Way back in the day, when I first encountered antivaccine views in that wretched Usenet swamp of pseudoscience, antiscience, and quackery known as misc.health.alternative, there was one particular antivaccine lie that disturbed me more than just about any other. No, it wasn't the claim that vaccines cause autism, the central dogma of the antivaccine movement. Even ten years ago, that wasn't a particularly difficult myth to refute, and, with the continuing torrent of negative studies failing to find even a whiff of a hint of a whisper of a correlation between vaccination and autism, refuting that myth has only gotten easier over the years. Indeed, I know it's gotten pretty easy when even the mainstream media start to accept that the claim that vaccines cause autism is a myth and report matter-of-factly on issues such as Andrew Wakefield's fraud and don't give nearly as much copious and prominent media time to the likes of Jenny McCarthy. No, what I've found to be one of the most disturbing antivaccine claims of all is the assertion that shaken baby syndrome is a "misdiagnosis for vaccine injury."
I first learned of this vile concept when I learned of the case of Alan Yurko. Yurko gained "fame" (if you can call it that) when he was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of his 10-week-old son, who was shaken to death. Somehow, Yurko became the centerpiece of a campaign (Free Yurko) that featured as the centerpiece of its argument for Yurko's innocence the claim that shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is in realty "vaccine injury." Unfortunately, ultimately Yurko was released early, not because the courts agreed with the lie that it was vaccine injury, not SBS, that killed Yurko's son. Rather, it was because apparently the coroner's office where the autopsy was done on the dead baby was the most shoddily run morgue ever and incompetent coroner ever.
If you ever wanted to know how low antivaccine zealots can sink, let Australian skeptic Peter Bowditch describe it:
I want you to think about a dead baby. This baby was ten weeks old when he died. The autopsy revealed bleeding around the brain, in the eyes and in the spinal column. There were bruises on the sides of his head. Another thing that the autopsy showed was four broken ribs. These fractures had started to heal, and therefore indicated a pattern of physical abuse prior to the date of death. The father admitted to holding the baby by his feet and hitting him shortly before he died. I now want to you to form an opinion of the father. If you are the sort of person who opposes vaccination, you would see this man as a hero. You would see him as a martyr to the cause and would try to get him released from prison. In a breathtaking demonstration of what it can mean to believe that the end justifies the means, the anti-vaccination liars have adopted Alan Yurko as a symbol that they can use to frighten parents into refusing vaccination for their children. You can read a loathsome justification for this murderer at http://www.woodmed.com/ShakenBabyAlan.htm.
The claim that SBS is in reality due to "vaccine injury" ignores the wealth of clinical data indicating that SBS (also sometimes called "abusive head trauma") is a distinct clinical entity that has been well-studied and is probably underdiagnosed. Although there is some controversy over the pathophysiology of SBS and how much force is necessary to produce it (hence the additional term to describe it). Whatever controversy there is over the symptoms and findings in SBS, there is no controversy that SBS is not "vaccine injury."
Unless, of course, you're a rabid antivaccine loon like Catherine Frompovich.
So off the deep end is Frompovich that she penned a post for the Orwellian-named International Medical Council on Vaccination with the even more Orwellian-named subtext "critical thinking for a critical dilemma" entitled Bone Density Test Can Disprove Shaken Baby Syndrome. Pseudoscience doesn't get much more vile than this.
Frompovich starts out by touting her antivaccine cred:
Before I delve into the topic I want to discuss, perhaps you may want to know that I have co-authored several papers with Dr. Harold E. Buttram, MD, regarding topics such as Brain Inflammation, Basics of the Human Immune System Prior to Vaccines, and Shaken Baby Syndrome, which can be accessed at the International Medical Council on Vaccination website starting with Vaccines and Brain Inflammation at http://lawreview.byu.edu/articles/1325789487_13Seeley.FIN.pdf. In order to access the other papers, you will have to scroll through IMCV's archives. Dr. Buttram's name appears first on all articles.
Harold Buttram is downright "famous" (if you can call it that) as the guru of the antivaccine movement claiming that SBS is in reality vaccine injury. He's made a name for himself over the years. As I've noted, his bogus hypothesis has been featured in the journal of the crank organization, the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons. It also turns out that Buttram is a favorite of Medical Voices, which ultimately became the International Medical Council on Vaccination. You'll note that Buttram, unlike many "luminaries" of the antivaccine movement, doesn't show up on the blogs or websites of the "big three" antivaccine groups, Generation Rescue (and its associated blog, Age of Autism), SafeMinds, or the National Vaccine Information Center. Here's an observation. If your brand of antivaccine pseudoscience is so crazy that even AoA, Safeminds, and NVIC want nothing to do with you, you ought to take another look and ask yourself is maybe--just maybe--you're so wrong as to be not even wrong. When, for instance, the likes of Jenny McCarthy, Barbara Loe Fisher, J.B. Handley, and even Jake Crosby take a look at your bizarre hypothesis and respond, "Meh, I don't think so," you really ought to take a second look and consider the possibility that you might be a total loon. Of course, part and parcel of being a total loon is that you don't realize you're a total loon, and certainly Harold Buttram doesn't realize it. In any case, Frompovich has no clue that being associated with Buttram is not something a normal person would be proud of.
In any case, you might think that the idea that SBS is vaccine injury was an antivaccine lie so unbelievable and so outrageous that it would have died off by now through the sheer contempt and ridicule so justly heaped upon it by anyone with a modicum of critical thinking skills. You'd be wrong, as there are no depths to which some antivaccine activists will not sink. But apparently as recently as December 2010 Frompovich made a presentation before U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Advisory Committee on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV) about Shaken Baby Syndrome, along with Harold Buttram. What I wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall in that room. Were I a member of the ACCV, I don't know if I would have laughed or cried at the presentation. Maybe a bit of both. Either that, or I might have sat there in stunned silence, unbelieving that anyone would present an idea so patently wrong and actually believe it.
Frompovich's credulity, however, leads her to exult over a paper published in a law journal by someone named Matthew B. Seeley entitled Unexplained Fractures in Infants and Child Abuse: The Case for Requiring Bone-Density Testing Before Convicting Caretakers. The basic thrust of the article is that not all cases of unexplained fractures in infants are due to abuse. In other words, it's rather a massive straw man argument. Here's why. First, unexplained long bone fractures are not pathognomonic for child abuse. What's far more suspicious are injuries that are not consistent with the history given. Second, the term SBS is falling out of favor; the preferred term is now "abusive head trauma," which doesn't limit the potential cause of injury to shaking. Third, recent reviews have been very clear in emphasizing that the diagnosis of abusive head trauma is not a trivial matter and can be at times difficult. Indeed, they emphasize other conditions that can cause the usual triad (subdural haemorrhage, retinal haemorrhage and encephalopathy) that characterize the diagnosis. A review from just last year, for example, provides what it characterizes as the "exhaustive" list of conditions that can result in this triad:
- Chronic subdural haemorrhage
- Accidental falls
- Resuscitated SIDS
- Cortical vein and sinus thrombosis
- Inflicted injury
- Vitamin D deficiency
- Second impact syndrome (a second head injury, often very mild, occurring days or weeks after a first)
- Aneurysm rupture
- Rare genetic conditions
Notice that none of the conditions listed above includes "vaccine injury." There is no evidence that vaccine injury can cause the triad associated with SBS/abusive head trauma.
Indeed, the review is also notable for its emphasizing a "pragmatic" approach to diagnosing SBS/abusive head trauma. Another review describes the process of diagnosing SBS/abusive head trauma:
SBS is known to be difficult to detect and diagnose. Clinicians should use their own clinical judgment as each individual case is different and needs to be considered carefully on its own evidence...The diagnosis of SBS must be considered in any infant or young child who collapses with no obvious causes. Clinicians must maintain a low threshold of suspicion for considering this diagnosis.16 The diagnosis of SBS is usually made following a careful medical and social history taking. This ought to be supplemented by appropriate investigations.
[...]
Birth history, developmental milestones, and vitamin K status are also important to note. In most cases where a history of injury is given, it is reported to be of a minor nature and is not consistent with the severity of the infant's condition. A review of checklists of risk indicators for child abuse in emergency departments, shows that three history items are worthwhile considering: delay in seeking medical advice, an inconsistent history, and clinical findings that are incongruent with the history narrated by the accompanying adult.17
The authors conclude that the clinical diagnosis is usually based on a patient history that does not explain the clinical features. They also emphasize:
Laboratory investigations are necessary in order to exclude other medical conditions such as rare metabolic diseases (glutaric aciduria), coagulation disorders, and infective encephalopathy.24,25 Other investigations should include a septic screen to exclude infection--as subdural collections could be associated with meningitis, urine screening for toxicology, and a metabolic screen. It is also important to do a full blood count, repeated after 24-48 hours, which may demonstrate a rapidly falling and low haemoglobin level.
The paper that Frompovich touts advocates the use of single photon absorptiometers to measure bone density in children. While this might well be a valid tool to estimate bone density in infants, but this argument does not in any way support the idea promoted by antivaccine loons that the SBS/abusive head injury triad can be caused by vaccines. In fact, Frompovich even admits that Seeley would likely "bristle at the thought that vaccines can contribute to SBS." I have no idea what Seeley would think. For one thing, he's not a pediatrician, and he published no primary studies on this issue, nor is he a neuroscientis. Rather, he is an exercise scientist wrote a medical-legal review that is basically designed to suggest to other lawyers what sorts of techniques can be used to sow reasonable doubt in a jury considering cases of child abuse of babies who present with the SBS triad, and, quite frankly, I don't know whether he's pandering to a law audience or being incredibly simplistic when he argues that there's a huge degree of doubt because it's impossible to do a randomized trial to determine whether shaking can cause the SBS triad.
I kid you not. That's really what he writes, which is one reason why I was underwhelmed. Frompovich, not surprisingly, eats this up, so much so that she starts advocating subjecting children to bone density tests as routinely as Apgar scores and, in a triumph of speculation over evidence, suggests that the birth dose of hepatitis B vacine should not be given before a serum vitamin D test is done.
I have to wonder what Seeley thinks of his law review article being coopted into the service of a particularly vile bit of antivaccine pseudoscience. In essence, Frompovich's invocation of Seeley's review article is designed to sow fear and doubt about the very existence of SBS and then to imply, not so subtly, that if SBS is difficult to diagnose then it could well be vaccine injury. Never mind that, again, there is no credible evidence that SBS is in any way related to vaccine injury, and never mind further that the intricacies and controversies in diagnosing SBS do not in any way demonstrate that vaccines cause the triad of findings that characterize SBS. By publishing this sort of nonsense, the IMCV has demonstrated that there are no depths to which it would not go in trying to discredit vaccines.
Except that I just noticed that the IMCV went even lower. It published an article that I apparently missed when taking on Frompovich's article. It's an article by Harold Buttram himself saying--you guessed it!--that vaccines cause SBS.
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I don't think it's that, but rather that the most extreme of the anti-vaxxers think vaccines are so evil that they'll believe anything that will cast them in a bad light, so long as it can be given the flimsiest of justifications.
@MC - I would have to agree with you. If you ask anyone as AoA about which vaccines they would be in favor of, you get nothing but silence. It is hard to accept their coy "pro-safe vaccine" line, when they can't even find one good thing to say about vaccines in general.
Of course, this particular article does highlight how crazy some of those people are.....
It seems that out of the AoA crowd, at least John Stone supports this hypothesis, given that he reposted a frothing screed by that wingnut Yazbak on this topic in the JABS forum a few years ago.
http://www.jabs.org.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=960
Don't get me started on "exercise scientists"!
Has the "vaccine damage" defense ever been used in another case?
I shudder to think what could happen if that hokum started showing up as a legal defense.
I would like to know what Frompovich believes is the mechanism by which vaccines cause SBS type injuries.
Years ago I was treated by many quacks. Eventually thanks to skeptics and blogs like this I stopped accepting their treatments diagnoses. Looking up one of the quacks who treated me I discovered he testified in a trial of a man who was charged with murdering his three month old baby girl. My former doctor claimed that vaccines could have contributed to her death. The judge found my former doctor credible enough to find the father not guilty. While my treatment from this doctor was abysmal, I was surprised at just how bad a doctor he was.
This is the most idiotic line of bullshit I've encountered this week. But hey, it's only Tuesday !
The wiki for this guy is obviously made by an anti-vax person,
I can't believe that they would try to hide a murder in order to push their agenda. How low will they go??
Given that the ultimate aim of antivaxers, at least the true believers, is the needless death and suffering of children, it is not a huge psychological leap to defend, even praise, child killers.
Trying to hide a murder doesn't seem such a distant idea when you consider the risks the anti-vax crowd put their own children and their communities to by forgoing vaccines and urging others to do the same. Many more than the one death and many, many more injuries can be left at the anti-vax doorstep.
Unless I'm very much mistaken (my Google-fu is not functioning well this morning, and I'm at work so disinclined to really start digging), Yurko and his crew are also tight with the MRA movement, the implications of which are really disgusting, namely that blaming vaccine injury for the fact that you abused your kid to death is a hell of a way to a) get out of paying child support, and b) get back at your ex.
Far as I know, there is no low to which these guys won't go; they hit the bottom of the barrel and just keep digging.
An interesting thing to suggest given that many SBS cases are determined by *autopsy*.
I suppose the bone density thing might have been in allusion to some actual cases where the parents (of children still living) had charges of child abuse dropped when it turned out that the child had osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare genetic condition in which collagen is not formed properly. Many die within the first year; some survive to adulthood. Seriousness varies; some break bones if you look at them funny, while others are mostly normal. One famous example is Nabil Shaban, who Orac may know as the villainous alien Sil on "Doctor Who" ("Vengeance on Varos" and "Trial of a Time Lord Part Three: Mindwarp".)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteogenesis_imperfecta
But it's definitely not caused by vaccines, nor aggravated by them; it's genetic (though not always inherited; it can be de novo) and cannot be cured.
An interesting thing to suggest given that many SBS cases are determined by *autopsy*.
I suppose the bone density thing might have been in allusion to some actual cases where the parents (of children still living) had charges of child abuse dropped when it turned out that the child had osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare genetic condition in which collagen is not formed properly. Many die within the first year; some survive to adulthood. Seriousness varies; some break bones if you look at them funny, while others are mostly normal. One famous example is Nabil Shaban, who Orac may know as the villainous alien Sil on "Doctor Who" ("Vengeance on Varos" and "Trial of a Time Lord Part Three: Mindwarp".)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteogenesis_imperfecta
But it's definitely not caused by vaccines, nor aggravated by them; it's genetic (though not always inherited; it can be de novo) and cannot be cured.
Just to add to Rebecca Fisher's comment about John D. Stone supporting Yazbak on the JABs forum, and to correct Orac's statement,
"If your brand of antivaccine pseudoscience is so crazy that even AoA, Safeminds, and NVIC want nothing to do with you, you ought to take another look and ask yourself is maybe--just maybe--you're so wrong as to be not even wrong."
http://www.nvic.org/Doctors-Corner/Shaken-Baby-Syndrome.aspx
So now we know what The Council is keeping in Room 101: nonsense defenses for baby murderers. Until they come up with something worse, anyway.
I've also heard support for Yurko's despicable position at that festering sinkhole of informational miasma and disease-promoting biofilm** ( the Progressive Radio Network)- in fact, he's been featured in anti-vaccination -so-called- documentaries.
** where braggadocio is un-encumbered by neo-cortical activity.
Oh yeah? Well, um . . . um . . . vaccines caused . . . Teh Nine Allebbinzâ¢! Monsantoâ¢! Hitlerâ¢! (grabs head, grimmaces, veins and eyes bulge, head explodes, corpse retrieved by lizards in Obsidian Unitâ¢)
Anj:
Yes, it has. Arthur Allen has in his book, Vaccine, several pages on Buttram. It even includes him interviewing Buttram while he was being paid as an expert witness on a trial of parents accused of shaking their child.
Peter Bowditch also has on his site a legal article about the disturbing trend in shaken baby cases: DTP Vaccination or SBS?: The Role of Irresponsible Medical Expert Testimony in Creating a False Causal Connection.
Also, this Buttram article was cited elsewhere. I was amused by Buttram's lack of scholarship with this paragraph:
And the references he cited are:
63. Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California Depât of Health and Human Services.
64. Miller NZ, Vaccine Safety Manual, 2008; Sante Fe, NM: New Atlantean Press, p.102.
I would like to know what Frompovich believes is the mechanism by which vaccines cause SBS type injuries.
Instant "arterial scurvy" causing subdural haemorrhaging and overnight loss of bone strength.
No, really. Apparently vaccines leach vitamin C out of the tissues. Quite how this leads to overnight tissue transformations is a mystery.
Sometimes they appropriate existing medical terms and talk about "infantile scurvy" or "Barlow's disease" and gloss over the vastly different clinical description.
I also remembering reading that a proposed mechanism that vaccines were supposed to cause shaken baby injuries were the seizures. Since my son had had multiple seizures as a newborn, I knew they did not cause broken bones. The anti-vaxers on Usenet did not like real facts and that little anecdote raining on their little delusions.
On the upside, I suspect even the dimmest of antivaxxers might just be able to grasp this example of why some randomised trials are unethical.
it's impossible to do a randomized trial to determine whether shaking can cause the SBS triad.
There've been experiments with non-human primates, though.
Here's the be-all and end-all website for "Shaken Baby Syndrome". It includes the "experts" who have testified for the defense to let baby murderers out of jail, a list of "victims" (including Alan Yurko), who have been "falsely accused" of the heinous crime... and a host of "other explanations" (vaccines), that actually caused the deaths of these innocent babies:
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/sbs1.html
@herr dokter bimler: thanks for the information, although the supposed method raises even more questions.
@lilady: a page on whale.to. Why am I not surprised.
Hey folks, I need a little help. I tweaked Amy Lansky's nose a bit on a Mothering.com article, and got this reply. I could use some help dissecting it for a reply. To me even linking to Mercola is a huge flag of woo.
"The stuff you read about no studies supporting homeopathyâs efficacy, etc. are completely false, Iâm afraid. There are TONS of studies â many of them in Europe where homeopathy is used widely. I suggest you start really investigating this.
One good place to start is
http://www.nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org/articles-research
Interestingly, in most studies, the cases of people that were the MOST sick, with verifiable bacteria, viruses, etc. benefited the most from homeopathy.
Historically, homeopathy has been used for some VERY sick people. As I said in my article, the hospital in NYC that used homeopathy exclusively during the 1918 flu epidemic had the lowest death rate. And this was a charity hospital â i.e. the poorest people. The success of homeopathy in treating very serious epidemics in Europe and the USA was the reason it spread throughout the world, and also why medical doctors abandoned conventional medicine for homeopathy.
Modern studies in the lab (with rats â no possible placebo effect!) have also been successful.
Another good place to learn more is from my book (http://www.impossiblecure.com). Many more modern studies are always being done.
Homeopathy is serious medicine. It is also threatening to big pharma, which is why media coverage is slanted â big pharma is probably more powerful today than the military industrial complex.
See this article to learn more:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/12/22/Why-Skept…
I hope this is helpful."
@Lawrence: you keep saying that but I have told you I feel there may be some benefit in measles and mumps vaccine- given separately, though. I wouldn't vacc for pertussis since my kid got the vacc and got pertussis anyways. I would never give the HPV vacc given that we don't know if certain strains not in the vaccination could become worse and it makes no sense to give it to kids whose immunity may wear off by the time they get sexually active. Also I don't like it's safety profile. I foe one am glad they have found other reasons for the triad besides abusive parents. Many parents lives have been torn up over a lack of understanding of some of the risk factors Orac mentioned and they zeroed straight in on the parents! It almost reminds me of the rush to judgement of "conversion disorder" in the Leroy situation, rather than a more thorough look at environmental causes including PANS.
Meryl Dorey, of the misleadingly named Australian Vaccination Network, has gleefully jumped on the 'SBS is cause by the vaccines!' bandwagon.
She takes it to a new low by calling it 'Shaken Maybe Syndrome'. And yes, she thinks that's clever.
As an RN that worked in Emergency and also trained people in recognising children at risk of abuse this cavalier attitude to non-accidental injuries resulting in death, and the subsequent defense of the offender as a 'victim' of whatever conspiracy du jour, highlights for me the absolute moral bankruptcy that people like Dorey exhibit.
I think it's important to also realize that there are also a lot of legitimate concerns over the diagnosis of SBS and over the assumptions that have historically been made in criminally implicating particular individuals.
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/02-does-shaken-baby-syndrome-reall…
http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/21/a-shake-to-the-system
I think it's important to also realize that there are also a lot of legitimate concerns over the diagnosis of SBS
Do those articles make their case particularly well? The Reason piece recycles the Discover article, a law professor's survey, and a Ronald Uscinski who is part of the Buttram / Frompovich network of infanticide denialists. Given his cherry-picked sources, it is not surprising to find the Reason author blithely asserting that "A number of other things can produce these symptoms [of SBS}, including falls, head impacts, infections, birth defects, reaction to vaccinations, and surgical procedures."
The Discover Magazine article seems to rely heavily on a Dr Yazbak as a source. Some Googling around suggests that again, Yazbak has prior form (i.e. his own page at whale.to), and like Buttram and Uscinski, he contributes articles to the JAP&S (which is the John Birch Newsletter in a labcoat) explaining the latest theories on how vaccines cause autism. One of his income streams is providing defense attorneys with "other possible causes of baby Jakeâs hemorrhages, including adverse reaction to his vaccinations, a vitamin C and K deficiency, and/or a toxic level of histamine in his blood."
Here's an issue of JAP&S with contributions from the whole sordid crew, with bonus Andrew Wakefield!
http://www.jpands.org/jpands0903.htm
Why separately?
Your ignorance for how the pertussis vaccine actually works is no excuse for eschewing it. How do you know your child wouldn't have had a more serious case? Isn't something that attenuates a disease course better than nothing?
The long term efficacy remains to be seen although the safety profile is just fine or will you start spouting VAERS and AoA nonsense?
Kelly M. Bray @27 -- sorry, don't have time for a full takedown.
Go to Cochrane Collaboration
http://www.cochrane.org/search/site/homeopathy
No evidence after no evidence.
The 1918 bit is just a distractor.
I really do try to be objective when evaluating woo claims, but this is one guaranteed to send me over the edge into frothing at the mouth madness.
It sends me into the way back machine, way back in the early '80's, doing my first clinical rotations. Yes, I was wide eyed stupid. I mean, my parents had raised me with great care, didn't every family do the same?
Well, no. One of the children I was caring for at the hospital was a beautiful little boy..I think he was about 18 months old, who was pretty much brain dead. Everything I would do, he would have a seizure. try to feed him? He had a seizure. Change his diaper? He'd have a seizure. Try to pick him up for a cuddle? Yes, the poor little kid would have a seizure.
So, his mother wanted to let him die, just go and let the suffering be done. But his Father, who was the one who had shaken him, and cut his life short?.well...he and his lawyers didn't want baby to die,because then he could be charged with Murder. Which is what he had done when he shook his child and caused brain damage!
to Kelly who said that "homeopathy is strong medicine".
Hi. Thank you homeopathy guys soo much for compelling my mothers friend to forgo her cancer treatments. Those water pills were awesome when her colon exploded and she died in the kitchen. It was a slow, nasty and dehumanizing death. But sooo much better than "evil chemicals" that would have made her hair fall out. I mean, at that point she couldn't keep poop from falling out, but hair is important right??
I can't be "objective" about this. I'm tired of seeing people get hurt by Woo. My parents are both in ministry so I see more than my fair share of anti-science and it's killing people.We need to start holding these guys accountable just like a real doctor. They want to play grown and act like they know, then with rights comes responsibiliies.
jessie - FYI - Kelly is quoting someone else. She's looking for help refuting that nonsense.
Actually, it looks like Kelly is quoting Amy Lansky.
Ms. Bray, one way to counter Ms. Lansky (Phd in computer science) is to remember that her child was never officially diagnosed with autism. It was just her opinion.
There are lots of kids who have some language deficits for various reasons, but do catch up. My youngest son was one of those, he had a diagnosis of "dysphasia" at age three, and with some language therapy was caught up by age five. My older son, not so much... he definitely has more challenging issues (he has been going to some speech therapy over the last month to address some lingering issues, he is 23 years old).
In short, Ms. Lansky does not know what she is talking about. As you can tell from her reply, she is just pushing her book.
Personally, I would recommend staying away from the sMothering website, but if you wish to continue to tweek Ms. Lansky's nose I suggest you ask her to link to papers indexed on PubMed that show homeopathy curing non-self-limiting diseases. Some of the ones I have used were the ones that Hahnemann named as "miasms", like syphilis and gonorrhea.
Also, several years ago Dr. Steve Novella was part of homeopathy discussion where he was the only skeptic (it is mentioned on his blog NeuroLogica, My Day With the Homeopaths, Part II). From this article, I have often asked for the proof that homeopathy cures rabies. Here is why:
And to flog my own blog post, you can link to my recipe for homeopathy. Oh, man... I need to write another post. I've been a bit busy with my oldest son (since my "I Heart Well Child Check-Up" post last September, which include another ambulance ride, a hospital stay and a discussion on surgery, le sigh).
I offered some suggestions for Ms. Bray, but it got stuck in moderation. Le sigh.
Here's another (more extensive) article written by Dr. Yazbak about Shaken Baby Syndrome. Taking a lesson from the "VAERS Dumpster Diving Geiers", Yazbak analyzes actual VAERS reports:
http://www.nvic.org/Doctors-Corner/Edward-Yazbak/Multiple-Vaccinations-…
(Source: NVIC website)
I actually meant to post it to another thread. I was reading three of them at the same time. I had a duh moment. Must be the toxins, or the vaccines. Thanks for the help. I just needed a little direction to the right sources.
Kelly, I tried, but I included links. In short: Ms. Lansky never had an official diagnosis for her son, she is trying to sell her book... and we need evidence that homeopathy works for rabies.
You mean a more thorough look after it was whipped in a Gardasil froth? And not everybody had actually received Gardasil? And how this is going to look really stupid, so we'd better start talking about something else quick, because dropping Desiree Jennings like a hot potato got noticed?
Here's a link for a piece I did a few years ago:
http://kwomblescountering.blogspot.com/2009/09/parents-cause-sids-david…
This was done as a data analysis of 30 VAERS reports. A key observation: "17 (57%) of the deaths were reported as SIDS (the most feared of all technically non-existent maladies!). 11 of those deaths were noted to have occurred while the infant was in the parentâs bed..."
@24:
"it's impossible to do a randomized trial to determine whether shaking can cause the SBS triad.
There've been experiments with non-human primates, though."
That strikes me as inhumane to the lab peons. On the lighter side, a comment from cracked.com thm: "That's not a grin. That's a mouthful of large teeth being bared. The chimp is trying to tell you you are invading his space. If you don't understand this, the chimp will be happy to elaborate..."
@34 Navigator
There was a case in Ohio a few years ago. Child, brain dead due to SBS on life support. Mother's family wanted to remove the support, father fought it.
The reason? Once the child passed, the father would be charged in the child's death.
The case slogged through the courts. In the end, support was removed, the child passed away, the father was charged, tried and convicted. Thankfully without any attempt to involve "vaccine damage" as a defense.
@29 Ausduck
Thanks for giving me another reason to dislike Dorey. Sad though that the Woodford Folk Festival still had her speak recently, even with sceptical push-back - all for the sake of 'balance'. It would be nice to find a way to get organisations like that to pay more attention to what she thinks. I can't imagine why anyone would support someone who has that large a problem with critical thinking.
That a person who admittedly hits a 10 wk old baby is viewed not only not a monster, but a bloody victim is mindboggling.
I have to tell you, as a parent with two young children, I actually can comprehend SBS. I understand the frustration that can occur, and how it seems like you just want to shake the kid and say, "WHY WON'T YOU STOP CRYING?!?!?!" We teach new parents (in the expecting parent classes for which I volunteer) to avoid it by teaching them to recognize the situation when it occurs and to deal with it properly. It is not as evident that high acceleration can be harmful, and awareness is the key to preventing SBS.
In contrast, "holding a baby by his feet and hitting him" is not a problem of lack of awareness or understanding. That is just friggin evil. No, saying "I didn't shake him, I just hit him" is not a defense in my book. To be honest, I would be far more sympathetic if it were the other way around. Sure, I would still consider him responsible for the death of the child, but I could accept that it was inadvertent, and could attribute it mostly to ignorance. However, the claim of "I didn't shake him, I only hit him" is not inadvertence or ignorance, it indicates malice, and is vile.
A cursory look at the Free Alan Yurko website has plenty of articles, almost all written by Buttram with the cursory Al-Bayatti and Donohoe ones thrown in for good measure.
Wasn't Al-Bayatti the same doctor that declared that Christine Maggiore's daughter died of anything but AIDS?
@ kruuth:
Yes, he is. Actually, isn't he a vet?
Seriously?!? I tend not to pay attention to a lot of the anti-vaccine rhetoric, so I've honestly never heard that ridiculous idea that SBS is vaccine induced. While there are risks with any vaccine or medication for that matter, the lunacy of the anti-vaccine movement never ceases to amaze me.
Slightly o/t...has anyone read today's howler at AoA?
http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/02/the-trouble-with-the-anti-anti-vacci…
*It seems that AoA is upset that we lump them together with the other anti-vax sites.
Read the comments as well. Orac is mentioned and so is "Lawrence" because "jen" is pissed that Orac banned her sock puppets.
*Let's keep lumping them together...I want them to stay pissed off at us.
lilady, I don't want to raise my blood pressure, even with laughter. Oh, it is also great that you are now posting links.
And on another topic, there are now new cases of measles in Indiana because someone with measles was wandering around the Super Bowl Village. Good going AoA!
@lilady
Like Chris, I try to avoid that site for the sake of my blood pressure, but I couldn't resist giving it a quick scrollthrough for the lulz. I notice the phrase "medical communism" - would that make them medical McCarthyists, then?
The argument that NO PARENT EVAR would knowingly put their own child at a (very slight) risk in order to protect other kids is kind of hilarious to me, because that's exactly what my own Mom did. She's not a doctor or a scientist, but she educated herself about the diseases, and she knew about the risks of the vaccines, and, oddly enough, she still decided to vaccinate me and my sister. For everything, no less. On time, even.
She likes to tell me about her decision to vaccinate me and Kate for polio - this was during the OPV period, so she knew that the risk of me catching polio from the vaccine was actually much higher than the risk of me catching natural-type polio was. But she also knew that the reason it was so unlikely I would catch it was because of vaccination. And so, guess what? She vaccinated us anyway, knowing the risks, in order to maintain the herd immunity that protected us from the natural type.
C'mon Chris...you know that you will find my "link" irresistible. Yes, I did finally figure out how to "link"...in spite of being in my dotage.
Update: Two teenagers who were not immunized against measles exposed thousands of people at the Super Bowl.
http://www.wibc.com/news/Story.aspx?ID=1651803
@missmayinga
I see what you did there
@lilady - I saw that this morning. I was just itching to post something in return, but I figured it would have been pointless. It is nice to see that we are getting under their skin.
It's nice that we all are part of the coterie of people that AoA is pissed at.
*Perhaps Lord Draconis would consider having small gold engraved "I pissed off AoA" brooches/lapel pins made up and placed in our next goodies bags.
*I suggest that Lawrence's and Orac's trinkets be platinum.
@lilady - I also noticed that our cannabis troll seems to be making an appearance at AoA.....it'll be interesting to see how they deal with him.
Jesus H. Christ. It makes me sick, literally nauseated, to think of using that sick bastard Yurko as a poster child for anything. The only bright side, and it's a teeny tiney one, is that it may help discredit those anti-vax loons. Sick, sick, sick.
Dr.Bollocks@10
Given that the ultimate aim of antivaxers, at least the true believers, is the needless death and suffering of children, it is not a huge psychological leap to defend, even praise, child killers.
Not really.There is quite a good size contingent of the antivax community,that believes it's perfectly OK,that a certain number of immunocompromised children,become seriously ill,and even die,from vaccine preventable diseases.Helps weed out the gene pool of "defectives".
There is one especially vile woman,with a heavy German,or Austrian accent,who I am thinking of,who spouts such stuff.Her name escapes me right now.Ironic,because there are many autistics,like myself,who were born with serious immune problems.
@ 31 herr doktor bimler
Orac's first review of Shaken Baby Syndrome causes was written by Waney Spier who is publicly skeptical of SBS diagnoses based only on the triad.
A possibly better review than the Discovery article is a piece on CBC's Fifth Estate in January. :)
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2011-2012/diagnosismurder/ for readers in Canada.
Possible link for non-natives
Diagnosis Murder is posted online for screening. http://vimeo.com/35041114
password: shakenbabydiagnosis
Shorter but most interesting summary is on CBC's radio program The Current at
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2012/01/13/has-shaken-baby-syndrom…
Extended CBC interview with Waney Squier
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2011-2012/diagnosismurder/squier.html
Both films have annoying ads at the start :(
Thanks, jrkrideau. I tend not to watch videos due to a slow connection and low bandwidth (on the computer's part as well as my own), so I went and educated myself with Waney Squier's review article.
I also found a piece from Prof. Squier in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/13/beyondreasonabledou…
In the linked comment thread, it only takes *three comments* before some troll turns up with the "all-due-to-vaccines" argument. Barlow's disease, instant scurvy, Dr Yazbak says, blah blah blah. They're like vultures.
Roger Kulp:
Viera Schreiber (maybe Vera?) is the woman you are thinking of. Orac posted a video of her ranting away in an Australian news segment that.
IMO a despicable woman.
Thanks for the help folks. sMothering.com shows up on my wall posts and there are times I just have to reply on their FB page. There are people out there who are looking for legitimate answers and they are terribly mislead by this nonsense they spout. They offer a "exploring vaccines discussion group" but the only discussion is how vaccines are bad.
Mr. Bray, thank you for yet another reason to avoid Facebook.
@ 62 herr doktor bimler
I won't have a chance to get to the review article much before Saturday.
I understand the bandwidth problem -- in both senses.
Still, I'd recommend listening to some of Squier comments at http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2012/01/13/has-shaken-baby-syndrom…
Radio is a lot easier on bandwidth and her comments are 'interesting'.
Also the comments of Van EE (a biomechanic researcher on the force needed in SBS injuries is interesting as is Dr. Block (sp?) who denies any validity to Squier's or Van EE's reseach. It is not clear if he read any of it but he is head of, if I remember correctly, the American Pediatric Association and heads its SBS group.
Can I get drunk on homeopathic vodka, or will it do the opposite and make me sober?
Re: Shaken Baby Syndrome
h-ttp://www.nvic.org/Doctors-Corner/Shaken-Baby-Syndrome.aspx
Again, ken, that has been posted on this thread more than once.
Again, Yazbak defended Alan Yurko who murdered his girlfriend's baby. That baby actually had bones that had been broken that were healing, meaning the child had been continually abused.
Again, have someone help with the meaning of this bit that was quoted in Orac's article:
Yeah, because vaccines cause abusive men to hold babies by their feet and hit them. The next question is why should we support people who abuse children and try to get a court to believe it was a vaccine?
ken, Yazbak defended the person who "admitted to holding the baby by his feet and hitting him shortly before he died."
Actually read the whole article.
OK ken, we get it; you are an apologist for vile criminals who brutally kill their infants and a gullible fool to boot.
@Chris @Science Mom- you are both lying- citations please
Some day the truth will emerge and you will still be in denial.
Why should I believe you or Orac?
On the "anti-vaccine movement" thread, ken linked to a web post by Dr Frompovich, quoting an unpublishable article by Buttram, and arguing that vaccines contain peanut oil because they contain peanut oil, Really, that is the level of evidence adduced.
As interrobang noted back at #12, there is a lot of overlap between the infanticide-denialists and the Men's Rights Advocates who want someone or something else to blame when they're charged with killing a child. Is ken a MRA?
Re: Dr. Yazbak
h-ttp://www.nvic.org/Doctors-Corner/Edward-Yazbak.aspx
You are absolutely right ken, the truth is staring you in the face and you still remain in denial. This made me laugh given what you are using for "proof", which basically amounts to, "someone said something and I believe them".
Edward Yazbak, MD, FAAP practiced pediatrics and was a school physician in Northern Rhode Island for 34 years. Dr. Yazbak served as Pediatric Director of the Child Development Study and an Assistant Member of the Institute of Health Sciences at Brown University. He was the Assistant Clinical Director for infectious diseases at the Charles V. Chapin Hospital and the Director of Pediatrics at the Woonsocket Hospital in Rhode Island.
ken, I just checked the offender database at http://www.drc.state.oh.us/OffenderSearch/Search.aspx ... and here is your hero, Alan Yurko:
BURGLARY Counts: 1 ORC: 2911.12 4
Committing County: CUYAHOGA Admission Date: 12/01/2008 Degree of Felony: Second
AGG BURGLARY Counts: 2 ORC: 2911.11 3
Committing County: CUYAHOGA Admission Date: 11/29/2006 Degree of Felony: A1
AGG BURGLARY Counts: 1 ORC: 2911.11 3
Committing County: CUYAHOGA Admission Date: 11/29/2006 Degree of Felony: A1
AGG BURGLARY Counts: 1 ORC: 2911.11 3
Committing County: CUYAHOGA Admission Date: 11/29/2006 Degree of Felony: A1
AGG BURGLARY Counts: 1 ORC: 2911.11 3
Committing County: CUYAHOGA Admission Date: 11/29/2006 Degree of Felony: A1
ken, in all his foolishness keeps commenting here about the "dangers" of vaccine...a relatively harmless troll...until now.
Is ken so bereft of compassion for the innocent babies who are left with permanent neurological impairment or have died at the hands of their murdering caretakers, that he continues to defend these murderers?
Just what is your endgame ken? We have provided you with links to excellent websites, yet you persist in using notorious anti-vax and crank websites for defending child abusers and child murderers.
Actually read the whole article.
I see no evidence that ken reads his own links. Upstream he linked to a piece by Yazbak ("Shaken-Baby-Syndrome.aspx"), apparently under the impression that it presented an unassailable case, when Yazbak's argument is basically "vaccines exist; SBS exists; therefore vaccines cause SBS". In another thread he showed similar certainty when linking to a piece by Frompovich & Buttram in which the argument runs "Peanut oil is bad; vaccines are bad; therefore one must contain the other"... no *evidence* was presented, as if the presence of peanut oil is an article of faith which it would be impious to doubt.
Anyway, it would be unfair to expect ken to read *someone else's* links as well.
WHOA, time out. I am an MRA and proud of it. It has nothing to do with injuring children. It has everything to do with equal parenting, fair child support, equitable divorce laws, protection for male victims of domestic violence, support for men's health issues, support for boys who are falling behind in school etc. equality is not a zero sum game as many would say.
You all distort the truth-what the hell does Alan Yurko have to do with Dr. Yazbak's
qualifications.
You are a disgusting group of liars.
ken, where did I lie? Did you not see that I posted Alan Yurko's incarceration record? By the way, he is eligible for parole in 2014.
And Yazbak actually got Yurko out of jail in Florida. He was part of the defense to getting Yurko out of a murder charge. And Yazbak even brags about here:
http://www.jpands.org/vol10no2/yazbak.pdf
Now exactly how is pulling up a Yazbak paper where he blatantly defends a child abuser and repeat criminal a lie?
ken, did I lie in Comment #20 when I quoted Buttram totally screwing up when the MMR was introduced in the USA, and actually calling it the "MMF" vaccine?
F. Edward Yazbak, MD, FAAP practiced pediatrics and was a school physician in Northern Rhode Island for 34 years. Dr. Yazbak served as Pediatric Director of the Child Development Study and an Assistant Member of the Institute of Health Sciences at Brown University. He was the Assistant Clinical Director for infectious diseases at the Charles V. Chapin Hospital and the Director of Pediatrics at the Woonsocket Hospital in Rhode Island.
Comment in moderation
In the mean time you can tell us what grade you are in. You are still acting like a child.
WHOA, time out. I am an MRA and proud of it.
OK, I will try not to start any extraneous arguments and not to insult any additional groups. [enters Time Out corner]
Ooh - can I have one? Please?? In the comments on the "There is no anti-vax movement" comments, I appear to have seriously upset that halfwit Jenny Allanâ¦
That's made my day. :-)
ken:
So what? He still helped get a man who abused a child to death out of jail.
At least Yurko is back behind bars, again. Too bad there is no punishment for what Yurko, Buttram and others have done.
Ken, there's something I think (well, hope actually) you're old enough to be understand. Smart people--even very smart people, though I'd hestiate to include Yazbak in taht demographic--can be wrong.
And right now what we have is:
a ten week old infant which suffered neural insult consistent with SBS.
a convicted felon who admits to holding that infant by the feet and striking him.
an anti-vax doctor championing his innocence and asserting without evidence, without even identifying a plausible mechanism by which vaccines could cause the damage the infant suffered, that it's all the fault of "them devil vaccines!"
Noting Yazbak's credentials and previous appointments doesn't lend support to this claim (google rhetorical fallacy, argument from authority sometime and you'll see why).
At such time as you can identify actual evidence that this is the case--something more than "But these two credentialed physicians who's opinions I accept unconditionally say it's so"--you'll have something to bring to the table.
Thank you Herr Doctor, you come out of the corner now.
Mr. Bray, I actually understand some of those issues. My grandfather was actually given custody of his kids in his 1930's divorce. But this was in the wild and wooly western part of the USA, where weirdness actually happened... like actually looking at the facts and ignoring the "status quo."
(my family put the "fun" in dysfunctional)
If you guys are interested in this, and I credit Orac with summarizing mutiple causes that could result in the "triad", there's an article in the Daily Mail in Health on SBS. they make it sound as though baby's head trauma could only be due to "shaking." you may want to check it out. (Orac, I know you may not print this but I think it's an NB issue and just saw a program on it where even a bio-mechanical guy said it's not possible to cause the kind of force needed to cause a bleed).
I think it is fair to say that Dr Squier suggests that one possible reason for an SBS diagnois is a result from a vaccination but as she classifies it under "Resuscitated SIDS" (pg 536-537)
Her statement:
"Vaccination Infants may collapse with the triad in the days following immunisations, possibly due to a pyrexial response triggering seizures.
Not exactly strong support for the Anti-Vaxers
Pg
The Alan Yurko page was pulled off Wikipedia yesterday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Yurko. Interesting.
Not notable enough, apparently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Alan_Yurko
The Alan Yurko page was pulled off Wikipedia yesterday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Yurko. Interesting.
Here is the history of that deleted page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Alan_Yurko
Forgive me, but I though the vilest lie that wouldn't die was Orac?
My only child got her first and last vaccination in 1986 which resulted in a life-threatening flesh-eating infection. She started getting sick before we even got home that day. It was so virulent that my husband and I got infected from contact. The pain was unspeakable. That was pretty good motivation to start in-death research on the subject, particularly since I was already an independent investigative researcher/writer on health issues. My findings--continued now for the last 25+ years--were horrifying. Everything we think we know is basically "revisionist history", like the myth that vaccines stopped epidemics. In fact, every vaccine created for epidemic diseases came at the end of those epidemics (infectious diseases known as "filth diseases") and had no impact on their decline, but in many cases caused temporary increases in cases, including polio. According to an admission by the CDC, the improvement in clean water, food supplies and waste disposal ended epidemics, not vaccines.
A few quotes tell the story: Vaccination THE WASHINGTON POST, Feb.2, 1986 "Vaccines can be a risk for infected persons--virus in vaccines, like natural virus infection...MAY ACTIVATE LATENT VIRAL INFECTIONS."--Dr. Robert Gallo, National Institute of Health
⢠Getting a vaccination does not guarantee immunity. (~CDC, January 28, 1994.)
â¢"Neutralizing antibodies are reported to reflect levels of protection, although this has not been validated in the field." (~Journal of the American Medical Association, June 9, 1999, Vol. 281. No. 22)
â¢Vaccines made from animal substrate contain animal viruses that are impossible to filter out. By 1961, scientists discovered that animal viruses in vaccines, including smallpox, could act as a carcinogen when given to mice in combination with cancer-causing chemicals, even in amounts too small to induce tumors alone. They concluded that vaccine viruses function as a catalyst for tumor production. (~Science, December 15, 1961.)
If anyone is interested in something other than blind admiration and obedience to the tenets of "The Church of Modern Medicine" look up SV-40 and HeLa Cell contamination of millions of vaccines.
And of course vaccines are implicated in autism. There was no autism before mass vaccination of infants and young children. Not just mercury, which is neurotoxic, but many contributing elements of vaccine cause brain damage, bowel problems, etc. Wakefield's findings have been duplicated since then, not to mention the primate studies where young monkeys were put on the same vaccine schedule as infants and EVERY one of them manifested varying degrees of autistic behavior. As in all cases of reaction, susceptibility is the determining factor and some are more susceptible than others, whether human or simian.
Care to comment on a more recent article? And by the way, we didn't have open sewers in the 1940's and 50's, which was when polio was epidemic.
DJT:
You say lots of things, most of them wrong. Especially about Wakefield's findings being replicated. They were not independently replicated. Plus the SV40 was removed from polio vaccines over fifty years ago. You would know these things if you had read more of this blog.
Now I have a question for you about the claim that disease epidemics were going away before the vaccines. Please tell us why in the USA measles incidence (morbidity) in 1970 is only 10% of what it was in 1960? The census data is provided below. Give us the reasons that measles rates plummeted with supporting scientific evidence. Do not post random websites, or news reports. Do not change the decade and do not discuss deaths (mortality) from measles, and do not mention any other country than the USA. Thank you.
From http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec31.pdf
Year.... Rate per 100000 of measles
1912 . . . 310.0
1920 . . . 480.5
1925 . . . 194.3
1930 . . . 340.8
1935 . . . 584.6
1940 . . . 220.7
1945 . . . 110.2
1950 . . . 210.1
1955 . . . 337.9
1960 . . . 245.4
1965 . . . 135.1
1970 . . . . 23.2
1975 . . . . 11.3
1980 . . . . . 5.9
1985 . . . . . 1.2
1990 . . . . .11.2
1991 . . . . . .3.8
1992 . . . . . .0.9
1993 . . . . . .0.1
1994 . . . . . .0.4
1995 . . . . . .0.1
1996 . . . . . .0.2
1997 . . . . . . 0.1
Doctors are VILE in that they TRUST drug company research and push these vaccines on children. YOU ARE ALL MURDERERS for pushing the drugs and NOT EVEN REALLY KNOWING anything, just trusting the drug companies! SHAME! visit mercola.com for truth about vaccines or www.nvic.org or go to a REAL doctor drbuttar.com ALL AMA drug pushers are evil quacks from hell! Don't trust ONE of them cause all they do is PUSH toxic potions and they don't even have cures, nor know why you get sick! They just need more money and more time to falsely give you hope they might find a cure! BS!
DIAF. HTH. HAND.
You mean like this? http://goo.gl/PwgHy