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Something is beginning to smell…

5 Mar

As noted by Catherina in a previous thread, David Kirby went on US morning show Imus to talk about autism, vaccines and the recent so called ‘concession report’.

Here’s the snippet Catherina highlighted:

IMUS: Why haven’t we read about that in the NY Times or seen it on NBC nightly news?

DAVID: Well, the NY Times is not particularly interested in this story. There are reporters out there this week trying to cover it, but, *until the family gets permission from government to speak*, I’m not sure how much coverage it actually is going to get. You know, I love being on your show, but, I wish instead of me being here this morning, you have somebody from the HHS. Because what we basically have over there is a wall of silence. *Why is it not okay to talk about this? Why is this confidential? Exactly whose interests are being protected if the family says it’s perfectly okay to talk about this….and…the family wants to talk about it? Why is the government saying we can’t talk about it? Those rules are in place to protect the privacy of the family, which has already been waived.

This is eyebrow raising to say the least. The *fact* of the matter is that the Gvmt has *no* rights to stop the family talking about the case. The other *fact* of the matter is that it is the family who have ensured that the one person who can clear up most of the questions about this case – Dr Zimmerman – must remain silent on the issue. Once again, here is the KK statement:

Dr. Zimmerman…….is not able to publicly discuss this patient. As a participant in this case, the family provided consent for Dr. Zimmerman to share information with the court, but *we do not have parental consent to discuss the patient publicly* – as we are bound by HIPAA privacy regulations, as in any healthcare setting in the U.S.

I don’t want to say David Kirby is deliberately lying here but his statement on the Imus show is plain old wrong. I’m left with the feeling that a conspiracy theory is being generated here right before our eyes.

To paraphrase Orac…

2 Mar

stagnomilf.jpg

…even more evidence its not about the mercury. Or even about the autism.

Meet Kim. Kim likes to say things like:

“Some days you’re the windshield. Some days you’re the bug.” This week I was the bug. And the autism world (those of us who care about helping kids feel better that is) have been “the bug” for a long time. So today I took off the gloves on HuffPo. I might have even taken off my bra and panties

Um. Form an orderly queue gents?

So Kim – she who is part of the community who care about helping kids feel better – posts a good ol’ rant on Huff Po:

Moms and Dads are waking up and refusing to drink the Kool Aid offered by their patronizing pediatrician, CDC Pharma shill, FDA schmuck…..When docs start pushing a “cervical cancer” vaccine (Gardasil) to boys, even the dimmest bulb of a parent starts to realize that there is a marketing agenda taking precedence over health.

Yeah, even the dimmest bulb of a parent.

Gardasil is a vaccine against certain types of the human papillomavirus (HPV).

HPV is highly communicable…..Both men and women are carriers of HPV. To eradicate these particular strains, men would eventually need to be vaccinated

The forms of HPV that Gardasil is designed to vaccinate against also include a form that is responsible for throat cancer, something my paternal grandfather died from.

So yeah Kim, you carry on taking your clothes off if it makes you feel better. I think those people with the dimmest bulbs would thank whatever diety they worship that they couldn’t see the results of that particular exercise. And out here in the real world, where the discussion continues to be about _autism_ (remember that Kim? the thing that all three of your daughters have – the three daughters of whom only one is vaccinated?) and vaccines we can get back to science instead of ego-stroking.

Rally at the AAP

21 Feb

From the Age of Autism:

They need to start listening to parents’ concerns and take them seriously,” said Amy Carson from Moms Against Mercury. She and cofounder Angela Medlin came all the way from balmy North Carolina to freeze in front of the AAP, abetted by TACA and NAA Chicago, led by Chapter Development Director Karen McDonough. This was their fifth rally outside the AAP, timed to greet employees arriving at work and remind them that thousands of American families believe vaccines have triggered an epidemic of autism and other developmental and chronic health disorders.

And here is the proof positive of the teeming throngs of ‘thousands of American families’.

rally_people.jpg

You can click the image to make it bigger. Sadly it doesn’t increase the amount of attendee’s.

Brad Handley Offers Us A Chance To Evaluate

6 Feb

A couple of days ago, Brad Handley wrote a blog entry on Age of Autism called ‘DR. NANCY MINSHEW & ME: WHO’S CRAZY?’.

Let us instead examine Brad’s criteria for deciding on who is crazy and who is not between Dr Minshew and he.

I disagree with almost every single thing you have written or said about autism. Since we both can’t possibly be right, one of us has to be crazy. I’m scared to death it might be me. As a psychiatrist, I thought you could help.

Says Brad to Dr Minshew in an email. He then continues with:

It is maddening for parents like me that our “experts” can’t agree on the most fundamentally important and critical data point in the entire field of autism: is prevalence truly rising or not? This very binary notion impacts everything else. If it’s growing, it’s the environment. If it’s not, it’s genetics. From you perspective, “The increase in number of cases reflects the increase in recognition of verbal children.” I was confounded by this point, because I can’t find a single sentence in the scientific literature to support this. What I do look to is the following:

OK, lets pause. Brad says there’s no scientific literature to support the idea that there isn’t an epidemic. We’ll come back to that. Firstly, however, he cites a few bits and bobs to support his hypothesis that there is.

First off he cites:

[1]Report to the Legislature on the Principle Findings from The Epidemiology of Autism in California: A Comprehensive Pilot Study MIND Institute, UC Davis, Oct 2002.

This is not in the scientific literature. It is not peer reviewed. According to Brad’s own specified criteria of utilising the scientific literature, he cannot cite this document.

The second (and last) paper he cites is:

[2]National Autism Prevalence Trends From United States Special Education Data. Pediatrics, March 2005. Craig J. Newschaffer, PhD..

Using Special Education data has been debunked in a paper published four months after that Newschaffer paper. The author (James Laidler) says:

Many autism advocacy groups use the data collected by the US Department of Education (USDE) to show a rapidly increasing prevalence of autism. Closer examination of these data to follow each birth-year cohort reveals anomalies within the USDE data on autism……These anomalies point to internal problems in the USDE data that make them unsuitable for tracking autism prevalence.

and Shattuck says:

The mean administrative prevalence of autism in US special education among children ages 6 to 11 in 1994 was only 0.6 per 1000, less than one-fifth of the lowest CDC estimate from Atlanta (based on surveillance data from 1996). Therefore, special education counts of children with autism in the early 1990s were dramatic underestimates of population prevalence and really had nowhere to go but up. This finding highlights the inappropriateness of using special education trends to make declarations about an epidemic of autism, as has been common in recent media and advocacy reports.

So thats the sum total of Brad’s ‘science’ regarding the autism epidemic. A non-science report and a twice debunked study.

Is there actually anything in the scientific literature that suggests the ‘epidemic’ is not anything of the sort?

Variation in the administrative prevalence of ASD is associated with education-related spending, which may be associated with better-trained educational staff who can recognize the problem, and more and better trained in-school specialists who can provide screening. It is also associated with the availability of health care resources. Increased access to pediatricians and school-based health centers may lead to improved recognition of ASD. Interstate variability in the identification of ASD should be taken into account when interpreting the results of prevalence studies based on administrative data and the associated system characteristics taken into account by policy makers working to improve the recognition of ASD.

David S. Mandell, ScD; Raymond Palmer, PhD

The incidence of research-identified autism increased in Olmsted County from 1976 to 1997, with the increase occurring among young children after the introduction of broader, more precise diagnostic criteria, increased availability of services, and increased awareness of autism. Although it is possible that unidentified environmental factors have contributed to an increase in autism, the timing of the increase suggests that it may be due to improved awareness, changes in diagnostic criteria, and availability of services, leading to identification of previously unrecognized young children with autism.

William J. Barbaresi, MD; Slavica K. Katusic, MD; Robert C. Colligan, PhD; Amy L. Weaver, MS; Steven J. Jacobsen, MD, PhD

We observed dramatic increases in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder as a primary special educational disability starting in the 1991-1992 school year, and the trends show no sign of abatement. We found no corresponding decrease in any special educational disability category to suggest diagnostic substitution as an explanation for the autism trends in Minnesota. We could not assess changes in actual disease incidence with these data, but federal and state administrative changes in policy and law favoring better identification and reporting of autism are likely contributing factors to the prevalence increases and may imply that autism spectrum disorder has been underdiagnosed in the past.

James G. Gurney, PhD; Melissa S. Fritz, MPH; Kirsten K. Ness, MPH; Phillip Sievers, MA;Craig J. Newschaffer, PhD; Elsa G. Shapiro, PhD

Brad continues:

You say vaccines are proven to not cause autism and that parents should vaccinate their children.

Dr. Minshew, you are either being intellectually dishonest on this point or it is outside of your expertise as a psychiatrist to understand the vaccine-autism issue, Let me explain:

Brad _seems_ to be basing this belief on the news article he quotes:

Dr. Nancy Minshew, Director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Excellence in Autism Research, says it’s time to end the debate [about vaccines and autism] because research overwhelmingly proves there’s no connection and parents don’t need to worry about that anymore. Minshew says it’s time real experts dispel the rumors for concerned parents. “They deserve to hear the evidence, the real evidence. So I thought, ‘Enough is enough,'” she said. Minshew says people’s lives are at stake because some kids aren’t getting vaccinated for life-threatening diseases due to incorrect information. Since Thimerosal, an ethyl mercury preservative, was banned from most childhood vaccines in the U.S. seven years ago, autism rates have continued to increase – disproving the link. Minshew says it’s only a coincidence that toddlers are vaccinated around the same time autism is usually diagnosed.

Minshew did _not_ say ‘vaccines are proven to not cause autism’, that is what the article she was quoted in says. You can tell the bits she actually said as they will be surrounded with quote marks.

– Thimerosal was not banned from vaccines as you are quoted as saying, so this is a falsehood.

Minshew was not quoted as saying this. This is a falsehood.

– Thimerosal did not come out of vaccines seven years ago as you are quoted as saying, so this is a falsehood. In fact, it’s still in the overwhelming majority of the flu shot supply at full dose- the flu shot was recently added (2004) to the CDC’s recommended schedule.

Once more, Minshew was _not_ quoted as saying thiomersal came out of vaccines seven year ago. This is a falsehood. Your statement that it is still in the overwhelming majority of the flu shot is speculative and without foundation – unless you have something to back that up….?

And in *fact* – although Minshew never claims it, a CDC meeting reported on a study that said:

N.I.P. estimated the amount of thimerosal in provider vaccine inventories in a survey conducted September 20, 2001 to February 20, 2002. The targets were a convenience sample of providers getting site visits from public health officials across the country. Inventory counts were done of all refrigerators for D.T.a.P., Hib, and hep B pediatric vaccines. The thimerosal classification was based on the lot number information, which was verified by the manufacturers. In September 2001, 225 sites were canvassed, and 447 by February 2002…..During the visits, the providers were surveyed about thimerosal-containing vaccines in their inventories. Of the 447 interviews, 83.5 percent reported no thimerosal-containing vaccines in stock at any time since October 2001.

and

in September 2001, only 5.6%1 of all vaccines contained thiomersal. By Feb 2002, only 1.9% of all vaccines contained thiomersal.

(NB: The 5.6% figure seems to be a typo in the report. It should be 56%. From 33,500 doses out of 63,600; to 2,796 doses out of 149,147)

– If you believe that focusing on a single ingredient in vaccines (mercury) exonerates vaccines in totality, that’s an impossibility. We have grown our vaccine schedule from 10 vaccines in the early 1980s to 36 today. Yet, we never test the “combination risk” of so many vaccines. No one, except Generation Rescue, has ever studied unvaccinated children and looked at their autism rates. We never look at the aluminum that replaced thimerosal, the live viruses, or the many other toxic ingredients in vaccines at all.

So, Brad says that its not just mercury. Which is weird because in Feb 2005 (click the first video) he was saying:

What we immediately realised – and I think this is something that is a surprise to lots of people – um that autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning. If you line up 100 symptoms of mercury poisoning and 100 symptoms of autism they are exactly the same

So, to borrow a phrase, both can’t be true….is it a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning or is it the combination of vaccines?

– The parent reports of children going upside-down and developing autism right after vaccination continues unabated. Will you ever listen to them?

People such as Minshew have done nothing _but_ listen. Generation Rescue keep promising something for them to listen to but keep failing to provide it.

Brad continues:

It strikes me, and perhaps I’m crazy for saying this, that now that you have publicly reassured parents that vaccines are safe, that you may well be the last person on earth, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, to concede that vaccines are in fact playing a role in autism.

That, my friend, is called ‘projection’. Now you have publicly hemmed and hawed about what vaccines role is in autism and now all your projections and predictions have singularly failed to materialise (read the rest of that blog entry with the video for details), even with an overwhelming lack of any evidence whatsoever you will be the last person to ever admit you were plain old wrong time and time again.

And yet there’s more.

You never mention recovered children.

In all the writings and quotes of yours, Doctor, I didn’t read one thing about children who have recovered from autism. Have you ever met a recovered child? Would you like to? Would you care to scan their brains and see how they look? I heard a noted neurologist mention an idea that we should scan the brains of children newly diagnosed with autism, let their parents who want to treat the children biomedically, and then re-scan the brains of any children who have recovered. Does that strike you as an interesting idea?

Ah, the famous recovered children. I wrote about this awhile ago. The upshot of it is that when actually looks in detail at the kids Generation Rescue claims as recovered, kids who no longer have a diagnosis account for about 5-7% of the total he presents as recovered. Its a con trick. I even managed to get my own daughter listed as a recovery story on his website.

Brad continues:

As a courtesy, I forwarded the above piece to Dr. Minshew one day in advance of posting it on Age of Autism. What follows is a short email exchange between us:

———————

Dr. Minshew:

What’s written below, by me, will be posted at The Age of Autism blog tomorrow. As a courtesy, I’m sending it to you first.

I have no issues with you personally. In fact, reading that you lost a child makes me very, very empathetic.

That said, it is my heartfelt belief that you are actually part of the problem with autism, rather than part of the solution. I’m sure that’s a comment you disagree with profoundly, but I really believe history will be a harsh judge of scientists like you who continue to deny the existence of a rising prevalence of autism and mistakenly reassure parents that vaccines are safe – a topic you can’t possibly be an expert on, by the way.

I also thought your email to Mr. —- reeked of intellectual arrogance in a very close-minded sort of a way. There are many well-credentialed scientists who would take exception to almost everything you believe about autism, but you speak with sweeping generalizations like you are in the only camp that actually knows where truth lies. I also found your continual reference to a court case in Maryland, while 2 tests cases before the Vaccine Court remain WIDE OPEN, to demonstrate either ignorance on your part or a case of selective fact gathering. What if the test cases in D.C. rule in favor of the plaintiffs?

So, I don’t expect us to be pen pals anytime soon, but I’m including the open letter to you below.

Sincerely,

JB Handley

——————–

From: Nancy Minshew
To: J.B. Handley
Sent: Mon Feb 04 11:50:31 2008
Subject: RE: Nancy & Me: Who’s crazy

Mr. Handley none of you have permission to share emails that i have sent to you as individuals with anyone besides the intended receiver nor do you have permission to quote me publicly. Unlike the newspaper which was public, private emails to individuals sent confidentially are not for public quotation.

——————–

From: J.B. Handley
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 11:54 AM
To: Nancy Minshew
Subject: Re: Nancy & Me: Who’s crazy

Says who?

And, tough shit.

J.B. Handley

——————–

Nice guy huh?

And also further example of Brad’s hypocrisy. Our very first online set-to Brad commented (in the comment section) about me publishing part of an email he sent me:

Mr. Leitch sent me an email on my private email account, I responded, and he put my comments on his blog without asking me.

Which wasn’t strictly true but anyway – if I’d known how Brad would chop and change his mind I would’ve just said ‘tough shit’.

Anyway, Brad concludes:

This is my world, Dr. Minshew, it seems clear as day. It’s so different from yours, I really, really need to know: which one of us is crazy?

Lets recap. In Brad’s world science isn’t science unless he says it is. He can chop and change his mind without it invalidating his earlier, contradictory beliefs and its OK to be a massive hypocrite. Are these the actions of a crazy man?

In 1931…

27 Sep

In 1931 Eli Lilly invented autism.  Or so the story goes.  Again, as the story goes, all autism is mercury poisoning or, more specifically, Thimerosal poisoning.  Thus, Autism didn’t  (and couldn’t) exist before the invention of Thimerosal in 1931.

Dan Olmsted has made a number of bloggish press releases on the “original” autism cases. You know, those kids that Dr. Kanner first reported on. According to that story, somehow all of the first cases (since there weren’t any before then) somehow found their way into Dr. Kanner’s practice.

Wouldn’t it be strange if there were autistic individuals born before 1931? Wouldn’t you expect Mr. Kirby or Mr. Olmsted to let us know if there were evidence of autism that didn’t fit this little model?

In a recent blog post, David Kirby noted that:

“But it turns out that a private citizen has paid the state each quarter to analyze the autism numbers according to year of birth, and not just by age group. State law requires that such privately funded analyses be made available to anyone else who asks for it

So I asked for it. What I got was rather interesting.”

Well, someone else asked for these data sets. Now I have them too.  Joseph has them as well.   And they are rather interesting.

The spreadsheets list the number of clients getting CDDS services by year of birth.  Open the most recent one and there, at the very top, are three of clients born before 1931.  Top of the list, someone born in 1920.   If you look through the past years, you will find as many as five in a single year.  There is evidence for more as some people come and go.

I can already write one of the responses to this post. “Thank you for pointing out that the number is so much less than 1:150 for the older generations”.

While you hope that we all go running after that particular red herring, reread the statement above: “..as people come and go from the system”.  Consider our now 87 year old client mentioned above.  He/she entered the system as autistic in late 1999.

Yessir, at 79 years old this person was added to the CDDS autism roll.   There are a lot of possible reasons.  He/She could have moved into the state, his/her family could have found that they no longer could handle the job alone or, and this is the big question, he/she was already in the system but was only identified as autistic at this late age.

That’s not the only example.  In 1992, a 70 year old was added to the list under autistism.  In 1992 a 64 year old was added, followed by another in early 1993. 

There are more, but you get the point.  These people, people born before the invention of Thimerosal are autistic and are being added to the CDDS lists as autistic late in life.

I do wonder why Mr. Kirby didn’t mention this.  I do wonder why he didn’t shoot a quick email to Mr. Olmsted to point this out.  One has to think that Dan Olmsted would be interested in getting the stories of the pre-Thimerosal, pre-Kanner autistics.  Then again, one has to imagine that Dan Olmsted probably has seen these data for himself already.  Why neither of them has seen fit to mention this or dig deeper into this is an open question.

For once I agree with David Kirby, “What I got was rather interesting”.

Why Aren’t You “Scared To Death”?

13 Sep

Do you miss Dan Olmsted’s writing? He now apparently showcases his version of scientific brilliance over at Rescue Host.

Recently, he tried to pass off the Flu shots and Chinese mercury hypothesis (which I thought was David Kirby’s, but I guess I was wrong) without much more than unfounded speculation and belief.

California, of course, is ground zero as we watch autism rates keep rising — even after mercury was “removed” from childhood vaccines starting in 1999 (the situation is much more complicated than that, since more and more pregnant women and younger and younger kids are getting mercury-preserved flu shots). So if you believe as I do that autism is fundamentally an environmental illness that whacks a subgroup of susceptible kids, mercury from China — or anyplace else — is every bit as important as mercury from vaccines.

I asked him the following in the comments:

If you wouldn’t mind Mr. Olmsted, take a look at a graph of the 3-5 year-old autism caseload cohort for the past 5 years.

Such a graph would include children born at the starting point of the “removal” in 1999 you mentioned. What do you see? Does the trend look linear to you?

Do you really believe there is combined flu shot uptake and airborne mercury data that would exactly and inversely match (in dose and effect, if any) the reduction the use of thimerosal in childhood vaccines in order to produce a trendline with an R-squared value of .9954 for this time period?

You can view such a graph here.

To which he replied:

An “R-squared value of .9954” is way beyond my non-scientific expertise. All I can say is that thimerosal use has actually been increasing in by far the most vulnerable group — pregnant women — and that at least some studies suggest that greater pollution directly correlates with a greater risk of autism. If the CDC had recalled all thimerosal-containing vaccines in 1999, we’d have a genuine “natural experiment.” But we don’t. Nor will the government study autism rates in never-vaccinated kids; the survey by Generation Rescue found ominous correlations between vaccines and NDs including autism, but it’s been widely ignored.

The survey by Generation Rescue? Right. Did he just make up that part about thimerosal use increasing in pregnant women? It kind of looked like it to me, so I asked and commented as follows:

What evidence do you have that thimerosal use actually increased in pregnant women for the period immediately following the “removal” of thimerosal from childhood vaccinations? (required to make your hypothesis work)

The majority of childhood vaccines were thimerosal-free or contain only trace amounts by 2002 (more on that below). Here’s flu shot uptake estimates for pregnant women for the three years that follow:

2002 – 12.4±3.9 %
2003 – 12.8±4.4 %
2004 – 12.9±5.0 %

Source

Note: there is an increase in the estimate for 2005, but children born in 2005 and later are not old enough to be reflected in the 3-5 year-old California autism caseload cohort yet. Additionally, estimates for 2006 were back down to 12.9 percent.

Source

Mark Blaxill and JB Handley showed up in the comments following that, and Olmsted apparently did not reply further. So the question of where Dan Olmsted might have found any data to make his Flu shots and Chinese mercury hypothesis plausible, will have to remain unanswered for now. But, while we’re on the subject of data-free gibberish, have a look at a piece of something posted by Dan Olmsted at Rescue Host on September 11th.

At some point, common sense has to prevail. For instance, let’s stipulate that better diagnosis accounts for a gargantuan 36 times more cases of bipolar disorder among kids over the past 10 years. That still would mean that the condition quadrupled in a decade — suspiciously, the same decade that autism, asthma, ADD, ADHD etc. soared out of sight. The deniers have to explain away every digit of that 40-fold number, because even a “mere” fourfold increase in the real incidence would be deeply disturbing. How can anyone be certain that one-tenth of that 40-fold increase isn’t actually real? And if they can’t be certain, why aren’t they scared to death?

Emphasis mine.

An appeal to “common sense” is a sure sign that what follows is probably not data that supports his hypothesis. Is common sense really the best way to arrive at correct answers about any subject for anyone, regardless of their background? What do statements like, “An ‘R-squared value of .9954’ is way beyond my non-scientific expertise”, tell us about the context to which Mr. Olmsted’s “common sense” might be reliably applied? Is autism epidemiology likely to be anywhere near Olmsted’s knowledge and expertise?

Sometimes common sense seems like a good way to operate, but the reality is that many things in science have quite complex answers. It’s also the case that science does not have all the answers (nor does it claim to). None of this will apparently stop Mr. Olmsted from forging ahead with assertion and anecdote in the rest of his post of course.

Did you catch this part of that paragraph above?

“…suspiciously, the same decade that autism, asthma, ADD, ADHD etc. soared out of sight.”

Did you see any real data or science whatsoever that actual autism prevalence “soared out of sight” in the past ten years? Me neither. So here you go any “Flu shot and Chinese mercury” proponents, now is your chance to post that real data or science in the comments – really, Mr. Olmsted needs your help if he’s to avoid the inevitable “You’ve got nothing!”. Either that, or get him a new hypothesis to work with (something with corroborative data preferred).

As for Mr. Olmsted’s final question in that paragraph, I’d like to answer it from one perspective.

We can’t be absolutely sure that there hasn’t been some real increase in autism prevalence, there might have been. To conclude that there has been a real increase in autism prevalence wouldn’t require much more than good data that shows it’s actually true. However, to conclude that there has been a real increase without supporting scientific evidence, but based on “stories”, is unscientific, if not a bit silly.

I can’t be absolutely 100% certain that an alien abduction has never occurred, but this lack of certainty does not translate to “therefore alien abductions are real”. I can’t be absolutely 100% certain that bigfoot doesn’t exist either, but again, that lack of certainty does not translate to “bigfoot is real”. I don’t live in fear of being abducted by aliens or encountering a hairy giant biped while on a hike with the kids, despite an abundance of “stories” about these things. I’m also not “scared to death” that there could indeed be an increase in the actual prevalence of autism. It is a possibility, but I have seen no evidence of it’s truth. I do see an increase in storytelling though.

Generation Rescue Survey Results

26 Jun

Brad Handley has commissioned a telephone polling company to perform a telephone poll:

Generation Rescue commissioned an independent opinion research firm, SurveyUSA of Verona NJ, to conduct a telephone survey in nine counties in California and Oregon. Counties were selected by Generation Rescue. Interviews were successfully completed in 11,817 households with one or more children age 4 to 17. From those 11,817 households, data on 17,674 children was gathered. Of the 17,674 children inventoried, 991 were described as being completely unvaccinated. For each unvaccinated child, a heath battery was administered.

Oooh – exciting!

The results are damning apparently….

We surveyed over 9,000 boys in California and Oregon and found that vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a neurological disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys

Woah, what? _Like_ autism…? And what the hell has ADHD got to do with anything? Oh right, right – I remember, Generation Rescue redesigned their site when they couldn’t make their old message of:

Autism is treatable. It’s reversible. It’s nothing more than mercury poisoning,” said JB Handley, founder of Generation Rescue.

stick. Now its more than just mercury and its more than just autism. Hey – if you can’t make one idea work, expand it and pretend you’ve _always_ meant that. In this survey, applicants were asked about ADD, ADHD, Aspergers, PDD-NOS, Autism, Asthma and Juvenile Diabetes. Nothing like muddying the water to make things clearer.

On the Generation Rescue page I link to above, Generation Rescue have kindly provided their source data but in closed access PDF’s. How helpful. Never mind, I turned all the aggregate data into an Excel file and had a bit of a look myself. UPDATE: All Generation Rescue Survey data is now available in Excel.

Now, my issue with Generation Rescue is solely to do with autism and vaccines. I really don’t care about their newly found interest in asthma or juvenile diabetes. Lets see what they say about their autism results:

Vaccinated boys were 61% more likely to have autism

Well, thats one way to look at it. Another way is to look at it properly. In the spreadsheet I created using Generation Rescue raw data the following was found.

Number of boys with Aspergers
Unvaccinated: 2% of total
Partially vaccinated: 3% of total
Fully vaccinated: 2%
Fully and Partially combined: 2%

Conclusion: you are 1% more likely to have Aspergers if you have been partially vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being Aspergers is exactly the same as if you were unvaccinated.

Number of boys with PDD-NOS
Unvaccinated: 1% of total
Partially vaccinated: 2% of total
Fully vaccinated: 1%
Fully and Partially combined: 1%

Conclusion: you are 1% more likely to have PDD-NOS if you have been partially vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being PDD-NOS is exactly the same as if you were unvaccinated.

Number of boys with Autism
Unvaccinated: 2% of total
Partially vaccinated: 7% of total
Fully vaccinated: 3%
Fully and Partially combined: 4%

Conclusion: you are 5% more likely to have autism if you have been partially vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being autistic is 1% greater than if you were unvaccinated.

Number of boys with all ASD’s
Unvaccinated: 4% of total
Partially vaccinated: 8% of total
Fully vaccinated: 5%
Fully and Partially combined: 5%

Conclusion: you are 4% more likely to have an ASD if you have been partially vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of having an ASD is 1% greater than if you were unvaccinated.

These figures are laughable. 4% more likely? And that’s if your son has been partially vaccinated! If he’s been fully vaccinated the percentage increase drops to 1%. The figures for girls are even worse.

Number of girls with Aspergers
Unvaccinated: 1% of total
Partially vaccinated: 1% of total
Fully vaccinated: 0%
Fully and Partially combined: 0%

Conclusion: you are no more likely to have Aspergers if you have been partially vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being Aspergers is 1% less than if you were unvaccinated.

Number of girls with PDD-NOS
Unvaccinated: 2% of total
Partially vaccinated: 1% of total
Fully vaccinated: 0%
Fully and Partially combined: 0%

Conclusion: you are 1% more likely to have PDD-NOS if you are unvaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being PDD-NOS is 2% less than if you were unvaccinated.

Number of girls with Autism
Unvaccinated: 1% of total
Partially vaccinated: 2% of total
Fully vaccinated: 1%
Fully and Partially combined: 1%

Conclusion: you are 1% more likely to have autism if you have been partially vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being autistic is no greater than if you were unvaccinated.

Number of girls with all ASD’s
Unvaccinated: 3% of total
Partially vaccinated: 3% of total
Fully vaccinated: 1%
Fully and Partially combined: 1%

Conclusion: you are no more likely to have an ASD if you have been partially vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of having an ASD is 2% less than if you were unvaccinated.

My goodness, this is _awful_ for Generation Rescue. Finally, we’ll look at girls and boys together:

Number of boys and girls with Aspergers
Unvaccinated: 1% of total
Partially vaccinated: 2% of total
Fully vaccinated: 1%
Fully and Partially combined: 2%

Conclusion: you are 1% more likely to have Aspergers if you have been partially vaccinated than unvaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being Aspergers is no greater than if you were unvaccinated.

Number of boys and girls with PDD-NOS
Unvaccinated: 2% of total
Partially vaccinated: 2% of total
Fully vaccinated: 1%
Fully and Partially combined: 1%

Conclusion: you are 1% more likely to have PDD-NOS if you are unvaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being PDD-NOS is 1% less than if you were unvaccinated.

Number of boys and girls with Autism
Unvaccinated: 2% of total
Partially vaccinated: 4% of total
Fully vaccinated: 2%
Fully and Partially combined: 2%

Conclusion: you are 2% more likely to have autism if you have been partially vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being autistic is no greater than if you were unvaccinated.

Number of boys and girls with all ASD’s
Unvaccinated: 4% of total
Partially vaccinated: 6% of total
Fully vaccinated: 3%
Fully and Partially combined: 3%

Conclusion:you are 2% more likely to have an ASD if you have been partially vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated your chance of being autistic is 1% less than if you were unvaccinated.

There’s no getting away from this. This is a disaster for Generation Rescue and the whole ‘vaccines cause autism’ debacle. Generation Rescue’s data indicates that you are ‘safer’ from autism if you fully vaccinate than partially vaccinate. It also indicates that across the spectrum of autism, you are only 1% more likely to be autistic if you have had any sort of vaccination as oppose to no vaccinations at all – and thats only if you are male. If you are a girl you chances of being on the spectrum are _less_ if you have been vaccinated! Across both boys and girls, your chances of being on the spectrum are _less_ if you have received all vaccinations.

Elsewhere

Orac
Prometheus

Autism amongst the Amish

22 Apr

Don’t Stand So Close To Me

I recently had an email conversation with someone who is married to a lapsed Mennonite and who’s secretary is a lapsed Amish. As this was too good an opportunity to miss I asked xyr about autism amongst the Amish and vaccinations.

I was interested in Dan Olmsted’s idea that he and his sources waltz around Amish communities, grabbing people and asking ‘got any autism in the family’? and calling this reporting. When we talked about this xyr answer was fascinating:

As for tracking autistics, forget about it. Families are not likely going to seek diagnosis unless there are seizures or some other acute issue. Imagine driving up to a bunch of Amish farms and asking, “Are any of your kids autistic?” I would guess they probably haven’t ever heard of the word.

As xe explains it, the Amish are deeply religious people. Xe has first hand experience of this and explained to me how it would be virtually impossible given these beliefs and on such a short aquaintance for Olmsted – or his sources -to get ‘close’ to the Amish as a population:

The entire Amish religion is based on shunning the outside, secular world, these are the biblical tenants they live by:

Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. (II Corinthians 6:14)

Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. (II Corinthians 6:17)

And be ye not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:2)

The Amish only make accommodations when necessary. So, they have a phone in the barn to call the vet and the dairy plant. They accept rides in automobiles and trucks but don’t drive. They may shop for essentials but they aren’t going to chat you up.

And as I said before, I doubt seriously that they would seek a diagnosis for autism unless there was some acute comorbidity like seizures. They would likely know that their child was different but that was god’s will.

and as for vaccination:

The Amish are not anti-vaccine. Some Amish kids go to public school and must be vaccinated. My brother-in-law was raised Amish until about age 10 and he’s got the small pox scar to prove the point.

The basic gist is that the Amish are leery of non-Amish/Mennonite (whom they refer to as ‘the English’ (!!) apparently) but if a matter is medical and may cause threats to health than they are not stupid and seek out Western medicine.

Based on this, I really have doubts that Olmsted ever did more than stablish himself as a ‘nosey English’. I really have trouble believing that such a reserved, separate people would open up to either him or his water cooler salesman source about their personal, private medical matters.

No Autism Amongst The Amish

Its a long standing (and oft repeated) belief amongst the autism/antivaccine believers that there is no autism, or vastly reduced incidence of autism, amongst the Amish. This belief is repeated by all and sundry:

…thousands of Amish, almost all of whom do not vaccinate their children and do not seem to suffer much autism.

Dan Olmsted.

This finding of no significant level of “autism”….has also been observed in the unvaccinated children of the Amish

Dr Paul King, CoMed, closed access Yahoo List.

….the Amish community who do not participate in Western medicine, including the practice of vaccinations, have demonstrated their rates of autism are substantially lower.

Lisa Ackerman, TACA (Talk about Curing Autism) Executive Director, closed access Yahoo List.

Why has there never been autism in the Amish community? They dont vaccinate!

Poster ‘Jan’ to closed access Yahoo List.

I challenge anyone to go into any Amish community in this country and find autistic children. You won’t find them. Yet, our schools are being over run with autistic children. Why? The Amish do not vaccinate.

Poster ‘Paul Troutt’ to closed access Yahoo List

HE [friend of the poster] HAS NEVER SEEN AN AUTISTIC AMISH CHILD OR ADULT…. Why? THE[y] DO NOT IMMUNIZE….EVER.

Poster ‘Amethyst Mueller’ to closed access Yahoo List.

And so it seems clear right? All these people are saying the same thing. We could go into any Amish community and find very, very low or zero autism. And to what do these people attribute the non-existent autism? Vaccines (or the lack thereof) of course!

What would happen if we removed one of these factors from the equation?

The Old-Order Amish have low rates of vaccination and are at increased risk for vaccine-preventable diseases. A written survey was mailed to all Amish households in the largest Amish community in Illinois inquiring about their vaccination status and
that of their children.

Source.

Well, well. How very interesting. Finally some _science_ , as oppose to journalism, that examines whether the oft-reported belief that the Amish don’t vaccinate is true. What did these guys find?

Responses were received by 225 (60%) of the 374 Amish households in the community with children aged <15 years. An additional 120 responses were received by households without children. A total of 189 (84%) households with children reported
that all of their children had received vaccinations; 28 (12%) reported that some of their children had received vaccinations; and
8 (4%) reported that none of their children had received vaccinations.

84% of Amish households reported all their kids had received vaccinations. Only 4% reported that none of their kids had received vaccinations.

Among all respondents who knew their own vaccination status, 281/313 (90%) reported that they had received vaccinations
as children

Wow. Amazing how the two to three ‘toxic train wrecks’ from amongst these adults could not only have been missed (vaccine induced autism being unmissable as we all know) but also managed to fill in a survey.

So – we can say that the assumption that the Amish do not vaccinate is in severe doubt. When 90% of Amish adults in a survey state they received vaccinations and when 84% state all their kids have been vaccinated to what do we attribute the fact that according to Dan Olmsted, Dr Paul King, Lisa Ackerman and various posters on Yahoo groups there is little to no autism amongst the Amish?

Dan Olmsted – Autism’s Dick Tracy

2 Mar

Apparently.

Dan Olmsted, who writes for the Moonie owned UPI recently published another interminable piece in his ongoing series on autism (it isn’t really about autism, its about thiomersal causing autism but what the hell…)

In this one, he reveals the shocking results of his ongoing investigation into the private lives of the first set of Kanner’s patients and tries as hard as he can to draw a parallel between them and mercury. This time he’s struck the mother lode.

Patient Frederick W’s father is now identified as Frederick L. Wellman, a scientist who’s collection of papers ‘fill 18 boxes in the Special Collections Research Center at the North Carolina State University Libraries in Raleigh’.

The first item in the first folder in the first box is dated Spring 1922, when the senior Wellman was working toward his doctorate in plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin…..Wellman collected cabbage seeds infected with a common fungus and dunked some of them in a solution of mercury salts and hot water. “The lots treated with mercuric [chloride] were shaken vigorously at first to get thorough contact with the solution,” he wrote.

And that’s not all.

Case 1 grew up in a town called Forest, Miss., surrounded by logging camps, lumber mills, and a national forest being planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Forest is 50 miles from the Mississippi sawmills where ethyl mercury fungicides were first tested in the United States in 1929 to preserve lumber, a practice that quickly became widespread;

Case 3 was the son of “a professor of forestry in a southern university,” Kanner wrote….In 1936, he assisted in the planting of pine seedlings in the university’s newly acquired Hofmann Forest. His son was born in 1937. Organic mercury fungicides, including an ethyl mercury brand, were often used to prevent “damping off” or fungal contamination of pine seedlings during that era.

All this led Mark Blaxill of Antivax group SafeMinds to comment:

So now we have learned that Frederick Wellman handled ethyl mercury fungicides that were first introduced to the market in 1929 and that his child was Kanner’s patient No. 2….And we know that cases 1 and 3 grew up around the first application of ethyl mercury products. If that’s not a smoking gun, I don’t know what is…

A smoking gun. Impressive.

Except, lets apply a little less gasping credulity and a little more logic.

Fredrick Wellman’s documented use of ethyl mercury was 14 long years before his son was born. Does ethyl mercury have special time travelling properties no one told me about? And how exactly does Wellman Snr being associated with ethyl mercury lead to his son becoming autistic? By that logic every person who ever worked with ethyl mercury should both be autistic themselves and have autistic kids. Did Wellman inject the ethyl mercury into his scrotum?

And what was he doing during the year of his son’s birth? He wasn’t even in the country:

During most of 1936, Wellman was hunting exotic plant diseases in Turkey, Egypt, and Iran.

Case 1 ‘grew up’ (but where was he born?) 50 miles away from ethyl mercury. Everything else in that particular quote is supposition. Case 3’s Dad once planted seedlings that were planted about the same time that some fungicides that might’ve contained ethyl mercury might’ve been used. Thats a sight to may ‘might’ve’s for me.

Sorry, but this to me is not a smoking gun. Its not even a lukewarm barrell.

Another intriguing thing to note was that, in a follow up paper in 1971 Kanner found only two of his original eleven had had what he termed a favourable outcome. Those two were Wellman’s son and ‘case 1’. I’ll apply some Olmsted logic and conclude that the ethyl mercury obviously mitigated the worst of the ravaging effects of the hellish autism.

David Kirby – what have you done?

20 Dec

I want to follow up somewhat on Joseph’s techncial takedown of David Kirby’s recent act of intellectual suicide. On the Huffington Post he wrote a bewildering post called ‘Bad News for Mercury Defenders‘ which discussed how Dan Olmsted’s recent sleuth-like skills led him to talking about a report that undermined studies conducted using VSD data.

Let us begin:

Next June, when the Vaccine Trial of the Century gets underway in Federal Claims Court, government lawyers will defend the direct injection of toxic mercury into infant children by repeating the well-worn mantra that “five large population studies” in Europe and the US have completely exonerated the vaccine preservative thimerosal as a possible cause of autism.

My, my – vaccine trial of the century eh? I’ll have to remember that one when the verdict comes back. This is crap. No lawyer will have to defend the direct injection of mercury into infant children. What they will have to do is counter the accusation that thiomersal in vaccines caused autism. Kirby (as usual) presents a highly distorted view to his adoring fans. The truth is that as in all legal cases, the burden of proof lies on those making the accusation. The accusation is not that mercury is dangerous. the accusation is that it caused autism.

Again:

The VSD study is constantly held up by public health officials as EXHIBIT A in the defense of injecting mercury into little kids.

No, its not. If its held up as anything, its held up as a study that refutes the link between thiomersal in vaccines and autism. Seriously – isn’t this man a journalist? What’s difficult to grasp about this concept?

Kirby goes on to diss the remaining studies and surmises this section of his blog thusly:

With so many holes shot through their “five large studies” defense, the government lawyers will be left to argue that autism is purely genetic, that there is no environmental component, and that the rates of illness have not “really” gone up. We are simply better at recognizing and diagnosing the disorder, that’s all.

Well, if that is the case, the mercury-defense lawyers should have no problem proving it. All they need do is produce irrefutable evidence that 1-in-166 American adults of ALL ages (and 1-in-104 men) fall somewhere within the autism spectrum disorder, at the same rate as kids. But they can’t, and they won’t.

I can only surmise that Kirby is a big fan of the Wizard of Oz and had strawmen on his mind whilst writing this. Yet _again_ he fails to grasp the fact that what this trial is about is simply if thiomersal caused autism. All the vaccine makers have to do is refute the ‘science’ from the other side. And lets be honest, after the RhoGAM smackdown that’s going to be about as difficult as falling off a log. It’ll be surprising if any of the ‘scientific’ evidence ever gets past a Daubert hearing as it failed to do in the RhoGAM case.

And whilst we’re at it, no one has said anything about arguing autism is purely genetic. Why in Gods name would _that_ be required? Autism may well have an environmental component – I know I think it does – but unless Kirby is trying to say that the word ‘environment’ is interchangable with the word ‘vaccine’ then this is also just…meaningless.

And lets get back to the clinical science for a moment:

Instead, one must also consider biological studies (animal, clinical, test tube) when assessing causation. And that’s where the plaintiffs will come to court armed with reams of published evidence – produced at Harvard, Columbia, Davis, etc., and printed in prestigious journals – to suggest a highly plausible biological mechanism that would link a known neurotoxin with a neuro-developmental disorder

Has no one broken the news of the thiomersal/RHOGam/autism case to Kirby? _All_ the ‘science’ that Kirby is talking about here was brought to that trial (follow the link and you can download the entire Daubert findings and read the studies presented for yourself) and was cumulatively dismissed. Here’s what the presiding Judge stated:

However, upon being subjected to extensive cross examination, much of Dr. Geier’s analysis, based upon his collective review of a motley assortment of diverse literature, proved, in the Court’s view, to be overstated……[Dr. Geier] could not point to a single study that conclusively determined that any amount of mercury could cause the specific neurological disorder of autism.

So, that’s exactly what effect eliminating VSD based studies will have on the respondents case. None whatsoever.

But what about the plaintiffs? They have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that thiomersal in vaccines caused autism. And as Kirby helpfully points out:

….They wanted to know if the US database, the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), could be used to compare autism rates in kids before, during, and after the gradual removal of thimerosal, which began in roughly 2000.

Unfortunately, the answer was a resounding “not really.” A laundry list of “weaknesses” and “limitations” associated with the database would render such a comparative analysis “uninformative and potentially misleading,” the panel said, (though it did suggest some excellent ways to re-approach the data going into the future).

Some weaknesses had to do with changes in medical practices over time. But many of the limitations sprang directly from the poorly designed VSD study itself….

So what studies could be killed off by this examination. Well, there are two actually. The first one is Verstraeten et al (2000) which is the one we’ve been discussing so far and Kirby’s been bashing. The other one is Geier and Geier (2005) which they plagiarised from Verstraeten et al (2000). Oops.

Why does the nuking of Geier matter whilst the nuking of Verstraeten does not? Burden of proof, which lies with the prosecution. The Geier paper will be used to help _establish_ causation which is vital, not prove it didn’t happen, which is not called for. The Geier paper (which was crap anyway, lets face it) has now been neatly and effectively taken out by Olmsted and Kirby. Don’t Americans refer to that as friendly fire? By removing Geier 2005 from the playing field, the prosecution are now left with clinical science which has already failed one Daubert hearing (I believe the legal term is ‘setting a precedent’) and any epidemiological data they can scrape together from VAERS and CDDS.

As far as VAERS go, I’d like to remind people of my own experimentation with VAERS. And as far as CDDS data goes, lets remind ourselves one more time what Kirby has said about CDDS data:

“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.

And here, helpfully provided by Dad of Cameron are the ever-growing numbers in that cohort.

There’s also the small matter of The Simpsonwood Conspiracy. To quote Joseph:

….it completely undermines the foundations of the Simpsonwood conspiracy theory. You see, Verstraeten et al. were supposed to have found significant associations between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental outcomes beyond those that were reported in 2003. But now Kirby is endorsing a NIH report which says that ecological studies on the VSD database, specifically those done by Verstraeten et al., are likely flawed.

In other words, without the VSD data being good, the Simpsonwood Conspiracy is a non-starter.

Amazing.

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