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New blog worth following

20 May

I don’t usually make recommendations about new blogs. Not because I’m above all that – course I’m not – but mostly because so many people have their set ideas about what makes a good blog and they don’t need me pushing my opinions on them.

But this is a little different. Its the first blog I’ve seen that concentrates on epidemiology and is written by someone 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.

Thats some pretty impressive credentials.

I wouldn’t (and I doubt Epi would either) claim that the blog is about autism or vaccines, or autism related science but the two posts I’ve read that have discussed autism have been clear, concise and easy for non-experts to parse.

So, I hope that Epi will continue to blog tangentially about autism from time to time as there are big issues surrounding autism epidemiology that we could all learn about. But more than that I plan on reading Epi’s blog on a regular basis in order to learn.

That’s not to say I expect to become an epidemiology expert simply by reading a blog! Of course not. But that doesn’t preclude me from being able to hopefully discern from an expert what is important in epidemiological studies and what is not.

I would _love_ to see Epi turn her attention to some of the Geier’s epidemiological studies for example. I think we all might learn a lot from a detailed critique of that particular body of work!

I’d also like to see Epi’s opinion on some of the epidemiological studies being utilised in the Autism Omnibus hearings. As we’ve all seen, the epidemiological basis on the autism/vaccine hypothesis seems to have undergone a substantive revision of late. I’d like to see a professionals take on it.

Best of all though? The name Epi Wonk. It reminds me of Wonko The Sane from ‘So Long and Thanks For All The Fish”. Anyone that sounds that much like a man who believes he’s living in a perpetual lunatic asylum can’t be all bad 😉

So – visit Epi Wonk, see what you think.

Autism Omnibus – Vas Aposhian

16 May

Vas Aposhian is – like Sander Greenland – an expert witness for petitioners (the families) and a professor of molecular and cellular biology as well as a professor of pharmacology.

On Day 2 and 3 he testified as to what seemed to be the main hypothesis behind the whole thiomersal/autism idea.

The basic idea is that some people are genetically predisposed to something called _mercury efflux disorder_ (plain english, they can’t get rid of mercury as well as most people can, it crosses the blood brain barrier and triggers autism). Mercury Efflux Disorder is itself an unproven hypothesis but Aposhian passionately believes in it.

He came under heavy cross exam (I won’t go through his performance whilst testifying to his own ‘side’ – we all know the basic hypothesis), that compromised a lot of day two and most of the morning of day three (the audio is released slowly so I’m a couple of days behind). The part I’m writing about today starts about an hour and a half into day three (NB: I’ve downloaded all the MP3’s and stitched them into one file).

Aposhian says that the mercury efflux hypothesis is supported by six papers:

…each piece of evidence alone leaves some doubt but taken all together the evidence implicates thimerosal/ethylmercury as the likely precipitating agent in the etiology of some of the autism spectral disorders.

Respondent counsel referred to these six papers as ‘pillars’ supporting the hypothesis. Aposhians’s pillars are:

First, Adams et al. (2007) demonstrated that teeth from autistic children contain more mercury than those from non-autistic children.

Respondent counsel asked Asphosian what he thought he could criticize about these papers he says ‘implicate thiomersal’. Regarding Adams et al, Asphosian said (and I’m paraphrasing slightly after scribbling notes furiously):

1) The number of controls should’ve been increased.
2) There were too few test subjects
3) When asked if raised mercury level was an indicator of toxicity, Asphosian answered “I don’t know”.
4) When asked if he would’ve expected mercury concentrations to vary depending on gender, Asphosian answered “Yes”.
5) When asked if Adams controlled for gender Asphosian answered, “No, he doesn’t control for gender”.
6) When asked if lead concentration of a tooth affected mercury concentration of a tooth, Asphosian answered, “I don’t know”.
7) Asphosian was asked, given the fact that the thiomersal hypothesis depended on the role of _ethyl_ mercury, what type of mercury did Adams et al measure in the teeth? Asphosian’s answer was “…did not do speciation” – in other words, he didn’t separate the types of mercury out. He recorded it all.
8) When asked if mercury levels in teeth tell you anything about amounts of mercury in the brain Asphosian replied that he didn’t know as no one had ever done that study.

These are fairly damning failings in what Asphosian’s assumptions were regarding the quality of that study. Of course, there is more wrong with the Adams paper than just the above, but these points are pretty damning. The failure to control for gender, the paucity of subjects and the fact Adams et al didn’t concentrate on ethyl-mercury raise serious questions over what exactly this study can add to the so-called Mercury Efflux Disorder.

I’ll keep appending to this post as I work through the rest of the audio.

Thimerosal on trial- the incredible shrinking epidemic

13 May

The audio recordings of the first day of the thimerosal-only portion of the Autism Omnibus Proceedings hearings are now available here: ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/thimerosal.html. They are mp3 files.

Here’s some of what I heard yesterday via telephone and comments on what I think the parents’ lawyers seem to be implying now, maybe you will listen to the same discussion and take away different key points:

A lawyer for the petitioners (Mr. Williams, I think) said, as if a fact: there has been an autism epidemic, and he added that there is no such thing as a “genetic epidemic”.

They know this because no one could “miss” regressive autism in the past. I guess they might have missed other non-regressive autism and other ASDs.

The only kind of regressive autism they are interested in is the “clearly regressive” subtype, which they seem to be saying is about 2% or less of all ASD children born during the 1990s.

Apparently, they are only interested in the children of the “epidemic” era when kids got more thimerosal exposure.

There are so few of their target group that when these kids started to be “added” to the “epidemic” no one could see it happening, and likewise when the exposure to thimerosal dropped of precipitously, even though the numbers of these target group kids must have dropped off precipitously, no one could see that change in the larger epidemiological data.

So the epidemic might continue but it has nothing to do with thimerosal exposure now.

The numbers of “clearly regressive” autistics, however should be obviously diminishing. Because it’s a small group and not all of them “clearly regressed” following a vaccine containing thimerosal. These supposedly thimerosal-damaged clearly regressive kids must be disappearing by now, but maybe they’ve been replaced by kids who “clearly regress” due to another actionable agent. If they regress because of an non-actionable agent, like, say, oxygen or exposure prenatally to mom’s immune system, no one cares. Then logically, if all of the “clear regressing” autistics were caused to regress only by thimerosal, then there should be very few, or none, younger “clearly regressed” autistics in areas where thimerosal is not used for toddler age vaccines now and hasn’t been used in the past few years.

Apparently, they are claiming that thimeosal in vaccines only causes a subset of regressive autism, not including early-onset autism. So apparently there’s no way for a baby who got the birth dose of Hep B to be made autistic, since it can’t “clearly regress” shortly after birth. And if the baby only got the Hep B dose (if preserved by thimerosal), that alone couldn’t cause a regression months later. I think they are only interested in vaccines given right before a toddler regresses, at say age 12 months to 36 months.

Also, it seems that the PSC believes Eric Fombonne’s research is reliable when they want to make a point with it. They used his research to support the numbers of autistics who regress if I recall.

The transcripts will be available eventually (maybe soon), but we don’t know when. I think it would be interesting to compare get them to explain how many of this tiny group of ASD kids also have mitochondrial diseases or disorders. I wonder if they are trying to imply that the rest of the “epidemic” is caused by tuna mercury, chicken mercury or MMR, aluminum, assortative mating or what?

Autism Omnibus and shrinking hypotheses

13 May

The number of people who have made confident assertions about thiomersal causing autism over the last four years or so is astounding.

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

– David Kirby

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

– David Kirby

“Late 2006 should be the first time that rates go down” said Handley. “If they don’t, our. hypothesis will need to be reexamined.”

– JB Handley

…I would like to make a virtual wager that within the next 18-24 months scientific evidence will make the thimerosal-autism link a near certainty.

– Richard Deth, March 22, 2006.

All these statements have one thing in common, they promote the idea that mercury (thiomersal in particular) causes autism in either all, or the vast majority of cases.

However, listening to the Autism Omnibus yesterday provided a very interesting change from this perspective:

In some kids, there’s enough of it that it sets off this chronic neuroinflammatory pattern that can lead to regressive autism,” said attorney Mike Williams.

ABC.

Note the new language: ‘some kids’….’regressive autism’…..’can lead’.

It seems the days of ‘all autism is mercury poisoning’ are long gone.

Petitioners presented a very interesting expert witness yesterday – a Dr Sander Greenland from UCLA who is a Professor of Epidemiology.

Dr Greenland argued some strange facts for the PSC but completely in line with this new tack that I can’t even remember being argued in the Cedillo hearing (thiomersal may cause regressive autism in some kids).

Greenland essentially argued that all the current epidemiology regarding autism and thiomersal was not good enough to detect thiomersal causation in regressive autism – this is from his submitted report:

A simple example may clarify this point. If a vaccine is not associated with any type of disorder in the category, we should expect to see the same risk when comparing vaccinated to the unvaccinated. Suppose, however, that in reality the vaccine is associated with a two-fold increase in the risk of a type of disorder in the category, but not associated with any other type. Suppose also that, without the vaccine, the associated type represents only one-tenth (10%) of the disease category, and that the total number of cases in the category would be 100. Then, without the vaccine, the number of cases with the associated type would be 100/10 = 10. With the vaccine, however, the number of cases with the associated type would double, to 20, an excess of 10 cases over the original 10 with the associated type. This excess produced by the vaccine would result in a total of 100+10 = 110 cases over the full category, which is only a 10% increase in the risk of any type in the category. Thus, the risk ratio for getting any type in the category would be only 110/100 = 1.1. Such a small risk ratio cannot be reliably distinguished from 1 by ordinary epidemiologic studies.

In other words, the amount of autism caused by vaccines is in fact too small to be detected by epidemiology. If, of course, it is associated with it at all – a point made later by Dr Greenland:

The brief overview given above supports the idea that the association of MCV (mercury containing vaccine) with autism is small or nonexistent.

But really his point is that if thiomersal does cause autism (and whilst he professes to have ‘no opinion’ on the matter it may be telling that he refers to the idea as a hypothesis throughout his report, not a theory) it causes it in very, very small numbers indeed.

Dr Greenland passed no opinion the validity of the hypothesis itself. Rather, he was there to study epidemiology. We have to respect his opinion even if we disagree with it.

The more telling aspect for me was this sudden conversion from ‘vaccines cause autism’ to this suddenly tiny percentage – so small to be undetectable by epidemiology up to this point. That’s quite a step back. What will become of the Omnibus cases that are not considered’ regressive’? Or the ones (like Michelle Cedillo) who were claimed to be regressive but were, upon viewing the video evidence, clearly not. Are the PSC really throwing cases away?

Presto Chango

12 May

Now, there’s nothing wrong with making a mistake. Nothing at all. People make mistakes all the time – as I saw on the back of a window cleaners van the other day – ‘guano happens’.

For a trivial mistake (spelling etc) its easy to change things on a blog. I can simply edit and re-save the post. I don’t need to tell anyone my Bluto sized fingers have typed ‘teh’ instead of ‘the’ again. I can just change it and republish.

However, sometimes, you make a mistake that is rather more important. A mistake that changes the factual interpretation _and_ the tone of a post. These should be altered _and_ a little note be made close to the alteration to point out the error and the fact its fixed. Trying to get away with making such large scale errors and hoping no one notices is bad form.

If one is a journalist – a professional writer – you would expect the notification as a matter of course. Don’t journalists pride themselves on their accuracy and attention to detail?

So it was something of a surprise to see that the article Sullivan discussed written by David Kirby had undergone a mysterious and totally unremarked upon alteration.

This (click for larger image and then use your browsers ‘back’ button to return here after viewing) is the original post David made on the Huffington Post. The page was recovered from Google Cache. As you can see, this contains the erroneous ‘34,000’ figure and all that flows from it. The maths error that Sullivan noted.

However, visiting the Huffington Post post today reveals the following:

.

(Again, click for bigger).

As we can see, the post has undergone very significant change of a key part of important factual information. With no (that I can see) notification that the data has been altered. I took a screen shot of the entire page as of 09:43 on Mon 12th May 2008 and couldn’t see such a notification. Maybe someone else can see one?

Tut tut.

However, even more curiously, the same article David posted at the Age of Autism blog still contains the error.

(Again, click for bigger).

Why? Are AoA readers less interested in facts? Is David too busy packing for his trip over here in June (which I am _very_ much looking forward to by the way)?

Autism and Mental Illness

10 May

So, the family have been away for four days on holiday – our first ever holiday! A very, very good time was had by all 🙂

But in the meantime it seems like the Autism News Juggernaut hasn’t even slightly slowed. I came back to a deluge of emails on subjects touching on autism but one really caught my eye.

This is the story about autism being linked to mental illness:

Parents of autistic children are twice as likely to have had psychiatric illness, researchers have discovered…A child’s risk of autism was 70% greater if one parent was diagnosed with a mental illness, and twice as high as average if both parents had psychiatric disorders, according to a report in the Pediatrics journal. The finding suggests autism and psychiatric problems may sometimes have a common cause and genetic link.

I’m trying to get ahold of this paper to read for myself but its totally unsurprising to me that this should be the case. As some of you know I have manic depression (bipolar as its known in the US) for which I have been receiving treatment for approaching 30 years. I have long suspected that there is an overreaching link between many flavours of mental difference – a hypothesis, born out in the scientific work of David Porteous who has been involved in pioneering science regarding mental illness and DISC 1 mutations. Long term readers of this blog may know that DISC 1 has a high association with autism too.

Indeed, last year, David Porteous gave a fascinating talk at last years MDF Conference in which he talked about the DISC1 connection to manic depression and included ASD amongst the constellation of ‘mental disorders’ that have some kind of interrelationship.

So, this news was no surprise to me at all. Yet to some others it seemed as if it was a slap in the face. A comment from a reader who saw this item reported at CBC said:

So what is being implied here? That mental illness in parents is an indicator /cause of autism in off-spring, or autism in children causes mental illness for their parents? On behalf of parents of autistic children I feel offended by this type of garbage research…

Which is a frankly bizarre way to look at this study. The study itself seems to be saying only what is presented in its abstract.:

This large population study supports the potential for familial aggregation of psychiatric conditions that may provide leads for future investigations of heritable forms of autism.

Its step one. Nothing about _cause_ has been discussed as far as I can tell from reading the abstract. Does that make it ‘garbage research’? Hardly.

Adults, Autism and Scotland

10 May

I have been thinking recently how nice it is that the online autism community has moved on from the quarterly analyses of the CDDS data. For those who are blissfully unaware–the California Department of Developmental Services (CDDS) publishes statistics on the people it serves. They do this every three months.

These data are a favorite of people who would like to promote the idea of an autism ‘epidemic’. Mr. David Kirby has a book and enough power point slides for three debates which are filled with (mis)interpretations of these data.

For the past year or so, every three months the CDDS publishes the data followed by people stating, “The CDDS autism count has gone up, this proves there is an epidemic” and “the CDDS autism count has gone down, this proves the epidemic”. Both seemingly contradictory statements being made on the same dataset. These were quickly followed by multiple bloggers pointing out that the interpretations made were incorrect.

Three things happened that made for a break. (1) Mr. Kirby declared that he was moving on from autism, (2) the CDDS is on a break while they rework the way they compile the data and (3) A case was conceded in the Autism Omnibus which shifted the debate (and ended item (1)).

I was very happy to see the CDDS phase of the autism discussion end.

Then, much to my dismay, the same arguments started up again. This time it is data from Scotland, not the CDDS being misused. Otherwise, it is the same old arguments and the same bad analyses. Well…almost. Some new bad analyses have been added.

Mr. Kirby has a discussion of the Scottish data on another blog. Let’s avoid the conceptual mistakes (such as assuming that somehow everyone is properly identified and receiving services). Before we get to the real implications of this, let’s take a break and look at the math errors, shall we?

Mr Kirby takes this graph of data from the Scottish report:

And states:

Let’s look at the numbers. There are approximately 34,000 young people with autism in Scotland, born during the 16 years from 1987-2002. That is an average of 2,125 cases per birth cohort. But among older people, born during the 31 years between 1955 and 1986, there are only about 600 reported cases, or just over 19 cases a year.

Based on this, he has determined that if the true incidence of autism is constant, about 1 in 110 of the adults are missing from the count.

OK, go back and click on that image for me. I know you skipped over it, but, go take a look at the bigger version.

Did you see it? Yep, the number is not 34,000, but 3,400 adults with autism in the Scottish survey. A factor of 10. Don’t worry if you missed it. Mr Kirby (who spent some time ‘analyzing’ the data) and at least 20 people who responded to his post missed it too.

At this point, I can hear the screams of “So what, that’s just a small mistake. You are trying to distract us all from the big picture.” Because, in the end, even though Mr. Kirby is off by a factor of 10 and there aren’t 100 times more kids than adults receiving services with an autism label in Scotland, there is a roughly factor of 10 difference in the administrative prevalence of autism.

A factor of 10 is still big. I’d argue it’s huge. In fact, I’d scream right back at the people who are trying to use this for political gain.We can argue back and forth whether it’s real. But, consider some of the possibilities for the Scottish survey:

  1. the numbers are correct, all autistics are correctly counted.
  2. People are getting appropriate services, but some are under the wrong label (e.g. intellectual disability).
  3. Some people are getting the wrong services because of an incorrect label (e.g. schizophrenia).
  4. People who really should be getting services and supports are not getting any.

Let’s face it, if there’s a chance that people are getting the wrong services, we should be looking. And, yes, it is a very real possibility. Remember the big stink some people made when it was implied that some adults with the label of Schizophrenia might actually be autistic? Well, David Mandell is scheduled to talk about this at IMFAR this year in his paper: Evidence of autism in a psychiatrically hospitalized sample.

A £500,000 project to look for adults with Autism in the UK has been recently announced. To quote one of the researchers on this project:

“Adults with autism and Asperger’s syndrome are too often abandoned by services with their families left to struggle alone. Equally, people are frequently missaprorpriately referred to either mental health or learning disability services

“This study will inform the development of a national strategy designed to ensure that adults with autism and Asperger’s syndrome are supported to have full lives.”

“We still don’t know enough about autism, but we do know that left unsupported, it can have a devastating impact on those who have the condition and their families. One of the key gaps in our knowledge is simple – we don’t know how many people have the condition in any given area. That is why I am ordering a study to address this. “

It sounds like a really tough project. I don’t know if this study can really be accomplished. But, I have hopes that it could help improve the lives of adult autistics.

Now, as long as we brought up the Scottish survey, why not look at some of the details that were missed by others?

One question was how many of the individuals had “other behavioural or biomedical conditions?”. For the adults, this was 30% of the total. For the children, this was 3% of the total. Is this an indication that the kids being identified today actually have less severe symptoms than the adults? Even without that, only 1% have “other…biomedical conditions”?!? Where are all the kids with all the conditions like bowel problems that some groups claim define autism?

Another interesting fact from the survey is that over 50% of the children are in mainstream schools.

Yet another factoid: about 32% of the children in the survey have Asperger syndrome. Of those, half are listed as having ‘no learning disabilities’. For adults, only 14% are listed as having Asperger syndrome.

Surveys of those getting services are prone to a lot of errors–as has been discussed in the past for the CDDS data many times. So, these data should not be taken as hard epidemiological counts of the actual number of people in Scotland with autism. However, these data do not support the idea that the younger generation of autistics have greater challenges than the adults had to overcome.

I am actually glad that the subject came up of autism in Scotland. Why? Because in looking for some of these data, I found the website for the National Autistic Society Scotland. I particularly liked this page: I Exist: the message from adults with autism in Scotland.

For me, I have just finished a box of McVitie’s HobNobs while writing this. I don’t know if they are Scottish, but I love them. Perhaps I’ll open the other box to celebrate a study of adults with autism.

Additional

Sullivan’s catch of David’s maths error is good but I thought to myself as soon as I heard about this Scottish report that I’d heard about it before. I had. I blogged on this audit three years ago. One of the most fascinating aspects of the paper was when local authorities were asked for their opinions on the following question:

Research tells us that prevalence rates of autistic spectrum disorder represent an underestimate. To what extent do you consider the numbers above to be an accurate reflection of all those who live in your area?

The answers were very interesting. About 45% of the areas questioned said that the prevalence for adults was grossly underestimated, badly reported and that a lot of these adults exist without diagnosis. For example:

Argyll & Bute Council
It is believed that the figures represent a significant under-representation of those with ASD in Argyll and Bute. This was thought to be due to a historical under-diagnosis and the absence of clearly defined referral pathways and multi-agency assessment processes for adults.

East Renfrewshire Council, NHS A&C and Greater Glasgow NHS

…as a result of changing patterns of diagnosis over recent years there are likely to be substantial numbers of adults with ASD who are not known to services and are not diagnosed as having ASDs.

AYRSHIRE AND ARRAN
It is apparent that information collection and collation for adults is almost non existent.

DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY
There is little doubt that this number is far short of the actual number of adults in Dumfries & Galloway with ASD.

GRAMPIAN
There is low diagnosis for longstanding clients, whom workers are aware have autism as well as a learning disability.

HIGHLAND
It is believed that these figures comprise a significant underestimate due to the lack of a diagnostic process particularly for adults. It is believed that the figures for younger children are accurate due to the development of diagnostic tools for children are accurate due to the development of diagnostic tools for children and the establishment of multi-disciplinary partnerships which include education.

LANARKSHIRE
The estimated numbers provided for the pre-school and primary school ages are thought to be a reasonably accurate reflection of the true picture. However the estimated number of secondary school children is less accurate and the estimated number of adults with ASD is likely to be a considerable underestimate of the true prevalence.

ORKNEY
Figures for children are an accurate representation of needs. One or two children may yet be diagnosed. Figures for adults are under estimated as diagnosis has not been made and access to specialists is variable.

Perth & Kinross Council
Figures for adults reflect the national findings that the numbers known to services/diagnosed represent a significant underestimate of those individuals likely to be affected. For example day centre managers locally consider a number of people to be on the spectrum who have had no formal diagnosis.

Pretty interesting stuff I think you’ll agree. This means that about 45% of the areas questioned said that the prevalence for adults was grossly underestimated, badly reported and that a lot of these adults exist without diagnosis. The two really stand out quotes for me were:

There is low diagnosis for longstanding clients, whom workers are aware have autism as well as a learning disability……day centre managers locally consider a number of people to be on the spectrum who have had no formal diagnosis.

So as well as the excellent points Sullivan raised, I’d also like to ask how it is possible to place any kind of interpretation of the data when the fact that adult prevalence is grossly under-reported is so well established?

What Makes You Smile?

2 May

This post is dedicated to a wonderful woman I know on another site who is terminally ill. She wants to be remembered for being happy and to go out with lots of shoes and a bang. So this post is just about being happy. Specifically, some of the things that makes Tom happy.

Tom loves the colour blue

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/Picture002.jpg

 

He loves icecream

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/ghost028-1.jpg

 

And walks

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/ghost030.jpg

 

He loves his little brother

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/ghost035.jpg

 

And he likes water

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/radio010-1.jpg

 

He adores lifts

http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/?action=view&current=cooking015.flv

 

And he loves singing and action rhymes. He also loves looking at himself in the mirror, which is what he’s doing during these three clips.

http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/?action=view&current=082.flv

 

http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/?action=view&current=083.flv

 

http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/bullet046/?action=view&current=084.flv

 

 

Alexander Krakow – The Next Bombshell

27 Apr

And so, the next twist in the Autism Omnibus is revealed. Writing in Spectrum Publications in a piece rather hopefully entitled ‘The Next Hannah Poling’ David Kirby writes:

….the boy who was selected to replace Hannah Poling as the first-ever thimerosal “test case” in so-called Vaccine Court, has just been found with many of the same unusual metabolic markers as… you guessed it, Hannah Poling.

……..

….the court announced that the replacement thimerosal test case was also being withdrawn, in order to “proceed to an individual hearing on a different theory of causation.”

……..

“We want to pursue an additional theory, not a different theory,” the boy’s father told me. “We are by no means abandoning the thimerosal theory of causation but, in the context of the test case, the thimerosal theory would have eclipsed our other evidence, including evidence of metabolic dysfunction,” such as impaired mitchondria and low cellular energy.

The boy is Alexander Krakow, son of EoH regular, lawyer Bob Krakow. Up until very recently, lawyer Bob could be heard trumpeting the evils of thiomersal to the exclusion of just about everything else (MMR aside of course). Now, however, the Krakow’s have a new hypothesis (DK refers to ‘theory’ through his article but it isn’t a theory) – but note they still give a shout out to thiomersal anyway.

Now, much as DK and the Krakow’s might want to think this is important, it really isn’t. This situation is in no way similar to Hannah Poling’s. In that scenario, HHS said she was vaccine damaged (but again, despite what DK says, there was no concession she had been made autistic by her vaccines – an opinion the medical evidence and mitochondrial experts agree with) and they recommended awarding damages uncontested. In Alexander Krakow’s case, his _parents_ have withdrawn him from the Omnibus. No science has been presented, HHS have not said anything at all about his medical conditions. All we have so far is the Krakow’s opinion that their son has a mitochondrial disorder.

This is especially interesting in the light of the report of the Krakow’s own hand-picked medical expert, DAN doctor Elizabeth Mumper – not only _a_ DAN! doctor but the ‘Medical Director’ of ARI.

This report prepared by Mumper states:

In my best professional judgement…..it is more likely than not that the thimerosal in the childhood vaccines Alexander Krakow received was a substantial contributing factor to his neurodevelopmental problems.

So the ARI medical director blames thiomersal. What did she have to say about mitochondria?

Well, nothing. The word ‘mitochondria’ is not mentioned once in the whole report.

In his article DK talks about Alexander Krakow having the same ‘markers’ as Hannah Poling. He neglects to say what they are however, or how he concludes they are markers. He also neglects to mention how the DAN! medical director singularly failed to detect any of these so called ‘markers’.

Perhaps the biggest mark against Alexander Krakow having ‘mito induced autism from vaccines’ is the fact that his medical report (which stated the thiomersal dunnit) made no mention of a fever or raised temperature. If I recall correctly, it was a key part of the Hannah Poling scenario that the vaccines had given her a fever and it was this which aggravated her underlying mitochondrial disorder and in turn caused her autism. Alexander Krakow’s medical report mentioned no fever at all.

David must also be aware of the fact that the ‘markers’ he refers to are, at best, markers of mitochondrial issues. Lots kids with mito issues have them. They bear no relation to vaccine injury. I was disappointed to see this issue being talked around but I have some hopes that later this year – towards the autumn maybe – this issue will be made abundantly clear.

So, all in all I am deeply puzzled as to how this is ‘the next bombshell’ or even how Alexander Krakow can be considered to have any kind of mitochondrial related autism issue. The HHS definitely did not concede this case and my guess is that they will be more than happy – given Bob Krakow’s own expert medical report into his son – to contest when their case comes up separately.

My further guess is that we will see some more people switch horses sometime fairly soon. I’m also guessing that – like the Krakow’s – it will be done against their lawyers advice.

LBRB – The CNN Edition

26 Apr

Time for a change of design. Not that there was anything wrong with the old design as such but I got bored of it and lets face it, sporting a design not created by onesself when one is a designer for a living is not really the done thing. Therefore this one _is_ created by moi.

I wanted to keep ahold of the ‘news’ type them of the old design but make it much more contemporary and cleaner. The CNN website is a great example of this contemporary style so I decided to rip it off, be inspired by it.

The backend (the bit you don’t see) is also upgraded to WordPress 2.5and is quite sexy in its appearance and new information architecture structure. However, I note that 2.5.1 is already released so I’m downloading that as we speak and that’ll be installed in the next 20 mins or so.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging. Out.

PS – there may be a few bugs as I upgrade. I had this design working on IE6, 7 and the latest developer beta of 8 as well as Firefox 2, Opera 8 and Safari.

If you happen to note anything spectacularly awful that I’ve missed or if your browser starts to do weird things let me know either in the comments or in an email.

Also, if I happen to have retired (or as its otherwise known ‘forgotten’) a feature from the old design that you really liked also let me know. I don’t think I have but you never know.

Out (Part II).

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