Tag Archives: Vaccines

Want the Nobel Prize for Warp Speed, Mr. Trump? Fire Kennedy.

6 Sep

The same people who might value your efforts with Operation Warp Speed will also be able to do the simple math in their heads that says Mr. Kennedy’s approach is going to kill people.

Mr. Trump, there is a lot of chatter about you wanting the Nobel Peace Prize. OK, I know you’ve publicly stated you don’t want it, but just in case that’s just you being modest, let’s assume you actually do.

Even Robert Kennedy, a man with few to no good words to offer on vaccines, stated publicly that he believes you should get the Prize. Which may make you think, “good guy, Bobby. He’s going to help me get that Prize!”

Well…not so much. You may be thinking that I’ll point out the fact that Mr. Kennedy, as Senator Cassidy pointed out, says things like, “the vaccine killed more people than COVID”. You may be thinking that I’ll point out that he is likely getting people to generate “gold-standard science” that will claim the vaccine doesn’t work and kills people. Which he probably is doing.

Nope. Here’s an even bigger point I want to make: Mr. Kennedy’s policies are taking America back to a time when children die of vaccine preventable diseases. For example, we just had a large outbreak of measles, and Mr. Kennedy’s response was so lackluster that it certainly was a factor in how long it lasted. Two American children died. Needlessly. I called that outbreak “large”. It is nothing compared to what is in store for America under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership. Florida is moving to removing vaccine mandates for schoolchildren. That will lead to larger outbreaks. And not just among children. Florida is a state with a large retiree population.

The same people who might value your efforts with Operation Warp Speed will also be able to do the simple math in their heads that says Mr. Kennedy’s approach is going to kill people.

My guess is that if Mr. Kennedy is already telling you in private: “Solving the ‘autism epidemic’ will be even bigger than Operation Warp Speed. They will have to give you the Nobel then.” He even has ‘studies’ by some really bad and unethical people he can use to support his idea that vaccines are the cause. And, no doubt, more are on the way from David Geier and others. This is one of those times you need advisors who are both competent and free to speak their mind. People who actually understand science which, frankly, Mr. Kennedy does not. Because he is playing with people’s lives. Children’s lives. And that’s a lot more important than the Nobel Prize.

I am the parent of a young autistic adult. My kid grew up during the time Mr. Kennedy has been running his campaign against vaccines. I am a scientist. A researcher. Not in medicine, but I understand the studies. Focus on that last–not in medicine. I have no conflicts of interest other than this topic is very important to me. I don’t want children to die because Mr. Kennedy used my kid as a weapon against vaccines. I just don’t want children to die needlessly. I have been speaking out to counter Mr. Kennedy for 20 years because I saw the danger he posed.

Mr. Trump, I think you don’t want children to die and that is probably a bigger motivation than the Prize. But, do the simple math. Anyone on the Peace Prize Committee who values public health to the point of considering you for your efforts with the COVID vaccine program will see the dangers your administration–with Robert Kennedy running HHS–poses.

Do it for the children. Do it for yourself. Fire Robert Kennedy.

By Matt Carey

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For Robert Kennedy “Restoring Trust” is not a goal. It’s a weapon.

3 Sep

We pay for the CDC. It isn’t there to support Mr. Kennedy’s agenda. It’s there to generate good information that Mr. Kennedy can use or, sadly, not use. He can’t ask them to sign off on dangerous vaccine policy and then cry “restore trust” to excuse firing the trusted experts who are, in his own words, world-leading experts who drive the science that serves us all.

Robert Kennedy (aka RFK Jr.) is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services*. He came to this job after his failed run for the office of President, but if you follow his social media you know: he still sounds like someone campaigning.

He loves slogans. Of course he has his “MAHA” (Make America Healthy Again) which not only brands his movement, but allows him to flatter Mr. Trump at the same time. Two more slogans are very important to him and are what I will focus on today: “Restoring Public Trust” and “Gold-Standard Science”. On first glance, they sound like good aspirational goals. But “restoring” public trust is a slam, where Mr. Kennedy makes people accept his premise that people don’t trust the CDC. Likewise, “Gold-Standard” science is a way of saying that results produced before his tenure are low quality.

Allow me to discuss Mr. Kennedy’s failure this last week with the CDC to highlight his use of “Public Trust” as a weapon.

What failure am I thinking of? Losing much of CDC’s leadership through mismanagement. That failure. Last week, Mr. Kennedy tried to pressure the head of the CDC into rubber-stamping his agenda on vaccines. The CDC Director, Dr. Susan Monarez, not only refused to approve Mr. Kennedy’s anything-but-gold-standard vaccine policy, she also refused to recognize Mr. Kennedy’s authority to fire her (Kennedy Sought to Fire C.D.C. Director Over Vaccine Policy) Eventually she was fired by the President.

At least four other senior CDC officials resigned over Mr. Kennedy’s actions with Dr. Monarez (CDC director is out after less than a month; other agency leaders resign). The list includes Dr. Debra Houry, the agency’s deputy director; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, head of the agency’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, head of its National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Dr. Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.

Losing so much expertise in one week in a huge blow to America. We all rely upon the CDC. We rely on expertise, experience and a nonpolitical agency. Make no mistake, all this is a huge blow to Mr. Kennedy. He not only lost experienced leaders who could provide him with quality information (which, he appears to be too arrogant to ask for), but also the reputation of the CDC and these staff. Mr. Kennedy wouldn’t have wouldn’t have pressured Dr. Monarez to rubber-stamp his policy if he didn’t want the credibility of the CDC behind his action.

If this wasn’t bad enough for Mr Kennedy’s claim to be restoring trust, nine (nine!) former CDC directors wrote a scathing (to use the New York Post’s word) editorial spelling out how dangerous Mr. Kennedy’s actions are: We Ran the CDC: RFK Jr. Is Endangering Every American’s Health. If it had been one, or only democrats, perhaps Mr. Kennedy could shrug this off. But it was nine former heads of the CDC. People who know how CDC works and know how important it is.

Clearly it was time for damage control. Mr. Kennedy took to the Wall Street Journal to defend himself. Instead of acknowledging that he severely damaged trust in the CDC, he spun his actions as “restoring public trust” (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: We’re Restoring Public Trust in the CDC). Of course, to “restore trust”. Mr. Kennedy states “First, the CDC must restore public trust—and that restoration has begun.” No, really, it hasn’t. When nine former CDC directors come out and not just disagree with you, but state that you are “endangering every American’s health”, you can’t claim to be restoring public trust.

Focus on how Mr. Kennedy uses “restoring trust”. “Restoring trust” isn’t a goal. It’s a weapon. Stand up for the health of Americans? You are out, because we need to “restore trust”. It’s an excuse. “Did I try to ram through a vaccine policy so dangerous that over a dozen leaders, past and present, of CDC protested? No! I was ‘restoring trust'”.

The final sentence of Mr. Kennedy’s opinion piece is a slam to the good people who stood up and resigned. Mr. Kennedy doesn’t have the guts to directly call them out, instead he simply states:

It won’t stop until America’s public-health institutions again serve the people with transparency, honesty and integrity.

Yep. Those good people were part of a system that doesn’t serve with “transparency, honesty and integrity”. As opposed to Mr. Kennedy, who fired most of the FOIA staff (so much for transparency) and, frankly has rarely shown integrity and honesty in the 20 years I’ve known of him.

Consider that just a few weeks ago, Mr. Kennedy responded to the shooting at the CDC campus by praising the very people he now accuses of lacking integrity and honesty and the “public’s trust”. How did he characterize the people who work at CDC then**?

Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are curable or preventable, chronic or acute, or from human activity or deliberate attack, CDC’s world-leading experts protect lives and livelihoods, national security and the U.S. economy by providing timely, commonsense information, and rapidly identifying and responding to diseases, including outbreaks and illnesses. CDC drives science, public health research, and data innovation in communities across the country by investing in local initiatives to protect everyone’s health.

Yes. In a couple of weeks, they went from “world-leading experts” who “drive science” to people who lack “transparency, honesty and integrity”.

Mr. Kennedy is a politician. He’s not a doctor or a health expert. As a researcher who has followed Mr. Kennedy for 20 years, I can say he is not in any way the expert on reading science that he claims to be. He’s a politician. One week it serves him to praise CDC and the people there. The next he needs to slam them to excuse his own inexcusable behavior.

We pay for the CDC. It isn’t there to support Mr. Kennedy’s agenda. It’s there to generate good information that Mr. Kennedy can use or, sadly, not use. He can’t ask them to sign off on dangerous vaccine policy and then cry “restore trust” to excuse firing the trusted experts who are, in his own words, world-leading experts who drive the science that serves us all.

By Matt Carey

*It’s been six months, but it is still mind boggling to read, much less type, that sentence. After 20 years of following Mr. Kennedy’s action, much of that chronicled on this blog, it would be hard to imagine someone worse for the job that Mr. Kennedy.

** One might argue that since Mr. Kennedy didn’t sign that statement, these aren’t his words. He’s the Secretary of HHS. The quote is from a “Statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services“. If one wants to argue whether these are his words or just words he approved of, go ahead with the semantics. The end result is the same.

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In light of the CDC attack, RFK Jr. should apologize for his language against vaccine researchers.

21 Aug

I will state this straight out–I believe the anti vaccine movement has put good people at risk for decades with their rhetoric. And I also believe Mr. Kennedy has contributed a great deal to this climate of hate. How much or how directly he may have influenced the gunman who opened fire at the CDC recently, I cannot say. But I can say that I believe Mr. Kennedy, who has used terms like “corrupt”, “criminal” and “poison children” when discussing a CDC researcher, should apologize for his language. It isn’t a matter of whether the language directly contributed to the shooting. He never should have made many of the comments that were a mainstay of his speeches over the years.

Let’s consider one specific event. Ten years ago Robert Kennedy attended an anti vaccine event called the CDCTruth rally. The rally was held in Atlanta, Georgia, home of the CDC. Mr. Kennedy singled out a researcher at CDC, calling them them “corrupt”, a “criminal”, “guilty of research fraud”, who injured people and suggested they “poison[ed] children”. Read his statement for yourself:

I’m going to say one last thing to you.  [CDC-Researcher], who runs the division, the vaccine division, and who orchestrated this corruption; [they are] a criminal and he committed scientific research fraud and [they are] guilty of injuring all of these people.  Now I’m saying that and I’m using [their] name*; and what I’m saying, if it’s untrue is an act of slander, and I want [them] to sue me.  And if [they] didn’t do it, [they] ought to sue me.  [They] ought to file a suit this afternoon and enjoin me from ever saying that again.  If somebody said that about me, I would sue them immediately and I’m saying to you, [CDC-Researcher], if you didn’t poison the children, you need to sue me right now and shut me up because what I’m saying to you is damaging to your career.  So let’s see what [they do] on Monday.  Thank you all very much.” 

That was ten years ago, why bring this up now? Because, as I noted above, a gunman killed a police officer in what was an apparent attempt to commit mass murder at the CDC recently (1 week after deadly shooting at CDC, some employees feel Trump and RFK Jr. have moved on). The attack appears to have been a motivated by the CDC’s actions with vaccines (Shooter attacked CDC headquarters to protest COVID-19 vaccines, authorities say).

When Mr. Kennedy spoke, it wasn’t about the COVID-19 vaccines. The pandemic hadn’t occurred yet. It was about the MMR vaccine. But, I will argue, it contributed to the climate of hatred towards vaccine researchers that persists to this day among his supporters. While I can’t say Mr. Kennedy’s words directly influenced the murderer, he never should have said them. They were irresponsible then and they should be retracted now.

We should address a few points as long as this topic has come up. First, as Medpage Today reports:

“There is no evidence that vaccination causes depression and suicidality,” Roy Perlis, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told MedPage Today.

So, for those who have framed this as, “look at what vaccines did”: stop. You are setting the stage for the next attack.

Also, from the same article, “One study found that those with depression were more likely to endorse COVID vaccine falsehoods”.

Mr. Kennedy’s supporters can try to excuse his comments as, “reasonable people wouldn’t use words like these to justify violence.” Not everyone is reasonable. And you can’t just send out hateful words to reasonable people.

By Matt Carey

I suspect Mr. Kennedy will make moves that will dramatically reduce access to the MMR vaccine. Sooner rather than later. It will be a big mistake. That’s one of the big understatements ever made on this blog.

That said, here’s something to consider as an appendix to the article above. Mr. Kennedy made statements that, in his own words, are slander if not true. He was talking about the MMR vaccine which in his statements “poison[s] children”. Begs the question: why is it still approved? It is safe and effective and doesn’t cause autism. But why hasn’t Mr. Kennedy stopped its use?

Mr. Kennedy has been in charge of HHS–which ultimately has control over whether the MMR vaccine is approved for use–for six months. While he has done a lot to dismantle America’s vaccine program, and has moved very quickly, the MMR vaccine is still approved for use with American infants. Given Mr. Kennedy’s 2015 statements, one must ask why he didn’t immediately pull approval. Did Mr. Kennedy actually believe his rhetoric back in 2015 or was it indeed slander? Or, did he believe it then but doesn’t now? Is he moving slowly to keep his position of power? Wouldn’t that action, if the MMR vaccine were indeed poison (again, it is not), amount to sacrificing the kids getting the vaccine today for some “greater good”?

I have a hard time aligning Mr. Kennedy’s actions with his views.

* I redacted the researcher’s name and gender. Should be obvious that I think Mr. Kennedy put that researcher in danger and that I want don’t want to contribute to that effort.

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Who will take over for Gavi, Mr. Kennedy?

27 Jun

No one.

And that tells us this isn’t about “gold standard science” or anything else. Mr. Kennedy just wanted to remove a major source of vaccination in the world. He had the power, so he used it.

What’s this all about, Matt? Here’s the background: Gavi is an international vaccine alliance. The United States is part of the alliance and contributed $400m last year. And Mr. Kennedy just pulled America out (U.S. is pulling funding from Gavi, global group that has paid for more than a billion kids to get vaccinated)

Mr. Kennedy would like us all to spend time debating his reasoning. He says Gavi has “ignored the science” and “lost the public trust.” I’m sure many people will discuss how that’s nonsense. Perhaps by noting that Mr. Kennedy starts by saying that Gavi and WHO were mean to him by asking social media companies to de emphasize his misinformation. Simply put, Mr. Kennedy is saying, “this is payback”.

But let me bring this back to the simple question of: who will the U.S. choose to perform the job Gavi has been doing?

No one. Mr. Kennedy doesn’t mention who the US will fund to provide the life saving vaccines Gavi did. Or even that there is an interest in continuing the program.

And that’s critical. He saw the chance to stop people from getting vaccinated and he took it.

by Matt Carey

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WSJ: Vaccine Opponent Hired by RFK Jr. Scours Official Records for Link to Autism

9 Jun

For years, I’ve hoped major news outlets would shine a light on figures like David and Mark Geier—key players in the anti-vaccine movement that has harmed autism communities for decades. Now that attention has come, but since it’s due to Robert Kennedy being the Secretary of HHS, I wish it hadn’t.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that David Geier has been hired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. The article, by Liz Essley Whyte and Dominique Mosbergen, titled “Vaccine Opponent Hired by RFK Jr. Scours Official Records for Link to Autism”, highlights what appears to be Mr. Kennedy’s plan to reanalyze CDC vaccine data—seeking to link vaccines to autism and allege CDC corruption.

Geier is aiming to reanalyze the data used in the CDC thimerosal study to see if it supports a link between vaccines and autism, people familiar with the matter said. But he is also interested in proving the CDC is corrupt, the people added.

The article is relatively short and it’s better for you to read it for yourself than for me to summarize it. Instead let me discuss my opinions of Mr. Kennedy and his decision to hire Mr. Geier.

People like to point out David Geier’s lack of credentials. While true (he has a B.A. and left graduate school without completing a degree), I would argue it’s very much secondary to the fact that he has a track record. And his track record in vaccine-related research is poor at best. There’s no reason for Mr. Kennedy to involve him again—unless, that is, the goal is to confirm a preexisting belief that vaccines cause autism. Ironically, that’s the very kind of bias and “corruption” Mr. Kennedy has accused public health institutions of engaging in.

Mr. Kennedy has access to skilled epidemiologists. If he truly wanted transparency and scientific rigor, he could commission a well-documented, peer-reviewed study. Instead, he brought on David Geier. The WSJ reports:

NIH researchers have been asked to help Geier, people familiar with the matter said. NIH employees recently requested that the CDC send over the entirety of the VSD—an ask that set off alarm bells at the CDC and among researchers at the healthcare networks, who worried whether their patients’ private health information would be adequately protected, according to other people familiar with the matter.

Which is backwards. Don’t have the experienced, qualified researchers help the unqualified guy with a bias. If he wants a quality study done and wants someone to ensure transparency, have Mr. Geier observe the actual researchers.

Sadly, this assumes an ideal world where researchers at NIH aren’t under threat of losing their jobs, their pensions and all, if they tell a clearly vindictive administration what it doesn’t want to hear. We don’t live in that ideal world.

As the saying goes, judge a person by their actions, not their words. Mr. Kennedy’s decision suggests he’s more interested in validating long-held beliefs than uncovering scientific truth. For years, he’s built influence and wealth off the backs of families like mine—families with autistic children. For years, he’s ignored good scientific results and instead promoted junk. Like that generated by David Geier.

Before I go on and on and completely lose the point of this article (the new WSJ article: Vaccine Opponent Hired by RFK Jr. Scours Official Records for Link to Autism), let me make three points:

  1. I have been following Mr. Geier, Mr. Kennedy and the anti-vaccine movement for 19 years now.
  2. I am the parent of an autistic adult. I have skin in this game. If there were evidence that vaccines caused an autism epidemic, I’d be shouting it out.
  3. I am a Ph.D. researcher with decades of experience. I’d say my publication record is better than Mr. Geier’s but that is a terribly low bar. I am well respected in my field. Mr. Geier’s publications are an affront to good scientists everywhere.

If there were real evidence linking vaccines to an autism epidemic, I would be the first to speak up. But what we’re seeing now is not a search for truth. It’s a continuation of a harmful agenda, now backed by the highest levels of government.

By Matt Carey

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James Terence Fisher: RFK Jr., autism and long-debunked theories

7 Apr

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an article by James Terence Fisher: RFK Jr., autism and long-debunked theories. If I start quoting, I’ll copy the whole article. So, I’ll just recommend you follow the link and read the article in place.

Prof. Fisher mentions “Autism families of a certain vintage”. I am of that vintage. I’ve watched his son grow up through blog posts over the years. I too saw Robert Kennedy over decades and David Geier promote bad science and bad medicine. The harm they have caused is real and it can only get worse with them in positions of power. Prof. Fisher gives another perspective on the history, from an autism father’s point of view.

By Matt Carey

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How RFK Jr. could add $100B a year to the debt

31 Mar

If autism were a vaccine injury, i.e. if it was legitimate to add autism to the vaccine injury table, I would say, “change the schedule now and pay however many families deserve it, no matter the cost.” But autism is not a vaccine injury. I will note that if Mr. Kennedy truly believed autism is a vaccine injury, he wouldn’t have hired David Geier to do the studies. Having Mr. Geier run an autism study is the equivalent of using loaded dice in a game of craps. Mr. Kennedy is buying the outcome he wants to see. If he wants to do more autism/vaccine studies, let the science speak, to quote Mr. Kennedy himself. He’s not doing that.

Robert Kennedy is (rightly) getting a lot of attention for his vaccine related actions. Just last week he pushed out the FDA’s top vaccine official (Top US vaccine official forced to resign, reports say). I will suggest it’s past time to stop reacting and start looking ahead–ask ourselves what is going to happen and what will the fallout be? That said, if we’ve learned anything from Mr. Kennedy, it’s that one should be careful and not fall into the conspiracy theory trap. So I’ll be careful and conservative as I predict what I think Mr. Kennedy is planning.

One Kennedy goal that seems obvious to me (and many others): get autism recognized as a vaccine injury. Get autism added to the vaccine injury table* to allow families to obtain compensation from the vaccine program. Perhaps he’s made this statement outright. I wouldn’t be surprised. But even if he hasn’t, I doubt many who have followed Mr. Kennedy’s words and actions would argue that this is a likely goal for him.

Let’s say he’s successful. What would be the result? Specifically, what would this cost? The vaccine court, after all, awards monetary compensation. It’s a pretty simple calculation:

$17B is a lot, but it’s not the $100B in the title of the article. Where did I get that? The support needs for an autistic person vary greatly, but, I would argue, they are higher than the average vaccine injury recipient. Also, we are talking about very young autistic children here, so there will be a lot of uncertainty projecting the lifelong needs and the court may be convinced to provide payouts on the higher end of the scale. Often in the past, I saw payments of about $1m to provide support for a lifelong disability awarded by the court, so I chose that number when I wrote the title of this piece. If we take 104,000 autistic kids being awarded $1m a year, we get $104B a year in vaccine court awards.

Let’s state the obvious: that’s a huge amount of money. That’s about 8 aircraft carriers a year. If Elon Musk found $104B a year in savings, believe me, we’d be hearing about it.

To put this more in context, the vaccine program has a trust fund of about $4.3B. This would be gone in the first year (potentially the first month) of autism cases being handled as a table injury. Technically, the vaccine court would have no money after that, and the awards should stop. This would put congress in a tight spot: allocate more money, or tell their constituents that that they voted to deny compensation to disabled children. I suspect they would vote to allocate funds. So we are talking about somewhere between $17B and $100B a year added to the budget, which would be directly added to the national debt.

I will admit that this is a very rough estimate of the financial cost. We could argue how much the average award would be. We could argue that not all autistic kids would get awards, even if autism were added as a table injury. So, maybe the total would go down. However, I also would argue that more kids will be diagnosed as autistic should autism be added as a table injury. Many more. How that balances out in the end can be debated, but I think a reasonable person can see that the answer will be billions of dollars a year and very likely many billions of dollars a year.

If autism were a vaccine injury, i.e. if it was legitimate to add autism to the vaccine injury table, I would say, “change the schedule now and pay however many families deserve it, no matter the cost.” But autism is not a vaccine injury. I will note that if Mr. Kennedy truly believed autism is a vaccine injury, he would not have hired David Geier to do the studies. Having Mr. Geier run an autism study is the equivalent of using loaded dice in a game of craps. Mr. Kennedy is buying the outcome he wants to see. If he wants to do more autism/vaccine studies, he would let the science speak. To quote Mr. Kennedy himself. He’s not doing that.

As I stated at the outset, one has to be careful of relying upon conspiracy theories. I believe I’ve stayed away from that here. I’ve made assumptions of what I think Mr. Kennedy wants to accomplish, but I think those are valid assumptions. And the cost analysis is very simple and I’ve laid it out very clearly. No chance to hide some trick in the math. I could be off by a factor of 10 and the conclusion would be the same.

One could and should ask why I am focusing on the financial cost and not the human cost. First, because autism is not a vaccine injury, we aren’t talking about a real human cost. Second, the financial cost is what will get the attention of Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk and congress. Sad to say, but I believe that to be the case.

The most logical outcome of adding autism to the vaccine injury table, in my opinion, is that congress and the president would be forced to choose between keeping autism on the vaccine injury table and ending the infant vaccine program. End the infant vaccine program and many people in Mr. Kennedy’s community (possibly including Mr. Kennedy himself), will say “mission accomplished.”** Pull autism off the table and the net effect is pretty much the same. The idea that vaccines cause autism will be accepted and vaccine uptake will drop. Many states will stop mandating infant vaccines. The infant vaccine program would be effectively dead.

Either way, Mr. Kennedy will be able to say, “See, I’m not anti-vaccine. I didn’t direct the infant vaccine program to end. They just followed the “science” (that I directed be created when I hired David Geier).”

By Matt Carey

* The vaccine injury table lays out injuries that are presumed to be caused by a vaccine. For example, if one develops paralytic polio within 30 days of getting the oral polio vaccine, it is assumed to be caused by the vaccine. If you haven’t heard of this, that’s because the U.S. doesn’t use the oral polio vaccine anymore.

** Recall that one of the people at Mr. Kennedy’s “Children’s Health Defense” is JB Handley (Vice Chair in 2018). Recall that Mr. Handley once wrote: “With less than a half-dozen full-time activists, annual budgets of six figures or less, and umpteen thousand courageous, undaunted, and selfless volunteer parents, our community, held together with duct tape and bailing wire, is in the early to middle stages of bringing the U.S. vaccine program to its knees.”

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Autism Speaks founder Bob Wright’s opinion is more important than science

24 Sep

Last year the Chief Science Officer of Autism Speaks made a simple and clear statement

“Over the last two decades, extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccinations and autism.  The results of this research are clear: Vaccines do not cause autism.  We urge that all children be fully vaccinated.”

It was nice to finally see someone from Autism Speaks make a clear statement without a lot of equivocation and “leave the door open” language.

But what I think is nice and what Bob Wright, the founder of Autism Speaks, thinks is nice are two different things.  The Wright family is, at least, sympathetic to the idea that vaccines cause autism (and, in at least one case, very outspoken on the idea.)  So perhaps I should have been surprised when Autism Speaks put on their website Rob Ring’s statement together with a statement by Bob Wright.

Over the last two decades, extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccinations and autism.  The results of this research are clear: Vaccines do not cause autism.  We urge that all children be fully vaccinated.
Rob Ring
Chief Science Officer, Autism Speaks
Over the last two decades extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccines and autism. Scientific research has not directly connected autism to vaccines. Vaccines are very important. Parents must make the decision whether to vaccinate their children. Efforts must be continually  made to educate parents about vaccine safety. If parents decide not to vaccinate they must be aware of the consequences in their community and their local schools.
Bob Wright
Co-founder, Autism Speaks
Because why should we let the Chief Science Officer have the actual word on what Autism Speaks thinks about an issue of science?  Why let a clear statement stand alone when one can leave the door open with “Scientific research has not directly connected autism to vaccines.”
And that was sad.  A sad move by Autism Speaks.  A sad move by Bob Wright.
But I’ve already written about that.  Why bring it up again now?  Well, because a reader here alerted me to the fact that Bob Wright and Autism Speaks have expunged the statement by their science officer. If one now goes to https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/policy-statements/information-about-vaccines-and-autism, one finds only Bob Wright’s statement:
AS backpedals on vaccines
I so want Autism Speaks to be an organization I could support.  And sometimes they seem to be moving in that direction.  But, in the end, they are still clinging to ideas like “vaccines cause autism”, ideas that cause a lot of harm within the autism communities.  And they also take a very stigmatizing approach to the discussion of autism, but that is another discussion.

Autism Speaks pretends to be a science driven organization, but they just aren’t.  The founder is the founder and his opinion means more than the results of scientific studies as expressed by their own Chief Science Officer.

—
By Matt Carey

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Autism Speaks:  The results of this research are clear: Vaccines do not cause autism…but doesn’t let that statement stand alone.

26 Mar

Autism Speaks has come out with some very strong statements about autism and vaccines.  And the back peddled. 

First, here is a statement by Robert Ring, Chief Science Officer:

Over the last two decades, extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccinations and autism.  The results of this research are clear: Vaccines do not cause autism.  We urge that all children be fully vaccinated.

Rob Ring
Chief Science Officer, Autism Speaks

 
In the past Autism Speaks had been sympathetic towards the idea that vaccines cause autism.  More than sympathetic, some would say.  Such a clear statement as above would have been unthinkable from Autism Speaks only a few years ago.
I wish they had made these statements earlier, but I am glad they are making these statements now.  The vaccine hypothesis has been the most damaging idea in autism since the refrigerator mother theory.  With Autism Speaks position as a well known autism organization, perhaps even fewer families will get caught in the vaccines-cause-autism trap in the future.Here’s the way the Autism Speaks vaccines and autism page looked just last year.  It includes many problematic statements and concludes: “A list of publications that used VAERS information to study associations with autism can be found here“.  “Here” is a link to pubmed with the search terms “vaers” and “autism”.  No surprise, it’s a list that is padded out by works by Mark and David Geier.  The Geiers have been performing poor research for years and have been discussed here at Left Brain/Right Brain many times.


The above statement by Mr. Ring was picked up by the press in February as it was so clear.
Next, Bob Wright, co-founder of Autism Speaks:
 

Over the last two decades extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccines and autism. Scientific research has not directly connected autism to vaccines. Vaccines are very important. Parents must make the decision whether to vaccinate their children. Efforts must be continually  made to educate parents about vaccine safety. If parents decide not to vaccinate they must be aware of the consequences in their community and their local schools.

Bob Wright
Co-founder, Autism Speaks

It’s a fairly stilted paragraph in my read.  It comes across as though Mr. Wright is trying to appear to ride the fence while at the same time pulling back dramatically from the clear statement by Mr. Ring.  Scientific research has not directly connected autism to vaccines?

Even with that, I can’t imagine that admitting that vaccines are “important” will go over well in some circles.  Close circles.  Even “important” is to positive a word for some.  But, seriously, here we have an invention that has saved more lives that possibly any other in medical history and we get “important”?

Yes, Mr. Wright, efforts must be made to educate parents about vaccine safety.  That’s what your chief science officer did.  Sadly, you can’t let Autism Speaks be a science led organization.

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By Matt Carey

Note: I accidentally published an early draft of this article yesterday.

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National Geographic, “The War on Science”, includes discussion of vaccines and autism

19 Feb

I just got my copy of the March 2015 issue of National Geographic a couple of days ago. Imagine my reaction when I saw this cover (click to enlarge):

natgeo

In case you are having trouble imagining my reaction–it includes a big THANK YOU to National Geographic.

Yes, they put “vaccinations can lead to autism” up there with “evolution never happened” and “the moon landing was fake”.

This paragraph includes references to Jenny McCarthy (anti-vaccine activist and actress Jenny McCarthy) and Andrew Wakefield’s Lancet article.

Doubting science also has consequences. The people who believe vaccines cause autism—often well educated and affluent, by the way—are undermining “herd immunity” to such diseases as whooping cough and measles. The anti-vaccine movement has been going strong since the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet published a study in 1998 linking a common vaccine to autism. The journal later retracted the study, which was thoroughly discredited. But the notion of a vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and reinforced through the usual Internet filters. (Anti-vaccine activist and actress Jenny McCarthy famously said on the Oprah Winfrey Show, “The University of Google is where I got my degree from.”)

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By Matt Carey

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