Skeptico

Oprah Dissembles

Several bloggers have reported on the recent Newsweek story that exposed some of the dangerous nonsense and pseudoscience that Oprah Winfrey insists on including in her TV show. From obviously crackpot ideas such as The Secret to dangerous pseudoscience such as the anti-vaccine nonsense spouted by celebrity idiot Jenny McCarthy, Newsweek did a pretty good job of calling nonsense nonsense.

Now Oprah has responded with a statement, as reported by EW.com:

I trust the viewers, and I know that they are smart and discerning enough to seek out medical opinions to determine what may be best for them.

This is a highly dishonest statement from Oprah.  You’ll note there is no attempt to justify any of the bogus* medical advice given on her show; no evidence that any of the quackery* she features actually works or is valid in any way.  So what is she saying, exactly?  That, yes, my TV show includes crap but my audience will realize it’s crap?  No, sorry, not good enough. If you have the sort of power that Oprah  has to influence opinion, you have a responsibility to make sure that the advice you give is good.  You should not just show any old crap and expect your viewers to do their own research to determine what is real and what is not, you should determine for yourself if it is real before you feature it in front of millions of viewers.  And you should then be able and willing to defend what you have promoted and rebut any criticisms with facts and evidence, or retract and admit you were wrong.  Instead Oprah hides the truth of what she is doing behind this sham claim that she trusts her viewers to discern what is real and what is not. It’s dishonest, unethical and cowardly.

You only have to read the comments to that EW story to see that many of Oprah’s viewers are neither smart nor discerning enough to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Just a couple of comments in and you will read the regurgitated lies and logical fallacies of the anti-vaccination loons, repeated in all their idiotic glory.  Those comments are, unfortunately, proof of the damage that Oprah has already done.  Her lame self serving statement does not even begin to address her critics.

More on Oprah’s support of pseudoscience:

Combatting the Oprah Effect

Say It Ain't So, O

Oprah's ugly secret

The Oprah-fication of medicine

* Deliberate deception not implied.

Vaccines Didn't Cause Autism

This morning, Orac called Keith Olbermann out on his ridiculous “worst person in the world” slot yesterday, where he (Olbermann) named Brian Deer as one of his ”worsts”.  Olbermann called Deer’s reporting of the Wakefield MMR/autism fraud “journalistic malfeasance”, apparently because The Times didn’t mention that the investigation into Wakefield was the result of a complaint by Brian Deer.  Leaving aside for now the fact that that Deer is not the complainant in this case anyway, my reaction was “so what?”  How would Deer being the complainant change the facts so that Wakefield suddenly magically didn’t commit fraud any more?  Obviously, it wouldn’t.

Of course, we know that Wakefield's work was flawed at best, and paid for by those seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers.  Deer (as anyone knows) has been covering this story for years.  As Orac writes:

Olbermann apparently doesn't know that the reason Deer made the complaint to the British GMC was because of what he found in his original report in 2004 and then again in 2006. In other words, Deer discovered that Wakefield had been in the pocket of a trial lawyers seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers, having accepted £435,643 in fees, plus £3,910 expenses for his "research." Who wouldn't have reported him to the GMC for that?

Talk about a conflict of interest.  We now know that Olbermann’s piece was essentially written for him by anti-vaccine crank David Kirby, who is crowing about it today on the Huff Post.  Several people including Brian Deer himself have written to Olbermann today to inform him of his mistake(s), but since there was no retraction from Olbermann tonight we have to conclude that Olbermann is happy with his hatchet job on a respected journalist.  Pretty ironic for someone who criticizes Fox News presenters for reading talking points given to them without checking the facts.

Vaccines Didn’t Cause Autism

Which brings us to a related story.  Today a special court ruled that evidence presented to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program did not demonstrate a link between autism and childhood vaccines:

In a statement shortly after the release of the decisions, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it continues to support research "to better understand the cause of autistic disorders and develop more effective methods of treatment."

However, "the medical and scientific communities ... have found no association between vaccines and autism."

This is possibly a bigger deal than it may appear. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was set up to compensate anyone who might have been injured by vaccines.  And quite rightly so.  Everyone benefits from a vaccinated population, and so it’s only fair that the very small number of people who are actually injured by vaccines should be compensated by the rest of us.  With this in mind, the Compensation Program was set up to make it easy for anyone injured by vaccines to claim compensation, with minimal legal and financial hurdles to overcome. The result is that the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is very favorable to litigants.  The standard of proof is much lower than it would be in a regular court.  And of course, in a regular court, the standards of evidence are much lower than they would be in the world of science.  So these hearings would have been expected to be very friendly to the litigants.  The fact that even these courts found no link from vaccines to autism is very telling.

I predict that Kirby and his merry band will now commence smear tactics on the special masters of the court, and/or anyone else they can blame for this eminently sensible decision.  One thing they will not do, I predict, is reflect that maybe, just possibly, it is just conceivable that they might be wrong about vaccines and autism.  They won’t do that because nothing will ever change their minds.  It’s the vaccines.  It just has to be.  Anyone want to bet I’m wrong?

Reduced MMR Equals More Measles

Reduced uptake of the MMR vaccine, fueled no doubt by anti-vaccine propaganda, has resulted in a recent significant increase in Measles in the UK as shown by the graph on the right.  And despite what the anti-vaccine twits will tell you, Measles can be a very serious disease.  According to the CDC:

As many as one out of 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, and about one child in every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis. (This is an inflammation of the brain that can lead to convulsions, and can leave your child deaf or mentally retarded.) For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it.

And that last statistic is sadly confirmed in the BBC article:

So far this year, 150 children have been admitted to hospital with complications and one child has died.

One child died.  Compare that with the slight risk of an allergic reaction to the vaccine.  And yet, the BBC reports that only 75% of children in the UK have had both doses of the MMR vaccine, at 12 to 15 months and at four to six years, as recommended.  This reduced uptake of MMR is almost certainly the reason for the current increase in the disease.

That is the result, so far, of the pseudo-scientific scare stories put out by the anti-vaccination loons.  If the uptake of the vaccine does not increase, there will be more deaths.

Hat tip to Jimmy Blue for the story.

No Way RFK

Several of my fellow skeptical bloggers have been getting worked up about the possibility – rumors really – that Robert F. Kennedy Junior might be chosen by Obama as the next head of the EPA. It’s encouraging to note that most science bloggers who have commented, realize it would be a really bad move to appoint such an anti-vaccine crank with so little understanding of science, to this position. Read what Orac has to say about Robert F. Kennedy Junior if you don’t know the details. In summary, RFK somehow got it into his head that autism is caused by Thimerosal in vaccines. To help confirm this idea, he read the transcripts of a medical conference that was set up to discuss any possible link, to see if he could find evidence of a cover up. Unsurprisingly, he found the confirmation and the evidence of a conspiracy he was looking for. But only by torturing the minutes of the meeting so the attendees appeared to be saying the exact opposite of what they did, actually, say. I read the detailed minutes myself and wrote two posts on RFK’s conspiracy mongering and RFK’s quote mining. You can see from all this that Kennedy first made up his mind about vaccines and then forced the evidence to match his previously made up position. And haven’t we had enough of that over the previous eight years? Yes, RFK would be a terrible choice.

I have to say though, I’m a lot more relaxed about this than most of the other skeptical bloggers. Not because I don’t think RFK would be a terrible choice, but because I don’t actually see Obama picking RFK for this. The reason is that Obama’s decision making seems to be characterized by careful thought and especially by comprehensive vetting of appointees. I just don’t see him making such a mistake. And that is especially so when you read Obama’s Statement in Support of World Autism Awareness Day and Awareness Month, where he states among other things, “while the causes of autism remain a mystery…”. Not to Kennedy. He knows it’s the vaccines.

And with RFK it’s not just anti-vaccine crankery. See this video where RFK talks favorably of Hugo Chavez and the nationalization of oil companies in Venezuela. While I don’t want to get into the argument about whether that is good or bad, you have to admit the nationalization of oil companies is actually socialism, unlike the lame “socialist” things Obama was charged with during the campaign. Just the thought of playing that tape and having to justify those comments at the congressional hearings ought to be enough for Obama’s team to rule out RFK. He really doesn’t want to start all that again.

And the rumors of an RFK appointment don’t even seem that credible. For example see this article that doesn’t even mention the word “Kennedy”. Reports hyping up RFK’s chances are from the likes of The Huffington Post. And we know how reliable they are when the subject has anything to do with vaccines.

So while it’s good to get the word out, again, about RFK’s total unsuitability for such a post, I actually doubt that he’s even on Obama’s shortlist. If I’m wrong, then clearly my opinion of Obama would take a very early nosedive, but I don’t think I’m ready to pre-criticize one of his future decisions just yet.

Stop Jenny McCarthy

A new website has just been created to counter to the anti-vaccine nonsense perpetrated by Jenny McCarthy - Stop Jenny McCarthy.  As they say on their website:

Jenny has no educational background and no license to give any type of medical advice on any medically related topic. Becoming a parent of an autistic child is a huge job, but that does not make Jenny's google research and interpretation of the experiences more valid than others who have had the same experiences and come to different conclusions.

We ask that Jenny re-evaluate her assertions, and ask all parents to learn about the issue in depth.

A nice idea but somehow I don't think she will "re-evaluate her assertions," because they are just that - assertions.  Jenny's views on vaccines were not arrived at following a rational review of the evidence.  And that which is not arrived at through reason is unlikely to be reasoned away.  Still, I think the idea of the Stop Jenny McCarthy site is a good one - not to "stop" her per se, but at least to provide a site that will counter Jenny's ridiculous claims for anyone who is actually researching the topic.  (You know Oprah won't do it.)  In future, anyone Googling Jenny McCarthy will now find at least one site presenting facts and rationality.

Do Vaccines Cause That?!

If you have a friend or family member who still thinks vaccines cause autism, or who is on the fence, you could do worse than to send them a copy of the book Do Vaccines Cause That?!, which, dubious punctuation aside, seems to cover the main points in a logical and easy to read format. The book’s authors want you to:

• Balance the risks and benefits of immunizations for your child.
• Recognize red flags that should raise alarms about vaccine- related information you read in the media.
• Determine whether or not a vaccine is the cause of an adverse event or disease.

As well as five chapters on how to weigh the evidence, there is a lengthy section on whether vaccines cause autism, dealing with both the MMR and Thimerosal claims. For example, the Thimerosal section has a very good explanation for the reasons Thimerosal was used, as well as what it really means to have “trace amounts” of the substance listed in the ingredients. It also explains the differences between methyl and ethyl mercury, and how we now know that the latter (which includes Thimerosal) is less of a risk. Also covered are an expose of some of the flawed studies beloved by the mercury nut jobs, such as the baby haircut study and Maddy Hornig’s Rain Mouse paper. It looks like an excellent source of good information on the subject – recommended.

They Seized Control of Wikipedia

That’s according to attorney Clifford J. Shoemaker, in his response to the Order to Show Cause. He states that Kathleen Seidel’s “principal co-conspirator” (ie her husband), has “seized control” of Wikipedia. Apparently this eminent attorney is unaware that Wikipedia is written and updated collaboratively by more than 75,000 active volunteers from all around the world. Or, as Kathleen put it:

These documents offer a remarkable exposition of the grandiose, cartoonish conspiracy fantasies entertained by advocates of the concept of autism as toxicity and tort, and the arguments of those who seek to justify the perversion of legal processes in order to oppress their critics.

Kathleen has nine days to respond to Shoemaker, if she wishes.

Update – Neurodiversity Subpoena Quashed!

And get this:

Attorney Clifford Shoemaker is ordered to show cause within 10 days why he should not be sanctioned under Fed R Civ P 11 – see Fed R Civ P 45(a)(2)(B) which requires that a deposition subpoena be issued from the court in which the deposition is to occur and Fed R Civ P 45 (c)(1) commanding counsel to avoid burdensome subpoenas. A failure to appear will result in notification of Mr Shoemaker’s conduct to the Presiding Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia.”

I’m not a lawyer, but that doesn’t sound good for Clifford Shoemaker.

No news yet on Marie McCormack’s subpoena - her motion to quash was filed ten days after Siedel’s.

Further reading:

Lawyer Ken writing in the blog Popehat: Anti-Vaccine Thug Lawyer Gets Burned By Pro Se Blogger

No news yet on Marie McCormack’s subpoena - her motion to quash was filed ten days after Siedel’s.

Scientist Subpoenaed Too

There is an old saying in legal circles that if the facts are on your side, pound the facts; if the law is on your side, pound the law; if neither is on your side, pound the table.  Clifford Shoemaker, with neither the facts nor the law on his side, prefers to pound the table. Or more accurately, to pound his opponents with frivolous intimidatory subpoenas.

As I wrote two weeks ago in Bullying Attorney Thug, Clifford Shoemaker is the ambulance chasing attorney who makes his living filing claims in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Unable to cope with honest criticism of his methods, and with few facts on his side, he issued a massively invasive and irrelevant subpoena to blogger Kathleen Seidel. Kathleen now reports that scientist Marie McCormick received a similar subpoena at the same time. As with Seidel, McCormick has also filed a motion to quash.

You may remember Dr. McCormick from Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s dishonest article about thimerosal and autism of nearly three years ago. McCormick was one of the scientists whom Kennedy quote mined to make them appear to be saying the opposite of what they actually said. Three years later, little has changed. The opponents of vaccines, still lacking actual evidence to support their case, still resort to dishonest methods to push their agenda. All proponents of free speech should hope that both these ludicrous subpoenas will be quashed. If they are not, I would imagine that independent scientists would in future be less willing to serve on committees the way McCormick and others have done.

Autism’s Hidden Hordes Wrongly Diagnosed?

Anti-vaccinationists frequently a quote the recent (the last 10 - 15 years) increases in autism as evidence that vaccines cause autism. Since virtually all good science contradicts this idea, it seems there must be another explanation for this apparent increase. One possible explanation is a change in diagnosis - children who are now diagnosed as autistic would have been diagnosed with a different condition 20 years ago. Anti-vaccinationists ask, “where are the hidden hordes?” – the adult autistics who were not diagnosed autistic as children. Because, if increases in autism are merely a change of diagnosis, then there must be numerous adult autistics who were not diagnosed as such as children.

Professor Dorothy Bishop of the University of Oxford, led a recent study to examine this question. The study was published this month in the Journal of Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, and its conclusion was indeed to suggest that many children who would now be diagnosed as having autism, were in the 1980s and 1990s diagnosed with severe language disorders instead.

From the abstract we can see that Bishop looked at 38 subjects (aged 15 to 31), who had, as children, been diagnosed as having developmental language disorder, rather than autism. She then applied to them, modern tests for diagnosing autism at age 4 to 5 years – tests that involved interviewing both the subjects and their parents. The result was that one third of the subjects met the modern criteria for autism. The interviews with the parents were especially revealing: the subjects’ parents recalled what we would now regard as autistic symptoms appearing in their children when they were very young.  The conclusion is that much of the recent rise of autism could be due to a change in the diagnostic criteria.

The result is consistent with this study in Pediatrics from 2006 that showed the growing autism diagnoses from 1994 to 2003 were associated with corresponding declines in other diagnostic categories.

Of course the study needs replicating with a much larger number of subjects than 38, before any firm conclusions can be drawn. But the study’s tentative conclusion is consistent with the total lack of evidence that autism is caused by vaccines. To be sure, the anti-vaccine crowd would have been quick to publicize this study if the results had been negative, but now they will probably ignore the study, or criticize the independence of the study’s authors. That is their normal tactic when faced with studies they don’t like but have no evidence to refute. But what they won’t have are valid criticisms of the actual study, or studies of their own that show there was, in fact, no change in diagnostic criteria.

It would be nice if CNN and Larry King would now have Professor Bishop on to explain her studies to the public, and undo some of the misinformation they recently helped put out. But, again, we can be sure this won’t happen. They get higher ratings showing the idiotic views of “Professor” Jenny McCarthy.

References

Abstract: Autism and diagnostic substitution: evidence from a study of adults with a history of developmental language disorder

University of Oxford: Rise in autism related to changes in diagnosis

Bullying Attorney Thug

They don’t learn. This time the attack is directed at autism blogger Kathleen Seidel. Kathleen had blogged about attorney Clifford Shoemaker (pictured right), who specializes in prosecuting claims filed in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Apparently Shoemaker frequently uses Mark Geier as an expert witness, which by itself should tell you all you need to know about Shoemaker. But Kathleen’s article dug a little more deeply into how attorneys like Shoemaker get paid for filing claims, regardless of their actual merit or end result. She listed the cases that Shoemaker had filed (and been paid for) in the previous 18 months – two thirds of which were dismissed as not satisfying even the relatively lax standard of proof required in these cases. Within hours of this post, Shoemaker issued an intimidatory subpoena.

But the subpoena had nothing to do with the actual article Kathleen had written. From Overlawyered:

The subpoena contains no indication that Seidel herself is accused of defaming anyone or violating any other legal rights of any party. Instead it seems she is being dragged in as a third-party witness in Shoemaker's suit on behalf of his clients, Rev. Lisa Sykes and Seth Sykes, against vaccine maker Bayer. Although Seidel has been a remarkably diligent blogger on autism-vaccine litigation, I can find no indication that she is in possession of specialized knowledge that Shoemaker would not be able to obtain for his clients through more ordinary means.

Instead, the first phrase that occurred to me on looking through the subpoena was "fishing expedition", and the second was "intimidation".

Indeed. The subpoena demands all documents, financial records and communications related to the creation and operation of her blog. This is to include all her financial records, and copies of all communications with a range of people, including what appears to be her entire autism blog roll. In it she is “COMMANDED to appear” in person at the court in New Hampshire (at her own expense, naturally). Since Kathleen is not a party to, nor has any special inside knowledge of, any of Shoemaker’s cases, it is obvious this is just an intimidatory tactic and an abuse of Shoemaker’s power as an attorney.

Kathleen has responded with a motion to quash. It ends with:

Kathleen Seidel prays her motion to quash this unconstitutional, unreasonable, irrelevant, excessive, invasive, burdensome, frivolous, and clearly retaliatory subpoena be ALLOWED.

Today Orac posted An open letter to David Kirby and Dan Olmsted about the Kathleen Seidel subpoena – an appeal to Kirby and Olmstead to use their influence in the autism movement to protest Shoemaker’s bullying tactics. Because, as one commenter wrote:

If I were on the legal team for Glaxo-SmithKline, Wyeth, Inc. and Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corporation, I would be preparing virtually identical subpoenas for David Kirby, Dan Olmsted, JB Handley, John Best, and all the "journalists" and bloggers associated with the Mercury Militia to be served the precise moment that the Judge rules the subpoena can go forward

Such action would perhaps provide some kind of grim satisfaction – to see these pseudoscientists hoist by their own petard. But it would be a hollow victory. If attorneys can shut down criticism this easily, using nothing but the threat of subpoena, most skeptical blogging will be at risk. One can only hope the judge will allow Kathleen’s motion to quash.

In the meantime, Clifford Shoemaker should enjoy his Streisand moment.

Other Articles

Popehat on attorney Clifford Shoemaker - Vaccine-Litigant Thuggery: Subpoenaed For Blogging

Overlawyered on attorney Clifford Shoemaker - Vaccine lawyer subpoenas Kathleen Seidel

I speak of Dreams on attorney Clifford Shoemaker – the snappily entitled Kathleen Seidel Slapped With Unconstitutional, Illegal, Barred by the Journalist’s Privilege, and Needlessly Invasive Subpoena

The Voyage on attorney Clifford Shoemaker - Neurodiversity Blogger Unfairly Subpoenaed

New York personal injury law blog on attorney Clifford Shoemaker - Abuse of Process: Blogger, Unrelated to Action, Hit With Subpoena

Legal Blog Watch on attorney Clifford Shoemaker - Blogger Subpoenaed for Influence

Autism – Still Not Vaccines

I’m sure you’ve heard anti-vaccinationists claiming recently that the government conceded that vaccines cause autism. Of course, they did no such thing. As Orac wrote in David Kirby and the government "concession that vaccines cause autism": The incredible shrinking causation claim, the government merely conceded that vaccinations may have aggravated a child’s underlying mitochondrial disorder – with some of the child’s symptoms being similar to autism. This doesn’t mean the child is autistic, or that autism is caused by vaccines. Also, the “may have” rider tells us merely that the government chose to settle the case rather than go the prolonged and expensive route of a disputed court case. Since we know that (a) vaccines do occasionally harm a small number of patients, and (b) it clearly benefits the majority that we continuing vaccinating, it is entirely sensible and ethical to compensate possible victims the few times this happens. Such facts haven’t stopped bigots such as David “the debate will never be over” Kirby and his ilk.

Anyway, others have deconstructed this case much better than I. If you want to know the facts on this case, Orac has a post up with some of the best links covering this vaccine injury case / mercury / autism story, including posts of his own as well as posts from Steven Novella, Kevin Leitch and others.

Study: No Mercury – Autism Link

You may have read about the new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry that (yet again) failed to find a link between mercury in vaccines and autism – a study that would have been expected to find some link if one existed. It’s been discussed in detail by Orac:

Another very bad day for antivaccinationists: Yet another study fails to find a link between thimerosal and autism.

Also Steven Novella:

One More Nail in the Mercury-Autism Coffin

And in Science Based Medicine

Mercury in vaccines as a cause of autism and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs): A failed hypothesis.

Click the links – I really don’t have much to add.

I think we’re now at the stage when we can safely say that the people who still insist that the debate on this subject is not over, are in the same league as creationists, HIV-AIDS deniers and global warming deniers – ie they’re cranks.

Results Are In / Debate’s Not Over

The utter vacuousness that is David Kirby can be found in the header to his recent confused rant in the Huffington Post. It’s right there at the top of his article, in bold so you don’t miss it:

Memo to those who wanted the autism-vaccine contretemps to just go away: You lost.

If you read that again and think about it, you’ll realize it’s more interesting for what it doesn’t say than for what it does. This is what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say, “Memo to those who said that vaccines don’t cause autism: You lost”. It doesn’t say that because even he realizes that would be false.  (Although later, he equivocates like hell. Of course.)  Remember, this is the same David Kirby who said, in June 2005

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

Just to be clear – by “this year” he meant 2005. That was two years ago. And newsflash – autism rates didn’t fall. In 2005, or since.

But, note, we Thimerosal skeptics “lost.” Not because we were wrong. But because Kirby insists that the “debate” is going to continue, no matter what the evidence tells him. Yeah. Doesn’t that remind you of the “debate” about whether evolution is true?

The definition of pseudoscience includes not altering your theory when contradictory evidence comes in. The pseudoscientist moves the goalposts and makes ad-hoc rationalizations for why his previously predicted results did not transpire exactly as planned. Want to read Kirby’s version of this? Prepare to be astonished at the chutzpah:

Finally, to all those who are going to post comments about the autism rates in California not coming down, following the removal of thimerosal from most vaccines: You are right. The most likely explanation is that thimerosal was not responsible for the autism epidemic. But that does not mean that it never harmed a single child.

No, of course it doesn’t. But note the new, impossible standard he has just sneaked in. The skeptics now have to prove that not a single child was ever harmed by Thimerosal. He wants us to prove a universal negative. Although even then we all know he’d find something else to go for. (Aluminum in vaccines makes an early trial run in this post.)

Kirby says right there in his post that most likely explanation is that thimerosal was not responsible for the autism epidemic, and yet he still wants the debate to continue. But if Thimerosal was not responsible for the autism epidemic, what reason do we now have for even continuing to debate Thimerosal? Kirby’s motive for writing this post is to gloat that we “lost”, because the debate will continue regardless. That’s his definition of “winning”. The word douchebag to describe Kirby seems a little unkind. To douchebags.

Note:

Orac takes apart Kirby’s arguments in more detail. I’ll just mention one point. Kirby makes a big deal because advocates of the mercury-vaccine-autism connection were appointed to a new federal panel on autism.  Funny thing, the day before Kirby posted this sorry screed, Orac wrote in a different post, “Expect the mercury militia to milk this connection for all it's worth”. Well it didn’t take long. One day, to be precise. Take that psychics.

Worst Arguments

Two weeks ago I posted Left Brain Right Brain closes – how the actions of John Best (who sometimes posts as Fore Sam) had forced Kevin Leitch to close his blog to protect his family. Predictably, John Best appeared in the comments to promote his pseudoscientific view that autism is caused by Thimerosal in vaccines. Several other commenters (details below) took Best to task and essentially ripped his silly arguments apart for all to see. Yes, my regular commenters really are smarter than the average bear.

Not everyone reads long comments threads, but I can honestly recommend reading this one to see how weak Best’s’ arguments are. You can compare Best’s mere assertions with the actual contrary evidence and citations provided by the other commenters. It’s worth a read just to appreciate the intellectual ass kicking the other commenters gave Best. Some of it’s pretty funny too. And remember, this repertoire Best has of fallacious reasoning, assertion and bullying represent the very best (no pun intended) arguments that he has been able to think of in all his years promoting these beliefs. You’ll need to set aside a couple of hours to read all of the 180 comments - more if you’re going to read all the citations (not the ones from Best because he doesn’t provide any), but it will be entertaining.

That said, I know not everyone has that amount of spare time, so I’m going to sum up Best’s arguments and the rebuttals.

Best Arguments for Thimerosal

Pun intended that time. His is an argument in two parts, namely:

1. Autism first appeared in 1943 (or maybe 1931 – a little uncertain over the exact date) – which corresponds to the date Thimerosal was first used in vaccines. The only explanation for this is that thimerosal causes autism.
2. Based on his personal observation only, Best thinks his son’s autism (or is it his ADD – a little unsure here too), and that of several other kids, was cured by chelation.

Take those two points, add insults about your opponents – call them deuschbags (sic), knuckleheads, Bozo’s (sic), idiots, dumb bastards, simpletons, boneheads, wack jobs, bunch of jerks, scum, dopes etc. – and reference your success at gambling on the horses as proof you’re smart (I’m not kidding), and you’ve essentially got Best’s arguments.

I’ll try to summarize the main reasons the other commenters gave for why Best is wrong.

Autism first appeared in 1943

Best actually writes:

How about we use a graph from the last million years? It will show no autism until 1943 with a slow rise for about 40 years and an increasing rise as the number of vaccines with thimerosal increased.

Even if we had data from the last million years (obviously we don’t), it wouldn’t show autism until 1943 because that’s when Leo Kanner determined that autism was a separate syndrome, not reported before. Kanner notes autism had most likely previously been previously reported as schizophrenia. Best provided no data, but Tom Foss found Kanner’s actual paper that states:

These characteristics form a unique “syndrome,” not heretofore reported, which seems to be rare enough, yet is probably more frequent than is indicated by the paucity of observed cases. It is quite possible that some such children have been viewed as feebleminded or schizophrenic. In fact, several children of our group were introduced to us as idiots or imbeciles, one still resides in a state school for the feebleminded, and two had been previously considered as schizophrenic.

It seems fairly clear that Kanner means autistics were around before but had been misdiagnosed as feebleminded or schizophrenic. That is, autism existed before 1943 (or 1931 – take your pick), but it had been called something else. Kanner is just the first person to recognize that autism is something different. Best insists Kanner is saying autistics didn’t even exist before he (Kanner) diagnosed these initial children. Reading what Kanner wrote, I don’t see how any reasonable person could possibly come to the conclusion that Best comes to. In any case, the idea is absurd.

Best’s entire case stands or falls on his interpretation of Kanner’s words, the truth of Best’s interpretation, and Best’s assertion that “Autism is never misdiagnosed”. And he means it never was misdiagnosed – even before Kanner. That’s clearly an absurd assertion on its own, but even more so after Joseph provided a link to Dr. J. Landon Down and "Developmental" Disorders – referring to an 1887 paper that reported on patients with a “developmental” disorder that we would now almost certainly refer to as autism. Best just ignores this inconvenient piece of data.

Best then leads with what he considers is a killer argument, the crudely phrased:

Are you trying to tell me autism existed before 1943? If your ridiculous assertion is true, you should be able to show me 77 year olds at the rate of 1 in 150 with autism. If you can do that, I'll blow you.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely that 77 year old autistics, who value their privacy, would be lining up to present themselves now for classification at the order of John Best. Even so, Interverbal managed to provide:

California Department of Disability Services

Quarterly Report 7/1/1992

Age Cohort: 62-99

4 people meeting DSM-III-R autism criteria (stricter than the current standard).

1992 - 62 = 1930.

If they are alive today, then they are your 77 year old autistics, at the youngest.

Best just hand waved away this inconvenient piece of data.

The most charitable view is that Best hasn’t provided any even remotely extraordinary evidence for his extraordinary claim. The less charitable and more realistic view, is that his argument has been totally busted. And without it, what reason does he have to suppose autism is caused by Thimerosal? Oh yes, it’s:

Chelation

Best’s reasoning for this is:

My son's improvement, my son with ADD being 100% cured, friends and acquaintances who have cured their children and reports from DAN and others.

But he provides no double blind studies that show chelation to be better than placebo. There is a reason we use double blind studies – it is because we know that humans are good at fooling themselves. This is especially true with autism which involves delay in many areas of development. But delay doesn’t necessarily mean no progression. Autistic kids often progress without intervention, and certainly without chelation. Without a double blind study, you have no way of knowing if chelation is a factor in the progression or not.

Best also fails to explain why, if his son is “100% cured”, he still needs chelation. This is something you would expect if chelation was not curing the child. It’s a result that is inconsistent with chelation being the cure.

Without a randomized double-blind study we cannot possibly know if chelation is helping Best’s child or any other. And since that was the other leg of Best’s proof that Thimerosal causes autism, his “argument” such as it was, is completely destroyed. Best’s continued aggressive and anti-science responses such as “Studies are a waste of time to me” demonstrate his inability to even think coherently on this subject. It also means he doesn’t even realize how much he’s just been beaten, and how much his foolishness has been laid bare for the world to see.

Questions Best Can’t Answer

When debating someone, questions often arise from the claims the person makes. For example, if someone says “chelation cures autism”, a reasonable question is “where is the study that shows that?” Questions not answered, or answered dishonestly, can be very revealing about the strength of the person’s position and his or her intellectual honesty. Jimmy Blue and Tom Foss came up with several relevant questions that Best ignored. If you want to know how honest Best is, or how strong his case is, consider these questions that Best still can’t or won’t answer:

1. What reason do you have not to believe that all the Thimerosal has been removed from vaccines?
2. How does Thimerosal cause mercury poisoning?
3. If removing Thimerosal from childhood vaccines had no effect on reducing autism (because it's still coming from the parents' flu shots) then how do you know it was ever caused by childhood vaccines?
4. A lot fewer people get flu shots than get their children vaccines; still fewer get it while they're pregnant. How long does it stay in the mother's system?
5. What evidence do you have that chelation cures autistics?
6. So, were autistic kids born with "scrambled brains" before, due to the flu shots? If so, again, how could you blame childhood vaccines? If not, why has the flu vaccine started causing autism earlier than the mercury crowd used to claim?
7. How could Kanner (or you) say that autism had NEVER existed before 1943 if he (or you) did not have access to the medical records of every human being who had ever lived?
8. Why didn't mercury poisoning and widespread varied use cause autism until 1943/1931/1929?
9. How does chelation cure autism?
10. What is the chemical equation for the metabolization of some harmful mercury compound from Thimerosal in the body?
11. Why don't autistics exhibit the other symptoms of mercury poisoning (kidney dysfunction, ruddy faces, loss of hair, teeth, and nails, etc.) if autism is mercury poisoning?
12. How does HBOT cause brain cells to re-grow?
13. What evidence is there that autism is the result of brain cells damaged by mercury?
14. Why can't Best give us a detailed rebuttal of the sources I have found in the last week, when he has been researching this for years?
15. In what sense does he mean his son is cured of autism if he still needs treatment for it?
16. How does Generation Rescue respond to the accusation that it's research is not peer reviewed?
17. Why does Generation Rescue still claim that the work of certain scientists supports their arguments when many of those scientists have specifically stated it does not and asked to be disassociated from GR's work?
18. How does Best explain the contradiction of claiming the CDC cannot be trusted whilst quoting autism prevalence rates provided by CDC research?
19. Why does Best think life is nothing to lose for autistic children?
20. How does Best explain his statement that autism is never misdiagnosed when there is clear evidence that it has been in the past and still is now?

Note in the comments below, whether or not Best attempts to answer any of these questions, and form your own views.

Acknowledgements

This post was written with the arguments developed and put forward by commenters on this blog.

Most of the heavy lifting of the detailed paragraph by paragraph rebuttals to Best’s points, was written by Jimmy_Blue and Tom Foss. From experience I know how much time this takes, and they should be congratulated. They also gave me several good laughs (“My dogs think they are smarter than you”). Tactical support was supplied by Bronze Dog and Techskeptic, pointing out fallacies and other problems with Best’s position. A couple of pieces of really interesting information came from Joseph, who has clearly been writing about autism longer than most of us. And of course, Interverbal found the 77 year old autistics that Best still insists don’t exist. Thanks to you all. It was quite a lesson in taking apart fallacious arguments.

Bestisms

I want to end with a few choice Best quotes. It’s not quite as good as this list of John Best quotes, but they are amusing none the less.

In response to requests for citations to back up his claims:

I don't use citations. I just rely on my memory. When you learn to do that, you will be a lot better off.

On the inventiveness of Eli Lilly:

Autism was invented in 1931 by Eli Lilly.

Argument by wild west wanted poster:

…just find me the 77 year olds, dead or alive.

On consistency in evaluating sources:

The FDA and CDC are not reputable sources for anything.

And then goes on to quote the autism prevalence of 1 in 150, which he gets from (guess where? No prizes) , the CDC.

On the true meaning of science

true scientists like myself…

and yet

I think you guys are too involved with science

Where I learned what I know to be true is of no concern to you.

Studies are a waste of time to me.

On humility

Autism is never misdiagnosed

And finally, the proof Best really is smarter than anyone else:

Until one of you morons can decipher a racing form and select 6 out of 9 races while I only pick 5, you will not be able to outdo me at any intellectual pursuit. For, handicapping horse races is the single most difficult problem solving exercise one could ever encounter.

Note: the single most difficult problem solving exercise one could ever encounter. There really is no answer to that. Best’s Nobel Prize must surely be a mere formality.

Left Brain Right Brain closes

Kevin Leitch’s Left Brain Right Brain autism blog closed today. Click the link and you will discover why:

The reason LB/RB is shutting is because I cannot continue to allow my beautiful eldest girl to be exposed to the hatred and bullying she is recieving from John Best. John has seen fit to compare my beautiful child to a trained monkey because he didn't like the fact she was progressing. He has made numerous jokes at her expense on that theme. He has assumed her identity online. He has encouraged others to do the same.

Let me be clear. I do not care one iota what this cowardly idiot thinks of me. He can write whatever he wants. But he has involved my daughter. Not to reference her progression. Not to quote me. But to laugh at her and to put words in her seven year old mouth.

I genuinely fear for her safety at the hands of this person (I will refrain from calling someone who picks on children 'a man'). Three days running he has posted blog entries about her, two of which assume her identity and one of which is attempting to gain money in her name. I do not know where he would stop. Therefore the only way to make her safe is to remove us from his presence.

More at the link.

This is sad. Kevin’s blog has been a source of much thoughtful and useful information on autism and autism quackery over the years, and all of this information is now lost (the wayback machine notwithstanding). But Kevin has to put the safety of his family first and I can’t fault him for doing so. I don’t know too much of this John Best, except that he posts numerous comments to blogs under the name “Fore Sam”, and is well known in the autism anti-quackery blogosphere. For example, this appears to be a sample of John Best aka Fore Sam’s thought on a variety of subjects.  This is his blog.

Whatever your views on the causes of autism, it’s a sad day when a blog has to close due to fears for the safety of its author and/or his family.

Get Your Flu Shot

From Carl Zimmer today I found this excellent opinion piece in the NYT by Jessica Snyder Sachs, explaining why you should get your children vaccinated and why the “natural” approach is no such thing. Some extracts:

Some parents have come to embrace colds and flus, and in recent years we’ve seen a resurgence of the chickenpox party, where parents deliberately expose their preschoolers to infected playmates on the theory that it’s better to get the disease than to have the vaccine.

But the idea that illness is good for children — or anyone else — is wrong. In part, the idea of “good sickness” is a throwback to a now disproved version of the “hygiene hypothesis.”

And she goes on to explain why this idea, which originally was thought to be sound, has been proven wrong. I actually met a woman recently who thought it was better for her kids to get a disease than to have the disease prevented by a vaccine. The logic for that escaped me (if your kid gets the disease he’ll then not get the disease again?). I wish I’d had this article handy. Also, I didn’t know this:

Moreover, studies now show that the more infections a person has during childhood, the greater his or her chance of premature death from scourges of old age like heart disease and cancer. The link appears to be chronic inflammation, a kind of lingering collateral damage from the body’s disease-fighting response.

I thought the most interesting part was how Snyder Sachs explained that getting immunity through getting the disease, is not natural:

A second misconception common among vaccine-shunning parents is that there’s something “natural” about the 6 to 10 respiratory infections the typical American child gets every year (or even the two to four we adults experience). Common, yes; natural no, not if “natural” represents the forces that shaped the human immune system during all but the last sliver of our 250,000 years as Homo sapiens. Colds, flus and most other contagious diseases found a central place in our lives only after we and our domestic animals began crowding together in large settlements some 5,000 years ago.

The article goes on to explain why you really should get your flu shot this year.

Autism – personal experience more credible than scientists?

No of course it’s not. But someone thinks it is. I recently received the following email from Kelly – the email subject line being “Thimerasol Link to Autism”. I thought some of you might be amused by the following exchange:

I will keep this email brief so as to not be misinterpreted.  I ran across your website by accident, but I just had to comment. 

I do not want to be a part of all the political rhetoric and garbage.  All I want to do is site personal experience and educate you on the facts.  I have autism.  The problem with thimerasol is that as an autistic person I lack the gene glutatione s-transferase.  That gene filters out heavy metals from your body.  When you lack the gene you cannot eliminate heavy metals, such as mercury, from your body.  So, over time they build up and damage your organs and tissues.

Let's say someone passed you an old fashioned mercury thermometer and it accidentally fell and broke.  You would jump up and get out of the room faster than one could blink.  Then you would call the Fire Department so the Hazardous Materials team could clean up the mercury.  Why is that?  You have not ingested any of the mercury.  Therefore, it is not dangerous.  So what is the problem?  After all, you have the gene to process the mercury out of your system. 

It ticks me off how so called "scientists" with no personal experience, can debate an issue without ever listening to the other side.  People with personal experience and knowledge have much more credibility than a scientist in a lab.  When you are lactose intolerant, no one debates that you cannot properly digest milk.  No one runs around and claims milk is bad.  Because it is not for the rest of us.  When you are diabetic, no one debates that you cannot properly break down sugar and carbohydrates.  Sugar and carbohydrates are not bad for the rest of us.  Then why is it so hard to believe that someone who is missing a gene to eliminate heavy metals from their bodies would have a devastating reaction to a heavy metal being ingested into their body?  It may not be bad for the rest of you, but it is bad for some of us.  Thimerasol does not cause autism, it simply is something we cannot tolerate.  That to me is pretty simple. 

If vaccines are required, and they should be, then pharmaceutical companies should take out the thimersol as a preservative.  Then everyone could enjoy the benefits of building immunity without having their lives ripped from them with devasting effects of having mercury coarsing through their veins.  Believe me, it is devasting.  I live it every day.

I replied:

You criticize scientists "with no personal experience", and state that "People with personal experience and knowledge have much more credibility than a scientist in a lab" - and then you write in detail about the gene for "glutatione s-transferase".  How, exactly do you even know about the gene for glutathione s-transferase?  From your personal experience?  Of course not.  The only reason you have even heard about the gene for glutathione s-transferase is from scientists working in a lab.  So who really has any credibility here?

I’m afraid you have jumped to a conclusion about this gene, heavy metals, and autism that is not supported by the science. As I understand it, autistics have no deficiency in Glutathione, and even if they did it wouldn’t matter:

If the average human carries around approximately 6 milligrams of mercury how much glutathione should we require to deal with environmental mercury levels ? Even if several molecules of glutathione were required for each mercury molecule, we should have millions of times sufficient glutathione to get the job done. Compare that to the reported upper limit of exposure through vaccines which has been estimated at less than 250 micrograms. A person so severely deficient in glutathione they would be unable to detoxify 250 micrograms of mercury 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.

I’m sorry Kelly, but this desperate need to blame Thimerosal despite the evidence is not helping anyone find the real causes of autism.  You have absolutely no personal experience that has a hope in hell of telling you that glutathione s-transferase deficiency has caused your autism.  You have no idea, no clue.  Your only hope is with scientists.

She replied, but (and I know you’ll be really surprised by this), without addressing any of the points I raised. Instead there was a stream of fallacious reasoning. Her response and my replies are below.

Wow.  I just passed on a friendly email about my personal experience to give you more insight into this problem.  I tried to keep it brief so as to not be misinterpreted, but that didn't work.  You read quite a bit into my email that was no where near what I intended.  That is the problem with email, you cannot tell the other person's tone of voice, attitude, or inflection.  So, we end up reading in to what they are saying. 

A disingenuous start. The original email may have had a friendly tone, but she said she wanted to “educate [me] on the facts”. Somewhat arrogant. When her “education” didn’t take she now tries to make out that I’m over reacting or something, as though I am the one with a problem. It’s just an appeal to pity.

Do you have autism?  How are you so passionate about this cause?  I am impressed with the energy level you have concerning mercury and autism.  How long have you been studying this?  What is your background and training?  I like your spunk, too. 

I am passionate about applying critical thinking, and explaining how I apply it to issues such as the autism / mercury controversy.

Actually, I am a scientist by training.  I practiced pharmacy for 7 years.  I also have 25+ years as a pharmaceutical rep as well. 

An attempt to claim authority.

I was in no way criticizing scientists. 

Yes you were . You complained about "so called "scientists" with no personal experience" and you wrote "People with personal experience and knowledge have much more credibility than a scientist in a lab".

It is like anything else in this world, you are the expert if you actually have the condition.  You possess a personal, intimate knowledge that someone who does not have the disease can never possess.  Scientists and physicians get their science and understanding originally from the actual patient. 

Scientists study the patient using the scientific method. The person with the condition knows how it feels, what the disadvantages of it are. She is the expert on that, perhaps. But she doesn’t have any special insight into the causes of the condition.

When they loose sight of that, is when it angers me.  They can debate and believe all they want to, but that does not make it true. 

Something you might like to consider yourself before you write any more on this subject, Kelly.

In my experience, the best physicians out there are the ones who have a personal experience with a disease.  Ask any well known, highly respected physician why they went in to the specialty they did and they will tell you either a family member had the disease or they personally struggle with it.  I have worked with top thought leaders throughout the world in my career and the answer is always the same.  The credibility comes from actually experiencing an illness or disease.  You have an edge when you are that close to the disease.  One of the best Ob-Gyn Oncologists at MD Anderson lost his wife to ovarian cancer.   He has a personal vested interest in finding a cure for that type of cancer, since losing his wife his daughter is now at risk.  He will be more open to new knowledge, theories, and treatments than another expert who is only using straight science, speculation, and theories.

Such a person will be more motivated, may feel more passionate about finding a cure, may work longer hours etc. But he will absolutely not have any better idea of the causes of such illnesses just because a spouse died. And anyone who thought he did would be fooling himself and would be a lousy researcher.

Take for example, my friends with MS or Breast Cancer.  I would never go to them and lecture them about their diseases.  They have the disease and possess an intimate knowledge that neither you nor me will ever know.  Thank goodness.  It is very presumptuous and arrogant to boldly lecture and/or correct someone who is living with a disease every day. 

Wrong. If that person claimed they knew what caused the disease, with no reason, then you would be perfectly correct in telling them they were wrong.

Any reputable scientist will tell you that no matter how much you read and study something, it does not always mean that is what can be replicated in the lab or human experience.  That is why it takes an average of 12 years and $400 million to bring a drug to market.  Yet, every year dozens of drugs are pulled from the market, because you just cannot replicate the entire human experience in a study.  You cannot predict all the possible consequences and all the possible outcomes that could happen when a large number of people consume a medication.  But, the FDA does the best they can.  Like anything else, the system isn't perfect, but it is pretty darn good.

I know all that. Funny. I though you said that people with the condition knew more that the scientist. So why do we need scientists to do these tests that cost so much? Why don’t we just ask the people with the illnesses what caused it and what the cure is? You prove yourself wrong with your own words Kerry. You demonstrate that only science will determine what the cure is (or isn’t), not the person with the disease.

Something concerned me in your email.  You keep referring to "supported by science."  Come on, you know that science is an ever evolving field and we have barely touched the surface on any one disease. 

Yeees, but that still doesn’t mean that you know, just because you happen to have a condition, by some magic, that autism is caused by not having the gene for glutatione s-transferase. As I wrote to you, and as you have ignored, there is no way you could possibly know that other than through science. Tell me – how do you know this is true Kelly? How did you even hear about the gene for glutatione s-transferase? Explain how that works please.

Forming conclusions, based on past events and results is what we do.  Then, we continually try to prove or disprove our theories.   There will always be conflicting data and conflicting opinions.  That is why scientific symposiums are such wonderful places.  The ability to share information that one scientist has done with other scientists is phenomenal for the advancement of science in general.  Everyone has their theories, their studies, and their opinions.  Theories and opinions are based on so many different things and I am always leery of people who are extremely adamant in their opinions.

As you seem to be, you mean? Because you are adamant in your opinion of what causes autism and yet you have not cited a single study that demonstrates that. I cited an examination of a study that the mercury militia thinks shows it, and my cite explains why they are wrong. You ignored that cite. Did you even read it? Because if you didn’t read it, and still think you’re right, I would say you are extremely adamant in your opinions. You should be leery of yourself.

When they are close-minded

It is not closed minded to reject claims that are not true. On the other hand, it is closed minded to insist that autism is caused by a missing gene for glutatione s-transferase although the article I cited for you (that you ignored) shows it is not the case. It is closed minded to insist you are right when you have nothing but your arrogant belief that you know more just because you happen to be autistic. Read The appeal to be open-minded to learn more.

I have to ask where their funding or loyalties lie. 

No you don’t. The conclusions do not depend on the motives of the funding. Read Ad Hominem to learn why.

I always find it humorous to sit with the skeptics.  I like a little controversy, too. 

I don't know how old you are, but were you around for all the AIDS symposiums, discussions, and rhetoric in the early 80's?  Fascinating theories and discussions.  What we thought was absolute has been proven and subsequently disproven over the last 20+ years.  The heated debates were amazing.  Some well-known scientists stuck their necks out, were ridiculed and ostracized at the time, and are now revered.   Love it.

What theories that were disproven? I only remember Peter Duesberg who said that HIV did not cause AIDS. He’s still saying it, as far as I know. He’s still wrong. Anyway, I think you are trying to appeal to “science was wrong before”. Read the link to find out why that is fallacious.

Citing my own personal experience and a plethora of studies,

No – only citing your own experience. Not one study. Nada. Zip. What? Didn’t you think I’d notice?

when a person lacks glutathione s-transferase to properly eliminate heavy metals from their body, the heavy metals will build up and damage organs.

Still no evidence that’s what causes autism.

Surely, you have heard of the dangers of mercury poisoning, arsenic poisoning, lead poisoning,  etc.?  There is an easy test to determine the levels in someone's body.  There are endless studies showing the devastating effects on the body from prolonged exposure and/or toxic levels of any heavy metal be it mercury, lead, arsenic, copper, titanium, aluminum, etc.  Just recently, several children in south Dallas were tested and treated for lead poisoning because their homes are near an old paint factory.  They had the gene, but because there were such high levels around, their bodies could not eliminate it quickly enough and they succumbed to the effects.  To my knowledge, all are doing okay, but suffering some permanent damage to their organs due to prolonged exposure.   No one can dispute that they are ill due to lead exposure. 

Now we’re on to arsenic and lead. Nice misdirect, but still no evidence that Thimerosal causes autism.

Autistic people have toxic levels of all heavy metals, not just mercury. 

Evidence please. (Hint: I don’t think there is any. Oh, and I wouldn’t bother to cite those debunked “baby haircut” studies. Up to you though.)

And I must correct you.  This is not a desperate need on my part to blame thimerosal.  

I’m glad to hear it. Many others do, though.

The facts are the facts. 

Yes they are. Only you don’t have any.

People ingest heavy metals from a variety of sources, not just vaccines. 

Oh, but your email subject was “Thimerasol Link to Autism”. Now it’s heavy metals (not just mercury) from a variety of sources, not just vaccines. Standard woo – shift the goalposts. Still no evidence it causes autism, though.

My health deteriorated after each injection I received as a kid.  Luckily I am old enough that very few vaccines were required.  

That makes no sense. You must have been young once. Unless you were created in a lab. Were you created in a lab?

I did not go completely downhill until I had my mercury fillings removed. If this is not done properly, it can be dangerous for anyone - even you. 

Oh, now we’re in total woo land. Mercury fillings.

That is actually just common sense.  If too much of a toxic substance is released into the blood stream, the person will suffer the problems associated with that substance. 

Except that the typical clinical signs of mercurism are not similar to the typical clinical signs of autism.

I thought I had a quailfied dentist, little did I know the damage that was to come.  Trust me, I have learned more about the devastating effects of mercury and autism first hand.  And, as a scientist, I have done my research and homework.  I do not rely simply on what someone cites in one small study.  Any study can be manipulated to say whatever you want it to say.  There are hundreds,  if not thousands, of studies that support the harmful effects of heavy metals on the body that are well controlled and reputable.   

Yes. But not one study that shows thimerosal causes autism. Funny that.

Reason with me for a moment.  Thimerosal is harmful by inhalation and ingestion, and lethal between 50 and 1000 times the usual intake, which for mercury is . 0.1 milligram of mercury per cubic meter of air (0.1 mg/m3).  I wanted to get my hands on the original package insert and studies submitted to the FDA by Eli Lilly in the '20's.  Thimerosal is a substance like several other older drugs, that if submitted today, would not be approved by the FDA.

But none of that matters if your liver is incapable of eliminating the mercury.  No one is debating that mercury, a neurotoxin, is dangerous.  Look at all the warnings on fish consumption, flourescent lighting, etc.  The FDA even admitted that the vaccine schedule in 1999 exceeded the EPA standards for mercury exposure.  No one is debating that mercury is toxic.  No one suggests that the levels in my body are in any way okay.  Autism is on the rise and that should be a cause for concern.  We need to find out why there is such a exponential rise in autism, or any disease for that matter. 

Yes we do. And insisting that thimerosal causes autism, despite the increasing evidence it does not, will make it harder to find the cause. Why don’t you see that?

Aaah, science, we learn we grow.  It is a fascinating journey if you look back at the history of medicine.  So many people unfortunately die as we try desperately to figure out disease processes.  When we barely understand something, we may be actually hurting the people we are supposedly treating.  But, as we study, advance, and grow in our knowledge, things change.   Molecular geneticism has played a huge role in identifying problems and improving treatment outcomes.  Genetics, genomes are something to keep your eye on in the future. 

The debate will continue on any link with mercury and autism.  But, please, don't completely discount someone who has a disease and therefore has a more intimate knowledge of the disease than you.  I ask that you open your mind up to the fact that heavy metals have been undeniably proven to be toxic and that those of us who cannot eliminate those substances from our body will suffer if we ingest even a tiny amount. 

Still waiting for the studies you say you’ve read. And I’m still waiting for you to open your mind to the possibility that you are wrong.

My motivation is simple.  I personally do not want anyone else to suffer like I have and so I try to gently inform others of the dangers of mercury, lead, and heavy metal toxicity.  My intention is to educate and hopefully prevent someone else, especially a much more vulnerable child,  from dealing with the horrendous effects of heavy metal toxicity.  I have been there and it sucks. 

You have autism. But you are not educating anyone as to its cause. Sorry, but you are part of the problem.

The “Autism Community” Punk’d!

Orac and Kevin Leitch both comment on how  the “Autism Community” (whoever the hell they are – who decided they represented the “Autism Community”?) have asked for messages of support for Andrew Wakefield. You know, the researcher whose crappy “research” supposedly linked autism to the MMR vaccine, and thereby (with the help of a complicit media) caused a reduction in uptake of the vaccine and an increase in Measles. (No reduction in autism, funnily enough.)

Anyway, several people posted messages with, shall we say, less than supportive messages. But the “Autism Community” is only accepting supportive messages. Shame.

Anyway, I thought I should post a message. But it had to be supportive, or it wouldn’t have been published. This is what I wrote:

Well done Dr. Wakefield. Although the medical establishment denies your research. Keep up the good work. Even though you are criticized. For the sake of the children. I know you are a man of integrity. Every thing you have said has turned out right. Lots of kids got autism from vaccines. Did that stop them poisoning our kids?. I don’t think so. So much for integrity. All we have are beacons of honesty such as yourself. Let our words give you strength. I trust you will continue your research. Autism is treatable. Real doctors know that.

U Menteur

So, I hear you say, a strange message from me. Seems a little too supportive.  And who the hell is U Menteur?

Perhaps if I started each sentence on a new line, my message might be a little clearer:

Well done Dr. Wakefield.

Although the medical establishment denies your research.

Keep up the good work.

Even though you are criticized.

For the sake of the children.

I know you are a man of integrity.

Every thing you have said has turned out right.

Lots of kids got autism from vaccines.

Did that stop them poisoning our kids?.

 

I don’t think so.

So much for integrity.

 

All we have are beacons of honesty such as yourself.

 

Let our words give you strength.

I trust you will continue your research.

Autism is treatable.

Real doctors know that.

I’ve bolded the first letter of each sentence - just read down. Also, “Menteur” is French for “liar”. So it’s signed, “U Liar”.

The funny thing – they published it. Click the thumbnail to read the actual section (just in case they take it down).

Childish? Of course. But deserved.

MMR Scares Debunked

Ben Goldacre writing in Bad Science, exposes the dishonesty in recent newspaper reports on how “MMR causes autism”. Ben does what the newspapers should have done and actually contacts noted autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen and other researchers quoted in the newspaper, and finds out what they actually said and think. A sample:

But in fact, the two “leading experts” concerned about MMR were not professors, or fellows, or lecturers: they were research associates. I rang both, and both were very clear that they wouldn’t really describe themselves as leading experts. One is Fiona Scott, a psychologist and very competent researcher at Cambridge. She said to me, very clearly: “I absolutely do not think that the rise in autism is related to MMR.” And: “My own daughter is getting vaccinated with the MMR jab on July 17.”

She also says, astonishingly, that the Observer never even spoke to her, before incorrectly reporting that she has a privately held view that MMR might be partly to blame for autism. I say “reporting,” but in some ways, it’s more like an accusation. Dr Scott horrified. She simply does not believe that MMR has caused a rise in autism.

Ben concludes the news media, in its need for alarmist stories, is more of a problem than dishonest researchers such as Andrew Wakefield.  It's worth reading Ben’s entire post.

Edit July 22, 2007

Ben comments on the newspaper’s lame attempts to retract and apologize cover up its errors.  Sample:

This is beyond childishness. They were wrong. They should have clarified the closeness of the relationship in the article, and if they’re making amends now, they should do so properly. But instead they’re still trying to cover up (rather ironically for a story effectively claiming a cover up about autism).

RFK a true believer?

Longer term readers will remember Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s rather absurd articles in Salon about how autism is caused by mercury in vaccines and the CDC etc is covering it all up. In June 2005 I covered RFK’s manipulation of the facts and quote mining, as well as a more detailed review of his quote-mining of the Institute of Medicine report. Many others blogged about it too. I wondered aloud if Kennedy really believed the nonsense he was spouting, or if he just hadn’t read the reports he was writing about.

Reader Kim just sent me this link to the Going All the Way blog where blog owner Gabolicious described how she was present recently at a talk given by RFK. And it seems RFK is still spouting the same old nonsense, judging by this response to a question from the mother of an autistic child:

[RFK’s] response was a good ten-minute rant about how our vaccines are making kids autistic because of the mercury in them, how American pharmaceutical companies introduced autism to China because of the vaccines they sent over, how more and more kids are being diagnosed with autism every year because there is so much mercury everywhere, that the Amish don’t have autistic kids because they don’t vaccinate their babies, the Christian Scientists and Scientologists don’t have autistic kids, either, for the same reasons…

Same old nonsense. (Incidentally, I also wrote in August 2005 how Kennedy was wrong about the Amish claim and his conclusions. Nothing has changed and Kennedy is still just as wrong about this as he was then.)

Later at the same meeting, Gabolicious got to meet RFK as he worked the room, and she asked him what he would say to a family who has just learned their child was autistic:

He said yes, chelation is a tough issue, you know, our bodies don’t produce as much of this hormone/ chemical anymore, and it is one of the big things we need to process and extract mercury…

As Gabolicious points out, this doesn’t even make sense.  If autism has increased because of increased mercury in vaccines, then why is our supposed recent inability to produce as much of a hormone as before, even an issue?

Obviously I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the above report, but Gabolicious, as an apparent admirer of RFK in other areas, seems genuine in how she reports these events. So it seems that RFK probably really does believe the nonsense he spouts about autism. Although autism numbers are not falling, despite the removal of mercury from childhood vaccines, RFK is apparently still a true autism conspiracy believer. Ho hum.

Autism not declining so Kirby redefines it

Via Orac I learn of David Kirby’s strange but boldly deceptive piece in the Huff Post Tuesday.

You see, Kirby has a problem. He has to explain why the current autism figures haven’t “declined by 2007” as he claimed they would due to removal of thimerosal from vaccines, but he can’t admit it’s because thimerosal doesn’t cause autism. So how does he get out of this mess of his own making? Tricky one. Well, his response is quite brilliant in its imagination. Get this - he redefines what autism is. Yes, according to Kirby, all the “higher functioning” autistics (ie the ones that are not declining in number), are not really autistic. This increasing number has to be taken out of the total, so that the total isn’t increasing any more. This leaves just the real autistics (ie the ones poisoned by vaccines):

I'm talking about kids who spin like fireworks until they fall and crack their heads, kids who will play with a pencil but not with their sister, kids who stare at nothing and scream at everything and don't even realize it when their dad comes home from work.

Get it? These are the ones poisoned by thimerosal, not the increased numbers with Asperger's, etc. Wow! Probably the most blatant case of moving the goalposts I’ve ever seen. But you really have to give him some credit for thinking out the box. Quite inspired.

Of course it’s nonsense and as well as Orac, Kevin Leitch, Autism Diva and Autism Vox take it apart in more detail.

Kirby even has a new name for his newly defined not-autism- if-it-hasn’t-declined syndrome:

Maybe what these kids have is not autism, but something like, say, "Environmentally-acquired Neuroimmune Disorder," which we could call E.N.D. (Great slogan: "Let's End E.N.D.).

Yeah, good one Dave. I’ve got one to describe what you seem to be suffering from: "Disorder Enabling Nonsensical Interpretations And Lies", which we could call D.E.N.I.A.L. And I've got a great slogan too: "It’s not just a river in Egypt".

Some good links

I haven’t written much recently, but I thought I would share some links to what I thought were some especially interesting recent skeptical or science blog posts.

First, Phil Plait the Bad Astronomer has a superb explanation of what makes a year (sidereal or tropical) in Happy New Year Arbitrary Orbital Marker! :

Yay! Tonight at midnight it’s New Year!

But what does that mean, exactly?

The year, of course, is the time it takes for the Earth to orbit the Sun, right? Well, not exactly. It depends on what you mean by "year", and how you measure it. This takes a wee bit of explaining, so put down the champagne, take the lampshade off your head, and hang on.

Phil gives a really good explanation of the astronomical factors at play – and it’s not as simple as most people think. Of course, the Earth’s “wobble”, and the resulting difference between the sidereal and the tropical year is the reason that most astrological charts, and therefore your sun sign used by most astrologers, is wrong. Not that it would make any difference if astrologers used the sidereal instead of the tropical zodiac – astrology is crap either way.

Next, Orac writes about how Andrew Wakefield was paid to undermine MMR vaccine.

ANDREW WAKEFIELD, the former surgeon whose campaign linking the MMR vaccine with autism caused a collapse in immunisation rates, was paid more than £400,000 [$780,000] by lawyers trying to prove that the vaccine was unsafe.

Of course, the fact that he was paid does not in and of itself prove Wakefield was wrong, although the conflict of interest clearly means we should examine his data more skeptically. However, the anti-vax crowd routinely use this kind of conflict of interest to smear anyone who disagrees with their position. It will be instructive to see how they handle this piece of news.

Next, John Lynch of Give Seed, Get Seed Stranger Fruit gives us ID in 2007 - from the horses mouth – a list of developments in ID that we almost certainly won’t be seeing. My favorite:

A theory of how the Designer-Who-Shall-Not-Be- Named did the designing.

Don’t hold your breath.

Then there is Ben Goldacre’s review of the year in bad science. Sample:

And what a great year for scares. The Times reported on its front page that cocaine use among schoolchildren had doubled when it had done nothing of the sort (they simply misinterpreted the report). The media’s anti-MMR campaign continued unabated as the Telegraph, Mail and Times all reported on unpublished research claiming to show a link between the vaccine and autism, even though the research was from a man with a history of making such claims as far back as 2002, which he still hasn’t published. Over the year, at least two fully published studies showing a negative result for almost the exact same experiment were inexplicably ignored by all newspapers.

Finally, I liked RealClimate’s 2006 Year in review, which starts:

Best highlight of the gap between the 'two cultures':

Justice Scalia: 'Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming'.

I’m sure you don’t.

New Study Says No Vaccines-Autism Link

Via Autism Diva I learn of this study just published in the journal Pediatrics. The objective of the study was to estimate the prevalence of pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), which includes autism, and compare this with cumulative exposure to both thimerosal and MMR vaccines. The authors surveyed 28,000 children born from 1987 to 1998. Children with PDD were identified by a special needs team.

What they actually found was that children who had had no exposure to thimerosal actually had a higher degree of PDD. No association to PDD was found with the MMR vaccine. From the abstract (all quotes are with my bold):

The prevalence of pervasive developmental disorder in thimerosal free birth cohorts was significantly higher than that in thimerosal-exposed cohorts (82.7 of 10 000 vs 59.5 of 10 000). Using logistic regression models of the prevalence data, we found no significant effect of thimerosal exposure used either as a continuous or a categorical variable. Thus, thimerosal exposure was unrelated to the increasing trend in pervasive developmental disorder prevalence.

The authors conclude that the increased prevalence of PDD is due to broadening diagnostic criteria and increased awareness. If you remember, this is the explanation that Bobby Kennedy called “a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children”. Well, it’s hard to see what other conclusion could be drawn from this study. From the paper again:

During the 12 years encompassed by our study, thimerosal exposure before age 2 of each birth cohort changed several times and ranged from nil to a high value of 225 μg. This provided a unique opportunity to test the relationship of ethylmercury exposure with rates of PDDs, free of a known problem of vaccine safety studies when high rates of exposure in populations, and therefore low variability in exposure, constrain the data and limit the opportunity to detect effects.⁶³ No association between thimerosal levels treated either continuously or categorically with PDD rates could be found in our study. In fact, it was remarkable that the PDD rates were at their highest value in birth cohorts that were thimerosal free, providing a clear and convincing message on the lack of an association. The results were robust and held true when various analyses were conducted to evaluate the potential impact of misclassification on exposure and diagnosis. Within each period of medium, high, or nil exposure, the same trend toward a steady increase in PDD rate was observed, demonstrating total independence of the 2 variables.

The authors also address one of the mercury-causes-autism lobby’s criticisms of other studies that have also shown no link, namely that these other studies were in countries with lower exposure to thimerosal or lower rates of PDD:

Previous negative studies, especially those conducted in European countries, have sometimes been criticized on the account that either the rates of PDDs were not as high as those in North America, that the cumulative exposure to thimerosal was much lower than that attained in the United States in the 1990s, or both. This study avoids both pitfalls and is, therefore, very informative for the North American public. In addition, the rate of exposure varied from nil to very high levels of vaccine-derived ethylmercury, allowing us to test for effects along the full range of exposure and to detect possible threshold effects as well. All of the results were negative.

Of course, don’t expect this study to convince the religious mercury-causes-autism groups. From a (pretty good) BBC article on the study we find:

Jackie Fletcher, from campaign group Jabs, a support network for parents who believe their children have been damaged by vaccines, said the study still did not prove there was not a link.

Well, proving a universal negative is always difficult, but with one more seemingly well run study finding no link when you would expect to find one if it were there, haven’t we passed the point when it becomes perverse to insist there is a link?

Edited to add:

Two more excellent reads today on this subject. Respectful Insolence has a more detailed write-up about this study, along with an examination of some of the usual smear tactics used by the mercury-causes-autism group SafeMinds. Left Brain/Right Brain has a further perspective on SafeMinds hypocritical ad hominems, and insight on where they might be headed in their future mercury claims.

Autism epidemic? What autism epidemic?

The April issue of the journal Pediatrics contains a study by Paul Shattuck at the University of Wisconsin, entitled, The Contribution of Diagnostic Substitution to the Growing Administrative Prevalence of Autism in US Special Education. This study would appear to contradict the view that there is an epidemic of autism – the supposed autism epidemic that many blame on vaccines. Orac recently wrote a good summary of the paper.

Of course, if there has been no increase in autism, the case against vaccines being responsible for this (non) increase is weakened quite a bit (or a lot). Unsurprisingly the vaccines-cause-autism industry wasted no time in smearing Shattuck with the usual personal attacks, claims of bias due to funding, and phony links to discredited researchers. No valid criticisms of the actual data, though. For a good take-down of these fallacious smear tactics you really should read (this time) Orac’s take down of Shattuck’s critics.

Also, you should read the comments section. Shattuck himself leaves a detailed comment, and I thought I would highlight a couple of the points he made.

First, he tackles the accusation that he received a large grant from the CDC:

As for the $540,000 from the CDC...it's not entirely clear what they are talking about. I certainly don't have a grant that big from anyone. They are probably talking about the autism surveillance grant that our center received from the CDC...a proposal which I helped prepare but am not listed as a co-investigator and am not funded from. Our University is one of several sites around the country funded to do prospective monitoring of the prevalence of autism and other disorders...am not sure why that is so horrible in the eyes of some advocates.

So his critics essentially made that one up.

On whether being a autism skeptic is actually a lucrative career for a researcher:

If I was truly an unscrupulous researcher looking to boost my grant portfolio in any way possible then I would be better off trying to stoke concerns about an epidemic, rather than do the research I've undertaken. I've actually had colleagues from other universities nervously joke that if concern about autism fades then their research funding might dry up. So, the "unscrupulous researcher bends findings to boost financial self-interest" angle doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

What do you know? Pushing vaccines-cause autism is where the money is.  (That would explain the Geiers.)

And on the smear by association – the claim that a fellow researcher had been discredited (and so by association Shattuck must also be tainted):

Finally, yes there was a graduate student who was caught doing bad things at the same University where I was a graduate student. She was disciplined appropriately by the University and the NIH, and the small amount of affected data was quickly quarantined and never made its way into any published work. The attempt to paint me as guilty of data falsification because I was a graduate student at the same time as this person is just incredibly insulting.

Lame, just lame. And totally dishonest.

And a general comment on the (lack of) honesty and integrity of Shattuck’s critics:

It's worth noting none of the attacks on me have actually addressed the evidence presented in my paper. It's been my experience in debating that when one side abandons talking about evidence in favor of personal attacks it's usually because they have no credible evidence to bring to the table themselves.

Precisely. It’s called ad hominem, and it’s a logical fallacy for the reason that you don’t arrive at the conclusions they want you to from the arguments they present.

I don’t know if thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, honestly I don’t, but I doubt it for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that autism and mercury poisoning appear to be different. But I could be wrong – I’m not an expert on this subject. But you would think that anyone honestly out to find out what causes autism would be interested in Shattuck’s study, and would at least examine the data to see if it was good. That they don’t is telling. When the vaccines-cause autism group appears only to be interested in shutting down opposition by smear tactics and other dishonesty, you’ve got to wonder what they have to hide.

Ask the expert

Via Reason Online I learned of a discussion about blogging entitled Ask the expert: Should old media embrace the new? going on over at FT online. Included were some comments about a couple of blogs you may have heard of:

… the idea that there are hundreds of thousands of “niche experts” blogging away (or ready and willing to blog) lacks empirical evidence. I’m very impressed with scienceblogs.com – read the surgeon/scientist “respectful insolence” and you get a real sense of how the mainstream need to upgrade their medical reporting.

And yet at the same time, I see scienceblogs.com as a sort of rearguard action against a blitzkrieg of rubbish on the net rather than the vanguard of an expert army. The “collective intelligence” of the blogosphere is nothing more than a virtual Maginot Line against bad information, which often begins in the mainstream press and, thanks to the immediate parasitical nature of blogging, invades and permanently occupies the Internet.

Consider the furor over vaccination and autism. Last year, the mainstream press (Rolling Stone and Salon) published an extraordinarily flawed story by Robert F. Kennedy on how the American government was supposedly covering up data linking a mercury-based preservative in vaccines to an “epidemic” of autism. This was picked up the Huffington Post, which, inter alia, damned ABC news for radically changing a story based on Kennedy’s claims. It was a big bad corporate pharma pile on.

Yes, the original story was negligent journalism of the highest order, but the frontlines of blogging simply amplified it. Bloggers such as Skeptico and Respectful Insolence did a terrific job of analysing and pointing out why Kennedy’s claims had no merit, but they lacked the impact of the Huffington Post or Salon or Rolling Stone. And given that the elite blogging circles are dominated by journalists, established pundits and their dauphins, I don’t see how this kind of expert network can leverage its intelligence to inoculate the public against bad information.

The moral of this story is that mainstream news organisations need to look at this kind of event, and figure out what is best for the public interest. Co-opt science and medical expert bloggers into their news model? Maybe. Do a better job of covering this kind of story? Definitely. Re-evaluate what constitutes news and how it should be presented? Absolutely. It’s no good patting yourself on the back because your organisation knew better than to swallow Kennedy’s anti-vaccine Kool Aid if a rival publication ends up propagating misleading and potentially deadly information.

(My bold, shamelessly added.)

Good to know not everyone in the mainstream media swallowed Kennedy’s anti-vaccine Kool Aid.

Drinking the anti-vax Kool-Aid

Some people never get it. Despite being put straight by Dr. Sanjay Gupta five weeks ago, Bill Maher still doesn’t get vaccines. Just listen to this piece of stupidity from him tonight on Larry King tonight (all bold mine):

MAHER: I'm not into western medicine. That to me is a complete scare tactic. It just shows you, you can...

KING: You mean you don't get a -- you don't get a flu shot?

MAHER: A flu shot is the worst thing you can do.

KING: Why? MAHER: Because it's got -- it's got mercury.

KING: It prevents flu.

MAHER: It doesn't prevent. First of all, that's...

KING: I haven't had the flu in 25 years since I've been taking a flu shot.

MAHER: Well, I hate to tell you, Larry, but if you have a flu shot for more than five years in a row, there's ten times the likelihood that you'll get Alzheimer's disease. I would stop getting your...

KING: What did you say?

MAHER: That went better in rehearsal but it was still good. Absolutely, no the defense against disease is to have a strong immune system. A flu shot just compromises your immune system.

First – he’s really been drinking the anti-vax Kool Aid. This “vaccines compromise the immune system” is just nonsense. Idiocy. Vaccines train the immune system so they are ready if the real disease strikes.

Second – where does he get the data that says five flu shots makes it ten times more likely that you'll get Alzheimer's disease? That’s a very specific number. What study could this have come from? He didn’t just make it up did he? Nah, surely not.

Then, get this about the polio vaccine – that has virtually wiped out polio from the world:

KING: Polio was eliminated.

MAHER: Yes but, you know, there are many books out that will -- that will -- and I'm not well enough versed on it to talk about it that will indicate that there are other reasons why it was.

And a lot of diseases that have been they say, whoa, this was eliminated because of a vaccine, they find out well no actually the country got toilets and that's what happened.

This idea that better hygiene and sanitation meant that diseases had already begun to disappear before vaccines were introduced, is just more anti-vax nonsense. Yes, better sanitation helped, but vaccines were still the reason most diseases have gone away. I suppose we should be grateful Maher doesn’t want any kids – we don’t want any more unvaccinated kids in the country.

I decided to email bill and ask about that ten times figure:

Bill:

On Larry King tonight you said “if you have a flu shot for more than five years in a row, there's ten times the likelihood that you'll get Alzheimer's disease”. Can you please provide the source for that statement? I’m ideally looking for a citation in a peer reviewed scientific journal, but I’d be interested in any source you have.

Unless there is something to back it up, your comment would also seem like a scare tactic.

I’ll let you know if he replies.

Of course, you could also Email Bill and ask him where he gets his information from. If you wanted.

Polio’s spread halted

Polio has been wiped out in 10 African countries, according to the World Health Organization, the BBC reports:

No cases have been found in the 10 west and central African state since June.

"This is the light at the end of the tunnel," said Bruce Aylward, WHO co-ordinator for the eradication of polio.

"The world can be polio-free in another 18 months everywhere and the poorest countries in the world are committed to turning this around."

All thanks to vaccination.

The polio outbreak began in 2003 when Islamic clerics in Nigeria organised a boycott of the polio vaccine, claiming it was part a western plot against Muslims

And they say the world can be free of polio in 18 months if the anti-vaccination and religious nuts can be kept at bay.

Kennedy wrong again

Robert Kennedy has been Huffington Posting again, this time suggesting that we study the Amish to see if vaccines are a cause of autism:

If Dr. Fineberg genuinely wants to test his assertions about Thimerosal safety with epidemiological data, he should commission a study comparing American children who were exposed to vaccines to (sic) the Amish, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists or others, who, for religious reasons, did not receive Thimerosal-laced vaccines.

A recent survey by United Press found that autism is virtually unknown among Pennsylvania's large Amish populations -- a strong indication that vaccines are indeed a principal culprit of the epidemic. Despite the repeated urgings of independent scientists and the families of autistic children, the federal agencies involved have refused to commission such a study and have closed federal vaccine files in order to derail the creation of those studies by outside scientists.

(My bold.)

It was encouraging to note that many people in the comments could immediately see the flaws in Kennedy’s reasoning. I’ll repeat a few of them below.

First, a “survey by United Press” is hardly solid evidence that there is virtually no autism in the Amish. Maybe it is true, I don’t know, but it sure can’t be taken as a given, and I’m not going to take Kennedy’s word for it.

Secondly, even if true, it is absolutely not “a strong indication” that vaccines are responsible for Autism. In fact, it means virtually nothing: there are many other confounding factors that could contribute towards this supposed piece of data.

The first obvious confounding factor would be genetics: the Amish are largely an inbred community with many genetic diseases. They could easily have a genetic immunity to autism.

Other confounding factors would be the Amish’s many lifestyle differences. For example, they shun much else of modern medicine (not just vaccines), such as ultrasound tests. Additionally, they have a diet of home grown organic un-pasteurized food with no hormones. Theirs is also a typical pre-World War II rural diet: meat, potatoes, gravy, eggs, vegetables, bread, pies, cakes, with no fast food. I’m not saying any of these things are what gives them protection. I am saying that these (and no doubt numerous other lifestyle differences) are confounding factors that would mean the simple “no autistic Amish = vaccinations are to blame” conclusion that Kennedy appears to be suggesting, is absurd.

One interesting comment referred to a recent article suggesting that Autism might be the product of both parents being systems-type thinkers, rather than empathizers:

One needs to be extremely careful in advancing a cause for autism, because this field is rife with theories that have collapsed under empirical scrutiny. Nonetheless, my hypothesis is that autism is the genetic result of "assortative mating" between parents who are both strong systemizers. Assortative mating is the term we use when like is attracted to like, and there are four significant reasons to believe it is happening here.

FIRST, both mothers and fathers of children with autism complete the embedded figures test faster than men and women in the general population.

Second, both mothers and fathers of children with autism are more likely to have fathers who are talented systemizers (engineers, for example).

Third, when we look at brain activity with magnetic resonance imaging, males and females on average show different patterns while performing empathizing or systemizing tasks. But both mothers and fathers of children with autism show strong male patterns of brain activity.

Fourth, both mothers and fathers of children with autism score above average on a questionnaire that measures how many autistic traits an individual has. These results suggest a genetic cause of autism, with both parents contributing genes that ultimately relate to a similar kind of mind: one with an affinity for thinking systematically.

This sort of thinker – scientifically inclined rather than emotional and with social sensitivity – would probably be unlikely to join / more likely to leave the highly regimented and religious Amish. Consequently the “systems thinker” trait would be rare in Amish – and very rare in both parents.

Of course, if the Amish really do have no autism, then a study into the reasons would be extremely useful. It’s just that the rather childish study Kennedy appears to be suggesting would be a waste of time. I don’t know if a study of the Amish could be designed that would reveal anything useful regarding autism. I just know Kennedy’s idea is absurd.

Sticking up for thimerosal

There is an interesting article in today’s Slate Magazine covering the thimerosal issue and Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s involvement. It points out some of the flaws in the Geiers’ work:

The main Geier approach is to mine data from a CDC reporting system that contains a mishmash of real and garbage vaccine-injury allegations, according to the vast majority of the scientists who work in this area. The Geiers have found a sixfold increase in autism in children who got thimerosal-containing vaccines. But nearly all the reports of autism they tallied came after allegations of the vaccine link had been publicized in the newspapers. In other words, the Geiers report the public's response to a scare as if it were meaningful data.

And it talks about other possible reasons for the supposed increases in autism:

A far more obvious explanation for the increase in autism rates in California was the one that mainstream autism experts expounded: diagnostic changes, new laws that expanded federal payments to care for autistics, and greater parental awareness of these resources. In 1990, Congress made autism one of the disabilities that qualified for federal funding. Thereafter, states were obliged to report all cases of autism. In a Minnesota study, to take one example, admissions of autistic children to developmental programs jumped starting in the 1991 school year and continued to do so for a decade. Often these increases occurred within the same grade. For example, 13 autism cases were reported per 10,000 Minnesota 6-year-olds in the 1995-96 school year—that is, among children born roughly in 1989. Five years later, the prevalence rate for this cohort was reported at 33 per 10,000. These were the same kids. Between the ages of 6 and 11, they'd suddenly "become" nearly three times as autistic—or rather, doctors, parents, and school counselors were enrolling them in programs more aggressively.

The author concludes he doubts vaccines are the cause of autism.

Skeptico wins another award

… or at least a testimonial. From Orac I learn today that regarding my autism posts, Skeptico is one of

the top three "skeptical bloggers" on the issue

… the other two being Orac and Autism Diva. I’m honored.

Seriously, read Orac today expose the logical fallacies and complete lack of meaningful content in this piece by Karl Bode.  Also, read a piece just about me (be sure to read the comments).

Edited to add:

If you click on the “just about me” link above to see Karl’s post about me, and if you read the comments to that post, you should know that Karl has edited virtually all of his comments where he replies to me, to try to make his posts look slightly less stupid than they were originally. Click on the comments below to see an example of what I am talking about. So far I don’t think he has edited any of my comments, but who knows what he will do in the future. He has now closed his post to comments.

Of course, this is very intellectually dishonest and a definite no-no on internet boards. It is the sign of a frightened immature poster who realizes he has made a fool of himself and has no answer but to change history by altering the actual posts that I did, in fact, reply to.

Kennedy admits he’s not qualified to talk about vaccines or autism

Last night on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”, Robert F. Kennedy Junior admitted that he’s not qualified to talk about vaccines or autism:

“It’s not really my area”

… a crestfallen Kennedy admitted to host Jon Stewart. And despite repeated questioning by Stewart, Kennedy would not be drawn on why ABC’s autism special did not support Kennedy’s accusation of a link between autism and mercury in vaccines:

“I’ve no idea what happened”

… he said defensively, the desperation showing in his voice as he sidestepped why ABC did not buy into the scaremongering tactics of a lawyer, but had instead chosen to listen to the qualified scientists on the issue. However, instead of taking immediate steps to quell the panic instigated by his earlier dishonest article in Salon, Kennedy used the rest of the interview to cover his now admitted lack of expertise with some even more hysterical claims, including that 1 in 6 American children had become brain damaged due to vaccines.

Kennedy and his cohorts, many of them sincere, even idealistic, who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal, claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from autism. They are badly misguided. Now they have at last admitted they are not qualified, they should stop this dishonest campaign.

Post Script

If Kennedy or any of his supporters were to read the above article and compare the quotes with a full transcript of the interview, they might suggest that I had quote-mined the interview and reproduced those quotes out of context to prove my pre-conceived opinion. They would be right. Now they know how it feels. (And you can see how easy it is.)

In reality Kennedy repeated his usual crap, with a couple of new “facts” thrown in for good measure. Some of the low points:

It was “unnecessary to add (thimerosal) to the vaccines”

Not strictly true. Kennedy selectively chose to ignore the fact that thimerosal was a preservative, and that it actually had a purpose.

“Today, one in every six American children born (between 1989 and 2003) has some degree of neurological disorders”

Of course, no source was given for this statistic; I have no idea if it is true, although I’m skeptical. Kennedy didn’t actually say that 1 in 6 children had neurological disorders because of vaccines, but it was certainly implied given what they were discussing - very seriously dishonest.

There is “very strong science, really overwhelming science linking these autism rates to thimerosal in vaccines”.

What science could this be? Well, it couldn’t be this study that showed no link. Or this one. Or this comprehensive review of the literature. Could he be talking about the kind of flawed research the Geiers produce? Surely not.

“If you actually read the science which most journalists don’t do, the science is overwhelming that there is a link between the autism and the thimerosal.”

(My emphasis.)

(Damn, that’s another irony meter broken.)

“These people have been caught red handed conspiring to hide this information from the American people”.

Actually I’m getting really sick of this crap from Kennedy. He is presumably talking about the Simpsonwood conference which was an honest attempt by scientists to evaluate the science on the subject, not a cover-up as Kennedy claims. Or perhaps he’s talking about the IOM meeting which was another honest attempt to design the parameters of a study to get to the truth, not a cover up as Kennedy also alleged. Either way, Kennedy can’t claim any more that he doesn’t know that the Simpsonwood conference or he IOM conference weren’t conspiracies. He’s just lying.

All in all, it’s depressing that Kennedy can get airtime to present this stuff without the counter-position being made known too.

Citizen Cain corrects Kirby

There’s a new blog in town: Citizen Cain looks at David Kirby’s claim in the Huffington Post:

For months now, a mantra of the thimerosal defenders has been as follows: “Mercury was removed from vaccines years ago, and we have not seen a drop in autism rates.”

It looks like they might have to find a new slogan.

Freshly reported numbers out of California show that new cases entering that state’s disability system (children who are three-to-four years old and newly diagnosed with autism) have indeed dropped since 2002, marking the first decline in new autism cases since California began tracking the mysterious disorder.

It’s not easy to see where Kirby gets his figures (he says “fresh numbers out of California”), but Cain uses the same California DDS that Kirby presumably used (except that Cain actually provides a link), to produce the following table:

It looks to me as though autism is rising slightly, not falling as Kirby claims. Citizen Cain comments:

As you can see, caseload in the 3-5 year old group increased during every quarter, at a fairly constant rate, even as exposure to mercury in vaccines was decreasing. Completely the opposite of the picture portrayed by Kirby! Moreover, caseload over this period increased by 38 percent among 3-5 year olds, but by only 34 percent among 6-9 year olds, although even by mid-2005 nearly all of the children in this category were born prior to 1999. If the thimerosal-autism theory were correct, caseloads should have been increasing faster in the 6-9 year old category, in which there has been essentially no change in thimerosal exposure, than among the 3-5 year old category, in which thimerosal exposure has plummeted.

So, if we’re going to trust the California data, it’s pretty clearly telling us that removing thimerosal from infant vaccines isn’t an effective way to reduce autism.

What Kirby is on about is anyone’s guess.

Cain ends with the hope that Kirby will now correct the record. Ha, I see that like me, he likes to end with a joke.

SkepDic weighs in

Bob Carroll of the Skeptics’ Dictionary has weighed in with some interesting angles on Robert F. Kennedy’s scaremongering piece in Salon.

Carroll starts off examining the argument for protecting the vaccine industry against lawsuits, and highlights a problem with the use of lawsuits that he first wrote about (quoting Marcia Angel),with regard to silicone implants:

What causes this is the use of expert witnesses. The expert gives an opinion, and that becomes the evidence. Since they are hired by the adversaries, they get the most extreme people they can find. In science it's the opposite. It doesn't matter who you are; what matters are what your data say

What he’s saying is that the actual data will not matter in a lawsuit, once the lawyers get hold of it. That’s because courts of law are not about determining the truth, they are about advocates for opposing views presenting their case as strongly as possible. Carroll concludes the vaccine industry does need some protection against lawsuits.

Carroll also discusses the Simpsonwood conference, and touches on Kennedy’s out-of-context quote mining that Orac, Majikthise and I commented on before, and discusses the whole “conflict of interest” (non) issue.

Having looked at the detail, he then examines the broad question:

Is there any truth in Kennedy's article? There may well be but I am not going to waste my time tracking down every claim he makes since I already know that he has distorted some very important data and twisted facts to serve his purpose. There is no way to close this issue of mercury and autism. Whatever data is available can always be mined for some gem that supports the conspiratorial theory and there is always hope that some future study will provide some support for the causal belief. No study will ever be able to show with absolute certainty once and for all that thimerosal or any other substance does not cause autism in some people some of the time.

In the meantime, we must ask ourselves what is the likelihood that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the American Academy of Pediatrics have joined a drug cartel to dupe the public by agreeing that there is no evidence linking thimerosal and autism? Are we to believe, for example, that the WHO made it all up when they published the results of a study that examined the health records of 109,863 children born in Britain from 1988 to 1997 and found that children who had received the most thimerosal in vaccines had the lowest incidence of developmental problems like autism?* Or are we to believe the parents of autistic children who are desperately seeking a villain?

I wish I’d written that. Carroll then quotes at length a section he wrote on this subject over three years ago, and it is striking that he could just have well as written it today. A good read.

Skeptico wins four tiaras

It is with great pleasure that Skeptico accepts this award from Autism Diva – her highest award. It’s so unexpected, it’s the first award Skeptico (the blog anyway) has won. I had nothing prepared and don’t know what to say except a very big thank you and you’re welcome.

I will display them here for all to see and pine for.

Oh and checkout three reasons not to believe in an autism epidemic, and other recent posts, at Autism Diva.

Lies, damn lies, and quote mining

OK, I’ve just read a second lengthy document that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his fellow travelers say is proof of a CDC/IOM cover-up, and I’ve found it is nothing of the kind. In fact it quite strongly shows the opposite.

First, a refresher. Kennedy wrote a scare piece linking thimerosal to autism, stating that a CDC meeting had spent days covering up a supposed link. I wrote a piece showing how Kennedy’s article was totally dishonest, and my conclusion was later confirmed and expanded upon by Majikthise. Kennedy also claimed in his article that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) had been paid by the CDC to further bury this so-called link, and presented several (un-sourced) quotes to support this claim. The IOM’s president replied that the quotes were taken out of context, and denied that they were part of any cover up. I reported on this, stating that Kennedy should offer evidence (with cites) of the original quotes (in context) and evidence of the “paid cover-up” that he so scandalously alleged. He hasn’t done so, as far as I am aware.

My post generated several comments, including several from a poster calling himself “Critical Thinker”, who did manage to find the transcript that contained the Kennedy IOM quotes. He challenged me:

Here is a link to the full IOM report. Read this document. Then tell me how I can possibly believe that the CDC did not want the IOM to find a link (Note by Skeptico: presumably he means “find no link”) and that the IOM had not already made up their mind BEFORE the study started that they would find no link between thimerosal and autism. Explain to me how these quotes are taken out of context as the IOM president would like us to believe. Here are some specific quotes that I find most concerning:

Page 32 Dr. Kaback:

"We have got a dragon by the tail here. At the end of the line, what we know is -- and I agree -- that the more negative that presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization, and we know what the results of that will be.

We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work out way out of the trap, I think, is the charge."

Page 34 (Note: actually page 33) Dr. McCormick:

"I am wondering, if we take this dual perspective, we may address more of the parent concerns, perhaps developing a better message if we think about what comes down the stream as opposed to CDC, which wants us to declare, well, these things are pretty safe on a population basis."

Page 72 (Note: actually page 74) Dr. Stratton:

"We said this before you got here, and I think we said this yesterday. The point of no return, the line we will not cross in public policy is pull the vaccine, change the schedule.

We could say it is time to revisit this, but we would never recommend that level. Even recommending research is recommendations for policy.

We wouldn't say compensate, we wouldn't say pull the vaccine, we wouldn't say stop the program."

Page 95 (Note: actually page 97) Dr. McCormick:

"What I am trying to get at is, do we want to simply, on our gut, say looking at the significance of the wild disease that you are protecting, and the seriousness and potential association with the vaccine - because we are not ever going to come down that it is a true side effect - is that going to be sufficient for you to judge public health impact?"

These did appear to be the quotes Kennedy was using. So I read the full transcript and the following is what I find those quotes to really mean, in context.

NOTE: I have shown the portion of the quotes that Kennedy included, highlighted in yellow. I believe that makes it clearer which bits Kennedy included and which bits he left out.  It should be easier this way, for you to make your own mind up as to whether the bits Kennedy missed out (ie the non-highlighted text), alters the meaning.  All additional bold is mine.

Page 32 Dr. Kaback:

The first quote is preceded by a lengthy discussion on how most people are bad at understanding statistics and determining relative risks (several anecdotes are recounted). There is a discussion about how there are always risks to anything, and that sometimes one risk trades off against another, and that people have to make decisions about these trade-offs. Finally, there is the recognition that, in reality, doctors only have a little time (1.6 or 1.7 minutes are quoted), to explain these factors to their patients. Then we have this:

It (the doctors’ explanation) all has to be done in 1.6 minutes in a way that they can make a – I will come back another time and give you a nice anecdote about informed decision making.

That, of course, is threaded through all our vocabularies, this great notion of informed choices that patients make.

We need to think a lot about that. We have got a dragon by the tail here. At the end of the line, what we know is -- and I agree -- that the more negative that presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization, and we know what the results of that will be.

We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work out way out of the trap, I think, is the charge. It does have a kinetic component.

That’s why I think we can’t sit two years to do it. (Snip)

Of course, we live in a 24-hour-a-day seven-day-a-week media blitz on our public. They are always looking for things to fill up the time and the newspapers with. This makes a great story. So, we have a big job.

They are talking about how people don’t understand statistics, and how it might be difficult to explain certain findings, and how difficult this job will be.

Page 33: Dr. McCormick

Following immediately from the above is:

I took away actually an issue that we may have to confront, and that is actually the definition of what we mean by safety.

It is safety on a population basis, but it is also safety for the individual child.

I am wondering, if we take this dual perspective, we may address more of the parent concerns, perhaps developing a better message if we think about what comes down the stream as opposed to CDC, which wants us to declare, well, these things are pretty safe on a population basis.

This is a discussion of the need of parents to know if a vaccine is safe for their individual child compared with the CDC’s requirement to know safety for the whole population.  McCormick is proposing the committee additionally considers the parents’ concerns about the health of their individual children, instead of just safety for the whole population.

The whole flap around this quote is the wording “wants us to declare, well, these things are pretty safe”. She means, the CDC wants to know if they are safe. Seriously, the conspiracy believers need to grow up a little – it’s obvious what she means when you read the whole transcript.

Page 73: Dr. Stratton:

There is a discussion about just what the CDC wants to know from the IOM, with the conclusion being that the CDC primarily wants to know if there really is a causative link (ie doesn’t want to “whitewash” anything).

Dr. Stratton

I think there are two things we absolutely have to do and there is no doubt about it. We have to give them your best judgment of the causality assessment.

Exactly how you define that… you can decide.

This committee has to make a causality assessment. That is clear, and they have to recommend action, inaction, you know, how much action in some sense.

How you get from one to the other is your judgment. They have made suggestions for the things that you might want to consider. But we must give them a causality assessment.

Dr. Goodman:

… when you say action, how are you defining action? How far down the line are you defining actions?

(Snip)

Dr. Stratton:

We said this before you got here, and I think we said this yesterday. The point of no return, the line we will not cross in public policy is pull the vaccine, change the schedule.

We could say it is time to revisit this, but we would never recommend that level. Even recommending research is recommendations for policy.

We wouldn't say compensate, we wouldn't say pull the vaccine, we wouldn't say stop the program.

It really is very clear from the above that nothing is being buried. In fact, the key piece of information the CDC wants is, is there a causative relationship?  Stratton is saying that they must say if the vaccine is dangerous – they must “make a causality assessment”. But Stratton is saying this committee draws the line at policy – whether or not the vaccine must be pulled. And this is confirmed by an earlier quote (that Kennedy ignored), from page 16:

Ms. Davis: So our recommendations can then influence public policy, but we will not be specifically recommending that they follow them.

Dr. Stratton: Right. When CDC and I talked about sort of how far we would go, and the president of the IOM and I spoke about the project, it is clear that it is not the purview of this committee

(Snip)

We would never say that something should be covered, something should be pulled, some schedule should be changed, but just suggest the evidence is sufficient that they themselves take a look at it.

“Suggest the evidence is sufficient” – hardly a group who had “already made up their mind BEFORE the study started that they would find no link”. Anyone who concentrates on “the line we will not cross in public policy is pull the vaccine” and ignores “they must say if the vaccine is dangerous “is just not reading the transcript with an honest desire to ascertain the intent of the committee.

Page 97 Dr. McCormick

What I am trying to get at is, do we want to simply, on our gut, say looking at the significance of the wild disease that you are protecting, and the seriousness and potential association with the vaccine - because we are not ever going to come down that it is a true side effect - is that going to be sufficient for you to judge public health impact?

This quote comes in the middle of a long discussion about risks of disease verses possible risks of vaccines, and severity of symptoms, and how you would grade such things. It’s hard to be sure exactly what McCormick  means, but I think she is saying that it is unlikely they will be able to prove a causative link with 100% certainty.  Then she says, remembering that the disease and autism are both serious conditions, would being less than 100% sure of a link be sufficient to make a public health judgment. In other words, she is not whitewashing a potential bad outcome; she is suggesting that a less than 100% certainty of a link could still be reported as a bad outcome: the opposite of what the conspiracy believers want to think. I’ve read this section about 20 times now and that’s the only explanation that makes sense. None of the other discussion even hints that a decision has been made by the committee; in fact, they are discussing how to quantify their results. It’s probably just a bit of careless language (in a meeting lasting a whole day, remember – did you ever have a bunch of conspiracy nuts with preconceived beliefs analyzing your every word for a whole day?), and in any case, even if I am wrong, taking this one quote out of 199 pages and suggesting it means the decision had already been made, is frankly absurd.

The rest of the transcript shows a group of people discussing: how to do the studies; how to prioritize; who would be the best people to get involved; how to educate the public about the outcome; how to define association v. causality; the difficulty of diagnosing autism; how to evaluate data. Nothing on how to “whitewash” anything, as Kennedy alleges.

But that’ not it. In fact, I saved the best for last.

Walt Wants

I found the “Walt wants” quote. In the Salon article, Kennedy writes:

According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

This is probably the most disgraceful piece of out-of-context quote mining of the whole sorry piece. The following is the actual quote from Dr. Stratton, starting on page 123, with the only actual words quoted by Kennedy in yellow highlighter as before, and my bold:

What Walt said to us, and I know they are worried about, I mean, he said to us, saying something is category two, which means what Mike is calling category four, vaccine safety called category two inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation.

What he said is, telling me that it is still a category two isn’t enough to tell me what to do.

(Snip)

What Walt has said is, just telling me it is here isn’t enough. That is where he started to call what he wants, what everybody wants in the vaccine safety field is, break this one out for me. I am just telling you that is what they say.

First, you may notice that “Walt wants” doesn’t appear at all – that is a manufactured quote.  For the sake of this discussion though, I'll accept "what he wants".  ("He" being Walt.) More to the point, it is very clear from reading the whole thing that what Walt “wants” is to know if he should “accept or reject a causal relation”. Sheesh - "accept or reject" - it's right there in the actual words actually used by Stratton. "He wants the IOM to “tell (him) what to do”. So, very clearly, Walt is not dictating to the IOM what the conclusion should be, as Kennedy alleges. It is the exact opposite. Walt clearly “wants” the IOM to break it out so it is clear if the vaccine is dangerous or not. He says: “inadequate to accept or reject” is not good enough; he wants to know yes or no if it is dangerous or not.

Some In Context Quotes

Having said all that, now it’s time for some representative, not out of context quotes, that demonstrate the integrity of this committee:

Page 15 Dr. McCormick

…we could potentially come up with , there isn’t evidence for this one way or another, keep going full court press, or there is so much evidence to support this adverse reaction, pull the vaccine.

Page 73 Dr. Stratton

I think there are two things that we absolutely have to do and there is no doubt about it. We have to give them your best judgment of the causality assessment.

Page 83 Dr. Shaywitz

I wonder if we are just over-complicating the question that CDC is asking us. They really want to know – it is a complicated enough question for us scientifically.

They really want to know the causality of – they want to know about adverse effects.

Page 84 Dr. Kaback

…the real goal of this thing is to provide the public – not the CDC and not the congress, but the public – with a reasonable basis upon which to make decisions about immunization.

Hardly people covering anything up is it? Or, to paraphrase, read those quotes and tell me how I can possibly believe that the CDC wanted the IOM to whitewash a link and that the IOM had already made up their mind BEFORE the study started. Do tell.

OK, that’s it. Enough! The conspiracy believers have taken their best shot – and that was your best shot – and neither document quoted by Kennedy shows any conspiracy or cover-up. And frankly, taking a few out-of-context quotes from a 199 page transcript as proof of a conspiracy is pretty stupid anyway, but when the transcript reveals a group of honest scientists trying, with integrity, to grapple a difficult problem, it gets beyond stupid and is just thoroughly dishonest. It’s pathetic, frankly. If there really was a cover up, wouldn’t they have something better than this?

No more. Don’t bother throwing down a url linking to a huge .pdf with a couple of dodgy quotes in it and expecting me to read it. That’s over now.

Orac Thunders

Today Orac delivers another thundering rebuke to the Huffington Post and the rest of the thimerosal conspiracy believers. Interestingly, Orac compares the believers to creationists, a link that had occurred to me too. Orac notes their similar methods, for example challenging opponents to public “debates” (and writing popular books), instead of publishing in peer-reviewed science journals the way real scientists do.

And this really astonished me (although perhaps it shouldn’t have): Orac finds Kennedy in discussion with Scarborough continuing to lie about what transpired at the Simpsonwood conference:

There are scientists there from the government who are saying—who are reading the reports and saying, this is undeniable. There's no way we can ever deny this.  I am not going to give this to my children, but now let's hide this from the American people.  And it's that clear. 

And this is what I write about.  It's this language that I write about in the “Rolling Stone” and the “Salon” piece that is so shocking, where we have the guys who are supposed to be protecting Americans' health who are actually conspiring to keep this stuff in the vaccines. 

Kennedy is a liar. A liar. There can be no doubt about this now, no possibility that he just didn’t read the whole transcript. I can’t help but think if he had any real evidence he wouldn’t have to lie.

Thimerosal update

I thought I would link and summarize some other bloggers’ posts and other feedback on Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s ridiculous thimerosal scare piece that I commented on unfavorably last Monday.

My original thread attracted a lot of comment, and much of what follows here is relevant to those comments. For example, one commenter who (sometimes) refers to himself as “Critical Thinker” keeps referring to a paper entitled Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal Scandal that has been posted on Kennedy’s website. Apparently this is supposed to be evidence of the dangers of thimerosal, or of a cover up or something, certainly not a dishonest, inaccurate or sensationalist article like his Salon piece, oh no.

Autism Diva

Anyway, Autism Diva points out a rather interesting conclusion (via Michelle Dawson) from this paper. On page 40, Kennedy writes that American children received much higher doses of thimerosal than UK children, and especially, more in one day than UK children, with the conclusion that American children are at a much higher risk of autism than children from the UK (since thimerosal causes autism, you see). Okey dokey, keep that in mind and read on.

Ten pages later, Kennedy approvingly cites a paper by Marc Blaxill entitled, What's going on? The question of time trends in autism. Blaxill states that autism rates in the UK and the US rose by the same amounts, as these graphs show:

 

(Note: the graphs are easier to read at Autism Diva.)

The UK and the US both clearly underwent the same increase in autism at the same time, and both now have the 1 in 166 rate, despite the much lower thimerosal doses in the UK. Autism Diva summarizes:

Kennedy says that there's no comparison between the usage of thimerosal in the U.S. and the U.K., and if the Brits say they can't see thimerosal as a cause of autism it's because they have used so much less of it –

and Blaxill says that the increase of autism has been the same in the two countries.

(Snip)

The conclusion is: thimerosal usage has no effect on autism diagnosis rates.

That conclusion would seem to be entirely consistent with the data, although perhaps any critical thinker(s) reading could explain why this conclusion could be wrong.

(Of course, the conspiracy theorists in the UK blame autism on the MMR shot, since thimerosal is so low in the UK, but that’s another story.)

Majikthise

Moving on, I find that Majikthise has also read the full Simpsonwood transcript (I’m not the only one without a life, apparently). Like me, she concluded Kennedy had been dishonest about the meeting, or as she puts it:

Nothing said at Simpsonwood suggests an attempt to whitewash or cover up anything. The study got some interesting results, which later failed to withstand verification at the third HMO. Vaccine experts said some nasty things about anti-vaccine activists. That was about it.

She also makes some interesting comments on the actual data they were examining, and explains why no firm conclusions could be drawn:

Of course, there are confounds upon confounds. Care-seeking may be related to socioeconomic status, socioeconomic status to maternal mercury intake and breast feeding, and therefore to prenatal and postnatal mercury exposure, and so on. You can generate any number of alternative scenarios.

It is difficult to interpret the Simpsonwood data because the diagnoses of interest are so fuzzy. The study is trying to capture small differences in the relative risk for relatively rare conditions. As we learned from the recent JAMA obesity study, if you're studying a relatively rare phenomenon, like death at age forty (or infantile autism), small numerical differences between groups translate into huge increases in relative risk. Under these circumstances, it's especially important to be mindful of confounds that could account for small differences between the groups, e.g. local variation in diagnosis rates and diagnostic criteria in the case of relatively subtle and fluid diagnoses like "speech delay" or "attention deficit disorder."

As one of the pediatric neurologists at Simpsonwood pointed out, most of the kids in the study were too young to be diagnosed as speech delayed or attention deficit disordered with any degree of rigor. There's just too much overlap between the "normal" and the "pathological" curves at that age. Of course, once someone gets diagnosed with something, it's pretty rare for them to get undiagnosed, especially in the eyes of an administrative database. So, it's unclear how many kids with early diagnoses actually had a pathological problem to begin with.

All in all a very good write-up – worth reading the whole thing.

The Institute of Medicine

You’ll recall Kennedy accused the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of being part of the cover up. There were also some (un-sourced) IOM quotes that I had questioned. The IOM’s President replies:

Mr. Kennedy sought to buttress his misrepresentation of the purpose of the IOM studies by selectively using and fabricating quotations from the transcript of an organizational meeting held by the committee. He took words and phrases out of context, combined them and misrepresented them as direct quotes.

Hum, taking words and phrases out of context, combined them and misrepresented them as direct quotes – yep that sounds like Kennedy. The IOM president goes on to defend the IOM’s integrity, especially with reference to its studies being peer reviewed, unlike the work of many of the thimerosal activists:

Mr. Kennedy's piece does not mention that the IOM's studies on vaccines and autism -- like all IOM studies -- were peer reviewed (the equivalent of fact checking in the scientific community) by a group of outside experts before being approved for publication. The IOM, a branch of the National Academies, also follows stringent policies for reviewing the potential conflicts of interest or biases of individuals who are chosen to serve on its study committees. The members selected for the committee that reviewed vaccine safety issues had no links to the CDC, vaccine manufacturers, vaccine-related litigation or advocacy groups, and they had received no recent funding from the sponsors of the study. They received no remuneration for their work on the committee. The reputation of the National Academies for objectivity, integrity, independence and competence has been earned through numerous studies, and it is one of our most important assets.

Salon allowed Kennedy to reply. Amusingly, Kennedy pouts that the IOM President “offers no evidence of "fabricated" quotes”, as if Kennedy is all about evidence now. Of course, if Kennedy could offer evidence (with cites) of the original quotes (in context) and evidence of the “paid cover-up” that he so scandalously alleged, I might concede that the IOM President should back up his claim; but as I see it, Kennedy is the one unable to back up his claims, not the IOM President. Kennedy continues with more of the “conflict of interest” ad Hominem fallacious reasoning Orac and I have debunked before.

Michael Fumento

Finally, Michael Fumento writes in the Wall Street Journal online:

…Mr. Kennedy isn't to be relied upon for facts. He told Mr. Scarborough in a June 21 interview: "We are injecting our children with 400 times the amount of mercury that FDA or EPA considers safe." Yet four days earlier this correction to his piece appeared: "The article also misstated the level of [mercury that infants have received]." It was "40 percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methyl mercury." Mr. Kennedy not only ignored this correction on Mr. Scarborough's show; he overstated it even further.

(My bold.)

Kennedy being loose with the facts. Wow! And Fumento comments on how Kennedy relies on people who will agree with him, rather than on people with expertise who don’t:

…Mr. Kennedy quotes from vaccine conspirators like Boyd Haley, "one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity." Actually, Mr. Haley has co-authored, since 1993, a total of five mercury-related publications listed on the medical data base Medline--not exactly what you'd expect from a world authority. By contrast, Frank DeStefano, an epidemiologist at the CDC who does not believe that vaccines cause autism, has co-authored 49 vaccine papers.

Finally, Fumento debunks the conspiracy to hide the data:

Mr. Kennedy had claimed that "to thwart the Freedom of Information Act," the government "handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers." But this practice, Dr. DeStefano noted, was required by federal regulations to protect the privacy of autistic children and their parents. It still allowed access by external researchers but not to any Joe Blow with a FOIA application.

Nicely put.

Edited to add:

See the pretty good article in yesterday's New York Times which included this quote from David Kirby, the author of "Evidence of Harm" that premotes the link between thimerosal and autism:

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

Yes it should, David, if you are right.

RFK Jr. gets the RFK Jr. treatment

I refer to my piece on Monday: Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s completely dishonest thimerosal article.

Remember how Kennedy’s article starts off with emotive language – the meeting is at an “isolated” conference center “nestled in wooded farmland… to ensure complete secrecy”, etc.?

Well, according to MSNBC News, Cult News and others, earlier this year Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke at the headquarters of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment – that’s the cult of the 35,000 warrior chief channeled by Judy Z. Knight. (I wrote about this group in my review of the film What The (Bleep) Do We Know!? (sic).)

Kennedy spoke at Ramtha? Hum. If I take the information on Kennedy’s talk to Ramtha and give it the same treatment as Kennedy does in the first paragraph of his article, I could write something that starts:

In March 2005, a restricted audience composed only of Ramtha’s current students, gathered for a meeting with Robert F. Kennedy Junior at the isolated Ramtha compound in Yelm, WA.  Convened by a 35,000 year old warrior spirit from Atlantis, the meeting was held at JZ Knight’s ranch, a place of special beauty nestled in deep serenity at the foothills of Mount Rainier, to ensure complete secrecy.

Sounds suspicious, doncha think? Perhaps I’ll write an article for Salon and Rolling Stone. All I need is a long boring transcript of the meeting that no one will read and I’m off to the races. Anyone?

Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s completely dishonest thimerosal article

I’m referring to his scare piece in Salon and Rolling Stone, linking Autism to the Thimerosal (mercury) preservative used in vaccines. Kennedy’s article has been roundly criticized by Orac (also here), Autism Diva, Blendor, Soapgun and no doubt others. I decided to hold off a detailed post until I had read the report in question. Even so, I felt Kennedy’s article had gotten off to a rather inauspicious start:

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy.

Note the emotive language – an “isolated” conference center “nestled in wooded farmland… to ensure complete secrecy”. Sounds suspicious, yes? Well, not really. Perhaps Kennedy should have read the actual full 286 page transcript of the meeting because then he would have learned (page 257) that it was only held there because there had been a Super Comp Computer Conference at the same time and that the Simpsonwood center was the only place available in Atlanta at such short notice. He might also have noted the closeted location had “created a spirit that (the meeting) benefited from”. But that would have robbed Kennedy of his sensationalist opening, I guess.

And the conspiracy mongering didn’t stop there. At the end of Kennedy’s first paragraph is:

All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

Sounds shady, right? Wrong. Again, if you read the transcript you’ll find the participants were actually told:

…consider it embargoed and protected until it is made public on June 21 and 22 at the ACIP. There is a plan to do that. (Page 256)

Completely different: it was only embargoed until official release later that same month. Kennedy seems intellectually dishonest in taking these non-issues and writing them up to make it sound as though there is something fishy going on.

Anyway, having set the scene to his satisfaction he launches into his sensationalist story.

The “Secret” Meeting

The experts were meeting to discuss a CDC study to evaluate if there were health risks from mercury in vaccines. Kennedy quotes scientists at the meeting agreeing that Thimerosal was responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. He goes on to state:

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.

(My bold.)

Wow! Serious charges that appeared to be supported by the selected quotes linked from the article. (And you’ll note, he only has these thanks to the Freedom of Information Act – we should be grateful to relentless investigative reporters like Kennedy, right?) However, having read the full 286 page transcript I am honestly at a loss to understand how anyone could possibly come to that conclusion. In fact, the meeting did not conclude that thimerosal was responsible for an increase in autism and did not discuss any cover up. It did discuss possible future studies.

The actual transcript shows this was phase one of a two phase study. The second phase would be carried out if phase one gave “any hint of an association” (page 30) that needed investigating. The first day of the meeting (pages 1 to 167), consisted of presentations of the data with much questioning and discussion of: the meaning of the results; what evidence there might be (or not) for a causal link; confounding factors (ie other things that might have caused the results). This is an honest group of scientists interested in getting to the truth, not a group “discussing how to cover up the damaging data”. Not even.

Then it gets interesting. On day two, the experts each get a turn giving their view on whether there is a causal link between thimerosal and autism. The participants were asked to rate the possibility of a causal link on a scale of one to six: one being a weak causal link, six strong. From page 189 to 222 you can read of one attendee after another (with just one exception) grading the likelihood of a causal relationship as being either a one or a two out of six. The mean value given by the group (page 253) was 1.8 - very little evidence for a causal link.

There was only one exception (Dr. Weil) who gave it a four. Guess which one Kennedy quoted? (No prizes.) Here are some more representative quotes I pulled from the transcript:

Part one, is there a causal association between ethylmercury and neurological effects noted in the Vaccine Study Datalink project? The answer is no. Why not? From a toxicologists (sic) viewpoint there is no dose response relationship (Page 191)

To me the increasing mercury levels in your population at one month… is so small that it would suggest to me that you have a confounder here. That this is not due to mercury. (page 213)

I gave it a value as 1. I think the strength of the associations are mostly weak and the weaker the associations, the more likely bias might explain some of this. (Page 217)

This is not designed as a study to look at the effects of these vaccines on the different outcomes, but it is using data collected for other reasons, so it is not a carefully controlled prospective cohort study to study. We are using data that was collected for other purposes. (Page 218)

Kennedy’s version is totally inconsistent with the transcript. Quite honestly, only someone with a preconceived belief in a causative relationship and who was fixed in that view no matter what the evidence, would view this meeting as “discussing how to cover up the damaging data”.

The “Paid” Cover-up

But it gets worse. Kennedy continues:

The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated.

(My bold.)

I have searched Kennedy’s article including the “Thimerosal resource guide” page provided by Salon and I have not found one shred of evidence that the CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to “whitewash” any thimerosal / autism link. It’s certainly a very serious accusation that I am not prepared to take on Kennedy’s say-so (especially considering the dishonesty in the bits of his article I have been able to check).

I presume he’s referring to Institute of Medicine reports of 2001 or 2004 that stated that there is no link between mercury and autism. I guess it would be too much for Kennedy to show what is actually wrong with these studies, rather than making wild accusations of a cover-up. And too much to show what is wrong with this comprehensive review of the literature in 2004 that also failed to find a link. I guess so.

Old Fallacies

The article goes on to repeat the old “links to vaccine industry” ad Hominem that both Orac and I have debunked before, and also quotes the (flawed) studies by the Geiers (ditto). I won’t labor the point – you know Kennedy is using fallacious reasoning.

When I first read Kennedy’s piece, I was shocked that there had apparently been some kind of cover up about thimerosal. It seemed I would have to re-examine my previous views on the subject as all good skeptics should when new evidence appears. And that was even though I have full knowledge of studies in Denmark and Canada that show autism rates increasing even though thimerosal has been banned in those countries for years. Even though I knew this, the article still sounded convincing. So I can well understand people reading this article and believing it and being livid with the vaccination industry, the CDC and everyone else involved.

But I now know Kennedy’s article is a shockingly dishonest piece of crap from beginning to end. Dishonest and manipulative. He starts with sensationalist language to imply there is something wrong going on, softening up his readers for what comes next. The scene set he, frankly, lies about what happened at the meeting. (Either that or he didn’t read the transcript – your call.) And in the absence of evidence to back up his claim, I suggest Kennedy also made up the bit about the Institute of Medicine whitewashing any embarrassing results. Kennedy wrote his alarmist piece in the knowledge that very few people (in reality – virtually zero) would bother to read the lengthy transcript to find out what actually happened.  It’s nothing short of shameful from someone who I had previously believed to have the highest integrity. My only question is, why? Perhaps he’s just losing it, I don’t know.

So does thimerosal in vaccines cause autism? Honestly, I have no idea although I doubt it – the increasing incidence of autism in Canada and Denmark despite bans of thimerosal would appear to falsify a causative link. But I do know that this piece of garbage from Kennedy has not advanced our knowledge. In fact it has probably put us back, as focus will be placed back on thimerosal rather than on looking for what really causes autism.

Update June 29, 2005:

Read the follow up article: Lies, damn lies, and quote mining – an expose of how Kennedy quote mined the IOM report to make it seem that it said the exact opposite of what it really said.

Salon and Rolling Stone go to the Dark Side

You may have seen Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s thimerosal/autism scare piece in Salon and Rolling Stone that is no doubt going to be quoted ad Nauseam by anti-vax nuts. I haven’t had time yet to read the 286 page report RFK cites, and I won’t comment in full until I have. However Orac today flushes RFK’s credibility down the toilet in a superb piece of writing.

Irony Alert!

The irony award this week goes to… Dr Jay Gordon who writes in the Huffington Post blog:

When medical research manipulates data to prove what you suspect is false, doubt the research, not your original impression.

Um, perhaps Gordon will apply that method to this post by (er) Dr Jay Gordon that refers to the “excellent research” by the likes of Geier and Geier. That shouldn’t be too much of a stretch: their research has been shown to be full of methodological errors.

Or perhaps he should look at the work of Geier and Geier and apply the method used in this post by (er) Dr Jay Gordon where he states a pro-vaccine study “borders on being worthless” because its lead author conducts trials sponsored by vaccine manufacturers. He concludes:

…the appearance of impropriety is strong enough to make me ignore the study. You should, too.

As Orac has noted, Geier and Geier make a living as expert witnesses against the vaccine companies:

David A. Geier, his son, is president of MedCon, a medical–legal consulting firm that helps vaccine injury claimants to obtain money from both the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and through civil litigation.

(My bold.)  MedCon - now there’s an appropriately named firm.

Dr Gordon, allow me to present these two guys:

Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

PS: Orac has just posted a much more detailed rebuttal of Dr. Gordon’s piece.

Huffington Post huffs and puffs

Today Orac has another piece on the Puffington Host’s anti-vaccination obsession. After several anti-vax pieces, the “Host” allowed one pro-vax rebuttal piece by Dr. Mark Strassburg, which was promptly followed by a content-free fallacy ridden “response” from Dr. Jay Gordon.

Gordon notes that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other pro-vax authors have “a very cozy relationship with the vaccine industry”, as though that is actually an argument against vaccines. Of course, this is just ad Hominen – attack the person making the argument rather than the argument itself. If he had any actual arguments refuting the research presented by the AAP or other organizations, he would presumably have presented them. I guess it’s easier to smear the source than provide any actual evidence.

Orac also points out the hypocrisy:

…why, then, does it not seem to bother Dr. Gordon in the least that David Geier and Dr. Mark Geier, whose research he once again singles out to cite approvingly and both of whom make a significant part of their livings providing legal counsel and consulting and expert witness services to parents pursuing legal action for alleged "injuries" due to vaccination? Doesn't that count as a financial conflict of interest? Yet Dr. Gordon thinks their research is "excellent." Or why doesn't it bother him that their work has been criticized for sloppiness and methodological flaws and they've been rebuked for risking patient confidentiality while mining the CDC's database.

Good questions I’d like to see Gordon answer.

The rest of Gordon’s post is equally bizarre. First, he dismisses Strassburg’s argument comparing birth rates and stork populations:

Dr. Strasburg’s reductio ad absurdum story about storks in Belgium is distracting and not germane to this discussion.

Huh? Reductio ad absurdum is defined as:

a mode of argumentation that seeks to establish a contention by deriving an absurdity from its denial, thus arguing that a thesis must be accepted because its rejection would be untenable

Strassburg’s point was that correlation is not causation and is totally germane to the discussion. Calling this reduction ad absurdum is, well, absurd. I guess Gordon has never heard that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy, or he would have understood Strassburg’s point.

Even more absurd is this:

The Institute of Medicine chose to ignore excellent research supporting a link between thimerosal and autism. Look at Dr. Geier’s presentation in particular.

Okey dokey, I clicked on the Geier’s presentation link and clicked on the study abstract, which concluded:

Conclusions. With the possible exception of tics, there was no evidence that thimerosal exposure via DTP/DT vaccines causes neurodevelopmental disorders.

Get that? The study concludes there is no evidence of neuro-developmental disorders from thimerosal (apart from – just possibly – tics). No evidence of a link. And this is Gordon’s “excellent research” supporting his position. It’s his best shot.

Well, I posted a comment to Gordon’s piece:

A completely worthless and content-free post from Jay Gordon. Stating that he AAP has a “cozy relationship with the vaccine industry” is nothing more than a poisoning of the well ad Hominem – insulting the messenger instead of providing any evidence of wrongdoing.

You should check out the work of some real bloggers who have commented on these ridiculous stories this site has been promoting

Orac provides sound commentary, and a rebuttal to Jay Gordon’s latest post, with evidence:

(With links to Orac, Autism Diva and Skeptico

I got the message that all comments are read before they are posted. It’ll be interesting to see if the Huffington Post is a real blog and allows my comment to be posted.

PS: I guess it is a real blog - they posted it.

More on Autism, mercury and chelation

Following from yesterday’s article, a couple more items on autism and mercury.

First, according to the CDC, symptoms of organic mercury poisoning might include:

paresthesias (pins and needles), headaches, ataxia (loss of the ability to coordinate muscular movement), dysarthria (difficulty in articulating words, caused by impairment of the muscles used in speech), visual field constriction, blindness, and hearing impairment.

While symptoms of autism usually include:

Abnormal reactions to sensory stimuli (i.e., senses may be over- or underactive). Touches may be experienced as painful, smells may be overwhelmingly unpleasant, and ordinary daily noises may be painful. Loud noises (e.g., motorcycle going by, vacuum cleaner) and bright lights may cause inconsolable crying.

Other signs of the disorder in infants include the following:

• Appears indifferent to surroundings
• Appears content to be alone, happier to play alone
• Displays lack of interest in toys
• Displays lack of response to others
• Does not point out objects of interest to others (called protodeclarative pointing)
• Marked reduction or increase in activity level
• Resists cuddling

They don’t look much alike to me.

Next, an article by James R. Laidler, MD, who was once an impassioned supporter of chelation therapy for autism, but who examined the actual evidence and changed his mind:

There were more treatments for autism than I could ever hope to try on my son, and every one of them had passionate promoters claiming that it had cured at least one autistic child—usually their own. There were blood tests, urine test, hair tests, saliva tests, brain wave tests and eye tests, all claiming to be able to find the specific cause for a child’s autism. And they had specific treatments for each of those causes. Sure, some of them were contradictory, but nobody seemed to mind that. What really caught my interest was the proposition that thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative in vaccines, caused autism and chelation therapy could cure it. Advocates of this idea spoke authoritatively, with impressive lists of references and well-designed PowerPoint slides. I was intrigued even though the children I had seen with mercury poisoning did not behave like my autistic son and the recommended dosage for the chelating agents made no sense to me.

(Snip)

In the following months, we stopped every treatment except speech and occupational therapy for both boys. They did not deteriorate and, in fact, continued to improve at the same rate as before—or faster. Our bank balance improved, and the circles under our eyes started to fade. And quite frankly, I began to get mad at myself for being so gullible and for misleading other parents of autistic children.

Looking back on my experiences with "alternate" autism therapies, they seem almost unreal, like Alice's adventures in Wonderland. Utter nonsense treated like scientific data, people nodding in sage agreement with blatant contradictions, and theories made out of thin air and unrelated facts—and all of it happening right here and now, not in some book. Real people are being deceived and hurt, and there won't be a happy ending unless enough of us get together and write one.

(My bold.)

He could be describing much of alternative medicine, of course.

Finally, an item today on the effects the anti-vaxers have, supported by celebrity idiots and the press, from the Guardian’s Bad Science guy. I wish I could write like that.

Mercury in vaccines and chelation therapy

A Californian couple is convinced chelation therapy has alleviated the symptoms of their autistic son, who they believe got his autism from mercury in the thimerosal preservative in a vaccine. Chelation therapy is a lotion or pill that strips the body of such heavy metals, and when supposedly treating autism is typically combined with severe dietary restrictions plus multiple vitamin and mineral supplements.  The story goes:

Jamie Handley was a happy, healthy baby who reached all his developmental milestones until he turned 18 months, his parents said. Then, he started spinning in circles and standing on his toes and no longer responded to his name. They were eventually told he was autistic

(Snip)

For Jamie's parents, the proof they need is in front of them: Jamie, now 3 years old and several months into treatment, is plump and playing baseball. His smile has returned.

"Every day brings small, steady gains," said Lisa Handley of Lafayette "Our life is filled with hope and the conviction that Jamie won't just improve, but will completely recover."

Hum. It seems to me there are several questionable things about this story.

The first is that there is no evidence of a link between mercury in vaccines and autism. More to the point, there is even evidence of no link:

Denmark mandated removal of thimerosal from vaccines in 1992. Even allowing for continued use of thimerosal-containing stocks of vaccine, Danish children were thimerosal-free by 1995. Autism prevalence in Denmark has risen in exactly the same fashion as in the United States and the United Kingdom.

(Study here.)

Secondly, as I reported Michael Fitzpatrick writing a couple of days ago, the symptoms of mercury poisoning and those of autism, are different.

The third puzzle is why is this kid’s autism linked to thimerosal? According to Quackwatch, manufacturers stopped using thimerosal in children’s vaccines in 2000, and so few children now under age four have ever received a thimerosal-containing vaccine. However, this child is stated to be three years old. He could have been one of the “few”, I suppose.

But the thing that really puzzles me is this. Even if thimerosal does cause the neurological damage related to autism, and even if chelation removes all the thimerosal, why would this child be getting better? Surely the damage has already been done? I could see that perhaps he wouldn’t get any worse, but how would he be getting better? If someone can explain how chelation therapy can repair neurological damage already done, I’d be really interested.

Why do this child’s parents think chelation made him better? Impossible to say, but incorrect initial diagnosis of autism springs to mind. Or maybe they are over-optimistic in reporting improvements. In any case, you can’t draw any conclusions from just one story or from anecdotes in general.

I guess it is good to stop putting thimerosal in vaccines if it means more parents will vaccinate their children. And if thimerosal is part of the problem, the numbers of cases should begin to drop. Alternatively, the Danish results may be replicated, and autism may continue to rise regardless. I don’t know what the answer is, but I’d bet autism will continue to rise. And I’ll also bet that won’t stop the peddlers of chelation and other dubious cures from continuing in business.

By the way, I’ve just noticed Orac today has an excellent and more detailed article on vaccines and autism.  In addition, Autism Diva has more information on autism, mercury in vaccines, chelation therapy and related subjects than you can shake a stick at. A recommended read.

No evidence of harm

There is a new book by David Kirby, called Evidence of Harm, apparently supportive of the idea that mercury in vaccines causes autism in children. Of course, there is no evidence for this, but that hasn’t stopped the anti-vaxers. Refreshingly, Michael Fitzpatrick, a doctor, parent of an autistic child and author of MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Know, has written a critical review of Kirby’s book, entitled Mercury and autism: a damaging delusion. A couple of relevant quotes:

It is true that mercury is potentially toxic to the developing infant brain and that, as babies were given more vaccines, the total dose of mercury received increased (though it remained at trace level, and it has now fallen as immunisation authorities have, in deference to popular anxieties, shifted to non-mercury vaccines). Yet, exhaustive studies, carried out in the USA, the UK and elsewhere, and surveyed by the US Institute of Medicine in an authoritative report last year, have failed to reveal any link between exposure to thimerosal and autism (3). The so-called 'epidemic of autism', which some parents blame on vaccines, is better explained by the increased recognition of the condition among both parents and professionals and by the expansion of diagnostic categories. Though campaigners claim that the symptoms of mercury toxicity are similar to those of autism, on closer inspection, they are quite distinct. Mercury poisoning typically causes an unsteady gait and slurred speech, visual disturbances and numbness in fingers and toes. None of these features is characteristic of autism.

(Snip)

Though the increasingly unpopular drug companies provide a convenient focus for parental anger, there is little evidence to support the wild allegations made by campaigners and no reason why companies should pay damages in relation to unsubstantiated claims. Indeed, the real problem facing the government is supply shortages resulting from the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to continue producing vaccines. For some time an area of low investment and low profitability, vaccine production is increasingly threatened by the climate of risk aversion and litigiousness - as the anti-mercury campaign aptly illustrates.

(My bold.)

As well as frightening parents into not vaccinating their kids, the anti-vaxers are frightening corporations, who fear costly and time-consuming lawsuits, from making the stuff anyway. And all because of an ingredient that doesn’t produce symptoms anything like those of the thing they're using to do the frightening.

Mumps epidemic in UK

There is a Mumps epidemic in the UK, according to the BBC:

Cases are being seen in people born before MMR became routine in 1988 and children who have not been vaccinated, possibly due to vaccine safety fears.

(Snip)

The World Health Organization recommends that at least 90% of all those eligible receive the vaccine.

However, Dr Gupta's group said uptake of MMR among two-year-olds in the UK fell from around 92% in early 1995 to around 80% in 2003/4.

"In some areas of London, as few as 60% of two-year-olds had received a first dose of MMR.

"This would account for our recent experience with mumps in younger children," they said.

(My bold.)

Risks of disease v. risks of immunization:

Mumps

Cases: 200,000 per year before vaccine became available, currently 3,000-5,000 per year

Encephalitis: 2 in 100,000
Testicular swelling: 1 in 5 adults
Deafness: 1 in 20,000
Death: 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 10,000

MMR Vaccine (Mumps Component):

Severe allergic reaction: less than 1 in 1,000,000

Sigh.

Polio rises – thanks anti-vaxers!

Thanks to religious anti-vaccination propaganda, Polio is on the increase:

Nearly two years after radical Islamic preachers told parents to refuse to have their children vaccinated against polio for fear it was part of a U.S. plot against Muslims, the repercussions are still being felt: A Nigerian strain of the virus that causes the crippling disease has cropped up as far away as Indonesia.

In this case it is Islamic preachers who have been causing the problems. We shouldn’t feel too smug though: the West has its own anti-vaxers who also rely on ignorance to oppose such proven solutions. These range from quacks such as Naturopaths to celebrity idiots like Bill Maher. Whatever its source, it results in unnecessary suffering. Polio is a horrible crippling disease that has been eliminated in the Western world.

The same old fallacies are being employed, including:

I do not agree that we exported polio to any country. If these countries were carrying out vaccinations ... they should not have had any cases.

Wrong. Vaccination is not always 100% effective; it relies on what is known as “herd immunity”.  That is, if a sufficiently large proportion of the population is immune through vaccination, few people will get the disease because it can't gain a foothold.  However, there will always be people who cannot be vaccinated or for whom vaccines will be ineffective, for example people who are:

• Receiving immunosuppressive treatment, perhaps for cancer
• Allergic to the vaccine
• Too young to be vaccinated
• Unable to mount an immune response to the vaccine
• Inflicted with immunosuppressive diseases like AIDS.

These people need the herd immunity, it is their only protection. A small number of healthy people can freeload in this group also. But once more than a few start doing it, the whole thing breaks down. The lack of vaccination in Nigeria allowed the disease to gain hold and it spread to other countries where the disease had been eradicated, and presumably they had ceased full vaccination:

Fifteen other countries where polio had been eradicated have been re-infected from Nigeria since 2003, when northern Islamic leaders led a vaccine boycott.

(My bold.)

All thanks to anti-vaccination propaganda.  Good job.

Idiot week

It is idiot week on TV. I just heard Bill Maher (HBO) say that vaccines don’t prevent disease. Also, that Pasteur recanted on his deathbed. So what? Modern medicine relies on more recent studies than just Pasteur - his theories have been confirmed and improved upon, even if he did recant.  But wait - he didn't recant.  In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny: “what a maroon!”

Just look at this from UNICEF.  The vaccine didn't have any effect on Polio, Bill?  Really?

And what about measles, pertussis, smallpox… ?

Whenever a population believes an idiot like Maher and stops vaccinating, disease rates always increase. Always.

Idiot!