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Ad Council increasing autism awareness

13 Jul

This is one of the questions that comes up a lot in many discussions. Many people (myself included) believe that an increased awareness of autism, both amongst parents and professionals, has led to much of the increase in the number of people identified with autism.

So, can awareness be increased? Apparently, the Ad Council. and their partner in a recent ad campagin, Autism Speaks, think so. They recently ran an ad campaign to raise awareness about autism.

The campaign was effective enough that the Ad Council is including it as one of their recent success stories by posting a ‘case report‘ on it.

After only three months in the marketplace, the campaign reached No. 2 among 50 active Ad Council television campaigns. In the nine-month period from April to December 2006, the “Odds” campaign earned almost $47 million in donated media.

That’s a lot of exposure, and a lot of money. That would have purchased a lot of, say, full page ads in USA Today. But, it wasn’t the amount of exposure alone, it was the tone of the campaign. The Ad Council did some background research before they started spending a lot of donated ad money. What did they find?

It became apparent that there was a disabling fear among parents regarding autism, a fear that led them to tune out information.

I am sure we could have a nice lively debate about how much fear was used in the ad council campaign which focused on the “odds” of a child being diagnosed with autism. But, their background research was indicating that the fear mongering campaigns (think print ads with giant vaccine syringes for one example) were actually driving people away, making them “tune out”.

Hmmm, the previous ad campaigns, run by organizations populated with public relations people, were making people “tune out”.

But, did the campaign work? Yep, they increased awareness of autism. The ad council claimed a 35% increase in awareness. More importantly, “Parents are also increasingly likely to take action as a result of the campaign.” Parents are talking more about autism, seeking out autism websites and, most importantly, they are talking to their doctors about autism more. That last bit has to impact the number of kids identified with autism.

The campaign also benefited their partner in this: Autism Speaks. Traffic to their website spiked to nearly 450,000 visitors a month. That would be about 15,000 visitors a day. For reference, Kev has noted that this blog gets about 3,000 unique visitors a day. Not bad for someone who built the traffic to this website on words, not money.

Perhaps no other childhood disorder has come into the public eye as quickly and widely as autism. The “Odds” campaign has successfully made autism a more common subject for family concern and discussion. By doing so, the campaign has laid the groundwork for an effective follow-up phase, in which parents can be educated about the early signs of autism and empowered to take action that will significantly enhance their children’s development. Considering the widespread nature of the disorder, such action could potentially benefit nearly 2 million children in the U.S., significantly improving the health and welfare of future generations.

First off: whoa! 2 million children?!? I can only imagine that they are including children with other, non-autism, conditions who might be helped by parents seeking out information. Or, are they considering future generations? Or, the American children who are now grown up into adults? That aside, the ad council (and their partner Autism Speaks) appears to be agreeing that raising awareness about autism can lead to parents taking action. In other words, parents will be more likely to get their kids properly identified…increasing the “epidemic” of autism by counting the uncounted.

The Ad-Council/Autism Speaks alliance has been continued for another three years.

The campaign has thus far generated more than $125 million in donated print, broadcast and online media and is credited with raising awareness of autism by more than 43%.

Raising awareness. More people will be identified. Is the Ad-Council adding to the epidemic?

In closing I have to add: where is the campaign about adults with autism?

Autism Speaks refuses to talk: 1.5 million autistic people? How do you figure?

12 Jul

Not long ago Michelle Dawson, an autistic adult and autism researcher in Montreal, Canada, wrote that she had tried to get Autism Speaks to explain how they arrrived at their well known number of autistic people in the US (or just autistic children in the US, depending on which of their statements you are reading). She phoned the Autism Speaks offices not too long ago and eventually was handed off to a man named Michael. This apparently was Autism Speaks epidemiology “expert” of sorts, Michael Rosanoff, a young man in a sort of low level position at Autism Speaks and without much training in epidemiology it seems.

You can read some of what transpired in Michelle’s conversation
on her QT board And on her blog

I like this paragraph in particular from that blog

On the other hand, if Autism Speaks applies their advertised 1 in 150 prevalence figure to the entire US population (which cracked 300 million in 2006), then the result is a total of 2 million autistics in the US, of whom about 500,000 are children and 1.5 million are adults. But this would mean that there has been a high stable rate of autism. This is a scientifically sound position, but one that Autism Speaks and autism advocacy in general has rejected.

jypsy also contacted Autism Speaks through a form on their website and was sent to check out a page on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website that explained the 1 in 150 number, which was not jypsy’s question. Hers was the same as mine, “How did you get the 1.5 million autistics in the United States number?”. jypsy was told to check back with Autism Speaks if she didn’t get her answer on the CDC website. She checked back with them reiterating that she wanted to know how they got the 1.5 million number and they didn’t respond.

So I emailed Michael Rosanoff (mrosanoff@autismspeaks.org) and the AS general email address (contactus@autismspeaks.org) my question, which is below Mr. Rosanoff’s response here from Monday, July 7, 2008:

Ms. Clark,

Thank you for the e-mail. I will be glad to answer your questions. Would you be available for a brief phone call? If so, please provide me with some dates/times you are available as well as a number at which you can be reached. I look forward to speaking with you.

Best,

Michael

—–Original Message—–
From: [Ms. Clark]
Sent: Friday, July 04, 2008 5:57 PM
To: contactus; Michael Rosanoff
Subject: Question about autism epidemiology

Dear Autism Speaks and Michael Rosanoff,

I am gathering information for an article I want to write about
autism prevalence in the United States. Autism Speaks uses the CDC’s
latest estimate of autism prevalence, that is 1 in 150.

Autism Speaks also uses a figure for the total number of people with
autism in the United States, 1.5 million.

1) Can you show me how you arrived at the 1.5 million number?

2) Which census numbers were you using when you arrived at 1.5 million
and which prevalence numbers were you using?

3) Is it possible that the number of autistic people in the US is
significantly higher that 1.5 million? That is, if you divide the
currently population of the United States by 150 would you arrive at
1.5 million?

4) Can you tell me how you see the 1.5 million breaking down by age
groups, in other words, about how many of the 1.5 million are about
age 3-15 and about how many are 16-21? Also, how many are over 21,
and how many are over 50? If you can break out the ages using
different age groups that would be fine, but basically, how many
youngsters and how many adults?

5) Please indicate if you are using numbers for the whole spectrum:
autistic disorder, pdd-nos and Asperger’s disorder, or if you believe
that a set of numbers only applies to people with “classic autism”.

Thank you very much in advance.

[Ms. Clark]

I sent my question to Mr. Rosanoff on Friday, July 4, and he responded on Monday which was nice and prompt. I answered him on Tuesday saying that he could call me Thursday and gave him a time slot. I then told him if he confirmed that time was good I’d send him my phone number.
He didn’t respond.
Then I found out that it was likely that Mr. Rosanoff would not be responding, that it was likely he was just trying to give the impression that he wanted to respond… since really, he could have responded in the email to me instead of asking if we could talk on the phone. The whole thing about needing to talk on the phone struck me as a little bizarre anyway. Why couldn’t he just answer the questions, he being Autism Speaks epidemiology expert? Shouldn’t he be able to crank out the answers in his sleep? For that matter why isn’t there a page or two on Autism Speaks devoted to explaining how many autistic adults they are trying to serve as the big mondo world encompassing AUTISM (b)org?

So after getting no response about my offered time slot for Michael Rosanoff to call me, I sent Mr. Rosanoff and a few others at the now curiously silent Autism “Speaks” (including to media@autismspeaks.org) semi-cranky email saying this shouldn’t be a so difficult you guys, and asking them just to answer my questions, please, thank you. And I have had no response from any of those I emailed.

So I encourage any of you to also email Autism Speaks or to call them and ask them, how do you get your 1.5 million number. About how many are adults and how many are children? You could also ask them if they have a vague idea of how many of the total have “autistic disorder” and how many have another of the ASDs/PDDs.

If you’d like to send them a letter you could address it to:

Autism Speaks
2 Park Avenue
11th Floor
New York, NY 10016

This is their general phone number (212) 252-8584 and their fax: (212) 252-8676, if you prefer faxing the question. I suppose they answer the phone from 9-5 Monday through Friday, Eastern Time excepting holidays. I encourage all to use your “indoor voice” when calling and be polite as possible.

This is not a trivial question. If Autism Speaks wants to be BIG AUTISM* the borg (We are Autism Speaks. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.) of autism organizations then they should be able to give basic facts about the community they are claiming to serve when they are out pounding on people’s emotions to get them to fork over cash to support Autism Speaks.

*”Big Autism” is an apt term that was coined by the blogger Prometheus.

WXYZ and bad "investigative" reporting

11 Jul

Wouldn’t you love to move on from the thimerosal debate? Yes, I mean that as part of the greater move away from the vaccine/autism debate. But we are closing in on the end of the thimerosal era and, let’s face it, the nebulous arguments about “toxins” will be around for a while. People have learned the lessons of not making clearly falsifiable claims or setting deadlines for the “autism rate to decline”, so they will be able to keep the general vaccine discussion alive for some time to come.

But, we aren’t there yet with thimerosal. And, to prove the point, Steve Wilson at station WXYZ in Detroit has managed to regurgitate the standard thimerosal arguments. That would be not surprising. I expect a these aftershocks. What I is really annoying is the methodology. Orac has referred to it as “yellow journalism”, and I quite agree.

I will note that Orac and the Denialism Blog have both covered this in greater detail than I can. AutismNewsBeat has a journalist’s viewpoint as well.

Why am I annoyed with Steve Wilson? First off, he starts out by claiming that the “prevailing strategy seems to be to downplay the possibility of any link so that parents will continue to vaccinate their children”. (rough quote, sorry, I just don’t want to listen to that over and over again).

Sounds like a page from the Bernadine Healy playbook. Let’s imply something sinister is going on. Let’s imply that the AAP is hiding evidence. Steve: how about acknowledging that the “prevailing strategy” is to tell people what the science actually says? Doesn’t that seem like the “prevailing strategy” that the AAP and others are using? It does to me.

Another big chunk of the Steve Wilson’s report is based on this statement:

“..the truth is, there is still as much as ever..in 11 vaccines”

At this point, it’s worth reading Orac who lists the actual pediatric vaccines and their thimerosal levels.

You see, Steve Wilson pulled a classic con. Sorry to call it so bluntly, but that’s what I see. He talks about vaccines that aren’t being given to children young enough to develop autism. I don’t even know if the 11 vaccines he is talking about really do have thimerosal. Because, it doesn’t matter in this discussion. What matters is the pediatric vaccine schedule.

The part that bugs me is that Steve Wilson knows it. He gives as an example the thimerosal in tetanus boosters given to 11 year olds. Yes, he actually talks about 11 year olds.

Yep, the goalposts have moved so far, we are building new stadiums. 11 year olds being given tetanus boosters might develop autism. Except for Jim Carrey, who has ever implicated Tetanus shots? Even Jim Carry didn’t indicate that it was the booster given at age 11.

It appears to me that Mr. Wilson isn’t even going to the actual sources for his information. His report is a nice smattering of the standard vaccines-cause-autism line. One bit that caught my attention is when he talks about statements in the congressional record.

A congressional committee that studied the matter has already concluded: “Thimerosal…is directly related to the Autism epidemic.”

I was pretty sure that was a Dan Burton quote, so I Googled it to find the source. I came up with Deadly Immunity, by Robert Kennedy Jr, but I didn’t find the part of the congressional record with it. I looked a bit harder and found that the congressional record shows the statement as:

“Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines in [sic] likely related to the autism epidemic.”

I don’t agree with the above either. But, compare “likely related” (Steve Wilson) and “directly related” (congressional record). Somewhat different meaning, don’t you think?

I can’t resist putting out some of the list of “what do we know about mercury”? As it turns out, a lot. A lot more than I ever wanted to know, I’ll tell you that. A lot more than actually helps my family. But, here are some examples of what we know:

1) the dose makes the poison. Absolutely. There has to be a dose small enough that it would not cause toxicity.

2) mercury is everywhere. It was in the organic cinnamon-applesauce cup I just ate. It was in the organic lemonade juicebox I just drank. (sounds like I am the one on the playground, eh?).

3) When used in vaccines, it doesn’t increase the risk of most neurological disorders. Most? Yes, they didn’t include autism (see (5) below). Also, there were disorders that were indicated as possibly associated. Then again, there were some positive outcomes that were indicated as possibly associated with thimerosal. It looks like random chance–association is determined by statistics, and if you test enough associations, some will appear to be statistically significant.

4) when injected into pregnant women in RhoGaM type shots, it does not increase the risk of autism.

5) indications are that the upcoming CDC report on thimerosal and autism will show no increased risk.

6) Autism symptoms are not the same as mercury intoxication…autism is not “a novel form of mercury poisoning.

We could go on for a long time with the evidence against the concept that autism is caused by mercury. But, this is just a small list of the many things that somehow didn’t get into Steve Wilson’s investigative report.

Unstrange Minds – UK release

5 Jun

I wrote about Unstrange Minds in 2006 when it was first published in the US only.

Cover of Unstrange Minds

It gives me huge pleasure to note that Icon Books have now released the UK version (also available on Amazon UK.

I loved Unstrange Minds unreservedly. Professor Grinker sent me a galley copy to read before it was published and I read it in a couple of weeks worth of train journeys to and from my workplace. So absorbed was I that I very nearly missed my stop more than once.

Its a book about two things. Firstly it is a Fathers paen to his autistic daughter. The love and respect he has for his daughter permeates every single page. It is clear that he finds his daughter fascinating and wonderful. Through the pages, we do too.

Secondly, it is a book about the ‘autism epidemic’ or rather the lack thereof.

The shift in how we view autism….is part of a broader set of shifts taking place in society.

Grinker goes on to take the reader through the often fascinating history of autism as a diagnostic label (Kanner is pronounced ‘connor’ – who knew??) to illustrate his theory of the apparent rise in autism prevalence being intrinsically linked to these cultural changes such as the growth in child psychology as an area of practice, the decline of psychoanalysis, the rise of advocacy organisations, greater public awareness to educational needs and change in pubic policies:

Doctors now have a more heightened awareness of autism and are diagnosing it with more frequency, and public schools….which first started using the category of autism during the 1991 – 1992 school year are reporting it more often….Epidemiologists are also counting it better.

One of the most fascinating parts of the book for me was Grinker’s exploration of autism in non-Westernised cultures such as South Africa and Korea. In some ways it was like reading about how autism was viewed here 20 years ago.

When [Milal School] was being built in the mid-1990s, some of the wealthy residents of this quiet neighborhood south of the Kangnam River in Seoul picketed the site, cut the school’s phone lines, physically assaulted school administrators, and filed a lawsuit to halt construction, because they believed that the presence in the neighborhood of children with disabilities would lower property values. The school opened in 1997, but only with a compromise. It was required to alter its architecture so that the children were completely hidden from public view. Some of the protestors were brutally honest. They said they didn’t want their children to see or meet a child with autism.

That seems (and is) outrageous to us but 20 years ago I can easily imagine this happening in the West. One only has to look at the recent experiences of Alex Barton to see how quickly the West can regress to barbarism.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Go buy it now.

A quiet concession

3 Jun

While much has been made of a certain “concession” lately, it is worthwhile noting that the past month has seen a significant shift in the mindset of people pushing the autism “epidemic”.  In vaccine court it was the petitioners (plaintiffs) who opened with the admission that if there is any group of people with autism as a result of vaccine injury, the number would be so small as to be invisible to epidemiological studies.  (This didn’t stop them from closing with the latest Geier paper claiming that they can see the effect of thimerosal on the autism rates.)

But, this hasn’t been such a sudden shift.  As far back as last November, David Kirby noted:

“Finally, to all those who are going to post comments about the autism rates in California not coming down, following the removal of thimerosal from most vaccines: You are right. The most likely explanation is that thimerosal was not responsible for the autism epidemic.”

Baby steps….baby steps…

That’s my way of saying to those who would bravely rise up in their seats and proclaim, “stop the hate speech!” that the above is progress.  Sure, we still have to continue to endure the “epidemic” language for now.  Why he can’t just admit it in full, I am not sure.  Oddly, Mr Kirby doesn’t put forth a valid suggestion of what caused this “epidemic” of non-thimerosal-induced autism.  He does try a last-ditch effort to prop up the possibility of a thimerosal-induced-autism-epidemic with claims of immigration and pushing the goalposts back to 2011.  

But, I felt I had to acknowledge the fact that even Mr. Kirby is stating that the most likely answer is that it is not thimerosal before I go on.  Because, if one looks at the data just a little farther, one can find a likely answer for why there is a larger number of young people identified with autism than older people.  It isn’t news to us, and it isn’t news to Mr. Kirby and the rest: one likely reason is substitution.  I don’t know which they would try to avoid more, admitting that substitution is a big effect or an MMR jab, but let’s look a the data.  Just a peak. 

Consider  Autism as a function of age in the CDDS (California Department of Developmental Services) data.  Keep in mind, this is service data–i.e. this is a count of who is receiving services from the CDDS, not a count of who has autism in California.  This is not epidemiological grade data.   But, since it has been used so much, let’s move forward, keeping the caveats in mind. (click on the graph if you want to see it larger and more clear)

 

So, Autism count vs. age (data in black), what do we see?  Of course, we see a big peak in the younger ages.  This is the “Tidle Wave” or “Tsunami” or “Insert Other Hate Speech Term Here” that people like to use to make this scary.  But, as you have noticed, I have included the data for “Mild Mental Retardation” as well, in red.   What do we see there?  A dramatic dip in individuals identified with mild mental retardation in the younger ages.  Does anyone believe that something happened in California to reduce the number of people with intellectual disabilities?  If so, they aren’t very vocal about it.

If I were reading this for the first time, I would be suspicious of someone using only one mental retardation category.  Believe me, all mental retardation categories show much lower numbers in the younger age brackets.

This is a clear indication of “administrative substitution”.  [edit–see comments below] Joseph has done a lot of work on the CDDS data in the past and notes (below) that it is very difficult to draw conclusions about substitution from the publicly available data.  However, this is similar to what people have reported in the literature especially using special education data: people with autism have very likely been mislabeled, their autism label was “substituted” for a different label.  They weren’t “missed” as the favorite straw-man arguement would have it, but mis-labeled.

One person in the AutismOne media discussion (as reported by AutismNewsBeat) kept saying, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet”, implying that the future is going to be very different from the past.  I have to agree, in the future, more adults with autism will be correctly identified.  They won’t be in hospitals with schizophrenia diagnoses, for example.  This will be a good thing.

Frankly, I’d like to see that change come sooner.  I’d like to see adults properly identified and appropriately served now.  We have to move away from baby steps and take bigger steps away from the “epidemic” and acknowledge that unidentified/misidentifed adults with autism are almost certainly out there.

Instead, we have people asking to “Green Our Vaccines“.  The “Green Our Vaccines” idea is a very cute way to mask the typical “epidemic” speech.  But it is the same old story: autism is vaccine injury and new.  Note that almost all of the groups sponsoring the “Green our Vaccines” rally are autism-related.   Sorry to divert to that topic somewhat, but I can’t help thinking that all that effort is being put into that rally by people who actively supress the existance of adults with autism.  I can’t help thinking that the present and the future would be better if they were acting to help everyone with autism, now.

(noted, this has been edited to more correctly reflect Joseph’s opinions on substitution.  Also, I missed another Green Our Vaccines link.)

How many autistic amish?

3 Jun

Yesterday, Joseph wrote a great post that looked at the prevalence of low functioning autism amongst the Amish and found it correlated strongly with non Amish sources.

Today, I want to look at the Amish through the lens of the ‘new’ prevalence that The Autism Omnibus Petitioners expert witness (for the families) Professor Sander Greenland testified to.

Now, as we all know, when Dan Olmsted first started writing about the Amish he claimed that both Amish children are never vaccinated and that the Amish either don’t have autism, or it is very rare.

It has been established since than that Omsted’s ‘reporting’ (which constituted asking a water cooler salesman) somehow missed the fact that the Amish actually do vaccinate in pretty high numbers.

Since that time, as the autism/vaccine hypothesis has become weaker and weaker we have seen a ‘silent switch’ amongst its proponents. Gone is the talk about ‘epidemic’ and hundred of thousands of children ‘poisoned’ to be replaced with talk such as:

My message is this: “We need more research to determine if a small subset of kids is genetically susceptible to lifelong neurological injury from something, or things, in our current vaccine program.

This has been echoed by Dan Olmsted. When Autism News Beat stepped into woo-land and visited Autism One, Dan Olmsted was quoted on camera as saying (this is a hurried transcription, apologies for slight errors):

…you try to listen for anything that’s useful in terms of information. Sometimes they tell you things that they don’t mean to in terms of how..uh..you know we learned things about the Amish from a blogger who tried to destroy my reporting about that because he basically talked to somebody who confirmed that there were very few cases of classic, regressive autism. So…it’s, you know…that’s the way it is…

So, we can see that the ‘silent shift’ is underway. Nobody acknowledges it but the media people amongst the autism/vaccine believers have switched their stance. Now we’re only looking for a small subset of regressive cases.

This was born out by the families expert witness Professor Greenland. He was asked to tackle the epidemiology for autism and stated that the number of kids made autistic by vaccines (assuming it had happened at all) was so small it could not be detected by epidemiology. He contended that it was in fact a subset of a subset he called ‘clearly regressive autism’.

Using his data, we could see that ‘clearly regressive autism’ accounts for 0.015% of a given population. According to Elizabethtown College the Amish population of the US is about 220,000.

So, in real terms we are looking for (0.015% of 220,000) 33 ‘clearly regressive autistic’ people.

According to Mark Blaxill, Olmsted has already found:

….less than 20 cases

Which is good news. It means he must already be over halfway in finding all the ‘clearly regressive autistic’ people he needs to in order to establish the Amish have the same rate of ‘clearly regressive autism’ as the rest of us.

The Amish Anomaly is an anomaly in one respect only – it is anomalous to keep silently shifting the numbers you want to find. Now that David Kirby, Dan Olmsted and the Autism Omnibus families are all on record as only looking for a ‘small subset’ isn’t it time that the Amish Anomaly was seen for what it is – anomalous.

New blog worth following

20 May

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

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

…has a Ph.D. in epidemiology from an Ivy League university. Before that I got a bachelor’s degree from a different Ivy League college, a master’s degree in developmental psychology, and a master’s degree in medical sociology from another Ivy League University. I worked for more than 30 years as an epidemiology professor in medical academia and schools of public health, and in the senior biomedical research service at the Centers for Disease for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). During my career I have been the editor of two epidemiology journals and one more general biomedical journal.

Thats some pretty impressive credentials.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So – visit Epi Wonk, see what you think.

No such thing as a genetic epidemic

15 May

Since the Autism Omnibus started up again, I’ve been talking about how the Petitioners have pulled the tablecloth out from under the feet of the mercury militia. Its been a mainstay of the militia that there has been an epidemic of autism since the early 1990’s, caused by vaccines, most notably thiomersal and MMR (hence the strapline of mercury militia bible Evidence of Harm – Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic and the ‘M’ in SafeMinds (Sensible Action For Ending Mercury -Induced Neurological Disorders).

In fact, lets be clear, SafeMinds believe in an Autism Epidemic, Generation Rescue believe in an Autism Epidemic, the NAA believe in an Autism Epidemic, Jenny McCarthy believes in an Autism Epidemic.

And yet this week, we had petitioners expert witness (i.e. _for the families_) in the autism omnibus destroying the idea of an epidemic. According to him, the number of children throughout the 1990’s/early noughties was in the hundreds.

That’s ‘hundreds’ from a population of 40 million.

He went on to say:

Q: So if the risk is confined to that group, clearly regressive autism, are you assuming then that there is no elevated risk to any other group – any other cases of autism?

A: In the calculations I made, yes.

This is a deliberate strategy on behalf on Petitioners. They want to destroy the idea that all the epidemiological evidence regarding autism and vaccines has shown thus far – that there is no association between autism and any vaccine. They cannot challenge the quality of the science itself so they have moved the goal posts. They are now saying _not_ that vaccines cause autism, but that _some_ vaccines _may_ cause autism in a population of children so tiny it cannot be detected by epidemiology.

That is in direct opposition to the very idea of an autism epidemic which, by definition, must be large and ‘unmissable’ – a tsunami of autism.

Amusingly, the beloved science editor of the Age of Autism blog decided the best way to deal with _his own sides_ expert testimony was to pretend it had never happened.

‘You cannot have a genetic epidemic’ – that’s another mainstay of the mercury militia. The idea that there has been an epidemic is used to support the idea that genes play a small, negligible role in autism (if they play a role at all) because ‘you cannot have a genetic epidemic’ and as we all know there has been au autism epidemic right? Therefore, genees can’t have played any role _in_ that epidemic.

Except that the families in the Autism Omnibus are now relying almost totally on the idea that there never _was_ an autism epidemic.

The genetic role in autism science came to the fore again yesterday when Yale announced a new study that found Genetic links to impaired social behavior in autism:

With the help of Yale’s Autism Center of Excellence, led by Drs. Ami Klin and Fred Volkmar, and many families of individuals with ASD, we have registered a possible association between some of the genes identified in animal studies as controlling affiliative behaviors in ASD.” The strongest statistical findings of the study implicate the prolactin gene, the prolactin receptor gene, and the oxytocin receptor gene in these affiliative behavior deficits.

I haven’t read the paper yet (and I’ll probably need help to understand all the highly technical gene talk) but I’ll probably have nore to say once I have. For now, its interesting that in the week that expert witness for the families in the Autism Omnibus gutted the epidemic hypothesis, yet another study was released linking genes to autism.

Autism Omnibus – Petitioners suggest new prevalence

14 May

As noted by Ms Clark yesterday, petitioners in the current Autism Omnibus hearing are redefining the terms of the so called ‘epidemic’ to proportions that would’ve been unthinkable to any card-carrying mercury militia member at the start of this year.

And as I noted yesterday, not only is the ‘epidemic’ (so long a standard of the vaccine hypotheses) being seriously watered down, so is the very definition of who can claim status as a member of the vaccine-induced-autism club.

And this is not as a result of any utterance by anybody on respondents (HHS) side – this is all direct from the mouths of the Petitioners legal team and their experts. Truly amazing.

The audio files were posted yesterday (please note that despite everything being linked, as of right now, only Day 1 audio files are actually present for download) so I could finally hear some of what was being said for myself. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet but I wanted to hear more about what I posted yesterday – the fact that Petitioners are now claiming that thiomersal induced autism (assuming it exists at all) accounts for such a small proportion of autism that it is not detectable using epidemiology.

Dr Greenland says (and this is all on Day 1 File 1 – I ain’t going to transcribe it exactly!) that the figures Petitioners are talking about represent a sub-group of regressive autism he terms ‘clearly regressive autism’ (this is also mentioned in his report which I linked to in the post I made yesterday). And of course regressive autism itself is a sub group of autism. According to Greenland, the figures are:

Regressive autism: 28% of autism1.
Clearly regressive autism: 20% of regressive autism
Therefore, clearly regressive autism: (approx) 6% of autism

Now, when we translate this to what the vaccine hypothesis believers like to call ‘proper’ autism (by which I assume they mean classic/low functioning) we get this:

Classical/LF autism: 33% of ASD (based on Fombonne data again).
So, ‘clearly regressive autism’ is 6% of 33% of ASD.

Or in other words, Petitioners ‘clearly regressive autism’ accounts for approx 2% of all ASD.

I can’t say it often enough. This is the expert report of an expert testifying for petitioners. Amazing.

And lets also bear in mind that Greenland is not claiming that *all* ‘clearly regressive autism’ cases are caused by thiomersal. He’s saying that this is the numerical size of the group Petitioners claim *contain* those injured by vaccines, resulting in autism.

So, when we translate that to actual numbers what do we get?

According to CDC, we can estimate that 560,000 children (0 – 21) have an ASD. Using Greenland’s data we can see that:

2% of 560000 = 11,200 people aged between 0 and 21 have ‘clearly regressive autism’.

Based on the data on the front page of census.gov, there are 304,079,911 American citizens as of right now. The child population of which is 25% or 76,019,961.5.

Therefore, according to Petitioners expert witness, the ‘clearly regressive autism’ (aka autism-caused-by-thiomersal) population percentage of the US is *0.015%*.

Tsunami? Hardly.

1] interesting point to note – this is based on Fombonne’s work. Who would’ve thought we’d ever see Fombonne’s data being used to support Petitioners?

PS – maths is not my strong point. Feel free to double check and point out errors/fixes.

Presto Chango

12 May

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

(Again, click for bigger).

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

Tut tut.

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

(Again, click for bigger).

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

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