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Andrew Wakefield and the death of the MMR debacle

27 Jun

On Day 8 of the testimony in the Autism Omnibus, Stephen Bustin – the leading world expert on PCR put a stake through the heart of the MMR debacle when he revealed that the testing done in Professor O’Leary’s lab on behalf of Andrew Wakefield and others was flawed due to uncontrolled contamination in O’Leary’s lab:

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….

On day 10, the head was finally chopped off the corpse of this hypothesis. Day 10 featured the testimony of Nick Chadwick, a scientist who was a graduate students of Andrew Wakefield’s when Wakefield was being paid to find fault with the MMR. Here is the two killing sections of Chadwick’s testimony:

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.

Same source material, same equipment, same lab. The only difference was in the results. The difference came about because Chadwick did it properly. Wakefield didn’t. But even after Chadwick _told_ Wakefield about the negative results and the false positives Wakefield had engineered, Wakefield carried on.

MMR as a hypothesis is dead. The initial results were errors. No replication has been done and published in reputable journals. Decent science has shown the exact nature of Wakefields ‘error’ and Chadwick has testified that Wakefield knew about the error.

MMR uptake dropped over 10% in 10 years in the UK. Lots of people were hospitalised, people in the UK and Ireland died.

Autism Omnibus and David Kirby

14 Jun

And so, as we approach the end of week one of the vaccine trial, its been truly fascinating to read (albeit a day behind my US counterparts) the ongoing proceedings.

One of the things that fascinated me was the culling of the ‘expert witness’ list. Before Monday – the start of the trial – the expert list comprised:

Jim Adams PhD
Harland Austin D. Sc.
David S Baskin MD
Jeffrey Bradstreet M.D.
Richard Carlton Deth PhD
Mark Geier MD
M. Eric Gershwin MD
Phillippe Grandjean, Ph.D.
Sander Greenland, Dr. PH
Boyd E. Hayley, Ph D
Robert Hirsch PhD
Arthur Krigsman MD
Cathy A Lally, Master P.H.
Mary Megson, MD
Elizabeth Mumper MD
Andrew J. Wakefield, MB, BS, FRCS, FRCPath

And on Monday, the people left from this list were:

Arthur Krigsman MD.

Amazing. I can only surmise that the others were considered as liabilities. Certainly when one considers the stupidity of Haley, Adams, Geier and Wakefield then this looks like a good move. They would’ve been crucified on cross examination. It comes to something when only one person from the original list is considered a safe bet and then he is also crucified on cross examination.

Q. Doctor, your C.V. states that you’re a clinical assistant professor at New York University.
Is that correct?

A. Correct.

Q. Are you currently on staff there?

A. Correct.

Q. When was the last time you taught a class at NYU?

A. I haven’t taught there.

Q. You’ve never taught a class at NYU?

A. I’m on staff there.

Q. Are you salaried?

A. From NYU?

Q. Yes.

A. No.

Q. Have you ever been salaried at NYU?

A. No

I listened closely to the Petitioners opening statement and was bewildered. I’ll quote the ACHAMP blog:

Mr. Powers argued that over the last five years, since the Omnibus Autism Proceeding commenced, the Respondent in the Proceeding, with the Department of Justice acting as its counsel, had been standing “shoulder to shoulder” with industry and that it had placed many obstacles in Petitioners’ way. He noted obstacles of a short statute of limitations; very limited rights of discovery to gain necessary background information to build a case, particularly discovery from the Vaccine Safety Datalink; and selective use of materials from MMR litigation in the United Kingdom that was inaccessible to Petitioners; among other uncooperative tactics.

Not only are most of these things not _quite_ as painted, it seemed to me that Powers was presenting a long litany of excuses to be presented when the case fails. He’s simply fuelling the conspiracy theorist fire.

Also stoking the flames of that fire is one David Kirby. He made a recent HuffPo blog entry that berated critics for inflating the possibilities of what might happen if the parents win:

Critics of the autism claims also contend that a victory in court by any of the families would drive panicked parents away from immunizing their children at all, resulting in new epidemics of infectious disease and lots of sick and dying youngsters…..Nobody wants to see measles, or mumps, or polio sweep the country. But I don’t think that will happen.

Yeah? Its already happening you idiot.

In the course of 10 days, officials confirmed four pertussis cases, including the hospitalization of one child to treat respiratory symptoms. All of the cases afflicted children under 5 years old, and one in an infant just a couple of days old, according to Ravalli County Public Health Nurse Judy Griffin…..There have been more than 450 cases of pertussis in Montana so far this year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The infection rate is much higher than average years, when about 30 cases are reported….”Parents should check immunization records and make sure they’re up to date,” Nurse Judy Griffin said.

Ravalli Republic.

(Columbia) The state health department said yesterday that an infant has died from whooping cough. It is the first death reported in South Carolina from the disease in nearly three years….The health agency said it’s important children receive pertussis vaccinations on schedule.

WLTX News.

A whooping cough epidemic has hit Deschutes County. Health officials say that in the past six weeks, 18 cases of pertussis have been identified in the county. In all of 2004, there were only two cases of pertussis in Deschutes County.

KATU 2.

An increase in cases of the highly contagious whooping cough is prompting state health officials to urge stricter compliance with childhood immunization schedules….Cases have increased annually from 22 statewide in 1996 to 120 last year…Oklahoma’s childhood immunization levels continue to lag behind those nationally, officials said.

RedNova News

Kids are dying again. And in some areas of the US the disease causing those deaths is at epidemic (real epidemic as oppose to autism epidemic) proportions. And thats just one disease that vaccination removed the sting from for many years. In my country (UK) we’ve recently had a Mumps epidemic due to Andrew Wakefield’s unfounded scaremongering regarding the MMR vaccine. And worse:

Take-up rates of the jab dropped throughout the UK, down to less than 70% in some areas, after a small-scale study published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr Andrew Wakefield suggested a link to autism.

Source.

In 2004, mumps cases in the England and Wales rose from 4,204 in 2003 to 16,436 in 2004, nearly a four-fold increase.

And in the first month of 2005, there were nearly 5,000 cases. Most were among young adults born before 1988 and who would, therefore, not have been offered MMR as a child. In the second paper, Dr Ravindra Gupta, from London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’, working with colleagues from King’s College London, found cases have also occurring in very young children who would have been eligible for the MMR – measles, mumps and rubella – vaccine…..Dr Gupta (…) said uptake of MMR among two-year-olds in the UK fell from around 92% in early 1995 to around 80% in 2003/4.

Source.

In October 2004, experts predicted that due to falling vaccination uptake, the UK would start to suffer from ‘small outbreaks’:

The medical newspaper Pulse has warned that there could be a measles epidemic this winter on a scale last seen in the 1960s. It said that lowering levels of immunity meant as many as 12% of children and 20% of adults could be hospitalised if infected by measles.

Source.

And now, this year, 18 months after this warning, we have the UK’s first measles induced fatality in 14 years.

The 13-year-old who died last month lived in a travellers’ community. It is thought that he had a weakened immune system; he was being treated for a lung condition. The boy died of an infection of the central nervous system caused by a reaction to the measles virus. The Health Protection Agency described his death as shocking.

Source

The Times also says that of the 72 reported measles cases last month, 9 required hospitalisation – this tallies almost exactly with the 2004 prediction of a hospitalisation rate of 12%.

Kirby has his own ‘dire warnings’ about what might happen if the parents lose:

And then there is the Middle East. Osama, for one, has a very extended family. We are exporting thimerosal containing vaccines to many Muslim nations. Some vaccines contain not only mercury, but products derived from pigs. I don’t need to tell you where I am going with this train of thought. You already know.

Actually, I do. You’re trying to instil fear of Muslims into people to support your meaningless rhetoric you nasty little racist.

Generation Rescue II – This Time It’s Vague

3 May

As already blogged by Steve and Orac, Generation Rescue have undergone a change in both website and message.

Up until this week and for the last two years, Brad Handley – GR Head Honcho has promoted a message quite unequivocal:

“Autism is treatable. It’s reversible. It’s nothing more than mercury poisoning,” said JB Handley, founder of Generation Rescue.

In fact, giving a reason for the redesign of the site on Orac’s blog, Brad said:

From my perspective, our website and its message have always been broader than “its ONLY mercury”…

Huh. Weird. Maybe its just me but I detect a teensy-weensy inconsistency between those two statements. Lets switch to the video!!:

And for the non-video-blessed amongst us, what Brad said was:

We immediately realised…and I think this is something that is a big surprise to people….um, that autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning.

Riiight. So let me see if I can summarise the position. When there is no science to have an informed debate about mercury, and when there’s lots of scary sounding stuff like ‘the Amish aren’t vaccinated and have no autism’ or ‘CDDS proves the epidemic’ floating around then the situation is:

“Autism is treatable. It’s reversible. It’s nothing more than mercury poisoning”.

Now that there’s no science to establish a causative link between mercury and autism, plenty of epidemiology to refute it and now that the first piece of science on the Amish has shown that actually they do vaccinate and that the penny has finally dropped, even for David Kirby, regarding CDDS’ inability to support the epidemic, what is the Generation Rescue position now? Lets see shall we?:

Our children are experiencing epidemics of ADD/ADHD, Asperger’s, PDD-NOS, and Autism. We believe these neurological disorders (“NDs”) are environmental illnesses caused by an overload of heavy metals, live viruses, and bacteria.

Wow. So we’re now no longer talking about just autism. We’re now talking about ‘neurological disorders’, including ADD/ADHD which is not even classed as being on the spectrum. That is quite some turnabout.

And look at this! Now, we’re talking about a _combination_ of causative agents: heavy metals (not just mercury any more), live viruses and bacteria.

Incredible. Makes you feel almost sorry for poor old mercury don’t it? Last week it was the Terror of the High Seas. Now it doesn’t even make it as a distinct causative agent.

The ‘live viruses’ is in there to placate the Wakefield Worshipers who think the MMR also (or in combination with mercury) caused autism. The ‘bacteria’ mention is I’m guessing a nod to the Martha Herbert theory of mold causing autism – a theory that was described thusly last time Martha took it to court:

Dr. Herbert’s publications indicate that she is an outspoken advocate of increased attention to the possibility of environmental influences. Even she, however, despite that acknowledged perspective, speaks in her published work of possibilities and potentialities, rather than of the ‘reasonable degree of medical certainty’ to which she offers to testify under oath in this case. Neither Dr. Herbert’s publications, nor any others cited, identify mold exposure as even a suspected, still less a known or proven, trigger of autism

Going back to MMR and taking a brief side journey for a minute, here’s the latest update from the Autism Omnibus proceedings. When last we left it, Petitioners had put forward one family as a ‘test case’ to see if the whole Omnibus proceeding had enough merit to proceed. There were supposed to be three. Awhile ago, the court told Petitioners to hurry up and identify the other two. They couldn’t. Respondents replied with:

The Court ordered the PSC to find two cases (similar enough to the first) to present the same basic theory of causation…..the essence of its (PSC’s) response is that it does not know of any case presenting the same causation issues as are implicated in Cedillo.

Ouch. How long has this been dragging on? Five years or something? And out of the 4,700 cases in the Omnibus no other case can be found to match the first one put forward. The only people who must be enjoying this are the lawyers.

Anyway, back to Generation Rescue.

Of particular note is the much vaunted, never seen ‘California-Oregon Unvaccinated Children Survey’ of described thusly by GR:

no studies have ever been done to compare neurological disorder (“ND”) rates of unvaccinated children to vaccinated children. We commissioned a national market research firm to survey more than 17,000 children in California and Oregon.

National market research firm eh? How very scientific. Researching popular chewing gum, researching autism causation. Yep, they’re the same. Souds very much like a a ‘convenience sample’ where people are called up. Here’s a friend of Brad’s describing what a convenience sample is and is not:

So. Not data according to David Kirby. Bummer.

Generation Rescue have also revamped their ‘Testimonials’ section. This is the section I looked at I August of last year and reached a (very) rough figure of a 5% success rate for the kids talked about on the GR site where ‘success’ is losing the diagnosis:

Out of these 59 success stories, just 3 describe their child as having been reclassified as no longer meeting a diagnosis of ASD. That’s a ‘recovery’ rate of 5%. Interestingly, one of these cases states they did not use chelation at all. That puts the Generation Rescue chelation success rate at a little over 3%.

Now, Generation Rescue have 76 ‘success stories’ (except they’re not called that any more, now they’re ‘testimonials’). Of that number, 6 claim full recovery with total loss of diagnosis. That’s a percentage of 7.8%. A heady leap of over 2%. Woo-hoo.

I was drawn to some of the newer testimonials, particularly the 6 year old ones as Meg only recently turned 7. One of them, about a girl called Liz was fascinating.

Our daughter Liz was diagnosed with low functioning autism at age three. We blamed the DTP vaccine which she had a bad reaction to. She would have very long lasting meltdowns, she would smear faeces, she would exhibit self injurious behaviour, she did not talk at all, she avoided eye contact and her only activity was that involving toys that spun. She walked on her tip toes and the doctor said she had a low IQ (below 70). We were told by mainstream medicine that she was ‘unreachable’.

Today Liz is six and after following biomedical interventions (and some other things) Liz will talk – on Christmas morning this year I went to wake her up and she said ‘good morning’ to me. She no longer smears faeces and is 99% toilet trained, she can write notes to people and knows all the letters of the alphabet and can count up to 40 unprompted. She can use a computer mouse unaided and has numerous favourite websites. The self injurious behaviour is vastly lessened, as are the meltdowns. Her eye contact is now perfect and overall her sensory issues seem 99% under control. She can drink out of a normal cup and use a knife, fork and spoon to eat whilst sitting at the table.

In so many ways, this is a different child.

Why was I drawn to this little girl so much?

Because it’s Megan’s story. I assumed a false name – Mr Clarence House – and emailed it to the Generation Rescue site. ‘Clarence’ received an email saying it was going to be on the new site which I was very happy about.

All of it is true except the name. The biomedical treatments I was talking about were multi vitamins, fish oil and a steroid inhlaer for her asthma. The ‘other things’ were love, acceptance, patience and education.

Why do this? To prove a point. You can make anyone’s story fit your own beliefs if you twist it hard enough.

Don’t worry, if it disappears I took a loving screenshot.

Brad Handley has tried to shift his goalposts as his first guess wasn’t working out. As evidenced above, he has latched on to items that are equally silly. As evidenced above he is incapable of seeing autism. He only sees mercury. As evidenced above, improvement is not limited – or even related to – detoxification of heavy metals.

MMR and Autism – 2007 is the year

1 Apr

This year, the Autism Omnibus hearing in the USA will examine the idea that MMR causes autism. They will do this by taking one of the plus 4,500 cases and looking at it as a ‘test case’. The case in question is the Cedillo family, mother Theresa (just a coincidence), father Michael and daughter Michelle.

The document above by the way establishes that they want the evidence they accumulate to be open to the other families but that they do not want the identities or the evidence of their expert witnesses to be made available online. I wonder why. If I may be so egotistical, it could have something to do with the fact that several bloggers have trounced both the data and the experts and they don’t want this happening any more.

Anyway. What do we know about the Cedillo’s?

We know that Michelle’s bioposies were examined by Professor O’Leary, one time colleague of Andrew Wakefield who went on to have his own results seriously questioned and who went to say:

Professor John O’Leary, who did the tests for solicitors representing the families of autistic children, said his scientific findings “did not support the MMR/autism hypothesis”.

We also know that Michelle was seen by Arthur Krigsman, who, despite claiming to replicate Wakefield’s discredited Lancet paper has had no papers on autism, or vaccines published at all. What he has had however, are numerous close calls with licensing bodies – in one instance he had to resign in order to escape official investigations into his conduct.

And what do the Cedillo’s believe has happened to Michelle?

We just found out the left hind foot bones in Michelle’s foot are deformed. Instead of being one on top of the other, they are growing side by side. Michelle is on pain meds nearly around the clock. She limps and walks with a side to side gait instead of forward like normal. This was caused by the Crohn’s associated arthritis (confirmed independely by 2 orthopedic spec and a ped rheumatologist AND Dr. Krigsman and Dr. Wakefield), which was caused by the Crohn’s disease caused by the vaccine strain measles RNA found in her bowel tissue from the MMR. Michelle gets periodic ocular inflammation – also from the Crohn’s disease. This gives her headaches.

Its terrible that such a young girl is in so much discomfort. But looking past that and concentrating solely on the science, we see that the Cedillo’s believe that Michelle contracted Crohn’s disease brought on by the measles element of the MMR.

So – Crohn’s _and_ autism? Searching VAERS, I find only seven cases that refer to ‘crohn’ and had the MMR vaccine. That’s pretty rare.

Even those who might be expected to support the MMR/autism hypothesis don’t. In an email to the Autism Biomedical Group on March 08, 2004, Vice President of SafeMinds Mark Blaxill stated:

epidemiological evidence (albeit from studies that have not carefully considered interaction issues), have not supported the broader proposition that “MMR causes autism.”

I will be very curious to see exactly who their experts are and what their evidence will be. If it really is, as I suspect, Andrew Wakefield, then they won’t be able to choose a worse time to invoke his ‘expertise’. Wakefield’s hearing at the GMC starts at about the same time.

Here’s a beginners guide to the MMR/autism hypothesis and what Wakefield claims to have found. The hypothesis states that the MMR vaccine, being a live vaccine, leaves bits of live Measles virus in the gut. Wakefield claimed to have found it there. This goes on to trigger autism.

No part of this hypothesis has ever been replicated and published in a decent journal. Wakefields closest colleague – Krigsman – has been unable to find a publisher for his ‘replication’ which indicates the quality of _his_ science. As reported above John O’Leary claimed to have replicated Wakefield’s work but it turned out there was a good chance his data was contaminated and he later stated none of his work showed a connection. Various epidemiological studies have also failed to find any link (as Mark Blaxill admits).

We also have two clinical science papers that demonstrate convincingly that Wakefield did indeed make a substantial error. One Paediatricsin Pediatrics was very damning:

The real-time assays based on previously published primers gave rise to a large number of positive reactions in both autism spectrum disorder and control samples.

Translation: We replicated Krigsman/Wakefield etc to their end point and there were lots of measles virus just like they said.

Almost all of the positive reactions in these assays were eliminated by evaluation of melting curves and amplicon band size.

Translation: We did the science properly just like they didn’t. When we did most, but not all of the positive reactions disappeared.

The amplicons for the remaining positive reactions were cloned and sequenced. No sample from either autism spectrum disorder or control groups was found to contain nucleic acids from any measles virus gene.

Translation: When we looked at the rest of the very small number of positives we had left we found no measles virus in any of them.

In the nested polymerase chain reaction and inhouse assays, none of the samples yielded positive results. Furthermore, there was no difference in anti-measles antibody titers between the autism and control groups

Translation: We double checked our methods and tools and there were now _no_ positive reactions at all. Further more, just for clarity – there were none in our non autistic people _or our autistic people_.

It’s going to be very, very difficult for the Cedillo’s to overcome this.

Now, closer to home (for me anyway), there are a couple of new papers that discuss what impact the MMR really _did_ have on people. Here’s some real evidence of harm.

In “Tracking mothers’ attitudes to MMR immunisation 1996–2006“, we hear the alarming statistic of how much damage Wakefield et al did to the UK MMR program:

The proportion of parents believing MMRto be a greater risk than the diseases it protects against has fallen from 24% in 2002 to 14% in 2006. The proportion of ‘hard-core rejectors’ of MMR vaccine remains stable at 6%. There has been a gradual and sustained increase in the proportion of parents across all social groups saying MMR was completely safe/slight risk rising from 60% in 2002 to a current level of 74%. There now appears to be a sustained move away from fears over MMR safety and belief in the unfounded link to autism towards a more positive perception of the vaccine.

It a relief that the authors believe there is a sustained move back towards a more rational state of mind regarding MMR but its incredible that 24% of people ever believed that MMR was more risky than the diseases it protected against.

Its no surprise then, that in the years 1997/98 – 2004/05, MMR uptake dropped by a massive 10%. Of interest, when comparing that _fall_ in MMR uptake is the epidemic rhetoric that claims autism is sweeping the UK too. Both things can’t be true. If MMR causes autism then however one paints the stats, there should’ve been a 10% fall in autism.

One group of people truly have suffered through this period. They have been the front line recipients of the bad science of Wakefield et al: parents of autistic kids.

In the new paper, “MMR: marginalised, misrepresented and rejected? Autism: a focus group study“, investigators interviewed parents of autistic kids:

Of the parents whose children received the MMR vaccine, many felt guilty that they may have caused or contributed to their child’s autism. Some parents felt frustrated by health professionals’ lack of understanding of the negative impact the MMR controversy has had on them. Some parents were anxious about subsequent MMR decision-making for their children.

This is the legacy of Andrew Wakefield. Parents who are guilt ridden and unsure who to turn to. The study conclusions state:

The controversy has had a negative impact on some parents of children with autism. This has implications for health professionals, who need to be particularly aware of the issues these parents face in future MMR decision-making for their affected child and younger siblings.

These focus group discussions produced moving and often emotional accounts of parents trying to come to terms with their child’s diagnosis of autism against a backdrop of widespread public speculation about the role of the MMR vaccine in the aetiology of autism.

As Jim Sinclair states in his essay ‘Don’t Mourn For Us’:

Some amount of grief is natural as parents adjust to the fact that an event and a relationship they’ve been looking forward to isn’t going to materialize. But this grief over a fantasized normal child needs to be separated from the parents’ perceptions of the child they do have: the autistic child who needs the support of adult caretakers and who can form very meaningful relationships with those caretakers if given the opportunity.

The parents in these focus groups (and remember these people were interviewed when the MMR conspiracy theory was still well underway) never had a chance to move past the natural adjustment period and on to acceptance. When the media and ‘scientists’ continue to express certainty despite having absolutely no evidence that MMR causes autism its hard to get past the guilt. I know. That’s how I felt as well.

Parents often spoke angrily about how the MMR controversy had impacted on their lives. Even parents who stated that their
child’s autism was entirely genetic in origin felt affected by the uncertainty about the causes of autism which were heightened
by the controversy. For example, one mother who thought her son had been born with autism nonetheless found the speculation surrounding MMR upsetting, and stated that: … it makes you feel pretty damn rotten. I feel as if at the time I did the best for my boy… I wouldn’t have put my child through anything that I think would harm him. (G1: P3)

Thanks again Andy.

Guest blogger on VAERS, gastric issues and autism

13 Jan

Manipulating VAERS - guest blogger Dr Nick Riviera

Hi Everybody!

OK, now I wanna talk to you about how good VAERS is for showing stuff. Now I know there are some so called ‘Doctors’ who _didn’t_ get their qualifications via mailorder (yeah, right! As if that were even possible) who think VAERS ain’t so good:

…the VAERS database is designed only as an early warning system for reporting adverse events thought to be due to vaccines. It is not designed to track the incidence or prevalence of vaccine complications.

…the database has been corrupted by litigation, with a dramatic increase of entries linked to litigation claiming that thimerosal caused the plaintiff’s child’s autism.

Hey! So what right? As I once said to a patient of mine: _”Now by the morning you’ll be good as new. Or dead. The important thing is, we’ll know.”_

So, these two guys once showed how VAERS can be made to say whatever you want and as part of my duty as a doctor I want you to know how you can do it too! Hey, maybe I should charge for this – I once gave a guy a triple bypass and let me tell you, the most rewarding part was when he gave me my money.

So, some people say that the MMR vaccine gave their kids measles in their tummies (sorry for the medical jargon friends!) and that it makes them poop or get bunged up (more medical jargon friends – sorry! I have to use it though. Medicine is nasty. A friend gave me a copy of Gray’s Anatomy…that’s how we look like inside? It’s disgusting! Whoa! It had a picture of a lady who’d swallowed a baby!).

Now these same people gave some Doctors lots of money to try and prove a link between vaccines and autism and they used VAERS like a couple of diva’s!

So here’s my take on using VAERS and how you can use it yourself to prove anything you want! Really! But remember, if something should go wrong, let’s not get the law involved.

If you go to this page on the intrawebnet you can get all the numbers you need to get what we doctors like to call ‘numbers’. These ‘numbers’ are like who did what and told VAERS about it.

Anyway, I got this guy to download them for me and I asked him to import them into MS Access so I could analyse the numbers – just like this dad and his little boy did – anyway, after he finished laughing, he explained to me that using MS Access to analyse data is like trying to paint the Forth Road Bridge with a toothbrush so he did this computery thing he called ‘merging the tables’ and then imported them into what he called ‘an _actual_ relational database – MySQL.

I gotta be honest friends, I don’t know what the hell he was talking about but he told me he’d handwritten _’all the Queries in the command line interface’_ so – cool. I guess. Whatever.

Anyway – here’s my first graph for you. Using VAERS data we can show that out of a total (up to Nov 2006) of 202,011 submissions to VAERS, 1003 mentioned the word ‘autism’ as a symptom.

Out of our sub-group (I’ll go easy on the medical terminology friends, Dr Nick promises!) of 1003 identified as reporting autism as a symptom, a total of 84 used the word ‘Diarrhea’ as a symptom and a total of 5 used the word ‘constipation’. Have a look at the graph I drew (OK, OK, did in Excel):

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers Now that means that, just like my good friends the Geier’s, I have _used VAERS to prove something _ – that 92% of people who have autism have no gastric issues at all! Now, where’s my money?

What? More? Oh OK – Dr. Nick loves you all!

We could also _prove_ that 53% (486 vs 428) of people reporting autism didn’t have the MMR jab. I guess that means nearly half of people who think MMR caused their kids autism are full of pooh-pooh (its a family show kids).

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers

And if we delve even deeper we could _prove_ that 89% of people who are autistic and who have had an MMR jab have no gastric issues at all – look at this doozy of a graph!

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers

How cools is _that_?

The computery guy wanted me to tell you that ‘%gastro%’ is like a wildcard search where the percent signs could be anything before or after the phrase ‘gastro’. Whatever, right?

Dr Nick Riviera

Just remember these things next time someone tells you VAERS is a good source of data. Its _so_ not, but in the right hands, it can make you a pot of money friends! And remember….you need help? Call 1-600-DOCTORB! The “B” is for BARGAIN!”

Bye Everybody!

Andrew Wakefield backs down

4 Jan

A quick catch-up: After Andrew Wakefield did his MMR thing, journalist Brian Deer published a report in the Times that highlighted Wakefield’s dodgy involvement in the whole scandal.

When 13 doctors from London’s Royal Free hospital, including Andrew Wakefield, announced the research in the Lancet at a heavily-promoted press conference in February 1998, it triggered a slump in immunizations and a rise in outbreaks of infectious diseases. But the key finding was a sham: laundering anonymized allegations against MMR by claimants in a multibillion lawsuit against the vaccine’s makers – which Wakefield, behind the scenes, was backing

Brian uncovered a shocking amount of misconduct from Wakefield, so much so that Channel 4 television’s ‘Dispatches’ investigative program launched a special that showed that amongst other things, Wakefield had applied for a rival patent to MMR.

Please visit his site for all the truly shocking shenanigans.

Wakefield’s response was to launch libel suits against Brian Deer, Channel 4 and The Times during which time he was steadfast, as his wife describes:

‘Whatever his enemies may hope, he’s not going away,’ she vows.

In November 2005, it became apparent that Wakefield was beginning to ‘go away’. He had applied for a stay of one action (a pause in proceedings) and, as I blogged at the time, was trying to use this stay as a cudgel to beat down people reporting on the Times/Channel4/Deer investigation – this was sent to the Cambridge Evening News by Wakefield’s legal team:

You should be aware that proceedings in defamation have already been commenced against The Sunday Times in respect of the article published by Mr Brian Deer on 22nd February 2004. Your article has gone even further than the allegation in The Sunday Times which are currently being litigated and allege impropriety on the part of Mr Wakefield to receive money from lawyers to achieve a predetermined outcome…

However, the actual story was that Wakefield had also applied for a stay in these proceedings too. Justice Eady who was presiding over the decision to stay proceeding said this of the attempt to browbeat the Cambridge Evening News:

In my view that paragraph was misleading. Mr Browne (Wakefield’s QC) argues that, even if the circumstances had been set out more fully and accurately, it would have made no difference to the outcome. The editor would still have acknowledged that he had got his facts wrong. That may be, but the important point at the moment is that the editor was given a misleading impression. Because of the stay, to which I have referred, the allegations in The Sunday Times were certainly not “currently being litigated”. They were stayed pending the outcome of serious allegations of professional misconduct against the Claimant, to which no reference was made. It thus appears that the Claimant wishes to use the existence of the libel proceedings for public relations purposes, and to deter other critics, while at the same time isolating himself from the “downside” of such litigation, in having to answer a substantial defence of justification.

Justice Eady declined Wakefields request to stay further proceedings:

I have come to the conclusion, bearing all these considerations in mind, that the interests of the administration of justice require that the Channel 4 proceedings should not be stayed pending the outcome of the GMC proceedings. I appreciate that there will be an increased workload for the Claimant’s advisers, but I do not have any reason to suppose that the firm is incapable of absorbing that extra burden. It is, after all, their client who chose to issue these proceedings and to use them, as I have described above, as a weapon in his attempts to close down discussion and debate over an important public issue

Quite.

Of course, the poor old Cambridge Evening News, being a small local newspaper had already issued a retraction. Brave Mr Wakefield read the retraction out to wild applause at the 2005 Power of Truth rally.

However, its not been the best start to 2007 for Andrew Wakefield. On 31st December 2006, Brian published an article in the Times that demonstrated that Andrew Wakefield had been paid approaching half a million pounds to conduct his MMR investigation for lawyers. This runs contrary to the bottomless claim by Wakefield’s apologists who told the BBC he hadn’t.

And now it seems like its going to be an ‘annus horribilis‘ for Wakefield – the man who once claimed that there would be an established proven link between MMR and autism in 2002 – as Brian has now received news that, contrary to the claims of his wife, Wakefield has indeed, ‘run away’.

Following Brian Deer’s Dispatches investigation of November 2004, reporting facts about Andrew Wakefield and his campaign against the MMR vaccine, which a judge described as “of considerable public interest and concern” that “went to the heart” of the British former surgeon’s “honesty and professional integrity”, Wakefield initiated libel proceedings. Two years later, after the disclosure of a mass of documents, including medical records, he dropped his claim, and agreed to pay the defendants’ costs

Amazing how a sudden disclosure of documents can prompt such a turn around isn’t it? I wonder what his supporters will find as an excuse for this hasty change of mind?

Follow the money

31 Dec

Regularly whenever I read about some nefarious plot by Big Pharma to use vaccines to take over the world/cause autism/incite riots/insert crap of your choice here, the writer exhorts the reader to ‘follow the money’ as a phrase to indicate that the evil, money grubbers at Big Pharma can have their actions rationalised by seeing how much they might gain from the particular conspiracy theory under discussion. Of course, very rarely can these writers actually name an individual at Big Pharma or an alleged ‘payout’ they are getting.

Luckily, Times reporter Brian Deer is an _actual_ reporter – i.e. one who investigates his findings and sources his facts. Today he published the findings of his latest investigation into Andrew Wakefield and the associated people that support his vaccine/autism/legal financial business.

Brian has basically found that UK tax payer funded legal aid to the sum of _£3.4m_ was spent (wasted might be a better word) on payments to doctors and scientists who had been recruited to support a now failed lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. This information wasn’t submitted voluntarily, Brian had to submit a Freedom of Information request in order to unearth the figures. There are some notable names on the list:

Andrew Wakefield: £439,553. Quite profitable to start vaccine litigation isn’t it? Seems that you can fleece the British tax payer to the tune of nearly half a million quid. Follow the money indeed.

But is good old Wakers alone? Oh no, this money making machine had a few members, some familiar names to this blog:

Dr Ken Aitken, Scottish DAN! Doctor: £232,022. After resigning under a cloud from his role at Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh, Aitken gladly signed up for this gravy train which seems to have netted him nearly a quarter of a million quid of tax payers money. In 2004, Aitken was severely reprimanded by the British Psychological Society concerning his handling of an autistic child’s case. The society’s conduct committee said that he “allowed his professional responsibilities or standards of practice to be diminished by considerations of extraneous factors”.

Peter Fletcher: £39,960. I wrote a blog entry about Peter Fletcher’s anti-MMR strawmen awhile ago. Here’s a quote from him:

There are very powerful people in positions of great authority in Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves.

You can say that again.

And on it goes:

Arthur Krigsman, Business partner of Andrew Wakefield: £16,986. His unpublished ‘papers’ have been cited numerous times by Wakefield and supporters as evidence Wakefield was right, conveniently forgetting they were a) unpublished and b) written for his boss. According to Brian (see link in Aitken paragraph), in December 2004, he left Lennox Hill hospital, New York,after a lawsuit, which was followed by an ethics inquiry. In August 2005, he was fined $5,000 by the Texas Medical Board for misconduct. Gotta try and recoup some of that money somewhere eh?

Jeff Bradstreet: £21,600. Bradstreet – who recommends exorcism for autism – snapped up Wakefield as Director of his business after Wakefield was booted out of the Royal Free.

Mark Geier: £7,052. We could write a whole book on the Geier’s and their dubious practices. Luckily, Kathleen has documented most of them already. Suffice it to say, Geier shouldn’t be offering legal expert advice to anyone.

See some more notables on Brian’s personal site.

Brian’s report in the Times also states:

…among those named as being paid from the legal aid fund was a referee for one of Wakefield’s papers, who was allowed £40,000…

Which is an interesting position as Wakefield is on record as stating:

You cannot referee your own soccer matches. It’s like asking the Italians to — an Italian referee to take over the game of Italy between South Korea. It doesn’t work. Can’t do it. You have to separate those agencies that endorse and mandate vaccines and those who monitor safety. One needs to be on the back of the other all the time in order to check on safety.

Quite. That same principle also works against you Mr Wakefield. Back-handers to referee’s of your papers makes you an Italian throwing a bung to an Italian referee. Follow the money.

Also according to the LSC (who oversee administration of Legal Aid) A private GP who runs a single vaccines clinic received £6,000. Follow the money.

What the hell are the LSC playing at? They have a £2billion per year budget in order to provide legal services to people who can’t afford to retain a lawyer. Once that money is spent, its spent. Apparently, they’ve already:

acknowledged that the attempt to make a case against MMR with taxpayers’ money was “not effective or appropriate”.

Understatement of they year!

One of the legal aid recipients, John March has broken ranks to speak out against what has happened:

“There was a huge conflict of interest,” said Dr John March, an animal vaccine specialist who was among those recruited. “It bothered me quite a lot because I thought, well, if I’m getting paid for doing this, then surely it’s in my interest to keep it going as long as possible.”

I doubt March was alone in his thinking.

Wakefield has circulated a pitiful defence of his antics stating that these monies were received over a period of nine years and that after tax and ‘out of pocket expenses’ which he failed to detail or summarise he donated the money to charity. What a saint. The point, of course, is entirely missed. It doesn’t matter what you did with it Mr Wakefield, the point is that you got it. I hear tell some religious heroin dealers in Columbia donate some of their profit to churches. Big deal – they’re still crooks.

According to Brian’s report, at least one MP is calling for a an inquiry into how exactly this could’ve come about and a Lib Dem MP is quoted as saying:

“These figures are astonishing,” said Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. “This lawsuit was an industry, and an industry peddling what turned out to be a myth.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself.

More reading

Diva, Mike, Orac and Anthony.

MMR and statistics and science

16 Oct

Measles Mumps Rubella Timeline

Now that we have a couple of clinical papers refuting the findings of Wakefield, Krigsman, O’Leary et al – and not only refuting them but even showing exactly how they screwed up – I thought a retrospective look at the data concerning the fall in uptake of the MMR vaccine corresponds to the latest data on prevalence for autism in the UK and what it might mean for the MMR theory.

This table shows vaccination uptake rates across England. I’m going to highlight the years 97/98 – 04/05. An eight year period that starts when the original Wakefield paper was released and ends with the latest set of known data from last year. I’ll also be ignoring everything except MMR data.

Year Uptake percentage
2nd birthday in 1997/98 91%
2nd birthday in 1998/99 88%
2nd birthday in 1999/00 88%
2nd birthday in 2000/01 87%
2nd birthday in 2001/02 84%
2nd birthday in 2002/03 82%
2nd birthday in 2003/04 80%
2nd birthday in 2004/05 81%

So we can see that MMR uptake _dropped by a factor of 10%_ in eight years. Thats a pretty sobering stat.

When we look at how many live births there have been between 1998 – 2005 (inc) we see that there have been a total of 4,959,995. Ten percent of _that_ figure means that 496,000 have not (for whatever reason) received the MMR. And if prevalence (as established by Baird et al) really is 1 in 100 then we should expect to get 49,599 diagnosis of autism since 1998 (1% of live birth rate).

But, if MMR proponents are right, then we _should not_ have 49,599.autism diagnosis. We should have 45,036 (49,995 (dx) – 4,959 (10% of dx)).

To put it another way – if MMR uptake has fallen by 10% over the last 8 years, then there should’ve been a corresponding 10% fall in autism diagnosis. Has there been?

Obviously not. Bill Welsh of the Autism Treatment Trust certainly doesn’t think so:

It will come as no surprise to parents throughout Scotland that there has been a “sharp increase in autism” (July 14). The diagnosis of this devastating childhood developmental condition has increased to such an extent since 1990 that many, many families are now affected. It is very worrying that it has taken well over 10 years for the authorities at last to recognise that an autism epidemic has been sweeping the UK.

And lets not forget Chakrabarti and Fombonne who also found a high but stable prevalence of autism in the UK. Both things cannot be true. If MMR causes autism then as MMR uptake has dropped off the rate of autism cannot possibly have remained the same, unless we want to try and find a substitute that not only acts in the exact same way as MMR but also slots exactly into the numerical data, rising as MMR falls. Possible but pretty unlikely.

Crumbling science

3 Oct

Krigsman, Wakefield Error Highlighted

A study this month in Paediatrics tackles head-on the ‘science’ that is still yet to be published (a number of years later) by Arthur Krigsman in which he claims that he has found evidence of persistent measles virus in autistic kids and thus backing up the work of his business partner Andrew Wakefield.

In layman’s terms what this study did was replicate the result of Krigsman et al and then eliminate the poor science that led Krigsman to his erroneous conclusions. Of the samples that still showed as positive, no trace of MV was found.

The real-time assays based on previously published primers gave rise to a large number of positive reactions in both autism spectrum disorder and control samples. Almost all of the positive reactions in these assays were eliminated by evaluation of melting curves and amplicon band size. The amplicons for the remaining positive reactions were cloned and sequenced. No sample from either autism spectrum disorder or control groups was found to contain nucleic acids from any measles virus gene. In the nested polymerase chain reaction and inhouse assays, none of the samples yielded positive results. Furthermore, there was no difference in anti-measles antibody titers between the autism and control groups

Now thats pretty hardcore science language. I’ve emailed the authors to see if they are willing to explain (and be quoted) on an English translation of the above but in essence, the facts are as I state them above. Krigsman et al (and Wakefield before him?) failed to eliminate false positives and counted them as part of his result set. When these false positives are eliminated then the samples left contain no MV.

I’m hoping that Bart Cubbins, No Mercury, Maria, Ms Clarke et al (who are wise in the ways of this terminology) might offer more input into the meaning of the exact phraseology used and as I say, I’ve mailed the authors for clarification too. In the meantime – Krigsman’s (unpublished) work is now pretty much refuted (by published work).

Daubert’s Revenge – Martha Herbert

As reported by Autism Diva, Dr Martha Herbert has now reached the dizzy heights Boyd Haley and Mark Geier have scaled in having her ‘expert testimony’ found severely wanting following a Daubert hearing.

Herbert basically claimed that a childs autism (diagnosed by her following a differential diagnosis) was caused by mold. Yes, mold. However, upon being cross-examined:

When asked whether there is ‘any evidence that mold is a trigger [for autism],’ Dr. Herbert responded by referring to research regarding brain inflammation and immunological abnormalities in autism. Asked about research showing that ‘any of the mold or any of the mildew or any of those other things also cause brain inflammation,’ she responded ‘that’s a hole in my knowledge. In terms of autism, I don’t believe that’s been done.’

Right. Well, thank goodness she’s so rigorous. Wouldn’t want to just make assumptions right? That would just be a waste of everyone’s time right?

In another classic piece of thinking Herbert goes on to say:

Dr. Herbert commented, ‘she doesn’t have any of the known genetic syndromes, or known in-utero infections. I personally consider it symptomatic, but not in the established set of categories, in that I hope that when more research is done she’ll move in the symptomatic category.’

In other words she doesn’t know what caused the childs autism (gasp!) but that it doesn’t fit any known profile but that maybe some research at some unspecified point in the future might help categorise it (whatever ‘it’ is).

Oh, it gets better.

Dr. Herbert was asked, ‘[c]an you say to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that if Emilia Ward had been in a sterile environment, she would not suffer from autism” She responded, ‘My guess would be, yes, that she probably would not.’ The basis for that ‘guess,’ she testified, was ‘her having regressed after the mold exposure and that she gets worse with exposures.’

Wait… _guess_ – her _guess_ ? Well surely she meant ‘informed opinion’, or ‘scientific judgement based on the evidence to hand’…..except there _is_no evidence to hand:

In response to questions she acknowledged that she has never done any research on mold or mildew as an environmental toxin, and is not aware of any published peer review articles that link mold and mildew exposure to autism.

And so it is no great shock to find the court saying:

Dr. Herbert’s publications indicate that she is an outspoken advocate of increased attention to the possibility of environmental influences. Even she, however, despite that acknowledged perspective, speaks in her published work of possibilities and potentialities, rather than of the ‘reasonable degree of medical certainty’ to which she offers to testify under oath in this case.10 Neither Dr. Herbert’s publications, nor any others cited, identify mold exposure as even a suspected, still less a known or proven, trigger of autism……Dr. Herbert’s method, to the extent the Court can discern it from the materials offered, is a series of deductions based on possibilities…..*Clearly, Dr. Herbert’s method is not generally accepted in the scientific community*. Dr. Herbert’s theory of environmental triggers of autism may some day prove true. It has not yet. *Her proffered testimony does not meet the standard of reliability required by the case law*, and cannot be admitted in evidence at trial.

FDA Spanks Mercury Milita

Back in 2004, Dr Paul King of dr-king.com, uh, fame, submitted a ‘citizen petition’ to the FDA requesting:

[The FDA]…take numerous actions pertaining to vaccines and other FDA-regulated products containing thimerosal or other mercury-based preservatives….After review and consideration, we deny the petition for the reasons stated below in this response.

The response is very detailed (the whole thing is available at Kathleen’s site) but can be summed up in one quote:

The evidence on which your petition relies either does not support your requests, or is too flawed to be considered valid scientific evidence.

Which seems to be something of a growing refrain for the mercury (and apparently mold!) militia.

Damn science with its rigorous pursuit of accuracy eh? If only we could rely on opinions and guesses.

Just Sayin’ Part II

28 Aug
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