It is as I had feared. I must do one more post on a story that I’ve been blogging about for one solid week now. Hopefully after this, I will be able to move on to other topics last week, but after spending this whole week writing just about this, I figured, “What the heck? It’s Friday. Might as well make it a solid week and move on next week. I hope.” What am I referring to? Those familiar with the story, as in past installments, can skip the recap (but shouldn’t). I feel obligated to include one because of all the new readers who have appeared for these peerless bits of, in this case, not-so-Respectful Insolence.
This whole story about a “CDC whistleblower,” who, or so the rabid antivaccine contingent hoped, would “blow the lid” off of a massive CDC conspiracy to hide The Truth and bring their conspiracy theory to the mainstream press, is still limping along, even in light of the rather mealy-mouthed and disingenuous statement by the CDC whistleblower himself. This Revelation of The Truth would then build in the mainstream press to the point of leading to investigations of the CDC and the discovery of what they’ve hoped for passionately ever since they became antivaccinationists: Actual scientific evidence that vaccines, or the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal that used to be in most childhood vaccines, cause autism and all sorts of health problems. In this case, they thought that they had found slam-dunk evidence that the CDC had manipulated data to hide an “association” between the MMR vaccine and autism in African American males. At first, in a video by antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield featuring the antivaccine biochemical engineer turned epidemiologist wannabe, this “whistleblower” was not identified, but then, a week ago, a new video identified him as William W. Thompson, PhD, a psychologist and senior scientist at the CDC, who, apparently, over a ten month period, helped Hooker produce his utterly incompetent “reanalysis” of a ten year old CDC study that had failed to find a difference in age of first MMR vaccination in children with autism compared with neurotypical controls. So incompetent was the analysis that I couldn’t resist titling my post a week ago about it, Brian Hooker proves Andrew Wakefield wrong about vaccines and autism, because that’s basically what he did.
When the expected media storm did not materialize, antivaccine activists lost their collective minds, ineffectively trying the “drip, drip, drip” revelation technique. Even now they are still relentlessly Tweeting the same discredited talking points over and over and over again under the hashtag #CDCwhistleblower, although the Twitter storm appears to be abating as I write this. Unfortunately, in light of Dr. Thompson’s two-edged statement, in which he insinuated that his co-authors on the Destefano et al paper (the ten year old study) had committed scientific misconduct, or, at the very least, very sloppy, ideologically motivated science, while at the same time attacking Brian Hooker for recording his conversations without his permission, which, if true, makes Hooker an utter slimeball in my book, and Andrew Wakefield for revealing his identity without his permission.
It’s all a convoluted mess that basically blew up in Hooker’s face. Hooker played Thompson, gaining his confidence and recording him in the process, while bragging to the faithful that he had an “inside man” who would blow the lid off the CDC. Wakefield played Hooker. We have no way of knowing how Wakefield found out about Hooker and Thompson, but, given Wakefield’s previous behavior, it’s not too far beyond the pale to speculate that Wakefield applied pressure to Hooker to do that video. Then Wakefield betrayed Hooker. Because Wakefield’s reputation is so toxic, he basically destroyed any chance of mainstream media attention to the story, relegating it to the fevered conspiracy swamp of “media” like NaturalNews.com, the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, and a variety of lesser, but no less loony, outfits.
All of this brings us to the question: What now? The story has blown up in Hooker and Wakefield’s faces. It very much reminds me of this:
In this case, I think it’s helpful to go back to the past and then back to the future, so to speak. There have been a couple of odds and ends that I’ve wanted to incorporate into previous posts, but somehow didn’t, and now seems as good a time as any to address them. From the past, let’s look first at Brian Hooker being interviewed at this year’s AutismOne quackfest in May:
For people not long familiar with Hooker and his activities, this is an excellent introduction to the origins of this manufactroversy from the antivaccine point of view. Hooker explains how he used Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get the CDC dataset. Now here’s where it’s interesting. He says that he used the CDC’s own methods and confirmed its results. Then he claims he realized that the CDC used “very devious, duplicitous statistical methods,” which made me chuckle out loud, given that Hooker used very incompetent statistical methods in his reanalysis. Hilariously, he claims that he analyzed the data correctly, which is utter tripe. As I described, he analyzed data set up to be analyzed as case-control as a cohort study and, as many of you pointed out, used inappropriate statistical tests, all to torture the data until they confessed a relationship between MMR vaccine and autism. However he could only find such a relationship in African American males. As I also described, this relationship was based on very tiny numbers and almost certainly spurious. Basically, Hooker tells the same lies about the study that have been debunked. I wish I had seen this before I saw Hooker’s paper last week.
Hilariously, Hooker laments that most journals don’t want to touch this stuff because it’s so controversial. In retrospect, we know that it’s more likely that the reason journals don’t want to touch papers such as those by Hooker is because, scientifically, they are utter and complete crap. At least he admits that there is such a thing as autism in the unvaccinated. There’s also the usual hodge-podge of “environmental causation” discussed, such as heavy metals, and, of course, GMOs. We do learn, however, that Hooker doesn’t trust the NIH to do a good vaccinated/unvaccinated study, even though one is going on. Of course, what he doesn’t like is that, from every indication we get from other studies, such a study would likely be negative; so instead he weaves conspiracy theories about how the NIH “suppresses” results that support his views and trumpets how he’s going to do a vaccinated/unvaccinated study using a Florida Medicaid database. Of course, given his utter statistical and epidemiological incompetence, there’s no way he could ever properly control for all the potential confounders in such data; so it’s virtually a given that he will be producing another “positive” study. Maybe he’ll get Jake Crosby to do the statistics. I am, however, touched at how much faith Hooker places in “large numbers” as arbiters of the truth in epidemiology. Apparently, he doesn’t realize that analyzing large numbers incorrectly will produce results just as wrong as analyzing smaller datasets.
Next up, hot off the YouTube presses, so to speak, the crank NextNewsNetwork has featured Andrew Wakefield:
I nearly spewed my coffee all over my laptop when the “reporter” described Andrew Wakefield an “international leader” on vaccinations. It’s one of the rare times when words fail me. My dear readers, the things I do for you. Watching the unctuous, arrogant, and smarmy Wakefield for 13 solid minutes induces in me the overwhelming desire to retch and vomit, but I did it anyway, all for you. Notice that, even in light of Dr. Thompson’s statement, the antivaccine talking point remains unchanged: That Dr. Thompson, as the CDC whistleblower, has admitted that the CDC intentionally removed data from Destefano et al in order to hide a relationship between MMR vaccination and autism in African American males. This is not what Dr. Thompson said in his statement. Rather, he insinuated less than scientifically rigorous decision-making at best and scientific misconduct at worst, all trying to temper the insinuation by couching it as “reasonable scientists” disagreeing about interpretation of data. In other words, his statement is far less inflammatory than it is being portrayed. Even Wakefield, cherry picking statements from Hooker’s recordings of Thompson, couldn’t make a case that Thompson had said this.
There’s more race-baiting, in which Wakefield claims that these African American boys were “neglected.” He also claims that this is vindication for him, but, of course, it is not. Notice how he completely neglects to mention that in every other subgroup, even Hooker couldn’t torture the data to make it confess a relationship between age at MMR vaccination and autism in any other population other than a very small population in the study: African-American males. Whenever that happens as you slice epidemiological data finer and finer, you should be alert for the very distinct possibility that what you’re really looking at is a spurious correlation. As I pointed out before, Hooker in reality merely confirmed that Wakefield was wrong about everyone except African-American males, and, given how small this subgroup was in the study, almost certainly didn’t find any evidence supporting Wakefield’s hypothesis (such as it is) for even African-American boys. Yet, Wakefield, as deluded as he is, spins it as “vindication.” He even thanks Hooker for getting a “senior scientist at the CDC” to come forward and “confirm” that some of those “ideas we put forward” are true. Holy hell! Even if you spin Thompson’s statements in the most unflattering manner possible towards the CDC and his co-investigators, Thompson said nothing of the sort!
Hilariously, the interviewer actually asks one pretty good question: Whether Wakefield had ever observed a greater effect of MMR causing autism in black male babies. Naturally, he took the opportunity to spin these results as an excuse to mention his dubious statements about Somali immigrants in Minnesota. Then, while implicitly acknowledging that Hooker’s reanalysis didn’t confirm his belief for white children (I refuse to call it a hypothesis any more) that MMR causes autism, proposes a much larger study to determine if MMR causes autism in non-African American children. No matter what the data show, to Wakefield MMR causes autism. Particularly despicable, however, is Wakefield’s repeated assertion that, because of the CDC “fraud,” for 13 years children have gone “untreated and uncared for.” Translation: Mainstream medicine haven’t embraced my biomedical quackery to treat autism as “vaccine injury” because it doesn’t accept that vaccines cause autism.
In any case, the rest of the interview is the same talking points we’ve heard ad nauseam from Wakefield. He does, however, get one more good question. Near the end of the interview, the interviewer makes the observation that one of the arguments against vaccines causing autism is that correlation does not equal causation and then asks him if there’s been a correlation between low vaccine uptake and spikes in vaccine-preventable diseases in unvaccinated children. (I know! Shocking! Actually another pretty good question that I bet Wakefield didn’t see coming! The answer is yes, by the way.) Wakefield completely ignores that part of the question and tries to convince the interviewer that correlation of autism diagnoses with vaccination is “not a coincidence,” something he repeats multiple times. He doesn’t answer at all about spikes in infectious disease in unvaccinated children, but rather finishes with a flourish of “too many too soon” and the “toxins gambit,” while calling for prosecution of CDC officials.
So at the end of all this, I’m still left wondering: WTF happened with Dr. Thompson? I’m beginning to wonder more and more if he has started down that slippery slope to becoming antivaccine. His public statement makes me wonder, and so does this snippet of conversation surreptitiously recorded by Brian Hooker, in which he states unequivocally that he thinks that thimerosal-containing vaccines given to pregnant women will result in tics in the infant and that there is “biological plausibility” that thimerosal causes “autism-like” features. Of course, his very own study, published in the NEJM in 2007, does not show that, nor do any other reputable studies. True, his followup paper found what was described as a “small, but statistically significant association between early thimerosal exposure and the presence of tics in boys,” but also cautioned that this “finding should be interpreted with caution due to limitations in the measurement of tics and the limited biological plausibility regarding a causal relationship.” There were also significant limitations in the study, for instance:
This study was also limited by the relatively crude measurement of tics. All the other outcome measures assessed in this study used reliable and valid measures that have published manuals, which allowed the researchers to provide feedback to parents of the child. Furthermore, all testers underwent a 2-day training session and required them to reach a specific level of reliability in terms of administering the tests appropriately as documented in the published assessment manuals. The tics assessments, however, carried out by the testers did not require them to meet any reliability criteria and the testers had no prior training in neurology or tic assessments. The only training the testers received for tic assessments was based on viewing a 30-min training video (“Tourette Syndrome: A Guide to Diagnosis of TS,” 1989).
Now, two years later, Thompson has gone from a tentative finding of a slight increase in tics in boys to saying that because tics are more common in autistic children, that there’s biological plausibility to the hypothesis that thimerosal causes “autism-like” features in children when given in vaccines to their mothers during pregnancy? WTF? It’s really hard not to conclude from his statements regarding tics and thimerosal that Dr. Thompson has not gone at least partially antivaccine, which, if true, may explain much.
I conclude as I began, by asking “What now?” It’s obvious that the antivaccine contingent will flog this story for all it’s worth as long as they can, but fortunately the mainstream press doesn’t appear to be getting the message. It’s also clear that Hooker will continue to crank out incompetently performed epidemiological papers that torture the data until they confess a relationship between vaccines and autism. After this kerfuffle, however, he will be even more unlikely to find an epidemiologist or statistician to team up with him, other than perhaps Jake Crosby, who still hasn’t finished school yet. I only wonder whether Thompson will go full antivax now that he’s been outed, perhaps further assisting incorrectly identified “unbiased scientists” like Hooker, or whether he’ll just put his head down and try to ride the storm out, hopefully perhaps to do good work again someday. I don’t know. I do know that Thompson has done horrific harm, but, thankfully, because of Wakefield, that harm is much less than it would have been if Thompson’s allegations had reached the mainstream media untainted by association with Wakefield.
Now can I please write about something else next week?
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"Breaks Silence"? More like breaks wind. When has Wakefraud been silent about anything revolving around him? That's part of the problem, he won't shut the eff up.
You've put the fork in this one, Orac, and it's done.
The inability to think rationally is what makes anti-vaccinationists their own worst enemy. Wakefield is not their friend, hero, or savior. But hey, if they want to hitch their wagon to a self-serving, bottom-feeding, scum sucking parasite of the lowest order--well, who am I to try and stop them?
Since it is highly unlikely that any new information will be forthcoming (except, perhaps, the results of the eventual disposition of Hooker's paper - maybe retracted or something similar), the AoA folks & the "nut-o-sphere" will just continue to regurgitate the same old stories in an attempt to keep the situation relevant, but it will be all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Have a great holiday weekend Orac - you've earned it this week.
Thanks for the week of posts.
So far it's been most interesting to read the critiques of the data torture, as well as the character profiling! All has only cemented the desperate nature of hooker etc.
I have to say, this and only this piece of the story has given me real pause for thought, though. I found those little snippets from Thompson kind of disturbing. I mean I know they are selective edits but here is a man in the field saying what sound like fairly specific points of concern.
So I was waiting for your blog on this matter. The Andy video I wasn't prepared for but that's another matter!
It's interesting though that in response the main thrust you've come up with Orac is that Thompson has gone off the deep end. The tics thing I've never read about before (just an interested patent with anti Vax people around me) so I guess I'll have to read those linked posts to understand more deeply.
I guess I'm making this comment as it strikes me at least curious that someone who has studied the topic and raised in research (with significant qualifiers) something of potential interest or concern (mercury and 'autism behaviours') is now appearing to have definite concerns. Is it really reducable to just saying he had gone off the deep end? Is this a specific topic yet has received the same depth of epidemological attention that vaccines and autism has more broadly? Is is there possibly legitimate scope for scientific disagreement about causal links and biological mechanims between thermisol and some behaviours ?
I'm honestly not baiting or seeking a 'chink in the armour' - it's more my reaction to the concept of a CDC researcher appearing to have specific concerns and change of view, for some reason presumably founded in his work. It just isn't feeling as simple to throw aside as the other stuff. But maybe that's just my uninformed read on things...
@Eliot - from the quotes given by Wakefield, it is impossible to determine the context of the statements by Thompson - it is quite possible that he was merely speaking in hypotheticals....the data, on the other hand, is available for everyone to see & critique - and even if there was data that might have seemed significant back in 2003 / 2004 before the paper was published, Hooker certainly did not "uncover" it with his statistical non-methodology.
So, I would expect that Orac would not and cannot comment directly on those comments because they lack the very context that would allow them to be independently evaluated. All we have is what was cherry-picked out of what might have been hours of conversations.
Come to think of it, its even worse - the reason Hooker had to "slice and dice & torture the data" in the way that he did, was so that his results would validate what he had been told by Thompson - he was told that there was some statistical information that might show an increased risk for African-American boys....so Hooker did everything in his power to make such a risk apparent in his paper.
So, in this case, again, Hooker already knew what answer he wanted to find - he just had to use whatever methods he could (valid or not) to get to what his goal was.
Science doesn't work that way - another reason this is a completely invalid paper & the issue in general is a "non-issue."
It is very difficult to work out Thompson's motives in all of this. All we really have to go on is his lawyer's press release and the tics video.
Certainly in both of those he is suggesting first MMR and secondly thiomersal may have effects that have been generally dismissed. In both cases he is going against conclusions of papers for which he was a co-author.
That last to me is the strange bit. If Thompson was worried 10 years ago that there was a problem with the analysis, why did he put his name to the paper?
It is somewhat idle to speculate, but I can't help feeling there is something else going on here and as a result Thompson has blow up these miniscule molehills into mountains. Not so much that Thompson has gone anti-vax, but he is using this to hit back at the CDC.
There is some surface resemblance to Dr Oz's descent from a proper doctor into a woo-ridden wannabe celebrity.
My view is that, in the interests of fairness and resolving some of these issues, CDC should write to Brian Hooker and say that, now he has been availed of its data, he should avail CDC of his data.
In short, I believe that Dr Hooker should evidence his good faith in much the way I believe Jenny McCathy should help parents out.
He should co-operate in the assembling of an expert committee, including his own doctors, to run a full panel of genetic tests on his son, along with a thorough assembly of the boy's clinical history and all other pertinent information.
Although I have never taken any view on whether MMR may or may not cause autism - and I have paid a heavy price in lost income for maintaining that position - I have looked at scores of cases (usually in court disputes, as well as Wakefield's 1998 series) and have yet to see an account that you would say: "Ah yes, there's one."
I would probably take quite a hefty bet on the upshot of any such panel being convened to review the children of the most high profile vaccine accusers.
Of course, it is close to being a statistical certainty that there are kids out there whose first symptoms (as opposed to potential signs) of autism occurred within the time-period to arouse strong suspicion in those minded to suspect. But the chances of Brian Hooker's or Jenny McCarthy's weathering such scrutiny are about as likely as a vaccine paper coming out of CDC that hasn't been pre-screened for public perception.
"Certainly in both of those he is suggesting first MMR and secondly thiomersal may have effects that have been generally dismissed. In both cases he is going against conclusions of papers for which he was a co-author."
Furthermore I have never seen MMR in multi-dose vials requiring a preservative so I'm probably right in guessing it has never contained thimerosal. So we are to believe that a vaccine and a completely separate and unrelated preservative both cause tics? It sounds too much like someone has predetermined the desired conclusion and is willing to suggest a remarkable coincidence to support that conclusion.
And once again, for anyone reading this thread but not any of the others. Hooker and Thompson both claim that there's a relationship in African American boys between receiving their first MMR after 36 months of age, and autism.
However, the whole study only had 41 kids (boys & girls, all races) that received their first MMR after 36 mos. And, the original DeStefano paper says:
So, there were only 9 total kids who received MMR after 36 mos and were not already diagnosed with a developmental problem. Those 9 are the only kids that you could reasonably think developed autism due to MMR after 36 mos.
I don't know if Hooker and Thompson are too blinded by their convictions to have considered this, or if they're just ignoring it because it doesn't fit their preconceived conclusions. But I haven't seen either of them address it, or explain why it doesn't invalidate their whole "hypothesis."
Neither have they addressed their own finding that African American boys receiving MMR before 18 mos are not at increased risk of autism.
Actually Hooker's paper made no claims regarding children getting their first MMR after 36 months. The claims were for African-American boys between 24 and 36 months or 24 and 31 months.
Pot for autism won't look good with those crazy people advocating it.
Can it even get a fair trial?
It would be interesting to have more details from Thompson about the data (and statistical results) that persuaded him to go overboard. He is a competent epidemiologist by the look of it.
And was he familiar with the manuscript of Hooker's paper chock full of epidemiological howlers? Hooker apparently followed on Thompson's input about the di Stefano study, so It would be a natural thing to show it to him and ask for
an opinion.
Re: the tics video, that sounded even more choppy and edited than any of the previous ones to me. The captions even include ellipses...too many of the statements were along the lines of "thimerosal causes tics" ...complete change in tone..."make that your mantra and stick to it." (sic). The sentences they made it seem like Thompson was saying did sound like anything close to a coherent, chronological sentence structure.
Did anyone else hear that? The tics video was the *least* convincing for me, it sounded the most edited and misconstrued.
*This is not a defense of Thompson, who's got some 'splaining to do.
I think that the events actually argue against the idea that it was something necessarily 'founded in his work.' Why wait 10 years?
Dear Orac,
or should that be, Dear Self-Appointed Great Orac?
Why does the multibillion dollar federal “no questions asked, no one denied” Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund even exit? If vaccines are so safe, why that? Clearly vaccines cause admitted harm. Study the Vaccine Injury Table. Are you certain that other non-admitted harm is not being covered up by the CDC? Can you think of any motives for the CDC performing such a cover up? I can, but let's hear you do that. Let's see how opened minded you are. Come on – Why would the CDC cover up vaccine injuries?
But of course you won’t. Because you're not. You are excessively prejudiced and closed-minded. You have made up your mind. You have stated your opinion. Nothing contradicting your stated opinion could budge you from your cemented position. If Wakefield gave you a live video feed of the CDC roasting and lunching on newborn children, you’d still grovel before their throne while ad hominem attacking Wakefield et al, out your prostrated behind, right? Apparently.
Are you positive that the dataset analyzed by Hooker contains all the data the CDC has to offer on potentially linking autism to vaccines? Are you certain that other studies have not shown the dangers of Thimerosal? There are many. Have you open-mindedly analyzed them, or did you already know your answer before you cracked them open? Are you certain that the CDC has not hidden data or perhaps hidden even entire studies which potentially link autism to vaccines? Are you certain that the CDC has not avoided performing studies which potentially would demonstrate that correlation? Doesn’t this unwillingly outed CDC conspirist even make you pause? Are you sure that there’s nothing deeper? Does he know more? Are others hiding results also?
Once this specific data is reanalyzed and more CDC data is analyzed by the many scientists from various camps who will be doing that now that Thompson’s been outed, if Hooker's & Thompson's findings are verified, if other broader linkages between autism and vaccines are found with other data, if Thimerosal is dangerous after all, if MMR is dangerous after all – if they were right and you were wrong – what are your intentions? Please let us know prior. Inquiring minds would love to know.
@Yo - you do know that Barbara Loe Fisher (Grand Dame of the Anti-Vaccine Movement) was instrumental in creating the VCIP, right?
Maybe you should ask her....
Yo, inquiring minds should stop reading Inquirer-like materials. Of course vaccines can cause injury. With exceptional infrequency and that is why that mechanism exists. The burden of proof is not great to produce compensation. On the other hand, the number of lives saved and disease-produced side effects prevented so far outnumber the risks that vaccines are recommended by the CDC. If risk did not get seriously outweighed by benefits the CDC would not recommend them. That's their job.
Apparently hearing Thompson say that thimerosal in vaccines causes not only tics, but "autism-like features", that TCVs should not be given to pregnant women, and that he would not give one to his wife confirms to me that Thompson is sadly lacking in statistical understanding and well on the way down the antivaccine rabbithole. Here's how the CDC explained it:
One of those 19 statistically significant associations was the tics one. As I wrote on another thread yesterday, what that means is that the results obtained were consistent with thimerosal not having anything at all to do with any of the neurodevelopmental problems they looked at. If you are going to claim that the positive association with tics is of any significance, you should also accept that, "with boys increasing thimerosal was associated with increased performance IQ" (a quote from Thompson, ironically), another statistically significant result that is almost certainly due to chance. No one who understood the first thing about stats would conclude from these results that thimerosal in vaccines increases IQ in boys any more than they would conclude it causes tics or autism.
" Might as well make it a solid week..", said Orac.
And it's been an entertaining week - I found myself reading and listening to related material from diverse sources ( SB to whimsy-based) to such a great extent that I haven't really followed Grand Slam tennis much- which is on-going - btw- not that I'm such a great televised sports watcher but I do have to at least be aware of 'who's who/ what's happening' in order to talk to my fellow/ sister tennis players.
I expect that the usual suspects will continue droning long after we've moved on to other topics. In addition, there seems to be increased activity by lower level anti-vaxxers on facebook and twitter, giving them even more avenues by which to fritter away their time and perseverate upon their
tightly circumscribed areas of exclusive interest, as they do.
So Yo
If the CDC was going to expunge data set after data set and shut up dozens if not hundreds of researcher for decade after decade...how'd they let this one slip through?
And vaccine injuries that are from the scientific studies are well understood and expected. That is why they are on informed consent documents.
Do you really believe all these diseases are less harmful than a cold? Given how even a simple cold effects my asthma even that could kill me.
The problem with carving the data into smaller and smaller subsets is you eventually always find something that does not show up again in any study as your method insures you will get a spurious result.
May the kids around your kids all be vaccinated so you don't have to know the horror of the 1800's of row after row of tiny caskets in the family plot.
Did you ever stop to think about how little of an anti-vaccine contingent there would be today if Thimerosal had been removed from our vaccines when originally requested/demanded, and replaced with something more benign sounding, if not actually more benign?
Not understanding/predicting/preventing this huge negative reaction can only be accomplished by federal government-sized hubris.
@YoDaddie
From your comment, it seems that you have not done very much reading, at all, on the history of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, vaccines in general, nor the greater scientific literature. Rather, it appears you have read some stuff on anti-vaccine sites, glommed onto it and so wholly wrapped yourself in it that you cannot see anything else.
Tell me, since you imply that you are so open-minded, what would change your position?
YoDaddie,
I can't answer ofr Orac, but he is no doubt busy, and I'm procrastinating so....
Self-appointed what? He writes an interesting and informative blog that has attracted a following of well-educated people. If you start your own blog, which is extremely easy to do, and made it equally interesting (not so easy), no doubt you could do the same. No self-appointment necessary.
Too much frivolous litigation was driving drug companies away from manufacturing vaccines. The NVICP was introduced to stop this potentially disastrous trend. It is extremely fair to those who have genuinely been damaged by vaccines. I sincerely wish we had something similar in the UK. It irritates me when people in the US complain about it as if it was a bad thing, or somehow evidence of wrongdoing.
Sometimes, no doubt, they do, but extremely rarely. Serious side effects occur perhaps once in every million vaccines given, or even less frequently than that. They are so rare they are hard to measure accurately.
I'm pretty certain, yes. I think that the vast majority of those compensated for vaccine injury very probably were not in reality damaged by vaccines. Then again, I would like to see government support for parents of children with disabilities whatever their cause.
Because they know that the benefits of vaccines hugely outweigh their benefits, and a loss of public confidence in vaccines would be a public health disaster resulting in countless suffering, death and enormous expense?
That said, I see no evidence at all that the CDC has covered up any such thing.
Nonsense. Everything I have seen of Orac suggests to me that if the evidence led him to conclude that vaccines are dangerous he would acknowledge it.
Since no convincing evidence of any kind has been presented by Wakefield or anyone else, your claim seems more than a little hyperbolic.
What data "potentially linking autism to vaccines"? I haven't seen any.
Such as? Please don't mention the Geiers execrable studies.
You should familiarize yourself with this blog, in which Orac frequently analyzes such studies. I have seen no evidence of the prejudices you claim. Generally the studies are so poorly designed that it is clear to anyone with any understanding of the subject once pointed out.
Could there be hidden evidence of wrongdoing that no one has ever seen? There could be, but we have to go on what evidence is available, and from what I have seen your claims are utterly groundless.
It makes me pause to wonder why the CDC employed a scientist who is apparently so ignorant about epidemiology and statistics.
Hooker's findings are not going to be verified, as they are very clearly erroneous. You don't treat case control studies as cohort studies, and you don't use unadjusted p values for multiple subgroup analyses. His results are simply wrong.
YoDaddie,
Are you seriously suggesting that we should decide what public health measures we employ based on the opinions of Google University graduates, even when the evidence contradicts these? What kind of a world would that be?
I'm beginning to think the converse, that removing thimerosal from vaccines was a serious mistake. It has simply given ammunition to those who are convinced that thimerosal has injured children, when overwhelming evidence tells us it has not.
It would make no difference whatsoever. Lets see:, you knuckleheads have ranted about aluminum, squalene, formaldehyde, fetal tissue, foreign DNA, monkey viruses and on and on. If the only ingredient in a vaccine was water, you'd find a way to blame that, too.
YoDaddie,
Thimerosal was removed from Canadian vaccines several years before it was removed from the USA's. There was no decrease in autism rates in Canada. In fact, the apparent number of children with autism in Canada continued to rise, just as it apparently did in the US in general and California in particular.
But we also know that these apparently increased numbers of children with ASD are due to increases in awareness and diagnosis of milder cases.
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/28/6078005/autism-rates-arent-actually-increa…
"Reports of higher rates of autism in recent years means that we are doing a better job of identifying people on the autism disorder spectrum, particularly those at the milder end of the spectrum, and also identifying them at an earlier age."
It would have made no different to remove thimerosal from vaccines earlier because thimerosal does not cause autism.
Thanks for your interest Krebiozen,
The self-anointed Great Orac has clearly attracted a following of self-appointed well-educated people. I think that some of y’all actually are. Not clear from your message though.
You mention the NVICP’s driving motivation: “Too much frivolous litigation was driving drug companies away from manufacturing vaccines.”. You fail to mention that it was also the result of much non-frivolous litigation driving drug companies away from manufacturing vaccines. You mention that “It is extremely fair to those who have genuinely been damaged by vaccines.” Hummm… for some yes. Certainly. For some – kinda-sorta fair. But in general - I don’t concur. Neither does the many who have not been adequately or even compensated at all by the NVICP while being genuinely injured. Check out the payout percentages and get back to me. Please. Talk to some of the victims. Read their blogs. Their articles. Their life stories. Their resulting trials and tribulations. Maybe the Great Orac will help you with that.
Regarding “Serious side effects occur perhaps once in every million vaccines given, or even less frequently than that. They are so rare they are hard to measure accurately.” I wonder if you yourself or your child were permanently damaged in extreme life-altering ways by a vaccine – if you’d be so statistically cavalier….? Altruism is great. I’m sure that many vaccine injured families appreciate the good that vaccines do – population wide. That hardly removes their own pain and suffering though. They’d appreciate if safer vaccines had been forced upon them. Wouldn’t you in their position? If they had to do it over, surely they’d say … “Nope. We’ll skip this”. How about you Krebiozen, in their position?
You claim “Nonsense. Everything I have seen of Orac suggests to me that if the evidence led him to conclude that vaccines are dangerous he would acknowledge it.” I guess you didn’t read his above article?
Guilty . “….more than a little hyperbolic” by design.
“What data ‘potentially linking autism to vaccines’? I haven’t seen any. “ Start here: http://mercury-freedrugs.org/docs/20140329_Kern_JK_ExcelFile_TM_sHarm_R….
“Please don’t mention the Geiers execrable studies.” Maybe vaccines cause ad hominemitis?
“You should familiarize yourself with this blog, in which Orac frequently analyzes such studies.” Thanks for the offer Krebiozen , but I have too often already. Long time. The resulting chronic nausea finally made me pipe up. You’re welcome for that.
“I have seen no evidence of the prejudices you claim.”. Really? None? Doesn’t an unwillingly outed high-level long-standing well-thought-of CDC research Ph.D. scientist even remotely smell like that to you? Remotely? Maybe your vaccines have caused Opposing Agenda Blindness? Does your UK health system have an ICD-10-like code for that? Hopefully. Hey, there’s a couple of new rows for our Vaccine Injury Table!
You say “It makes me pause to wonder why the CDC employed a scientist who is apparently so ignorant about epidemiology and statistics.” Why weren’t you saying that before? When he seemed to be playing on “your team”? For over a decade. Maybe he actually is a well-educated and skillful epidemiologist. I bet the thinks so. But obviously a dishonest one. Hell, I bet that he has even frequented this site, seeing as how it’s packed with self-anointed well-educated scientists. Their honesty TBD… I’ll be watching if/when there is a clear undeniable autism/Thimerosal linkage established.
How do you explain that Thompson feels bad about sitting on his apparent firmly-held belief that vaccines are very dangerous to African-American boys? How do you feel about that Krebiozen?
For the record : I fully support safe vaccines. Don’t skimp on the important adjective.
And again, why not just remove Thimerosal and let everyone worried relax and take their medicine? What’s so difficult with that? That’s an easy solution. Why not, Krebiozen?
You must have missed the part of the statement where he says
Julian @ 12 looks like Jacob, the pothead troll.
Dear Krebiozen,
So you are beginning to think that removing Thimerosal from vaccines was a serious mistake, that it has simply given ammunition to those who are convinced that Thimerosal has injured children?
Tells me all I need to know about your morals. This is about “my side” verse “your side” and not about protecting as many children as possible. I'd respect an opinion that anything that can easily be done to increase our vaccine rates should be done. Especially something as easy as replacing Thimerosal in multi-use vaccines with something less "mercury" sounding; less toxic sounding. Yours - I can't respect. Sounds like Disrespectful Insolence to me. Do you yourself really like the idea of putting ethyl mercury into your and your kids bloodstreams? You really do? Wouldn't the hair on the back of your neck ease down a bit from having to worry if YOUR kid is a one-in-a-million lottery winner?
@yo
Have you ever heard of the saying "the dose is the poison?"
@Yo : And what do you think about what Broken link said regarding Canada ?
Besides, even in the USA thiomersal was removed more than 10 years ago from most vaccines, yet the autism rates are still high.
And lastly, you sound as if it is damn easy to find a replacement for thiomersal. Why don't you enlighten us and assure us that this suitable replacement would be guaranteed non-toxic ?
@YoDaddie: why are you fixated on the CDC? Are you unaware that the question of whether vaccination might cause autism has been studied in many other developed countries, countries which the CDC has no influence over whatsoever? What possible influence can the CDC bring to bear on scientific research and publication in these other countries? The world does not end at the borders of the USA; science goes on - good science by good scientists.
And this vast body of independent research from all around the globe shows zero evidence for any causative relationship between vaccination and autism. There have been literally hundreds of studies with tens of millions of participants, and those studies are robust.
Even if there may be some hint of discord at the CDC regarding the interpretation of one rather small and old study, it does not negate the plethora of global research showing that vaccination does not cause autism.
@Yo - if you are so educated, please list the vaccines on the US Pediatric Vaccine Schedule that contain Thimerasol?
And I'll give you a free pass on the Influenza vaccine - but over 50% of the current generation of flu vaccines (including such favorites as FluMist) do not contain any....
Other than that - please list the vaccines, on the current schedule, that contain that particular ingredient.
Dear Broken Link,
Did you ever stop to think that if “we are doing a better job of identifying people on the autism disorder spectrum, particularly those at the milder end of the spectrum, and also identifying them at an earlier age.” and that if Thimerosal is simultaneously removed from your vaccines, you easily could expect the rate of autism to not go down?
Think about that for a minute. Please.
Do I need to spell it out? One rate goes up, one rate goes down.........
However, contrary to your belief that “Thimerosal was removed from Canadian vaccines several years” your influenza vaccine and most of your hepatitis B vaccines still are multi-dose vaccines, which contain Thimerosal as a preservative. So your article actually should prove nothing to the well-educated respectfully insolent here. Right?
At least now you have a choice of giving your infants non-Thimerosal vaccines in Canada. Yay! I bet that did increase your vaccination rates. Yay! Which sadly the Krebiozen-like-disrespectfully-insolent would not allow you to be able to do if they had it their way.
By the way - why did the USA and Canada and the UK etc. remove Thimerosal from most vaccines?
And why can't the third-world get some of that? We really can't afford non-Thimerosal for them, but we can for us?
From a 2012 ORAC column, Tactics & tropes : with regards to "safe vaccines"-"a variant of this is to like vaccines to cars and say that "I am not anti-car, I just want safer cars." That's not a good analogy. A better equivalent would be if they demanded absolute safety of cars and refused to use them unless GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, et al swear that they'll never be injured in a car crash"
I'm given to understand that there are two issues. First, refrigeration (which is always important) is even more critical for vaccines without preservatives; however, in many third world countries it is difficult to keep them properly cold for the entire supply chain. Second, single dose dispensers are relatively expensive, so for a given amount of money the agencies providing those can provide more immunizations with multi-use vials than single-use.
The latter issue could be dealt with if people were willing to provide more funding. How much can we put you down for?
"For the record : I fully support safe vaccines."
Which vaccines are those? Are any of them on the current pediatric vaccine schedule, or recommended for adults?
If on the other hand you're not referring to any currently existing vaccines because of a belief that they are unsafe, what would it take to convince you that they have acceptable safety?
YoDaddie, I assume from the tone of your above post that you support changing world policy on vaccines based on 1/1000000 serious adverse events? Maybe you think its better to have no vaccines and a world rife with VPDs rather than risk that 1/1000000 event? After all, nobody was ever harmed by VPDs were they? The whole idea that we need vaccines is just an invention of the CDC isn't it? Including the secret branches of the CDC in the UK, France, Russia.......the rest of the world. Oh, I'm sorry, the rest of the world doesn't really exist does it? We're certainly not capable of wiping our arse without checking with America first.
Oh, and how many of the vaccines on your current schedule still contain thimerosal?
Oh, and another thing. I'm an engineer, the opinions on engineering matters of none engineers I come across on a daily basis are frequently worthless. So when I see someone with no medical or statistical training accusing someone who has both of lying (essentially the whole ethos of the anti-vaccine movement) .....well, in my part of the UK we say "It boils my piss".
YoDaddie, your evidence that thimerosal is anything other than benign at exposure levels achievable as a consequence of routine childhood vaccination would be... what, exactly? Be specific.
YoDaddy,
HepB is not given at birth in Ontario, Canada's most populous province. Last time I had a flu shot is was a single dose, and didn't contain thimerosal. Indeed, most don't
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/13vol39/acs-dcc-4/index-e…
Canada and the UK, and eventually the US removed thimerosal as a precaution. After extensive studies were performed, we can now say conclusively that thimerosal does not cause autism, nor any other unwanted neurological outcomes. It could be added back in, in my view. In the third world, they need thimerosal because it preserves multi-use ampoules, and removes the need for refrigeration. This allows more children to receive vaccines.
Dear LouVeha
Regarding “…you sound as if it is damn easy to find a replacement for thiomersal. Why don’t you enlighten us and assure us that this suitable replacement would be guaranteed non-toxic?”
How about switching to single-use non-preserved vaccines? That would be worth it. I’d pay more for my kids. Lots more. If I could get them non-Thimerosal flu vaccines I’d pay a lot more. You wouldn’t?
But – if it’s so impossible to find alternatives – why has Thimerosal been removed from most first-world vaccines? Can’t be that hard since we did it, right? You say “Besides, even in the USA Thimerosal was removed more than 10 years ago from most vaccines”, so you do get this, right?
Hummm… you want me to “… assure us that this suitable replacement would be guaranteed non-toxic”. Are you suggesting that the replacement preservatives now in use are not non-toxic? Is there something that you know? Careful - you’re about to start a whole new anti-vaccine front.
As a parent and layperson I have to say that the anti-vaxxers have really wasted an asset. They had an ally at the CDC who took some of their ideas seriously and was willing to have a dialogue. That, in and of itself, would have been a huge credibility gain for them -- a PR coup. Fence-sitters would have taken notice. Even I would have taken them a little more seriously. By linking Thompson with that embarrassment of a paper and then topping it off with the ludicrous and reprehensible Wakefield/Tuskeegee video they've totally ruined what they had. The guy may as well have "I'm With Stupid" tattooed on his forehead at this point. I thought Wakefield would have been smart enough to realize that, but I guess I gave him too much credit. Obviously, he's less interested in swaying the general public than in keeping the faithful in an open-walletted frenzy.
It's not often that one hears someone stake a claim to being a self-appointed ill-educated person.
On everyone's favorite blog, Age of Autism, Sharyl Atkinson has posted where she refers to William Thompson as a "CDC epidemiologist." Is Thompson an epidemiologist? I thought is Ph.D. was in psychology?
Dear novalox,
Have I ever heard of the saying “the dose is the poison?”
Have you ever summed up the combined amount of Thimerosal vaccine-compliant children used to get? How much they still get in third-world countries? Add in mercury amalgams and mercury pollution and food with mercury - it's nontrivial.
What do you think about this dear novalox?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtFsy0rQsak
Thanks for your feedback dear novalox.
@Yo - again, please list the vaccines that are currently on the US Pediatric Schedule that contain Thimerosal....
Because here is the current list:
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSaf…
Guess what - those flu vaccines that you would "pay lots more for" are given each and every single day to men, women & children across the country.
Are you a moron?
TBruce @26, responding to the troll: If the only ingredient in a vaccine was water, you’d find a way to blame that, too.
I suspect you're right, but let's not give homeopaths any ideas here.
Is Thompson an epidemiologist?
He's whatever the anti-vax cranks need him to be, so this week, he's an epidemiologist. Trivial details such as facts are of no importance to conspiracy theorists like Atkisson.
Dear Lawrence,
A moron? Perhaps. My apparently inadequately conveyed point was that multi-use vaccines ought not to still have Thimerosal. Being able to say "All US vaccines are Thimerosal free" would increase vaccine rates. That's your goal, right? You want your kids protected from other non-vaccinated kids, right?
Paying more for single-use or more for multi-use alternatively-preserved vaccines would be worth it in my estimation. That was my intended point. That doesn't seem moronic to me. Hopefully not to you either.
yodaddie, 3 vaccines instead of 1 would still mean being spiked with a needle 3 times. Regardless of the relative safety of the methods, these aren't sugar-coated pills. When I was little I didn't like being vaccinated and none of the other kids in school liked it either.
Isn't that a good reason to give the triple vaccine instead of three monovalents?
@ Brian Deer: Brian Hooker still has an open claim (filed 12 years ago) on behalf of his autistic child before the Vaccine Court for "vaccine-related-autism". As far as I know, the case is still open. All the bullsh!t studies published about the supposed link between MMR vaccines/ vaccines which containThimerosal and the onset of autism, have been used by litigants and have failed. The authors of those studies (Mark Geier, Arthur Krigsman and others) who have testified in the Vaccine Court as "expert witnesses" have been found to be not credible. But, you know about them, don't you? :-)
(Scroll down to see Krigsman's opinion that all children diagnosed with ASDs...even those who have no symptoms of gastrointestinal disorders):
http://briandeer.com/wakefield/cedillo-krigsman.htm
Yo, still hasn't answered questions posed to him/her, about the removal of Thimerosal from all childhood vaccines, more than a decade ago. And, single dose vaccine vials/preloaded single dose vaccines, still are refrigerated...according to supply chain directives:
http://www.who.int/immunization/sage/meetings/2014/april/3_GAVI_immuniz…
@Yo - you still seem to not get the fact that there aren't any vaccines on the US Pediatric Schedule that still have Thimerosal in them.....kids and pregnant women all get the thimerosal-free versions anyway & more than 50% of the flu vaccines in this country don't have the ingredient anyway for everyone else.
You're position might have made sense about 15 years ago - but today, well, you're a bit out of date (and yes, a moron).
Whoa - hey Orac, did you change the moderation routines recently?
@Yo - the point I made is that those multi-vial vaccines here in the US don't use it anymore - so your point is moo.....moo, because no one cares what a cow says.
Dear Julian,
Multi-use vaccines are for multiple-person use, not multi-vaccines per container. So a 10-dose bottle on a vaccine solution is given to 10 different people. Get it? The needles are scrapped each time. So no worries there.
@YoDaddie:
And what would you use to ensure that the multi-dose vials remain free of infection?
All I can say is, you are very, very ignorant. Thimerosal was removed. Did that shut the anti-vaxxers up? Nope. They started moaning about the adjuvants, "too many too soon" and anything they could.
This has nothing to do with thimerosal. It's about disliking something and then finding a reason to justify that dislike. As an old slavic saying goes, "A man who wishes to beat a dog will always find a stick."
@Yo - and your point is what, exactly? Because the preservative you are complaining about, isn't used in this country anymore, except in a very small number of flu vaccines (not given to children or pregnant women).
YoDaddie,
Do you have any evidence for this? If vaccines caused all the problems the antivaccine movement claims, this would show up in the science, and it simply doesn't.
Low payout percentages support my suggestion that many claims of vaccine damage are unfounded, don't they?
I have read plenty of stories. I can understand why some parents blame vaccines for a variety of problems they see in their children, it's heartbreaking, but I think the vast majority are mistaken. Blaming the wrong culprit for their problems isn't going to help them.
How is stating what a large body of high quality evidence tells us is true, "cavalier"? I feel for the parents of children with neurodevelopmental problems. Sympathy and empathy does not mean I have to accept their claims uncritically.
I don't know if you are talking about the vaccine injuries that have been compensated by the NVICP here, or those who claim to be vaccine injured but whose claims are not supported by the evidence.
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. We don't know which people are going to react badly to a vaccine, so the only way of avoiding vaccine injury completely is not to give any vaccines at all. The problem with that is we would go back to the good old days of infectious diseases with all the misery and death they would bring.
The article tearing apart an utterly unreliable study? Where does it say that he wouldn't accept good evidence?
I have read reams of this stuff and spent hours checking out references, and the conclusion I have come to is that there is no evidence for thimerosal in vaccines causing neurological developmental problems. The amount in vaccines is a tiny fraction (several orders of magnitude) of the doses that cause symptoms in animals. The highest concentrations of mercury seen in babies and animals after vaccination with a TCV are a fraction of the concentration that affects brain and other cells in cultures. The mercury claims are just bogus.
You don't appear to understand what ad hominem means. I referred to their studies as execrable, not them personally. These are the people who decided that chemically castrating autistic boys was a good idea based on how mercury binds to testosterone at high temperatures.
It's a shame none of the science appears to have sunk in.
I'm very familiar with the claims that Thompson has made, I understand the study design, and I know that what Hooker has done is not valid. It is guaranteed to give the wrong results. What he said about mercury and tics is invalid too. In multiple subgroup analyses you will see some that are statistically significant, around 1 in 20 will be significant at the 95% confidence limits. That's what we see in the study that found an increased incidence of tics (and increased IQ) in boys exposed to more mercury. I say that both are due to chance, as 19 of the 378 subgroup analyses they did gave statistically significant results, 1 in 20, exactly as we would expect from chance alone.
Do I smell something here? Yes, I smell someone with an agenda exploiting people's scientific ignorance.
Aren't you hilarious? I don't have any agenda. I don't work for a drug company, or have anything to do with vaccines. I do have a background in science, and I can see obvious BS when I see it. That's all.
Because he didn't come out with some nonsense that anyone with some understanding of epidemiology and statistics is unfounded then. I don't know what has happened to him to make him come out with this stuff, but it's clearly wrong.
I see no evidence of dishonesty. I think he is honestly mistaken.
Self-anointed? I think you will find that many of us here are professionals, with real qualifications and experience in science.
That simply isn't ever going to happen. There is a gulf of orders of magnitude between the amount of mercury in vaccines and the amount that could cause the problems ascribed to it. Look at the Faroes study or the ones in the Seychelles: pregnant women exposed daily to lots of methylmercury, and no sign of any developmental problems in their children except at amounts far greater than there ever was in any vaccines.
I feel sorry for him because I think he is mistaken. I think the association is probably due to the insistence on vaccination in the autism early intervention programs.
I'm glad to hear it, but I suspect you don't believe the vaccines on the current schedule are safe.
Just because people are afraid of mercury? The next thing they will want the formaldehyde removed, then the other scary-sounding ingredients. You can't make decisions like that based on public hysteria.
YoDaddie,
I can't answer for novalox, but this is something I know a little bit about.
The video you linked to found that exposure to 30 micromolar mercury, i.e. 6,000 micrograms per liter, adversely affects nail neurones in vitro. How does this compare to the levels seen in children after vaccination with a TCV? Maximal mean blood concentrations of ethylmercury in children post vaccination were 5.7 µg/L the day after vaccination, dropping to baseline levels after 30 days.
Why would anyone be concerned about mercury levels over 1,000 times higher than the highest blood levels seen in children after vaccination, affecting snail neurones in a petri dish?
Yo is obviously a troll. I admit my patience is thin today (still really pissed about Thompson going off the deep end) but his inane ramblings are pissing me off. Glad it is a holiday weekend and wish all the best. Krebiozen better you than me mate and I wish you luck with your task of educating the troll.
@yo
How quaint, citiation by youtube.
Krebiozen answered most of the objections to the video that I seen, but I'll add one more.
Why are you comparing elemental mercury to ethylmercury? Do you even look at the question posed to you?
Kiiri,
It was exactly this mercury nonsense that got me involved in the whole vaccine business several years ago, so I have the figures engraved on my brain, having had to repeat them over and over and over again.
Why can't people like YoDaddie understand that something being poisonous at one dose doesn't mean it's poisonous at 1,000th of that dose? If I complained that some quack CAMster is recommending people take 2,000 IU vitamin D every day, and point to someone getting poisoned by a dose of 2 million IU of vitamin D as evidence this is dangerous, wouldn't they pull me up on that? Half a teaspoonful of salt makes food taste better and provides essential nutrients, 500 teaspoonfuls will kill several people. It isn't rocket surgery.
That's odd. A comment went into moderation for no apparent reason. Just a rant asking why some people just don't get the dose=poison thing in regard to thimerosal.
Name the successful cases. It's not really that hard.
Not because of any specific concerns related to the use of thimerosal as a preservative in vacine formulations. The 1997 FDA Modernization act required the FDA to identify and review all biological products which contained mercury compounds, Vaccines incorporating thimerosal preservatives were just one of the products that fell within this directive.
On review it appeared that it might rarely be possible, under the current recomended vaccine schedule, for individuals to exceed exposure limits set for methyl mercury as a result of routine vacination. As a precaution the FDA directed the removal of thimerosal (which metabolizes to produce ethyl--not methyl--mercury) from vaccine formulatons until further studies could be conducted.
Those studies have since been conducted (google, for example, Pichchiero and Burbacher) and demonstrate that ethyl mercury's is far less toxic than, far more quickly eliminated than, and does accumulate as does, methyl mercury that it is completely inappropriate to apply exposure limits established for methyl mercury to ethyl mercury.
Why not, given that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that thimerosal, at exposure levels achievable by routine vaccination, engenders risk?
I find it amusing that the PubMed reference to the study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25114790) has as its author attribution, "Hooker BS". Childish? Perhaps. But satisfying.
YoDaddie: "My apparently inadequately conveyed point was that multi-use vaccines ought not to still have Thimerosal."
The MMR has never ever contained thimerosal in its over forty year history. It comes as dry powder that is reconstituted with sterile water and must be used within eight hours.
By the way, to echo Lawrence: what vaccine in the present American schedule is only available with thimerosal? Do not mention influenza because half do not have thimerosal.
If I recall correctly, it binds at high temperatures in benzene>/i>.
I'm guessing it's because the only argument they've got to offer takes the form "Oooo...mercury! Scary stuff!"
ruthq: **standing ovation**
"Obviously, [Wakefield]’s less interested in swaying the general public than in keeping the faithful in an open-walletted frenzy."
As Orac said, Wakefield betrayed Hooker, and scotched Hooker's chances of getting good pub, but you've added the logical 'why.'
I don't know the details of this sordid history as well as other folks here, so I'll ask if the following summary in story form gets the broad strokes right:
** Wakefield is a scam artist who got into this for money. Whatever concern he may have for autistic kids and their families is dwarfed by his concern for Andrew Wakefield. His scam offered a group of traumatized people the opportunity to form a new 'religion' to cope with their emotional pains. People like Hooker and McCarthy are sincere and mean well, but they have grasped onto fairy tales as reality is too hard for them to deal with. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for everyone else), they can't make their 'case' without going back to Wakefield, as his 'study' is the best 'evidence' they have or will ever get. Thus, they constantly discredit themselves, limiting their effectiveness with reasonable people, and confining the anti-vax 'movement' to what amounts to a cult. Hooker saw Thompson's 'revelations' as the cult's big chance to get some non-Wakefield-based legitimacy. But after 10 months of playing Thompson, he realized Thompson couldn't give him what he needed — there really was nothing there to support the central thesis of 'vaccines cause autism.' So Hooker decided the time was right to run with the thin material he had to get the max out of it. (Unless he's a total idiot, he wouldn't have betrayed Thompson if he thought Thompson had anything more to give him.) So Hooker's gambit was tactical, an attempt to get a forward push on innuendo that would still leave positive gain after the inevitable pushback exemplified by Orac's pefectly observed, "Brian Hooker proves Andrew Wakefield wrong about vaccines and autism" and the discovery that Thompson's position is actually "I believe vaccines have saved and continue to save countless lives. I would never suggest that any parent avoid vaccinating children of any race." But even that small hope was torpedoed by Wakefield being who Wakefield will always be: a self-serving suck-hole of credibility. And so it always will be. **
If my lay person's take on the story has any merit, this strikes me as a big 'win' for real doctors and for families at risk for measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Desperate for a 'whistleblower' the anti-vaxers hyped-up a guy who had only a nano-whistle at best, and was too consumptive to push much of a blow through it besides. What teeny-weeny-tiny-temporary media boost they might get out of this (e.g. the horrible CNN article that seems to have all the facts right, but hangs them on the wrong peg, with all the important stuff below-the-fold) has cost them the chance that anyone with legitimate credentials in epidemiology or any kind of inside dope on existing studies will ever trust them or pass on information to them again. Whatever happens to William Thompson from here, I can only imagine that his path will rise to the top of, "don't EVER go there" for members of the medical research profession.
What do y'all think of this interpretation? (There's a lot of guess-work involved, obviously...) Does it make sense? Is it on the right track? Do you have alternate hypotheses?
Phew, the Greasemonkey script still works.
"It isn’t rocket surgery." - Kreblozen
**applause**
Nice! That made my day!
May the meme conquer the Interwebs!
Yo: This is about “my side” verse “your side” and not about protecting as many children as possible.
It's cute that you think anti-vaxxers actually care for real children. From what I've seen most of them are in mourning for kids that never were, and want to make their actual child's life as miserable and joyless as possible. They bully parents who've lost kids to vpds, they support parents that murder their kids. Spare us the sugary sentiments please. We know what you guys are really like.
Yeah...I knew it. Dr. Thompson is crazy...had to be one or the other. Let's just leave it at that.
@Krebiozen:
OBVIOUSLY, you are unable to 'think outside the box', Mister, and are suffering the "disadvantages of an elite education"- being too "focused on getting credentials" and following rules habitually. You are quite simply an "EXCELLENT SHEEP".**
Or so says a recent guest of the Null-macher who has both a website and a book on the topic.
You see, we blindly followed instructions when studying and sought only to please our masters- as we continue to do so even today, trying so desperately to make sense and to express ourselves in humdrum linguistic conventions and mathematical formulae- while Thompson, painfully aware of his indentured servitude and encouraged by his confessor, attempted to break free of the hamster wheel of statistical analysis, reasonability and bureaucratic camaraderie to fly unencumbered.
He desired the spark of liberation but flew too close to its flame. Alas! Another martyr lost in the rat's maze. Another 'wrecked by success'. Shunned by former colleagues but true to his inner quest.
And still drawing a salary, I might add.
** as are Narad, Eric, yours truly and quite a few others here.
-btw- BD is probably the worst. Orac next.
Lovely prose Denice, it almost brings a tear to my eye. So much beauty destroyed by reason, logic and evidence.
Is the singular of sheeple sheeperson? Whatever - baaa!
@ Denice Walter
I purchased "Excellent Sheep" just yesterday. I may have to return it, since, to my disappointment, it's not really a training manual.
" almost brings a tear to my eye"
Made me wonder if perhaps there had been a recent acquisition of a bargain job lot of catch phrases.
Did anyone notice a few days ago that wazzizzname, Hellishdeadly or sompin like that, said Thompson had "come over to the angels"? Such humility.
Daily Kos: Anti-vaccine movement gains more victims
"Hooker explains how he used Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get the CDC dataset."
Huh?
In his paper he claimed he obtained a restricted access data set from CDC under a data use agreement & the analysis was approved by the Simpson U IRB.
Data set info here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/developmentaldisabilities/maddsp-data-sets.ht…
This ain't FOIA.
The regulatory geek in me wishes that CDC would decline to provide data sets to folks at institutions that don't have an active Federal Wide Assurance.
@ brian:
Right, I think he's trying to reform education or suchlike.
Now PRN is exactly the *perfect* place to air your greivances with universities. I'm sure the host has many astute criticisms about their inadequacies.
For those who are interested, here's the story of a parent whose child had a vaccine reaction...and they're still pro-vaccine: http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2011/08/parents-story-of-vaccine-reaction.html
@YoDaddie
Here's a question for you that you might answer, since you didn't answer my other one. Since you rail against thimerosal, what currently available preservative would you recommend to replace it in multi-use vials of vaccines such as are used in developing nations? And before you go off about why not just switch to single-used vials, cost is an important factor, as is refrigeration/cold chain and infrastructure. For those nations that cannot afford single-dose vaccines, what preservative would you recommend be used?
Please support your answer with studies examining the safety and efficacy of said preservative when used in a vaccine.
Re: comment moderation
I'm guessing Orac had to up moderation strictness due to increased traffic from anti-vaccine sorts.
Usethebrainsgodgaveyou: Not crazy, probably saw dollar signs.Now don't you have a nice cozy bridge to crawl back under?
Sadmar: and cue the usual excuse making of 'we're sad for the parents, but those kids would have died anyway. Darwin!"*
*Like any anti-vaxxer ever read the origin of species, or passed 10th grade biology.
Longtime Lurker wrote: "the tics video sounded even more choppy and edited than any of the previous ones to me."
On the quite short list of things I'm really got at (as opposed to the very long list of things at which I pretty much suck) is audio editing of speech. So I recorded the sound of the tics video, listened through the studio 'phones, and took a close look at the waveforms.
My conclusions: There is trace evidence of edit points represented by the slashes in the two lines below...
"Thimerosal from vaccines cause tics / you start a campaign and you just make that your mantra."
"There is biologic plausibility right now / to say that Thimerosal causes autism like features."
The second has less evidence than the first, and would seem to be trivial as Thomspon does say, "Thimerosal from vaccines cause tics" and "Thimerosal causes autism like features."
The first suspected edit point, while more probable, is probably not at all definitive in court-of-law BRD terms. However, if the statement is a construction, it's a potentially significant one, as I'd guess Thompson was probably referring to something else as a 'campaign mantra,' more likely something to do with the data not included in De Stefano.
As I understand it, Wakefield doesn't really benefit from Thompson's agenda of 'full disclosure of CDC data' as, no matter how you frame it, the results still don't support his claims. So Wakefield would have motive to twist Thompson's comments to make the "campaign" subject Thimerosal.
And, isn't the whole thing kind of hinkey in that Thompson is concerned with a study of MMR vaccine, and that doesn't contain Thimerosal? I mean, he'd know that, right? Is that in itself suggestive that remarks about two different things have been cut together here to make them sound like one thing?
I can post a screenshot of the waveform, and an explanation of what I think might be the edit artifact, if anyone's interested...
'good at' not 'got at'
A few thoughts:
YoDoody's primary meta-error, the one that underlies most of his others, is a common one among antivaxers: the belief that anything unknown is to be interpreted in his cause's favor. He has not one whit of evidence to indicate that the CDC has 'hidden entire studies', but to all appearances sincerely thinks that everyone else needs to prove the negative that they didn't, for no better reason than that he can dream up such a scenario and it seems plausible to his biased mind.
As for what Thompson's true motives are, whether he's a convert to the cult of antivaccine, a reasonable person just suffering from "thinks a Ph.D. in one field makes him qualified in another syndrome", or just plain batty... we may have to simply put up our hands and say "At this time, we don't have enough data to point to any answer and be confident that it's correct." The alternative would be to emulate another frequent meta-error of antivaxers, to think that they are entitled to draw huge conclusions from skimpy evidence because skimpy evidence is all they have.
Can somebody explain the significance of 'tics'? What are they exactly, and are the tics to which Thompson refers a life-long condition like a spectrum disorder, or a symptom that goes away after a period of time? If kids exhibit tics, how often to they manifest, and what degree of life-problems do they cause?
I'm guessing the tech staff is predictably incompetent. Note the prior plausibility.
@sadmar
We don't know when these recordings were made. According to Hooker, he and Thompson have been in contact for at least 10 months. I would imagine there were several conversations that were recorded during that period, so there'd be plenty of material to draw from and a range of topics covered.
@Narad
Also a plausible possibility.
Dear Lawrence, where did I claim to be “so educated”? And please don’t lose track of the issue here – the Great Orac’s article is about denigrating Wakefield & rejecting Hooker’s analysis. How has MMR changed? Why is today’s MMR safer than the study’s MMR?
Dear Mephistopheles O'Brien, so …. we can afford Thimerosal free vaccines, but only for us?
Dear Dangerous Bacon, I support the non-Thimerosal vaccines. Thompson’s revelation is making me now worry about MMR. I wasn’t before. I’m not willing to brush this under the rug. It needs more analysis.
Dear NumberWang, I support changing world policy based on the very real fear a large contingent of the world’s population has of pumping mercury into their kids bloodstreams. Did you notice that many out there don’t trust y’all? Given that very real reality – why not react effectively to that reality rather than peering down your questioningly respectful ly Insolent noses while pretending that their fear, founded or not, is not important? It sure as hell is to them. Which makes it your problem, since they subsequently don’t vaccine their kids, which y’all rail against. Congrats on being an engineer. I support engineers. But please explain to me why, since you are not at epidemiologist, are you bothering us with your opinion here? Just using your own logic… Sorry about your piss. Maybe there’s a vaccine for that?
Dear JGC, please re-read my statement you quoted, then try again. Thank you.
Dear Narad, hey, there’s someone here I can agree with!
Dear Lawrence (re #55 comment) Good, you do understand that. I was worrying about you.. But then by #57, you’ve lost it again. FOCUS! The above article is MMR. My not liking any Thimerosal in any current vaccnes is important to me, but not the thrust of Orac’s nauseating article. Regarding #60 – no children get multi-dose flu vaccines? Really? Check out http://issuesinmedicalethics.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/2015/4375 .
Dear Julian, Thimerosal is not removed. Please tell me how many multi-dose flu & Hep B vaccines are injected yearly? Lumping all “anti-vaxxers” into one category is silly. Do you think that nobody seeks out single-use flu vaccines? All of those who do, would all have taken the Thimerosal vaccines if the non-Thimerosal vaccines had not been made available? Ya’lls pro-vaccine team fanboy nonsense is nauseatingly simple-minded. Do y’all wear skirts and wave pompoms?
Dear Krebiozen. Welcome back. Do I have evidence that non-frivolous litigation was a driving factor for the creation of a multi-billion injury compensation fund? Really? You think that it’s all frivolous? And low payout percentages at least supports the likely possibility that the fund managers want to hang onto the funds. Positioning claims as unfounded helps that goal, whether they are founded or are not. And maybe if you didn’t discount Thompson you would have an idea of at least some children who are more likely to react badly to vaccines – African-American boys. You say “…so the only way of avoiding vaccine injury completely is not to give any vaccines at all.” True. But why not try to increase the vaccine rates by making them as safe as possible? Y’alls vitriol and ugly cramming of everyone outside of your friendly camp into one anti-vaccine fanatic category is counterproductive.
Since you claim to understand what ad hominem means, please educate Orac. And you say “Because [Thompson] didn’t come out with some nonsense that anyone with some understanding of epidemiology and statistics is unfounded then. I don’t know what has happened to him to make him come out with this stuff, but it’s clearly wrong.” So when his methods promote your team’s agenda you’re fine with him, but the instant he disagrees with you, it’s “off with his head”? You see no evidence of dishonesty from Thompson? Are you paying attention? He feels bad about his own dishonesty. But you deny that he was dishonest. What does 2 + 2 equal in your world? And why do you “…suspect [I] don’t believe the vaccines on the current schedule are safe”? Because you prefer to stuff everyone into your tidy categories you’ve subsequently trained yourself to disregard? And you sure as hell can make public policy based on public hysteria. Firstly, you could be wrong, they could be right. Secondly, their opinion matters. Ever study democracy?
Regarding “Why would anyone be concerned about mercury levels over 1,000 times higher than the highest blood levels seen in children after vaccination, affecting snail neurones in a petri dish?”… because they don’t trust you. Or the CDC. Or the government. They prefer to play it safe. You couldn’t figure that out without me leading you by the nose?
Why can’t people like Krebiozen understand that toxin injury is a function of both dosage and time? Accumulate enough small doses over a long enough time and bad things can start to happen.
Dear Kiiri, People not on your team are automatically trolls? Right.
Dear novalox, now y’all are ad homineming youtube? Your logic is nauseating. Why am I comparing elemental mercury to ethyl mercury? Because the population y’all spend your days and nights trying to wish away are worried about accumulated ethyl mercury transitioning to elemental or methyl mercury enough to cause nerve damage. They don’t believe you. They don’t trust you. Scientists make mistakes. Scientists lie. Go ahead and pump Thimerosal into your bloodstream. Knock yourself out. Other scientists are telling them that ethyl mercury is a problem. Are you scientist? Did you conduct such experiments? No. You are going by faith. So are they. Deal with it.
Dear Narad, what are you asking? What successful cases? You don’t think that there has been any successful vaccine litigation? That the VCIP has never paid out?
Dear JGC, you say “Not because of any specific concerns related to the use of thimerosal as a preservative in vacine formulations.”. But you then admit “As a precaution the FDA directed the removal of Thimerosal”. Sounds like a specific concern to me. You also say “Why not, given that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that thimerosal, at exposure levels achievable by routine vaccination, engenders risk?” Please modify that to read that you’ve chosen to ignore the evidence that some scientists have produced that Thimerosal, at exposure levels achievable by routine vaccination, engenders risk. That’s more honest, don’t you think? Thanks for that!
Dear Chris – I never suggested MMR ever had Thimerosal. And why do you not allow me to worry about vaccines containing Thimerosal just because some versions of the same vaccine don’t? Clearly I’m not convinced that Thimerosal is not causing autism. So I’m bitching about the vaccines that do contain Thimerosal. Pointing out the one’s that don’t doesn’t stop me from disliking those that do. Get it? If the government was pumping toxins into the ground water, would you tell me to stop my worrying, because some of what is being pumped into our groundwater is not toxic? Logic is rare on this blog.
Dear Politicalguineapig, crawl back into your hole if you have nothing besides pure derision to contribute.
Dear Todd W., regarding post #85 – Have you stopped to consider the cost of vaccine injury compared to the cost of removing Thimerosal? If Thimerosal is causing autism, the cost of one resulting autistic child outweighs millions of non-Thimerosal doses. If there are tens of thousands of such autistic children, you are spending fortunes trying to save pennies. Combine that with the other result that vaccine rates are depressed by Thimerosal fear. Can’t you see the logic of removing Thimerosal from vaccines globally?
Skeptics, please read:
7/23/14
by Lyn Redwood
...When he was born, my son weighed close to 9 lbs. He was a happy baby who ate and slept well, smiled, cooed, walked, and talked all by one year. But shortly after his first birthday, my son began to regress physically and developmentally, losing speech, eye contact, and social interactions. He no longer slept through the night and suddenly refused to eat foods that he had previously enjoyed, gagging and spitting them out. He started suffering bouts of bloody diarrhea.
My once active happy baby now only wanted to sit and watch Disney’s Fox and the Hound over and over for hours. After multiple evaluations he was initially diagnosed with a global receptive and expressive speech delay and later with autism.
I am a nurse. My husband is a doctor. We would have never made a correlation between our son’s illnesses and vaccines. But in July 1999 I read that a preservative, thimerosal, utilized in some infant vaccines actually contained 49.6% ethylmercury. According to a joint statement released by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Public Health Service, the FDA had determined that:
“infants who received thimerosal-containing vaccines at several visits may be exposed to more mercury than recommended by Federal Guidelines for total mercury exposure.”
I quickly pulled out the thick file containing my son’s medical records.
My worst fears were confirmed.
All of my son’s early vaccines had contained thimerosal.
I also discovered that the injections that I received during the first and third trimesters of my pregnancy and hours after the delivery of my son to prevent RH blood incompatibility also contained high levels of thimerosal.
Mercury is one of the most toxic metals on earth and adverse health effects from mercury have been known for centuries. The symptoms of mercury poisoning can be highly variable based on the type of mercury, the exposure level, and the sensitivity of the individual exposed.
Developing fetuses, infants, and young children are the most vulnerable to harm from mercury, which interferes with development.
Research proves that even very low levels of exposure have adverse effects on language, attention, and memory, making children less able to think and learn. When you read this list of symptoms, it is easy for even the layperson to correlate that this environmental toxin has caused havoc with our children’s development starting in the late 80’s when the numbers of vaccines containing thimerosal and the epidemic of developmental disorders began to increase.
While acceptable levels for exposure are published by Federal Agencies, mercury is a poison at any level. The dose thought to be safely allowed on a daily basis by the EPA is 0.1mcg per kilogram of body weight per day.
At 2 months of age my son had received 62.5 mcg of mercury from 3 infant vaccines. According to EPA criteria, his allowable dose was only 0.5mcg. He received 125 times his allowable exposure on that one day!
These large injected bolus exposures continued at 4, 6, 12 and 18 months to total mercury exposure of 237.5 mcg the first year and a half of life. Knowing that the major effect of mercury compounds was neurotoxicity, I questioned if these exposures could account for my son’s regression and autism diagnosis.
Since my son was 5 ½ years old when I found out about his exposures to thimerosal, it would be difficult to know what his mercury levels had been at that time. I had remembered reading that hair was often utilized to determine heavy metal exposure, but that it would only reflect exposures at the time of growth. A current hair sample would not be reflective of an exposure that had occurred years earlier.
I had almost given up on finding an answer until I came across a lock of hair that we had saved from his first haircut at 20 months of age.
I sat staring at his beautiful brown locks, knowing I would have to part with them to answer this disturbing question. But I needed to know. With hesitation, but knowing it was for the best, I packed and shipped them off to the lab.
The testing detected 4.8 ppm mercury in his hair. According to the EPA, the allowable levels for mercury in hair is less than 1 ppm and anything above 1 ppm is considered an action level that demands immediate attention to reduce any further exposure. My son’s levels were five times above the action level and that sample of hair did not even reflect his early exposures the first six months of life because he has lost all his baby hair at 6 months. Since my son had never eaten fish or seafood nor had dental amalgams, I had no other identifiable source for his mercury levels outside of thimerosal exposure from vaccines and my Rho D injections during and after pregnancy.
As a nurse and a member of the Board of Health for our county, I felt an urgency to share my concerns about thimerosal with other professionals...
More: http://www.safeminds.org/blog/2014/07/23/robert-f-kennedy-jr-right-slat…
I have a better idea: If you've got nothing of your own to say, say nothing.
Reader,
Please tell us which vaccine on the American pediatric schedule is only available with thimerosal. Do no mention influenza because half are thimerosal free.
Also what does her one anecdote have to do with the MMR vaccine?
And what about kids like mine who got seizures and/or were disabled by getting the actual diseases? Please, do tell us how the MMR vaccine causes more seizures and encephalitis than measles. I am anxiously awaiting your answer to that question.
Skeptics, please read:
by Lyn Redwood
It was nice of Reader to warn us that the rest of the copy-paste spam is from the loons and fabulists at SafeMinds.
Am I being dense, or are antivaxers tiptoeing around the huge elephant in the room about this whole kerkuffle?
Even if Thompson/Hooker concerns were right about black children being for some reason susceptible to side effects from MMR vaccine, the Destefano study conclusion is still that, for other children, this is not the case. And Thompson/Hooker didn't challenge this part, AFAIK.
In other words, if you accept that this study was good enough to show a relationship between vaccines and one group of autistic children, then this study conclusively showed that no relationship could be found between MMR vaccine and the other groups.
Re: MMR and thimerosal
To elaborate on that Chris said:
MMR is a live attenuated vaccine. That is, it contains viruses able of limited pathogen activity (to elicit a stronger immune response).
Thimerosal is a preservative. That is, it kills germs.
Putting the two of them together would defeat all these efforts to keep the virus alive...
It's so silly when disgruntled flying monkeys from AoA hide behind fake names when posting here (YoDiddle and Reader), given that Orac almost never blocks a post.
For those who may have missed the irony, and doubtless for even more who aren't 100% on top of comparative libel law, it might be worth considering what would happen to Wakefield if he made his accusations against a British citizen in the UK jurisdiction.
He would have been sued, lost, and be required to sell his home to pay his victim's legal bills. He has produced nothing whatsoever to prove fraud by any CDC scientist and, indeed, Dr Thompson himself carefully conceded that honest scientists can have differing views about what to include in research papers.
In the UK, and the rest of the common law world, there is no "free speech" first amendment. Journalists such as myself, publishing in the UK, work to standards of accuracy that even Wakefield's buddy Lewis stood in awe of. That's because, in anything contentious, there is a raft of fact-checking and legal scrutiny to ensure that we don't get sued. And that's why - despite the UK holding to devastating standards of strict liability, at that time - Wakefield sued in Texas. He knew he could not win in Texas, but could inflict huge legal costs. His own were raised among parents of disabled children. Ours were met by an insurance company.
So, even as Wakefield accuses others of fraud, without the evidence, he brings vexatious lawsuits designed to harass anyone who challenges his conduct. To use his kind of comparisons, was Stalin or Hitler that kind of a hypocrite?
And yet - on his standard - he ADMITTED fraud when, at his UK General Medical Council hearing, he admitted that the first FINDING of his fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper was, in fact, a fraud. The finding was that eight of 12 families blamed MMR for their child's autism (actually the real figure was 11). But, as he admitted under cross examination, the parental association was an INCLUSION CRITERION. Indeed, the subjects of his study had been recruited through anti-vaccine campaign groups and lawyers.
Now, if that's not fraud, then I don't know what is. Maybe the cry should now go up: ANDREW WAKEFIELD ADMITS FRAUD.
Oh no... Thimerosal is 49.6% mercury.
That's nice.
It's also irrelevant. It's a compound. It is not elemental mercury.
Table salt is what, 51% chlorine by weight? It's still tasty.
Dear Brian Deer, I'm not saying you're wrong but with Paul Dacre as head of the PCC, aren't we living in a bit of a fantasy-world thinking we can actually hold the British press to account?
If people who were harmed by Daily Mail lies could sue for damages?
@ Brian Deer: Throughout Andrew Wakefield's, long career as the darling of the anti-vaccine movement in the United States, after he left the U.K. in disgrace, we have been following the money to see how this odious man supports himself and the Wakefield clan from his headquarters in Austin Texas. We have determined that that extremely wealthy benefactors set him up in Thoughtful House, an autism treatment center where he was paid a lucrative salary and benefits package for ~ 10 years and also derived income through the generous contributions made to his "Strategic Autism Initiative group", with huge grants from anti-vaccine groups funding his part time work with that group.
Then this is the matter of his ownership, with his partner Polly Tommey of the Autism Media Channel, where any references to that partnership have been scrubbed clean from the internet (when the subject of his "advising" the murdering mother of Alex Spourdalakis about her child's care during his hospitalization to stabilize the child's condition with medications...those same medications were used by Dorothy Spourdalakis and the child's "godmother" to overly sedate Alex to switfly "eliminate him" in the premedicated most brutal murderous act. The Autism Media Chanel (Wakefield and
Tommey) used Alex while he was alive and continue to use
Alex even after his murder, as tawdry video segments placed by them on YouTube...to promote the 18 minute documentary "Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis", which Wakefield was shopping around to sell to major network TV channels. Yes, I blame the State of Illinois for not confiscating every bit of the videotape that is owned by Wakefield which exploits Alex and which, to me, are vital pieces of evidence, as we await the prosecution of the two vicious murderers on charges of premeditated murder.
Then, we come to the "Academic Integrity Fund" and its stepchild D.A.I,R, (Defending Academy Integrity & Research
Foundation) another of Wakefield's shell non-profit 501c-3 which runs highly secretive fundraisers to add to his coffers, to fund Wakefield's lush lifestyle and to pay some of those expensive lawyers fees for his vexatious laysuits.
The credulous parents of autistic "vaccine damaged" children considered it their duties to protect their idol.
Yeah, I believe in "outing" Mr. Wakefield for the enormous wealth he derives from his business interest, his "consulting fees" and his charities. Good job Mr. Wakefield and right in keeping with your totally-lacking-in-honesty persona.
(Dammit, I'd give anything to have an editing function...especially when I find myself posting a rant about Andrew Wakefield)
Part of the problem is stuff like this:
http://imgur.com/A5yrKkU
I can't even see updates from Scienceblogs.com on Facebook without being slammed with multiple, nearly identical updates from these anti-vax blogs.
Reader,
This isn't your child you are describing is it?
The EPA says that 0.1 mcg/kg of methylmercury (not ethylmercury, which thimerosal breaks down into) each and every day is not likely to cause harmful effects if maintained for an entire lifetime. The World Health Organization recommends a maximum of 0.47 mcg/ kg/day. Note that these limits include a large safety margin and are for lifetime exposure.
So, the EPA safe limit for exposure to methylmercury over a period of 18 months would be 273.75 mcg, or according to the WHO 1,286 mcg. This 5 kilogram child's exposure to the much less toxic ethylmercury over 18 months is well below the limit for the more toxic methylmercury, even if this level of exposure was continued for the child's lifetime.
On average each of us is exposed to at least 10 micrograms of mercury each and every day, in air water and food, and we retain at least 5 micrograms of that, about 2 micrograms of that is as methylmercury. That's at least 1,800 micrograms total mercury, including over 600 mcg methylmercury, retained each year. Why would the relatively small amount of mercury in vaccines (far smaller today), in the less toxic form of ethylmercury, cause any harm?
Also, we know that less than 1% of the mercury in TCVs is retained, so this child would have retained perhaps 3 mcg of ethylmercury from the vaccines it was given, as compared to the 13 mcg the child would have retained over the same period just from mercury in the air (see op cit).
Do you really believe that less than 300 micrograms of mercury is going to do a baby any harm at all? Do you know how tiny an amount this is? A single drop of water from a medicine dropper weighs about 50,000 micrograms. Did you know that most commercial fish contain an average of 23 micrograms of mercury per 8 ounces of fish, in the considerably more toxic methylmercury form? Did you know that the children of women exposed to vastly more mercury than this during pregnancy show no signs at all of neurocognitive impairment? In the Seychelles no effects were seen in women exposed to 0.5 microgram/kg of methylmercury each and every day. In a 66 kg woman that's over 9,000 micrograms over the course of a 9 month pregnancy.
I wonder what laboratory was used. Heavy metals hair analysis is rife with quackery.
That's higher than normal, but not a cause for alarm. The Faroes and Seychelles studies, "did not provide consistent evidence of neurodevelopmental effects in children of mothers whose intake of methylmercury yielded hair burdens of 20 µg/g [20 ppm] or less". In North Greenland, where a lot of fish is eaten, 80% of the population have hair mercury greater than 10 ppm (Hansen and Pedersen, 1986).
If that hair mercury level is accurate, it does suggest an unusually high mercury intake. However, vaccination with TCVs does not result in the sustained blood levels necessary to elevate hair mercury levels. What we see after TCV vaccination is a transient rise in blood mercury, to levels not associated with any problems even if sustained, rapidly falling to normal levels as ethylmercury is excreted in the feces. These transient increases in blood mercury could not possibly lead to elevated hair mercury levels. I suspect contamination (what else was kept with that lock of hair for how many years?), or perhaps exposure to mercury from some other source - living near a coal-fired power station for example.
@Helanthius: Your observation is the very reason I entitled my first post Brian Hooker proves Andrew Wakefield wrong about vaccines and autism. :-)
Almost OT, but that reminded me of another case of controversial evidence of metal poisoning by hair analysis.
Regularly, historians dig up an old issue, about whether Napoleon Bonaparte was poisoned by arsenic while in exile on the island of St-Helena.
At some point, the evidence for arsenic poisoning was provided by the analysis of a lock of Bonaparte's hair which one of his followers had brought back as a memento. These hairs displayed indeed a high level of arsenic.
Latter on, another scientist pointed out that this lock of hairs has been kept pinned to a locket made of copper for a number of years. The locket had corroded into vert-de-gris, as copper tend to do. And like many things made of pre-modern copper metal, it was also containing a fair amount of arsenic as impurity. Arsenic which easily leached out of the corroded copper.
(that's why one should not use vert-de-gris copper as a receptacle for food)
I just read on Wikipedia the latest episodes on this arsenic poisoning issue. It was confirmed that Bonaparte did have elevated concentration of arsenic, his whole life actually. And then it was pointed out that arsenic was present everywhere in 19th-century Europa's environment - in dye, glues, cosmetics... - .and that would easily account for Bonaparte's high levels.
I suspect that, like the arsenic example above, there are a number of others sources of mercury than seafood and vaccines.
I am also a bit skeptical of the thimerosal from the Rho D injections going en masse through the placental barrier. To start with, it will be distributed between the mother's and the fetus' bodies, and usually, the mom's body is a bit bigger than's the fetus', so there will be more on the mom's side. Then there is the barrier itself, not full-proof, but shouldn't it slow down diffusion of unnecessary stuff?
A fraction may end up with the fetus, but most of it will be dealt by by the mother's body.
Especially for the dose received after pregnancy.
"he was always kind of quiet" (paraphrased) by DeStefano, lead author of Thompson's disputed study..http://sharylattkisson.com/audio-cdc-addresses-allegations-on-vaccine-a… CBS Investigative reporter ...tweeted, but not getting much action.
Do you hear me? DE STEFANO....my paraphrase is cynical
" click to hear audio of Sharyl Attkisson telephone interview with CDC’s Dr. Frank DeStefano about his questioned MMR-autism study, Aug. 26, 2014"
Dear Lawrence,
Please go to http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/Thimerosal/Index.html and read the first sentence.
What does "Since 2001, with the exception of some influenza (flu) vaccines, thimerosal is not used as a preservative in routinely recommended childhood vaccines." mean to you? Is it wrong?
Also consider please http://issuesinmedicalethics.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/2015/4375
The 4.8 ppm value for mercury in the child's hair strikes me as absurd unless hair is an incredibly powerful concentrator of mercury or there was a very significant intake or absorption into the hair of mercury from sources other than the vaccines.
0.3 milligrams of mercury uniformly distributed throughout the body of a 5 kg (pretty low for mean weight over the first year of life) child would yield concentration of 0.3 ppm if 100% of the mercury were retained. The concentration supposedly found in the hair is 16 times that. Unless hair follicles are ultra powerful scrubbers of mercury - more powerful than any other bodily process for elimination of mercury - the number seems completely implausible.
Eeee. I cannae do arithmetic this morning. 0.3 mg in 5 kg is 0.06 ppm, making the 4.8 ppm 80 times as high.
@YoDaddie
Yes, I have. First off, there is no valid evidence that thimerosal causes autism. Second, what would happen if thimerosal were removed from multi-dose vials? We'd see bacterial and/or fungal contamination, leading to deaths. That's the whole reason thimerosal started to be used in the first place.
So then we have my other question, which you ignored, what currently available preservative would you use to replace thimerosal? Again, remember to provide citations to support that it is at least as safe and effective as thimerosal when used in vaccines and that it does not negatively impact the effectiveness of the vaccine itself.
Seems to confirm you are a moron, doesn't it?
Dear Lawrence, There is significant volumes of Thimerosal still distributed in the US annually to adults and to children, and also to adults and to children world-wide. The CDC has authorized brand new Thimerosal vaccine formulations even in 2014. Which is nuts. Are you unable to engage intellectually and understand that putting mercury in vaccines and into our bloodstreams is irresponsible? People don’t want it. Stop it! Stoop to sophomoric school-yard name calling if that's the highest form of intellect you can muster. Are you proud to raise science blogging to an all-time low? And you complain about the moderation routines here. Ha. Orac needs an auto-Lawrence-reject clause dedicated to you.
Dear nutritionprof, Consider thatGM has had a problem with ignition switches in some of their vehicles. Engines turing off at inopportune moments, like on busy highways, for example. But hell, it’s only one-in-a million type of a statistical problem, so by your logic GM should keep putting faulty ignition switches into their vehicles, since your chances of getting injured are slim. Right? We know we can’t have absolute car safety, right? So why worry about misbehaving ignition switches?
@YoTroll - so you admit that no vaccines on the current US Pediatric schedule contain Thimerosal?
What is your problem then?
@yoD
Do you know the difference between ethanol and methanol? Between ethylmercury & methylmercury?
Just askin'
"Consider thatGM has had a problem with ignition switches in some of their vehicles. Engines turing off at inopportune moments, like on busy highways, for example. But hell, it’s only one-in-a million type of a statistical problem, so by your logic GM should keep putting faulty ignition switches into their vehicles, since your chances of getting injured are slim."
By antivaxer logic, this means all cars are unsafe and no one should ever drive.
Dan ( AoA) informs us that he is just not a 'chi square' type of guy- he studied ENGLISH-
which-btw-means he should know how to read. Dolt..
A few of AoA's contributors- Dan included- are paid to continuously stir the pot and get readers whipped up into a frenzy over minor issues- which Dan does quite effectively. In reality, he could simply
look up what the statistical analyses mean and explain it to his followers but he doesn't.. He could get a statistician to explain it to him and then write about it himself.
I had the great priiviege and pleasure to translate this arcane science into English- ( as a student assisting others and to co-workers,clients and publicly when I worked for a non-profit) .
You don't have to instruct a course but instead give readers insight into the process using simple English. I would think that a skilled communicator like Dan should be able to do that easily after reading a few articles.
Perhaps it's all over his head if not, he's deliberately mis-leading his audience. But after all, what would you expect from AoA.
YoDaddie,
It hasn't and it isn't. The study, and lots of other evidence, shows that MMR was and is safe. Hooker's analysis is fatally flawed.
I don't understand your point. Apparently "we" can't afford to feed the developing world, or provide it with clean water, or enough vaccines and other medicines. Why would thimerosal-free vaccines be any different?
Why not support TCVs too, since you have seen the evidence that thimerosal is safe in the doses vaccines contain?
No one is brushing anything under the rug. Orac and various commenters have explained in detail why Thompson is wrong about the findings in African American children after MMR and about tics after TCVs. Why don't you address the science instead of tone trolling? Shouting, "I don't believe you", with your fingers in your ears isn't very convincing, and makes you look like a nut.
Why not support burning witches because of the very real fear a large contingent of the world's population has of black magic? If you start making policy based on people's irrational fears, you are lost.
Not that many, when you consider that only 0.3% of children in the US are unvaccinated.
The best way to respond to irrational fear is to present the evidence and explain why the fears are unfounded. Lots of people are afraid of flying; should we ground all airplanes?
That's a broken link, I suspect you meant this paper, which is authored by the Geiers and Boyd Haley, among others. I have read a great deal written by these authors, and found it to be a mass of distorted misinformation. A quick scan of this paper shows it contains the same old misinformation that has been shown to be inaccurate over and over again.
Over 60% of flu vaccines in the US this year are thimerosal free, as you can see here. The remainder contain 25 mcg mercury or less, about as much as you might find in the form of the more toxic methylmercury in a tuna sandwich.
Hepatitis B vaccines have not contained thimerosal since 2001, as far as I know. Do please correct me if I'm mistaken.
You don't appear to have addressed any of the science, that which you have presented directly contradicts your position, yet you accuse us of being simple-minded? That's quite amusing.
There is no doubt that vaccine litigation became a cash cow for many unscrupulous law firms, there's a discussion of this in the Congressional Records for 2004 here if you are unfamiliar with the facts.
When there is good quality scientific evidence that a vaccine is safe, and that serious side effects are rare, yet much higher numbers of people claim damage, I think that suggests they are mistaken.
The way to decide if these cases are unfounded is to look at the scientific evidence, and to assess each case on its merits, which is what happens. The NVICP doesn't even require this for table injuries in the right time frame. Even so, 43% of the 993 claims made last year were dismissed. If you really believe that the US Justice System in general and the NVICP in particular are corrupt, and in the pockets of Big Pharma then I can't help you.
No one is discounting Thompson or Hooker. We have looked at their claims, and they are very obviously unfounded. The data does not suggest that any children react badly to vaccines. Do you want me to pretend Hooker's study used valid statistical techniques when it very obviously did not? Or that the increased incidence in tics after thimerosal is important but the increased IQ isn't? I can't do that, sorry.
Drug companies already make vaccines as safe as possible. The last thing a drug company wants is a vaccine (or any drug) that causes harm and leads to litigation. The Vioxx debacle is estimated to have cost Merck billions of dollars.
Personally I stick to polite reasoning, and only resort to vitriol when I am attacked, insulted, or accused of being a pharma shill. I find it wearing when I explain something to someone and they simply ignore it, as you have the information I have posted about thimerosal toxicity. When someone is apparently so wedded to a particular belief that they are unable to accept good evidence against it, you for example, I do tend to file them under 'antivaccine'. If the cap fits....
Do please show me an example of an ad hominem attack by Orac.
No, when he makes statements that are consistent with the evidence I have no problem. When he comes out with unfounded alarmist statements about the MMR and thimerosal, of course I speak out. I follow the science and the evidence. Is that so hard for you to understand? Why is it so hard for antivaccine activists to believe that others don't have an agenda? Is it simply projection, that they are so closed-minded they assume everyone else is similarly prejudiced?
In my world dishonesty is deliberately telling lies. What evidence is there that Thompson has been telling lies? At worst he colluded in leaving out some data in a study that didn't say what he apparently believes it did.
You have made it abundantly clear where you stand on vaccines, and that you are not at all interested in what the scientific evidence tells us. When anyone addresses the evidence you retreat into, "even if it's wrong, that's what people believe".
You can, but it would be extremely foolish. Where do you draw the line?
When there is overwhelming evidence that they are wrong, and when more than 99% of the population disagrees with them? That doesn't seem a good strategy to me.
Should democracy give credence to the 0.3% of the population that don't vaccinate their children? Should we give credence to the 45% of the US population that think homosexuality is a sin? Or the million or more Americans who believe a woman should wear a veil in public? This is argumentum ad populum.
That's precious. We should ignore solid evidence that the amount of mercury that could theoretically damage brain cells is over a thousand times higher than that seen in children after vaccination because a tiny minority of loons are conspiracy nuts who don't trust the government? Flying is unnatural, let's play it safe by grounding all airplanes, since we can't trust the people who claim they are safe. Alien abduction should be taken seriously because so many people believe in it?
Ethylmercury does not accumulate like methylmercury; the vast majority is rapidly excreted, mostly in feces. On average we accumulate 1,800 mcg of mercury each year from other sources. Why would 25 mcg each year from vaccines, of which less than 1 mcg is retained, make the slightest difference?
You should get that nausea checked out, you seem to get a lot of it. Anyone can put up a video on YouTube making whatever claims they want, with no evidence to support them and no peer review. You don't see that presenting a YouTube video as evidence that an international scientific consensus is wrong is more than a bit weak?
Yet the video you yourself posted a link to showed that it requires mercury concentrations 1,000 times higher than those seen transiently after vaccination to adversely affect neurones. Don't you believe the evidence you posted? Or did you perhaps think that micromoles are the same as micrograms?
Sometimes, yes. But are there hundreds of scientists all over the world all lying or mistaken about their vaccine research? I don't think so.
Thimerosal has been used as a preservative in immunoglobulins and other blood products for many decades. Patients have been given up to 1,800 mg (that's 1.8 million mcg) of thimerosal intravenously without noticeable ill effects (the infamous Eli Lily experiments with terminal meningococcal meningitis patients in 1930), that's 72,000 times as much thimerosal as there is in a flu vaccine. It is remarkably safe. I would happily have a vaccine containing thimerosal (which would not be injected into my bloodstream, by the way), since I know I get far more mercury from other sources.
You mean the Geiers? Boyd Haley? I have read what they have to say, and they are clearly, demonstrably wrong. Those appalling monkey studies, which found three out of 13 (or was it 18?)reflexes were delayed by one or two days in monkeys given thimerosal? This is very thin thin gruel indeed.
What is the best evidence you can muster that suggests that thimerosal injected IM in doses of 50 mcg or even 300 mcg can adversely affect a child?
Yodaddie: "How has MMR changed?"
It was last changed in 1978 with a switch to a better rubella vaccine strain.
You are showing your intellectual rigor by assuming that the American MMR vaccine was changed in similar fashion as others. The same MMR vaccine had been in use in USA for twenty years before Wakefield published his 1998 fraudulent case series.
If there was a relationship between MMR and autism, it would have been seen in the USA before 1990. The USA is both much larger and had been using that vaccine much longer than the UK.
Denice,
Are you sure they are paid? I have lost count of the number of times I have been accused being a paid shill, are you telling me that the people who have accused me of this actually employ paid shills themselves? No wonder they think we are so unscrupulous. It's projection, pure and simple.
@ Helianthus:
That 'huge elephant in the room' has company, mon ami, because there's also an hippopotamus:
i.e. studies over the years from around the world ( i.e. NOT within the choke-hold of the CDC's iron fist) fail to reveal increased vulnerability amongst children of African descent.
The CDC itself has a 2012 study that shows they have less autism- I looked it up- and that involved 14 different locales.
There's lots more. Anti-vaxxers tend tp fixate upon one result which may be spurious .
YoDaddy -
If you want to put it that way, sure. That's not how I phrased it, which has more basis in conditions on the ground and the realities of funding for these kinds of efforts. But sure. What would be your point?
@ Krebiozen:
I should have said 'editors' ( Dan and Kim AFAIK which I read @ RI) but also wanted to include Dachel who appears to benefit somehow.
But I'm an elite shill so I'm overpaid.
Krebiozen, I ran across a particularly bizarre example that corroborates your statement that "Anyone can put up a video on YouTube making whatever claims they want, with no evidence to support them and no peer review." Someone has put out a series of videos apparently done in all seriousness to show that we live on the inside of a concave earth.
Firstly, you may want to be sure the issue is with the ignition switch. It would be a bit silly - and expensive - to spend all these efforts into changing all of these switches and find out it improved nothing.
Demonstration by personal anecdote: lastly in my lab, maintenance engineers have spent collectively a full month trying to fix one of our instruments. They kept ordering spare pieces to replace one part by a new one .
Right now, we almost have accumulated enough spare pieces to be able to build a second instrument. If the engineers finally manage to get our instrument working again, I'm not sure how we will be able to foot the bill.
Aggripina
To be fair, that link wasn't live until recently. The CDC made the dataset available to qualified researchers from the start. They advertised this back in the day, but with no interest they didn't include the link after a while.
But your point is completely valid. Mr. Hooker could not get that dataset through FOIA. One has to demonstrate (as the link discusses) not only what one plans to do with it, but how one plans to keep the dataset protected. It is a restricted dataset.
This is just one of the many strange and false statements by Mr. Hooker. Who knows what he actually believes, but many statements he has made have been outright falsehoods.
Mr. Deer (comment #105),
I didn't miss that irony at all. Mr. Wakefield's best outcome right now for his suit is to have the appeal dismissed. Then he can walk away as a victim of "the man". Otherwise he will be faced with (a) paying for an expensive lawsuit which he will just about certainly lose (especially given his recent actions) or (b) abandon it with some excuse like "I have so much to do protecting the children that I must once again sacrifice my own interests."
But his new job--producing press release videos for Focus Autism will likely do much more for him than his lawsuit. Both in keeping him in the public eye and, as I suspect, in money. No pesky attorney's to pay. No chance of a SLAPP judgment.
@Krebiozen (111)
No, I'm not Lyn Redwood. I apologize for any confusion, but I posted the link to the source at the end of the excerpt rather than the beginning so that it wouldn't be rejected automatically.
The recent WaPo article ( http://goo.gl/Ehjfu7 ) describing a trip to DC by a group of 4 (Lyn Redwood, Martha Herbert MD, Mark Hyman MD, and RFK Jr) neglected to mention Redwood's presence, oddly.
REDWOOD ESSAY (CONTINUED): "The meetings that I have attended over the past 14 years were not unlike the meeting that took place on April 9th, 2014 with high officials representing the HHS, the FDA, and the CDC that I attended with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Mark Hyman, M.D. Though this Washington Post article detailing Kennedy’s efforts makes no mention of me, yes, I was there."
Subsequently, she wrote that stunning and moving personal account. I'm impressed by the sincerity of Redwood's motivation to understand and remedy what she has described. (Lyn Redwood, R.N., M.S.N., is co-founder and board member of SafeMinds and cofounder of the National Autism Association...Lyn Redwood also served on the Department of Defense Autism Spectrum Disorder Research Program from 2007-2009 and is currently a public member of the National Institutes of Health Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee...)
I'm impressed with your detailed response although I'm not qualified to assess it. Please share your analysis with her/SafeMinds directly or as a comment to her essay (and, I suspect, expect constructive informed feedback): http://www.safeminds.org/blog/2014/07/23/robert-f-kennedy-jr-right-slat…
REDWOOD ESSAY (CONTINUED): "Once we figured out that my son had been poisoned by mercury, we were able to work on getting get it out of his system. It took years of treatment, which included identifying and treating the myriad of underlying medical problems caused by mercury, and detoxification therapy to help his body excrete the mercury bound in his tissues.
You would never know it now if you met him today that at age five he could barely speak, had no eye contact, was incredible sensitive to light and sound, and had no feeling in his fingertips. He’s in college now and on the Dean’s list!"
The language of a mother might be grating to some scientists, but multiplied the story cannot be ignored, ridiculed, or suppressed, IMO. Thank you for your reply.
IMO, scientists will save the day. @Narad.
Reader, what does her biased anecdote have to with the MMR vaccine? Really?
@YoDaddie
Almost missed this. Umm...exactly how is ethylmercury supposed to "transition to elemental or methylmercury"? That would be a very interesting feat, indeed.
Oh, and you still haven't answered my question: what currently available preservative would you suggest to replace thimerosal that has been shown to be at least as safe and effective in vaccines as thimerosal?
I don't "get it". The AoA groupies were complaining that Orac didn't, at first, post about Hooker's "study".
Now Orac has posted extensively about that "study" and they are still complaining.
How many dozens of comments were posted on RI about the data set, specifically information about prenatal care, prenatal factors, birth weights, etc., from the long form Georgia Birth Certificate/Birth Certificate Worksheet that were used in the DeStefano et al Study? Yet, we still have comments such as this one from one of the AoA groupies:
"Your reporter status and your English major served you well here. While I have J's birth certificate here from 1997 with no boxes to fill in for mother's education, infant's gestation time, birth weight, ethnic background--the birth certificate claim is a joke. I also highly doubt the birth certificate changed from 1994 to 1997(the study claiming 1994 was the last year used for birth information).The jig is up CDC"
Unbelievable, simply unbelievable
Hello again YoDaddie. You seem to be equating America with the whole world again. In fact most of the worlds population are completely unaware that any mercury containing compounds are in vaccines at all. Let alone give a flying monkey about it.
As an engineer I am well aware of my medical and statistical limitations. Which is why I listen to people who actually do have that training. Unlike you and the rest of the anti-vax crowd who give the appearance of believing that your scientific opinion is worth the same as that of actual scientists. I wonder if you try the same techniques on the mechanic who fixes your car?
Reader,
I don't doubt her sincerity, but equally I don't doubt she is completely wrong in blaming mercury for her son's problems. There is no shortage of heart-breaking tales about autistic children, but blaming vaccines when they have nothing to do with it does no one any favors.
Sorry, but I have wasted enough of my time arguing with the SafeMinds mercury militia. Their minds are closed to anything that does not support their idée fixes.
I find it very sad that Redwood has been taken in by the mercury chelation nonsense. Unscrupulous practitioners give a patient chelators that stir up mercury in the body so it is excreted in the urine. They then measure mercury in that urine and compare it to normal levels in people who have not been given chelators. Urine levels appear to be elevated, which convinced the mark, sorry patient (or parent in this case), that further chelation is necessary. Chelation is a valid treatment for real heavy metal poisoning, but a hair mercury level of 5 ppm does not indicate mercury poisoning requiring chelation, and chelation can be extremely dangerous.
This is a more heart-warming part of the tale, but it is one that I have heard repeatedly from the parents of autistic children who have not been subjected to quackery of this kind. Autism is defined as neurodevelopmental delay, not stasis. It improves with time and there are behavioral treatments that have been shown to help. Not only is there no plausible mechanism for chelation in autism, there is also no evidence it helps and at least one death has occurred.
The important bits of Redwoods tale are:
The first two parts are undoubtedly true; this is a compelling account of regressive autism, and at that time vaccines did contain thimerosal. The third part, claiming that, "very low levels of exposure have adverse effects on language, attention, and memory, making children less able to think and learn" is also true. However, what toxicologists call "very low levels of exposure" are orders of magnitude higher than the exposure children get (got) from vaccines.
I repeat, in the Seychelles no effects were seen in the children of pregnant women exposed to 0.5 mcg/kg of methylmercury each and every day. In a 66 kg woman that's over 9,000 micrograms over the course of a 9 month pregnancy. I do not believe that an infant exposed to less than 300 mcg of ethylmercury over the course of a year and a half could possibly be adversely affected by this.
Not only this, but there is copious evidence that autism starts, and can be detected, long before any vaccines are given.
Assuming autism does start in the womb (which I believe is the case), and signs start becoming obvious around the same age vaccines are given, it is inevitable that some parents will notice these signs soon after vaccination. It doesn't matter how many parents report this temporal association, it still doesn't mean vaccines cause autism, it's just that vaccination and showing signs of autism happen around the same time.
Thanks for your politeness and for not accusing me of simple-mindedness or of dressing up as a cheerleader. That does get a little wearing after a while.
I agree, but it won't be the scientists beloved of AoA et al. It is the scientists working on the genetics of neurodevelopment who will come up with important answers in the near future, IMO.
A full unpacking of a bad-ignition-switch/vaccines analogy is beyond a blog comment. I just want to note that this argument between YoTroll and DB isn't an abstract discussion, but an actual issue in product liability cases brought against automotive manufacturers.
All motor vehicles ARE unsafe, and people do choose to drive knowing their chances of getting injured are slim. As a legal/ethical matter the question is how far that principle extends; what is reasonable to allow under it; how it applies to the defect at hand.
For example, in the infamous 'exploding GM pickup truck scandal' for PR and 'legal exposure' reasons GM never put forth the valid defense of the CK pickup design with any force. The allegation against GM was 1) the placement of dual gas tanks behind the rocker panels and outside the frame made the trucks liable to explode in side impact crashes, causing the truck's occupants to burn to death in what would otherwise be easily survivable collisions, 2) thus GM was negligent, and subject to penalties in wrongful death litigation. Now, #1 happens to be absolutely true, but irrelevant to #2. But after losing a wrongful death suit in Texas, GM responded by trying to 'burn' anyone who made point #1, most notably Dateline: NBC,/em>.
The bottom line SHOULD have been: When you design an internal combustion pickup truck, you have to put the gas tank (which is basically a bomb) somewhere; the question is whether one location is safer than another in terms of the general risk of driving; and massive statistical evidence indicates the answer is 'no.' In a CK pickup you ARE much more likely to burn to death in a relatively minor side-impact crash, BUT no more likely to die overall, compared to other designs. That is, CK passengers are likely to survive certain types of crashes that would kill passengers in other trucks.
Anyway, the ignition switch issue is different, and I'm guessing the CK truck thing might be analogous to vaccine safety in some ways but not in others. I've just put this here FWIW since the auto-safety thing came up.
PS: The whole GM vs. NBC affair is a paradigmatic example of how what could be labeled 'the ideology of scientism' can have a pernicious effect on reasoned public discourse, but worry not septics, this has virtually nothing to do with scientists doing science. Rather it's about how non-scientists who feel compelled to frame their presentations in science-like terms fall into (non-woo) forms of pseudo-science (NBC), and how the rubric of actual science is misused by social actors (GM). But unpacking that would take a book...
PGP wrote:
**appause**
OK, "parents that murder their kids" is over-the-top, and it would be more accurate to say "they feed scam-artists who murder kids for profit." But the broader point hits the nail on the head beautifully. What yoD calls "pure derision" I'd call painful Truth, and if you have to crawl into a hole to get there, PGP, dig out some extra room 'cause that's my kind of hole and I'd happily join you in there.
@sadmar
Actually, they have supported parents that have (or at least, are alleged to have) murdered their children.
M.O'B.,
I have come across that idea before, and somewhere i have a book that claims the Earth is hollow, and expanding, but we live on the outside. I used to collect such weirdness before the interwebz spoiled it all by making vast quantities of nonsense available at the click of a mouse.
Since my son had never eaten fish or seafood nor had dental amalgams, I had no other identifiable source for his mercury levels outside of thimerosal exposure from vaccines
Apparently you have not considered the identifiable source of "fly-by-night grifters who take tissue samples from obsessive nimrods and give them the high mercury figure which they so desperately desire".
Amazing how anti-vaxers seem to ignore the very laws of nature (not to mention physics) when they seem to claim that something like "mercury" in any of its forms, is able to spontaneously reproduce within a person's body....these people are nutcases.
lilady, it is even worse than that over at AoA. After having pointed out to them that Hooker's study only reported a link for African-American boys vaccinated between 24 and 36 months (disregarding the statistical flaws), they insist he showed an effect for Caucasian boys of all ages.
The Hooker paper now has an expression of concern, although it hasn't actually been put back up.
It makes perfect sense, Lawrence.
Humans need energy to live
Humans need a liver to live
Fusion reactors combine light elements to make heavy elements
Fusion reactors produce energy
The sun is a fusion reactor
Therefore, all their male children have fusion reactors for livers
Result - mercury poisoning
@ Narad
Translational Neurogenegeration notes "possible undeclared competing interests" not only of the authors but also of the paper's peer reviewers.
Note that the Geiers have previously published in that, um, journal. I suppose that they and their coauthors might have been in the pool of possible reviewers. 'Nuff said.
@Todd W.
I don't know all the gory details a lot of you folks do, so support of alleged murderers is new to me.
For me, a dead kid is just as dead no matter who gets the proximate blame for the unnecessary exposure to vpds. I want less sick and dead kids, and I'm convinced the route to that is getting more parents to vaccinate their young-uns to rebuild 'the protection for all the babies' (as I won't type the medical term).
And I'm convinced the route to THAT is not in arguing with the anti-vaxers, because as Orac said "their minds can’t be changed," but rather, (again per Orac) "persuading the general public, particularly the fence sitters".
Now, as it happens, I spent my whole professional career teaching students how to communicate more effectively with their audiences in a wide variety of forms (from public speaking to avant-garde art), which sometimes touched on "persuading the general public, particularly the fence sitters" directly, and usually at least indirectly. The methods of doing that are things I studied from undergrad through PhD, and even practiced myself on some occasions.
By any available more-or-less-empirical-but-definitely-not-scientific measure, I was a pretty good practitioner, and very good teacher of the 'communication arts.'
Everything I've learned in my 43 years in this field leads me to conclude that persuading the fence sitters in the general public cannot be done effectively through scientific argument alone, though that's certainly important. For want of a better term, I'll call what's required to lower those vpd rates an effective PR strategy. And again, for want of a better term, I'll call how your create an effective PR strategy 'the pragmatic application of rhetorical theory.'
So, to get back to the example at hand, while 'anti-vaxers have supported parents alleged to have murdered their children' may be true, I don't think making that claim is good PR. It APPEARS over-the-top, regardless of its actual truth value, and you don't win the hearts-and-minds of parents by demonizing other parents (with whom they may identify in one way or another). Better to cast the scam-scum like Wakefield as the real villains, the anti-vax rank-and-file as tragic marks of the flim-flam, and focus on 'why vaccinating your kid makes you a MUCH better parent than all those poor fools telling you not to.'
That's why everything in PGP's post up to 'support murderous parents' is PR gold, IMHO, as it's all believable and strokes the audience in the right way:
• anti-vaxers don't care for real children (not like you, who love your kids as they are).
• anti-vaxers make their actual childrens' lives miserable (not like you, who will sacrifice your own interests for the sake of your kids' well-being)
• anti-vaxers bully parents who’ve lost kids to vpds (and now they're trying to suck you into their misery, putting your kid further at risk than the mess they've already created, and should tragedy befall you and yours, they'll bully YOU with self-righteous condemnation if you speak out against the delusions they're using to assuage a guilt they shouldn't have in the first place.)
(The first rule of advertising: the pitch is always about YOU [the customer] not the product.)
Speaking of which, the last mention I can find of Kern from UT Southwestern is in a 2008 faculty listing, as an "adjunct clinical assistant professor" in the psychiatry department. She doesn't even bother listing this on her LinkedIn profile, yet it is used as an affiliation for the 2013 paper. With a dfwair-dot-net E-mail address.
One might wonder. Then again, "The Rev" gets an author position with a listed contribution of "LK [sic] edited manuscript structure." (Structure? Background, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion?) This is simply not a valid criterion for authorship.
Dear self-anointed The Great Orac,
Do you remember me stating “… seeing as how [this site is] packed with self-anointed well-educated scientists. Their honesty TBD…”?
Probably not, so I’ll pause while you look that up….. bored bored bored… you’re back? Good. I’ve got an honesty issue with your blog. You’ve got some ‘‘ ‘splaining to do Lucy.”
I’ll continue with that in my next post, assuming you become interested.... TBD time has arrived.
Lawrence @148 --
Well, my interior sustaints temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees and has a huge free neutron flux -- doesn't everybodys?
"Translational Neurogenegeration notes “possible undeclared competing interests” not only of the authors but also of the paper’s peer reviewers."
It's not uncommon to recommend possible referees for a paper when you submit. One is supposed to be responsible and recommend people who are familiar with the subject, not, for example, your friends.
Who knows what happened here. But it is starting to smell.
Let's say, just as an exercise, that Mr. Hooker recommended the Geiers. They've published in that journal before. Mark Geier has also served as an expert witness for Brian Hooker in his vaccine court case. That would be a COI.
Let's say he said, "Hey, there's this really knowledgeable guy at CDC who did similar work. His name is Thompson". That would be inappropriate.
So far we have no proof of anything, but there are many ways in which this could have been deceptive.
Hooker's competing interest statement is not what I'd call precise enough
"Dr. Hooker has been involved in vaccine/biologic litigation."
It doesn't really capture the fact that it is still active.
I believe he used the same statement in a previous paper. I recall this because I was not convinced it was sufficient then either.
^ Oh, wait, "The Rev" is Lisa Goes.
No, dumbass, before the "VCIP." Did you forget your own comment? Here, allow me:
This likeminded bunch of douche canoes would feel 'right at home here' --
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/how-to-respond-to-antivaxers-ic…
And this informed forum member's comment is the epitomy of this whole maligning Orots' series of threads on this:
""It’s anti-intellectualism because it’s belief in folklore rather than established science (within which there is absolutely zero controversy)
-----------------------
I *think* giving pregnant mothers any ethyl mercury during pregnancy is insanity. This is, I *think*, because the placental barrier is 'one way' crossing in -- no out.
It builds up.The fetus eventually has a seizure, wraps the cord around its' little neck, and dies.
------------------
I'm quite sure Orac realizes that the authoritative 'science is in' paper's lead author is, shall we say, less than credible. Unless he was just too busy derping out scientificy sounding analysis whilst playing lawyer:
“”There is also the CDC’s continual citing of a study done by one of the FBI’s Most Wanted Criminals, Paul Thorsen. Despite stealing the grant money given to him by the U.S., his study is still cited, as though it was valid (his study said there was no link between thimerosal and autism).
http://justice.gov/usao/gan/press/2011/04-13-11.html
ouch. See how that works??
-----------------------------------------
So,
“If you are a Dee
And you’re doctor’s a Dee
Then all your kids will be Dee de de
peace, buds.
"The Hooker paper now has an expression of concern, although it hasn’t actually been put back up."
Knowing zip about publication in the sciences, do I not get what the concern statement at Translational Neuroscience means? Is this not more strongly worded and damning than what they put up when they first "removed [the article] from the public domain"? Does this new statement indicate it might be on the path to being put back up? t took it as 'we're pretty sure we've been scammed, and once we get definitive confirmation we'll let you know...' Have any news agencies picked up the "expression of concern", and if so, how have they spun it?
This likeminded bunch of douche canoes would feel 'right at home here' --
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/how-to-respond-to-antivaxers-ic…
And this informed forum member's comment is the epitomy of this whole maligning Orots' series of threads on this:
""It’s anti-intellectualism because it’s belief in folklore rather than established science (within which there is absolutely zero controversy)
-----------------------
I *think* giving pregnant mothers any ethyl mercury during pregnancy is insanity. This is, I *think*, because the placental barrier is 'one way' crossing in -- no out.
It builds up.The fetus eventually has a seizure, wraps the cord around its' little neck, and dies.
------------------
I'm quite sure Orac realizes that the authoritative 'science is in' paper's lead author is, shall we say, less than credible. That is,unless he was just too busy derping out scientificy sounding analysis whilst playing lawyer:
“”There is also the CDC’s continual citing of a study done by one of the FBI’s Most Wanted Criminals, Paul Thorsen. Despite stealing the grant money given to him by the U.S., his study is still cited, as though it was valid (his study said there was no link between thimerosal and autism).
http://justice.gov/usao/gan/press/2011/04-13-11.html
ouch. See how that works??
-----------------------------------------
So,
“If you are a Dee
And you’re doctor’s a Dee
Then all your kids will be Dee de de
peace, buds.
umm, that was not the epitomy. This is --
""Hacks, pseudoscientists on the internet, and then mutually reinforce their false sense of superiority among themselves
What it means is that the editor has been provided information of an undeclared conflict of interest by Hooker. This could relate to his undeclared Board Membership of Focus Autism, which believes there is a cover-up of a link between vaccination and autism.
A number of journals ask authors to nominate potential reviewers. When they do, they will usually only pick one and then select another reviewer not nominated by the author. Some journals, particularly the predatory pay to play open access journals, will just take the author's suggestions. Reviewers are supposed to declare whether they have competing interests. For example, this week I turned down the opportunity to review a paper because I had given the authors advice about an early version of the manuscript.
It seems the editor thinks one or more of the reviewers may have failed to declare a potential conflict of interest.
The author instructions, for reference:
Ohh, I see, Orac, you do know that guy. Sorry.
My view is that when an occupying criminal organization pretending to be government {ya bunch of self-loathing anarchists} mandates something then it is usually to hurt me -- Prohibited substances are countermeasures to whatever they did. Simple.
Also, I had a reaction to a tetanus shot in the past and yet was still strongarmed into taking one before they would set my very painful, very broken arm...
As for the CDC, fuckem. I don't trust them at all. I'm recalling Showa Denko and the L-tryptophan fiasco wherein the CDC conveniently lost a couple thousand samples of necrotic bowl for just long enough that first GMO Smoking Gun got a mercy flush before they got there. Something like that... Anyways, I've always been afraid of L-tryptophan never realizing it was GMO and not a rare allergy to otherwise. And I'd really like to try some now but it's still banned in the US. Does it remain banned for big pharma bucks {I see prozac mentioned} or so I won't be able to fix the argyria I got protecting myself from ebola?
""the patent also claims exclusive ownership of most, if not all, Ebola treatments, tests, experiments, vaccines and drugs.
Who knew US GOV/CDC had a patent on ebola?
http://whiteoutpress.com/articles/2014/q3/cdc-ebola-patent-could-earn-b…
ACTA - ""an international legal framework for targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement...
Monsanto, US Military , CDC, GMO corn, some backwater canadian biotech.
Monsanto's business model has always been "We contaminate it - We own it"
and if ACTA passes, my homade colloidal silver will get me swat teamed.
@ Dim Tim:
Oh, you *think*, do you? Well, throughout history, a lot of people have *thought* that a lot of really stupid things were true. Oh, and you're wrong. Ethylmercury has a far higher toxic level than methylmercury, and a foetus's kidneys work in the womb. So much for "no out".
Oh really? Thorsen is on the "Most Wanted" list? Balderdash.
Thorsen wasn't even the first author on that paper, you champion ignoramus. And there are serious doubts about whether what happened was fraud or just a spat about which institutions were owed what. Finally, monetary fraud (even if that occurred here, which as I said seems questionable) is not proof of research fraud.
@tim #164 I suggest you stick to words you know how to spell.
I'm looking forward to this revelation about dishonesty on this blog, but I guess YoDaddie is currently too busy self-anointing to post his evidence of this.
@Tim - let's see what you get wrong:
1) Lack of understanding of biology (check)
2) Lack of understanding of chemistry (check)
3) Lack of understanding of paper authors (check)
4) Regurgitation of typical anti-vax lies (check)
Almost got bingo there - you should try just a little harder (or crazier).
@Julian Frost
""Ethylmercury has a far higher toxic level than methylmercury, and a foetus’s kidneys work in the womb. So much for “no out”.
I wasn't talking about methylmercury and I *thought* the route of excretion was through the bowel.
Otherwise "Dim Tim" would be accurate for this room. I'm no doctor nor scientist.
Anyways, I see my somewhat apology {not a very good one} and dimwitted 'splaining didn't make the cut to the wall here...
it was on government ebola patent, ACTA and how it applies globally to 'generic drugs' so that my homemade colloidal silver would get me a swat raid.
And to ask "does this blue ever wash off?" Some doctor said it was Argyria, but they're probably shills for the CDC.
Ohh, and how I think Showa Denko and CDC did a little dance to Ban L-tryptophan and cover up that it was the first GMO catastrophy and to swell big pharma bucks... or woids to that effect.
ok ok. But this time it was my eyes that are dim.
@Brook
I suggest you stick WITH words that have less of an opposing static charge.
@Julian Frost
""all of the mercury in stool was inorganic mercury. There was almost no mercury in urine.
http://immunizationinfo.org/science/mercury-levels-after-vaccines-thime…
Thimerosal in vaccines were replaced by 2-phenoxyethanol (a neuro-toxin), another toxic substance used in antifreeze and is contained in Pentacel, the DTPaP+Hib vaccine injected into most Canadian babies starting at 2 months of age. Also, many other vaccines now contain aluminum as an adjuvant as a replacement for Thimerosol - also having ties with neurological damage including brain inflammation. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/cmc/2011/00000018/00000017/ar….
Just food for thought, I think the question was posed regarding why autism rates did not drop after Thimerosol was removed. Autism is defined by a set of behaviours associated with neurological damage, be it involved with GI issues, auto-immune deficiencies and/or brain inflammation. While not all autism is the same nor results from the same sources, neither can anyone definitively say that vaccines do not either trigger the decline nor exacerbate the original problems. Based on Thompsons correspondences (and he neither denies that its his voice on the internet nor claims that anything was taken out of context, remember - he in fact confirms in his statement that its his voice on the internet), that there may indeed be some children that may be at higher risk. What is wrong in researching what children may be at greater risk - be it genetic or other basis - and having work out an alternate vaccine schedule or finding safer alternatives. We wouldn't give a child with cancer any vaccines...there are children who are clearly born with other auto-immune dysfunction and methylations issues now. More information, more choice = less fear.
@Lawrence
5) Lack of understanding of law/law enforcement (check)
That makes bingo. His claim about the FBI is easily shown to be false. One can go to the FBI web site and search for who's wanted. A search for Thorsen comes up empty.
Help me out just one more time....how many African American males are involved in this manufactroversy? What is the breakown of the number per age group (< 36 month, or whatever the ages were)
thanks
@Dawn
Aluminum is an adjuvant. Thimerosal is a preservative. The one, by definition, cannot be a replacement for the other.
@Julian Frost
p.s. How does one 'block quote' on this backwater blog? And is the timestamp font so tiny because I'm a Luddite and still using FF 4.0 or do I need to turn off Ad Block Plus?
Tim,
If the mother's bowel excretes almost all the mercury in her feces, how does enough get into her fetus to cause it to commit suicide? How do you know how much ethylmercury would be excreted in the urine if it hadn't almost all been excreted in the feces?
@nutritionprof
Doesn't look like Hooker gave any information on the number of children in his subgroups (no n values reported in the text or tables). He tells us the total number of cases and controls, but not the breakdowns by gender or race. The closest we get is this:
The DeStefano paper gives us the number in each racial category, within each age range and within each gender, but does not break any of those categories down further (e.g., the racial breakdown does not further separate out by age or gender).
Dawn - there is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to figure out in advance what children (or population of children, if there are associations based on ethnic or racial heritage) might have worse reactions to vaccines and adjust the schedule accordingly. Indeed, some children could very well have such severe reactions that it would be wisest not to immunize them at all.
So far, the vast bulk of well conducted studies says that autism is not caused by vaccines. This has been confirmed by repeatedly. Thus it would seem a waste of scarce research funds to try to determine how to reduce the risk of autism from vaccines. However, should such data arise this would certainly be worth exploring.
If you have pointers to research indicating how one might screen children in advance to avoid vaccine reactions, particularly screening not currently in common uses, please share.
You did comment that "neither can anyone definitively say that vaccines do not either trigger the decline nor exacerbate the original problems." Various people have repeatedly stated that autism is primarily caused by heavy metal poisoning (some go as far as saying that autism IS heavy metal poisoning), and that a major source of heavy metals is vaccination. Since childhood vaccines in the US no longer include thimerosal and this has not had an apparent effect on autism rates, can we agree that this is evidence that thimerosal is not a major cause of autism?
Dawn,
How can the aluminum in vaccines possibly cause neurological damage when a child absorbs more from food, including breast milk, than it does from vaccines? Mitkus (a href="http://www.medstat.hu/vakcina/Mitkus2011.pdf">full text PDF) gives these figures for daily absorption of aluminum:
So a breast-milk-fed child absorbs 0.03 x 180 = 5.4 mg aluminum over the first six months of its life. Vaccines given over the first year of life contain a maximum of 4.225 mg, as stated in Mitkus, less than the amount of aluminum absorbed from breast milk in the first six months.
The insoluble aluminum salts in vaccines are injected intramuscularly and slowly dissolve in the interstitial fluids, leach into the bloodstream and are excreted in the urine. Even a premature baby's kidneys can easily excrete far more aluminum than it gets from vaccines, which is why vaccination does not cause elevated blood aluminum levels.
I'm sure this has been explained to you before, hasn't it? If so, why do you keep repeating this misinformation?
Grrr. I meant, Mitkus (full text PDF) gives these figures for daily absorption of aluminum:
@Todd W.
so all we can really say is that there were more than 5 individuals in his (possibly made up?) co-hort?
(and statistics is nowhere near my forte, but I do remember the phrase "statistically significant but not clinically relevant")-(we're not talking about significance though, are we?)
@Dawn
Perhaps this is why??
""And I was astonished by this…‘why would you do this, if your principal concern is to protect children from serious infectious disease? Why would you remove an option from parents who are legitimately concerned about the safety of MMR?’ And her answer was extraordinary. She said to me, ‘if we allow parents the option of single vaccines, it would destroy our MMR program.’ In other words, her principal concern seemed to be full protection of the MMR program and not protection of children.”
http://whiteoutpress.com/timeless/courts-quietly-confirm-mmr-vaccine-ca…
@Krebiozen
An uneducated guess would be that the mercury staying in the primordial{?} or just forming bowel would mess up its development -- The whole gut/brain thing.
Or does the little bun just blow it out its' sphincter-enveloped void with any regularity? Personally, I don't see where it gets the bran.
@ Dawn: Pentacel is not available in Canada. The pentavalent vaccine used in Canada is Pediacel...according to Health Canada. According to this website Pediacel contains trace amounts of PE...which is, I believe, the preservative which Brian Hooker is "recommending" to replace Thimerosal in multi-dose vials of seasonal influenza vaccine.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/cig-gci/p01-14-eng.php
\
PE (2-phenoxyethanol) is found in some vaccines that are used in the United States...none of which are on the Recommended Childhood Vaccine Schedule.
Brian Hooker's claim on behalf of his autistic son before the Vaccine Court is still open after 12 years and Hooker claims his child's autism was caused by Thimerosal. He's desperate to prove that claim and it is without merit.
And Dawn, the rest of your statement is pure speculation and based on the anti-vaccine playbook.
@nutritionprof
Unless all of the raw numbers are disclosed, yes, the best we can say is that Hooker's subgroup contained more than 5 individuals.
And, after hearing Sharyl Attkisson's interview with Dr. DeStefano, it seems that Thompson's main concern was that the full study population showed a higher odds ratio than the smaller birth certificate subgroup at <36 months. But as Dr. DeStefano explains, the smaller group (consisting in total of several hundred AA cases) controlled for more confounding variables and was thus more reliable than the results from the total population. In other words, this is seeming to be less and less of the concern that it was made out to be.
@Todd. My bad, I should clarify. Thimerosol was removed in the early 90's (some say thimerosol containing vaccines were still given up until late 2000 however I just don't know so won't look at that possibility). However, the number of vaccines given to children has increased since the early 90's - thus the adjuvant aluminum being injected is in higher amounts...as well they added 2-phenoxyethanol as a preservative.
Like I said just an observation. Thompson spoke up about something that really concerned him - and it seems he is concerned on the effective that certain vaccines may have on certain groups of children. I don't think it should be dismissed.
@Krebiozen. I couldn't open the pdf. Is there another link, I really would like to see that paper. But you know, what I took from your statement was that the amount of exposure from aluminum almost doubles when you give breastfed babies vaccines within their first year of life? 5.4 mg from breast milk and 4.225 mg from vaccines during the first year?
Tim,
You missed my point. The mother is injected with a vaccine containing thimerosal. Almost all the ethylmercury from the thimerosal is excreted by the mother's bowel. How does any more than a tiny fraction of the minuscule amount of mercury from the vaccine get into the fetus?
Even if it did get into the fetus, we know a great deal about mercury poisoning - many pregnant women were aming those poisoned in Minimata and Iraq for example, and pregnant women in the Faroes and Seychelles who are exposed to far more mercury than American women getting a flu vaccine - and it bears practically no resemblance to autism, despite what various people continue to claim.
Good grief. No, fetuses do not pass feces into the amniotic fluid, not unless something goes wrong.
@ Mephistopheles O'Brien. Thanks to you as well for a thoughtful response (Kriebiozen being the other one). Your last statement, I would point out that William Thompson statements suggest he is uncomfortable with how a certain study was handled that would address the thimerosol question possible further. I don't necessarily subscribe to *all autism is due to heavy metal poisoning*. I do subscribe to the fact that more and more research into autism is identifying sub-groups of kids with certain characteristics (physiological and developmental) that would indicate varying factors of its onset as well as varying options of treatment. I think what Dr. Thompson has alluded to...needs further investigation and I hope some non-bias evaluations are completed. Again, I do not understand what everyone is so afraid of from Dr. William Thompson stepping up and saying what he has said. |Including about pregnant women and the Flu shot. He seems to be well-respected and I think his observations need to be taken seriously.
@Kriebiozen....I agree with your analysis with how thimerosol is processed out of the body along with other toxins. However, there are certain children that have compromised immune/methylation issues that prevent such *flushing out* to take place. Hence..they may be at greater risk from neurological damage. Again...the same reason we would not give a very sick child or a sick elderly person any vaccines - no responsible doctor would. THIS, in my mind, is where research could greatly help parents and their children. Anyway, still would like to see that pdf...really I would as I like to read and collect information.
Dawn,
Sorry, I'm all fingers and thumbs today. This link should work (PDF).
The important point is that we know that aluminum is rapidly excreted by the kidneys which can easily excrete far larger amounts than we get from our diet. Look at Table 1 in this paper looking at aluminum toxicokinetics (PDF). You will see that people taking aluminum-based antacids daily absorb as much as 5,000,000 micrograms every day, with no ill effects (I have seen research showing how blood levels peak and rapidly fall after aluminum antacids); compare the 25 micrograms in a flu vaccine.
Aluminum is only a problem if you are exposed to it in large amounts, if you work with aluminum salts for example, or if you are unable to excrete it effectively (premature babies and patients with kidney failure) and you absorb large amounts.
Aluminum poisoning has been seen in dialysis patients given IV fluids containing large amounts of aluminum. The few micrograms found in vaccines are tiny in comparison.
Toxic blood levels are 100 mcg/L or more, but levels seen after vaccination are so slightly elevated above normal that it is only recently techniques for measuring aluminum have become sensitive enough to measure it.
Dear Krebiozen,
Regarding #170 Please hang tight. I'm handling this temporarily offline via email to Orac. I'd like to give him an opportunity to explain himself prior to my forthcoming rant.
I also plan to get to your other questions. I had attempted to earlier, but apparently one of y'alls moderators, or Orac himself, was filtering me out. Something apparently about how someone who comes in here questioning y'alls science and tactics is immediately stamped "troll", whatever the hell that means, and escorted electronically off the premises. Maybe you'd like to explain that to me while I'm debating with Orac offline? Please?
Sticking with the brain/gut thing, this looks interesting:
http://math-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/autism_by_nation.jpg
because of this:
“”On May 18, 1994, the FDA completed its evaluation of the Flavr Savr tomato and the use of APH(3′)II, concluding that the tomato “is as safe as tomatoes bred by conventional means” and “that the use of aminoglycoside 3′-phosphotransferase II is safe for use as a processing aid in the development of new varieties of tomato, rapeseed oil, and cotton intended for food use.” It was first sold in 1994, and was only available for a few years before production ceased in 1997. Calgene made history, but mounting costs prevented the company from becoming profitable, and it was eventually acquired by Monsanto Company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr
It almost looks as if somebody is hiding a decline.
Anyways, if GMO really is an intentional *soft kill* weapon then we'd better start questioning Bill Gates' grammar:
""Until we get near to zero the temperature will continue to rise
Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent "
http://lifesitenews.com/news/gates-foundation-explains-bill-gates-re-va…
I'd guess *reproductive health care* means aborting babies and *new vaccines* means something nefarious.
IDK. Nobody knows what Gates meant but Gates. Personally, I think he's kinda dim.
Dawn,
The issue is that what Dr. Thompson has apparently said (I'm suspicious about the editing of his phone conversations) is contradicted by the available evidence. What he has said about the African American males in the DeStefano study is plain wrong, as is his alarmist claim that thimerosal causes tics. The study showing the association between thimerosal and tics also showed an association between thimerosal and increased IQ in boys.
Do you notice that there are people on the antivaccine side claiming that this proves that thimerosal is dangerous, but no onje on the science side claiming that thimerosal increases boys' IQs? That's because if you look at lots of sub-groups it is statistically certain that around 1 in 20 will show statistical significance at the 95% confidence level purely by chance, This is exactly what we see in the thimerosal study Thompson commented on, 19 statistically significant results out of 373 statistical tests done.
Thompson should know that this suggests chance in operation, not some effect of thimerosal. The fact that he doesn't appear to understand this does concern me - I hope it is a misunderstanding of some sort.
You grow tiresome. Just post whatever you have to post here. I'm not having a prolonged e-mail exchange with you.
Dawn,
I find it very hard to believe that quantities of mercury hundreds or even thousands of times lower than the minimum known to cause adverse effects in humans and animals could cause problems even in specific individuals with problems excreting mercury (if such individuals exist, which is far from certain).
I'm not aware of any convincing evidence of elevated mercury in autistic children; the evidence is inconsistent. Some studies have shown low hair levels, suggesting lower than normal levels. Amusingly I have seen people claim that this means these children are unable to excrete mercury in hair, even though there is no known mechanism for excretion of heavy metals in hair. Higher levels, of course, indicate mercury poisoning from vaccines - the results don't matter to these people, as long as they can somehow fit them into their prejudices.
There is a lot of bogus research in this area and many unscrupulous labs and medical practitioners who do provoked urine mercury analysis, which is guaranteed to give misleading results, and who then offer chelation to remove the non-existent excess mercury, despite its dangers and lack of evidence for efficacy, They then tell the parent that any improvements are due to removal of mercury, not the normal improvement that you expect to see in autistic children. It's a despicable con trick, but people still fall for it.
@Krebiozen. Thanks for the link. I took a quick read through and will go back later tonight and read more closely. I wish the human volunteers they had used were *babies* (maybe after a vaccine) and not adults...same with the rabbits. :-) Even they note that babies do not have the same capacity to process out aluminum and while they do use very sound and conservative analysis to account or such things (even for low birth weight babies)...it is still an *educated guess* and not strictly confirmed by specific study (or is there another link I can look at?) . Regardless...valid and will look more closely tonight when I have time to really engage. I agree that Thompson should know enough about statistics, especially being a part of so many studies through the CDC - to understand the propensity for *chance* findings. Increased IQ's in boys? Increased findings of Autism in Black children? Do they go hand in hand (a lot of ASD kids are extremely intelligent) or completely different reactions? Or simply chance. This is why I am concerned with his statement, surely he has had ten years to figure that out...and seems to find it important enough to speak out after all these years and after all of the studies he has been a part of. THAT is my biggest concern and hope this gets clarified over the coming months.
Thanks again!
"Regarding #170 Please hang tight. I’m handling this temporarily offline via email to Orac. I’d like to give him an opportunity to explain himself prior to my forthcoming rant."
I've read your prior posts YoDaddie and we are all awaiting your responses to the questions posed to you.
Could you manage to post your rant now? I'll be going offline shortly.
YoDaddie,
Here's Wikipedia's definition of an internet troll:
Sound familiar?
I haven't noticed you questioning any science here. You have made a lot of accusations of bias and claimed that the CDC and various people are untrustworthy. You haven't answered any of the questions people have asked, you have ignored the evidence I and others have presented to you and generally been rude and unpleasant. You accuse qualified doctors and scientists of being "self-anointed" and of being "simple-minded". You have shown no interest in actually discussing the science, or the details of what Thompson, Hooker and DeStefano have said. When I pointed out that the video you posted as evidence that thimerosal in vaccines is dangerous showed the opposite, you didn't even acknowledge your mistake.
I don't believe you are here to learn anything, or to discuss anything in a civilized manner. I think you are just here to annoy people and cause trouble,
That's why some people have labeled you as a troll.
here are certain children that have compromised immune/methylation issues that prevent such *flushing out* to take place.
Details would be gratefully received. If your kidneys work at all they are going to remove ethyl mercury.
We wouldn’t give a child with cancer any vaccines
O RLY? I am detecting a general lack of concern for facts here.
Dawn seems to be in full Gish Gallop, simultaneously claiming that thimerosal is still dangerous because reasons, AND that thimerosal doesn't matter because it's really the aluminium (referring us to one of Tomljenovic & Shaw's shabby little papers), AND that neither thimerosal nor aluminium matter because of the antifreeze. No doubt if the toxic risks of all three is patiently explained then it will be some other ingredient.
Vaccines = Evil, as far as I can see.
That's easy to test for.
Dawn-
Is there any safe and effective vaccine that you can name? Please answer within your next 3 post, or we will assume that you do not think that any vaccine is acceptable to you, and that engaging you is a waste of time.
Good for you herr doktor bimler: It certainly looks as though Dawn is employing a Gish Gallop.
How about looking at this screening tool used by doctors and nurses before they vaccinate a child?
http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p4060.pdf
Tell us which vaccines are contraindicated and which vaccines are not contraindicated, for a child diagnosed with cancer, Dawn.
"(Thompson) seems to be well-respected"
DiStefano and his colleagues at the CDC, as well as myriad other researchers who've found no link between MMR and autism, also seem to be well-respected.
I suggest evaluating scientific findings on their merits rather than judging on the basis of who is "well-respected", especially when "well-respected" is defined as "agrees with me".
addendum:
I guess, my hypothesis from the graph might be that the *decline* since the mercury was removed was obliterated by the *rise* of GMO.
2001
Except for influenza (flu), thimerosal is removed from or reduced in all vaccines routinely recommended for children 6 years of age and under manufactured for the U.S. market.
http://cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/thimerosal_timeline.ht…
http://math-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/autism_by_nation.jpg
Somebody should do a study of a group never exposed to GMO nor their mothers because who knows if some of the abberant protiens are not incorporated into our cells and continue with the bacillus thuringiensis production?
RE: hiding the decline
Futhermore, the mercury was not removed all at once -- Batches that still contained mercury were still being used for quite some time.
re 'vaccine safety' and Gish galloping
Believe it or not- Mikey is currently reaping the benefits** of increased attention (read page views) because of *l'affaire Hooker/Thompson* so he is 'educating' his audience additionally with a 63 minute spiel about vaccine safety- and yes, I listened to the whole barrel of discarded,reeking fish parts which-btw- utilises each and every anti-vax trope known to man/woman. He lists his points as well- just in case you are overcome by strong emotions or a wave of nausea when listening to his scientific brilliance in audio. He relates how we can make vaccines safer.
In other news:
Jake initiates an e-mail exchange with Hooker's publisher.
** he sells advert space
Now both the Expression of Concern and the Hooker paper itself have been removed, although the direct links still work.
If you are interested, please check out:
http://wp.me/p505uv-2
It's an email thread between Orac and YoDaddie with this preamble:
----------------------------------------
I’m pasting below an email thread between YoDaddie and Orac.
Please reply on RI’s “The CDC whistleblower William W. Thompson: Final (for now) roundup and epilogue” comment section if you have something to offer regarding this.
How/why did this happen? Is this a common occurrence on RI’s comments? I’d be interested in anybody’s opinion on whether Orac is being truthful or if Orac is lying, and why you feel that way. Honesty is important. If Orac can’t be honest here, why should we believe his articles? Orac apparently believes that the CDC is honest. He believes that the CDC wouldn’t/doesn’t/hasn’t pulled data or studies which contradict their pro-vaccine agenda. But then opinions which contradict his agenda are pulled from his comments, and he denies doing that. Kinda sounds like what the "anti-vaxxers", as y’all have labeled them, accuse the CDC of doing. So… pulling data or opinions you don’t like is honest science at RI?
If you want to explain why you think YoDaddie is a "troll", skip it please. I’m bored with that already.
Thanks!
And then the email thread follows.
Dawn, there has never been any thimerosal nor aluminum adjuvants in the MMR vaccine in its over forty year history.
Tim, please stop dragging in more off topic subjects. This article is about Hooker's reanalysis of MMR data. Nothing else.
Tim, here is how to do blockquotes (and you might try upgrading your browser):
<blockquote>Put paragraph of person you are quoting in here.</blockquote>
Everyone else: could we please not get dragged into every anti-vaccine and anti-science trope that is brought up by others. Just remind them that the vaccine being discussed is the MMR vaccine, which was introduced in the USA in 1971, and also it comes as a dry powder plug that is reconstituted with sterile... and doesn't contain a preservative nor adjuvant!
To the point:
Tim, the MMR vaccine is not the influenza vaccine. Stop confusing the issues.
Come now, why don't you say what you really mean. The incidence of autism would have declined when thimerosal was removed from vaccines, but pregnant mothers and young children were eating more broccoli. Do you accept that broccoli causes autism, or are you part of the massive broccoli-industrial complex that is suppressing the connection?
Chris (ssy),
Sorry, man. And I believe that would be *conflating* and not *confusing* -- since we have grammer nazis here that can't see the meaning for the words..
Rather hilariously YoDaddie is claiming (on his blog - see WP autogenerated link above) that Orac has censored one of his posts, this one, specifically. He has clearly got his threads mixed up, but is now bleating way on his blog about how this proves that Orac is dishonest and that vaccines are therefore unsafe, or something.
What a twit.
Tim, it is not "grammar" Nazi, it is that you, YoDaddie and Dawn are off topic.
Now, have someone explain to you this sentence: "The MMR vaccine has never contained thimerosal in its entire forty-plus year existence."
@Kreb - I still haven't been able to figure out what Yo is complaining about, since the ingredient he's complaining about wasn't even used in most vaccines back in the day & hasn't been used in any pediatric vaccine (at all) - here in the States, for over a decade.....
Mephistopheles O'Brien,
http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/07/eastern-broccoli-monsanto-i…
Also, I'd not discount the corresponding exponential rise in Roundup itself.
Dude, note the date of that article -- jul 17, 2013 Do you think that by *recent* they meant at least 8 years prior??
You're like me, I guess. Not a regular guest here and quite dim.
Lawrence,
For some it will always be about the mercury.
My goodness, but the quality of trollage has dipped a bit of late.
At least YD gets decent marks for his first awkward steps at creating a sort of frat boy, self-congratulating, douchebag character.
Poor Tim is just, well, not fully connected to reality. Loses points for links to conspiracy sites and that weird, disjointed poem thing at the end of 161. His attempts at creating a snarky character come off as irritability, which is never good.
Dawn's initially promising attempt at seeming reasonable and polite eventually revealed an agenda that basically devolved into spewing unrelated antivaxx tropes clearly didn't succeed in the end.
Next!
@Kreb - what a Derp moment for him - he's complaining about a comment that "disappeared" when in fact, he was too stupid to post it on the same thread.
I'll go back to my original opinion - he's a moron.
And complaining to the staff at AoA about "cersorship" and comment removal is beyond hilarious, given their draconian moderation policies over there (as compared to here).
Dawn - I can't recall anyone being afraid of what Dr. Thompson has said. Perhaps you've seen something I haven't.
There has been previous discussion of the concept that vaccines could be a trigger for autism in a group of particularly susceptible people. However, the data hasn't shown that. Once you start discussing it in those terms, then it's impossible to make a choice of causes - why vaccines instead of fluorescent lights, or exposure to air pollution, or broccoli?
There are certainly many factors that could lead to an autism diagnosis as it is a complex group of disorders. There is good data that says there is a strong genetic component, and that the age of the parents at conception is also a factor. I would not doubt (but do not know) that there may environmental factors both in the womb and after birth that could cause autism.
To date, the best data says that vaccines are not a major cause or trigger. It's previously been noted that if they were, then presumably the diseases themselves would have triggered far more autism than the vaccines. Additionally, one would expect a strong statistical signal if more than, say, 1 case in a thousand of autism was triggered by a vaccine and this has not been observed in the good studies. I believe it was Krebiozen who pointed out that it can either be something that triggers autism only in a small group of susceptible people or is a primary cause of autism, but it can't logically be both.
Tim - Do you have evidence that either GMOs or glyphosate cause autism? If not, what you suggest is merely speculation and hardly worth discussing.
Tim: brain/gut thing
Which was made up whole sale by Wakers. Legitimate doctors don't support it and only gullible people believe in it.
Sadmar: Thanks. These people frustrate me. I have friends with Aspergers, who are some of the brightest people I know, and I know that if I'd been born into an anti-vax household, I'd've had a miserable life- I'm not on the spectrum, but I have ADD and an anxiety disorder.
Anti-vaxxers don't think anyone who has slightly different wiring is a person, and a lot of them try to convert parents who have kids with ADD or ADHD. Also, I personally find most of them ridiculous, annoying and tedious. The 'we're victims' whining is awful, given that most of them are highly successful people, and wouldn't recognize bullying if it kicked them in the stomach. (There's something especially annoying about homecoming king dads and cheerleader mommies whining about 'vaccine bullies.')
Cris (ssy),
Then where is the ebola thread and i'll get the frack out of ya'lls way and let y'all do your own thing with your damn MMR distraction from intentional *soft kill* deployment upon all the peoples of the world.
Been fun, all .. thx for the time.
He seems to have a pretty solid point.
I'm always glad when people like Dawn stop by so they can show us the knowledge the typical anti-vaxx warrior mommy uses to withhold vaccines from their children. No Dawn 2-phenoxyethanol is not in anti-freeze nor is it used as a preservative in vaccines and even says so in the package insert: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/biologicsbloodvaccines/vaccines/approvedpr… It's function is as a stabiliser. Single injectors don't require preservatives. So I'll await your correction on this.
Thiomersal is a preservative, aluminium is an adjuvant; one of these things is not like the other so perhaps you'd like to correct this as well and provide an actual source that aluminium in vaccines is "tied" with brain inflammation.
Mephistopheles O'Brien,
No. Nobody does -- it's why I suggested a {possibly more fruitful} route of inquiry. Tool.
Are you going to CC: the AoA brain trust again when you figure out how spectacularly you've fυcked up?
I'm not seeing it.
It's been a while since someone called me that. Happy memories...
Well, Mephy
It was going to be *fucktarded tool* but you have already grown upon me -- and I may need the combined brainpower in these threads to help me excise it.
"Blog" is rather generous – there's no other content. Yes, he went to the trouble of setting up a WordPress site for the sole purpose of making a fool of himself.
Tim - as someone who has not actively insulted you, I fail to understand your hostility towards me. Have you seen someone about your anger issues? Or are you dealing with Tourette syndrome? Lashing out at people who are trying to have a polite conversation may be a sign of something serious. I am not a psychologist, nor do I play one on TV, but I understand there's no shame in these things, only a problem that can be helped.
I'm not particularly interested in your incoherent detritus but since you decided to cross the line you did, I'll have a go at you too. Do you see the bolded words? You don't say that; there are parents here with special needs children and adult autists who have had to grow up with fʋcknuckles like you calling them that.
Out of curiosity, I looked at Retraction Watch for an article about Hooker's paper. There wasn't much there that hasn't already been covered here, and I saw that some of our regulars had posted on that entry. But there was this curious detail:
Presumably the bloggers at Retraction Watch found Thompson's number through publicly available sources (e.g., Google), and 770, like 404, indicates a phone number issued in metro Atlanta. Of course Thompson may have been calling from a private number (mobile or landline), but then the call would not have been coming from the CDC, as Hooker claimed.
Mephy B... It was a complement. You don't know me very well, do you? And yes. I'm out of pot on a long weekend locked down by a militarized police force so I do have anger issues as well as explosive rage.
Have you checked your B-12, lately??
But, the most prominent thing on my mind right now, Mephy, is that I *exploded* and dropped my long-held {31 years} doctor because he keeps wanting to micromanage my fucking hydroxizine {for when I'm out of pot}. -- I was brain damaged by vaccines and the bogus two-shot-per-week for 2 year "immunotherapy".. I don't have a damn clue what they were really studying but now, one can, in fact, get *immunized* against feeling at ease.
Tics, thimerosal, just saying....
Or maybe it's the GM DNA getting in his cells and producing bacteria.
I'm truely shamed, Science Mom. I would quip "can they even read?" Only thing is, I know for six sigma that they can better than most here.
Dear Krebiozen, You're right! I was being a twit and did I get my threads mixed up. I hereby apologize to Orac. I mistook the amount of time for my comments to get posted as me being banished. And I looked for my comment in the wrong place and jumped to the wrong conclusion. My bad. That's what happens when you are rookie troll. In a few years I'll be better at this.
However - I'd still like someone here to present the amount of Thimerosal being distributed and used, both in the US and worldwide. Why does that seem to be downplayed here?
Tim - why no, I don't know you very well - we've just met. I'll take it as the compliment it was intended as, then.
My B-12 and D-4 are doing fine, thanks for asking!
Ohh, and *science mom*, then why don't yu go ahead and boldtype it so I'm sure to understand what you mean.
Oh dear. Tim, you've lost more TrollPoints™ by copying YD's annoying southern affectations. Unless of course . . .
Krebiozen,
I wondered who'd call me on that first. ding ding dingYou win the cupie doll. Of course, I meant the toxin.
YoDaddie took down his "blog".
Well, more accurately, he replaced his post with the words "Never mind".
Krebiozen's comment is still there.
I wonder what the AoA brain trust thinks about the whole thing?
I guess, that one didn't get through... When I'm out of cannabis, I need hydroxozine which is available over the counter in damn near every country on the face of Earth except where I'm at.
Pharma shill, 31-year GP whom I liked alot wants to micromanage my fallback -- I had to drop him, here at the end of all things.
Why does all my passiflora incarnata seem to be getting 2-4-D' every time these last several decades? Same as the L-tryptophan?
there are parents here with special needs children and adult autists who have had to grow up with fʋcknuckles like you calling them that.
Then they probably had a Statist drone of a mother.
I'd be interested in Narad's take on whether Tim's attempting to imitate a bad LSD trip with #248.
No, we had some schoolmates who were $h!thead bullies. And you're a first class tosser.
Comment of mine in moderation.
Juilian Frost,
I hated school.
It tought me learned helplessness.
My formative years were robbed.
http://outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/Unschooling-The-Case-…
And, if not mandated by an imposter criminal 'government', there would have been no need to be maligned for detrimenting 'heard immunity'.
immunotherapy was worthless. I'm convinced it was some study. I noted earlier that you can get 'immunized' against happy -- happy makes me sick, now. Mission accomplished, *scientists* ==You Know, if it wasn't for all you paperclip guys, then we could have stuck the nosy-mother-in-laws all in Arizona. Problem solved.
Brian Hooker spoke at the Autism One conference two days ago, and the video is up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfyGFvXWACU
"Vaccine safety should be completely taken out of the CDC".
Anti-vaccine, absolutely.
@PGP
I feel ya, bro.
I came down with a severe anxiety disorder thirteen years ago, which morphed over time into a kind of ADD. (I don't the physically debilitating panic attacks anymore, but I can't concentrate enough to finish a novel or watch a movie at home all the way through. And I was a effing Film Professor!)
I also have a dear sweet cousin, about age 20 now IIRC, who's an 'Aspie.'
The stigma faced by folks with even relatively minor mental health issues can be absolutely crushing, and more so if it's harbored by family and friends. Given the crap my cousin got from his peers, I can't imagine what would have happened to him had the Grandma and Great-Grandma who raised him not accepted him and loved him for exactly who he is.
You win the cupie doll.
There is the opportunity here for a long shaggy-dog joke ending with the punchline "A string of Kewpies is a joy for Heather", but I will restrain myself.
Hello again Dear Krebiozen,
Thanks again for pointing out that I was mixing up my threads!
You say :
I don’t understand your point. Apparently “we” can’t afford to feed the developing world, or provide it with clean water, or enough vaccines and other medicines. Why would thimerosal-free vaccines be any different?
Because “we” are the ones pumping, for profit, Thimerosal into third-world countries. Consider that Merk & Pfizer are US based, GlaxoSmithKline is UK, Novartis is Swiss… We are providing ourselves with lots of the good stuff, but we dump the cheaper potentially more toxic stuff on the third world. And on low-income first-world residents who can’t afford the more expensive good stuff. When you combine this with problems such as the CDC potentially covering up African-American boys increased sensitivity to MMR
, is it any wonder that “anti-vaxxers” frequently have their pitchforks and torches out?
Regarding:
Why not support TCVs too, since you have seen the evidence that thimerosal is safe in the doses vaccines contain?
Because I’ve also looked at stuff like this: http://mercury-freedrugs.org/docs/20140329_Kern_JK_ExcelFile_TM_sHarm_R…. I’m thinking that since there is not consensus, why not play it safe? Like the CDC was trying to do when they acquiesced to the pitchforks and removed Thimerosal from most vaccines in the US?
Regarding:
… Orac and various commenters have explained in detail why Thompson is wrong about he findings in African American children after MMR and about tics after TCVs
Because I’m not ready to believe that the CDC is being totally honest here. I’m going to wait for hopefully resulting congressional hearing. And if that’s an obvious whitewash, I’ll still not be ready. Why is it so hard to get into the CDC’s data? Why don’t they open it up? Why don’t you and I have access to it? It’s our data after all, right? We paid for it. I’d like to run a few queries of my own with that data. Why were the original Verstraten et al. results apparently sliced and diced like the DeStefano Thompson et al. data until they both appeared squeaky safe?
Regarding:
Why not support burning witches because…
More than a little hyperbolic by design yourself perhaps?
Regarding:
Not that many (.3% are not vaccinated)
Then why are you all so vitriolic?
Regarding:
That’s a broken link, I suspect you meant this paper [ http://www.ijme.in/index.php/ijme/article/view/2015/4375 ], which is authored by the Geiers and Boyd Haley, among others. I have read a great deal written by these authors, and found it to be a mass of distorted misinformation. A quick scan of this paper shows it contains the same old misinformation that has been shown to be inaccurate over and over again.
Really, is that how you do your science? By quick scan after disrespectfully insolently ad homineming the authors? What part of that paper’s conclusion do you disagree with?
… Thus, thimerosal has continued to be a part of the global vaccine supply and its
acceptability as a component of vaccine formulations remained unchallenged until 2010,
when the United Nations (UN), through the UN Environment Programme, began
negotiations to write the global, legally binding Minamata Convention on Hg. During the
negotiations, TCVs were dropped from the list of Hg-containing products to be regulated.
Consequently, a double standard in vaccine safety, which previously existed due to ignorance
and economic reasons, has now been institutionalised as global policy. Ultimately, the
Minamata Convention on Hg has sanctioned the inequitable distribution of thimerosal by specifically exempting TCVs from regulation, condoning a two-tier standard of vaccine safety:
a predominantly no-thimerosal and reduced-thimerosal standard for developed nations and a
predominantly thimerosal-containing one for developing nations. This disparity must now be
evaluated urgently as a potential form of institutionalised discrimination.
I get that you’d sugar your Cheerios with Thimerosal. But that doesn’t mean that the above double-standard does not actually exist.
Regarding:
Drug companies already make vaccines as safe as possible. The last thing a drug company wants is a vaccine (or any drug) that causes harm and leads to litigation.
The more wealthy and knowledgeable can afford and know to order the yummy single-use flu vaccines. But the poor and the third-world located; they still get the distasteful Thimerosal stuff.
Regarding:
In my world dishonesty is deliberately telling lies. What evidence is there that Thompson has been telling lies? At worst he colluded in leaving out some data in a study that didn’t say what he apparently believes it did.
In my world “…he colluded in leaving out some data in a study that didn’t say what he apparently believes it did” is dishonesty. I recommend raising your bar.
Regarding:
You can [make public policy based on public hysteria], but it would be extremely foolish. Where do you draw the line?
One easy demarcation would be on products mandated to be injected into citizen’s tissues. If the citizens are scared, figure something else out. Especially if it means more effectively decreasing horrible diseases.
Regarding:
Ethylmercury does not accumulate like methylmercury; the vast majority is rapidly excreted, mostly in feces. On average we accumulate 1,800 mcg of mercury each year from other sources. Why would 25 mcg each year from vaccines, of which less than 1 mcg is retained, make the slightest difference?
Are you sure? Are you positive that decreased glutathione levels in a very small segment of males are not preventing mercury from being excreted as much as you think? Are you sure that it does not accumulate to dangerous levels?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3774468/ states that :
In the human body, TM is broken down into Hg2+ species that tightly bind with the sulfur (S) residues in cellular components such as enzymes, organelles, cytoskeleton, and membranes that are critical to normal cell function [41]. Many times, the sulfhydryl (-SH) group of the amino acid l-cysteine (Cys) is the active site or is an important functional site of the protein molecule. Thus, when the Hg2+ species bind with enzymes, proteins, ion channels, membranes, etc., they alter normal cellular function and, in many instances, render the enzymes, proteins, ion channels, membranes, etc., essentially nonfunctional. In addition, the Hg2+ species present within tissues tend to bioaccummulate, especially in the brain (it is energetically very difficult for Hg2+ species to cross the blood-brain-barrier to back into the body), and inhibit the intracellular production and recycling of the oxidized GSH to reduced GSH [42].
I realize that you skim the authors and skip those articles from who you don’t already like, but ….. are you sure? Are you sure that you want me to pump Thimerosal into my kids? Answer me this, please… When it’s time for your and your kid’s flu vaccines – do you opt for the Thimerosal stuff or the good stuff?
Regarding:
Thimerosal has been used as a preservative in immunoglobulins and other blood products for many decades. Patients have been given up to 1,800 mg (that’s 1.8 million mcg) of thimerosal intravenously without noticeable ill effects (the infamous Eli Lily experiments with terminal meningococcal meningitis patients in 1930), that’s 72,000 times as much thimerosal as there is in a flu vaccine. It is remarkably safe. I would happily have a vaccine containing thimerosal (which would not be injected into my bloodstream, by the way), since I know I get far more mercury from other sources.
I guess you do opt for the Thimerosal stuff !! But are you sure that you and yours simply haven’t won the high- glutathione level lottery? Just because your specific body chemistry can collect and excrete ethyl mercury does not mean that everyone’s can. Right? You see that possibility, right?
Regarding:
What is the best evidence you can muster that suggests that thimerosal injected IM in doses of 50 mcg or even 300 mcg can adversely affect a child?
Let’s say you’re a low- glutathione male boy. And let’s say that you either live in a third-world country, or you were on the 90’s lots-o- Thimerosal schedule, and/or you get regular multi-dose flu shots today, and maybe you’re unlucky enough to like tuna and you live near a power plant…. Can you estimate how much ethyl mercury could accumulate in your tissues (and subsequently into your blood stream and past your blood-brain barrier) if you don’t have gobs of glutathione metabolizing it away for you?
How is it possible to "downplay" something that just bubbled out of the swamp of your head, leading you to demand that people do your self-assigned homework for you?
Go look at the number of flu vaccines administered, which is available by season IIRC, and try to sort it out for your own fυcking self before you start further demanding the figures for fυcking Samoa or something.
Have yet another clue on the house: You haven't bothered to provide a reason for anyone to service you in the first place.
That comment is from Pareidolius.
Keep it classy Tim; I'm sure you are really popular with um some group.
Dear Todd W:
Regarding #139:
…exactly how is ethylmercury supposed to “transition to elemental or methylmercury”? That would be a very interesting feat, indeed.
Several scientists have proposed pathways. But you missed my point. Which was since people are worried about that happening – stop worrying them!
I would not be surprised if some ethylmercury transitions to methylmercury, especially if some kids do retain ethylmercury much longer and eventually in much higher concentrations than y’all prefer to believe. You do understand that kids with the lowest bowel and hair mercury levels could be the kids most not metabolizing mercury, right?
Regarding:
Oh, and you still haven’t answered my question: what currently available preservative would you suggest to replace thimerosal that has been shown to be at least as safe and effective in vaccines as thimerosal?
Clearly some chemicals have already been found to replace Thimerosal, otherwise we’d only be using single-dose vials. Or still be using Thimerosal as broadly as it was in the 90s. But figuring that out is not my job. That’s above my pay grade. Because I don’t provide you with a quick answer does not mean that 1) a workable solution is not either already known or discoverable, or 2) that we are therefore justified in pumping Thimerosal into kids, and adults. Mercury toxicity has been understood since the 1600 mad hatter’s days. At least. Thimerosal was initially used in the 30s. It’s time to replace it with something more modern and less toxic.
Todd W, you seem to be an expert on this alternate preservative subject. What is the answer? What compounds are being used and what other compounds could be used? Please explain exactly why Thimerosal is still in flu vaccines? How much would it cost, world-wide, to eliminate Thimerosal from all vaccines? And – if Thimerosal causes some autism as many scientists y’all denigrate believe – how many kids prevented from otherwise getting autism would it take before the program has paid for itself?
Dear Narad,
You ask “How is it possible to “downplay” something that just bubbled out of the swamp of your head, leading you to demand that people do your self-assigned homework for you? [referring to my request for data on current Thimerosal doses administered via vaccinations]”
So I’m here on your “science” site asking supposed scientists for something as important as exactly how much Thimerosal is still being administered in the US and world-wide anyway, and y’all either don’t know or y’all don’t care or y’all are covering something up. I’m guessing the latter two. Instead of useful data I get stuff back like “try to sort it out for your own fυcking self”. LOL. I’m thinking that you’ve just elevated this blog above Lawrence’s achievement to and even deeper all-time low.
Is this some false flag anti-cannabis operation?
OK. It was me. I put the acid in the punch . . .
Elevated to a . . . deeper low . . . what? Oh, nevermind.
Darn moderated posts... It's now #251, Narad.
You know, Mephistopheles O'Brien, when you put it this way:
I'm not quite sure of the context/meaning but I'll go ahead and *assume* that you are in the know that nothing but yummy, healthy GMO broccoli will be the only choice pretty soon...
If that were the case, I'd advise expectant mothers to eat nothing but raw tunafish heads from 1 yr before conception to 6 mo prior to weening.
@ Broken Link # 257: Thanks for that link to Brian Hooker's presentation at an Autism One conference.
(The things I do for science)...I listened to Brian Hooker's explanation and if you fast forward to 24 minutes in to his presentation, you'll find that Hooker admits to illegally recording Dr. Thompson's telephone conversations.
It looks like Jake Crosby is partially correct, when he blamed Wakefield for the illegally recorded phone conversations.
How could Jake forget Hooker's interview with Anne Dachel, where Hooker describes the wining and dining of Congressmen and their wives?
http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/12/brian-hookers-testimony-autism.html
"....My initial thanks go to Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier, who strategically linked me up with a friend of theirs, who in turn has become my good friend as well. Through the work of this individual, Dr. Andrew Wakefield and I were invited to meet with Rep. Darrell Issa, Rep. Vern Buchanan and their wives in early May, 2012 to discuss malfeasance in the CDC regarding autism and vaccines. Andy discussed the MMR vaccine and the vaccine schedule. I talked specifically about thimerosal and the cover-up of CDC data that affirm a causal relationship between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders including autism. Rep. Issa was concerned regarding the CDC information and stated that this was the type of government misconduct that his committee (Oversight and Government Reform) specifically addressed.
I was in DC for a National Science Foundation function later the same month and had the opportunity to meet with Reps. Issa and Buchanan again, this time with Rep. Dan Burton. Rep. Issa affirmed his commitment to hold a hearing at that time. Rep. Burton detailed his valiant efforts to get the CDC and large pharma to remove mercury from vaccines and indicated that they wouldn’t listen to him.
I was in DC for a National Science Foundation function later the same month and had the opportunity to meet with Reps. Issa and Buchanan again, this time with Rep. Dan Burton. Rep. Issa affirmed his commitment to hold a hearing at that time. Rep. Burton detailed his valiant efforts to get the CDC and large pharma to remove mercury from vaccines and indicated that they wouldn’t listen to him.
I’ve worked very diligently since May with the Oversight committee staff to convey what I had found via the FOIA and to get additional information from CDC relevant to thimerosal. Along the way, I gained the support of Barry and Dolly Segal, through Focus Autism and they have become pivotal to this entire effort. In addition, I received a very significant amount of assistance from Dawn Loughborough, Bob Krakow, Bobbie Manning and Louise Habakus. They are all amazing sources of insight and have advised me throughout the process. I also need to acknowledge my friends at EBCALA, especially Louis Conte, Rolf Hazlehurst, Becky Estepp and Kevin Barry, who have been working with the committee staff very effectively regarding NVICP reform.
I was able to meet with the Oversight committee staff several times between May and November, up to the day before the hearing, to discuss the pertinent details. I also was corresponding with Beth Clay from SafeMinds who was working very diligently on the issue as well. When the committee staff finally indicated the participants in the panel, I was disappointed because there was only one participating organization (Safeminds) that included the relationship of vaccines (specifically thimerosal) to autism causation within their mission. The rest of the panel would either avoid the issue or deny any causal relationship. Given the importance of autism causation, this was just not a balanced panel...."
You haven't bothered to establish that it is "as important" as anything. You pulled this out of your ass and are demanding answers, dammit, when you're too damned lazy to even make an effort at the first item on the list after being given instructions how to do it.
If it's "as important" as all that, maybe you could have spent the time that you did whomping up a comically stupid WordPress mistake and wasting people's time with dumbass E-mails and tried to come up with anything.
Instead, it's just an attempt to salvage something from the tantrum.
@ Narad re # 231:
You know, I'm disappointed- I was hoping that this might be the start of one of his protracted e-mails exchanges.But no.
I looked at the thread Timmeh linked, and mixed in with what is indeed some amazing and disturbing douchebaggery, I found a couple commendable nuggets.
1.
Here's a .pdf of a pamphlet "Vaccine Preventable Diseases - The Forgotten Story" that relates the stories of several actual children who contracted diseases that would have been prevented by proper immunization by their family or within their community. There should be a stack of these in every pediatricians office, and a copy should be forced into the hands of the parents of every newborn before they can take their kid home from the hospital. The photo on p. 28 alone could do more to raise vaccination rates that everything written on RI and SBM put together.
2.
IMHO, PGP hit on another potential strategy here:
Under #2 in the 'PR' post above.
First level indent is quote from PGP.
Second level indent is me.
Third level indent is quote from 'Brick Majors'
Back to second level after that is me to the end.
mea culpa
Oh. No, I don't think it's imitating anything. Bad trip, sure, but not one resembling anything having to do with LSD.
And lilady's ** comment reminds me-
let me see if I've got this straight:
Hooker, the Geiers and Jake*** ( separately)- all used FOI requests to extract data in order to find ways of twisting it into knots and submitting it to perversely inappropriate statistical tests so as to find significance for their pet ideas?
And REALLY! Did you notice that list of anti-vax celebrities in Hooker's testimony? That'd be a cocktail party for you.
** or as an AoA commenter calls her- *lil*
*** for his thesis IIRC.
I'm actually having difficulty keeping track of what the dumbest G-ddamned thing I've seen in the space of a week is.
@ Denice Walter: I was not impressed with the audience for Hooker's presentation; my applause meter stopped at about a dozen (or less) in his audience.
Jake has been sucking up to Hooker for months now. I think he just found out that he is out of the loop; Wakefield lied to Jake and Hooker lied to Jake.
@ lil:
No, I mean those he listed that you quote- in his penultimate paragraph.
Dear Narad,
Please educate us. How easy is it to get onto the CDC's data network?
Do you understand the process? Have you ever submitted yourself to their FOIA process? Have you, after years of diligence and submissions and re-submissions and delays and dishonest explanations etc. ad almost-fucking infinitum finally been allowed on premises only with armed guards peering over your shoulder, watching your every move, analyzing and filtering your queries?
I haven't either. But I can imagine. I've read the stories.
Exactly what are they so afraid of us finding?
You thinking that getting at the CDC's data is easy is actually the second dumbest G-ddamned thing you have seen in the space of week. Just slightly not as dumb as Thompson sitting on his corrupt report for over a decade. Glad I could clear that up for you.
sadmar,
I'm not seeing any *indents* but only serial numbers down the screen -- do I really need a new browser or is there a switch on this site somewhere??
machine elf seeking minds want to know...
It sounds as if you need a new computer. Your current model is just posting gibberish.
Ohh, so nobody gets the idea that I'm unstable and need assistance so that a swat team comes to save me and shoots my damn Fuligo septica;
http://overcomerministry.org/
Tim - like US president George HW Bush, I have come to the conclusion that the rise in broccoli consumption over the last, say, 20 years will lead to global warming, economic recession, the destruction of the environment, and, possibly, the end of mammalian life on earth. It hardly matters whether it was bred by natural or recombinant methods it is what Dr. Hibbard called "the widowmaker" and "One of the deadliest plants on earth."
Just in case there is anyone here that would like to spend grant money on something more interesting than watching a camel piss away it's hump for AGW --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuligo_septica#Resistance_to_metal_toxicity
I don't think that SWAT teams actually enter into this assessment per se.
You're an imbecile, and too lazy to read the actual comments to the extent that they don't roll some Weimaraner. All of this has already been explained.
However, I am certain that you have earned the eternal gratitude of AoA Central for this.
Denice Walter: I can't believe how stupid Hooker is. When you are introduced to Congressmen by the likes of Wakefield and the Geiers and you actually wine and dine those Congressmen and their wives, you shouldn't be bragging about those activities.
"y’all either don’t know or y’all don’t care or y’all are covering something up."
Y'all need to find another phrase for variety's sake. Try "you people", "ya buncha shills", "morons", "Illuminati Lizards" or suchlike.
Dear Krebiozen, nutritionprof , novalox, JGC, and anybody else I've inadvertently omitted who's voiced their ethylmercury is not methymercury so go away troll opinion:
How-about taking a crack at these:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3018252/
… Although toxic doses of methylmercury and ethylmercury lead to similar effects in the central nervous system, pharmacokinetic differences distinguish the ultimate effects in the body. Ethylmercury is metabolized to inorganic mercury more quickly than methylmercury, and this difference in metabolism may account for kidney damage that can result from toxic quantities.
and
IdentiWcation and distribution of mercury species in rat tissues following administration of thimerosal or methylmercury
Jairo L. Rodrigues • Juliana M. Serpeloni •
Bruno L. Batista • Samuel S. Souza •
Fernando Barbosa Jr
Whereas the behavior of Met-Hg in humans is
relatively well known, that of ethylmercury (Et-Hg) is poorly understood. The present study describes the distribu- tion of mercury as (-methyl, -ethyl and inorganic mercury) in rat tissues (brain, heart, kidney and liver) and blood fol- lowing administration of TM or Met-Hg. Animals received one dose/day of Met-Hg or TM by gavage (0.5 mg Hg/kg). Blood samples were collected after 6, 12, 24, 48, 96 and
120 h of exposure. After 5 days, the animals were killed, and their tissues were collected. Total blood mercury (THg) levels were determined by ICP-MS, and methylmercury (Met-Hg), ethylmercury (Et-Hg) and inorganic mercury (Ino-Hg) levels were determined by speciation analysis with LC-ICP-MS. Mercury remains longer in the blood of rats treated with Met-Hg compared to that of TM-exposed rats. Moreover, after 48 h of the TM treatment, most of the Hg found in blood was inorganic. Of the total mercury found in the brain after TM exposure, 63% was in the form of Ino-Hg, with 13.5% as Et-Hg and 23.7% as Met-Hg. In general, mercury in tissues and blood following TM treat- ment was predominantly found as Ino-Hg, but a consider- able amount of Et-Hg was also found in the liver and brain.
Taken together, our data demonstrated that the toxicokinetics
of TM is completely diVerent from that of Met-Hg.
Thus, Met-Hg is not an appropriate reference for assessing
the risk from exposure to TM-derived Hg. It also adds new
data for further studies in the evaluation of TM toxicity.
Also… anybody ....
Please help me understand – is ingested mercury processed any differently than injected mercury? I believe it it. Isn't ingested mercury put through additional self-protection systems which remove/excrete most of the ingested mercury before it has an opportunity to enter our bloodstreams? Systems that injected mercury bypasses? If so, then comparing ingested mercury levels to injected mercury levels is nonsense. Right Krebiozen?
AoA is all like this
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/724/561/aa6.jpg
Given that Nancy Hokkanen has previously attempted Disqus astroturfing, one might be inclined to try to figure out just who is whom in this case.
Sadmar: as far as Brick Major's comments go, I'm going to have to disagree with this: But the moneyed liberals in Marin County and Vermont believe in the common good. They weren’t homecoming royalty in high school. They were the bookish nerds who got picked on by the in-crowd. They think everybody should have access to good care from a functioning public health system. They’re seen Bully and are active in anti-bullying campaigns in their local schools.
People like Dachel, Ciaparker and Rev (et al) aren't the least bit interested in the common good. Parker's been untethered from reality for a good long while, Dachel will say anything and vote for anyone as long as they give her money, attention and praise. Most of the (non)Thinking Mums live in fairly conservative states and at least two are from military families- draw your own conclusions about what that entails. Mums from Marin and Park Lane tend to be apolitical, too wrapped up in social striving to do anything that matters. And if any of them are on anti-bully committees, they should resign yesterday, since that's the apex of hypocrisy.
DB: Illuminati Lizards needs to be a real thing. It's incredibly versatile- a swearword, a band name, an album or a comic book.
Tim: I think you've wandered into the wrong corner of the interwebz. Did you miss the great big SCIENCE label on the blog? And what is a weedhead like you doing being a fanboy of an apocalyptic Christian Church? Did you not get the memo that God hates fun?
and y’all either don’t know or y’all don’t care or y’all are covering something up. I’m guessing the latter two
Your false trichotomy misses out the alternative of "Pointing and laughing".
Hey y'all, there's the alternative description for YoDaddie's posts...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zd5drs8zG8
He's not going to get the Cyndi Lauper reference.
I'm sure you've all seen the story about the british couple arrested for taking their son out of the hospital because the hospital wouldn't give him "proton beam" treatment ?
The boy has a brain tumor. Apparently of a type that's fairly nasty.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/31/world/europe/uk-brain-cancer-boy-found/in…
:: Sorry for the departure from topic. We now return to our regularly scheduled comments section. :::
When my husband had his annual flu vaccine in 2012, he came down with arthritic (RA) like symptoms the next day. His joints were swollen, in pain, required a cane for mobility, and was off of work for 2.5 months, mainly for pain management. At only 38, we had thoughts we may be looking at disability. Being pro-vaccine, hubby thought the timing of this vaccines and symptoms was merely coincidence. Fall 2013, he receives the flu vaccine again, and suddenly all of the symptoms return, with vengence, the next day. He now, and his doctors concide, a correlation.
Like it or not, vaccines can very much cause adverse reactions. Seemingly, to be pro-vaccine, is to deny or to minimalize such reactions exist. To fully acknowledge the extent of the problem, and call attention to the suspects, is deemed anti-vaccine. In reality, if we acknowledge the problem, so change can occur, the justified reasons of those who are anti-vaccine would be reduce or remove.
We need to hold the pharmaceutical companies accountable to develop alternatives to those preservatives or combination of viruses which are questionable. They can do better, or at least, they have the funds to try.
@Politicalguineapig
Nah. He told be to come here and see if this .pdf has any validity for *scientists* or if they're all still under the thumbs of their corprofascist masters...
people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/glyphosate/NancySwanson.pdf
Mephistopheles O’Brien, wouldn't any of those correlations be worthy of The People's wages to see if it becomes 'evidence' withstanding peer review and published {the knowledge gained being 'copywrited' and locked away behind a paywall and away from those who paid for it} or is it just a laundry list of linkings specifically NOT to be looked at as was the case with cannabis for a bit too long now?
http://wgrz.com/story/news/2014/07/23/funeral-today-for-anna-conte/1306…
When my husband had his annual flu vaccine in 2012, he came down with arthritic (RA) like symptoms the next day. His joints were swollen, in pain, required a cane for mobility, and was off of work for 2.5 months, mainly for pain management. At only 38, we had thoughts we may be looking at disability. Being pro-vaccine, hubby thought the timing of this vaccine and symptoms was mere coincidence. Fall 2013, he receives the flu vaccine again, and suddenly all of the symptoms return, with vengence, the next day. He now, and his doctors concide, a correlation.
Like it or not, vaccines can very much cause adverse reactions. Seemingly, to be pro-vaccine, is to deny or to minimalize such reactions exist. To fully acknowledge the extent of the problem, and call attention to the suspects, is deemed anti-vaccine. In reality, if we acknowledge the problem, so change can occur, the justified reasons of those who are anti-vaccine would be reduced or removed.
We need to hold the pharmaceutical companies accountable to develop alternatives to those preservatives or combination of viruses which are questionable. They can do better, or at least, they have the funds to try.
Krebiozen says
Yes. But
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal#Toxicology
Dear Tim, Krebiozen ...
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jt/2012/373678/abs/
Thimerosal generates ethylmercury in aqueous solution and is widely used as preservative. We have investigated the toxicology of Thimerosal in normal human astrocytes, paying particular attention to mitochondrial function and the generation of specific oxidants. We find that ethylmercury not only inhibits mitochondrial respiration leading to a drop in the steady state membrane potential, but also concurrent with these phenomena increases the formation of superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and Fenton/Haber-Weiss generated hydroxyl radical. These oxidants increase the levels of cellular aldehyde/ketones. Additionally, we find a five-fold increase in the levels of oxidant damaged mitochondrial DNA bases and increases in the levels of mtDNA nicks and blunt-ended breaks. Highly damaged mitochondria are characterized by having very low membrane potentials, increased superoxide/hydrogen peroxide production, and extensively damaged mtDNA and proteins. These mitochondria appear to have undergone a permeability transition, an observation supported by the five-fold increase in Caspase-3 activity observed after Thimerosal treatment
@Mmpfot99:
Nobody here denies that. That's why countries have compensation programs for those genuinely hurt by adverse vaccine reactions.
Total strawman. We support vaccines because the risks are minimal and the benefits huge. The diseases are literally thousands of times more dangerous than the vaccines.
Another gargantuan strawman. People who are anti-vaccine exaggerate the minuscule risks of vaccination and downplay both their effectiveness and the risks of the diseases. They rely on anecdotes and discredited "studies", and distort information to fit their preconceived notions about vaccines.
"Justified" reasons?!?! "JUSTIFIED"?!?!
Anti-vaccinationists do not have justified reasons for their beliefs. Thimerosal was removed at their behest. They still complained. They repeat the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism despite the fact that Wakefield's "case study" has been shown to be fraudulent.
Very well. And just which preservatives and combinations are questionable? And you have to be specific.
YoDaddie, given that the amount of thimerosal in a vaccine has less mercury than a sushi dinner, and that said sushi dinner will have the more dangerous methylmercury, please show that the minuscule amount in a vaccine is harmful.
@DLC A story with some ethical cmoplications which might merit a discussion somewhere. I'm still coping with the fact that apparently the UK police can issue an arrest warrant and initiate extradition proceedings without a crime actually being committed...(though the parents actions are definitely somewhat to blame for the siuation - they could have told someone what they were doing after all, but still, arrested, imprisoned and removed from the side of their seriously ill son without committing a crime - how is that possible?)
Dear Tim, Krebiozen …
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X05000288
Environmental exposure to mercurials continues to be a public health issue due to their deleterious effects on immune, renal and neurological function. Recently the safety of thimerosal, an ethyl mercury-containing preservative used in vaccines, has been questioned due to exposure of infants during immunization. Mercurials have been reported to cause apoptosis in cultured neurons; however, the signaling pathways resulting in cell death have not been well characterized. Therefore, the objective of this study was to identify the mode of cell death in an in vitro model of thimerosal-induced neurotoxicity, and more specifically, to elucidate signaling pathways which might serve as pharmacological targets. Within 2 h of thimerosal exposure (5 μM) to the human neuroblastoma cell line, SK-N-SH, morphological changes, including membrane alterations and cell shrinkage, were observed. Cell viability, assessed by measurement of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity in the medium, as well as the 3-[4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay, showed a time- and concentration-dependent decrease in cell survival upon thimerosal exposure. In cells treated for 24 h with thimerosal, fluorescence microscopy indicated cells undergoing both apoptosis and oncosis/necrosis. To identify the apoptotic pathway associated with thimerosal-mediated cell death, we first evaluated the mitochondrial cascade, as both inorganic and organic mercurials have been reported to accumulate in the organelle. Cytochrome c was shown to leak from the mitochondria, followed by caspase 9 cleavage within 8 h of treatment. In addition, poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) was cleaved to form a 85 kDa fragment following maximal caspase 3 activation at 24 h. Taken together these findings suggest deleterious effects on the cytoarchitecture by thimerosal and initiation of mitochondrial-mediated apoptosis.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X04001147
Thimerosol is an antiseptic containing 49.5% ethyl mercury that has been used for years as a preservative in many infant vaccines and in flu vaccines. Environmental methyl mercury has been shown to be highly neurotoxic, especially to the developing brain. Because mercury has a high affinity for thiol (sulfhydryl (SH)) groups, the thiol-containing antioxidant, glutathione (GSH), provides the major intracellular defense against mercury-induced neurotoxicity. Cultured neuroblastoma cells were found to have lower levels of GSH and increased sensitivity to thimerosol toxicity compared to glioblastoma cells that have higher basal levels of intracellular GSH. Thimerosal-induced cytotoxicity was associated with depletion of intracellular GSH in both cell lines. Pretreatment with 100 μM glutathione ethyl ester or N-acetylcysteine (NAC), but not methionine, resulted in a significant increase in intracellular GSH in both cell types. Further, pretreatment of the cells with glutathione ethyl ester or NAC prevented cytotoxicity with exposure to 15 μM Thimerosal. Although Thimerosal has been recently removed from most children's vaccines, it is still present in flu vaccines given to pregnant women, the elderly, and to children in developing countries. The potential protective effect of GSH or NAC against mercury toxicity warrants further research as possible adjunct therapy to individuals still receiving Thimerosal-containing vaccinations.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1385/BTER:105:1-3:071
Thimerosal, also known as thimersal, Merthrolate, or sodiumethyl-mercurithiosalicylate, is an organic mercurial compound that is used in a variety of commercial as well as biomedical applications. As a preservative, it is used in a number of vaccines and pharmaceutical products. Its active ingredient is ethylmercury. Both inorganic and organic mercurials are known to interfere with glutamate homeostasis. Brain glutamate is removed mainly by astrocytes from the extracellular fluid via high-affinity astroglial Na+-dependent excitatory amino acid transporters, glutamate/ aspartats transporter (GLAST) and glutamate transporter-1 (GLT-1). The effects of thimerosal on glutamate homeostasis have yet to be determined. As a first step in this process, we examined the effects of thimerosal on the transport of [3H]-D-aspartate, a nonmetabolizable glutamate analog, in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells transfected with two glutamate transporter subtypes, GLAST (EAAT1) and GLT-1 (EAAT2). Additionally, studies were undertaken to determine the effects of thimerosal on mRNA and protein levels of these transporters. The results indicate that thimerosal treatment caused significant but selective changes in both glutamate transporter mRNA and protein expression in CHO cells. Thimerosal-mediated inhibition of glutamate transport in the CHO-K1 cell line DdB7 was more pronounced in the GLT-1-transfected cells compared with the GLAST-transfected cells. These studies suggest that thimerosal accumulation in the central nervous system might contribute to dysregulation of glutamate homeostasis.
Thx, YoDaddie.
That's a great example of why it requires a researcher in that field to even interpret the results to us 'laypersons'. And one just kinda have to trust them because we're derps. and the PR ones we're allowed to talk to may not be the one we should trust.
I mean, where are the ribozomes? Perhaps they fell out of this Rube Goldberg?
http://hindawi.com/journals/jt/2012/373678/fig7/
I'd just call that ^^ sloppy work!
So, we need one we can trust -- I recommend Nigerian ones because the ones in the US corporatocracy have way too many vested interests {Tylenol. Fuck you, Donald Rumsfeld. Aspartame. Jam a hedgegog up your ass, Donald Rumsfeld} so I'd steer clear of the CDC and get one from Nigeria.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X12000678
Methylmercury (MeHg) exposure at high concentrations poses significant neurotoxic threat to humans worldwide. The present study investigated the mechanisms of glutathione-mediated attenuation of MeHg neurotoxicity in primary cortical culture. MeHg (5 μM) caused depletion of mono- and disulfide glutathione in neuronal, glial and mixed cultures. Supplementation with exogenous glutathione, specifically glutathione monoethyl ester (GSHME) protected against the MeHg induced neuronal death. MeHg caused increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation measured by dichlorodihydrofluorescein (DCF) fluorescence with an early increase at 30 min and a late increase at 6 h. This oxidative stress was prevented by the presence of either GSHME or the free radical scavenger, trolox. While trolox was capable of quenching the ROS, it showed no neuroprotection. Exposure to MeHg at subtoxic concentrations (3 μM) caused an increase in system xc− mediated 14C-cystine uptake that was blocked by the protein synthesis inhibitor, cycloheximide (CHX). Interestingly, blockade of the early ROS burst prevented the functional upregulation of system xc−. Inhibition of multidrug resistance protein-1 (MRP1) potentiated MeHg neurotoxicity and increased cellular MeHg. Taken together, these data suggest glutathione offers neuroprotection against MeHg toxicity in a manner dependent on MRP1-mediated efflux.
How many seniors are getting flu shots?
http://www.keytoxins.com/hgbiblio-files/neurological/mutter_neuroendocr…
The etiology of most cases of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is as yet unknown. Epidemiological studies suggest that environmental factors may be involved beside genetic risk factors. Some studies have shown higher mercury concen-trations in brains of deceased and in blood of living patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Experimental studies have found that even smallest amounts of mer-cury but no other metals in low concentrations were able to cause all nerve cell changes, which are typical for Alzheimer’s disease. The most important genetic risk factor for sporadic Alzheimer’s disease is the presence of the apolipopro-tein Ee4 allele whereas the apolipoprotein Ee2 allele reduces the risk of devel-oping Alzheimer’s disease. Some investigators have suggested that apolipopro-tein Ee4 has a reduced ability to bind metals like mercury and therefore explain the higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Therapeutic approaches embrace phar-maceuticals which bind metals in the brain of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. In sum, both the findings from epidemiological and demographical studies, the frequency of amalgam application in industrialized countries, clinical studies, experimental studies and the dental state of AD patients in comparison to con-trols suggest a decisive role for inorganic mercury in the etiology of AD.
Uh, Yo Daddie, regurgitating lots and lots of links with nothing more than cut and paste jobs of the abstracts of the study is, as far as I'm concerned, not much different than spamming. I've approved this round. I won't approve any more, because the intent is obvious: You want to flood the comment thread. It's an old and obnoxious technique. Keep it up, and I'll limit your posting until you stop. Permanent bans are very, very rare here, but temporary slowing down of commenters who try to flood comment threads with cut'n'paste jobs is common. You posted a dozen in an hour. That's far beyond what I will tolerate after this.
Science Mom,
I apologize.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X06001665
There are reports suggesting that some autistic children are unable to mount an adequate response following exposure to environmental toxins. This potential deficit, coupled with the similarity in clinical presentations of autism and some heavy metal toxicities, has led to the suggestion that heavy metal poisoning might play a role in the etiology of autism in uniquely susceptible individuals. Thimerosal, an anti-microbial preservative previously added routinely to childhood multi-dose vaccines, is composed of 49.6% ethyl mercury. Based on the levels of this toxin that children receive through routine immunization schedules in the first years of life, it has been postulated that thimerosal may be a potential triggering mechanism contributing to autism in susceptible individuals. One potential risk factor in these individuals may be an inability to adequately up-regulate metallothionein (MT) biosynthesis in response to presentation of a heavy metal challenge. To investigate this hypothesis, cultured lymphocytes (obtained from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange, AGRE) from autistic children and non-autistic siblings were challenged with either 10 μM ethyl mercury, 150 μM zinc, or fresh media (control). Following the challenge, total RNA was extracted and used to query “whole genome” DNA microarrays. Cultured lymphocytes challenged with zinc responded with an impressive up-regulation of MT transcripts (at least nine different MTs were over-expressed) while cells challenged with thimerosal responded by up-regulating numerous heat shock protein transcripts, but not MTs. Although there were no apparent differences between autistic and non-autistic sibling responses in this very small sampling group, the differences in expression profiles between those cells treated with zinc versus thimerosal were dramatic. Determining cellular response, at the level of gene expression, has important implications for the understanding and treatment of conditions that result from exposure to neurotoxic compounds.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12640-009-9113-2
Are Neuropathological Conditions Relevant to Ethylmercury Exposure?
..The conclusion is that there are no reliable data indicating that administration of vaccines containing thimerosal is a primary cause of autism. However, one cannot rule out the possibility that the individual gene profile and/or gene–environment interactions may play a role in modulating the response to acquired risk by modifying the individual susceptibility..
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/86/1/132.short
.With and without NGF, thimerosal caused elevated levels of fragmented DNA appearing at 0.01 μM (apoptosis) to decrease at concentrations >1 μM (necrosis). These data demonstrate that thimerosal could alter NGF-induced signaling in neurotrophin-treated cells at concentrations lower than those responsible for cell death...
Integrating Experimental (In Vitro and In Vivo) Neurotoxicity Studies of Low-dose Thimerosal Relevant to Vaccines
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11064-011-0427-0
There is a need to interpret neurotoxic studies to help deal with uncertainties surrounding pregnant mothers, newborns and young children who must receive repeated doses of Thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs). This review integrates information derived from emerging experimental studies (in vitro and in vivo) of low-dose Thimerosal (sodium ethyl mercury thiosalicylate). Major databases (PubMed and Web-of-science) were searched for in vitro and in vivo experimental studies that addressed the effects of low-dose Thimerosal (or ethylmercury) on neural tissues and animal behaviour. Information extracted from studies indicates that: (a) activity of low doses of Thimerosal against isolated human and animal brain cells was found in all studies and is consistent with Hg neurotoxicity; (b) the neurotoxic effect of ethylmercury has not been studied with co-occurring adjuvant-Al in TCVs; (c) animal studies have shown that exposure to Thimerosal-Hg can lead to accumulation of inorganic Hg in brain, and that (d) doses relevant to TCV exposure possess the potential to affect human neuro-development. Thimerosal at concentrations relevant for infants’ exposure (in vaccines) is toxic to cultured human-brain cells and to laboratory animals. The persisting use of TCV (in developing countries) is counterintuitive to global efforts to lower Hg exposure and to ban Hg in medical products; its continued use in TCV requires evaluation of a sufficiently nontoxic level of ethylmercury compatible with repeated exposure (co-occurring with adjuvant-Al) during early life.
ToxSci Advance Access published March 27, 2014
Transcriptomic analyses of neurotoxic effects in mouse brain after intermittent neonatal administration of thimerosal
Xiaoling Li,* Fengqin Qu,* Wenjuan Xie,* Fengli Wang,* Hongmei Liu,* Shuhui Song,† Tingting Chen,† Yang Zhang,* Shu Zhu,* Yun Wang,* Caixia Guo,†§ Tie-Shan Tang*§ *
State Key Laboratory of Biomembrane and Membrane Biotechnology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China † Laboratory of Disease Genomics and Individual Medicine, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China
Thimerosal is a vaccine antimicrobial preservative which has long been suspected an iatrogenic factor possibly contributing to neurodevelopmental disorders including autism. The association between infant vaccine thimerosal exposure and autism remains an open question. Although thimerosal has been removed from mandatory childhood vaccines in the United States, thimerosal-preserved vaccines are still widely used outside of the United States especially in developing countries. Notably, thimerosal-containing vaccines are being given to the newborns within the first 12–24 h after birth in some countries. To examine the possible neurotoxic effects of early neonatal exposure to a higher level of thimerosal, FVB mice were subcutaneously injected with thimerosal-mercury at a dose which is 20 times higher as that used for regular Chinese infant immunization during the first 4 months of life. Thimerosal-treated mice exhibited neural development delay, social interaction deficiency, and inclination of depression. Apparent neuropathological changes were also observed in adult mice neonatally-treated with thimerosal. High-throughput RNA sequencing of autistic-behaved mice brains revealed the alternation of a number of canonical pathways involving neuronal development, neuronal synaptic function, and the dysregulation of endocrine system Intriguingly, the elevation of anterior pituitary secreting hormones occurred exclusively in male but not in female thimerosal-treated mice, demonstrating for the first time the gender bias of thimerosal-mercury toxicity with regard to endocrine system. Our results indicate that higher dose of neonatal thimerosal-mercury (20 times higher than that used in human) is capable of inducing long-lasting substantial dysregulation of neurodevelopment, synaptic function, and end
Velly velly solly....
... Our results indicate that higher dose of neonatal thimerosal-mercury (20 times higher than that used in human) is capable of inducing long-lasting substantial dysregulation of neurodevelopment, synaptic function, and endocrine system, which could be the causal involvements of autistic-like behavior in mice.
Over at AoA this morning, Kent Heckenlively demonstrates just how the anti-vax contingent is played by their heroes. After criticizing Thompson for waiting 10 years to go public, he makes the incredible statement:
"Scientists like Wakefield, Hooker, and Mikovits would NEVER dream of concealing data. For them, that would be the equivalent of a crime against humanity."
Wakefield is a known fraud. His papers have been retracted precisely because he concealed/manipulated data. Mikovits the same:
http://retractionwatch.com/2011/12/22/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-xmrv-pap…
"the authors acknowledged to Science that they omitted important information from the legend of this figure panel."
And Wakefield just demonstrated that he lies like a rug, right on Jake's blog, for all to see.
Yet, Kent still believes that he's perfect. What a tool. Can't these people see that Wakefield is playing them for his own personal wealth?
Situations like this are like money are like Money is Wakefield's bank....he'll be able to ride this particular wave for a few years, garnering additional money from speaking engagements and "legal defense funds" to keep up his current lifestyle...pretty sad, actually.
Damn....that was horrible.
Like Money in Wakefield's bank....is what I meant to say.
Lawrence,
One positive from this is that now Jake knows that Wakefield lies. He lies easily and often. Jake is a bright guy, if just a bit misguided. And he won't forget this. He also won't forget how his former friends turned on him when he pointed out the lie, and how they said that it was OK for Wakefield to lie because it was for the greater good. That might, just might, get him thinking that it is possible that Wakefield lied about even more important things when it suited him to do so.
Ethyl mercury in vaccines is transported to tissues and enters the cells where it is converted to inorganic mercury . See
Quicksilverscientific.com for more info on biological effects ( so far known) on mercury in living systems.
When you eat sushi, it is generally assumed that an adult with a fairly well functioning detoxification system is eating it. When mercury, or any of the other toxins ( aluminium) in seemingly insignificant amounts ( to an adult) is injected into a baby( for example Hep B at 12 hours old) with a very limited detoxification capacity - liver not fully functioning for a few days after birth-the effects are rather different and potentially devastating.
All you self accredited scientifically brilliant minds on this blog who seem to know everything there is to know about the world could use a little more humility especially when young developing children are concerned.
I think I may 'get' Tim's mode of self-expression. I'd just as soon see folks ignore Tim on the Oracian principle "We don’t care about changing the anti-vaxers minds, because their minds can’t be changed. What we do care about is persuading the general public, particularly the fence sitters." But for those still wanting to chat him up, here' are my hypotheses about 'where he's coming from'...
I take his semantic excesses ("fucktarded tool") and his stylistic flourishes ("derping out scientificy sounding analysis", "{ya bunch of self-loathing anarchists} " etc.) as essentially theatrical. I think he's probably smarter than the typical anti-vax-trolls who show up here, as my guess is that while saying what he believes to be true, his tongue is nevertheless darting into his cheek while saying much of it. The typical trolls don't crack jokes, especially self-deprecating ones. ("You’re like me, I guess. Not a regular guest here and quite dim.") They just reel of one sincerely spiteful insult after the next occasionally wrapped in junior high level sarcasm.
Tim's more literary, The SWAT team and pot references especially lead me to suspect he's trying to pull of something like the 'gonzo' style of Hunter S. Thompson. Or maybe a hipster version of Triumph The Insult Comic Dog. Or maybe Lewis Carroll crossed with a young Scott Ferrall.*
In short, I think he playing with Oracians in a way that's intended to be a tad condescending, but NOT actually mean-spirited. My guess is he was being more sincere than not when he wrote "peace buds" and claimed he was trying to compliment Mephistopheles O’Brien.
What I'm saying is it's POSSIBLE (as in a probability that can be expressed in integers rather than, say, numbers beginning with a decimal point followed by three of more zeroes) that someone tossing out smack like 'I would have said 'fucktarded tool' but you've grown on me and I may need a surgeon to remove the growth' and dropping a pun like "I suggest you stick WITH words that have less of an opposing static charge" (get it? Static. Stick WITH..) is enough of a self-aware jokester that he'd know that, taken LITERALLY, his reply of "then they probably had a Statist drone of a mother" to ScienceMom's concern for the insults adult autists have had to face all their lives, would be fucktarded tool douche-canoe derpery in extremis. In which case he would have meant it as I-can-only-there-wrapped-in-irony joke, and another pun on the number of times the word 'statistic' has been used in this thread. (Get it? Statist. Tic. Static...)
Now, Tim may be adopting a web-persona just for the purpose of needling folks here in a way that lets him point-and-laugh at how nobody gets his jokes. Or that may just the way he expresses himself all the time. If so, I'd bet he's a 'free agent' who agrees with the anti-vaxers, but doesn't hang out with them in cyberspace as he thinks they're too square and they think he's too effin' weird. Either way, the 'prose voice' he's employing in this thread has nothing whatsoever to do with the anti-vax contents of his posts.
The thing is, IMHO, Tim's lingo doesn't matter. IMHO, arguing with anti-vaxers is a waste of time no matter how they present themselves. They're venting, not listening. Maybe venting back releases the accumulated stress blocking the self-healing energy field of your Qi. :-) I guess I can't be too judgmental about that. At least posting here is free, and you're not paying a fucktarded douche canoe to re-align your subluxations. :-) :-)
* Ferrall (fur-EL) hosts a late-night sports-talk show on CBS Sports Radio. I intentionally picked a person whose fame I guessed would lie outside the ambits of most Oracians, just as a reminder that there are whole Other Worlds out there in Pop Culture. If you're curious about Planet Ferrall, I put a short compilation audio clip and some text notes at: http://youtu.be/TD4dfy-jEEk. This is 'new' middle-aged Ferrall. The 'old' young Ferrall is on display at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt_hSF7kMEM
@YD 322 I'm not sure what I should take from that snippet. After all no-one here claims that *any* compound is safe at all levels (the dose makes the poison and all that) - and I'm supposing that the x20 is weight adjusted otherwise its beyond ridiculous.
On a more general point - I am far far from being an expert, but I had thought quite a few symptoms of autism were behvaioural and pretty specific to humans - mice can't even begin to have reduced language abilites for instance. Isn't pushing comparative psych a little far to claim that mice have autistic-like behaviour? (I don't know - its a real question for anyone here to answer - not rhetorical)
That's an interesting approach, though I can think of several possible confounders. What did the Geiers find?
Those are striking results, though I don't see any statistical analysis, so we don't know if they are statistically significant. One has to wonder why they are so different to the results obtained by other researchers, such as this case control study PMID: 18554566, which found:
They even mention the Geiers work in this area:
Also, since the Geiers' research was described by the Institute of Medicine as "seriously flawed, "uninterpretable", and marred by incorrect use of scientific terms" and by the American Academy of Pediatrics as containing "numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements." I think we're safe in disregarding this study.
Moving on....
Lawton M 2007 "The aims of this work were to compare the effects of methyl mercury chloride and thimerosal on neurite/process outgrowth and microtubule proteins in differentiating mouse N2a neuroblastoma and rat C6 glioma cells. Exposure for 4h to sublethal concentrations of both compounds inhibited neurite outgrowth to a similar extent in both cells lines compared to controls."
Sublethal concentration? In other words thousands of times higher than those seen in infants after vaccination. Irrelevant.
Herdman ML 2006 "SK-N-SH cells, treated with a range of thimerosal concentrations (0–10μM) for 2 and 4 h, showed an increase of JNK phosphorylation at 5 and 10μM at both time points in comparison with thiosalicylate".
A thimerosal concentration of 5 microM is 1,000 mcg/L, 175 times higher than the highest seen in infants post-vaccination. Irrelevant.
Lee-Wong M 2005 An account of a patient with thimerosal sensitivity. "Patch testing confirmed a T-cell-mediated sensitivity to thimerosal." Since we know that some people are sensitive to thimerosal, I don't see the relevance.
Bultynck G 2004 This looked at the effects of thimerosal on the Ca2+-flux properties of the IP3 (inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate) receptor (IP3R). The thimerosal concentrations used were 100 μM which is 20,000 mcg/L, or 3,500 times greater than the highest seen in infants post-vaccination. Irrelevant.
Alexandre H 2003 " we evaluated the cytological effects of the inhibitory 10 min-long treatment with TMS 0.4 mM using confocal fluorescence microscopy."
TMS is thimerosal and 0.4 mM is the same as 400 µM, or 80,000 mcg/L, 14,000 times greater than the highest seen in infants post-vaccination. Irrelevant.
Makani S 2002 thimerosal-induced apoptosis in T cells, the lowest concentration of thimerosal used was 0.5 µM, which is 100 mcg/L, 17 times higher than the highest level seen in infants post vaccination. Some parts of the study used 2.5 µM thimerosal, which is 80 times higher than the highest level seen in infants post vaccination. Irrelevant.
Montero M 2001 Stimulation by thimerosal of histamine-induced Ca(2+) release in intact HeLa cells seen with aequorin targeted to the endoplasmic reticulum. I can't find a full text version that gives the concentration of thimerosal used.
Müller M 2001 Inhibition of the human erythrocytic glutathione-S-transferase T1 (GST T1) by thimerosal. "For the normal conjugator we have determined a 2.77 mM thimerosal concentration to inhibit 50% of the GST T1 activity. In the case of the super-conjugator a 2.3 mM thimerosal concentration causes a 50% inhibition of the enzyme activity. For both phenotypes a 14.8 mM thimerosal concentration results in residual enzyme activities equal to those typically detected in non-conjugator lysates."
The lowest concentration of thimerosal that inhibited the enzyme was 2.3 mM, 2,300 microM which is 460 mcg/L, 80 times higher than the highest level seen in infants post vaccination. Irrelevant.
At this point I have run out of patience. Of the 15 studies I have looked at, 10 show that concentrations of over an order of magnitude (in some cases 3 orders of magnitude) greater than the maximum concentration transiently seen in infants post vaccination can have various biological effects. The large difference between these conectrations and those seen physiologically mean they are irrelevant to assessments of the toxicity of thimerosal in vaccines.
Of the remaining 5 studies, one shows a transient association between thimerosal exposre and psychomotor development that has disappeared by the age of 3, one that found a transient association between hair mercury and a measure of the development of infants and young children that had also disappeared by age 3, one was a flawed study by the Geiers, one a case study of a patient with thimerosal sensitivity, and finally a study that found thimerosal affected histamine release at concentrations I am unable to establish.
I am utterly unimpressed by this supposed "evidence". None of it is at all compelling and most of it supports the idea that thimerosal is safe in the amounts contained in vaccines.
Just one more point:
Looking at an author's work and deciding to discount it because, as eminent scientists have concluded, it is "seriously flawed, 'uninterpretable', and marred by incorrect use of scientific terms" and contains "numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements" is not an ad hominem.
Why would I or anyone accept research by incompetent researchers:
1. Who conducted unapproved analysis on the VSD datasets they were given access to
2. Who chemically castrated kids based on junk science
3. Who gave testimony at the NVICP and was ruled to be, "testifying beyond his expertise"
4. Who have clear conflicts of interest since their whole practice was based on the idea that thimerosal in vaccines is dangerous
5. One of whom has been disbarred from practising medicine because his treatment, "endangers autistic children and exploits their parents by administering to the children a treatment protocol that has a known substantial risk of serious harm and which is neither consistent with evidence-based medicine nor generally accepted in the relevant scientific community"?
Especially when their findings are contradicted by numerous other studies by more reliable researchers.
Sorry, that last comment is missing its beginning. Here's the whole thing:
I'm ignoring most of YoDaddie's comments, as he has simply reiterated points that have already been addressed, a familiar strategy. I thought it worth taking a look at that list of references though. BTW, I think the effects of thimerosal are on topic, since Thompson has (apparently) claimed that it is associated with tics.
I have looked at "stuff like this" too. I don't have time to go through every reference but I'll pick a few at random, one from each year until I get too bored (only one Geier study though, I value my mental health).
Zimmermann et al. (2013) - "MeHg and EtHg caused significant (p < 0.0001) decreases in cellular viability when cells were treated during 30 min with each mercurial following by a washing period of 24 h (EC50 values of 4.83 and 5.05 μM, respectively)."
The EC50 (effective concentration) for ethylmercury is 4.83 micromol/L, or 966 mcg/L. If you remember, the highest blood mercury levels seen in children after vaccination was 5.7mcg/L the day after vaccination, dropping to baseline levels after 30 days. That's a difference of more than 2 orders of magnitude between toxic levels and levels observed in children. I can't think of any drug that isn't toxic at over 100 times the therapeutic level. Even common salt can be lethal if to ingest 100 times the amount used in cooking. Irrelevant.
Mrozek-Budzyn D (2012) - "An adverse effect of neonatal TCV exposure was observed for the psychomotor development index (PDI) only in the 12th and 24th months of life (β = − 6.44, p < 0.001 and β = − 5.89, p < 0.001). No significant effect of neonatal TCV exposure was found in the 36th month." A study of fewer than 200 children and a transient association that has disappeared by the age of 3.
Khan A. 2012 "Following a period of recovery from the stress of shipment, selected SHR dams (n=3) received thimerosal (TM; Sigma-Aldrich, St Louis, MO) at a dose of 200 μg/kg body weight (BW) [...] The dose of TM given to dams was an order of magnitude higher than the dose administered to mouse pups, primate infants, or the dose given in vaccines to human infants."
So ten times the dose given to human infants, what are the effects? A barely statistically significant change in expression of a gene involved in thyroid hormone regulation. Irrelevant.
Secor JD 2010 "Our results demonstrated (i) mercury in the form of mercury(II) chloride, methylmercury, and thimerosal induced PLD activation in a dose- and time-dependent manner"
PLD is thiol-redox-mediated phospholipase D, an enzyme involved in glutathione metabolism. So, what concentration of thimerosal had these effects? It was 25 micromol/L, that's 5,000 times the concentration seen in children after vaccination. Irrelevant.
Marques RC 2009 "Length of lactation and hair-Hg were each significantly correlated with GS, but in opposite ways: length of lactation was positive and significantly correlated with all GS at 60 months; hair-Hg concentrations were negative and significantly correlated with GS at 6 months (r=-0.333; P=0.002) and 60 months (r=-0.803; P=0.010), but not at 36 months."
GS is a test that used to be used to measure the development of infants and young children. Even if the association between hair mercury and GS is real, I see nothing to indicate a link with thimerosal in vaccines. Does exposure to thimerosal result in elevated hair mercury? It seems unlikely since it is excreted so quickly. It seems odd that no effects were seen at age 3, as in an earlier study. That suggests some confounding factor to me.
Epstein SP 2009 This was looking at contact lens solutions. "Conjunctival and corneal cell toxicity was seen with all preservatives. [...] Generally, the order of decreasing toxicity at the most commonly used concentrations: Thi (0.0025%) [...]"
What concentration is 0.0025%? That would be 0.0025 grams per 100 ml, 2.5 mg/100 ml, 25 mg/L, or 25,000 mcgl/L. So, thimerosal is irritating to eye cells at a concentration over 4,000 times higher than those seen in infants post vaccination. Irrelevant.
Geier DA 2008 I needed some light relief, and the Geiers as usual, provided it. Here's their explanation of this study:
That's an interesting approach, though I can think of several possible confounders. What did the Geiers find?
Those are striking results, though I don't see any statistical analysis, so we don't know if they are statistically significant. One has to wonder why they are so different to the results obtained by other researchers, such as this case control study PMID: 18554566, which found:
They even mention the Geiers work in this area:
Also, since the Geiers' research was described by the Institute of Medicine as "seriously flawed, "uninterpretable", and marred by incorrect use of scientific terms" and by the American Academy of Pediatrics as containing "numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements." I think we're safe in disregarding this study.
Moving on....
Lawton M 2007 "The aims of this work were to compare the effects of methyl mercury chloride and thimerosal on neurite/process outgrowth and microtubule proteins in differentiating mouse N2a neuroblastoma and rat C6 glioma cells. Exposure for 4h to sublethal concentrations of both compounds inhibited neurite outgrowth to a similar extent in both cells lines compared to controls."
Sublethal concentration? In other words thousands of times higher than those seen in infants after vaccination. Irrelevant.
Herdman ML 2006 "SK-N-SH cells, treated with a range of thimerosal concentrations (0–10μM) for 2 and 4 h, showed an increase of JNK phosphorylation at 5 and 10μM at both time points in comparison with thiosalicylate".
A thimerosal concentration of 5 microM is 1,000 mcg/L, 175 times higher than the highest seen in infants post-vaccination. Irrelevant.
Lee-Wong M 2005 An account of a patient with thimerosal sensitivity. "Patch testing confirmed a T-cell-mediated sensitivity to thimerosal." Since we know that some people are sensitive to thimerosal, I don't see the relevance.
Bultynck G 2004 This looked at the effects of thimerosal on the Ca2+-flux properties of the IP3 (inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate) receptor (IP3R). The thimerosal concentrations used were 100 μM which is 20,000 mcg/L, or 3,500 times greater than the highest seen in infants post-vaccination. Irrelevant.
Alexandre H 2003 " we evaluated the cytological effects of the inhibitory 10 min-long treatment with TMS 0.4 mM using confocal fluorescence microscopy."
TMS is thimerosal and 0.4 mM is the same as 400 µM, or 80,000 mcg/L, 14,000 times greater than the highest seen in infants post-vaccination. Irrelevant.
Makani S 2002 thimerosal-induced apoptosis in T cells, the lowest concentration of thimerosal used was 0.5 µM, which is 100 mcg/L, 17 times higher than the highest level seen in infants post vaccination. Some parts of the study used 2.5 µM thimerosal, which is 80 times higher than the highest level seen in infants post vaccination. Irrelevant.
Montero M 2001 Stimulation by thimerosal of histamine-induced Ca(2+) release in intact HeLa cells seen with aequorin targeted to the endoplasmic reticulum. I can't find a full text version that gives the concentration of thimerosal used.
Müller M 2001 Inhibition of the human erythrocytic glutathione-S-transferase T1 (GST T1) by thimerosal. "For the normal conjugator we have determined a 2.77 mM thimerosal concentration to inhibit 50% of the GST T1 activity. In the case of the super-conjugator a 2.3 mM thimerosal concentration causes a 50% inhibition of the enzyme activity. For both phenotypes a 14.8 mM thimerosal concentration results in residual enzyme activities equal to those typically detected in non-conjugator lysates."
The lowest concentration of thimerosal that inhibited the enzyme was 2.3 mM, 2,300 microM which is 460 mcg/L, 80 times higher than the highest level seen in infants post vaccination. Irrelevant.
At this point I have run out of patience. Of the 15 studies I have looked at, 10 show that concentrations of over an order of magnitude (in some cases 3 orders of magnitude) greater than the maximum concentration transiently seen in infants post vaccination can have various biological effects. The large difference between these conectrations and those seen physiologically mean they are irrelevant to assessments of the toxicity of thimerosal in vaccines.
Of the remaining 5 studies, one shows a transient association between thimerosal exposre and psychomotor development that has disappeared by the age of 3, one that found a transient association between hair mercury and a measure of the development of infants and young children that had also disappeared by age 3, one was a flawed study by the Geiers, one a case study of a patient with thimerosal sensitivity, and finally a study that found thimerosal affected histamine release at concentrations I am unable to establish.
I am utterly unimpressed by this supposed "evidence". None of it is at all compelling and most of it supports the idea that thimerosal is safe in the amounts contained in vaccines.
Just one more point:
Looking at an author's work and deciding to discount it because, as eminent scientists have concluded, it is "seriously flawed, 'uninterpretable', and marred by incorrect use of scientific terms" and contains "numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements" is not an ad hominem.
Why would I accept research by incompetent researchers:
1. Who conducted unapproved analysis on the VSD datasets they were given access to
2. Who chemically castrated kids based on junk science
3. Who gave testimony at the NVICP and was ruled to be, "testifying beyond his expertise"
4. Who have clear conflicts of interest since their whole practisc was based on the idea that thimerosal in vaccines is dangerous
5. One of whom has been disbarred from practising medicine because his treatment, "endangers autistic children and exploits their parents by administering to the children a treatment protocol that has a known substantial risk of serious harm and which is neither consistent with evidence-based medicine nor generally accepted in the relevant scientific community"?
Especially when their findings are contradicted by numerous other studies by more reliable researchers.
YoDaddie,
Why do you keep posting studies that show thimerosal is only toxic in concentrations far, far higher than those seen in children after vaccination? Have you failed to understand what I have explained to you in language as simple as I can manage?
From your last batch of links:
Blockquote fail is hopefully obvious.
Ugg, YoDaddie.
Suffice it to say it's probably not a good idea to drink Hg. But no more! It gets hard to get back up and find my link..The alzheimer's one looks like a good resource for the futher interested.
Incidentally, did you take a look at the glyphosate coorelations?? Just looking at the graphs {if they're valid} is much more compelling to me than just the mercury -- In fact, it is easy to see {I *think*} that any reduction from the mercury would definately have that signal sunk due to the glyphosate rise already in that same period.
AND, perhaps more importantly, why that second Thorsen study seemed to have shown more autism AFTER the mercury was removed.
Even if mercury were the sole cause before, it would be of relatively little significance now (Of course, I'm going on intuition here).
http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/glyphosate/NancySwanson.pdf
I *think* they may have ya'll fishing for red snapper over the mercury, currently. But mainly monsanto has genetically polluted the whole world and I'd like to see them fold -- that is what it would take to have our world back, sustainable small-scale distributed farming of energy and fuel, and people* -- That situation is what is anathama to Monsanto and what they have thus far been mostly able to destroy.
Otherwise, it's AGENDA 21and it is over.
But just posting loads and loads of those technical papers is meaningless when one realizes that the policy is written down well in advance before the public even hears of the issue.
In other words, 'those are lots of words to work through when, in the end, the *correct* answer is the one that fit the preordained agenda.
*that is, 'distribution' of people and NOT a Soylent Green.
Dear Orac,
Please check this thread for the number of times I've been labeled "troll" by y'all Illuminati Lizard Orac groupies and asked to back up my ethylmercury concern. No backup - no concern. These are just a few of the papers that have generated that concern for me. I'll stop, but can you agree that without significant weight applied to the other side of the rusty balance here, nothing would ever budge?
The reality is that there should be significant worry about Thimerosal causing tics, Tourette's, ADHD, Asperger's, autism, etc. These are all potentially neurological damage, in some cases anyway.
You can't dismiss Thimerosal in vaccines due to it being a fraction of ingested mercury amounts, sorry Julian Frost, Krebiozen et al., because every GI tract cell creates glutathione, which protects against mercury injury. Injected ethylmercury bypasses all that. It's excreted. As Krebiozen admits but can't complete the circle. And you can't dismiss Thimerosal because autism rates have not decreased since the 90s. Autism identification techniques have increased the perceived rate of autism incidence. And because multi-use flu vaccine rates have increased also. You have two rates going up, one going down. These confounding factors obscure the answer.
Every suggestion that we proceed with more caution and get Thimerosal out completely, world-wide, is met with derision and skepticism about ethylmercury's toxicity at vaccination concentrations. I even get back that we should have never removed Thimerosal in the first place, because allegedly doing so just agitated the "anti-vaxxers".
Dear Illuminati Lizard Orac groupies: There are scientists out there very worried about Thimerosal. Orac won't let me give you more data here, so go find it yourself.
I think that this is were y'all Illuminati Lizard Orac groupies "...honesty TBD" happens.
Is every one of you certain that erring on the side of caution by completely outlawing Thimerosal is not actually the best policy?
I'm not an "Anti-vaxxer". I don't want my kids to get the diseases vaccines are trying to eradicate. But I am "Anti-Thimerosal".
Now please excuse me, I think that my "I'm a Troll" T-shirt is ready.
"But I am “Anti-Thimerosal”."
Then you should be fine with the MMR vaccine, since it has never had any since its 1971 introduction.
Sadmar,
I have apologized to Science Mom, I have tonned it down, and I have pointed out that I'm now convinced that it's probably not the mercury, after all.
Wouldn't both sides of this entrenched position be satisfied if
(a.) The a-vaxxers vaxed more
(b.) we all stop the autism and the rest of the (what I believe to be due to monsanto) tsunami of other exploding maladies?
As for *literary*
In case you missed why I used *snapper* instead of the usual *herring* here is that it contains a little more mercury than herring but now I'm not so afraid of it if Hg is not the overwhelming cause of all this.
Like I said, can anybody summarize for me how these graphs are scaled or otherwise 'doctored up' to look like such an enormous driver of it all?
Now, go out and squirt some real causations out on the dandelions like you've won the west.
Oh, and Sadmar,
While that is very cleaver of you to come up with -- you did not 'get it'.
by *statist* I mean one who worships the State unquestioningly and by *static* I meant "opposing static charge" as I was chided for a misspelling with the missapplication of grammar --stick TO' vs 'stick with-- .
May I take it that you're sort of the 'heads up' gatekeeper around here or do you just work for Monsanto??
Many maladies, one driving signal??
http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/glyphosate/NancySwanson.pdf
Sadmar, thank you so much for contributing to this *tall-walling* which is swamping this thread since I posted that link last time.
Dear Chris,
I was OK with MMR until Thompson was outed. Now I'm analyzing that.
But focus please. Were are you on Thimerosal?
Dear Krebiozen.
Regarding:
YoDaddie,
Why do you keep posting studies that show thimerosal is only toxic in concentrations far, far higher than those seen in children after vaccination? Have you failed to understand what I have explained to you in language as simple as I can manage?
From your last batch of links:
cultured lymphocytes (obtained from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange, AGRE) from autistic children and non-autistic siblings were challenged with either 10 μM ethyl mercury,[...]
Do you still not understand that 10 µM is the same as 2,000 mcg/L and that the highest blood levels seen after vaccination were 5.7 mcg/L? Do you not see that factor of 350?
It’s as if you were claiming that people putting a gram of salt on food can be instantly fatal because 350 grams can kill a person. Or that you could batter someone to death with a piece of tissue paper because a baseball bat can hurt someone. It’s just stupid.
Because, Dear sir, for example, some people are genetically glutathione deficient. Just like some folks are genetically insulin deficient. Where most folks easily metabolize mercury a select few other don't. So mercury concentrates in their cells at higher and higher level over time, as more Thimerosal is injected. Like if they get a flu shot annually as y'all recommend. Or if they get their regular vaccine schedule, but live in a third-world. Boys, for example, reportedly have less glutathione than girls. It's a genetic/biochemical testosterone thing. So... would you expect more boys to get ethylmercury damage than girls? Sure. Do more boys get autism than girls? Yep.
Are you positive that injected mercury is not bio-accumulating to dangerous concentrations in a portion of our population?
Do you recommend glutathione assays be taken before each Thimerosal injection? I've never heard you recommend that. That would be cost prohibitive for 99.99% of those taking Thimerosal anyway. You are worried about cost, right? That's one reason you recommend putting cheaper Thimerosal back into all vaccines, right?
Besides the low glutathione potential problem, there are probably other yet-to-be-discovered reasons why injecting ethylmercury should be contraindicated.
Skit:
Year 2099 dude after reading his 101 history: Can you believe that back in 2014 they still injected most people world-wide with mercury containing vaccines? Back when we used to have contagious diseases?
Dude's Buddy: Ya, can you imagine?
Dude: Bunch of fucking Illuminati Lizard idiots. Were they smoking Thimerosal? Pass me that laser-bong.
Dear Chris,
typo - apologies...
.... But focus please. Where are you on Thimerosal?
"Where are you on Thimerosal?"
Why?
So when you investigate MMR, be sure to go back and find the levels of autism in the USA before 1990. Since the MMR vaccine was introduced there in 1971, and was the preferred vaccine for the 1978 Measles Elimination Program, if there is a connection of that vaccine to autism it would have been seen in a country that is much larger, and had been using the vaccine longer than the UK.
Also, be sure to stick only to the MMR vaccines with the Jeryl Lynn mumps component. The Urabe mumps component has never been used in the USA.
Ohh _facepalm_ Ummm sorry Sadmar. I see you DID get it (I'll have my facial eggs over light, please) -- I should have prefaced my last posting with tl;dr. *grins*
@YD341
'Besides the low glutathione potential problem, there are probably other yet-to-be-discovered reasons why injecting ethylmercury should be contraindicated.'
Basically you are saying you have one possible problem that you can justify (at least to your own satisfaction), so you're 'borrowing' some unspecified issues from the unknown future - who needs research with precognisance like that!
Any idea of the timescale? Perhaps 10 years? You could go away and come back then....
there are probably other yet-to-be-discovered reasons why injecting ethylmercury should be contraindicated.
Ah, you already know the conclusions you want and it is only a matter of looking for reasons to support them. Alles klar.
YoDaddie,
All through this discussion I have talked of blood levels and the amount of mercury absorbed and/or retained. GI defenses against ingested mercury have nothing to do with it. Injected ethylmercury is indeed excreted, by the gut, which is why it appears in feces after injection. What circle am I not completing?
It is ridiculous to argue that increased awareness and diagnosis have somehow precisely dovetailed to produce a smooth increase in every country on the world. Anyway, no one is dismissing thimerosal just because of this, it is one piece of a large body of evidence.
I don't think that's true, especially when the CDC states:
Of course, you don't trust the CDC so you probably think this means thimerosal is good for you..
If thimerosal was an important cause of autism you would see a sudden dramatic fall after 2000, not the steady increase we have seen. You can't have a greater diagnostic awareness of something that doesn't exist, can you?
General apology to community:
I'm sorry. I really did believe there was a total and absolute media blackout over the revelations on the 27th -- I really did picture the army in every news room sighting their scopes and proofreading their scoops.
I have never heard of *Orac* (sorry dude, I'm sure it's only me) before that day and I did come in to flame.
The *derisive term* I used has been one of my go to vulgarities of late and it never crossed my mind about who might get offended other than "at least, I didn't call yu that!" And yet, that crossing of the line has been reproduced how many times now?? I to think that perhaps it may need dropping that one into last weeks' box of mean.
While, to my core, I do think there has been and is plenty of coverup and malfeasance within these agencies and that we have all been screwed by Big Pharma and Monsanto, et al; I awoke this morning a little more somewhatat ease with Hg.
^^ It was that paradoxical Thorsen one that did it -- "then something is hiding the decline which has got to be there", I thought.
However, I'm still not A ok with it at all in the very young or in pregant women. I'd like to see it stopped being forced upon people altogether but this is not due to mercury but because the induced inflammation can and does sometimes have horrible concequences, Hg or not. -- I'm talking cats, here. When I'd lay my case out for non-vaxxing my cat during illness or certain vaccines, the veternarian affirmed that, she to, felt that was best. I wish it could be the same with the allopaths.
And for any rigid scheduling or protocol having to be the same for everyone so things are easier to track and trace on the researchers is reprehensible to me.
I've had a saying over certain automobile parts for many years now:
Universal X -- Fits everything but YOUR car
Thank you for your time,
Peaceful Armaggeddon,
Tim
YoDaddie,
>
That's true, but mercury from vaccines is the very least of their problems, since glutathione is a key part of several essential metabolic pathways. How, I might ask, do they cope with the 1,800 micrograms of mercury they absorb and retain from food, water and air? Is the extra 25 micrograms of ethlymercury that from a flu vaccine, less than 1 microgram of which is retained, enough to tip them over the edge into mercury poisoning? I don't think so.
I suspect you are referring to diabetes, in which Type 1 is autoimmune and Type 2 is due to increased insulin resistance, not deficiency;not a great example.
Yet a recent review of the subject found:
We don't see elevated levels of mercury in individuals with ASDs and we don't see an association between thimerosal exposure and ASDs or ADHD. If you want a rational target for your opprobrium, I suggest coal-fired power stations which pump out tons of mercury into the air.
It's an ingenious explanation for something that isn't true. In science, generally observations come first, models to explain them come afterwards. Starting with conclusions and explanations, desperately looking for evidence to support them and ignoring anything that doesn't is pseudoscience.
Give the copious evidence against this being the case, yes I'm positive. Positive enough to make sure any grandchildren I happen to have in the future are vaccinated (my children are adults), even if those vaccines do contain thimerosal.
Tim wrote:
That's the sort of comment that makes it all worth while.
Incidentally, I'm curious about this idea that glutathione deficiency makes it difficult or impossible to excrete mercury. I'm familiar with the idea that mercury poisoning can reduce reduced glutathione (GSH) levels probably by binding to thiol and seleno groups in glutathione precursors such as cysteine and N-acetyl cysteine. It also seems plausible that GSH can protect against the damaging effects of mercury, as it does various other poisons.
However, the specific claim is that GSH is essential to excrete mercury. Do patients with low levels of GSH have problems excreting mercury? Anyone know?
Typical anti-vaxx tactic i.e. shifting the goalposts. When YoDaddy's Gish Gallup was thoroughly and thoughtfully eviscerated by Krebiozen (I can't believe you took the time to do that Kreb), YoDaddy now whinges about glutathione deficiency without any forethought but it just sounds sufficiently sciencey and he heard it somewhere. Please read this: http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/glutathione-synthetase-deficiency and tell us YoDaddy how in Hades would this factor in to your "new-found" fear of thiomersal. Don't you think that an infant with glutathione synthetase deficiency is going to have other symptoms prior to "mercury toxicity"? And furthermore, it isn't the mercury that would even cause neurological symptoms where glutathione synthetase deficiency exists.
However, the specific claim is that GSH is essential to excrete mercury. Do patients with low levels of GSH have problems excreting mercury? Anyone know?
I confess that I can't be arsed looking the details up when dealing with a time-wasting making-stuff-up nimrod.
Me neither, though the numerous typos reveal I didn't give it as much attention as I might have - sorry about that, though the meaning I hope is clear, I have taken to eviscerating a random sampling of gishgallops, which seems an effective enough strategy.
I'm late to the game here, and apologies if this was addressed upthread, I didn't see it specifically addressed. But why is thimerosal being brought up? Considering it's been out of the scheduled vaccines for over a decade, there are very few of the anti-vaccinationist theories that have been as thoroughly debunked. Are they really that desperate that they have to dig up thimerosal? If so, what's their justification? What the hell is a " Thimerosal injection"?
"But why is thimerosal being brought up?"
Especially since the study was on MMR, which has never contained thimerosal.
I suspect it is the only bit Yodaddie and the others know about, and they must all assume every vaccine has always and still contains thimerosal. It basically shows that they are impervious to new and updated facts.
Well then Krebiozen,
I need to extend and revise my remarks.
But it was before 1998.
Clarkson guesstimates a rate of about 1/10 that of methylmercury based on a single autopsy after a six-month dose of several hundred milligrams.
Could you perhaps try to figure out some way to indicate quoted material, like an average fifth-grader?
Dear Science Mom,
I love your sciencey name! Because I like sciency sounding stuff! Thanks for boning up on glutathione deficiency. Not quite sure how you got so far as a seasoned anti-vaxx Jedi without already having studied that. Hummmm…. Or are you just a Padawan? Well, I’m a junior troll, so who am I to judge?
Anyway, for years it’s been known that Autistic children are glutathione deficient. In fact, in 2011 Al-0Yafee Ya et al. stated in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22051046 that “... The impaired glutathione status together with the elevated Trx and TrxR and the remarkable over expression of both Prx I and Prx III, could be used as diagnostic biomarkers of autism.” That’s how common glutathione deficiency is in Autistic children. If a kid has low glutathione levels, the kid is almost surely Autistic. In fact, an entire cottage industry of providing glutathione supplements grew around that discovery. But then you already knew that, right?
Just like your powers of the force emanating from your excessive midichlorians (probably ethylmercury protecting little buggers – who knew?) caused you to realize that common compounds such as acetaminophen decrease glutathione. There’s lots of http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15878691 type references. But you’ve read them all already, right?
My question is – knowing that boys have lower glutathione levels, autistic kids have low glutathione levels, kids on acetaminophen have low glutathione levels, and that glutathione protects from neurological mercury injury, would you man up, like Kreb would, and go ahead and roll up your autistic boy’s sleeve at the doctor’s office after Tylenol hadn’t worked - so you brought him in - when dear Doc says that you might as well give him a hit off his multi-use flu vial while he’s there, because what he has is just a cold?
Or would your sciency mom instincts kick in and you’d rather say “How about some of the yummy single-use stuff doc?”
TomB,
Thompson has apparently said that thimerosal in vaccines causes tics and autism-like symptoms etc., which in my book makes thimerosal on topic. It doesn't make it any less tedious to those of us that have heard it a thousand times before, I know, but there may be fence-sitters who haven't had the facts about thimerosal and mercury presented to them before.
"Thompson has apparently said that thimerosal in vaccines causes tics and autism-like symptoms etc."
Well, other than the (optional) flu vaccine, where does he say the thimerosal come from? There isn't enough trace remaining in the pediatric vaccines to make a difference.
Narad,
Thanks, that's a useful paper to add to my collection. I suspect such a high dose overwhelms fecal excretion, leading to elevated blood levels which leads to deposition in hair. The paper states, "the level in blood was approximately 7 µg Hg/mL", but this would be 7,000 µg/L, which surely can't be right. I suspect they mean either µg Hg/L or ng Hg/mL, or have I missed something?
Just for perspective, a total dose of of 284–450 mg (that's milligrams) Hg over six months is equivalent to 63 TCV flu vaccines each and every day.
TomB,
He is referring to another ten-year-old paper. I know, it seems some people like flogging a dead horse.
Thanks all for the quick catch-up.
This is frustrating beyond belief.
Well, other than the (optional) flu vaccine, where does he say the thimerosal come from?
Alchemy. Or possibly from the future, due to an entirely understandable confusion between thimerosal and thiotimaline such as anyone could make.
A quick look at this finds "the investigators concluded that the onset of [methylmercury paresthesia] symptoms should occur at blood levels above 200 µg Hg/L of whole blood and above 50 µg Hg/g of hair," so, given the difference between 250:1 and 27:1, I'm thinking it should be 70 µg/L.
Then again, I'm not feeling in tip-top shape today.
There's no suggestion that boy died of mercury poisoning, or even any suggestion he had symptoms, is there? It just says he, " died 5 days after receiving infusion of artificial human plasma containing thimerosal as a preservative". It would seem likely he had a serious condition to require six months of daily immunoglobulin infusions, and possibly died of that condition. I couldn't find the Japanese paper referred to.
By the way, if anyone needed evidence that Paul G. King is as nutty as a fruitcake, look no further (PDF).
The snippet available from G—le Books identifies it as "protein-losing enteropathy since four years of age."
Yodaddy: The reality is that there should be significant worry about Thimerosal causing tics, Tourette’s, ADHD, Asperger’s, autism, etc. These are all potentially neurological damage, in some cases anyway.
If I didn't already know you were thick as a plank, this comment would prove it. ADHD, autism and Tourette's are not equivalent at all. I am pretty sure ADD has been running in my family for at least three generations, and the two generations before me didn't have the MMR. They did, however, get both measles and mumps. If you buy the line that MMR causes neurological damage, wouldn't the diseases themselves cause much more extreme neurological damage?
Tourette's is genetic. End of story. Until recently, Tourette's sufferers lived and died in asylums, so most anti-vaxxers (including you) think it's a recent thing.
And here's something for your tiny brain to chew on- perhaps the reason there are more boys and men with autism is just purely down to human error and not hormones( also, glutathione and oxytocin are made up.) Girls tend not to get diagnosed with autism or Asperger's because people don't look for it.
I am shocked by this revelation, and will be contacting my biochemistry professors to inform them forthwith. Oxytocin was only mentioned in passing, but I had several lectures on glutathione, in which I was told of the importance of having enough of the reduced variety around; if you don't the lenses of your eyes go opaque and your red blood cell membranes disintegrate, or so they told me, but now I find it was all lies....
YoDaddy and any others concerned that glutathione deficiencies cause extraordinary sensitivity to thimerosal in vaccines,
If glutathione deficiency results in an inability to excrete "toxins", thimerosal being one example, then why don't people with this deficiency die an early death? How does someone with mito make it past age 1? After all, it can't be just thimerosal that they can't excrete, it must be all kind of other elements and compounds that we are all exposed to our our daily lives. Aluminum from the dust we breathe, gas fumes, VOCs, heavy metals in foods, etc.
And then again, autistics are expected to have a full life expectancy.
Krebiozen said,
could it be Rhabdomyolysis??
I'm no doctor but I did watch House on Fox a couple years ago.
Oxytocin is the new Rohypnol, Krebiozen -- did the patient get fucked?
OK, it took three hours to OCR, but the Suzuki stuff is also commented on in here.
From pages 129–130,
Rather than proofreading this stuff for the sake of blockquoting (which is what I was starting to do), the details start around page 397, although there are a number of scattered mentions.
The OCR'd version is here. A robust popup blocker is recommended.
I feel that this display has not received adequate mockery:
I'm as certain as Ivory soap is pure that only one of those two is a legitimate typo.
^ (Or three, depending on one's scoring system.)
@krebiozen
Would you? I mean, they are right next to CNN -- The most trusted name in serial liars
Here.
Is that ^^ some kind of psyop, Narad??
FUCK!!!!!!
Would it be possible for anybody to pick a few pertinent sentences and let the link speak for itself??????
Of course, it's only a suggestion.
Thx for the House archive, Narad.
I promise i won't stream them or download them or critque them or anything otherwise nefarious with them but watch them. ;>
if i had a back-channel to IT folks {yea, we tortured some folks} here then I might inquire if it is hard to implement opening a link in a new window/tab???
it's just a suggestion, afterall
Narad said,
Which is precisly why these windows need to be set to default open in a separate tab so NoScript and whatnot can be managed between them.
I know you can set it with the browser, but I forgot.
More like dumbass troll who posted comments to the wrong post, went on an email tirade with the host, had a wordpress tantrum replete with AoA editors' email addy's, then said oopsie, posted a ridiculous Gish Gallup, had arse handed to him, shifted goal-posts and are now making a clumsy attempt at Star Wars imagery. Yeah, I'd say good judgement isn't your strong suit.
What I do know is that you are making rather broad statements based upon some investigators whose only replication is by themselves. You would have done marginally better by citing James who doesn't claim what you are claiming. A child with chronically deficient glutathione levels is not only going to have a helluva lot more difficulty with environmental exposures that have nothing to do with ethylmercury but there are assays which can detect glutathione levels and circulating "toxins" and this has all been hashed out during the OAP and found very wanting for your pet hypothesis.
So you do know what in vitro means and that acute or chronic overdoses of acetaminophen are required to reduce glutathione levels right Jar Jar?
And how do you know that boys have lower glutathione levels and how do you know that autistic kids have lower glutathione levels? Your citations thus far have not risen to the level of any evidence that could support either of those broad statements. And let me help you with some other bone-headed statements you make:
Kids on acetaminophen do not have reduced glutathione levels or are you implying that all kids on acetaminophen are overdosed?
The amount of mercury found even in the pre TCV-free era did not cause "neurological mercury injury" and it sure as shit doesn't now with no mercury in paediatric vaccines. You have that other obstacle to overcome which you set yourself up to do and that is to explain how, if so many autistic children have depleted glutathione levels and prone to "neurological mercury injury" then how has autism prevalences increased globally after the removal of thiomersal?
It really doesn't matter to me since my science education and experience tell me so. It must suck to live in such fear and ignorance as you do.
YoDaddie,
Thx for the emesis --
Your Blue Room {excerpt from THX1138-- The Passengers}
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xS4hJabqRc4
other than that, did anyone ever find that tainted hedgehog??
I know I'm just spamming now, but have you guys ever heard of *page-breaks*?? 400 posts, many of which are tall-walls, on one page gets kinda unwieldy, after all.
@tim
That's on the developers of the site.
@Krebiozen - I was also surprised to find out that glutathione and oxytocin are made up.
Makes me wonder why a phamacist and I spent a couple of hours compounding an oral glutathione solution for a premie with (among other problems) GSD. I don't think anybody made any money on that deal so it wasn't big pharma's idea.
As for the oxytocin, guess I'll stop lugging liter bags of the stuff up to L&D.
Ah an article about random things that correlate. It could be better: Suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation correlates with Lawyers in DC
Dear Tim,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKpX-o-AMaY&list=PLE3177551DB3AAEA3
Welcome to Illuminati Lizard Orac Groupies.
That is certainly a cogent argument against suicide and should be made into a PSA. "Don't do it... you'll create another lawyer!"
Dear Sciency Mom,
Did you also skip http://www.ijme.in/index.php/ijme/article/view/2015/4375 like Dear Kreb did? Is that how sciency mom does her science as well? By quick scan after disrespectfully insolently ad homineming the authors? I'll ask you the same question: What part of that paper’s conclusion do you disagree with?
I get that you and Kreb sugar your kid's Cheerios with Thimerosal. Knock youselves out. But that "sure as shit" doesn’t mean that the above described double-standard does not actually exist. And it "sure as shit" doesn’t mean that now there is no mercury in paediatric vaccines. Our first-world pharmaceutical companies are pumping cheap Thimerosal-containing vaccines into third-world children still. That "sure as shit" is beyond contestation.
Dear Lawrence never did figure it out. Perhaps you would please go to http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/Thimerosal/Index.html and read the first sentence:
What does that "sure as shit" mean to you? Is it wrong? Or are Thimerosal containing vaccines "sure as shit" still being administered to even US children?
Apologies for excessively rubbing your nose in your "sure as shit", but I sure as shit am not very proud of us today.
Thanks Mephistopheles O'Brien for your response at 307. I harbour many of the same thoughts, especially regarding how you suggest that its difficult to account for confounding variables. I guess that's why I like to try and look at one or two things at a time (tho dam near impossible to do)... and appreciate your insight. This is always a question on my mind. Research regarding Tylenol and Vaccines - really attracts my attention overall - more so than vaccines on their own. @ Krebiozen thanks again for producing specific studies regarding Aluminum rather than trashing my comments as I was not aware of any specific published research regarding Aluminum. I admit had to look up gish gallop. lol. I chose to respond and engage with certain commentators based on their demonstrated knowledge and how they interact overall. Your responses were helpful and do not believe that resulted in *gish gallop*. I don't recall flooding comments with lists of different bits of information, nor going off topic. It was a nice chuckle when I logged on this morning after spending a beautiful long weekend with my family to check on the responses. I feel sorry for those that have nothing better to do than insult people they have never met...all weekend long (wow such nastiness and I don't mean just to myself). I thought Krebiozen's question about glutathione was legitimate and was hopeful someone knowledgeable on this topic would answer. As I have read some published articles towards the same observations (hence my previous suppositions about an *at risk* group).
@Yo - given that we've already said that a small number of flu vaccines still contain Thimerasol (and certainly not those routinely given to children - like FluMist, for instance), you are the one that is "full of sh*t."
Because the safety profile of Thimerasol has been confirmed & vaccines that utilize it as a preservative don't require the level of refrigeration that single-use vials do here in the States. You can certainly see how that would be a good thing, given the overall lack of modern medical facilities & electricity in most areas where vaccines are most needed.
Hundreds of thousands of people still die in the 3rd World of VPDs - but because of your overblown concerns, I guess they are acceptable losses in your idiotic crusade.
YoDaddie:
Maybe you'd get a bit more respect if you would learn what ad hominem really means.
But then again: Nah.
I see that you can't even support your own assertions and just double-down with monkey poo-flinging. I disagree with everything in their conclusion because it's entirely based upon the false premise that TCVs cause harm. They also suggest 2-phenoxyethanol as an alternative preservative; you might want to look into that one. As for the Geiers et al., they stand for everything you pretend to complain about. They have numerous, serious conflicts of interest and have performed gruesome experimentation on autistic children by falsely diagnosing them with precocious puberty and mercury toxicity based upon rigged tests, injecting them with larger-than-adult doses of Lupron (a chemical castration drug) and chelating them. And this is your "gotcha" paper?
You're sounding rather unhinged, or rather more unhinged. You don't seem to understand that third world countries do not enjoy the same infrastructure and wealth that first world countries do which are required to keep vaccines safe and effective without preservatives. By all means, please fix this instead of whinging on blog posts and even the wrong blog posts.
Frankly I don't see how you running about dropping irrelevant, fabricated and cherry-picked citations, failing to defend them and instead frantically waving your hands is rubbing our faces in anything. What part of doing your own homework are you having trouble with? No paediatric vaccines contain thiomersal, more than half of the U.S. supply of flu vaccines do not contain thiomersal and are specifically recommended for children three years and under and pregnant women and the overall uptake is not very impressive most years. You can't even support your belief that thiomersal in the full suite of vaccines given prior to it's removal was harmful but somehow the mere existence of a single TCV that the vast majority of children and pregnant women don't even get is problematic. Freakin weirdo.
But perfectly fine to retort with smug, sanctimonious passive-aggressiveness. I take it then that you won't be correcting your demonstrably false statements... but that's what honest people do who are actually willing to learn from their mistakes.
Kreb: I assumed that glutathione and oxytocin weren't real, because up til now, the sources asserting the existence and function of those hormones were ones that I wouldn't trust if they said the sky was blue. For example if Yodaddy or Ann Dachel or Jake said the sky was blue, I'd need five other sources and ten eyewitnesses to confirm it.
Dear Lawrence,
Please get a grip. Hundreds of thousands of people do not still have to die in the 3rd World of VPDs because of my concerns. You sound hysterical.
Where alternate preservatives are being used in the US, they can be used in the third-world. We can dump trillions of dollars into failed big banks and "shovel-ready" projects, but we can’t help big pharma distribute potentially safer vaccines outside of our borders? Kinda sounds like a "shovel-ready" project to me.
Where single-use vaccines are used here, perhaps we can develop cheaper single-use vaccines for distribution into the third-world. For example, we already have the technology to blister-pack liquid meds. Think Albuterol:
http://vertassets.blob.core.windows.net/image/1bf6d518/1bf6d518-ddb4-4e…
Maybe we can develop something even cheaper. Similar to this, but for liquid:
http://lamarsblog.com/files/2014/03/bubble-pack-meds.jpg
Maybe a pharmaceutical manufacturing engineer out there can help explain what the options are for getting cheaper single-use meds to the third-world.
Simply pretending that nothing can be done besides the status quo is irresponsible.
@Yo - the only hysterical person here is you, for your unfounded concerns about Thimerasol.....as for distribution to the 3rd World - perhaps you should take your concerns to WHO.
It's not every day that one finds a journal using G—le Docs as a content delivery platform. It was also over its quota.
Anyway, it's cute that Rev. Sykes (first author rather than the Geiers' copy editor for a change) resorted to outright lying, in an ethics journal no less:
"That children are extremely sensitive to thimerosal has been documented since at least 1977 (25). In that year, a study was carried out in which thimerosal was added topologically [sic] to the stomach area of 13 children with infected umbilical cords, after which 10 of them died. According to the autopsy report [sic], the deaths were due to the effects of internal organic Hg toxicity."
Gee, Lisa, did you think nobody would check the actual reference?
Leaving aside the fact that there were only nine autopsies and that exomphalos sure as shіt isn't an "infected umbilical cord," no, Lisa:
"Whether the levels reported in Table 1 are acutely toxic or capable of producing chronic neurological damage in the newborn infant expose perinatally as opposed to the fetus, older child, or adult, is unclear."
YoDaddie, why the hysterics about Thimerosal? With the removal of it from pediatric vaccines here in the US since around 2000, and the resulting absence of any effect on autism (or any disease) rates proves about as conclusively as you can get that it is not responsible for any harm.
Babbling about blister packs while clearly failing to understand the basic concepts in play is simply moronic.
@Narad - and having him complain about the "status quo" like nothing is currently being done to enhance the ability to deploy vaccines out (heck, even the Gates Foundation is spending millions in grants to find better delivery methods) into the developing world is idiotic.
Just like, him complaining about the current methods of vaccine delivery (including storage and deployment in areas where there is little to no electricity & no cold storage), is stupid as well.
Perhaps someone could. There are difficulties in packaging liquids that have to remain sterile that are not the same as the issues of packaging pills which don't require the same degree of sterility.
I'd like to think that the financial incentives for a firm that packages large numbers of sterile, single use ampules would be sufficient for them to come up with the least expensive packaging that still meets regulatory controls. But it's certainly possible that nobody has thought about that and that current designs are considered "good enough" and "cheap enough".
Oh, looky. Threats:
Lawrence -- yeah, I think the trouble is that market forces work about as well as evolution. They drive towards a solution that sells well, not a solution that sells best, much less one that actually *is* best. Asking why manufacturers haven't come up with a perfect sterile shelf-stable packaging for absolutely anything is a bit like asking why humans and gorillas suffer disproportionately from heart disease. It's because we can get by well enough, and there isn't a special incentive to do better.
That's where government funding can change the game, IMHO, though of course it doesn't always since just as with company financing, the folks in charge of the money don't necessarily share the same goals as we might.
Dawn
I was referring to YD, not you. I try to restrict labeling things as a gishgallop to when someone posts a whole list of references that they assume no one will have the time and effort to go through to debunk individually, which you have not done here.
YD,
I didn't skip it, I skimmed through it, and it isn't an ad hominem to believe the Geiers are unreliable sources of information because:
a) Mark Geier's appalling abuse of autistic children has resulted in his medical license being suspended or revoked in every state in which he was licensed
b) The Institute of Medicine has described the Geiers' research as "seriously flawed, 'uninterpretable', and marred by incorrect use of scientific terms", and
c) The American Academy of Pediatrics said the Geier's research contains, "numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements".
I don't trust the Geier's work because it has been repeatedly demonstrated to be misinformed (to put it politely).
Please look up ad hominem and figure out what it means before embarrassing yourself further.
As for the paper you linked to, it complains that a harmless ingredient has been removed from vaccines in the developed world but not the developing world. So what? In the absence of any remotely convincing evidence that thimerosal in vaccines has every harmed anyone anywhere ever, I don't see what the fuss is about. The money it would take to replace thimerosal in the developing world could be far better spent in many other ways. They have plenty of real problems and really don't need nutty people from the developed world trying to scare them with imaginary bogeymen.
Narad,
But the application of 0.1 % tincture of thimerosal, containing 5,000 micrograms thimerosal in every teaspoonful, is exactly the same as an IM injeciton of 25 micrograms of thimerosal, isn't it?
You mean like this, ChrisP? --
http://wirelesswatchblog.org/pps-law-suit-complete-text/graph-of-microw…
Tim, clearly it was organic food!
http://www.pd.infn.it/~dorigo/autism_organic_foods.jpg
@yoDaddie
Jon Anderson is a fuckbag squared my most cherished vocalist -- especially when combined with Vangelis
thx
Dear Krebiozen,
You say that it is not ad hominem to believe that some individuals are unreliable sources of information because of various reasons you choose to personally hold, so you thus discount their logic without giving them serious analysis, regard, etc. Am I summarizing you correctly? That is not "ad hominem"?
Hummmm.... Really?
Shall we agree to use Merriam-Webster? Assuming so, please, if you have not already, go to:
So let's say that some person develops and presents an argument. Because you harbor from past experiences specially held feelings or/or prejudices against that person, you decide to attack that person's character rather than answering their contentions made.
That, sir, is exactly what you and a many of your fellow groupies have exactly done here repeatedly. And that, sir, is exactly ad hominem. You are so blinded by your prejudices that you can't even figure out that you are prejudicing your decisions based on your feelings of others' character, rather than appealing to the intellect of their logic being presented.
You confuse "appealing to the intellect of their logic being presented" with "appealing to their intellect" - as you believe it to be".
As for the paper I linked to - it states that there is a double-standard. That we produce for ourselves and our wealthy neighbors non-Thimerosal vaccinations while producing for the less fortunate the mercury ladened.
Attacking the author's characters makes that no less true. Pointing out over and over and over that most US vaccines no longer contain mercury does nothing to address the fact that mult-use flu vaccines are hugely distributed in the US today, even to children, and that a full schedule of mercury ladened vaccines are still being distributed world-wide.
We're *chill*, Sadmar --
I hope I gave an exemplary performance. mind the rabbit.
Apologies - the link didn't work:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ad%20hominem
Definition of AD HOMINEM
1 : appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect
2 : marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made
@AdamG -- It's as I hinted at before... The start of the timeline is the same (~1996-1998 depending on geolocation) -- it hid the decline.
PGP@400: Anatomy and physiology textbooks are readily available and would address the issue of oxytocin, at least. As I assume would Pubmed. And I'm pretty sure people you've appeared to trust here have told you about it as well.
YoDaddy: The point you are also missing is that since thimerosal IS NOT a problem, all money spent towards eliminating it from 3rd world vaccine programmes is money wasted that would definitely be better spent on known value added projects. Like, for example, drilling bore hole wells so that there is safe drinking water.
If someone has provided unreliable data in the past and you bring that up when they bring up new data instead of examining their current findings, that may technically be ad hominem, but is also prudent. The term more typically is used when the current topic is unrelated to the criticism.
Say for instance Duncan Idaho has a history of claiming that vitamin D will cure all ills, and has cited 15 studies which either don't prove vitamin D cures something, were poorly performed, or which demonstrate that vitamin D can be actually harmful. Should Mr. Idaho come back and say "here's another study showing how wonderful vitamin D is", he MAY have actually found something important. However, one could not be faulted for placing a higher burden of proof on Duncan as he has previously been unreliable (and somewhat tiresome, in all truth) on this topic.
If, on the other hand, one were to bring up Mr. Idaho's failure to properly protect House Atreides in discussions of the efficacy of vitamin D, that would clearly be an ad hominem attack.
@Sadmar
It is a *binary* soft-kill, Sadmar. It is like that original Batman where the Joker says "She's not smiling...She's been using Brand X"
The one study that put the BT with the application rate of glyphosate got maligned -- They said that those type rats are prone to tumors anyways. Never mind that it was the same type rat and the same number of rats that Monsanto used for justification but just carried out for a longer term -- They were very carefull to not address the hair growing out of their mouths. Equivalent for humans would be what? ~25-30 years??
http:/?naturalnews.com/037249_GMO_study_cancer_tumors_organ_damage.html
(I know ya'll don't like that guy, but it is the quick reference for me to post the pictures)
Dear Mephistopheles O'Brien,
Exactly! You get it.
When I point out that they are resorting to ad hominem attacks - rather than manning up and saying, "Ya, we do that. When we think it's justified. Get use to it.", or whatever - they instead try to weasel out by painting lipstick on it.
Mephistopheles O'Brien,
It would have helped if he pointed out that he gets the vitamin D encapsulated with the (now poisonous) soy oil -- Otherwise, he risks spending the rest of his days in a pain amplifyer.
Say for instance Duncan Idaho has a history of claiming that vitamin D will cure all ills
Never trust a man with metallic Tleilaxu eyes.
@back_channel IT personnel
It would be nice to go back and edit a post (with the caveat that one did so, of course) because I would like to replace *helped* with *prudent*.
Of course, it's only a suggestion but dayum.
@Tim - we've been asking for the edit function for a while now.....
Narad,
Is 'Clarkson' a psuedonym for Mengele?
I would disagree on the desirability of a comment editor. Sure, I've had my share of typos and auto-incorrects that I notice after I submit. But suppose, just to use a recient event, YoDaddie could go back and erase the history of his "blog". Nobody would be able to come along and join in the laughter.
Besides, the anti-vaxers already rewrite science. Imagine what they would do if they could rewrite history.
You have got your useless studies mixed up.
This has been done before, but just in case anyone hasn't looked back:
SD rats are prone to tumours as they age. This makes them ideal for 90 day feeding studies, but useless for 2 year feeding studies. If 80% of you controls get tumours, you need really large numbers to see any significant effect.
That particular study fed glyphosate (including homeopathic amounts) and GM corn, not BT.
FTFY. Don't make me repost the "Lisa Sykes goes to Uruguay" video.
Was there anything in the Friberg & Vostal that helped?
^ "Vostol"
YoDaddie: they're not attacking the Geiers for their character but for their history of deliberately distorting data to suit their own ends -- specifically, to allow them to profit off of a therapy for autism that only they would administer (because every other medical clinic knew it was insane). Now, their *character* would make an excellent target, because what they did to all those children was reprehensible, but that's not the point here. The point is their continous and consistent misrepresentation of data concerning autistic children in order to profit themselves.
THAT is what makes them untrustworthy. Not the fact that they injured scores of children, denying them the normal course of puberty for no gain whatsoever, but the fact that they persistently manipulated data -- both in their publications and in their clinical data, which they gamed by intentionally using unprovoked baseline values for mercury exposure on provoked samples -- for the specific intent of discrediting any competitors and driving business to themselves.
That is a valid reason to distrust them. And if you disagree that it's a valid reason to distrust their work, then I invite you to explain why we should trust workers who have persistently demonstrated their work to be unreliable.
A paper from WHO on multi-dose vs single-dose packaging (2003)
I always love it when people try to argue "I know better than you do what this term means, and when it is and isn't applicable - because I looked it up in a dictionary!!"
An ad hominem argument is one that tries to argue that a person's argument is weakened by factors about that person which do not relate to the argument.
But the probative value of any scientific research is dependent upon the credibility of the researcher. If the researcher has shown utterly poor scientific judgment by concluding "oh, what happens in a benzene solution at high temperature must also happen in the human body and that means using chemical castration drugs on autistic children is okey-dokey and we should sell that to desperate parents of autistic children as a service" (and believe me, describing that as only a lapse in scientific judgment is giving them incredible benefit of the doubt) then we'd be foolish to say "Oh, well, hey, just because they have a history of shoddy science, why should we even consider that maybe this is MORE shoddy science by them??"
How strange that you refer to us as groupies; you also lack considerable self-awareness in addition to intellectual dishonesty and scientific illiteracy. None of your sources has supported your claims and you're scraping the bottom of the barrel with a Sykes/Geier article, not even a study. It was critiqued, did you miss #s 398, 403 and 412? They all commented directly on the article; I will add that Lisa Sykes has no scientific education nor training that places her in the realm of authority on the subject.
So what that it is also pointed out what atrocious excuses for scientists and human beings the Geiers are, your precious article wasn't dismissed on that basis alone so grow up and put your big boy panties on. Your argument simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny and there's nothing prejudiced about that. Given how fastidiously you are clinging to your beliefs and can't resist calling the author a reptilian overlord and us groupies, you may want to double-check who actually has the prejudice.
Bah, ^in addition to having intellectual...^
YoDaddie (and whoever's watching):
There's a subtle but profound difference between the ad hominem fallacy and the falsus in unum (or uno), falsus in omnibus rule. The difference was explained to me in each of the juries that I have served on over the years. It translates to, quite roughly, "get caught in a lie, your word is mud."
An ad hom argument would be, e. g., "He's a cat-lover, so his word can't be trusted about eggs." This is a fallacy, since, cats and eggs are disjoint subjects (except for, perhaps, feline reproduction). However, "He's lied about cats, so his word can't be trusted about anything" is a perfectly valid example of applying that rule.
The crucial difference isn't character, as the ad hom definition would require: it's history: particularly, a history of false statements. Note that it matters little whether the falsehood is intentional (like Wakefield), incompetent (like Hooker, to cut him some slack), mistaken, or misled (like many of the pro-vpd followers): a falsehood is false, and renders everything else suspect (at least).
Many of the pro-VPD (anti-vax, "safe-vax") crowd have been caught in so many falsehoods that it's not an ad hom to (a) suspect that they're doing it again and (b) discount the truth possibility of anything they might claim.
Out of consideration to the fence-sitters, the commentariat here will often respond, yet again, to known falsehoods from the pro-VPD crowd, so that J. Random Reader can have some reality with which to counteract the anti-vax propaganda.
YD,
If I said the Geiers are idiots therefore their work should not be trusted, that would be an ad hominem, which literally means "against the man" i.e. attacking the man instead of his arguments. Saying that I don't trust the Geiers' arguments because they have been shown to be "seriously flawed", "'uninterpretable", "marred by incorrect use of scientific terms", and contain, "numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements" is not an ad hominem, it is a logical deduction from observable facts, nothing to do with feelings or prejudices. Prejudices are coming to a conclusion before the evidence has been examined, but in the case of the Geiers the evidence is in and it indicates they are full of BS.
Short version: the Geiers work is seriously flawed and riddled with inaccuracies therefore they are idiots. That's the opposite of an ad hominem.
Yes, there is a double-standard of sorts, but I see no evidence that it matters.
Did you ever explain why 25 micrograms of mercury in a vaccine, of which perhaps 0.25 micrograms is retained wthout being excreted matters when we all absorb and retain 1,800 micrograms of mercury each year? You claimed that some people cannot excrete mercury, but surely the 3,000 micrograms (at least) they are exposed to every year would give them more problems than the 25 micrograms from vaccines.
How do you explain this YD? The figures are reliable, as they agree with other estimates I have seen, and they are from Europe, nothing to do with the evil CDC. I'm interested in how you can square this with your conviction that thimerosal is poisoning people.
Steven Novella has summarized the serious flaws of the infamous Seralini rat study, which involve far more than the type of rat used:
"The Seralini study suffers from small sample size, lack of statistical analysis, ambiguous results, a questionable selection of rat strain which maximizes noise in the data, and dubious ethical treatment of the animals for possible dramatic effect. At this point anyone referencing this study as support for their position that GMO has health risks sacrifices their credibility."
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-seralini-gmo-study-retraction-a…
Narad,
I'm still reading through it, thanks. It's interesting stuff, way out of date, of course, but the old toxicological stuff is always worth nosing through.
I have a similar review of aluminum toxicity somewhere, which as I recall has case histories of a couple of people who managed to poison themselves with aluminum by OD'ing on antacid tablets for years. It's weird what some people get addicted to - we used to occasionally have to run bloods on suspected laxative addicts. But I digress....
I think it's worth pointing out that ingested methylmercury is very readily absorbed by the GI tract and passed directly into the bloodstream. In fact, about 95% of ingest MeHg makes it to the bloodstream. So much for the cells of the gut taking care of ingested mercury.
Oh, and YoDaddie? I see you still did not offer an alternative to thimerosal. And here I thought you were going to offer potential solutions, rather than just JAQing off.
YoDaddie said,
Tried that already, the Czechos still want reimbursment for their damn meercats.
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aTo3LbhcA75I&pid=newsarchive
Of course, it all hinges on what one means by *safer* Otherwise, it all goes to Tuskegee.
@sadmar
I went back and read/parced your analysis of me. You're very kind -- you got it. But, you missed the mark completely.
What does it take to get a William S. Burrows in this drull room??
Sadmar,
I'll get back to you after I've been broken in by my new writing instrument...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sRzpG59MKWo
It was mainly just aimed at the (then) in-press Suzuki stuff. It turns out that the volume containing the actual report is on the shelf at a local library. I might be able to muster scanning it tomorrow.
@herr doktor bimler
""Brought to you by American exceptionalism and the Ad Council.
**disclaimer. What I'm about to do is usually contraindicated to sanity-- so, let the hillarity ensue, if y'all must...
I just had two thoughts I needed to get out before a militarized police force zipties them together:
I was looking for a response from Krebiozen on the half life of mercury salts from ethylmercury in the brain being 120 days (though, they note, not as toxic) --Sorry Kreb, If it's up there I can't see it. (query is #304)
Well, Inside the Rube Goldberg text (#309) YoDaddie posted were strange runes --
^^ could that potential be altered in the presence of the sodium laureth sulfate and similar detergents the little tikes bond with when off mommy's fun bags??
Any chance you guys being nice to me??
Hi, Justin.
Dear Todd W,
Assuming that you are correct (kind of a silly source), note that Krebiozen stands behind 2.41 micrograms of MeHg entering an average person on an average day. From fish essentially. How long does it take to ingest a fish? Now compare that to the time it takes for 25 micrograms of Thimerasol to be injected IM. The spikes are not comparable. Hell, let’s say the technician goofed and a bunch of the injection went directly into a blood vessel. (You sure that never happens?) Consider that spike. Do you know if spikes make a difference in Hg toxicity? Are you willing to bet my kid that you’re right?
Also, I never promised to be an vaccine preservative expert, like you. But at least I’m trying. Did you miss #401? Where’s your contribution dear expert?
Dear Krebiozen,
Is it possible for the Geiers to perform valid research? I'm going to climb out on a really really long limb here and assume that you would reply in the affirmative, that yes, it is possible. Let's theoretically assume that for the moment anyway.
In the theoretical case that these Geiers actually do, theoretically, perform valid research, you will have ignored their research because of your long list of prejudices, not because of anything wrong with their valid research. If you can't find ad homimen staring back at you in that then we will have to agree to disagree on this just like we have to agree to disagree that In my world “…he colluded in leaving out some data in a study that didn’t say what he apparently believes it did” is dishonesty, but in yours it's not.
Regarding
Countering your lack of worry, I find research, not from the Geiers, stating that injected ethylmercury actually is dangerous after all. Lots of it. Here’s one. Again:
In Orac-land Gregorian-like crescendos of derision pierced the interwebs regarding the 20 times higher amount injected. Nobody here stopped to wonder that, because they saw autistic-like results at 20 times amounts, does that mean that you actually have to use 20 times higher amounts to get those same autistic-like results in mice? What would have happened at 15 times? 10 times? 5 times? 1 time? Who knows? We only know that at 20 times they observed autistic-like behavior. Also, nobody stopped to wonder how human autistic-like is 1/20th of the 20x autistic-like mouse behavior they observed anyway? Maybe in mice 1/20th of what they observed compares to average autism in humans. I don’t know. You don’t know. We aren’t going to inject 20x Thimerosal into enough people to do a useful study. It’s all guess-work.
I say “Stop guessing”. Get rid of it.
Oh, never mind.... Sometimes, I think it was a bad idea to vacuum up the busted large manometer with the shop vac.
Tim,
Other recent studies have found a half-life of several years or of just a few days for inorganic mercury in the brain. It isn't yet clear which is right.
Some studies have shown that a higher percentage of ethylmercury that ends up in the brain may be dealkylated to inorganic mercury than methylmercury. The antivaccine brigade always omit to mention that the proportion of methylmercury that gets into the brain is much larger than the proportion of ethylmercury (see Magos 1985). That's because ethylmercury is eliminated from the body about six times faster than methylmercury. The quicker it is eliminated from the blood, the less gets into the brain. They also omit to mention that (from Magos):
In other words it doesn't seem to be the inorganic mercury that causes damage anyway.
Really this is all irrelevant, given the tiny doses of thimerosal and ethylmercury we are talking about which are dwarfed by the amounts we get from other sources. In Greenland mean mercury intake is 42 micrograms per day in the fall and 66 micrograms per day in the summer, mostly methylmercury, making their yearly intake around 20,000 micrograms. Compare the 25 micrograms of thimerosal each year from a flu vaccine.
Link for Greenland mercury data (the Look Inside button gets you the first two pages).
@Kreb. No it wasn't you who accused me of gish gallop and didn't mean it to sound like I was referring to you, there were some others that I was not corresponding with at all that felt that was their best two cents to add in.
You guys are going round and round in circles with the whole thimerosol thing, you are arguing data from toxicology from adults NOT infants whose neurological system is not even fully formed until around 2 years old. Flu shots in utero and in early infancy and other shots with thimerosol and aluminium and other neurotoxins have not been evaluated properly for safety in infants.
This forum is pretty offensive and malicious and it is clear there are some pretty large egos in the way of any constructive debate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMXZEFX7jUM&feature=youtu.be
paradigmshit-
I believe you posted the wrong link to back up your claim. You claimed that it's incorrect to use adult data for toxicity of thimerosal when used in children, and that the subject has not been studied. You then post a link to a story about the MMR, which as everybody knows by now has never had thimerosol.
When come back, please bring evidence.
I've a comment in moderation because of a typo, for which I apologize. When it comes out, you see why.
Gishgalloping along…
Since I don’t harbor perma-hard-wired anti-Geier logic defeating neural circuits, I’m forced to examine their stuff rather than off-hand it.
Please unseath your gut hooks and prepare to eviscerate this:
I understand that VAERS is perhaps not expressly designed for this type of analysis, but I’m not sure that nothing useful can be gleaned from it. Overall the study seems worth analyzing. So, have y’all or not?
@Yo - stop it, you're killing me! Geiers & Hooker, really?
There is a search function on this blog - you should really learn to use it. It has been addressed here, many, many times in the past.
I'm beginning to think you are a masochist too. Of course VAERS isn't designed to do this, it's a passive reporting system which requires a denominator. And oh look, the Geiers and Hooker just made one up for it. They selected just 2 DTaPs in use as proxies for Hg and Hg-free, churned up ASD reports associated with them and then used the net number of those DTaPs distributed in the U.S. at that time to rectally-source a completely bogus figure. VAERS doesn't determine causality and number of vaccines distributed doesn't mean uptake. So you tell us how this is valid.
Phase II suffers from the same completely wrong statistical application as Hooker's MMR withdrawn paper. And even worse, their cases and controls weren't even as rigorously collected as in the DeStefano study. They mined the VSD for ASD cases and their "controls" consisted of children without an ASD diagnosis at the time (no attempt at actual matching), used Hep B vaccination as a proxy for Hg exposure split them up into 3 exposure subgroups and applied Fisher's exact test which is completely wrong and will pretty much guarantee you can find any association you are looking for.
Try reading and critiquing your own studies instead of asking us to do your work for you. But please do share why this study is so compelling to you.
Tim: Any chance you guys being nice to me??
Maybe if you start posting coherently and demonstrating some active intelligence. Right now you're just taking up space and whining.
thx, Krebiozen.
Yea, they do that interpreting scripture to -- 6 days? 6 billion years?
So they split it down the middle {sort of, anyways} and still get it wrong:
"a day is as a thousand years" -- 6000 years, for sure.
--------------------------------
Say, doctor dudes; I really did tell my GP to hand over my medical records being angry over having to fumble with refill hassle and being made to feel *subjugated* that way.
I'm not usually the one to be changing horses in the middle of a race -- He's been a great doctor to me.
But, I feel like I can't tell him the whole story and hydroxyzine is not available round the back of the hot water pipes...
---------------------------------------------------
Just out of curiosity, Would it be possible for someone to have a single failed kidney and not know about it?
Tim @464:
I am not a doctor, but it is possible for a person to have one of his two kidneys vanish entirely and not know it. This happened to my grandfather. He had two healthy kidneys when he was 70. Twenty-odd years later, when he was in the hospital for something else, the doctors noticed that he only had one kidney. He was not having any kidney-related symptoms (and eventually died of something else, at age 97).
We were told that kidneys do that occasionally, and that there was nothing to worry about, as the other kidney was doing a fine job. This makes sense: transplant recipients are given one kidney, not two, and live donors with two healthy kidneys can give one of them to someone who needs it.
I can't help it if you're unable to correctly parse "identify and review all biological products which contained mercury compounds" (bold for emphasis)
What evidence do you believe I'm ignoring, that demonstrates that thimerosal at exposure levels achievable by routine vaccination engenders risk?
Be specific--Pubmed ID's will be sufficient--and please don't waste our time with another Gish Gallop list of studies addressing mercury or mercury compounds other than thimerosal, at exposure levels greater than result from vaccination, adminstered not to whole organisms but to isolated cells in culture, etc.
re: the citation to "Thimerosal-Derived Ethylmercury Is a Mitochondrial Toxin in Human Astrocytes: Possible Role of Fenton Chemistry in the Oxidation and Breakage of mtDNA", it's a perfect example of the types of articles I've just reminded you do not support your position. (BTW< did you actually read it before citing it? If you had, you'd have found teh following:
A quick calculation ((10 x 360)/240) demonstrates that the astrocytes were exposed to thimerosal at a concentration of 15 uM.
When used as a preservative in multi-dose vaccine vials thimerosal is present at a concentration of 5 uM (25 ug in a 0.5 mL dose volume), and following injection it will be diluted by the entire blood volume of the recipient.
The possible "worst case" exposure occur in a vaccinated newborn, where the blood volume is typically 85 mL/kg bodyweight. An 8 pound baby would have a blood volume of about 300 mL, so we’d talking about 600-fold dilution to a final circulating concentration of 8.3 nM.
That’s about 1800 times LESS than the concentration at which these authors examined effects in cell culture.
Repeat after me: the dose makes the poison.
Your evidence that thimerosal at exposure levels achievable by routine vaccination causes harm in infants as a consequence of their neurological development being incomplete until ~2 years after delivery would be...what, exactly?
Be specific.
Is it possible for the Geiers to perform valid research?
It is conceivable that someone who has lied in the past, repeatedly, is this time telling the truth. It is conceivable that this time Lucy will not snatch the ball away. Sadly, I have only limited attentional resources, and I prefer to assign them to reading work by people who are not serial fabulists.
In other words it doesn’t seem to be the inorganic mercury that causes damage anyway.
Now this is an area in which I do actually have some expertise -- or which I have co-authored papers, at least -- and there is evidence that nerve tissue does not like accumulations of inorganic mercury. It seems to be an irritant rather than a serious neurotoxin, but still not a good thing. One source of evidence being the workers in poorly-regulated and poorly-ventilated fluorescent light factories who breathed too much mercury vapour for too long, and suffered measurable visual impairment which took a long time to go away. There was also some experimental work with squirrel monkeys, IIRC
The link for that Geier study leads us to the same journal which published....and then removed....Hooker's study.
Now I'm thinking that the peer-reviewer(s) on Hooker's study are the serial fabulist(s).
Meanwhile, Jake is blathering on about how Hooker's publisher violated its own policies when they removed Hooker's study.
YD,
The CDC is a "silly source"? Why?
The table I linked to suggests we each ingest, inhale or otherwise are exposed to 1,340 micrograms of mercury each year merely through air, water and food, that's excluding fish and dental amalgams.
Why aren't they comparable? It seems likely to me that the time scales for absorption of mercury from the gut and from an IM injection would be much the same. As it happens we do have measurements of blood mercury levels after vaccination with a TCV and they never get anywhere near a toxic level. People in Greenland, the Faroes and the Seychelles all have far higher blood mercury levels all the time, and only the very highest levels, far, far higher than those seen post-vaccination, in pregnant women are associated with neurodevelopmental problems in their children. Bear in mind fetuses are far more vulnerable to mercury poisoning than infants, and methylmercury does seem to accumulate in the fetus.
Where do technicians give vaccines? Anyone giving an IM injection knows they have to aspirate to ensure they haven't hit a blood vessel. But anyway....
You don't understand much about toxicokinetics, do you? How could an IV injection of 25 micrograms of thimerosal possibly do any harm? It is sustained blood levels that do the harm, not spikes. I would certainly bet your kid, and my (hypothetical) grandchildren on that. That 25 micrograms would break down to ethylmercury and be mostly excreted in the child's feces over the following weeks. The tiny proportion that made it into the child's brain would be far too small to cause any harm.
You can't just admit you didn't understand what an ad hominem is, can you? I don't think the Geiers have the training or understanding to do valid research. I also think they have a massive conflict of interest that has led them to produce junk research in the past. It seems unlikely they are going to have a sudden change of heart and go back to school to learn about epidemiology and statistics.
Is this is the best you can do? How many substances are poisonous in doses 20 times higher than we normally get? What happens in you drink 20 times as much alcohol as usual? Anyway, we know from other studies, this one for example, which used different doses of thimerosal in mice. They found:
Back to YD.
It isn't guesswork. There's a ton of evidence directly contradicting your claims, this metaanalysis for example.
Over a million children and not a hint of an association between thimerosal and autism or other ASDs. I suppose you claim all ten studies in this metaanalysis are somehow unreliable.
Also, thimerosal has been used in far higher doses for decades, with no signs of it causing anything resembling autism.
I say "Stop flogging a dead horse". The particular horse you are flogging has been dead, buried and reduced to a skeleton for years.
the 20x autistic-like mouse behavior
Anyone capable of typing this combination of words without bursting into laughter is someone who is irredeemably out of touch with reality.
Dear Krebiozen,
So how many “X” would worry you? The Chinese say 20x human vaccine levels could be a problem. It is for mice anyway. Apparently. Or do you think that they are wrong? If someone injected twenty 25 microgram doses of Thimerosal into some average kid at the same time, that would be a big problem, or that would still be OK in your book? At what 25 microgram multiple do you start to worry?
Johnny ,458
JGC 466
http://mercury-freedrugs.org/
2nd link,------ Kern,J. Studies that show harm from Thimerosol, updated 2014
There is the link to open many published studies that show harm from thimerosol. You will have to read through and find the ones that give the details about developing brains. I may suggest a basic biology text book that talks about myelinisation in the brain in the early months of life.
@ paradigmshift, the way it works is that you provide the studies which support your claims including a basic biology textbook which you should have availed yourself of first. If you think that CoMedy is a resource for anything other than gullible fools helping to keep the Geiers in a posh lifestyle then you should also repeat middle school.
YD,
Looking again at that Chinese study, I don't have access to the full text of the study so I don't know if by "FVB mice were subcutaneously injected with thimerosal-mercury at a dose which is 20× higher than that used for regular Chinese infant immunization during the first 4 months of life" they mean a weight-adjusted dose or the same dose in micrograms.Given the results they got, I suspect that the latter may be the case, as many other studies find no effects at these levels. I also don't know the study design, how many mice were used or what statistical techniques were used.
Anyway, lots of things are more or less toxic in mice than in humans. It is the effects in humans that are important, and we have very few reasons to believe these amounts of thimerosal may be toxic in humans and many good reasons to think they are not.
The study I cited injected mice with,, "14.2, 10.8, 9.2, and 5.6 μg/kg mercury from thimerosal", and found:
If an infant weighing 5 kg is given 25 mcg thimerosal, that's 5 mcg/kg, lower than the lowest dose used in this study, yet the highest dose found no problems. There are multiple studies that support this - you have unwittingly supplied several yourself.
Haven't you taken in any of the evidence we have shown you here? You ignore all the studies that found no problems except in doses or concentrations orders of magnitude higher than those seen after vaccination, and only give any credence to those that support your prejudices, however tenuously, which is, ironically, the blinkered attitude you accuse us of.
You have to take a step back and look at the evidence as a whole, the in vitro studies, the animal studies, human studies, epidemiological studies, genetic studies, all of it. Looked at as a whole the evidence paints a clear picture: vaccines don't cause autism, thimerosal doesn't cause autism, mercury doesn't cause autism, autism starts in the uterus, the amounts of thimerosal in vaccines are far too tiny to cause problems even in premature children.
I don't think you have commented on the metaanalysis I linked to. If thimerosal in vaccines is so dangerous, how is it that a metaanalysis of over a million children found no hint of an association? Bear in mind that this sample size should be sufficient to detect very small differences in incidence of ASDs. Were those Australian researchers somehow paid off by unscrupulous CDC shills?
Science Mom,
The link goes to a document that shows a number of studies, FYI. although it is obvious you have made up your mind and have got a bit of a righteous attitude .
Total waste of time.
For very obvious reasons, the Geiers for legitimate sources of information for NO ONE.....
Is it possible for them to do trustworthy research? No. They had a chance to do that. They squandered it. That bell cannot be un-rung.
paradigmshift,
Look at all the evidence, as I suggested above. It forms a coherent picture that is consistent with vaccines in general and thimerosal in particular being safe. Why would anyone come to a different conclusion? Can you blame people for getting a bit snarky when people keep claiming that thimerosal is dangerous when the evidence tells us it isn't? Dealing with the likes of YD is like dealing with a child who simply won't believe there isn't a bogeyman under the bed, even after you shine a torch under there to show there isn't.
Paradigmshift, please identify which which of the studies on Kem's list you consider to present the single most credible, most compelling case that thimerosal at levels achievable as the result of routine childhood vaccination engenders greater risk than remaining vulnerable to the infectious diseases vaccination protects against and we''ll discuss its design and findings, so that we don't waste time looking at studies which aren't applicable to vaccine safety (e.g., studies like Yodaddies offered in isolated cells in culture at exposures far greater than achievable by vaccination).
Dear Krebiozen,
I haven’t unwittingly done jack. As I’ve said multiple times I’m only here to find out what’s going on. I’m reading studies from both sides of “the fence”. I’m not a trained toxicologist or a trained epidemiologist. The best I can do is read and learn as much as I can with the skills I’m packing; as deficient as y'all thrill yourselves pointing out. You pronounce the horse dead but “they” say that your pet theories and studies are flawed and biased and useless. When y’all Illuminati Hyena Orac groupies first laid eyes on me, you screamed “anti-vaxxer” as your eyes bulged even farther while you tried to out-lope each other to me for the evisceration. Orac says that he can count on one hand the trolls he’s permanently banished, but he forgot to warn me that he can also count on one hand the number of open-minded groupies lurking here.
I will say that you Krebiozen and a very few others here seem to be able to carry on a somewhat civil dialogue, but JAQazs like Todd W, Lawrence et al. are extremely counterproductive to your cause of winning “anti-vaxxers” over to your side. If y'all really do care about that. My being cheeky and sarcastic and rude back myself doesn’t change anything. I represent me. I suspect that you are more interested in being the “Top Eviscerating Hyena” than actually giving a crap about kids. But sometimes you seem to be proving that wrong. Please do. When I make junior troll mistakes y’all giggle at me, what fun, but when epidemiologists and toxicologists make mistakes, people die.
Because a study which concludes that mercury is protective has got to have issues, I’m thinking. And also because I found stuff that seems to pretty effectively eviscerate it from the other side of the fence. They point out problems, such as, Verstraten himself saying about his study used in your metaanalysis:
Regarding
That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. All of them. Thus my concern with your ad hominem attacks (which according to Merriam et al. you are EXACTLY doing); starting with Orac’s original article above. Lots of what I’ve been fed so far doesn’t jive yet. For example, I'm told that 95% of ingested methylmercury goes directly into the blood stream. But when I eat a meal it seems like lots more than 5% hits the crapper. I’ve never measured; I’m just guessing. If so, how could that 95% report be accurate? What else did they miss? I’m not buying it yet. And aren’t ingested toxins routed through our livers, gall bladders, kidney’s etc. more directly than toxins injected IM or SQ? I'm trying to understand that. And lots of the above arguments you’ve presented so far are non-infant toxicology anyway, and although interesting, and perhaps even true, may be a waste of time if a potential autism-Thimerosal causation happens only in infants.
Until I agree that Thimerosal is safe, I’m sticking with “get rid of it”. And why not anyway? Even if it actually is not harmful? Nobody here has explained that. Because you don’t want to appease the anti-vaxxers? Because all of your enjoyable Thimerosal eviscerations will have been in vain? Because you’ll have less anti-vaxxers to vex? Wouldn’t the anti-vaxxers that subsequently convert to pro-vaxxers be worth it if your real goal was simply to save the children? Hell, wouldn’t making me go the eff away alone be worth it?
YD,
So why would you post a link to that YouTube video titled, "How Mercury Destroys the Brain", when it actually shows that only concentrations of thimerosal are damaging to snail astrocytes?
There's a term for that, that you would do well to familiarize yourself with.
Yet you have only linked to those that you think show that thimerosal is dangerous. Odd that..
So whatever makes you think you can interpret the evidence better than those trained and qualified to do so?
When I find myself out of my depth in an area I know little to nothing about, I find an expert who does understand it. I certainly don't go to a bunch of conspiracy theorists who endlessly circulate lies and misinformation on the subject. Why would anyone do that if they were honestly interested in the truth?
Show me a measured analysis of those "pet theories and studies" that demonstrates that they are "flawed and biased and useless" and you will have my attention. All you have posted here so far either doesn't support your position or is very poor quality. That isn't a subjective opinion, there are objective ways of assessing studies for quality, as they did in that metaanalysis.
Do you know how repulsive you come across in the way you write? I try to ignore it, but it makes trying to communicate with you very unpleasant.
I have found the commenters here to be very open-minded. You just have to provide some compelling evidence o support your arguments, which you have utterly failed to do.
I'll ignore the tone-trolling, which is amusing given your own obnoxious comments.
Are you really suggesting that hundreds of researchers all over the world have made mistakes about thimerosal, and that it is killing people?
That demonstrates your true colors right there. When a study shows some barely statistically significant effect of thimerosal on tics, you think it is a meaningful finding. When a study shows a barely statistically significant negative association between thimerosal and autism the study has "issues". Don't you see the double-standard there?
Why haven't you shared any of it here? Nothing you have posted so far remotely suggests that the amount of thimerosal in vaccines can cause any problems.
Was his study used in that metaanalysis? I haven't got the list of included studies to hand. I doubt it, as it wasn't a great study anyway, in my opinion, a retrospective cohort study based on unreliable data (such as the dose of thimerosal each child received), even Verstraeten himself admitted it was "the study that nobody thought we should do". Even so, a lack of any positive associations in the final version is part of a body of evidence against the hypothesis that thimerosal causes autism, whatever Verstraeten might say.
I don't know why you have such trouble understanding simple English. An ad hominem is an attack on a person's character, not making a judgment about the quality of the research they do based on the undeniable fact that they have produced lousy work in the past.
Good grief. Are you serious? Our GI tract actively absorbs a number of substances, leaving undigestible stuff behind. Lots of things are absorbed very efficiently, methylmercury being one of them. This isn't in doubt, in mice 100% of ingested methylmercury was absorbed (PMID: 1522616) and studies looking at ingested radiolabeled methylmercury have empirically measured exactly what happens to it.
They didn't miss anything. You have just made something up based on your complete lack of understanding of how digestion works, and assumed it is correct, when it isn't.
What difference would that make? It's true that ingested substances are directed straight to the liver, but anything that ends up in the blood will find itself passing through the liver within a few minutes anyway.
It is you that first muddied the waters with in vitro and animal studies. I have simply pointed out that they don't support your arguments. Neither do the many other studies that fail to provide any evidence that thimerosal causes autism.
It would cost a lot of money to replace thimerosal in vaccines, and there are no good reasons, apart from the precautionary principle, to do so. As I pointed out before, there are many things that money would be much better spent on, in the developing world particularly,
If thimerosal was removed from all vaccines, they would move on the the formaldehyde, the aluminum and the other scary-sounding ingredients. Do we remove those to? What about the antigens produced through genetically modified yeast, like Gardasil? There are people who claim, despite the evidence, that Gardasil is killing swathes of teenage girls. Do we pander to their irrational beliefs too?
You aren't under the illusion that it is RI commenters that decide global policy about thimerosal in vaccines, are you?
Like all the antivaxxers who converted to provaxxers when thimerosal was removed from all but the flu vaccine?
I have little doubt you would either find something else in vaccines to blame for autism rates failing to go down, or you would take its removal as evidence that thimerosal was responsible for all the cases of autism diagnosed for decades, and start demanding compensation.
Incidentally, what evidence would convince you that thimerosal doesn't cause autism?
Also, you still haven't explained why you don't accept the results of the metaanalysis I linked to above.
I'm bored with this discussion, which is going around in circles. I'll leave you with some conclusions of this paper (PDF) published by the AAP last year:
Which is why you had to be shut down from comment flooding and copied in the AoA brain trust on your screamingly stupid exposé of "censorship." Pull the other one, Diddly.
YoDaddie:
You eat pure methylmercury?
Fixed that for you.
But in all seriousness, let's use an analogue...
There is a minority who think seat belts are killing and injuring people. Should we listen to them and start manufacturing cars without seat belts? Because even when these people have not managed to demonstrate the dangers of seat belts, there are dozens of studies that have shown how and why seat belts increase passenger safety, and by how much, just because these people don't agree with those studies therefore, by your argument, we should listen to them and get rid of those damnable restraints.
YoDaddie:
Oh for Christ's sake.
One more time: Ad hominem is an argument based on alleged irrelevant character flaws. The Geiers' shockingly bad science may well come down to character flaws — moneygrubbing dishonesty, for instance — but it's still germane to the topic at hand; it's not ad hominem to point out their huge scientific errors or their unethical behavior within their field.
If a local mechanic has fixed my car three times, and has seriously botched the job on every attempt, it is not ad hominem to call him a lousy or untrustworthy mechanic. And it is not ad hominem to predict that he would do just as bad a job on his fourth attempt. Is it possible that he won't screw my car up again? Sure. Am I obliged to give him another chance? Of course not! If anything, giving him a fourth chance would be a risky act of stupidity or inattention or ignorance on my part. After all, why would I want to ignore all the clear and compelling evidence that he's not very good at his job?
Using your definition of "ad hominem," any reference to actual experience must be disallowed — relevant or not — because it may be prejudicial. But no such stricture exists; the point of avoiding ad hominem is not to suspend all judgment now and forever, but to avoid basing those judgments on facts that have nothing whatsoever to do with a given case. Is that what's going here? Of course not.
If I've never gone to a mechanic, but I argue that he's a lousy mechanic because he has a Nickelback poster in his garage, or has Fox News blaring on his TV, or thinks "50 Shades of Gray" is the greatest novel of the past 200 years, that would be ad hominem. These could be reasons for preferring not to do business with him, depending on how strongly you feel, but not for arguing that he's incompetent as a mechanic.
Seriously, YoDaddie, this is not a very complicated concept. If you can't figure out something this easy, and are incapable of learning from multiple corrections in plain English, what on earth makes you think you have an informed or reliable opinion about, say, ethylmercury? I mean, it's a LOT easier to read and understand ad hominem as a layperson than it is to grasp decades of scientific papers and stats, and yet you're failing miserably.
Maybe taking a deep breath, admitting your mistake, and starting over from scratch would be a good step toward getting the information and reassurance you claim to want.
Been reading through some of the messages that offer up a lot of information and brings me to some other thoughts on the issues. There is a study I located regarding glutathione and thimerosol (although I suspect that this could be paired with any toxin with similar results) - if anyone has seen other studies I'd like to know about them. However I can only see the abstract. I am certain Krebiozen or O'Brien probably can access the entire study. Glutathione depletion is something I am more interested in and how vaccines (and even environmental toxins) may come into play with this sort of thing. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15527868
Dear Phila,
Regarding:
Let’s start with Webster et al.: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ad%20hominem
The idea in ad hominem is that every argument made be analyzed via the microscope of correctness and accuracy not the telescope of past performance. Nobody says that you’re not allowed to point out huge scientific errors or unethical behavior within a field. I’ve never said that. Ad hominem doesn’t say that.
Let’s flip it. Say that you decided to not analyze someone’s papers because of your feelings of how damn awesomely magnificent historically they’ve been. So you decide to just agree with every conclusion they make cart blanche. That’s Ad hominem. Einstein’s cosmological constant was a big blunder, regardless of his previous genius. (Assuming it actually was a big blunder. Space-time may actually be smooth, turns out, possibly vindicating Einstein after all. But whatever, I’m just trying to use for analogy something everyone already knows about).
I think that y’all are replacing in your minds “justifiable ad hominem” for “ad hominem”. Did you ever hear of justifiable homicide? Used to be you could legally knock off someone violating your marriage bed. But please note that they didn’t call it “non-homicide”. It was still homicide. Please check out this explanation.
To say “Party A’s paper is crap because every paper Party A ever produced to date is crap!” is ad hominem.
Which is why I said above:
To not be able to believe someone because historically you’ve judged them to have compulsively lied is ad hominem. Justified ad hominem perhaps you may feel, but still ad hominem nonetheless.
To say “Party A’s paper is crap because the data inclusion & exclusion criteria is not useful for these reasons, the statistical methods employed lead to unusable results because of this specific list of reasons and so on is not ad hominem. That’s legitimate critique. I suggest the best form, because that’s actually going to get you the farthest with people who don’t already share your prejudices.
Above I said
And later:
Much interwebs piercing of author bashing ensued but eventually Krebiozen, after actually finally reading the paper, decided:
Which proves that valuable conclusions can come from those held in contempt. Not taking the time to read material from folks you disrespect is not ad hominem. Stating that a specific conclusion they’ve drawn has to be wrong because every conclusion they’ve ever produced you feel is wrong is ad hominem.
Above Orac says:
So we have a formerly respected CDC PhD deciding that there’s biological plausibility to the hypothesis that thimerosal causes “autism-like” features, like maybe tics. Y’all seem to exist in a binary world. Antivaxxers and provaxxers. If an antivaxxer says anything is it automatically wrong? Now that Thompson has disagreed with you and you’ve stamped his forehead “antivaxxer”, will he be professionally ostracized and from now on anything he produces will be discounted without analyzing each of his conclusions based on each of his conclusion’s proposed merits?
Y'all can take yourself over to Jake Crosby's blog. He's communicated with Brian Hooker and with Andrew Wakefield.
Y'all can ask Jake about Hooker's paper...he has the expertise because he has a MPH-Epidemiology degree and is in an epidemiology doctorate program.
YoDaddie, you are misinterpreting ad hominem.
Let's look at the Geiers again. They bought into the discredited "autism is a form of mercury poisoning" hypothesis. They misinterpreted, and I'm being generous, a study that showed that mercury bonded to testosterone at high temperatures. They then composed a "treatment protocol" (and I'm being even more generous) that used lupron therapy to clear testosterone. In order to be able to use it, they deliberately misdiagnosed patients with precocious puberty. They made a lot of money out their marks (sorry, parents of patients) before they were closed down.
Correctly pointing out that the Geiers lied and defrauded and using that to disregard their arguments is not an ad hominem, particularly if the study they conducted relates to the topic they were caught lying about.
Yodaddie: To say “Party A’s paper is crap because every paper Party A ever produced to date is crap!” is ad hominem.
No, it's actually a valid point. In criminal law, if a person has committed crimes in the past and is unrepentant, it's valid to believe they'll commit crimes again. Also, please note that the Geiers have lost their medical licenses in every single state they ever practiced in. It ain't just us saying they're unreliable.
Lilady: Uh, did you get hacked?
Let me also remind you that the Geiers have created a false institutional review board. Given that IRBs exist primarily to prevent another Tuskegee siphilis experiment, that is an extremely severe charge, and enough to render untrustworthy anything they produce.
YoDaddie,
That isn't the idea at all! The idea is that you don't judge someone's argument based on their character. "YoDaddie is an idiot therefore what he writes isn't true", is an ad hominem, "YoDaddie has demonstrated a breath-taking ignorance of science and has gotten almost everything he has written about thimerosal here wrong therefore I'm not going to bother reading any more of his comments", is not an ad hominem.
That's not a valuable conclusion. The AAP has stated that if we had had the information we now have about thimerosal safety it would never have been removed from vaccines. The WHO validated the use of thimerosal invaccines in 2008. So what if developing countries get it and we don't. It doesn't matter, as long as vaccines are properly preserved.
The really stupid thing about this argument is that I never said I didn't take the time to read anything. I wrote, about the Geir's and Haley paper, "I didn’t skip it, I skimmed through it", I can skim through a document very quickly and extract the relevant material, it's something I have become quite good at. Having skimmed through it I came to the conclusion that there was nothing of interest there, which didn't surprise me based on the Geiers' previous form, which I then pointed out.
How have you remained completely oblivious to the fact that the tics finding was one of 19 statistically significant results out of 373 statistical tests done, which is exactly what we would expect if there was no association between thimerosal and tics? Do you not understand this, or do you just ignore it because it doesn't fit your prejudices? It's the science that matters, not the players, but you and many others don't seem interested in anything that doesn't support your prejudices. In contrast, here we spend a lot of time discussing stuff that apparently doesn't support our beliefs. Don't you see the enormous hypocrisy here?
If that were true why does Orac and the commenters here spend so much time analyzing and discussing various bits of evidence that antivaccine activists say prove that vaccines are more dangerous than doctors and scientists tell them?
I will certainly look very closely at anything Thompson produces in future, assuming that anyone every wants to collaborate with him on any research ever again. I think he has revealed his ignorance about statistics and appallingly bad judgment about who he has confided in.
Eek, typo city. Typing too fast and no time to properly proof read, sorry.
I cannot recall anyone actually saying that. The actual statement is more along the lines of “Party A’s paper is very probably crap because every paper Party A ever produced to date is crap!” Naturally, all one has to do to counter that is to show how the latest paper is not crap.
You can try, but he's not home.
Jake responds to almost every comment. I'd bet $5 he has 45% of the comments, and $100 that he has 40%. But Narad has run him off his own blog.
Using Jake's time stamps, I see Narad challenged Jake to defend Hookers paper at 2 SEP 1105PM
http://www.autisminvestigated.com/biomed-central-brian-hooker/#comment-…
As of this moment, I don't see that Jake has responded to that or anyone else. The newest post I see from Jake is about 30 minuets prior to Narad's post.
Stand up and take a bow, Narad. You broke the Jake-bot.
Aside from you, apparently. WTF do you think Λ has to do with the smoothness of anything?
Dawn,
Since glutathione plays a major role in preventing damage from free radicals, low levels for whatever reason will have major effects in multiple body systems. For example it is responsible for keeping the lenses of our eyes transparent, and maintaining our red blood cell membranes, as I mentioned before somewhere. Mercury poisoning from vanishingly small amounts in vaccines is the least of the problems someone with glutathione depletion has.
There are broadly three ways someone can have low glutathione levels, firstly from genetic defects in the enzymes that synthesize glutathione, secondly depletion through illness, thirdly through poisoning. In the first case total glutathione will be low, as it will in the case of illness and/or malnutrition, in the case of poisoning it is reduced glutathione (GSH) that gets depleted more quickly than the body can replenish it (acetaminophen poisoning for example), often because the precursors of glutathione (sulfur-containing amino acids like cysteine) are also depleted. That's why acetaminophen poisoning is treated with n-acetylcysteine or methionine.
As the study you linked to suggests, GSH precursors may be a useful treatment in mercury poisoning. Maybe those still concerned about thimerosal in vaccines would feel better if they gave their child n-acetylcysteine, which is available from health food stores, before and after vaccination. There's no rational basis, since the amount of thimerosal in vaccines is so small, bit it couldn't do any harm*, and if it gets people to vaccinate their children it seems like a good thing to me.
By the way, I note that the study you cited found that, "pretreatment of the cells with glutathione ethyl ester or NAC prevented cytotoxicity with exposure to 15 microM Thimerosal". That's 3,000 mcg/L, over 500 times greater than the highest blood mercury concentration found in infants post-vaccination. That's why I wouldn't bother taking NAC even if I had a flu vaccine containing thimerosal.
I hope this helps.
* As far as I know- toxicity of NAC anyone?
Is glutathione only affected by mercury - I know the study only looks at that but can overexposures to lead, aluminum or say...chemical sprays on foods reduce glutathione? My understanding is that it is required to help process out any toxins that enter our system. Are there tests available to check people for genetic issues that may lead to low glutathione?
NVM, I realize my questions are getting way off post topic. I see there are tests that can be taken, too for GSH. Many children with Autism have serious malabsorption problems due to GI Issues http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/04/22/peds.201… thttp://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/Supplement_2/S160.full http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614765
And it would lead to malnutrition for many (add to that many are picky eaters only choosing to eat 2 or 3 food items). Hence my interest in GSH and the role it has. Something is triggering a lot of these kids to regress into Autistic behaviours right around the time when the heaviest vaccine loads are being administered. So is it no wonder that desperate parents want answers - and without an alternative suggestion why it happens soon or right after a particular vaccine..it leads to a set mindset that it must be vaccines despite available research *(as long as all the research is kosher...which Thompson may have thrown a wrench in that...guess will see). This is why so many find it hard to believe it could be anything else. B/c no-one else is really giving a reasonable explanation as to another option. No matter how scientific the studies are...no matter how correct, until they start taking a closer look at what other factors may be involved in triggering these regressions, the vaccine issue will not go away. Between the heavier vaccine schedules, the poor western diets (processed foods/salt/sugar), pesticides and chemicals and pollutions we are exposed to everyday, I tend to believe it has more to do with internal processes that have malfunctioned or are simply damaged beyond repair. Certainly genetic mutations being a culprit - but not genetics per se. I realize this is very grandiose thinking, however studies do show the umbilical cords of fetuses are filled with toxins, even DDThttp://www.ewg.org/research/body-burden-pollution-newborns http://environmentaldefence.ca/prepolluted. Autism cannot strictly be an evolutionary change. Something is interacting with the fetus's/child's genetics causing these mutations to take place. Hence why in Twin studies some develop as NT children while others are on the spectrum these studies do show that genetics are involved however they also show that environment plays a significant role as well http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1107328&maxtosho…. I don't think vaccines are necessarily the culprit. However, I do think there could be a tipping point making some children more susceptible to illness and (in the case of autisms) neurological dysfunctions. Of course IMHO. Am I really way off? When I read the research and see individual studies...to me...it seems to point in one direction. GSH depletion. One study with mercury does not make it so. One study on GI issues does not make it so. But we are not exposed to one thing at a time either. Hence my interest there. Am I really way off on my thinking here? I get there is nothing to prove what I am thinking...but aren't alot of these studies...when you look at them as a whole...pointing in this direction?
Again my apologies if I have gotten way off topic. I'm still looking for knowledgeable insights.
I certainly didn't mean to; I'm not "trolling" Jake's blog or anything, which is why I found above-average irritation when some of the shіtwits skulking around started pissing and moaning.
Sure, I (correctly) mocked Jen for being crusted with Rappoport barf, but she was only around to piss and moan about Jake's failure to "behave" in the first place. I rarely even look in unless Denice mentions that there's a new entry.
You skipped a step.