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BMJ press release: there is “no doubt” that it was Wakefield who perpetrated this fraud

6 Jan

Here is the press release for the series in the BMJ on Andrew Wakefield.

Today, the BMJ declares the 1998 Lancet paper that implied a link between the MMR vaccine and autism “an elaborate fraud.”

Dr Fiona Godlee, BMJ Editor in Chief says “the MMR scare was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud” and that such “clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare.”

She is struck by a comparison between researcher Andrew Wakefield’s fraud and Piltdown man, that great paleontological hoax that led people to believe for 40 years that the missing link between man and ape had been found.

She also questions the veracity of Wakefield’s other publications and calls for an investigation “to decide whether any others should be retracted.”

A series of three articles starting this week reveal the true extent of the scam behind the scare. The series is based on interviews, documents and data, collected during seven years of inquiries by award-winning investigative journalist Brian Deer.

Thanks to the recent publication of the General Medical Council’s six million word transcript, the BMJ was able to peer-review and check Deer’s findings and confirm extensive falsification in the Lancet paper.

In an editorial, Dr Godlee, together with deputy BMJ editor Jane Smith, and leading paediatrician and associate BMJ editor Harvey Marcovitch, conclude that there is “no doubt” that it was Wakefield who perpetrated this fraud. They say: “A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction; misreporting was gross.”

Yet he has repeatedly denied doing anything wrong at all, they add. “Instead, although now disgraced and stripped of his clinical and academic credentials, he continues to push his views. Meanwhile the damage to public health continues.”

“Science is based on trust,” concludes Dr Godlee. “Such a breach of trust is deeply shocking. And even though almost certainly rare on this scale, it raises important questions about how this could happen, what could have been done to uncover it earlier, what further inquiry is now needed, and what can be done to prevent something like this happening again.”

The BMJ will explore these and other questions over the next two weeks.

Brian Deer in the BMJ: How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed

6 Jan

Brian Deer, the investigative journalist who broke the story of the misdeeds of Andrew Wakefield, has a new article in the BMJ, How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed. The article is prefaced:

In the first part of a special BMJ series, Brian Deer exposes the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school

This article is damning enough, but as a series this may lay out clearly, in one place, the cases behind the multiple ethical breaches which cost Andrew Wakefield his license to practice medicine in the UK.

Some may ask “why?” There is so much information out there about Mr. Wakefield and his misdeeds. Do we really need it again? I would say yes. In this BMJ series we have the research (and other) ethical lapses laid out in a medical journal. No lengthy GMC transcripts. No news stories with false balance. No “Callous Disregard” book.

The full article is worth the read. Here is the summary from today’s article.

How the link was fixed

The Lancet paper was a case series of 12 child patients; it reported a proposed “new syndrome” of enterocolitis and regressive autism and associated this with MMR as an “apparent precipitating event.” But in fact:

• Three of nine children reported with regressive autism did not have autism diagnosed at all. Only one child clearly had regressive autism

• Despite the paper claiming that all 12 children were “previously normal,” five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns

• Some children were reported to have experienced first behavioural symptoms within days of MMR, but the records documented these as starting some months after vaccination

• In nine cases, unremarkable colonic histopathology results—noting no or minimal fluctuations in inflammatory cell populations—were changed after a medical school “research review” to “non-specific colitis”

• The parents of eight children were reported as blaming MMR, but 11 families made this allegation at the hospital. The exclusion of three allegations—all giving times to onset of problems in months—helped to create the appearance of a 14 day temporal link

• Patients were recruited through anti-MMR campaigners, and the study was commissioned and funded for planned litigation

In multiple ways, the story of the Lancet article was crafted to support the conclusion Mr. Wakefield had–a conclusion he came to before starting on the research project.

Yes, before.

In his research proposal to the legal aid board, Mr. Wakefield made the following statement (quoted in Mr. Deer’s article):

““In contrast with the IBD cases [those set out in paragraph 2] which have a prima facie gastrointestinal pathology, children with enteritis/disintegrative disorder form part of a new syndrome. Nonetheless, the evidence is undeniably in favour of a specific vaccine induced pathology. ”

Mr. Deer presents a table comparing how the Lancet article reported the 12 children and how the records really show their cases. He compares regressive autism (only 1 patient’s records clearly show it), non-specific colitis (only 3 children showed it) and whether symptoms occured in the days following MMR (10 clearly did not, 2 are unclear). In all, none of the Lancet 12 children had all three features.

So that is the Lancet 12: the foundation of the vaccine scare. No case was free of misreporting or alteration. Taken together, NHS records cannot be reconciled with what was published, to such devastating effect, in the journal.

Mr. Deer opens his piece with a discussion he had with the father of child 11. Mr. 11 did not agree with the way his son was represented in the Lancet article. Mr. 11 states:

“Please let me know if Andrew W has his doctor’s license revoked,” wrote Mr 11, who is convinced that many vaccines and environmental pollutants may be responsible for childhood brain disorders. “His misrepresentation of my son in his research paper is inexcusable. His motives for this I may never know.”

We may never know the motives. In the end, I don’t care. It is the damage that this fraudulent research has caused to the autism communities and to public health that matter. Countless families have believed Mr. Wakefield, with parents blaming themselves for causing their child’s disability. As to public health, Mr. Wakefield is responsible for a drop in vaccine uptake in the UK, which led to disease and death.

Further reading on the subject can be found at Action For Autism with Wakefield and the MMR Autism Hoax

Paul Offit responds to Mark Blaxill

5 Jan

Over at Age of Autism today, financial whizz Mark Blaxill subjected Paul Offit’s finances to his usual searing intellect. I can’t quote from his post because its just to smart for me to understand!

Anyway, his conclusion has drawn the following response from Paul Offit in an email:

Just for the record: I no longer financially benefit from the sales of RotaTeq. My financial interests in that vaccine have been sold out by either The Wistar Institute, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, or me. I will, however, continue to stand up for the science of vaccines because unfounded fears about vaccines have hurt children. That is why I do what I do and why I have always done it. And I will continue to closely follow the distribution of rotavirus vaccines because these vaccines have the potential to save as many as 2,000 children a day, which is why I joined the research team at Children’s Hospital.

Seems pretty clear to me 🙂

The past is present (non autism related post)

5 Jan

Kev has recently discussed the book, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. Besides discussing the dangers the movement poses in its current form, Dr. Offit puts the anti-vaccine movement into historical perspective.

Ever since there was vaccination, there was a resistance to the practice. One of the easiest hooks is to discuss the ingredients. In the case of the original vaccine (which used the cowpox virus to protect humans against smallpox), the target was clear: it comes from cows. One of the more famous images was a cartoon made by James Gillray, showing people growing cow parts after vaccination (click image to enlarge):

It’s so 19th century. Or, is it?

I wasn’t aware of this image (or didn’t remember it) before I read the book. I was taken aback by the similarity to recent imagery used to frighten people about the rotavirus vaccine. If you recall, fragments of a pig virus were found in one of the rotavirus vaccine brands. This was a time for a reasoned, serious discussion. Was there potential for these virus fragments to be harmful? (as it turns out, the virus does not infect humans. It is even found in the fecal matter of humans who have recently eaten pig products).

Here’s one image:

Yeah, kinda cute and funny. The text of the post has headings like “Rotavirus Vaccines Use Monkey, Cow, Pig Materials for Production” and, for some odd reason, “Using Cancer Cells to Produce Vaccines? ” What this has to do with pig virus fragments in rotavirus vaccine is beyond me. The post goes on to link to a video by Barbara Loe Fisher, who discusses “fatal pig viruses”. Fatal to infant pigs, yes. Fatal to humans, no. But, Ms. Fisher doesn’t make that distinction.

Here’s another image, this time from the Age of Autism blog:

There is room for a real vaccine safety movement. In fact, vaccine safety advocates have been successful in creating real change. Dr. Offit makes this clear in his book. But scaring people with these images isn’t helping anyone.

Autism and the Affluent

4 Jan

Autism and the Affluent is a piece in today’s Newsweek by Seth Mnookin, author of the upcoming book, The Panic Virus. It lays out how he got started on the book. Here is the first paragraph:

My wife and I first noticed our friends’ preoccupation with autism and vaccines in late 2007, right around the time former TV star and Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy published the first of several bestsellers in which she claimed that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine had probably given her son autism. As we soon discovered, McCarthy’s intuition-based approach to medicine (she referred to it as “mommy instinct”) had a number of adherents among our friends.

The rest can be found on the NewsWeek website.

Deadly Choices: The myth of the mild disease

29 Dec

I’ve started reading Deadly Choices and goodness me its a breath of fresh air in terms of factual analysis and also writing skill. The last autism book I read was Age of Autism so you’ll appreciate how great the difference is.

I’ll be blogging about Deadly Choices a fair bit I guess and I guess Sullivan will too (after all he is Bonnie Offit) and in this first blog post I want to discuss why the idea that certain illnesses are perceived (and indeed promoted) by the anti-vaccine lobby as mild and therefore of no risk – just another excuse to stick us all with another needle containing who knows what!!

The book Deadly Choices, makes this point crystal clear in the Introduction. Regarding a Hib outbreak in Minnesota:

[parents]…were afraid that vaccines contained dangerous additives, or that children received too many vaccines too soon; or that vaccines caused autism

…

…one mother reconsidered her decision: ” the doctor looked at me and said, ‘Your son is going to die, he doesn’t have much time.’ Honestly, I never really understood how severe the risk [was] that we put our son at.”

Deadly choices indeed.

And what about mumps? In 2009, an outbreak caused by an unvaccinated traveller coming back from England caused a chain reaction that infected over 1500 people in 8 months. The end result?

When it was over, mumps was found to have caused pancreatitis, meningitis, deafness, facial paralysis or inflammation of the ovaries in sixty-five people, nineteen were hospitalised.

Hib and mumps are just two of the diseases previously easily controlled by vaccines that are now becoming rampant again due to poor vaccination rates and the fact that such deadly and crippling diseases are now just a plane ride away.

The Peril of Parent Testimony – Stem Cell Treatment for Autism

15 Dec

It usually begins naively enough – the parent of a newly-diagnosed child launches a search into the Wild, Wild West of the World Wide Web, searching for help and hope for a diagnosis they are still struggling to grasp.

Soon parents may find themselves on internet support forums and in email groups, surrounded by parents promoting everything from the plausibly helpful to the fantastically impossible.

Some parents may become part of a new peer group – an online pack of believers, where pack status is determined by the number of experimental treatments employed and the claims made regarding these treatments. Alpha pack status is achieved when a parent claims to have “recovered” or “almost recovered” their child, often by applying an arbitrary definition of “recovered,” or even an extrapolated percentage of recovery. Every developmental tick is attributed to the most recent treatment addition, adverse reactions are attributed to healing, and anyone questioning the pack interpretation is considered an intruder in the anthill.

The appeal of these claims is obvious. The truth, however, may be another matter. With autism, there are always newcomers to the ranks of the recently-diagnosed, whose parents are unfamiliar with the histories of popularized treatments, fantastic claims, and failed treatment prophecies.

Eventually, even well-meaning parents may be sucked into the vortex of upping the treatment ante and believing their own fantastic claims, and may remember history differently in order to rationalize and justify the invasive and risky treatments their children are forced to endure. The pursuit of treatment itself becomes a drug — impairing objectivity, dulling recollection, and often, even obscuring the truth.

And so it goes with the Faiella family. Daniel and Ruth frequently thrust their son, Matthew, now 10, into the media to promote hyperbaric and stem-cell treatment for autism, and they have done so yet again, in Local Father Says Controversial Treatments For Autism Work. Matthew has previously endured four stem cell transplants, the fourth not only involving lumbar puncture, according to Daniel Faiella’s blog, but also a frightening experience with anesthesia in a developing central American country.

Unfortunately, Mr. Faiella later removed his harrowing account of anesthesia and the stem cell lumbar puncture from his blog, and though left an entry stating that he still “believes” in the clinic, along with plenty of graphic pictures of his son undergoing this procedure. The search results for his original post concerning Matthew’s dangerous experience are all that now remain:

Aug 10, 2010 … I would never do a spinal stem cell injection again! I can’t just write the good without writing the obstacle that we went through! …
recoveringmatthew.blogspot.com/…/i-would-never-do-spinal-stem-cell.html
Aug 10, 2010 … We also believe Matthew got way too much anesthesia! Thankfully, we were able to get these behaviors to go away by doing many hours of deep …
recoveringmatthew.blogspot.com/…/i-would-never-do-spinal-stem-cell.html

Mr. Faiella has also self-published a book, Out of the Darkness: The Faiella Family’s Journey to Recover their Autistic Son, encompassing a number of alternative and questionable treatments. According to the Amazon page where it is sold, the book appears to be endorsed by JB Handley, of Generation Rescue and Age of Autism, as well as a number of individuals in the DAN treatment community. Recognition and notoriety – the mirage of a maverick hero “rescuing” a child — seems to glorify and goad along risky experimentation on children with autism.

The current news article depicting the Faiella family’s upcoming stem cell journey to Panama includes many elements typical of such accounts, such as the dreaded institutional prognosis rendered by the diagnostician. This has been a recurring theme in the Faiella treatment testimony, as has the impression that Matthew only recently acquired particular skills that are then attributed to the current treatments. As in a media article published when Matthew was seven:

“Faiella recently gained the ability to use words and loves to share his passion for drawing pictures.

Matthew’s dad said his son was diagnosed with autism at 18 months, and doctors warned he eventually would need to be institutionalized.

“They gave us really no hope,” Daniel Faiella said. “We broke down and cried, but I looked at the doctor and said, ‘Not my son. Not on my watch. I’m going to do whatever I can.'”

And another — Matthew is turning nine years old:

Published : Monday, 02 Nov 2009, 8:00 PM EST
WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. (WIVB) – Like most eight-year-old boys, Matthew Faiella of Williamsville loves playing with his action figures. Unlike most boys his age, he has an incredible talent for sketching, and can also speak Spanish.
It’s hard to imagine, just two years ago, Matthew, who lives with autism, couldn’t even string two words together.
“It was very sad to see, he was in his own little world. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t communicate,” said Daniel Faiella, Matthew’s father.

The dramatic statements made in media opportunities regarding Matthew’s diagnostic baseline, (institutional) prognosis, and progress have changed significantly from the original parent testimony posted in public internet locations five years ago. According to Matthew’s mother, “momtoMatthew,” the diagnostic baselines and prognoses were quite different then:

When Matthew was four years old, his mother wrote:

“Matthew was diagnosed at age 20 months to have PDD/NOS. This neurologist just doesn’t seem to agree with that diagnosis at all. He says Matthew is just too different to be given that diagnosis. His is very loving, able to learn easily, is learning to read, can write beautifully, and has a great memory to the point of possible photographic memory.”

Several months later (Dec 2005), momtoMatthew explains that:

“Matthew was diagnosed as language delay at 18 months, then that diagnosis was changed to PDD-NOS at 22 months. He had the PDD/NOS label until just a short few weeks ago. […] In the end they told us that NO he is not on the spectrum. However, he does have a SEVERE receptive/expressive language disorder. […] They told me that with TONS of speech therapy he could get to be so typical that no one would know he had ever had a disorder at all.”

Matthew is likely now diagnosed accurately as on the spectrum, as his parents do report. Interestingly, this is apparent in the very youtube video ICM (apparently the stem cell clinic) posted to advertise the treatment. The Faiellas now depict Matthew as “85% recovered” on a charitable site soliciting donations for his additional stem cell transplants. The meaning of “85% recovered” remains unclear, as does the remaining 15% of autism to be eradicated with a 5th stem cell treatment.

Matthew is a charming young man and has made wonderful progress over time. This would understandably pique the interest of a “new” set of parental eyes unfamiliar with the history, especially since his progress is now being attributed largely to hbot and stem cell transplants. However, according to past parent testimony, Matthew has been communicating, speaking in sentences, answering questions, following 3 to 4-step directions, reading, spelling, writing, and drawing long before his hyperbaric oxygen and stem cell treatments:

Dec 2005: Having just turned five years old, Matthew can indeed communicate in sentences, and on this occasion, language progress is attributed to supplements:

“After giving him his supplements, I would say within 15 to 20 minutes he was much calmer and happily playing with some toys. He came over to me a few minutes later and said “excuse me mommy, I want to watch the dog movie.”

Matthew was spelling and reading words at age 3 or 4, and mom states that his handwriting was advanced for his age of 6 at this time:

Despite the parents’ claims that Matthew’s developmental gains are more recent and due to stem cell treatments and hbot, Matthew had made significant progress by the time he was 5, according to mom:

“My ds has come a long way since he was first dx’d. At that time he was completely non-verbal, he could not follow any sort of direction, he would spend at least a quarter of the day spinning in circles or hand flapping (or both).
Today he is a little chatterbox, can follow directions fairly well..even 3 and 4 step directions, he no longer spins or flaps, and his receptive language is much better.”

And also as a five-year-old, mom reports that Matthew was initiating conversation, answering questions, and speaking in sentences:

It is curious that Matthew’s parents later edited and deleted the seemingly contradictory content of these past public posts, following the publication of their book and numerous media articles (checked using an address captured in the screenshots). Perhaps this is most unfortunate for the parents themselves — these at least served as markers along the path that Matthew actually traveled, in case they ever wish to find their way back.

When parent testimonies take on a life of their own, the well-meaning parents responsible may have lost their way, lost their boundaries, and even lost their recollection of the child that actually was – a happy, healthy boy who has been learning, loving, and making progress all along.

Internet testimonies and fantastic treatment claims: approach with caution.

Book Sales: The Age of Autism and Callous Disregard

15 Dec

I tapped my source one last time for book sales figures for “The Age of Autism” and “Callous Disregard”. The Age of Autism was written by Mark Blaxill (board member of SafeMinds and one of the three principle editors of the blog, Age of Autism) and Dan Olmsted (former UPI editor, principle editor and, from what I can tell, owner of the Age of Autism blog). Callous Disregard is Andrew Wakefield’s account of the events which landed him before the General Medical Council and resulted in him being removed from the UK medical register.

Total book sales to date:

Age of Autism: 2301
Callous Disregard: 2925

Last week five copies of Callous Disregard were sold.

Last week The Age of Autism sold 130 copies–38 in Minneapolis St. Paul and 35 in Norfolk, Virginia. This appears to coincide with book signing events in those locations. The week before that, The Age of Autism sold 57 copies.

These figures must be disappointing. If not to the authors, to the publishers.

I may post an update with this week’s book sales. Either way, there isn’t much reason to continue the discussion of these books. When they are available in the remainder book outlets (with this few sales, there won’t be a lot of used copies and little chance for paperback editions) I will likely obtain copies of each. I’ve already read them, but they are interesting from a historical perspective. It will be a good exercise to see how these books read ten years from now. If history is kind to these authors, it will be by neglecting them.

Mitochondrial Dysfunction and autism. Brief Q and A with lead author

13 Dec

Mitochondrial Dysfunction was thrust back into the news again earlier this month when a team from UC Davis led by Professor Cecilia Giulivi discovered:

In this exploratory study, children with autism were more likely to have mitochondrial dysfunction, mtDNA overreplication, and mtDNA deletions than typically developing children

In itself this is a fascinating development and the first true look at whether autistic children were more likely or not to have mtDNA dysfunction(s).

However, as ever in the world of autism, the world of the anti-vaccinationists are never far behind. This passage from Harold Doherty demonstrates this bizarre need to always conflate the two:

The Poling family was successful in advancing a vaccine injury claim on behalf of their daughter Hannah Poling to the point of settlement by US authorities. Hannah’s father is Dr. Jon Poling, a practicing neurologist in Athens, Georgia, and clinical assistant professor at the Medical College of Georgia. He reviewed his daughter’s case in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on April 11, 2008. In his comments Dr. Poling explained how mitchondrial dysfunction was related to his daughter’s case and to the existence of a possible mitochondrial dysfunction subgroup of autism disorder. He also discussed, as a medical doctor who expressly recognized the importance of vaccines in preventing serious diseases, the need for public health authorities to abandon fear tactics and conduct research to restore confidence in public health authorities and vaccines

In order to try and staunch the upcoming flood of misunderstandings and false statements like those implied by Doherty (and John Poling whom other mtDNA specialists such as John Shoffner clearly don’t trust on the issue), I contacted Professor Giulivi and asked her three simple questions about the study she is lead author of. She supplied three simple answers.

KL: Do you think, based on available science (including your paper) that vaccines cause autism?

CG: We do not have any evidence for this in our study. Our study was cross-sectional not longitudinal so it cannot point to any cause (not just vaccines), meaning we do not have anydata supporting one way or another.

KL: If so, why is this? Does it follow (in your opinion) that mitochondrial dysfunction can be triggered by a vaccine?

CG: Again, please see (1).

KL: Do you believe your own paper adds weight to any opinion regarding autism causation by any means?

CG: No. At this point we do not know if it is mainly genetic, environmental or a combination of both. Again, with a cross-sectional study you get a snapshot of the situation but not how you got to that situation.

There you have it. The lead author of the study everyone is raving about is very carefully pointing out that the study in question does not add weight to _any_ hypothesis of autism causation, let alone vaccines.

SafeMinds retaliates against skeptic blogger

7 Dec

SafeMinds is an organization with the stated purpose to “…to restore health and protect future generations by eradicating the devastation of autism and associated health disorders induced by mercury and other man made toxicants. ” SafeMinds has stayed with this purpose even as the years have gone by and the evidence has mounted that the SafeMinds hypothesis was incorrect (autism is not a form of mercury poisoning). Recently, SafeMinds produced an advertisement, framed as a public service announcement, focusing on mercury in the flu vaccine and tried to get these shown in movie theaters. As we discussed here recently, Elyse over at Skepchick started an effort to inform the movie theaters about SafeMinds. Her effort snowballed into a large petition and resulted in the movie theaters deciding to not show the SafeMinds advertisement.

Recently, SafeMinds has chosen to leave the discussion of ideas and take on Elyse in a personal attack, through their media effort at the Age of Autism. SafeMinds is not only a key sponsor of Age of Autism, but Mark Blaxill (SafeMinds board member) is one of the three principle editors of the Age of Autism blog.

Again, rather than discuss the issues, they pulled Elyse’s facebook photo


and posted this message

This is the woman who fought to pull the SafeMinds PSA’s from the theatres. It’s her FB profile page photo. She is anti-choice and wants to tell you that mercury is safe and that Thimeosal is good – according to her blog. She trolls AofA regularly. As do all the pro-vaccine-injury bloggers.

It was a call to mock and insult Elyse. A perfect example of cyber bullying. Amongst the comments to that FaceBook page was one extreme enough that one of the Age of Autism editors noted it and promised to remove it. “While I agree that the broken thermometer comment was out of order (the blog does not condone violent speech, so that comments is going.”

It took a while for them to make good on the promise. As in many hours later, after Elyse reported the abuse to the police. That comment does appear to be gone now. Many other abusive comments (but not all) also appear to be removed.

Rather than apologize for inciting the bullying effort, SafeMinds/AgeofAutism are defending themselves by claiming that Elyse was standing in the way of choice.

Stopping Americans unable to understand? What is she St. Skepchick? She interefered with medical choice and commerce. That’s her right to make the attempt. We dis not use her name. We pulled her public photo that she used here on FB. We ran it on FB, not the main site – our readers deserved to know who was behind (at the outer level anyway) the AMC campaign to stop the ads. We provide news. This was news.

No. It wasn’t news. And, no, Elyse was not interfering with medical choice or commerce. She was quite simply providing the theaters with information–allowing them to make informed consent about the SafeMinds advertisement.

The idea of SafeMinds being pro-choice on vaccines is rather ironic. Again a story from their outlet blog, the Age of Autism makes this clear. Two years ago, a theater in New Mexico was going to show the movie “Horton Hears a Who” combined with a free vaccination clinic. At that time, they had a connection to Horton star, Jim Carrey. Instead of allowing choice, providing information, they got Jim Carrey to force the cancellation of the event:

Following a long discussion with his representatives at Fox Entertainment – Who-ville – once again through Horton – was heard. The New Mexico test market of drive thru vaccines while at the movies with your children was stopped. Halted by Horton himself because he heard “we are here, we are here, we are here!” once again.

The bullying attack on Elyse wasn’t about choice, it was just a childish attempt at some sort of petty vengeance. Unfortunately it got out of control. I thank SafeMinds and the Age of Autism for editing the comments, but even what is left is unacceptable. It’s time for apologies, not excuses.

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