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More Evidence for the Safety of Vaccines

29 Sep

This article was originally published at the NeuroLogica Blog and is re-published here with permission.

By Steven Novella, MD
NeuroLogica Blog

A new study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Early Thimerosal Exposure and Neuropsychological Outcomes at 7 to 10 Years, does not support a correlation between mercury in vaccines and neurological damage. It adds to the growing evidence that vaccines are safe and they do not cause neurological disorders. This study did not look at autism (a study that will be published next year looks, again, at vaccines and autism), but the mercury-causes-autism crowd are still unhappy with the results.

I have been following this issue closely for several years. Although my awareness of the issue goes back much farther, I started to seriously research the claim that the MMR vaccine, or that thimerosal in other vaccines, causes autism while researching an article on the topic for the New Haven Advocate. As a physician (a neurologist) and a skeptical activist I knew I had to get this issue right. I certainly did not want to falsely stoke the flames of public fear, nor did I want to cast myself in the role of denier.

Early on in my research I really did not know which way I was going to go with the issue. Should my bottom line be that there is real reason for concern here, that there is nothing to the claims, or that we really don’t know and will have to just wait for further research? But after reading through all the claims on both sides, and all the research, it was an easy call – vaccines, and specifically the MMR vaccine and thimerosal, do not cause autism, and the alleged autism “epidemic” is likely just an artifact. Those claiming there is a connection were drowning in conspiracy thinking, logical fallacies, and blatant pseudoscience. Meanwhile every piece of reliable clinical data was pointing in the same direction – no connection.

But still, while I was confident in my final conclusion, a small connection between mercury and autism that eluded the existing data could not be ruled out. Or perhaps there was an angle to the whole story that we were missing but would later come to light. I have had enough experience with scientific medicine to be humble in the face of the complexity of medicine and biology. The only rational position is to remain open to new data and new ideas. On this issue there was sure to be more studies in the future – and the ultimate test of the thimerosal-autism connection, the removal of thimerosal from the vaccine schedule, was yet to be seen. So I confidently plunked my nickel down and waited for the future to unfold.

Everyone likes being right, and sometimes this desire clouds our judgment. I have learned, therefore, how to cheat, which is to say how to always be right. All you have to do is say that your position is based upon the existing data, but is contingent upon the results of future studies. In other words, the “right” position is to change your final answer to accommodate new evidence as it comes in. Therefore the only “wrong” answer is to stick to your original position despite new evidence that contradicts it.

OK – so this is just restating how science is supposed to work, but it is amazing how many people forget to cover their behinds with this simple rule. Usually this is because they are not doing science – they are taking an ideological position, and ideology is inflexible. This is a huge advantage for science over ideology, and why, when science and ideology clash, science is almost always right.

In the case of vaccines and autism, since writing my first major article on the topic, the data has come in all consistent with my original position (so I get to be doubly right). Removing thimerosal from vaccines did not decrease the incidence of autism (or decrease the rate of increase in new diagnoses). And several new major studies came out all showing no association – not counting the utter crap being produced by the Geiers.

Enough had happened to warrant an update, so I jumped at the chance when Ken Frazier of the Skeptical Inquirer asked me to write an article on the topic. My article will be out in the next issue, along with a couple of smaller ones on the same topic, so take a look.

Alas, as is often the way in the world of science, my paper is outdated before it even goes to print. This new study, of course, will not be covered in the article. But that’s what blogs are for – instantaneous news and analysis.

Actually, several of my fellow science bloggers have already beat me to the punch. They cover the article, and the response to the article by the mercury crowd, in great detail, so I will not duplicate it here.

Orac at Respectful Insolence goes over the press release of A-CHAMP (one of the mercury militia) that attempts to dismiss the study. He shows that, while the study (like all studies) has its weaknesses, it does add significantly to the body of evidence showing that vaccines are safe. The complaints of A-CHAMP are either wrong, overblown, or inconsistent with their prior positions and shows that they are just trying to tear down the study at all costs.

For the record, I agree with Orac that the study is good enough that it’s conclusions add to the cumulative data on this topic, and that the weakest element of the study was the 30% compliance rate. In other words, only 30% of the subjects that they looked at for the study made it into the final analysis. This opens up the door for selection bias. Orac is probably correct that this bias would likely overestimate a correlation, not underestimate it, but you can never be sure with such things.

I will add that the 30% figure is not as bad as it first seems. The study reports:

Of 3648 children selected for recruitment, 1107 (30.3%) were tested. Among children who were not tested, 512 did not meet one or more of the eligibility criteria, 1026 could not be located, and 44 had scheduling difficulties; in addition, the mothers of 959 children declined to participate. Most of the mothers (68%) who declined to participate in the study and provided reasons for nonparticipation cited a lack of time; 13% reported distrust of or ambivalence toward research. Of the 1107 children who were tested, 60 were excluded from the final analysis for the following reasons: missing vaccination records, 1 child; missing prenatal records, 5; missing data regarding weight, 7; and discovery of an exclusionary medical condition during record abstraction, 47. Thus, 1047 children were included in the final analyses. The exposure distribution of the final sample was similar to the exposure distribution of the initial 3648 children selected for recruitment in the study.

So about 40% of those that did not make it into the final analysis simply could not be located – this is unlikely to represent a bias. But this is a small point.

Isles from Left Brain/Right Brain points out that Sallie Bernard (a believer in the mercury hypothesis) was consulted on the study design and execution and did not criticize its methods until after the results came back negative. That kind of behavior instantly sacrifices all your credibility in the science club.

Kristina Chew at AutismVox reiterates what I did above – that the mercury-causes-autism ideologues are always asking for more studies, but refuse to change their position when the studies they ask for come out. They are waiting for studies that show what they want them to show – we call that “cherry picking.”

The other side is busy too. David Kirby (a bad journalist who desperately wants to be a bad scientist), who wrote the book Evidence of Harm, published an article online in that absolute rag, The Huffington Post (to be fair, they also published this piece by Arthur Allen defending the paper’s conclusions). Kirby repeats all the same points in the A-CHAMP press release, but he emphasizes the fact that the study found some neurological symptoms that were higher in the subjects who received more thimerosal. Kirby proceeds to completely misinterpret the significance of this.

The study looked at 42 different outcomes, and set the p-value for significance at 0.05. A vague concept of basic math should be sufficient to see that some outcomes will reach significance by chance alone. The researchers arguably should have adjusted their statistics to account for the fact that they were looking at 42 variables – but instead they just looked at all the outcomes that were significant to see if there were any patterns or trends. What they found was that there were a few scores that were worse among those exposed to more thimerosal, but there were also a few scores that were better. There was a random distribution of positive and negative effects that essentially average out to no net effect. It’s all just noise. (Is there a small signal hiding in the noise? There could be – scientists have to be honest about that. But that doesn’t mean there is.)

What Kirby does is not just really dumb, it’s despicable. He cherry picks all the negative (meaning bad) neurological outcomes and pretends that the study shows a correlation (it doesn’t, when you look at ALL the data). He then tries to dismiss the positive (good) outcomes as absurd. He mockingly writes:

If they (the CDC) really mean that thimerosal increases IQ levels in males, then sign me up for a double-dose flu shot this year.

No, David, they don’t mean that. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It takes incompetent statistical analysis or the blindness of ideology to write something so ridiculous. What the CDC means is that the study does NOT show that thimerosal increases IQ, nor that it causes motor tics, or improve motor skills, or decrease language skills, or anything else. The study showed no correlations because it all averaged out as noise.

This is, by the way, the same mistake that astrologers make (remember that crusty pseudoscience?). They look at many variables then cherry pick the outliers. At best what this study might show is a possible correlation, but any such possible correlation would have to be corroborated by a later study (with fresh data) that looked specifically at that one variable.

So the pattern that I found when I first started looking at this issue – that all the reliable data was on the side of no correlation between vaccines or mercury and autism or neurological disorders – continues to hold up to new data. The other pattern I noticed – that those promoting a correlation were relying on bad science, logical fallacies, and ad hoc conspiracy claims – also continues to hold.

In the last few years every new study showed no correlation, and the mercury militia responded with abject nonsense and dismissal. This cycle seems to be repeating itself over and over, and this latest study is no exception.

Bloodletting 101 – an alternative history

29 Sep

Alt-med groupies tell us they are on the cutting edge of medical science, and that fringe providers are somehow protecting patients from the ravages of evidenced-based medicine. They even offer examples, as one austim list serve member did when he wrote “Mainstream medicine used to think bloodletting cured disease. So science doesn’t have all the answers!” I’ve read variations on this statement.

It’s true that doctors once prescribed bloodletting for a wide range of conditions. The ancient Greeks were big into bloodletting, based on a non-empirical view of the natural world which held that blood was composed of four “humours”, symbolizing earth, air, water and fire. Bloodletting was popular for 2,000 years because it seemed to work. Some patients improved after being bled. Doctors just knew it worked, and could point to centuries of precedent.

It’s difficult for the modern mind to grasp why anyone would consider deliberate bloodletting to be a cure for anything. But the answers are quite simple.

First of all, patients have always felt that it’s better to do something than nothing. Before the germ theory of disease, which is only 130 years old, there wasn’t much doctors could do for most diseases short of bed rest and chicken soup. Bloodletting may have been messy and painful, but at least someone was trying something. So, odd as it may seem, bloodletting actually had a placebo effect on some patients.

Since bloodletting wasn’t evidenced-based, it was assumed that those patients that improved after being bled must have benefited by the bleeding. If anybody had thought to do a controlled study 500 years ago, they would have found that the patients who weren’t bled recovered more quickly and in greater numbers than the ones that were. But alas, evidence-based medicine was still a ways off.

I suppose if there was an internet back then, one could have learned the benefits of bloodletting from scores of websites. Bleed Autism Now! practitioners would spread the BAN! protocol far and wide, telling story after story of the children who were rescued from the abyss of mind-blindness and senseless spinning. The more people who signed on to the BAN! protocol, the more self-evident its worth. Heart-shaped Autism Bandages would adorn every donkey cart, testament to the love that parents felt for the children they bled.

And evidence-based skeptics would have been called “hemophobes” and burned at the stake as child abusers.

History teaches: Quackery – hard to kill. People – not so much.

29 Sep

New Scientist had an article recently describing the history of the use of X-rays as a beauty treatment. Who knew that radiation’s ability to make a person’s hair fall out was once exploited as a hair remover?
Histories: The perils of X-ray hair removal

FOLLOWING Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of X-rays in 1895, doctors around the world turned their primitive X-ray machines on everything from their own hands to patients with cancer and tuberculosis. To Albert Geyser, a brash German immigrant who graduated from a New York medical school in that heady year of discovery, X-rays were clearly the future of medicine.

Researchers quickly noticed that exposure to X-rays had a remarkable side effect: it made hair fall out. In Austria, physician Leopold Freund recommended it as a treatment for excess body hair, or hypertrichosis. “Hair begins to fall out in thick tufts when lightly grasped, or it is seen on the towel after the patient’s toilet,” he observed in 1899. … Tests followed across Europe and North America with apparent success, … There were already hints that all was not well, however. In France, some doctors reported that their patients had fallen ill. Loath to admit that X-rays were responsible, Freund blamed “the hysterical character” of French patients.

Now working at Cornell Medical College in New York, Geyser embraced X-rays with enthusiasm. Like many others, he paid a high price for his zeal: radiologists were belatedly realising that frequent exposure to X-rays could be dangerous, and Geyser suffered burns that claimed the fingers of his left hand. Undeterred, he invented the Cornell tube – an X-ray vacuum tube of leaded glass with a small aperture of common glass, meant to direct lower-energy, or “ultrasoft”, X-rays directly onto a small area of skin. With the Cornell tube, “the X-ray is robbed of its terrors”, declared The New York Times. By 1908 Geyser had administered about 5000 X-ray exposures with his tube, for a variety of skin ailments. Others remained suspicious of X-rays, and the County Medical Society’s lawyer warned Geyser that “the time is coming soon when if a man is burned, the doctor will be held liable… Don’t use the X-ray unless you know what you are doing with it.”

The article goes on to explain how the use of the Cornell tube’s “ultrasoft” hair-removing rays became known as the “Roentgen therapy for hypertrichosis,.” In 1915, Geyser published an article in, The Journal for Cutaneous Diseases, he assured his readers that “no protection of any kind, either for patient or operator” was needed when using his Cornell tube. In 1924, Dr. Geyser and his son founded Tricho Sales Corporation. They advertised the glories of the Tricho System in hundreds of advertisements that went into newspapers throughout North America. Promises in these ads included: “no injury to skin will result.” Explanations of how it worked noted that it used a “hair starvation process” and that it worked by way of, “radio vibration.” Female relatives of physicians just swore by it, apparently.

Soon there were Tricho clinics in over 75 cities in the U.S.. The process was tidy and painless, the only thing that operators or clients might have noticed was a “faint hum and a whiff of ozone.” The women only need to be exposed to the X-rays for a few minutes, and voila, some time later their hair fell out.

You may be asking, “Approximately, how many women underwent this thoroughly modern beauty treatment?” The New Scientist article says the New York City clinic alone claimed 200,000 clients. These clients would have paid from a “few hundred to over a thousand dollars” for a course of treatments. That’s a huge chunk of change in 1920’s dollars.

OK… so are we all waiting for the other shoe to drop here?

Tricho’s triumph was short-lived.

In 1926, Ida Thomas of Brooklyn sued Frank Geyser (the son) for “a staggering $100,739 – the cost of her facial treatments plus $100,000 in damages.” Ms. Thomas sued because her skin had thickened and wrinkled following the treatments. Two years later Frank Geyser “was arrested following a similar complaint.” Then things got really ugly. Clients now were suffering from “wrinkling, mottling, lesions, ulcers and even skin cancer.” The Journal of the American Medical Association commented on this new health problem, “In their endeavor to remove a minor blemish, they have incurred a major injury.” In July 1929, the AMA condemned the treatment as dangerous.

What was Tricho’s tactical response to all these people–like the AMA–bunch of killjoys–trying to bum them out, bring them down? What action could rescue the Tricho Sales Corporation from losing revenue by the handful, not unlike a radiation poisoning victim losing hair?

Well, if you’ve been following the saga of Defeat Autism Now! and similar groups, and their history of promoting questionable and even plainly dangerous quack therapies, you may have at some point thought to yourself:

“What could rescue autism quackery and it’s adherents from the doldrums induced in part by the death of Abubakar, but also by the criminal charges being brought against the DAN! doctor who killed him, the lack of a promised drop in the numbers of children being diagnosed with autism following the reduction of the use of thimerosal in childhood vaccines, the ridiculous show put on by so-called “expert witnesses” chosen by the Petitioners Steering Committee in the Cedillo vaccine hearing, accumulating evidence tending to exonorate vaccines as not being a cause of autism, and even the exposing of Andrew Wakefield’s seeming ethical problems in his General Medical Counsel hearing in London?”

Or, “What does autism wingnuttery need, right now, to give it life again, you know, fluffliness and bounce and shine, like a good salon-quality shampoo can do for listless hair?” Maybe autism quackery could borrow a page from the Tricho corporation playbook…what DAN! and company needs NOW is and what Tricho Sales Corporation got in their hour of need …

A celebrity endorsement!

Ann Pennington

Ann Pennington, was played as Tricho’s “trump card,” according to the NS article. She was the star of 1929’s hit film, Gold Diggers of Broadway.” The article continues:

And if clients had any lingering doubts, the elder Geyser’s impeccable medical credentials probably reassured them. Yet closer inspection of Geyser’s record would have shown that although he carried out research at a prestigious medical college, some of his work was decidedly dubious: he had used electric shocks to treat all sorts of conditions, from gonorrhoea to asthma, and had made unsubstantiated claims to have found cures for tuberculosis and anaemia.

Inevitably, more Tricho victims appeared in JAMA, including a patient in Washington DC “so depressed as a result of the disfigurement of the X-ray burn that she attempted suicide”. Geyser, it seemed, had either been too greedy to heed any warnings, or had convinced himself that his Cornell tubes really were safe. Whatever his motivation, he had installed poorly regulated X-ray machines across the country, and tens of thousands of women – perhaps even more – were exposed to massive doses of radiation on their faces and arms. They had also received wildly varying doses: some women had as few as four treatments, others as many as 50. And because X-ray exposure rises as an inverse square of distance, even a slight shift in sitting position could double or treble a client’s dose.

With the prospect of being sued for millions of dollars, the Tricho Sales Corporation collapsed in 1930. …

If we all feel a sort of vicarious relief at this point, turns out, it’s premature. Other companies noticing the financial success of the Tricho clinics developed their own “copycat operations.” If the training was miniscule for the Tricho clinicians, it seems that it was even less among these newcomers to the game. Medical and business groups responded by trying to close down these outfits, too. But they just went underground. The article says that in 1940, San Francisco detectives were on the trail of what they thought was an illegal abortion clinic. To their surprise, no doubt, the place in question was instead one of these hair-removal-by-radiation shops. And such shops were still taking in customers “at least” into the 1950’s.

Since all radiation-poisoning “fallout” isn’t noticeable immediately, you can imagine how the story of the customers of the Tricho clinics kept coming up again and again in doctors offices into the 1960’s and 70’s.

One 80-year-old woman arrived with a grapefruit-sized tumour in her head; another refused treatment until she had “a huge and deep crater occupying practically the whole lower half of the breast and the chest wall immediately below it”. By 1970, US researchers were attributing over one-third of radiation-induced cancers in women to X-ray hair removal.

Given cancer’s long latency and the many years that Tricho parlours and their ilk persisted, the procedure may not yet have claimed its final victim. Tricho’s most famous customer, though, had reason long ago to regret her endorsement. After spending her final years as a recluse in a small hotel room off Broadway, Ann Pennington died in 1971. Her cause of death, it was reported, was a brain tumour.

Now, no one is wishing a grapefruit sized tumor on to Jenny McCarthy or anything. For one thing, in the updated case of quack driven nonsense, the gullible celebrity endorser is not the one who is being subjected to questionable therapies. It’s her son. And no one wishes any harm to come to Jenny’s son in the least. He looks like an adorable boy. It’s a shame his mother has been fooled into believing the whole “most of these kids are practically saturated with candida yeast, it’s the reason they go all stimmy … it makes them act crazy…put them on a prescription antifungal and a restrictive diet and you’ll get your kid back,” thing (not to mention the whole anti-vax and autism epidemic thing). If his mom and doc sent a blood sample off to Immunosciences lab before it was closed (this past July) then she likely got a bogus positive result. Then the fool doctor could write a prescription for a toxic antifungal (all drugs are toxic, don’t you know, depends on the dose) that the kid likely didn’t need–just to make mommy feel like she’s doing all she can to “pull her son through a rapidly closing window” and give her something to write about besides.

One really scary lesson from the Tricho debacle is that this deadly quackery hung around for so long. In this case, bad news, the news that these radiation machines could easily cause a client’s slow death, besides creating some really ugly skin, didn’t seem to travel quickly enough. Tricho shut down in 1930, but the technique and hype they developed was still be employed forty years later on new suckers, the ones born every minute. The Candida yeast (as cause of dozens of chronic disorders) business was a stupid health fad in the 1980’s. The fad died for the most part, but apparently Jenny didn’t know about it, or didn’t take a clue from it, and here she is in 2007 promoting it as the thing that stood between her autistic son and being a typical kid.

It was interesting that the Tricho company was founded by an apparently unethical doctor, Albert Geyser, who had a pretty respectible looking CV, and who claimed to have great insights into and treatments for many different diseases. Albert went into business with his son. Hmmm. Who does that remind one of? Someone else with a German name that sounds a bit like Geyser. There’s also a creepy and creepier brother duo in autism quackery with a similarly questionable looking, but less impressive-looking background.

When one compares the seeming safety profile of Mr. and Dr. Yasko’s (and Garry Gordon’s) ridiculous RNA yeast soup, or the homeopathic water drops said to be favored by Katie Wright, with something like Lupron and IV chelation, one can almost be grateful for such benign, if expensive and reprehensibly misrepresented, “cures.” But there are major question-marks hanging over the safety of things like long-term, high-dose methyl B12 injections given to kids who are not deficient in B12. There are questions about high doses of any vitamins for anyone. Some mineral supplements are contaminated with heavy metals, so are some chelators, apparently. Lots of biomedded kids take vitamin and mineral supplements. There are questions about the dangers of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, like what if the kid is susceptible to seizures and you put him in the HBOT tank and the extra oxygen kindles these seizures?

As for the recent Jenny McCarthy road show and it’s effect on the DAN! dox customer base, it’s hard to say who needed whom more–DAN! suffering from a series of bad PR breaks, or Jenny suffering from a sagging career and a failed attempt at making a go with the Indigomom Crystalkid schtick. It’s hard enough for a talented actress to keep getting work at age 35, they say, imagine what it’s like for short-on-talent Jenny with her now famed post-pregnancy stretch-marks “that glow in the dark … for some reason!”.

DAN! and Jenny McCarthy deserve each other. Let’s hope they both quickly skulk out of the limelight and into obscurity and may they take their quack therapies, benign or not, with them.

Paul Collins is the writer of the above mentioned New Scientist article. The writing style would seem to indicate that it’s the same Paul Collins who is the author of the fantastic book, “Not Even Wrong.” If so, this Mr. Collins is the father of a beloved autistic boy.

The Wizard Of Oprah

21 Sep

Hey, it’s Thursday evening. Why don’t we stop by and see what the cat dragged in over at Rescue Host. Holy Vaccinations Batman! It’s more autism epidemic gibberish! The current installment comes to us from Kelli Ann Davis, who writes:

I knew the day was coming. With numbers like 1 in 150 children and 1 in 94 boys, “it” was bound to happen.

Her “it” apparently refers to the recent appearances of some fellow believers on daytime television. Davis goes on to share some apparent feelings of vindication:

I must of recited “the-numbers-are-getting-larger-and-our-voices-are-getting-louder” mantra at least a bazillion times over the last 5 years, cuz that’s how many meetings it feels like I’ve been in. but it never seemed to resonate.

There’s a good reason it probably didn’t seem to, for Kelli Ann, and doesn’t resonate in general. It’s because there isn’t any data that shows that “the-numbers” are actually getting larger. There is no question that there are indeed many more people being diagnosed as “on the autism spectrum”. But the thing is, the very definition of what professionals say autism is, changed dramatically in the not too distant past – even the conceptualization of autism as a spectrum of disorders is relatively recent development.

I think there’s a reasonable explanation for many of the “vaccines dunnit” voices getting louder. I’ve noticed a similar phenomenon in my own household, and I’m even guilty of it myself from time to time. Sometimes people craving attention (or just needing to be listened to) get louder and louder. Do four or five little children always calmly discuss who should get to go first in a game? Do they always rationally reason with each other about who should have the biggest piece of cake? What about children competing for the attention of a parent? Do they always stop, raise their hands, and quietly wait their turn? My opinion is that it’s often natural to shout. Shouting doesn’t automatically make one incorrect in their assertions, but it doesn’t make one correct either. It’s just shouting.

The difference here is that while shouting like children may garner attention, it does not change scientific reality. It just doesn’t matter if there are a million voices reciting the mantras of a flat earth, an autism ‘epidemic’, or flying saucers. No quantity of repetitive nonsense will construct any assertion’s truth. Without evidence that it is true, a failed hypothesis is doomed to the clutches of a handful of village idiots – and probably inevitably, a few celebrities too.

What does Kelli Ann have for us to demonstrate that “the-numbers-are-getting- larger”? Will it be daytime TV demagoguery?

Okay. So now “it” has arrived….in full Oprah force…..and I’m anxious to see if the “powers that be” FINALLY get “it.”

Ah, the “Appeal to Oprah”. Extremely similar to a simple appeal to popularity, but garnished with a household name that’s guaranteed to stir emotion and draw both media, and popular attention.

Kelli Ann might as well just write:

“Cuz everyone knows, “if you seen ’em on Oprah, they must be right”.

Should the “powers that be” Kelli Ann refers to, whomever or whatever that means, be worried if they don’t “FINALLY get it”? Only if they pay attention to that TV personality behind the curtain. Let’s hope they aren’t fooled into asking for a brain, heart, courage, or a trip home, and instead, ask to see everyone’s data.

Why Aren’t You “Scared To Death”?

13 Sep

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

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

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

I asked him the following in the comments:

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

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

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

You can view such a graph here.

To which he replied:

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

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

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

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

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

Source

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

Source

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

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

Emphasis mine.

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

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

Did you catch this part of that paragraph above?

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

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

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

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

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

JB Handley’s Emerging Hypothesis

9 Sep

The Handley’s are now proud parents to a third child. Many congratulations to them. I hope their daughter gives them as much pride and happiness as my two have given me over the years.

Of course, for JB, its all about the autism. And so, he details the steps the family took to ‘ensure’ this third child wasn’t autistic. Its, um, interesting reading.

First Brad reminisces about whats on the GR site:

It’s probably worth taking a quick step back. The Generation Rescue website spells out pretty accurately how we feel about the cause of
autism:

We believe these neurological disorders (“NDs”) are environmental illnesses caused by an overload of heavy metals, live viruses, and
bacteria. Proper treatment of our children, known as “biomedical intervention”, is leading to recovery for thousands.

Yeah, you do _now_ – it used to be:

It’s nothing more than mercury poisoning

And whilst Brad was happy to carry this simple message to the TV masses, he’s seemingly less happy to go back on and say, well no, I was wrong actually. Its in fact ‘overload of heavy metals, live viruses, and bacteria’. And as for ‘leading to recovery for thousands’…heh yeah, whatever.

But anyway, back to the Emerging Hypothesis of preventing autism. What has JB Handley come up with?

we began to develop a plan to prepare for life before and after birth that we believed would reduce the chances for another autistic child.

And what does this plan entail?

Early Preparation for Mom (prior to conception):

– Switching to a gluten/casein free diet
– Eating organic foods and avoiding all artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives
– Limiting sugar
– Focusing on gut health through a combination of anti-fungal treatment, beneficial bacteria re-population, and digestive enzymes
– Detoxifying the body through a combination of chelation and natural detoxification techniques like FIR sauna, NDF Plus, Zeolites, etc.
– Adding a pre-natal vitamin and B-12

During pregnancy:

– Maintaining all dietary approaches listed above
– Avoiding all vaccines
– Avoiding any environmental risks like lead paint, home construction, cleaners and solvents, chemicals, etc.
– Avoiding antibiotics except in life-or-death situations
– Avoiding x-rays and sonograms, unless high-risk birth issues exist
– Continuing supplementation of pre-natal vitamins, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and B-12
– Proper supplementation of mom’s methylation cycle based on genetics

After birth:

– Maintaining all dietary approaches and supplements listed above while breastfeeding
– Holding off on introducing solid-foods until at least 6 months
– Avoiding antibiotics for breastfeeding mom and baby except in life-or-death situations
– Avoiding any environmental risks like lead paint, home construction, cleaners and solvents, chemicals, etc.
– Supplementing baby with infant-safe probiotics
– Avoiding all vaccines for at least the first 2 years of life, and then taking extraordinary caution
– At the right time (typically 6 months or older), adding proper methylation cycle support
– At the right time, proper supplementation of Omega3-6-9
– Providing natural detoxification through things like Epsom salt baths

So mum has to go through an extremely rigorous program. What does dad have to do?

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Fuck all.

Children are, it seems, conceived solely by the female and thus the male’s biology plays no part. Or maybe JB just couldn’t stomach the thought that men’s sperm might play a role.

OK now, back on real street, lets look at a few things.

Firstly, this child is a third born female. Sibling risk of recurrence for autism with the previous birth of any child with autism is thought to be about 4.5% (the numbers are higher for families with a firstborn female with autism or more than one child with autism). That’s right, about 4.5%. That means that there is an approximately 95.5% chance, based on the available science, that a third child born into a family with one autistic child who is not a firstborn male, will not be autistic. Let’s say that again – a 95.5 % chance for non-autistic (maybe even higher if the child is female). From a purely statistical perspective, that’s a very high probability for a non-autistic child. (Source).

If this daughter _doesn’t_ end up being autistic, what do you think is more likely to be the reason? The +95% chance it wouldn’t have happened anyway? Or JB’s course of mummy purification?

Acceptance not denial

22 Aug

Acceptance. It is a word that some use to describe their relationship with the reality of their children, or their own, autism. We accept the fact our daughter is autistic.

For people who claim to ‘fight autism’ this acceptance is a weak passivity. An act of giving in.

This, of course, is rubbish. Those who have accepted the reality of their own or their children’s autism know that the work starts right there. We do not attempt to carry on deluding ourselves and using quack treatments such as chelation etc as shields against the reality of who our kids really are.

Parents like Brad Handley of Generation Rescue claim at one point in time that:

“autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning…..The whole notion of autism is mythical. It didn’t exist before thimerosal in vaccines”

Source

and then later say:

The argument is being spun by focusing exclusively on a single ingredient used in vaccines, Thimerosal (which is made from mercury), while forgetting to mention a number of key points about the differences between the vaccine schedule of 20 years ago and today….Thimerosal is only one of the possible ways that the vaccine schedule could be the primary trigger behind the autism epidemic…

Source

are simply in denial. When their first belief is established to be untrue, they simply move on to another belief.

From the videos I posted a link to above, Brad is asked:

Q: This therapy (chelation) is it something he (Jamie) will be on the rest of his life?

Brad’s answer is:

A: Absolutely not. Its at maximum a two year process. Probably less.

As of next month, Jamie Handley will have been undergoing various treatments for three years. His story is not, as far as I can tell, listed anywhere as a ‘recovery’ story. He is still autistic.

Brad has made no effort to go back onto TV and explain this inconsistency. This is because he cannot. It is not explainable. I will be honest. Brad and I regularly exchange verbal barbs but I often feel sorry for the Handley’s. Because of their inability to accept the reality of their sons autism they have been unable to move on. They have instead – as I think is the case with a lot of the autism/vaccine parents – sublimated their failure to ‘cure/recover’ their kids in a proxy-fight with the ND’s, the CDC, the FDA – whatever.

I read a lot of blogs from the likes of Wade, Ginger, Kim Stagliano etc and whilst I often read about their anger and I often read about their love for their kids, I never ever read about them being happy. Do they love their kids? Of course they do. Do they enjoy their time with their autistic kids? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

There is a curious emphasis in a lot of these blog posts. Take Kim Stagliano’s most infamous blog entry – The Crappy Life of the Autism Mom – in which she says:

Recovering your kids doesn’t mean denying their value as people. To the contrary, it means we are willing to devote our lives, our savings, our sanity to their improved health, development and well being.

The jarring difference between stating that she is not denying their value and describing her life as their mum as crappy never occurs to her. It is also sad beyond belief that Stagliano feels that the measure of a persons value is the suffering of their parents.

Of course, the truth is that any decent parent will devote their lives, savings and sanity to their kids well being. That is not a situation that is the sole province of autism or even disability. Just parenting. However, I think that as well as lives, money and sanity, a parent should also invest respect and reality. Sublimating a continued tilting at the windmill of your child’s condition into an increasingly dirty and violent fight against a giant conspiracy is sad. Not sad in a sneering way but genuinely sad. It must be so miserable to be simply unable to accept the reality of the nature of your child.

This inability manifests itself in some strange ways. There have been a spate of articles fairly recently which examine the possibility that older parents are more likely to have autistic kids, or that autism might be due to a ‘corrupted’ (in the medical sense) gene. The outbursts these research papers have generated on EoH are amazing:

You forgot to mention that we’re damn old TESTOSTERONE-laden refrigerator mutant moms……………Here’s more from Autism Speaks funded research. So now the theory is it’s you damn old moms with your refrigerator mutant genes that causes autism. You are such horrible people. Tsk-tsk. Clearly, you aren’t feeling guilty enough, no matter how misplaced.

Any hypothesis which mentions or refers to parents is given equally short shrift. It doesn’t take much to work out why. Even when there is no hint of ‘blame’ (as in dear old Bettlehiem) to parents, any intimation that the genetic/physical make up of parents might have something to do with causes is pounced on and denounced in increasingly hysterical overtones.

Personally I don’t see the issue. Does it matter? No, not to me. But it seems to these parents that the idea that they might carry some responsibility for the fact their kids are autistic fills them with an utter horror. Even to the point that they have to delude themselves.

Take the cases of Erik Nanstiel’s daughter and John Best’s son. Here are two fathers who regularly sing the praises of their children’s doctors (the Geier’s and Andy Cutler respectively) and yet…

When we look back at everything we pay out of pocket… and for everything we pay as a co-pay… it’s several THOUSAND a year.

Why are we still doing biomed after six long years? Because we’ve seen our daughter go from failing-to-thrive to a pretty healthy kid. From a kid who couldn’t balance her copper and zinc… who had lead and mercury through the roof, with very little glutathione… who had constant diarrhea and wouldn’t sleep at night… and terrible eyesight…

to a kid with darn-near normal mineral levels, whose heavy metals have been more than half depleted, is thriving on a good nutritional program… and whose glutathione levels are now higher than daddy’s… is sleeping wonderfully through the night and has seen a 60% improvement in her eyeglass prescription.

She’s also nearly lost her tactile-defensiveness, loves attention (much more than before), stims a LOT less… is beginning to potty train and needs less “prompting” from us for life skills that she’s learning (like using silverware at meal time and dressing/undressing, etc.)

She is still considered low-functioning…

Like Brad and I, Erik and I have also had our fair share of verbal jousts but when I read this I want to weep. How can a man who so obviously adores his daughter fail to see that which is right in front of his face? They’ve been doing biomed for six years and his daughter is still low functioning (Erik’s words). The improvements he describes have little to no bearing on autism.

I waste no pity on John Best but once again, his denial is as plain as the autistic son in front of him:

I’ve done 55 rounds of chelation safely following the advice of Andy Cutler. My son keeps improving. I advise everyone that contacts me through GR to read what Cutler has to say and consider his protocol over what some DAN doc’s say. He has answered all of my questions at no cost and this chelation for a severely autistic child is working.

Whereas today, John made a post on EoH that stated:

In the time it took me to type my last reply, my son smeared feces all over himself and his room again. I’ve long since lost track of how many hundreds of times this has happened.

By the standards of Kim Stagliano – smearing (A Crappy Life remember) equals not cured. How exactly is the chelation working for John’s son? Or is it merely a panacea for the denial that ails his dad?

Andrew Wakefield, MMR and….The Observer??

8 Jul

I have a category tag on this blog especially for the loons at the Daily Mail (Melanie Phillips et al) which I usually select whenever I write about Andrew Wakefield or the MMR because its invariably one of them doing the writing.

This time I was amazed to see that it was that usual bastion of intelligence and propriety, The Observer, that had decided to play the role of media dumbass. Obviously the mail and Private Eye are having an off day.

First up was Andrew Wakefield himself – comparing himself to Vaclav Havel no less he pontificates:

Wakefield told The Observer that he has no regrets for saying what he did in 1998 nor for continuing to seek to prove his view of MMR as the likeliest explanation for the rise in cases of autism in Britain. Almost every child health expert, though, regards the jab as hugely beneficial to public health and rules out any connection between it and autism.

‘My concern is that it’s biologically plausible that the MMR vaccine causes or contributes to the disease in many children, and that nothing in the science so far dissuades me from the continued need to pursue that question’, Wakefield said.

Nothing in the science? Is he joking?

How about the sworn testimony of Stephen Bustin, the world expert in the technique Wakefield’s lab of choice screwed up:

What I immediately observed was that they had forgotten to do the RT step…….If you detect a target that is apparently measles virus in the absence of an RT step by definition it can’t be measles virus because it has to be DNA. It’s a very simple concept. At least it is to me. It’s not to everyone else……[b]ecause measles virus doesn’t exist as a DNA molecule in nature, they cannot be detecting measles virus….

What’s not to get here Andy? Your lab fucked up. And whats more, in your original study, you ignored the fact that you had been proven wrong:

Q Okay. Did you personally test the gut biopsy samples for measles RNA?
A Yes.

Q What tests did you perform?
A A PCR test, a polymerase chain reaction.

Q What results did you receive from the gut biopsy materials for measles RNA?
A They were all negative.

Q They were always negative?
A Yes. There were a few cases of false positive results, which I used a method to see whether they were real positive results or false positive, and in every case they turned out to be false positive results. Essentially all the samples tested were negative.

…….

Q So you personally tested while you were in Dr. Wakefield’s lab gut biopsy material, CSF and PBMCs?
A Yes, that’s right.

Q And all the results were either negative, or if they were positive it always turned out that they were false positives?
A Yes, that’s correct.

Q Did you inform Dr. Wakefield of the negative results?
A Yes. Yes.

Please, someone – anyone – I mean it, anyone. please explain to me _what science_ exists that supports Andrew Wakefield’s opinion that ‘it’s biologically plausible that the MMR vaccine causes or contributes to [autism]’.

Also in The Observer (where is the third to complete the Trifecta of Stupid?) is the story:

New health fears over big surge in autism

And how did The Observer know this?

A study, as yet unpublished, shows that as many as one in 58 children may have some form of the condition

An unpublished study…? So, in other words, hearsay? Is there any indication as to the methodology of this study?

Well, according to Public Address, the team used the CAST (Childhood Asperger Syndrome Test) tool for evaluation. CAST has the following conclusion applied to it by the team that developed it:

The CAST is useful as a screening test for autism spectrum conditions in epidemiological research. There is not currently enough evidence to recommend the use of the CAST as a screening test within a public health screening programme in the general population

Those sorts of questionnaires are preliminary, for children who *might* have an ASD, and who should be followed up. If you take the 1 in 58 having features that might make you suspicious of ASD, then it’s a much more realistic feature – go down the full diagnostic road and you’re going to find that not all of them have an ASD.

And yet this is trumpted as a new health fear? An alternate and much more accurate headline would be: _We think some kids may have autism but we haven’t really tested for it at all_ – not quite as snappy though I grant you.

And hey, how did this story get linked to the MMR?

Seven academics at Cambridge University, six of them from its renowned Autism Research Centre, undertook the research by studying children at local primary schools. Two of the academics, leaders in their field, privately believe that the surprisingly high figure may be linked to the use of the controversial MMR vaccine.

Well, well, I wonder how these two could be? Again, from Public Address (link as above):

Dr Fiona Scott and Dr Carol Stott. Stott is a psychologist and is about as qualified to comment on diseases of the gut, immunology and PCR testing (all of which are relevant to the MMR claims) as I am. But there’s more to it. Her name will be known to anyone who has looked at this saga. It was Stott who sent a string of abusive emails to Brian Deer, which led to a formal warning from the British Psychological Society. (Stott accused her colleagues of failing to support her in her battle with Deer because they were in thrall of drug companies.)

Campbell doesn’t tell his readers all that. He also forgets to note that Stott is no longer employed as a junior researcher at Cambridge. She now works with the California-based clinic Thoughtful House, which is run by – did you see this coming? – Andrew Wakefield. As you might expect, Deer takes a dim view of what goes on there.

Until Deer started writing about it, Stott and Dr Fiona Scott shared a website, on which they touted their “substantial experience in medico-legal and educational-legal expert witness work” to parents who might have been minded to pursue legal action in the belief that the MMR vaccine had caused their children’s autism.

It would appear that either or both of Stott and Scott are Campbell’s source, and that the timing of the story around Wakefield’s return to face the music before the GMC is no accident.

Suddenly, the story becomes clearer. Andrew Wakefield is on a PR campaign to paint himself as the beatific hero of the piece and his two glamorous assistants are happy to sell out their study partners in order to help him. of course, this will also entail rehashing all the unfounded and non-scientific fears about autism and MMR just to muddy the waters a bit.

I am not surprised at Wakefield or his two cronies. But The Observer? I’m surprised to say the least.

Update from Ben at Badscience

Ben has received email from Fiona Scott regarding this. Her email reads:

I can respond to your question in terms of the following which will be the
formal press release available from the National Autistic Society:

The Cambridge University Autism Research Centre have not yet released the
findings from their prevalence study, as the study is not yet complete. The
Cambridge researchers are surprised that an unpublished report of their work
was described out of context by the Observer. They are investigating how
this report was made available to the Observer. They are equally surprised
that the Observer fabricated comments attributed to their team. They do not
believe there is any link between rising prevalence and the MMR, or chemical
toxins. It is untrue that Prof Baron-Cohen “was so concerned by the 1 in 58
figure that he proposed informing public health officials in the county “.
Such journalism raises anxiety unnecessarily and is irresponsible.

So it really does seem as if The Observer has out-and-out fabricated comments. Incredible.

Elsewhere

Autism Diva
Autism Vox
BadScience
Black Triangle
Mike Stanton
Public Address
Shinga
Tim Worstall
Tony Hatfield

What will change?

30 Jun

The first of the nine ‘test’ Autism Omnibus cases has wrapped up. This was also the first of the designated three that will attempt to associate autism with MMR _and_ Thiomersal causation.

In todays’ Wall Street Journal, Professor Roy Richard Grinker, author of Unstrange Minds wraps up what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks:

Over the last three weeks, I listened to testimony in the first of nine test cases in the U.S. Vaccine Court (Cedillo v. Health and Human Services) considering the question of whether a mercury-based vaccine preservative called thimerosal (which used to be in many vaccines), or the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine, or both together, caused autism in Michelle Cedillo, the plaintiffs’ daughter.

I heard some of the world’s leading experts on autism, immunology, and vaccines testify that there is no biological model to account for an autism-vaccine connection, no scientific evidence or credible studies linking the two. They argue, instead, that autism is largely genetic. And yet just last week, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., wrote in the Huffington Post that there are “hundreds of research studies” from a dozen countries providing “undeniable” proof that vaccines cause autism and Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana) wrote a letter to the president of NBC claiming that there is increasingly conclusive evidence that thimerosal caused an “epidemic” of autism. Scores of websites and autism advocacy groups are convinced of the connection, and the vast majority of scientists and physicians can’t understand why.

………….

The scientific testimony has been devastating to the plaintiffs because the recognized experts on autism, vaccines, and immunology do not support even one of these premises, let alone a linkage between any of them. The only thing the government and Cedillos agree on is that Michelle Cedillo has autism.

However, I can assure you that those who support the Cedillo’s – and the Cedillo’s themselves don’t see it like that.

I was able to attend the hearing on Friday.

As I sat in the court room and listen to the twisted bull generated by the defense, I wanted to scream out, “you have proof of what
thimerisol does in the human body-look at all these damaged kids.”

This was posted by Holly (I assume Bortfield) on the Yahoo EoH group. Her response typifies exactly why it won’t make one shred of difference to these people what the outcome of the Cedillo case is – or the other eight to come.

These are not people who are swayed by science. To them, decent, peer reviewed science is ‘twisted bull’. To them idiocy posted to JPANDS, Medical Veritas etc is gospel truth.

This court hearing revealed once and for all Andrew Wakefield’s deliberate falsification of science and the O’Leary labs accidental false reporting of negative samples. In the O’Leary lab it was sloppy science. In Wakefield’s hands it was knowingly ignoring evidence that showed his error plainly. Without Wakefield and without the O’Leary results there was no MMR association to autism whatsoever. That testimony alone is enough to sink the Cedillo case and all other MMR related cases that may come after.

But as Arthur Allen writes in Slate:

None of that moves Laura Wildman, 47, whose son’s case is before the court and who drove from her home near Pittsburgh to watch the hearing, which ended this week. “I know what happened to my son after he got his MMR shot,” she told me. “I have no doubt. There’s no way they’ll convince me that all these kids were not damaged by vaccines.”

At some point we may have to realise that what we are dealing with here is simply blind, deliberate ignorance.

Even the plaintiffs lawyers realise this. Here’s a telling quote from Michelle Cedillo’s lawyer:

The government position is backed by the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, which has repeatedly found the vaccines safe. But what the Cedillos and other parents lack in hard data, they have made up for with a stubborn passion and sorrow that science cannot dispute. _”It is parents versus science,”_ said Kevin Conway, one of the attorneys for the Cedillos.

Parents vs science. Indeed it is.

The real sorrow here is that the Cedillo’s continue, in the face of all reason, logic and evidence, to passionately insist MMR caused Michelle’s autism.

On the Evidence of Harm yahoo group – and on various other Yahoo groups, the conspiracy theories are already being polished.

Theory one states that the media – bought off by Pharma – have reported nothing but science and dismissed the opinions of parents. This theory goes on to continue to suggest that the three Special Masters will be under the sway of the media.

Its true that the media have not been kind to the mercury militia. This is because there is nothing to write about in their beliefs except for the fact that they are beliefs. The science lies with Respondents.

Theory two suggests that the Special Masters are Pharma plants. Various members of the mercury militia are carefully combing through the backgrounds of these three Special Masters for Pharma connections they can wave about.

Will they ever let this go? Of course not. You cannot reason someone out of a belief they did not reason themselves into.

Lisa Sykes and Paul King: CoMed with a silent ‘y’

17 Apr

One of the more extreme quackery groups formed post-EoH is CoMed (the ‘y’ is silent) which is run by the Rev Lisa Sykes and Dr Paul King recently emailed a large group of people with a PDF Press Release that tried to make the case that autistic children were proven to be clinically mercury poisoned.

How did they reach this earth shattering conclusion? By stating that two papers and one methodology backed them up. Have a read of the document – its a fascinating example of how the militia attempt to ‘spin’ the reality of the situation and try to make things sounds like a given. Note the silent switch about halfway through from talking about ‘mercury’ in general to talking about ‘vaccines’ in particular.

Anyway, Sykes and King were good enough to note only post this press release on EoH but also to tell the group exactly who they had emailed – a motely crew, ranging from fellow whacko’s like David Ayoub to Governer Arnie “I’ll be back” Schwarzenegger, plus a host of journalists, lawyers etc.

So, I thought I’d better put these poor people straight and consequently sent them a letter. This is what I sent them:

Dear Madams and Sirs,

Firstly, please accept my apologies for the unsolicited email. I hope it is not intrusive.

I wanted to write to you as you were the recipients of a recent email/PDF press release from the group ComEd regarding their belief that ‘Autistic Children Clinically Proven Mercury Poisoning’. I wanted to offer an alternative to this erroneous belief. I will cite any references I make and I promise to keep this brief.

The ComEd press release uses two studies[1,2] and a technique as the ‘mainstay’ of its certainty that autistic children are clinically proven to be mercury poisoned.

The Geier paper [1] is an attempted replication of the Nataf paper [2] and suffers from its same substantial drawbacks.

Issue one: The role of precoproporphyrin.

Nataf et al claim that the presence of elevated precoproporphyrin is a specific indicator of mercury toxicity. They do this on the basis of three studies produced by one author[3,4,5]. When these studies are read properly, if we ask the question “Does exposure to heavy metals cause a relative elevation for certain porphyrin compounds in urine?” the answer would appear to be “Yes.” However, If we ask the question “Is the presence of certain urinary porphyrin compounds a specific indicator of heavy metal toxicity?” the answer would have to be “No”[6]

The Woods papers are interesting but far from conclusive enough for the Nataf and consequently Geier papers to reply on.

Issue two: Creatinine and the subsequent UPPA technique

In their press release ComEd claim that the UPPA (urinary porphyrin profile analysis) technique is a ‘highly accurate’ method of determining toxicity. Indeed, it is the method used by the Nataf and Geier papers. In this method, the urine of children is collected and analysed for the presence of porphyrin’s. If they are elevated then QED: the children must be metal poisoned.

Except its not as simple as that. The content, volume and dilution of urine varies considerably from patient to patient. The way around this issue is to measure a secondary constant element from the urine and compare the amount of porphyrins found against the amount of this compound and express the result as a ratio. This is what Nataf, Geier and the UPPA technique does. It utilises creatinine – a constant in urine – to provide a baseline figure and thus get an accurate percentage of porphyrins.

This is a standard way of measuring compounds in urine. The only issue is found when the population in question (autistic children in this case) are known to have significantly low levels of creatinine. Obviously, this would skew the results considerably and present a false reading of elevated porphyrins.

Is there recorded instances of low creatinine in autistic kids? It seems that there might be.

“Spot urinary creatinine excretion in pervasive developmental disorders” published in Pediatrics International[7], reports low creatinine levels in PDD:

a significant decrease in urinary creatinine concentration was found in the PDD group compared to controls using a Mann–Whitney two-tailed ranks test.

Of course, this just one study. Its a good start but thats it. But maybe its interesting that the group of maverick DAN! doctors (of whom one is treating Rev Sykes of ComEd’s autistic son I believe) also find low creatinine in autistic kids[8]:

“”Creatinine is often found to be marginal in the urine of autistics, and low creatinine can skew urine analyte results to high levels. So, also take note of creatinine levels if the laboratory results include ratioing to creatinine.””

I engaged in an email exchange with Professor Richard Lathe, secondary author of the Nataf paper[2] regarding the study his group had published and I questioned him at length regarding this creatinine issue. He said:

1.There was no significant decline in urinary CRT levels in any of the autism groups, though there was a non-significant trend to a reduced level. 2. Reduced CRT, and increased porphyrin, both appear to be markers of environmental toxicity.

However, neither of these observations were reported in the published paper. Lathe described it as ‘pointless’ to publish all data. I disagreed with him citing the uncertainty over creatinine levels and he conceded:

The long and short of it is that the response of CRT to different levels of heavy metal toxicity has not been studied adequately.

Which is a troubling statement considering that his paper required CRT to be well understood and to be functioning as described in order for the science in the paper to be accurate.

Lathe also conceded that other key parts of his paper (and consequently the UPPA method) were in doubt and relied on science that had been refuted and thrown out of court when attempted to be used in private prosecution[9]

The UPPA method has been in use for some time amongst adherents to the theory that mercury poisoning (notably from vaccines) causes autism. I have found numerous emails to a private access Yahoo Group called ‘chelating2kids’ which details peoples experiences with this method. Here are just three.:

1: “A fellow listmate had her son tested twice– once over the summer which showed he had no elevated metals, and one this fall that showed he did indeed have elevated metal levels. She has sent an email to the lab asking about the differing results and has not received a response. I believe she is still trying to contact them”

2: “FWIW, my neighbor’s dad happens to be a porphyrin specialist here in Boston (believe it or not– how many of those are there??). He reviewed lots of info for me– Nataf’s paper, my son’s results that showed very elevated metals across the board– and said he would have rejected the paper for publication had he been asked to review it. He said that fecal, not urine, should be used to measure the porphyrin levels. I sent an email to the lab inquiring about this and also received no response”

3: “I just received the results of the French porphyrin test for myself and my 7 year old NT [NeuroTypical – i.e. non autistic] daughter, and the results also show severe lead and mercury toxicity. My daughters numbers are worse than my ASD son!”

In closing, I would suggest that any assurances that mercury poisoning as a causative agent of autism are even likely, let alone ‘clinically proven’ should be taken with a very large grain of salt. I would also suggest that Rev Sykes role as an anti-vaccine activist and vaccine/autism litigant[10] are taken into account when considering the validity and motives of this press release.

Thanks for listening. My motive for writing this email is that, as parent to a severely autistic seven year old girl, I am sick to death of hearing bad science and media-driven misrepresentations attempt to coerce from autistic people what they truly need – decent, peer reviewed science which lead to good educational interventions for all autistic people. Thanks again.

References

[1]PubMed
[2]PubMed
[3]PubMed
[4]PubMed
[5]PubMed
[6]NotMercury
[7]Ingenta
[8]Google Cache of DAN! site
[9]Me
[10]Neurodiversity.com

I’ve had a number of fascinating responses, but my far and away favourite response was:

thank you for your email it has made it easier to apply you to my junk filter even though the junk file is far to good for the likes of you sir.

Which I received from one David Ayoub MD. The same man I publicly challenged to a web based debate less than two weeks ago on a third party letters page and who backed down.

Update: 18th April 2007

Dr King of CoMed produced a response to my rebuttal. You can read that here. and I couldn’t resist one more frolic through the CoMedy logic,as you can read here.

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