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Response to Jake at Age of Autism

14 Jan

Jake Crosby has written a fairly humdrum piece about me which contains a few errors (as do some of the comments), most notably his claim that he’s tried to contact me. I’ve not recieved any contact from him at all either to my personal email nor via the Feedback widget. If Jake wants to contact me to discuss his piece I’m more than happy to do so – you can get me at kevleitchATgmailDOTcom.

The piece itself is a rehash of some of the early comment threads on here – I used to think vaccines caused my child’s autism, then I changed my mind. Jake speculates about why that might be without coming to any firm conclusion.

My “hostile” or “threatening” messages to the Age of Autism editors

23 Dec

I’m critical of the Age of Autism blog and their so called “editors”. That comes as no news to anyone who has read this blog, I’m sure. But I found an odd bit in David N. Brown’s recent piece, Paul Offit’s Mythical Millions (v. 2), when he noted that Mr. Mark Blaxill and Mr. Dan Olmsted wrote in a recent Age of Autism piece:

Most notably, we have received hostile (and in one case threatening) messages from readers who take issue with our estimates

I sent email messages to Mr. Blaxill and Mr. Olmsted, pointing out their mistakes. Hostile and threatening were not the way I would characterize the emails, so I emailed Mr. Blaxill and Mr. Olmsted with my request for clarification of their comments. They have not responded, which I am taking as confirmation that they considered my communications “hostile” and/or “threatening”. I thought I would let the readers decide whether based on the actual messages below.

As a bit of a backstory, Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Blaxill wrote a piece where they estimated the amount of money Dr. Paul Offit earned from his share of his vaccine patents. In this piece, they made a number of errors. I pointed out some of the errors, errors that were easily confirmed with publicly available information, via email.

I thought I had phrased this in a non “threatening” and non “hostile” manner. Again, I leave it to you, the reader, to decide.

Here is my initial letter to Mark Blaxill and Dan Olmsted, editors at the Age of Autism blog.

Mr. Olmsted, Mr. Blaxill,

I am sure you are interested in accuracy whenever possible in your blog posts. I assume you want to know and want to correct errors.

In a recent post of yours, you estimated the royalty payment for Dr. Paul Offit from CHOP’s sale of it’s rights to the rotavirus vaccine Dr. Offit, Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Clark invented.

Your post makes an estimate that is markedly higher than the real number. This is in large part to two errors you made.

First, the Patent and Intellectual Property Policy you used is incorrect. You rightly note that this is a new policy and that the rotavirus patent was likely covered by a previous policy.

The details of the previous policy are included in this document (http://stokes.chop.edu/forms/btob/Jan07BtoB.pdf) , which can be easily found with the following google search:

Patent and Intellectual Property Policy site:chop.edu

Using the older policy and the $182M reported as the payment CHOP received for their patent, you can calculate an inventors share of $18,550,000.

The second mistake in your estimation is in assuming that Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Clark. did not share in the CHOP inventor share. This is incorrect. Again, a quick google search will demonstrate that Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Clark were, indeed, CHOP faculty. Therefore, the $18,550,000 is divided by 3, resulting in an inventor share of $6,183,333.

The CHOP 2006 annual report (http://stokes.chop.edu/publications/annual_report/pdf/annual_report_2006.pdf page 42) clearly states that Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Plotkin were part of the CHOP team that invented the vaccine. Other pages on the CHOP site note that Doctors Plotkin and Clark were, indeed, faculty there.

I have already emailed Dr. Offit to check that this is an accurate representation of the facts, and he confirmed this.

I look forward to seeing how you make use of these corrections.

Mr. Blaxill reponds:

Dear Sullivan,

Please identify yourself. I do not respond to unsigned communications.

Sincerely,

Mark Blaxill

Sullivan:

Mr. Blaxill,

I realize that this is your policy and I respect that. I apologize for contacting you like this, but I felt it important that you have accurate information in this case. The links I supplied confirm this. That information is independent of whether I sign or do not sign my email.

I believe your mistake to be an honest one. At the same time I believe it was easily avoided as accurate information is readily and publicly available. Note that I made a conservative estimate, using the full $182M of the Royalty Pharma payment, not the $153M you report as net income from CHOP’s sale.

I respect your policy and I was not and am not looking for a response. I do hope that you will act on the information provided.

Mr. Blaxill:

Dear “Sullivan”,

Your information is interesting but equivocal. I have information that goes in the other direction. More to the point, we asked both Offit and CHOP to comment on the story before publication and they declined. The only definitive way to resolve the ambiguity is full disclosure of the amounts Offit received from all sources and he has declined to do so. So we have no plans at the moment to act on this or any other new information, which at the most amounts to a distinction without a difference. The conclusion stands: Rotateq made Offit a millionaire.

In the meantime, you continue to hide behind an anonymous email address. You must understand that discredits you as a source.

Sincerely,

Mark Blaxill

Sullivan

Dr. Offit has publicly stated how much he was paid by CHOP.

http://counteringageofautism.blogspot.com/2009/09/paul-offit-explains-money-side-of.html

A blogger contacted Dr. Offit and Dr. Offit responded. The blogger (David N. Brown) used his real name in reporting the information. No different than had he responded to you and you had included that information in your blog under your name.

Were you both unaware of that blog and that post?

Will you make the correction now?

Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Blaxill did not make the correction. The recently admitted their mistakes, but have yet to make the correction.

Upon reading the comment that they had received “hostile” and “threatening” responses, I decided to inquire as to whether they were referring to the exchange above. Below is my final email in this exchange.

Mr. Olmsted, Mr. Blaxill:

In reading David Brown’s discussion of your recent blog post on Dr Offit, I found this comment: ” Most notably, we have received hostile (and in one case threatening) messages from readers who take issue with our estimates. ”

I would like to know if you include this exchange as either hostile or threatening.

I thank you for your time.

This has remained unanswered. I take this as a strong indication that, yes, they considered my discussion “hostile” or “threatening”.

Frankly, I believe either clarification or an apology are in order from Mr. Blaxill and Mr. Olmsted as the above discussion was quite respectful. Do I expect that? No. I don’t expect such behavior from people who would write the passage below:

“The only definitive way to resolve the ambiguity is full disclosure of the amounts Offit received from all sources and he has declined to do so. So we have no plans at the moment to act on this or any other new information, which at the most amounts to a distinction without a difference. “

The message was clear to me: the blog post would remain uncorrected unless Dr. Offit met their demands. The fact that Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Blaxill were clearly mistaken had no bearing on whether the piece would remain. Note that even though they have admitted their mistake, no mention is made in their original post to this day.

I started the above communication with the assumption that Mr. Blaxill and Mr. Olmsted were honorable people who, while we disagree, would put accuracy above smear.

I am willing to admit my mistake.

Paul Offit’s Mythical Millions (v. 2)

22 Dec

This is a PUBLIC DOMAIN document (dated 12/11/09, revised 12/12). It may be copied, forwarded, cited, circulated or posted elsewhere. The author requests only that it not be altered from its current form.

Breaking news: Dan Olmsted and AoA have finally admitted that CHOP paid Paul Offit $6 million, not $29M, $45 or $55M, for the Rotateq patent.
So why isn’t the Evil Possum sneering and laughing a single “HAH!” of contempt as he surveys the smoking wreckage and broken bodies of his enemies?

Because, the “correction” was embedded in another hate piece against Paul Offit, “Counting Offit’s Millions.” Here are some of the things Olmsted has to say to rationalize his earlier incompetence and/or dishonesty, and justify further suspicions against Paul Offit, and what I have to say in reply:

“Our new estimate of Offit’s total profit of $13-35 million through 2019, overlaps the range of our original estimate of $29-55 million. Both those estimates exceed Offit’s recent — and apparently partial — disclosure that he made `about 6 million.'”

I object strongly to the reference to this statement as “recent”. I posted it on “Evil Possum” (See “Offit’s Mythical Millions (v. 2)” back on August 18. I would also remind everyone of Dr. Offit’s statement to me: “CHOP sold its patent for $182 million. This information was made publicly available and was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer at the time. The inventors, Fred Clark, Stan Plotkin, and me split 10 percent of that three ways. This means that we each received about $6 million.” As we shall see, AoA is not trying to dispute this. They are arguing that he received more money from other sources. Fair enough, but that does not make his disclosure “partial”. It should be clear from context that Offit is disclosing the amount he was paid from the CHOP inventor’s share.

“Offit’s recent revelations do little to change our conclusion, that he was `voting himself rich’ while sitting on a government vaccine standards body.”

This “conclusion” would make no sense even if their original “estimate” were correct. From the standpoint of ca. 1999, even in the event of the recommendation of rotavirus vaccination the eventual development of Offit’s own patent into a commercial product was uncertain at best and improbable at worst. So, as long as the charge is intentionally using his position to pursue anticipated monetary gain, accusers don’t have a leg to stand on. It should also be noted that they have not offered any evidence that Offit made a single decisive vote on the issue.

“Based on two crucial new disclosures from Offit, we estimate in a revised and more detailed analysis that Offit has received and will continue to receive multiple payments based on Rotateq® licensing revenue, that he may already have earned $10 million from Rotateq® and that he stands to earn between $13-35 million over the lifetime of Rotateq’s key patents (based on different assumptions regarding the product’s future worldwide sales forecasts).”

At this point, any sensible person should be thinking, “Consider the source…” When Olmsted was working from figures and other facts that could easily be established from a few public records, he came up with a “minimum” of $30M for a payment whose actual amount was $6M. He also seems to have overlooked such basic things as the prominent listing of CHOP on Clark’s and Plotkin’s resumes and a clear statement in the CHOP document used as a “source” that a policy was not applicable to patents disclosed before July 1, 2005. So why should anyone put much trust in what he has to say on more complex issues, especially market projections?

“(Paul Offit) has thrust himself into the spotlight as both a vaccine safety authority and an autism expert, spokesman roles that have little to do with his work on Rotateq®. “

This is an entirely frivolous criticism. It cannot seriously be disputed that he is a “vaccine expert”. As for the label of “autism expert”, that is not a label Offit has applied to himself. The only place I personally have seen it applied it to him is in the sarcastic headline of an October 26 AOA post.

“Most notably, we have received hostile (and in one case threatening) messages from readers who take issue with our estimates. Although these threats have concerned us, they have also been a useful source of new information, the full implications of which our critics had clearly not grasped.”

I think it is not improbable that this is directed against me; in another instance, I have been referred to by name as “abusive”. In the interests of completeness, here is the text of a private email sent to Mark Blaxill: “I have attempted several times to post additional comments on article `Voting himself Rich’. I recognize that I have allowed the tone to get overly harsh, and I would rather discuss this in a private discussion, before posting my own work in progress… If you have any response or emendation to offer, I will duly note it in any public posting. But your previous report and response, as such, cannot stand.” So, what in this is “threatening”?

“(W)e have been unable to fully explain the $29 million difference between Royalty Pharma’s reported payment ($182 million) for CHOP’s royalty interest and CHOP’s reported proceeds ($153 million) from the monetization of its royalty rights.”

This is a decidedly frivolous aside, unless Olmsted wishes to imply that Offit’s disclosure regarding the CHOP sale is incomplete. By this point, any remaining “mystery” is on par with “What happened to Jimmy Hoffa?”: What we don’t know, can easily be guessed! It is reasonable to suppose about $18.5M was paid to the inventors. As for the other $10.5M, that could be accounted for by any number of things. Filing a patent costs money. Arranging the sale of a valuable intellectual property costs a lot of money. I attempted to explain the inevitable expenses in one of the few posts that were not censored by AoA: “I’m sure the 29M would include payments to others; for example, a 15% fee is typical from inventors’ royalties.” It should have been clear that I was no longer just discussing the inventor’s share, but also the presumable expenses related to the patent and sale. A reply by Mark Blaxill completely failed to acknowledge the issue: “David Brown, please read the article before making incorrect statements… Offit would have received the entirety of the CHOP inventor’s share.” Olmsted’s continued display of bafflement likewise shows a failure to apprehend (or openly acknowledge) just how far the claims of the original article were from what was known or even plausible.

“Based on the current CHOP policy, it is clear that such private arrangements between inventors are anticipated. `If there is only one such Inventor, Author, or other creator, the total Inventor Share is payable to that person’ reads the `Patent and Intellectual Property Policy” from CHOP’s Administrative Policy Manual. But `where there is more than one such Inventor, Author, or other creator, and all such persons unanimously agree in writing how the Net Income should be distributed among them … then the Net Income will distributed in accordance with such agreement.‘ According to Offit, he, Clark and Plotkin reached a private agreement to share the inventor proceeds, which resulted in a three way split of the inventor distribution.” (Underlining added)

This passage caught my attention because it seemed eerily familiar, and not just because I had read it in the CHOP patent policy manual. Just now, I was checking on my first draft (no longer online) of “Offit’s Mythical Millions”: “CHOP’s manual, cited by Blaxill and Olmstead, makes the following statements: `The Inventor Share… is the total amount payable to all Hospital Personnel who are Inventors, Authors, or other creators of the Intellectual Property… Where there is more than one such Inventor, Author, or other creator, and all such persons unanimously agree in writing how the Net Income should be distributed among them… then the Net Income will distributed in accordance with such agreement… (If) all such persons have not unanimously agreed on the distribution… then the IPA, or his/her designee, will determine an appropriate allocation of Net Income among the Inventors, Authors, or other creators… Each Inventor, Author, or other creator will be entitled to receive his/her Inventor Share of Net Income in accordance with this policy whether or not he/she remains Hospital Personnel. In the event of the death of an Inventor, Author, or other creator, such Net Income will be paid to his/her estate.’ (All italics added.)… It is also clearly the hospital’s intent that coworkers settle the issue among themselves. The implication is that the division of the share among a team would be negotiated among the team as a whole, with a reasonable balance of bargaining power even between a leader and his subordinates.” (Underlining new.)

Given the degree of similarity between their quotes and mine, I think it is very possible (I won’t go so far as to say probable) that their quote of the CHOP document is simply copied and pasted from mine. And that raises some question in my mind whether Olmsted (and Blaxill) have ever gone to the trouble of reading their “source” with any care. Then there is the remark that follows, which looks to me very much like what I suggested in the first draft of “Mythical Millions”. My correspondence with Offit on the matter convinced me otherwise, which was why I replaced that document.

“But if Offit shared the Royalty Pharma proceeds with Plotkin and Clark, then Offit would also stand to receive a share of any Rotateq® related payments made to Wistar, payments we did not attribute to him previously and that he has not disclosed.”

This is a reasonable conclusion, but an unacceptable argument. The reason Plotkin and Clark were eligible for payment from the CHOP share is that they both were present or former employees of the hospital. For the same argument to apply to Offit and the Wistar payment, it must be shown that he is or was a Wistar employee. As it happens, he is (a fact which I was aware of back in August). But, Olmsted has not gone to the minimal effort of establishing this fact, nor has he shown that he understands why he was in error in the first place.

“His claim of a 10% inventor distribution for Rotateq® is supported by a document we received from a critic of our analysis: a January 2007 newsletter from CHOP call `Bench to Bedside.’”

I will add a significant detail: I mentioned this document in the first draft of “Mythical Millions”, and gave Blaxill notice of what I intended to publish on August 10.

“Offit has now publicly disclosed both of these terms (a disclosure that Age of Autism Contributing Editor Jake Crosby confirmed in direct correspondence with Offit).”

This immediately reminded me of one of Crosby’s periodic visits to Left Brain/Right Brain. On September 14, he left this confrontational “comment”: “When did Paul Offit receive the royalty payments for the Rotavirus vaccine? It was added to the schedule in February 2006, but the new patent code went into regulation in November 2006. If Paul Offit’s vaccine was added to the schedule in early 2006, but received payment in late 2006 (either November or December), or beyond, then he would have received inventor’s share of the money according to the current patent policies of CHOP.

Also, how would Drs. Clark and Plotkin receive CHOP inventor’s share of the vaccine when they already received some through Wistar and no longer work at the hospital, and only Paul Offit does? That does not seem to make sense.” He did not offer any further comments or questions in response to detailed explanations. I mention this because it is indicative of how slow and recalcitrant AoA has been in retracting their original article: Nearly a month after I posted Offit’s statement, it appears that even a major member of the AoA staff was either wholly unaware of the correction or not yet fully informed of the extent to which the original story had been shown to be in error.

But even this revised lump sum estimate likely understates Offit’s total return from the CHOP royalty streams. According to the announced payment terms, Royalty Pharma only purchased the rights to CHOP’s royalty stream “from and after October 1, 2007.” Based on its quarterly financial statements, Merck reported Rotateq ® sales of $537 million before that date. If CHOP retained the royalty rights to Merck revenues before that date, then Offit could have received royalty payments directly from CHOP based on Merck’s early Rotateq® revenues in addition to the lump sum payment he received based on the Royalty Pharma transaction…

This is an odd tangent. If Olmsted thinks that Offit received a significant amount of money from this transaction, why doesn’t he give an amount? For that matter, why doesn’t he mention this after providing some suggestions as to calculate royalties? This immediately raised my suspicion that, as in the inclusion of $55M in the original piece (see “18/3=29”), Olmsted has put forward a claim he knows is improbable at best, to lead readers to draw erroneous conclusions.

As it happens, Olmsted suggests later (see below) that the royalties to the hospital(s) would have been 2.5%. If that is applied here, the hospital would have received $13.5M. Based on the complex policy in place in ca. 2000, the inventor’s share would be $200,000 for the first $500K, $675,000 up to $5M, and $850,000 for the rest, for a total of $1.725M, or $575K per inventor. Or, so it would seem. For 2006, matters seem straightforward. Olmsted reports that there were $163M in sales for Rotateq before the end of the year, which comes out as $4M for the hospital and $242K for each inventor. But what about 2007, which is when the greater part of the royalty would come into play? That would depend on the terms on which payments were made. If CHOP had received a royalty payment for each quarter, then the institution would have pocketed the royalties up to October. But if the royalty was an annual payment, it appears quite possible that, in making the sale, CHOP forfeited all royalties for 2007. Needless to say, I consider the second possibility more likely.

“Wistar’s immediate receipt of $45 million was subject to the same inventor distribution requirements as the CHOP transaction. So just as Offit received a share of the CHOP inventor distribution, the Wistar deal created an occasion for a second lump-sum payment. According to the “Guidelines for Wistar inventors”. Offit would have received 5% of the Paul Capital proceeds, or $2.25 million … In his recent disclosures regarding his CHOP payment of $6 million, Offit has consistently neglected to mention that he received another seven-figure payment from Wistar a few months before. Adding these payments together gives Offit a total of $8.4 million from lump sum payments alone.”

I mention this to point out that (contrary to what Olmsted seems to believe) none of this is news to me. As already mentioned, I was aware of Offit’s employment at Wistar around the time I contacted him for comment on his CHOP share. If he didn’t tell me his income from other sources, I will grant that, given the opportunity, I chose not to ask. Also, to the best of my recollection ,I had at that point taken a look at the Wistar policies, and come up with a figure in the neighborhood of of $7M for the inventor’s share. If I had chosen, I could have suggested the same figure Olmsted is presenting now. I had little reason to go to the trouble. For one thing, Olmsted had placed the focus on the CHOP share. For another, he had so preposterously inflated Offit’s income that two million or so either way would make no difference in judging the the credibility of his “reporting”. As far as I’m concerned, it still doesn’t.

“(I)n order for Paul Capital to be willing to pay $45 million for a 13 year royalty stream between 2006 and 2019, we calculate that Wistar’s royalties on the first $300 million in Rotateq® revenues would need to fall somewhere between $6-9 million per year, depending on the discount rate Paul Capital applied to the future royalties… This calculation would mean that Wistar has a royalty rate somewhere in the 2-3% range. For simplicity’s sake, we have assumed that Wistar’s actual royalty is 2.5%, which after adding an equal amount for the CHOP license brings Merck’s total royalty for its Rotateq® patent license to 5%.”

This whole passage is far from convincing. It is clear that what is “calculated” is based on a series of assumptions, of which the first- “for Paul Capital to be willing to pay $45 million for a 13 year royalty stream… Wistar’s royalties on the first $300 million in Rotateq® revenues would need to fall somewhere between $6-9 million per year”- is clearly the most questionable. How does one know what businessmen would be “willing to pay”, unless either a) one is telepathic or b) the businessman can see the future? It’s not at all clear to me how Olmsted came up with his figure.

Rather than try to sort out his calculations (in which he has given me no reason for confidence), I will do my own math. $45 million divided by 13 is $3.46M, or 1.15% of $300 million. It can be assumed on this basis that royalties were more than 1.15% , because Paul Capital would have had no chance of making a profit otherwise. But, if it were that much more, it is more likely Wistar would not have sold. So, I will settle for 2%, which would have given Paul Capital the chance of almost double return and allowed them to break even by the time sales hit the $150M mark. A 5% inventor’s share (1/3 of 15%) would come out at 0.1% of gross minus $300M.

In this scenario, in 2008, when gross Rotateq sales reached $665M, Offit and associates would have received $365,000. This doesn’t come close to justifying Olmsted’s figures. As noted, his claim at the start was that Offit has made $10M from Rotateq, which since he estimates lump sums to be $8.4M would mean $1.6 million, over 3 years, or on average $533,333 per year. My calculation for 2008 provides only 68%, and that is so far the peak for Rotateq sales. Moving up the percentage is little help: At 2.5%,, the royalties come out at $456,000 for 2008, which is 70K short. Even at 3%, I come up with $547,500 to Offit, which is only barely more than what Olmsted requires. So how is it that Olmsted has arrived at an “average” of $533K per year, when applying the royalties percentage he claims to have used to the highest sales on record falls short by about 14%?

That brings us to the final sentence of the passage, which I can only regard as an outright lie. Now, Olmstead previously suggests that Offit received royalties on Rotateq sales through ca. Q3 2007, on grounds which seem plausible. But that is not what Olmstead appears to be saying. Instead, he gives every indication of saying (briefly and offhandedly) that Offit is receiving ongoing income from both Wistar and CHOP. There is absolutely no chance that this is true, or even what Olmstead believes to be true. He repeatedly states, in this very article, that any current income to Offit can only come from Wistar. That he seems explicitly to say otherwise here cannot be excused as mere “error”. Witness the next item…

“(W)e estimate that Offit receives an eighth of a cent (or .125%) for every dollar of Merck’s Rotateq® revenue above $300 million If Rotateq® performs well, it can generate a large annual income for Offit: a relationship we have illustrated graphically in Figure 1.”

Year Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Total/300 Royalty
2007 85 119 171 149 224 $280,000
2008 190 178 134 162 364 $455,000
2009 134 126 127 120* 207 $258,750
Total $993,000

*Estimate by the author, minimum

It is clear from the chart that Olmsted’s “estimate” has no basis even in his own data. Even the 2008 “spike” falls $78K short of the $533K per year necessary to add up to the $1.6M that Olmsted implies. The sum of them all is only 62% of that figure. (Even granting his doubtful claim of CHOP royalty payments through Q3 2007 won’t quite get to $1.6M without rounding.) The only readily apparent means by which Olmsted could have come up with that, based on ongoing royalties alone, is by assuming two sources of such income, ie by adding CHOP payments which he has admitted do not exist. In summary, it is again proved absolutely impossible that Olmstead could have arrived at in the methods he describes. Furthermore, if he did not necessarily lie in producing the first story, it cannot be doubted that he is doing so in this one. I will grant him the benefit of one doubt: It is possible that the untenable figures precede the apparent “miscalculations”, and that the former were foisted onto him by another, possibly with initials of H, B and J, not necessarily in that order.

That brings us to the graph, which can be traced to what appears to be a protected site created by Generation Rescue, and kept disappearing or getting messed up when I tried to include it here. To the extent that I am able to analyze it (a task which required magnification, a printout and a ruler), I must admit its figures are less objectionable than Olmsted’s. At the least, it is clear enough (when the graph is examined closely enough!) that Offit’s annual royalty would not reach or exceed $500K until around $750M in gross sales. (By Olmsted’s math, the royalties on $750M would be $562,500.) But that is more than nullified by the extravagant scale assumed. Based on available fiscal data, it can be predicted reasonably that Rotateq sales will remain stable at around $500M per year. But the anonymous graph maker saw fit to illustrate Offit’s royalties on sales up to $3.5 billion.

After this, the only remaining question is why, after four months of denial, silence, censorship and the occasional insult, AoA is finally making a “correction” now. It certainly is not to convince me or those in the communities of which I am a part. If they cared about what we had to say, they would have issued corrections a long time ago. The only intelligible interpretation is that this is a “rear guard” action, and a sign that even loyal AoA members, perhaps even some of their leaders, are growing tired of this “story” and/or “anti-Offit” tactics in general. I suspect that the role of Olmsted in particular has been to stall, waiting either for criticism to die down or to perfect exactly what he has finally done: create a story which would admit his previous error(s) while allowing himself to “save face” before his loyal followers. In that event, I have only one thing left to say to Olmsted: This is the best you could do??!
And the Possum just says, “HAH!”

David N. Brown is a semipro author, diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome as an adult. Previous works include the novels The Worlds of Naughtenny Moore, Walking Dead and Aliens Vs Exotroopers, and the nonfiction ebook The Urban Legend of Vaccine-Caused Autism. This and other articles related to autism are available free of charge at evilpossum.weebly.com

Tom Insel lets himself down

21 Dec

I was saddened to see a recent interview given by Tom Insel to the Age of Autism blog. Maybe he’s not a regular reader of that blog where his fellow scientst Paul Offit is regularly castigated in such personal and violent ways. Or maybe he is and doesn;t care. However the impression I get from Insel is that he’s a weak man who will say whatever it is the person he’s talking to wants to hear.

He certainly did this during his interview with David with statements as bizarre as:

As far as I can tell, the burden of proof is upon anybody who feels that there is NOT a real increase here in the number of kids affected…

In fact the oonly really accurate statement I found during David’s published highlights with Insel was Insel’s statement that:

I think I am arguing, probably, against the wave of the people that are in this field…

which is most definitely the truth. I can’t think of an autism epidemiology expert that has come out and said that there is definitely or definitely not an ‘epidemic’ of autism. And why? Because the science doesn’t exist.

Insel also seems to be infering that most people in the field believe there is one entity called ‘autism’ which is most certainly not true. A simple comparison between Rhett syndrome and all other known forms of autism would clearly show more than one type of autism. Insel doesn;t name names but I am at a loss to think of anyone else in the field who considers autism to be one entity.

He goes on to say that he finds it ‘believable’ that children can develop autism in the context of severe gut problems. Well, good for him. But ‘believable’ is not the same thing as ‘established’ or even ‘hypothetical’. Its one persons opinion.

All in all, this interview added little (if anything) to what we know about autism. But it did allow us to see Tom Insel in a certain light. Not a very good once in my opinion.

An example of how people earn the title “denialist”

16 Dec

Denialist. One who denies. It is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot on the internet. You don’t agree with me? Well, you must be a denialist. The term has risen in prominence lately with Michael Specter’s recent book, “Denialism, How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives” One of his prime examples is the anti-vaccine movement, so this book has been discussed on a number of autism blogs (including this one).

Denial–here are definitions from dictionary.com

1. an assertion that something said, believed, alleged, etc., is false: Despite his denials, we knew he had taken the purse. The politician issued a denial of his opponent’s charges.
2. refusal to believe a doctrine, theory, or the like.
3. disbelief in the existence or reality of a thing.
4. the refusal to satisfy a claim, request, desire, etc., or the refusal of a person making it.
5. refusal to recognize or acknowledge; a disowning or disavowal: the traitor’s denial of his country; Peter’s denial of Christ.
6. Law. refusal to acknowledge the validity of a claim, suit, or the like; a plea that denies allegations of fact in an adversary’s plea: Although she sued for libel, he entered a general denial.
7. sacrifice of one’s own wants or needs; self-denial.
8. Psychology. an unconscious defense mechanism used to reduce anxiety by denying thoughts, feelings, or facts that are consciously intolerable.

Many people “deny” that vaccines work. Many people “deny” that the diseases vaccines prevent are dangerous. People who do so are, in my book, denialists.

Case in point, a recent blog post by Kim Stagliano of the Age of Autism blog: An Autism Mom Goes Back to Christmas 1962. In it, she presents a doll from 1962. A doll with a changeable face, and one face shows the baby doll with measles. The message of the blog post is clear: measles wasn’t so bad. Ms. Stagliano writes:

Yes, in 1962, measles were a common childhood illness. And little girls played with dollies that had the measles, and made them all better. So did doctors for children who got the measles.

Well, yes. Most of the time children got better.

Let’s check what people wrote about measles in the early 1960’s, shall we? From Time Magazine, 1961 (with emphasis added by me).

When famed Harvard Nobel Laureate John Franklin Enders announced at a Manhattan meeting three years ago that he had isolated measles virus, his fellow virologists stood up and cheered. It would not be long, they hoped, before a vaccine could be developed to wipe out a disease that sends one child in 4,000 to institutions for the feebleminded. But the first live virus vaccine developed by Enders left much to be desired; four of five children got severe fevers, roughly half developed a rash. Last week, after much toil by Enders and others, a group of Pennsylvania physicians and virologists announced that they had successfully tested a measles vaccination technique. Children are first inoculated with Enders vaccine, which gives nearly 100% protection. Then, almost immediately, they are injected in the same arm with gamma globulin, which holds undesirable side effects, such as fever and rash, to a minimum. The Public Health Service still must approve the new measles technique, establish manufacturing standards. If all goes well, a vaccine will be on the market next year, just as measles heads toward its next cyclical peak.

Yes, virologists cheered, 1 in 4,000 children were sent to institutions.

Life Magazine, in 1963, discussed the new vaccines for Measles.

Though often joked about, this commonplace disease kills about 400 Americans each year–twice the number that polio now kills. Several thousand cases each year develop encephalitis, which can damage the brain.

The Age of Autism, where Ms. Stagliano blogs, was quite upset by Mr. Specter and his book for singling out anti-vaccine groups as denialists. My suggestion: if you don’t want to be labeled denialist, don’t be a denialist.

Age of Autism Abandon Pretence

9 Dec

To many of us who have been following the online ‘careers’ of the various people and factions behind Age of ‘Autism’ for many years (at least 7 in my case) this will be no surprise but it still needs pointing out once more:

The Age of ‘Autism’ blog is a repository of and a flag waver for anti-vaccine quackery.

Easy to say and growing easier and easier to demonstrate every day. As of the time of publishing of this post, the latest *six* posts from Age of ‘Autism’ have absolutely nothing to do with autism. These posts are (in reverse order):

1) Counting Offit’s Millions: More on How Merck’s Rotateq Vaccine Made Paul Offit Wealthy
2) Is One Man to Blame for the WorldWide H1N1 Panic?
3) $300K to Banyan Communications from Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines?
4) Harvard and CNN Report on Lower than Expected H1N1 Vaccine Uptake
5) Oops. Flu Pandemic May Be The Mildest since Modern Medicine Began Tracking.
6) Kickin’ the Tires of the Green Vaccine Initiative

*All* the above have no relationship to autism. *All* the above have a direct relationship to anti-vaccine beliefs.

One or two stories every now and then that don’t touch on your blog’s core subject is routine and only to be expected – but six in a row? Thats only routine if your core subject is drifting. Or if your *real* core subject is slowly being revealed.

Age of Autism pull offensive blog post

4 Dec

Recently, the Age of Autism blog put out a piece of “satire” where they showed a badly photoshopped image of the people they like to demonize sitting down to a thanksgiving dinner, with a baby as the main course.

It was disgusting. I said so then.

Orac at Respectful Insolence blogged it, as did Kim at Countering Age of Autism and Turner and Kowalski.

Follow the link, and you get nothing now.

http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/11/pass-the-maalox-an-aoa-thanksgiving-nightmare.html.

Thank you for pulling the piece. An apology, to the autism community and to the individuals you maligned would be in order. A public one. AoA, take the link above, and replace the post with an apology.

I am not holding my breath.

A quicker guide to the ‘Green Vaccines’ Initiative

30 Nov

Some music to accompany this entry.

Over at AoA, Kent Heckenlively must be making the rest of the crew nervoous. Maybe you haven’t read his brand new idea for making the ‘green our vaccines’ initiative a political…um…’force’. To whit:

We’re not going to get anywhere with our current legal system because everything gets funneled into Vaccine Court. We’re not going to get far with the current media because they’re so heavily funded by pharmaceutical drug ads. We’re not going to get far with the medical community because they’re part of the machinery.

And don’t even get me started on the politicians. On one hand you have pharma handing out millions of dollars to politicians, and on the other you have parents of children with autism who are slowly bankrupted by this disease. Who do you think is going to have more money to ‘support’ the politician of their choice?

So Kent wants to tackle the legal system, the media, the medical community and politicians. And how?

In the months leading up to this announcement I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the necessary ingredients for a successful rebellion. Reading books on our own American Revolution has given me some guidance…

Cool. Nifty idea Kent. Tackle the legal system, the medical system, the political system and the media by reading a few books on the American Revolution. I think this is definitely a winner.

I’ve carefully scanned the article a few times (whilst wiping the tears of laughter away) but yep – that seems to be about it. And really, if we (god save us) look at this seriously for a moment what is it? Its a tacit admission that Kent doesn;t like the fact that these systems he wants to change don’t agree with him and his loon friends that vaccines cause autism. In fact, take a look at the comments and you’ll see its moved beyond autism to outright anti-vaxx. Is Kent proposing the very first anti-vaxx based political party? Some choice comments:

…thank you for the opportunity your statement gave us to refine the expression of our opposition to any form of vaccination.

I will never vaccinate again…

I no longer think any vaccine is safe…

There are no green vaccines. I am convinced.

I am in the camp that you can’t make vaccine safe ever

Finished listening to Pink Floyd yet? Good isn’t it?

Age of Autism to Autism Families: Make your children suffer

24 Nov

Your pretty red house is engulfed in a roaring fire. You keep feeding the fire. Maybe petrol will help. Pour it on. Maybe some oil. Pour that on too. You don’t know. Nobody knows. Some guy you met on the internet tells you he’s a fireman and that the best way to stop a fire is to try and smother it with bone dry hay.

Your burns are bad. Your kids burns are worse. Do you throw them out of a window where a few other ‘firemen’ are holding on to a sheet made of melting plastic? Or do you push them down the stairs, where the rest of the injured and dead families are?

Thats my response to the utterly asinine response Kim Stagliano posted on the Age of Autism blog today to the Chicago Tribune’s series of articles on the quacks and hacks infesting the autism community. She wheels out the same old strawmen…

That’s my response to the Chicago Tribune accusing us of performing “uncontrolled studies” on our kids. (Our medical doctors are thorough and safe, by the way.)

I know of at least two doctors associated with the biomed movement who are on sex offenders registers. I know of one DAN! doc who is associated with the death of a child. I know of one other who hospitlaised a child. I know another who performed exorcism on autistic kids. I know another who is under investigation for more than one complaint.

And why does it bother journalists like Trine Tsouderos and Pat Callahan that some of us are improving our children’s lives?

I can’t speak for these journalists but I’ll speak as the parent (and step-parent) of two autistic kids. You’re not improving your childs autism. Thats the claim that these journalists are challenging. I challenge Kim Stagliano or Mark Blaxill to show the autism community where a biomed treatment discussed by the Tribune led to a measurable and scientifically documented improvement in their child’s autism. In fact, I can’t think of a child belonging to the founders of Autism FAIR Media, Generation Rescue, Age of Autism, SAFE MINDS or the NAA that has either been cured of their autism or made any sort of progress towards that end result as a sole consequence of biomed treatments. Why? Because in terms of curing/recovering/treating autism *they do nothing* . As a direct consequence of that obvious fact, parents continuing with detox, urine injections, exorcism et al are – as the Tribune indicate – experimenting on their children.

Bob Wright snubs autistic adults, the same group who live in poverty

23 Nov

The New York Post reported on Autism Speaks founder Bob Wright having a grumpy slap at adult autistic people who were protesting the fact that Autism Speaks still has no autistic representation on its Board.

Bob Wright had harsh words for protesters who tried to muck up the A-list benefit concert he put on at Carnegie Hall on behalf of autistic kids.

“The protesters are lucky,” said Wright. “They’re well off enough, healthy enough, to do it. I wish my grandson were able to join them.”

Wright runs Autism Speaks, which has raised over $200 million for research into a disorder that afflicts mainly children.

That didn’t stop a clutch of sign-carrying adult protesters from descending on Carnegie Hall Tuesday night, trying to disrupt a concert attended by Donald Trump, Howard Stern and Martha Stewart. Protesters complain that there’s not one autistic person on the board of the org, which produced an “offensive” ad suggesting that autism was a fate worse than death.

Wright, whose grandson cannot talk because of autism, said the disorder is exploding among young kids who can’t speak for themselves.

“This is serious business,” he said.

Note how the reporter states that the benefit was for autistic kids and further states that autism affects mainly children. This should give some insight into the silly one dimensional world that the Wrights, and by extension, Autism Speaks inhabit. Of course autism doesn’t affect mainly children. In fact, it would seem that the reverse is true.

I would like to suggest to Bobo that what is serious business is blindly misrepresenting autism either purposefully or (more likely) out of ignorance. I would also like to suggest that its about time Autism Speaks walked the walk and got aome autistic Board level members. I would further suggest that Bobo wakes up and smells the coffee. Young autistic kids definitely find it difficult to talk for themselves. Most kids of his grandsons age might find it difficult to form coherent opinions on high level concepts like the right to be who you are. In the meantime, having an autistic Board level member would be a step in the right direction. I’d happily accept Jake Crosby or Jon Mitchell. Two men who I vehemntly disagree with yet who’s opinion on autism I respect due to their diagnosis.

Maybe Bobo might take a look across the pond if his cheeks aren’t still smarting from the slapdown he got last time he came over here. Maybe the reality of life for autistic adults over here might cause him to get a bit of a reality check as to where his research priorities should lie. As he continues to steer Autism Speaks down the increasingly stupid looking anti-vaxx hypotheses,

A THIRD of Wales’ autism sufferers are unemployed and living in ‘poverty’ without benefits, a charity has said.

9,000 autistic adults are surviving (sort of) on handouts from friends and family. Not only are they subject to ignorance in job centres, they are not made aware of _how_ to make a claim:

She [Shirley Parsley] said: “It is scandalous, therefore, that thousands of people with this serious, lifelong and disabling condition are being consigned to poverty by a complex and counter-productive benefits system.”

This is the reality of life for autistic adults. Abandoned by a state system and also abandoned by Autism Speaks, an organisation focussed solely it seems on people of Bob Wright’s grandchilds age. Whilst Bobo complains about how autism is ‘exploding amongst kids who can’t talk for themselves’ (a factoid for which there’s no valid science), the adults he and his organisation turn their backs on are literally starving.

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