Archive | Ben Goldacre RSS feed for this section

Scientology and HBOT

23 Sep

At the start of the month I read a post about HBOT on the OC Register. Standard fare but something about it nagged away at me.

I realised it was the sidebar where the author had listed two purveyors of HBOT in Orange County. One of them was called Whitaker Wellness. The name rang a bell so I found the website and lo and behold, found the connection – Julian Whitaker, MD.

Whitaker Wellness in Costa Mesa was the first hyperbaric oxygen therapy clinic in Orange County to treat a large number of autistic patients.

I first blogged about Whitaker two years ago. It turns out that he has some interesting friends:

[Whitaker]….is with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, established by the Church of Scientology to expose what the church calls psychiatric violations of human rights and who pushes a variety of CAM treatments including chelation.

My goodness these Scientologists get about.

Julian Whitaker is – like all DAN! docs and Scientologists down on toxins and big on how to get rid of them all but intriguingly the word ‘autism’ is not used once on his website, although a web search for Dr Whitaker and autism reveals lots of results.

I was concerned two years ago at the prospect of Scientologists being so involved with the autism/antivax movement and I still am. I hope Dr Whitaker is totally upfront with all his patients regarding his beliefs.

Salon – Inside the vaccine scare

22 Sep

Salon redeems itself from producing what Orac at the time called biggest, steamingest, drippiest turd ever dropped on the web.

Three years ago Salon published the notoriously innacurate ramblings of RFK Jr. After uproar in the web science community and numerous fixes and amends to the original piece, what was left was still an awful piece of credulous rubbish.

It seems that Salon learnt their lesson. This time, they have ensured that the person talking about vaccines and autism is a _scientist_ as oppose to a crowd-pleasing politician.

Rahul Parikh has published a review of Paul Offit’s Autism’s False Prophets which differs so wildly from the RFK Jr debacle that its almost impossible to think of them being in the same publication.

I don’t want to do a review of a review as that would be bizarre and unnecessary but Parikh makes some key points that I want to address. The first one is the way the book starts.

Early in Dr. Paul A. Offit’s new book, “Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure,” he describes a threatening letter he received from a man in Seattle. “I will hang you by you neck until you are dead!” it read. The FBI deemed the threat credible, assigning Offit a protective officer who, for the next few months, followed him “to and from lunch, a gun hanging at his side.” He then recalls a suspicious phone call from a man who recited the names of Offit’s two children and where they went to school: “His implication was clear. He knew where my children went to school. The he hung up.” These days, the hospital he works in regularly screens his mail for suspicious packages.

Such stories usually come from pro-choice physicians on the front lines of the abortion debate. But Offit is no obstetrician. Rather, he is a baby doctor — the chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The threats against him and his family have come not from antiabortion advocates, but rather from anti-vaccine crusaders who believe that vaccines cause autism. Offit, it turns out, has been targeted by them because he helped to develop a vaccine that prevents rotavirus, a serious gastrointestinal infection in children, and because he has been staunchly pro-vaccine in a time when there are many doubts about their safety.

It is amazing that we should be in a situation where a doctor who is actively saving lives is being targeted for that very fact. What is even more amazing is the fact that the very antivaxers who hate Offit so much simply don’t believe he _is_ being targeted. A few comments from Lisa Jo Rudy’s piece on Offit’s book illustrate this perfectly:

It’s very hard to judge the seriousness claims like Offit’s….

Mark Blaxill, Safe Minds.

I have heard Dr. Offitt make his claims of threats, etc. on more than one occasion. But I have never seen any real evidence of those alleged threats.

Wade Rankin, autism/antivax blogger

I would suggest that a reference to the possibility that some agency or company would harm one’s children in the future could be construed and repeated as a “threat” to one’s children if that threat would help to garner sympathy and label an opposing side as nuts.

Mike B

An amazing reaction. They genuinely hate Paul Offit so much that they think he is making up threats made to his children. And they think he’s doing it to ‘garner sympathy and label an opposing side as nuts’. This is the type of denial and refusal to see their own shortcomings that has led to the sorry state of autism/vaccine science in the first place.

Parikh also documents the reality of the science today and the reality of how the wider world views the autism/anti-vaccine community.

Despite what Wakefield claimed in his paper, his hospital’s ethics committee never approved his experiments to put children to sleep under general anesthesia, do spinal taps on them, take biopsies of their intestines (one of the children was hospitalized after his colon perforated in several places) and take volumes of blood from their veins. Deer also discovered serious conflicts of interest: Wakefield’s research was secretly bankrolled by a personal injury lawyer whose clients were suing MMR makers. Wakefield himself was given close to a million dollars to prove that the MMR caused autism. He had filed a patent for a new MMR vaccine at the same time he was doing his research. Upon learning this, Lancet retracted his paper, and he was charged with professional misconduct in 2005. If he is found guilty of misconduct, he will never practice medicine in the U.K. again.

The people in the autism/anti-vaccine community see Wakefield as a persecuted hero. Everyone else in the entire world who takes an interest in the matter sees him as a weak man who tried to game people – and did. Possibly he still is.

This level of disconnect between what those in the autism/antivax community see as the reality and the _actual_ reality is sometimes shocking. Even for me who has been in the front line of this debate for five years now, some of the things I read about and see from these people make my jaw drop.

I blogged about an example of this not long ago when Safe Minds Board Member Heidi Roger stated that Polio could be preferable to autism – and even that death could be better than autism.

This is a sadly far from uncommon opinion amongst a certain type of autism/antivax believer. To sum up their personality type would, I think, bring a sizeable minority of them very close to Munchausen syndrome by proxy/ Fabricated or induced illness , the indications of which seem very familiar to me from reading the Yahoo groups over the last few years:

* A child who has one or more medical problems that do not respond to treatment or that follow an unusual course that is persistent, puzzling and unexplained.
* Physical or laboratory findings that are highly unusual, discrepant with history, or physically or clinically impossible.
* A parent who appears to be medically knowledgeable and/or fascinated with medical details and hospital gossip, appears to enjoy the hospital environment, and expresses interest in the details of other patients’ problems.
* A highly attentive parent who is reluctant to leave their child’s side and who themselves seem to require constant attention.
* A parent who appears to be unusually calm in the face of serious difficulties in their child’s medical course while being highly supportive and encouraging of the physician, or one who is angry, devalues staff, and demands further intervention, more procedures, second opinions, and transfers to other, more sophisticated, facilities.
* The suspected parent may work in the health care field themselves or profess interest in a health-related job.
* The signs and symptoms of a child’s illness do not occur in the parent’s absence (hospitalization and careful monitoring may be necessary to establish this causal relationship).
* A family history of similar or unexplained illness or death in a sibling.
* A parent with symptoms similar to their child’s own medical problems or an illness history that itself is puzzling and unusual.
* A suspected emotionally distant relationship between parents; the spouse often fails to visit the patient and has little contact with physicians even when the child is hospitalized with serious illness.
* A parent who reports dramatic, negative events, such as house fires, burglaries, or car accidents, that affect them and their family while their child is undergoing treatment.
* A parent who seems to have an insatiable need for adulation or who makes self-serving efforts for public acknowledgment of their abilities.

I might catch some flak for making this comparison but whilst I am not suggesting that everyone autism/antivax adherent is MSbP or FII, I do think – as I say – a sizeable minority are. In the list above I have emboldened the characteristics I personally have seen lots of evidence of.

At any rate, whether there is genuine evidence of MSbP or FII or not, there is definitely an ongoing unreality to a certain group of peoples lives with autism. Why? To pretend to themselves they have total control over something that they do not understand? To medicalise something in order to keep alive the hope of a medical cure? To fuel their pre-existing lust for conspiracy theories? All of the above? None? Something else?

It gets to a point when it starts to not matter. When autistic children are literally being experimented on with absolutely no control in place like they are being with chelation, like they are being with Lupron and like they now are being with OSR we have to do something. When children in the UK are dying of vaccine preventable disease and children in the US are being hospitalised then we need to do something.

Paul Offit did something.

Age of Autism on chelation cancellation

18 Sep

I posted yesterday on the cancellation of the NIH study that was going to be examining chelation’s efficacy as an autism treatment.

What I said was that it was a good idea and it is. The simple facts are that autistic children are not toxic. The only labs that consistently find autistic children to be toxic are the labs Dr Jeffrey Brent identified as ‘these ‘doctor’s data’ type of laboratories’. In fact, its probably worth repeating his testimony about these labs:

Q: Dr Mumper discussed today some key aspects of chelation therapy….as a medical toxicologist do you see any reason for the chelation to remove mercury from either Jordan King or William Mead in these cases?

A: Absolutely not….there is no test in medicine that is more valid for for assessing mercury toxicity than an unprovoked urine mercury concentration. [For Jordan King and William Mead]…their unprovoked urine concentration is exactly in the normal range.

On the other hand, they have been chelated. And the justification for that chelation with regard to mercury comes from what you see in the right hand column where in both cases, 4 out of 5 provoked examples have been…uh…increase urine mercury. Well, you’re supposed to have increased urine mercury with provoked examples! Therefore there is absolutely no indication based here or anywhere else I saw in the medical records that suggest that there is any mercury effect in these children and therefore that was absolutely no reason to chelate them for any mercury related reason.

The standard way of chelating autistic kids is to do a provoked challenge test. As Dr Brent says – you’re supposed to have increased levels with provoked examples.

Q: There’s nothing here that would be out of the ordinary – from your experience – absent, even in the absence of a standard reference range.

A: Well, in truth we don’t (?) urine/leads because the ‘gold test’ is blood/lead so I haven’t looked at many urine/leads in children that I have chelated. So I can’t speak to that in my experience. But I have seen a number of patients now come to me because of these ‘doctor’s data’ type of laboratories which are based on urines – chelated urines – and they always have high leads in their chelated urines and I tell them ‘well, lets just do the gold standard test, lets get a blood/lead level and so far, 100% of the time they’ve been normal.

To sum up, the labs that consistently find a need to chelate autistic kids use the wrong sort of tests. When expert Toxicologists such as Brent do the proper ‘gold standard’ testing, the results are normal 100% of the time.

Its as simple as pie. You use the wrong test, you’re going to get the wrong results.

And yet, over on the Age of Autism website, they’re getting very angry about this cancellation. The angry opening paragraph to a recent post highlights the lack of logic in their stance:

So who canned the NIMH chelation study as “too dangerous?” Children are given huge doses of chemotherapy and radiation in a desperate effort to save them from cancer – fully knowing the side effects themselves can be deadly. It’s a fair risk most parents are willing to take to help a sick child.

Chemo is a standard treatment for cancer. It is medically indicated. Chelation is not a standard treatment for autism. It is not medically indicated. The reason it is not medically indicated is because there is no evidence metals are linked with autism.

There is a chain of logic that must be followed. If you want a type of treatment to be assessed for its efficacy, then your first step is surely to establish that there is a medical necessity for that treatment. If there isn’t then what you are doing is inflicting a completely unnecessary procedure on a child. In this case, a procedure that has been known to cause lasting brain injury in animals (rats).

The comments on AoA go from the bizarre:

So, why do I sense Pauly PrOffit’s grubby, greedy little fingers on this? This smells like something that he would do

To the paranoid:

THIS HAS BULLSH*T WRITTEN ALL OVER IT!!!

To the conspiracy-esque:

Notice the studies they WON’T do:
Studies on the effects of chelation.
Studies comparing unvaxed and vaxed children for autism.
Studies to find the misdiagnosed adults with autism to prove there’s been no increase.

When is everyone going to wake up to what’s happening?

NB – a study to find adults in Scotland is being planned if I recall correctly.

No-one considers the most likely reason for this cancellation:

a) There is no evidence metals cause autism
b) There is evidence chelation can cause injury
c) There is therefore what any rational person would see as an unacceptable amount of risk to children.

And of course we have the usual ‘my child recovered’ stories. Why do these stories never seem to get written up as case studies I wonder? We’re told there are thousands of them – where? Where in the medical literature are they? Apparently there are lots of rogue paediatricians who believe the antivaxxers so why aren’t they doing case studies on the multitudes of autistic children who are now totally recovered?

Personally I think that is what has bullshit written all over it.

Chelation study 'called off'

17 Sep

CHICAGO – A government agency has dropped plans to test a controversial treatment for autism that critics had called an unethical experiment on children.

The National Institute of Mental Health said in a statement Wednesday that the study of chelation (kee-LAY’-shun) has been discontinued. The statement says the agency decided the money would be better used testing other potential therapies for autism and related disorders.

The study had been on hold because of safety concerns . A study published last year linked a chemical used in the treatment to lasting brain problems in rats.

The treatment removes heavy metals from the body and is based on the fringe theory that mercury in vaccines triggers autism — a theory never proved and rejected by mainstream science.

Yahoo News

Back in June, I blogged about the possibility of the delayed chelation study being released. It had been delayed due to the same ethical concerns that now seem to have scuppered it. I can only view this development with relief. As I said at the time:

Lets be clear. This study is being touted about for one reason and one reason only – to appease the anti-vaccine/autism groups. In the mainstream medical/scientific community (and notably in the toxicology community) it is well known that autistic kids aren’t toxic.

Click on the link above to see some quoted testimony from Dr Jeffery Brent, world renowned Toxicologist. His opinion on the need for chelation of autisitic children is thoroughly discussed. Basically, when you do the provoked, non-standard tests from labs that make a good living from charging for these tests, they come back positive. When experts like Dr Brent do the gold standard tests, 100% of the time they come back normal.

There is no reason to chelate autistic children.

The exoneration of John O'Leary

5 Sep

Since the publication of the latest MMR study to refute any connection to autism, the principal believers in the idea that vaccines _simply must_ have some connection to autism have been floundering to spin some positives from the study. They have decided to concentrate on getting this study to exonerate Unigenetics (the lab of Professor John O’Leary). A little backstory is necessary here.

The idea that MMR leads to autism was first perpetuated by Andrew Wakefield. The idea goes that the MMR is injected, the measles component travels to the gut where it persists and causes severe gastric issues. It travels on to the brain and causes autism. Hence, it is – in the Wakefield scenario – the measles virus component of the MMR that causes autism.

In order to test this hypothesis, Wakefield tested for the presence of measles virus in the gut of autistic kids and lo and behold found loads. The way he found them was to send his biopsy samples off to the lab of John O’Leary, Unigenetics, in Dublin. Unigenetics ran the tests on the Wakefield samples and reported they had found measles RNA in significant percentages in Wakefield’s samples. They tested the samples using a technique called PCR.

So, later on, as study after study failed to replicate Wakefield’s – except, tellingly, for studies that went through Unigentics – investigators became suspicious of the results being generated at Unigenetics. As part of the UK litigation into MMR Professor Stephen Bustin – quite possibly _the_ world expert in PCR – went in and spent over 150 hours examining the methods used at Unigenetics to get their results. What he found was a bombshell.

Two things clearly arose from Bustin’s investigation. The first was a clear error of methodology. They forgot to perform an ‘RT Step’. What this was and what it meant is cleared up nicely here by commenter Brian:

The RT stands for “Reverse Transcriptase”, an enzyme that makes a DNA copy of an RNA molecule.

Measles virus exists as an RNA molecule. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay amplifies DNA. Thus to detect an RNA molecule in a PCR assay, the RNA must first be copied (by the reverse transcriptase enzyme) into DNA, which can then be amplified.

Bustin showed that the O’Leary lab reported positive results even when they could not possibly have detected an RNA molecule because they had left out the step to copy that RNA into DNA. Thus the positive results reported for such assays were undoubtedly false positives.

Its worth noting here that Bustin found this methodological error by following Unigenetics lab manual if I recall correctly.

Here is Bustin himself:

If you detect a target that is _apparently_ measles virus in the absence of an RT step by definition it can’t be measles virus because it has to be DNA [measles virus does not exist as a DNA molecule]. It’s a very simple concept. At least it is to me. It’s not to everyone else.

So what were they reporting as measles virus? Lab contamination. That was the second error.

OK, so now back to today and the new MMR paper and the drive to make it exonerate O’Leary.

The new study used three labs to perform its detection. All three performed excellently. One of the labs was (you guessed it) John O’Learys in Dublin.

So, two new press releases have hit since then. I’ll quote from them both.

This is from Thoughtful House (Andrew Wakefield’s Texan fiefdom):

This new study confirmed that results from the laboratory of Professor John O’Leary….were correct, and identical to the results obtained by the laboratories of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University.

In that this new study affirms the reliability of Professor O’Leary’s laboratory and therefore of his previous findings, a major impact upon the current hearings in vaccine court is likely, wherein the government’s defense relies largely on the claim that Professor O’Leary’s finding of measles in the intestinal biopsy of Michelle Cedillo (a child with severe autism and epilepsy) was unreliable. The historical reliability of the measles assay used in Professor O’Leary’s laboratory is now confirmed.

And SafeMinds:

One of the three labs involved in the Hornig study was led by John O’Leary who conducted the testing for the Wakefield study. The three Hornig study labs validated each other,
confirming the rigorousness of Dr. O’Leary’s work. Dr. O’Leary conducted the testing for one of the autism test cases now in the Federal Court for Vaccine Claims. The child, who regressed into autism
and bowel disease after receiving the MMR, tested positive for measles virus.

So, you can see that this is the spin – exonerating Unigenetics work that Stephen Bustin had demolished.

They take a rather simplistic viewpoint of things – that because the lab performed well now, it did then. I think that’s rather a large assumption.

I also think that they have forgotten the timeline of events surrounding the Cedillo case.

Michelle Cedillo’s positive measles virus finding was in 2002:

From the cross examination of Arthur Krigsman:

Q: OKay, now in support of your opinion that Michelle has persistent measles virus in the lymphoid tissue of her bowel, you cite to the positive finding in *2002* by the Unigenetics in Dublin, Ireland of measles RNA in the tissue sample tested in Michelle, correct?

A: By the published report, of their findings.

Q: But from Unigenetics, specific to Michelle?

A: Right.

(Page 531, line 9 – 18)

Stephen Bustin did not enter the lab until January 2004.

From the Direct examination of Stephen Bustin:

Q:…..Now, you were granted physical access to the Unigenetics laboratory?

A: I was, yes.

Q: When?

A: In January 2004 and then again in May 2004.

(Page 1964, line 12 – 16)

In other words, Michelle Cedillo’s test results were generated by Unigenetics, _before_ Stephen Bustin (or anyone else) had discovered the catastrophic errors that made it impossible they were detecting measles.

The question becomes – if you were John O’Leary and someone had made it perfectly clear that you had done bad work two years earlier would you then carry on missing out the RT step? Or would you not? By the time 2008 rolled around, would you hope that your lab staff could do their jobs properly? Or wouldn’t you really care?

The idea that this new MMR study somehow exonerates the work of Unigenetics prior to 2004 is a joke. Unfortunately, Michelle Cedillo’s testing was done prior to 2004. Two years prior, back to a time when Unigenetics weren’t so good at lab work.

Sharyl Attkisson – are you sure?

19 Aug

Searchingly diligent and totally impartial CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson has managed to uncover a third case of autism/vaccine related activity via the the Vaccine Courts. Never mind that Kathleen found it 5 months ago eh?

This case originates from a person born in 1974 who had a DTP shot that very same year, exactly 4 months later…..and thats about all we know.

Comparing autism in 1974 with autism in 2008 is not comparing apples to oranges. Its more like comparing apples to trains. In 1974, the DSM, didn’t even contain the _word_ autism. This is the existing DSM in use at the time:

DSM II (1968)
295.8 Schizophrenia, childhood type

This category is for cases in which schizophrenic symptoms appear before puberty. The condition may be manifested by autistic, atypical and withdrawn behavior; failure to develop identity separate from the mother’s; and general unevenness, gross immaturity and inadequacy of development. These developmental defects may result in mental retardation, which should also be diagnosed.

So, in 1974 autism was not even a defined disorder. It was a behaviour. A symptom of Schizophrenia. That’s worth remembering as we go forward.

Atkinson says:

In excerpts from the case below, the government agreed the child suffered “a residual seizure disorder” after his second Diphtheria, Tetanus & Pertussis (DPT) vaccine but attempted to argue that the child’s mental retardation and brain injury were unrelated to the seizure disorder and were, instead, caused by his autism. On the other hand, the court found that the autistic behavior, brain injury and mental retardation were all part of the vaccine injury.

Did they? Is this accurate? Did the court find that _the autistic behaviour_ was part of the vaccine injury?

Atkinson quotes at length from the transcript of the case.

CHILD was born on August 23, 1974, the 9 lb. 9 oz. product of an uncomplicated pregnancy and delivery. CHILD developed normally until the age of four months when he was administered his second DPT vaccination on December 23, 1974… That evening, he experienced a grand mal seizure. CHILD’s mother… took CHILD to the… emergency room where he was found to have a fever of 101.8 degrees at that time and a *bulging fontanelle* …CHILD had a *seizure* on March 25, 1975, with a temperature of 102 degrees. The next day, he had another *seizure* with a *fever* less than 102 degrees…On April 15, 1975, CHILD experienced a *petit mal seizure* without an associated fever… CHILD apparently did well until mid-July 1975, when he had four *seizures, with fever* around 100.7 degrees… CHILD had *additional seizure activity* in November 1975. Again in February 1976, CHILD had *seizures*. At that time, a repeat EEG was grossly abnormal…when CHILD was 21 months of age, (CHILD’s doctor) noted that CHILD had a vocabulary of only two to three words. At that time, (CHILD’s doctor) discussed… the *possibility that CHILD was mentally retarded and developmentally delayed*. CHILD currently is severely mentally retarded and has an intractable seizure disorder.

(The government) respondent has conceded that CHILD suffered a residual seizure disorder as set forth in the Vaccine Injury Table, but argues against a finding that CHILD also suffered an encephalopathy (brain injury). Moreover, (the government) contends that CHILD suffers from autism, which has produced his severe mental retardation and developmental delay. Consequently, (the government) urges that compensation in this case be limited to those expenses that reasonably might be incurred for CHILD’s residual seizure disorder, not for expenses he might accrue because of his mental retardation, developmental delay and autistic behaviors.

The question of encephalopathy.

*(Government physician) believes that CHILD currently suffers from autism and mental retardation that are the result of an independent underlying neurologic condition that pre-dated the vaccination*. However, all tests that were conducted to determine possible causes for CHILD’s condition have revealed none. Furthermore, (government physician) has posited no origin of any underlying neurologic condition. (Government physician) would have us believe that CHILD’s grand mal convulsion following his second DPT vaccination was simply a manifestation of benign febrile seizures and that CHILD had another concurrent underlying (but etiologically undetermined) neurological disorder which later produced his severe mental retardation and autism.

I reject this theory for several reasons. First, the Vaccine Act’s defines encephalopathy as “any significant acquired abnormality of, or injury to, or impairment of function of the brain.” Section 14(b)((3)(A). This definition is extremely broad. CHILD’s initial grand mal seizure indicated an impairment of function of the brain. The question becomes whether this was a benign event unrelated to any lasting neurological sequelae. In my view… (CHILD’s treating pediatric neurologist) is in a better position to accurately assess CHILD’s illness than (government physician). Beginning in 1980, when he first evaluated CHILD, (CHILD’s neurologist) diagnosed CHILD as having static encephalopathy probably related to the time of his first seizure at four months of age.

Based on the foregoing, *I find that there is a preponderance of the evidence that CHILD suffered an encephalopathy within 72 hours of the administration of a DPT vaccination on December 23, 1974, and that no alternative cause for such encephalopathy has been satisfactorily shown*.

Read all that carefully? Good. Now, where in that summation does the Special Master find ‘that the autistic behavior, brain injury and mental retardation were all part of the vaccine injury’

Brain injury – yes. mental retardation – yes. But where is ‘autistic behaviour’ mentioned by the court? In fact, the truth is that the only person who raised the issue of autism at all were the government. They tried to explain away CHILD’s injury by blaming it on autism (which bizarrely wasn’t an actual diagnosis in 1974).

Bottom line: the court did not, I repeat *did not* find that this child (a grown man now) had autism, autistic features or autistic behaviours as a result of vaccines. The closest we get is the phrase ‘static encephalopathy’ which basically means that a child doesn’t develop. This can _lead_ to autism (as well as a whole host of things such as cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, Schizophrenia) but it is not autism. When this diagnosis was given (1980) the child would’ve been 6 and thus well past the age at which autistic symptoms must appear.

An interesting sidenote. We can guesstimate the 1974 schedule. Well, maybe not the schedule but we can at least see which vaccines were in use.

In 1960, the US was using Smallpox, DTwP and Polio. By the mid-80’s, the schedule was made up of DTP, MMR and Polio.

Smallpox was dropped in 1971 and MMR stared in 1963. Therefore we can guesstimate that in 1974 the schedule was the same as the 1980 one. DTP, MMR and Polio. At some point however, the Polio switched from injection to Oral. I can’t find out when.

So – how is this ‘too many too soon’? How is a case from when there wasn’t even an autism category relevant? How is a case where the claim is that one single vaccine caused autism in any way similar to the idea of ‘too many too soon’?

Kirby, wrong on the radio

14 Aug

First there was the world tour (well, to London). Then there was the national tour (well, around a day’s drive from NYC, or thereabouts). Now, we had David Kirby, live by phone on the radio!

The talk is broken into two hours. Mr. Kirby starts at about 50 minutes into the first hour. And, he doesn’t waste time. He instantly moves into getting it wrong.

First he says that anyone who thinks that the science is on the side of saying there is no link isn’t keeping up with the science. This is because (un-supported assertion coming up) “new stuff comes up virtually daily” coming in from major universities around the world.

Well, yes, new stuff is coming in daily from major universities around the world. There’s all sorts of stuff coming in on a multitude of areas, so, I guess he’s right. But, there isn’t stuff coming in daily to support the vaccine/autism concept. Take the last 5 years. With stuff coming in virtually daily, there should be over 1,000 “stuffs” (nice that he didn’t say “research” or “papers” or “results”, but “stuff”). Did anyone else listen to the Autism Omnibus? Did you notice over 1,000 stuffs being presented, or did you, like me, hear a few studies that may or may not support the idea?

OK, that isn’t a biggie. He moves on quickly into…come on we all can all guess….that’s right! Mitochondria! And, right off the bat, he gets it wrong.

He brings up that just yesterday from the UMDF (good group from what I can see) about the research from the Newcastle and Virginia Polytechnic Institute that Kev and Kristina noted recently.

Mr. Kirby mentions that the study noted that 1 in 200 have a “DNA mutation that may confer mitochondrial dysfunction” and “..this is exactly what Hannah Poling had when she got 9 vaccines in one day.”

OK. Now the facts. The study indicates a number of specific, measurable mtDNA mutations that might lead to mitochondrial disorders. Only one mtDNA mutation has yet been found with Hannah Poling–and this is not one of those studied in the recent paper. A major piece of David Kirby’s arguments so far has been that the mtDNA mutation that Hannah Poling and her mother have is benign. The dysfunction results, according to David Kirby’s interpretation of his source, is in Hannah Poling’s nuclear DNA.

As an aside, Mr. Kirby’s stance has been that the Hannah Poling type of dysfunction is inherited from the father (an apparent misinterpretation of it’s own). I bring this up to point out even more–David Kirby knows that there are major differences between the recent study and the kids in the upcoming 30-kid study that describes children with conditions similar to Hannah Poling (with the exception of any vaccine trigger, but that gets glossed over by Mr. Kirby too).

It is worth reading this comment yesterday from Prometheus.

One thing he notes is that a number of the people identified in this study had mtDNA mutations linked to Leber Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON). You don’t have to go farther than the name to realize that an “optic neuropathy” isn’t “exactly what Hannah Poling had…”

Do I dare listen to hour two?

Dear Mercury and MMR Militia

21 Jun

I want to write you all an open letter to offer you my opinion as to where you are going wrong. Before I do, I fully realise that this is a massive generalisation and that some of you won’t hold all the opinions I’m about to go through. I think though, that many of you do.

Three things prompted this open letter. First of all was David Kirby’s trip to the UK. Second was a comment from Kelli Ann Davies where she expressed surprise that some of us might know/guess/whatever the intentions of the science and medical community. Third was Ginger Taylor’s recent sulk about the AAP. I’ll touch on these things as I go through this.

You have a truly massive credibility issue which grows with every passing year. Once upon a time it was an issue with the science/medical community but now it is an issue with the general public. There are a number of reasons why this is so.

1) You cannot keep your story straight. You have (as I said to Kelli Anne) some first class marketing and PR people. As I recall, Lynn Redwood, Mark Blaxill and Sallie Bernard all have marketing qualifications. You also have numerous leading lights who are very, very rich. This means you have ample opportunity to lever your message into the heart of the US media system.

But that means nothing without a coherent story to sell. You don’t have one. I understand that you have recently talked about how the ‘story of vaccines’ has _evolved_ . That is stretching things more than a little. Its mercury, no its MMR, no its both, no its Aluminium, no its all three, no its all ingredients, no its the very vaccines themselves, no its the schedule they’re given. No – its ALL the above. And don’t forget the mitochondria!

The more ingredients you add to the pot, the more you have to explain why they are causative of autism. You didn’t even manage to do this when you were concentrating on just _one_ thing (thiomersal). The above is not an example of an evolving hypothesis. Its an example of an ever widening hypothesis as one after another, your original ideas have been taken down.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than David Kirby’s stumbling backwards and backwards:

In 2005, David said in a FAIR Autism Media interview:

It’s now 2005…..[W]e should see fewer cases entering the system [cdds] this year than we did last year.

When that didn’t happen he then said:

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.

That didn’t happen either.

You started off by pointing an air pistol at a target 20 feet away and missing. You worked your way through Magnums, Shotguns and Miniguns and kept missing. You currently have a canon wheeled right up to within a foot of the target and you’re _still_ missing.

2) Your science is weak and getting weaker. Sadly for you, the onus was (and still is) on you to provide evidence that vaccines in any of the myriad of hypotheses cause autism. Lets hypothetically agree with you that vaccines are in fact, fashioned by Satan and are in fact, tools of population control. That is not the point. The point is: _do they cause autism?_

There is not one paper that passes muster as valid science that offers corroborating evidence that any vaccine, any ingredient of vaccines or any schedule they are administered in causes autism. This is after over 10 years of trying to find one. What you are increasingly left with is a double conspiracy theory. In one barrel of the conspiracy theory, brave maverick doctors are having their research suppressed. In the other barrel of the conspiracy theory, Big Pharma shills are publishing science to refute the various vaccine hypotheses.

Of course, neither barrel is true. The brave maverick docs are not having their science suppressed. It is simply not good enough to pass peer review.

A good example of this is the science experts being presented at the Omnibus Autism proceedings. No Geier’s. No Jim Adams. No Boyd Haley. No Andrew Wakefield. At least, not so far anyway. And this is in the Vaccine Court, where standards of evidence are way lower than in a civil court, where – by the way – not a few of these same researchers science was not good enough to even be entered as evidence.

And you have this nasty habit of shooting yourselves in the foot. Only today David Kirby posted on the Huffington Post about how rubbish the VSD database was. The very same database the Geier’s recently used to allege a link between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders.

And the list goes on. The Hornig study? Refuted by Rick Rollens MIND Institute. The Nataf paper on Porphyrins? Liz Mumper, head of DAN! medical admits that even ‘normal’ children have raised Porphyrin levels. The Bernard et al paper? Refuted. Richard Deth’s work? Exposed and questioned.

3) Your choice of media people to represent you is doing you harm. I am not sure how the idea of latching onto Jenny McCarthy as a spokesperson for the anti-vaccine/autism connection came up. There are a few other celebs I can think of with more gravitas than McCarthy. In truth, you couldn’t have chosen worse. Already, she has made a public fool of herself (and you). As has her partner, Jim Carrey, with his ‘lazy ass’ FUBAR and calls to notice ‘warnings from the universe‘.

I understand that these events feel terribly cathartic to you but I would urge you to take off your rose tinted glasses and see how the real world perceives these kind of things. Its not good. Don’t take my word for it, go to a _mainstream_ news source, discount the people you know as friends/associates who are leaving comments and then see what people think.

You have also latched onto the words of Bernadine Healy. I can see why but she (is/was) a member of a paid lobby group that advances the ‘science’ of Philip Morris to put forward the idea passive smoking isn’t dangerous. How desperate do you have to be to turn to _this_ ‘authority’ for backup?

4) You cannot see that you are being humoured. I know that some of you have been very proud of your success in getting involved with things like the IACC and y’know, thats great – well done to you. And then there’s the ‘coup’ of getting the AAP to attend a DAN! conference and ‘work with’ them. But there’s one thing you seem to have forgotten. AAP members are medical scientists. They will go with the decent science.

I read a blog post from Ginger Taylor today which seemed to be telling the AAP their ‘window of opportunity’ to work with DAN! et al had closed due to the fact they endorsed a letter that a paediatrician had written on how to tackle parents who were nervous about vaccination.

Amusingly, Taylor also chided the AAP for not turning up to the ‘green our vaccines’ rally:

I warned that the window would only be open for a short time unless we saw real action, and would probably close around the time of the Green our Vaccines Rally if they didn’t show up for us in some respect.

Well the AAP didn’t show up for the rally and well… this certainly signals that the window is closed. They want it closed. And it looks like they may be locking it.

Can you not understand that to expect the AAP will turn up for a rally which touts such anti-science as Aluminium and Formaldehyde being at singularly dangerous levels in vaccines and Anti-Freeze being in them at all is the height of arrogant stupidity? Surely you cannot be that naive?

The truth is – and I get this from speaking to AAP, NIH, FDA and NHS members – that you had, and always will have, an opportunity to impress them with decent, peer reviewed science. That’s all you’ve ever needed. And that’s what you’ve never had.

5) The future. The person you’ve decided will be your public face is writing another book. <a href="http://stopthinkautism.blogspot.com/2008/06/today-autism-recovery-tomorrow-crystals.html"She says that:

It’s really an Indigo book…….We’re definitely the Indigos, you know, breaking down these walls so this, you know, New Earth behind us can happen.

And what’s your role in this?

…But people aren’t quite there yet and I kinda had to, not lower my vibration, change my vibration to focusing on the world hearing that message. Hearing that biomedical treatment does help these kids.

And then, slowly, you know I can put it in my speeches. and then in my last book I talked about the indigos and crystals. And I’m just like, I’m really following source, kind of I felt the need to do that, I’m just kind of dribbling it here and there until people, you know, have that spiritual awakening of spirituality.”

That’s where you’re going. You’re close to abandoning any kind of rational basis for your beliefs and just becoming Jenny’s followers in an Indigo Spiritual Awakening to herald in the New Earth..

Quag-Geier

14 Jun

I propose that any researcher or scientist who unwittingly gets into a quagmire with the Geier’s should be referred to as being ‘quag-geier-ed’. Its a handy way of referring to people who’ve (possibly accidently) stumbled into a great big pile of shit.

I therefore nominate Professor Heather Young as the inaugural QuagGeier. She has published a paper with the Geier’s which alleged to find:

associations between neurodevelopmental disorders (NDs) and exposure to mercury (Hg) from Thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) by examining the automated Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD)

One would imagine that any serious researcher who valued her career would be reluctant to associate with the Geier’s who have odd ideas about what is valid research but maybe Professor Young simply didn’t know.

Anyway, I forwarded the paper itself onto Epi Wonk, a blogger who:

…has a Ph.D. in epidemiology from an Ivy League university. Before that I got a bachelor’s degree from a different Ivy League college, a master’s degree in developmental psychology, and a master’s degree in medical sociology from another Ivy League University. I worked for more than 30 years as an epidemiology professor in medical academia and schools of public health, and in the senior biomedical research service at the Centers for Disease for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). During my career I have been the editor of two epidemiology journals and one more general biomedical journal. I am now retired.

So very, very bad was the quality of this paper that Epi Wonk took three (and possibly a couple more in the future) posts to tackle the numerous issues with it. I plan to recap them here but here is Epi’s take on the paper itself.

So in part I, Epi found the following:

dubious “imputing” or imputation lies at the bottom of the author’s little trick…..

Imputastion is simply – using known data to ‘guess’ at unknown data. Epi gives an example:

…let’s say a researcher has a file of data on children and 8% are missing data values on parent’s household income, 4% are missing data values on gestational age at birth, and 1% are missing data values on birth weight. She decides to use an imputation procedure to impute values for parental income, gestational age, and birthweight where they were missing. Perfectly fine, legitimate, and scientifically valid under most circumstances.

However, when we are dealing with something like autism….

She examines the data and sees that in certain cohorts in her study population the distribution of autism isn’t quite what she would like. So she “imputes” autism cases into the data set. Except that she’s not imputing a value on a variable for an existing study participant. She’s adding imaginary autism cases into the analysis. This isn’t imputation — it’s cooking the data.

Epi was very disturbed about this to the point that xe said:

This is just not done. It’s not valid. It’s not ethical. Adding imaginary cases into a data set borders on scientiific fraud.

Later on in the comment thread that developed, commenter Andrea asked:

Does this mean that Young, Geier and Geier added 45 and 80 cases that were not in the original data sets, that they MADE UP those 125 cases just to add imaginary data points to make the stats results look more like what they wanted?!

Thats exactly what happened.

In Part II of xes detailed look at this paper, Epi concluded that when it come to controls and particularly controlling for any confounding variables:

….there’s no attempt to control for, or adjust for, the confounding effect of birth cohort. Just one look at Figure 1 (or a basic knowledge about trends in autism) tells you the regression coefficients (slopes) are being driven by increases in autism risk over time. Given the increase in frequency of autism (and other neurodevelopmental disabilities) during time time period, you could do an ecological regression analysis of almost any factor that varied over time and you would find an an association with autism. I would bet that you could enter number of sushi bars per capita into an ecological regression and you’d find an association with autism rates.

This is not a good or valid paper. It seems, based on the expert analysis of a professor of epidemiology that this paper is fundementally flawed.

The Bernadine Healy Card

31 May

Last month, ex NIH leader, Bernadine Healy came out of her semi-retirement to weigh in on the autism/vaccine hypothesis:

….the rise of this disorder, which shows up before age 3, happens to coincide with the increased number and type of vaccine shots in the first few years of life. So as a trigger, vaccines carry a ring of both historical and biological plausibility.

It was a credulous article designed, I suspect, to have a bit of a snipe at HHS – currently embroiled in the Autism Omnibus. Why do I say that?

Well, being a UK citizen I’d never heard of Bernadine Healy so I did a bit of looking around to see if I could adequately explain to myself why such a luminary would say such plainly silly and unscientific things.

It seems that:

on 10 Feb [1993], Healy, who is known for her bluntness, went to her new boss, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Donna Shalala and asked about her future. Shalala apparently matched Healy for bluntness. “She let me know it wouldn’t work out in the long term.” Said Healy.

So possibly there is some lingering resentment towards HHS. Who knows. It seems doubtful that this would entirely (if at all) explain Healy’s decision to parrot pseudo-science but – people do silly things sometimes.

What I found fascinating was that this is not the first time Healy has taken an active role in direct opposition to science and the scientific process:

…..patients are forced into a one-size-fits-all straitjacket…..EBM [evidence based medicine] carries its own ideological and political agenda separate from its clinical purpose.

Dr. Bernadine Healy, a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and former director of the National Institutes of Health, falsely claimed that “several” neurologists who “evaluated” Terri Schiavo determined that she had “a functional mind” and was “minimally conscious.”

Dr Bernadine Healey, former director of the National Institute of Health said, “Blenderizing these diverse trials into one giant 232,606-patient-strong study to come up with a seductively simple proclamation is just silly….”

That latter was Healy’s attack on a study that highlighted the dangers of vitamins.

So we can see that Healy has a history that is peppered with leanings toward a credulous approach.

It also seems that she is first and foremost a politician, willing to sacrifice her scientific credibility to support her party (she is a Republican):

Healy was appointed director of the National Institutes of Health in 1991….when Healy assumed control, the agency was beset with problems…..[s]cientists were leaving in record numbers because of…..politicization of scientific agendas (a prime example was the ban on fetal-tissue research because the Republican administration believed it encouraged abortion)

Healy had, at that time expressed support for fetal-tissue research:

….she had been a member of a panel that advised continuation of fetal-tissue research, her appointment was also seen as a move away from politicized science.

So, it must’ve come as something of a shock to NIH scientists when:

….she lobbied against overturning the Bush Administration’s ban on fetal tissue research, despite her previous support for such research.

She also had to defend herself against charges of mishandling a scientific misconduct case:

Healy demanded that OSI (like internal affairs for the NIH) rewrite a draft report that found misconduct on the part of Popovic. The OSI report also severely criticized Gallo.

“When her order for a rewrite was refused, Dr. Healy replaced the chief investigator [Suzanne Hadley] with one more malleable,” the subcommittee report said. The resulting OSI report was “watered down,” the subcommittee document said.

……….

In 1992, the National Academy of Sciences’ panel completed its investigation and produced a report critical of Gallo.

Healy chose to ignore the findings of the NAS panel and commissioned her own ad hoc committee of top NIH scientists, whom she called her “wise men,” the report said. Healy required the members to sign a secrecy agreement.

(Full story also here).

Maybe the biggest question mark against Healy’s scientific credibility and ability to be impartial as this. She was a member of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition:

The Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC), formerly the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, is an industry-funded lobby group which promotes the idea that environmental science on issues including smoking, pesticides and global warming is “junk science”, which should be replaced by “sound science”.

Notably, TASSC promote the interests of tobacco companies:

Initially, the primary focus of TASSC was an attempt to discredit research on Environmental Tobacco Smoke [passive smoking] as a long-term cause of increased cancer and heart problem rates in the community — especially among office workers and children living with smoking parents. It subsequently advanced industry-friendly positions on a wide range of topics, including global warming, smoking, phthalates, and pesticides. Later still, they extended the role of TASSC to Europe using Dr George Carlo. TASSC used the label of ‘junk science’ to criticise work that was unfavorable to the interests of its backers.

TASSC’s funders included:

3M
Amoco
Chevron
Dow Chemical
Exxon
General Motors
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lorillard Tobacco
Louisiana Chemical Association
National Pest Control Association
Occidental Petroleum
Philip Morris
Procter & Gamble
Santa Fe Pacific Gold
W.R. Grace

More can be found here.

So, all in all, I am disposed to not trust the words, or ‘beliefs’ of Bernadine Healy very much. Anyone who campaigns against the dangers of passive smoking to children or who is prepared to block science they allegedly once supported when it is politically expedient doesn’t seem that good a judge of what constitutes good science.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →