Isabelle “Issy” Stapleton is a human being. Worthy of respect. She is endowed with inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Being disabled does not change this. Being autistic does not change this. Having an extremely challenging life in her pursuit of happiness does not change this.
And she was almost robbed of what we in America consider “inalienable”. Her mother tried to murder Isabelle.
On the eve of her trial for attempted murder, Kelli Stapleton – the Michigan mom and former blogger on autism issues who stood accused of trying to kill her autistic teen daughter – pleaded guilty Tuesday to a felony charge of first-degree child abuse.
Kelli Stapleton, the mother, still faces the possibility of a very long prison sentence. I hope those deciding the sentence do not in any way lessen the punishment compared to if Ms. Stapleton was attempting to murder a non-disabled child.
I am very thankful that I can still say Isabelle Stapleton is a human being. Her mother failed in her murder attempt.
I wish the young Miss Stapleton well. I hope the the pursuit of happiness turns into a life of happiness.
Since these stories have attracted many people from outside the autism community, let me start with a few things I’d like you to know. I am not a science blogger. I am the parent of an autistic child. One with multiple disabilities, including intellectual disability. While I try to stay as objective as possible in my discussions, these topics are personal to me. Frequent readers here will know that the inequities in identification and services in autism, especially between racial and ethnic groups, is something that concerns me and is something I have long advocated to correct. And this has nothing to do with the fact that my kid is mixed race (not mixed African American, but mixed race nonetheless). I don’t think about that. My kid is just my kid. And that luxury comes because there are people who changed America and made it this way. Still, equity means a lot to me; inequity bothers me a great deal. I have upmost respect for those who have pioneered the civil rights we now enjoy and I abhor those who use race in order to sensationalize their message.
All this said, let me get this out of the way clearly right now: the CDC did not find that the MMR causes autism in African American boys. The CDC has not been running some sort of experiment and allowing kids to be vaccine injured.
Many people have taken on the science–or better stated lack thereof–of Mr. Hooker’s paper. And if Mr. Hooker’s paper has taught me anything, it’s that epidemiology isn’t something for amateurs, even ones with Ph.D.’s like Mr. Hooker and myself. Sure, one can do some simple first passes, but there’s a reason why people get their Ph.D.’s in epidemiology. Rather than have me go into the science and get diverted from what I really want to talk about, here are discussions by an Surgeon/scientist,scientist/writer specializing in healthcare an epidemiology grad student. When grad students are pointing out your very basic mistakes, this isn’t a close call. Mr. Hooker’s paper is flawed. If you are so inclined, please go and read these.
Instead of summarizing the analyses of this re-analysis paper, let’s go to Brian Hooker, who wrote the re-analysis study, and William Thompson, who was an author on the original study and see what they have to say.
What did Mr. Hooker write in his paper? The final sentence, the conclusion was “Additional research is required to better understand the relationship between MMR exposure and autism in African American males.” Not, “we’ve shown that MMR causes autism” but “additional research is required”. Of course he has since made much more sweeping statements. But he wrote in the paper what he knew he could defend. No one was going to read his paper and approve it for publication if he said “MMR causes autism”. Not because of some political reason. He just didn’t have the data to make that claim.
And here is a good time to point out: the CDC team did do additional research. Both within the paper–the analysis adjusted for possible other factors, and other papers.
Now let’s look to Mr. Thompson. It’s difficult here to discuss what he has to say. Not because his statement isn’t clear, it is. But because people tried hard to speak through him. And by that I mean that Andrew Wakefield and Brian Hooker basically said, “We spoke to a whistleblower. Here are some statements out of context. And here’s our point of view, please believe that the whistleblower shares our view.” As we have seen from Mr. Thompson’s own words, he was unaware that Mr. Hooker and Mr. Wakefield were going to release his identity or use his voice. So he clearly didn’t see, much less approve, of the video that was produced to promote the movie. So, what has Mr. Thompson had to say? We have his statement here, with no analysis, no editorializing. I’d encourage readers to go through that statement for themselves.
Everyone will pull one or more sentences out of his statement for further analysis, but given the discussion here I want to pull out the one where he expresses his concern: “My concern has been the decision to omit relevant findings in a particular study for a particular sub group for a particular vaccine.”
That’s his concern. Not “tens of thousands of African American boys were allowed to become autistic because we didn’t act.” Not “there was massive fraud and a coverup at the CDC”. No, this result should have been openly discussed.
As a researcher with 30 years experience (yes, I started as an undergraduate student) I could go into a long discussion of both sides of this scientific debate and tell you about how I side with Mr. Thompson’s co-authors that this is not a strong result and there are very reasonable arguments for why social factors resulted in the higher calculated risk, and so it was appropriate to leave this out of the paper (it also would have been appropriate to leave in with a discussion in ). Let’s instead focus on the two simple words I just wrote: scientific debate. Mr. Thompson appears to feel that this debate should have been opened up to the community, the broader scientific community, and I suspect and hope the autism community and the general population. As a parent, an advocate and a citizen, I have to say I hold that sentiment. That’s easy to say now. Now that we’ve seen how cynically this result was used. It’s easy to say we should have had this discussion 10 years ago and have this resolved and avoid this current PR campaign by Mr. Wakefield.
Can a researcher really be that troubled by the scientific debate behind a paper? I can certainly see it. I have over 100 publications to my name. Some have been very highly cited. Some I am quite proud of. And out of all of those, the one that sticks out in my mind is one I never wanted to write. There’s nothing wrong in it, but we held on to the results for years and instead of publishing them when they would have shown how far in front we were, they made it look like we were behind. If it had been left up to me, we would never have published that. That’s industrial research. So, yeah, I can understand on one level what Mr. Thompson seems to be saying. Of course my experience is on a whole different level than that of a public servant doing research. I didn’t have the responsibility Mr. Thompson has had and still has. I can absolutely see someone feeling strong regret over holding back on a result, even one that his coauthors and he agreed to hold back.
I don’t see Mr. Thompson’s regret indicating, as some have suggested, that he feels that the MMR vaccine has allowed a huge number of African American boys to become autistic. What do I base this upon? Mr. Thompson’s statement:
I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.
He’s talking about the decision making process. He specifically states that the data “suggested” an increased risk in African American boys. He doesn’t say proved. Not demonstrated. Certainly he does not say anything that can be extrapolated to say that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism in all groups, and while we are at it, all vaccines cause autism, as some advocates have portrayed this statement online. And let’s take a look at another statement:
I want to be absolutely clear that I believe vaccines have saved and continue to save countless lives. I would never suggest that any parent avoid vaccinating children of any race. Vaccines prevent serious diseases, and the risks associated with their administration are vastly outweighed by their individual and societal benefits.
I wouldn’t make that statement if I felt that this statistically significant result meant definitively that autism could be prevented in African American boys.
You know what I also don’t see in this statement? Lie, fraud, cover-up, many of the terms that have been attributed to the Mr. Thompson when he was just being referred to as an anonymous whistleblower. Now that he’s known, and has been apparently granted federal whistleblower protection, we aren’t hearing these terms. We are hearing about a serious and important scientific debate.
People have tried to frame this, “since he feels so much remorse, since he’s stepping forward and risking his job” followed by one of myriad things this is supposed to tell us. Let’s remind ourselves of one point: it appears Mr. Thompson didn’t think he was stepping forward: he wasn’t planning on the fact that he was involved becoming public. Based on this, it doesn’t appear that his intent was to become a whistleblower. I’m not trying to take away from his actions, just to point out that his focus seems to have been trying to get this result out. He seems to have been guiding Mr. Hooker into doing the analysis so this result would be in the public domain and could be discussed.
Given all that, ask yourself this simple question: if this is the sort of thing that really bothers a CDC scientist, if this is the sort of thing a CDC scientist would risk his job over, how could anyone expect that CDC would ever be able to keep a lid on the supposed conspiracy/cover-up that some people claim is happening in the CDC autism research program?
Think about that. A single result, one which many people agreed didn’t need to be discussed, was held back and this CDC researcher struggled with that decision for a decade. But he and his colleagues are just going along with what is supposedly the biggest cover-up in history?
I would then ask you to consider this: if Mr. Hooker and Mr. Wakefield really felt they had their “smoking gun” with this result, why did they resort to their race-baiting video? Data and facts would have spoken much louder. And that video attack was obviously going to cost them in credibility. Then we could ask, why did Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Hooker betray the trust of Mr. Thompson? I’m pretty sure I have the answer to that: the image of a “whistleblower” was far more persuasive than the data Mr. Hooker was presenting. And combining the “whistleblower” who wasn’t with playing the race card gave them an emotional hook that was much more powerful than their data.
Having brought up this ugly race-baiting video (I’d encourage you to watch it if you haven’t already even though it is ugly. It is truly a step into the gutter for Mr. Wakefield, Mr. Hooker and Mr. Lewis), let’s address the questions that video poses. Even though they are patently ridiculous.
Are the CDC engaging in a new “Tuskegee” experiment? No. Again, it’s sad to even grace this question with recognition.
But, then, why did Mr. Wakefield make this claim? Well, I will say Mr. Wakefield was very shrewd, at least in the short term, to tap into such strong emotions. The video was certain to enrage many people. And it got the re-analysis discussed. But while Mr. Wakefield was shrewd, even he must have seen that for many it would backfire immediately and in the long term this would eventually backfire for many more. Eventually people start asking questions.
It’s been long enough to start asking some of those questions. Like, really, a Tuskegee experiment? CDC are engaging in an experiment to allow African American boys to become autistic for some study? And that would be because there are so few autistics that they need more for some study? (clearly not) And, if there’s an experiment going on, why is it that one big issue right now is the lack of racial/ethnic minorities in autism research? So, the CDC are allowing many more African American boys to become autistic for an experiment that they aren’t doing?
Of course the most obvious reason this strategy was only a short-term one was that eventually Mr. Thompson would speak. And he has. And he hasn’t said one word about this supposed “Tuskegee” experiment.
Let’s ask a very simple question: are we really supposed to believe that a civil rights pioneer who has devoted her life to people with developmental disabilities is running a Tuskegee type experiment? It is embarrassing to give this accusation credence enough to even address it. At the time that Marshalyn Yeargan-Allsopp was breaking down barriers, becoming the first African American to attend Sweet Briar College, the Supreme Court had yet to decide whether some states could continue to hold that marriages like mine were illegal. I live a life where I don’t even think about my kid’s mixed heritage and blended culture. And I can do that because of people like Dr. Yeargan-Allsopp. You can (and I’d say should) read her story online. Being he first to attend and graduate Sweet Briar was tough. She’d done more than enough but she didn’t stop. She became the first African American woman to enroll in and graduate from Emory’s medical school. Dr. Yeargan-Allsopp, if you ever read this know that I mean every word. You are an example of what I see is best in America. As are your colleagues.
Dr. Yeargan-Allsopp is just the most obvious example of how this whole mythos of a great CDC coverup is just without any merit. And that Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Hooker are fabricating stories that are not just insulting to the CDC teams, they are insulting to us in the autism community.
The CDC are made up of dedicated researchers and staff. People who have devoted their lives to areas of public health, like developmental disabilities. People who apparently struggle for years over a scientific decision as to whether to include a result that is so far from a smoking gun that Mr. Wakefield had to embellish his presentation with race-baiting attacks and play on fear and emotion. CDC staff are people. People with families. Some with autistic kids. I suspect there are some who are autistic themselves, and more are broader autism phenotype.
And Andrew Wakefield, Brian Hooker and the rest of their group are trying very hard to make you believe otherwise. They are trying to dehumanize these people. If they had facts, they’d use them. They don’t. Plain and simple. If they felt that these facts spoke for themselves, they wouldn’t have burned their “informant”. They wouldn’t play to our emotions with this nasty, race-baiting attack. Believe me, I know how strong those emotions are and how effective this video can be. It is a very cynical approach they are taking. Mr. Wakefield’s team is trying to drag more parents into the world of hatred that he’s built. All so they can claim that their ideas are right. Ideas which even now, even with access to someone “on the inside” at CDC, have no merit.
Educator/writer Liz Ditz often keeps a running summary of online discussions of trending topics. Below are some of her links. They are a few days old, but this gives you a starting place in case you wish to read multiple sources.
Of course, the key finding in Brian Hooker’s paper is that Wakefield was wrong. Indeed, in this video, Wakefield even admits that he was mostly wrong about MMR and autism. Let that sink in again. He admits that he was mostly wrong about MMR and autism. OK, he says we were “partially right,” but the flip side of that is that he must have been mostly wrong.
Hooker is wrong in his assertions because the DeStefano paper did not leave out African-American children on purpose. Children were excluded from the analysis because of very legitimate and scientific reasons. They either were not the right age, did not have autism but some other neurodevelopment disorder, or were born outside of Georgia. Even if they were tossed into the analysis, DeStefano et al used a statistical analysis that took into account things like birth weight and mother’s age when analysing the data. They wanted to make sure that what they were seeing was most likely because of the MMR vaccine and not because of some other factor associated with autism.
I’m very skeptical that Dr. Hooker’s simplified statistical approach can be better than DeStefano et al’s approach of conditional logistic regression. Conditional logistic regression has the advantage of being able to control for a multitude of confounders and effect modifiers.
I can imagine three main possibilities for what happened. The first possibility from what I know is that Thompson had some sort of disagreement with his co-investigators, made the incredibly stupid—yes, stupid—decision to unburden himself to Brian Hooker, who, he must have known or should have known, is an antivaccine crank associated with Andrew Wakefield, and is now paying the price for that decision… The second possibility is that Thompson wanted to correct something Hooker was doing with the data and somehow let himself be drawn into saying things that could easily be taken out of context. The third, and (I hope) much less likely, possibility is that Thompson’s gone off the deep end and gone antivaccine.
“What [Hooker] has done, apparently, is found grist for a perfect conspiracy theory to demonize the CDC, play the race card in a truly despicable fashion, and cast fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the CDC vaccination program, knowing that most of the white antivaccine activists who support hate the CDC so much that they won’t notice that even Hooker’s reanalysis doesn’t support their belief that vaccines caused the autism in their children. Meanwhile, there is no evidence, at least none, submitted by the antivaccine propagandists flogging this conspiracy theory, that there really was a CDC conspiracy to hide anything.
I want to focus on some statements made by one Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor who committed scientific fraud, resulting in the full retraction of his 1998 case series study on MMR and the stripping of his medical license. Wakefield boldly added himself to the list of not only torturing science, but now adds to his accomplishments torturing history and ethics (granted, we already knew he was ethically challenged). You see, in his videos (here and here) about the alleged “whistleblower”, William Thompson,Wakefield compared the purported “cover-up” to the Tuskegee syphilis debacle. It’s a false comparison used simply to inflame people and claim the race card.
It’s clear what’s happening here. Thompson, through sheer ignorance or total incompetence may have had a conversation with Hooker. Given the fact that the antivaccination gang lacks any serious scientific evidence supporting their dogma that vaccines cause autism, they jump on anything, however tenuous, that makes it appear that all of the evidence that refutes their dogma should be thrown in the garbage.
Here it is, Tuesday already, and the antivaccine underground is still on full mental jacket alert over the biggest story the antivaccine movement has seen in a while. Fortunately, it’s a story that’s been largely ignored by the mainstream media, which tells me that maybe, just maybe, the mainstream media has figured out that it shouldn’t give undue credence to cranks.
A study relying largely on a small group of subjects (about 20) with the conclusion that more work is needed. Sounds vaguely familiar. And, as we will see, Mr. Hooker has teamed up with Andrew Wakefield to put out a video where they jump past the whole this indicates more research is needed through this is absolute evidence of MMR causing autism directly to the CDC are engaging in a racist experiment sacrificing children to autism. It’s like the events around Mr. Wakefield’s 1997 Lancet paper cranked up to 11.
a friend, a friend that I consider to be intelligent and reasonable….first posted a link to a CNN article. Correction–it’s iCNN…which is VERY different. ANYONE can post ANYTHING there. You can, really. It’s a crowdsourcing platform. Shame on you CNN for whoring out your name for page views. Because this is what happens–people will post just about anything…..
I wish we knew the causes of autism, I really do. But vaccines ain’t it.
As much as the anti-vaccine activists have been demanding that Dr. Thompson come out into the open and make some sort of a statement, no one seems to demand that Andrew Jeremy Wakefield and his team publish the entire recorded conversation between Brian Hooker and Dr. Thompson. All we get are lies and innuendo. We have operatives like Ginger Taylor writing on Twitter that CDC deliberately didn’t look at birth certificates for African-American babies in the DeStefano study.
August 26, 2014: Anti-Vaccine Group The Thinking Mom’s Revolution Hosts a #CDCWhistleblower Twitter Party
There’s nothing like a good conspiracy theory to get the creative juices flowing. For actor Rob Schneider, that means getting your dander up over your incorrect belief that the CDC altered data to bury the “fact” that MMR causes autism.
Below are a selected list of discussions about Brian Hooker’s recent paper and the highly irresponsible way he and his team are promoting it. Let me know if you spot one I should add to the list.
… just how desperate the antivaccine movement is to have Brian Hooker’s incompetent “reanalysis” of a ten year old vaccine safety study and Andrew Wakefield’s despicable race-baiting video gain traction in the mainstream media. The failure of this conspiracy theory to do so is driving antivaccine activists into ever-greater fits of lunacy online.
There’s a conspiracy theory going around that the CDC covered up a link between autism and vaccines. From what I can tell, this conspiracy theory is on the same level as the one that NASA faked the Moon landings. And you know how I feel about that.
… the hashtag #CDCwhistleblower to do what really amounted to the social media equivalent of a temper tantrum, whining about how the mainstream media is not reporting on the study. It was really a sad display, as they simply all copied and pasted from the same list of talking points, not even adding their own interpretation.
August 27, 2014, in the morning: The Journal Translational Neurodegeneration removes Hooker’s paper from the public domain
An article purporting to find that black children are at substantially increased risk for autism after early exposure to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine has been shelved, amid claims that a CDC whistleblower has accused health officials of suppressing information about the link.
August 27, 2014, Reuben Gaines at The Poxes Blog: Even the bottom-feeding journals seem to have some sense
’m still left wondering how this paper got through peer review, or who did the peer review. They seem to not have bothered with checking the biostatistics or with looking back at the DeStefano paper.
August 27, 2014, at approximately 2:30 pm, PDT, attorneys for William W. Thompson, the CDC employee, publish Thompson’s statement
My problem with Dr. Thompson’s statement is that the data were not omitted willy-nilly. There was a protocol that was established, and it excluded from the analysis children of different ethnicities, not just African Americans. In that exclusion, a vaccine-autism signal that was confounded by different factors was lost. It wasn’t lost out of bias but out of properly adjusting for different factors.
Apparently Mr. Hooker is unaware that the secrecy of confession is absolute. Priests, real ones, not self appointed ones like Mr. Hooker, have been known to go to jail rather than divulge what they’ve been told in confession. Real priests don’t record confessions so they can betray another.
Dr. Frank DeStefano, lead author of the 2004 study, said he and his colleagues stand by their findings. DeStefano said all the study authors, including Thompson, agreed on the analysis and interpretation before the study was submitted for publication 10 years ago. However, he said he plans to review his notes and will decide whether to run another analysis on the data.
While the black ribbon can mean different things to different people, it’s main use is for grieving or remembering the fallen, the dead. The way that these people have used it is to try to bring attention to their cause by equating autism with a death or a loss.
August 25, 2014- New York, NY)– The Autism Science Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to funding autism research, today announced that Dr. Alycia Halladay will join the organization as Chief Science Officer. The announcement was made by Autism Science Foundation president Alison Singer.
“Dr. Halladay is the perfect person to lead our growing science department” said Singer. “She has extensive experience in all aspects of autism research, as well as a deep understanding of how to maximize investment in research to provide the best outcomes for families. I could not be more thrilled to have her as part of our executive team.”
Halladay previously served as the Senior Director of Clinical and Environmental Sciences and Interim Head of the Etiology Portfolio at Autism Speaks. Prior to joining Autism Speaks, she was Associate Director for Research at the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR). While at NAAR and Autism Speaks, she worked across all areas of autism science, directing or managing portfolios relating to risk factors, diagnosis, and treatment of ASDs. In addition, she led activities relating to family services, communications, awareness, and advocacy. She has a Ph.D. in psychology and behavioral neuroscience from Rutgers University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the department of pharmacology and toxicology at Rutgers where she later joined as faculty and currently holds an adjunct position. She has participated as a guest editor for a number of journals including Neurotoxicology, Autism Research, Brain Research and Gastroenterology and has served on grant review panels for the CDC and the NJ Governor’s Council for ASD.
“I am proud and honored to lead the growing science program at the Autism Science Foundation” said Halladay. “This is an exciting and important time for autism research, and I look forward to working with ASF to continue and also expand its scientific contributions.”
In its five years of operations, the Autism Science Foundation has funded over $1.6 million in grants including pre and postdoctoral fellowships, medical school gap year research fellowships, 3-year early career awards, treatment grants, undergraduate summer research funding, research enhancement mini-grants and travel scholarships to enable stakeholders to attend the annual International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR).
“Autism Science Foundation’s research programs have grown consistently year after year and now need full time leadership to oversee their continued expansion”, said Dr. Matthew State, chair of ASF’s Scientific Advisory Board and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco. “Alycia is a highly respected autism scientist and has exactly the right experience to lead ASF into the next phase of its growth.”
Dr. Halladay will begin work with the foundation on September 8, 2014.
Founded in 2009, Autism Science Foundation (ASF) is a 501(c) (3) public charity. Its mission is to support autism research by providing funding to scientists and organizations conducting autism research. ASF also provides information about autism to the general public and serves to increase awareness of autism spectrum disorders and the needs of individuals and families affected by autism. To learn more about the Autism Science Foundation or to make a donation visit http://www.autismsciencefoundation.org.
Probably the biggest story in years for the groups claiming that vaccines cause autism was when last week vaccine antagonistic activists Andrew Wakefield and Brian Hooker announced that they were in contact with an “informant” at the CDC who guided them to do a re-analysis of an older dataset. Andrew Wakefield has a history of not respecting the responsibility that one has when speaking with a whistleblower, having first threatened then actually outed a whistleblower who trusted him. As the recent story has unfolded, I’ve been asked and I’ve told many people that in my view, Brian Hooker sees himself as an honest person and, as such, he would not be a party to the sort of deception that would be involved in secretly recording someone while acting as his “priest”, then betraying him.
Apparently I was wrong.
When Wakefield and Hooker first released their story, they claimed that their “informant” wanted to remain anonymous. It says so right in the press release dated August 18. The (disgustingly race-baiting) video they put out was censored as if they wanted to protect the anonymity of the informant. But by the night of August 21st, 3 days later, the video had been changed without announcement. Mr. Wakefield (he owns/runs the Autism Media Channel that is putting out these videos) apparently uploaded the noncensored version. In it, Mr. Thompson is named early and repeatedly. His voice is no longer obscured. Mr. Thompsons’ anonymity (weakly veiled to begin with) was no more.
From the start many people questioned whether the “CDC Whistleblower” as he has been dubbed had agreed to be recorded, knew about the video that was made, or agreed to let his identity be known. Or if he ever had any intention that anyone would even disclose that there even was help from someone at the CDC on this.
My read on the press release Mr. Thompson has put out is that Mr. Thompson never intended for his role to be made public. That Mr. Hooker would just present the study as his own work and use that to advocate for a follow on analysis. Much less that his name would be revealed.
But, as we see, that didn’t happen. He was outed. His participation was revealed immediately. His name was revealed in a few days. His conversations with Mr. Hooker were edited for effect and put on the web.
How did Mr. Hooker describe his interaction with Mr. Thompson? From the video we hear:
“Dr. Thompson had appointed me his priest. And when he appointed me his priest, then he started confessing.”
Apparently Mr. Hooker is unaware that the secrecy of confession is absolute. Priests, real ones, not self appointed ones like Mr. Hooker, have been known to go to jail rather than divulge what they’ve been told in confession. Real priests don’t record confessions so they can betray another.
I once thought that perhaps Mr. Hooker and I were at a very basic level similar. That we were focused on doing what was best for our kids. I no longer think that way. At a basic level one either has integrity or one doesn’t. A person who takes on the role of a confessor in order to secretly tape and betray another has no integrity.
Mr. Hooker will no doubt be the hero of parent conventions in the future. It’s a very low price for one’s integrity in my opinion.
For whatever it is worth: Mr. Hooker lives in a state with a very clear two-party rule. It’s against the law there to record someone without his/her knowledge. Mr. Thompson also lives in a two-party state.
Below is that press release again.
—
By Matt Carey
August 27, 2014 Press Release, “Statement of William W. Thompson, Ph.D., Regarding the 2004 Article Examining the Possibility of a Relationship Between MMR Vaccine and Autism”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-AUGUST 27,2014
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. THOMPSON, Ph.D., REGARDING THE 2004 ARTICLE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM
My name is William Thompson. I am a Senior Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, where I have worked since 1998.
I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.
I want to be absolutely clear that I believe vaccines have saved and continue to save countless lives. I would never suggest that any parent avoid vaccinating children of any race. Vaccines prevent serious diseases, and the risks associated with their administration are vastly outweighed by their individual and societal benefits.
My concern has been the decision to omit relevant findings in a particular study for a particular sub group for a particular vaccine. There have always been recognized risks for vaccination and I believe it is the responsibility of the CDC to properly convey the risks associated with receipt of those vaccines.
I have had many discussions with Dr. Brian Hooker over the last 10 months regarding studies the CDC has carried out regarding vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes including autism spectrum disorders. I share his beliefthat CDC decision-making and analyses should be transparent. I was not, however, aware that he was recording any of our conversations, nor was I given any choice regarding whether my name would be made public or my voice would be put on the Internet.
I am grateful for the many supportive e-mails that I have received over the last several days.
I will not be answering further questions at this time. I am providing information to Congressman William Posey, and of course will continue to cooperate with Congress. I have also offered to assist with reanalysis of the study data or development of further studies. For the time being, however, I am focused on my job and my family.
Reasonable scientists can and do differ in their interpretation of information. I will do everything I can to assist any unbiased and objective scientists inside or outside the CDC to analyze data collected by the CDC or other public organizations for the purpose of understanding whether vaccines are associated with an increased risk of autism. There are still more questions than answers, and I appreciate that so many families are looking for answers from the scientific community.
My colleagues and supervisors at the CDC have been entirely professional since this matter became public. In fact, I received a performance-based award after this story came out. I have experienced no pressure or retaliation and certainly was not escorted from the building, as some have stated.
Dr. Thompson is represented by Frederick M. Morgan,Jr., Morgan Verkamp, LLC, Cincinnati, Ohio, http://www.morganverkamp.com.
I will discuss this soon, but here is a press release from the attorney representing William Thompson, a CDC researcher involved who appears to have spoken with vaccine antagonistic activists Andrew Wakefield and Brian Hooker about work he had performed on autism.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-AUGUST 27,2014
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. THOMPSON, Ph.D., REGARDING THE 2004 ARTICLE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM
My name is William Thompson. I am a Senior Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, where I have worked since 1998.
I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.
I want to be absolutely clear that I believe vaccines have saved and continue to save countless lives. I would never suggest that any parent avoid vaccinating children of any race. Vaccines prevent serious diseases, and the risks associated with their administration are vastly outweighed by their individual and societal benefits.
My concern has been the decision to omit relevant findings in a particular study for a particular sub group for a particular vaccine. There have always been recognized risks for vaccination and I believe it is the responsibility of the CDC to properly convey the risks associated with receipt of those vaccines.
I have had many discussions with Dr. Brian Hooker over the last 10 months regarding studies the CDC has carried out regarding vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes including autism spectrum disorders. I share his beliefthat CDC decision-making and analyses should be transparent. I was not, however, aware that he was recording any of our conversations, nor was I given any choice regarding whether my name would be made public or my voice would be put on the Internet.
I am grateful for the many supportive e-mails that I have received over the last several days.
I will not be answering further questions at this time. I am providing information to Congressman William Posey, and of course will continue to cooperate with Congress. I have also offered to assist with reanalysis of the study data or development of further studies. For the time being, however, I am focused on my job and my family.
Reasonable scientists can and do differ in their interpretation of information. I will do everything I can to assist any unbiased and objective scientists inside or outside the CDC to analyze data collected by the CDC or other public organizations for the purpose of understanding whether vaccines are associated with an increased risk of autism. There are still more questions than answers, and I appreciate that so many families are looking for answers from the scientific community.
My colleagues and supervisors at the CDC have been entirely professional since this matter became public. In fact, I received a performance-based award after this story came out. I have experienced no pressure or retaliation and certainly was not escorted from the building, as some have stated.
Dr. Thompson is represented by Frederick M. Morgan,Jr., Morgan Verkamp, LLC, Cincinnati, Ohio, http://www.morganverkamp.com.
Mr. Thompson has been called the “CDC Whistleblower” by the groups promoting the idea that vaccines cause autism.
Below are a selected list of discussions about Brian Hooker’s recent paper and the highly irresponsible way he and his team are promoting it. Let me know if you spot one I should add to the list.
Here on Left Brain/Right Brain, I have discussed this as:
One will certainly find more articles, especially searching for the names of the people involved and terms like “CDC Whistleblower”
So far none of the groups who promote autism as a vaccine-induced epidemic have stepped forward to distance themselves from Andrew Wakefield and Brian Hooker’s disgusting race-baiting attack. I hope that will change.
This article has been removed from the public domain because of serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions. The journal and publisher believe that its continued availability may not be in the public interest. Definitive editorial action will be pending further investigation.
I wish they had thought this through before publishing it. Be that as it may, my own view (as an author and one-time editor) is that the revelation that this is not an original work by Mr. Hooker should have warranted some action. Mr. Hooker has discussed how the idea to do this study came from someone else and the analysis is a recreation of a previous analysis. Minor point, I know. And I know my online friends did not agree with me on that.
I do appreciate the journal taking this step. While Mr. Hooker, Andrew Wakefield and their team try to make as much political hay out of this paper as they can.
MMS. Miracle Mineral Solution is dangerous bunk. They’ve taken such a hit with people exposing it as bunk that they’ve started rebranding themselves as “CD” of “Chlorine Dioxide”.
The basic idea is that there are bad things inside you that make you sick. And by sick, they include autistic. If you ingest something that kills the bad things, or take enemas that kill the bad things, you will no longer be sick. There’s a lot of handwaving about how this only works on the bad things and not the good things like, say, the tissues in your body.
While CDS has no raw materials left in the final product, CDH does, making it similar to classic MMS. The main difference between classic MMS and CDH, however, is that the sodium chlorite is allowed to react with the acid for a much longer period of time which reduces the amount of unactivated sodium chlorite and activator left in the final CDH solution. Then, since CDH is more fully activated outside of the body, it causes little or no stomach upset in most people. Also, CDH made with 4% HCl tastes much better. (Note: For those who still have a problem with the taste, “Sweetleaf” brand liquid stevia has been tested and is compatible with MMS, thus can be used to make it taste even better.)
If you took high school or college chemistry you probably remember the very sharp aroma of HCl. You may remember how it can burn skin and the lining of your nose. It’s nasty stuff. Sure, they’ve got relatively dilute HCl (4%), but, still, WHAT ARE THEY THINKING? (and after that–people are looking at 10% HCl! There is something seriously wrong here)
MMS/CD/CDH, whatever you want to call this, it’s a scam. People post to Facebook pictures of the intestinal linings of their disabled kids, passed with the help of MMS enemas. They caption these pictures with statements about how MMS killed “worms”. Rather than go to a doctor and see if there are real parasites, they are self-diagnosing and self-treating and causing harm.
One of the main avenues for promoting this to the autism community is the AutismOne parent convention, where MMS pracitioner Terri Kerri Riviera sells her services under the guise of “scientific” presentations.
And all the people presenting at AutismOne stand by and don’t say a word. The supposed leaders in that community don’t seem to have the ability to spot scam artists (which is pretty obvious given the years they have spent promoting Andrew Wakefield, to give just one example). They also lack courage. They rarely if ever stand up to anyone who is promoting obvious and dangerous nonsense.
The all show up, promote themselves, their goods and services, and go home. It’s time for them to show some courage. They can put a stop to this. Instead they lend their names and credibility to this obvious scam.
The groups promoting vaccines causing autism have been handed probably their biggest story in a decade. They are claiming, and it seams likely, that a senior CDC epidemiologist came to them with information that a statistically significant result of possible increased autism risk from the MMR in a specific subpopulation was not reported.
I’ll go into a lot of background below, but if you wish to read up about these events:
Here’s the press release for the recent reanalysis study
Even with multiple press releases and no doubt other efforts to gain media attention, this story has yet to break out into a mainstream news story. Some alternative news sources and many parent supporters of the vaccine/autism idea have discussed this lack of media attention. And there’s a YouTube video by Andrew Wakefield that I’ll embed below. That video deserves and probably will get it’s own article here on Left Brain/Right Brain. It is remarkably bad.
It has often been said that the parents promoting the idea that autism is a vaccine-induced epidemic are their own worst enemies. As the parent of a multiply disabled autistic child I can say without reservation that these groups are no friends to the majority of the autism parent community either. Nor are they friends to the real majority of our community: autistics. The vaccines-caused-an-autism-epidemic parents have refused to support any research which goes against their idea that autism is a vaccine-induced epidemic. They don’t support research into the prevalence of autism in adults. Likely because they worry that this will show that their epidemic idea is false. In the process we lose the chance to learn from the previous generations of autistics about what has worked and what has not. Information which is critical to this autism parent. These groups have failed to accept that the lower prevalence of identified autism in racial and ethnic minorities indicates that the prevalence numbers we so often hear are not the a true count of the fraction of our population that is autistic. Because to admit that is to admit that they are misusing the numbers they rely upon to claim an epidemic. Their lack of support has hindered attempts to improve identification and get appropriate services for autistics in racial and ethnic minorities. This is a point that is incredibly ironic given the way these groups are framing their recent news as you will see (or have seen if you read Ms. Ditz’ article linked above). On top of this they have produced a way over-the-top PR campaign about their news, demonstrating their deep hatred for the CDC. If I were to tell you that Andrew Wakefield is claiming that the CDC are worse than Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot (because, you see, in Mr. Wakefield’s eyes at least those dictators were sincere), would you believe me? Would you think I was making this up? If I said that Mr. Wakefield has played the race card in a disgusting way, claiming that the U.S. vaccine program is a new Tuskegee experiment, would you believe me? You can skip down to the bottom if you want to see that discussion and video. I’ll start with the science.
About 10 years ago a team from the CDC published a study: Age at First Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccination in Children With Autism and School-Matched Control Subjects: A Population-Based Study in Metropolitan Atlanta (full paper here). They took data from the CDC’s Metropolitan Atlanta Developmental Disabilities Surveillance Program (MADDSP). In order to control for potential confounding variables–like mother’s age, birth weight and more, the authors of the MMR follow-up study pulled birth certificate records. They only pulled them for kids born in Georgia. Could be there was a logistics issue (trying to track down records across the country) or if birth records were not consistent across the US. Also, they would have had to find control kids for those born outside Georgia, and that would have been a big logistics issue. In the end there were two analyses presented–one on the raw data with all the kids, and one with a more detailed analysis done with this smaller “birth certificate” cohort.
This is a good table to review this study. What did they find? The general result is that time of MMR vaccine receipt was similar between autistic kids and non autistic kids, but was statistically more common among autistic kids. In the table above we see that for the most part, the sub groups reported had generally no increased risk of autism with MMR. I.e. in most examples the 95% confidence intervals encompass 1. The unadjusted sample “all cases” and “boys” do not encompass 1. If those were all the data we had, we’d say “let’s look more closely at these”. We’d start with exactly what the authors do–check for confounding variables and see if the effect gets bigger or smaller. In the adjusted data, all the odds ratios encompass one. Some are high enough to warrant a closer look: kids aged 3-5 and boys. Combining these two I’d probably ask, “what about boys aged 3-5”, but the authors take on the age 3-5 question in general in the discussion citing that the 3-5 age group autistics were mostly in special ed preschool and were thus required to have MMR.
If you look at Table 5 (click to enlarge) you see an interesting and very strange trend. It was in the other data but it’s really clear here. The odds ratio is much larger for kids who got MMR before 36 months than for kids who got it before 24 months. The odds ratios still encompass 1, but there is something going on in the data for the kids who got vaccines between 24 and 36 months. And by “something going on” we always have to consider social factors. But take a look:
Take, for example, maternal education. Kids with mothers who had more than 15 years of education had an odds ratio of only 0.61 if their kids got the MMR before 24 months, but that odds ratio jumps up to 2.76 if their kids got the vaccine before 36 months. In both the confidence intervals encompass 1, so we can’t say “MMR before 24 months is protective but MMR before 36 months increases risk”. But that difference is striking. Even if these results were statistically significant, it doesn’t make sense to say, “the MMR vaccine causes autism in kids when it is given between 24 and 26 months if their mothers are well educated. And, by the way, it’s protective if given before 36 months.”
While not as striking, the differences between the unadjusted and adjusted analyses in table 3 are notable. Odds ratios change when you take into account other factors. I’m no epidemiologist, but if this isn’t covered in epidemiology 101 I’ll be stunned. In physics (the field of my Ph.D.) we talk about “hidden variables”. You see one thing correlated with another but in reality a third, “hidden”, variable is actually causing the association.
That said, the CDC MMR paper is not a study without limitations (no study is). One major limitation was the need discussed above–to argue why the 3-5 age group kids had a higher prevalence.
At this point researchers (both the study authors and those reading this paper) and advocates can take a number of approaches. Here are 4:
1) They can say, “yep, that’s plausible enough. We’ve worked this dataset enough. This tells us that MMR doesn’t cause autism. Let’s move on from MMR.”
That didn’t happen and rightfully so. This isn’t a particularly strong study. It’s not the final word and I don’t think it was intended to be. It was a relatively quick study using an existing population. In the end there were more studies on autism and MMR.
2) Advocates and researchers could take the approach: “There’s an association there, but these data are too limited to really answer the question of causation. Can we do a study to nail down if there’s something about those kids born in those specific years (the 3-5 year olds) who got the MMR between 24 and 36 months? Maybe look at further subsets?” And, while it’s easy to say with hindsight, this is the approach that should have been taken in my opinion. I am unaware of work by this team of researchers or external researchers which addressed this question. I am also unaware of calls by the autism community to do such a follow up, by the way.
3) Advocates and/or researchers could say, “I think we can tease more out of these data. Hey, CDC, can I have that dataset to review myself?” Because the CDC did make these data available for serious researchers to review. CDC researchers moved on to other topics in autism and vaccines, but other researchers or qualified advocates could have taken this up.
4) Advocates (not so much researchers I suspect) could say, “I don’t trust the CDC to add 1 and 1. Give me those data and I’ll do the analysis myself. Even those areas where you show a lack of association are probably wrong.” And, yes, there are advocates like that. Well, except that no one asked for the data back then. More recently, though someone did. Which leads us to:
An autism parent and strong proponent of the failed mercury hypothesis, Brian Hooker, recently published a study re-analyzing that old CDC dataset on MMR and autism. His financial backers put out a press release claiming that not only does this study show that vaccines cause autism in a specific subgroup, but that this study was prompted by a CDC “whistleblower”. I.e. someone who was inside CDC and knew about the details of the CDC study was in contact with Mr. Hooker.
That’s a pretty dramatic press release. Let’s take some time on it.
Focus Autism Releases Findings on 2003 CDC Autism Study – Higher Autism Rate Among African-American Boys Receiving MMR Shot Earlier than 36 Months
Focus Autism releases their findings of a possible reduction in the sample size of a major 2003 study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This sample size reduction negates statistically significant findings from the study.
This title is why I jumped to the press release before talking about Mr. Hooker’s paper. With this title we know (a) that Mr. Hooker is claiming an association among a specific subgroup only (African American boys) and (b) he’s claiming that there was some sort of sleight of hand by the CDC where they reduced the sample size.
Well we already know from the CDC study that autism rates were higher in kids who got the MMR before 36 months. It’s right there in the conclusion statement of the abstract. But not so much before 24 months. And we know autism rates were higher in boys. We didn’t see the analysis narrowed down to African American boys.
The press release states:
“However, CDC researchers did not include any children that did not have a valid State of Georgia birth certificate – reducing the study’s sample size by 41% . Dr. Hooker explains that by introducing this discretionary criteria into the analysis, the cohort size was sharply reduced, eliminating what would have been a higher statistical finding. ”
This is a rather odd statement. And by odd, I mean so obviously false that I wonder why it was written. See for yourself above, the study includes *both* the group with the birth certificate data and the raw data. Mr. Hooker’s explanation is, well, lacking. Sure, it is “discretionary” to try to account for confounding variables. It’s the sort of discretion I expect from epidemiologists. It’s like saying, “the engineers designing the Tacoma Narrows bridge decided against including the discretionary criteria of wind”. Also, consider that a result can be both statistically significant and wrong as is often the case when one finds something “statistically significant” without looking for or correcting for hidden variables.
In another press release Mr. Hooker calls the birth certificate data “irrelevant and unnecessary”. Again, why put out statements that anyone familiar with epidemiology would know to be false?
Elsewhere Mr. Hooker has even challenged the fact that one can obtain the stated data from birth certificates. He is in effect stating that not only is there no point in controlling for such factors, but that the CDC just lied and didn’t even have those data from the birth certificates.
Despite your assertions and the assertions of Destefano, Birth Certificates do not contain the information on the covariates you cite: birth weight, maternal age, maternal education, parity, etc. If you had read my paper, you would see that I repeated the analyses of the CDC and obtained the same results that they obtained in both what was published originally and what was withheld. Also, the birth certificate restriction was NOT applied to other race categories outside of African Americans.
Readers interested in whether Mr. Hooker is correct can take a look at the U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth. While this is the revised version, states standardized on birth certificates back in the 1990’s.
Epidemiologists are aware that the piece of paper a parent takes home isn’t necessarily the same birth certificate data that is in the full record.
And “Also, the birth certificate restriction was NOT applied to other race categories outside of African Americans”. Here we see the race card being played. A card that we will soon see was played with a very heavy hand. But to address the assertion made by Mr. Hooker, I wonder how he explains that there are 333 white autistic kids in the “total sample” and 199 in the “birth certificate sample”. Which is to say, his statement is false.
In one of the press releases, Mr. Hooker states
When asked if there could be any scientific basis for excluding children born outside of Georgia, Hooker responded, “I know of none, and none has been provided by the authors of the DeStefano study.”
Again, children born outside of Georgia were not excluded as Mr. Hooker asserts. Analyses were presented on both those born within Georgia (including adjustments for vital statistics found on the birth certificates) and a total sample including those born outside Georgia (the unadjusted analysis). If Mr. Hooker is “unaware” why people would do such an elementary epimiological task as adjusting data with covariates, I suggest he was a poor choice to perform Focus Autism’s study. Another thought would be that Mr. Hooker could read his own paper where he states:
It should be noted that a recent publication has shown that the prevalence of autism in African Americans is nearly 25% higher than that of whites. This value was obtained when CDC data were appropriately analyzed based on socioeconomic status
Mr. Hooker notes that when one does an analysis “appropriately” one includes socioeconomic status (such as with data found in the full birth certificates).
If Mr. Hooker would like to ask why the CDC team didn’t look for birth certificate data on kids born outside of Georgia, that’s would be a better place to start. Then we can discuss whether the CDC would then need 3 controls for each non-Georgia born kid, controls from the same place of birth as the study team did with Georgia born kids. And we could discuss how difficult that would be. And whether that would introduce more problems than it might solve. That’s a reasonable discussion. Claiming there’s no reason to gather important data is not.
Enough of the inconsistencies in Mr. Hooker’s recent statements. What was Mr. Hooker’s method and what did Mr. Hooker find in his analysis? The Poxes Blog and epidemiologcal.net discuss this with more expertise than I can. Mr. Hooker does not recreate the CDC’s case-control study. That would require that match autistic kids and non autistic kids on the parameters he says aren’t available, and adjust for those same parameters. Instead he does a cohort study without adjustments. As discussed elsewhere, this is a much weaker approach. His main result is as the press release states “Higher Autism Rate Among African-American Boys Receiving MMR Shot Earlier than 36 Months”. He does not note in his press release “no risk for MMR and autism in everyone else”. Here is table 2 from his paper showing that.
He states a relative risk that is statistically significant for African American boys who get the vaccine before 24 months (RR=1.73) and before 36 months (RR=3.36). No increased risk for African American girls. And, as Table 3 shows, no increased risk for non African Americans.
Mr. Hooker says his results are statistically significant. Others have questioned whether his analysis is really appropriate to say this, but for now let’s just benchmark this by checking how large his sample group for that large relative risk is anyway. Just so we know. The high risk group are kids vaccinated before 36 months. Here’s a figure from Table 2 of DeStefano et al.:
There are 45 autistic kids vaccinated between 24 and 36 months. African Americans account for 40% of the total population, but let’s say about 1/2 of this 24-36 age group are African American. Or about 22 kids. 22 kids and Mr. Hooker is doing no adjustments for factors such as those found on birth certificates. The sort of socioeconomic parameters that he notes are important to get an accurate prevalence in the African American population.
Which is to say: this is not a strong finding by any stretch of the imagination.
Mr. Hooker took a subgroup–African American males–and found that there was in the unadjusted data a statistically significant relative risk. An increased relative risk is not the same thing as showing causation, especially when you are working with unadjusted data and many other limitations in this. This is enough to raise the question of whether we should do more studies to show if this increased risk holds up to further scrutiny. This is how Mr. Hooker concludes his paper:
Routine childhood vaccination is considered an important public health tool in reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases. However, consideration should be made in the current United States vaccination schedule for genetic subpopulations that may be associated with vaccine adverse events. Additional research is required to better understand the relationship between MMR exposure and autism in African American males.
A study relying largely on a small group of subjects (about 20) with the conclusion that more work is needed. Sounds vaguely familiar. And, as we will see, Mr. Hooker has teamed up with Andrew Wakefield to put out a video where they jump past the whole this indicates more research is needed through this is absolute evidence of MMR causing autism directly to the CDC are engaging in a racist experiment sacrificing children to autism. It’s like the events around Mr. Wakefield’s 1997 Lancet paper cranked up to 11.
Even though Mr. Hooker’s analysis is quite limited, as in it would be (and you will see is) incredibly irresponsible to jump from this to say “MMR Causes Autism in African American Males”, I’d like to see either more data or a good explanation why someone shouldn’t do it. If for nothing else, precisely to head off the sort of irresponsible and damaging PR campaign that Mr. Hooker and Mr. Wakefield have engaged in. There are a lot of data on MMR and autism since DeStefano first published (especially Hornig et al.) showing that MMR doesn’t increase autism risk. And Mr. Hooker himself has shown that autism risk is not raised in everyone other than African American boys. One can easily argue (and should) that the MMR/Autism/African American Boys result is spurious. But I’d like to see more evidence to support that. I don’t see evidence so far that this is fraud, but I don’t agree with the scientific decisions made.
All this said, can reasonable people really raise a concern about autism risk given how inflammatory that discussion can be? Yes. Here’s an example of how a study found a possible risk factor and follow up studies answered the question. The Price study was one of the largest studies on thimerosal exposure and autism risk. As part of that study they considered folic acid intake in mothers as one confounding variable for thimerosal exposure. They reported that there could be an increased autism risk from taking folic acid. The calculated risk for mothers who reported taking folic acid was about double that of those who didn’t. Keep in mind that folic acid supplementation for pregnant women is a major public health program as it reduces the risk of some developmental disabilities, so the possibility that it was increasing autism risk has major public health implications. This is a good parallel to the question of vaccines (public health program) and autism.
After the Price study, multiple studies were performed looking folic acid intake and autism risk (I can’t say that these were prompted by Price et al., but it seems reasonable to think they might):
How can we summarize the folic acid history? A possible risk factor was found. It wasn’t plausible since folic acid seems to be protective for birth defects. But people did a second check (and even a third) and found that not only is folic acid not a risk factor, it may even reduce autism risk. Which even though this is what people would have said was biologically the most probable outcome at the start, this was a needed exercise.
Can we draw a parallel? Well, DeStefano et al. and later Hooker found a possible risk for MMR and boys (with Hooker citing African American Boys) getting the MMR vaccine late but before 36 months. It doesn’t seem plausible or even self consistent with the other results of the study dataset as has already been discussed. Reasonable people could move forward on this and see if existing data could answer this or if a new study is warranted.
Reasonable people could. As I’ve alluded to, we aren’t really dealing with a “and reasonable people” scenario. And here’s where we get into the “these people are their own worst enemies” part of the discussion. We’ve already seen how Mr. Hooker has made incorrect statements about the birth certificates of the DeStefano study. Let’s look another of Mr. Hooker’s statements and ask, “is this the statement of a reasonable person”?
He added, “The exclusion is reminiscent of tactics historically used to deprive African-Americans of the vote by requiring valid birth certificates.”
And here we see Mr. Hooker and Focus Autism playing the race card for sensational effect. One can’t even say this is a stretch. It’s just ridiculous. There was no exclusion and certainly people didn’t say, “let’s exclude African Americans and deny them their rights.” Maybe some will say this still within the realm of what a reasonable person might say. I would then ask you to watch this video produced to promote this study and the events surrounding it. The really inflammatory statements are made by Andrew Wakefield, but this looks to be a joint effort between Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Hooker. If Mr. Hooker would like to explain that he disagrees with the approach Mr. Wakefield took, I’ll be quick to rewrite this. But for now, here’s what team Wakefield/Hooker has prepared for you:
As promised above here are Andrew Wakefield and Brian Hooker claiming that the CDC are running a Tuskegee like experiment, where in Mr. Wakefield’s view African American boys are allowed become autistic by MMR for some nefarious and unexplained reason (because there are so few autistics that we need to create some for study?). I suspect Mr. Hooker will take offense at me stating that he is claiming this as it’s Mr. Wakefield who says the words. OK. Go ahead and put out a statement distancing yourself from this irresponsible attack Mr. Hooker. And, yes, I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that Mr. Wakefield thinks that the CDC are even worse than Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. The dictators, you see, were sincere. (8:40 into the video).
No one has yet responded in the mainstream media to the press releases and the Hooker study. And many of Mr. Wakefield’s supporters online are noticing this and asking why. Here are some possibilities:
2) perhaps the most famous person in that bad science and unethical behavior is your spokesperson on this new media campaign: Andrew Wakefield.
3) members of the press are not generally attracted to stories where people who have devoted their lives to preventing infectious diseases and to understanding developmental disability are called worse than Hitler.
4) after years of a campaign to instill fear about vaccines, we are in the midst of outbreaks of multiple vaccine preventable diseases. The founder of the blog where Mr. Hooker chose to release and discuss his new results famously once bragged that his groups was going to bring the “U.S. vaccine program to its knees”
Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Hooker probably (and some of their followers certainly) have been wondering why their news of a CDC “informant” hasn’t garnered media attention. If you read the press releases and have followed the online discussions, you know that the idea for this reanalysis of the DeStefano data came from documents obtained by Congressman Issa and from phone conversations Mr. Hooker had with a CDC epidemiologist.
In their first press release, Mr. Hooker’s team noted that
According to Dr. Hooker, the CDC whistleblower informant — who wishes to remain anonymous — guided him to evidence that a statistically significant relationship between the age the MMR vaccine was first given and autism incidence in African-American boys was hidden by CDC researchers.
That was released on a Tuesday. The video came out the Monday previous, but was censored and the voice of the “informant” was obscured. On that same Monday, Mr. Wakefield noted on his Facebook page “He will be identified very soon” (referring to the “informant”). In other words, they had no intention of keeping this man’s identity secret. And a few days late, on Thursday night, the video was changed so that the censoring was gone and the voice was not obscured.
So, we have an informant who was obviously working with the Hooker/Wakefield team for months who wanted to remain anonymous. The Wakefield/Hooker team left clues about who this person was: they noted that he works for the CDC and has for some number of years and Mr. Hooker spoke of the informant as “him”. There are only two males who worked on that paper: W.W. Anderson Thompson (who has been named as the informant) and a statistician in the acknowledgments. Which of those two are on record within CDC as having voiced a strong opinion about the African American boy data? Heck, I nearly called Mr. Thompson myself to ask if he was working with Mr. Hooker. I wouldn’t be surprised if people at the CDC figured it out and that’s why his name was so quickly divulged by Mr. Wakefield. Why keep his name secret if you’ve already given out enough information to his superiors for them to break his cover?
And with that let’s get back to the “these guys are their own worst enemies” discussion. When you have someone you consider a whistleblower, it is your duty to protect that person. Not out him/her. Mr. Wakefield doesn’t seem to understand that. Years after having ignored the information given to him by a whistleblower in the UK, Mr. Wakefield not only outed that whistleblower, he first threatened the man with disclosure:
If Mr. Thompson intended to stay anonymous, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, he chose poorly in his confidants.
Mr. Thompson had many options of to whom he could reveal his information. Many people would have taken him seriously and not taken the highly irresponsible approach that Brian Hooker has with the race-baiting video and more. I’ve read a number of people speculate that Mr. Thompson didn’t know what he was getting himself in to. If he really chose to work closely with Mr. Hooker, I can’t see how he didn’t see the extremes this information would be put to.
Mr. Hooker has had much communication with the CDC over the past decade and more. Here is some of that communication (about 3MB worth), selected by Mr. Hooker himself as an exhibit in his FOIA case with the CDC.
People at the CDC, likely Mr. Thompson included, would know of Mr. Hooker’s very strong opinions of them. A letter sent to then CDC Director Julie Gerberding is entitled “War Crimes in Your Fight Against Infectious Disease and recommends: “I would personally urge you to review the Book of Matthew 18:6 and consider your own responsibility to all children of the U.S. including my own son.” Italics in the original. Here is one version of Matthew 18:6:
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Brian Hooker and Andrew Wakefield present at parent conventions such as AutismOne, where other presenters are selling their goods and services with faux autism treatments. Treatments such as bleach enemas and drinks (MMS), Lupron (a drug which shuts down sex hormone production. Essentially chemical castration), chelation, megadoses of “supplements” and more. They are sold largely on the promise of healing “vaccine injury”. By handing the Hooker/Wakefield team this PR win, Mr. Thompson will be feeding that industry.
This all said, we only have a few sentences on a video purporting to be Mr. Thompson. I have no reason yet to doubt that his his voice. I also don’t have the full conversations in context. Nor do I have evidence that Mr. Thompson agreed to be outed. Nor do I have evidence that Mr. Thompson agreed to have his phone conversations recorded. Nor do I have evidence that Mr. Thompson continues to communicate with Mr. Hooker. In fact he’s been silent since this story broke and no new quotes from him have been passed by Mr. Hooker or Mr. Wakefield.
What’s more, and rather odd, is that MMR is not really either Mr. Thompson nor Mr. Hooker’s primary interest. Mr. Thompson was author on a number of major thimerosal papers. First author on one. Mr. Hooker’s primary focus on the vaccine/autism discussion has been on thimerosal. I have been reading people online claiming that these events are what they’ve expected and hoped for: someone from CDC exposing that all the vaccine/autism work is fraudulent. But this isn’t the case at all. Nothing so far on thimerosal. One re-analysis of some MMR work that, while important to discuss, is not very strong at all. And while I have written what is possibly my longest article yet (out of something like 2000), there isn’t, as they say, much there there when it comes to anything substantial about vaccines and autism. What we do have is a public relations mess. A story that will be exploited by unethical people to frighten parents and try to revamp their own image and take some revenge.
More recently, at least one (non reliable) site is reporting that Mr. Thompson has spoken through his attorney. The message (and I paraphrase): in getting the preliminary result on African American boys out, he did what he set out to do.
In the end, it is once again public health and autism families that will pay the price. People will use this in their attempt to “bring the U.S. vaccine program to it’s knees”. More autism parents will be dragged into the self blame and guilt that comes with the vaccines-cause-autism beliefs. And disabled children will be subjected to abusive faux therapies in attempts to heal their “vaccine injury”.
Yesterday, Donald Trump, Robert Kennedy and others met in the Oval Office to announce an executive order on vaccines and autism. I have a simple message for them: Don’t pretend that you are helping my kid, me or my family. Don’t act like you are speaking for us or our wants or desires. There is […]
Let’s start with an uncomfortable fact. States have a financial incentive to underserve disabled students. Special education is expensive, and every support costs money. The Department of Education exists, in part, as a federal watchdog to ensure that states live up to their obligations under the law. And these are kids who will never pay […]
When I was young, people like my kid were institutionalized. Access to community, either in their residence or their daily activities, was limited. Which is a nice way of saying, a lot of people never saw the outside of an institution. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to think that after I […]
NIH autism research funding has collapsed since Mr. Kennedy became HHS Secretary. I wrote about this in my open letter to the IACC. Then I got curious: are the cuts limited to autism, or is this happening across NIH? The answer: it’s everywhere, and it’s worse than I expected. Below is a graph I made […]
Secretary Kennedy has cut back on autism research, and you can act. You should act. You must act. Here are data from NIH Reporter on new NIH autism grants by fiscal year. I pro-rated the results from 2026, since the fiscal year ends in September. This graph shows only those grants which are new in each fiscal […]
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