So busy was I writing about America's quack Dr. Mehmet Oz and, of course, the FDA hearing on regulating homeopathy that I didn't take note of a story that came out the other day examining a study looking at the association between MMR vaccination and autism. More correctly, the study examines the lack of association between MMR and autism because that's what every well-designed study that's looked for such an association has found, a lack of association, as I've blogged about more times than I can remember over the last decade. Heck, there's already been one study like this so far in 2015.
Of course, the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism is what I like to refer to as a "zombie myth." It's undead. Like a herd of walkers in The Walking Dead, it just keeps relentlessly shambling along until it surrounds and devours reason and science. Or maybe a better simile is to liken this myth to slasher movie killers like Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th movie franchise or Michael Myers in the Halloween movies. At the end of each movie, the heroes have vanquished the killer. In many of the movies, the killer appears to have died at the end of the movie. Yet, inevitably there's another movie and it turns out that the killer didn't die after all. He's still alive and slashing away. So it is with the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism. No matter how much science is thrown at it, no matter how much it appears to be dead after each new study failing to find even a hint of a whisper of an association between MMR and autism, it always comes back.
Yet, scientifically, I prefer a different metaphor for the myth, and that's to invoke Monty Python's (in)famous Dead Parrot sketch, with antivaccine loons playing the role of the shopkeeper trying to deny to an unhappy customer that the parrot he had sold him was dead, telling the customer that he's "not dead," but rather "pinin' for the fjords." My response about the hypothesis that MMR causes autism goes along the lines: "It's not pinin'! It's passed on! This hypothesis is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the perch it'd be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolic processes are now 'istory! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, It's shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-HYPOTHESIS!!"
And so it is that this study, published in JAMA as a collaboration between the Lewin Group, Optum, and the J. Drexel Autism Institute, Drexel University, entitled Autism Occurrence by MMR Vaccine Status Among US Children With Older Siblings With and Without Autism, is yet another reason to label the MMR-autism hypothesis an "ex-hypothesis." In fact, I rarely even bother to refer to it as a hypothesis any more because that grants too much credence to what is now a cranky conspiracy theory. (Is there any other kind?) In fact, I almost wasn't going to write about this study for the simple reason that it's just another in a long line of such studies that have all shown the same thing: There is no detectable association between MMR and autism. All of this leads me to wonder (and I'm not the only one) why another such study is even necessary. Certainly there doesn't seem to be much purpose in studying the same question over and over and over again when the answer has been consistently negative. It's reinventing the wheel, and in the process wasting resources that might otherwise be devoted to studying questions where there is genuine uncertainty about what the answer is.
Be that as it may, this study is different in that it takes into account families with an older sibling with autism or autism spectrum disorder. The rationale, given by the authors, for doing this is not unreasonable, even though they surely must have known what the result would be:
Two doses of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine are currently recommended for children in the United States: the first at age 12 to 15 months and the second at age 4 to 6 years. Although a substantial body of research over the last 15 years has found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorders (ASD), parents and others continue to associate the vaccine with ASD. Parents cite vaccinations, especially MMR, as a cause of ASD6 and have deferred or refused vaccinations for their children as a result. Lower vaccination levels threaten public health by reducing both individual and herd immunity and have been associated with several recent outbreaks of measles, with most cases occurring among unvaccinated individuals.
Families with a child affected by ASD may be particularly concerned about reports linking MMR and ASD, despite the lack of evidence. Surveys of parents who have children with ASD suggest that many believe the MMR vaccine was a contributing cause. This belief, combined with knowing that younger siblings of children with ASD are already at higher genetic risk for ASD compared with the general population, might prompt these parents to avoid vaccinating their younger children. In a recent survey of 486 parents of children with ASD, nearly 20% had declined or delayed MMR immunization in the younger siblings of these children. Furthermore, a Canadian study of 98 younger siblings of children with ASD found that younger siblings were less likely to be fully MMR immunized when compared with their older siblings with ASD. However, there were no statistically significant differences in rates of ASD diagnosis between immunized and nonimmunized children. To our knowledge, this very small study is alone in examining MMR immunization and ASD outcomes among the younger siblings of children with ASD.
Thus, we set out to report on ASD occurrence by MMR vaccine status in a large sample of US children having older siblings with ASD and to compare findings with those among children who have older siblings without ASD.
The study itself is a retrospective cohort study carried out using an administrative claims database, the Optum Research Database, which includes more than 34 million individuals per year and contains both commercially insured individuals and Medicare managed care enrollees. The database contains proprietary deidentified health claims data from a geographically diverse US population whose age and sex distribution is similar to that reported by the US Census Bureau. The previous study I discussed was a case control study, in which individuals with the condition under study (autism) were compared with controls who did not have the condition and risk factors associated with the condition assessed. A cohort study, on the other hand, looks at groups exposed to a putative risk factor and those not. In this case, the risk factor under study was the MMR vaccine. Participants included children continuously enrolled during the period of 2001 to 2012 in the health plan from birth to at least 5 years of age who also had an older sibling continuously enrolled for at least six months between 1997 and 2012. The children in the study were stratified according to how many doses of MMR had been received (0, 1, or 2) between birth and five years of age. There ended up being over 95,727 children in the study group.
So what were the findings? Surprise! Surprise! There was no association detected between MMR and autism:
Of 95,727 children with older siblings, 994 (1.04%) were diagnosed with ASD and 1929 (2.01%) had an older sibling with ASD. Of those with older siblings with ASD, 134 (6.9%) had ASD, vs 860 (0.9%) children with unaffected siblings (P < .001). MMR vaccination rates (≥1 dose) were 84% (n = 78 564) at age 2 years and 92% (n = 86 063) at age 5 years for children with unaffected older siblings, vs 73% (n = 1409) at age 2 years and 86% (n = 1660) at age 5 years for children with affected siblings. MMR vaccine receipt was not associated with an increased risk of ASD at any age. For children with older siblings with ASD, at age 2, the adjusted relative risk (RR) of ASD for 1 dose of MMR vaccine vs no vaccine was 0.76 (95% CI, 0.49-1.18; P = .22), and at age 5, the RR of ASD for 2 doses compared with no vaccine was 0.56 (95% CI, 0.31-1.01; P = .052). For children whose older siblings did not have ASD, at age 2, the adjusted RR of ASD for 1 dose was 0.91 (95% CI, 0.67-1.20; P = .50) and at age 5, the RR of ASD for 2 doses was 1.12 (95% CI, 0.78-1.59; P = .55).
Astute readers will note that most of the relative risks are below 1.0, which is actually in the protective range. They are not statistically significant, of course, but one of them, for children with an older sibling with an ASD who received two doses of MMR, the effect almost reaches statistical significance. Of course, no one is saying that the MMR vaccine is protective against autism/ASD, but rather that it is not associated with the condition. So what might explain these low adjusted RRs:
Although there were no statistically significant RR estimates indicating increased ASD risk at any age in either group of children (those whose older siblings had or did not have ASD), the statistically significant interactions in the final Cox model suggest differences in RR by both age and older sibling ASD status. The pattern in RRs across these groups was such that lower RR estimates (commonly extending into the protective range, ie, below 1.0) were observed at younger vs older ages and in children with older siblings with vs without ASD. Although protective estimates tended not to reach statistical significance, this pattern is worth further consideration. It is possible, for example, that this pattern is driven by selective parental decision making around MMR immunization, ie, parents who notice social or communication delays in their children decide to forestall vaccination. Because as a group children with recognized delays are likely to be at higher risk of ASD, such selectivity could result in a tendency for some higher-risk children to be unexposed. To be consistent with observed data, this would need to happen more often at younger ages. This seems feasible because by the time the child is older, developmental concerns are more likely to have been confirmed or ruled out and parents may then be less worried about a new exposure, such as a vaccination, influencing a child’s developmental trajectory. Estimates at older ages would thus be less susceptible to bias related to selective parental decision making, which also aligns with the pattern observed here. This explanation would also suggest that the estimate for the 1-dose RR estimate at age 5 years (1.10; 95% CI, 0.76-1.54) is least vulnerable to this bias because age 5 is several years removed from the time parents are typically deciding about the first MMR dose or weighing the importance of early developmental concerns.
In other words, the myth that MMR causes autism likely influenced these results to give the appearance of a protective effect of MMR against autism in some of these groups. We can't conclude from this study that MMR is protective against autism, but we can conclude that there is no association suggesting that MMR could cause or contribute to autism. In other words, this study provides no support for a common antivaccine claim that, well, yes, MMR doesn't cause autism in most kids, just in "high risk" and "genetically susceptible" kids, such as ones who have an older sibling with an ASD diagnosis. In other words, the parrot is still dead.
So why do we keep studying this question of whether MMR causes autism when so many studies have already been done and have all come to the same conclusion, namely that the answer is no? As I keep saying, from a scientific standpoint the parrot has been dead for quite some time, but unfortunately the antivaccine movement remains like the pet shop owner, claiming that the hypothesis isn't really dead. It's just pining for the fjords. Besides increasing degradation of herd immunity in pockets of low vaccine uptake with resulting outbreaks like the recent Disneyland measles outbreak, this is one of the significant harms of the antivaccine movement, a major waste of resources and funding expended studying the same question again and again. The problem, of course, is that these studies do not reassure the very parents who need to be reassured; all they do is to provide incrementally more confidence among scientists and pediatricians to their already high level of confidence that MMR does not cause autism.
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It's been interesting how the UK media that first championed the Wakefield fraud (although they did so unwittingly and/or negligently) now report the affair. Here, for example, is how Associated Newspapers covered the latest development.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3049044/Another-study-finds-n…
That's certainly a turn-up for the books, but I'm still not impressed with The Daily Fail. They reported on the Italian Court Ruling that vaccines cause autism, but I couldn't find anything on their site about that verdict being overturned.
From the stats.
If you had an older sib with ASD, you have a 6.9% chance of also having ASD.
If your older sib did not have ASD your risk of ASD is only 0.9%.
As these figures have been shown by the study not to have been affected by MMR uptake, surely this shows the effect of genetics on ASD risk?
@ Fergus
I guess one could still argue for unidentified environmental factors: siblings are after all very likely to be sharing a specific environment and lifestyle.
A more compelling case would be with either studying separated twins or close cousins living in different places.
(I believe one of the "thinking moms" is in this case, with odd people in different branches of her family)
That being said, since MMR vaccination doesn't significantly modify the risk, whatever this environmental factor is, that's not the MMR vaccine.
(cue the goalposts shifting among anti-vaxers)
Steve Novella wrote about this yesterday and made the great point that research doesn't convince true believers. I think a more effective use of resources would be researching what kind of message is most effective for swaying fence sitters. Maybe a study could be designed somewhere that parents need to consult a healthcare provider to obtain a personal belief exemption.
I'm curious as to what nonsense our resident AVers are going to spout here.
@Helianthus
You are right about environmental factors.
It would have to be one hell of a factor to increase your risk so much though. More likely genetic IMO.
@capnkrunch #6
If our resident AVers are anything like the anti science gang at the Daily Kos, they are going to sucker punch random strangers and cry FOUL when anyone objects. Displaced aggression makes for pathetic spectacles.
The meme that forced vaccination = rape is out there again. Timing might be in response to this JAMA report, it might be random. The antis have taken a number of hits in recent months. Some have obviously left a mark.
If one actually forcefully grabbed someone and vaccinated them without consent, it would be a violation of bodily autonomy, much the same way that sexual assault is.
That's where the similarities between the two end, of course.
This also highlights the mendacity of anti-vaccine activists, because of course no one is actually forced to vaccinate, at least in the US (*). Even in states with no non-medical exemptions for pediatric vaccination, parents have the freedom not to vaccinate their children. They just have to live with the consequence of exercising that freedom in that way, which is coming up with arrangements other than public school (and, I assume, most private schools) to educate their children.
(*) I suppose some exceptional circumstances might arise in which citizens are compelled to be vaccinated, but with the eradication of smallpox such circumstances seem very unlikely.
Autism occurrence by MMR vaccine status among US children with older siblings with and without autism.
DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS:
A retrospective cohort study using an administrative claims database associated with a large commercial health plan.
This study does not have an unvaccinated cohort to compare with those vaccinated. It is a typical pubmed spin wash. I doubt also that a commercial claims database has much evidence of worth in it either.
Studying a cohort of vaccinated kids and comparing it with a group of vaccinated kids, using the biased autism rate of 1.1% for the norm, made up from studying predominantly vaccinated kids, is hardly worth the pixels on the page.
The autism rate is no different in the cohorts used because both groups had been vaccinated! Weasel words supreme.
But I suppose the heading is rather catchy and in a market led world this is all that matters. "What result do you want, we hear the researchers say." more like autism doesn't cause MMR.
Edvard Ernst writes for the Daily Mail, which is no surprise as most of his postings are unsubstantiated tosh
What? He's not dead, he's just pining for the fjords.
"Maybe a study could be designed somewhere that parents need to consult a healthcare provider to obtain a personal belief exemption." C button
Maybe there should be proper follow up studies on those who choose to vaccinate against those who choose not to. Perhaps doctors should be compelled to follow legal directives on informed consent when vaccinating kids instead of their own beliefs.
An unvaccinated cohort would be unethical johnny, as you well know. The reason, of course, is that vaccines work.
" Even in states with no non-medical exemptions for pediatric vaccination, parents have the freedom not to vaccinate their children" compost99
Not in Belgium where you can lose your kids if you don't have a Polio jab. Check out this film by a doctor on the Polio scam and maybe you will understand why so many are shunning vaccination as an out of date procedure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twch-T-n8Ns
So if there is less measles and rubella in the population that, though not providing direct protection to the child, would reduce risk to the developing fetus, correct? Congenital rubella has been associated with increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.
"An unvaccinated cohort would be unethical johnny, as you well know. The reason, of course, is that vaccines work."mikeymoo
That is bullshit, another reason why people shun the vaccine process. "They work so don't need testing" is utter antiscience.
So you admit then that captain Orac's paper mush at the top of this thread compared kids who had been vaccinated against kids who had been vaccinated and found no increase in the autism rate!!!! Fxxxxxg bullshit
What is unethical is changing the research goalposts to exclude vaccination from real placebo comparative trials by playing the "it's unethical to use an unvaccinated group card". If vaccines have only been 'tested' against themselves what on earth is the research telling us?
Either you are a megalomaniac who has total vaccine belief, cos you can't have proof, or you are bonkers! The stats on the outcome don't look good here
Johnny
"The autism rate is no different in the cohorts used because both groups had been vaccinated! Weasel words supreme."
16% unvaccinated at age 2 = 15,200 children unvaccinated
8% unvaccinated at age 5 = 7,600 children unvaccinated
Mmm whose using the weasel words or did you not read the report?
Argument by YouTube Video is not accepted here, johnny. Come back when you have better data.
MikeMa@15:
But, but, but, it's Johnny science. You know, for kids.
>posits something that's utter nonsense
>"watch this youtube video"
laughingelfman.jpg
@johnny
"The autism rate is no different in the cohorts used because both groups had been vaccinated! Weasel words supreme."
Actually, the autism rate is the same in both cohorts because *vaccine don't fu%?&ing cause autism*.
This is the same type of study that was used to show a correlation between smoking and lung cancer. If vaccines caused autism, the rate of autism would be *greater* in the vaccinated cohort.
Interestingly, the authors mention that parents might *selectively* forestall vaccination in children whom they have observed to have social or communication delays.
I think that there's a case like that @ TMR: Jameson stopped vaccinating her second child after her older child was diagnosed and the second appeared to have problems as well. She later 'recovered'** the younger through various woo.
** I despise how they say that. Sounds like they found a child who was missing in the woods or suchlike.
capnkrunch @6
I may be mistaken,but won't studies like this continue as long as there are antivaxers with very deep pockets to fund them? Kennedy and Trump to name but two.
johnny,
Assuming you mean Edzard Ernst, perhaps you could provide some examples of the articles he has written for the Daily Mail. All I can find are a couple of reviews for 'Trick or Treatment'. Or did you just make this up like everything else you excrete here?
Altho' I'm not sure how the anti-vaxxers will dismiss this study- which they will- there are over 95000 subjects- that's quite huge and powerful!
Well, they'll probably insist that one of the authors- possibly the third one ( or as they call it- the 'lead author') once was employed by a university that participated in research on SSRIs or that Drexel once received money from the government ((shudder)) or that the statistical method was developed by a person who was sympathetic to the N-zis or was Murdoch's son-in-law.
They'll find something.
"a cranky conspiracy theory. (Is there any other kind?)"
There are plausible but evidence-poor conspiracy theories. My go to answer for "most plausible conspiracy theory" is one, Michael Jordan's first retirement was a secret suspension for gambling. I don't believe it because there's no evidence, but if some were to surface I'd have an easy time buying it. Nothing about it is more implausible than the best basketball player in the world, in his prime, deciding he should play baseball.
Julian Frost
Give the poor guy a break, - he obviously has a problem with reading comprehension.
You all remember the California Senate Bill, SB277? It was passed by the Senate Education Committee yesterday, on a 7-2 vote.
The anti-vaccine, anti-SB277 forces started muttering balefully that the "timing of this study's release is suspicious".
I just had to laugh. They are grasping at straws and calling them timber.
Johnny
"If vaccines have only been ‘tested’ against themselves what on earth is the research telling us?"
They weren't.
"For children with older siblings with ASD, at age 2, the adjusted relative risk (RR) of ASD for 1 dose of MMR vaccine vs no vaccine was 0.76 (95% CI, 0.49-1.18; P = .22), and at age 5, the RR of ASD for 2 doses compared with no vaccine was 0.56 (95% CI, 0.31-1.01; P = .052"
The relevant bits are "vs no vaccine" and "compared to no vaccine"
"Altho’ I’m not sure how the anti-vaxxers will dismiss this study"
1. It used insurance data so it isn't a real study.
2. The Lewin Group works for an insurance company, so it's tainted.
3. Because THOMPSON!!!!!!
Liz Ditz @ 30
It may be too soon to call SB 277 a victory.There may still be "religious" exemptions,rather than "personal belief" ones,that the antis could still manipulate.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article192…
Could Brown still kill the bill,rather than sign it into law? What is his personal belief on vaccines?
As with money,politics often trumps science and public safety.
Re: the disgusting meme that vaccination = rape (comments #9 & #10)
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/23/campaign-comparing-vacci…
Shay @ 32
Don't forget
4) Because POUL THORSEN!!!
^ I would suggest not clicking on DrBollocks' link if you don't want to see a really repulsive image. (My G-d but the people who came up with that are garbage-y.)
@JP - I think "scum" is the word you were looking for.
:-(
"Altho’ I’m not sure how the anti-vaxxers will dismiss this study- which they will- there are over 95000 subjects- that’s quite huge and powerful!"
Oh they're already trying. For example:
"This study only goes to age 5.
The study itself admits that the average age for an ASD diagnosis is 4 - which means some people with an ASD diagnosis are diagnosed after age 5.
We know that the average age for Aspergers diagnosis (which is 11% of the ASD population) is over age 6.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwr...cid=ss6302a1_w
I suspect large portions of the ASD population were not captured due to the five-year old cut off."
I agree that this study is basically beating a dead...er...parrot, but I'm still glad someone did a study looking specifically at siblings of children with ASD, since the antivaxxers' fallback position is that large epidemiological studies don't detect an association between vaccination and autism because vaccines only cause autism in a small sub-group of genetically vulnerable children (while simultaneously holding the contradictory belief that vaccines are the driving force behind the autism "epidemic.") If there were a vulnerable sub-group of children, you'd expect to find them among those with a family history of autism, but this study clearly shows that that isn't the case. It won't convince true believers, of course, but hopefully it will reassure parents with one kid on the spectrum that it's safe to vaccinate the rest of their kids.
Oops, CDC link didn't work.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6302a1.htm?s_cid=ss6302a1_w
Re DrBollocks #34:
Classy stuff from the AVN.
Then again, as we've seen from the trolls and from the writings of AoA, TMR, et al, classiness is not a virtue dedicated anti-vaccine activists or online trolls possess in any great abundance.
@ Sarah A:
Actually, at this very moment, TMR's most recent post discusses how 'genetics load the gun but vaccines pull the trigger' and advises genetic tests to look for specific mutations. Now they can sit around and compare mutations on facebook I suppose.They recommend a service run by one of the Team TMR 'thinkers'.
Johnny #14 "Perhaps doctors should be compelled to follow legal directives on informed consent when vaccinating kids instead of their own beliefs."
Dunno how the laws work in Merkinania, but over here informed consent definitely applies to vaccination: it is exercised by parents on behalf of their children until such time as the child is deemed competent to consent for themselves (hint - look up Fraser guidelines).
@Annie
Ironically, I was thinking that they'd take the opposite tack and claim that the researchers looked at kids with ASD rather than "classical" autism deliberately in order to "water down" the results by including kids with Asperger's or HFA, which, of course, isn't "really" autism. But then, we've already seen that antivaxxers will include people at the "high functioning" end of the spectrum when it suits them (i.e., when they're contributing to an increase in incidence) and exclude them when it doesn't (i.e., whenever someone tries to point out that autism is not the same thing as brain damage, vaccine-induced or otherwise.)
@Denice - Have you read all that TMR post? There's pretty much a complete toxin conspiracy bingo card there. Aspartame, anti-perspirants cause breast cancer, GM food, Chemtrails, flame retardants, electrosmog, fluoride, cloud seeding, Chernobyl... Just... wow.
@JP / DrBollocks
This disgusting picture has been around for some time, Orac pointed to it in a previous article to show how low the Anti-Vax brigade could go.
While reading the article linked by Dr Bollocks, I noticed a few related articles about anti-vaxers, with other instances of unrestrained "let's go hyperbolic".
I liked the one about pro-vax people being like Charlie Hebdo killers because we are opposed to AVN organizing public rallies.
@Rebecca Fisher:
I was particularly amused at the way she tried to sneak chemtrails into the article, as if she didn't want to just come out and say the word:
I'm only surprised she didn't mention MANGANESE.
Thought I'd take a peek over at AoA,to see what the response was.Nothing on the JAMA article,but Heckenlively is busy throwing around comparisons to forced segregation and Nazi racial purity laws in regards to SB277,as well as accusing Senator Pan of being a tool of "Pharma lobbyists".
Same as it ever was.
Then there is this.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-vaccines-dont-cause-autism-even-…
"Altho’ I’m not sure how the anti-vaxxers will dismiss this study”
1. It used insurance data so it isn’t a real study.
2. The Lewin Group works for an insurance company, so it’s tainted.
3. Because THOMPSON!!!!!!" Shay away with the fairies
Are you serious, comparing a group of people with the same group of people then claiming 'no increase' is equivalent to bullshit
back in moderation, must be pissing you of sorry
@ Rebecca:
I certainly did read it!
( I should clarify what I said previously: The Team TMR creature doesn't provide genetic testing but she advises people after they get results from a standard service at her woo-based business in Denver)
As if this isn't bad enough, Fearless Parent ( anti-vaxxers Habakus, Ji, Brogan et al) suggest that both deodorants and bras cause breast cancer.
Then there's this chilling study:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-finds-those-with-deceased-family…
Which got me to thinking: do you realize that there is an absolute correlation between vaccination and death? Everyone who's gotten a vaccine has a 100% chance of dying at some point! How come these millions of deaths haven't been reported to VAERS?*
*yes, a pitiful handful have been listed, like the girl who fell down the well and drowned a couple weeks after getting Gardasil (the case is listed on the NVIC website), but just think of all the fatal auto accidents, bathtub falls, heart attacks, pneumonias and other deaths after vaccination that go unreported because physicians are in the pockets of Giant Pharma!!!).
That's an awesome looking sculpture. It almost makes me want to visit London again. Unless, of course, the parrot flies away before I can get there.
I don't know if it's still there. It was installed last summer as part of the publicity for Monty Python's farewell performances.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/1097…
Re: Kent Heckenlively
Here we have a fellow who has subjected his child to all manner of experimental and unapproved treatments, without her consent, comparing supporters of SB277 to Nazis.
Orac, could you hook me up with your irony meter supplier?
@johnny
You clearly don't understand ethics. A prospective vnt)accinated vs. unvaccined (which seems to be what you wa is unethical regardless of which side you are on. Either you are withholding well proven, effective treatment or you are poisoning children. Not that there's evidence to support you view but if you really believe vaccines are poisons, how terribly unethical of you to advocate such a study.
If only Orac would write about such a study...I think what you meant to say was,
I agree. If only Dr. Bob, et al could be compelled to evidence driven practice.
RE: Shay @32
I would propose what I call 'The Crosby Deduction' as a more likely scenario -
1. Vaccines cause autism
2. This study found that vaccines do not cause autism
3. The study is flawed
4. Because THOMPSON!!!!!!
5. Because POUL THORSEN!!!
Johnny
The sane one
Sarah A @39
There are a number of subgroups of children in the general autism population,who might suffer serious consequences of vaccines.But what is not mentioned,either by the antivaxers,or in studies like this,is that these children come from families that have very long histories of medical problems that can fit into,now defined,subtypes.Histories of autoimmune disease,like type 1 diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis.Histories of conditions related to faulty folate metabolism genes,like neural tube defects,infertility,stillbirth,pernicious anemia,or cerebrovascular disease.Diseases that might come under the broad umbrella of mitochondrial disorders.And in a most autism families there is a history of either mental illness or intellectual disability,if not autism.These are children who would have suffered serious consequences from any challenge to their immune systems early in life,as I did from having acute meningitis as an older infant.But even so,vaccines are safer than wild infections,like I had.
Unlike most autism parents,I have spent many years researching the medical literature learning about all the advances in autism medicine,with genetics in mind.Mostly so I could get answers to the serious problems,medical and otherwise,I have had all of my life,and ask my doctors for the right tests.
There is so much we have learned in the last 25 years or so of autism medicine,and it's so much more interesting than vaccines.
But the one thing I learned from all my years interacting with parents at places like AoA,is these parents are so convinced that their child was "perfect",that they refuse to connect their own family history to their kid's autism.
@johnny #14:
Perhaps doctors should be compelled to follow legal directives on informed consent when vaccinating kids instead of their own beliefs.
I suppose you got to this conclusion because you believe that, if parents had "all the information", more would be choosing not to vaccinate. Most, even. Yes? It never even occurred to you that they *have* all the information and are choosing to vaccinate anyway? In droves?
No, because it only counts at "informed" if it agrees with your views.
@Shadowflash
In anti-vaccine land, "informed consent" means telling parents about all the horrors that anti-vaccine activists attribute to vaccines.
#56 Should read
johnny, how many times do we gotta tell you that every single person on this blog that types out bull**** correctly will be moderated.
It was here before you came and it will be here after you leave, it was not invented just for you, nor does it just effect you.
I know you can't believe the S word is a bad word (as others cannot grasp the A word is a bad word, either) but since these words are often used in personal attacks they tend to bump anything right into the won't be seen until the moderator approves it.
I don't understand why you can't get this simple idea or pay enough attention to your own typing to figure out which words trigger it time and time again. No it all has to be about a vendetta against you, does you ego really need that much feeding and care? Must be such a burden, poor thing.
Except the study didn't do this, did it?
Instead it compared people in one group (who had received MMR vaccination) to people in a different group (who had never recieved the MMR vaccine).
Johnny, your evidence demonstrating that "Vaccines cause autism" would be...what, exactly? be specific.
Oh, wait--that's right. You don't have any.
Contemplating simple stupidity is to give Phildo far too much credit.
JGC @64, that's the sane johnny, and I think he was just saying how the antivaxxers would respond. I don't believe he was endorsing the belief.
#26 Kreb
edzardernst.com
I qualified as a physician in Germany in 1978 where I also completed my MD and PhD theses. I received hands-on training in acupuncture, autogenic training, herbalism, homoeopathy, massage therapy and spinal manipulation.
Later, I became Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Hannover Medical School and Head of the PMR Department at the University of Vienna. In 1993, I moved to the UK and became Chair in Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter.
I am founder/Editor-in-Chief of two medical journals (Perfusion and Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies).My research focussed on the critical evaluation of all aspects of alternative medicine.
Unlike most of my collegues, I do not aim to promote this or that therapy, my goal is to provide objective evidence and reliable information. It is fair to say that this ambition did not endear me to many quasi-religious believers in alternative medicine.
Oh, there's plenty of evidence. For example, here "mythbuster" reports
And here, "Jenson" observes
Same old shіt, year after year.
#26 Kreb
Edzard Ernst- edzardernst.com (if you are interested)
Bio of him is awaiting moderation.
^ The best part of this will be seeing how long it takes him to find the actual item. Phildo, if true to usual form, will require several rounds of spluttering that he knows where it is but everyone else is too stupid to find it, all the while failing to cough it up.
Johnny #14 “Perhaps doctors should be compelled to follow legal directives on informed consent when vaccinating kids instead of their own beliefs.”
Dunno how the laws work in Merkinania, but over here [in the UK] informed consent definitely applies to vaccination:
Johnny himself is writing from darkest Essex.
Assuming you mean Edzard Ernst, perhaps you could provide some examples of the articles he has written for the Daily Mail.
Johnny Chav's a Daily Mail reader commenter himself, so he should be able to furnish the evidence soon enough.
Oh, Phildo has suggested a restrospective study as well:
Of course, he doesn't understand basic statistics, either.
It's the Daily Fail, please and thank you.
There was a fish and chips place my Cockney Dad used to take me in the East End somewhere when I was small and we'd be on a visit to Blighty. The fish and chips were always wrapped in the Daily Fail. My Dad would say, "All it's good for, that and wiping yer arse."
"You clearly don’t understand ethics. A prospective vnt)accinated vs. unvaccined (which seems to be what you wa is unethical regardless of which side you are on. Either you are withholding well proven, effective treatment or you are poisoning children." cockcrunch
The is an elephant in your argument dear boy - testing a group of people who have had the MMR against a group of people who have had the MMR and saying there is no difference in the levels of autism in both groups is bull.
The stat that says the average number of people in a group with autism is 1.1% was based on studying groups of people who had been vaccinated so this stat is based on a vaccinated cohort.
This kind of weasel research is the reason why your average person sees right through the bull. We don't need to not believe it!!!!!!!!!!! it's complete crapola - if you can't see that you must be a 'proper doctor'.
Stop rubbing it Narad - it's unethical.
This, this, from herr doktor's link above: So you are obviously well prepared to start diversions from discussions, you must be a vaccine believer. Now you mention it Jenner returned to all the places he had vaccinated and declared 'My suppositions were based on a fallacy' there was more disease than was there in the first place.
Smallpox eradication is the first myth taught to children at school, like the value of milk in schools, vaccination is all about fear propagation and profit, the health issue should be referred to the ASA. Your screaming nutter avatar is straight out of a Merck manual, you need to come up to speed with vaccine facts and stop diverting into propaganda.
http://drtenpenny.com/the_truth_about_the_flu_Shot.aspx
I will spend all night finding a source for the Jenner quote if I have to!!1!!
Sorry Narad I am not Mr Hill, never have been. Try posting something factual and interesting for a change.
"Assuming you mean Edzard Ernst, perhaps you could provide some examples of the articles he has written for the Daily Mail."
Look them up yourself
"Dunno how the laws work in Merkinania, but over here [in the UK] informed consent definitely applies to vaccination:" HerDocky
You must be having a laugh, there isn't a doctor in the UK or anywhere else that reads through the drug sheet compendium on vaccine side effects, they only have 8 mins for a consultation. It is a lottery of woo and speculation.
Vaccinated vs unvaccinated studies have been done too.Our friend Matt Carey AKA "Sullivan" has done a great job writing about them all.
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?s=vaccinated+unvaccinated&submit=Sear…
Delphine if you want your vaccine belief torn to shreds check out Susan Humphries - another proper doctor who has blown the whistle on Polio vaccine fraud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twch-T-n8Ns
Narad is so scared of this link he can't even press it, let alone watch it. You gotta stop believing in Pubmed, it's the only way
"My research focussed on the critical evaluation of all aspects of alternative medicine." Ernst
And he got the sack for being biased!
#58 Roger Kulp Thank you Roger Kulp- You are spot on and reasonable and have posted the best answer I've read in a long time. Exactly! Enough of the hysteria already!
Yeah mate (sorry, I revert when I'm around the accent) I don't need your videos but thanks anyway. I'm no scientist like but I come from a family of scientific types and proper doctors who make Susan Humphries look like a right feckin' you know what. My work funnily enough involves India and one of the best celebrations I ever had was with a colleague who wept the day his 'ome country was declared polio-free. Never thought he'd see it 'appen.
Support for my theory continues to accrue at an alarming rate.
@Delphine - you mean this Tenpenny?
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2014/11/1198-sherri-tenpenny.html
Seriously, you wonder why people consider you (and anti-vaxers in general) to be crazy loons.
I will spend all night finding a source for the Jenner quote if I have to!!1!!
Good luck with that. Jenner's deathbed recantation is an article of faith among UK osteopaths, and if they cared about the reliability of sources then they wouldn't be osteopaths. The original fabrication could be quite a way back along their collective puke funnel.
You will notice that in the same Fail-Online comment thread, Johnny / Orwell123 goes on about an "Ashfar ruling". That doesn't exist either, but at least we know that it was an Uber-quack by the name of Broadmore who invented it. Johnny has been faithfully repeating fabrications because he really is that stupid.
Chill, Lawrence. I was quoting Johnny, from his putative Daily Fail comments. I could not be more pro-vaccine and have been immunized more frequently and for more exotic sh!t than the average bear.
I am going to use "collective puke funnel" in this powerpoint I'm working on. Thanks, herr doktor. Reading Beardmore on gastic ulcers just gave me one.
Never mind, I'm getting to Beardmore on mumps and measles and forget the ulcer, I'm having a stroke.
I have pointed this out before, but it never ceases to amaze me how the various socks of Philip Hills declare themselves not to be Philip Hill when busted and seem to think no one will notice the difference.
Perhaps when reading comprehension is not your strong suit you think every one else is similarly afflicted.
Otherwise, Mr. Hills is not worth engaging with; it is too much like wrestling a pig in shite.
I think Phil needs a new keyboard. The S key seems to malfunction in a strangely associative way, and the f has clearly worn off of the big keys next to to the Z and ? keys.
Ah Howard Beardmore, the one man institute.
It is always nice when you can get together with a few like-minded people (particularly if they all have exactly the same name) and make stuff up.
Orac wrote:
To the extent that's true, IMHO we need to pose three qualifying questions: 1) Who are the parents who need to be reassured; 2) Why don't the studies re-assure them? 3) Could the problems be issues of presentation, rather than substance?
We seem to have a consensus that 'true believers' will go on no matter what. However, I am not aware of any convincing evidence that shows what percentage of non-vaxed kids have 'true believer' parents, and what percentage of parents fall into 'we didn't go get the shots because we're still on the fence'. (C.f. non-vax rates do not correlate as well with 'personal exemption' rates as you'd expect if a large majority of non-vaxers were true believers.)
And I must again climb my apparently lone horse to caution that Brendan Nyhan is utterly full of sh!te – for a good many reasons, but most notably here for concluding the substance of messages 'don't work' without controlling for the form and skill of delivery. Among the other relevant methodological errors: 1) He only considered short term 'effect' of a single exposure to the test mesages, though any change in belief is likely only to occur over time and with both message repetition and variety in message form. 2) He relied on self-reports of belief (as House would say, everybody lies). 3) He attempted to gauge the effects of individual pro-vax persuasion strategies, and even if he'd gotten valid measures (which he didn't, not even remotely), he's assuming a composition/division fallacy in which the individual effect would necessarily reflect what persuasive influence any of those strategies would have in a message campaign combining strategies in different ways.
in sum, I think we can't rule out these possibilities:
1) That there are nowhere enough true believers among non-vaxing parents to reach the tipping-point for herd immunity collapse, and outbreaks have only occurred because fence-sitting parents who could indeed have been persuaded to vax their kids weren't moved to the point of action.
2) That the new study refuting the specific hypothesis of 'MMR only affects a subset of vulnerable families' could NOT be persuasive to parents who don't vax because they're still on the fence. (Or, if it looks like the same parrot to Orac, that doesn't mean John and Jane Doe will see it that way.)
3) That if the target audience rejects any purely scientific argument, that means scientific findings could not play a key role in a campaign 'synergistically' integrating a variety of strategies, presented with skillful execution of 'proven' persuasion techniques, that would in fact be effective in increasing vax rates over time with repetition.
I'm not saying it's likely, only that it's possible this new study wasn't a waste of resources at all, but produced a necessary ingredient to an argumentation cocktail that might actually make a difference. We may not have all the ingredients yet, and the pro-vax voices sure don't seem to know how to mix the drink. But that's no reason to stop trying. Even if the study was totally redundant in the eyes of the public, the publication in JAMA puts it in the headlines again – which could have cumulative effect. Or not, of course.
The thing is, persuasion is as much 'art' as science, meaning even the best and most experienced experts can miss on their predictions, and the folks running the pro-vax show are very far from expert or experienced in the task.
It's like you want to get rid of a dying tree in your yard, but have no experience or reference works on tree-cutting, so you try the most 'logical' method that presents itself – you grab the axe already sitting in your shed and start whacking away at the trunk with it first thing in the morning. By late afternoon, you're totally exhausted, the tree is still standing, and you see you've only chipped away a notch about 40% of it's diameter. For awhile each axe-whack seemed to produce an incremental increase in the notch, but you got closer to the center of the trunk, that progress seemed to slow and then stop altogether.
You stop, think, and assess what you do and don't know. You consider you don't know: 1) if an axe is capable of cutting through this part of the tree at all; 2) or just a few more of your whacks might break down the barrier you've hit and it would easy sailing from there; 3) or if some other technique with the axe you can't figure – a different stance or angle, oand/or making the notch a foot higher up the trunk – would make all the difference.
You conclude you could continue to whack away until doomsday without felling the tree, OR you could be on the verge of bringing it down doing what you've been doing and just not realize it; OR suspect there's a 'trick', maybe using another tool in the shed or even the kitchen that doesn't strike YOU as relevant to tree-cutting, that would make quick work of a task that will indeed never yield to the methods you've tried so far. You decide to look for someone who does know this stuff...
WHO YOU GONNA' CALL?
You might look for 'experts' advertising possible solutions, only to find the directory has no entries for "Woodsman" or "Tree Service". Scanning through the listings, you find all kinds of general promises suggesting (to you) so-and-so MIGHT be able to fell the tree. But there are too many different concepts, all of them too vague, all too foreign to your experience. You can't parse any consensus or credibility from the contrasting claims, and wonder if the odds of any random plunge for help would favor success, or being led even further astray from the objective of clearing the yard.
I'll admit I started this tree analogy without thinking through where it would go, or having any fixed idea for drawing a suggestion for a pro-vax tack out of it. So, only having written in to the hypothetical quandry does it occur to me what I might do next if I actually had a tree I didn't know how to get rid of. I might cruise the neighborhood, looking for stumps, then asking the residents for references, good or bad, on various tree-removal techniques and various specific folks who did the work.
So I wonder if the pro-vax advocates have done something analogous to that. If we take antivax as a social/political problem, are there other social/political problems where the oppositional influence of an absolutely intractable vocal minority was eventually overcome? If so, who did the work, how did they get 'er done; and what can we learn?
One might imagine that "Pasteur's" would have been sufficient.
Hey Johnny @16: You still haven't explained to me how polio isn't actually a disease (or is pesticides) and how it didn't kill my great aunt or cripple my great uncle.
There aren't many people left in the US (or the UK) with post-polio syndrome, (due to an effective vaccine), so they can't whack you upside the head with their crutches when you tell them polio isn't real.
Maybe you should go to a country that only recently eradicated polio and tell people there that it isn't real.
Your constant dismissal of the real pain, suffering and death caused by vaccine preventable diseases is disgusting and monstrous.
Beyond the inability to parse auto-moderation algorithms, an inability to figure out simple workarounds does not speak well for a commenter's acumen.
Sadmar,
The issue as I see it is that the people who fall on the anti-vax spectrum (the diehards, the fence-sitters) cannot be persuaded by logic/facts/science. The only motivator that works is fear. Fear of legal, social, medical consequences.
Dr. Jay in the comments of this blog some time ago (height of Disney measles) said that he'd vaccinated more kids for MMR during the outbreak than he had in something like 2 years. That's fear.
I don't think the true diehards will be motivated to change by fear, but I don't think that most anti-vax spectrum-ites are true diehards. They're mostly fence-sitters. Reasonable discourse doesn't change their minds.
Tara Hills has received a lot of press lately for changing her mind on vaccines after her kids contracted pertussis. Hills says that anti-vaxxers shouldn't be treated with anger/belittlement because instead of reaching them, it drives them away. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/tara-hills-says-anti-vaxxers-need-…
I could not disagree with her more. I don't think anger/belittlement matter much, and I don't think Kumbaya'ing these folk does a whole lot either. Neither approach is right or wrong, neither approach works. Ironically, Hills' own story is a perfect example of fear as the motivating factor for change, she just doesn't see it that way. http://thescientificparent.org/learning-the-hard-way-my-journey-from-an…
One might imagine that “Pasteur’s” would have been sufficient.
Yet Johnny felt obliged to invent a recantation from Sabin:
Maybe it's a rite of passage that osteopaths must go through to prove that they have a high enough level of mendacity to meet professional standards.
I am going to use “collective puke funnel” in this powerpoint I’m working on
Must credit James Carville for the phrase.
This is the sort of response that Philip Hills, Hope Osteopathic Clinic Essex, wants, viz., at this point, he has nothing left to aspire to other than successful trolling.
I find it much more entertaining to drive down to the core of his being:
Then again, I've killfiled his lowercase incarnation; his migration to these comments more than adequately demonstrates his pathetic desire for attention even after his bag of stale tricks has been emptied. It's just as easy to ridicule him from orbit.
One must bear in mind that his use of quotation marks is doubtlessly to be filed under "typo" (referring to every year's being "last year").
Delphine #95,
Fear works for you, I get it. Why do I picture you sitting on the board of directors for Big Shot somewhere voting to fling out the fleas, spring out the spirochetes, and pretty much just walking around in Subway's caughing on everything?
*Social*?? Don't forget to unfriend them on FaceF**k.
IIRC, she had already changed her mind and was working on catch-up schedules when the pertussis blimp landed on her roof.
@johnny
You do realize that pubmed indexes the entire medical research community of the entire planet, right?
You don't think a health insurance company would want to track how much it was playing on autism-related claims?
What's wrong with the current ones? Please address each separately.
Narad, true. Hills was already in the process of playing catch-up with her kids when whooping cough threw a big mucous and puke party at her house. But my point stands - it was fear that motivated Hills to change her behaviour. The tipping point for Hills was Disney. Fear of the consequences eclipsed the fear of the shot.
I think it's great that Hills changed her mind. Climbing on a "tsk tsk don't be so meeeeeen" platform, not so much.
I seem to have forgotten some of Phildo's Jenner pseudoquote instances.
I'm really fond of when he pretends to be a woman. I do wonder whether he dresses the part as well. Given that he's been reduced to insulting his poor wife in order to distance his, ah, Internet proclivities from his "professional" name and has recently become obsessed with masturbation, I tend to suspect that he's likely to have enough time alone for this extra touch.
ken,
Yes I know who Ernst is, thanks, I have a copy of Trick or Treatment which I highly recommend to you, and to johnny, though I suspect his reading comprehension isn't up to it.
Why do you do this weird thing of linking to something tangentially related to something someone has mentioned here? Are you under the impression that you are the only person who has figured out how to use G__gle or something?
If this is in fact true, he is shirley a weirdo transvestite, not an executive transvestite.
I completely agree with you Delphine. A large outbreak changed vaccination rates in several European countries. It really is the lack of experience with these diseases that let people even fathom not vaccinating.
#58 Thank you again Roger Kulp
johnny@75
I can't if you are refusing to read the study, willfully misinterpreting it or if you just lack basic reading comprehension. Are you intellectually dishonest or an ignorant fool? I suppose the distinction isn't important.
P.S. try to be a little more creative with your name calling. You could learn something from Narad. Though learning anything may ne asking too much
Case in point, Wales. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news…
JP@104 --- "And stop calling me Shirley!"
The wogs begin at Calais. That could spoil his hepcat look.
If this is in fact true, he is shirley a weirdo transvestite, not an executive transvestite.
He's certainly not a sweet one.
Maybe he'd like to come up to the lab. And see what's on the slab.
In further support for my theory that osteopaths must invent at least one fraudulent citation in order to earn their initiation, to show that they have killed their last vestige of loyalty to truth, here's Johnny Chav again, from his Daily Fail period:
Of course Lancet issues are on line, and searchable, and contain no 1985 papers or letters about BCG, or any of the many field trials listed by Plotkin, Orenstein & Offitt. But I can't credit him with enough intelligence to work completely from scratch... he is several stages along the centipede. Any suggestions as to what earlier osteopathic fabrication he was embroidering there?
Connoisseurs of persiflage might also enjoy the creativity on show here:
http://www.theosteopathichouse.com/Blog/Osteopaths-and-their-support-of…
@the good herr doktor
It's always interesting to be reminded of how osteopath's are quacks in the rest of the world. I wonder why things developed so differently in the US.
Oh my that was an alarming headline! Squawkers McCaw was worried.
Antivaxxers remind me more of the argument sketch. They don't have real arguments, just the same contradictions again and again.
But really, can't we move this conversation past "Vaccines don't cause autism" to "Stop implying that autism is worse than preventable deadly disease!"
http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/
Duly regurgitated by "nobby":
When called on this, he summons all his wits for this zinger:
Followed by
Sound familiar?
Really familiar?
h[]tp://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/04/09/the-annals-of-im-not-antivaccine-part-15-robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-the-vaccine-associated-holocaust/#comment-394818
Phildo is like an even dumber version of the Dachelbot.
Bev@116
https://youtu.be/kQFKtI6gn9Y
Denice Walter @24:
You remind me of one of my favorite observations: The autism rate was probably about the same four hundred years ago, but people thought it was because the faerie were kidnapping the children and leaving changelings.
It's assuredly a (a href="http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/Supplement_3/S64.full">pointless) garbling of the Chengalpattu trial. All three of the final papers were reprinted just over two years ago and are freely accessible.
Given that locating them with this information should be quite straightforward for most but hopelessly intractable for Phildo, I'll leave it as an exercise.
^ Well, I guess that's a novel way to prevent autolinking.
It’s assuredly a garbling of the Chengalpattu trial
Filtered through the Nov. 15 1979 "New Scientist", and then through one or two osteo intermediaries.
I would propose what I call ‘The Crosby Deduction’ as a more likely scenario
Close, but not exactly a Jake production. Bonus points for padding it out with ObongoCare.
^ Man, today is not my successful-markup day at all.
The is an elephant in your argument dear boy
And a ferret sticking up my nose.
Who the f killed my parrot???
Johnny, you sunova
Orac, the dead parrot meme is brilliant. That'll go viral faster than a measles outbreak, and I'm going to start spreading it. It's exactly the right tone and type of ridicule that's needed for dealing with anti-vax True Believers in public places.
-----
Re. Robert Bell @ 8: "...the anti-science gang at Daily Kos..."
Anti-vaxers get banned on Daily Kos practically the moment they stick their noses up. The top three ways to get instantly banned on DK are:
1) Advocate violence.
2) Advocate anti-vax conspiracy theory.
3) Advocate 9/11 conspiracy theory.
Most of us who hang out on DK have zero tolerance for any of that mind-garbage, and we don't hesitate to pounce it when we see it.
---
Re. "waste of money replicating already-validated science." A few replication studies are always good, but what really ticks me off is this:
Here's the general public all a-tweak about ASDs for well over a decade.
How many violent crimes each year are committed by people with ASDs? Tiny number.
How many violent crimes each year are committed by people with personality disorders, notably antisocial personality disorder (sociopaths)? Huge number. Half or more of people incarcerated for violent crimes and for white-collar frauds are diagnosable sociopaths.
In terms of benefit to the public, we ought to be spending half or more of whatever we spend each year on prisons, on personality disorder research. As viable treatments become available, this will pay for itself via reduced crime. And the change in the overall quality of life will be noticeable in the culture.
MMR DOES cause autism!!!
GlaxoSmithCline, have tried to hide a 1271 page research dokument - theit own - that says MMR causes autism and a whole lot of awful things. This document, now on my computer, superseedes any horror movie ever made.Not even Stephen King could dream up such atrocities, yet we use these poisionous vaccines on our defenceless children every day, claiming science is with us. It is NOT, and randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial is NOT unethical. Enough children are already non-vaccinated and more then willing to support and participate in such a study, in order to once and for all get rid of vaccines. I volounteer with my son, 3 years old, non vaccinated and healthy. Bring it on. Let us slay the vaccine monster!!!
Johnny @78:
That's not how it works, you tosser. You made the claim, so YOU stump up the evidence.
THE NEW PHONE BOOKS ARE HERE!
Not surprising given the letter was apparently in a 1980 edition of Lancet as described through the medium of interprative homeopathy .
Somebody be sure to let me know if Phildo reverts to weird internal speech; I might not be able to resist witnessing a repeat of the time that he came down with the "virus hovers".
#78
As you are so certain that the various rules and regulations on informed consent are routinely breached I look forward to your complaints to the relevant medical (and nursing, as if you are in the UK you know who actually gives most vaccinations) regulators with all the relevant details...
Murmer, Philip Hills is an osteopath. He makes his complaints on the internet.
That is how it is done in the osteopathic universe. Coupled with making stuff up of course.
Given that the Hope Osteopathic Clinic already has a bird logo, I'm thinking that maybe it should become the Hoopoe Osteopathic Clinic:
When we test painkillers and other pharmas it is not unethical to test known painkillers against saline. In fact when we do we find that saline can work just as well.
The only reason some 'ethics' committee has decided that an untested vaccine can only be tested against itself, minus the antigen, is because it enables all the side effects to be excluded. This is because, for example, when both groups have something nasty like brain swelling, it can be ruled out on the grounds that the control group also has brain swelling to the same degree.
So this 'study' that captain Gorski has creamed his nuts over is no different than testing the real burn effect of petrol against the real burn effect of petrol.
It is 'applied manure', like all vaccine research. The only problem here is that we and many others can see that the emperor's pants are down and you are all in denial about that.
Narad should change his name to NobRed, it must be so sore, put something on it like a proper doctor would. Not Mr Hill and never was - did you enjoy Susan Humphries trashing Polio vaccination NobRed.
Ohh look, back in moderation, is Susan Humphries trashing polio vaccination what did it? You sad sausages
Let's test a vaccine against itself and then announce "no difference, it's safe" why is it that vaccine studied never correlate with the raw data boys, just ghost write anything you like as long as it's positive. "We all know vaccines work"!!!! for shareholders that is, stuff the public. Not Mr Hill
Narad should change his name to NObRed, it's more fitting. Put something on it like a proper doctor oooooh.
Once again, johnny lies in the teeth of proof.
In #136:
But Fergus @19 quoted from the study:
hdb @114 and ChrisP @134 have it right. You make $h!t up and when you are shown to be wrong, you ignore the refutations. You are a liar and delusional.
Comment of mine in moderation.
MMR DOES cause autism!!!
GlaxoSmithCline, have tried to hide a 1271 page research dokument – theit own – that says MMR causes autism and a whole lot of awful things. This document, now on my computer, superseedes any horror movie ever made.Not even Stephen King could dream up such atrocities
Needs moar chemtrails.
Comment of mine in moderation.
The name of G*rsk* is not evoked lightly, it is a power word.
GlaxoSmithCline probably does make lousy vaccines. That Rollex watch I bought out of the trunk of that guy's car wasn't very good, either.
Tony,
That sounds terrible. Would that happen to be this 1,271 page document? Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me which pages say that MMR causes these "awful things". I can't find any reference to MMR at all, since the document is about the two Combined Diphtheria, Tetanus and Acellular Pertussis, Hepatitis B enhanced Inactivated Poliomyelitis and Haemophilus influenzae type B vaccine (Infanrix™ hexa). It must be another 1,271 page GSK document about vaccine safety you are referring to. I'm sure you weren't lying when you said you it had all those terrible things about MMR in it. No one would be stupid enough to make such a claim without perusing the document first, would they?
Anyway, the adverse events reported are those reported after vaccine administration and are not necessarily caused by the vaccines - it would be very remarkable if no one ever got sick or was diagnosed with autism after getting a vaccine, just by pure chance, wouldn't it?
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the Declaration of Helsinki which makes it very clear that such a study would be unethical:
Since vaccines are proven interventions, there are no compelling and scientifically sound methodological reasons to doubt their safety, and not vaccinating a child puts it at risk of serious or irreversible harm, the sort of study you suggest would not and should not be approved by any IRB or ethics committee anywhere in the world.
But then it wouldn't be a randomized or a double-blind trial, would it?
How very noble of you. Does this mean you would be happy for your child to be in the vaccinated arm of a randomized study? Thought not.
What I think is monstrous, by the way, is anyone leaving their child unvaccinated and vulnerable to life-threatening illnesses the way you have. I sincerely hope your child is not among the many children that will suffer pneumonia, encephalitis, permanent injury or death in the measles outbreaks that are, sadly, inevitable in Denmark given the current low vaccine uptake.
Comment of mine in moderation, because I used three links. It happens to us all occasionally. Some of us learn to avoid it most of the time.
So is it the cr3amed or nu!s or the whole phrase?
Either way stop talking about bodily functions and body parts in the crudest possible way and you'll find moderation will no longer be a problem.
A bit off topic, but still vaccine-loon related: Does anyone have the faintest idea what Adriana Gamondes is banging on about with her "State of Plague" rantings? She's starting to make that halfwit Heckenlively sound coherent,
Tony@128
Those are certainly extraordinary claims and as you apparently don't know extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Sorry but your word is not good enough.
You do realize that in a double-blind RCT it's possible your son could end up getting vaccinated. Injected with the very poisons you hate so much. This is why even from your (unsupported) point of view such a trial would be unethical.
johnny@137
Your inability to grasp the simple automoderation rules says far more about yoy than it does about Orac's tyrannical moderation and censorship.
The CDC is not only concealing documents showing that vaccines cause autism, they also have locked file cabinets full of proof that alt cancer cures work and that apple cider vinegar cures all known diseases.
The truth will always out though. Don't miss part IV of AoA's dynamic series "Militarized Trojan Horse for Globalization and Surveillance", which rips the cover off the vaccination conspiracy.
Today's installment invokes ISIS, Nazi Germany, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Apocalypse Now and the CIA Phoenix assassination program.
Get out your crayons and connect those dots!
JP @105, thanks! Made my day, "I'm from Europe, where the history comes from", brilliant.
@Tony
Give this bit a read, starting with part 1 to learn why an RCT of existing vaccines would be unethical.
BTW, newer vaccines, such as Gardasil, are tested against saline, as well as a control containing everything but the antigen.
johnny@137
It's been explained to you multiple times why you are wrong about this with quotes from the study as evidence (evidence being something you have consistently failed to provide). I think you've answered my previous question. In this case you are apparently being deliberately obtuse and intellectually dishonest. Note, however that this does not exclude you from also being an ignorant fool. I think you've provided ample evidence to support both conclusions.
@ Rebecca Fisher:
I read her material and wonder the same: usually she tries to impress her audience with abstruse references to modern philosophies or theories of aesthetics but then gums up that façade by inserting randomised trinkets from pop culture- including 40 year old movies that most people have never seen- all illustrated profusely in baroque fashion. Interestingly, she frequently makes very odd, 'far' associations- which we studied in psychologists' school and the significance of which I will leave to your imagination.
Generally her thesis is ( beyond the convolutions):
bad stuff/ vaccines/ autism/ corruption/ cover-up/ trouble or suchlike which resembles Teresa Conrick's essays nearly exactly sans the microbiome. Heckenlively mostly resorts to superheroes and supernatural detective memes as explication. Their work compiled is like unto James Joyce for the illiterati.
I answered Rebecca *without* viewing the latest installment- but now after reading that enormous barrel of pickled tripe masquerading as English I must say, I think she's outdone herself.
@Denice - thanks, especially for introducing me to the word of the day - "illiterati". :-D
Dangerous Bacon@150
I though you were joking but I looked the article up after Denice mentioned it as well. Not a joke. It doesn't get more insane than the first paragraph.
Wow. I also like the invomation on Noam Chomsky to support...something. I don't believe he would appreciate being cited to support such insanity. Can't wait for part 5:
"Maybe you should go to a country that only recently eradicated polio and tell people there that it isn’t real." NobRed
What like India, where they renamed it Bill Gates variant Polio after the Polio plus campaign gave everyone NPFP. How come NPFP is indistinguishable clinically from Polio, except that you have had the vaccine? Oh I forgot someone changed the Polio diagnostic guideline to say that if you have Polio but have had the vaccine you have to now call it NPFP. Funny in the country that they have eradicated it, there is now the same no of cases of NPFP as there was Polio before the vaccine campaign started.
Next you will be telling us there is a flu pandemic coming and we are all going to die unless we have the vaccine
No one is denying the reality of anterior horn demyelination which has been called Polio. What is a fog of fraud is the cause. When we know that DDT causes anterior horn demyelination and the proper doctors in the US were spraying kids with DDT at the height of the epidemic, creating a smokescreen and blaming it on a virus was disgusting. Then they bring out a 'vaccine' at the same time as banning DDT and announce a success. Herbal medicine, acupuncture and vaccination should be packaged up and burnt as woo.
"BTW, newer vaccines, such as Gardasil, are tested against saline, as well as a control containing everything but the antigen." Todd
Everything but the antigen includes all of the adjunctives including all the things that cause inflammation. So how on earth can that be a placebo. If both groups have brains swelling due to the fact that minus the antigen is effectively peanuts, you can take out the brain swelling.
That's vaccine placebo - bull
"Since vaccines are proven interventions, there are no compelling and scientifically sound methodological reasons to doubt their safety, and not vaccinating a child puts it at risk of serious or irreversible harm, the sort of study you suggest would not and should not be approved by any IRB or ethics committee anywhere in the world." Krap
No vaccine is proven to work, the rest of the sentence is anecdotal toadstools.
"Yes I know who Ernst is, thanks, I have a copy of Trick or Treatment which I highly recommend to you, and to johnny, though I suspect his reading comprehension isn’t up to it."
This book reads like Kindergarten. It is totally self referential, a pile of medical anecdotes supreme. I would imagine NobRed would use it as porn.
johnny@158
[citation needed]
@159
God you are mindnumbingly stupid. It's right there in the quote you provided.
"As you are so certain that the various rules and regulations on informed consent are routinely breached I look forward to your complaints to the relevant medical (and nursing, as if you are in the UK you know who actually gives most vaccinations) regulators with all the relevant details…" murmook
There is no need, it is a useful natural selection - one avoids the general proper doctor and his snake oil. No one has vaccinated anyone I know so I have no complaint.
People who have actually studied the subject disagree. An interesting write-up of vaccines for several diseases, focusing on history and factors that affect efficacy, is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042682215001725.
Much as I hate to be controversial, I do have some qualms about the title of this article.
Is the idea that we know, as a fact, that there are no people out there in the world who have autism who wouldn't have autism if they weren't vaccinated?
My problem here is that I think this is unknowable. There are complex issues about the possible effect of fever at particular times in development, for example, and while, overall, vaccines may reduce the incidence of fever in children, this doesn't cover the point.
In individual cases, vaccine injury has never been proven to a scientific standard of certainty, but that doesn't prove it never happens, any more than a court decision that someone was vaccine injured means that they really were.
Alternatively, is the idea that those monster autism prevalence stats are not consequentially the product of vaccines? This we do know to be true: the signals from epidemiology pointing to a link with vaccines are so weak, or nonexistent, that shots couldn't possibly account for them. But this is still not the same thing as the headline statement to the effect that vaccines don't, or can't, cause autism.
I never really get into causality issues. The exposure of the Wakefield fraud doesn't require it. That he systematically altered and misrepresented data to fabricate a "syndrome" for litigation and personal greed is a whole other issue to do with the integrity of research.
So, I kind of wondering if anyone can unpack for me the statement "MMR (still) doesn't cause autism"?
Think of it this way: Science can never prove a negative with absolute 100% certainty. However, when the weight of studies looking for and failing to find an association reaches a certain level, it becomes reasonable to change from saying that there is no evidence of association between MMR and autism to saying that MMR doesn't cause autism. I would argue that the weight of evidence failing to find an association between MMR and autism reached that level years ago.
Does that mean that there has never been a case of autism caused by MMR since the MMR was introduced. That is a contention that is, as you say, probably unknowable. However, we now have many well-designed studies attacking the question of association from multiple angles, and all of them have come up negative even though several of them were sensitive enough to have found a very tiny association. It is therefore not unreasonable to use the shorthand of saying that MMR does not cause autism, because there has been no evidence showing that it does. Truly, the parrot is still dead, as is the MMR-autism hypothesis, to the point where I would argue that it is unethical to waste further resources studying it, barring new evidence.
@johnny
Here's a source for you of a saline controlled trial for Gardasil. I don't feel the need to look for more than one since that is already 100% more evidence than you have provided for any of your absurd claims.
Safety and persistent immunogenicity of a quadrivalent human papillomavirus types 6, 11, 16, 18 L1 virus-like particle vaccine in preadolescents and adolescents: a randomized controlled trial.
@Brian Deer
Phil Plait talks about that a little over on Bad Astronomy.
Johnny replied:
Translation: I pulled that claim out of my backside and have no evidence to support it, so I'll just try to handwave it away.
Alternate translation: I don't actually know and don't actually care, but was trying to get a rise out of you.
In all fairness, I think most culturally literate people are familiar with Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness. I even think that one could use pop culture examples in a discussion on various theorists, etc. The problem is that she demonstrably doesn't understand the theory she's trying to use to "connect the dots." That whole "cult of science" thing "growing like a fungus," for example - that's a reference to Tsvetan Todorov, who actually had a reasonable point to make about how totalitarian regimes in the 20th century often appropriated "science" and its language in order to legitimize their atrocities. The fungus metaphor was him trying to carefully state that what he calls "scientism" is not the same as science, but that it grows on science like a parasite. (It's kind of like cargo cult science on a grand institutional level.)
My favorite bit from her new piece of work is this little sentence:
So... apparently autism kills you dead, just like AIDS in the 80s and early 90s, and it's also, uh, infectious? That's how the sentence reads, anyway.
@ JP:
I wrote that BEFORE I read today's installment and was referring to other, older and more obscure movies that most youngsters today most likely would not recognise. Just off the top of my head, one of her operas of Wagnerian length focused upon Catch-22 which was the most well-known.
I should really scan her listed articles and find a few examples but I am presently contemplating the illustrious Mr Deer's comment about causality with which I do not want to tangle after having had tangled with causality in what now seems like a past life aeons ago but that's another story which I won't relate today. SO.......
Be that as it may, Gamondes' article and supposedly edgy artwork may best be described by the Yiddish word 'dreck'.
@Denice:
Aw, come on, Catch 22 is a classic! I actually never saw the movie though, only read the book.
I have to say that I am sadly disappointed at the relative dearth of images in Gamondes' most recent weirdness. The pictures are at least half the fun.
@ JP:
I went to scan Gamondes' collected oeuvre at AoA and I just can't look at it in detail. My head hurt already after only a few minutes and I have to get ready for a long day trip tomorrow..
BUT I did look at today's dreck and noticed how she works up to how the native people cut off their children's inoculated arms- that's really why she chose that particular film.
I think that she's more concerned with collecting phrases and images that float her boat and gluing them together than she is about communicating any reasonable ideas. Primary process thinking at its finest.
@Denice:
Yeah, she definitely focuses in on that. It seems a little bit backfire-y, though, because ultimately isn't she comparing her side to... y'know, the baddies?
I've seen the latest thus far 4-part epic from Gamondes. If she could concentrate batshit crazy any more, it's be a black hole.
@Orac:
My favorite part of the latest space opera so far is the image header on part three. I spent a little bit too much trying to parse the deranged symbolism in that one.
How often is it that a surgeon scientist, a poet and a psychologist can wholeheartedly agree?
Her writing is crap.
Unfortunately, it seems that I wade thorough material of that nature on a near daily basis... good thing I have boots.
and she's nothing special- she just produces a highly concentrated product.
@Tony:
Be careful there. You're starting to sound like THEO, who believes that parents should be allowed to decide that their children can be killed for science, and that babies should be tormented for their own good. Not exactly someone I'd look to for ethical advice. So I ask you, would you be OK with parents subjecting their children to risky science experiments on any topic other than vaccination?
justthestats@179
Pretty sure Tony was a drive-by commenter. But he does provide interesting insight into AVers absolute failure to understand science and ethics. In an RCT of course every patient stands an equal chance of placebo or treatment. Yet Tony is seemingly under the impression that he would have a choice in the matter. Since that is not the case it would actually be a coin flip that he would be putting his child in (imagined) danger. Hence even from his point of view it would be a highly unethical study.
What I can't figure out is whether it's a misunderstanding of how RCTs work or warped ethics that lies behind Tony's (and others) proposals. In johnny and THEO's case I'm pretty sure it's poor ethics since this has been explained many times to them. For most AVers though I think it is a bit of both. Because even if it is a misunderstanding about their ability to choose in a trial there's an underlying (inaccurate) belief that it's ok for the vaccinated cohort to be injured as long it's not their children.
Piece of cake. (Given that overall post, I don't recall seeing any antivax coverage of the Rimini decision's being overturned.)
That's a five-paragraph editorial based on the 7.5-year Chengalpattu results.
the invomation on Noam Chomsky
Even if "invomation" was intended as 'invocation', it is still a fine addition to the language.
Pretty sure Tony was a drive-by commenter.
There are more sinister interpretations of Tony's failure to reappear with more details of the 1271-page document describing GSK's malfeasance. It was foolhardy of him to choose this particular forum -- we know who pays the blogger and the commenters! -- to gloat about his possession of such dangerous information.
It's a pain in the ass to read, since the geniuses who put together the tables didn't repeat the column heads on each page. Frompovich seems to be fritzing out over some single-digit tally of scattered entries containing "autis*" out of... 21,283,415 distributed doses.
@Brian Deer:
In addition to what Orac has said, there are two other lines of thought:
1. It's biologically improbable that the MMR could cause the kinds of neurological changes that autistic folk share
2. If there's something about being exposed to the attenuated measles virus that causes autism to appear in childhood, wouldn't there be something even more about being infected with the measles virus that would cause autism? In the pre-vaccine era, it was assumed that everyone was exposed to the measles virus. Why didn't that exposure cause autism?
I should have remembered that there's a Puliyel angle here. Check out these Pubmed Commons comments, in which Graph-Boy Miller makes an appearance.
Narad@184
It certainly is a frustrating document to parse. I get the feeling that it is somewhat like VAERS data given that page 25 lists "Live birth" as an adverse event. More detailed information on 2 of the cases is on p756 and p995. Neither is terribly convincing. For one they note (p756):
and the other has an unknown time from last dose to onset of symptoms (p756). Case reports are already poor evidence, such poorly documented ones even more so.
Looking at which appendices the autism reports appear also provides some insight. 2 appear in Appendix 4A while the 6 that AVers harp on are in 4E.
From p705
and p706
The 2 from 4A correspond to the 2 unconvincing case reports I mentioned above. I think it's a reasonable deduction that the others in 4E are consumer reports or at least non-medically verified. All in all it's rather poor evidence but the complexity makes it hard to explain and perfect for AVers to FUDdy the waters.
Side note, I love that they are celebrating legal decisions as if they are scientific proof. Science illiteracy at its finest.
Sweet Jesus.
That second citation should be p995. Also here's a direct link to the document https://autismoevaccini.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/vaccin-dc3a9cc3a8s… (PDF).
Remember, the DOI is a technological advance of staggering proportions!
No, I'm not sending a bug report.
Since the relevant thread is terminated and there is no In Other News permanent thread (hint, hint)
First Nations chemo case ruling amended to include child's well-being
So much for Clement:
"The clarification, read in a Brantford, Ont. court Friday afternoon, comes with news the child restarted chemotherapy in March when the cancer returned after a period of remission....
"As for the Hippocrates Health Institute, the Florida health spa that provided therapy to J.J. as well as leukemia patient Makayla Sault, who died in January, Williams said J.J. is no longer being treated there.
"'There's no contact,' Williams said."
^^ Well, at least Wiley seems to have someone reading the error logs.
^^^ Oh. My. G-d.
^^^^ Scratch that.
^^^^^ Oh. My. G-d.
Note that the link will try to skeeze up your joint, so unsuitable for Phildo-level clods.
@ #185 Liz: yes, the measles virus thing was simply a fraudulent concoction by Wakefield. Plainly false, and the failure by medical publishers - particularly BMJ Group (ironically) - to deal with the misconduct that surrounded those claims is quite shocking. They simply can't be bothered.
It appears that she's only received one charity comment so far. Then again, the horse itself has achieved the status of clip art.
Medicine is not science: guessing the future, predicting the past
Rather than arse around trying to download Miller's paper, I will just guess that he is having none of this 'evidence-based' approach and seeks to restore medicine to 'clinical judgement' and confirmation bias -- knowing that people will correct me if I'm wrong.
I'll fix it tomorrow. He imagines himself to be following in the footsteps of Poincare.
" In the pre-vaccine era, it was assumed that everyone was exposed to the measles virus. Why didn’t that exposure cause autism?" Liz ditz
it is not measles that causes the problem, it is trying to interfere with it that does. Look at the amount of crap in the vaccine, that's enough to push anyone over the edge that is hovering.
In a way you could say the whole vaccine thang is a distraction, like with Polio - had nothing to do with a bug as such but spraying kids with DDT, putting it in baby milk, wallpaper etc. was more of what it was about. Doctors even had a mantra "DDT it's good for me". it is why so many people shun the doctor as a source of good impartial information, especially now medicine is so dominated by market share. Same old same old
Not hill, never was
Unfortunately I enjoyed the dubious pleasure of viewing Bill Maher speak with RFK ( see Daily Beast; Salon/ clips)-
whilst he started out asking reasonably appropriate questions, it soon became apparent that he stood firmly in his guest's camp and didn't follow up any of Kennedy's assertions which even the most junior of Orac's minions could refute easily. Kennedy thanked him for allowing him to speak, something the news outlets refuse to do because of their vested interests ( advertisement from pharma). I'm certain that Orac ( and many present here) just groaned throughout.
I'm not sure if there is yet a video of the whole episode available.
it is not measles that causes the problem, it is trying to interfere with it that does
By all means, let's not interfere with something that puts 10-20% of those infected in the hospital and causes hepatitis, myocarditis, thrombocytopenia, encephalitis, pneumonia, otitis media, and death.
Perhaps the vaccine should try harder.
Well, y'see, shay, pneumonia, encephalitis, etc., are just examples of the body expressing its innate intelligence. Or something.
"Look at the amount of crap in the vaccine."
I don't know what planet you're on, but a 0.5 ml vaccine doesn't have a lot of 'crap' in it - we're talking micrograms. Millionths of a gram.
As far as the Polio/DDT canard - we didn't start spraying DDT as an insecticide until the mid 40's - so why did FDR have polio in the 20's then?
Logic - you're lacking it.
JP -- so, we should all be getting in touch with our inner pathogen?
"Johnny" certainly seems to have gotten in touch with his.
johnny,
You really are the gift that keeps on giving. I find your inept and idiotic offerings here endlessly entertaining. You're like a sort of antivaccine Mr Bean, but funnier. Thank you!
So trying to interfere with a virus that has only been affecting humans for a few hundred years causes autism? You really believe that measles was developed by some benign supernatural agency to give human immune systems a workout? How did humans survive before the 12th century?
Which of the ingredients of MMR specifically do you believe is the culprit?
The 1,000 TCID50 (tissue culture infectious doses) of measles virus; 12,500 TCID50 of mumps virus; and 1,000 TCID50 of rubella virus? Aren't these viruses good for us according to your beliefs?
Sorbitol (14.5 mg) - found naturally, in much greater quantities, in apples, pears, peaches, and prunes?
Sodium phosphate - which occurs naturally, in much greater quantities, in the human body?
Sucrose (1.9 mg), that's table sugar, also found naturally, in much greater quantities, in fruits?
Sodium chloride - common table salt?
Hydrolyzed gelatin (14.5 mg), which occurs in many foods?
Human albumin, which occurs, in much greater quantities, in human blood?,
Fetal bovine serum (<1 ppm), which occurs in many foods in hugely greater quantities?
Other buffer and media ingredients - mostly amino acids and salts that occur naturally in the human body?
Or is it the 25 mcg of neomycin, which is an antibiotic given in daily doses up to 480,000 times higher than this?
Come on, which of this "cr@p" is the culprit?
Hilariously, not only have you fallen for an utterly ludicrous claim - that polio was really caused by insecticides - but you have seized upon the wrong insecticide. Even prenatal exposure to relatively large amounts of DDT is not associated with any nervous system effects. If you have some evidence that DDT has an adverse effect on the human nervous system, "anterior horn demylination", for example, and causes symptoms even remotely similar to polio, do share.
The drug company that first produced DDT in the 1940s, true, but I doubt very much that doctors promoted it. DDT is remarkably safe in acute doses, but sadly it doesn't biodegrade very fast and bioaccumulates as it moves up the food chain, leading to unfortunate ecological consequences. Still, it is far less toxic than I used to believe.
Still deliberately misspelling your own name in an attempt to throw everyone off? Sad.
The indiscriminate spraying of DDT on crops and other outdoor applications (and the detrimental environmental effects that ensued) should be differentiated from controlled indoor spraying (i.e. to combat malaria-carrying mosquitoes):
"Nearly thirty years after phasing out the widespread use of indoor spraying with DDT and other insecticides to control malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) (in 2006) announced that this intervention will once again play a major role in its efforts to fight the disease. WHO is now recommending the use of indoor residual spraying (IRS) not only in epidemic areas but also in areas with constant and high malaria transmission, including throughout Africa."
“The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment,” said Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, WHO Assistant Director-General for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. "Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes. IRS has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures, and DDT presents no health risk when used properly.”
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/
http://m.naturalnews.com/news/046630_CDC_whistleblower_public_confessio…
I'm sorry, but posting a Natural News link gets you laughed off the internet, Matthew in Seattle.
"Be careful there. You’re starting to sound like THEO, who believes that parents should be allowed to decide that their children can be killed for science, and that babies should be tormented for their own good. Not exactly someone I’d look to for ethical advice." justhesoundbites
Ok, this smokescreen is getting rather boring. No vaccine, apart from the BCG, has ever been properly tested for efficacy against a real placebo (not a vaccine minus the antigen). In the case of the BCG it spectacularly failed - there was more TB in the vaccinated group. The real vaccine experiment is the one happening every day with every vaccine on the childhood schedule - non of them have been tested against placebo. To try and imply that withholding an untested vaccine is somehow going to risk life, ney put someone at risk - is total baloney.
Ask all the kids with narcolepsy after the swine flu vaccine experiment on children, that was state sanctioned and paid for by the taxpayer - only a total con man could pull that off.
Are you implying that 'proper doctors' are ethical or able to offer any kind of useful health advice? LOL
"I’m sorry, but posting a Pubmed link gets you laughed off the internet, Darwy up the end pipe."
Quite so, apparently there are still people who think all you have to do is quote a piece of industry funded 'research' and it's all tickyteeboo. Who came up with that idea?
Crude oil is natural, nothing healthy about that Krebby. You are starting to look like an identikit septic soldier. Try and do something more useful.
"DDT presents no health risk when used properly.” Dangerous bull
I suppose if you say it quickly it just rolls off the tongue. Apparently we can have 10,000 vaccines, they have done the studies or do we apply Offit's principle or maybe the Deer method? Just round it up with a quick RCT, publish and be damned. I could get good at this. Straw men all round.
Yes, that is interesting, like mercury is completely harmless in a vaccine - isn't that remarkable. Same with aluminum salts, innocuous in a vaccine. How do that do that?
"Still, it is far less toxic than I used to believe." Krebby
There we go, it is all about belief - where is the science?
"I don’t know what planet you’re on, but a 0.5 ml vaccine doesn’t have a lot of ‘crap’ in it – we’re talking micrograms. Millionths of a gram. Loon
Well Strontium 120 or whatever it was, try telling that to the Russian defector who dissed Putin. There is plenty of room for crap in a vaccine, you should know, look at the list.
Not Mr Hill and
Oh Johnny
You need to work on that biting wit, it's flagging a bit.
So, please pony up your 'evidence' of a swine flu vaccine experiment on kids.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6196/498.short
Strontium 120 is a red herring. It's not contained in any vaccine. There are no compounds in any vaccine which are toxic at the dose present.
johnny@212
I could've sworn I gave you a link to a saline controlled trial of Gardasil. Yup definitely did in #167.
@213
Ok I get it. A Pubmed indexed study is not good evidence. There's not really much I can do if NaturalNews and friends are the only references you'll accept. johnny, you are so full of sh*t I think it's dripping out your mouth onto your keyboard.
@johnny
A brief Pubmed search turned up saline controlled RCTs for multiple influenza vaccines (including the maligned H1N1 vaccine), TDAP, HiB, Hep B among other still experimental ones. Not going to bother with the links though since Pubmed means nothing to you and you just ignore anything that challenges your bull.
Gamondes writing is both less-crazy AND more-crazy than it appears to skeptics. The big question, though, is what the heck does it say that AoA is publishing it?
Less-crazy because what appears to be totally hallucinated random ramblings – mere gibberish – actually constitute a fairly sophisticated argument, explicted with interesting examples and citations of really smart people. She just can't organize her thoughts into a proper rhetorical structure, or express herself in clear language. If she could, the theory mish-mash almost makes sense – if and only if you start with her first principle: 'it is an objective fact beyond contention that vaccines cause great harm'.
More-crazy because (duh), you have to be out of the reality loop to have that as a base premise. The result is that Gamondes readings of critical theory and pop culture aren't meaningless gibberish – they're inversions of the sources, twisting them to draw conclusions opposite in some way to what these things actually mean. But her evocations of the sources are 'close enough', you have to both know the proper context of the stuff, AND spot the distorting premises to get how thoroughly she's stood her references on their heads.
Which is to say, if you knew nothing of Foucault, Chomsky, Todorov, Arendt, Popper (!), etc., read her glosses of them with some patience, and then went back to check the individual sources, you MIGHT think she got their ideas more-or-less right, these folks writings more-or-less support her position, and these thinkers too are bat-gauno lunatics. Which they're not.
[I'll spare y'all the proper explication of what Foucault's up to with "panopticism", for sake of time and bandwidth. Discipline and Punish is a true landmark book, as prescient as all get out, and not only accessible, but a pretty good read for the most part (other writings by Foucault, uhh, not so much)...]
So, for anyone who values the thinkers she cites (which doesn't mean agreeing with them by the way...), reading Gamondes is both amusing in it's ultimate wackiness, and disturbing in its mangling of intellectual traditions. The few comments she receives are mostly comedy gold, though, as the AoA crowd mostly has no clue what sort of intellectual threads she's trying to weave, and just tells her the posts are 'beautiful'.
OK, so what do we take from the fact AoA features these pseudo-intellectual travesties? IMHO:
1) They're way beyond trying to persuade any fence-sitters into their camp. The site is now devoted to community maintenance for hard-core anti-vax conspiracy theorists — re-enforcing and rallying their small group of partisans, not recruiting new members.
2) They've been wounded enough with various forms of counter-argument, public pressure, bad press for their 'heroes' and events-on-the-ground that they've got a 'legitimation crisis' in their old narrative. Post-Disneyland, the idea that Merck is just engineering a cover-up to protect their profits doesn't cut it anymore. It posits that too many people and authorities are asleep at the wheel to account for harm at the scale they 'KNOW' is occurring. They have to come up with an answer to 'how could this horror be happening?' The most readily-available tack, which many anti-vaxers are surely taking, is to weave ever more elaborate conspiracy theories. But these have the same root problem: motive. What kind of cabal would be so thoroughly evil as to pro-actively 'destroy' all those perfect-snowflake privileged white babies? Gamondes can't extract conspiracy from her screeds entirely, but she understands just enough about ideology theory to realize it provides a more credible rationale for the 'unquestionable' vaccine-epidemic scourge: the harm doesn't have to be conscious, no conspiracy is necessary, this is just the way authoritarian power manifests itself.
AoA is so marginal and obscure that the living authors Gamondes cites and genuine students of the dead ones are likely never become aware of her travesties of their work, and if they did, they'd barely roll their eyes before getting on to better things to do. I'd guess besides JP and myself, you could count on your fingers and toes the number of people who know anything about the stuff Gamondes mangles and also attend to medical pseudo-science issues enough to have actually read (ok, skimmed) any of her posts.
Anyway, my notes to skeptics:
1) That Gamondes is featured on AoA is evidence the hard-core loonies are LOSING.
2) You shouldn't draw any conclusions about the actual ideas (or the coherence) of any thinker Gamondes cites from anything she writes. It's all quote mining and then twisted at that. The safest assumption is that the folks she attempts to draw on are actually smart people with something valuable to say, who would snort whatever they drink onto their keyboards reading the distortions in her diatribes.
3) As such, Gamondes does represent a danger to the cause of sbm, as 'science-folk' who scan her posts can get a big confirmation-bias tweak of their anti-humanities stereotypes. On sum, critical theory offers little comfort to medical pseudo-science, and much, much more to combat it. Lives are at stake here, and a due concern for the potential victims calls on us all to avoid driving unnecessary wedges among potential allies who might work to protect them.
Despite the title, it has almost nothing to do with medicine. (The link in #196 just worked for me.)
It just devolves into assertions that the Goldbach conjecture is unprovable, ball lightning cannot be explained, etc. The running head is "Towards a theory of irregularity," while, to all appearances, it is a product a whopper of a case of irregularity. What it's doing in a journal focusing on clinical practice is anyone's guess.
This similarly titled item looks insightful by comparison, although I strongly doubt that I'm going to find an institutional holding, given that the site has a response time suggesting that it's hosted on a consumer-grade account.
The field trials of the Salk vaccine kind of dispense with such niceties in any event.
Well, assuming that FDR actually had polio, lead arsenate.
This is what happens when Phildo's sack of original screwups runs dry.
"Johnny" @ 201 says: "it is not measles that causes the problem, it is trying to interfere with it that does."
Maybe he wants to explain that in more detail to the 1,600 litigants in the UK, and something like 6.000 litigants in the USA whose lawsuits depended 100% on "it is the measles that causes the problem", and whose lawsuits went to the wall, at a public cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Of course, the whole thing rested on the most outrageous frauds by Andrew Wakefield - who concocted the measles theory - but rather than show him the door, victims continue to cling to him like boat people clutching hold of a concrete life-raft.
Johnny: write to your buddy Andy explaining that it's not the measles virus.
"Measles virus in the gut" - seems like a very simple hypothesis to test.....yet, after after 15 years, no one has yet to replicate the original findings, or better, run some simple tests and do it themselves.
johnny,
Why do you continue to lie when your lies have been exposed? Over and over again your silly claims are shown to be untrue, but you just bounce back repeating them over and over; I'm tempted to call you rubber johnny, but that would be unfair to prophylactics.
Citation needed. BCG isn't the greatest vaccine against TB for some populations, but in others it is up to 90% effective with efficacy of 52% after 50–60 years. BCG appears to have other non-specific effects on the immune system, leading to lower incidence of melanoma, bladder cancer, leprosy and to a greater response to various other vaccines.
Anyway, you are wasting your time trying to convince Americans that BCG is of no use, since it has never been used routinely in the US, though I'm sure you were injected with it at school in the UK, just as I was, after a sensitivity test to rule out active infection. Early detection and and treatment has been the mainstay of elimination in the US; TB isn't particularly contagious so this approach can be just as effective as a vaccine.
Missed a link: BCG against TB is up to 90% effective with efficacy of 52% after 50–60 years.
johnny@78
@136
@138
@201
@216
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
This bit of Phildo's homework has already been done. He's screwed it up several ways to Sunday, as is his wont.
The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies ( 2013 )
/ Appendix D: Study Designs for the Safety Evaluation of Different Childhood Immunization Schedules--Martin Kulldorff
Committee on the Assessment of Studies of Health Outcomes Related to the Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule
Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice
INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
"To date, there have been few comparative studies evaluating the safety of different vaccine schedules. A few of the existing studies have shown that there are cases in which the risk of adverse events can depend on the vaccination schedule used. Hence, it is both a feasible and an important area of study. "
books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13563&page=161
ken@231
What the hell point are you trying to make? This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. Link, quote, no context, no original thoughts. That's also a nicely cherry-picked quote you got there. How about this one from their conclusions?
Is he still under the impression that I'm actually seeing his comments? (Spinning off a root-owned GM script helps in this regard.)
#232 link please
Continued...."As a relatively new field of investigation, the big question is what types of study designs will be most fruitful for evaluating different childhood vaccine schedules. A number of possible study designs are presented in this review to evaluate different features or components of the vaccine schedule. These include the timing of individual vaccines, the timing between doses of the same vaccine, the interaction effect between vaccines and concurrent health conditions or pharmaceutical medications, the interaction effects of different vaccines given on the same day, the ordering of different vaccines, and the effect of cumulative summary metrics such as the total number of vaccines or the total amount of some vaccine ingredient. Study designs for the comparative evaluation of one or more complete schedules are also considered. Methods are presented both for adverse events with an early onset, which are the easiest to study, and for adverse events with a late onset, including serious chronic conditions. It is concluded that a wide variety of different vaccine schedule components can be studied. "
Oh, dear, someone has been cribbing.
#232 Krunch
"Instead, the committee made a judgment based on the literature that failed to link adverse effects to schedule exposures or multiple immunizations, concluding that there is no evidence that the schedule is not safe."
That's because they had very few studies- Duh
@ johnny you are spot on regarding the placebo control. That's not science that's quackery. It just never ends with this topic. Vaccine science looks like a brick of Swiss cheese when its vetted.
So this ‘study’ that captain Gorski has creamed his nuts over is no different than testing the real burn effect of petrol against the real burn effect of petrol.
Dude your hilarious LMFAO. And narad nobred Bahaha
This article is making the rounds.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/04/bretigne-shaffer/first-they-came-fo…
Repeat
"Instead, the committee made a judgment based on the literature that failed to link adverse effects to schedule exposures or multiple immunizations, concluding that there is no evidence that the schedule is not safe."
That's because they had very few studies- Duh
“To date, there have been few comparative studies evaluating the safety of different vaccine schedules. A few of the existing studies have shown that there are cases in which the risk of adverse events can depend on the vaccination schedule used. Hence, it is both a feasible and an important area of study. ”
books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13563&page=161
Hey, ken, here something you should answer:
The first MMR vaccine was introduced in the USA in 1971. If MMR was associated with autism it would have been noticed in the USA before the UK as it is a much larger country using MMR much longer. Where is the verifiable documentation dated before 1990 that autism in the USA increased during the 1970s and 1980’s?
Johnny has not denied the main accusation about his honesty -- that he has hidden behind enough sockpuppets and created enough untrue biographies to populate an entire season of "Game of Thrones".
Hilariously, though, Ken fails to notice that Kulldorff scored an R01 on the very subject.
#237 link please
Suggest you all petition IOM for their egregious error and ORAC address this.
OK.
Liz Ditz@ 185
Let us go even further.I was watching this YouTube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx7OA60PRKg
It tells the fascinating,and little known,story of the pioneering women who developed the pertussis vaccine in the 1930s.
At 4:32 in this video,the narrator talks about how thimerosal was first used to culture vaccines starting in the Netherlands in the 1930s.Something I,and probably many laypeople,did not know.Is it safe to assume thimerosal was in broad use for all vaccine worldwide by the 1940s?
Perhaps someone could fill me in here.
If thimerosal was anywhere near as dangerous as St. Andrew and his followers claimed it was,we no doubt would have seen untold millions of autistic or brain damaged children worldwide by the late 1940s or 1950s.But as we all know from reading Mr. Deer's writing,Wakekfield pretty much pulled his thimerosal theory out of his (fill in anatomy part of your choice).
ken@239
You cherry-picked one quote from their appendix and are ignoring their stated conclusion. Their conclusion was that the current schedule is safe, not that more study is needed. From p133, they conclude that the current schedule is safe,
that vaccinated vs. unvaccinated RCTs are unethical,
that an alternate schedule to decrease the number of vaccines per visit is unfeasable,
and finally:
In fact their recommendation for further research is more or less to keep doing what we're doing (p134):
Their concluding observations on p135 are also good. I'd recommend you read the whole page but since I don't think you will here are particularly poignant excerpts:
And the best for last because it directly contradicts your statement that it only looks safe because there is not enough data:
Try harder bro.
That should be
#248 Krunch Re#231 Why did the IOM add Appendix D to their publication if it contradicts previous conclusions?
books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13563&page=161
(People will cherry-pick according to their bias.)
You honestly can't think, can you?
Roger Kulp:
At 4:32 in this video,the narrator talks about how thimerosal was first used to culture vaccines starting in the Netherlands in the 1930s.Something I,and probably many laypeople,did not know.Is it safe to assume thimerosal was in broad use for all vaccine worldwide by the 1940s?
That assumption would *not* be safe... remember that thimerosal / methiolate is an antiseptic / preservative, so not a good idea for attenuated live-cell vacines.
For the same reason I am skeptical that "thimerosal was [ever] used to culture vaccines". But a slow intertubes connection, combined with a dislike for the medium, prevents me from watching the video to see what was said.
ken,
I just hurt myself laughing too hard. Some people have an astonishing lack of insight.
Roger Kulp,
Thimerosal has been used as a preservative for various biological products. In particular it has been used for many decades as a preservative for immunoglobulins in similar concentrations to those used in vaccines. Since immunoglobulins are often given repeatedly in much larger doses than vaccines, we know that thimerosal has no adverse effects except in doses several orders of magnitude greater than those present in vaccines.
For example, this study (PDF) looked at patients with hypogammaglobulinemia who had receive doses of immunoglobulins containing an average 317 milligrams of thimerosal over an average 6.5 years. That's 317,000 micrograms of thimerosal as compared to less than 150 micrograms of thimerosal in the entire childhood vaccination schedule before thimerosal was mostly removed. One patient had received an estimated 1,482,000 micrograms of thimerosal.
Their conclusion:
When thimerosal in immunoglobulins given IV regularly over a period of years causes no problems, even in the babies of pregnant women, I find it hard to see how doses thousands of times lower could possibly cause problems in vaccines.
Aren't those exceedingly high numbers of unvaccinated? Although there are pockets, the authors themselves found a rate of even 5% totally vaccine free to be unlikely.
I'm too stupid to know how that would move the logic.
Also, only one number met significance. Isn't this all a rather lot of noise considering that?
THEO @238: Lew Rockwell? You lose.
The point is not that the MMR causes autism. The point is that with the large number of doses from many different vaccines and from future vaccines as well for future generations, anti vaxxers think this increases the risk for autism. There is this idea that these vaccines given together act synergistically and additively in a negative way. Anti vaxxers want studies comparing vaccinated vs non vaccinated. Looking at one vaccine is simplifying it a bit, especially since there are other vaccines and autism is one of those often multifactorial diseases.
Looking at one vaccine is simplifying it a bit
AoA contributors are simple and have not accepted the need to move the goalpost.
Strangely, "they" refuse to specify the most rudimentary aspects of such a study, such as, oh, I dunno, what result threshold would suffice to shіtcan H₁.
Perhaps you could check with "them" on this point, given that you're splainin' and all.
Hello: "The point is that with the large number of doses from many different vaccines and from future vaccines as well for future generations, anti vaxxers think this increases the risk for autism."
Here you go: Increasing exposure to antibody-stimulating proteins and polysaccharides in vaccines is not associated with risk of autism.
"Children were excluded who had any the follow-
ing medical conditions with known links to ASD traits:
fragile X syndrome, tuberous sclerosis, Rett syndrome, con-
genital rubella syndrome, or Angelman syndrome. Control
children were selected at random from the MCO popula-
tions to match cases within matching strata defined by birth
year, sex, and MCO" Christ
There you go, imbalanced cohorts. The kids being looked at for increase risk of ASD had all the kids taken out that had known ASD traits. However the kids in the control were going to include these so the outcome was going to bias in favour of the study aims - to prove vaccination doesn't cause ASD.
Can't you see that this is why people are shunning vaccination or are you a true vaccine believer? Or just a pharma shilllll. Not Mr Hil, never have been.
Next
Another lovely gem in your study is that it was funded by the CDC. The authors, all proper doctors, had no conflict of interests to declare.
Well of course they didn't, who is going to bite their master and get a pat on the head.
Can you really believe that the public is so dumb? This study, like all vaccine studies, has more holes than I can be bothered to make up a comparison with.
Still not Mr Hillll and never have been.
"AoA contributors are simple and have not accepted the need to move the goalpost." Hairy doctor
What like in Christ's study, take out all the ASD trait kids from the study group and then select the control from the random population - that might work.
" I find it hard to see how doses thousands of times lower could possibly cause problems in vaccines." Krebby pants
Well you would, wouldn't you, you are a vaccine believer. Not seeing is the preserve of the challenged, I wish you luck on your quest.
"Is he still under the impression that I’m actually seeing his comments?" Lord NobRed of the higher fold
Such was the cutting wit of the mighty Johnny, even NobRed had had enough - driven blind by constant rebuttals to his nonsensical Pubmed spewing rants he finally gave up.
What a mess you gotta clear up now, put something on it.
Sorrry, my typo. Should have read 'lord NobRed of the lower fold'
johnny:
It always amazes me how antivaxxers are convinced that the CDC is in on some huge conspiracy to hide the "real dangers" of vaccines. One would think that an organisation that has public health as its main area of concern would be extremely anxious to find out whether or not vaccines cause harm, and if they did, to do something about it. Maybe even shut down vaccination if it was really as harmful as that.
Six "comments" in a row? It looks as though Philip "Fannyblaster" Hills has had to swap the U.S. and U.K. idioms.
johnny,
Why would you include children with known genetic or prenatal causes of ASD in a study trying to see if vaccines causes autism? It would just include a lot of unnecessary noise. Children with those congenital conditions will have ASD-like symptoms whether they are vaccinated or not. Or are you suggesting that genetic disorders and CRS are caused by vaccines? It wouldn't surprise me at all, given the depth of your ignorance.
The children in the control group did not have ASDs, by definition; they were even screened for ASDs to be sure. There is no way any children with "fragile X syndrome, tuberous sclerosis, Rett syndrome, congenital rubella syndrome, or Angelman syndrome" were included in the controls. The idea was to match children with ASDs with children without ASDs to see if the ASD children had been exposed to more vaccine antibodies.
How could this study design possibly bias the results in the way you claim? If children with congenital disorders were included in the control group (they were not) they would be less likely to have been vaccinated, making it look as if vaccines prevent these disorders and ASDs, the opposite of your claim.
I can see why someone with a closed-minded and unshakable conviction that vaccines are bad, combined with serious problems understanding scientific papers, like you, might leap to the wrong conclusions.
Another deliberate misspelling? It gets sadder. You keep telling yourself that. No one here believes you.
@Julian - or accept the fact that the CDC has taken action when vaccines are suspected of causing harm, such as mandating the removal of DPT and also pulling the first Rotavirus vaccine from the market as well.....recommendations for both individual vaccines and the schedule have changed over the years, sometimes to the detriment of individual manufacturers - so exactly how does that jive with the anti-vax line that the CDC or FDA don't care?
It doesn't, of course - because the anti-vaxers will always be about the conspiracy, even if the evidence shows exactly the opposite.
@Kreb - because he believes that all of those things are caused by vaccines, of course.
Not Mr Hil, never have been.
"I have no brother at all. I never had a brother in my life, and I certainly have not the smallest intention of ever having one in the future."
johnny,
I love this bizarre idea that scientists are obliged to produce results that the people funding their research would like to see. On many occasions I have participated in studies to evaluate new methods for measuring various substances in blood and/or urine. More than once the new method has proven to be more or less useless.
I remember in particular a serum creatinine method that resulted in a scatter plot comparing the new method to our existing method that looked like a random collection of dots on the page. There was no correlation at all, and the diagnostics company had to go back to the drawing board; how they got as far as asking us to evaluate this method beats me.
That didn't stop the diagnostics company from paying the laboratory (we had an amenity fund that was used to fund training and conferences), taking us all out for a nice meal to say thanks and coming back to us the next time they had a new method to evaluate. The last thing they wanted was to bring a useless diagnostics kit to market, any more than a vaccine manufacturer wants to find a new vaccine leads to adverse events and have to withdraw it from the market.
In any case I struggle to see how any scientist desperate to please his/her funders would go about altering the results. At what point would this happen? Unless they are working more or less alone, like Cyril Burt (though his malfeasance has been recently called into question - one of his 'imaginary' collaborators turned up, IIRC), they would have to either include their co-authors and co-workers in the conspiracy or sneak about fiddling with the data, hoping not to get caught and lose their job.
In the case of a large study like the one Chris cited, a fraudster would presumably have to find controls that had been exposed to more vaccine antibodies than average, to mask the effects of the vaccines on ASDs. I suppose that isn't impossible, but the idea that this has happened in every single study that has found no link is beyond belief. The motivation for a scientist to commit such fraud is unclear. Wakefield was paid by a lawyer to find the results he did, and had an alternative measles vaccine lined up to sell to people once he had scared them away from the MMR vaccine. A scientist funded by the CDC isn't going to have his funding taken back because he didn't get a specific set of results.
Spare us your made up criticisms. You clearly have no clue about the study design.
johnny,
The study group consisted of children with ASDs, and the control group consisted of children without ASDs. Children with ASDs of known cause were excluded from both study and control groups. Explain how this would bias the study.
"Krebby pants"? This is what you describe as "cutting wit"?
Explain it to me. How is it that patients given up to 1,482,000 micrograms of thimerosal had no neurological symptoms, and pregnant women given hundreds of thousands of micrograms of thimerosal had neurotypical children, but less than 150 micrograms of thimerosal in vaccines given over the course of several years caused autism? What other substance can cause permanent neurological changes in some people in doses 10,000 times lower than those that cause no effects at all in others?
"Instead, the committee made a judgment based on the literature that failed to link adverse effects to schedule exposures or multiple immunizations, concluding that there is no evidence that the schedule is not safe." Cuntmunch
nice Cherry pick there, they wobbled on it looking like the schedule issue was an issue so they plundered the texts that failed to find a link? Nice work, now take the hairs out of your mouth.
"or accept the fact that the CDC has taken no action when vaccines are suspected of causing harm, such as mandating the removal of the urabe strain of mumps ..recommendations for both individual vaccines and the schedule have changed over the years, sometimes to the detriment of babies and children manufacturers –Even when drugs like Vioox had killed 360,000 people they waited until share prices dived on payouts before banning it. so exactly how does that jive with the vax line that the CDC or FDA care?
It doesn’t, of course – because the vaxers will always be about the conspiracy, even if the evidence shows exactly the opposite.
Krebby pants - the group that was studied had all of the kids with ASD tendancies taken out. The control group was picked randomly. That looks to me like a rocket up the arse of your squealing appeals to see it your way.
"Explain it to me. How is it that patients given up to 1,482,000 micrograms of thimerosal had no neurological symptoms," Krebby pants
Well with the kind of studies you post, they probably screened everyone out with neurological symptoms.
"In any case I struggle to see how any scientist desperate to please his/her funders would go about altering the results." Krebby and the Disney land of publication
Well speak to Merck, they are up in court for forcing their staff to fiddle data on MMR efficacy. Speak to Roche, after the last swine flu fiddle and billions of tax payers spent money on their snake oil antivirals, after months of delay producing data for an audit on its efficacy - offical reply- lost it - the whole lot. There are lots of times that people fiddle data Krebby, do you live in the real world - how about the banking crisis, weapons of mass destruction? Or would you rather snuggle up to NobRed and watch an Offit promo with a pizza? Tell him to put something on it.
"So let me get this straight. Rates of autoimmune disease, neurological disorders, allergies, cancers, infant mortality go up as the number of vaccines increases. 'Correlation does not mean causation'
Instances of infectious disease go down as vaccines are introduced. 'Correlation totally means causation'
Can you spot the 'medical anecdote' masquerading as a fact?
In fact if you are on a sofa with NobRed in front of anything to do with vaccine promotion - take some tissues-please!
The Hope Osteopathic Clinic must have a shortage of patients today.
"Funding/Support: This project was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, and the US Department of Health and Human Services under contract HHSN-271-2010-00033-C."
AS much as I hate to interrupt this engagingly erudite conversation, I should note to all interested that AoA has put up a 10 minute video of Kennedy and Bill Maher that should be either enlightening or sickening depending on your viewpoint.
For all those tired of "Dr. Bob" Sears and "Dr. Jay" Gordon monopolizing the antivax discussion in southern California, be assured that there is an alternative - "Dr. Dane (Fliedner) in Newport Beach.
Dr. Dane promotes an "alternative" vaccine schedule, because he recognizes that parents have fears about the chronic conditions linked to vaccines, including autism.
Like Orac, Dr. Dane used to be on the medical faculty at an academic institution, before he saw the light:
"Dr. Dane’s own children were experiencing chronic health conditions of their own which, despite seeing many specialists, were not getting answers using the conventional medical model. Out of frustration and desperation, his kids saw an alternative healthcare practitioner, who effectively diagnosed and healed them after one visit, when they had seen numerous specialists and general pediatricians over the years and essentially got nowhere! This was a very humbling experience, and was ultimately the beginning of his receptivity to alternative paradigms of health and healing."
Now Dr. Dane is into alt med in a big way, going for his certification in Functional Medicine (there is a Mark Hyman video on the website) and proudly citing his 500 hours of yoga and yoga therapy teaching experience attained in India (he is certified by the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine, and of course by the AAP).
http://raisingsagespediatrics.com/about-us/dr-dane-fliedner/
@DB #283
One visit? Wow, I hope he only pushes for the one visit cures all woo and not the you have to devote your entire life to it for 2 years or more woo.
I know he probably doesn't want to share too much PHI about his kids but do you think he could at least reveal which woo is the one time cure woo?
@Julian
It always amazes me how antivaxxers are convinced that the CDC is in on some huge conspiracy to hide the “real dangers” of vaccines. One would think that an organisation that has public health as its main area of concern would be extremely anxious to find out whether or not vaccines cause harm, and if they did, to do something about it. Maybe even shut down vaccination if it was really as harmful as that.
People want to believe that, since doctors can put accident victims back together in one piece and can set broken bones and temporarily reduce inflammation, the practice of medicine must be uniformly successful across the board.
People want to believe in SCIENCE.
If a paper like the New York Times let loose their hounds to relentlessly explore vaccine science, I assure you that, in time, doctors and medical bureaucrats and even drug-company employees would come out of the woodwork with confessions, and the resultant explosions and outcries would shake the medical/pharmaceutical foundations of America and the planet.
It would shake and destroy the SCIENCE. it would jeopardize Obamacare it would shatter the trust of Doctors. In short it would cause a revolution.
Vaccines are the holy grail and foundation of Modern Medicine It must be protected at all costs.
Clearly you are unable to do the mental gymnastics to see this perspective.
@ D Bacon, Functional Medicine is the future of medicine. Vaccines represent the past an old archaic approach that will be thrown into the dustbin of history. Doctors like this one are waking up all over the country and seeing how powerful food and supplements HEAL not toxic drugs and vaccines
Johnny is kicking some ass in here as usual.
THEO- How many people died from smallpox this year?
johnny,
Your ignorance is astonishing.
No, you are just ignorant of how scientific language is used.. They looked very thoroughly for evidence linking adverse effects to schedule exposures or multiple immunizations and found none. If I carefully look for evidence of an elephant in my backyard and find none, I can safely conclude there isn't one there.
Vioxx didn't kill 360,000 people and it wasn't banned, it was voluntarily withdrawn even though it only has cardiovascular adverse effects when used in high doses for long periods. Both US and Canadian advisory panels voted to allow the drug to return to the market.
Is your reading comprehension really that poor? The group that was studied all had ASDs. The control group did not. Neither the study group nor the control group included people with Fragile X etc.. Simply repeating your lies doesn't make them true.
So when you can't find a problem with a study that contradicts your delusional beliefs, you simply make one up?
You mean the two Merck whistleblowers whose claims are not supported by the epidemiological evidence? We'll have to wait and see how that case goes, but I will note that they have a strong financial motivation to make those claims.
If you are talking about Tamiflu, that was data produced by one drug company. The studies showing no link between vaccines and autism have been done in multiple countries and by multiple independent researchers, not just by drug companies.
I asked you before for the RCTs that proved that banking deregulation was a good idea or that there were WMDs in Iraq. The whole point is that there was no convincing evidence for either, and there is a mountain of convincing evidence that shows no link between vaccines and autism.
None of that is true. Multiple studies have found no link between vaccines and autoimmune disease, neurological disorders, allergies and cancers, and infant mortality is a fraction of what it was before vaccines were introduced.
So explain why the incidence of chickenpox is the same as it ever was in the UK, but has plummeted in the US.
Sometimes correlation is due to correlation, sometimes it is not. The point is not to assume causation just because of correlation
You wouldn't know a medical anecdote if it bit you on the backside.
And what are people going to do until we have enough emergency chakra realignment centers?
And what if they take you to the wrong alt-med emergency room and they give you TCM treatments rather than Ayruveda, can you imagine the adverse reporting system we'd have to set up for that?
If Phildo is babbling about the DeStefano et al. cited by Chris, the AHIP contract (200-2002-00732) was hardly just for this, and both DeStefano and Wentraub are CDC staff.
^ Weintraub
THEO,
What a very strange fantasy life you have. I am confident that any competent journalists have the intellect to see that the vast majority of the evidence supports the safety and efficacy of vaccines. I honestly believe you must be either profoundly ignorant or intellectually impaired to conclude otherwise.
I'm sure it would, if any of your claims had any truth to them, but they don't. You are simply deluded.
Heh.
@ KayMarie:
That's hilarious!
"Mental Gymnastics" - more like a mental contortionist.....
Excellent point! I heard that said just the other day by, er, by, well, by nobody really. In fact, I've never heard that said before. I've never once heard anyone seriously say that since aspirin works for headaches and splints work for broken bones that the entire structure of medicine is good, pure, and without stain.
What I keep hearing is that every medical treatment should be backed with solid evidence that it is effective and (relatively) safe. That would be science.
Science is not threatened by your views.
Actually...
even woo-meisters must admit that 'emergency' medicine is peerless - who can argue with its ability to start stopped hearts and re-attach severed limbs?-
But then they say that standard, everyday SBM is awful.
As if the two entities are un-related, use different data sets and their practitioners are educated and trained in absolute isolation from the 'opposite' side.
Again, I must say, AS IF.
Science is not threatened by your views.
Far from being threatened, in fact, Science is sitting back laughing itself silly over your views.
@DB #283
I just had a look at his website. How fortuitous for me. He's assured me that I no longer have to worry about sodium in my diet, as long as I eat "pure Himalayan Crystal salt with 84 trace minerals and 1 iodine supplement" and not The Evil Table Salt. My nephrologist would probably not agree, but what does she know?
I keep worrying that someone will start selling "sodium free natural salts" that turns out to be arsenic salts, or "all natural mineral sweetener" that's actually lead acetate.
KayMarie@288
I've been considering letting my paramedic license lapse and becoming an emergency chiropractic technician*. If we can get some of the doctors here become NDs or DCs we can really get the emergency alternative medical system kickstarted.
That Mitchell and Webb Look: Homeopathic A&E: h[]p://youtu.be/HMGIbOGu8q0
*sadly emergency chiropractic technician seems like an almost real thing
johnny@274
Speaking of cherry-picking did you miss my other post or are you just dishonest? They concluded that the schedule is safe, federal surveillance is strong and vaxxed vs unvaxxed is unethical. Basically what they said was the schedule is safe and when it's not we have the ability to detect that so let's keep funding our current systems. In fact the (un)ethics of vaxxed vs unvaxxed has most of chapter 6 devoted to it.
As far as you "cunning wit" is concerned it's possible to be both offensive and inflammatory without being so vulgar. You don't do your profession great credit Mr. Hills.
Gray Falcon@299
Did you know there's also chlorine in our salt? That the stuff in bleach! I want some of that elemental sodium. Heck, elemental evem sounds more natural.
Speaking of johnny's "wit," I've never really been able to understand why terms referring to somebody who practices cunnilingus are supposed to be insulting. There is in fact a Yiddish version of johnny's insult which is a term of endearment.
Krebiozen @ 253
Thank you.I did not know any of this.My point was that thimerosal had been in use longer ago than many people thought,myself included.That had it been the serious neurotoxin the antis claim,we would have seen big problems with millions of children 50,60,70 years ago.
THEO @ 238 clicking on your link,I saw this.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/bring-back-childhood-measles-partie…
As you can imagine,it's weapons grade burning stupid that makes Mike Adams sound sane and rational.You'd need a sheet of multiple antivax bingo cards here.
@ JP
I guess it's done by people unable to give pleasure to their partners.
I pity Johnny's wife.
JP,
Me neither, though it doesn't surprise me that johnny would concur - he seems to be the sort of uptight sort who would find sex repulsive. I also find it peculiar that the slang name for female genitalia that johnny also used is probably the most insulting epithet; I have a great fondness for them myself (though not the word).
Krebiozen:
Oh, but they're only paid shills if they're *pro* vax. If they're anti-vax, then they're merely receiving compensation for the bravery to speak out, right?
Also, I think it's hilarious that THEO doesn't realize that when we say it takes "mental gymnastics" to see something, it is not actually a compliment.
THEO:
You have got to be joking. Plenty of people loathe science as it doesn't confirm their prejudices.
Now you're starting to enter conspiracy mode. You are insinuating that vaccines cause huge amounts of harm. The fact of the matter is, for that to be true, so many people would have to be in on the conspiracy, and some of them (like the health insurers) would have to be working against their own interests, that it simply isn't plausible.
I agree. It's impossible for me to get my head that far up my posterior.
Insert relevant "Princess Bride" quote here.
@THEO
I'm confused. Just a few days ago you were so eloquently saying that vaccine research is good enough to find even side effects that harm less than 4 in every 10,000 doses, and that the CDC promptly reports those things, while today you're saying things like:
Which is it, THEO?
Alos, if vaccines are as terrible as you claim, why doesn't this company's database reflect that? Why would a health insurance company not keep track of what they are paying?
Do you offer any food or supplements that aren't toxic? I'm going to hold you to the same standard of "toxic" that you use, which means that counts as "toxic" even if it's harmful only in amounts far higher than the recommended typical dosage.
@ JP:
@ Krebiozen;
Why was that an insult?
BECAUSE in the olden days, women were considered less worthy by virtue of having less power, value and prestige THEREFORE pleasuring them put that practitioner in an even lower position. What man would so lower himself? It should only be the other way around, the natural way. In addition, female genitalia were considered dirty and unattractive- only tolerated because of necessity.
And *women* being servile themselves, should be the only servicers of others. ( since they dis-approved of same sex activities because that was even worse)
I should clarify:
servicing someone of the same sex was frowned upon- gay people and lesbians were probably rated lower than women.
@Denice:
Right; which only speaks volumes more about Philip Hills, Hope Osteopathic Clinic Essex. It's also just a bizarre way to try to insult somebody in this day and age, at least in my circles - it's like saying, "Geez, you must have a lot of sex, you loser!"
I have to imagine that things were a bit more complicated, historically speaking, and that people enjoyed all kinds of fun sexy-time activities regardless of "proper" cultural attitudes. Because I have a hard time imaging a cultural/time/place where nobody was enthusiastic about all kinds of sex acts.
But then I am a lousy prevert.
Is it worth my while to disable the killfile to see what he managed to blunder into?
@Narad:
Just a certain epithet directed toward capnkrunch. "Pierge freser" would be one of the Yiddish equivalents.
^ S'iz poylish, bear in mind. And affectionately dirty.
No. It is just Philip Hills strange fascination with using sexual activity as insults. It is almost as if little Phil is jealous 'cause he doesn't get any himself.
The Health Stranger has done it again.
SB 277 will unleash "medical civil war" in California as parents demand doctors be arrested for felony assault
This goes on for quite a while....
SB277 will be heard in the Judiciary Committee tomorrow. I shall be present with a few friends. Should be interesting, given both Mikey & St. Andy's inflammatory words.
I'm reminded of the death throes of Delysid, wherein he concluded that "accusing" me ad nauseam of having either an enormous schlong or amazing flexibility was an insult of the first water.
“Instead, the committee made a judgment based on the literature that failed to link adverse effects to schedule exposures or multiple immunizations, concluding that there is no evidence that the schedule is not safe.” Cuntmunch
Go on...
@299
Don't be giving anyone ideas.
I remember Delysid, his idea of clever was to ask people "How do you wipe your own ***?" whenever they brought up situations his ideal society couldn't handle, such as crime, poverty, and fire.
And THEO should keep in mind that James Buchanan declared "history will vindicate my memory" as he was dying. If you don't know who he is, that's exactly my point.
If a paper like the New York Times let loose their hounds to relentlessly explore vaccine science
So all the major news media are PART OF THE CONSPIRACY and collude in SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH!
I didn't see that coming.
Orac, somewhat (okay a lot) off-topic, but someday, I'd like you to write about pet woo. We acquired a puppy this winter and discovered that dogdom is filled with quacks that make Daily Fail Boy look comparatively restrained.
Who could fail to?
(The subseqent story is that when this text was superposed on an image of his blankly sticking a finger into a pair of chattering teeth while wearing a lab coat, he eventually went insane about "doxxing," which never occurred.)
I do know people who have gone insane, temporarily or maybe otherwise, who would never dream of saying things like those linked to above to, well, anyone. Despite demons chasing them through the forest until they collapsed, barefoot, disheveled and exhausted, and were found and taken to the hospital. Just for the record.
Ah, Delysid. It seemed odd to see a supremely self-reliant, intellectually self-sufficient Objectivist accusing other people of autofellatio.
I still have a copy of an edition of this to remind me of his name.
JP has missed out on some extremely high level ( or is it low level?) visitors: Chris mentions others on the "America's quack" thread- Augustine, Medecein Man.
Then there was H@ppeh ( his name triggers sirens, whistles and an immediate lockdown) .
In addition we had the tranny 'nym'd chiropractor Peg/ Emily/ Greg of Oz. And Grandma Marcia.
Anti-vaxxers scampered about merrily whining and Jake came to school Orac's minions in degrees of separation.
I think we scared them away. They are too frightened of SB reality as well as our lovely minions' sharp tongues.
@ Liz Ditz:
Heh. Well, Mikey has made lots of predictions - including a few about California: both he and the other idiot predict that- because of the drought- people will soon be ABANDONING the place by the millions. You'll be able to buy properties for virtually nothing and ghost owns will multiply.
Oooh. That's a thought- perhaps I can get an historic mission or lighthouse for a song.
I was naturally reminded of Augie by virtue of Phildo's recent pseduonym + obsession combo.
^ Sorry, I meant psuedeonym.
It's luxurious.
Sadmar: "However, I am not aware of any convincing evidence that shows what percentage of non-vaxed kids have ‘true believer’ parents, and what percentage of parents fall into ‘we didn’t go get the shots because we’re still on the fence’."
How many times do I have to point out that there aren't any fence-sitters in the anti-vax camp? I think the only way to make people reconsider is to hit them in the pocket book- paying extra for having unvaxxed kids would make people reconsider.
DW: Considering that we are talking about California, I am surprised the bill to eliminate non-medical exemptions got as far as I did. The problem is that Brown's a flake- he'll kill it. I hope Pan makes it to the end of his term alive.
Here is a lovely critique of that dreadful study that started this thread. Good job someone knows how to see through your voodoo masquerading as science.
"As with almost all studies that dispute the link between vaccines and autism, there are two statistical “tricks” that are used to remove association.
– Hiding data, in this case through age of test
– Not discussing obvious results and focusing on areas where impact is not seen
– Comparing unrelated items to make invalid conclusions
For number 1, Dr. William Thompson of the CDC revealed that the age of the MMR had a large impact. The impact is before 36 months of age. In this study they look at well before (age 2) and well after (age 5). This could mask the problem, especially since you would be looking for a small population size, less than 1% of the total children.
Second, In the initial discussion they reveal that 2% of children had an older sibling with ASD, but only 1% of these children had ASD themselves. This states that the risk of autism in a younger sibling is cut in 1/2. This is extremely significant and brings the question of, what was different with these kids, how did they cut the autism rate in HALF. There is no way these doctors did not notice this. They made it the first sentence of the results, yet the wording is such that it is not obvious on the first reading.
The study then reveals that the MMR vaccine rates were lower and more delayed for the children with siblings with autism. This scream that there is a significant relationship between the two. So how did the study not see it and why did they not discuss this?
That brings us to number three, When they go to look at risk of the MMR they compare against the total population, this has the effect of diluting the connection. The previous findings should have had them compare the MMR rates for children with older siblings with ASD (994) that;
– had ASD (134)
– did not have ASD (860)
By doing this I can already tell you there is a statistically significant relationship. Unfortunately the full data set would be needed to prove this and getting that may be difficult.
This is not to say the paper is not true, it just does not tell the whole story and is misleading. A more accurate conclusion should be. For the population of children that are at risk of autism there is a statistically significant risk of autism." Touche
Get a box of tissues - NobRed, you are gonna need them
johnny, put "William Thompson" into the search box. Suffice to say, you're talking nonsense.
What, only two protein stains so far from Philip "Nancy" Hills?
johnny,
You didn't attribute the critique to its author, Eben Plettner, who is an contributor to AoA, and who claims to be a rocket scientist with a higher degree in math and statistics. That seems a little unlikely given his performance.
This should be interesting.
This assumes that Hooker's execrable paper came to accurate conclusions i.e. that African American males who received the first MMR prior to 36 months of age are at increased risk of ASDs. The fact that Hooker only came to this conclusion because he failed to account for confounders such as premature birth and utterly mangled the statistics seems to have escaped Eben Plettner despite his higher degree in statistics.
The rocket scientist appears to suffer from reading comprehension problems. Here's what the study says:
How anyone could interpret that to mean the risk of an ASD in a younger sibling is halved, when the actual figure is 6.9%, beats me. That doesn't fill me with confidence in the rest of this self-proclaimed statistics expert's analysis.
There is an obvious explanation for this, that thanks to the relentless misinformation spread by the antivaccine movement the younger siblings of children with ASDs are less likely to get vaccinated with MMR due to parental concerns. The authors did see this and discussed it:
It amuses me that this self-proclaimed statistics expert is demanding an explanation for what appears to be a protective effect of MMR on the development of ASDs, but hasn't noticed that there is one on the paper.
They didn't compare MMR RR with the total population, they compared it with children of the same age because, obviously, the likelihood of having had MMR and the likelihood of having an ASD diagnosis both increase with age. What would comparing MMR RR in children with ASDs who also had older siblings with ASDs to the MMR RR in children without ASDs who also had older siblings with ASDs tell us? We can see in Table 2 that children with an older sibling with an ASD who have been vaccinated are less likely to have an ASD than those who are vaccinated. This association disappears when corrected for various confounders.
How can he tell there is a statistically significant relationship when he doesn't have the data? The only statistically significant relationships in this study show an apparent protective effect of MMR against ASDs but these relationships disappear when adjusted for confounders.
I see nothing in this analysis that suggests the results are at all misleading.
No, the conclusion the study's authors came to is perfectly reasonable:
Younger siblings of children with ASDs are less likely to get vaccinated with MMR. However, this does not lead to lower rates of ASDs in those unvaccinated children, which suggests that MMR does not cause ASDs.
Not even close.
By doing this I can already tell you there is a statistically significant relationship. Unfortunately the full data set would be needed to prove this
In the meantime, in the absence of statistical tests, Plettner uses the term "statistically significant" in a special sense, vaguely meaning "betokened by a secret message concealed within the froth on his latte".
@ gray falcon Google Liecester England and Small pox
@ Julian
Now you’re starting to enter conspiracy mode. You are insinuating that vaccines cause huge amounts of harm. The fact of the matter is, for that to be true, so many people would have to be in on the conspiracy, and some of them (like the health insurers) would have to be working against their own T
They cause far more side effects and problems than we are officially being told. Why would the insurance companies care when all these side effects get swept under the rug by pediatricians as NORMAL? They are not being reported. Doctors are brainwashed/trained NOT to look into vaccines for there side effects. Do some original research and look into the history of medicine and you will find it littered with junk science and experiments that are covered up.
If you come into this debate TRUSTING pharmaceutical companies and their research *YOU LOSE* Thats the first error in judgement. This is where the mental gymnastics must begin. If you cannot complete this simple exercise your susceptible to the propaganda they push. This is well known outside of the establishment and even inside as shown here.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Truth-About-Drug-Companies/dp/0375760946
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Sale-Government-Corporations-Universities…
@Just the stats
Do you offer any food or supplements that aren’t toxic? I’m going to hold you to the same standard of “toxic” that you use, which means that counts as “toxic” even if it’s harmful only in amounts far higher than the recommended typical dosage.
Eating foods with toxins vs injecting toxins bypassing the immune system is totally different.
I shop at Whole foods and prepare all my meals. every once in a while I eat out. I don't drink flouridated tap water either.
I have said this before and I will say it again. Children don't need vaccines to thrive in this country in 2015. Thats the dirty little secret. We should all be thanking PLUMBERS not vaccines for disease eradication.
There are fearless parents refusing to vaccinate like myself. we are not nervous about our decision at all. Actually were excited and relived to know that our child wont be assaulted by the schedule.
From Sherryl Attkinson
The supposedly best medical experts in the world who deny vaccines have anything to do with autism remain at an utter loss to explain this generation’s epidemic. To declare the science “settled” and the debate “over” is to defy the plain fact that many scientists worldwide are still sorting through it, and millions of people are still debating it.
The body of evidence on both sides is open to interpretation. People have every right to disbelieve the studies on one side. But it is disingenuous to pretend they do not exist. Sherryl Atkinson. She calls out ORAC in her piece too
http://sharylattkisson.com/what-the-news-isnt-saying-about-vaccine-auti…
This is from a pediatric doctor DC who writes text books for his profession.
The vaccine is effective and you must take it, and it is ineffective (waning immunity) and you must take it. The vaccine is effective and the nonvaccinated are at risk and the vaccine is ineffective and you need another one.
You have the right to self-determination (personal autonomy), and you don't have the right to self-determination. You need to be legally ordered to get something against your will because it is proven safe, but we can't show you the controlled prospective longitudinal study, because it's already proven to be safe due to post hoc ergo proctor hoc.
Vaccines no longer contain thimerosal and flu vaccine contains thimerosal.
Thimerosal was put into vaccines because it is safe and it has been removed (except in the flu shot) because it is potentially dangerous, but it is also safe.
Vaccines are ineffective but are proven effective and therefore we need no further studies as well as ANY studies (e.g. vaccinated vs. unvaccinated), but we need more comparison (noncontrolled) studies to show they are safe, which we already know to be true.
If the risk of a vaccine is 1/100,000,000 then you need 3 million subjects in a study to have 95% confidence of that estimate, but you need 1000 subjects or 100,000 subjects to show a vaccine is safe.
It is proven safe but we need protection from lawsuits because they are safe.
The absence of proof is the proof of absence.
Must be the high fructose corn syrup, nothing to see here, and move along.
Antivaxxers are lunatics about mercury in vaccines, and the FDA is not a lunatic for removing mercury from most vaccines.
Carry on LMFAO are you folks in this much denial?
@theo
You do know I show your comments to a few doctors and nurses that I work with. All of them said that you cannot possibly be that stupid right?
If so, they recommend that you never seek out medical care, since you seem so entrenched against it.
@Theo
Black and white thinking. Look it up.
Cars are safe. You can start yours and hope it will not fall apart as you drive on.
Planes are safe. You can plan an air trip and hope you will land in one piece.
Vaccines are safe. You can get injected with one and hope not to turn into the the Hulk.
Sometimes, things break. Yet, we still have cars and planes. And hopefully, vaccines.
THEO:
Sharyl Attkisson? Are you freakin' kidding me?
This is the genius who thought a stuck backspace key was the Feds hacking her laptop.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/10/31/benghazi-sharyl-attkisson-claim…
What side effects? How many more? How was that number obtained? What's the quality of the evidence for that? You don't trust pharmaceutical companies, and I get that. That may be a fully justifiable position. It's not evidence.
That's true enough - the current incidence of vaccine preventable diseases in this country is pretty low. That is, to a large extent, because people vaccinate and the diseases don't become epidemics. If people were tot stop vaccinating, we would reasonably expect some diseases to re-surge.
It depends on the disease. You should also thank the makers of soaps and hand sanitizers, detergents, paper tissues, air filters, and a whole list of other things that reduce disease transmission. Clearly having treated, uncontaminated, fluoridated water and good waste treatment reduces the spread of cholera, typhoid, various worms, and so on. It does nothing for airborne diseases, those found in food, or those spread by direct contact.
THEO @338:
Show us your evidence.
Given that the insurance companies would be the ones paying for the consequences of these supposed "side effects", I think they would care. They'd care a great deal.
Anybody can submit a report to VAERS, even someone who isn't a medical practitioner. In fact, antivaxxers have skewed VAERS by entering false reports. Your assertion that side effects are not being reported is dubious, to put it mildly.
I had a flu vaccine today. You have no cooking clue what you're writing about.
Firstly, I don't blindly trust anybody. Secondly, there are numerous studies into vaccine safety not funded by pharmaceutical companies. The study this post is about is one such.
I have done my research. Vaccines work and are far safer than the diseases they prevent.
THEO,
If you are referring to the Leicester method of notification and quarantine of smallpox cases (PDF), I see nothing that supports your claims. Residents opposed to vaccination tried to use this as the sole way of dealing with smallpox, instead of in combination with vaccination, and the result was hundreds of cases of smallpox and 21 deaths:
That doesn't seem very effective to me. It was notification, quarantine and vaccination together that finally eradicated smallpox.
Why do you believe this when hundreds of large studies, many of them by independent researchers, carried out all over the world, do not show any such thing?
Insurance companies care very much if something is making their clients sick because it costs them money. The reason they support vaccination is because it reduces illness and their costs. Insurance companies are not stupid and use very sophisticated statistics to maximize their profits. If vaccines made people sick insurance companies would not support them.
I have, and there are some cases of junk science and corruption, but to extrapolate from this to claim that all scientific research is bogus is simply ridiculous.
I am suspicious of pharmaceutical companies and would never rely entirely on their research, but as I wrote above, there is a large amount of research done by independent scientists with no motive to cover up vaccine damage, and they find that serious vaccine injuries are vanishingly rare, so rare that we can't be sure they are caused by vaccines.
You link to a book by Marcia Angell who edited the NEJM for over 20 years. Not everyone agrees with Marcia Angell. Some even suggest that, "Angell’s arguments [...] are rife with inaccuracies and fallacies".
Then you link to a book by David Lewis, the retired sewage sludge researcher who supports Andrew Wakefield and blunderingly supplied Brian Deer with the colitis score sheets that put a final nail in Wakefield's fraud coffin. He is hardly a reliable source of information.
Why, when toxins like methylmercury are rapidly and almost completely absorbed?
Why is it that cranks are incapable of spelling "fluoridated"? It's almost as reliable a marker of being a loon as using the word "dis-ease". What is the natural level of fluoride in your drinking water?
I don't know how anyone can make such a monumentally dumb statement with their bare face hanging out. Vaccines have saved aproaching a million lives since 1994 in the US alone.
How does plumbing prevent diseases spread by close contact such as meningitis, measles, chickenpox, diphtheria, rubella, mumps, pertussis or HPV?
You should be very nervous indeed about your decision. You have greatly increased your child's risk of serious illness, permanent disability or death. Well done.
Why would anyone believe a word this idiotic 'journalist' says?
Every study I have seen that purports to show a link between vaccines and autism is very badly designed, or horribly mangles the statistics used. Attkinson writes:
What a remarkably stupid statement, If there is a question about whether the brain injury is in any way related to vaccination then there is indeed "a dispute in that arena". She links to the CDC page on the DTaP vaccines which says:
How is a page that states clearly that permanent brain damage after vaccination is so rare we can't tell if it was caused by vaccination evidence that "there’s no dispute in that arena"? In my opinion the woman is a dangerous idiot.
THEO: I looked up "Liecester England and Small pox", and the first thing I noticed was that you misspelled Leicester. The second was that isolation only played a partial role in the eradication of smallpox, so did vaccination. This article should set you straight:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1082657/
If the risk of a vaccine is one in a hundred million, then it is vastly safer than the disease. THEO, have you considered aiming at something other than your foot?
@ MO'B
Clearly having treated, uncontaminated, fluoridated water and good waste treatment reduces the spread of cholera, typhoid, various worms, and so on. It does nothing for airborne diseases, those found in food, or those spread by direct contact.
And funny enough, most vaccines are against diseases which are airborne (flu, measles, mumps, smallpox, tuberculosis) or use direct contact (polio)...
Ah, forget blockquotes around 1st paragraph. Apologies.
@Juilan
I had a flu vaccine today. You have no cooking clue what you’re writing about.
Sounds awful did you at least get the one with no mercury?
I would never ever ever ever get that shot.
@ novalox
You do know I show your comments to a few doctors and nurses that I work with. All of them said that you cannot possibly be that stupid right?
Newsflash MD's dont think FOOD heals so of course they think I am stupid. It goes back to there upside down training on pharmacology.
If so, they recommend that you never seek out medical care, since you seem so entrenched against it.
I AVOID MD's at all costs unless its an emergency like a bullet wound, car accident or broken leg. For chronic diseases they are an utter failure and USELESS. tell them that. They are excellent at Trauma
Medical doctors can't even cure heart burn and acid reflux without toxic drugs. Thats how ignorant they are.
here us the real solution. Detox and food elimination diet
I would go to a chiro, ND or functional medical doctor like Dr Hyman for a REAL solution not drugs thats don't solve anything.
Dont you guys understand there is more than 1 view on healthcare and its rising up through a grassroots movement based on the understanding that the human body is 100% fully equipped to handle all diseases it just needs the proper building blocks to fight. NOT Vaccines, drugs, chemo radiation and surgery. Sure in some cases but not in ALL cases like we are lead to believe.
Functional medicine with the help of Nutritional supplements is where health care is going.
OH its coming you better wake up
I get the impression all of you are in the medical field in one way or another defending your beliefs
One of my friends kids has loss of hearing in both ears and the doctors call it congenital. WRONG vaccines
http://adc.bmj.com/content/69/1/153.full.pdf
johnny@332
You should know that quoting without citing your sources is plagarism. Not very surprising though, given that you've pretty clearly demonstrated a lack of integrity already.
Besides the fact that this premise is based on Hooker's flawed and retracted paper (as Krebiozen already noted) there are are 2 more problems I can see here. First, the CDC schedule recommends MMR at 12-15 months and 4-6 years; it wouldn't make sense to evaluate at 3 years since that is pretty far outside the schedule. Second, 2 and 5 was when the patients were evaluated, not when MMR was administered. You would need to see the whole data set to make the claims you are making and even then, as you noted, since it is so far outside the schedule there is not likely to be a large population.
Despite what Hooker thinks, simple is not always (or even generally) better for evaluating statistics. You can't just grab two numbers, divide them and say holy sh*t they halved the risk. When you comparec children with ASDs who have older siblings with ASDs vs those who don't you see that the risk is actually several times higher not lower (as Krebiozen already noted).
You are dividing apples by oranges which invalidates your conclusion. Even that wasn't the case the vaccination rates were 11% and 6% lower at 2 and 5 years respectively. That's not nearly enough to account for the halving that you claim. Even if we assume your analysis is correct (hint: it's not) the effect is clearly minor.
That is what they did:
[emphasis mine]
How do you know if you can't prove it? A gut feeling rather than thinking with your brai? Though Keith Bell would claim they are one and the same.
The population at risk for autism is at risk for autism. Brilliant observation.
I don't think you're using that word correctly.
@theo
Ok then, then prove your statements.
Oh yeah, you cannot prove it with any reliable science. All you can rely on is base pseudoscience and cranks.
Please, keep on posting, The doctors and nurses that I work with, those with actual education and are actually helping those with real medical conditions, not ones that are made up by quacks like you and that you believe in, really do need a laugh and more determination against the lies that you attempt to spread.
And I certainly don't think that they will be quaking in fear at your empty pronouncements, less of all the regulars here.
johnny @338
As bizarre as it may seem to you, some people who are extremely critical of the pharma industry in general are still mostly pro-vaccination.
See for example Ben Goldacre, whose book "Bad Pharma" is far from a glowing endorsement of the industry.
Marcia Angell, that you cited, has this to say in one of her books ("The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It", p.91-92)
"While me-too drugs flood the market, there are growing shortages of some important, even lifesaving drugs. (...) In 2001, there were serious shortages of many important drugs," [follows a long list including vaccines against flu and pneumonia in adults] "Perhaps the worst shortages are of childhood vaccines."
In France we have the journal "Prescrire", funded only by their suscribers, whose very mission is to check pharma companies' claims and to educate doctors against marketing practices such as medical visitors.
They didn't hesitate to be pretty negative about Vioxx as soon as july 2000, or about our national scandal the Mediator.
However, as far as vaccines are concerned, they are still mostly favorable ; they however don't hesitate to criticize them when it is warranted (for example, they don't think that Gardasil is dangerous, but criticize Sanofi's french ads which vastly overstate its known benefits).
^^
Oops, 338 was Theo.
"Touche"
"I don’t think you’re using that word correctly."
Well, he _does_ seem touched.
" Doctors are brainwashed/trained NOT to look into vaccines for there side effects" Noblux
Are you kidding, doctors are trained to follow the NICE guidelines except when they don't want to because of some anecdotal tosh that fever must be suppressed at all costs.
Most doctors try very hard to come up with a solution to a problem in 8 minutes or so, pick something from a list and go down it until it is exhausted. The patient is only allowed to mention one problem. They finish the day and then pick up Josinter from the point to point in the range rover and go home. One wonders why such a profession has a high suicide rate? The idea that doctors spend their life on the internet when at home researching new cures for new diseases is a fantasy.
This is redundant, essentially, since the wide variety of biologically-produced chemicals that scientists call "toxins" exist pretty much everywhere life exists, and I assume you don't eat anything that isn't primarily previously living.
I see. You're one of those folks that somehow think that there is some impenetrable barrier in the GI tract that keeps all the bad things out. But think about it. Plant toxins wouldn't be worth producing if they only killed the herbivores that injected them, would they? Bacterial toxins generally aren't aimed at you, but haven't you noticed that the bacteria manage to get places deeper in your tissue?
THEO, there are people that spend their whole lives studying how toxins and other toxic chemicals such as ethylmercury interact with the body. They are called toxicologists, and the study of what happens when you come in contact with toxic substances is called toxicokinetics. It is a very well-studied area.
For any chemical you would ever care to get scared about, there are many animal studies that show exactly how the poison gets into the body, where it goes when it gets there, and how the body gets rid of it, assuming that the animal survives. So we know that generally anything that would harm you when injected will harm you if eaten. The GI tract is just not very good as a barrier. Sorry to disappoint you.
It may surprise you to learn that deliberately poisoning people for science is considered unethical, even for children whose parents are willing to sacrifice them, but we know enough from people who have accidentally been poisoned that we have a pretty good ability to translate the animal data to humans. Then for good measure we set acceptable dosage levels to be hundreds of times lower than the lowest levels that cause harm.
Generally your immune system has nothing to do with the neutralization and elimination of toxins and other toxic chemicals. That's your liver's job, although the kidneys are also pretty important in that area.
Not very clear or specific, but it doesn't matter. I'm sure you eat plants, which are full of lots of toxins which would love nothing better than to kill you and would do it, too, if your pesky liver didn't get in the way.
Your food is no doubt full of small amounts of other kinds of toxic chemicals such as sodium chloride. I can say this with some confidence because people who don't eat sodium chloride eventually die.
I noticed you're being uncharacteristically coy about which supplements you use, THEO.
I didn't realize you were a fan of tooth decay, but it doesn't surprise me. If you want to avoid toxic chemicals, you should stop drinking all together. The reason for this is simple: water is TOXIC. Water will POISON you. I'm being 100% serious here. If you're of average weight, drinking a mere six liters of water in a short period of time will have a 50% chance of killing you, not because of drowning or stretching your stomach out but because of its toxic effects on the cells of your body.
Of course drowning is another reason you might consider removing all water from your life. You can never be too careful.
So you're saying that diseases were eliminated because we started spreading around enormous amounts of that TOXIC chemical, water?
I'm not aware of these advances. What are the disease-specific plumbing technology improvements that made individual disease eradications possible? Why were they put in place quietly and invariably at the same time that vaccination campaigns took place for the same disease, so that it looked like the disease was being eradicated due to not being about to infect people?
"You should know that quoting without citing your sources is plagarism. Not very surprising though, given that you’ve pretty clearly demonstrated a lack of integrity already." Ccrunch
You know, sometimes it makes no difference what one says or does to the brainwashed, the paper that G posted at the top of this thread is so full of stat tweaking it is worthless as a piece of science.
Believing in vaccination is like believing in anything - the idea that you have science backing up vaccination is LOL.
If you had the guts to do the definitive test and ignore paid lackeys like the deers of this world we would find out that vaccination is as useful as extracting a load of pus from a cow and injecting it into children and proclaiming a cure for disease. The only saving grace here is that hopeful, unless you are a gaggle of hypocrites you are all keeping up with the vaccine schedule.
@THEO
You do know that people get killed by their own beds, right? At rates comparable to one in three million a year? Does that mean we should ban beds because they aren't safe?
I'm also confused why you care about rates of harm at that level when you're perfectly content to advocate getting measles, which has a wide variety of harmful effects at rates much higher than that, even for people who take Vitamin A supplements like you suggest.
@LouV #353
And don't forget the anti-vaxxers' 2nd most hated nemesis (after Dr. Paul Offit) - Brian Deer. Prior to his exposure of the confilcts of interest, lack of ethical oversight, and outright fraud that riddled Andrew Wakefield's MMR study, he wrote multiple stories exposing various deceptions within the pharmaceutical industry, including the infamous Vioxx scandal. If you go to his webpage, the top story is entitled "Doctoring the evidence: what the science establishment doesn’t want you to know." Yep, obviously this guy is far too trusting of the pharmaceutical industry and biomedical research in general.
In France we have the journal “Prescrire”, funded only by their suscribers, whose very mission is to check pharma companies’ claims and to educate doctors against marketing practices such as medical visitors.
That sounds like a great idea - is there an English-language version?
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Ok Mr Researcher, show us how you arrived at that conclusion, if you can, that is.
@Sarah A
Here is the english version if you are interested : http://english.prescrire.org
One can only imagine how this string of words was arrived at.
@johnny
Total self awareness fail.
I'll spell it out for you. You've posted at least three different completely contradictory theories about how this paper "is so full of stat tweaking it is worthless as a piece of science." As far as I can tell, the first was from not reading the paper, the second from selective misreading, and the third by plagiarism. The main points of each allegation were easily refuted by quotes from the actual paper, usually the same paragraphs each time.
It sounds like it makes no difference what one says or does to you, your mind is made up. You have decided in advance that the paper has "tweaked" stats.
Ok, got a few questions for you.
1) Why would we believe that someone who was willing to do what you're referring to as "the definitive test" wouldn't be willing to do less unethical things like lie about the results?
2) Who would publish such a thing?
3) What plausible reason is there to believe that the "definitive" test would give a different result than all the epidemiological studies, including the case-controlled and cohort studies?
4) Why should we believe that you'd change your tune in the immensely likely case that the "definitive test" had the same results as all the not-quite-"definitive test[s]"? How can you prove to us that you wouldn't rationalize them away the same way you rationalize away all the other studies?
@Narad
THEO uses all-natural "Whole Statistics" for his statistical power analysis. Sure, you may think his invocation of the notion of "confidence interval" is nonsensical, given that any sample size greater than one can give you one (useless as it may be), but that's simply because you lack the mental gymnastics to be able to understand how Whole Statistics uses the term. I suspect brainwashing.
Real studies do not have "sides." People interested in truth don't look at studies in terms of "sides."
Well, there are studies supported by sound science, and studies touted by cranks supported by either no or just poor science.....
I think I figured it out. Someone once told him that to have a 95% chance of detecting an event with a probability of 1/100,000,000, he'd need a hair under 3 billion subjects. He then put it in his own words.
johnny@358
You know, I kind of lobbed you a softball there with the plagarism thing, no science involved, and you couldn't even answer that. Like justthestats said your lack of self awareness is astounding. You have failed to make a single substantive reply to any of the criticisms leveled at your ideas.
Well, that saves me the trouble of actually trying to compute the sample necessary for an effect size of 0.00000001.
^ I think you've got an extra of magnitude in there, though.
^^ "order of"
This is from a pediatric doctor DC who writes text books for his profession.
Details would be nice. Without them, or a link, THEO's textbook-writing source sounds about as genuine as my Canadian supermodel girlfriend.
I get the impression all of you are in the medical field in one way or another defending your beliefs
At least some are psychologists, conducting cruel experiments to do with cognitive dysfunction.
@Narad:
Meh, close enough for THEO work.
In contrast to (say) osteopaths, who have plenty of spare time for their clients, or in the absence of such, for their keyboards.
Oh dear, class envy and thwarted aspirations are not a pleasant sight.
herr doktor bimler@373
He's just emulating his hero johnny. Whether it's plagiarism or lying I'm not sure but the distinction is hardly important.
It seems to be soft-tissue manipulation either way for the case in point.
I'm pretty sure that Phildo has been asked what level of similarity between the two groups (assuming a nonrandomized, non-prospective study) would get him to admit that he was just picking his feet in Poughkeepsie and responded with... nothing, which seems to be the inevitable outcome of asking this straightforward question.
herr doktor bimler, I'm sure your Canadian supermodel girlfriend is very sincere.
Sorry, but when I saw this I had to think of Krebiozen:
http://www.retailhellunderground.com/my_weblog/2015/04/meanwhile-at-an-…
Alas, the fox was a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/was-a-fox-really-spotted-q…
Heh.
But seriously, I swear these furry opportunists may eventually take over our cities and suburbs.
Pretty soon they're be feeding US scraps and cat food.
One of 'em got our cat a few months ago. Why chase rabbits? Cats are slower and there's more meat on their bones.
Well, here's a video of a fox making a sandwich in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
"You know, I kind of lobbed you a softball there with the plagarism thing, no science involved, and you couldn’t even answer that. Like justthestats said your lack of self awareness is astounding. You have failed to make a single substantive reply to any of the criticisms leveled at your ideas." muntlunp
You are so up yourself with the idea that your critique has any value, it's laughable. Why you claim to believe in the stat tweaked pubmed world is only known to you, I can't fathom it out. Post something of interest and value and I will have a think about it, don't cite some medical peer reviewed crap as evidence - it's worthless
shay,
I had nothing to do with that stunt, I promise.
Sorry to hear that. Are you sure? Our cat, a small rescue cat who would be no match for a fox, likes to watch our local foxes, and I have never seen them interact at all; they keep their distance from each other. I guess if they were hungry enough they might go for a cat. When I lived in a rural area I heard tales of foxes taking down lambs, but lambs don't have sharp claws and teeth.
johnny,
It doesn't surprise me that you can't fathom out why peer-reviewed science is accepted by thousands of scientists and doctors all over the world, and rejected by a few merely because it doesn't support their bizarre delusions. I note that you still don't understand what PubMed is, and still seem to think it does research.
You wouldn't recognize something of interest and value. You are so completely brain-washed that you are unwilling to even consider anything that doesn't support your idées fixes.
johnny@386
You just can't stop digging that hole can you? I didn't cite Pubmed, I accused you plagarism due to your quoting someone without attribution. Anyone with a shred of academic integrity would want to defend themselves against such an accusation. Plagarism is quite serious in reality land, it's not all that different from stealing. Really all you had to do was provide a link to your source. Heck, I would have accepted just naming your source. But no, you can't even address something so simple and your inability to even comprehend why you should speaks volumes.
You're not the first.
Kreb -- coyotes are a possibility, but they rarely wander into town. On the other hand, there is a fox den across the alley (they've dug themselves under the side of the post office. Oh, the singular delights of living in a country village).
I'm not ruling out an owl.
johnny @386
I'll bite. Define what you mean by "something of interest and value".
shay #391,
It isn't just rural areas - some years ago I worked in an urban hospital that had a small store outside, in a portakabin. The extraordinary noises the foxes made at night during the breeding season almost drowned out the screams from the labor ward. They were certainly more blood-curdling :-)
I wonder if we're missing the point in some way with the 'no, vaccines don't cause Autism' argument. Not saying they do but....trying to do a shoes thing here.
You're an terrified new parent, and your child has just been diagnosed as Autistic. You happen to reside in America and what you think of as THE Autism charity regularly puts out psas that say that 'There is no cure for Autism. Autism destroys your social life, your marriage, your life is now an endless round of social clinics and therapies. And this is the reality for 3000 families.'
What they tell you is that there's no cure. They don't tell you that acceptance, accommodations and sometimes, modifications go a long long long way.
What they show you as an example of autism is usually a child with lots of co-morbidites but you don't know that. You think it's all 'Autism'
You've seen examples of children who can't speak and have self-injurious behaviours because they're so frustrated but you just see 'Autism' What you don't see is what happens when they've learnt to use Augmented/Alternative communications
So when you hear 'your child is Autistic', your mind flashes on this picture of this hopeless child who will forever be 'like a baby'.
So there's this picture in your head. And when you go online, these commenters are Autistic....nope...doesn't match with what you know about Autism...so they must be high-functioning and NOTHING like your child, right? So therefore they don't know about your situation.
Disclaimer: Not a parent, just tl;dring what I've read.
Sia, Autism Speaks is viewed with extreme hostility by most autistics for precisely that reason.
Sia,Julian
The problem is there is twofold.There are too many different and varied disorders classified under the broad umbrella of "autism".There are those who are very high functioning with few,if any,comorbidities.That would be those that speak up against Autism Speaks,and those in the neurodiversity movement.There are those only who have autism and ADHD.There are those that are very high functioning,and have autism plus psychiatric disorders,such as childhood onset bipolar disorder.This can be quite severe as I know from my family.Then there are very complex disorders with autism and many medical conditions,with or without intellectual disability.They can either be autoimmune,chromosomal,or involving mitochondrial disease,or other inborn errors of metabolism,like I have.
And it's all "autism".
This situation is very,very wrong,and one I do not see going away any time soon.The other part of the problem is the fact that those who rail against Autism Speaks are woefully uneducated about all this.
What I would like to see is for more high functioning types who are so vocal in their opposition to Autism Speaks,to educate themselves about these various types of autism before they start shooting their mouths off about "genocide" and "eliminating autistics".Such talk only makes parents of more severely disabled children more angry,and only serves to make the divides and differences across the spectrum even worse than they are.
@Roger Kulp
Excuse me?! Excuse Me?!?! Autism Speaks constantly punts the "Autism as an unmitigated Tragedy" line. In 2013, John Elder Robison, the only autistic member of Autism Speaks' board, resigned over an advertising campaign. Secondly, the fact that you assume that we (the critics of Autism Speaks) are unaware of the severely disabled on the spectrum is laughable.
Roger, you are being rude, presumptuous, obnoxious and very ill-informed. Autism Speaks constant punting of that line dehumanises us, cut it how you like. Your assuming that we don't know about the severe end of the spectrum is mindblowing. You suggest we educate ourselves? Educate yourself.
(TW: functioning labels, cure.)
I do wish people would stop 'splaining about it being a spectrum though - autistic adults know that. t's not like the only neurodiversity advocates are high-functioning autistics/Asperger's, for that matter.
And what else would you call selectively aborting a fetus based on the genes it has? (Because protip: that's what the 'cure' that's being looked at is and it isn't unreasonable to fear that selective abortion might be the case.) And I'm talking about selectively aborting, not pro-choice/pro-life stuff, here.
And how would you NOT eliminate autistics with a cure? Is that not the complete point of a cure ... to wipe whatever it is you're talking about out?
It's not like a tumor where you can excise it and be left with the same person or like dementia where if there was a cure for it, you'd get back the same person you had before. You would be left with a completely different person than you had before you started.
But....honesty is important....
"
"Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts..." and
"Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, currently or by history..."
That is what Autism is, per DSM-IV, along with "Where the disturbance is not better explained by Rett's disorder or CDD". In other words, anything (other than Rett's or CDD)
I hear people talking about seizures (which is epilepsy or maybe, a slightly lower seizure threshold but not actually epilepsy as seen in febrile seizures) but that isn't Autism.
I hear people talking about GI distress which isn't Autism either. Allergies aren't Autism, either. Seizures aren't Autism. All of those can exist within the same individual but they're not the same thing.
" At any rate, if people are honest with themselves, all "low-functioning" really means is someone who is both autistic AND has a lower score on IQ and/or adaptive living skills assessments. (Additionally, to some it likely also means an autistic person who is primarily nonspeaking.)
In other words, "low-functioning" is the presence of an autism diagnosis and intellectual disability (and again, to some, also the characteristic of being a nonspeaking individual). These are the ONLY differences between those who are "low-functioning" and those who are high-functioning." Nothing else."
I'll repeat that again: Low-functioning is the presence of a)Autism and b)An intellectual disability and maybe c)nonverbal. C is irrelevant over the internet though.
Seeking a cure for Autism will not help you obtain your goals though....because since "High-Functioning Autism/Asperger's" has to do with the absence of an intellectual disability, what you really want, Roger is a cure for intellectual disability.