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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

8 Apr

I got email from Ginger Taylor today. She’d read one of my posts on the ongoing Poling/HHS scenario.

I wanted to make sure you had see this from the VICP table.

It is part of the description of what vaccine induced encephalopathy is:

(1) A significant change in mental status that is not medication related; specifically a confusional state, or a delirium, or a psychosis;
(2) A significantly decreased level of consciousness, which is independent of a seizure and cannot be attributed to the effects of medication; and
(3) A seizure associated with loss of consciousness.

(D) A “significantly decreased level of consciousness” is indicated by the presence of at least one of the following clinical signs for at least 24 hours or greater (see paragraphs (2)(I)(A) and (2)(I)(B) of this section for applicable timeframes):

(1) Decreased or absent response to environment (responds, if at all, only to loud voice or painful stimuli);
(2) Decreased or absent eye contact (does not fix gaze upon family members or other individuals); or
(3) Inconsistent or absent responses to external stimuli (does not recognize familiar people or things).

As a matter of fact, I _had_ seen the table. Why Ginger wanted me to read it again I’m not sure. It doesn’t add anything new to the list of symptoms that both the HHS document and the Case Report document and thus we’re still no nearer a diagnosis of autism.

Anyway, after that she carried on:

That is an exact description of what most of us observed in our children when they regressed. When I went into my peds office with my son hanging limp in my arms and not responding to external stimuli, with absent eye contact, and dramatic change in mental status and a very marked decreased level of consciousness, and told him it all started after his vaccines, he should have diagnosed him with encephalopathy. A medical condition, that my medical doctor was charged with diagnosing.

But pediatricians are not taught to look for vaccine injury. Only autism. Because no one is responsible for autism. So instead he sent him to a speech therapist and a psychologist that diagnosed him under a DSM IV code of autism. He passed the buck because if he had done his diagnostic job correctly, he would have indited himself and the vaccine program.

And my doctor was a good doctor. He was not a shlub.

He would’ve indicted the vaccine program for what? Indicating a known vaccine injury was present? Huh?

This to me is the crux of the title of my post – meet the old boss, same as the old boss. People such as Ginger are not interested in _autism_ . They are not interested in being advocates for _autism_ . What they want is either a recognition that their docs screwed up and diagnosed their kids with the wrong thing (this is fine by me. The sooner these people are off the autism communities back the better) or for autism itself to be redefined to meet their own children’s symptoms. This is not fine with me.

This is nothing new. Way back in 2001, Bernard et al published Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning which attempted the same ‘trick’ as is being attempted here – redefine autism to meet your own beliefs rather than see if what you believe fits the already established facts. As we have all been witness to, time has not been kind to the thiomersal hypotheses. Neither has it been kind to the MMR hypotheses.

Anyway, Ginger carried on:

Things are changing VERY quickly Kevin. The atmosphere here is much different than from what i understand is happening in the UK. Major networks are not ready to report on it yet, but they are listening to us now. Calling and asking questions even. Main stream docs were talking to me about integrating DAN methods into their practices before the AAP’s announcement last week. All of the sudden parents are getting their phone calls returned very quickly from sources that have blown them off for a long time. And I can’t keep up with my email.

I thought this would be a decade or more of fighting all this, but it looks to be more like the cascade of events when the Soviet Union fell. It is gaining speed. The Polings were the first major crack in the dam and now huge chunks are coming out faster and faster.

Kirby was right, the debate is over.

I had a quick grin at the sheer arrogance of comparing the autism/vaccine hypotheses to the collapse of communism in the old Soviet block but really, this again is nothing new. If I had a pound for every time someone had posted on here that ‘this is it, its all over’ I’d be richer by a fair few pounds. Of course, they always come to nothing.

The devil is in the details. And in the science. Mito connections to autism are nothing new. Attempts to ‘talk up’ and muddy the wide picture whilst failing to look at the details are nothing new. The media talking to people is hardly anything new (I had an interview myself recently and have had several in the past). Attempting to twist autism away from what is already known about it into something new to make it fit into yet another set of beliefs is not new.

I’ll say it again as I have before. Its a very exciting time for the media and bloggers as we have lots of cool stuff to talk about. However, none of that stuff is new science. And when it comes to vaccines causing autism that’s what is needed. Science.

The Next Big Autism Bomb?

28 Mar

Over on the Huffington Post, David Kirby has posted about The Next Big Autism Bomb. Its a very long post so take a sammich.

The gist (with apologies to Mr Kirby) of it is that there was a conference call to discuss the autism/mito issues:

On Tuesday, March 11, a conference call was held between vaccine safety officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several leading experts in vaccine safety research, and executives from America’s Health Insurance Plans, (the HMO trade association) to discuss childhood mitochondrial dysfunction and its potential link to autism and vaccines.

The purpose of the call was:

“We need to find out if there is credible evidence, theoretically, to support the idea that childhood mitochondrial dysfunction might regress into autism,” one of the callers reportedly told participants.

To that end, Mr Kirby mentions four studies throughout the rest of his piece. Three are accessible but the fourth is a total mystery. This is unfortunate as it is this fourth one which the majority of his blog post relies upon for its conclusions.

The first three are discussing what the prevalence of mito _within_ autism might be. Kirby states:

CDC officials were made aware of a Portuguese study, published last October, which reported that 7.2% of children with autism had confirmed mitochondrial disorders. The authors also noted that, “a diversity of associated medical conditions was documented in 20%, with an unexpectedly high rate of mitochondrial respiratory chain disorders.”

There is a slight point of confusion to clear up here. The figure of 7.2% is from a 2005 study ‘Mitochondrial dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders: a population-based study‘.

The study (by the same author) that Kirby mentions as being published last October is ‘Epidemiology of autism spectrum disorder in Portugal: prevalence, clinical
characterization, and medical conditions‘ declares a 4.1% figure.

The reason for this is that the lead author re-examined his data from the 2005 study and adjusted it downwards in the 2007 study. So Kirby is not correct to state that the authors believe that the rate is 7.2%. The latest figure from these authors is 4.1%.

The third study that discusses prevalence is referenced by Kirby as:

They also know that some reports estimate the rate of mitochondrial dysfunction in autism to be 20% or more. And the rate among children with the regressive sub-type of autism is likely higher still.

Kirby links to a web page that is the web interface to a mail list.

Upon searching for this paper I couldn’t find it anywhere. It is not in PubMed or Google Scholar and in fact I can only find three references to it online at all.

It since transpires that this paper is not in fact a paper at all and has not been published anywhere. It is in fact a summary for attendees of a 2003 LADDERS conference in Boston, USA. Therefore it has not been subject to any kind of peer review. That’s not to say the figure is wrong, merely that it hasn’t been verified or undergone any kind of the usual scientific checks and balances a published piece of work must undertake to ensure quality.

Its also been explained to me that the percentage of “mitochondrial autism” reported by any group will vary with the percentage of regressive autism in their ASD population. So it is not true that the summary states a differential between autism and regressive autism. Rather that “mitochondrial autism” exists _within_ regressive autism.

And so we move on to the fourth study.

One doctor reported his findings from a five-year study of children with autism, who also showed clinical markers for impaired cellular energy, due to mild dysfunction of their mitochondria.

The biochemistry of 30 children was studied intensively, and in each case, the results showed the same abnormalities as those found in Hannah Poling, participants said. Each child had moderate elevations or imbalances in the exact same amino acids and liver enzymes as Hannah Poling.

All thirty children also displayed normal, healthy development until about 18-24 months of age, when they quickly regressed into clinically diagnosed autism (and not merely “features of autism”), following some type of unusual trigger, or stress, placed on their immune system.

……….

But what causes the stress? That is a very big question.

Apparently, in only two of the 30 cases, or 6%, could the regression be traced directly and temporally to immunizations, and one of them was Hannah Poling. In the other cases, there was reportedly some type of documented, fever-inducing viral infection that occurred within seven days of the onset of brain injury symptoms.

Mr Kirby makes this study the raison d’etre of the rest of his post.

I have some major concerns about this. Who is this doctor? What is this study? Where is it published? Where can we _read for ourselves_ what this study says? Without wishing to question the honesty with which Mr Kirby is posting, its obvious that – even in this post as I discuss above – errors and misinterpretations have crept in.

Lets be honest here. These are some *major* claims being made. Firstly that all 30 kids in the study regressed into clinically diagnosed autism as opposed to features of autism. All 30? That’s incredible.

Secondly that 6% of the regressions into clinically diagnosed autism are traced directly from immunisations. That’s big. That is about as big as it gets. I would really like to see this study.

I have asked (twice) in the comments section of Mr Kirby’s post to be pointed to this study. So far, no answer has been forthcoming from anybody.

However. I note that Mr Kirby states that one of the 6% is Hannah Poling. If this is so then it is not true to say that:

the…[autistic]…regression…[can]… be traced directly and temporally to immunizations

(insertions mine for clarity).

As I’ve discussed before, none of the listed symptoms attributed to immunisations can accumulate to a diagnosis of autism. So unless we can actually see this study, know who the author, see what checks and balances this paper has undergone, we’re in a bit of a limbo.

Dear CDC

26 Mar

I read with interest Dr Schuchat’s opinion piece in the AJC today.

Whilst it is gratifying to see someone of Dr Schuchat’s calibre responding to previous claims regarding vaccines in autism I would like to make a few points to Dr Schuchat and the CDC in general.

Firstly, this level of response is around eight years too late. What have you been doing on the media/PR front over the last eight years? I’ll tell you what your ‘opponents’ have been doing – they’ve been conducting protests outside your offices, outside the offices of the AAP etc. They’ve been setting up and organising vaccine/autism groups and heavily marketing them via the use of organic and paid for web based advertising.

The only people who have made any kind of attempt to counter these groups and the misinformation (deliberate or not) they publish is people like myself. I am not attempting to aggrandise myself at all. I am attempting to convey to you how one sided the ‘battle’ has been over the last few years.

Where were you? You were needed. You could’ve helped. Instead you sat back and hoped this would all go away. It didn’t. It won’t.

Secondly, the level of Dr Schuchat’s response is very close to condescending. Simply stating that:

Kirby’s column included many inaccuracies related to childhood vaccines. As such, it illustrates that when it comes to immunizations, child development and specific medical conditions, the best source of guidance is the child’s health care provider.

is patronising in the extreme. The level and quality of the debate has moved on in the last eight years. Bland assurances won’t cut it. You need to be specific and offer evidence. Autistic people, parents of autistic people and interested professionals are smart enough to know and understand a certain level of science these days.

Don’t be shy about providing people with science. You have some truly excellent science on ‘your side’ as I and others have attempted to blog about in the last five years to no small effect. For example, Googling mmr autism displays, amongst others, the blog of a friend of mine – also the parent of an autistic child and also convinced of the need to blog about the bad science surrounding the various vaccine/autism hypotheses. Googling thiomersal autism brings up _this_ blog. We’re doing your job for you!

You’re being left behind in this debate. Its time you caught up.

How to create a disease

25 Mar

This piece is once again guest written by ‘Nigel’, a scientist working in the field whos real name is not actually Nigel ;o)

Followers of Andy Wakefield may not have come across a little spat which took place in the correspondence section of the journal “ Histopathology” last year. It is all to do with “ autistic enterocolitis”, the alleged inflammatory bowel disease described by Wakefield and colleagues in 1998 in the infamous Lancet paper. It is worth remembering that although the MMR-autism link garnered all the publicity, a key intermediate in the link was that measles persisted in the gut, resulted in enlarged lymphoid follicles, which then somehow caused this “ autistic enterocolitis”. At Thoughtful House in Austin, Texas, Wakefield and his acolyte Artie Krigsman, are now trying to make a buck out of treating this condition.

Professors Tom MacDonald and Paola Domizio from Barts and the London School of Medicine in London were experts for the defense in the UK MMR litigation against the vaccine manufacturers out of which Wakefield trousered one million dollars. MacDonald is a pre-eminent gut immunologist with an international reputation and was recently awarded the President’s Medal of the British Society for Gastroenterology for his scientific achievements. Domizio is an extremely well known gut pathologist and is also a senior figure in the Royal College of Pathologists in the UK.

The gist of their article (Histopathology. 2007 50:371-9) was that autistic enterocolitis does not exist. In a forensic dissection of the key paper by Wakefield and colleagues in the Am J Gastroenterology in 2000 (Am J Gastroenterol. 2000 95:2285-95), MacDonald and Domizio clearly showed that the so-called enterocolitis was due to Wakefield incorrectly deeming enlarged lymphoid follicles in the gut as pathological abnormalities, and that he had also created new and unsubstantiated pathological abnormalities to give the impression of gut pathology. The image of enterocolitis in an affected child shown in this paper was an extremely highly magnified picture of a small piece of tissue, which may in fact have come from one of the original Lancet 12 (in order to bump up the numbers of patients studied, Wakefield just reported the original Lancet 12 again). This is a familiar Wakefield tactic, his “representative” images are always taken at an extremely high magnification on the microscope, presumably to hide the fact that the rest of the tissue is normal. MacDonald and Domizio also shredded other Wakefield papers of the same ilk in their article.

Key to this piece of detective work by Domizio and MacDonald was a table in the Am J Gastro paper where these invented histological abnormalities were shown. In his response ( Histopathology 2007 50:380-4) Wakefield did not address any of the substantive points raised by MacDonald and Domizio, but stated that the pathological descriptions in the table were nothing to do with him, but were the work of Prof A Dhillon at the Royal Free Hospital in London, who was not an author of the paper. Unfortunately for Wakefield, Dhillon also wrote to the journal to say that it was nothing to do with him either (Histopathology 2007 50:794). Dhillon showed his version of the table, which unsurprisingly, because Dhillon is a bona fide pathologist, contained none of the new invented abnormalities. So we have an impasse, though not enough of an impasse to stop Wakefield publishing another paper in 2005 (Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol 17:827-36) showing the same table again, and remarkably, reporting the Lancet 12 for at least the third time! Wakefield produced no response to MacDonald and Domizio’s suggestion that since the histopathology slides from the autistic children seen at the Royal Free Hospital in London are available, it would be a straightforward exercise to have these analysed in an anonymous and independent fashion to put this question to rest.

In response to Wakefield’s defence of his work, the editor allowed MacDonald and Domizio a final say, where they demolished Wakefield again (Histopathology 2007, 51, 552–3).

Although all of this might seem highly technical, histopathological diagnosis of gut disease is a highly skilled art, with extremely high standards, and it is scientific vandalism for non-pathologists such as Wakefield to create new and non-existant abnormalities and then use them to burden children and parents with a life-long inflammatory bowel disease. The best example of this sleight of hand is his definition that a tissue section from the gut of an autistic child was abnormal if it contained a lymphoid follicle. However when the gut biopsies were taken at colonoscopy from autistic children, lymphoid follicles were specifically targeted for sampling because they wanted to look for measles in these tissues. So it is obvious that all will have pathology if one uses this invented criteria.

Throughout this saga, Wakefield has traded on the fact that autistic children do have real gut problems. However instead of attributing these problems in the majority of children to a combination of chronic and severe constipation, fecal impaction, unusual diet, diarrhea, bloating, parasites, gas etc, he had to find a new disease! However the pediatric gastroenterologists in charge of these children at the Royal Free knew what the problem was, when they wrote in the Lancet in 1998, that following cleansing of the colon needed for colonoscopy, many children underwent rapid symptomatic improvement which was maintained if constipation was avoided ( Lancet 1998;351:908). So there you have it, an inflammatory bowel disease treatable by cleansing the colon!

An interesting post-script to all this is that when challenged with the fact that the alleged “enterocolitis” in autistic children is not different from the mild changes and ileal lymphoid hyperplasia seen in chronically constipated, developmentally normal children, Wakefield and Krigsman are now saying that the constipation in autistic children is different! Give us a break !

PS. MacDonald was also an expert witness last year in the Hazelhurst versus HHS case in the USA. In his testimony MacDonald re-iterated in some depth the extent of Wakefield’s rogue and junk science, going back all the way to his identification of measles virus in Crohn’s disease using reagents which were not specific for measles virus. However he picked up yet another deception in the Am J Gastro paper. Much of the paper deals with the alleged lymphoid hyperplasia in the ileum of autistic children, graded by Wakefield on a score 0-3, with 0 being no follicles and 3 allegedly an undefined “severe” lymphoid hyperplasia. To illustrate the colonoscopic appearances of grades 0-3, a panel of photographs purportedly showing the different grades is included as Figure 1 of the paper. The date and time each photograph was taken is reproduced in figure. The image of alleged grade 0 ileal lymphoid hyperplasia (ILH) was taken on the same day and only 1 minute 54 seconds before the image of alleged grade 3 ILH. It is impossible to remove a colonoscope from 1 child and scope another child, reaching the ileum in 1 minute 54 seconds. Therefore the grade 0 and grade 3 images were taken from the same child; the grade 0 image most probably from the caecum ( the part of the colon just after the ileum) and the grade 3 image from the terminal ileum.

Urinary opioid peptides and genes

19 Mar

Two new interesting pieces of science out this week.

Firstly was the latest piece of MMR hypothesis destroying science called ‘Absence of urinary opioid peptides in children with autism’.

MMR believers say that part of the hypothetical damage the MMR does to the gut of autistic kids is cause so-called ‘leaky gut’ syndrome, an alternative medicine hypothesis roughly suspected to be on a par with homeopathy and massaging aura’s in terms of scientific credibility.

Proponents of the autism branch of this hypothesis say that the MMR causes leaky gut and that the ‘leak’ fails to parse these urinary opioid peptides which in turn would (in effect) get the patient stoned. or to put it another way:

….these peptides result in effects which are basically opioid in nature (akin to drugs such as morphine) and that they may either, themselves, have direct opioid activity or that they may form ligands for the enzymes which would normally break down such opioid peptides that occur naturally within the Central Nervous System (CNS). In either case, the consequence would be the same. The CNS neuroregulatory role, which is normally performed by the natural opioid peptides such as the enkephalins and endorphins, would be intensified to such an extent that normal processes within the CNS would be severely disrupted…

Yeah, right.

So now some actual science (as oppose to blueskying) has looked at this. And what do they conclude:

It has been claimed for a number of years that the urine of children with autism contains exogenously derived opioid peptides. This finding is said to reflect a disturbance in the integrity of the gut epithelium, act as a diagnostic marker for autism and predict treatment response to a diet excluding gluten and casein. The aim of the present study was to determine whether exogenous or endogenous peptides were present either in the urine of children with autism, or control children.

…..

There were no significant differences between the HPLC urinary profiles of the children affected by autism and the typically developing controls. In those cases where HPLC showed peaks in the locations at which opioid peptides might be expected to be found., MALDI-TOF established that these peaks did not, in fact, represent opioid peptides at all.

……

Given the lack of evidence for any opioid peptiduria in children with autism it can neither serve as a biomedical marker for autism, nor be employed to predict or monitor response to a casein and gluten exclusion diet.

So that’s yet another nail in the undead vampire of the MMR hypothesis (in fact, is there a proper word for something which is less than a hypothesis? Even using the word ‘hypothesis’ now seems aggrandising this silliness)

On the other side of research, where actual progress is being made, an as yet unpublished study (or published but the journal issue hasn’t been released or it has and I can’t find it) has found genetic connections which they think can count towards up to 2.5% of autism:

Disruptions in the gene, called contactin 4, stop the gene from working properly and appear to stop the brain from making proper networks, the researchers reported in the Journal of Medical Genetics.

These disruptions, in which the child has either three copies of the gene or just one copy when two copies is normal, could account for up to 2.5 percent of autism cases, said Dr. Eli Hatchwell of Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York, who led the study.

Now, when we put this together with Rett, Fragile-X, Tuberous Sclerosis, de-novo mutations and a few others I can’t recall I think we’re approaching between 10 – 16% of an established genetic cause for autism(s). Slightly better than the 0% that the vaccine hypotheses are running at.

Autism vs features of autism

14 Mar

In sum, DVIC has concluded that the facts of this case meet the statutory criteria for demonstrating that the vaccinations CHILD received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder.

– HHS

If one has the right set of “features” of autism, one has autism……Hannah Poling has autism — as defined in every book, in every library, in every university in the world. Dr. Parikh’s insistence otherwise is perplexing.

– David Kirby, to EoH group in response to Dr. Parikh’s article in Salon.

Its a massively ambiguous point. Do ‘features of autism’ equate to a _diagnosis_ of autism? David Kirby and some commenter’s to this site say ‘yes’. I personally think ‘no’.

But I think we need to be clear here. In this particular case, Hannah Poling can still be autistic but the HHS are arguing (in my opinion) that the features listed as those being aggravated/caused by vaccines do not add up to enough by themselves to give a diagnosis of autism.

To illustrate this idea, I went through the symptoms given by Dr Zimmerman that he put forward as being vaccine aggravated in a previous post (green = hit with DSM (IV), red = miss):

1) Loss of previously acquired language
2) Eye Contact
3) Relatedness
4) disruption in CHILD’s sleep patterns,
5) Persistent screaming
6) Arching
7) the development of pica to foreign objects,
8) loose stools
9) CHILD watched the fluorescent lights repeatedly during the examination

So, three of the symptoms given by Dr Zimmerman as being vaccine aggravated can be matched with the DSM (IV). This is way below what is needed for a diagnosis of autism.

But, we cannot discount the idea that she _could be_ autistic. To me, it seems likely that here is an autistic child who has her vaccines and who presents with nine symptoms following those vaccines, three of which tally with DSM (IV) criteria.

This presents two questions. First, is there a difference made by autism diagnosticians about autistic features vs a diagnosis of autism?

The best way to answer this is to ask autism diagnosticians. I wrote to some autism diagnosticians. They asked to remain anonymous, which I have to respect. The email I sent in essence asked them if they thought that:

a) ‘with features of autism spectrum disorder’ is directly equivalent to a diagnosis of autism?
b) ‘with features of autism spectrum disorder’ means that some elements of the DSM (IV) are present but not enough to diagnose autism?
c) ‘with features of autism spectrum disorder’ means that some elements of the DSM (IV) are present but not enough to diagnose ASD?
d) ‘with features of autism spectrum disorder’ means something else entirely?

The responses I got back stated that b) was most likely, maybe c) .

So according to these autism diagnosticians, some elements of the DSM (IV) are present but not enough to diagnose autism, or possibly ASD. This tallies with my own personal opinion.

The second question is; did Hannah Poling present with any diagnosable symptoms of autism _before_ her vaccines? Sadly, it seems we will never accurately know the answer to this question. The Poling’s will say no of course. David Kirby et al will say no of course.

I will remember the Cedillo’s however, who testified that their daughter (who they claimed was made autistic by vaccines) showed no symptoms of autism before her vaccines were administered. However, when home movies of their daughter taken before her vaccines were shown to several diagnosticians, they testified that she was indeed exhibiting symptoms of autism prior to vaccine administration. The Cedillo’s didn’t lie. Its simply not possible to remain clinically objective about one’s own child. Even for an employee of Johns Hopkins, it is not possible to remain objective about one’s own child.

That doesn’t mean Hannah Poling _did_ exhibit symptoms of autism prior to vaccines of course. It simply means that we need to be skeptical of the claim that she didn’t.

Is Hannah Poling autistic? Could be. Seems likely.

Did the vaccines cause the nine symptoms Dr Zimmerman found? HHS ‘concede’ they did.

Do the fact that three of those nine symptoms tally with the DSM (IV) mean that the vaccines are the cause of her autism? No, thats not logical.

Vaccines, Autism and the Concession

1 Mar

1) Concession Report (This document has been removed due to the possibility of it being illegally obtained). If people really wish to read the document for themselves it can be founf here, at the Huffington post
2) Zimmerman Case Study

When David Kirby wrote his piece in the Huffington Post, I’ll admit I read it with my jaw on my chest. Here was evidence I was wrong. I emailed David Kirby to get the whole report from him and he was kind enough to provide not only a PDF version but a plain text version as well.

This enabled me to contact a few people that I know are medical people and/or scientists and/or closely connected to this case. For example I contacted Dr Zimmerman and learned that it was not possible for him to offer any sort of opinion on this case due to the fact that his patients parents had not allowed him to discuss his thoughts and opinions with anyone except the court. I was told however that ‘the comments on your site with questions raised and loopholes pointed out about the way others are interpreting the facts of the situation, are right on track.’

It is clear to me then that there is some wordsmithing going on – either deliberately or unintentionally. What we need to do is look closely at the wording of two documents. The concession report and the case study performed by Dr Zimmerman.

The claim by David Kirby et al is, in essence, that the US Government have conceded that vaccines cause autism in this one case. Lets look at the so-called concession report in relation to what it says about autism.

Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a pediatric neurologist, evaluated CHILD……on February 8, 2001. Dr. Zimmerman reported that after CHILD’s immunizations of July 19, 2000, an “encephalopathy progressed to persistent loss of previously acquired language, eye contact, and relatedness.” He noted a disruption in CHILD’s sleep patterns, persistent screaming and arching, the development of pica to foreign objects, and loose stools. Id. Dr. Zimmerman observed that CHILD watched the fluorescent lights repeatedly during the examination and would not make eye contact. He diagnosed CHILD with “regressive encephalopathy with features consistent with an autistic spectrum disorder, following normal development.”

Features consistent with. He did not diagnose her with autism. What were these features?

1) encephalopathy progressed to persistent loss of previously acquired language,
2) eye contact,
3) relatedness
4) disruption in CHILD’s sleep patterns,
5) persistent screaming
6) arching,
7) the development of pica to foreign objects,
8) loose stools
9) CHILD watched the fluorescent lights repeatedly during the examination
10) would not make eye contact

Of these ten, one is repeated (eye contact issues) so I make nine clear separate symptoms there. Which of these appear in the DSM (IV)? Green equal matches, red equal misses.

1) Loss of previously acquired language
2) Eye Contact
3) Relatedness
4) disruption in CHILD’s sleep patterns,
5) Persistent screaming
6) Arching
7) the development of pica to foreign objects,
8) loose stools
9) CHILD watched the fluorescent lights repeatedly during the examination

To meet the DSM(IV) criteria a person must meet no less than 6 of the criteria. So, as described perfectly exactly by the Dr Zimmerman in the concession report, this child has features consistent with an ASD. But its clear she does not meet the criteria for autism.

Later on,

CHILD was evaluated by Alice Kau and Kelley Duff, on May 16, 2001, at CARDS. The clinicians concluded that CHILD was developmentally delayed and demonstrated features of autistic disorder.

Almost the exact same phrasing. Consistent with. But no one has said thus far that the child has been diagnosed with an ASD.

The concession report concludes with:

the vaccinations CHILD received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder….

This is the phrasing that caused the uproar. But when looked at in light of the previous, it is clear that far from suggesting that vaccines cause autism via a mitochondrial disorder, the vaccines worsened an occluded or underlying mitochondrial disorder which took on a few of the symptoms of autism _but was never actually diagnosed as autism at all_ . Because it wasn’t autism.

Before we switch to Dr Zimmerman’s Case Study, lets clear up a few things.

No one, I repeat, no one is saying this child wasn’t autistic. She may well have been. What we are doing is looking at the science reported in the concession report and Zimmerman’s paper and seeing if what the _science_ says in these two papers means that it was the vaccines that caused any autism. The concession report clearly says that no it wasn’t. Thats why this case was uncontested. She was affected by her vaccines but autism was not the result.

Zimmerman’s case study is entitled ‘Developmental Regression and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in a Child With Autism’ – this is further evidence against the case presented that it was the vaccines that caused the autism. This child is reported as being one with autism. Not one who develops autism as a result of vaccines.

However, it is clear that this child _does_ develop autism:

We describe a female patient in whom developmental regression and autism followed normal development…..Evaluation at 23 months showed …..[t]he Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) score was 33 (mild autism range), and she also met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for
Mental Disorders-IV criteria for autism

and yet this autism was so mild that at that exact same period (23 months):

the patient began speaking again at 23 months old

which means that expressive language was lost for a sum total of one month (it is reported being lost at 22 months). It should also be noted that CARS is _not_ designed for diagnosis but is an indicator only. Overall, we get a picture of a child who had an underlying mitochondrial dysfunction exposed by the illnesses following her vaccinations which caused developmental regression. This developmental regression presented with some features of autism.

Did the vaccinations cause her developmental regression? Seems likely. It is an undisputed fact that vaccines do cause injury, that is why after all there is a compensation program to claim from in the US and the UK.

Was her developmental regression autism? No. At no point in either the concession report is it claimed that the developmental regression the child went through _was_ autism. However, in the same way that Leukemia (weakness, paleness; fever and flu-like symptoms) can have the same symptoms as flu (weakness, paleness; fever and flu-like symptoms) but be totally different, this child’s developmental regression shared certain features of autism.

So was this child autistic. She might well have been. However, her autism was not caused by a vaccine.

Update

This column was forwarded to me by a friend. Thanks to him.

The practice of calling certain things near-autism, or even autism itself is not new. Here’s a quote from a Science article regarding HIV in 1989:

The signs of AIDS dementia in children are clear and, Pizzo says, “very painful to watch. Very young children lose words.” Words like “mommy” and “daddy” and “bear” are too hard to remember as the AIDS virus multiplies in the young child’s body and penetrates the central nervous
system.

An 8-year-old boy, once normal, was rendered practically autistic by HIV, Pizzo said. He stopped speaking. Asked to trace a simple
outline of an elephant, the boy could not. Painfully, he knew what a simple task it was, and he knew he was failing it. But he could not cry even though his doctors could see tears welling up in his eyes.

Pizzo has seen children lose IQ points one boy lost as many as 28-as AIDS ravages their brains. “Kids who used to do well in school really deteriorate,” says Pizzo who has “before and after” IQ data from school-age children.

But in a series of remarkable studies, Pizzo has seen AZT (azidothymidine) reverse these symptoms. The child who lost words like “mommy” and “daddy” “got them back,” Pizzo says. The boy who lost IQ points is restored to his former capacity.

The 8 year old cries. After just a couple of weeks of continuous AZT therapy, the boy who could not trace an elephant is successful at tracing a horse.

Now, we all know that ‘tracing an elephant’ and losing IQ points are not symptoms of autism but it is intriguing to see a doctor describe a regression as ‘practically autistic’. Note also, just like in this case, in Zimmermans case study, the child quickly loses, then very quickly regains aspects of their former regression. But HIV didn’t cause autism any more than vaccines did.

US government concededs vaccine/autism case

26 Feb

As per this story from David Kirby in the HuffPo.

I have some doubts about it but lets see. I’ve emailed David Kirby to ask him to provide me with a full copy of the concession. His willingness to provide this information as well as the information itself should tell us more about what this concession report contains.

Ya ken that hidden horde, aye?

24 Feb

So – the ‘Hidden Horde’ – the term that anti-vaccinationists like to smirk about as evidence of an autism epidemic. The logic goes like this: if there’s no autism epidemic then where are all the [insert age here] year old autistic adults? I’ve heard people asking for evidence of 75 year old autistics (conveniently forgetting that the average mortality age in the US and UK is around 70), 50 year olds – even 30 year olds.

Never mind that there’s been plenty of evidence for adult autistics. Thats not convenient for the anti-vaccinationist agenda so it gets ignored.

Anyway, todays Sunday Herald carries another story about adult autistics in Scotland called ‘Revealed: ‘invisible’ adults living with autism’.

According to the National Autistic Society (NAS) Scotland report, due to be launched this week, 52% of adults have not had an assessment of their needs since the age of 18…..It is estimated that more than 35,000 adults in Scotland have the condition, but campaigners said they were “invisible” to local authorities, who are failing to record the number of people with autism in their area.

The population of Scotland is 5,062,011. The latest prevalence estimates for the UK are 1 in 100. This means that 50,620 people are autistic. If 35,000 adults in Scotland are autistic then 69% of autistic people in Scotland are adults.

Hidden horde aye?

New mercury/autism paper to misrepresent

22 Feb

A new study on autism and mercury has been published:

Autism is a highly heritable disorder, however, there is mounting evidence to suggest that toxicant-induced oxidative stress may play a role. The focus of this article will be to review our animal model of autism and discuss our evidence that oxidative stress may be a common underlying mechanism of neurodevelopmental damage. We have shown that mice exposed to either methylmercury (MeHg) or valproic acid (VPA) in early postnatal life display aberrant social, cognitive and motor behavior.

Some people have reported on this study thusly:

New Study Implicates Mercury In The Development Of Autism

Um, right.

These same people, well known for their anti-vaccine beliefs, fail to note anywhere that this study says:

…., it is important to note that autism was not found to be associated with either pre- or neonatal exposure to organic mercury.

One form of organic mercury being, of course, thiomersal.

Might it be very uncharitable of me to suggest that this was a deliberate obfuscation? I guess it might but I still think it was. Especially when this same person says:

….will they all continue to proffer the lie that there is no convincing evidence linking vaccines to autism, while ignoring all the studies that are piling up on the hard drives of parents across the country?

Hmmm, so this study quite categorically states there is no link between organic mercury and autism and yet this person calls others liars? Projection is a terrible thing.

There will be more to say on the quality of this study – especially its references – but I wanted to get this clear as soon as possible.

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