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National Geographic, “The War on Science”, includes discussion of vaccines and autism

19 Feb

I just got my copy of the March 2015 issue of National Geographic a couple of days ago. Imagine my reaction when I saw this cover (click to enlarge):

natgeo

In case you are having trouble imagining my reaction–it includes a big THANK YOU to National Geographic.

Yes, they put “vaccinations can lead to autism” up there with “evolution never happened” and “the moon landing was fake”.

This paragraph includes references to Jenny McCarthy (anti-vaccine activist and actress Jenny McCarthy) and Andrew Wakefield’s Lancet article.

Doubting science also has consequences. The people who believe vaccines cause autism—often well educated and affluent, by the way—are undermining “herd immunity” to such diseases as whooping cough and measles. The anti-vaccine movement has been going strong since the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet published a study in 1998 linking a common vaccine to autism. The journal later retracted the study, which was thoroughly discredited. But the notion of a vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and reinforced through the usual Internet filters. (Anti-vaccine activist and actress Jenny McCarthy famously said on the Oprah Winfrey Show, “The University of Google is where I got my degree from.”)

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By Matt Carey

Tags: , , ,

CNN: The money behind the vaccine skeptics

6 Feb

CNN Money has a short video up that makes a point that a few of us have been making for the past few years: much of the vaccine antagonistic message is funded by a few wealthy people. A good discussion can be found at A Snapshot of the Deep Pockets of the Anti-Vaccine Movement on Haprocrates Speaks. The CNN piece is called “The money behind the vaccine skeptics“. I can’t get the video to embed here, but one can find it here.

Here’s a screenshot from CNN showing the organizations, people and money that CNN discusses (click to enlarge)

cnn money

CNN points out that the self-styled National Vaccine Information Center and others (such as Chris Shaw’s group at the University of British Columbia) get a lot of money from the Dwoskin family. The Dwoskin Family Foundation told CNN that they are not antivaccine but are, instead, advocates for safer vaccines. It’s a story we hear a lot.

Claire Dwoskin is or was a board member of the NVIC and made this statement about vaccines. John Stossel had aired a piece about how his daughter had fought off a whooping cough infection and in her response to one of his producers she stated:

What his daughter went through is NOTHING compared to what the families of autistic children go through every day of their lives. No disease can match this record of human devastation. Vaccines are a holocaust of poison on our children’s brains and immune systems. Shame on you all.

I’m not sure how that sentiment fits in with being “advocates for safer vaccines”. One has to accept that vaccines are safe before advocating for safer vaccines.

Also mentioned is Barry Segal who funds Focus Autism (now Focus for Health) and A Shot of Truth. And Generation Rescue’s JB Handley and Jenny McCarthy. Both Focus Autism and Generation Rescue are noted for funding Andrew Wakefield’s “Strategic Autism Initiative”. All these groups are discussed in previous articles here at Left Brain/Right Brain.

The piece is short and perhaps that’s why they don’t mention Generation Rescue’s hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on full page ads claiming vaccines cause autism, or their poorly performed phone survey on vaccines. Lots of money spent on promoting fear and distrust of vaccines.

I’ve never seen evidence of these groups actually funding work into safer vaccines. I’ve never seen, say, funding for research into a new vaccine or even something simple like improved storage and transportation for vaccines into the developing world to reduce the use of thimerosal, a preservative these groups claim (without good evidence) cause autism and other disabilities.

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Matt Carey

Jenny McCarthy tells the story two different ways…again

29 Jan

Yep, this doesn’t have anything to do with autism. Well, aside from the fact that we will discuss how one public face for autism is once again showing that her stories don’t match over time. You see, Jenny McCarthy has a reality TV show now and the story of her divorce presented in that show doesn’t match what she wrote in her book 8 years ago. I found the new story in a recent article in the Washington Post: Jenny McCarthy tries to mend her anti-vaccine reputation with reality TV. It’s too little, too late in which Emily Yahr writes:

The show is filled with such heart-to-hearts, with McCarthy recounting her ordeals as a single mom, starting with her ex filing for divorce in 2005 the same week that Evan was diagnosed with autism.

Now, it’s been a while since I read Jenny McCarthy’s “Louder than words” book. A long while, but that statement didn’t strike me as consistent with what she wrote in her book. The sentiment is the same: harsh on her kid’s father while putting herself in a good light, but the details didn’t match.

What did she say in her 2007 book? She says that she asked for the divorce. She was the mommy warrior, taking charge in that book. Now in her reality show she’s the object of sympathy, dumped by her husband just when she needed him most.

LTW-divorce

In fact, if you read the book, she talks about thinking about divorce for some time before she finally asked for it. Because that whole “same week as the diagnosis” thing in the TV show isn’t what she wrote in 2007 either. Between the autism diagnosis and her asking for a divorce, there are weeks, if not months of stories in her book. Stories that include Ms. McCarthy asking her husband to leave, and him refusing.

Who knows what the actual story was. All we hear is the story that fits the image she wants to portray at the moment. Her ex husband is taking the high road and not returning fire.

Oh, and if you are worried about how her son took the divorce, don’t. According to Ms. McCarthy, autism renders one incapable “emotionally connecting” with such events.

LTW-downplay-evan-reaction

Sorry to be sarcastic there. But, really, Ms. McCarthy? Autism renders one incapable of emotionally connecting with what was going on? Couldn’t be that the kid was unable to understand why his mother was making his father leave, just as any kid would?

No real surprises here. Ms. McCarthy has been inconsistent over the years. She had multiple stories of her first encounter with Barbara Walters when Ms. McCarthy was a guest on The View. She has informed us that her son is no longer autistic. Then, a few years later, she tells us that he is. (Jenny McCarthy Slams Rumor That Her 11-Year-Old Son Evan Doesn’t Have Autism). She hammers away at vaccines, but tells us she’s pro-vaccine. And to cap it all, she heads an autism charity that focuses on treatment, but won’t speak out against the faux treatments (like bleach enemas) that are promoted at her orgs conventions.

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by Matt Carey

Measles are back but where is Jenny McCarthy?

28 Jan

It takes a lot of courage to stand up and make yourself heard on unpopular topics. But it’s only really courageous if you are willing to accept responsibility for being wrong. Jenny McCarthy stood up. She made herself heard. In the process she got a lot of media attention, led a march on Washington (the Green Our Vaccines rally), and sold a lot of books. That was years ago. Now we are seeing the outbreaks of disease that so many, even Ms. McCarthy, predicted based on the path she set. Back then she at least had the guts to say, “it’s not my fault” (I disagree). Now she’s just absent from the public’s eye on this topic. Instead we get her new reality show.

Today, a measles outbreak originating in Jenny McCarthy’s old backyard (southern California) has reached about 100 people infected (50 in the state, 23 more whose connection to the epicenter of the outbreak is unknown and more out of state). And, no comment from Ms. McCarthy. But she wasn’t always so quiet. Consider this statement from an interview in Time Magazine:

I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s s___. If you give us a safe vaccine, we’ll use it. It shouldn’t be polio versus autism.

The idea that somehow a resurgence of disease would lead to a change in vaccines didn’t make sense to me back then. It seemed like some nasty game of “chicken” where Ms. McCarthy was going to frighten enough people about vaccines that outbreaks would be possible. Frighten with statements like “they’re making a product that’s shit” and that the vaccines are not safe. Somehow, once this fear was instilled and the drop in vaccination rates happened, outbreaks would happen and these would prove her point that the vaccines are “shit” and the vaccines would be reinvented.

Apparently Ms. McCarthy realized that this logic wasn’t sound as she started distancing herself from the vaccine message years ago. Instead of being at the forefront of her movement today, ready to force the changes she predicted, she brings handlers to interviews to deflect questions on vaccines. She points people to her nonpology and nosplenation of her views in an op-ed published by the Chicago Sun Times, Jenny McCarthy: The gray area on vaccines

Here’s a defensive paragraph (and a straw man argument) in that op-ed:

“People have the misconception that we want to eliminate vaccines,” I told Time Magazine science editor Jeffrey Kluger in 2009. “Please understand that we are not an anti-vaccine group. We are demanding safe vaccines. We want to reduce the schedule and reduce the toxins.”

Here’s the thing. Many people have called out Jenny McCarthy over the years for her irresponsible statements about vaccines. She spread a lot of fear. One doesn’t read “They’re making a product that’s shit” or a correction of that view at the Sun Times. One doesn’t hear blanket statements that vaccines are all unsafe (“If you give us a safe vaccine, we’ll use it.”) One doesn’t read her statements that vaccines are behind the rise in diagnosed autism rates. One doesn’t hear her state that if she had another child, she wouldn’t vaccinate (a statement she made back when she was more vocal). No, all we get is her “grey area” on vaccines.

Also, not comment about the impending outbreaks.

Which brings me back to: where’s the courage in hiding and dodging the consequences of your actions, Ms. McCarthy? Are you going to point me back to your claim that “it’s not my fault” made on Larry King Live?

KING: Isn’t the problem here, Jenny, that people sometimes listen with one ear are going to panic. And not vaccine at all?

MCCARTHY: Probably. But guess what? It’s not my fault. The reason why they’re not vaccinating is because the vaccines are not safe. Make a better product and then parents will vaccinate.

I didn’t buy it then, I don’t buy it now.

And a similar sentiment

KING: Probably due to you, jenny, and programs like this, the percentage of children getting vaccinations is dropping.
Do you think that’s good?

MCCARTHY: I think it’s only good because it’s the only thing that’s going to shake up the CDC to do something about it.

Yes, they and others have been doing something about “it”. It being the drop in vaccination rates, not the alleged problems with vaccines you were intending. Many people have spent a lot of time trying to prevent or reduce the outbreaks we are seeing now. The question is why weren’t you working on avoiding this?

As I stated at the outset, it’s only courageous to stand up against prevailing opinion if you are willing to take responsibility and fix problems if/when you are proved wrong.

Ms. McCarthy, you were wrong. You were wrong to spread fear. And you can’t get out of it with a simple “it’s not my fault”. It is partly your fault that outbreaks are happening.

And are these outbreaks causing people to accept your position and make the changes you asked for?

No.

And all this doesn’t even touch on the problems of your promotion of unsafe “therapies” for autism, an issue much closer to my heart.

—
By Matt Carey

So, the National Vaccine Information Center has a Twitter bot?

20 Jan

Nonprofit organizations’ tax forms are public records. One can find them on many sites, and most nonprofits even host them on their own website. I was looking over the 2012 tax form for the National Vaccine Information Center recently and found something very interesting. The NVIC is one of the organizations that continues to push the failed idea that vaccines cause autism. This idea has caused a great deal of harm in the autism communities, but we get to be their hammer against vaccines.

The NVIC has a “vaccine ingredient calculator” or VIC (The NVIC Vaccine Ingredient Calculator: A disingenuous deceptive instrument of vaccine fear mongering).

Lately I’ve seen a lot of social media chatter where vaccine antagonistic people and groups are claiming that any opposition they see is being coordinated by “twitter bots”. Programs designed to create tweets.

So, imagine my response when I saw this on the NVIC 2012 tax form (click to enlarge):

NVIC tweet machine

Yes, the NVIC created a “Tweet Machine” which produced 8,760 tweets in one year. That’s one an hour over a 365 day year.

I am assuming that is this Twitter account.

VIC twit

See how they are still pounding the old, failed “autism is mercury poisoning” idea? That idea led to many kids being subjected to unnecessary chelation and other alternative treatments that range from useless to harmful.

Also, they want a stop to robocalls. Because that’s on topic for a vaccine discussion. And not at all ironic given the NVIC’s “Tweet Machine”

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By Matt Carey

Unethical DAN doctor to be supervised by acupuncturist

31 Dec

An Illinois doctor who subjects autistic children to “unwarranted, dangerous therapies” must have her work reviewed by an acupuncturist. The state medical board also fined Dr. Anju Usman $10,000, ordered her to take additional medical education classes, and placed her on probation for at least one year, as part of her plea agreement with state regulators.

The acupuncturist, Dr. Robert Charles Dumont, is a pediatrician, and a member of the faculty of the Integrative Medicine Department of Northwestern University School of Medicine. According to the consent decree, Usman “shall submit ten active patient charts on a quarterly basis” to Dumont. When asked if Usman is allowed to select which charts will be reviewed, a medical board spokesperson referred the reporter to the language in the consent decree.

Usman suggested to regulators the doctor who will be reviewing her charts, according to Usman’s attorney.

drusman

Usman is director of True Health Medical Center in Naperville, Illinois and owner of Pure Compounding Pharmacy. She a is regular presenter at Autism One, an annual gathering of vendors, providers, quasi-researchers and desperate parents.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation says Usman provided “medically unwarranted treatment that may potentially result in permanent disabling injuries” to a boy that Usman started seeing in the spring of 2002, when the child was not quite two years old. Records indicate Usman diagnosed the boy with a calcium-to-zinc imbalance, yeast, “dysbiosis”, low zinc, heavy metal toxicity, and abnormally high levels of aluminum, antimony, arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, silver, tin, titanium and selenium. Usman prescribed chelation, a hormone modulator, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which regulators describe as an “extreme departure from rational medical judgment.”

The complaint against Usman was filed by the boy’s father in 2009. A year later, he sued Usman and Dr. Daniel Rossignol of Melbourne, Fla. for harming the child with “dangerous and unnecessary experimental treatments.” A Chicago-area lab, Doctor’s Data, was also sued. The plaintiff voluntarily dismissed the suit in 2014, but will reportedly reinstate it in 2015 or later.

Usman was the subject of a 2009 Chicago Tribune investigation into questionable medical practices aimed at treating autism. The article noted that Usman and Rossignol “are stars of Defeat Autism Now!, having trained thousands of clinicians…  They are listed on the group’s online clinician registry, a first stop for many parents of children with autism seeking alternative treatment.”

Usman’s name is also connected to the 2005 death of Tariq Nadama, a five-year-old boy who died at the hands of Dr. Roy Kerry. Usman diagnosed the boy with high aluminum levels, then referred him to Kerry, an ear-nose-throat specialist in Pennsylvania. Kerry treated the child for lead poisoning, even though his blood lead levels were below that which indicates the need for chelation.

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Cross posted from Autism News Beat

ASAN Series: JRC Survivor Speaks Out

4 Dec

When this article first appeared here at Left Brain/Right Brain only the first three parts of the 4-part series were online at the ASAN website.  Part 4 is now up and I include it here.

JRC Survivor Speaks Out (Part 4)

The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is most infamous for it’s use of electric shocks as a behavior modification method.  But electric shocks are not the only aversive technique they use.  In a four part series, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network presents a rare insider’s view of life at the JRC.   So far three parts have been published.  But rather than wait for part 4, I’ve decided to post links to the articles now.

The series starts with this introduction:

The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is a residential facility in Massachusetts where disabled residents are subject to electric shock, sensory assault, food deprivation, prolonged restraint and seclusion, and a host of other horrifying and aversive “treatments.” The United Nations has condemned the JRC’s treatment of its residents as torture, and disability rights advocates have been trying to get the facility shut down for over 30 years. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has previously published an in-depth piece about the history and practices of the JRC, which you can read here.

This post is the first of a four-part series written by Jennifer, a survivor of the JRC. We are extremely grateful to have her permission to publish this brave account of her own experiences with the so-called “treatments” the JRC provides.

Here are links to the series so far:

JRC Survivor Speaks Out (Part 1)

JRC Survivor Speaks Out (Part 2)

JRC Survivor Speaks Out (Part 3)

JRC Survivor Speaks Out (Part 4)

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By Matt Carey

Tags: , ,

ASAN Series: JRC Survivor Speaks Out

23 Nov

The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is most infamous for it’s use of electric shocks as a behavior modification method.  But electric shocks are not the only aversive technique they use.  In a four part series, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network presents a rare insider’s view of life at the JRC.   So far three parts have been published.  But rather than wait for part 4, I’ve decided to post links to the articles now.

The series starts with this introduction:

The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is a residential facility in Massachusetts where disabled residents are subject to electric shock, sensory assault, food deprivation, prolonged restraint and seclusion, and a host of other horrifying and aversive “treatments.” The United Nations has condemned the JRC’s treatment of its residents as torture, and disability rights advocates have been trying to get the facility shut down for over 30 years. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has previously published an in-depth piece about the history and practices of the JRC, which you can read here.

This post is the first of a four-part series written by Jennifer, a survivor of the JRC. We are extremely grateful to have her permission to publish this brave account of her own experiences with the so-called “treatments” the JRC provides.

Here are links to the series so far:

JRC Survivor Speaks Out (Part 1)

JRC Survivor Speaks Out (Part 2)

JRC Survivor Speaks Out (Part 3)

—

By Matt Carey

Tags: , ,

The Center for Personal Rights, another charity with rather high salary/revenue

19 Nov

Odds are you haven’t heard of the Center for Personal Rights. It’s a small organization recently formed to promote “vaccine choice”. If you’ve heard of the book Vaccine Epidemic, that’s their work. And, yes, a big piece of the “vaccine choice” movement involves promoting the failed “vaccines-caused-an-autism-epidemic” idea.

Tax forms are now available for the first three years of the Center for Personal Rights (2010, 2011 and 2012). The records show that they’ve pulled in a respectable $165,000 in that time, and revenues were up each year. By far the majority of revenue is from contributions/gifts/grants and not from sales of their book. Here are those tax forms

Center for Personal rights 2010 form 990

Center for Personal rights 2011 form 990

Center for Personal rights 2012 form 990

Let’s take a look at how much of the money taken in has gone to salaries of the board members. Well, board member, as it appears that the executive director, Louise Kuo Habakis, is the only one on the board being paid. Here are revenue and compensation:

2010:
Total Revenue: $42,072
executive compensation: $0

2011:
Total Revenue: $53,300
Executive compensation: $33,065

i.e. 62% of revenue went to board member compensation.

2012:
Total Revenue: $69,823
Executive Compensation: $74,355

i.e. 106% of revenue went to board member compensation.

Total for three years?
Revenue: $165,195
Board member compensation: $107,420

Or, 65% of revenue went to compensation of Ms. Hubakis. It’s a rather modest salary, but a large fraction of the revenue.

What else has the Center for Personal Rights accomplished?

Well, they held a rally ($23,788 in 2010)

They produced the book, Vaccine Epidemic, for which they list expenses of
$556 in 2010
$15,182 in 2011
$28,132 in 2012

So, that’s about $43k to produce the book. Much of that expense appears to be Ms. Hubakis’ compensation.

Here’s their list of program expenses for 2012.

Center for personal rights 2012 program expenses

From what I can tell, they took their total expenses for the year, including Ms. Hubakis’ compensation, and divided it by three and put that amount into each category. Hence my statement above that much of the expenses attributed to the book appear to be her compensation.

Their end of the year balances (net assets) have been declining:
$22,625 in 2010
$19,361 in 2011
-$1,220 in 2012

One might think they are on the way out. They would need a large infusion of cash to stay afloat. They still have a web presence and, well, Ms. Hubakis is a board member of Barry Segal’s “Focus Autism”. Mr. Segal and Focus Autism have distributed a significant amount of money to vaccine-antagonistic groups in recent years. And there are other wealthy people who contribute to such causes. So I wouldn’t count the Center for Personal Rights out just yet.

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By Matt Carey

A new Autism Media Channel video. A chance to watch some sleight of hand

17 Oct

Andrew Wakefield has a new video with stunning new revelations of malfeasance by the CDC. Well, that’s what he wants you to think. Let’s take a look and see how well his story stands up to scrutiny, shall we? To do this I’ll highlight two of the problems with the video.  The first I’ve already discussed some: Mr. Wakefield claims the CDC hid a result but the CDC actually published it. For the second problem, let’s follow Mr. Wakefield as he creates a timeline showing us how the CDC’s research plan was supposedly revised in response to some analysis results.  Then let’s piece together the real timeline.

We will start with problem one. The basic idea of Mr. Wakefields argument in his new video is that the CDC hid an association in a group of kids allegedly susceptible to becoming autistic due to the MMR. This group are those with “isolated autism”: autism without intellectual disability, birth defects or other possible cause.

There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in the video, but here’s the main result.  An increased odd ratio for “isolated autism” for kids vaccinated before 36 months.  Calculated odds ratio is 2.48.  With a confidence interval that doesn’t span 1 (1.16 to 5.31).

Wakefield smoke and mirrors

There’s much drama in the video about this.  For example, here’s what Brian Hooker had to say (about 3:25 into the video).

What CDC employees do, when they see an effect, then they will get in a room together and they will work until that association goes away

Followed by Mr Wakefield:

But that didn’t seem to happen. They deviated further from the analysis plan by limiting the isolated group to only those with no mental retardation. Even changing the age categories and composition of the isolated subgroup may not have achieved the desired effect. Since, in the end, the simply omitted the relevant findings from the paper altogether.

That’s an amazing claim, isn’t it? The CDC allegedly just buried the result.  “Omitted the findings altogether.”

Except that the CDC didn’t hide the result. They reported on autism without MR. Here’s table 4 from the paper in Pediatrics.

Destefano_table_4 highlighted

If you want to say, “well autism without MR isn’t the same thing as ‘isolated autism’, consider this: the answer is basically unchanged from what Mr. Wakefield claims was “omitted”.   Take a look at the table: in the total sample, the group without MR has basically the same result as was supposedly hidden.   Odds ratio 2.45 (compared to 2.48), with confidence interval from 1.20 to 5.00 (compared to 1.16 to 5.31).  Which is to say: the CDC published the result that Mr. Wakefield claims was hidden.

Smoke.  Mirrors.  Wakefield.  Hooker.

This result is 10 years old.  And no one, not Wakefield, Not Hooker, not anyone in the real advocacy community has made a big deal out of it until now. I do not profess to understand how Mr. Wakefield nor Mr. Hooker think, but here’s one reason why most people haven’t considered this “autism without MR” result a big deal:  this is a raw data result.  A result unadjusted for any possible confounders.  The adjusted result, also highlighted in the figure above, shows a confidence interval that spans 1.  In other words, there’s no suggestion of a real effect when one does a full analysis.

Which of course shows us why people do full analyses.  Sometimes associations change when one controls for other factors.  Sometimes associations get stronger.  Sometimes they go away.  Sometimes things that appear to not be associations are shown to be associations.

Now that we’ve seen that the conclusion from Mr. Wakefield’s video is wrong, let’s consider a second problem with this new video: the way in which Mr. Wakefield manipulates his audience.  He creates a timeline for the CDC’s actions that allows Mr. Wakefield to use his new favorite “f” word.  Fraud.  Let’s go through the timeline.

At about 2:20 in the video, Mr. Wakefield shows us a fraction of a page of the analysis plan. The protocol. Dated September 5, 2001.

draft analysis plan screenshot

We then get this ominous voiceover. Complete with the analysis plan page going up in flames. Very dramatic:

“Over the ensuing months, after the data after the data had been collected and analyzed, and strictly forbidden in the proper conduct of science, the group abandoned the approved analysis plan, introducing a revised analysis plan to help them deal with their problem.”

And to “prove” that months later the CDC introduced a new analysis plan we are shown notes supposedly documenting that the CDC team were creating that revised plan:

Scary Revised Analysis Plan Screenshot

You are supposed to say, “they revised the analysis plan!  That’s bad!” But do you see what I see? That these are notes from September 6, 2001 2011?  Not after the “ensuing months” but one day later after the plan was finalized. I guess we weren’t supposed to look at the date, just the scary words “revised analysis plan”.

From these notes it appears to say that there will be a records review on September 12th and that in advance of that, whoever wrote these notes needs to get the revised analysis plan. Not, “hey, let’s fabricate a new analysis plan” but, “Hey, the plan was revised yesterday and I should get a copy”. Or, to put it another way: how sinister does the note read sound when the plan was just finalized the day before?

So, when did the CDC do the analysis that Mr. Wakefield shows in his video?  You know, the analysis that the “revised” plan was supposed to avoid?  November, 2001.  Two months later after the plan was finalized and, importantly, two months after those notes were taken. Here’s a screenshot from a talk Mr. Hooker recently gave about his work and the DeStefano paper.  He showed one of the same tables that Mr. Wakefield uses in his video (29:11 into the video).  Notice the date? November 7. In the audio he says “they did see a statistically significant result as early as November 7th, 2001”.  Mr. Wakefield’s first video (the ugly, race-baiting one) also references the November 7th meeting.  So it looks like this is the earliest evidence Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Hooker have  of the CDC obtaining results for this study.

Hooker_CDC

Now, let’s compare how Mr. Wakefield presented a chain of events and what actually happened.

The impression Mr. Wakefield gives in his video is that:

(a) first the plan for the research was finalized by the CDC team,

(b) then they found data which showed an effect they didn’t like and

(c) after “ensuing months” the CDC team then held a meeting in which notes were taken that they had to revise the plan.

Here’s what the actual events appear to be

(a) the research plan was finalized on Sept. 5,

(b) on Sept. 6, someone (likely Mr. Thompson) took notes that he had to get the revised plan and

(c) on November 7, what appears to be the first pass at data analysis were presented presented in an internal CDC meeting.

No evidence of revising the plan after the analysis.  The image of the meeting notes are being used as props to craft a story. Andrew Wakefield apparently doesn’t understand the first rule of documentaries.  And apparently whatever ability he had for reporting factually has long since faded since he left grad school.

And, Brian Hooker?  He’s not just a prop in these videos.  He’s an active participant.  His organization has paid Mr. Wakefield for at least the first video.  The race-baiting video.

The autism communities deserve better. Better than Andrew Wakefield.  Better than Brian Hooker.

—

By Matt Carey

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