguments that led to the setting up of the Vaccine Program originally touching on how vaccines were a national health priority and that supply should not be endangered. The purpose of this legislation therefore was to try and limit the number of civil cases against vaccine manufacturers so that the health of the nations children was never compromised (see pages 6 – 7) .

In order to do this, it was accepted that the burden of proof would be substantially less. It was also noted that from time to time, people who’s kids weren’t actually damaged by vaccines would be awarded compensation. As the petitioners define the statute it reads:

As enacted the vaccinate act has a unique evidentiary standard, a unique standard, one that facilitates resolution of cases in the Vaccine Program and discourages the diversion of cases to the civil arena. It does not require a petitioner to prove his or her case with scientific certainty. It does not require ‘truth’. It does not require a petitioner to show ’cause in fact’

So why is all this lead up to the vaccine program necessary? Because the petitioners – who eschewed their option to go down the vaccine program option if you recall – now want their cases to be tried under these same ‘relaxed’ standards. They want their _civil legal cases_ to be tried under conditions that do not require the truth.

Wow. Just wow. The bare faced, cowardly effrontery of it defies belief.

Let us recall that at the start of these proceedings, plaintiffs stated they required time for their science to crystallize. Now they want to their omnibus case to be tried under a standard that doesn’t require scientific certainty or indeed, truth. That tells its own story about how good the state of the ‘science’ is underpinning the OAP case.

But what really galls me is that here are these people who had their opportunity to go down the route of the vaccine program and follow the same set of rules as described above and refused. They wanted to make a big song and dance about it and parade their science. Now that its apparent that their science is crap, they want their cases to be tried under the same legalities as the vaccine program cases are. Talk about wanting your cake and eating it.

If it was up to me, I’d tell them to go away and accept the consequences of their actions.

UPDATE: Please scroll down and read Anne’s comments on the _actual_ status of the OAP. It seems a whole lot of people who are part of the Omnibus are badly mistaken as to the nature of it and I’ve duplicated their misunderstanding.

David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part I

15 Jan

ACIP Meeting Minutes, Feb 2002

It’ll be Part I because after the debate video is released I’m sure there will be more to come. This post will concentrate on the pre-debate interview involving both people on Fox and the words of several audience members.

OK, so, first lets look at the joint interview on Fox.

When asked what the issue was with vaccines Kirby replied that it was because up until _”very recently”_ , _”most”_ vaccines contained thimerosal. This is incorrect. Unless your definition of ‘very recently’ is five years ago and your definition of ‘most’ is between 2 and 5 % then its incorrect. Note that I am choosing to believe Kirby is simply incorrect and a sloppy researcher rather than a good researcher who knew about a document we’ll discuss shortly and elected to suppress his knowledge of it.

Kirby’s next error is when he makes reference to the ‘epidemic’ – he says in the the 90’s we start to see the number of autism cases really start to climb and that it ‘almost tracks exactly’ with the addition of thiomersal containing vaccines. This isn’t an error. Kirby knows this isn’t the case. He knows the ‘science’ that argues this hypothesis is poor, published in non peer reviewed, bad quality journals by people who utilised poor data sources.

However, this sentence also damns Kirby to sticking with those sources. If he wants to quote them to back up his points then he needs to realise you can’t simply abandon them when they don’t – and one of those sources is CDDS, and CDDS has very recently contradicted Kirby.

Kirby then proceeds from one error to another. He states that the symptoms of mercury poisoning are very similar to the symptoms of autism. They aren’t.

At what point do these errors that are stacking up become outright lies and dishonesty? I’m not sure but its a pretty fine line.

About a minute and 40 seconds into the interview, Kirby debuts his new adjusted hypothesis. He mentions all the ‘environmental mercury’ and makes special mention of California in order to challenge the CDDS stats I would assume.

Now excuse me if I’m wrong but isn’t the strapline to Kirby’s book _”MERCURY IN VACCINES AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY”_?

It is. So what’s with the sudden interest in ‘environmental mercury’. This interview was booked regarding the upcoming debate with Arthur Allen about the _vaccine_ hypothesis – the hypothesis Kirby made the central subject and content of the book. In this context I’m utterly uninterested in this new, competing theory. Stick to the subject would be my message and stop building convenient strawmen. More about this later too.

About three and a half minutes into the interview Arthur Allen gives Kirby a bit of a shock. He mentions the 2% figure I mentioned at the top of this post.

Let’s make sure we know what we’re talking about here. To do that we’ll skip forward to some remarks made by an EoH Yahoo Group member who attended the debate. These are her words about what Kirby had said.

We do not know when 25 mcg infant vaccines really made it off the shelves. When the CDC says the supply was down to 2% in 2003 (I think that was the stat) it was not official. They called vaccine providers and asked what was in the fridge — not a definitive answer.

First off I urge caution – the video’s not been made available yet so this person could be in error but lets assume for now its not.

This proclamation by Kirby is wrong on many levels.

We _do_ know when the vaccines made it off the shelves, the supply was down to 1.9% in 2002, they did _not_ ‘call vaccine providers and ask them what was in the fridge’. Here’s what actually happened (you can download the document at the top of this post to see for yourself if you want to).

In Feb 2002, a meeting was held by the CDC to discuss many aspects of vaccine policy and supply, one of which was the thiomersal issue. Here are the main points (see page 51 of the document):

1) The thiomersal update was made regarding paediatric vaccines. Babies and kids.
2) There was a _survey_ conducted from Sept 2001 to Feb 2002
3) The survey was performed using site visits from public health officials
4) In September 2001, 225 sites were canvassed, and 447 by February 2002.
5) The decline in thimerosal-containing vaccine went from 5.6 percent to 1.9%, from 33,500 doses out of 63,600; to 2,796 doses out of 149,147
6) Of the 447 interviews, 83.5 percent reported no thimerosal-containing vaccines in stock at any time since October 2001.

Make no mistake, this is a bombshell to the thimerosal hypothesis. When examined in context with the CDDS data which shows _no decline in autism_ this is the smoking gun that kills the thiomersal hypothesis stone dead.

To make it crystal clear – by 2002 thiomersal containing vaccines made up 1.9% of supply. Autism numbers are still rising. Reconcile if you can.

Anyway, back to David Kirby. Not a stupid man, he can see the writing on the wall. So what does he do? He makes up something else to ‘plug the gap’. Now its not ‘mercury in vaccines – a medical controversy’ now the writing is on the wall something else is needed. back to our EoH attendee:

Calif has had horrendous forest fires over the last 5 years (much more so than the previous 20), and pregnant women are breathing the fumes. Forrest fires release a lot more mercury than even coal fired power plants.

The horrific coal generated mercury pollution from China (as we have been reading) is getting worse and the mercury by-product is brought into CA (particularly So Cal) from the jet stream. These coal fired power plants have expontially increased since 2000.

Aha – here we have it. The prelude to Kirby’s second book methinks – he’s going to go all Al Gore on us and expound on the evils of environmental pollution.

Let’s be clear here: this is a de facto admission that the vaccine hypothesis is dead in a ditch. the minute that he reneged on his ‘severe blow’ of 2007 and the minute he went against the strapline of his own book he became openly hypocritical and wrong.

_You cannot have a thiomersal supported ‘epidemic’ when there is no thiomersal and increasing autism_.

I’m not suggesting that mercury has not increased with forest fires and (maybe) from China but to attribute these things as autism causation? Please. First off, the CDDS numbers are collected from regional centres. The data from each varies wildly – if Chinese mercury is an issue why are these numbers so disparate?

Are we also expected to believe that as thiomersal tailed off, the mercury from forest fires and China neatly and exactly dovetailed on in ever increasing amounts year on year until it carried on producing such a flat line increase? Were there no forest fires during the 90’s? Did China not spew mercury in the 90’s?

But all this is way besides the point of the debate – did the debate moderators call Kirby on this? None of this has anything at all to do with vaccines or thimerosal.

I’ll say it again: _You cannot have a thiomersal supported ‘epidemic’ when there is no thiomersal and increasing autism_.

I look forward to the release of the undoctered video.

Guest blogger on VAERS, gastric issues and autism

13 Jan

Manipulating VAERS - guest blogger Dr Nick Riviera

Hi Everybody!

OK, now I wanna talk to you about how good VAERS is for showing stuff. Now I know there are some so called ‘Doctors’ who _didn’t_ get their qualifications via mailorder (yeah, right! As if that were even possible) who think VAERS ain’t so good:

…the VAERS database is designed only as an early warning system for reporting adverse events thought to be due to vaccines. It is not designed to track the incidence or prevalence of vaccine complications.

…the database has been corrupted by litigation, with a dramatic increase of entries linked to litigation claiming that thimerosal caused the plaintiff’s child’s autism.

Hey! So what right? As I once said to a patient of mine: _”Now by the morning you’ll be good as new. Or dead. The important thing is, we’ll know.”_

So, these two guys once showed how VAERS can be made to say whatever you want and as part of my duty as a doctor I want you to know how you can do it too! Hey, maybe I should charge for this – I once gave a guy a triple bypass and let me tell you, the most rewarding part was when he gave me my money.

So, some people say that the MMR vaccine gave their kids measles in their tummies (sorry for the medical jargon friends!) and that it makes them poop or get bunged up (more medical jargon friends – sorry! I have to use it though. Medicine is nasty. A friend gave me a copy of Gray’s Anatomy…that’s how we look like inside? It’s disgusting! Whoa! It had a picture of a lady who’d swallowed a baby!).

Now these same people gave some Doctors lots of money to try and prove a link between vaccines and autism and they used VAERS like a couple of diva’s!

So here’s my take on using VAERS and how you can use it yourself to prove anything you want! Really! But remember, if something should go wrong, let’s not get the law involved.

If you go to this page on the intrawebnet you can get all the numbers you need to get what we doctors like to call ‘numbers’. These ‘numbers’ are like who did what and told VAERS about it.

Anyway, I got this guy to download them for me and I asked him to import them into MS Access so I could analyse the numbers – just like this dad and his little boy did – anyway, after he finished laughing, he explained to me that using MS Access to analyse data is like trying to paint the Forth Road Bridge with a toothbrush so he did this computery thing he called ‘merging the tables’ and then imported them into what he called ‘an _actual_ relational database – MySQL.

I gotta be honest friends, I don’t know what the hell he was talking about but he told me he’d handwritten _’all the Queries in the command line interface’_ so – cool. I guess. Whatever.

Anyway – here’s my first graph for you. Using VAERS data we can show that out of a total (up to Nov 2006) of 202,011 submissions to VAERS, 1003 mentioned the word ‘autism’ as a symptom.

Out of our sub-group (I’ll go easy on the medical terminology friends, Dr Nick promises!) of 1003 identified as reporting autism as a symptom, a total of 84 used the word ‘Diarrhea’ as a symptom and a total of 5 used the word ‘constipation’. Have a look at the graph I drew (OK, OK, did in Excel):

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers Now that means that, just like my good friends the Geier’s, I have _used VAERS to prove something _ – that 92% of people who have autism have no gastric issues at all! Now, where’s my money?

What? More? Oh OK – Dr. Nick loves you all!

We could also _prove_ that 53% (486 vs 428) of people reporting autism didn’t have the MMR jab. I guess that means nearly half of people who think MMR caused their kids autism are full of pooh-pooh (its a family show kids).

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers

And if we delve even deeper we could _prove_ that 89% of people who are autistic and who have had an MMR jab have no gastric issues at all – look at this doozy of a graph!

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers

How cools is _that_?

The computery guy wanted me to tell you that ‘%gastro%’ is like a wildcard search where the percent signs could be anything before or after the phrase ‘gastro’. Whatever, right?

Dr Nick Riviera

Just remember these things next time someone tells you VAERS is a good source of data. Its _so_ not, but in the right hands, it can make you a pot of money friends! And remember….you need help? Call 1-600-DOCTORB! The “B” is for BARGAIN!”

Bye Everybody!

Stat-tastic!

12 Jan

if the total number of 3-5 year olds in the California DDS system has not declined by 2007, that would deal a severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis…..total cases among 3-5 year olds, not changes in the rate of increase is the right measure.

David Kirby, Nov 2005.

Time’s up Mr Kirby. The last quarter numbers for 2006 are now in.

Jonathon even took the trouble to highlight on his graph where the Geier’s made asses of themselves declaring an early decrease in their 2006 paper. As can be seen from Jon’s graph (and even more clearly on Dad of Cameron’s) – _the numbers are still going up_.

A severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis has been dealt.

Jospeph tells us what to expect in the coming months in the way of excuses from Kirby. Something I also discussed in April 2006. In short, the militia will argue that there’s still TCV’s sitting around waiting to be used up (rubbish, but even if true, would be a very, very minimal amount, click the link to my previous post to see Sallie Bernard of SafeMinds struggling to locate TCV’s in June 2001), they will also argue that the flu shot supports the ‘epidemic’ (again, rubbish. Are we really comparing mandatory TCV administration culminating in 187 ug Hg with optional flu vaccines, administered in one season of the year, culminating in 25 ug Hg?). They will also argue that RhoGAM was a contributing factor (but as we all kow, that one’s got no legs.). They may also try and argue that some other vaccine/environmental ‘thing’ comes into play. This takes us right back to square one and is a virtual admission that thiomersal doesn’t do a goddamn thing except act as a preservative.

In fact, that process is already under way from the Big Cheese himself. In a post on Jan 9th 2007 to his munchkins on the EoH yahoo group, Kirby said:

I believe this puzzle will be solved by looking at TOTAL “environmental” toxic burden from ALL sources, including other chemicals, and, of course, thimerosal in vaccines,

Oh, of _course_ ;o)

This prompted a bit of controversy: H Coleman replied:

Please stop it- you’re all giving me a headache.

And Robert Krakow replied:

I disagree somewhat with the emphasis of your message. I don’t know anyone who focuses on the vaccine issue who believes that other environmental exposure is unimportant. To suggest so underestimates the intelligence of most of the members of this list.

‘Most’ obviously not including John Best, Rescue Angel, who said on that same group:

I view any talk of mercury in the air as a problem as utter nonsense. It’s just propaganda to deflect blame from pharma and I don’t buy one word of it.

See Robert? There’s more than a few idiots who need things spelled out to them on EoH.

Anyway, the impact of Kirby’s statement has not been lost amongst the rank and file militia members. They know he’s trying to move on. Memo to Mr Kirby: it would be quicker and more painless to just fess up: _A severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis has been dealt._

Two items of interest for US folks

8 Jan

There will be a debate titled “Vaccines and Autism: Is There a Connection?” between David Kirby and Arthur Allen. The debate will take place in San Diego, California (UC San Diego Price Center, 9500 Gilman Dr. La Jolla CA 92093) on Saturday, January 13, at 10am:

Admission is free, provided you register with TACA before January 10. (Be prepared to give out a mailing address). Or you can pay $10 on-site.

Sponsors include Generation Rescue, SafeMinds, TACA and the Autism Research Institute so as you can imagine, the quackery quotient will be high – anyone who favours a bit of reality and is in San Diego should go and give Mr Allen some support as I think he’s going to need it – the audience sounds like it will be partisan to say the least. Apparently some mercury mum or other has suggested wearing t-shirts with pictures of their autistic kids on them. Sounds like it’ll be conducted on a sound scientific footing.

The other thing regards the NIH which, not being ‘merican I’m not up to speed with so I’ll quote Diva:

Would you like to have a voice in how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) spends it’s autism research dollars? The NIMH may be getting a windfall of cash for autism research by way of the “Combatting Autism Act.” Whether or not they get that windfall, money will continue to be spent on autism research. Whether that research will benefit humanity to a greater or lesser degree depends on how the money is spent.

Many people shudder at the thought of science driving a big eugenics campaign where every last unfavored gene is scrubbed from the gene pool by culling or sterilizing the genetically defective, though it should be noted that not all studies of genetics are aimed at eugenics. If prenatal testing for autism sounds bad to you, for instance, or if another kind of research bothers you, what kinds of sensible research can be done with all that money? And how can you have a say in how the money is spent?

Go read this petition that will be sent to the NIH/NIMH, and if you agree with it, sign it. Signatures are needed before January 16th, it would probably be better to sign it by the Friday the 12th as that would give someone a chance to send the petition to the NIMH properly by the Tuesday the 16th. A few hundred or a thousand signatures would be really great.

Spread the word as quickly as possible :o)

Andrew Wakefield backs down

4 Jan

A quick catch-up: After Andrew Wakefield did his MMR thing, journalist Brian Deer published a report in the Times that highlighted Wakefield’s dodgy involvement in the whole scandal.

When 13 doctors from London’s Royal Free hospital, including Andrew Wakefield, announced the research in the Lancet at a heavily-promoted press conference in February 1998, it triggered a slump in immunizations and a rise in outbreaks of infectious diseases. But the key finding was a sham: laundering anonymized allegations against MMR by claimants in a multibillion lawsuit against the vaccine’s makers – which Wakefield, behind the scenes, was backing

Brian uncovered a shocking amount of misconduct from Wakefield, so much so that Channel 4 television’s ‘Dispatches’ investigative program launched a special that showed that amongst other things, Wakefield had applied for a rival patent to MMR.

Please visit his site for all the truly shocking shenanigans.

Wakefield’s response was to launch libel suits against Brian Deer, Channel 4 and The Times during which time he was steadfast, as his wife describes:

‘Whatever his enemies may hope, he’s not going away,’ she vows.

In November 2005, it became apparent that Wakefield was beginning to ‘go away’. He had applied for a stay of one action (a pause in proceedings) and, as I blogged at the time, was trying to use this stay as a cudgel to beat down people reporting on the Times/Channel4/Deer investigation – this was sent to the Cambridge Evening News by Wakefield’s legal team:

You should be aware that proceedings in defamation have already been commenced against The Sunday Times in respect of the article published by Mr Brian Deer on 22nd February 2004. Your article has gone even further than the allegation in The Sunday Times which are currently being litigated and allege impropriety on the part of Mr Wakefield to receive money from lawyers to achieve a predetermined outcome…

However, the actual story was that Wakefield had also applied for a stay in these proceedings too. Justice Eady who was presiding over the decision to stay proceeding said this of the attempt to browbeat the Cambridge Evening News:

In my view that paragraph was misleading. Mr Browne (Wakefield’s QC) argues that, even if the circumstances had been set out more fully and accurately, it would have made no difference to the outcome. The editor would still have acknowledged that he had got his facts wrong. That may be, but the important point at the moment is that the editor was given a misleading impression. Because of the stay, to which I have referred, the allegations in The Sunday Times were certainly not “currently being litigated”. They were stayed pending the outcome of serious allegations of professional misconduct against the Claimant, to which no reference was made. It thus appears that the Claimant wishes to use the existence of the libel proceedings for public relations purposes, and to deter other critics, while at the same time isolating himself from the “downside” of such litigation, in having to answer a substantial defence of justification.

Justice Eady declined Wakefields request to stay further proceedings:

I have come to the conclusion, bearing all these considerations in mind, that the interests of the administration of justice require that the Channel 4 proceedings should not be stayed pending the outcome of the GMC proceedings. I appreciate that there will be an increased workload for the Claimant’s advisers, but I do not have any reason to suppose that the firm is incapable of absorbing that extra burden. It is, after all, their client who chose to issue these proceedings and to use them, as I have described above, as a weapon in his attempts to close down discussion and debate over an important public issue

Quite.

Of course, the poor old Cambridge Evening News, being a small local newspaper had already issued a retraction. Brave Mr Wakefield read the retraction out to wild applause at the 2005 Power of Truth rally.

However, its not been the best start to 2007 for Andrew Wakefield. On 31st December 2006, Brian published an article in the Times that demonstrated that Andrew Wakefield had been paid approaching half a million pounds to conduct his MMR investigation for lawyers. This runs contrary to the bottomless claim by Wakefield’s apologists who told the BBC he hadn’t.

And now it seems like its going to be an ‘annus horribilis‘ for Wakefield – the man who once claimed that there would be an established proven link between MMR and autism in 2002 – as Brian has now received news that, contrary to the claims of his wife, Wakefield has indeed, ‘run away’.

Following Brian Deer’s Dispatches investigation of November 2004, reporting facts about Andrew Wakefield and his campaign against the MMR vaccine, which a judge described as “of considerable public interest and concern” that “went to the heart” of the British former surgeon’s “honesty and professional integrity”, Wakefield initiated libel proceedings. Two years later, after the disclosure of a mass of documents, including medical records, he dropped his claim, and agreed to pay the defendants’ costs

Amazing how a sudden disclosure of documents can prompt such a turn around isn’t it? I wonder what his supporters will find as an excuse for this hasty change of mind?

David kirby plays the segregation game

3 Jan

A truly fascinating start to 2007. David Kirby writes a blog entry entitled ‘There is no autism epidemic’. Why is it fascinating? Two reasons. Firstly, it reveals the lengths David Kirby is willing to go to shift goalposts even further. The entire entry is replete with strawmen arguments. An example – in his opening paragraph, Kirby talks about being vilified by people who who believe that autism is a stable genetic condition and then names the neurodiversity community as amongst his most spirited detractors.

Nobody I know who shares the opinion of neurodiversity believes autism is *only* a stable genetic condition. However, unless we want to throw out what we know about Rett Syndrome then we do have to accept that some of the spectrum of autism is indeed a genetically based condition.

He further describes neurodiversity as a ‘group of adults with autism’. Again, nowhere near accurate. As I wrote about only yesterday, neurodiversity is not specifically associated with autism, neither is it anything other than a fairly nebulous opinion shared by people who think respect and equality matters. Neither is it an opinion not shared by people who are parents of autistic children.

Here’s how Kirby sums up ‘the neurodiverse’:

Most of them, I believe, have what science calls “Asperger’s Syndrome,” or very high functioning autism. From their eloquent and well reasoned point of view, autism has no “cause,” and it certainly requires no “cure.” To suggest otherwise is to brand these adults with the stigma of disease and disability, which is patently absurd given their educational and intellectual achievements.

No.

Time and time again, the people I speak to who are autistic and who are sharers of the opinion neurodiversity expounds tell me that as children they either were not diagnosed at all and left to rot or diagnosed with low functioning autism. How do I know this? I asked, Mr Kirby, and then I listened to the answer. I didn’t make up any old opinion that suits my argument better. Some, like Amanda Baggs, still _are_ considered low functioning. My Great Uncle was ‘low functioning’ and my Great Aunt was ‘high functioning’ – both were born way before thiomersal was ever around by the way. My Grandma said that her brother-in-law was ‘much worse’ as a child than as an adult. As adults they were able to converse.

The first part of Kirby’s post sets up the second. He is attempting to dismantle the idea of the autistic spectrum and at the same time, corral all ‘the neurodiverse’ into a place where they cannot speak about autism. Here’s the filibuster part of his post in full:

But if that’s autism, then the kids that I have met suffer from some other condition entirely. When I talk about “curing” autism, I am not talking about curing the “neurodiverse.”

I am talking about kids who begin talking and then, suddenly, never say another word.

I’m talking about kids who may never learn to read, write, tie their shoes or fall in love.

I’m talking about kids who sometimes wail in torture at three in the morning because something inside them hurts like a burning coal, but they can’t say what or where it is.

I’m talking about kids who can barely keep food in their inflamed, distressed guts, and when they do, it winds up in rivers of diarrhea or swirls of feces spread on a favorite carpet or pet (no one said this kind of “autism” was pretty).

I’m talking about kids who escape from their home in a blaze of alarms, only to be found hours later, freezing, alone and wandering the Interstate.

I’m talking about kids who have bitten their mother so hard and so often, they are on a first name basis at the emergency room.

I’m talking about kids who spin like fireworks until they fall and crack their heads, kids who will play with a pencil but not with their sister, kids who stare at nothing and scream at everything and don’t even realize it when their dad comes home from work.

These are the kids I want to see cured. And I don’t believe they have “autism.”

Woah! My daughter very rarely speaks, she’s just on the cusp of learning to write, she can’t tie her shoes, she wakes up regularly in the night (on New Years Eve she got up at half past midnight – not 3am) but she is distinctly burning coal free, she tolerates certain foods very well and refuses to touch other foods, she used to smear faeces regularly on both the carpet, the walls, her bed, us, the cat and she’s had the odd bout of diarrhoea (no one said autism was pretty, right?) – she’s pulled out of my hand on occasion and ran and I’ve followed, heart in mouth, she sometimes has the odd pinch or smack at me if I’ve told her she can’t have something, or I’m not getting what it is she wants, she loves to spin – and bounce (have you see my video Mr Kirby?) and she used to be non-social completely.

So yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Guess what? Its still autism. I still love her just the way she is. I still don’t want to change anything about who she is. I’m happy for her to be autistic.

Here’s what *I* think.

I think you’re goalpost shifting again Mr Kirby. You don’t believe they have autism? So what was the last two years about? Why the constant harping on about the CDDS until it stopped showing you what you wanted it to? Why the sudden panicky need to dismantle the idea of a spectrum of autism? Why redefine? Is redefining easier than explaining why your hypothesis isn’t panning out?

And what’s this about?

Asthma, diabetes, allergies and arthritis are ravaging their bodies in growing numbers

Sounds suitably scary but a) has nothing to do with autism and b) would appear to be partly wrong. And what about this:

There is something, or more likely some things in our modern air, water, food and drugs that are making genetically susceptible children sick, and we need to find out what they are.

Wow, is this an admission of error? From stating a belief that thiomersal caused autism you are now suggesting that ‘some things’ are making ‘children sick’ – that’s quite a change of heart. Why? Is it so hard for you to say – ‘guys, I was wrong. Back to the drawing board and I’m sorry you wasted your hard earned dosh on my book’.

Here’s something for you to read on the subject of neurodiversity Mr Kirby, I hope the point doesn’t escape you.

On May 19, a small group of people with Down Syndrome and their supporters disrupted the International Down Syndrome Screening Conference at Regents College in London. This is the first time that people with disabilities have spoken out publicly about prenatal screening. Their protest opens up the debate about genetics, eugenics, and the rights of disabled people.

As a result of the protest, the conference organizers allowed Anya Souza to speak from the podium, a platform her group had previously been denied. Ms. Souza, a trustee of the Down Syndrome Association who is labeled as “suffering” from the condition herself, told the doctors why she opposes the screenings.

The protesters found it unacceptable that doctors would discuss better ways of preventing the birth of people with Down Syndrome while excluding the voices of people with that label from the debate. That runs, they said, directly counter to one of the main demands of the disability rights movement: Nothing about us without us.

“We are what we are,” Gilbert [another protester] concluded. “Ask our opinion.”

Do you get the point(s) Mr Kirby? What you are doing by pretending that AS and autism are two different things is taking away the opinion of autistic people. You are doing it without evidence that you are right, without anything other than a ‘hunch’. An MO that is becoming more than a little familiar. You are following the proud tradition of Lenny Schafer and Rick Rollens, who also want to stop autistic adults talking about autistic children being OK just as they are.

Be brighter than them Mr Kirby. Try and understand that no one advocates letting kids suffer painful medical issues but that these things do not, and never did, equate to autism. What you’ve taken away over the last two years from both these adults and the kids of those you call friends and those you don’t is dignity. Nothing about us without us.

Update: Kristina weighs in too and Joel writes a first class piece on proving one is broken. Diva gives us good instructions and spotting autistic people and Do’C and Jospeh ferries across a river of shit.

‘The neurodiverse are everywhere!’

2 Jan

I read an email from the chelating2kids Yahoo Group where ‘the neurodiverse’ are described as being everywhere. Its almost apocalyptic in the way it describes the way this poor mum feels alone in her local area and deluged under the weight of the online neurodiverse websites/blogs etc.

Of course the responses come thick and fast, just ignore them, you’re OK, they’re mad. etc etc. But it struck me that these people really didn’t get it. They’ve bought into the mercury militia definition of ‘the neurodiverse’ as a set of people who want autistic kids to remain undeveloped, uneducated, unhelped and institutionalised. To them, *everyone* who doesn’t follow a strong Biomed path is one of ‘the neurodiverse’. And that’s why they (the evil neurodiverse) seem to be everywhere – its because they are!

We have to get a bit of reality into this situation. Firstly, I appeal to anyone who’s ever used the term ‘the neurodiverse’ to think about what you are referring to. You are referring to an artificially constructed, non-existent entity. There are no such people/thing/entity as ‘the neurodiverse’. There is a concept called ‘neurodiversity’ which some people like the sound of but it is not like a political affiliation or religion or sports club – no member record exists, no fees are collected, no policies are decided upon. Neurodiversity is, at its essence, an opinion that all people, regardless of neurological setup, are of the same amount of worth and due an equal amount of respect.

Does that sound particularly scary to you? Do you not believe that a person who is Down is deserving of equal respect as someone who is NT? Should a person who has learning disabilities have inherently less worth than someone with none?

That’s neurodiversity. At the nucleus of the concept is the idea of equal worth and respect. Why does that fill you with horror?

You should also note that neurodiversity is not something confined to autism and even more importantly, it is not any kind of response to the anti-vaccine based hypothesis of autism causation. ‘The neurodiverse’ are not about you. They are not a response or a reply to you. They do not stand opposite to you. The ideology of equality and respect existed before your hypothesis and will continue to do so after your hypothesis is gone.

In reality, ‘the neurodiverse’ are *anyone* – including you – who have ever stood up for the rights of themselves or the rights of their children/siblings/grandchildren to have the same opportunities as everyone else. Did you fight for your child s educational rights because you thought they deserved the same opportunities as everyone else? Pull up a chair ‘neurodiverse’! When you hear about an autistic child being bullied does your blood boil about the lack of respect shown to that child? That makes you ‘neurodiverse’.

Where the actual set of people who like the idea of neurodiversity differ from you is where the basic idea of respect takes us. When you hear about a child being bullied, I think you feel the answer to that problem is to cure the child s autism. For people who are consciously aware of neurodiversity, they feel the answer to that problem is to alter societal beliefs to make it unacceptable to bully children who are not NT.

Or lets use an example closer to home – biomed. You think ‘the neurodiverse’ don’t want you to treat your kids and don’t want your kids not to be autistic. No. What they want is to reach a place where the unique strengths of autism are recognised and the weaknesses are assisted. When that occurs, it would seem silly to desire a cure. If, in the meantime, your child has genuine medical issues then address them. If, in a hypothetical situation, the alleviation of your child’s medical symptoms somehow results in the disappearance of your childs autism then so be it. Whats the issue here? If a child of mine developed cancer and if someone developed a cure for cancer that had the side effect of eclipsing every mote of my daughters autistic nature, believe me, I wouldn’t think twice.

Often I hear how strong you believe you are being in taking an extreme biomed option. That the use of chelation, Lupron, HBOT etc means you are being strong for your kids, exhausting every option. I don’t see it like that. I think you are essentially good people who have been shocked into a world you know nothing about (autism) and want to get out of that world as quickly as possible. I think you adore your kids and want the best for them. I think you are being taken advantage of by money and ego grubbing quacks.

In the first instance I would like to invite you to stop and look around the world you are now a part of. Don’t deny the bad, but also – don’t shut out or deny the good. On balance, right here and now, is *autism* so bad? Not the gut issues, not the faeces smearing, not the hassles with schools, but your autistic child. Is it all so bad? Is it unremittingly negative? No good points at all? Not even the pleasure of watching your child progress?

Secondly, I think you are badly mistaken in seeing autism and gut issues/smearing/schooling issues/meltdowns as interchangeable. My daughter is low functioning (but how odd it is that I only think of her in that way when I talk with you) and has experienced all the issues you relate. Seriously, all of them. But that was three years ago. Those things are gone or going. My daughters autism is not. She’s not ‘better’ in the sense I think you mean it, she’s not ‘less autistic’, but in exactly the same way as your child, she is not the same as she used to be. She’s growing. There’s no scale for this. It won’t happen uniformly. I don’t want to hold up an NT state of normality as a ‘goal’. She’s already indistinguishable from her peers – her peers are autistic.

Thirdly and most specifically in your case is the mercury/vaccine issue. I realise how much of a relief it can be to have something to blame when you are in a situation you have no knowledge about and are scared of. However, its only by seeking knowledge that fear of the unknown can be addressed. Knowing the unknown in this case means reading the words of autistic people.

The treatments and situations that I sometimes read about are really alarming. I read an email from a young mother who wanted to chelate a 9 month old baby because it was ‘smiling inappropriately’! I read the replies expecting lots of messages of horror and instead read instructions from non-medically trained people on how to do this. No one thought to say – ‘its probably gas, try winding for a bit longer’.

Your mainstream doctor is not part of any plan to control you via vaccines. They say that there is no risk of vaccines causing autism because it is the truth. No one wants to hurt your kids. Why would any doctor or nurse desire to purposefully hurt your kids? The only people who profit out of perpetuating this situation are the people you give money to for expensive tests and even more expensive treatments. Am I saying mainstream doctors know it all? No I am not. In frequent cases its clear mainstream doctors are woefully ignorant about autism and the needs of autistic people. Its never going to get better if you simply walk away.

‘The neurodiverse’ are everywhere indeed, if you define ‘neurodiverse’ as anyone not into biomed. I would hope that respect, equality and education – what I think of as the core attributes of neurodiversity – are also everywhere. I am not trying to make you realise how small the vaccine based hypothesis of causation is – I think in your heart of hearts you already know, but rather that this isn’t a competition. Its not about numbers. Its about reality and the need to fight for the respect and dignity of everyone to be the person they are without feeling like a second class citizen.

Follow the money

31 Dec

Regularly whenever I read about some nefarious plot by Big Pharma to use vaccines to take over the world/cause autism/incite riots/insert crap of your choice here, the writer exhorts the reader to ‘follow the money’ as a phrase to indicate that the evil, money grubbers at Big Pharma can have their actions rationalised by seeing how much they might gain from the particular conspiracy theory under discussion. Of course, very rarely can these writers actually name an individual at Big Pharma or an alleged ‘payout’ they are getting.

Luckily, Times reporter Brian Deer is an _actual_ reporter – i.e. one who investigates his findings and sources his facts. Today he published the findings of his latest investigation into Andrew Wakefield and the associated people that support his vaccine/autism/legal financial business.

Brian has basically found that UK tax payer funded legal aid to the sum of _£3.4m_ was spent (wasted might be a better word) on payments to doctors and scientists who had been recruited to support a now failed lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. This information wasn’t submitted voluntarily, Brian had to submit a Freedom of Information request in order to unearth the figures. There are some notable names on the list:

Andrew Wakefield: £439,553. Quite profitable to start vaccine litigation isn’t it? Seems that you can fleece the British tax payer to the tune of nearly half a million quid. Follow the money indeed.

But is good old Wakers alone? Oh no, this money making machine had a few members, some familiar names to this blog:

Dr Ken Aitken, Scottish DAN! Doctor: £232,022. After resigning under a cloud from his role at Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh, Aitken gladly signed up for this gravy train which seems to have netted him nearly a quarter of a million quid of tax payers money. In 2004, Aitken was severely reprimanded by the British Psychological Society concerning his handling of an autistic child’s case. The society’s conduct committee said that he “allowed his professional responsibilities or standards of practice to be diminished by considerations of extraneous factors”.

Peter Fletcher: £39,960. I wrote a blog entry about Peter Fletcher’s anti-MMR strawmen awhile ago. Here’s a quote from him:

There are very powerful people in positions of great authority in Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves.

You can say that again.

And on it goes:

Arthur Krigsman, Business partner of Andrew Wakefield: £16,986. His unpublished ‘papers’ have been cited numerous times by Wakefield and supporters as evidence Wakefield was right, conveniently forgetting they were a) unpublished and b) written for his boss. According to Brian (see link in Aitken paragraph), in December 2004, he left Lennox Hill hospital, New York,after a lawsuit, which was followed by an ethics inquiry. In August 2005, he was fined $5,000 by the Texas Medical Board for misconduct. Gotta try and recoup some of that money somewhere eh?

Jeff Bradstreet: £21,600. Bradstreet – who recommends exorcism for autism – snapped up Wakefield as Director of his business after Wakefield was booted out of the Royal Free.

Mark Geier: £7,052. We could write a whole book on the Geier’s and their dubious practices. Luckily, Kathleen has documented most of them already. Suffice it to say, Geier shouldn’t be offering legal expert advice to anyone.

See some more notables on Brian’s personal site.

Brian’s report in the Times also states:

…among those named as being paid from the legal aid fund was a referee for one of Wakefield’s papers, who was allowed £40,000…

Which is an interesting position as Wakefield is on record as stating:

You cannot referee your own soccer matches. It’s like asking the Italians to — an Italian referee to take over the game of Italy between South Korea. It doesn’t work. Can’t do it. You have to separate those agencies that endorse and mandate vaccines and those who monitor safety. One needs to be on the back of the other all the time in order to check on safety.

Quite. That same principle also works against you Mr Wakefield. Back-handers to referee’s of your papers makes you an Italian throwing a bung to an Italian referee. Follow the money.

Also according to the LSC (who oversee administration of Legal Aid) A private GP who runs a single vaccines clinic received £6,000. Follow the money.

What the hell are the LSC playing at? They have a £2billion per year budget in order to provide legal services to people who can’t afford to retain a lawyer. Once that money is spent, its spent. Apparently, they’ve already:

acknowledged that the attempt to make a case against MMR with taxpayers’ money was “not effective or appropriate”.

Understatement of they year!

One of the legal aid recipients, John March has broken ranks to speak out against what has happened:

“There was a huge conflict of interest,” said Dr John March, an animal vaccine specialist who was among those recruited. “It bothered me quite a lot because I thought, well, if I’m getting paid for doing this, then surely it’s in my interest to keep it going as long as possible.”

I doubt March was alone in his thinking.

Wakefield has circulated a pitiful defence of his antics stating that these monies were received over a period of nine years and that after tax and ‘out of pocket expenses’ which he failed to detail or summarise he donated the money to charity. What a saint. The point, of course, is entirely missed. It doesn’t matter what you did with it Mr Wakefield, the point is that you got it. I hear tell some religious heroin dealers in Columbia donate some of their profit to churches. Big deal – they’re still crooks.

According to Brian’s report, at least one MP is calling for a an inquiry into how exactly this could’ve come about and a Lib Dem MP is quoted as saying:

“These figures are astonishing,” said Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. “This lawsuit was an industry, and an industry peddling what turned out to be a myth.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself.

More reading

Diva, Mike, Orac and Anthony.

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