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Open Letter To Andrew Wakefield

4 Apr

Dear Mr Wakefield,

Following your announcement of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, uptake rates of this vaccine in the UK have fallen to amongst the lowest in Europe:

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

Source.

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

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

Source.

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

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

Source.

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

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

Source

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

I have a few questions for you Mr Wakefield.

Do you accept that there is a strong causative correlation between the falling MMR vaccine uptake and the rise in both mumps and measles? If you do not, could you please explain why not. If you do could you please explain what you feel is your role in these matters.

Is it true that, as reported by Brian Deer in the Times and in the Channel 4 current affairs programme ‘Dispatches’, that you received up to £55,000 to find scientific evidence of a link between MMR and autism and that you did not disclose you were being funded through solicitors seeking evidence to use against vaccine manufacturers?

Is it true that the vast majority of your subjects from the Lancet study were not, as you claimed, captured through the normal referral process, but actually supplied to you by lawyers representing these people and their families in vaccine litigation?

Is it true that up to nine months prior to the publication of your paper showing a link between the MMR vaccine and autism that you and the Royal Free (where you conducted your research) filed numerous patent applications which were alternatives to the MMR vaccine? If you did, would you consider it a lucky guess that led you to do this seeing as your MMR paper had yet to be published?

Do you believe, like your collaborator Hugh Fudenberg, that:

Some parents would rather see their kid die than live as a severely autistic.

Source.

These are serious matters Mr Wakefield. I’m aware that you are pursuing three court cases related to these matters (although at least one is currently stayed) and you are also due to be investigated by the GMC sometime this year but as the parent of an autistic child – in short exactly the sort of person you claim to want to help – I need answers now. What I read of you indicates wrong doing on a grand scale. If these things are established to be true you are guilty of not only extreme medical negligence but also of betraying thousands of parents and forcing thousands of autistic children to undergo totally unnecessary and highly invasive medical procedures.

You need to account for yourself Mr Wakefield. Please don’t wait for more children to be hospitalised or die.

A Few Questions For David Kirby

28 Mar

A few questions for Mr Kirby.

(All originally posted in the comments section of the above blog post)

You state that a study has recently been completed that:

showed that a few minutes of exposure with even miniscule amounts of thimerosal can damage dendritic cells, causing immune dysfunction and cytokine-induced inflammation, both of which are found in autism.

I’m aware of the study you are referring to but I am unsure of which study you draw your conclusion from that cytokine-induced inflammation is found in autism. You also fail to mention if it is a typical or rare phenomenom. Certainly it fails to appear in the diagnostic criteia for autism and a Google Scholar search for “”cytokine-induced inflammation” autism” reveals nothing. The same is also true for your claim that immune dysfunction appears in autism. You fail to state whether this is a common or rare occurance and yet again, it fails to appear in the diagnostic criteia for autism. Based on those facts, I fail to see what worth your interpretaton of this study has.

You are a staunch believer in the mercury/autism connection despite their being no symptomatic connection between merucry poisoning and autism except for that published in the oft-refuted ‘Mercury: a novel form of mercury poisoning’ paper.

Further, In the New York Times in 2005 you stated:

Because autism is usually diagnosed sometime between a child’s third and fourth birthdays and thimerosal was largely removed from childhood vaccines in 2001, the incidence of autism should fall this year.

The rates of autism did not fall that year.

A couple of months later you told blogger Citizen Cain:

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

I was puzzled enough by the discrepancy of you adding on two years to email you to ask you to clear it up. You replied to me:

Many thanks for your note. The Times misquoted me. I actually asked for a correction, but did not receive one. What I told the reporter is that we should know in the next few years.

In the interests of being thorough, I prevailed upon the two reporters for the NYT for their version of events. Reporter Gardiner Harris replied:

Prior to publication, we read the entire passage relating to this matter to Mr. Kirby. He approved it.

And reporter Anahad O’Connor said:

…we stand by that quote. David Kirby was interviewed at length, and we verified that quote and additional information with him before the article was published. He certainly did not object to that assertion at the time.

It is hard to escape the conclusion Mr Kirby, that you misled me and that you further tacked on a couple of extra years when the autism rates failed to decrease to support your original assertion. Will you now stand by your original statement that the incidence of autism should’ve fallen in 2005?

You attempted to use California DDS data to back up your continued assertion that autism rates had climbed throughout peak thimerosal useage periods and then dropped after thimerosal removal from the majority of vaccines. However, when blogger Citizen Cain pointed out you were using the data incorrectrly you conceeded:

…that total cases among 3-5 year olds, not changes in the rate of increase is the right measure.

Even a cursory glance at current and past CDDS data reveals that according to CDDS data, that cohort is still actively rising. Do you see that as another indicator that thiomersal plays no role in autism as you implied in your NYT interview?

In the course of this blog post you have made repeated mention of thimerosal still being in vaccines in the form of the flu shot. I wondered if you knew of the total mercury burden over time of mercury in vaccines?

US pre-thimerosal removal: 187.5 µg Hg.
US just flu shot: 25 µg Hg.
UK pre-thimerosal removal: 75 µg of Hg.

The US and UK have almost identical prevalence rates for autism. Given that we have very different thimerosal rates, how do you reach the conclusion that thimerosal can cause autism? Given those stats, shouldn’t US children have far more ‘full syndrome’ autism than UK children? How do you also account for the fact that even though US children are now recieving approx 7.5 times less thiomersal than they were at the height of thiomersals use the rate of autism amongst the 3 – 5 cohort is still climbing if we examine CDDS data – data that you refer to as the ‘gold standard’?

You are also a stauch proponent of the idea of there having been an epidemic of autism. You don’t base this on any science but rather what you claim to be an abscence of adults. Indeed on this very blog you asked:

But if autism is purely genetic (without an environmental “trigger”) and has always been prevalent at the same constant rate, then where are the 1-in-166 autistic 25-year-olds (those born in 1980)? Where are the 1-in-166 autistic 55-year-olds? Why can’t we find them?

You may remember that I mailed you a PDF report (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/1095/0001881.pdf) from the Scottish government of a 2004 ‘audit’ of autism. One of the questions they asked the Health authorities, Trusts etc under the national banner was:

Research tells us that prevalence rates of autistic spectrum disorder represent an underestimate. To what extent do you consider the numbers above to be an accurate reflection of all those who live in your area?

Approaching 45% of all councils/executive/NHS Trusts questioned responded that the prevalence for adults was grossly underestimated, badly reported and that a lot of these adults exist without diagnosis. A typical response was:

Figures for adults reflect the national findings that the numbers known to services/diagnosed represent a significant underestimate of those individuals likely to be affected. For example day centre managers locally consider a number of people to be on the spectrum who have had no formal diagnosis. _(Perth & Kinross Council)_

I apologise for mentioning this here but you failed to respond to my email regarding this matter.

Thanks in advance for your comprehensive answers.

UPDATE: Mike Stanton has found yet more evidence of your ‘hidden horde’:

_Liam Byrne, the health minister, said that 6,170 children under 16 had been diagnosed in England last year, compared with 3,100 in 1997-98. The number of cases including adults rose from 4,220 to 9,170 in the same period._

_So autism diagnoses for children have nearly doubled in 8 years from 3100 to 6170. Meanwhile adult diagnoses have nearly tripled in the same period from 1120 to 3000._

UPDATE No. 2: I just remembered an interesting quote from a New Scientist feature on the autism ‘epidemic’:

This view (that there are many children today diagnosed with autism who would not have been labelled as such in the past) is difficult to substantiate, but in 2001 a team led by Helen Heussler of Nottingham University, UK, had a crack. They re-examined the data from a 1970 survey of 13,135 British children. The original survey found just five autistic children, but using modern diagnostic criteria Heussler’s team found a hidden hoard of 56. That’s over a tenfold rise in numbers, which puts the California figures in perspective. Heussler and her colleagues concluded that estimates from the early 1970s may have seriously underestimated the prevalence.

Lenny Schafer’s Cognitive Dissonance

27 Mar

Another day, another Schafer Mercury Report.

Lenny has a dig at the recently published Afzal et al paper ‘Absence of detectable measles virus genome sequence in blood of autistic children who have had their MMR vaccination during the routine childhood immunization schedule of UK’:

It is hard to understand why the authors claim that their study of MMR virus in the blood “failed to substantiate” the reports by Andrew Wakefield, and by now any other researchers — that they found the MMR virus in gut biopsy samples from autistic children.It is obviously far easier to collect blood samples than to collect biopsy samples from the GI tract, which is an invasive procedure with risks. If blood were a suitable source to look for the MMR virus, Wakefield would have used blood in his study

I have no doubt it _is_ hard for Mr Scahfer to understand. It was hard for me to understand too. So I asked someone.

…measles is a lymphotropic virus, even more so for the vaccine strain which has been selected to exploit the CD46 cellular receptor. If there is a persistent MV infection the most logical place to detect it is in cells that it is most adept at infecting. Lymphocytes

Lymphocytes are a type of blood cell. Of course, given that, Lenny’s question re: Wakefield becomes unintentionally hilarious:

If blood were a suitable source to look for the MMR virus, Wakefield would have used blood in his study

Only if it occurred to him Lenny, only if it occurred to him.

Simple translation: Yes, this new study does not replicate Wakefield examining the gut. This is because there’s no need to. Blood cells are more likely to show infection than the gut. If Wakefield or Bradstreet wanted to make a special case for the gut then they failed to do so.

Interestingly, Afzal et al approached both Wakefield and Bradstreet to collect samples of the tissue they collected but they never responded to the request:

The groups of investigators that either had access to original autism specimens or investigated them later for measles virus detection were invited to take part in the study but failed to respond. Similarly, it was not possible to obtain clinical specimens of autism cases from these investigators for independent investigations.

Cynic that I am, I have to wonder why. Too busy to ask a research assistant to locate, package up and send off some samples? Or maybe too worried about what a decent scientist would reveal.

Amusingly, Lenny next attacks Parental Perspectives on the Causes of an Autism Spectrum Disorder in their
Children which recently reported that a low percentage of parents blamed their childs autism on vaccines:

This immense undertaking involved collecting questionnaires from a grand total of 41 parents! It is remarkable that as many as 16 of the respondents said vaccines are a cause of autism. How many questionnaires were given to parents who simply discarded them, knowing that a survey conducted by a University Department of Medical Genetics has little interest in learning what parents think about the role of vaccines in causing autism?

Can anyone remind me again how many kids were involved in the original Wakefield paper? Was it 41? No? 20? No?

Twelve?

Twelve.

Lets also not forget that another recent study looked at what treatment options parents were pursuing. Only 7% were pursuing detoxification (chelation etc). That was from a total of 552 returns.

Lenny seems disturbed that he is part of a minority. I’d advise him to get used to that feeling. As decent science like Afzal et al continues to refute the poor science that precedes it, people like Lenny will become more and more isolated.

DAN! Protocol For Dummies

20 Mar

Whenever anyone else hears the word ‘DAN!’ with that little exclamation mark do they go ‘DAN! – DAN! – DAN – DAN!’ to the opening four bars of the theme to ‘Dragnet’? No? Ah well, just me then.

Ken Aitken is a psychologist. He’s also a DAN! Doctor. One doesn’t need to be an actual Doctor to be a DAN! Doctor apparently:

As for choosing a DAN!, it just depends on what type of treatment you are looking for. DAN!’s that are MDs or DOs are typically going to be much more into testing and genetics and lots of expensive and invasive stuff. This, of course, is a gross generalization and isn’t necessarily true of all DAN! MDs, but rather something to be cautious of. A DAN! who is a homeopath or naturopath is typically going to do things more naturally and less invasive. Again, it’s a generalization. There are chiropractors, allergists and other types of doctors that are DAN!s as well, so it is really the type of doctor and treatment that best suits your needs. Many people go with a MD or DO because they can get insurance coverage for some of the services.

Homeopaths and Naturopaths doing things ‘naturally’. Heh. Does this lack of training in medical matters prevent them from performing things like chelation (source as above)?

…which is why we went with a homeopath/naturopath…….We decided to get the mercury out because I knew that Seth had had way too much put into him and it wasn’t coming out at all (he’s a non-excretor).

Homeopaths and Naturopaths doing chelation. Cool.

I talked to one yesterday (a DAN doctor mind you) and how he got qualifications to be one is beyond me. He told me has a couple of autistic patients and knows of the chelation process. If this is all that is required to be a DAN doctor then I don’t see a distinct advantage to them either.

Source.

Is your mind boggling yet? Here’s the reply to this commenter (source as above):

I think that being on the DAN list (in the past) meant something like that the person had attended some DAN training– or something rather general like this. Someone (in some post, somewhere) who went to the recent DAN conference wrote about that there is/was some discussion afoot to try to improve on this and make the
info on doctors more useful (or more detailed….or something??)

This doesn’t sound like a recipie for disaster at all. Was Roy Kerry a DAN! Doctor? I don’t know.

I came across some priceless websites pushing the DAN! protocol. They had numerous things in common, chiefly the disclaimer – all variations on the theme of:

this is not medical advice

Which is odd because from that point on, they mostly plough into what can only be thought of as _advice_ about what _medication_ an autistic child should take. There’s a fairly representative sample of what a dutiful DAN! Doc should do on the website of Miriam Jang MD. First, the usual copout from responsibility:

At this point, I would like to point out that this is not medical advice, even though I am a Medical Doctor. Rather, this is a wish for your child or your loved one(s) to have the advantage of what took us eight years to discover. Please take this as a medical disclaimer. All suggestions here should be done at your own risk.

‘Own risk’. Right. Or actually – wrong. She means the risk of the child receiving the treatment. Thats whos health will suffer when if it all goes wrong.

Dr Jang decides to lead off with some impressive science:

In both Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, the sages believed that there were only two ways to health: one was to correct deficiencies; the other was to get rid of toxicities.

Ayurvedic? What the hell?

This ancient art of healing has been practiced continuously for over 5,000 years. The principles of many natural healing systems now familiar in the West, such as Homeopathy and Polarity Therapy, have their roots in Ayurveda. Ayurvedic practices restore the balance and harmony of the individual, resulting in self-healing, good health and longevity.

So, DAN! Doctors are homeopaths and naturopaths who practice er, Polarity Therapy. Polarity Therapy? What the hell?

Polarity Therapy is a comprehensive health system involving energy-based bodywork, diet, exercise and self-awareness. It works with the Human Energy Field, electromagnetic patterns expressed in mental, emotional and physical experience.

Riiiight. OK. Back to er, Doctor (?) Jang. Basically, there’s a load of stuff with no cites – such as:

An important finding is that about 85 percent of Autistic kids are high in Copper and low in Zinc. Furthermore, these kids are very low in an important protein call Metallothionein, or MT Protein.

Hmm. Searching PubMed for ‘Metallothionein autism’ reveals two results. One is an inaccessible review and one is a free PDF published in the confidence inspiringly named ‘Alternative Medecine Review’. A Google search for the same reveals the predicted circus of quackery.

Except….another one of the mercury/autism darlings, Vijendra K. Singh has a paper that states:

serum level of MT did not significantly differ between normal and autistic children. Furthermore, autistic children harboured normal levels of anti-MT, including antibodies to isoform MT-I (anti-MT-I) and MT-II (anti-MT-II), without any significant difference between normal and autistic children.

A dilema, no? (You can read more on this paper here.)

Dr Jang continues with:

I will include a list of supplements that Marky is taking. There are many protocols, with many rationales. When we write down the dosages, please take into consideration that Marky is 11 years old and weighs 75 pounds. Please adjust your dosages according to your child’s weight.

Marky is her son. But isn’t it amazing how a DAN! Doctor is assuming parents know *how* to adjust medications for weight – and is happy to trust them to do so without medical supervision or even consultation!

Towards the end of her piece she says:

Please remember that, if you introduce your child to a new supplement, it is not unusual for the child to experience some adverse effects for a short while…When this happens, it does not necessarily mean that you should discontinue the supplement, unless the adverse effects are dangerous, or persistent….If there are adverse effects, stay at this dose until the adverse effects are gone, then proceed to a slightly higher dose, etc.

So there may be adverse effects but don’t stop unless the adverse effects are dangerous, instead stay on the same dose until the adverse effects are gone. I can’t imagine any Doctor thinking this is good advice. Interestingly, the following appeared from Dr Jang as part of an email newsletter:

I would like to start with some very serious news: we do have to be careful of Vitamin A toxicity with our sweet kids. There is a child with reported Vitamin A toxicity that was so severe that the child had to be hospitalized for 12 days.

Her patient? I wonder. Maybe the practitioner (whomever s/he was) read her advice to ‘stay on the same dose until the adverse effects are gone’.

Dr Jang tells us in relation to supplements that:

We noticed a difference in Marky in less than a week.

And yet later on she says:

In addition, you may not see the beneficial effects of these supplements for a period of time.

Something of a glaring contradiction. Which is true?

Anyway, having expounded all this good advice, Dr Jang closes with:

So, be curious and be persistent. Take good care of yourselves so that you can endure this arduous journey called “Autism”!

Yes, be curious – try everything that takes your fancy. Be persistent – whats a little Vitamin A poisoning between friends? And above all take good care of _yourselves_ so that _you_ can endure this journey…..except, its not _you_ who’s undergoing all these treatments is it? Its your child.

Dr Jang is also a big clay bath fancier (clay baths cure autism? Who knew?)

“…I have put a huge number of patients on these clay baths and the levels of heavy metals – mercury, lead, arsenic, aluminum, and cadmium have come down dramatically…I have been monitoring the levels of metals using all three methods (TD DMPS, oral DMSA and clay baths)and the clay baths are way faster in the removal of metals”.

Hoooo boy! Rashid’s going to be plenty pissed with her. Better than TD DMPS? Surely not! Why not use both? Smother your child with TD DMPS and then wash that stuff off in a nice clay bath? At least your child will have a nice happy splash in a bath.

So, Ken Aitken – welcome to your new role as a Dan! Doctor. I feel sure you can uphold the strong scientific standards your colleagues demonstrate.

Lupron: An Alternate View

17 Mar

I think it was Prometheus who first used the phrase:

You can’t reason someone out of a belief they haven’t reasoned themselves into.

By which he meant that proponents of the mercury/autism hypothesis were acting out of belief, innuendo and poor science rather than scientifically valid science and that subsequently trying to use reason to dissect their arguments was of limited use.

What I intend to do in the rest of this post is use the tactics, sources and methods commonly used by proponents of the autism/mercury connection to justify their belief systems. before I do I want to assure you that _nothing_ in this post is fabricated.

As we all know, Lupron has been big news recently. The Geiers love it, the mercury/autism crowd are clamouring to use it and the likes of Orac, Kathleen, Autism Diva, Prometheus and myself have all blogged comprehensively against its use.

However, we were using science and reason and as we know, there are people who are impervious to these things. However, when I received a fascinating email from a middle aged American woman who wanted to talk to me about Lupron I read her words with interest. As all proponents of the mercury/autism hypothesis know, anecdotes trump science. With that in mind I read her opening statement.

I am extremely concerned about the use of the drug Lupron being used on autistic children. As a former consumer of this drug, I can tell you firsthand how harmful it is. I understand the desperation people may experience trying to do all they can to heal their conditions, but we must not forget that Lupron is actually chemotherapy, and leaves the same conditions other forms of chemo do on patients. You wouldn’t give chemo to someone who didn’t have cancer, so how Lupron made the jump to all these other patient groups is purely manufactured by Abbott Labs, the parent of TAP who makes Lupron.

Lupron is chemotherapy. Lupron is manufactured by Big Pharma’s TAP – owned by Abbot Labs. A little digging on the Internet turns up lots of bad things about Abbot Labs:

ABBOTT LABS OBESITY DRUG KILLS 32 PEOPLE AND IS PULLED OFF THE MARKET IN ITALY

Source.

Abbott Laboratories, the world’s 12th largest drug company, has been suspended for a minimum of six months from membership in the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI).

Source

If there was ever any reason to squash human beings like a bug, the decision makers at Abbott Labortories have provided a perfect one with their decision to increase the cost of the anti-AIDS drug Norvir by 500% (from $1500 to $7800 per year).

Source.

Thats just the tip of the iceberg. My anonymous emailer continued….

Any child already harmed by vaccinations does not deserve a second pharmaceutical insult, which is what Lupron will
do. TAP/Abbott is a filthy company, and thinks nothing about the harm they do to patients. It was just published how 800 people have died from another drug they make.

Pretty convincing stuff, I think you’ll agree. Its obvious that Lupron is manufactured by the same sort of bottom-feeding evil scum Big Pharma types that inject autism-causing thiomersal into healthy babies. My anonymous emailer continued:

It just horrorfied me to read about these kids being encouraged to take this drug. Do you know, there was a National Lupron Victims Network with over 2 million hits that suddenly just disappeared off the net? The data is on Way Back Machine or Archive.org under “lupronvictims.com”. We have Abbott employees who follow us around the internet trying to discredit us. It’s like science fiction.

So I checked it out – the domain ‘lupronvictims.com’ was registered in August of 1999 and is hosted by Forest a Seattle company – the same city that the domain registrant specified. I’ve sent an email to the admin contact at Forest to enquire about why the site vanished in early 2005 but have thus far recieved no reply.

As proponents of the Simpsonwood conspiracy will readily recognise, this reeks of corruption and Big Pharma meddling.

The site is indeed archived on the WayBack Machine but fascinatingly, even though the Way Back Machine continued to archive up until March 2005, one has to go back to late 2003 to find actual archived content. the most complete archive is the first one from 1999.

And still my anonymous emailer had more to say:

Whether this happens to all patients I don’t know, but I do know there are many, many people living in hell from using it. Some of us have contracted terrible deseases from having our immune system compromised, and we all battle many diseases: CFS, Fibromyalgia, EBV, arthritus, severe memory problems, clinical depression, liver problems, high cholesterol, trabecular bone loss creating disc herniation and osteoporosis, etc.

She also mentioned the name ‘Lynne Millican’:

In 1999 I went public in the Boston Herald with my story trying to prevent more poisonings. One person, Lynne Millican, has testified before the senate. We have fought and fought to bring awareness to no avail.

A quick search reveals some impressive sources:

When we first met Lynne Millican in January, when this series on Lupron was launched, we learned that she still suffers a range of serious ailments more than a decade after injections of the drug, Lupron, for treatment of endometriosis. Millican, a registered nurse and paralegal, believes her problems are associated with Lupron. Millican’s numerous symptoms have included the development of a noncancerous tumor, breast cysts, cardiac arrythmias, pain, dizziness, swelling and fatigue. She is one of many women treated for endometriosis who have complained over the years about these and other lingering symptoms they believe are related to Lupron. Other symptoms include depression and confusion, bone pain, vision loss, high blood pressure, and nausea.

Red Flags Weekly

“There are thousands in the United States who say they have been victimized by this drug,” Millican said, emphasizing that symptoms can be severe, such as tremors, seizures and memory loss. “Many women I know say their symptoms didn’t stop when they stopped taking the drug.”

Mercola

Proof indeed. My anonymous emailer closed with the following:

They just got bagged doing the same dirty tricks in England that they were levied the largest fine in US History for doing
here. They have so much money they just pay everyone off. Get the word out. Prevent more poisonings because the FDA does not care.

I think supporters of the thiomeral/autism connection will testify to the truth of that. The FDA are in the pocket of Abbot Labs, Big Pharma Agents of the Apocolypse.

Truly, its stupid to put Lupron into kids. When their bodies start to break down, we can all march on Washington – the placards will read ‘It was the Lupron, stupid’.

No need for science. No need for investigation. As a regualr commenter here says ‘Because its obvious…’

On Using VAERS

14 Mar

Recently, KC posted a comment reflecting his strong suspicions that Dr Jim Laidler fabricated his infamous ‘incredible hulk’ report to VAERS:

You can’t backup Dr. Laidler’s…..VAERS bullshit with AutismWatch!

This is a common refrain. It’s been echoed by various people who choose to believe in the thiomersal/MMR/autism connection. Lets look again at what Jim Laidler said:

The chief problem with the VAERS data is that reports can be entered by anyone and are not routinely verified. To demonstrate this, a few years ago I entered a report that an influenza vaccine had turned me into The Hulk. The report was accepted and entered into the database.

This is what people routinely claim is ‘bullshit’. So, I thought I’d put it to the test.

VAERS has two ways of submitting a report. Firstly, you could download a PDF, fill it in and post it off. Or, you could do what I elected to do and fill in and submit a report online.

VAERS has a helpful popup which tells you exactly what it needs to know – which are the most important pieces of data it needs. However, the fact that I live in the UK was not deemed of importance. Neither was the fact that I told VAERS that my daughter had been turned into Wonder Woman. The only piece of contact data I submitted was my email address and I wasn’t even asked for that. I submitted it voluntarily.

I’m going to get a bit nerdy now.

VAERS use very, very simple Javascript form validation. It tripped me up a couple of times as I got confused about the fact you crazy Americans use mm/dd/yyyy rather than dd/mm/yyyy and it didn’t like the 24 hour clock either.

The Javascript routine caught the fact that I tried to submit an adverse event *before* the fictional date of my daughters birth but it failed to catch that I stated the vaccine was administered at 18months and that the date for vaccination I provided was only 6 months after the ‘birth’ date.

VAERS uses a ColdFusion backend. This means its easy to build a script that detects an incoming visitors IP address. It would therefore be just as easy to extend the script to use the IP address to determine what country the visitor is from. As it is, a UK resident has managed to successfully enter a record into VAERS.

But you don’t have to take my word for it, I ventured into Bartholomew Cubbins territory and recorded an AVI movie of me performing the whole process.

There’s a highly compressed and slightly lacking in quality version in SWF (Flash) format here (12mb) and a Hi-res version here (150mb). Please note that I use a ridiculously high resolution (1600 x 1200) so the SWF might encroach off the edge of your screens. If you’d rather download that file, right click it instead of left clicking it.

So what have I illustrated?

That Jim Laidler, far from ‘bullshitting’ about the record entry process and subsequent unreliablity of data was telling the truth. Anyone can enter any data into VAERS. Even someone from another country. Good source data? I think not.

Paul Shattock: What The…?

14 Mar

I recently had occasion to quote some of Mr Shattocks work. Namely, the case studies he diagnosed autism from in Victorian Britain. These were the papers that John Best Jr felt were lies. What I didn’t tell John until after he had a good rant and (if I recall) called the author ‘some nut’ was that Mr Shattock is a staunch believer in the MMR/Thiomersal/autism connection.

Some nut indeed.

Paul Shattock has extensive ties to Andrew Wakefield. Both feel that the MMR has some role to play in autism and Mr Shattock is a promoter of what he terms:

…some of the unorthodox forms of biomedical intervention currently being applied to autism.

Sunderland.

Dr Micheal Fitzpatrick comments:

Metabolic theories continued to attract a following in the shadowy area of alternative and fringe therapies, particularly in the USA. The cult of ‘orthomolecular psychiatry’ emerged out of these theories and popularised the treatment of a range of psychiatric problems with a high dose of vitamins, amino acids, minerals and other diets and dietary supplements. It is out of this tradition, which has little concern for the rigours of scientific research, that Mr Shattock’s studies have emerged.

Like the Geier’s, Paul Shattock publishes his research in some strange places (source as above):

It is impossible to evaluate Mr Shattock’s findings because they have not been published in any form. Indeed, virtually all his work has been published in the ‘grey literature’, in journals which have no formal process of evaluation or peer review.

It seems the paper he published and I quoted to John is a rare exception in a sea of vanity publishing. Indeed, Paul Shattocks Sunderland team website carries links to places like nomercury.org – hardly an informed or non-partisan choice.

Paul Shattock himself is an interesting figure. Father of an autistic child himself, he refuses to publish his work until he has studied 1,000 children. However that didn’t stop details of his work and preliminary findings mysteriously appearing (source as above):

Mr Shattock’s research entered the public realm, via journalists sympathetic to the anti-MMR campaign

But perhaps the greatest mystery about Paul Shattock is what the letters after his name mean. Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches journalist Brian Deer asks the same question:

(I)….ran a Google search for DipAgVet, the latest qualification sported by Mr Paul Shattock, who specialises in urine tests.

For details of what came back and how you can help Mr Deer, go visit his site and take a guess.

Isabella Thomas Gets Her Day In Court

10 Mar

Isabella Thomas of the anti-vaccination group JABS has got her day in court.

She claims that the MMR jab,

led to her sons developing autism

in the careful phrasing of the BBC.

The proceedings will begin in June. It should be a very interesting case for all of us involved from whatever perspective we look at the MMR angle from. She also told the BBC that:

…she noticed he was experiencing difficulty shortly after he had the vaccine…..The infant’s condition gradually deteriorated from that moment onwards and he was eventually diagnosed with autism,” she said

A bit short on facts as an article, I decided to see if I could find out a bit more regarding this ‘gradual deterioration’ in terms of what form it took.

In November 2003, the then (and current) Lib Dem MP for Lewes (Ms. Thomas’ constituency) Norman Baker, presented a speech concerning Ms Thomas to the Health Minister (then Dr Reid if memory serves) in which he outlined her various issues with how her sons had been treated by the medical establishment. Her MP sums up:

My constituent believes, rightly or wrongly, that the reactions that have been caused in her children and which have led to these, it seems, permanent conditions are a result of MMR. She holds that view very strongly and communicates it to those in the health service. She feels that because she holds that view, her children are effectively being denied effective treatment to deal with their conditions until such time as she is prepared to deny that MMR is the cause. That may be a misconception on her part, but that is what she believes.

Mr Baker is obviously being as tactful to Ms Thomas’s belief system as he possibly can be which is commendable behaviour in an MP but I agree with his inference that its only because she holds the view that MMR ‘led to’ her sons autism that she feels she’s having treatment withheld for _that_ condition (not autism, but MMR induced autism).

More interestingly, he also details her sons ‘gradual deterioration’. This is a description of Michael, her eldest.:

…he was like a wild animal; he screamed when anyone touched him and cried day and night. He has been diagnosed with regressive autism and has an obsessive-compulsive disorder. He suffers from auditory hallucinations, increased clumsiness, chronic bowel disease, temperature control problems, severe headaches, loss of memory, breathing problems and rashes.

And Terry, Michael’s younger brother:

During the night after the vaccination, Terry suffered a fit and within a week he developed excessive temperature swings and loss of skills. Before the vaccination, he was potty trained, but he regressed the very next day. Within two weeks he began to suffer from constipation and chronic diarrhoea. Within a month he appeared clumsy and walked into doors. He stopped talking and would become completely silent. He no longer indulged in pretend play. He now suffers from fits, jaundice when ill, chronic bowel disease, very high fevers, rashes, regressive autism and excessive thirst.

Both boys are said to have:

the measles virus, consistent with the vaccine strain

found in their bowels and blood in Michaels case.

As far as I read it, *none* of Michaels symptoms match those of any known diagnostic criteria of autism. Two, maybe three out of the eight listed above match comorbidities sometimes associated with autism.

Terry’s symptom list is more intriguing and contains the hotly debated ‘regressive autism’. It also lists it _as_ a symptom, indicating that the other symptoms haven’t _caused_ it but exist alongside it. If we take the other as possible indicators of autism then only one ‘he no longer indulged in pretend play’ speaks openly of autism to me. Again, two, possibly three of his listed symptoms out of the thirteen or so listed speak of sometime comorbidities.

Its an established fact that vaccines can cause injury. Could they have caused these injuries? Of course they _could_ . But did they? I don’t know. I would imagine that Ms Thomas filled out a form for the Vaccine Damage Payment Unit and I would imagine that, as in all cases, they performed an investigation and found her claim unsubstantiated. I could be wrong though, maybe she didn’t but seeing as JABS link to the VDPU and encourage people to make such a claim it would seem logical to assume she has. if they rejected her claim that means they don’t agree that the MMR jab caused either of kids problems.

But lets say they did, just to play devils advocate. As the listed symptoms seem utterly dissimilar to those used to diagnose autism I’m unsure how Ms Thomas hopes to establish a causative link at all. Should be an interesting case to watch all the same.

Burden Of Proof

8 Mar

As one dives ever deeper into the science (or lack thereof) between the two camps of the autism/thimerosal debate, the questions become more and more interesting.

It occurred to me awhile ago to wonder how, if we agree that thiomersal in vaccines causes autism, the UK and the US have such very similar rates of autism but very dissimilar rates of thiomersal. The main stance I’m challenging (as ever) is that of Generation Rescue who make it clear they believe thiomersal to be the main culprit (60% of the ‘mercury facts’ page is devoted to thiomersal related questions and thiomersal has its own dedicated section on the GR site). Lets have a look at mercury intake at the height of both countries thiiomersal use:

UK
..a substantial proportion of children in the GPRD cohort will have had a cumulative Hg exposure of *75 µg* of Hg.

US
the maximum cumulative exposure in some US children was *187.5 µg* Hg.

Source

Thats quite some disparity. It raises a few questions almost immediately.

Firstly, are US children more ‘severely’ autistic than UK children? If not, why not? Surely if they’ve received more than twice what UK kids have via vaccines we should see vastly more severely (or low functioning, pick your pejorative) affected autistic people. Is there any evidence this is the case? Well, if IQ is anything to go by (which I fully accept is questionable and I’m only using because thats how the diagnostic criteria work) then the latest stats as quoted by Joseph indicate it is not the case:

Why is the prevalence of CDDS clients without mental retardation (presumably based on IQ testing) going up quickly?

Joseph.

Are there any other indicators that ‘full’ or ‘classic’ or ‘kanners’ or ‘full spectrum’ or ‘low functioning’ (again pick your pejorative) autism is increasing in the US compared to the UK at a ratio of 2:1 whilst ‘high functioning’ or ‘Aspergers Syndrome’ cases are not? I can’t think of any.

Secondly, where are all the dead autistic US children compared to still living UK children?

We hear all the time that autistic people are poor excretors of mercury and yet I find it incredible that given this supposed poor excretion, American autistic kids aren’t dying much earlier than their UK counterparts. Isn’t mercury ingestion eventually fatal? At what level is it necessary for someone to excrete mercury in order to maintain life? There seems to be no evidence to suggest more autistic people die from illnesses close in appearance to fatal mercury exposure than non-autistics and yet not only do they have this inability to excrete mercury, they have a huge mercury burden to start life with and exactly the same exposure to other forms of environmental mercury as non-autistics.

And the inverse is also true. If we accept by virtue of the fact that autistic people are not dying of mercury poisoning that they *must* be excreting it then why do their symptoms not improve? According to proponents of chelation, chelation not only removes the mercury it actually recovers/cures the patient. Is there some aspect to chelation that there isn’t to normal excretion paths? How does chelation reverse the alleged neuro damage when ordinary excretion apparently cannot?

No answers here, only questions.

McScience

3 Mar

Yesterday, my fellow countryman Mike Stanton left the following comment in response to a previous commenter about his belief regarding how his child had become autistic:

There may not be a single answer. But that does not mean we can pick any answer we like. There has to be some scientific validity to any hypothesis.

This is such a good comment. It reflects something I’ve felt increasingly over the last year or so – the increase in pseudo-scientific theories posed as a ‘menu’ for parents to choose from. It reminds me of sauntering up to the counter at McDonalds and saying – “I’ll have one of those, one of those and one of those.”

I recently came across a post made on the Onibasu list which illustrates my point. This is the signature of the poster in question. Its a list of treatments she’s trying on her child:

My son is using M-B12 (Hopewell) since Dec 2003, Wellness Essential GSH (had been using TD-Glut but levels were always low), TD-DMSA (3 on and 4 off – 8 hr schedule) (Lee Silsby) since Oct 2005, (Used TD-DMPS Jan 2005 ?Oct 2005) TD-ALA (Lee Silsby) since Oct 2005, TD-LDN (Wellness) Since Oct 2005, (High Tech Health) FIR sauna, Magnetico bed, High Tech Health’s water machine, and a lot of supplements.) GFGFSF diet.

The post in question is also asking about Lupron. Thats a total of 12 separate treatments, ‘a lot of’ supplements and she probably is in the process of adding Lupron to that list as we speak.

And can you Supersize me please?

What worries me is even a bog-standard bottle of Asprin has a warning on it about responsible use. Is it really sensible to risk giving one’s child such a massive cocktail of drugs on the word of someone who quite obviously is more interested in money than science?

Medicine shouldn’t be such a pick and mix affair. Its quite worrying about what this reveals about how the West’s perception of doctors has changed. Doctors who have undergone 7 years plus of training are viewed with suspicion and sued at the drop of an opinion whilst ‘doctors’ who have shops rather than practices are lauded as heroes.

How did it come to this? When did McScience start to replace science? How did it come to pass that the process of peer review (designed to give a good _starting point_ to a paper) meant nothing and the process of buying an entry in a pseudoscience rag or buying a misleading advertmeant everything?

I’m nobodies scientist. It takes me longer to understand the science because I need to go through it time after time so I understand all the words and understand the implications. I ask questions of actual scientists and get them to translate for me so it stands to reason to me that for an article to be peer reviewed in a decent journal assures that the standard of science in that article will be fairly high. It might not make the paper _right_ , but at least we can be sure its been thought through properly.

Surely that needs to be the absolute baseline of quality we should come to expect for papers that discuss such important questions. Otherwise we really do end up at the counter of McScience – like kids in a sweet shop, taking what we think we’ll like rather than what we need.

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