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What I did with your money

18 May

Now LBRB is successfully moved (with a few little bits of tidying needed her and there) I need to tell you what I did with the nearly $1000 so generously donated.

First and foremost of course I bought some new hosting. I think you’ll agree that the site feels much faster and slicker as a result of the move. Gone is the churning away and (hopefully) gone is the CPU throttling.

However, I did have some money left over so I decided that as you all had been so generous that the right thing to do was pay it forward. In that spirit I split the remaining money into three parts and donated thusly:

The Autism Science Foundation – A good deal of LBRB contributors and visitors are American so to donate to a science based autism foundation in the States seemed like a good idea. ASF do not place _any_ research monies into the blind alley of vaccines.

National Autistic Society is the UK’s leading autism charity, giving an actual voice to actual autistic people is vital and the NAS do this better than anyone else in my opinion.

Speur Ghlan are a small, recently incorporated charity based in the land of my fathers – Scotland. I know the founder well and am constantly impressed at her drive and enthusiasm for her subject matter.

The amounts involved were not huge obviously but I hope that I’ve managed to meet with your approval both in choice and reasons for choice.

Thank you once again for your generous donations to get LBRB a better home. I hope I can repay you with years more quality blogging from Sullivan and the odd bit of snark from me 😉

New hosting environment – occassional weirdness

17 May

Hi folks,

Thanks to your extreme kindness, LBRB has been able to move to a much better hosting environment 🙂

However, as we’re moving _right now_ you’re going to see some oddness. Posts are going to disappear as will some comments. Hopefully we’ll be able to reinstate them ASAP but please bear with me whilst I get it all ship shape and bristol fashion.

Blogging IMFAR

12 May

I’m currently attending IMFAR. I’m taking notes and hope to get posts out quickly. I’d strongly recommend following Shannon Rosa. She’s tweeting and live blogging the conference. She’s on twitter and The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism.

PACE study confirms autism prevalence

11 May

The legal study published by anti-vaxxers and law students yesterday claims that 80 cases show definite autism. If we accept that as true (which I don’t, but there we go) this is an autism prevalence amongst the population of claimants of just over 3%. As we all know, a recent study puts the Korean prevalence as just under 3%. Close enough on behalf of the legal claims, when we allow for their dodgy definitions to be a match.

Or maybe we can be a little more exact. As Kim Wombles noted yesterday, 39 cases confirmed beyond parental anecdote equals a prevalence of 1.5%. Half a percentage over the UK official prevalence.

So what does this mean? It basically means that all things being equal, whichever prevalence figures you like to use (Korean or UK), this law study shows that amongst the population of claimants, there are no more autistic people than one would expect.

But surely, what we should be looking at is if vaccines caused autism in these cases?

OK, lets do that (thanks to Sullivan for spotting these):

From the paper:

[R]espondent’s report. . .suggests vaguely. . .that Kenny’s problems ‘can be attributed in part to other causes such as a family history of epilepsy, autism and tonsillar hypotrophy. . .Dr. Spiro did not even purport to know what did cause Kenny’s seizure disorder;? his basic point was that in his view the DTP did not cause it.”

From the case notes:

In this regard, respondent’s report (filed September 7, 1990) suggests vaguely (p. 5) that Kenny’s problems “can be attributed in part to other causes such as a family history [*18] of epilepsy, autism and tonsillar hypotrophy.” But in the attached expert report, upon which respondent based that assertion, Dr. Spiro candidly admitted (p. 2) that he can only “speculate” as to such possibilities. And certainly at the hearing, Dr. Spiro did not even purport to know what did cause Kenny’s seizure disorder; his basic point was that in his view the DTP did not cause it.

While Dr. Kaufhold notes Dr. Schmidt’s initial impression of infantile autism, she does not list autism among her impressions, but rather says Travis is significantly developmentally delayed to a degree not yet ascertained. Other medical personnel appear to use the term “autism” or “autistic” synonymously with “aphasia” or the absence of the ability
to speak. See, e.g., Pet. Ex. 7 at 148; Pet. Ex. 7 at 208; Pet. Ex. 7 at 393.

Here is an interesting statement:

While Dr. Schultz believes that Travis suffers from some autistic-like features, he does not now nor has he ever believed that Travis suffers from true autism.

In this case, Dr. Schultz is the doctor of the petitioner: Travis Underwood. Travis is child 7 in the PACE table. Here is how Holland et al. quoted that decision:

“In addition, respondent noted that Travis’ medical records indicate that he suffered from mental retardation and autism. These conditions, according to respondent, are not related to the residual seizure disorder.”

Dr. Schultz also said:

Moreover, Dr. Schultz testified that Travis is distinguishable from children with true autism because he (1) seeks affection; (2) makes eye contact; (3) doesn’t require sameness in routine as usually found with autistic children; and (4) doesn’t engage in twirling, flinging and other self-stimulatory behaviors to the same degree as autistic children.

So, next time someone tells you ‘autistic-like’ features or ‘features of autism’ are the same things as autism, tell them to look at the cases in question.

LBRB needs you!

9 May

As some have noticed, LeftBrain/RightBrain has been having issues. One of the main things is the fact that as LB/RB has become more and more popular over the years, it is not able to co-exist with normal Shared Hosting and is being CPU Throttled, something that basically means that, during peak time of popularity our hosts are having to basically turn the website off for 30min stretches to allow the CPU to cool down a bit.

The only way we can get around this practise is to get our own Dedicated Server. Having this means that we would have one CPU all to ourselves and thus not be throttled.

However, Dedicated Servers are not cheap. I have managed to source one for about £900 per year but that is way, way, waaaay beyond my personal means and much more than the advertising brings in.

So I’m asking for help. You should be able to see a ChipIn widget top right of each page. I’ve set the amount to $2000 and the time limit to a month but these are fairly arbitrary things. I’ll take whatever I can get and if it takes 6 months, so be it. I will of course be throwing in the advertising money that LBRB does get and I’ll also be putting in some personal money too but if you have a spare tenner, fiver or just a quid floating around in your PayPal acct, then I’d thank you for it.

Thanks in advance.

Ginger Taylor misrepresents David Bowman

5 May

the admission of David Bowman at HRSA (who runs VICP) that vaccines can cause encephalopathy that causes autism as reported by David Kirby.

Following the Poling vaccine concession, Kirby wrote to HRSA and asked if this now meant that the VICP was now paying for vaccine induced autism. This the “official statement” that HRSA sent him:

David,

In response to your most recent inquiry, HRSA has the following
statement:

The government has never compensated, nor has it ever been ordered to
compensate, any case based on a determination that autism was actually
caused by vaccines. We have compensated cases in which children
exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy
may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms
including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures.

Some children who have been compensated for vaccine injuries may have
shown signs of autism before the decision to compensate, or may
ultimately end up with autism or autistic symptoms, but we do not track
cases on this basis.

Regards,

David Bowman
Office of Communications
Health Resources and Services Administration
301-443-3376

Is this not a very significant disclosure by HHS and in conflict with many of their public statements of autism causation? HHS has admitted that vaccines can cause brain damage that becomes “autistic behavior, autism, or seizures”.

Well, no, no its not. Lets look closley at the ‘offending’ paragraph:

We have compensated cases in which children exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures.

Quite clearly Bowman is saying that Encephalopathy may be accompanied by etc. A fact he goes on to clarify further in his next paragraph. How much clearer does it need to be?

Ginger Taylor and David Kirby really have got to stop misrepresenting people in this way. It does their beliefs no justice.

Sullivan outs himself

27 Apr

Back in 2010, Age of Autism’s Inspector Clouseau, summed up the following about Sullivan:

1) Female
2) American
3) A doctor or scientist
4) Not the parent of an autistic child.
5) Is actually Paul Offit’s wife Bonnie.

And followed up with this promise:

If you can produce a dad with a child with autism with a remarkable grasp of the medical and scientific literature who blogs under the name Sullivan, a man who has an inordinate grasp of the details of your husband’s patents, lawsuits, published studies, and web habits, I will make sure that the pauloffit.com website is given to you and your husband for good.

In fact, if you can produce this father, I promise to never, ever publicly write about or utter the name “Paul Offit” again.

As blogged by Sullivan, he will be attending IMFAR as a contributor:

I have written in the past that I will be attending IMFAR, the International Meeting For Autism Research. I will be supported by a stakeholder travel grant from the Autism Science Foundation, for which I am very grateful. What I haven’t mentioned before is that I was planning to attend IMFAR even before applying for the stakeholder grant. I’ve been planning on attending since I submitted an abstract: Parent Reported Status and Expectations for Their Autistic Student Children: An Analysis of the 2007 National Household Education Survey.

The abstract in question is:

Parent Reported Status and Expectations for Their Autistic Student Children: An Analysis of the 2007 National Household Education Survey. M. J. Carey

M.J. Carey, of course being LB/RB’s own Matt Carey.

So, now we turn back to JB Handley – are you ready to both hand over both the domain and your word to never mention in word or speech the name Paul Offit again JB?

93% of US parents trust vaccinations

19 Apr

“Celebrities have no expertise in childhood immunizations or infectious disease,” Freed said. “There is a danger in the media of putting up celebrities as experts on any topic for which they have an opinion, and giving them a platform to share their opinions that is presented as equal to true experts.”

In the first survey, published in the May issue of Pediatrics, researchers used data from a 2009 nationally representative sample of about 1,550 parents of children aged 17 and younger.

About 76 percent of parents said they trusted their child’s doctor “a lot,” 22 percent said they had “some” trust, while only 2 percent said they didn’t trust the doctor.

Parents also trusted other health-care providers and government vaccine experts, but not as much as doctors.

Two percent of parents said they trusted celebrities “a lot,” 24 percent said they trusted celebrities somewhat for vaccine information, and 74 percent said they trusted celebrities “not at all.” Women and Hispanics were more likely to trust celebrities.

A second survey by researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in the same journal used 2009 survey data from parents of children under the age of 6.

Nearly 75 percent of parents reported their youngest child had received all of the recommended vaccines; another 19 percent said their child would receive the vaccines.

About 79 percent of parents were either confident or very confident in vaccine safety, and about 80 percent said they thought vaccines were important for a child’s health.

But parents still have their concerns. About 22 percent somewhat or strongly agreed that they were concerned about “too many vaccines potentially damaging a child’s immune system,” according to the study.

When asked how many shots parents were comfortable with their child receiving in a single doctor’s visit, 42 percent said one to two; 34 percent said three to four; and 23 percent said “whatever the doctor recommends.”

The authors suggest that pediatricians listen to parents’ concerns and direct them to appropriate resources for information.

“It’s encouraging that in this survey the overwhelming majority said they will get all of their immunizations. That’s a wonderful thing,” said Dr. David Kimberlin, a professor of pediatrics at University of Alabama at Birmingham and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases. “The noise out there that seems to question vaccine safety is increasingly being discounted and being discounted in a very public way.”

Source.

Left Brain/Right Brain Performance Issues – need your input

19 Apr

Hi friends (as pD would say),

As a few of you have noticed, LBRB is getting a bit slow. I think there are some obvious reasons for that – the database is heavy with nearly 9 years worth of posts and comments, our hosts are not all they could be etc.

However, there are a few things I can and have tried. I’ve cut out a few of the site features and I’ve optimised scripts etc to within an inch of their life. What I need now is your input. Is the site faster? Is it performing better? What pages/sections are particulalry troublesome for you? etc etc.

Thanks for any input you can offer.

Best image from an iPad-autism blog post

12 Apr

If you don’t regularly read the Liv’s Journey blog, it’s well worth taking a look. The blog has some great insights and a great sense of humor. Case in point: The Case FOR iPads Being a Miracle Device for Children with Autism. Posted in response to a post here on LeftBrainRightBrain: Wired: iPads Are Not a Miracle for Children With Autism, it takes a long look at the iPad. What made me snort aloud what this graphic:

I don’t know if he lifted it from someplace or created it himself (I didn’t find it with a quick google search). But it shows the humor of the blog. The real meat is in the actual posts, which are very well thought out and presented.

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