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No such thing as a genetic epidemic

15 May

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

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

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

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

He went on to say:

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

A: In the calculations I made, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Autism Omnibus – Petitioners suggest new prevalence

14 May

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tsunami? Hardly.

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

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

Thimerosal on trial- the incredible shrinking epidemic

13 May

The audio recordings of the first day of the thimerosal-only portion of the Autism Omnibus Proceedings hearings are now available here: ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/thimerosal.html. They are mp3 files.

Here’s some of what I heard yesterday via telephone and comments on what I think the parents’ lawyers seem to be implying now, maybe you will listen to the same discussion and take away different key points:

A lawyer for the petitioners (Mr. Williams, I think) said, as if a fact: there has been an autism epidemic, and he added that there is no such thing as a “genetic epidemic”.

They know this because no one could “miss” regressive autism in the past. I guess they might have missed other non-regressive autism and other ASDs.

The only kind of regressive autism they are interested in is the “clearly regressive” subtype, which they seem to be saying is about 2% or less of all ASD children born during the 1990s.

Apparently, they are only interested in the children of the “epidemic” era when kids got more thimerosal exposure.

There are so few of their target group that when these kids started to be “added” to the “epidemic” no one could see it happening, and likewise when the exposure to thimerosal dropped of precipitously, even though the numbers of these target group kids must have dropped off precipitously, no one could see that change in the larger epidemiological data.

So the epidemic might continue but it has nothing to do with thimerosal exposure now.

The numbers of “clearly regressive” autistics, however should be obviously diminishing. Because it’s a small group and not all of them “clearly regressed” following a vaccine containing thimerosal. These supposedly thimerosal-damaged clearly regressive kids must be disappearing by now, but maybe they’ve been replaced by kids who “clearly regress” due to another actionable agent. If they regress because of an non-actionable agent, like, say, oxygen or exposure prenatally to mom’s immune system, no one cares. Then logically, if all of the “clear regressing” autistics were caused to regress only by thimerosal, then there should be very few, or none, younger “clearly regressed” autistics in areas where thimerosal is not used for toddler age vaccines now and hasn’t been used in the past few years.

Apparently, they are claiming that thimeosal in vaccines only causes a subset of regressive autism, not including early-onset autism. So apparently there’s no way for a baby who got the birth dose of Hep B to be made autistic, since it can’t “clearly regress” shortly after birth. And if the baby only got the Hep B dose (if preserved by thimerosal), that alone couldn’t cause a regression months later. I think they are only interested in vaccines given right before a toddler regresses, at say age 12 months to 36 months.

Also, it seems that the PSC believes Eric Fombonne’s research is reliable when they want to make a point with it. They used his research to support the numbers of autistics who regress if I recall.

The transcripts will be available eventually (maybe soon), but we don’t know when. I think it would be interesting to compare get them to explain how many of this tiny group of ASD kids also have mitochondrial diseases or disorders. I wonder if they are trying to imply that the rest of the “epidemic” is caused by tuna mercury, chicken mercury or MMR, aluminum, assortative mating or what?

Autism Omnibus and shrinking hypotheses

13 May

The number of people who have made confident assertions about thiomersal causing autism over the last four years or so is astounding.

It’s now 2005…..[W]e should see fewer cases entering the system this year than we did last year.

– David Kirby

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

“Late 2006 should be the first time that rates go down” said Handley. “If they don’t, our. hypothesis will need to be reexamined.”

– JB Handley

…I would like to make a virtual wager that within the next 18-24 months scientific evidence will make the thimerosal-autism link a near certainty.

– Richard Deth, March 22, 2006.

All these statements have one thing in common, they promote the idea that mercury (thiomersal in particular) causes autism in either all, or the vast majority of cases.

However, listening to the Autism Omnibus yesterday provided a very interesting change from this perspective:

In some kids, there’s enough of it that it sets off this chronic neuroinflammatory pattern that can lead to regressive autism,” said attorney Mike Williams.

ABC.

Note the new language: ‘some kids’….’regressive autism’…..’can lead’.

It seems the days of ‘all autism is mercury poisoning’ are long gone.

Petitioners presented a very interesting expert witness yesterday – a Dr Sander Greenland from UCLA who is a Professor of Epidemiology.

Dr Greenland argued some strange facts for the PSC but completely in line with this new tack that I can’t even remember being argued in the Cedillo hearing (thiomersal may cause regressive autism in some kids).

Greenland essentially argued that all the current epidemiology regarding autism and thiomersal was not good enough to detect thiomersal causation in regressive autism – this is from his submitted report:

A simple example may clarify this point. If a vaccine is not associated with any type of disorder in the category, we should expect to see the same risk when comparing vaccinated to the unvaccinated. Suppose, however, that in reality the vaccine is associated with a two-fold increase in the risk of a type of disorder in the category, but not associated with any other type. Suppose also that, without the vaccine, the associated type represents only one-tenth (10%) of the disease category, and that the total number of cases in the category would be 100. Then, without the vaccine, the number of cases with the associated type would be 100/10 = 10. With the vaccine, however, the number of cases with the associated type would double, to 20, an excess of 10 cases over the original 10 with the associated type. This excess produced by the vaccine would result in a total of 100+10 = 110 cases over the full category, which is only a 10% increase in the risk of any type in the category. Thus, the risk ratio for getting any type in the category would be only 110/100 = 1.1. Such a small risk ratio cannot be reliably distinguished from 1 by ordinary epidemiologic studies.

In other words, the amount of autism caused by vaccines is in fact too small to be detected by epidemiology. If, of course, it is associated with it at all – a point made later by Dr Greenland:

The brief overview given above supports the idea that the association of MCV (mercury containing vaccine) with autism is small or nonexistent.

But really his point is that if thiomersal does cause autism (and whilst he professes to have ‘no opinion’ on the matter it may be telling that he refers to the idea as a hypothesis throughout his report, not a theory) it causes it in very, very small numbers indeed.

Dr Greenland passed no opinion the validity of the hypothesis itself. Rather, he was there to study epidemiology. We have to respect his opinion even if we disagree with it.

The more telling aspect for me was this sudden conversion from ‘vaccines cause autism’ to this suddenly tiny percentage – so small to be undetectable by epidemiology up to this point. That’s quite a step back. What will become of the Omnibus cases that are not considered’ regressive’? Or the ones (like Michelle Cedillo) who were claimed to be regressive but were, upon viewing the video evidence, clearly not. Are the PSC really throwing cases away?

Enforced Vaccination

11 May

I don’t like this, I really don’t.

I know I advocate for the undoubted and scientifically established benefits of vaccination and will continue to do so, but the news that the influential Fabian Society have recommended a policy of enforced vaccination is not good.

In an article for the Fabian Society, leading public health expert Sir Sandy Macara called for child benefit to be linked with vaccination uptake.

And Labour MP Mary Creagh said children should have to prove they are vaccinated before they start school to improve uptake of MMR.

Call for vaccine opt-out penalty

I’m all up for improving the uptake of MMR, I think that is a worthy and vital goal. But is this – educationally and financially punishing children – the right way to do it? Because make no mistake, the parents won’t particularly care that their kids are home schooled. And the type of parent who doesn’t vaccinate (wealthy, white middle class) won’t miss the child benefit. But the child at the heart of these penalties may well miss scholastic education. As a home schoolers ourselves (less through choice than lack of any other option) one of the things we are keenly aware our child misses is the company of her peers in an educational setting.

For those who don’t know, the Fabian Society is a ‘middle-left’ think tank that recommends policy to Labour Party members, particularly influential whilst we have a Labour government (as we do now). They reached this recommendation apparently after:

A poll by YouGov for the Fabian Society suggested that the public would back government action on MMR to address large rises in mumps and measles’ cases. It found that 63% of the public felt that immunisation only worked if everyone was covered, and only 31%felt if was purely up to families to make the choice.

MMR press release

YouGov are a well thought-of (in terms of results accuracy) market research agency. I’ve little doubt the figures they collected are correct. I still don’t like it though. I think that something needs to be done, but this? The penalties seem targeted to ‘hit’ the kids. It also seems tantamount to admitting that attempts to utilise the excellent, freely available science that has killed the MMR hypothesis is pointless.

I’m also frankly disturbed by this quote from Fabian review author Sir Sandy Macara:

One ought to recognise that mothers have a responsibility for ensuring their children are protected.

Mothers? Not parents?

This seems ill thought out, knee-jerk-ish and guaranteed to play into the hands of the conspiracy theorists. We need to do better – much better – than this.

Age of Autism Excels Itself

4 May

It’s my opinion that the blog Age of Autism has not ever once published a post that has contributed anything to the sum of human knowledge in a general sense, nor has it ever published a post that is designed to actually help autistic people live their lives.

However, every once in awhile, it publishes a post that is so monumentally stupid that I literally think the worse of myself for wasting time reading it. And here I am actually blogging about one. Sigh.

Such a post appeared today. It is entitled ‘CDC triggers measles outbreak’. The author of this post, ex-UPI journo Dan Olmsted says:

I’m starting to think we should rename the CDC the Centers for Disease Contagion. You’ve all seen the news that there are suddenly more measles cases in the United States and the CDC is blaming it in part on the increasing reluctance of parents to vaccinate their kids.

But it’s the CDC’s fault, and no other. Getting the “measles shot” means getting the MMR, and the MMR is “the autism shot” in the minds of many, many parents.

So, let me get this straight. It is the CDC’s fault that measles is making a return across the US? I see.

Its not, for example, the fault of the non-vaccinating upper-middle class soccer-mommies and daddies, for example:

Of the 64 people infected by the measles virus, only 1 had documentation of prior vaccination. Among the other 63 case-patients were 14 infants who were too young to be vaccinated. Many of the cases among US children occurred in children whose parents claimed exemption from vaccination due to religious or personal beliefs, or in children too young to be vaccinated.

Hell, no. _That_ couldn’t be the issue, right? Its obviously the CDC’s fault. Damn them for providing the vaccines and a schedule that has led to serious measles epidemics being held at bay in the US and the UK prior to the last 10 years of utter complacency and idiocy.

And why is Dan Olmsted happy to blame the CDC?

Let me tell you one reason why I’m not shy or circumspect about squarely blaming the CDC for this — because Jon Poling, Hannah’s dad, predicted something like this, or much worse, just a few week ago

And as we all know:

Dr, Poling is the real deal, educated at Johns Hopkins, devoted both to his daughter and his patients, tempered by reality. He’s mild-mannered. He’s mainstream. He’s credible.

Riiiiight. This is the same Jon Poling who was recently described by his co-authors as ‘muddying the waters’. The same Jon Poling who’s wife has been a subscriber to the vaccine hypothesis since at least 2001. The same Jon Poling who knowingly uses incorrect epidemiology.

I’m afraid that Jon Poling is right now in the process of extricating himself from the mainstream. And also from any concept of credibility. His refusal to approve access to information that would provide more accuracy to public statements members of his clique have made about the situation is testament to a man who is not governed by any reality other than a desire to push a pre-conceived agenda.

But really, the attempt to point the finger elsewhere by Dan Olmsted is nothing more than a childish ‘It wasn’t me! Its not my fault!’ when both logic and morality show quite clearly that if people decide to eschew something that might not only save their kids lives but the lives and/or well-being of the society in which they live then the finger of responsibility can only point in one direction.

Association Between Autism and Environmental Mercury Exposure Disappears Once Population Density is Controlled for

2 May

california-pollution-autism-analysis

[Correction 5/4/2008: Please see this comment. The trends and conclusions don’t change. The scatter of the graphs is not affected in a way that is noticeable, but the Y ranges do change. The adjustment formula also changes. See the corrected spreadsheet for details.]

This is a critique of Palmer et al. (2008), a recent study claiming to associate the administrative prevalence of autism in Texas school districts and proximity to coal-fired power plants, as well as mercury emissions. Normally I would just point out the likely problems of the paper, but this time I will go further and test a key hypothesis of my critique using California data in a way that is straightforward enough for readers to verify.

Background

Palmer et al. (2008) is not the first study of its kind. Palmer et al. (2006) claimed to document that “for each 1000 lb of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.” The more recent paper by Palmer et al. does not result in such remarkable estimates, considering its finding that “for every 1,000 pounds of release in 1998, there is a corresponding 2.6 percent increase in 2002 autism rates.”

Windham et al. (2006) is a case-control study done in the San Francisco Bay Area which claims to associate autism with emissions of Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs).

Then we also have Waldman et al. (2007), which I consider a study of the same type, except it associates autism with precipitation (as a proxy of television exposure) instead of environmental pollution.

My primary criticism of these types of studies is that they are attempting to find a cause for an epidemiological phenomenon that could very well not require an environmental explanation. That is, administrative data (special education data in particular) is not equipped to tell us if there are real differences in the prevalence of autism from one region to the next. No screening has ever demonstrated that substantial differences in administrative prevalence between regions are not simply diagnostic differences.

That said, the studies have been done, and they have found statistical associations. This usually means they either found a real effect or they have failed to properly control for some confound.

As I have noted repeatedly over the last couple of years, the glaring confound that most likely mediates these types of associations is urbanicity. The association between urbanicity and autism was documented even before these studies were carried out. It is plausibly explained by a greater availability of autism specialists in urban areas and by greater awareness in the part of parents who live in cities.

Palmer et al. (2008) does control for urbanicity, which might be one of several reasons why its findings are underwhelming compared to those of Palmer et al. (2006).

Is the control for urbanicity in Palmer et al. (2008) adequate?

There are two main problems with the control for urbanicity, described in the paper as follows.

Urbanicity. Eight separate demographically defined school district regions were used in the analysis as defined by the TEA: (1) Major urban districts and other central cities (2) Major suburban districts and other central city suburbs (5) Non-metropolitan and rural school districts In the current analysis, dummy variables were included in the analysis coding Urban (dummy variable 1, and Suburban (dummy variable2), contrasted with non-metro and rural districts which were the referent group. Details and specific definitions of urbanicity categories can be obtained at the TEA website http://www.tea.state.tx.us/data.html

.

1. It is too discrete. Within the set of urban districts, some districts will be more urban than others. The same is true of rural districts. Palmer et al. (2008) is effectively using a stratification method to control for urbanicity, but this method is limited, especially considering the paper looks at 1,040 school districts. A better methodology would be to use population density as a variable.

2. Modeling for distance. The paper models autism rates based on distance to coal-fired power plants. It follows that a control variable should model distance to urban areas rather than urbanicity of each district. Granted, this would not be easy because, as noted, urbanicity is not a discrete measure. But it needs to be noted as a significant limitation of the analysis. Consider school districts in areas designated as “rural” that are close to areas designated as “urban.” Such proximity would presumably provide access to a greater availability of autism specialists than would otherwise be the case.

California Analysis

This time around I thought it would be a good idea to run some actual numbers in order to test this population density confound hypothesis that up to this point has been simply theoretical. I will use county-level data from the state of California, which was fairly easy to obtain on short notice. The data used is the following.

  • Special education autism caseload data at the county level for 2005 was obtained from a California resident who had requested it from the California Department of Education.
  • County population and density data for 2006 was obtained from counties.org.
  • Atmospheric mercury concentration data was obtained from the EPA’s 1996 National Air Toxics Assessment Exposure and Risk Data for 2006.
  • All of the raw data, intermediate data, formulas, and resulting charts can be found in this spreadsheet which I am making available for readers to verify and tweak as needed.

Population Density vs. Autism

Autism prevalence was calculated by dividing the special education autism caseload of each county by its population (Column G). This is not a precise determination, of course, but it should not affect the analysis. In any given California county, the population under 18 is roughly a fifth of the total population of the county.

A first attempt at modeling population density vs. autism prevalence (Chart A) suggested the relationship was logarithmic. So I modeled log(population density) vs. autism prevalence, which resulted in the clear correlation you see in Figure 1 (Chart B).

Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

Figure 1: Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

–

This is as expected. You will note, however, there is one significant outlier in the lower-right quadrant. That is San Francisco county. Presumably, because of its peculiar geographic characteristics, its population density is the highest in the state. Nevertheless, San Francisco is an important data point since it is a significant urban area which happens to have a relatively low special education prevalence of autism. Let’s leave it in and see how it affects things.

I will use a simple standardization method of adjustment for population density. Basically, I will standardize autism prevalence in each county, such that population density is no longer a factor. Think of it this way. If the population density of each county grew such that its log were now about 3.5, how would we expect autism prevalence to be affected? The following formula is what I came up with.

Adjusted(Y) = Y + 7 – 1.93 * X

The fact that the adjusted prevalence (Column H) is not dependent on population density can be verified graphically (Chart C). Readers can click back and forth between Chart B and Chart C to better understand the effect of the adjustment. I will come back to this adjusted prevalence.

Mercury Exposure Concentration vs. Autism

I obtained atmospheric mercury exposure concentrations for each county from 1996 EPA data (Column I). More recent data would’ve been better since our population density data is from 2006, but it is not clear if newer data is available. I learned of the 1996 data because that is what Windham et al. (2006) uses. I’m working under the assumption that changes in population density in the last decade have been roughly uniform across the state.

Let’s first look at Figure 2 (Chart E), a graph of log(mercury exposure) vs. autism prevalence, without adjustment for population density.

Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

Figure 2: Mercury Exposure vs. Autism Prevalence

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There is a graphically noticeable trend in Figure 2, which is not surprising. The question is, does the trend remain after adjustment for population density?

Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

Figure 3: Mercury Exposure vs. Autism Prevalence Adjusted For Pop. Density

–

Figure 3 (Chart D) is a graph of log(mercury exposure) vs. standardized autism prevalence; that is, autism prevalence adjusted for population density as previously calculated. In this figure we see there’s no longer a graphically discernable correlation between environmental mercury and autism. In fact, Excel produces a linear fit that indicates there’s somewhat of an inverse correlation between environmental emissions and autism prevalence.

Granted, if we were to remove San Francisco as an outlier, the trend would be pushed upwards. But then in this graph there appear to be two additional outliers in the middle upper part of the graph, Orange county and Los Angeles county. Keep in mind we have not adjusted for wealth. Regardless of how we might adjust the analysis, I fail to see that the graph would support a statistically meaningful association between mercury exposure and autism.

Further Confirmation

So far I have provided evidence that, in California, an association between environmental mercury exposure and autism disappears once we control for population density. This is clear to my satisfaction, but I thought it would be a good idea to attempt an inverse exercise as an illustration of the adjustment method. That is, let us try adjusting prevalence for mercury exposure, and see if the correlation with population density remains.

This is similar to what I did previously. A linear model is discerned from the correlation between log(mercury exposure) and autism (Chart E). This is used to derive an adjustment formula (Column K) whose validity can be verified graphically (Chart F). The new adjusted prevalence (Column K) is used in a new graph of log(population density) vs. autism: Figure 4 (Chart G).

Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence

Figure 4: Pop. Density vs. Autism Prevalence Adjusted For Mercury Exposure

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What Figure 4 (Chart G) tells us is that even after we control for mercury exposure, there is still a clear correlation between autism and population density. In other words, population density wins bigtime – I believe that is the epidemiological term.

Conclusion

An analysis of California data suggests that correlations between the administrative prevalence of autism and environmental mercury emissions are fully mediated by population density. Palmer et al. (2008) suggests there is a real effect in Texas, but its results are not convincing primarily because its control for urbanicity is limited and inconsistent with the hypothesis the paper tests.

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US Reports Biggest Measles Outbreak Since 2001

2 May

The biggest U.S. outbreak of measles since 2001 is unfolding in 10 states, with at least 72 people ranging from infants to the elderly becoming ill — most of them unvaccinated, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said none of those who caught the highly contagious viral illness has died, but at least 14 people have been hospitalized, most with pneumonia triggered by measles.

Lets hope that none of these 14 actually get any worse or (god forbid) die. Lets hope that no one else gets sick. The last time people dies of measles in the US was 1991, the year before that pesky vaccine schedule was strengthened – not that that has any bearing on the matter I’m sure.

1989 to 1991, when 55,000 people got measles and 123 died.

On this recent outbreak, the CDC said:

Of the 64 people infected by the measles virus, only 1 had documentation of prior vaccination. Among the other 63 case-patients were 14 infants who were too young to be vaccinated. Many of the cases among US children occurred in children whose parents claimed exemption from vaccination due to religious or personal beliefs, or in children too young to be vaccinated.

Anti-vaccinationists inflict the coolest things on their kids. Illness, hospitalisation, death….

I wonder if any of these things will make it onto the no doubt completely rational signs the parents attending the ‘Green our vaccines’ rally will be waving around. After all, when the organiser of the event says:

I am surely not going to tell anyone to vaccinate. But if I had another child, there’s no way in hell…….for my next kid—which I’m never going to have—there’s no way.

Then you can rest assured that this will in no way be an anti-vaccine event.

Right?

Alexander Krakow – The Next Bombshell

27 Apr

And so, the next twist in the Autism Omnibus is revealed. Writing in Spectrum Publications in a piece rather hopefully entitled ‘The Next Hannah Poling’ David Kirby writes:

….the boy who was selected to replace Hannah Poling as the first-ever thimerosal “test case” in so-called Vaccine Court, has just been found with many of the same unusual metabolic markers as… you guessed it, Hannah Poling.

……..

….the court announced that the replacement thimerosal test case was also being withdrawn, in order to “proceed to an individual hearing on a different theory of causation.”

……..

“We want to pursue an additional theory, not a different theory,” the boy’s father told me. “We are by no means abandoning the thimerosal theory of causation but, in the context of the test case, the thimerosal theory would have eclipsed our other evidence, including evidence of metabolic dysfunction,” such as impaired mitchondria and low cellular energy.

The boy is Alexander Krakow, son of EoH regular, lawyer Bob Krakow. Up until very recently, lawyer Bob could be heard trumpeting the evils of thiomersal to the exclusion of just about everything else (MMR aside of course). Now, however, the Krakow’s have a new hypothesis (DK refers to ‘theory’ through his article but it isn’t a theory) – but note they still give a shout out to thiomersal anyway.

Now, much as DK and the Krakow’s might want to think this is important, it really isn’t. This situation is in no way similar to Hannah Poling’s. In that scenario, HHS said she was vaccine damaged (but again, despite what DK says, there was no concession she had been made autistic by her vaccines – an opinion the medical evidence and mitochondrial experts agree with) and they recommended awarding damages uncontested. In Alexander Krakow’s case, his _parents_ have withdrawn him from the Omnibus. No science has been presented, HHS have not said anything at all about his medical conditions. All we have so far is the Krakow’s opinion that their son has a mitochondrial disorder.

This is especially interesting in the light of the report of the Krakow’s own hand-picked medical expert, DAN doctor Elizabeth Mumper – not only _a_ DAN! doctor but the ‘Medical Director’ of ARI.

This report prepared by Mumper states:

In my best professional judgement…..it is more likely than not that the thimerosal in the childhood vaccines Alexander Krakow received was a substantial contributing factor to his neurodevelopmental problems.

So the ARI medical director blames thiomersal. What did she have to say about mitochondria?

Well, nothing. The word ‘mitochondria’ is not mentioned once in the whole report.

In his article DK talks about Alexander Krakow having the same ‘markers’ as Hannah Poling. He neglects to say what they are however, or how he concludes they are markers. He also neglects to mention how the DAN! medical director singularly failed to detect any of these so called ‘markers’.

Perhaps the biggest mark against Alexander Krakow having ‘mito induced autism from vaccines’ is the fact that his medical report (which stated the thiomersal dunnit) made no mention of a fever or raised temperature. If I recall correctly, it was a key part of the Hannah Poling scenario that the vaccines had given her a fever and it was this which aggravated her underlying mitochondrial disorder and in turn caused her autism. Alexander Krakow’s medical report mentioned no fever at all.

David must also be aware of the fact that the ‘markers’ he refers to are, at best, markers of mitochondrial issues. Lots kids with mito issues have them. They bear no relation to vaccine injury. I was disappointed to see this issue being talked around but I have some hopes that later this year – towards the autumn maybe – this issue will be made abundantly clear.

So, all in all I am deeply puzzled as to how this is ‘the next bombshell’ or even how Alexander Krakow can be considered to have any kind of mitochondrial related autism issue. The HHS definitely did not concede this case and my guess is that they will be more than happy – given Bob Krakow’s own expert medical report into his son – to contest when their case comes up separately.

My further guess is that we will see some more people switch horses sometime fairly soon. I’m also guessing that – like the Krakow’s – it will be done against their lawyers advice.

Green our vaccines?

21 Apr

Jenny McCarthy:

I am surely not going to tell anyone to vaccinate. But if I had another child, there’s no way in hell…….for my next kid — which I’m never going to have — there’s no way.

Thus speaks the woman who claims she is not anti-vaccine and not intending to spread an anti-vaccine agenda.

In June this year she will be spearheading a rally to carry the message of ‘green our vaccines’. Said message is apparently all about making vaccines ‘cleaner’ (???) reducing the number of them and spacing them out. No scientific reason for this of course.

When asked, the ‘green our vaccines’ leadership claim that they are not _anti_ vaccine – just pro _safe_ vaccine. Uh-huh. And which vaccines are ‘safe’ according to the ‘green our vaccines’ committee? Well, it seems that Jenny McCarthy thinks that answer to that is ‘none’. She will never vaccinate again. No way in hell.

Some people think that the ‘green our vaccines’ message is a trojan horse.

I’m against vaccines, but I feel that “greening our vaccines” is a step in the right direction. Because I realized that more people will be open to hearing the message “green our vaccines” rather than “no more vaccines”. In the beginning I couldn’t imagine scrapping vaccines altogether, but in time I transformed. I think the public
needs to digest this one bite at a time.

Greening of the vaccines is only half of the issue, people need to wake up and see that there is no such thing as a safe vaccine…

I agree with you that there will never likely be a “safe” vaccine, but the only good thing I see about talking about “safer” vaccines, is that this makes it more “palatable” for some and more likely that this news gets out into the mainstream. People are more comfortable dealing with “too much, too soon”, rather than with “none at all”. It gets the vaccine issue a foot in the door, so to speak, into the mainstream media

………..

Hopefully, the “Green Our Vaccines” campaign will get the ball rolling and get this info to more people, to get them thinking and talking about vaccine safety issues. Whether there is such a thing as “safe vaccines” will need to follow after that initial discussion.

….parents do need to come to the conclusion that vaccines are useless and harmful, on their own, through their own thinking and research

I agree that “Green the vacines” is more palatable to the general populace and that is the ‘message’ Jenny and TACA have chosen. I think the approach is ingenious and fits right into the times of global warming and greening everything.

……………

I think green the vaccines ultimately leads to NO vaccines but agreed it must be done in steps.

…………..

We could hopefully all agree that the goal is to STOP damaging children whether that will take greening or incinerating vaccines, that is still the ultimate goal.

These messages are from an active discussion on the EoH Yahoo Group. And after all, why wouldn’t this be the message? Jenny McCarthy quite obviously does _not_ believe in vaccination.

In my opinion the whole ‘green our vaccines’ campaign is very much a trojan horse. We all know how groups associated with this campaign really feel about vaccines. We know how Jenny McCarthy feels about vaccines and we can see what the ‘rank and file’ really think about both vaccines and what the ‘green our vaccines’ campaign is really all about.

Thankfully, the opinion of McCarthy as a less than stellar representative for science is a widely held mainstream one. On Gawker for example, her recent embarrassing performance on Larry King was described as:

Larry King had noted medical expert/softcore video star Jenny McCarthy on the program last night to talk about AUTISM. Specifically, how it’s caused by VACCINATING YOUR CHILDREN. This is patent conspiratorial nonsense, but it’s very popular conspiratorial nonsense. Of course, in a battle between concerned, credulous parents and medical experts, the media will generally frame it as, say, Debate Rages Anew on Vaccine-Autism Link. Faced with a panel of three trained pediatricians, Ms. McCarthy shouted “BULLSHIT” twice.

and Jossip said:

Jenny McCarthy believes common medical vaccinations cause autism in children. And you know what she thinks of your opinions if you disagree? Bullshit! At least that’s what she yelled last night while berating three doctors trying to reason with her on Larry King Live.

Ouch.

Now, whilst it might be mildly amusing to see how real people in the real world (those unconnected with either the vaccine, autism or vaccine/autism debates) consider the opinions of McCarthy it shouldn’t be forgotten or swept aside that its not just about the mercury. Its not even just about the autism. Its about the vaccines. When Jenny McCarthy tells you she wants to ‘green our vaccines’ then ask her exactly what that means and why she won’t ever vaccinate another child of hers.

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