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Autism amongst the Amish

22 Apr

Don’t Stand So Close To Me

I recently had an email conversation with someone who is married to a lapsed Mennonite and who’s secretary is a lapsed Amish. As this was too good an opportunity to miss I asked xyr about autism amongst the Amish and vaccinations.

I was interested in Dan Olmsted’s idea that he and his sources waltz around Amish communities, grabbing people and asking ‘got any autism in the family’? and calling this reporting. When we talked about this xyr answer was fascinating:

As for tracking autistics, forget about it. Families are not likely going to seek diagnosis unless there are seizures or some other acute issue. Imagine driving up to a bunch of Amish farms and asking, “Are any of your kids autistic?” I would guess they probably haven’t ever heard of the word.

As xe explains it, the Amish are deeply religious people. Xe has first hand experience of this and explained to me how it would be virtually impossible given these beliefs and on such a short aquaintance for Olmsted – or his sources -to get ‘close’ to the Amish as a population:

The entire Amish religion is based on shunning the outside, secular world, these are the biblical tenants they live by:

Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. (II Corinthians 6:14)

Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. (II Corinthians 6:17)

And be ye not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:2)

The Amish only make accommodations when necessary. So, they have a phone in the barn to call the vet and the dairy plant. They accept rides in automobiles and trucks but don’t drive. They may shop for essentials but they aren’t going to chat you up.

And as I said before, I doubt seriously that they would seek a diagnosis for autism unless there was some acute comorbidity like seizures. They would likely know that their child was different but that was god’s will.

and as for vaccination:

The Amish are not anti-vaccine. Some Amish kids go to public school and must be vaccinated. My brother-in-law was raised Amish until about age 10 and he’s got the small pox scar to prove the point.

The basic gist is that the Amish are leery of non-Amish/Mennonite (whom they refer to as ‘the English’ (!!) apparently) but if a matter is medical and may cause threats to health than they are not stupid and seek out Western medicine.

Based on this, I really have doubts that Olmsted ever did more than stablish himself as a ‘nosey English’. I really have trouble believing that such a reserved, separate people would open up to either him or his water cooler salesman source about their personal, private medical matters.

No Autism Amongst The Amish

Its a long standing (and oft repeated) belief amongst the autism/antivaccine believers that there is no autism, or vastly reduced incidence of autism, amongst the Amish. This belief is repeated by all and sundry:

…thousands of Amish, almost all of whom do not vaccinate their children and do not seem to suffer much autism.

Dan Olmsted.

This finding of no significant level of “autism”….has also been observed in the unvaccinated children of the Amish

Dr Paul King, CoMed, closed access Yahoo List.

….the Amish community who do not participate in Western medicine, including the practice of vaccinations, have demonstrated their rates of autism are substantially lower.

Lisa Ackerman, TACA (Talk about Curing Autism) Executive Director, closed access Yahoo List.

Why has there never been autism in the Amish community? They dont vaccinate!

Poster ‘Jan’ to closed access Yahoo List.

I challenge anyone to go into any Amish community in this country and find autistic children. You won’t find them. Yet, our schools are being over run with autistic children. Why? The Amish do not vaccinate.

Poster ‘Paul Troutt’ to closed access Yahoo List

HE [friend of the poster] HAS NEVER SEEN AN AUTISTIC AMISH CHILD OR ADULT…. Why? THE[y] DO NOT IMMUNIZE….EVER.

Poster ‘Amethyst Mueller’ to closed access Yahoo List.

And so it seems clear right? All these people are saying the same thing. We could go into any Amish community and find very, very low or zero autism. And to what do these people attribute the non-existent autism? Vaccines (or the lack thereof) of course!

What would happen if we removed one of these factors from the equation?

The Old-Order Amish have low rates of vaccination and are at increased risk for vaccine-preventable diseases. A written survey was mailed to all Amish households in the largest Amish community in Illinois inquiring about their vaccination status and
that of their children.

Source.

Well, well. How very interesting. Finally some _science_ , as oppose to journalism, that examines whether the oft-reported belief that the Amish don’t vaccinate is true. What did these guys find?

Responses were received by 225 (60%) of the 374 Amish households in the community with children aged <15 years. An additional 120 responses were received by households without children. A total of 189 (84%) households with children reported
that all of their children had received vaccinations; 28 (12%) reported that some of their children had received vaccinations; and
8 (4%) reported that none of their children had received vaccinations.

84% of Amish households reported all their kids had received vaccinations. Only 4% reported that none of their kids had received vaccinations.

Among all respondents who knew their own vaccination status, 281/313 (90%) reported that they had received vaccinations
as children

Wow. Amazing how the two to three ‘toxic train wrecks’ from amongst these adults could not only have been missed (vaccine induced autism being unmissable as we all know) but also managed to fill in a survey.

So – we can say that the assumption that the Amish do not vaccinate is in severe doubt. When 90% of Amish adults in a survey state they received vaccinations and when 84% state all their kids have been vaccinated to what do we attribute the fact that according to Dan Olmsted, Dr Paul King, Lisa Ackerman and various posters on Yahoo groups there is little to no autism amongst the Amish?

Autism, Chelation and Quackery

15 Apr

Mercury Mum, Christine Heeren recently posted a video of her son receiving IV chelation on YouTube.

UPDATE: Shortly after this blog post went live, the YouTube video disappeared. Luckily I had already grabbed a copy which you can view here:

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-5984127405622843714&hl=en-GB

Its a disturbing video on many levels. Heeren’s son has been undergoing chelation for seven months now and is still clearly totally autistic. During this video he is apparently writing ‘bus numbers’ down. The blog that Ms Heeren keeps (link on YouTube page) also makes it clear that her son still stims and he displays many common outward signs of autism (the scrunching up of the eyes at the start of the video reminds me of something my daughter does very much).

Heeren is subjecting her son to the Buttar protocol which should give anyone the stone cold heebie jeebies in and of itself. One patient of Buttar’s said that:

I find that Dr. Buttar talks a lot but produces little evidence.

And another said:

All the information about Dr. Buttar is still on this site but I no longer am one of his patients and I do not recommend him to any one for any reason. If you go to him for treatment BEWARE, BEWARE and read Roger Mason’s books first and go to QuackWatch.org first!

However, maybe we should take some kind of solace from the fact that Heeren’s doctor is not actually Buttar himself, only trained by Buttar. Maybe he’s a good doctor.

Heeren’s doctor is Muneer ImamMuneer Imam a shy, kind looking man wouldn’t you agree?

Well, he may well be.

In Jan 1993, the New York Office of Professional Conduct charged Muneer Imam:

…with gross negligence, gross incompetence, negligence on more than one occasion and failure to maintain adequate records.

The Hearing Committee sustained the charges of negligence on more than one occasion, incompetence on more than one occasion and failure to maintain adequate records. The Hearing Committee found Imam guilty of careless practice, lack of attention to detail and failure to appreciate the severity of patient illness

The incidents have included at least one death of a patient under the care of Imam.

The Hearing Committee (incredibly in my view) said he could probably be rehabilitated and laid out a plan of rehabilitation.

This all took place under Imam’s work at an ER. Imam no longer does ER work. I asked a medical friend about why that might be and xyr response was:

Since he no longer seems to do ER work, I imagine he settled a med mal claim for deceased patient A, and his insurer refused to write coverage for ER work and no hospital would cover him

Is this really someone any parent would want to trust with the kids life? A doctor found to be incompetent, negligent and who doesn’t pay attention to detail?

This inability to pay attention to details certainly seems to be playing out on Heeren’s video. Here is Imam’s nurse (a Vietnam vet called Nick) fitting the IV for a course of chelation.

No sterile

When I showed this to my medical friend xyr response was horrified:

WTF is this alleged nurse doing starting an IV without gloves??? What happened to sterile technique? Have they lost their minds?

and

What is this alleged nurse doing using that frigging tiny gauge needle???

It seems that the chelation protocol Buttar uses specifies a 22 gauge butterfly needle, not the tiny one seen in the video. There are good reasons why:

…..because this is the easiest to use for employees with no medical training who call themselves “chelation technicians.” The tiny needle also serves to prevent patients from killing themselves by increasing the drip rate when they’re sick of sitting around for hours. Increasing the drip through a 22 gauge butterfly needle should (in theory) burst the vein before delivering Endrate at a lethal rate. Clever stuff.

While almost everyone can start an IV with this tiny needle, it’s dangerous to use for chelation because if patients get into trouble you want a large bore needle inserted in case you need to administer drugs and fluids for treatment or god forbid, resuscitation. Starting a second IV with an appropriate size needle in a patient in circulatory collapse from shock is difficult and sometimes impossible. The daunting prospect of starting an IV in the jugular makes sane physicians do everything to avoid being in this position.

Administering a bolus of calcium gluconate to counteract hypocalcemia through this tiny needle can result in a swollen hand (when the IV infiltrates) attached to a dead patient.

So – Nick the Nurse also has incompetence issues.

At one point in this video I thought I had gone mad. Did my ears deceive me or did I really hear Nick the Nurse describe how they also chelated with vinegar and garlic? I rewound the video. Yep, he said it alright. Vinegar and Garlic. I could say ‘wow’ or ‘holy crap’ to express my incredulity after hearing that but really, no words do it justice. They are chelating this poor lad with Garlic and vinegar.

And why? What for? First test

Here is Heeren’s son’s first ever lab report (click the image to get a bigger one).

Let’s remember that these lab reports are all part of the quack culture and I suspect are frequently exaggerated to get the parent to use more of their treatments. If even these results are exaggerated then I’m dumbfounded. Everything except Aluminium and Lead are within normal ranges. And even those two are just barely in the elevated range.

It is on this basis that Heeren decided to start chelating her son using a doctor described as medically negligent and incompetent under the tender care of a ‘nurse’ who doesn’t know the protocol he is supposed to be using and who is actively putting this boy (and presumably others) in potential danger.

Oh and don’t forget the garlic and vinegar. Thanks Rashid, thanks Muneer, thanks Nick.

Katie Wright’s big day

6 Apr

Yesterday three big things happened to Katie Wright. Firstly, she joined the board of Directors of SafeMinds. Secondly she joined the board of directors of the National Autism Association. Thirdly, she appeared on the US Oprah Winfrey show.

The elusive Ginger blogged the NAA and SafeMinds news which was announced just before/during/after (depending on your timezone) the Oprah show.

The Opera show itself was a mixed bag apparently. There was a lot of self pity at the start:

“he’s not there, I don’t know where he is but he’s not there”

Oprah: A mystery affecting millions of families

“A bad day is a bad day and a good day is a bad day waiting to happen”

Please. Spare me. Not there?

However, a lot of people have also said there were some great moments:

I like the way the show ended with every single parent talking about the gifts their autistic children have given them! “He has made me more spiritual,” “He has made me look outside of myself,” “He takes people just as they are.” “He has given me someone to love way beyond what I ever thought possible.” Amen.

Sue also noted that no autistic adults were on the show and none were interviewed. That’s ridiculous.

However, part way through the show was the Katie Wright Experience. Apparently what happened was that Oprah asked a Doc on the show about vaccines and he repeated the scientific consensus – which is that vaccines have been refuted as a cause. Which is true. The show cut to a break. When it came back on, viewers were greeted by a visibly pink and flustered Katie Wright and then the host of the show told the audience that …..in fact I’ll quote from someone (who I won’t name so don’t ask) who was watching the show carefully:

To me it all seemed quite sane, except for Katie’s little blurt. A pediatrician of south Asian descent whose name I didn’t catch was periodically consulted from the dais by la Oprah, and gave what sounded like reasonable advice. At one point Oprah asked about causes–she didn’t use the word epidemic but said ‘what the cdc calls a health threat–and the pede gave a general response, genetics, possibly some environmental thing, and then Oprah said, “what about vaccines?” the pediatrician responded, “that’s controversial.” and oprah said, ‘well yeah, and?” or words to that effect. The pediatrician said the vaccine theory had been pretty well refuted. That was that, but after the next break, Katie Hildebrand, who was sitting next to Oprah, must have been chewing her ear off because la O told her to say her piece which she did in the usual incoherent shrieking way, “vaccines are not cleared of being responsible, children are given 37 different vaccines, my child has all kinds of immune problems, there’s an epidemic that keeps growing” etc. Oprah said, “there i can see you needed to get that off your chest, you don’t want to go home with that all bottled up. After all, you’re a mom.” the studio crowd applauded though they did not hoot or yell anything specific that i could detect on my tv screen.

Following that, Oprah apparently told the audience that this is what _Katie_ personally believed and it wasn’t supported by any CDC evidence.

Here’s _my_ summation of Katie Wright’s life at the moment.

Katie campaigned to get a Generation Rescue member on the board of Autism Speaks. Here’s how Brad Handley reported that event in a rant:

Kevin Barry, our former President, was hired by Autism Speaks. On his first day of employment, Mark Roithmayr informed Kevin that he was only there “as a favor to Katie” [ the mother of Bob and Suzanne Wright’s autistic grandson]

Katie has spoken of Brad and Kevin Barry as her mentors. Here’s Brad’s mention of Katie Wright:

I just want to share how damn proud I am of this family. Remember, there is no Christian Wright, his name is Christian Hildebrand.

Katie’s decision to be more public about her point of view is not some impulsive move. For almost two years now, quietly but firmly, she has lobbied her parents on the growing morass that Autism Speaks was becoming. By choosing to listen more to the “experts” than their own daughter, Katie’s parents selaed their own fate.

Two years. After which the Wright’s continue to listen to science, not Brad’s people.

Katie Wright has come to believe, after a long association with Brad Handley, that vaccines caused her sons autism. Katie had the king Rescue Angel himself hovering over her for the last two years. Has anyone ever told Katie that Brad is often wrong and never admits it even when its clearly demonstrated? I guess not.

Kim Stagliano (autism blogger – big on pooh) said:

This is a very big day when the SS Minnow overtakes the Titanic.

Really? _Really_ ?

From all I’ve read and seen, all that’s apparent is that the newest mercury mum on the block got appointed to two antivaccine groups and that made a bit of a fool of herself on television. The only difference is that this mercury mum happens to have parents who own and run an autism organisation that she’s just cut her ties from.

What I actually feel the Wrights are guilty of is: Listening to dinosaurs with degrees instead of their daughter, Deirdre Imus, and others speaking the truth, myself included.

In Brad’s world there is no greater sin than not listening to him. Maybe they did listen to you Brad and thought you were wrong.

So, after Katie Wright’s big day – the day the SS Minnow overtook the Titanic – what’s changed?

The world saw a visibly unstable mercury mum on TV being thrown a bone to rant about her pet theory for a few minutes and then the show carried on.

…and thats that. No scientific facts changed yesterday. Katie Wright confirmed herself as a woo-meister. All that means is people will be even less likely to listen to her than they were before. Autism Speaks must be breathing a sigh of relief she’s jumped ship.

Education data is the new black

26 Mar

Or, more accurately, Education data is the new CDDS.

Up until this year, David Kirby, Lenny Schafer, Rick Rollens et al said that CDDS data was the gold standard of autism data and because rates were rising during the 90’s according to CDDS data this proved that vaccines caused autism. Then they said this would be proved in 2005 – sorry, 2007 – when it was firmly established thiomersal was pretty much out of all vaccines in the US schedule excepting the voluntary flu jab. Kirby went so far as to say that if the CDDS rates didn’t fall by 2007 then this would be a significant blow to the thiomersal theory.

Guess what? No fall. In fact, there was a continued climb.

Next they all said – CDDS? That stuff is rubbish – California is ‘special’. No, no, no, what _really_ counts is educational data. In fact, just this morning, the latest Schafer Autism Report carried new data that showed how autism rates were still climbing.

But hang on….seeing as we _know_ that the amount of thiomersal in vaccines is essentially nil, and tests show that as early as 2002, over 80% of doctors surgeries reported they carried no thiomersal containing vaccines, how can we possibly carry on with the stupendously idiotic hypothesis that thiomersal in vaccines causes autism?

Feh. Never mind. Thiomersal is out of favour these days. These days its all about Aluminium or whatever other vaccine ingredient people want to wring their hands about.

Anyway, here’s a post I came across on EoH today:

I just found this newsletter from last fall- vaccine rates dropping funding short- sounds good to me. Too bad we are not counting AUtism rates like CA.

and it linked to this PDF which says:.

Alarmingly, our childhood vaccine rates have dropped from the highest in the nation to just below the national average. From 90% of two year olds fully immunized to less than 80%.

The inference is clear, right? If only we could count the number of autistic people in Maine up to and including 2006 I bet we’d see them dropping as the vaccine uptake in Maine dwindled. And hey – this should be an easy drop to find in the state that had the highest vaccine uptake in the nation, right? Oh, if _only_ someone had tracked the autism numbers in Maine!!!

Well, worry no more – the great guys at the Vaccine Autoimmune project have. (IE link only, poor web development ahoy!). Lets take a look shall we?

State 2000-2001 2005-2006 Percentage Increase
Maine 150 311 107

Huh??

Wait now…you mean to tell me that vaccine uptake _fell_ over 10% and yet autism _increased_????

Miraculous – whatever can it mean???

Daubert and the Autism Omnibus

17 Mar

I recently wrote about how the petitioners in the Autism Omnibus were trying to remove the need for their evidence to be scientific by fighting against the ‘daubert’ principle. I concluded that piece with a downbeat message that it was all too possible for petitioners to remove the need for their ‘science’ to actually _be_ science.

A regular reader (who happens to be a lawyer – no, not Wade) passed on a fascinating document (its 120 (searchable) pages – be prepared) to me which discussed the role of Daubert. My reader passed the link on to me with the explanation:

You will see a Court of Federal Claims Special Master, a couple of law professors, and some federal appeals court judges discussing causation and Daubert in vaccine cases.

Its a big (120 page) document so I’m going to concentrate on what these esteemed bodies thought of the role of Daubert in terms of applying it to the Vaccine Act. First a quick recap.

Oversimplifying things, cases tried under the Vaccine Act have almost no standard of evidentiary proof. That suits that Autism Omnibus petitioners as they _have_ no evidence or proof.

Daubert is usually applied in a _Federal_ court and demands that scientific evidence presented to that court is of a good standard of science.

That’s the basic position. If you want to read more about why these two positions are adopted for the differing courts then read the document I’ve linked to. Its just too big to go into all these things in a single blog entry.

So, ordinarily, Daubert would not apply to cases tried under the Vaccine Act. However, this omnibus proceeding is far from an ordinary situation.

JUDGE VOWELL: Well, let’s pick up on the issue of Daubert and Kumho Tire. Those decisions are mentioned nowhere in our trilogy of cases. In a program such as the vaccine program where there are no juries to be unfairly influenced, what role does Daubert play, or what role should a Daubert analysis play?

MS. GREY: I think that, like you said, in many ways they wouldn’t be applicable. We don’t have juries. We have a very sophisticated fact finder. Federal Rules of Evidence, Federal Rules of Procedure don’t apply here.

So that’s the basic positions. However:

MS. GREY: there is a reason why Daubert developed that is still applicable here, and that is to test the basis for an expert’s opinion. Why do we need that? Because when you have an area that is bereft of evidence like this, you don’t have the normal processes of a trial to test the assumption.

So you don’t have cross-examination that’s going to work as well. You don’t have the opposing evidence that will work as well. And that’s why you probably would be well-suited to take Daubert and apply it in this setting, even though you’re not protecting the jury from junk science. There are other reasons that underlie Daubert that would be applicable here.

And what are those other reasons?

MS GREY: You always, I think, want to probe the underlying basis for whatever opinion is being proffered in the Special Master’s Court. We don’t want to just rely on expert credentials alone. You want to see, was there any adherence to professional or technical standards? What is the basis for the opinion?

An excellent point. Only Daubert can give you this. And surely it would be utter madness to make such a judgement without taking a very careful look at _how_ results were obtained when looking at the results themselves. We know that the ‘science’ presented by the mercury militia is on the surface good but when looked at closely starts to unravel like a badly made sweater.

And here’s a paragraph assured to make the Bradstreets and Geiers of this world blood run cold:

Just like any other witness, a scientist, a doctor is going to be subject to biases, to value judgments that are coming from his own setting that could affect his view on the question of causation, which is why you want the Special Master or the trial Court to still probe the basis for the decision rather than just relying solely on the fact that the expert is making that assertion and is well-credentialed in that area.

Yikes. Will Jeff Bradstreet discover a renewed interest in his family again before this all kicks off?

What else?

Mr GREEN: at some point the idea of, okay, put up, expert, what have you got, is something that needs to be done, and Daubert is doing that under the aegis of Rule 702 and the admissibility of an expert testimony. It could be done at the hearing when an expert testifies, but it needs to be done.

It needs to be done. That’s the bottom line. There needs to be a test of expert testimony and Daubert is the way to do it.

But why? I said I didn’t want to go into the nuts and bolts of the legalities but we should maybe talk about why Daubert, which usually only applies in a Federal court setting, should also apply in a Vaccine Act court according to these people.

MS. GREY:…For 100 years, courts would allow treating physicians to testify about causation or about any subject as long as it was an inference that was the type that physicians normally make in the course of their practice. That would be the test; that we wouldn’t look beyond that. But that, as we keep describing, has changed gradually, especially in the last 10, 15 years. Why? What happened, we had an explosion of toxic tort cases, and there were a lot of experts that were willing to testify about causation without real strong scientific studies…… That brought us Daubert [.]

In other words, the sheer amount of new cases revolving around the issue of toxicity and vaccines led to a situation where it was no longer good enough to waive the standard (or lack thereof) of evidence. To prove toxicity, science had to be science. Hence Daubert. Ms Grey goes on to give a good example:

Let me just give you an example that will seem very exaggerated, but it’ll just show my point. If an infant develops a brain tumor after he gets a measles vaccine, this kind of post hoc reasoning would say, the vaccine caused the tumor. This kind of reasoning is going to be rejected by scientists. Why is that? Hundreds of thousands of infants receive a measles vaccine every year. A few of them will develop brain tumors. That’s the coincidence factor.

One of the fascinating aspects of this document is that the Special Master present – Judge Vowell – is also on the Autism Omnibus case as a Special Master (there are three in total). In reference to a non-expert physician opining that a vaccine _caused_ the problem, she asked:

Is it not, though, circumstantial evidence from which other circumstantial evidence I might reasonably infer causation?

The answer given by both Law Professors was essentially ‘no’:

You could take it into account, but it doesn’t qualify it. In other words, Capizzano (another precedent like daubert) probably in my mind went a little bit too far because it’s relying on the treating physician’s testimony to basically make out the whole case, and I think that that’s not strong enough.

There’s no resolution in this document but it seems clear to me – where an increasing amount of cases revolve around a scientific need for scientific evidence – Daubert will increasingly apply.

Yet more Scientology and Autism

11 Mar

After my post on Friday detailing how one of the ‘recovered’ poster children of Generation Rescue was in fact diagnosed, treated and recovered by Scientologists (people who do not, by definition, believe in psychiatric conditions), I was forwarded another piece of information that really did make me sit back in my chair and wonder where this was all leading.

Dan Burton is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Indiana. He is a firm believer in the autism/vaccine connection, being on record as stating:

“My only grandson became autistic right before my eyes – shortly after receiving his federally recommended and state-mandated vaccines”

He has acted in the interests of various parent led organisations who claim to be autism advocates and has become a powerful voice.

However, as the saying goes: behind every great man…

The people behind Dan Burton include (or used to) one Sarah Elizabeth (Beth) Clay who:

Beth Clay is Congressman Burton’s assistant, and Burton is the Chair of the House Oversight Committee.

This puts Ms Clay in a position of some strength with a man who is in a powerful position. In fact, as we can see Ms Clay has lobbied for SafeMinds, one of the largest antivax/autism movements, on numerous occasions.

Ms Clay also runs her own lobbying organisation BC and A International:

During her Capitol Hill tenure, Ms. Clay’s work focused on several breakthrough issues, including: complementary and alternative medicine, dietary supplement regulation, the epidemic rise in rates of autism spectrum disorders…..issues…..mercury and heavy metal toxicity

However, Ms Clay’s CV also includes other activities that are oddly not mentioned on BC and A’s website. She is a Board Member of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, an organisation that:

CCHR was founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and the internationally acclaimed author, Dr. Thomas Szasz.

Yup, Beth Clay, Assistant to Congressman Dan Burton and hired gun of SafeMinds is a Scientologist, or works with them.

We now have several DAN! doctors who are scientologists, several thiomersal/autism lawyers who are scientologists, a ‘cured’ child who was diagnosed (partly), treated and ‘cured’ by scientologists and now one Congressman who’s advisor is a scientologist. We also have one indirect link from scientology to Generation Rescue (in the shape of Julia Berle, founding parent of that organisation and mother to the ‘cured’ child described above) and one direct link from scientology to SafeMinds in the shape of Beth Clay.

Maybe its worth reminding ourselves what Scientology is. According to ex-scientologist, Roland Rashleigh-Berry, Scientology is:

….a vicious and dangerous cult that masquerades as a religion. Its purpose is to make money. It practices a variety of mind-control techniques on people lured into its midst to gain control over their money and their lives

The founder of this cult, L Ron Hubbard, once said:

Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion

Or maybe sell snake oil.

Airbrushing science from causation

4 Mar

Another update from the Autism Omnibus proceedings. This one I find worrying. It essentially presents two things for the courts consideration from petitioners (those who think vaccines cause autism):

1) That the scope of the hearings does _”not”_ :

…limit the scope of these proceedings to only those cases with a formal diagnosis of autism

2) That ‘Daubert’ is not utilised as the evidentiary standard.

The first one I find very worrying indeed. This essentially opens up a never ending series of possible cases surely? It also raises the ugly question of the honesty of the people raising this legal case. These are parents who hitherto have described their children as those who have been made autistic by vaccines (either just thiomersal or just MMR or a combo of both). Now, apparently, it is enough that:

…the injuries at issue here include neurodevelopmental disorders _similar_ to autism…

I have to wonder: just how many of these 4,700+ children have actually been diagnosed as being autistic? And how many are children being made to act as Trojan horses for a possible cash windfall for their parents? A disturbing, uncharitable thought to be sure but I don’t know what else to make of this.

Even more worrying is the petitioners attempts to make sure Daubert is not used as the means of determining evidentiary standard.

Lets remind ourselves of what Daubert is. Daubert is a legal precedent which:

[is] raised before or during trial, to exclude the presentation of unqualified evidence to the jury. This is a special case of motion in limine, usually used to exclude the testimony of an expert witness who has no such expertise or used questionable methods to obtain the information.

In plan terms it means that crap evidence cannot be presented to a court. I’m going to quote from Wikipedia directly:

In Daubert, the Supreme Court ordered federal trial judges to become the “gatekeepers” of scientific evidence. Trial judges now must evaluate proffered expert witnesses to determine whether their testimony is both “relevant” and “reliable”; a two-pronged test of admissibility.

a) The relevancy prong: The relevancy of a testimony refers to whether or not the expert’s evidence “fit” the facts of the case. For example, you may invite an astronomer to tell the jury if it was a full moon on the night of a crime. However, the astronomer would not be allowed to testify if the fact that the moon was full was not relevant to the issue at hand in the trial.

b) The reliability prong: The Supreme Court explained that in order for expert testimony to be considered reliable, the expert must have derived his or her conclusions from the scientific method. The Court offered “general observations” of whether proffered evidence was based on the scientific method, although the list was not intended to be used as an exacting checklist:
– Empirical testing: the theory or technique must be falsifiable, refutable, and testable.
– Subjected to peer review and publication.
– Known or potential error rate.
– Whether there are standards controlling the technique’s operations.
– Whether the theory and technique is generally accepted by a relevant scientific community.

What this boils down to is this – Daubert ensures that science presented as evidence is _good science_ . The petitioners are fighting hard to try and make sure Daubert does not become the way the omnibus case is judged:

…the notion that Daubert should provide the substantive criteria for resolving general causation issues in the omnibus proceeding ought to be explicitly dismissed.

Why? Well they _say_ its because Daubert is procedural, not practical, that Daubert interprets _Federal_ rules of evidence that do not apply in the Omnibus and that it is based on development of expert evidence through revealing documents which is not available in these proceedings.

Uh-huh, and of course the fact that Daubert demands a _scientific_ level of proof has nothing to do with things. Right.

Hilariously, what the petitioners want is to establish general causation in a Daubert-less series of hearings using a few ‘case studies’ hand picked from the 4,700 and then use _these_ as the body of general causation evidence to go on and establish specific causation in each single member of the 4,700. Stop and think about how poor the state of their science must be if they are arguing tooth and nail to do this.

Let’s not forget that three high echelon members of the mercury militia have all fallen foul of Daubert within the last year when trying to establish quack causes for autism: Martha Herbert, Boyd Haley and Mark Geier all came to realise that quackery and bad science is quickly exposed by such a hearing. And now – all of a sudden – the petitioners don’t want any truck with Daubert. Shocking.

Make no mistake – if they get their way, _which they may very well do_ – then a) these kids don’t have to be autistic and b) no science needs to be presented to establish general causation.

The closest recent bout of idiocy I can think to compare to this was when certain Southern US states stated that creationism was a viable science to be taught in a science class alongside actual science. They went on to win a a legal case as well if I recall. Don’t think that this one can’t be won by bad science too.

Dan Olmsted – Autism’s Dick Tracy

2 Mar

Apparently.

Dan Olmsted, who writes for the Moonie owned UPI recently published another interminable piece in his ongoing series on autism (it isn’t really about autism, its about thiomersal causing autism but what the hell…)

In this one, he reveals the shocking results of his ongoing investigation into the private lives of the first set of Kanner’s patients and tries as hard as he can to draw a parallel between them and mercury. This time he’s struck the mother lode.

Patient Frederick W’s father is now identified as Frederick L. Wellman, a scientist who’s collection of papers ‘fill 18 boxes in the Special Collections Research Center at the North Carolina State University Libraries in Raleigh’.

The first item in the first folder in the first box is dated Spring 1922, when the senior Wellman was working toward his doctorate in plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin…..Wellman collected cabbage seeds infected with a common fungus and dunked some of them in a solution of mercury salts and hot water. “The lots treated with mercuric [chloride] were shaken vigorously at first to get thorough contact with the solution,” he wrote.

And that’s not all.

Case 1 grew up in a town called Forest, Miss., surrounded by logging camps, lumber mills, and a national forest being planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Forest is 50 miles from the Mississippi sawmills where ethyl mercury fungicides were first tested in the United States in 1929 to preserve lumber, a practice that quickly became widespread;

Case 3 was the son of “a professor of forestry in a southern university,” Kanner wrote….In 1936, he assisted in the planting of pine seedlings in the university’s newly acquired Hofmann Forest. His son was born in 1937. Organic mercury fungicides, including an ethyl mercury brand, were often used to prevent “damping off” or fungal contamination of pine seedlings during that era.

All this led Mark Blaxill of Antivax group SafeMinds to comment:

So now we have learned that Frederick Wellman handled ethyl mercury fungicides that were first introduced to the market in 1929 and that his child was Kanner’s patient No. 2….And we know that cases 1 and 3 grew up around the first application of ethyl mercury products. If that’s not a smoking gun, I don’t know what is…

A smoking gun. Impressive.

Except, lets apply a little less gasping credulity and a little more logic.

Fredrick Wellman’s documented use of ethyl mercury was 14 long years before his son was born. Does ethyl mercury have special time travelling properties no one told me about? And how exactly does Wellman Snr being associated with ethyl mercury lead to his son becoming autistic? By that logic every person who ever worked with ethyl mercury should both be autistic themselves and have autistic kids. Did Wellman inject the ethyl mercury into his scrotum?

And what was he doing during the year of his son’s birth? He wasn’t even in the country:

During most of 1936, Wellman was hunting exotic plant diseases in Turkey, Egypt, and Iran.

Case 1 ‘grew up’ (but where was he born?) 50 miles away from ethyl mercury. Everything else in that particular quote is supposition. Case 3’s Dad once planted seedlings that were planted about the same time that some fungicides that might’ve contained ethyl mercury might’ve been used. Thats a sight to may ‘might’ve’s for me.

Sorry, but this to me is not a smoking gun. Its not even a lukewarm barrell.

Another intriguing thing to note was that, in a follow up paper in 1971 Kanner found only two of his original eleven had had what he termed a favourable outcome. Those two were Wellman’s son and ‘case 1’. I’ll apply some Olmsted logic and conclude that the ethyl mercury obviously mitigated the worst of the ravaging effects of the hellish autism.

David Kirby’s Causation Trail

22 Feb

In a truly fascinating exchange on the Evidence of Harm Yahoo Group, David Kirby has revealed:

…the studies which, when taken together, suggest a plausible biological mechanism for mercury exposure as a contributing factor to regressive autism

The exchange came about as a ‘renegade’ poster to that group started laying down a smidgen of fact regarding the state of the science that props up the thiomersal hypothesis. S/he is not a popular bunny on that group.

The exchange led group big cheese Lenny Schafer to state:

It seems that junk science is in the eye of the beholder. It will probably take an impartial jury in a court of law to substantially settle if there is enough evidence of harm to implicate thimerosal and or vaccines in autism.

Seems like Lenny hasn’t been keeping up with the news in that regard.

Anyway, back to David Kirby. Hot on the heels of his amusing further goalpost shifting (somehow the non-decrease in autism numbers which, in 2005 and 2006 would be a grave blow to the thiomersal hypothesis are now suddenly nothing to trouble this teflon coated hypothesis) comes this – David Kirby’s statement on the existing studies which support mercury exposure (what? Not ‘MERCURY _IN VACCINES_ AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY’ David? Just any old mercury now is it? Bless you for exposing the courage of your convictions.)

So which studies float David’s boat? This is his list:

Richard Deth, Northeastern U;
Martha Herbert, Harvard U;
Jill James, Univ of Arkansas;
Thomas Burbacher, Univ of Washington;
Diana Vargas, Johns Hopkins;
Isaac Pessah, UC Davis;
Mady Hornig, Columbia U;
Mark Noble, Univ of Rochester.

Eight people, eight studies. Thise is the ‘science’ that David thinks suggest a plausible mechanism for mercury being a contributing factor for regressive autism.

As an amusing aside, don’t you love (and appreciate!) how careful David is becoming with his choice of words these days? No more of this ‘thiomersal causes autism’ stuff for him! Now its’mercury’ (not ‘MERCURY _IN VACCINES_ AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY’) and instead of ‘causing’ we have ‘contributing factor’ and instead of autism we now have ‘regressive autism’. best of all we have ‘suggest’ instead of MERCURY IN VACCINES AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC. Bless him, all the blog reading he’s been doing from the skeptical folks is finally paying off.

So, lets turn our attention to these studies of David’s. First of all we should note that the Mark Noble cite is a red herring (you lose skeptic points for that David) as, if I’m not mistaken, this study is a) a pilot study and b) not as yet underway. Certainly none of the other ten studies PubMed attributes to Noble, M. appear to discuss autism. Naughty naughty.

Richard Deth

Deth’s paper, if I may quote myself, can be summed up thusly:The basic gist of the Deth paper is that various toxins, including thimerosal, affect methionine synthase activity (a process that helps in building proteins) and that this can adversely affect children. In short, the Deth paper alleges that thimerosal causes methionine synthase dysfunction (MSD).

There are several issues with this as they relate to autism. Firstly, MSD and autism do not resemble each other. Symptoms of MSD are: Anemia, moderate to severe developmental delay, lethargy, anorexia, and homocystinuria (mental retardation, dislocation of the crystalline lens of the eye, sparse blond hair, and cardiovascular and skeletal deformities). Further issues:

1) There is no active transport mechanism into the central nervous system currently known for ethylmercury (thimerosal) whereas there is an known and active transport mechanism for methylmercury.
2) Because its half-life is much longer, methylmercury is more likely to accumulate than ethylmercury, causing higher levels of mercury in the blood.
3) Exposing cells in vitro to ethylmercury eliminates the most important difference between those two forms of mercury, and ignores the fact that ethylmercury is unlikely to enter the central nervous system at concentrations likely to be harmful.
4) The authors chose to use a cell line derived from a metastatic peripheral nervous system tumor to make predictions about developing healthy cells of the central nervous system. If the authors were interested in making claims about the developing central nervous system they should use cells derived from there.
5) The authors make statements in their introduction about developmental disorders such as fetal alcohol syndrome, Rhett’s syndrome, or Fragile-X syndrome, they fail to consider the fact that all of these diseases have their origins in the developing embryo and fetus, not postnatally.
6) The authors’ reference a study that evaluated the causal association between thimerosal and vaccines using the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). Remember how good VAERS is?

Bart Cubbins produced a video detailing similar points.

Martha Herbert and Dianne Vargas

These two papers independeintly of each other indicated a role for neuroinflammation in autism (<a href="http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/herbert.pdf&quot; rel="nofollow"Herbert here and Vargas here but they differ slightly. The Vargas paper states:

neuroinflammatory process appears to be associated with an ongoing and chronic mechanism of CNS dysfunction

and leaves it at that. Herbert specualtes with no basis regarding the fact that metals might play a part in the neuroinflammation. She has no basis for these speculations and it surprises me that they’re in a paper published in such a good journal.

Jill James

Jill James’s studies revolve around glutathione. Glutathione, amongst other things, removes merucry from the human body. James’ studies purport to show that autistic people are deficient in Glutathione and thus when they get mercury they can’t excrete it in the same way non-autistic people do.

However, they don’t. James tried to show that the two types of Glutathione in the body (what she called Active and Inactive) were about 31% (Active) and 33% (Inactive) less in autistic kids than non-autistic kids. However, it should be noted that these are not two differing forms of Glutathione but instead two states of one thing which have a relationship to each other – when one goes up, the other goes down. As Not Mercury states:

Decreased synthetic capability is one possible explanation but this would probably result in a significant deficit of total glutathione not an imbalance between the two oxidation states. _If James found any evidence of impaired glutathione synthesis in this small group of children it wasn’t included in any of her published work_. It doesn’t sound like the children were suffering from a glutathione deficiency as much as an increased oxidative burden greater than the capacity to recycle and glutathione and maintain full oxidative defense capacity.

No deficiency in Glutathione. But Not Mercury takes it a step further:

let’s suppose children with autism had significantly lower levels of glutathione. Would it render them unable to detoxify thimerosal from vaccines? Probably not.

The average human carries about 6milligrams mercury, even if James’ figures were accurate (which they are clearly not) or represent what she claims they do (which they clearly don’t) then the human body would still have several million times more glutathione than needed to excrete the suspect mercury. As Not Mercury says:

A person so severely deficient in glutathione they would be unable to detoxify 250 micrograms of mercury (upper limit of thiomersal in vaccines 5 years ago) probably wouldn’t survive long enough to be vaccinated in the first place. Every breath of air would expose them to lethal levels of ozone, pollutants and other oxidants.

Please read all of Not Mercury’s piece. It’s an eye opener.

Thomas Burbacher

This paper reached one conclusion.

The key findings of the current study are the differences in the disposition kinetics and demethylation rates of thimerosal and MeHg. Consequently, MeHg is not a suitable reference for risk assessment from exposure to thimerosal derived Hg. Knowledge of the biotransformation of thimerosal, the chemical identity of the Hg-containing species in the blood and brain, and the neurotoxic potential of intact thimerosal and its various biotransformation products, including ethylmercury are urgently needed to afford a meaningful interpretation of the potential developmental effects of immunization with thimerosal-containing vaccines in newborns and infants. This information is critical if we are to respond to public concerns regarding the safety of childhood immunizations

In other words, Burbacher blood vs brain is not a valid comparison and that methHG vs ethHG is not valid either. He then goes on to state that more research is needed into what the toxic effects of thimerosal might be. He states that mercury from vaccines doesn’t accumulate as much in blood as it does in the brain and thusly, using blood levels of mercury to represent brain levels of mercury is innacurate.

It was also presented that this paper connected the dots between thiomersal and neuroinflammation (see Herbert and Vargas) but this is a false representation and not claimed or even insinuated by Burbacher.

Two more issues arose from this paper. Firstly, when the Burbacher team performed the extraction of mercury from the blood or brain matter, they failed to introduce controls to ensure that the thimerosal was not degraded in any way as a result of the extraction process. This means they had to basically assume from the resultant possibly contaminated material how much was attributable to methylmercury and how much to thimerosal (ethylmercury). Secondly, Burbacher used thimerosal free vaccines and added pure thimerosal. It is difficult to know how this fresh preparation compares with vaccine formulas when thimerosal is part of the manufacturing process and may have suffered some degradation to inorganic Hg in the vials before administration.

Issac Pessah

The Pessah paper related how the study team found that thiomersal administered to mice caused “dendritic cells” damage. Specifically:

the thimerosal disrupted the normal biological signals that take place in cells, Pessah said. At lower concentrations, the signal disruption caused an inflammatory response; at higher concentrations it caused cell death.

So the position here is that thimerosal has a negative effect on the immune system. Lots of parents think autism is immune-system related. However, this study is a) unreplicated (as far as I know) and b) we may be overestmating the real world effect. Here’s Autism Diva talking about hearing Pessah on Autism One radio.

But the really weird thing is how he described how long the effect would last when the dendritic cells came into contact with mercury. If Autism Diva understood him correctly, lets say a kid gets injected with a vaccine containing thimerosal and the dendritic cells that come into contact with the thimerosal. This is not necessarily all the dendritic cells–some of them, and the DCs are affected by the thimerosal, depending on how much thimerosal they come into contact with. And this effect lasts…. years and years? Is that what he said? No.

Was it months and months? Is that what he said? Maybe it was days and days? Hours and hours? No, actually, what he said, if Autism Diva heard him correctly, was “minutes and minutes.”

So, we know that if you take dendritic cells of a particular kind out of a mouse, and grow them in a glass dish and dump a weak solution of thimerosal on them, they freak out or get a little weird and either way can’t do their job normally, and this effect lasts for,

(gasp)

minutes and minutes.

And speaking of Autism Diva we come around to:

Mady Hornig

Briefly, Mady Horning conducted a study wherein she claimed to have developed a mouse model for autism which she then used to test how the model responded to the introduction of thiomersal. According to Hornig, the study showed that:

1. The mice they used are a good model for autistic people
2. The ‘vaccine’ schedule they used successfully mimicks childhood immunization programs
3. That the outcomes from Auto-immune disease sensitive mice were consistent with autism
4. That this indicates a genetically influenced sensitivity to thimerosal in autistic people

Autism Diva took this study apart when she pointed out that:

Did Dr. Hornig and colleagues find these features [diagnostic criteria for autism] in the ‘SJL Thim” mice?’ No.

Prometheus also had reservations about the design of the study:

So, the human experiences a maximum blood level of 1.63 (arbitrary units) and the mouse – since it is being dosed at a smaller fraction of its half-life – sees a maximum blood level of 2.61. In short, the mouse gets to a blood level 60% higher than the human……I found myself wondering, “Why didn’t they use the 50th percentile (50% weigh more than this weight, 50% weigh less – sort of an ‘average weight’)?” I have no answer – but I have an idea. By using the 10th percentile, they were able to give the baby mice an even bigger dose of mercury……So, by using the 10th percentile weights, the authors were able to give the mice about 15% more thimerosal. This goes nicely with the dosing schedule to significantly raise the dose the mice receive.

One of the big talking points from this study was reported by David Kirby in Evidence of Harm:

… putting up a photo of two mice. “He has groomed through the skull, and eventually destroys his partner,” Hornig said. Every parent of an autistic kid in the room could be seen grimacing in dark recognition of such destructive behavior.”(page 312)

Uh-huh, or maybe they were just grimacing as its not nice looking at mice chewing through the skulls of other mice?

Anyway, hyperbole aside, why did Hornig choose those particular mice? Here’s what else Autism Diva found out.

Why did Hornig pick the SJL/J mice in particular?….Besides being an “autoimmune disease-sensitive” breed what else is known about the SJL/J mice?

Good question. Diva found the answer highly revealing:

Behavior
1. High spontaneous fighting….
2. Severe fighting among males housed together, beginning at about 8 weeks.
3. Most males will be killed by 4-5 months unless caged separately….

Diva also found a separate source that showed that:

…some breeds do a kind of agressive grooming of other mice called, “barbering”

So, it seems that Hornig sourced a set of mice known to be aggressive, she then systematically overdosed them and then reported the fact that this aggression was indicative of autism. Right.

Wrapping It Up

A study that hasn’t yet been done. A study that alleges something it can’t back up. A study with no data and empty conclusions. Two studies that have nothing discernable to do with heavy metals. A study that shows ethylmercury and methylmercury are not comparable. A study that damages cells taken from a mouse for the span of minutes and a study that purposefully overdosed mice known to be aggressive.

Lets remind ourselves of the Judge;s opinion of this same body of science when it was presented by Dr Geier in the RhoGAM hearings as support for the view that thiomersal causes autism:

…the Court notes that, in fact, a literature review can be an appropriate part of a method of determining general causation. However, a literature review must still be performed appropriately. As revealed by his testimony at the Daubert hearing, Dr. Geier, however, relied upon a number of disparate and unconnected studies, including the findings of Dr. Haley and Dr. Lucier, to reach a piecemeal conclusion with respect to general causation…..However, upon being subjected to extensive cross examination, much of Dr. Geier’s analysis, based upon his collective review of a motley assortment of diverse literature, proved, in the Court’s view, to be overstated.

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) .

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