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Yet more Scientology and Autism

11 Mar

After my post on Friday detailing how one of the ‘recovered’ poster children of Generation Rescue was in fact diagnosed, treated and recovered by Scientologists (people who do not, by definition, believe in psychiatric conditions), I was forwarded another piece of information that really did make me sit back in my chair and wonder where this was all leading.

Dan Burton is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Indiana. He is a firm believer in the autism/vaccine connection, being on record as stating:

“My only grandson became autistic right before my eyes – shortly after receiving his federally recommended and state-mandated vaccines”

He has acted in the interests of various parent led organisations who claim to be autism advocates and has become a powerful voice.

However, as the saying goes: behind every great man…

The people behind Dan Burton include (or used to) one Sarah Elizabeth (Beth) Clay who:

Beth Clay is Congressman Burton’s assistant, and Burton is the Chair of the House Oversight Committee.

This puts Ms Clay in a position of some strength with a man who is in a powerful position. In fact, as we can see Ms Clay has lobbied for SafeMinds, one of the largest antivax/autism movements, on numerous occasions.

Ms Clay also runs her own lobbying organisation BC and A International:

During her Capitol Hill tenure, Ms. Clay’s work focused on several breakthrough issues, including: complementary and alternative medicine, dietary supplement regulation, the epidemic rise in rates of autism spectrum disorders…..issues…..mercury and heavy metal toxicity

However, Ms Clay’s CV also includes other activities that are oddly not mentioned on BC and A’s website. She is a Board Member of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, an organisation that:

CCHR was founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and the internationally acclaimed author, Dr. Thomas Szasz.

Yup, Beth Clay, Assistant to Congressman Dan Burton and hired gun of SafeMinds is a Scientologist, or works with them.

We now have several DAN! doctors who are scientologists, several thiomersal/autism lawyers who are scientologists, a ‘cured’ child who was diagnosed (partly), treated and ‘cured’ by scientologists and now one Congressman who’s advisor is a scientologist. We also have one indirect link from scientology to Generation Rescue (in the shape of Julia Berle, founding parent of that organisation and mother to the ‘cured’ child described above) and one direct link from scientology to SafeMinds in the shape of Beth Clay.

Maybe its worth reminding ourselves what Scientology is. According to ex-scientologist, Roland Rashleigh-Berry, Scientology is:

….a vicious and dangerous cult that masquerades as a religion. Its purpose is to make money. It practices a variety of mind-control techniques on people lured into its midst to gain control over their money and their lives

The founder of this cult, L Ron Hubbard, once said:

Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion

Or maybe sell snake oil.

Autism and Scientology again

9 Mar

Awhile ago, I wrote a post the detailed the disturbing links between the DAN! movement and scientology. It transpired that scientology – being a movement that is big on non psychiatric modes of treatments is a good fit for DAN! adherents. Both value detoxification for a range of things and it seems Scientologists have not been slow to ingratiate themselves into the DAN! movement. So far, I’ve identified three Scientologists who are also DAN! Doctors. One of them was involved in the death of a parent of a schizophrenic man in 2002.

One of the darlings of the autism/vaccine movement is Julia Berle who’s son, Baxter, was used in a Generation Rescue advert. Ms Berle is a frequent poster to various autism/vaccine groups. Her signature reads;

Julia, mom to Baxter, recovered in 2005, Founding Parent of Generation Rescue

As mum to a recovered child, Ms Berle’s opinion is sought in many places and she never stints from dispensing the advice she got far and wide.

Baxter Berle was diagnosed (at least partly it seems) by Scientologists. If I may quote myself:

Baxter Berle attended a school called ‘The Learning Castle’ which is an alleged elementary ‘feeder’ school for the Renaissance Academy with which it shares a campus (there seem to be about seven separate units on campus all feeding the Renaissance Academy). Here’s a little bit of information about the Director of the Renaissance Academy, Ann Hazen;

Renaissance Academy is truly bringing education back to life through the use of a full academic program, athletics, the Arts, a warm and caring staff coupled with the brilliant study and educational philosophies of humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard.

Yup, they’re Scientologists too.

So Scientologists had a big say in the diagnosis of Baxter Berle. What about his recovery? I was recently forwarded this email by a member of a autism/vaccine group Ms Berle is also a member of:

— begins —

Re: Opinion of Dr. Nancy Mullan ?
Sun Jan 28, 2007 6:25 pm
— In autisminterventionsocal@yahoogroups.com,
“djberle” wrote:

Hey there,

We used Dr. Mullan to recover Baxter. I like that she stays cutting edge on top of all new topics as it relates to autism. She attends numerous conferences to stay current. I also highly respect her availability to parents and compassion to “work with you” on
all aspects (to include financial to some degree). She cares deeply for our children and wants to help them….Our experience with her was very positive. I refer her often to other local. parents. I also refer Dr. Hirani as she helped us as well.

— ends —

So Dr Mullan recovered Baxter. Dr Mullan is also a Scientologist. She is the Medical Director of the Scientology owned Safe Harbor organisation. She also used Dr Hinari who studied under Julian Whittaker – another doctor with Scientology connections.

Here we have a situation where Scientologists have (maybe) diagnosed, treated and recovered a boy. This boy was subsequently turned into one of the poster children for successful recovery by Generation Rescue (of whom Ms Berle describes herself as a founding member).

Maybe I’m just a cynic but this reeks of ‘set up’ to me.

Airbrushing science from causation

4 Mar

Another update from the Autism Omnibus proceedings. This one I find worrying. It essentially presents two things for the courts consideration from petitioners (those who think vaccines cause autism):

1) That the scope of the hearings does _”not”_ :

…limit the scope of these proceedings to only those cases with a formal diagnosis of autism

2) That ‘Daubert’ is not utilised as the evidentiary standard.

The first one I find very worrying indeed. This essentially opens up a never ending series of possible cases surely? It also raises the ugly question of the honesty of the people raising this legal case. These are parents who hitherto have described their children as those who have been made autistic by vaccines (either just thiomersal or just MMR or a combo of both). Now, apparently, it is enough that:

…the injuries at issue here include neurodevelopmental disorders _similar_ to autism…

I have to wonder: just how many of these 4,700+ children have actually been diagnosed as being autistic? And how many are children being made to act as Trojan horses for a possible cash windfall for their parents? A disturbing, uncharitable thought to be sure but I don’t know what else to make of this.

Even more worrying is the petitioners attempts to make sure Daubert is not used as the means of determining evidentiary standard.

Lets remind ourselves of what Daubert is. Daubert is a legal precedent which:

[is] raised before or during trial, to exclude the presentation of unqualified evidence to the jury. This is a special case of motion in limine, usually used to exclude the testimony of an expert witness who has no such expertise or used questionable methods to obtain the information.

In plan terms it means that crap evidence cannot be presented to a court. I’m going to quote from Wikipedia directly:

In Daubert, the Supreme Court ordered federal trial judges to become the “gatekeepers” of scientific evidence. Trial judges now must evaluate proffered expert witnesses to determine whether their testimony is both “relevant” and “reliable”; a two-pronged test of admissibility.

a) The relevancy prong: The relevancy of a testimony refers to whether or not the expert’s evidence “fit” the facts of the case. For example, you may invite an astronomer to tell the jury if it was a full moon on the night of a crime. However, the astronomer would not be allowed to testify if the fact that the moon was full was not relevant to the issue at hand in the trial.

b) The reliability prong: The Supreme Court explained that in order for expert testimony to be considered reliable, the expert must have derived his or her conclusions from the scientific method. The Court offered “general observations” of whether proffered evidence was based on the scientific method, although the list was not intended to be used as an exacting checklist:
– Empirical testing: the theory or technique must be falsifiable, refutable, and testable.
– Subjected to peer review and publication.
– Known or potential error rate.
– Whether there are standards controlling the technique’s operations.
– Whether the theory and technique is generally accepted by a relevant scientific community.

What this boils down to is this – Daubert ensures that science presented as evidence is _good science_ . The petitioners are fighting hard to try and make sure Daubert does not become the way the omnibus case is judged:

…the notion that Daubert should provide the substantive criteria for resolving general causation issues in the omnibus proceeding ought to be explicitly dismissed.

Why? Well they _say_ its because Daubert is procedural, not practical, that Daubert interprets _Federal_ rules of evidence that do not apply in the Omnibus and that it is based on development of expert evidence through revealing documents which is not available in these proceedings.

Uh-huh, and of course the fact that Daubert demands a _scientific_ level of proof has nothing to do with things. Right.

Hilariously, what the petitioners want is to establish general causation in a Daubert-less series of hearings using a few ‘case studies’ hand picked from the 4,700 and then use _these_ as the body of general causation evidence to go on and establish specific causation in each single member of the 4,700. Stop and think about how poor the state of their science must be if they are arguing tooth and nail to do this.

Let’s not forget that three high echelon members of the mercury militia have all fallen foul of Daubert within the last year when trying to establish quack causes for autism: Martha Herbert, Boyd Haley and Mark Geier all came to realise that quackery and bad science is quickly exposed by such a hearing. And now – all of a sudden – the petitioners don’t want any truck with Daubert. Shocking.

Make no mistake – if they get their way, _which they may very well do_ – then a) these kids don’t have to be autistic and b) no science needs to be presented to establish general causation.

The closest recent bout of idiocy I can think to compare to this was when certain Southern US states stated that creationism was a viable science to be taught in a science class alongside actual science. They went on to win a a legal case as well if I recall. Don’t think that this one can’t be won by bad science too.

Dan Olmsted – Autism’s Dick Tracy

2 Mar

Apparently.

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

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

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

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

And that’s not all.

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

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

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

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

A smoking gun. Impressive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Kirby’s Causation Trail

22 Feb

In a truly fascinating exchange on the Evidence of Harm Yahoo Group, David Kirby has revealed:

…the studies which, when taken together, suggest a plausible biological mechanism for mercury exposure as a contributing factor to regressive autism

The exchange came about as a ‘renegade’ poster to that group started laying down a smidgen of fact regarding the state of the science that props up the thiomersal hypothesis. S/he is not a popular bunny on that group.

The exchange led group big cheese Lenny Schafer to state:

It seems that junk science is in the eye of the beholder. It will probably take an impartial jury in a court of law to substantially settle if there is enough evidence of harm to implicate thimerosal and or vaccines in autism.

Seems like Lenny hasn’t been keeping up with the news in that regard.

Anyway, back to David Kirby. Hot on the heels of his amusing further goalpost shifting (somehow the non-decrease in autism numbers which, in 2005 and 2006 would be a grave blow to the thiomersal hypothesis are now suddenly nothing to trouble this teflon coated hypothesis) comes this – David Kirby’s statement on the existing studies which support mercury exposure (what? Not ‘MERCURY _IN VACCINES_ AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY’ David? Just any old mercury now is it? Bless you for exposing the courage of your convictions.)

So which studies float David’s boat? This is his list:

Richard Deth, Northeastern U;
Martha Herbert, Harvard U;
Jill James, Univ of Arkansas;
Thomas Burbacher, Univ of Washington;
Diana Vargas, Johns Hopkins;
Isaac Pessah, UC Davis;
Mady Hornig, Columbia U;
Mark Noble, Univ of Rochester.

Eight people, eight studies. Thise is the ‘science’ that David thinks suggest a plausible mechanism for mercury being a contributing factor for regressive autism.

As an amusing aside, don’t you love (and appreciate!) how careful David is becoming with his choice of words these days? No more of this ‘thiomersal causes autism’ stuff for him! Now its’mercury’ (not ‘MERCURY _IN VACCINES_ AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY’) and instead of ‘causing’ we have ‘contributing factor’ and instead of autism we now have ‘regressive autism’. best of all we have ‘suggest’ instead of MERCURY IN VACCINES AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC. Bless him, all the blog reading he’s been doing from the skeptical folks is finally paying off.

So, lets turn our attention to these studies of David’s. First of all we should note that the Mark Noble cite is a red herring (you lose skeptic points for that David) as, if I’m not mistaken, this study is a) a pilot study and b) not as yet underway. Certainly none of the other ten studies PubMed attributes to Noble, M. appear to discuss autism. Naughty naughty.

Richard Deth

Deth’s paper, if I may quote myself, can be summed up thusly:The basic gist of the Deth paper is that various toxins, including thimerosal, affect methionine synthase activity (a process that helps in building proteins) and that this can adversely affect children. In short, the Deth paper alleges that thimerosal causes methionine synthase dysfunction (MSD).

There are several issues with this as they relate to autism. Firstly, MSD and autism do not resemble each other. Symptoms of MSD are: Anemia, moderate to severe developmental delay, lethargy, anorexia, and homocystinuria (mental retardation, dislocation of the crystalline lens of the eye, sparse blond hair, and cardiovascular and skeletal deformities). Further issues:

1) There is no active transport mechanism into the central nervous system currently known for ethylmercury (thimerosal) whereas there is an known and active transport mechanism for methylmercury.
2) Because its half-life is much longer, methylmercury is more likely to accumulate than ethylmercury, causing higher levels of mercury in the blood.
3) Exposing cells in vitro to ethylmercury eliminates the most important difference between those two forms of mercury, and ignores the fact that ethylmercury is unlikely to enter the central nervous system at concentrations likely to be harmful.
4) The authors chose to use a cell line derived from a metastatic peripheral nervous system tumor to make predictions about developing healthy cells of the central nervous system. If the authors were interested in making claims about the developing central nervous system they should use cells derived from there.
5) The authors make statements in their introduction about developmental disorders such as fetal alcohol syndrome, Rhett’s syndrome, or Fragile-X syndrome, they fail to consider the fact that all of these diseases have their origins in the developing embryo and fetus, not postnatally.
6) The authors’ reference a study that evaluated the causal association between thimerosal and vaccines using the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). Remember how good VAERS is?

Bart Cubbins produced a video detailing similar points.

Martha Herbert and Dianne Vargas

These two papers independeintly of each other indicated a role for neuroinflammation in autism (<a href="http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/herbert.pdf&quot; rel="nofollow"Herbert here and Vargas here but they differ slightly. The Vargas paper states:

neuroinflammatory process appears to be associated with an ongoing and chronic mechanism of CNS dysfunction

and leaves it at that. Herbert specualtes with no basis regarding the fact that metals might play a part in the neuroinflammation. She has no basis for these speculations and it surprises me that they’re in a paper published in such a good journal.

Jill James

Jill James’s studies revolve around glutathione. Glutathione, amongst other things, removes merucry from the human body. James’ studies purport to show that autistic people are deficient in Glutathione and thus when they get mercury they can’t excrete it in the same way non-autistic people do.

However, they don’t. James tried to show that the two types of Glutathione in the body (what she called Active and Inactive) were about 31% (Active) and 33% (Inactive) less in autistic kids than non-autistic kids. However, it should be noted that these are not two differing forms of Glutathione but instead two states of one thing which have a relationship to each other – when one goes up, the other goes down. As Not Mercury states:

Decreased synthetic capability is one possible explanation but this would probably result in a significant deficit of total glutathione not an imbalance between the two oxidation states. _If James found any evidence of impaired glutathione synthesis in this small group of children it wasn’t included in any of her published work_. It doesn’t sound like the children were suffering from a glutathione deficiency as much as an increased oxidative burden greater than the capacity to recycle and glutathione and maintain full oxidative defense capacity.

No deficiency in Glutathione. But Not Mercury takes it a step further:

let’s suppose children with autism had significantly lower levels of glutathione. Would it render them unable to detoxify thimerosal from vaccines? Probably not.

The average human carries about 6milligrams mercury, even if James’ figures were accurate (which they are clearly not) or represent what she claims they do (which they clearly don’t) then the human body would still have several million times more glutathione than needed to excrete the suspect mercury. As Not Mercury says:

A person so severely deficient in glutathione they would be unable to detoxify 250 micrograms of mercury (upper limit of thiomersal in vaccines 5 years ago) probably wouldn’t survive long enough to be vaccinated in the first place. Every breath of air would expose them to lethal levels of ozone, pollutants and other oxidants.

Please read all of Not Mercury’s piece. It’s an eye opener.

Thomas Burbacher

This paper reached one conclusion.

The key findings of the current study are the differences in the disposition kinetics and demethylation rates of thimerosal and MeHg. Consequently, MeHg is not a suitable reference for risk assessment from exposure to thimerosal derived Hg. Knowledge of the biotransformation of thimerosal, the chemical identity of the Hg-containing species in the blood and brain, and the neurotoxic potential of intact thimerosal and its various biotransformation products, including ethylmercury are urgently needed to afford a meaningful interpretation of the potential developmental effects of immunization with thimerosal-containing vaccines in newborns and infants. This information is critical if we are to respond to public concerns regarding the safety of childhood immunizations

In other words, Burbacher blood vs brain is not a valid comparison and that methHG vs ethHG is not valid either. He then goes on to state that more research is needed into what the toxic effects of thimerosal might be. He states that mercury from vaccines doesn’t accumulate as much in blood as it does in the brain and thusly, using blood levels of mercury to represent brain levels of mercury is innacurate.

It was also presented that this paper connected the dots between thiomersal and neuroinflammation (see Herbert and Vargas) but this is a false representation and not claimed or even insinuated by Burbacher.

Two more issues arose from this paper. Firstly, when the Burbacher team performed the extraction of mercury from the blood or brain matter, they failed to introduce controls to ensure that the thimerosal was not degraded in any way as a result of the extraction process. This means they had to basically assume from the resultant possibly contaminated material how much was attributable to methylmercury and how much to thimerosal (ethylmercury). Secondly, Burbacher used thimerosal free vaccines and added pure thimerosal. It is difficult to know how this fresh preparation compares with vaccine formulas when thimerosal is part of the manufacturing process and may have suffered some degradation to inorganic Hg in the vials before administration.

Issac Pessah

The Pessah paper related how the study team found that thiomersal administered to mice caused “dendritic cells” damage. Specifically:

the thimerosal disrupted the normal biological signals that take place in cells, Pessah said. At lower concentrations, the signal disruption caused an inflammatory response; at higher concentrations it caused cell death.

So the position here is that thimerosal has a negative effect on the immune system. Lots of parents think autism is immune-system related. However, this study is a) unreplicated (as far as I know) and b) we may be overestmating the real world effect. Here’s Autism Diva talking about hearing Pessah on Autism One radio.

But the really weird thing is how he described how long the effect would last when the dendritic cells came into contact with mercury. If Autism Diva understood him correctly, lets say a kid gets injected with a vaccine containing thimerosal and the dendritic cells that come into contact with the thimerosal. This is not necessarily all the dendritic cells–some of them, and the DCs are affected by the thimerosal, depending on how much thimerosal they come into contact with. And this effect lasts…. years and years? Is that what he said? No.

Was it months and months? Is that what he said? Maybe it was days and days? Hours and hours? No, actually, what he said, if Autism Diva heard him correctly, was “minutes and minutes.”

So, we know that if you take dendritic cells of a particular kind out of a mouse, and grow them in a glass dish and dump a weak solution of thimerosal on them, they freak out or get a little weird and either way can’t do their job normally, and this effect lasts for,

(gasp)

minutes and minutes.

And speaking of Autism Diva we come around to:

Mady Hornig

Briefly, Mady Horning conducted a study wherein she claimed to have developed a mouse model for autism which she then used to test how the model responded to the introduction of thiomersal. According to Hornig, the study showed that:

1. The mice they used are a good model for autistic people
2. The ‘vaccine’ schedule they used successfully mimicks childhood immunization programs
3. That the outcomes from Auto-immune disease sensitive mice were consistent with autism
4. That this indicates a genetically influenced sensitivity to thimerosal in autistic people

Autism Diva took this study apart when she pointed out that:

Did Dr. Hornig and colleagues find these features [diagnostic criteria for autism] in the ‘SJL Thim” mice?’ No.

Prometheus also had reservations about the design of the study:

So, the human experiences a maximum blood level of 1.63 (arbitrary units) and the mouse – since it is being dosed at a smaller fraction of its half-life – sees a maximum blood level of 2.61. In short, the mouse gets to a blood level 60% higher than the human……I found myself wondering, “Why didn’t they use the 50th percentile (50% weigh more than this weight, 50% weigh less – sort of an ‘average weight’)?” I have no answer – but I have an idea. By using the 10th percentile, they were able to give the baby mice an even bigger dose of mercury……So, by using the 10th percentile weights, the authors were able to give the mice about 15% more thimerosal. This goes nicely with the dosing schedule to significantly raise the dose the mice receive.

One of the big talking points from this study was reported by David Kirby in Evidence of Harm:

… putting up a photo of two mice. “He has groomed through the skull, and eventually destroys his partner,” Hornig said. Every parent of an autistic kid in the room could be seen grimacing in dark recognition of such destructive behavior.”(page 312)

Uh-huh, or maybe they were just grimacing as its not nice looking at mice chewing through the skulls of other mice?

Anyway, hyperbole aside, why did Hornig choose those particular mice? Here’s what else Autism Diva found out.

Why did Hornig pick the SJL/J mice in particular?….Besides being an “autoimmune disease-sensitive” breed what else is known about the SJL/J mice?

Good question. Diva found the answer highly revealing:

Behavior
1. High spontaneous fighting….
2. Severe fighting among males housed together, beginning at about 8 weeks.
3. Most males will be killed by 4-5 months unless caged separately….

Diva also found a separate source that showed that:

…some breeds do a kind of agressive grooming of other mice called, “barbering”

So, it seems that Hornig sourced a set of mice known to be aggressive, she then systematically overdosed them and then reported the fact that this aggression was indicative of autism. Right.

Wrapping It Up

A study that hasn’t yet been done. A study that alleges something it can’t back up. A study with no data and empty conclusions. Two studies that have nothing discernable to do with heavy metals. A study that shows ethylmercury and methylmercury are not comparable. A study that damages cells taken from a mouse for the span of minutes and a study that purposefully overdosed mice known to be aggressive.

Lets remind ourselves of the Judge;s opinion of this same body of science when it was presented by Dr Geier in the RhoGAM hearings as support for the view that thiomersal causes autism:

…the Court notes that, in fact, a literature review can be an appropriate part of a method of determining general causation. However, a literature review must still be performed appropriately. As revealed by his testimony at the Daubert hearing, Dr. Geier, however, relied upon a number of disparate and unconnected studies, including the findings of Dr. Haley and Dr. Lucier, to reach a piecemeal conclusion with respect to general causation…..However, upon being subjected to extensive cross examination, much of Dr. Geier’s analysis, based upon his collective review of a motley assortment of diverse literature, proved, in the Court’s view, to be overstated.

Jeff Bradstreet deserts the sinking ship

12 Feb

Cast you mind back, dear Reader, to July last year when the RhoGAM ruling failed to find general or specific causation for thiomersal causing autism. That little episode has taken a heavy toll on the ‘expert witness’ status of both Mark Geier and Boyd Haley, both of whom were eviscerated by the presiding judge.

But, hey, at least they had the guts to stick around. Some people decide to do a runner at the first sign of trouble.

Enter Jeff Bradstreet, advocate of <a href="exorcism (yes, really) for treating autism.

In September of 2006, Bradstreet was the designated ‘expert witness’ in a case of Aventis Pasteur, Inc. v. Skevofilax, the latter being a family that filed suit on the claim that:

…their minor son’s autism was caused by toxic levels of mercury contained in thimerosal, a preservative used in the vaccines.

This trial ended abruptly when:

After three amended scheduling orders and nearly eleven months of discovery, Respondents’ sole expert on specific causation withdrew from further participation in the case without ever having rendered his expert opinion.

There’s a lot of legal stuff going on in the background of this case regarding whether it was right to hold the Skevofilax’s responsible for the failure of the case. The first trial said it was, they appealed and the appeal judge supported this appeal and now this summary judgement has reversed the appeal.

However, what I’m really interested in is _why_ the ‘expert witness’ failed to materialise.

James Jeffrey Bradstreet, M.D., was designated to testify to specific causation, i.e., “that significant amounts of mercury to which the minor plaintiff was exposed, including bolus doses received as a result of vaccination, was a substantial factor in causing [Michael’s] current injuries and symptoms,” and further, “that the exposure to toxic levels of mercury within the vaccines [was] a substantial contributing factor to the minor Plaintiff’s ultimate injuries and symptoms.”

But what happened? Why did Bradstreet never testify?

On 26 October 2004, Respondents notified Petitioners, by letter, that “due to unforeseen circumstances [genomic profiling] test results critical to [Dr.] Bradstreet’s opinions” would be delayed up to sixty days. The relevant genomic susceptibility tests assertedly needed for Dr. Bradstreet’s expert medical opinion were being performed by a laboratory at the University of Arkansas. An affidavit completed by Dr. Bradstreet stated that an outbreak of leukemia in New Mexico caused the Arkansas lab ‘s director, Dr. Jill James, to be called out of town to consult on that outbreak, and that she would not be returning for several weeks. Drs. James and Bradstreet previously had collaborated on other projects. According to Dr. Bradstreet, he would be unable to formulate an expert medical opinion regarding causation specific to Michael’s injuries until the results of the genetic test results were received fro m Dr. James’ lab

Who else is rolling their eyes right now? Apparently, these ‘tests’ can only be performed by Jill James lab. And only by Jill James herself (I assume the other employees are useless?). There’s further no evidence to assume that these tests provide evedence of anything anyway and apparently the dog once ate his homework.

So, respondents and plaintiffs argued over a new schedule and a new schedule had to be enforced by the court in the end and Jeff Bradstreet was once again instructed to be made available for deposition, this time on 19 Nov 2005. Subjects at that deposition concerning Bradstreets role as an expert witness would include:

[a]ppropriate topics of inquiry for this deposition, [were to] include, but not be limited to, the nature and purpose of the GST [glutathione-S-transferase, a particular family of enzymes in the human genome] M1 [a particular gene which encodes the GST enzyme] polymorphism [i.e., difference or variation] test, the work that Dr. Brad street [had] performed to date in this action, his qualifications, his affidavit submitted in connection with Plaintiff ‘s Motion for Continuance, all of his opinions on the subject of general causation, and the results of those tests that Dr. Bradstreet [had] performed or directed to be performed and that [were] available as of the date of [the] initial discovery deposition.

In other words, a thorough examination of the man, his qualifications and the quality of his science.

But, the court decided if the results of his tests of unknown origin or efficacy that could only be performed by Jill James at Jill James lab ‘became available’ (snigger) then:

Dr. Bradstreet would be made available for additional discovery by no later than 14 January 2005 in order to explain how those results pertained to his expert opinion regarding specific causation.

And then (gasp!) the court received the following:

Counsel for Respondents informed the Circuit Court and opposing counsel, by letter dated 23 November 2004, that Dr. Bradstreet declined to participate further in the litigation. According to Respondents’ counsel, Dr. Bradstreet withdrew due to outside “professional and personal commitments and time constraints.

According to Bradstreet:

…the primary reason for his withdrawal was the impact the time commitment would have on his ability to spend time with his family.

So either he had no family before the start of proceedings or he forgot he had a family and then remembered or…oh hell, I don’t know…but strangely, Bradstreet was not to busy to speak at The Autism One conference in May 2005, or May 2006, or to attend and speak at a conference of the American Dietetic Assoc in October 2005.

I guess ‘too busy’ depends pretty much on how much money each gig pays and how often difficult questions are asked.

The end result for the Skevofilax’s?

Despite three amended scheduling orders, and approximately 11 months allotted to conduct discovery, Respondents failed to produce an expert who could testify to specific causation within a reason able degree of scientific certainty. Without such an expert, Respondents’ claims must fail as a matter of law.

Bradstreet hung them out to dry and they couldn’t find anyone else prepared to take on causation.

Thanks to A for the file :o) .

David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part IV

4 Feb

There’s Something About California!

So says David Kirby in the second part of his look at CDDS numbers. Lest we forget, whilst the California numbers seemed to support the thiomersal hypothesis, there was _nothing_ unusual about California. Now they don’t, there apparently is.

Right.

So, Kirby says there are seven reasons why ‘there’s something about California’. The first one is fascinating:

Wow. That’s pure, unadulterated bull. Sorry to be so blunt but it is. Far from ‘phoning people up to see what they had in the fridge’, here’s what the minutes of the meeting in which this was raised actually said:

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

So, no Mr Kirby no one ‘picked up the phone and asked – do you have any mercury in your refrigerator’. Site visits. Public health officials went out and counted. No one’s claiming its iron clad but its hardly throw away either.

But it is, however, nice to know what Kirby’s opinion on phone call based surveys are. I’ll remember that when Brad launches the fruits of his recent labour.

Kirby’s six other points are the same old same old about RhoGAM (not a vaccine and recently and recently trounced in court), Flu shots in mercury. Thats an odd one. Maybe someone could explain to me how a voluntary flu shot, given once a year that contains about a 1/8th of the thiomersal that vaccines used to can cause autism rates to go _up_ ?

What else? Oh yeah – immigration and population grew in CA and hey – maybe some of those durn immigrants got vaccinated twice? Cus – y’know – immigrants ain’t too smart at counting.

Then to add to the illogical fear of foreigners David ‘yellow peril’ Kirby brings out his piéce de resistance – Asian coal. Yeah. Damned Asians and their coal. Grrrrr. Sorry – what? Even if it is true, what the hell has it got to do with thiomersal?

Oh and he mentions that Aluminium might play some unspecified part in some unspecified way maybe.

Truly, in the annals of debating history, DK will go down as the ‘shuck and jive’ expert. When in doubt, change the subject, make up some stuff and show some cool looking graphs really, really quickly.

Rosie O’Donnell vs Evidence of Harm

4 Feb

I have to admit that before this whole thing kicked off, I didn’t really know who Rosie O’Donnell was (I do now so no need for explanations :o) ) and that my first real knowledge was David Kirby’s recent Huffington Post blog entry wherein he describes being invited to a show called The View that Ms O’Donnell presents….and how put out he was that the great DK did not actually end up being called upon to impart his wisdom:

During the breaks, however, I could hear women in the audience murmuring to each other: “But what causes it? Why so many children? What about mercury? How can I get more information?”

Yeah. I’ll bet.

My head spun as the show wrapped up. Had The View finally squelched Rosie O’Donnell? Did mercury trump Trump? Was this the heavy metal that dare not speak its name, at least on a network flush with Pharma ads?

Oho….from what I can gather, Ms O’Donnell is about as outspoken as you can get, even by American standards. Kirby thinks that she’s been ‘got at’ by the Pharma’s.

Over on the EoH Yahoo Group, opinions on Ms O’Donnell were changing from ‘I love Rosie’ to:

I used to be a Rosie Supporter but for some reason, she doesn’t really want to talk about Causation! Who is paying her!

Let’s be clear here. When someone who frequents the EoH group talks about ‘causation’ they really mean thiomersal. There’s a whole bunch of pissed off people here because Ms O’Donnell didn’t venerate David Kirby and wasn’t interested in the thiomersal issue. And why wasn’t she interested in the thiomersal issue?

Because its crap maybe?

No, couldn’t be that:

Too bad our kids are autistic and not gay….We could have show after show on anything we wanted.

I subsequently learned Ms O’Donnell is gay. How unnerving to discover John Best isn’t the only homophobe on EoH.

Ms O’Donnell also has a blog which the EoH members flocked to in an effort to wring ‘the truth’ (you know that evil Pharma had ‘gotten to’ her). The lovely Erik asked her:

Rosie, “The View” avoided any discussion of Autism’s causality, and only picks orgs as resources who have no interest in the thimerosal controversy. Why? Have you been pressured?

To which Ms O’Donnell answered, fairly unequivocally:

pressured? by who
listen
I ROSIE ODONNELL
chose not to do causation
ME

Over on Conspiracy theory Central EoH Roger asks:

Why do we think that the author of these messages is actually Rosie?

Woooo – scary! Good ol’ list Daddy, Lenny adds:

She has a pronounced style. It would not be so hard to do her.

So, here’s Ms O’Donnell not venerating at the feet of David Kirby – this must be a conspiracy. And here’s Ms O’Donnell having her blog authored by Shadowy Figures……I can almost feel the Black Helicopters taking off, can’t you?

In an amusing side issue, the Arthur Allen book, Vaccine was also being discussed on EoH and the members were taking extreme umbrage at being described as:

“much of the “antivaccinist” leadership is composed of countercultural types who view life through the prism of conspiracy
theory: the government lies, the drug companies are evil, the medical profession is corrupt; trust the Internet instead.”

Which characterisation was described as ‘grossly unfair’ by several EoH members. Yeah, how unfair to suggest people who accuse people of Big Pharma gaggings and ghost written blogs as being into conspiracies. How could they come to _that_ conclusion eh?

What’s the actual issue here? According to mainstream reports I’ve read it was a good program that focussed on awareness and adult services. Here’s the unvarnished take an awareness from EoH:

I am so tired of awareness. We are more than aware of autism. We are so over awareness. I understand that her friends children may be young and they are not as far along as we are.

and

I don’t give a shit if my neighbor is enlightened- I want my son to stop banging his head on the floor (my son doesn’t do that anymore- but just as an illustration)

Here are some other commenters from Ms O’Donnell’s blog. Lets hope EoH’ers can someday see why they are true:

You do a wonderful show on autism – whole show – compassionate – building awareness – yet you get critical letters – Look at what you DID do – some people are never happy. Thanks for not giving up.

Rosie – Everyone keeps coming after you for not speaking of causation on the autism show. No one is mentioning that thimerosal has been removed from shots, but autism diagnosis haven’t declined.

Have you read David Kirby recent blog? As a mom of a 5 year old son with autism I think you guys did a wonderful show. Let’s focus on the good

My nephew is severely AUTISTIC -doesn’t speak most of the time- HE HAS HAD NO SHOTS –

People don’t get it. On Autism. Awareness is about enlightening. Cause is looking for blame. Awareness is light and moving forward. Blame is being stuck.

As a health educator/parent of 2 boys with autism, I applaud you on NOT getting into the causes, as no-one is sure of the one or more ways children get autism, its important to understand their world.

Please people – get over it – it didn’t happen. Stop feeding money to quacks. Your kids are going to need a parent focussed on _them_ , not on their own needs to fuel a conspiracy theory because they are stuck in guilt and blame. Your kids are autistic. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your doctors fault. It wasn’t Pharma’s fault. This is just they way life is.

Stat-tastic!

12 Jan

if the total number of 3-5 year olds in the California DDS system has not declined by 2007, that would deal a severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis…..total cases among 3-5 year olds, not changes in the rate of increase is the right measure.

David Kirby, Nov 2005.

Time’s up Mr Kirby. The last quarter numbers for 2006 are now in.

Jonathon even took the trouble to highlight on his graph where the Geier’s made asses of themselves declaring an early decrease in their 2006 paper. As can be seen from Jon’s graph (and even more clearly on Dad of Cameron’s) – _the numbers are still going up_.

A severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis has been dealt.

Jospeph tells us what to expect in the coming months in the way of excuses from Kirby. Something I also discussed in April 2006. In short, the militia will argue that there’s still TCV’s sitting around waiting to be used up (rubbish, but even if true, would be a very, very minimal amount, click the link to my previous post to see Sallie Bernard of SafeMinds struggling to locate TCV’s in June 2001), they will also argue that the flu shot supports the ‘epidemic’ (again, rubbish. Are we really comparing mandatory TCV administration culminating in 187 ug Hg with optional flu vaccines, administered in one season of the year, culminating in 25 ug Hg?). They will also argue that RhoGAM was a contributing factor (but as we all kow, that one’s got no legs.). They may also try and argue that some other vaccine/environmental ‘thing’ comes into play. This takes us right back to square one and is a virtual admission that thiomersal doesn’t do a goddamn thing except act as a preservative.

In fact, that process is already under way from the Big Cheese himself. In a post on Jan 9th 2007 to his munchkins on the EoH yahoo group, Kirby said:

I believe this puzzle will be solved by looking at TOTAL “environmental” toxic burden from ALL sources, including other chemicals, and, of course, thimerosal in vaccines,

Oh, of _course_ ;o)

This prompted a bit of controversy: H Coleman replied:

Please stop it- you’re all giving me a headache.

And Robert Krakow replied:

I disagree somewhat with the emphasis of your message. I don’t know anyone who focuses on the vaccine issue who believes that other environmental exposure is unimportant. To suggest so underestimates the intelligence of most of the members of this list.

‘Most’ obviously not including John Best, Rescue Angel, who said on that same group:

I view any talk of mercury in the air as a problem as utter nonsense. It’s just propaganda to deflect blame from pharma and I don’t buy one word of it.

See Robert? There’s more than a few idiots who need things spelled out to them on EoH.

Anyway, the impact of Kirby’s statement has not been lost amongst the rank and file militia members. They know he’s trying to move on. Memo to Mr Kirby: it would be quicker and more painless to just fess up: _A severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis has been dealt._

Just Sayin’ Part V

7 Dec
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