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Jeff Bradstreet deserts the sinking ship

12 Feb

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

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

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

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

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

This trial ended abruptly when:

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

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

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

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

But what happened? Why did Bradstreet never testify?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to Bradstreet:

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

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

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

The end result for the Skevofilax’s?

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

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

Thanks to A for the file :o) .

David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part IV

4 Feb

There’s Something About California!

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

Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rosie O’Donnell vs Evidence of Harm

4 Feb

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

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

Yeah. I’ll bet.

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

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

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

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

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

Because its crap maybe?

No, couldn’t be that:

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

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

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

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

To which Ms O’Donnell answered, fairly unequivocally:

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

Over on Conspiracy theory Central EoH Roger asks:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guest Blogger on CDDS

31 Jan

Manipulating CDDS - guest blogger Dr Nick Riviera

Hi Everybody!

Wow! OK, so here I am again – I’m Dr. Nick Riviera, and I will perform any major operation for just 129.95!

So today I’m supposed to tell you about CDDS data and how, just like VAERS, you can use it to say anything really. And hey – if there’s any Autism Omnibus lawyers reading – You don’t have to make up stories here. Save that for court.

Now there’s this guy called David Kirby who once said that CDDS was the gold standard of autism epidemiology (long word friends – just means numbers) but it seems that now, after the numbers started to disagree with his hypothesis (long word friends – it just means any old thing you want to make up) that they’re suddenly not so important. That makes perfect sense to Dr Nick friends – who wants to be caught right? In fact, Mr Kirby – did you go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College too?

So, I wanna show you some more number examinations from CDDS – see what you think of them friends.

OK, so, the autism epidemic is thought to be demonstrated by the ever-increasing number of entries to the 3 – 5 age group (side note: the sci-guys only had 1.9% of mercury containing vaccines available by Feb 2002 and the 3 – 5 year olds are still increasing….even Dr. Nick can make the obvious conclusion from _that_ fact friends).

Those people who think that there _isn’t_ an epidemic say that the increase is just due to diagnosis catching up to the actual rate.

Those who say there _is_ an epidemic (man this is tiring) say, if that’s true where are all the older autistics? Some say there can’t be any autistic people over 75 as Eli Lilly invented autism in 1931.

Dr. Nick presents his first graph – ta da (click for bigger version)!

CDDS numbers for 62 - 99 year olds

This is 62 – 99 year old autistic people in CDDS from 1992 – 2005. First thing that seems pretty clear, even to Dr Nick, is that having a reporting category that goes up to 99 years old takes care of the claim that autism was invented by Eli Lilly in 1931.

But _man_ look at that graph – look at that rate climb! Just for your information friends, what you’re looking at there in the 62 – 99 category is a 16 times increase. Woah.

OK! Next graph friends – (click for bigger again, you get the drill right?)

CDDS numbers for 52 - 61 year olds

So this one shows 52 – 61 year olds in CDDS. Another pretty impressive climb there friends! This one shows a 15 times increase. Phew!

So what about the 3 – 5 year old category? They key category? Well this is where Dr Nick gets a bit confused friends. Here’s the graphs (clicky!!)

CDDS numbers for 03 - 05 year olds

So this one shows a climb too but – I dunno – what about the rate of increase? Well, unlike the 62 – 99 year olds which showed a 16 times increase (the biggest of all categories) and unlike the 52 – 61 year olds which showed a 15 times increase, the 3 – 5 year olds showed a 12 times increase.

So from what Dr Nick can _tell_ – it would seem that the age category that’s made the biggest gains since 1992 would be the 62 – 99 year old group.

Damn, Dr Nick just had a delivery of sun cream to put into medicinal looking bottles as well.

David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part III

24 Jan

“It’s understood that Hollywood sells Californication”
~ Red Hot Chilli Peppers

In this section I want to look at Kirby’s presentation regarding what he terms as the first of seven skeptical rebuttals to the autism/thiomersal hypothesis. He says that skeptics say:

Hmm. Not really. I think most people are agreed that autism is a ‘mix’ of genes and environment. However, this is a popular and recurring strawman from the anti-thiomersal hypothesisers – that thiomersal and environment are interchangeable. They’re not. Maybe ice cream is the environmental trigger for autism. What science _is_ pretty sure about however, is that thiomersal (i.e. one _possible_ environmental ‘trigger’) is _not_ in the frame. So straight away we can see the Kirby is proceeding from a misleading position. If his argument is so strong, why does he feel the need to do this I wonder?

However, the point Kirby is (misleadingly) making is to try and push the idea of there having been an epidemic. Lets see how he does this.

(A lot of the next section has been amply covered by Mike – I won’t repeat his work)

NB: The years Kirby refers to here are between 1988 – 1992.

Guess what else happened around that time?

In 1987, one year before the time period Kirby is talking about, the DSM (III-R) was published. This was a revision to the previously published (1980) DSM (III). Here’s what the DSM (III) criteria was for what it called ‘Diagnostic criteria for Infantile Autism’- this is in full by the way:

A. Onset before 30 months of age

B. Pervasive lack of responsiveness to other people (autism)

C. Gross deficits in language development

D. If speech is present, peculiar speech patterns such as immediate and delayed echolalia, metaphorical language, pronominal reversal.

E. Bizarre responses to various aspects of the environment, e.g., resistance to change, peculiar interest in or attachments to animate or inanimate objects.

F. Absence of delusions, hallucinations, loosening of associations, and incoherence as in Schizophrenia.

So that is the sole and only reference for autism in 1980. Next up, this is the 1987 revision – DSM (III-R):

Diagnostic Criteria for Autistic Disorder

At least eight of the following sixteen items are present, these to include at least two items from A, one from B, and one from C.

A. Qualitative impairment in reciprocal social interaction (the examples within parentheses are arranged so that those first listed are more likely to apply to younger or more disabled, and the later ones, to older or less disabled) as manifested by the following:

1.Marked lack of awareness of the existence or feelings of others (for example, treats a person as if that person were a piece of furniture; does not notice another person’s distress; apparently has no concept of the need of others for privacy);

2. No or abnormal seeking of comfort at times of distress (for example, does not come for comfort even when ill, hurt, or tired; seeks comfort in a stereotyped way, for example, says “cheese, cheese, cheese” whenever hurt);

3. No or impaired imitation (for example, does not wave bye-bye; does not copy parent’s domestic activities; mechanical imitation of others’ actions out of context);

4. No or abnormal social play (for example, does not actively participate in simple games; refers solitary play activities; involves other children in play only as mechanical aids); and

5. Gross impairment in ability to make peer friendships (for example, no interest in making peer friendships despite interest in making fiends, demonstrates lack of understanding of conventions of social interaction, for example, reads phone book to uninterested peer.

B. Qualitative impairment in verbal and nonverbal communication and in imaginative activity, (the numbered items are arranged so that those first listed are more likely to apply to younger or more disabled, and the later ones, to older or less disabled) as manifested by the following:

1. No mode of communication, such as: communicative babbling, facial expression, gesture, mime, or spoken language;

2. Markedly abnormal nonverbal communication, as in the use of eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, or gestures to initiate or modulate social interaction (for example, does not anticipate being held, stiffens when held, does not look at the person or smile when making a social approach, does not greet parents or visitors, has a fixed stare in social situations);

3. Absence of imaginative activity, such as play-acting of adult roles, fantasy character or animals; lack of interest in stories about imaginary events;

4. Marked abnormalities in the production of speech, including volume, pitch, stress, rate, rhythm, and intonation (for example, monotonous tone, question-like melody, or high pitch);

5. Marked abnormalities in the form or content of speech, including stereotyped and repetitive use of speech (for example, immediate echolalia or mechanical repetition of a television commercial); use of “you” when “I” is meant (for example, using “You want cookie?” to mean “I want a cookie”); idiosyncratic use of words or phrases (for example, “Go on green riding” to mean “I want to go on the swing”); or frequent irrelevant remarks (for example, starts talking about train schedules during a conversation about ports); and

6. Marked impairment in the ability to initiate or sustain a conversation with others, despite adequate speech (for example, indulging in lengthy monologues on one subject regardless of interjections from others);

C. Markedly restricted repertoire of activities and interests as manifested by the following:

1. Stereotyped body movements (for example, hand flicking or twisting, spinning, head-banging, complex whole-body movements);

2. Persistent preoccupation with parts of objects (for example, sniffing or smelling objects, repetitive feeling of texture of materials, spinning wheels of toy cars) or attachment to unusual objects (for example, insists on carrying around a piece of string);

3. Marked distress over changes in trivial aspects of environment (for example, when a vase is moved from usual position);

4. Unreasonable insistence on following routines in precise detail (for example, insisting that exactly the same route always be followed when shopping);

5. Markedly restricted range of interests and a preoccupation with one narrow interest, e.g., interested only in lining up objects, in amassing facts about meteorology, or in pretending to be a fantasy character.

D. Onset during infancy or early childhood

Specify if childhood onset (after 36 months of age)

Slight difference huh? Of key importance – in 1980 we only had ‘infantile autism’. In 1987, we had ‘autistic disorder’.

The DSM (III-R) is a quantum leap in diagnostic precision (far from perfect of course and as we all know the DSM (IV) came along in 1994 and the DSM (IV-R) came along in 2000) but surely it is blindingly obvious what a massively more accurate and precise set of criteria must mean – better recognition. More diagnosis.

Now Kirby says that this increase ties in to the ‘spike in mercury in vaccines’ over the same time period. Could be. But lets _also_ not forget that – as Kirby says in this debate – you need clinical science to support a clinical idea such as thiomersal causing autism.

Nine years now and there is _not one_ paper that even suggests that the symptoms of autism can be attributed to thiomersal (or MMR, or both together come to that). Nine years. In terms of science this hypothesis has four papers that might be considered of publishable quality. One shows that if you take a strain of mice known for aggressiveness and severely overdose them with thiomersal then they get more aggressive. Another shows that if you take a control group high in mercury levels and compare them with new born babies then the babies will look like poor excretors of mercury. The third shows that ethyl mercury and methyl mercury cannot be used to represent each other. The last one shows that thimerosal might cause methionine synthase dysfunction (MSD) – a condition that bears no resemblance to autism.

So here we are with the thiomersal hypothesis resting squarely and solely on epidemiology. Once upon a time, Kirby said CDDS epidemiology was ‘the gold standard’ – now he says its not enough. However, make no mistake. Epidemiology is all this hypothesis has.

So what is the state of this epidemiology? Is it of good quality? Well, no. As Mike has shown (see link above) Kirby’s presentation numbers are awful. As I have shown, his opinion of CDDS fluctuates depending on whether the numbers work for him or not and as Jospeh has shown, his new source is equally as badly reported on as his initial take on CDDS was.

Another example of the epidemiology not only not working for Kirby but being actively manipulated is this:

Have a close look at that graph. Remember in the previous slide Kirby said that the biggest increase in thiomersal was between 1988 and 1992. Take a close look at the dates in _this_ slide. They start in 1993. That’s pretty misleading Mr Kirby. Tut-tut-tut.

Also in this slide I want you to notice that according to this data that Kirby is using, the numbers are continuing to climb in 2001, 2002 and 2003. However, we know from a recently discovered CDC set of meeting minutes that according to a survey, in September 2001, only 5.6%1 of _all vaccines_ contained thiomersal. By Feb 2002, only 1.9% of _all vaccines_ contained thiomersal.

So apparently, Mr Kirby is happy to use data from two sources that shows an increasing amount of autism. CDDS and IDEA data. Both show climbing autism against a backdrop of miniscule amounts of mercury in the general population.

Danger, Will Robinson. Does not compute.

(More Californication to come soon….stay tuned…)

David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part II

22 Jan

Once upon a time, there was a man called David Kirby and he came to believe in a certain hypothesis so much that he wrote a book called ‘Evidence of Harm: _MERCURY IN VACCINES AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY_’ and this man wrote lots of blog posts that he never discussed on his blog and eventually he also agreed to a debate and this debate was called ‘Vaccines and Autism, Is There A Connection’.

The man made an opening statement which outlined his beliefs and these were….

Woah there…._’both in vaccines and in the environment’_ ? Where did that come from? How did this man who wrote a book who’s strapline talks solely about vaccines and who is participating in a debate who’s title refers solely about vaccines suddenly think it was OK to start talking about ‘the environment’.

Now, don’t get me wrong – he may be right, he may be wrong. That is not the point. The book and the debate are about the _vaccine_ hypothesis. Didn’t this debate have moderators?

Woah!!!! What the hell…? The first part of that little soliloquy is fine, but then….ah, lets look at it written down:

_”I’m not here to say thimerosal causes autism, I’m not here to say thimerosal is the only cause of autism. We don’t know what causes autism. But there’s evidence to suggest that **mercury** is one of the culprits in at least one of the cases…**and that’s what we’ll be looking at today.**”_

So David Kirby, all by himself, has abandoned the agenda and decided to stop talking about vaccines in particular and start talking about mercury in general. Did anyone stop him? Didn’t this debate have moderators?

This is getting ridiculous. Why are ‘we’ talking about four different types of mercury. This debate is about _vaccines_ (or that’s what I once thought – that’s what the PDF advertising said – it did, didn’t it? I didn’t hallucinate it did I?) and that means just _one_ type of mercury. Thiomersal. Thimerosal. Ethyl. That’s it. One. Not four. Hello?

Well, kudos for saying it publicly Mr Kirby. In future parts of my look at this debate I’ll be seeing why it doesn’t matter……oh wait….wait, here we go:

Now lets make sure we understand this. In July of 2005, Kirby wrote a Huffington Post entry that talked of these same California numbers in rather different terms:

The Golden State, however, is said to operate the gold standard of autism epidemiology, having always tracked “full-blown” autism only, as defined by the DSM-IV manual. In other words, children with milder forms of the disorder, such as PDD and Apserger Syndrome, need not apply for services. This means that nearly two decades of rising cases in California cannot be attributed to wider diagnostic criteria. The autism epidemic is real.

Hmm. So in 2005, California epidemiology (the gold standard according to Kirby) is good enough to declare ‘the epidemic real’ but in 2007, its not enough to disprove the epidemic when the numbers don’t go your way.

So why is the drop in numbers such a potential bombshell? Because children entering the system today were born in 2001 and 2002, soon after the mercury-based preservative thimerosal began to be phased out of pediatric vaccines in the United States. In California, fewer children with full-blown autism entered the system in 2003 than in 2002……Stay tuned. If the numbers in California and elsewhere continue to drop – and that still is a big if — the implication of thimerosal in the autism epidemic will be practically undeniable.

Hmm. So in 2005, if the numbers ‘continue to drop’ then ‘the implication of thimerosal will be practically undeniable’, but in 2007 when its quite clear the numbers are not dropping and never actually did then the reverse implication – that thiomersal is _not_ implicated in autism -cannot be true.

Weird. Some people might call that hypocrisy.

The next section of the debate has been expertly blogged by Mike. Go have a read. You should also read Joseph’s demolition of David Kirby’s latest epidemiology and Dad of Cameron’s look at Kirby’s grasp of science.

David Kirby/Arthur Allen Debate Part I

15 Jan

ACIP Meeting Minutes, Feb 2002

It’ll be Part I because after the debate video is released I’m sure there will be more to come. This post will concentrate on the pre-debate interview involving both people on Fox and the words of several audience members.

OK, so, first lets look at the joint interview on Fox.

When asked what the issue was with vaccines Kirby replied that it was because up until _”very recently”_ , _”most”_ vaccines contained thimerosal. This is incorrect. Unless your definition of ‘very recently’ is five years ago and your definition of ‘most’ is between 2 and 5 % then its incorrect. Note that I am choosing to believe Kirby is simply incorrect and a sloppy researcher rather than a good researcher who knew about a document we’ll discuss shortly and elected to suppress his knowledge of it.

Kirby’s next error is when he makes reference to the ‘epidemic’ – he says in the the 90’s we start to see the number of autism cases really start to climb and that it ‘almost tracks exactly’ with the addition of thiomersal containing vaccines. This isn’t an error. Kirby knows this isn’t the case. He knows the ‘science’ that argues this hypothesis is poor, published in non peer reviewed, bad quality journals by people who utilised poor data sources.

However, this sentence also damns Kirby to sticking with those sources. If he wants to quote them to back up his points then he needs to realise you can’t simply abandon them when they don’t – and one of those sources is CDDS, and CDDS has very recently contradicted Kirby.

Kirby then proceeds from one error to another. He states that the symptoms of mercury poisoning are very similar to the symptoms of autism. They aren’t.

At what point do these errors that are stacking up become outright lies and dishonesty? I’m not sure but its a pretty fine line.

About a minute and 40 seconds into the interview, Kirby debuts his new adjusted hypothesis. He mentions all the ‘environmental mercury’ and makes special mention of California in order to challenge the CDDS stats I would assume.

Now excuse me if I’m wrong but isn’t the strapline to Kirby’s book _”MERCURY IN VACCINES AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY”_?

It is. So what’s with the sudden interest in ‘environmental mercury’. This interview was booked regarding the upcoming debate with Arthur Allen about the _vaccine_ hypothesis – the hypothesis Kirby made the central subject and content of the book. In this context I’m utterly uninterested in this new, competing theory. Stick to the subject would be my message and stop building convenient strawmen. More about this later too.

About three and a half minutes into the interview Arthur Allen gives Kirby a bit of a shock. He mentions the 2% figure I mentioned at the top of this post.

Let’s make sure we know what we’re talking about here. To do that we’ll skip forward to some remarks made by an EoH Yahoo Group member who attended the debate. These are her words about what Kirby had said.

We do not know when 25 mcg infant vaccines really made it off the shelves. When the CDC says the supply was down to 2% in 2003 (I think that was the stat) it was not official. They called vaccine providers and asked what was in the fridge — not a definitive answer.

First off I urge caution – the video’s not been made available yet so this person could be in error but lets assume for now its not.

This proclamation by Kirby is wrong on many levels.

We _do_ know when the vaccines made it off the shelves, the supply was down to 1.9% in 2002, they did _not_ ‘call vaccine providers and ask them what was in the fridge’. Here’s what actually happened (you can download the document at the top of this post to see for yourself if you want to).

In Feb 2002, a meeting was held by the CDC to discuss many aspects of vaccine policy and supply, one of which was the thiomersal issue. Here are the main points (see page 51 of the document):

1) The thiomersal update was made regarding paediatric vaccines. Babies and kids.
2) There was a _survey_ conducted from Sept 2001 to Feb 2002
3) The survey was performed using site visits from public health officials
4) In September 2001, 225 sites were canvassed, and 447 by February 2002.
5) The decline in thimerosal-containing vaccine went from 5.6 percent to 1.9%, from 33,500 doses out of 63,600; to 2,796 doses out of 149,147
6) Of the 447 interviews, 83.5 percent reported no thimerosal-containing vaccines in stock at any time since October 2001.

Make no mistake, this is a bombshell to the thimerosal hypothesis. When examined in context with the CDDS data which shows _no decline in autism_ this is the smoking gun that kills the thiomersal hypothesis stone dead.

To make it crystal clear – by 2002 thiomersal containing vaccines made up 1.9% of supply. Autism numbers are still rising. Reconcile if you can.

Anyway, back to David Kirby. Not a stupid man, he can see the writing on the wall. So what does he do? He makes up something else to ‘plug the gap’. Now its not ‘mercury in vaccines – a medical controversy’ now the writing is on the wall something else is needed. back to our EoH attendee:

Calif has had horrendous forest fires over the last 5 years (much more so than the previous 20), and pregnant women are breathing the fumes. Forrest fires release a lot more mercury than even coal fired power plants.

The horrific coal generated mercury pollution from China (as we have been reading) is getting worse and the mercury by-product is brought into CA (particularly So Cal) from the jet stream. These coal fired power plants have expontially increased since 2000.

Aha – here we have it. The prelude to Kirby’s second book methinks – he’s going to go all Al Gore on us and expound on the evils of environmental pollution.

Let’s be clear here: this is a de facto admission that the vaccine hypothesis is dead in a ditch. the minute that he reneged on his ‘severe blow’ of 2007 and the minute he went against the strapline of his own book he became openly hypocritical and wrong.

_You cannot have a thiomersal supported ‘epidemic’ when there is no thiomersal and increasing autism_.

I’m not suggesting that mercury has not increased with forest fires and (maybe) from China but to attribute these things as autism causation? Please. First off, the CDDS numbers are collected from regional centres. The data from each varies wildly – if Chinese mercury is an issue why are these numbers so disparate?

Are we also expected to believe that as thiomersal tailed off, the mercury from forest fires and China neatly and exactly dovetailed on in ever increasing amounts year on year until it carried on producing such a flat line increase? Were there no forest fires during the 90’s? Did China not spew mercury in the 90’s?

But all this is way besides the point of the debate – did the debate moderators call Kirby on this? None of this has anything at all to do with vaccines or thimerosal.

I’ll say it again: _You cannot have a thiomersal supported ‘epidemic’ when there is no thiomersal and increasing autism_.

I look forward to the release of the undoctered video.

Guest blogger on VAERS, gastric issues and autism

13 Jan

Manipulating VAERS - guest blogger Dr Nick Riviera

Hi Everybody!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers

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

Pie chart of previously discussed numbers

How cools is _that_?

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

Dr Nick Riviera

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

Bye Everybody!

Stat-tastic!

12 Jan

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

David Kirby, Nov 2005.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, of _course_ ;o)

This prompted a bit of controversy: H Coleman replied:

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

And Robert Krakow replied:

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

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

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

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

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

Two items of interest for US folks

8 Jan

There will be a debate titled “Vaccines and Autism: Is There a Connection?” between David Kirby and Arthur Allen. The debate will take place in San Diego, California (UC San Diego Price Center, 9500 Gilman Dr. La Jolla CA 92093) on Saturday, January 13, at 10am:

Admission is free, provided you register with TACA before January 10. (Be prepared to give out a mailing address). Or you can pay $10 on-site.

Sponsors include Generation Rescue, SafeMinds, TACA and the Autism Research Institute so as you can imagine, the quackery quotient will be high – anyone who favours a bit of reality and is in San Diego should go and give Mr Allen some support as I think he’s going to need it – the audience sounds like it will be partisan to say the least. Apparently some mercury mum or other has suggested wearing t-shirts with pictures of their autistic kids on them. Sounds like it’ll be conducted on a sound scientific footing.

The other thing regards the NIH which, not being ‘merican I’m not up to speed with so I’ll quote Diva:

Would you like to have a voice in how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) spends it’s autism research dollars? The NIMH may be getting a windfall of cash for autism research by way of the “Combatting Autism Act.” Whether or not they get that windfall, money will continue to be spent on autism research. Whether that research will benefit humanity to a greater or lesser degree depends on how the money is spent.

Many people shudder at the thought of science driving a big eugenics campaign where every last unfavored gene is scrubbed from the gene pool by culling or sterilizing the genetically defective, though it should be noted that not all studies of genetics are aimed at eugenics. If prenatal testing for autism sounds bad to you, for instance, or if another kind of research bothers you, what kinds of sensible research can be done with all that money? And how can you have a say in how the money is spent?

Go read this petition that will be sent to the NIH/NIMH, and if you agree with it, sign it. Signatures are needed before January 16th, it would probably be better to sign it by the Friday the 12th as that would give someone a chance to send the petition to the NIMH properly by the Tuesday the 16th. A few hundred or a thousand signatures would be really great.

Spread the word as quickly as possible :o)

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