White Coat Underground

The Huffington Post put up a good piece about vaccination. It’s by Dr. Harvey Karp, and he does an especially nice job looking at some of the “scary numbers” used by the infectious disease promoters.

He’s also getting swamped with wackaloon comments, so if you don’t mind giving HuffPo your clicks, you might want to check it out.

BTW, JB Handley has written that Karp is, “a completely arrogant asshole with little grasp of the facts,” so you know his creds are legit.

Addendum:

Holy Karp! My head re-asploded! Thanks to our alert reader below, I see that Karp only made a little sense. I guess I should have realized things were gonna go wrong when he invoked terrorism and used scare stats, but the rest seemed so good… except it’s like…well…it’s like this.

Imagine you’re lost in a strange, frightening place, say a 19th century insane asylum. You finally run into someone who is well-groomed, and speaking sensibly. He acknowledges that you have been locked up in error, and that the place is crazy, and you feel relief, hope. Ah, an ally! Then he tells you that your salvation is coming, you shall be released from your confinement. Just show up on the roof at eight o’clock. That’s when the aliens are landing.

So this line sneaked into Karp’s piece:

In this 3-part blog, I’d like to discuss in detail the reasons why shots are very safe – and super important – and to present some fresh ideas about a more likely cause of autism: an invisible soup of toxins we’re exposed to every day…endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).

Arghhh!!!!

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Comments

#1 Tsu Dho Nimh
June 10, 2009

But is his “toxic soup” of endocrine disrupting chemicals a better idea?

Be careful what you applaud.
#2 PalMD
June 10, 2009

Eww…I knew there had to be a catch. Better read more words next time.
#3 Denice Walter
June 10, 2009

Now that autism “researchers” can no longer get away with blaming everything on thimerosal,I expect the resultant vacuum will be filled with a plethora of new “theories”:toxic soup, chemical sludge,background radiation,”mitochondrial”shift, non-green cleaning products,aluminum,cell phone towers,”slealth viruses”, and – a new one for me – vaccines cause “mini-strokes”(Andrew Moulden).
#4 lymeinduced
June 10, 2009

90% of autistic chidren test possitive for Lyme Disease.
#5 daedalus2u
June 10, 2009

Actually it is endocrine disruption is associated with autism, endocrine disruption due to lower nitric oxide levels.

NO is the normal autocrine and paracrine regulator of the cytochrome P450 enzymes that make all the steroids and many other things too. Because those enzymes are already being actively regulated by NO, a change in the NO level will change the activity of those enzymes with no threshold. The network of enzymes regulated by NO is complex, with many products of one reaction interfering or enhancing other reactions by being substrates or inhibitors or promoters.

In the case of autism, the low NO causes increased testosterone. The elevated testosterone is associated with low NO, it is not the cause of autism.

The physiology of development and how the endocrine system interacts with and helps regulate that development is too complex to try and regulate externally. Most hormones are for local regulation in the tissue compartment they are generated it. The endocrine system is not the only thing that is affected by low NO; lots of neurological stuff is regulated by NO. All of those physiological systems are regulated together in concert, with NO being the signaling molecule that keeps everything “in sync”.

Endocrine disruption due to changes in the basal NO level will happen with no threshold because the NO regulation of the production of those hormones is already in the active range. Endocrine disruption by xenobiotic chemicals is much less likely because those compounds are no where near as active as the natural hormones produced in the body where they occur at orders of magnitude higher levels. The amount of “endocrine disruption” caused by xenobiotics is (virtually always) orders of magnitude below the natural variation between individuals.

Thank you for risking having your head asplode, so that others of us with a lower tolerance don’t have to.
#6 mac
June 10, 2009

I read that 100% of autistic children started out drinking milk.

Maybe we need to look into this Lactose thingie?
#7 Dianne
June 11, 2009

90% of autistic chidren test possitive for Lyme Disease.

Interesting statistic. Do you have a reference? How does the 90% statistic compare to children without autism? What’s the p-value on the difference? Is autism more prevalent in areas with deer ticks? Shouldn’t places like AZ be essentially autism free if it’s lyme disease causing autism? (For that matter, does CA, setting of some of the early studies causing the autism panic, even have lyme?)
#8 llewelly
June 11, 2009

So what’s your take on this huffpo article on ‘natural’ supplements? (Also by Marchione.) It strikes me as a good article raising awareness about the risks of contamination in ‘natural’ supplements.
(cross-posted on Orac’s blog)
#9 lymeinduced
June 11, 2009

Dianne…visit http://www.lymeinducedautism.com
#10 HCN
June 11, 2009

Um, lymeinduced, it would be better if you just gave us the journal, title, author and date of the peer reviewed papers available in our local medical school libraries that have the evidence.

They seem to be missing from your website. Lots of stories and testimonials. I saw one paper at the research page: “A randomized, placebo-controlled trial of repeated IV antibiotic therapy for Lyme encephalopathy
B. A. Fallon MD*, J. G. Keilp PhD, K. M. Corbera MD, E. Petkova PhD, C. B. Britton MD, E. Dwyer MD, I. Slavov PhD, J. Cheng MD, PhD, J. Dobkin MD, D. R. Nelson PhD, and H. A Sackeim PhD”

A link to a paper by some guy at ACAM, which is kind of a quack organization.

Also, it would help that instead of links to Word files, that you at least post the PubMed index link (and do you have permission to reprint those papers?).
#11 lymeinduced
June 14, 2009

Dianne..I normally don’t entertain sarcasm but that seems to be the attitude of wanna be’s around here.

http://tinyurl.com/neurodeg…
#12 HCN
June 14, 2009

My comment was not sarcasm. You have no real data on your website, and what little there is does not support your premise. Plus your tinyurl does not work.

Please give us the journal, title, date, and author of any PubMed indexed papers that support your claim that 90% of autism is caused by lyme disease.

Also answer Dianne’s questions in regards to the levels of autism versus the probability of actually encountering a deer tick in areas like California, especially the more urban areas.
#13 Jo Anne
June 14, 2009

Nortern California has alot of Lyme, it is all over if you research it, I would have to write a book to tell you everything. Plus Lyme is also contracted other ways than just a tick. Here is the full link;

http://lymepoland.com/pliki/SIBI.Myco.Clam.Borr.NeuroMS.ALS.BhavDis.pdf
#14 Jo Anne
June 14, 2009

“Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the class room. Let not your conception of manifestations of disease come from work heard in the lecture room or read from the book: see and then research, compare and control. But see first.”
- Sir William Osler, MD
The Father of Modern Medicine
#15 HCN
June 14, 2009

Jo Anne, give me data from primary sources that are indexed at PubMed. No random websites. Also, be forewarned: papers in “Medical Hypotheses” do not count (if you want to know why, get a dictionary and look up the word “hypothesis”).

Also, that still does not show that 90% of autism are lyme related. Also, since most of the autism referrals are in urban areas, why would lyme have much to do with it?

So I see that yes, there is lyme in Northern California, but does that correlate to the levels of autism throughout the state? How about to the largest population centers around Los Angeles? Here is where you can get the information:
http://www.dds.ca.gov/FactsStats/QuarterlyChanges.cfm

Here is webpage to guide you through some of that:
http://autismnaturalvariation.blogspot.com/2009/05/another-way-to-tell-epidemic-in.html

(yes, I know it is just a webpage, but it is only to give you a start… just reference the California government data that shows there is a higher percentage of autism north of Sacramento, versus the Los Angeles area).