What Makes You Smile?

2 May

This post is dedicated to a wonderful woman I know on another site who is terminally ill. She wants to be remembered for being happy and to go out with lots of shoes and a bang. So this post is just about being happy. Specifically, some of the things that makes Tom happy.

Tom loves the colour blue

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He loves icecream

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And walks

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He loves his little brother

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And he likes water

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He adores lifts

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And he loves singing and action rhymes. He also loves looking at himself in the mirror, which is what he’s doing during these three clips.

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US Reports Biggest Measles Outbreak Since 2001

2 May

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

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

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

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

On this recent outbreak, the CDC said:

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

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

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

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

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

Right?

Poling vs HHS – Something is definitely beginning to smell

30 Apr

Back in March I wrote a post highlighting my suspicion that we weren’t getting the whole story regarding the Poling’s. They had – at that time – failed to give permission to Dr Andrew Zimmerman to discuss the case, despite the fact that he was deply involved in the treatment abd diagnosis of Hannah Poling. He has still – to the best of my knowledge – not been given permission by the Poling’s to speak.

I also blogged Jon Poling’s own words on the subject of document release:

The HHS expert documents that led to this concession and accompanying court documents remain sealed, though our family has already permitted release of Hannah’s records to those representing the almost 5, 000 other autistic children awaiting their day in vaccine court.

and pointed out the strange incompatability with what the _court_ said:

in the case that is the subject of the media reports, if the parties who supplied documents and information in the case provide their written consent, we may then be able to appropriately disclose documents in the case.

where it is made crystal clear that the Poling’s had not in fact provided written consent to release their documents.

Further documentation from the courts has now been released which touches on this issue in more detail.

I want to thank M who can choose to name themselves further if they feel like it for helping explain these and for highlighting them in the first place.

The basic gist of this document is that *the Poling’s do not want all the information to be released* despite their oft-repeated claim to the contrary. What information do they not want released – and why?

Respondent points out in the filed Sur-Reply to Petitioners’ Motion for Complete Transparency of Proceedings (R’s Sur-Reply) that while petitioners “did undertake initial steps
necessary to permit discussion of their case before the Special Masters presiding in the Omnibus
Autism Proceeding and before representatives of the Petitioners’ Steering Committee[,] *[i]n fact,
it is respondent who first approached and asked for petitioners’ consent to permit the Secretary of
Health and Human Services to disclose medical information regarding this case* in order for the
Secretary to address inaccurate statements that were being made publicly concerning respondent’s position in this case.”

Now _this_ is a bombshell. It was _not_ the Poling’s who first wanted to release documents, it was HHS. They asked for the Poling’s consent to permit HHS to disclose medical information in order to ‘address innaccurate statements that were being made publicly’.

Well, well.

And there’s more. HHS had also heard aboout the press conference the Poling’s intended to hold:

Having received no response from petitioners, respondent contacted petitioners’ counsel to inquire about the proposed consent form and to “inquire whether press reports were true that petitioners were planning press conference for the following day.” Petitioners’ counsel replied to respondent, and represented during a status conference in this case, that the reports of a planned press conference were not true…….and two days later they held a press conference and appeared in
nationally televised and print interviews discussing the case.

So they lied about the press conference too. Petitioners Counsel is, of course, one Clifford Shoemaker.

What is going on here? Granted there are pre-conditions HHS also wanted placed upon the release of information but why won’t the Poling’s let key medical details that would ‘address innaccurate statements that were being made publicly’ be released right now? Why do they claim that they are asking for complete disclosure when it is clear they are not? Why did their counsel blatantly lie about the press conference?

This is very much an example to me of the ‘muddying of the waters’ that John Shoffner talked about recently.

Alexander Krakow – The Next Bombshell

27 Apr

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

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

……..

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

……..

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

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

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

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

This report prepared by Mumper states:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rashid Buttar should ‘be prohibited’

26 Apr

Late last year, Kathleen posted about a disciplinary action being taken against Dr Rashid Buttar. The charges against him included claims that he:

provided therapies that were unproven and wholly ineffective;

charged exorbitant fees for his ineffectual therapies,” and dunned widows and survivors of his deceased patients for thousands of dollars;

order[ed] numerous tests and lab work… that had no rational, medical relationship to the Patients’ cancer diagnosis… in an attempt to drive up costs;

treated [patients] on an indistinguishable or arbitrary protocol regardless of their individual diagnosis… All Patients received frequent, expensive treatments that had no recognized scientific evidence of any validity whatsoever on almost a daily basis without any evidence of sustained improvement

Long term readers of this blog will know that Rashid Buttar has been the subject of blog posts once or twice, including the statistic that of the ten US board certifications claimed by Rashid Buttar, none of them are actually recognised by the American Board of Medical Specialities and the fact that _even parents who do extreme biomed_ think his procedures invasive and his rates ‘obscene’.

Rashid Buttar used to have the fact he testified to Congress emblazoned across at least one autism/vaccine groups website. Leading members of several extreme biomed groups had their children seen by him. They lauded him publicly and parroted his ideas.

Today, a report in the Charlotte Observer details the latest chapter in Rashid Buttar’s professional life:

A panel of the N.C. Medical Board recommended Thursday that Huntersville’s Dr. Rashid Buttar be prohibited from treating children or patients with cancer because his alternative medicine practice is below accepted medical standards in North Carolina.

All three board members on the hearing panel expressed doubts about the validity of Buttar’s treatments.

“Doesn’t it strike you as a little strange that every patient that comes through your door has heavy metal toxicity?” Dr. Art McCulloch, a Charlotte anesthesiologist, asked Buttar’s nurse practitioner, Jane Garcia.

To Buttar, he said: “There’s no basis for what you’re doing, in my opinion.”

The next step is that the board makes a judgement based on the panel’s recommendation. The Observer says that:

Of the half-dozen disciplinary cases that have been heard by a panel, the medical board has accepted every recommendation.

If the board _do_ agree with the panel then the children (including all the autistic children) of North Carolina can rest easier.

LBRB – The CNN Edition

26 Apr

Time for a change of design. Not that there was anything wrong with the old design as such but I got bored of it and lets face it, sporting a design not created by onesself when one is a designer for a living is not really the done thing. Therefore this one _is_ created by moi.

I wanted to keep ahold of the ‘news’ type them of the old design but make it much more contemporary and cleaner. The CNN website is a great example of this contemporary style so I decided to rip it off, be inspired by it.

The backend (the bit you don’t see) is also upgraded to WordPress 2.5and is quite sexy in its appearance and new information architecture structure. However, I note that 2.5.1 is already released so I’m downloading that as we speak and that’ll be installed in the next 20 mins or so.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging. Out.

PS – there may be a few bugs as I upgrade. I had this design working on IE6, 7 and the latest developer beta of 8 as well as Firefox 2, Opera 8 and Safari.

If you happen to note anything spectacularly awful that I’ve missed or if your browser starts to do weird things let me know either in the comments or in an email.

Also, if I happen to have retired (or as its otherwise known ‘forgotten’) a feature from the old design that you really liked also let me know. I don’t think I have but you never know.

Out (Part II).

Mitochondra and vaccines – the science

23 Apr

Dozens of autism cases (and perhaps more) currently filed in so-called Vaccine Court will almost certainly be compensated this year. Why? Because a little girl named Hannah Poling with a supposedly rare mitochondrial condition was recently compensated for her own vaccine injuries, including autism and epilepsy.

But I have personally identified at least a dozen (and there are reports of many more) children with cases in the court who meet the exact same medical criteria as Hannah, and whose cases will almost surely be compensated as well — each time with the attendant media fanfare.

My prediction is that, by Election Day, few Americans will still believe there is absolutely no evidence to link vaccines to at least some cases of regressive autism.

Thus speaks David Kirby in the Huffington Post. On the last point I have no doubt that he is correct. In fact, I’ll take it one step further – few citizens of the world, let alone America ill still believe there is absolutely no evidence to link vaccines to at least some cases of regressive autism.

However, I wish, with all due respect to David, like to highlight the differences in the above statement and the subtitle of his famous book. David talks of linking ‘vaccines to at least some cases of regressive autism’.

That’s quite a tentative statement when compared with the strapline ‘Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic’

But that is really a side issue that I simply can’t resist highlighting. The main talking point was – by a strange quirk of irony – also published today as was David’s piece. The irony comes from David’s certainty that the Poling case means something in the greater scheme of vaccines/autism hypotheses. Once again, he makes the claim that her vaccines was a cause of her autism and once again he thinks this has a meaning to the science.

As my regular readers will note I have – with some frustration – been blogging the responses of some Mitochondrial heavy hitters in recent weeks. They don’t want to be unmasked on my blog but perhaps some of them are happier talking to the mainstream media.

In an article in Scientific American, Nikhil Swaminathan (whom I spent a couple of hours chatting to long distance recently) talks to Salvatore DiMauro who is perhaps the ‘heaviest hitter’ of them all when it comes to mitochondrial issues. He says:

the point mutation mentioned in Poling’s case history–published in the Journal of Child Neurology–would imply that both she and her mother carried the genetic variation in all their tissues. So, he says, “you would expect to see the same results” in both the mother and the daughter. But Poling’s mother, Terry, who is an attorney and a registered nurse, is not autistic.

That suggests the genetic defect responsible for Poling’s condition is part of her nuclear DNA, which is separate from the mitochondrial variety, says DiMauro. This means that, scientifically, from the documents presented in the vaccine court, the Polings did not make a case that deserved compensation.

And even more tellingly, John Shoffner who co-authored the case study paper on Hannah Poling had this say:

Shoffner notes that parents and advocates looking to impugn vaccines as triggers for autism—or mitochondrial disease—need direct, not just circumstantial, evidence. “If you were sitting in a waiting room full of people and one person suddenly fell ill or died or something,” he says, “would you arrest the person sitting right next to them?”

And then there is the killer quote:

Jon Poling, says Shoffner, has been “muddying the waters” with some of his comments. “There is no precedent for that type of thinking and no data for that type of thinking,” Shoffner says.

He’s absolutely right of course.

Jon Poling is in severe danger of becoming the new Andrew Wakefield. If I was going to be presumptuous enough to offer him advice I would urge him to take a step back and consider what he is doing. It is clear that he and his wife have been flirting with the vaccine hypotheses for a number of years. And now already his co-authors are disagreeing with him.

Green our vaccines?

21 Apr

Jenny McCarthy:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

………..

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

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

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

……………

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

…………..

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

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

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

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

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

and Jossip said:

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

Ouch.

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

Frustration

20 Apr

One of the most frustrating things about blogging the unfolding vaccine>mitochondria>autism hypothesis is that a lot of the doctors who are experts in the field of mitochondria don’t want to publicly comment. A lot of them feel quite rightly that there is a certain element who are not the most balanced of individuals and they don’t really want to expose themselves to these people. That I can definitely empathise with.

However it does, as one of them has admitted themselves, leave the field wide open to (and I quote directly from one of these doctors):

….legions of mountebanks eager to pad their retirement funds at the expense of desperate parents…

So when a very well respected mitochondria researcher says the following all I can do is post it and not attribute it and hope that it can be read and believed. Of course, the fact it appears on this blog will no doubt cause some to dismiss it entirely but I would urge them not to do so. Please remember that kids with mitochondrial issues are a whole new ball game. Talking their parents out of vaccinating them could very well kill them.

…..I do not know of any evidence connecting mercury and mitochondrial disease. There is no evidence connecting vaccination with mitochondrial diseases: certainly vaccinations do not cause mitochondrial diseases. Whether they may act as transient stressors, like intercurrent URIs do, remains to be determined. Clearly, energy-challenged children with mitochondrial diseases need to be protected from potentially deadly infections through vaccination.

Please don’t vaccinate

18 Apr

After all, whats the death of a baby from a vaccine preventable illness huh?

The baby was 9 months old, his birth weight was 8 lbs 5 ounces. At six months he weighed just shy of 20 pounds. Today he weighed 15 pounds – he was a skeleton and he was dying.

Mom had brought him in after treatment by his naturopath had failed. Constant coughing had made it impossible for him to take in adequate nutrition and starvation, coupled with a raging bacterial pneumonia were conspiring to shortly end his very short life.

We worked feverishly. Intubation, IV boluses, major antibiotics, vasopressors. All futile.

At 9:03 pm, after 30 minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation we pronounced him dead.

This boy had pertussis. His mother choose not to vaccinate him. I won’t enter that debate. Anyone who has ever watched a child die or become permanently disabled from a preventable illness supports vaccination.

A naturopath a mother who elected not to vaccinate and decreasing herd immunity – what could go wrong there? Lets hope there’s no other people as *fucking stupid* as to go around blathering about not vaccinating, using naturopaths instead of doctors and insinuating that vaccine preventable diseases are nothing and vastly preferable to something like…oh I dunno….autism for example.

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