Author’s Note: This article got me banned from authoring on DailyKos. Which is really sad: I had long respected to Kos as a source of free-thought articles. I reproduce it here, with the comments from those policing the site for articles, comments, and readers who want to share the truth about the 1,000’s of research studies showing that vaccines can cause autism in some people. I reproduce it here for fear of them deleting the article, as they wantonly delete comments they do not agree with. Daily Kos is therefore biased, and not an open forum. Agree or disagree with my posts, I approve all comments (except those that say you can make $$$$ working from home, etc.)
A free and open market is a conservative’s dream.Laissez-faire policies mean freedom of markets to explore, and evolve. Competition, the argument goes, drives innovation, and innovation means better goods and services for consumers. The natural checks and balances of supply & demand provide brakes on runaway aggregation of wealth, and all stakeholders – including investors, workers, consumers, producers – can live in a naturally harmonious system. Sure, there are losers, but that’s because there are winners – and the best survive – and this includes individuals in each of these categories.
Unless, of course, the evolution that occurs – and the innovations that occur – by design somehow manages to short-circuit the natural checks & balances that keep the market from ballooning. To make sure that doesn’t happen, and the help the economy get back on its feet, Keynsian mild interventions have been imagined to help sweeten soured economies.
Anti-monopoly policies have been invoked whenever “big business” has overstepped a certain boundary of control. That line in the sand has, traditionally, been recognizable by three features: mass accumulation of wealth, mass accumulation of influence, and the use of that influence to effect even more accumulation of both.
The US Government, acting in the interest of the people, has both a stick, and a carrot, to coerce and cajole the ever unrepentant free market back into a form that resembles a system that honors the egalitarian spirit infused in the very foundations our democracy.
We saw the stick when the industrialist Robber Barons of the last Century were seen to have grown too big for anyone’s comfort. Bell Telephone’s neat monopoly held the American public hostage, and the enforcement of anti-trust laws brought about competition, and, some argue, many of the key innovations in electronics that has led to the information age.
We saw the carrot when with the Great Recession of 2008, when, through the spread of a practice of microabuses led to toxic debt salads, which drew massive cumulative losses of investments tied to banks – and the steady downward spiral of real estate values that resulted threatened to bring America’s banks to their ginormous, too-big-to-fail knees. I actually wrote to then Secretary of State Paulsen on the Friday before his Monday meeting with the banks because I suspected his carrot would not be very sweet. I was right – he forced banks that did not need a bail-out to drink from the Kool-Aid to legitimize the debt. By including winners in with the potential losers, the bail-out could never be said to be a total failure. I even suggested that the Fed loan money to banks in amounts inversely proportionate to the rate at which they were willing to lend to consumers. Because Paulsen did not, there was a 4-5 month lending freeze after the bail-outs.
Fast forward now to 2015. What kind of economy do we have? The biggest of the big businesses, Pharmaceuticals, have figured out a few key strategies similar to both the Robber Barons and to the microabuses of the 2000’s. They pull in profits beyond the comprehension of most Americans – and yet investment is way down. This is an odd combination – profits not driven by investment. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich attributes this in his new book, Saving Capitalism, to fluctuations in Skill-based technical change (SBTC) economics. As a somewhat insider in biomedicine, biomedical research, and as an inventor of a new type of investment market, I thought I would take a stab at describing how, in today’s American economy, companies like the biggest in Pharma can pull off this hat trick. The key ingredients turn out to be very, very costly:
- Use of Key Opinion Leaders to break the rules on marketing. Key Opinion Leaders are entitled to make whatever claims they care to make, warranted or not by research leading to FDA policy. In my forthcoming book, “Cures vs. Profits: Successes in Translational Research” I describe on particularly egregious abuse of the truth by a Key Opinion Leader who oversaw the destruction of a very promising academic career of a researcher and clinician who first showed — in 1995 — that ADHD was overdiagnosed. Nothing is beyond the pale for some Key Opinion Leaders. They are recognized as such by Pharmaceutical companies, by the way, not by some egalitarian process of being vetted by one’s peers. It seems at times that the only qualification required for being a Key Opinion Leader is being willing to stretch, bend, ignore, hide, and obfuscate the truth.
- Abuse of Off-Label Prescriptions. The use of one drug for another ailment is allowed. Off-label prescriptions use has led to the widespread use of drugs such as Ritalyn and Adderall to “treat” ADHD – that’s right – their use in these capacities are not based on FDA-approval after clinical trials showing long-term safety or efficacy. The topic of ADHD overdiagnosis takes up nearly ¼ of “Cures”, and a good portion of it describes the drugging of our elderly in nursing homes, and what one nurse has done to end inappropriate treatment of that population not just off-label, but without the legally required script.
- Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Marketing. Manipulation of demand and supply means complete market ownership by the producers. Pharma invents new diseases and hammers away at consumer’s minds with propaganda on how better their lives will be if they tell their doctors. Flowery music and attractive people smiling are used to sedate the mind as we are informed of the deadly side effects of ineffective drugs we do not need for conditions that do not exist.
- Ownership of the Legislative Branch of Government. Limits on campaign donations kept corporations at bay. Now the Office typically goes to the highest bidder. Not a single other Congressman acted on Rep. Bill Posey’s very public deposition of CDC Whistleblower Dr. William Thompsons’ confessions that he and others at the CDC committed fraud in numerous studies on the link between vaccines and autism. This topic is explored in depth in “Cures”, and more thoroughly, with the nearly complete transcripts of the recordings of Dr. Thompson’s revelations, in the book “Vaccine Whistleblower: Exposing Autism Fraud at the CDC” (Skyhorse Publishing).
- Ownership of the Media. No media outlet has touched the CDC Whistleblower story for fear of losing their #1 source of marketing revenue. The exception is Ben Swann. The Altermedia has done amuch more thorough job of covering the story.
- The Utter Corruption of Government Regulatory Agencies. I used to absolutely bristle (and still do) at the idea that a Senator or Congressman could, after working for years to arrange a long-term, immense no-bid contract with a defense industry corporation then depart public service to a cushy job at the same corporation they helped make rich. The US FDA and the US CDC were both founded to protect the people of the United States from ineffective and unsafe treatments (US FDA) and from serious, life-threatening diseases (US CDC). It has been said that there is a “revolving door” between Pharma, the US FDA and the US CDC: the same post-government ‘rewards’ await those in the CDC who have worked to insure bewildering economic success. The current push for complete vaccination is completely unnecessary from a public health perspective. While vaccines must be updated to keep up with evolution (#ebolaevolves), herd immunity already exists for most childhood diseases – and, when and where it does not, these childhood diseases are rarely life-threatening. The only thing that 100% vaccination can accomplish is higher revenues for Pharma. If you’re reading this, and you’re an American citizen, you “know” that there is “no link” between vaccines and autism. Ask yourself why you believe that. Then actually look into the research studies that have been done that find “no link”. I assure you, especially in light of Dr. Thompson’s findings, there is something rotten in Denmark (Insiders, allow yourself that chuckle. It’s been a long fight, forgive my levity). I’ve pitched on this topic elsewhere. For now, I’m content to say that there is a dire need to rapidly identify biomarkers of susceptibility to neurotoxins in vaccines, thimerosalmust be completely abandoned for all vaccines, including those we ship overseas, and that vaccines must be formulated without aluminum adjuvant (e.g., with Virus-Like Particles).
- Ergo, Corrupted Policies and Codified Corruption. It goes without saying that #6 leads to #7. However, the corrupted policies now include some well worth mentioning: the FDA will now approve drugs that are nearly as good as (i.e., slightly worse than) available treatments (as opposed to requiring that newer drugs are demonstrably superior). And the requirement of long-term efficacy & safety studies is all but ignored, without repercussion. The conscription of law-making via corporate donations means that the voices of American citizens are drowned out by dollars. We must fix this and limit campaign donations once more.
- Communicating to Fix Prices Through the Market. Milton Friedman held the position that monopoly mattered only to the extent that actual market behavior varied from the predictions of simple supply-and-demand analysis. Drug prices are priced on what the market will bear, not in a manner designed to compete. I review this problem thoroughly in the Preface of “Cures”. This occurs when one believes that the way to compete is not to sell more units via superior product or by competitive pricing, but instead, to make more money by any means necessary. When they enter a market with a new drug, they price it based on what the market will bear — not in a manner designed to outdo their competition. The result is runaway price increases — effective price-fixing, per product. It’s really enough to piss one off.
- They Own the Judicial Branch of Government. Litigation for vaccine-induced injuries, including neurological injuries that lead to a diagnosis of autism, are restricted to an “Office of Special Masters” “Vaccine Court”, a special federal court in which settlements for injuries are not paid by Pharma, but rather from an aggregate fund from a small tax collected on each and every vaccine. Pharma therefore has no concern over liability for damages done to the population. Findings of vaccine-induced autism are rare – and the tortuous logic used by the Special Masters to justify their findings of damages for symptoms of autism, but not autism itself, is ludicrous. There is a year-long waiting list and a statute of limitations on vaccine injuries — these two factors must change.
Pharma’s success in all of these areas has rendered our American democracy into nothing less than an overtly fascist (corporatist) state. The silence of Congressional Representatives and the media are particularly egregious. Pharma is now writing laws that allow them to do things that the FDA even as late as 2010 would never let them get away with. I shudder to think that I may have had something to do with their boldness. In “Cures”, I recount how I once told, in plenary session, a hundred or so Pharma CEO’s, CIO’s, and Pharma research scientists to ‘fire their current lawyers, or make them your lobbyists’ in reference to seeking legal, temporary monopoly for discovered cancer prophylaxes and treatments in naturally occurring compounds due to their reluctance to enter the market with naturally occurring compounds.
I’ll say it first: we no longer live in a democracy. We live in a fascist Pharmatopic Republic.
The saddest part about living in this fascist state is that most people in America are not even aware of this new reality. In fact, in the public shaming of those who want safe vaccines, the American public is an unwitting victim of mass propaganda – and those doing the shaming are analogous to jack-booted thugs. Those in the blogosphere resort immediately to ad-hominem attacks at the first hint of logic and rational discourse (see comments, below). Even asking a question on vaccine safety makes one suddenly “anti-vax”. (Disclosure: Both of my sons are fully vaccinated. I draw the line at HPV.)
The ‘party-line’ is black and white: ‘vaccines do not cause autism’. That’s a remarkably rare statement in biomedicine — it claims absolute truthiness — without exception. Such unqualified generalizations are nearly always wrong. The amount of misinformation spewing forth from the US CDC on everything from Ebola to vaccines is astonishing to anyone with slightly more than a passing familiarity with biomedical research. See “Ebola: An Evolving Story” for some jaw-dropping facts about wanton disinformation campaigns from the CDC (no mutations, 99.99% similar to Zaire, both absolutely incorrect), and the disconnect between public health policy and the peer-reviewed research on Ebola. And see the reading lists on aluminum neurotoxicity I have assigned to Dr. Paul Offit, one of the most misleading men in America on the science of vaccine safety. Vaccines do, indeed, lead to encephalopathy, seizures, brain fog, encephalitis, autoimmune disorders and death- sometimes within minutes of administration (see VAERS). It’s time to stop pretending we don’t know this.
We cannot afford the vaccine injuries that are ever-accumulating in severity and number. I will continue to vote, although I doubt that any of the candidates in either party will take on Pharma. Even if they wanted to, I doubt that anyone in the Office of the President of the United States could do anything to change these realities. Bernie Sanders is aware of these issues, and I hope that if he is elected, he will give help those in the Senate and in Congress find the will to come forward and state the obvious: the US government has been overrun by Pharma. These issues, however, remain notably absent from his platform.
I hope all of my academic colleagues who know the truth about the sorry state of vaccine safety research will come out of the shadows, and into the light, and speak their minds. I will continue to work on issues like educating Editors of journals that publish vaccine safety research of the serious misgivings about the studies they have published, in hopes that they may find the need to launch a formal inquiry given the scale and the scope of the impact of vaccines on public health.
To join me in this, you can either donate to the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, or, if you are a scientist or doctor of any kind, consider co-signing the Expression of Concern being mailed to 40 journals that publish vaccine safety research. These 40 journals will also be receiving copies of two books: “Vaccine Whistleblower: Exposing Autism Fraud at the CDC”, and “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak”, courtesy Skyhorse Publishing and via your donation (to cover shipping & handling).
Don’t get me wrong – I love America. I don’t even mind profit. But it should be fair profit, won honestly by a combination of hard work and ethical economic practices. The American public has been bamboozled by shamwizards (a term I coin in “Cures”), and they have stolen our mantle. The only hope is that enough of us still have sufficient morality, and integrity of character to reinstate a free market. Integrity of character is people doing the right thing, even though it’s the hard thing to do. Doctors must actually study the vaccine safety science, not just ape the talking points of the corrupt CDC. Patients must insist on products that do not contain neurotoxins. School nurses must push back on demands of treating students for ADHD – they must become patient advocates for each and every child for which a script was sought after a diagnosis by teacher or parent. Nurses who know better must push back on mandatory vaccination – and do the doctor’s job of first doing no harm. Psychiatrists must study and apply the exclusionary criteria for children whom they have been referred for a pre-considered diagnosis, and refuse to provide such a diagnosis when exclusionary principles apply. Researchers must follow the logical result that their biomedical studies yield, even when they go against formal policies. The CDC can no longer be trusted with vaccine research – we must wrest it from them and put it in the hands of five research independent academic research organizations – three by lottery and two by competitive contract – so the results are shown to generalize.
There are many players that can make a difference. The question is: will they? Will you?
Any biomedical researcher, medical doctor, health care professional who knows that vaccines with aluminum adjuvant can cause neurotoxicity, and who is aghast at the corruption at the CDC, and the clear violations and breaches of ethics in vaccine safety research (evidenced most clearly via recent whistleblowers from the CDC and Merck), who would like to step forward and be part of the sea change that is needed to put objectivism back into vaccine safety research, please support IPAK (The Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge), in our first IPAK Issue Focus Fundraiser. We are sending 40 Statements of Concerns to 40 biomedical research journals that have published papers showing no association between vaccine and autism. All journals that have published papers by people named by Dr. William Thompson as complicit in vaccine safety research fraud, and the Office of the Attorney General, are being notified. We are also sending, as part of our Expression of Concern, and courtesy Skyhorse Publishing, one copy each of two books:“Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak” and “Vaccine Whistleblower: Exposing Autism Research Fraud at the CDC” to the Editors and Editors-in Chief of these 40 journals. Editors of journals are compelled to act upon such Statements of Concern. So far, 8 packages have been sent. You can help by signing the Expression of Concern, and by donating to the cause at ipaknowledge.org. If you are a professional, your signature, degree and affiliation will carry much weight.
It’s time to stop acting as though we don’t know about aluminum neurotoxicity, and it’s time we demand advances in research to make vaccines safe.
James Lyons-Weiler, PhD
Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge is a 501(c)3 Pure Public Charity
Update: As expected, within minutes of this post, the ad hominemattacks by nameless, faceless individuals on my character began. However, there is no need to engage in a shouting match online, and I do not feel compelled to defend my credentials. The CDC’s vaccine safety research program is the thing in question. As I continue to wade through some 1,300 peer-reviewed research studies on autism, I can affirm that the black and white public policies, as stated by the CDC and the party line by medical associations that vaccines do not cause autism are not supported by the breadth of scientific evidence. There are hundreds of research studies that demonstrate serious neurotoxicity of aluminum adjuvant, many dating back into the early 2000’s. The full breadth of that literature, including exciting developments and success in genetic-guided treatments, will be described in my upcoming book, “Genetic and Environmental Causes of Autism”.
Further, I have learned that an increasing number of pediatricians have decided to cease vaccination in autistic children after diagnosis. Due to genetics, individuals with one autistic child are at increased risk of having additional children who develop autism. It is increasingly becoming the opinion that vaccination may therefore be contraindicated in family members of autistic individuals to mitigate risk (medical exemption). This is up to the individual doctor, who can also be informed by genetic and genomic assays, with follow-up biochemical testing to confirm specific disrupted pathways. Individuals may wish to share the literature on aluminum neurotoxicity with their doctor to help them afford their patients with their right to informed consent.
There is nothing special about vaccines that make them implausible as one of many sources of trouble for the brain during early development. Even Dr. DeStefano, subject of an ongoing inquiry at the CDC for potential vaccine research fraud (and cover-up of said fraud), has admitted that vaccines may cause autism in a subset of people. Let’s stop bickering and name-calling and get to the important work of studying ways of using the vast amount of information on genes & proteins involved in autism as biomarkers of risk indicators, and as guides to personalized medicine. Castigation of professionals (and by this I do not mean myself, I mean Pediatricians) who know full well that vaccines cause autism must stop. We must return objectivity to vaccine safety science.
another vaxxer.
Like every crackpot, ever, he claims “he’s not against vaccines, he’s just asking questions — questions about safety.” Do these guys take classes where they are taught that this declaration is a magical charm to ward off all criticism?
And what’s up with ebolapromo-at-gmail.com?
Is it illegal to ask questions? One can ask questions about Vioxx, Advair, drug coated stents- but not about vaccines? Why is that?
You must be new around here. “I’m only asking questions” is one of the standard tropes by which the anti-vaccine crackpots identify themselves to each other. They are really quite unimaginative, dishing up the same slop over and over and over again.
Another trick they use goes by the handle “dead threading.” They wait until the discussion has died down, then slip in — often several days later — in the hope that they can spew their lies and their poison without being challenged. A pretty cowardly tactic, don’t you agree? If they had a valid point, you would think they would want people to hear it.
Indeed, I just noticed that you signed up today. Good luck and enjoy your stay.
Well- what’s the deal? Vioxx, Advair, etc. The credentials of the author are impeccable, the points he makes are valid. Why are you so afraid and angry? There are many countries in Europe where vax rates are 70% or lower- show me the pandemics!
If anyone else wanders by here and wonders what’s going on, head down to the very last comments and see for yourself that this user is a full bore textbook anti-vaxxer loon.
As if anyone had any doubts.
calling me names doesn’t get the article down…..your conspiracy theory that Daily Kos is anti vaccine is pretty thin gruel. Can you refute one single thing in the article (still up!) above? Anything? BTW- it’s a free country. Go get as many vaccines as you want, get a double or triple dose.
That’s even loonier than the rest of what this troll (repeatedly recced by Twyla, who has 74 comments, each and every one consisting of anti-vax CT) has said … the notion that this diary is a “Daily Kos article”, which he says elsewhere has been “vetted”.
do you have anything double blind, placebo controlled on “herd immunity?” You know of course that vaccination is voluntary in Western Europe- some countries are way down in the 60’s and 70’s percent… no epidemics. In the US- most people over 30 are not immunized against measles or pertussis due to vaccine waning…. where are the outbreaks?
This now-banned troll’s nutty logic is a new one to me. Troll diaries posted at DKos are “vetted”? Who knew …
Frankly, I think its hilarious.
here is the author’s cv- pretty damn impressive. Can you comment on the data in his post, where is he wrong specifically? http://jameslyonsweiler.com/author-and-research-scientist-james-lyons-weiler-phd-extended-biography/
And when you go to the site, the biggest thing there is a donation link. Can it get more scammy than that? (That was a rhetorical question, but will probably be answered anyway, sad to say).
And if it hadn’t been thoroughly flagged for being anti-vax, I’d call it out for Spam, too. Available for speaking engagements, is he?
In your mind why is it this article ant vaxx?
Anti-vaxx anti-science CT trash.
The ‘party-line’ is black and white: ‘vaccines do not cause autism’. That’s a remarkably rare statement in biomedicine — it claims absolute truthiness — without exception. Such unqualified generalizations are nearly always wrong.
Your unqualified generalization is certainly wrong, Mr. Irony.
Yet the article is there! Right above for you to read and re-read! Just as is the CBS News piece on Bernadine Healy from 2008, as are numerous news articles on the same topic. You might also want to start accusing The Hill as being anti vax conspiracy nuts, because their October 21 2015 article featuring Dr. William Thompson is also still up. Lot of players in your “anti vax” ct, eh? How do you keep track of all of them?
The comments from the latest anti-vax CT troll aren’t worth responding to.
You’re a bit slow, aren’t you … see my comment below. Your every single comment here at DKos has been anti-vax CT … about which you have lied, saying that you aren’t anti-vax. You’re a bannable troll, but I won’t waste any more of my time on you.
The article from Daily Kos is right up there- take another long, careful look at it. Now, call out The Daily Kos as an anti vaccine conspriacy website. Go ahead. Make my quarter of a century.
Say, did you invite your friends John Mayer2 and Isolabella here to sock for you? They’re both now banned … your time will come.
From your comment history I see that you’re an anti-vax CT spammer. Not sure how you have survived, but please do post more so you can get yourself banned.
how many bounce backs do you get after walloping a kid with three or nine vax in one visit? Do you even note vax status when a kid you whacked up earlier in the day comes back convulsing, febrile, seizing? Of course you don’t. Because you don’t know shit about vaccine injury, you just proved it. Stay away from my kids.
There so many lies, misinformation, logical fallacies and downright ignorance in this article I had to take 14 Big Pharma drugs just to calm down.
But let’s debunk the nonsense in Point #6. Only 1 in 5000 potential drugs discovered by Pharmaceutical companies, and about 12-13% of drugs that enter clinical trials ever get approved by the FDA. It’s the same with drug regulatory agencies in the EU, Japan, and other countries.
Oh, and there’s Point 9, They Own the Judicial Branch of Government. Oh that’s a good one. Citations please? Oh you’re like one of those conspiracy theorists like the Republicans have.
You’re just a science denier who, using boatloads of verbiage, to show off your ignorance. Good job. My diary uses real science with real citations. You ought to read that, and it should advance the education of the science deniers by quite a bit.
at least your pill popping keeps your hands steady. Also explains why you are so checked out from reality. Look! The article! Still up, still vetted and fact checked by Daily Koz! WTF?????
I must say, you are especially stupid even for a vaxxer — which is really quite an accomplishment.
how do you know how stupid I am or not? The same way you know the highly credentialed author of this article is anti vaccine? I can say with certainty that you are a person who jumps to ill informed conclusions so I would be hesitant to believe any single thing you write. Perhaps if you ratchet up your rhetoric.
Try shaking your cane at The Daily Kos. The article is still up, getting lots of play on FB. I sure hope all those medical journals do review the complaint he sends out. I donated, I’m thinking about going in big. Seems like a worthy cause.
I know that you are stupid, and spectacularly so, because you actually signed up here to write “The article! Still up, still vetted and fact checked by Daily Koz!”
Silly person, the presence of a diary does not imply that it was vetted and fact checked by the administration — that is not how things work around here. The fact that the tip jar was hidden (something else you don’t understand) is the “tip” that your poisonous nonsense was decisively rejected by the community.
Begone, poisonous anti-science scumbag! Go peddle your lies to the stupid and the gullible, you might have a chance there.
No, I don’t know anything about a tip jar, but I can see with my own eyes that this article is posted on The Daily Koz. I do not usually read this site at all, however the piece (still up!- comes up in search engines) makes some very good points which you have not even attempted to refute. For example- why do we need a Vaccine Injury Act if vaccines could withstand the same legal standards that all other medical products and procedures. I have to conclude that without the VICP, the vaccine industry would be much different.
As are many of your idiot comments, even though you have already been unceremoniously booted off the“Daily Koz”. Fascinating!!
The conspiracy theory against vaccines expands, eh? Now, The Hill http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/257581-house-republican-resurfaces-claims-of-cdc-vaccine-cover-up is involved as well?
Thanks for again mentioning Dr. Thompson- here is the original news release: http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-william-w-thompson-ph-d-regarding-the-2004-article-examining-the-possibility-of-a-relationship-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/
he is part of the dark underbelly ct as well?
Let us not forget Ben Swann…..
It is interesting that suddenly all these stories (see above) questioning vaccine safety are appearing in ever more main stream publications.
Can you explain the role of vaccines in the precipitous drop in typhus, tuberculosis, bubonic plague, and cholera over the past 150 years?
This is how it always works: you show up mewling “what’s wrong with asking questions” and work your way up to full blown anti-vaxxer scummbag.
Fortunately, with respect to the dead threading mentioned above, you are so stupid and despised for your murderous antics that you have to hide like a cockroach and creep around in the shadows to spread your poison.
ummmm, I’m not anti vaccine, are you? Daily Kos is anti vaccine because they published this, is that your reasoning? So bitch at them, not me. The author has a very respectable science back round and he makes some excellent points. So what’s the problem? Why the nasty language? My normal disqus name is john Mayer, I had to add the 2 to get on this site. Why don’t you calm down and address the data the article (still up!) presents. How, why and where is it wrong?
Who do you think you are fooling? This is an open comment thread, anyone who comes by here can look to the top of this very page and see you chucking out standard brand anti-vaxxer talking points — you know, the ones that you guys keeping trotting out again and again despite their having been debunked repeatedly and definitively and from multiple perspectives. Vaccines do not cause autism, end of story. Your persistence might otherwise be admirable if you could find a worthy outlet, but as it is you are simply spreading death and disease and suffering with your lies.
and that is exactly the point. at last we agree on something. you have yet to refute, or even try, any single point the author makes. calling me names might make you feel better but it does not answer what the guy wrote. so I will quit responding to you unless you pick on me or until you come up with something that addresses the article (still up there! amazing! that Daily Koz has gone all anti vaccine on us! what an unusual turn of events!)
Unfortunately, not as long as this one is here: http://www.dailykos.com/user/Twyla
74 comments, all anti-vax CT, and uprates of her anti-vax Bojo buds John Meyer2 and Isolabella.
Like this one: www.dailykos.com/…
I read your article at Daily Kos. I stopped reading that site years ago because not only is it an AstroTurf site for big pharma, they allow the trolls free reign without restraint. However today was entertaining to see the trolls having a collective meltdown because they couldn’t discredit the information in your article. They resorted to the standard troll behavior of name calling and use of the troll train to try and dilute the informtion you were providing. Actually, I was quite surprised that Kos even allowed the article to be posted.
elnura1, not sure what an Astroturf site is (and don’t need to, but thanks). I’m a Democrat, I had imagined that DailyKos would be open to an open discussion. The ad hominem attacks that I predicted would occur do not bother me – they add no empirical content to the discussion. Their viciousness makes one wonder what it would take to convince these guys that cyanide is toxic, if it were an ingredient in vaccines. The neurotoxicity of aluminum is extremely well established, second only to mercury. Now we know how these metals are picked up by macrophages, deposited in organs (including the brain), hyperactivate microglial cells, which normal work to prune dendrite that are not reinforced, leading to the release of cytokines, which keep microglial cells activated, at least one mechanism of neurological injury is known. The demyelination injuries are already well recognized by the Special Masters court, but I will review those mechanisms as well
I don’t have time for trolls. I am working overtime to finish my book on Genetic and Environmental Causes of Autism. If think I am 40-50% done. There will be no turning back the knowledge gained from the thousands of studies I am reading and summarizing. It’s overwhelming, consistent and devastating to the false consensus. Paired with the whistleblower controversies (which take up 1/2 of my writing on vaccines in “Cures vs. Profits”, Pharma would do well to start moving … fast… to use Virus-Like Particle based vaccines, which don’t need attenuation, don’t need adjuvants, and don’t need preservatives. True anti-vaxxers should take a look at how natural-like VLP’s are. If the antigens used match those from the infectious agent, they should be nearly as effective as natural immunity, but much, much safer, without the cellular and genomic damage caused by the replicating virus, and without the adverse events from preservatives/adjuvants.
The people at the CDC who fudged the science for years should hire themselves some good defense attorneys, and they better hope they did not fudge more results since the 2000’s. The Statement of Concern that IPAK is sending has also been sent to the Office of the Attorney General.
Science marches on. As always, you can help support our efforts at ipaknowledge.org
Elnura1 is alluding to Sharyl Attkissons talk at Tedx http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Astroturf-and-manipulation-of-m
Essential viewing for understanding the level of coordination going on with the bigpharma-media complex.
Sorry James I didn’t see this post, my comment would have been better placed here.
Fr33thinker, I want to thank you for that comment. I am getting so many emails supporting what I’m doing. To see those comments out there in public really gave me a booster shot! I appreciate the support very much.
If you would like to help IPAK send a “Care Package” to a journal that publishes vaccines safety research, please visit ipaknowledge.org to find out how. We have sent 17 of 40 packages with the Statement of Concern. Paypal accepted! The packages are being shipped out every day since the announcement.
When this campaign is done, I will likely begin positing critical snippets of the books “Cures vs. Profits” and “Genetic and Environmental Causes of Autism”, so I hope to see you online here often. Thanks again.
I see what you did there…booster shot…nice. Great to hear so many donations have come through already. We certainly plan to support worthwhile projects such as yours going forward, we are just using all our pennies to launch our own project atm. A prosocial networking site that uses beliefs, values and lifestyles to place people with likeminded folk. Our way of mobilising the collectives. The beta will be up in a few days.
Evidently the suppression of clinical information has been ongoing in Canada, as well http://www.cmaj.ca/content/170/4/437.full/reply#cmaj_el_942
And here is the comment that got deleted and my account banned from DK. I find it fascinating they would leave antagonistic comments up from all sides, but not a benign one. Wanting the thread to paint a certain picture no doubt, and that picture doesn’t include calm and rational discussion.
“Very good article James. Back when I began to suspect vaccines weren’t completely safe and effective and started to look into it this scenario is exactly what I found. One side making clear, intelligent, logical, coherent arguments and presenting research and information. The other putting forward flimsy, inconsistent, incoherent arguments (eg bigpharma is untrustworthy, oh except when it concerns vaccines), cooked wikipedia articles, links to scienceblogs, sciencebasedmedecine, little research and mostly propaganda, abuse, bullying and constant attempts to censor and silence discussion. You reach a lot more people by being the better person that’s for sure.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this and mobilising the collective to address the issue on a professional level. You have our family’s deepest gratitude, and best wishes with your endeavours.”
I didn’t even try and post a comment on DK. I found out several year ago they were a big front for the pharmaceutical industry-along with Huffington Post, Salon, Daily Beast etc. All the sites that are considered liberal are all funded by the pharmaceutical industry as well as many MSM sites such as Forbes. Robert Kennedy Jr. stated earlier this year that he had a meeting with the head of one of the MSM networks who told him that he would fire any employee or reporter that posted or reported any information presenting negative information about vaccines. This is the world the US has created for it’s population. It has become unconstitutional to question the government that is run by corporations.
I recently learned of two documents that put into perspective how the country is being run by basically 6 corporations which explains how the pharmaceutical industry is getting away with murder. One is:
-Operation Mockingbird – An Overview and History-https://www.scribd.com/doc/41631313/Operation-Mockingbird-An-Overview-and-History. and
-CIA Document #1035-960: Using politicians and the media to counter criticism of the Warren Report — This document, dated Jan. 4, 1967, and marked PSYCH for Psychological Warfare, directs agents of the CIA to counter critics of the Warren Report by using “liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and “to employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics.” http://thewebfairy.com/masonic/cia_document.htm. Image of document: http://thedailyresistance.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/aarc-cia112-03_0056_0002.jpg
An additional document that shed light on how the CDC-pharma and those who have financial relationships with these entities are implementing their plan:
-ROADMAP FOR ACTION: TO REACH THE HEALTHY PEOPLE 2020 GOALS Developing Champions and Building a COMPREHENSIVE REPORT OF THE 2013 NATIONAL ADULT VACCINATION …http://www.naturalnews.com/files/GSA-2013NAVPwhitepaper_final.pdf#search=roadmap%20to%20action.
It is stunning to say the least that the country that you have been told is the land of the free, home of the brave, freedom of speech, yada yada yada has an finely tuned and organized blueprint to deceive the population on every aspect of life.
For now my focus is on bringing forward the peer-reviewed, NIH-funded (taxpayer funded) research that tells the rest of the story. We really cannot move forward at all unless the public understands the bias in the “science” they are told about. Luckily, I am working with publishers who are limited by any particular agenda to enforce the status quo. What’s funny is thinking all “Liberal” sites are Pharma fronts… when it comes to the media, the reach goes across the isle, that’s for sure. Thanks for the comment.
Haha love the update on your article over at DK, did you put that poll up as well? Round 2 goes to JLW, fantastic.
Round two comes in January. Stayed tuned.
From someone who is in the forefront of dealing with the repercusiions of the vaccine shcedule. My colleaues and I see tens of hair tests every day from autistic children, posted on our Facebook group by their parents. Almost all of them show the “deranged mineral transport” which only mercury can cause. So where are these little children getting mercury? I think it has to still be there in the pediatric vaccines. Or else the docs are using the adult vaccines (which still contain Thimerosal) on the children because they think they are just the same and they are cheaper.
Not that aluminium is not a problem, too. I think it is, and it is synergistic with the mercury. But the mercury is still there.
According to several comprehensive reviews of mercury, the average American gets around six micrograms of mercury every day from the air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, and through our skin from minor abrasions. As for aluminum, one of the most ubiquitous elements on earth, try looking up how much an infant gets from breast milk or from formula.
Whatever background we get, the thimerosal added to it, and because macrophages pick up that form and preferentially deposit it in organs, including the brain, it is especially dangerous. Ethyl also clears more slowly than methyl, for years we had it backwards. The clearance studies did not look at residual in the organs, just blood %s
As for aluminum, we absorb a tiny percentage <0.01% of what we eat. But ALL of it goes into our bodies. And it is serious neurotoxin that causes excitotoxicity. If it wasn't a big deal, then why all of the research on it as a neurotoxin? See http://jameslyonsweiler.com/2015/11/16/paging-dr-offit-your-aluminum-neurotoxicity-reading-assignments-are-ready/
Hey, I don’t know about the six micrograms every day and so forth. I only know that I see lots of little kids with brain damage and toxic hair tests. They get better when they chelate for mercury.
Regarding the so-called “whistleblower”, William Thompson, I suggest you read my article posted by Every Child By Two, “Debunking Antivaccinationist John Stone and the CDC ‘Whistleblower’: A Review of John Stone’s ‘DeStefano Rides Again: GSK Rotavirus Vaccine Study Loses 80% Of Cases And 18 Deaths'” at: http://www.ecbt.org/images/articles/A_Review_of_John_Stones_DeStefano_Rides_Again.pdf
Maybe no one acted on Bill Posey’s deposition of Thompson because they had done their homework, something you apparently haven’t done. You make a number of excellent points. However, while point 4 and point 5. do have some validity, your example is totally WRONG!
Oh, I’ve done my homework. I’ve read the entire transcripts of Hooker’s tapes of Thompson’s confessions. I will be happy to arrange for a copy of “Vaccine Whistleblower” published by Skyhorse for you to be able to see all of what Thompson admitted to, and what he alleged his co-workers did to hide and bury associations.
I will look at your file, thanks!
Joel, the problem w/your analysis (WRT to DeStefano et al., 2004) is that he (DeStefano) and colleagues (a) included other subgroups, only excluding the one result showing association, and (b) DeStefano admitted excluding it to Sharyl Attkisson/
Re: the use of confounders, in one study they overfit the modeling, using many, many variables like mother’s age, mother’s income, gestational age, birthweight, all highly collinear variables. They can be called “Control variables” but- and this is important – they had to analyze the data for 4 years until they could make the association goes away. And they didn’t even analyze interaction terms, which they should have, and they would have concluded “low-weight and pre-mature babies born to low-income, young mothers are particularly susceptible…….”
No, they just omitted that one result from the subgroup analysis. AMA Manual of Style:
Misrepresentation: Fabrication, Falsification, and Omission
Chapter: Ethical and Legal ConsiderationsAuthor(s):Annette Flanagin
Fabrication, falsification, and omission are forms of misrepresentation in scientific publication. Fabrication includes stating or presenting a falsehood and making up data, results, or “facts” that do not exist. Falsification includes manipulation of materials or processes, changing data or results, or altering the graphic display of data or digital images in a manner that results in misrepresentation (see also , Inappropriate Manipulation of Digital Images). Omission is the act of deliberately not reporting certain information for a desired outcome. Data fabrication, falsification, and omission occur when an investigator or author creates, alters, manipulates, selects, or presents selected or fails to…
You write: “the FDA will now approve drugs that are nearly as good as
(i.e., slightly worse than) available treatments (as opposed to requiring that
newer drugs are demonstrably superior).” I have tried Tylenol for headaches, no effect at all; but ibuprofen works for me. I have friends that have had the opposite experience. Genetics, etc. affect how people react to drugs. Maybe, on the average, a drug is better than another; but the other may work better for some subgroup. A more legitimate critique would be how the pharmaceutical industry pushes the latest drug for everyone because they can charge more for it; but having several drugs in ones armamentarium is a good thing when used appropriately.
Hi, Joel. Your critique is also correct, however, efficacy will decay under these rules with A being very good, E<D<C<B<A.
One of the main points claimed by the “whistleblower” is that the CDC destroyed data by shredding paper files. As I made quite clear in my article, getting rid of paper files while not only retaining the electronic data but making it available to anyone, demonstrated by Brian Hooker, is obviously proof they weren’t trying to hid anything. And as I explained, something your quote from AMA doesn’t apply to, post hoc subgroup analyses, which, at best, can be used to formulate hypotheses for future research, not to derive any conclusions from. In addition, as I made quite clear, the study did look at minorities. Hooker not only changed the age range in order to get a minimum of five in a cell, then used the wrong statistics and finally I made clear that such small numbers can be affected by changing just one, not something any legitimate researcher would base conclusions on. I have the AMA manual, the APA manual, and many books on research design, ethics, etc. As a long retired epidemiologist with an MS in biostatistics I spend my days reading and writing.
I’ve read carefully Brian Hooker’s paper and other claims by the whistleblower. If you go to Every Child By Two’s page Expert Commentaries you will see that I have written seven articles so far. Each one takes me months of obtaining articles and other documents, reading them, then writing and revising. My papers are thorough and well-documented, including extensive reference lists with URL when available. I suggest you read all seven carefully. Your
As for efficacy decaying, obviously you don’t really understand medicine. As an example, imagine one antibiotic is far superior to any other for treating some specific infection; however, also imagine that a small subset of the population is allergic to it, so, another antibiotic might not be as effective for the overall population; but could work for them.
As I wrote before, the main problem is not the development of alternative treatments; but that the pharmaceutical industry then pushes the alternatives for everyone as they can charge more for newer drugs. The one that works best should be tried first; but for the subset it doesn’t work for, would you deny them the alternative?
Brian Hooker got the data from William Thompson, who kept electronic records, unbeknownst to the rest of the team. May I send you a free copy of “Vaccine Whistleblower” published by Skyhorse? It contains the complete transcripts of Thompson’s revelations to Hooker. That way you would not have to surmise.
Many of the details you are posting are not consistent with the record.
It should not take months to read and review and understand these studies. However, I take nothing at face value. I check for myself. Like you, I’ve read the papers in question. You don’t see me “standing up” for Hooker’s paper here. In fact, for me, whether he repeated the CDC’s initial analysis verbatim is not important. Case/control or cohort, not important. The omission of the African American males, and of the idiopathic autism comparison result is the issue. Of all the studies in question are DeStefano et al (2004), Madsen et al. (2002), Verstraeten et al. (2003), they are only the beginning. For many of us, all of the studies conducted by this crew – and their colleagues, are in question. And rightfully so. The confessions and allegations of Thompson are sufficient grounds for grave concern. The fraud that Thompson describes is evident in the studies. Put that together with the emails (e.g., “It Just Won’t Go Away”), the lack of and IRB review of changes to study design, analyzing the data until they found a way to make found associations “go away”; the delays until publication, all of the questionable activities Thompson described, with peer reviewers seeing a positive association and wondering why it was being dismissed by the authors… it all has led to public policy and a public faith in the safety of vaccines beyond reason.
With respect to drugs that work on subset of patients, I’ve no problem w/that. My issue is Drug B a little worse than Drug A on the same population. I think it’s wonderful when we identify biomarkers that indicate which drugs work on subsets of patients – in “Cures vs. Profits” I devote an entire chapter to chemosensitivity assays. They’re fantastic.
I don’t give out my address; but if you want to send a copy of the book to Every Child By Two with a note to forward it to me, feel free. Their address is:
Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH
c/o Every Child By Two
1233 20th Street NW
Suite 403
Washington, DC 20036
Let me know so I can inform them to expect the book.
However, it will be some time before I can get around to it. I am currently reading the latest biography of Albert Einstein by Walter Isaakson and a couple of books by Brian Green explaining his theories/contributions which are frying my brain.
I can suggest several books that you should read:
Mervyn Susser. Causal Thinking in the Health Sciences: Concepts and Strategies in Epidemiology. Out of print; but available in many libraries and used copies on Amazon Marketplace. This is my absolute favorite book on epidemiology.
Kenneth J. Rothman & Sander Greenland. Modern Epidemiology (Second Edition). There is now a Third Edition; but having read the first two, enough for me. My second favorite.
I could list a dozen biostatistic books; but won’t.
As for the book on the whistleblower, you might want to read an article by David Gorski , Vaccine Whistleblower: An antivaccine “exposé full of sound and fury, signifying nothing at:
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vaccine-whistleblower-an-antivaccine-expose-full-of-sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing/
As for the Danish studies and others, I have read and re-read them and they were well done. I have also exchanged a couple of e-mails with them for additional information which they happily supplied. If you understood epidemiology and weren’t so biased you might have something reasonable to say. Now, I am through, I have better things to do. However, I will check this to see if you are sending the book to ECBT so I can alert them.
From your arguments I can understand why Daily Kos felt obliged to discontinue allowing you to post articles. I will repeat two things that you ignore, that the raw data is available in electronic form which Brian Hooker availed himself of, so one of Thompson’s claims is absolutely absurd. And, as I explained in detail in my article, post-hoc analyses are basically fishing expeditions, not confirmatory and the more analyses one does the more the risk of chance significant findings, especially with very very small data sets.
Joel:
Joel:
” post-hoc analyses are basically fishing expeditions, not confirmatory and the more analyses one does the more the risk of chance significant findings”
Yes, precisely. Once you read Thompson’s full description of how routine cooking the data with
round after round after round of analysis was, you will know why this applies to the studies
that we all have problems with.
On the surface, they all appear “well-done”. But if I told you that someone changed data points to make a result look significant, it would look “well-done” too. You are not factoring in the full revelations by Thompson. Anyone who reads the full transcript cannot conclude that these studies were “well-done” by the same reasoning youapply to Hooker’s analysis.
However, Hooker was not attempting to find a “new” result. He was, at Thompson’s suggestion, attempting
to reproduce the signficant result omitted by the CDC. So far you have not come up with any reason why
the CDC omitted the African American male result from DeStefano et al., yet included all of the other, post-hoc subgroup analyses? Any idea why they may have felt it OK to just leave it out?
The book is one the way.
You wrote: “Brian Hooker got the data from William Thompson, who kept electronic records, unbeknownst to the rest of the team.”
From Hooker’s paper: “This is a reanalysis of the data set, obtained from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC), used for the Destefano et al. 2004 publication on the timing of the first MMR vaccine and autism diagnoses.” (Hooker, 2014a, p.16)
“Cohort data were obtained directly as a “restricted access data set” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) via a Data Use Agreement. Data were deidentified by the CDC in accordance with Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prior to receipt by the study authors. Use of the CDC specifically for the study described herein was approved by the Simpson University Institutional Review Board, in accordance with U.S. Federal regulations.” (Hooker, 2014a, p.17)
So, you apparently got what you wrote from the transcripts in the book; but didn’t bother to check the actual article and you, apparently, didn’t read my ECBT article which clearly states the above, plus I also included in my article: “And the CDC certainly went out of their way to hide the data when they posted the following on their website:
The data CDC collected for this study continue to be available for analysis by others. CDC welcomes analysis by others that can be submitted for peer-review and publica-tion. For more information on how to access this public-use dataset please go to the this webpage”
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/developmentaldisabilities/maddsp-data-sets.html ) (CDC, 2014)
And you claim to be an objective scientist????
Joel, Interesting to hear you say, “Genetics, etc. affect how people react to drugs” as the same applies to vaccines – a drug being “a substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body”. Some children don’t make antibodies, no matter how many times they are vaccinated and others make too many after one shot, and yet they are re-vaccinated, just the same as everyone else, time and time again according to a schedule set up for all children, as if all children will respond in exactly the same way when clearly they don’t. Some children don’t have any negative reactions to vaccines at all and others have severe and serious reactions which, more often than not, are dismissed by doctors and nurses every day because they consider vaccines, unlike any other drugs, to be safe for everyone and don’t cause long term harm to anyone.
Pro-vaccine activists don’t seem to realise that the post-marketing surveillance system set up to monitor the safety of vaccines in the general population, and described by the CDC as “essential”, is not being used by medical professionals. It’s broken, and won’t be fixed until the reporting of vaccine reactions becomes mandatory. Just as there is a subgroup of people, like yourself, who don’t respond well to Tylenol, there is a subgroup of children who don’t respond well to vaccines because they are genetically different. There is no safe or effective ‘one-size-fits-all’ drug.
The post-marketing surveillance of vaccines is NOT broken. It includes a number of different surveillance schemes, including close to real-time surveillance of reports of adverse events and vaccinations on large populations. See my paper mentioned above. As for genetics and not building immunity to vaccines, the same genetics would come into play when exposed to the natural microbes which, if they have a genetically compromised immune system, would result in much more serious conditions. And that is ridiculous that some make “too many antibodies.” Would you like suggestions for some good books on the immune system as you obviously don’t know much about it? Read the section of my paper that gives references to current surveillance systems. Physicians don’t dismiss serious reactions just because they occur after vaccinations. How absolutely absurd.
What. Is the cutoff for attributing cause? It is very clear that VAERS can only underreport adverse events, and the resiurces is slathered with warnings that cause cannot be attributed to vaccine. There is a double standard for levels of evidence for safety and efficacy… Overcooked retrospective epidemiological studies are not reliable, and they are often not powered for rare events. We need to identify biomarkers of risk of vaccine induced microglial overactivation. The first step is to admit that vaccines can induce this chronically in a pathological state. We cannot get there until the CDC or the journal retracts the flawed studies and admits that vaccines can induce autism in some people. They are holding a entire arm of individualized medicine back.
My point was that not everyone responds in the same way to vaccines, just as not everyone responds in the same way to microbes. For example, there are numerous people who have never had all of the childhood diseases. Please explain what was protecting them from these microbes before the advent of vaccines, and tell me what is different about children who have serious reactions to vaccines, and suffer brain damage.
“Physicians don’t dismiss serious reactions just because they occur after vaccinations. How absolutely absurd.”
It’s not absurd at all. Please read through the details of Case No. 12-423V Wright v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Court of Federal Claims dated September 21, 2015.
Most people would expect physicians and their nurses to show concern for an obviously very sick child like this toddler but this case illustrates that they don’t, not after vaccination. It didn’t matter how many times the frantic mother rang the doctor’s office appealing for help, she was told repeatedly that she was witnessing a normal reaction to vaccination, that her son didn’t need to go to hospital, she should give him Tylenol and monitor him, and that he would be fine. Only, he wasn’t. He’d suffered an encephalopathy and is brain-damaged for life. Unfortunately, many parents have had a very similar experience.
Please tell me when convulsions, vomiting, somnolence, anorexia and catatonia for days are ever normal? This child’s pediatrician and nurses were so utterly convinced that he would be fine, they didn’t even record details of the reactions in his medical notes. The lack of contemporaneous notes and poor medical records didn’t surprise the judge. Again, many people have shared this experience.
“The post-marketing surveillance of vaccines is NOT broken.”
Knowing how “essential” VAERS is, according to the CDC, how can it possibly be working when medical people fail to report serious reactions like these, and how can the data used by epidemiologists be in any way accurate?
I suggest once more you read the two books on epidemiology I named. VAERS, as I wrote in several of my ECBT articles, is only one of several ongoing vaccine surveillance systems. You have chosen to believe that vaccines cause several problems and then any study that disagrees is wrong. I prefer to look at studies based on my 40 years of education in research methods and biostatistics, together with an understanding of the basics of immunology and infectious diseases.
You are fortunate to live in an era where smallpox doesn’t exist, thanks for vaccines. Otherwise, every few years there would be an outbreak resulting in around 1/3 of children dying. And smallpox vaccine is the one vaccine that actually had several severe adverse conditions. Prior to the WHO program to eliminate smallpox it caused an estimated two million deaths yearly in the Third World and required, despite the risk of adverse events, continued vaccinations in the US, since it is highly contagious and would have been a plane flight away. Polio may be the next disease wiped out so that we will be able to stop vaccinating for polio.
You asked why research on aluminum toxicity. I am a senior citizen, vegan, and blood donor. As such I take two 25 mg iron tablets, one in morning and one in evening, after donating blood for 3 – 4 weeks and then one tablet daily. Iron is an essential heavy metal; however, if I were to swallow the entire bottle I would be in trouble. I take a couple of aspirin once in a while when I get a headache. Aspirin is not a normal substance found in the body. However, if I were to swallow the entire bottle I would face an extremely unpleasant death.
Various metabolic pathways in our bodies actually result in formaldehyde which our bodies can deal with; but large doses could be fatal.
Mercury is ubiquitous and so is aluminum. In fact, millions of years ago the level of mercury in the environment of exponentially higher. Microbes developed mechanisms to deal with this. Our bodies have mechanisms also. We can excrete it. We can transform it. We can sequester it. The same with aluminum. However, we do research how to deal with toxic levels of many substances. How to treat an overdose of aspirin, for instance. Not only the dose; but the mode of entry into the body and the form of a substance play key roles.
You have made up your mind and nothing will change it. It is obvious from your writings. By the way, my next article for ECBT will deal with autism, its definition, when it first developed, etc. You won’t like it nor will you agree; but I will document my case and you will disagree based on cherry picking a few articles and your own bias.
You didn’t say if you will be mailing the book c/o ECBT, so I will assume you won’t.
I will certainly be sending you a copy, likely tomorrow. I will let you know when it has been shipped.
I don’t choose to ‘believe’, as you say. I have read the hundreds of studies demonstrating aluminum neurotoxicity. See my two reading lists for Dr. Offit. The CDC, Offitt and you have chosen to ignore aluminum induced immunoneuroexcitotoxicity. According to Offit, there are two populations for which aluminum is a problem:premature babies and diabetics. He has no idea what he is talking about, and there were 200 papers published before he wrote his misinformation in his book, and there have been another 200 published since. And, as I pointed out, but which you ignored, the full dose of aluminum in a vaccine goes into the body. Why do you ignore the published studies demonstrating microglial activation? I will ping you when the book has been mailed.
Joel: The book is on the way. You can tell them to look for it shipped directly from Skyhorse, addressed to you.
Joel: I know that Every Child by Two likes to based its policy decisions on peer-reviewed publications. here is one that you may wish to include in your consideration. I have many others, but this one in particular speaks to your assertion on the safety of aluminum:
Couette M1, Boisse MF, Maison P, Brugieres P, Cesaro P, Chevalier X, Gherardi RK, Bachoud-Levi AC, Authier FJ. 2009. Long-term persistence of vaccine-derived aluminum hydroxide is associated with chronic cognitive dysfunction. J Inorg Biochem. 103(11):1571-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jinorgbio.2009.08.005.
Abstract
Macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF) is an emerging condition, characterized by specific muscle lesions assessing long-term persistence of aluminum hydroxide within macrophages at the site of previous immunization. Affected patients mainly complain of arthromyalgias, chronic fatigue, and cognitive difficulties. We designed a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests to prospectively delineate MMF-associated cognitive dysfunction (MACD). Compared to control patients with arthritis and chronic pain, MMF patients had pronounced and specific cognitive impairment. MACD mainly affected (i) both visual and verbal memory; (ii) executive functions, including attention, working memory, and planning; and (iii) left ear extinction at dichotic listening test. Cognitive deficits did not correlate with pain, fatigue, depression, or disease duration. Pathophysiological mechanisms underlying MACD remain to be determined. In conclusion, long-term persistence of vaccine-derived aluminum hydroxide within the body assessed by MMF is associated with cognitive dysfunction, not solely due to chronic pain, fatigue and depression.
@ATSC
I read the entire court file. Given the description which varies of what transpired in the car after the 18 month vaccination, it is not clear what transpired. The doctor told her to go home, monitor the kid, and that she would be contacted. Personally, if it were my kid, I would have either driven back to the doctor’s office or to the emergency department. In any case, one example is not proof of anything. If I now come up with another example where the doctor told the mother to immediately go to the emergency department and he/she would meet them there, would that prove the opposite?
@ Joel
First you say that it was “absolutely absurd” for me to claim that physicians dismiss serious vaccine reactions and then when I give a documented example to show how wrong you are, you say, “one example is not proof of anything”. Do you honestly believe that the physician in this case is the only doctor on earth who has dismissed serious vaccine reactions; failed to treat a sick child; failed to write contemporaneous notes in a medical file and failed to report serious reactions to VAERS? If you do, Joel, you’re not living in the real world and it’s high time you stopped studying data and started speaking to people in the flesh.
It would appear that the little boy whose brain was permanently damaged by vaccines and whom you refer to as “the kid” means absolutely nothing to you. Those of us who’ve experienced the dismissiveness of doctors feel this child’s pain and the pain of his mother, father and sister. We empathise with this family., and all the other parents who’ve watched their once normal children suffer irreparable damage at the hands of their physician and their so-called “safe vaccines”. How do you feel? Is he no more to you than collateral damage and merely a statistic in your war against disease?
“The doctor told her to go home, monitor the kid, and that she would be contacted. Personally, if it were my kid, I would have either driven back to the doctor’s office or to the emergency department.”
Do you actually have a child or is this a hypothetical child?
At what other time would a doctor tell a non-medically trained parent to monitor her own child when he was obviously so very sick that even _you _claim that under the very same circumstances you would have ignored the doctor’s advice and driven back to his office or to the emergency department? Perhaps the difference is that you are better educated than this mother, who like most mothers didn’t know what she was looking at, neither did the father know what he was looking at, and trusting their pediatrician with the health and well-being of their child, thought that he and his nurses did when they said it was a normal vaccine reaction. What your statement shows is that, as a scientist and a strong believer in the safety of vaccines, _you_ have far less faith in doctors and the safety of vaccines than the rest of us.
Back to the subject of VAERS, ECBT claims under Vaccine Safety that vaccines are safe, and that “ECBT is confident in the safety of vaccines because of the elaborate systems in place to license safe vaccines and continually monitor their safety post-licensure”. Under one of the listed systems, VAERS, it says: “The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) gathers information about any side effects patients have experienced from vaccines. Medical personnel are required by law to report any adverse events to the system”.
Please direct me to the law that requires medical personnel to report any adverse events to VAERS and, if there is indeed a law, and I strongly suspect there isn’t, what are the penalties for those who don’t obey the law?
Joel, you will find that I never post anything that I cannot back up. However, I don’t have time to scour the web for you. Look around June 30, Jim Carrey tweeted about aluminum being a neutoxin; E.W. at Forbes “corrected” him, and I corrected her. If I happen to run into a link, I’ll share it. Re: your other comments, it is a birthday in my family, I am off web for the day.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Nevertheless, this is an interesting discussion.
My grandfather became numb on one side of his face and began slurring words. My grandmother rushed him to the hospital and told them her husband was having a stroke. The emergency room doctor disagreed, sent my grandfather home, and a few hours later he had a massive stroke.
I don’t know exactly what transpired. The mother is speaking from hindsight. People often conflate things and remember things that didn’t exactly happen. However, if events transpired as described, all it proves is that one doctor was a jerk. Another emergency room doctor may have admitted my grandfather, whether they could have prevented the massive stroke is uncertain. However, I know people a lot less educated than I am who, when their respective children displayed frightening conditions, drove them immediately to the nearest hospital emergency room. Such anecdotes prove nothing.
In regards to VAERS, “Anyone can report any vaccine AE [Adverse Event] to VAERS. . . healthcare providers are mandated by law to report certain AE after vaccination, and they are encouraged to report any clinically significant event occurring after vaccination, even if they are not certain the event is causally related to a vaccine(s).” (CDC, 2014)
CDC (last update 2014 Apr 1). Vaccines and Immunizations: Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt21-surv-adverse-events.html
And as I wrote, there are several “real-time” databases for vaccine surveillance where shots, lot numbers, any adverse conditions within so many days of the shots can be picked up. Such systems don’t require the medical personnel to report anything as they get it from the hospital databases. However, it only takes a couple of cases of serious conditions reported to VAERS, as with intussusception, for an investigation to begin. If you are really interested, you can go to my article at: http://www.ecbt.org/images/articles/A_Review_of_John_Stones_DeStefano_Rides_Again.pdf
Then go to section on page 6 “VAERS Is Not the Only Vaccine Surveillance System” Check out the references which can be found at end of paper.
My grandfather became numb on one side of his face and began slurring words. My grandmother rushed him to the hospital and told them her husband was having a stroke. The emergency room doctor disagreed, sent my grandfather home, and a few hours later he had a massive stroke.
I don’t know exactly what transpired. The mother is speaking from hindsight. People often conflate things and remember things that didn’t exactly happen. However, if events transpired as described, all it proves is that one doctor was a jerk. Another emergency room doctor may have admitted my grandfather, whether they could have prevented the massive stroke is uncertain. However, I know people a lot less educated than I am who, when their respective children displayed frightening conditions, drove them immediately to the nearest hospital emergency room. Such anecdotes prove nothing.
In regards to VAERS, “Anyone can report any vaccine AE [Adverse Event] to VAERS. . . healthcare providers are mandated by law to report certain AE after vaccination, and they are encouraged to report any clinically significant event occurring after vaccination, even if they are not certain the event is causally related to a vaccine(s).” (CDC, 2014)
CDC (last update 2014 Apr 1). Vaccines and Immunizations: Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt21-surv-adverse-events.html
And as I wrote, there are several “real-time” databases for vaccine surveillance where shots, lot numbers, any adverse conditions within so many days of the shots can be picked up. However, it only takes a couple of cases of serious conditions reported to VAERS, as with intussusception, for an investigation to begin. If you are really interested, you can go to my article at: http://www.ecbt.org/images/articles/A_Review_of_John_Stones_DeStefano_Rides_Again.pdf
Then go to section on page 6 “VAERS Is Not the Only Vaccine Surveillance System” Check out the references which can be found at end of paper.
The other subgroup analyses involved the same time frame and much larger n in each cell. It should be obvious that Hooker had to increase the time frame just to get 5 in one cell. I find it fascinating how you automatically believe Thompson; but also believe that ALL the other vaccine researchers, both CDC, Danish, and others, are either incompetent or dishonest. Did you read the David Gorski article I suggested?
I read the article you suggested on aluminum adjuvants. I then did a PubMed search and found a dozen more which I downloaded. I will eventually get around to them. In the meantime, I attached them to e-mails which I sent to several colleagues for their response.
As far as I can tell, it may be a valid association; but, then again, it may not be. If it is, it still may be quite rare and the question would be, if no screening test available, whether the benefit/cost ratio of vaccinating is still good. Years ago when peniciilin was first discovered, some people went into anaphylactic shock. If an emphasis was put on this, we would have had 10s of thousands of deaths to prevent a few cases of shock. Not the greatest analogy; but makes the point. There are still diseases out there that are quite nasty, diphtheria, polio, etc., and just as visitors to Disneyland were infected with measles, if parents decided to not vaccinate based on a rare adverse event, as more and more did this, the risk of being exposed to a vaccine-preventable disease would increase. It would be nice to have public health and medical interventions that worked a 100% of the time and NEVER had adverse events. Not in my life-time.
In any case, I will reserve judgment on aliuminum adjuvants until I have had time to read more and get feedback from colleagues. However, you said the article you suggested is just one of several you have. In case I missed any from my PubMed search, it would be helpful if you e-mailed me the list. You have my e-mail address.
I will notify ECBT to expect the book.
I found that you have written a book on Ebola. Not an area of prime interest; but I have read David Quammen’s book, Richard Preston’s “The Hot Zone,” William T. Close, MD’s novel, “Ebola: Through the Eyes of the People,” and Laurie Garrett’s “The Coming Plague,” as well as WHO and CDC articles and probably two dozen journal articles. If you want to send c/o ECBT a copy of the book, I would prioritize reading it.
From you emotionally laden attacks on epidemiology, you seem to suffer from the same problem a lot of intelligent well-educated people do, namely, you assume that you can evaluate areas that others have devoted years of education and training to just because you are intelligent and educated. I would love to know more biology and certainly would not, given my current level, presume to address research on tropics, etc. Different fundamentals, different statistics when used, different methodologies. In addition, you allow your emotions to color your opinions. I repeat, why believe Thompson and not all the others, unless, like other antivaccinationists, whatever agrees with you is valid, and whatever disagrees isn’t?
Personally, if tomorrow evidence appears based on, not one; but a host of different studies, that found problems with one or more vaccines, I would evaluate it and have NO problem changing my mind. However, given the history of vaccinations going back to colonial times, immunology, microbiology, and current infectious diseases around the world, vaccines have played a major role in the increase in life-expectancy and, especially, reduction of infant mortality.
So, let me know if you are send your book on Ebola and I will give ECBT a heads up.
Joel: Thank you for the interest in my book on Ebola. I cannot blame you for not knowing my resume, however, you should know that I am among those who have devoted their lives to data analysis in biomedicine. I have not replied to your repeated suggestions to read books on epidemiology, etc, because I have been a contributor in methodology for years…. I’ve been responsible for the analysis of many, many case/control studies and cohort studies, too.
I find it stunning that anyone would not take Thompson seriously. What in the world would he have to gain by lying that he participated in such activities as he has admitted?
There is a ton of literature that indicate immunoneurotoxicity of aluminum. At least you are not like one Forbes writer who, claiming that neuroscience is her specialty, that aluminum is not a neurotoxin.
Also, I don’t believe I have ever said that my response is emotional. One can claim egregious misconduct without letting one’s emotion overrule logic.
What I have done is to apply the same rigorous standards to the publications pointed out by Thompson as fraudulent that I apply to all papers I review, and to the methodology proposed in NIH grants when I serve on NIH panels. It’s fairly straightforward.
Re: the cells being larger: NOT MUCH! And, that omission must be interpreted in the context of the full description of the culture of cheating described by Thompson to Hooker.
I am glad to know that you’re open minded. I am working on the final bits of “Cures vs. Profits” and am of course writing furiously to finish “Genetic and Environmental Causes of Autism”. I wish I had time to share here everything I am including the book. I will likely be posting excerpts.
Since “Ebola” is mine, and yours is a personal request, I will be happy to send it from my house to yours. Please forward your personal mailing address to ebolapromo [at] gmail.com and let me know when the address is sent.
You wrote: “Re: the cells being larger: NOT MUCH! And, that omission must be interpreted in the context of the full description of the culture of cheating described by Thompson to Hooker.”
TABLE 5. from the article gives cases. For instance, for the analysis looking at Race, there we’re 137 Blacks and 218 whites. The smallest was 49 for Birth Weight. Somehow the math I learned doesn’t indicate that 49 is not much bigger than 5.
It is so obvious that you will defend your antivaccination stand no matter how unscientific, how illogical. When 5 is about the same as 49, what more can I say, and the 49 was the smallest cell in any analysis.
Joel I have not labeled you, please do not attempt to label me. It is a method of last resort. I am pro-life vaccine. Where do you stand on vaccine safety? Are you good with all of the ‘evidence’ the CDC says we should accept although you yourself have said newly all episode studies are flawed? I want Biomarkers of risk of autism after vaccines. I want to remove aluminum, let’s use VLPs. Can’t proceed as long as the discussion devolves into name-calling. And we cannot proceed unless and until we all look at the balance of the evidence available, not just the studies the C DC has chosen to not ignore.
Joel, autism occurs between 1-2%. Many rare genetic variants and some common genetic variants contribute to risk. What is the sample size needed to detect and effect on so few individuals? Can you detect a 1-2% even with 49 people? I stand by my conclusion. NOT MUCH!!!
1. As Paracelsus said 500 years ago, the dose makes the poison. I have NO doubt that aluminum can be a neurotoxin as can many other elements and compounds. However, no one injects aluminum directly into brain cells; thus, it depends on the mode of entry into the body and how the body deals with it, e.g. excretion, transformation through metabolic pathways, sequestration. And in many cases Paracelsus is correct; but some cases are not dose related; but threshold. Below a certain threshold the body can deal with something; but once above, is overwhelmed.
2. As for your saying your response was emotional, you didn’t; but your choice of words certainly implied a strong judgmental attitude rather than a scholarly scientific one.
3. As for “I find it stunning that anyone would not take Thompson seriously. What in the world would he have to gain by lying that he participated in such activities as he has admitted?” First, he was venting in what he thought was private conversations. Had he known Hooker and later Wakefield were so unethical, he might not have contacted Hooker at all or been more circumspect about what he said. Once made public, he could have either retracted some or all or circled the wagon (for an interesting study of how people refuse to admit being wrong in most cases, see Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson’s book “Mistakes were made (but not by me)”. My original training was in social and educational psychology followed by three year NIH post-doc where I studied and trained in epidemiology, biostatistics, and public health. And what could he gain? I guess you live in a different world than I do as during my lifetime there have been numerous cases of scientists accusing other scientist, some times proven true, sometimes not. Motives? I could list several.
4. If Thompson is to be believed, then he also said that the results of the paper were valid, just they left out one subgroup analyses of young Afro-American boys. So, why aren’t you and all the other antivaccinationists telling people that the study found vaccines safe EXCEPT for a small age range of Afro-American boys. Wouldn’t this be like saying that wheat products are safe except for those with gluten intolerance. I have NOT seen one antivaccinationist write anything even close. It seems that Thompson is credible when it suits them; but not otherwise.
5. Have you read Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Pharm” or Marcia Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies” or Melodie Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds”? Just a few of the books I have on the pharmaceutical industry. I probably have over a dozen and 100 or more pdfs of journal articles.
6. I would love to read your book on Ebola and actually the other two books you are working on when finished; but I don’t know you and, thus won’t give out my private address. If you don’t want to send it c/o ECBT, I can check with post office. I believe there is a way you can send it to be where it will come to the branch post office and I can pick it up.
7. Did you or are you going to send list of references on aluminum adjuncts to my e-mail address?
8. Could you also e-mail me your CV? Where are you currently working?
9. I did a quick search of PubMed on your name and most of the articles seem to deal with genetics?
Let’s chat by phone. I will be happy to send you my CV. I am currently CEO at The Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge. See ipaknowledge.org
The aluminum reading lists are on another article on my blog. See jameslyonsweiler.com and look for the ‘Paging Dr. Offit! article.
I have a great disdain for those whose mislead the public by cherry picking or worse only citing their own studies and ignoring all others’ contributions. If you sense any judgement, it is not misplaced. We cannot come to an understanding or even a true consensus when those in power choose to ignore hundreds of power reviewed studies that are available to them and for policy statements that lead the public to believe that no study has ever indicated a link. I will be posting excerpts at jameslyonsweiler.com as they become available. Thank you for the references. Happy to talk next week by phone so you can get to know me. I will place my biosketch online. I have published with coauthors in genomic, proteomics, genetics, bio informatics in cancer, heart disease, and many many other areas of biomedicine. I have taught genetics, ecology, research study design, – omics data analysis, bioinformatics. Led research consortia…. Enough about me.
I guess I am rather good at searching PubMed as I found all the articles you listed in “Paging Dr. Offit!”
You wrote: “Dr. Paul Offit earned millions of dollars from the sale of his patent for the Rotavirus vaccine after he voted to have it included in the pediatric vaccine schedule.” Offit voted to include the Rotashield vaccine, not his, in 1998 which was withdrawn from the market following a CDC investigation of a slight increase in cases of intussusception based on reports to VAERS (later research indicates the possibility that the association between Rotashield and intussusception may be weaker than the original CDC findings). In 2006, Offit recused himself from the vote for his vaccine, Rotateq. In addition, the patent money was paid to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the non-profit Wishart Institute who owned the patent rights, not Offit and his two co-inventors. CHOPs and Wishart have internal policies of how much they share with their employees. Considering that Offit worked about 25 years on developing the vaccine he did make out well; but not extravagantly. Divide the amount he received by 25 years. Given that CHOPs had neither the experience, the infrastructure, or the funds to carry out the Phase 3 clinical trials necessary to get FDA approval, they needed a pharmaceutical company. Merck had the experience; but wasn’t going to spend mass amounts of money just for the heck of it, so they purchased the patent. You assume the worst of people; but is it just possible that Offit devoted so many years to developing the vaccine because he believed it would benefit children? Do you really think he began as a young doctor with the goal of 25 years later making patent money? If he was so prescient of success and how much he would make, he could have saved a lot of time and made more money investing in Microsoft, Apple, and a couple of other stocks that sold really cheap at the time he began his research. The vaccine does work, especially in the 3rd world where more than a half million infants die each year from rotavirus; but in the US it saves between 20 and 60 infant deaths and 10s of thousands of hospitalizations, etc. A simple question: If Offit and colleagues had spent the same amount of time on a new successful treatment for, say, breast cancer, would you begrudge them and their respective institutes money from sale of the patent? Keep in mind that CHOPs, for instance, gave Offit the lab space, time, assistants, etc., and that CHOPS is a non-profit that does teaching, research, and indigent patient care. Would you have preferred they just give the patent to Merck?
I look forward to seeing your CV. If you decide to send me your book on EBOLA c/o ECBT, I will prioritize it; but won’t give out my private address. I saw you include Kennedy’s book on your recommended list. I read it and intend someday to review it. I found numerous errors. Unfortunately, as I get older, I have less and less energy, so one paper at a time and I have several to work on before I get around to Kennedy’s book.
You wrote above: “At least you are not like one Forbes writer who, claiming that neuroscience is her specialty, that aluminum is not a neurotoxin.” Which of Willingham’s articles did she make such a claim? Please give me the title and date.
It was a tweet
Here is the original article she tweeted about. ABCNews picked it up, too, and spread misinformation. Senator Pan clearly also knows nothing of the vast literature on aluminum neurotoxicity:
http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2015/jul/17a/jim-carrey/jim-carrey-misfires-vaccine-claim/
http://www.abc10.com/story/news/politics/2015/07/30/sen-richard-pan-calls-out-jim-carreys-vaccine-claims/30892729/
And thus my assigned reading lists to Offit – one before his book (~200 references) and one after his book (another ~200), all of which I have now read, and will summarize here an in my book. It does not look good for claims that aluminum is safe, not good at all.
http://jameslyonsweiler.com/2015/11/16/paging-dr-offit-your-aluminum-neurotoxicity-reading-assignments-are-ready/
The article you hyperlinked to is by April Hunt, Staff Writer. “April Hunt is an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter who has worked as a government and political journalist in three states and one commonwealth. She has won multiple awards for her investigative work, most recently the 2013 Gannett Foundation Award for Digital Innovation in Watchdog Journalism.” So, not someone from Forbes who claims to be a neuroscientist. You should really get your facts right. And Senator Pan is a pediatrician.
The list of articles on aluminum after your “Paging Dr. Offit,” included nine articles. So where does your 200 before and an additional 200 after come from? If you actually have such a list, please e-mail me a copy. I will be happy to share it with Offit and others. Given your many exaggerations, errors (e.g. Offit voted for his own vaccine, etc.), I’m not sure your claims about aluminum carry any weight; but I will be happy to look at the list of 400 and read some of them.
You avoid responding to what I wrote about you being wrong about Offit voting on his own vaccine and what I wrote about who owned the patent and also that it was for 25 years work. I would bet that if he had put in the same amount of effort on a successful treatment for some form of cancer or a new antibiotic you and others would be praising him.
There were about 200 articles on aluminum neurotoxicity before his book. I chose 11 for him to read. And then I chose more for him to read that have been on listed since. His willful ignorance of the evidence is putting people in danger. Many people follow his lead. In another of his books, he claims that Singh et al’s who stupid MMR and antibodies antibodies. He claimed that their assay did not measure MMR antibodies… I checked. They used ELISA. his claim would seem to impeach the millions of times ELISA has been used Perhaps the inventor of ELISA should have returned her Nobel Prize?
I know it was by April Hunt. Do her credentials a a journalist overrule the science that has demonstrated neuorotoxicuty of aluminum? I found Hunt’s article from a tweet from Emily. So what is you opinion on aluminum neurotoxicity?
Have you downloaded and looked at VAERS data? Have you read about ASIA? You know ADEM is recognized by the Vaccine Court as being caused by vaccines. Do you know how many dollars the court has awarded for vaccine induced injuries? What in the vaccines is causing those injuries that have been awarded? And do those factors have any negative effects, but to a lesser degree, on the rest of us? These are the questions on that the C DC should be asking Why are they not acting on these medical issues that result from vaccines? You know both of my boys are vaccinated, right?
Re: Office, it did not have to be his exact vaccine he voted on, his vote made his vaccine valuable nevertheless. I will stick with my assessment that no one on the vaccine board, or working on vaccine safety research, should have any financial stake in the outcome of their research or their voting. Offit’s hyperbole has revealed him as a non-standard for objextive viewpoint. In fact, anyone who confuses questions about vaccine safety with an attack on efficacy demonstrate so at least a lack of acumen if not a bias. I have never questioned efficacy. Unless and until I state that I am against immune protection provided by vaccines, do not confuse me with those who are against vaccines altogether. Are they times I think people should avoid stimulating their immune system? Yes. Mothers of babies with autism have more antibodies against brain proteins. This tells me that pregnant women with one autistic child already might want to avoid vaccines. There are other populations that I think should avoid current vaccines, too. Like people with autism and other immunoneurologuval conditions. Measure their microgliak activation with fMRI and see if another vaccine with aluminum might make it worse. It is time to move past ignorance.
You stated that Offit voted to approve his vaccine. He did not! You stated it was a Forbes writer claiming to be a neuroscientist who denied toxicity from aluminum, yet refer to article by journalist. You stated Hooker got electronic data from Thompson. Wrong. You stated Poling was diagnosed with autism and that the Court did not carry out such evaluations. Wrong. She was diagnosed by two separate experts consulted by her parents as having “autism like symptom” not autism and the Court did arrange a 3rd evaluation. Then you want me to make a diagnosis based on a few alleged descriptions. I don’t; but apparently you do. And you directed me to the article you wrote for getting your list of articles on aluminum. Then you claim to have a list of about 400 articles. So, where’s the list?
If you were a student in a graduate research course and continued to make such blatant errors and continued to refuse to admit them and I was the instructor, I would recommend you be dropped from the program and certainly would not pass you. It would NOT matter the subject, even if your position aligned with mine.
I have better things to do than waste my time with someone who appears congenitally incapable of admiitting error and just moving the goal posts.
Don’t bother replying.
In case anyone did not catch my response elswhere in the thread, Offit voted 3/4 times given the opportunity to add rotatvirus to the schedule. He recused himself only for ‘general use’ vote.
Also, Dr. Zimmerman is of the opinion that Hanah Poling had autism. He is well qualified to do so. You can read more here, and see how DeStefano admitted that vaccines may cause autism in some people. Perhaps Josh you would like to take your argument up with DeStefano on that point?
Also, please refer to my other comment where I make the root cause, and necessary and sufficient point. Zimmerman’s opinion was that the mutations presented a necessary, but insufficient set of circumstances for autism. The vaccines given (many in one day) completed the necessary and sufficient. Vaccines are man-made, the neurotoxin use is elective, etc, etc… We can see how vaccines are the cause, plainly, of Hanah’s autism, and this is why Zimmerman offer the opinion he did.
https://sharylattkisson.com/cdc-possibility-that-vaccines-rarely-trigger-autism/
Also, I provided the list as a pubmed search, here is again for ease of use:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=aluminum+neurotoxicity
It returns 398 studies and articles.
Josh, this is why your personal attacks are ineffective: they are baseless. You like to guess at what i know, or don’t know, and I keep telling you: that is not the point of this discussion!
Here I reply to each of the “gotchas” you think you found, in case you missed my other replies:
“You stated that Offit voted to approve his vaccine. He did not!”
Actually, you are correct in that he did not vote for HIS vaccine. He voted 3/4 opportunities to get the rotavirus vaccine added to the schedule… what’s the difference, it made his own valuable. He voted 3/4 times, recusing himself the 4th time for the “general use” question. I offered a full apology, then retracted 3/4 of it. But then he DID engage in the discussion…… still thinking about the 1/4 apology.
“You stated it was a Forbes writer claiming to be a neuroscientist who denied toxicity from aluminum, yet refer to article by journalist. ”
Emily had tweeted the journalists’ story. Did you not see my reply to you on that point? Or is it convenient to ignore my replies and repeat your accusations of errors. Oh, by the way, aluminum is still a neurotoxin, regardless of how many people are mistaken on that point, or who they are.
“You stated Hooker got electronic data from Thompson. Wrong. ”
RTB (Read the book)
“You stated Poling was diagnosed with autism and that the Court did not carry out such evaluations. Wrong. ”
She was diagnosed by two separate experts consulted by her parents as having “autism like symptom” not autism and the Court did arrange a 3rd evaluation. Then you want me to make a diagnosis based on a few alleged descriptions. I don’t; but apparently you do.”
You are mistaken. Dr. Zimmerman issued the diagnosis. It was Zimmerman’s diagnosis, not mine. And, by the way, otitis media is among the top 3 reasons for AD patients to appear in the emergency room. So the neurobloggologist who Hanah’s dad wrote a letter to, who replied with the (ahem) distant ‘diagnosis’, claimed Hanah’s cased was not typical of AD because she “also had” otitis media, frequent fevers, and seizures.
My review of the literature tells me that Steven Novella was wrong about that. His post in 2008 came long after the 1999 article reporting (Rosenhall et al. 1999) that at least 25% of cases of ASD had otitis media, and a more study in (Deavenport-Saman, 2015) now has found that otitis media is one of the top three reasons for autistic to appear in the emergency room.
Knowing how you dislike it when people are wrong, you will of course excuse me for being skeptical for statements made about diagnosis from neurologists unless and until I check the facts myself.
“And you directed me to the article you wrote for getting your list of articles on aluminum. Then you claim to have a list of about 400 articles. So, where’s the list?”
again, Pubmed. 398 articles.
Apparently you don’t understand basic economics. Offit voted to approve the Rotashield vaccine. At the time no one imagined it would be withdrawn because of problems. If there had been no problems, Offit’s vaccine approved eight years later would have been worth far less than if it were the only vaccine, so his voting for Rotashield made any future “profits” less, assuming he even was sure at the time that his vaccine would be approved eight years later. He recused himself from voting on his own vaccine, Rotateq. Judges recuse themselves from cases they have personal associations with; but no one expects them to resign their post. Offit recused himself. According to you, should he have totally resigned?
And does it totally escape you that someone can make money on something they truly believe in and that does work?
Ah, I did not know that Offit recused himself. He did, however, participate in the discussion.
I have served on committees where I had a potential conflict of interest – and I asked to be dismissed
for the duration of the discussion and vote. That is the minimum expectations of ethics, and it is
what I taught graduate students in my Research Design course.
Thank you for correcting my misunderstanding that Dr. Offit’s COI was restricted to participating in the discussion in which promoted the addition of the Rotavirus, rather than recuse himself. I apologize to Dr. Offit for any slight my misunderstanding of the nature of his COI may have caused him, and I apologize to my readership for not performing due diligence.
I would like to point out, however, that the minutes to Offit’s meeting where he promoted addition of the Rotavirus to the schedule are missing from the CDC website:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/acip/downloads/min-archive/min-feb06.pdf
If anyone has a copy, please forward them to me.
I would also like to remind you that the CDC was strongly reprimanded in a report for, among other things this:
“The CDC routinely grants waivers from conflict of interest rules to every member of its advisory committee.”
Conflicts of Interest in Vaccine Policy Making
Majority Staff Report
Committee on Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
June 15, 2000
And in the another report, we find that Offit voted 3 times, recusing himself one:
“Dr. Offit began his tenure on ACIP in October of 1998. Out of four votes pertaining to the ACIP’s rotavirus statement he voted “yes” three times, including, voting for the inclusion of the rotavirus vaccine in the VFC program.
Dr. Offit abstained from voting on the ACIP’s rescission of the recommendation of the rotavirus vaccine for routine use. He stated at the meeting, “I’m not conflicted with Wyeth, but because I consult with Merck on the development of rotavirus vaccine, I would still prefer to abstain because it creates a perception of conflict.”
Excerpted From the House of Representatives Gov’t Reform Committee Staff Report
See http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/idepc/immunize/immrule/comments/comment189.pdf for an embedded copy of the report.
I retract my 3/4 of my apology to Dr. Offit. Josh, please don’t spread misinformation!
@ATSC
My grandfather became numb on one side of his face and began slurring words. My grandmother rushed him to the hospital and told them her husband was having a stroke. The emergency room doctor disagreed, sent my grandfather home, and a few hours later he had a massive stroke.
I don’t know exactly what transpired. The mother is speaking from hindsight. People often conflate things and remember things that didn’t exactly happen. However, if events transpired as described, all it proves is that one doctor was a jerk. Another emergency room doctor may have admitted my grandfather, whether they could have prevented the massive stroke is uncertain. However, I know people a lot less educated than I am who, when their respective children displayed frightening conditions, drove them immediately to the nearest hospital emergency room. Such anecdotes prove nothing.
In regards to VAERS, “Anyone can report any vaccine AE [Adverse Event] to VAERS. . . healthcare providers are mandated by law to report certain AE after vaccination, and they are encouraged to report any clinically significant event occurring after vaccination, even if they are not certain the event is causally related to a vaccine(s).” (CDC, 2014)
CDC (last update 2014 Apr 1). Vaccines and Immunizations: Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt21-surv-adverse-events.html
And as I wrote, there are several “real-time” databases for vaccine surveillance where shots, lot numbers, any adverse conditions within so many days of the shots can be picked up. However, it only takes a couple of cases of serious conditions reported to VAERS, as with intussusception, for an investigation to begin. If you are really interested, you can go to my article at: http://www.ecbt.org/images/articles/A_Review_of_John_Stones_DeStefano_Rides_Again.pdf
Then go to section on page 6 “VAERS Is Not the Only Vaccine Surveillance System” Check out the references which can be found at end of paper.
@ Joel
Thanks for the link, but it’s just as I suspected, there is no law that requires medical personnel to report “any adverse events” to VAERS.
ECBT grossly misleads its readers by assuring them that they are confident in the safety of vaccines because of elaborate systems like VAERS which they claim continually monitors vaccine safety post-licensure, and because medical personnel are required by law to report any adverse events, but the truth is that the law only applies to “certain adverse events following specific vaccinations” – and even then reporting is dependent on healthcare providers being aware of the reporting system (see under Reporting Sensitivity).
How confident in VAERS can anyone be when healthcare providers haven’t even heard of it, and those that have are only required by law to report certain events after specific vaccines? How confident can parents be when providers are simply “encouraged to report any clinically significant event even if they are not certain the event is causally related to the vaccine”? How do doctors, nurses and receptionists on the other end of the phone decide which symptoms that non-medically trained parents describe to them are clinically significant?
Many parents of children later diagnosed with ASD have described how their child changed after vaccine reactions: they regressed, they lost eye-contact and stopped speaking and interacting with the family, only to be told by their doctor that vaccines don’t cause autism.
Imagine you had a puppy who greeted you every evening when you came home from work, wagging his tail, barking and running around in excitement, and then after being off-colour for a few days after vaccines, he spent his time lying in his bed obsessively licking his paws or constantly chasing his tail, and didn’t pay you any attention. Furthermore, he no longer spoke to you with his eyes, asking for food or a walk, and when you tried to stroke him, he growled or bit your hand. Are you going to tell me that you would not even consider that the vaccines had damaged your puppy’s brain?
“I know people a lot less educated than I am who, when their respective children displayed frightening conditions, drove them immediately to the nearest hospital emergency room. ”
I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t except after vaccination, because the generally held belief that vaccines are necessary and safe, and adverse reactions are expected but do no long term harm, influences how everyone responds.
I’ve read your paper, but your confidence in the system is so strong that you seem incapable of believing that people don’t do what is required of them, perhaps because you yourself would, if you were in their position.
@ATSC
Either you are dishonest and didn’t really read my paper or you really just plain didn’t understand. I clearly explained and gave numerous reference that described several other vaccine adverse events reporting systems. And I also explained how just a few reports of serious conditions, e.g. intussusception, to VAERS leads to investigations. So, even if VAERS is underreported, it takes only a few cases for an investigation. I suggest you re-read the section in my paper and go to the reference list and read each and every one of the references I gave.
While NO system is perfect, vaccine surveillance is far better than that of any other pharmaceuticals and food, including alternative medicines which are NOT covered by the FDA. Until just a few years ago, the government could only request voluntarily taking a food off the market even with clear evidence it was causing illness and even death. Now the government finally has the power to order a recall. As for pharmaceuticals other than vaccines, there are numerous cases with clear evidence of harm where it took years, even a decade or more to get them off the market. In 2004, pre-testing of the flu vaccine detected bacterial contamination in some lots leading to complete banning of Chiron’s vaccine for that year. Less than six months after approval of the Rotashield vaccine, doctors were ordered to stop using it and within a year it was withdrawn from the market. Keep in mind that the clinical trials for Rotashield involved more than 10,000 kids, much larger than typical regular pharmaceuticals. So, based on good science, there was NO evidence of problems; but the minute problems were found, the CDC began intensive investigations. The Rotateq vaccine, approved eight years later involved over 70,000 kids in the third phase clinical trials in order to find even very rare adverse events.
Prior to Rotateq, between 20 and 60 infants died every year in the US from rotavirus and up to 50,000 were hospitalized. I guess we could test every vaccine on a million children at a cost of billions of dollars. At what point would you feel safe? And, again, the post-market vaccine adverse surveillance system involves much more than VAERS. You and others focusing on VAERS would be like deciding how well the US is defended by looking at the Coast Guard and ignoring the other military branches. I repeat, VAERS is just one surveillance program and it is based mainly on voluntary passive reports. However, studies have shown that as the conditions get more serious, the percentage of reports increase. And the other systems are more active, real-time.
Finally, as far as I’m aware, just about all of the vaccine researchers make sure they and their children get vaccinated. Do you think they are ALL so stupid as to endanger their loved ones and selves?
I don’t trust anything 100%, which is why I monitor international reports and international studies; but I trust vaccines more than other pharmaceuticals and more than the foods I buy. Life involves weighing benefits and risks. Having read the history of infectious diseases, monitoring the current diseases around the world, studying how the immune system works, and knowing the much more stringent regulations for vaccines, I choose to vaccinate myself and encourage friends and loved ones to do the same.
It is always possible that someone is lying; but if that is your approach to life, I suggest you leave civilization, as far away as possible, and grow your own foods. Keep in mind that people died from tetanus and other infections even if they were 100s of miles from “civilization.” Every time you purchase anything it is a matter of faith. However, vaccines, as public policy, are looked at by governments around the world. The Scandinavian Countries, especially Sweden where I live nine years, believe in the value and dignity of every life and especially focus on the well-being of their children. So, if you don’t trust the CDC, think about the Scandinavians. But, if you don’t trust the CDC, next time their is an outbreak of some deadly disease, e.g. Hanta virus, well, who will you turn to?
One last point. Read all seven of my ECBT articles. I show that claims made by antivaccinationists represent poor scholarship, illogic, deficient science, and sometimes are contradictory.
Here’s the problem – hundreds of thousands of parents have witnessed their child regress into autism after vaccines. Where are those cases in the VAERS? If it is as good as you say it is, better than most others in medicine, then the reporting for all other types of medicine must be deplorable.
The Scandanavians are among those studies that are considered compromised… it was Vaestraten who wrote the email to the CDC: “it just won’t go away”. And he came out in the Journal of Pediatrics, stating that the CDC was over-interpreting the results:
”
“Surprisingly, however, the study is being interpreted now as negative [where ‘negative’ implies no association was shown between Thimerosal and autism] by many…The article does not state that we found evidence against an association, as a negative study would. It does state, on the contrary, that additional study is recommended, which is the conclusion to which a neutral study must come…A neutral study carries a very distinct message: the investigators could neither confirm nor exclude an association, and therefore more study is required.”
The Danish study in question (Madsen et al.) is no better. Do not refer us to the very science that we are calling out as corrupted by unethical practices as proof of support that we should believe or trust the CDC.
We don’t. The damage is done. That does not make us biased. It makes us informed, awake, and empowered.
We are hardly at square one with this.
@ATSC
You wrote: “Please direct me to the law that requires medical personnel to report any adverse events to VAERS and, if there is indeed a law, and I strongly suspect there isn’t, what are the penalties for those who don’t obey the law?”
I responded: “In regards to VAERS, “Anyone can report any vaccine AE [Adverse Event] to VAERS. . . healthcare providers are mandated by law to report certain AE after vaccination, and they are encouraged to report any clinically significant event occurring after vaccination, even if they are not certain the event is causally related to a vaccine(s).” (CDC, 2014)
CDC (last update 2014 Apr 1). Vaccines and Immunizations: Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt21-surv-adverse-events.html
You then wrote: “Thanks for the link, but it’s just as I suspected, there is no law that requires medical personnel to report “any adverse events” to VAERS. ECBT grossly misleads its readers by assuring them that they are confident in the safety of vaccines because of elaborate systems like VAERS which they claim continually monitors vaccine safety post-licensure, and because medical personnel are required by law to report any adverse events, but the truth is that the law only applies to “certain adverse events following specific vaccinations” – and even then reporting is dependent on healthcare providers being aware of the reporting system.”
So, all or none. Typical antivaccinationist response. If it isn’t exactly, 100% of what you want, then it doesn’t count. But, again, you ignore the multiple other surveillance systems which ECBT is aware of. While you would like to focus on VAERS alone as if it were the only system, we in the real world look at the entire picture.
Since 1986, the law requires that a Vaccine Information Sheet be given every time a vaccine is given. These sheets include minor adverse events and major adverse events. They also explain VAERS and encourage people to make reports and the sheets also explain about the Vaccine Court. The American Academy of Pediatrics discusses vaccine safety and that pediatricians should discuss with their patients at annual meetings and in repeated articles in their newsletter. I and most of my friends have been given these information sheets. Below is part of what is on one:
What should I do?
• If you think it is a severe allergic reaction or other emergency that can’t wait, call 9-1-1 or get the person to the nearest hospital. Otherwise, call your doctor.
• Afterward, the reaction should be reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Your doctor might file this report, or you can do it yourself through the VAERS website, or by calling 1-800-822-7967.
VAERS is only for reporting reactions. They do not give medical advice.
Notice if the mother who phoned her doctor about her kids condition had taken the time to read the sheet, it instructs her to call 9-1-1 or get the kid to the nearest hospital. Oh, since I didn’t bother to look up the kids name and have always had a poor memory for names, feel free to disregard everything I write and enjoy a gotcha moment, the refuge of those incapable of participating in a scholarly reasoned scientific dialogue. Just find something you can pounce on.
One can’t force parents to read the Vaccine Information Sheet; but many doctors offices do have nurses that encourage them to do so. In the State of California pharmacists are required by law to discuss every prescription with patients before giving it to them. Personally, I would support a law that required parents to read the Vaccine Information Sheet under the watchful eye of a nurse. Despite this, I’m sure some pharmacists don’t make sure that patients understand what they are getting, and some patients just pretend to pay attention. And some offices don’t give out the Vaccine Information Sheets. And parents could pretend to read the sheets. Of course, they could be required to take a multiple choice test? How far would you like to go. This isn’t a perfect world.
You can look at the Vaccine Information Sheets at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/dtap.html
As I wrote in my article: “the FDA established the Post-Licensure Rapid Immunization Monitoring Program (PRISM) as part of the Mini-Sentinel System in 2008. (Baker, 2013; FDA, 2014a, 2015) “Active Surveillance: Mini-Sentinel monitors the safety of FDA-regulated medical products through assessment of routinely collected electronic healthcare data in response to FDA concerns. It does not require patients or clinicians to initiate reports to FDA.”
There is also the Vaccine Safety Datalink which is linked to a number of large health care organizations. It gets almost real-time data on every vaccine given, including lot number, and any medical encounters that a kid might have afterwards. And, of course, there is always the possibility that a few doctors and/or nurses might goof. Let’s judge every system on the possibility that not every single person will do their jobs.
Besides the various systems for monitoring vaccine adverse events in the U.S., the CDC is linked/aware of reports from other countries, including the Scandinavian countries, France, and the UK. The UK, as I explained in the first paper of mine that ECBT posted, has an extensive system of drug adverse events surveillance systems. You can read what I wrote at:
http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOVACJ/TOVACJ-6-9.pdf
Go to the section entitled: “WHAT TYPES OF SURVEILLANCE DID THE UK USE?”
I am and have been a strong supporter of a non-profit single payer health care system. If we had one then all medical encounters, including vaccinations, would be accessible for surveillance purposes. Of course, protecting confidentiality. In such a system, teams at the CDC together with programmed searches could look at vaccines and the FDA would have a much better access to all other drug adverse events. So, besides a system that covers everyone with quality medical care and choice for no more money that currently spent (because of savings of the approximately 30 cents on the dollar that goes to excess administration and profits in our fragmented, dysfunctional for-profit health care system) we would have much better data to evaluate all aspects of health care. Check out Physicians for a National Healthcare Programs website at: http://www.pnhp.org
You and many antivaccinationists exhibit a clear example of:
“The nirvana fallacy is a name given to the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume that there is a perfect solution to a particular problem. A closely related concept is the Perfect solution fallacy. (Wikipedia “Nirvana Fallacy”) Exemplified by my giving the law and since it doesn’t complete cover everything and since some may not comply with it, then it is worthless in your mind. You also, by focusing only on VAERS, make sure that there isn’t a solution that would satisfy you.
How come you hide behind four letters? Why not use your real name?
@ATSC
You wrote: “Please direct me to the law that requires medical personnel to report any adverse events to VAERS and, if there is indeed a law, and I strongly suspect there isn’t, what are the penalties for those who don’t obey the law?”
I responded: “In regards to VAERS, “Anyone can report any vaccine AE [Adverse Event] to VAERS. . . healthcare providers are mandated by law to report certain AE after vaccination, and they are encouraged to report any clinically significant event occurring after vaccination, even if they are not certain the event is causally related to a vaccine(s).” (CDC, 2014)
CDC (last update 2014 Apr 1). Vaccines and Immunizations: Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt21-surv-adverse-events.html
You then wrote: “Thanks for the link, but it’s just as I suspected, there is no law that requires medical personnel to report “any adverse events” to VAERS. ECBT grossly misleads its readers by assuring them that they are confident in the safety of vaccines because of elaborate systems like VAERS which they claim continually monitors vaccine safety post-licensure, and because medical personnel are required by law to report any adverse events, but the truth is that the law only applies to “certain adverse events following specific vaccinations” – and even then reporting is dependent on healthcare providers being aware of the reporting system.”
So, all or none. Typical antivaccinationist response. If it isn’t exactly, 100% of what you want, then it doesn’t count. But, again, you ignore the multiple other surveillance systems which ECBT is aware of. While you would like to focus on VAERS alone as if it were the only system, we in the real world look at the entire picture. And what does “any adverse event” mean? Should doctors be mandated to waste their time reporting to VAERS that the kid cried? Or became slightly lethargic for a few minutes? Or, what if the mother mentions that the kid had a temperature of 100, she gave him children’s tylenol and the kid was fine? We already know that minor reactions occur. So, rather than mandating even the most trivial reactions, I prefer to focus on anything that is or could be serious. “Any adverse event” is so broad that it becomes absurd. Not only would it end with tons of meaningless data; but doctors, already pressed for time, would be forced to devote time to such meaningless reporting.
Since 1986, the law requires that a Vaccine Information Sheet be given every time a vaccine is given. These sheets include minor adverse events and major adverse events. They also explain VAERS and encourage people to make reports and the sheets also explain about the Vaccine Court. The American Academy of Pediatrics discusses vaccine safety and that pediatricians should discuss with their patients at annual meetings and in repeated articles in their newsletter. I and most of my friends have been given these information sheets. Below is part of what is on one:
What should I do?
• If you think it is a severe allergic reaction or other emergency that can’t wait, call 9-1-1 or get the person to the nearest hospital. Otherwise, call your doctor.
• Afterward, the reaction should be reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Your doctor might file this report, or you can do it yourself through the VAERS website, or by calling 1-800-822-7967.
VAERS is only for reporting reactions. They do not give medical advice.
Notice if the mother who phoned her doctor about her kid’s condition had taken the time to read the sheet, it instructs her to call 9-1-1 or get the kid to the nearest hospital. Oh, since I didn’t bother to look up the kids name and have always had a poor memory for names, feel free to disregard everything I write and enjoy a gotcha moment, the refuge of those incapable of participating in a scholarly reasoned scientific dialogue. Just find something you can pounce on.
One can’t force parents to read the Vaccine Information Sheet; but many doctors offices do have nurses that encourage them to do so. In the State of California pharmacists are required by law to discuss every prescription with patients before giving it to them. Personally, I would support a law that required parents to read the Vaccine Information Sheet under the watchful eye of a nurse. Despite this, I’m sure some pharmacists don’t make sure that patients understand what they are getting, and some patients just pretend to pay attention. And some offices don’t give out the Vaccine Information Sheets. And parents could pretend to read the sheets. Of course, they could be required to take a multiple choice test? How far would you like to go. This isn’t a perfect world.
You can look at the Vaccine Information Sheets at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/dtap.html
As I wrote in my article: “the FDA established the Post-Licensure Rapid Immunization Monitoring Program (PRISM) as part of the Mini-Sentinel System in 2008. (Baker, 2013; FDA, 2014a, 2015) “Active Surveillance: Mini-Sentinel monitors the safety of FDA-regulated medical products through assessment of routinely collected electronic healthcare data in response to FDA concerns. It does not require patients or clinicians to initiate reports to FDA.”
There is also the Vaccine Safety Datalink which is linked to a number of large health care organizations. It gets almost real-time data on every vaccine given, including lot number, and any medical encounters that a kid might have afterwards. And, of course, there is always the possibility that a few doctors and/or nurses might goof. Let’s judge every system on the possibility that not every single person will do their jobs.
Besides the various systems for monitoring vaccine adverse events in the U.S., the CDC is linked/aware of reports from other countries, including the Scandinavian countries, France, and the UK. The UK, as I explained in the first paper of mine that ECBT posted, has an extensive system of drug adverse events surveillance systems. You can read what I wrote at:
http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOVACJ/TOVACJ-6-9.pdf
Go to the section entitled: “WHAT TYPES OF SURVEILLANCE DID THE UK USE?”
I am and have been a strong supporter of a non-profit single payer health care system. If we had one then all medical encounters, including vaccinations, would be accessible for surveillance purposes. Of course, protecting confidentiality. In such a system, teams at the CDC together with programmed searches could look at vaccines and the FDA would have a much better access to all other drug adverse events. So, besides a system that covers everyone with quality medical care and choice for no more money that currently spent (because of savings of the approximately 30 cents on the dollar that goes to excess administration and profits in our fragmented, dysfunctional for-profit health care system) we would have much better data to evaluate all aspects of health care. Check out Physicians for a National Healthcare Programs website at: http://www.pnhp.org
You and many antivaccinationists exhibit a clear example of:
“The nirvana fallacy is a name given to the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume that there is a perfect solution to a particular problem. A closely related concept is the Perfect solution fallacy. (Wikipedia “Nirvana Fallacy”) Exemplified by my giving the law and since it doesn’t complete cover everything and since some may not comply with it, then it is worthless in your mind. You also, by focusing only on VAERS, make sure that there isn’t a solution that would satisfy you.
I have tried over the past two days to post comments; but they were NOT posted. So, our you making sure this is a one-sided dialogue???
No, that would be Matt Carey’s tactic.
By all means, please continue!
(Sorry about the delay. I may be away from my computer from time to time, spending time w/the boys, etc.)
Suddenly a short comment went through, so I’ll try again.
@ATSC
You wrote: “Please direct me to the law that requires medical personnel to report any adverse events to VAERS and, if there is indeed a law, and I strongly suspect there isn’t, what are the penalties for those who don’t obey the law?”
I responded: “In regards to VAERS, “Anyone can report any vaccine AE [Adverse Event] to VAERS. . . healthcare providers are mandated by law to report certain AE after vaccination, and they are encouraged to report any clinically significant event occurring after vaccination, even if they are not certain the event is causally related to a vaccine(s).” (CDC, 2014)
CDC (last update 2014 Apr 1). Vaccines and Immunizations: Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)Chapter 21: Surveillance for Adverse Events Following Immunization Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt21-surv-adverse-events.html
You then wrote: “Thanks for the link, but it’s just as I suspected, there is no law that requires medical personnel to report “any adverse events” to VAERS. ECBT grossly misleads its readers by assuring them that they are confident in the safety of vaccines because of elaborate systems like VAERS which they claim continually monitors vaccine safety post-licensure, and because medical personnel are required by law to report any adverse events, but the truth is that the law only applies to “certain adverse events following specific vaccinations” – and even then reporting is dependent on healthcare providers being aware of the reporting system.”
So, all or none. Typical antivaccinationist response. If it isn’t exactly, 100% of what you want, then it doesn’t count. But, again, you ignore the multiple other surveillance systems which ECBT is aware of. While you would like to focus on VAERS alone as if it were the only system, we in the real world look at the entire picture. And what does “any adverse event” mean? Should doctors be mandated to waste their time reporting to VAERS that the kid cried? Or became slightly lethargic for a few minutes? Or, what if the mother mentions that the kid had a temperature of 100, she gave him children’s tylenol and the kid was fine? We already know that minor reactions occur. So, rather than mandating even the most trivial reactions, I prefer to focus on anything that is or could be serious. “Any adverse event” is so broad that it becomes absurd. Not only would it end with tons of meaningless data; but doctors, already pressed for time, would be forced to devote time to such meaningless reporting.
Since 1986, the law requires that a Vaccine Information Sheet be given every time a vaccine is given. These sheets include minor adverse events and major adverse events. They also explain VAERS and encourage people to make reports and the sheets also explain about the Vaccine Court. The American Academy of Pediatrics discusses vaccine safety and that pediatricians should discuss with their patients at annual meetings and in repeated articles in their newsletter. I and most of my friends have been given these information sheets. Below is part of what is on one:
What should I do?
• If you think it is a severe allergic reaction or other emergency that can’t wait, call 9-1-1 or get the person to the nearest hospital. Otherwise, call your doctor.
• Afterward, the reaction should be reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Your doctor might file this report, or you can do it yourself through the VAERS website, or by calling 1-800-822-7967.
VAERS is only for reporting reactions. They do not give medical advice.
Notice if the mother who phoned her doctor about her kid’s condition had taken the time to read the sheet, it instructs her to call 9-1-1 or get the kid to the nearest hospital. Oh, since I didn’t bother to look up the kids name and have always had a poor memory for names, feel free to disregard everything I write and enjoy a gotcha moment, the refuge of those incapable of participating in a scholarly reasoned scientific dialogue. Just find something you can pounce on.
One can’t force parents to read the Vaccine Information Sheet; but many doctors offices do have nurses that encourage them to do so. In the State of California pharmacists are required by law to discuss every prescription with patients before giving it to them. Personally, I would support a law that required parents to read the Vaccine Information Sheet under the watchful eye of a nurse. Despite this, I’m sure some pharmacists don’t make sure that patients understand what they are getting, and some patients just pretend to pay attention. And some offices don’t give out the Vaccine Information Sheets. And parents could pretend to read the sheets. Of course, they could be required to take a multiple choice test? How far would you like to go. This isn’t a perfect world.
You can look at the Vaccine Information Sheets at: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/dtap.html
As I wrote in my article: “the FDA established the Post-Licensure Rapid Immunization Monitoring Program (PRISM) as part of the Mini-Sentinel System in 2008. (Baker, 2013; FDA, 2014a, 2015) “Active Surveillance: Mini-Sentinel monitors the safety of FDA-regulated medical products through assessment of routinely collected electronic healthcare data in response to FDA concerns. It does not require patients or clinicians to initiate reports to FDA.”
There is also the Vaccine Safety Datalink which is linked to a number of large health care organizations. It gets almost real-time data on every vaccine given, including lot number, and any medical encounters that a kid might have afterwards. And, of course, there is always the possibility that a few doctors and/or nurses might goof. Let’s judge every system on the possibility that not every single person will do their jobs.
Besides the various systems for monitoring vaccine adverse events in the U.S., the CDC is linked/aware of reports from other countries, including the Scandinavian countries, France, and the UK. The UK, as I explained in the first paper of mine that ECBT posted, has an extensive system of drug adverse events surveillance systems. You can read what I wrote at:
http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOVACJ/TOVACJ-6-9.pdf
Go to the section entitled: “WHAT TYPES OF SURVEILLANCE DID THE UK USE?”
I am and have been a strong supporter of a non-profit single payer health care system. If we had one then all medical encounters, including vaccinations, would be accessible for surveillance purposes. Of course, protecting confidentiality. In such a system, teams at the CDC together with programmed searches could look at vaccines and the FDA would have a much better access to all other drug adverse events. So, besides a system that covers everyone with quality medical care and choice for no more money that currently spent (because of savings of the approximately 30 cents on the dollar that goes to excess administration and profits in our fragmented, dysfunctional for-profit health care system) we would have much better data to evaluate all aspects of health care. Check out Physicians for a National Healthcare Programs website at: http://www.pnhp.org
You and many antivaccinationists exhibit a clear example of:
“The nirvana fallacy is a name given to the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume that there is a perfect solution to a particular problem. A closely related concept is the Perfect solution fallacy. (Wikipedia “Nirvana Fallacy”) Exemplified by my giving the law and since it doesn’t complete cover everything and since some may not comply with it, then it is worthless in your mind. You also, by focusing only on VAERS, make sure that there isn’t a solution that would satisfy you.
@ Joel,
You wrote: “And what does “any adverse event” mean?………“Any adverse event” is so broad that it becomes absurd. Not only would it end with tons of meaningless data; but doctors, already pressed for time, would be forced to devote time to such meaningless reporting.”
Perhaps you should ask the organization you work for, Every Child By Two, with nine MDs on its scientific advisory board including Dr Paul Offit what “any adverse event” means, for they are the ones claiming that: a) The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) gathers information about ANY SIDE EFFECTS patients have experienced from vaccines” and b) “Medical personnel are REQUIRED BY LAW TO REPORT ANY ADVERSE EVENTS to the system.”
Are these true statements?
You wrote: “Should doctors be mandated to waste their time reporting to VAERS that the kid cried? Or became slightly lethargic for a few minutes? Or, what if the mother mentions that the kid had a temperature of 100, she gave him children’s tylenol and the kid was fine? We already know that minor reactions occur. So, rather than mandating even the most trivial reactions, I prefer to focus on anything that is or could be serious.”
Parents are not stupid. Don’t trivialize the reactions that parents do report because that is exactly what “healthcare” providers do over the phone. “Oh that’s a normal reaction. He’ll be fine.” Countless parents have heard these words after reporting a cluster of symptoms that to trained medical personnel should have indicated serious ill-health, perhaps an encephalitis, and set off alarm bells, but because they happened after “routine vaccines”, the child was not seen, and the child was not fine. He or she was never the same again.
You wrote: “Since 1986, the law requires that a Vaccine Information Sheet be given every time a vaccine is given.”
How many doctors and nurses do you think give a hoot for this law when we learn from many parents that they were not given the VISs and you yourself say, “some offices don’t give out the Vaccine Information Sheets”?
Even if parents were given a VIS, do you think they would recognize a medical emergency? They are anticipating minor reactions which is precisely the reason they phone their physician when they see symptoms that don’t appear minor to them. Have you ever held a crying and irritable baby for hours, Joel? Have you ever stood over a crib anxiously waiting for your child to stir, look into your face and give you that special morning ‘It’s Daddy’or ‘It’s Uncle Joel’ grin? If you haven’t had much contact with babies, you won’t know what I’m talking about. Parents know when there is something wrong with their child. Call it instinct or a gut feeling and what they get from doctors and nurses is assurance and dismissal. And now you have the audacity to blame parents for not reading the VIS, which they may not have seen, and not taking the child to the emergency room after medical professionals have told them that such symptoms are normal after vaccination, and taking them to the hospital unnecessary!
You skip a lot of questions, but please answer this: Would you be able to recognize a seizure other than a grand mal seizure in a baby or small child?
You wrote: “You and many antivaccinationists…”
I can assure you I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t vaccinated my child.
“…… exhibit a clear example of: “The nirvana fallacy is a name given to the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume that there is a perfect solution to a particular problem.”
Do you mean like pro-vaccine zealots assume that vaccines are the perfect solution to eradicating disease?
You wrote earlier: “You are fortunate to live in an era where smallpox doesn’t exist, thanks for vaccines. Otherwise, every few years there would be an outbreak resulting in around 1/3 of children dying.”
It never ceases to amaze me how many presumably intelligent people believe that pus taken from the filthy hands of a dairymaid, or pus from the scrapings of the underbelly of a cowpox-infected cow, or pus from horses’ hooves, or pus from a blister of an infected person could possibly have been safe to inject into anyone, or could have possibly eliminated smallpox. This, together with the fact that only 10% of the world’s population was ever vaccinated against such a highly contagious disease, is astonishing, when the CDC in the 21st Century is looking for a 100% compliance rate to eliminate present-day infectious diseases.
Considering those sources of the material (pus) that was supposed to prevent smallpox, and the unhygienic conditions of the time – Semmelweis, handwashing, soap and antiseptics came later – it is not surprising that the smallpox vaccine was highly dangerous and spread diseases such as smallpox itself and syphilis. Smallpox was a disease of over-crowding and filth and disappeared after living conditions and treatments improved, and cases quarantined. Crediting the smallpox vaccine alone for the eradication of the disease, which you and all pro-vaccine zealots do, and ignoring all other contributing factors is not scientific, it is ridiculous, but unfortunately smallpox eradication is the cornerstone of your belief in vaccines.
As to my real name, it shouldn’t matter to anyone.
@jameslyonsweiler
You write: “hundreds of thousands of parents have witnessed their child regress into autism after vaccines. Where are those cases in the VAERS?”
First, there are documented cases of normal development then regressing; but I’m unaware of “hundreds of thousands.” Please give the reference for this assertion. Second, as I’ve written several times, VAERS is only one of several vaccine surveillance programs and the only one that is passive. I guess you need to keep things to VAERS in order to dishonestly argue that regression cases aren’t being picked up. It also depends on the time frame; but it would be a waste of time to discuss it with you.
You write: “The Scandanavians are among those studies that are considered compromised… it was Vaestraten who wrote the email to the CDC.” Just for you information, Verstraeten isn’t Scandinavian. He is Dutch or Belgium Walloon? I can’t remember which.
Just because you and others consider the studies compromised doesn’t mean they are. Verstraeten, for instance, was a guest researcher at the CDC when asked to do a study. He did a preliminary study based on electronic records. He presented this and experts suggested he do a random chart audit to ensure that errors were not made in entering the data into the computer. Such errors are often found. If you don’t understand this simple approach to validating data then you really have a problem. In addition, because the sample size was small, he extended the study to include a third HMO. And, even the original pilot finding was a very weak association. I have the complete SImpsonwood Transcripts, the original pilot study, and, as far as I can tell, all of Verstraeten’s publications.
In a criminal trial, a defense attorney will try to impeach the prosecution witnesses. If successful, great; but if unsuccessful, he could still on summation try to sway the jury by claiming the defense witnesses are lying, even without evidence. I have seen the so-called criticisms of the Scandinavian studies and none pass the laugh test. I could give you references; but it is SO OBVIOUS that you have made up your mind.
As for Verstraeten’s comments, they are correct and the CDC and researchers around the world have conducted additional studies since the original one approximately 15 years ago. But you don’t like the results of these studies; but, all the same, they were conducted.
You write: “We don’t. The damage is done. That does not make us biased. It makes us informed, awake, and empowered.”
“We” “us”. I speak for myself; but, as my frivolous diagnosis of you in previous comment, you do seem to suffer from Delusions of Grandeur, making yourself the spokesperson for large numbers of people.
I still await your posted CV and posting of the 400 or so studies on aluminum vaccines toxicity. I did goof in missing the your alleged thousands referred to autism and vaccines; but I still await the 400 or so.
The Danish studies were excellent. SafeMinds mistakenly accessed a subset of the data and missed that one of the papers did the analyses both for hospitalized and outpatients, so, the Copenhagen Clinic being included, an outpatient clinic, would NOT have affected the hospitalized data. I have ALL the Danish studies, including a letter exchange with SafeMinds and exchanged brief questions via e-mail with the authors.
And, as I wrote, the Scandinavians, probably more than any other people, really do their best to ensure the health of their children, so why would researchers in Denmark, Sweden, and FInland intentionally produce defective studies of risks from vaccines? I guess you as the “lifebiomedguru” are just more intelligent and ethical than ALL of them???
Josh,
Here, for the third time, is the list of 398 references on aluminum neurotoxicity…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=aluminum+neurotoxicity
Re: VAERS, you defended it as unbiased and representative.
As for the ‘we’, IPAK has a membership society, called the Society for Pure and Applied Knowledge, and I receive correspondence from members and non-members on a weekly basis encouraging me to continue with the mission to educate the public on thousands of studies that the CDC has ignored.
Your description of the multiple rounds of re-analysis by Verstraeten, conducted under some duress, is incomplete and misleading.
I’ve seen the Verstraeten analysis myself – and as I have told you – I think for myself. I have my own issues with that study, and the Madsen study. I happen to be writing them up for my book this week.
As for researchers ANYWHERE, regardless of country, why, indeed, why would the CDC produce intentionally defective studies by omitting results, by overcooking the analysis, by refusing to publish the full story, by only citing their own research, by ignoring the thousands of other studies…
And in case you missed it (again)… http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=aluminum+neurotoxicity
Given the percentages reported by Parr et al., and the rates of diagnosis of autism, it would seem obvious that there are hundreds of thousands – if not more. I am looking for a parent-based reporting resource.
Parr JR et al. 2011. Early developmental regression in autism spectrum disorder: evidence from an international multiplex sample. J Autism Dev Disord. 41(3):332-40. doi: 10.1007/s10803-010-1055-2.
@jameslyonsweiler
Not that it is important; but it would be nice if you got my name right. It is Joel, NOT Josh.
As I suspected, your reference list of 398 is a desperate mixing of apples and oranges. I searched PubMed using variations of the following; but always including either vaccine, vaccination, or immunization together with aluminum and then toxicity, adverse events and a few others. I got about 50. Including every study of aluminum would be like including every study of iron, including people who intentionally took overdoses, people exposed to high vapors in industry, etc. I am NOT interested in what happens to someone working at an aluminum foundry. I am only interested in the minute amounts included in vaccines. Given that our bodies have numerous ways to deal with things, e.g. excrete, transform through various metabolic processes, and sequester. This is typical poor dishonest scholarship that I’ve come to expect of an antivaccinationists.
As I believe I wrote, I am senior citizen, vegan, and blood donor, so I take an iron supplement daily; but if I were to take the entire bottle, I’d be in real trouble. Though I avoid pain pills as much as possible, once-in-a-while I take a couple of aspirin for a headache or muscle pain or, sometimes, ibuprofen. However, if I took an entire, even small, bottle of aspirin, I would die a rather unpleasant death. Though aluminum and mercury are not needed for red blood cells or to dampen inflammation, the same principle applies, our bodies have numerous mechanisms for dealing with things; but can be overwhelmed by high doses. Antivaccinationist have included Minamata and Iraq in their reviews of mercury. The dosage levels in the kids in those two events would be the equivalent of taking one or more bottles of aspirin. I can’t think of anything in such high quantities that wouldn’t have toxic effects.
As for IPAK, I am exchanging comments with you and I expect you to respond, not some group of people that can’t be verified. I find your title for the group rather pretentious, especially given some of your statements regarding epidemiology and your lack of knowledge on “causal theory”.
You wrote: “Re: VAERS, you defended it as unbiased and representative.” Find in any of my comments where I said such. You are delusional! VAERS is a passive reporting system. Studies have found that a number of the reports are from lawyers and families involved in lawsuits. As with intussusception, VAERS allows CDC to be alerted to possible problems; but many, most of the reports investigated don’t pan out. Just because someone thinks a problem resulted from a vaccine doesn’t make it so. Do you assume that everyone brought in for questioning by the police is automatically guilty? And, besides making the dishonest claim that I said VAERS is “unbiased and representative,” you continue to focus on VAERS, ignoring the active surveillance systems that can be considered “unbiased and representative” of the millions of families getting health care from the HMOs participating in the Vaccine Safety Datalink and other surveillance programs, though, of course, not representative of the entire nation. A non-profit single-payer health care system would allow for an unbiased surveillance and the concept of representativeness would be unnecessary since it would include the entire population, though smaller studies could be conducted using it. You are incredibly dishonest in continuing to write as if VAERS is all there is and putting words in my mouth. How do you live with yourself? I guess someone so arrogant that they can diagnose autism based on incomplete reports whereas three experts did not has NO PROBLEM twisting and making up things.
As for the rest of your claims, e.g. overcooking the data, etc. believe what you want, apparently exactly what you do. Verstraeten’s study wasn’t conducted under duress any more than my doctoral thesis committee requested additional analyses, etc. I guess you’ve never been asked to revise anything or to conduct additional analyses, everything you have done in your life has been perfect and accepted as is. Give me a break!
I suggest, first, that you develop an honest reference list of studies that deal with vaccines, aluminum adjuvants, and toxicity/adverse events. Who knows, you might find a few I missed.
You like to point out “flaws” in studies supporting vaccines, well, two studies that you included in your paper to Offit have been critiqued for being flawed. You can find the critique at:
http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/adjuvants/Jun_2012/en/
Of course, as most antivaccinationists, you look for flaws, even manufacture them, in anything that disagrees with you; but overlook them when in studies that support your position.
Precisely. I would be happy to point out to you that started it (name calling, that is).
Later, Josh.
Josh,
You skipped right past the fact that Offit claimed that there were two, and only two populations at risk of aluminum neurotoxicity, and that claim after claim exists by people stating that aluminum is not a neurotoxin, one by an award-winning journalist even… you don’t seem to dwell on the significance of the fact that
Aluminum. Is. A. Neurotoxin.
Here is a quote for you to ignore:Strong M.J. – Garruto R.M. – Joshi J.G. – Mundy W.R. – Shafer T.J.
Regardless of the host, the route of administration, or the speciation, aluminum is a potent neurotoxicant.
J Toxicol Environ Health (1996 Aug 30) 48(6):599-613
The aluminum in vaccines are not all exempt. Unless magic. If you have a magical explanation as to why aluminum injected in to muscle, which rapidly spreads and settles on organs, is picked up by macrophages and deposited in the brain, where it accumulates, causes chronic microglial activation, and destruction of synapses, neural precursor cells, and dendrites… maybe, just maybe there is a magical explanation why the injection method is not the same as all other exposures?
Your tirade, as impressive at it is, is so full of vile… Am I beginning to suspect a hint of bias in your position? But, as the objectivist that I am, I will wait for more data from you, and I will allow you to tell me if you believe you are objective. Something tells me you may not be…..
Re: overcooking the data, I was trained, and trained many a graduate student, on the objective approach to doing complex data analysis. It begins with showing all of your work. Pretty simple, actually. There are other ways to insure generalizability, including reporting all interim results. I have written a white paper on it, you may be interested? It’s called “Beyond Association”, and is available at via the IPAK web site. Your donation will be appreciated.
Re: IPAK membership, the list of names that you cannot verify exists, whether you can verify them or not. I am extremely grateful for their enlistment and donations. SPAK is a month old, and we are small, but durable dozen. Just give us time…
And there you go again with name-calling. Josh, fine, I’ll partake in that nonsense for a second.
I feel so much better now!
And I did distill the list down to those most relevant to the vaccine science. I distilled it down for Offit, as well. You just didn’t read what i sent you.
Did you read 1? Just 1? Before dismissing the entire 398, completely ignoring the distilled list. Here, let me pick one for you:
“Aluminum hydroxide injections lead to motor deficits and motor neuron degeneration.” (2009)
Now, that’s a Shaw paper, and I know you don’t like some of their funding sources… but please, tell me how
this does not raise your hackle on the thought of injecting this stuff into babies?
And, here is the link to the Pubmed entry for you:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19740540
At least, Josh, you’re not claiming that aluminum is beneficial to the fetus, a nutrient, like Offit tried to peddle back in 2013 on his website:
“Aluminum is considered to be an essential metal with quantities fluctuating naturally during normal cellular activity. It is found in all tissues and is also believed to play an important role in the development of a healthy fetus.”
You know, Josh, I just realized that every word I type here is another word I don’t type in my book.
So, unless there are topics other than ME you’d like to actually discuss, TTFN.
Josh, you might find vaccinepapers.org illuminating re the dangers of aluminum adjuvant. They include full-text copies of all the peer-reviewed science they quote, so it is very convenient to read the original and make sure they are using it correctly (they are).
@Tim Lundeen
I went to your suggested website and read the article “Dr. Paul Offit’s Aluminum Deceptions and Academic Misconduct.” The article includes hyperlinks to two articles by Paul Offit. Not one of the “quotes” they gave could be found in either one of the articles. I had already run across the “quotes” elsewhere and not only checked every paper I could find by Offit; but did a search of PubMed for articles that might support any of the “quotes.” None found. In addition, I went to university library, looked at several medical books, especially on Pediatrics and found nada. So, not only is there NO evidence that Offit said the “quotes” given; but it would be highly unlikely that he would make such public statements given there is absolutely no evidence that would support them and he would end up being the laughing stock of academic medicine. It is typical that people with an agenda who believe in their cause might embellish, even believe things that will further their cause even if there exist no credible evidence.
I suggest you click on the hyperlinks and check it out for yourself.
I did a search of Google to find the quote used by jameslyonsweiler
“Aluminum quantities fluctuate naturally during normal cellular activity. It is found in all tissues and is also believed to play an important role in the development of a healthy fetus.”
I found it repeated on lots of anti vaccine websites; but no where else and I found what I believe to be the source, a slide presentation by Suzanne Humphries. The one slide that shows “Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Vaccine Education Center” above the quote could easily have been photoshopped. Why? Good question; but as I wrote above, there is NO credible evidence that Offit made such a statement and there is NO medical literature that would support it.
I realize that jameslyonsweiler can’t be swayed; but, perhaps, you are open-minded enough to actually check out the hyperlinks. The articles do explain that infants are exposed to aluminum; but that certainly is a far cry from it is beneficial in any way shape or form.
You may also have noticed that jameslyonsweiler doesn’t respond when I point out an error he made; but continues to address me by the wrong name. He probably finds this amusing, so, not only does he display a poor scholarship; but a juvenile level of immaturity as well.
Note. it is late and I’m tired; but, when I have some time, I’ll check out the other articles on the Vaccine Papers: the not so Objective Look at Vaccine Dangers, based, so far, on the one article I read.
Dear Joel.
I began calling you Josh as an example to you of the futility, inappropriateness, and callousness of name-calling during discussions on a topic so important. I agree with your own assessment of those who call people names: it is completely juvenile for you to approach other scholars slathering them with names such as “antivaxxer” and describing them as “nuts”.
If you agree to stick to the topics actually worth considering, namely, for example, the rest of the scientific evidence on vaccines that the CDC has conveniently chosen to ignore in the rendering of their policies, and stop calling me, or any other commenter on this thread names, I’ll address you by your name.
If you continue to harangue, belittle, then you can expect the same type of unprofessional disregard in return.
You’re not dealing with some neophyte, Joel.
I also encourage you to read all of my replies to you. I have indeed refuted every “gotcha” that you claim to have found.
Let me introduce you to our open society’s friend, the WayBack Machine. It saves a snapshot of most of web at any time:
https://archive.org/web/
And here is the WayBack Machine’s record where Dr. Offit’s assessment of aluminum as healthy for the fetus is given:
http://vec.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum.html
And the text:
“Aluminum quantities fluctuate naturally during normal cellular activity. It is found in all tissues and is also believed to play an important role in the development of a healthy fetus. This is supported by several findings:
During healthy pregnancies the amount of aluminum in a woman’s blood increases.
The amount of aluminum in the blood of the fetus increases between four and a half and six months gestation and again at eight months gestation.
At delivery, the blood of full-term infants contains more aluminum than the mother’s, but it decreases shortly after delivery.
The blood of premature infants has more aluminum than that of full-term infants.
The concentrations of aluminum in brain tissue are high during gestation and highest immediately after birth.
The breast milk of moms with premature infants contains more aluminum than that of moms who carried their babies to term.”
On these points, one wonders what phenomenological hypotheses he is positing. Many could be taken to point squarely at aluminum as a toxin that leads to preterm birth.
I cannot square the science I know with Offit’s baloney.
And re: the Vaccine Papers, Joel, I am trying to understand your logic. If you approach every paper that contradicts your understanding of vaccines, is it automatically a bad paper?
@jameslyonsweiler
Score one for you. I actually did go to the wayback machine; but since the quote said April 2013, it did NOT have anything before November 17, 2014. I didn’t bother checking it out as I had downloaded the pages in 2015. Apparently, they were changed after November 17, 2014; but I am quite aware of the wayback machine. As for the Vaccine Papers, the paper I read hyperlinked to two papers which I went to and they did NOT show the quotes given, so I had NO reason to assume the hyperlinks were dated.The paper gave Feb 13, 2015, so, if the hyperlinks were correct at the time, then the pages must have been changed shortly afterwards when I saved them as pdfs. However, Offit’s quote aside, I now have over 60 articles on aluminum and I have read some of them and skimmed others. As for your “If you approach every paper that contradicts your understanding of vaccines, is it automatically a bad paper?” I did not consider it a bad paper because it contradicted my understanding of anything; but, as I wrote above, because the hyperlinks it gave did not lead to the quotes it claimed. If the hyperlinks had gone to papers that corroborated the quotes, I would have had NO problem with the paper or if my search in the wayback machine had been successful, again, I would have NO problem with the paper. In this case, though it seemed illogical that Nov 17, 2014 would have worked, I probably should have checked it. In any case, I saved the wayback obtained page with the quotes as a pdf.
But, you think you have responded to my questions; but you haven’t. You said Offit voted for his vaccine. Wrong. You said he voted for another rotavirus vaccine to open the way for his being accepted eight years later; but fail to understand the economics that it would have made his vaccine far less valuable. And you fail to understand that he did not own the patent. And you never consider the possibility that he may actually believe that rotavirus is a dangerous disease and that a vaccine can prevent many cases, so that is why he voted for the first vaccine. You also claimed that Hannah Poling was diagnosed with autism. When I pointed out that her parents had arranged that a clinic specializing in autism evaluate her and two experts did NOT diagnose her with autism, you said it was obvious. As I pointed out, you are not an expert and they had a lot more information that you did. You also said the Court did not deal with diagnoses and I pointed out that the Court engaged a third expert. You choose to believe Thompson who claims the data was destroyed and he saved the electronic data, despite the fact that Hooker wrote he got the electronic data from the CDC and they have posted on their website that it is available. When I pointed out that Hooker needed to extend the age range in order to get even five in one cell, you wrote the other analyses did have much more. I pointed out that the smallest analysis in the paper had 49 in one cell and the rest had much more. The math I learned doesn’t make 49 even close to 5. And you believe that they did NOT conducte analyses on race; yet it is in the paper’s table. I also pointed out that if you believe Thompson, then only Afro-American boys 18-36 months were affected by the MMR, so according to Thompson, safe for everyone else. You also stated the CDC cannot release medical info on employees which is correct; but the references to Thompson’s mental state come from him and Hooker. You keep pushing the book, which I will read when I get it; but as David Gorski points out, it includes only 4 of 30 alleged conversations. And, though it doesn’t change whatever the truth is about vaccines, the fact that Hooker recorded the conversations unknown to Thompson and then shared them with Wakefield, doesn’t say anything positive about Hooker or Wakefield and, in fact, in several States, Hooker would be facing criminal charges. So, NO, you haven’t responded to my questions and, if I were to go back over these exchanges I can probably find even more examples.
I asked you early on for a list of references of vaccines, aluminum adjuvants, and toxicity/adverse events. You gave me one study and referred me to a paper you wrote. By the way, you included one study twice by Gherardi in the reference list. Then you gave me URL to search of PubMed for aluminum toxicity in general, which is absurd. As I pointed out, the list includes, among other things, workers exposed to extremely high doses and almost any substances at high enough doses can cause problems. I could make large lists of just about anything if I used such an approach.
And my use of “nuts” was appropriate. Anyone who thinks they, without any training and without all the facts, can make a diagnosis that requires years of training, taking time to make the diagnosis, is nuts as far as I’m concerned. As I wrote, I actually have the training and was a licensed psychologist and if I attempted such my professors would disown me. And I pointed out that flu-like symptoms doesn’t mean someone has the flu. Same with autism-like symptoms. And when I mentioned Rett’s syndrome, you only saw the possibility of someone with autism being misdiagnosed with Rett’s; but not the opposite.
As for Offit, I don’t know what he based the aluminum page on; but he obviously changed it. However, though it does bother me, I’ve learned that people are multidimensional, can be right about some things and not others. I don’t know the circumstances. Maybe Offit wrote it; but just as likely that someone else wrote it and that he is so overstretched that he simply didn’t read it carefully. If so, not good. However, he sees patients, supervises interns, writes articles, books, etc. Just thinking about all he does exhausts me; but the stuff on aluminum should NOT have made it to the website. Nothing I can do about it.
You are right about one thing, we have a different understanding of vaccines. I accept that there is always the possibility that some ingredient could be problematic or that some genetic subgroup may react; but I also understand what this world would be like without vaccines and, despite what you choose to believe, that they are the safest product out there. As I wrote in a previous comment, no other product is so regulated with as much surveillance as vaccines. Not other drugs, not food, and certainly not alternative medicines. Is the system perfect? NO and I suggested that a non-profit single-payer system would not only be cost-effective for everyone; but allow for capture of all vaccinations, including lot numbers, and any and all conditions following vaccinations, a near perfect surveillance system.
Just the claims you made that I mentioned above shows that you are not open to new information that contradicts what you choose to believe. I have probably read several hundred articles, a dozen or more books, and monographs and reports, including several of the IOM reports (gets boring reading 500 pages or more of such stuff; but I did it), and I have found NO credible evidence that vaccines contribute to autism. If you read my papers at ECBT you would see I list a number of factors that antivaccinationists like you ignore, including that since end of World War II more than 80,000 chemicals have been release in the environment, that people with genetics problems who would have died early on are now living long lives, that the definition has changed/broadened, that people now look for it, and on and on it goes. And you will see that my papers show numerous flaws in antivaccinationist claims, including Wakefield’s book’s claims about vaccine safety. If even one point made by Wakefield had been correct, I would have pointed it out.
As for regression, I am aware of such cases; but there are a number of genetic disorders, e.g. Retts that develop normally and then regress. In addition, where videotapes are available, experts have seen signs of autistic behavior prior to vaccinations. Kanner pointed out that the kids from the beginning did not show the anticipatory sign expecting to be picked up by their parents. Asperger made similar observations.
I’m tired; but if you read Susser’s book and studied causal theory, you would understand that one doesn’t focus on one cause; but eliminate alternative hypotheses. Eric Courchesnes and several others have looked at brains of children diagnosed as autistic who died in accidents, etc. and they found changes that had to occur in the first trimester, including too many brain cells and certain types not where they should be, etc. I could give you the references.
As for you calling me Josh, the only point it made was you being immature. Again, I called you nuts because you believed you could diagnose Hannah Poling despite not have the training and despite not having all the information and I stand by what I said.
Now, I’m tired. It is late. I will be contacting Offit to find out, if he will share with me, he barely knows me, how the earlier version of the aluminum came about, etc. Who knows, maybe he will respond. But, I don’t rely on one person, nor even a dozen, I read the research from the UK, Sweden, Denmark, etc. I actually got hold of the Danish papers original version in Danish. I am fluent at Swedish and Danish is close. I have a Danish-Swedish dictionary. Rather amusing looking up words in a third language to a second language. And I have several articles in French, though I really need my big French-English dictionary to read them.
Joel,
I cannot understand how you would state that the “economics of the situation would make his vaccine less valuable”. How much did he sell his patent for?
I’m not really into semantic games. You are correct in that the EXACT verbiage (Offit voted HIS vaccine) was incorrect, but it is obvious from my earlier replies that I in fact did state that I was off by a technicality. The net effect of his vote was the same as if he had voted for his own wealth, which in fact he did realize.
I’m sorry that you find 398 references to aluminum neurotoxicity “absurd”. You are entitled to your opinion. Those papers falsify claims that aluminum is not a neurotoxin. I have made my point.
I suppose it is immature of me to point out (again) that ‘you started it!’ with the name-calling.
There are many causes of autism – one cause does not rule out the others. Prenatal exposure to valproic acid, thalidomide, misoprostol, Serotonin reuptake inhibitors are suspected, as is the pesticide glyphosate. The first three of these are accepted causal factors, and the scientific evidence for them is solid. Yet, as I read the literature that the CDC (and you) dismiss, the functional mechanism of aluminum and mercury induced excitotoxicity is abundantly clear.
I would hope that Hooker made public all of the tapes he had for the transcript. I do not know if they had other conversations that Hooker did not record. But, I’m sure you will see that whatever Hooker and Thompson may (or may not) have said off-tape, the dialog is a thorough condemnation of the research conducted by Coleen Boyle, Frank DeStefano, and others, and unlike others, who had a pre-existing view, I came into the question of vaccine safety objectively. I was writing my book, at the time entitled “Successes in Translational Research” – and wanted to include a chapter on vaccines. So I wrote what most people believe. And then I got to autism. I started writing about Wakefield – telling the story of fraud, repeating the renditions of the story I had read about over the years, re-reading sources. Then I read the literature on Thimerosal. Then I read about Thompson. (Remember, my head was full into Ebola when the Thompson story broke). Joel, it was no easy thing for me to allow myself to begin to look at the safety issues. I did my own homework. I read the literature skeptically. I could recognize signs in the DeStefano study (which I have told you, which you refuse to accept as omission). I recognized immediately that the other cells were not powered much better than the smaller one, given the low prevalence. Take a look at Vaccine Paper’s lethal skewering of Gadad et al on the same grounds:
http://vaccinepapers.org/gadad-et-al-2015-pnas-journal/
In my view that paper should be retracted. Failure to show evidence of association is not evidence of no association, you know this. All of the CDC’s studies are based on negative evidence. Yet they ignore the rest of the literature.
Call me whatever you want to call me. I am a convert to the “get aluminum out of vaccines” camp and the “let’s develop biomarkers of autism risk from vaccines” camp.
When VLP-base vaccines are routine, and shown to be effective, I’ll be first to line up for a flu shot. Until then, no neurotoxins in my body, thank you. Anyone who thinks and says aluminum is not an neurotoxin is spreading dangerous misinformation. We can talk cumulative dose, clearance rates, etc. But the data clearly show that autistics have lifelong neuroexcitotoxicity, and it shows precisely how microglia become activated, how a positive feedback loop is set up via the release of cytokines that prevent the microglia from returning to their ramified state. the resulting over-pruning devastating to the brain – data show loss of neural precursor cells, dendrites… the damage is sustained, and does not require involvement of adaptive immunity from the periphery. The innate immune system is sufficient. And the evidence for aluminum and mercury as causative agents for that entire process is overwhelming. That’s what the evidence shows. But the CDC won’t cite those studies, or tell that story. Therefore, who in America has informed consent???
@jameslyonsweiler
You write: “I cannot understand how you would state that the “economics of the situation would make his vaccine less valuable”. How much did he sell his patent for?”
It is a simple fact that companies will pay more for a product when it has NO competition as they will be able to sell more of it. Does this escape you? I’ve written several times; but, obviously you either don’t understand or refuse to understand that Offit did not own the patent, the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania did. They sold the patent and have internal policies of how much to share with the actual researchers. Keep in mind, as I already wrote, that they supplied the labs, equipment, etc. that made the research possible and they are a non-profit who conducts research, provides medical training, and gives free health care to poor people. They didn’t have the infrastructure or experience to carry out the required phase 3 studies, so they approached Merck. Should they have just given Merck the patent?
I also asked you what if Offit had devoted the same time and effort into developing a new treatment for, say breast cancer or a new antibiotic that was successful against current antibiotic resistant infections, would you begrudge him and the institution he worked for selling the patent?. I would bet that you have separate criteria for vaccines and any other developments. The fact is that we live in a society where people get paid for their creations. I would prefer that the government, given that vaccines are a public health issue, pay for the clinical trials as they do in many other countries. The fact is that people and companies make money on things that work and are beneficial and on things that are harmful. You believe vaccines are harmful, so you keep focusing on the money. As I also wrote before, there is NO way eight years prior to his vaccine being approved that he could have known it would work and be approved.
As for the 398 references, again, as I explained with the example of mercury in Minamata and Iraq, included studies of extremely high levels proves nothing. As I wrote, if I took an entire bottle of iron pills or aspirin, I would be in real trouble; but small doses of either would pose NO problem. And many of your studies involve both doses and mode of entry in the body that are not intramuscular. How a substance enters the body partly determines how the body deals with it. I also gave you a reference to an article that critiqued two of the vaccine and aluminum articles you listed. I guess when IOM finds studies that you disagree with flawed, that is great; but perish the thought that studies you agree with should be found to be flawed.
You write: “I suppose it is immature of me to point out (again) that ‘you started it!’ with the name-calling.” As I explained and you continue to avoid, I stand by calling you “nuts” when you think you, without any training and without all the information, can make what is a very complex diagnosis. You avoid responding to this. Feel free to call me whatever you wish. I am old and have been called a lot worse.
You write: “Yet, as I read the literature that the CDC (and you) dismiss, the functional mechanism of aluminum and mercury induced excitotoxicity is abundantly clear.” I have read, so far, probably 200 articles and chapters on mercury and do not agree with you. I had planned to write an article for ECBT on mercury; but it is not a priority. It may be “abundantly clear” for you, just as it is “obvious” for you that Hannah Poling is autistic; but I disagree.
I just don’t believe you when you state “I came into the question of vaccine safety objectively.”
I and David Gorski and others have pointed out flaws in Thompson’s narrative; but you ignore this and choose to believe what he said as gospel. Doesn’t sound “objective” to me. I give up when it comes to DeStefano. You continue to ignore the obvious, that the data wasn’t destroyed, just cluttering paper copies, that they did analyze race, that Hooker’s re-analysis was flawed, both changing age range to get 5 and using the wrong statistics, etc. You don’t even admit you were wrong about the other comparisons not having much larger cell size than Hooker’s “5”.
You write: “I am a convert to the “get aluminum out of vaccines” camp and the “let’s develop biomarkers of autism risk from vaccines” camp”
“Convert”, gee, sounds like a religious fanatic. As for biomarkers, I totally agree that we should develop biomarkers, not for autism as I’m not convinced that vaccines play any role; but for encephalopathy, mitochondrial disorders, etc. and I have several well-done studies, many Swedish, that look at genetic arrays for autism. If more research finds that some small genetic subgroup does react to vaccines to precipitate the onset of autism, fine by me; but in the meantime the risk from vaccine-preventable diseases is greater than the so-far not shown association between vaccines and autism.
You write: “Anyone who thinks and says aluminum is not an neurotoxin is spreading dangerous misinformation.” No one is saying that “aluminum is not a neurotoxin”; but they are saying that it is a normal substance that our bodies are exposed to daily, that our bodies somehow deal with these amounts and that the trace amounts in vaccines are just that, trace amounts. If you think aluminum is always a neurotoxin, I suggest you move into a “clean house” with filters for air, water, and I don’t know how you would get aluminum out of food??? Your phrasing is typical of antivaccinationists, untrue eneralized absolutes.
By the way, while aluminum wasn’t of primary interest to me, I have been working on other papers, you have forced me to take a closer look. The section that was removed, Aluminum and Pregnancy, listed several findings. I have actually found journal articles that included those findings, e.g. The blood of premature infants has more aluminum than that of full-term infants. and The breast milk of moms with premature infants contains more aluminum than that of moms who carried their babies to term.
If I have to spend several days at medical library and read several hundred articles I will see how strong a basis Offit had for listing those findings. As for: “Aluminum quantities fluctuate naturally during normal cellular activity. It is found in all tissues and is also believed to play an important role in the development of a healthy fetus. This is supported by several findings:”
Note. he doesn’t state “it has been found” but “believed”. I am going to find out if this “belief” exists from more than just Offit. As I wrote in a previous comment, mercury levels were much much higher a billion years ago when bacteria were developing. They learned how to live with it. Today we have inherited some of that ability in that we can deal with small amounts of mercury through various means. It is possible, what I will research, that not only similar mechanisms developed for aluminum; but that in some way in small quantities just as trace elements play some positive role. I am not claiming such, just stating the possibility. If I find different, I will say so. I have NEVER worked for a pharmaceutical company, NEVER purchased shares in one, and have NO close friends or family who work for one. Quite frankly, if I find aluminum is a problem, I will write about it. I am an old man and really could care less either way; but I don’t subscribe to your paranoid belief that CDC, Denmark, Sweden, etc are all involved in some grand conspiracy against the public.
By the way, your article addressed to Offit where you list a bunch of findings followed by year displays really poor scholarship. If you want to make a point, give the studies conclusion followed in parenthesis that include author and date and then at the end include all the references. Check out my ECBT papers. Yes, this is about you, your poor scholarship, something you can change.
And give it a rest on Offit making money. Everyone makes money, regardless of whether the product is beneficial or harmful. You are tiresome. And address what Gorski and others wrote about Thompson rather than just harping on how convinced you are by him.
You may give up when it comes to DeStefano. Many of us do not. You cite the small cell size as a possible reason for the omission – odd that the reason why the numbers of African American in the final analysis result (no association) was smaller than the initial result that showed a strong association, and what you may not know(?) is that the reason why the cell size was small was that individuals without valid Georgia birth certificates were omitted POST-HOC, after the first result showed association. By reducing the sample size, they caused a loss of power. They could have proceeded with the result, reporting both with and without BC inclusion criteria, but they didn’t. They acted as though the result never existed, as if the data analysis protocol was set from the beginning. And what’s more, Joel, they had the information they claimed that they needed from school records, and from parent-identified race of the child. Their actions are indefensible from an ethics of science standpoint, so it’s probably best that you give up on defending them. There is no rational cause for de-enrolling kids in a study post facto due to concern over race + a positive association anyway – where is the mechanistic reasoning that a potentially heterogeneous population would be MORE likely to be a false positive (first analysis)? Moreover, Thompson knew the motivation was to bury the result. Let’s not forget that omission of results is in the very definition of scientific fraud.
The rest of your post is your opinion. You are entitled to it. But it does not make it correct. “I can see the benefit in vaccine” That does not distinguish yourself from me, I have not even mentioned efficacy.
“Not every medicine is safe” is non-sequitur. We were not talking about other medicines. We’re talking about autoimmune damage to children’s brains via vaccines.
“Everyone makes money”. Thank you for the condescension. Boy, you’d think I never made money myself! But it, too, in non-sequitur. I never said I hve a problem with people making money. I have a problem with the addition and more and more and more aluminum into our children’s bodies, and Offit ignoring the neurotoxicity science, and Offit misleading the neurotoxicity science, and Offit voting 3/4 times to get a disease – for which he owned a patent for a vaccine for – added to the pediatric schedule. There are ethical ways to conduct biomedical research, and failing to recuse one’s self, and relying on a CDC waiver of immunity (which i highly doubt is legally binding) is circumspect at best.
“Offit could not have known 8 years before”… granted, but who cares? It’s what one does in the moment of opportunity that defines integrity.
“Paranoid belief”. Ah, there it is. Trying to cast me as a conspiracy theorist. As if conspiracies have never occurred in biomedicine? This is the most ridiculous thing one can say when the evidence of malfeasance is so great.
“If I find aluminum in a problem, I’ll get back to you”. Please, save yourself the effort. You don’t have to. Many, many others already have. And the route to neuroexitotoxicity is clear.
It is clear that you don’t like me for my position. You’ve made your position clear. Fine. Get over it. I was over it the first time you starting calling me anti-vaxxer. You don’t have to like everyone in the world. You’ll be fine. And somehow I feel I’ll be just fine, thank you, whether i know your opinion of me, or not.
Now, could we please, PLEASE stick to discussing the science, how junk science is used to stand up public health policies that impact billions of people?
@jameslyonsweiler
From what I can gather, your belief on post-hoc changing of data is solely based on Thompson’s claims.
You write: “You cite the small cell size as a possible reason for the omission – odd that the reason why the numbers of African American in the final analysis result (no association) was smaller than the initial result that showed a strong association, and what you may not know(?) is that the reason why the cell size was small was that individuals without valid Georgia birth certificates were omitted POST-HOC, after the first result showed association. By reducing the sample size, they caused a loss of power. They could have proceeded with the result, reporting both with and without BC inclusion criteria, but they didn’t. They acted as though the result never existed, as if the data analysis protocol was set from the beginning. And what’s more, Joel, they had the information they claimed that they needed from school records, and from parent-identified race of the child.
From the deStefano paper: “We were not able to find school immunization records for the remaining children because the children had moved out of state, transferred to a school in a county that was not under MADDSP’s jurisdiction, transferred to a private school that was not accessible by MADDSP, or were
being home schooled. When a child moved or transferred, the child’s permanent school record, including immunization form, was transferred to the child’s new school. We were not able to quantify how many children were lost for each of these reasons because of incomplete record keeping at the schools.”
You have only Thompson’s word that the preliminary analysis was on a larger group. In addition, you still refuse to accept that, according to Thompson, the vaccine was NOT associated with autism in any group except Afro-American boys, 18 – 36 months. So, you are ABSOLUTELY certain that everything Thompson says is gospel. So, it is you who refuse to even admit that it is possible that his claims aren’t true, not that they are false; but even that they may be.
You write: ““If I find aluminum in a problem, I’ll get back to you”. Please, save yourself the effort. You don’t have to. Many, many others already have. And the route to neuroexitotoxicity is clear.” And a number of papers from around the world found a different conclusion. I won’t bother getting back to you, I will just make sure it is reviewed/critiqued by numerous people and post it on ECBT. As I wrote, I have already found one review of two of the papers you listed that found their methodology deficient, something you would jump on if it related to papers you disagree with; but ignore when papers you agree with. Not a very honest approach having two sets of standards, one for articles you support and one for others. The paper is:
WHO (2012 Jun 6-7). Aluminium adjuvants. Global Vaccine Safety. Available at: http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/adjuvants/Jun_2012/en/
And I pointed out your poor scholarship in listing conclusions followed by just the year in parentheses. why not just admit it, go back to the paper and improve it. I have had to revise many papers in my life due to what people pointed out; but, I forget you are perfect, you can diagnose people without training or data, etc.
And one last time, your claims regarding Offit’s voting are ABSURD. If someone on a committee for cancer, an expert working on, say, monoclonal antibodies, votes on someone else’s monoclonal antibodies, should they disqualify themselves? Offit is an expert in pediatric infectious diseases. Because of people like you, many committees have removed the experts because most experts are actually doing research in the area and/or developing treatments, so that those left on the committees lack the requisite experience and knowledge. And Offit DID NOT OWN THE PATENT. Get that into your dense skull. He did NOT sell it and when he began his research on rotavirus vaccines, the law/regulations that allowed the investigators to share in any patents, up to their respective instituions, had not been passed. You are so fixated on Offit receiving money and refuse to even consider that he did the research because he believed in it. Should people choose areas of research that they don’t believe in? We give kudos to inventors, medical researchers, who come up with things that benefit us, and many make out quite well; but because of your antivaccinationists stand, you think anyone working on developing a vaccine is doing it solely for the money.
Joel you only see what you want to see. DeStefano admitted omission of the data and of the preliminary results. But you will not pay attention to that will you. Think it through: the result did not appear in the final paper, or in DeStefano’s presentations within which many other subgroups were reported. But you refuse to see what is right in front of you. So be it. It is only a matter of time. and if 398 paper showing aluminum neurotoxicity is not enough the FDA has a maximum amount of aluminum and infant should be exposed to over the first year of life. now why do you suppose they have that limit?
Joel:
You may want to start with this paper. It will be pointless to consider population-wide rates of exposure, should you care to take the discussion there.
Terhune TD, Deth RC. 2014. A role for impaired regulatory T cell function in adverse responses to aluminum adjuvant-containing vaccines in genetically susceptible individuals. Vaccine. 32(40):5149-55. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2014.07.052.
Abstract
Regulatory T cells play a critical role in the immune response to vaccination, but there is only a limited understanding of the response of regulatory T cells to aluminum adjuvants and the vaccines that contain them. Available studies in animal models show that although induced T regulatory cells may be induced concomitantly with effector T cells following aluminum-adjuvanted vaccination, they are unable to protect
against sensitization, suggesting that under the Th2 immune-stimulating effects of aluminum adjuvants,
Treg cells may be functionally compromised. Allergic diseases are characterized by immune dysregulation,
with increases in IL-4 and IL-6, both of which exert negative effects on Treg function. For individuals
with a genetic predisposition, the beneficial influence of adjuvants on immune responsiveness may be
accompanied by immune dysregulation, leading to allergic diseases. This review examines aspects of the
regulatory T cell response to aluminum-adjuvanted immunization and possible genetic susceptibility factors
related to that response.
@jameslyonsweiler
Give me the URL to DeStefano’s admission and not some other blogs reporting on it. You believe Thompson saved the electronic data set because he thought it wrong to destroy the data as they were shredding the paper files. If so, then didn’t he save the data that was on the files being shredded? If so, his electronic data should have included the kids allegedly later removed from the files. During my career, both myself and several colleagues have conducted “pilot” studies that we tested instruments and procedures on and sometimes even practice statistical runs. We didn’t report these and no one expected us to.
I just downloaded pdf of the suggested article and included it in my aluminum folder. Since I have been working quite some time on another paper, I am going to continue with it first, probably finished by end of January, the I will begin reading on aluminum. It will be tedious as I have almost 70 papers and some are reviews of up to several hundred pages.
Here is Edward R. Murrough Award-winning journalist Sharyl Atkisson’s report on DeStefano’s admission of changing the data analysis protocol mid-stream. His baloney excuse on biological plausibility amounts logically to admission of circular reasoning: they left boys out because autism “probably” starts in the womb. Basically, he did not believe the initial association. Is that science? No, it’s junk. You know it, and I know it.
Also, surely he knows about secondary, or regressive autism. AKA late-onset autism. Except the American public doesn’t know that it is associated with vaccines, because DeStefano and his colleaugues did not believe the result, they never published it. So the American public waited 15 years to find out about that result. From Thompson.
He just doesn’t “believe” it applies, apparently, so change the plan mid-stream, post-hoc, make the association go away. And then there’s the little issue about Thompson’s representation of events. DeStefano is covering up, plain and simple. You have no grounds to suspect Thompson, especially since he thought he conversation was private.. why would he lie to Hooker?
—
The Director of the CDC Immunization Safety Office, Dr. Frank DeStefano, is a co-author of the now-questioned study which has been widely-cited to dispel an MMR-autism link. DeStefano is frequently quoted as an expert who debunks vaccine-autism ties.
“I stand by the research and the conclusions in our 2004 paper, and I’ll reiterate that the evidence, thus far, the weight of the evidence, is against a causal association between vaccines and autism,” DeStefano told me in a telephone interview this week.
“Lowest Point in my Career”
Thompson is a PhD who works in the National Immunization Program at the CDC where he has been employed for 16 years. His revelations were first made public after he reportedly made wide-ranging claims and confessions in a series of telephone conversations with autism advocate and researcher Brian Hooker of Focus Autism. Hooker, also a PhD, is an assistant professor of biology and the parent of an autistic teenager. Because of the significance of Thompson’s allegations, Hooker began recording some of the conversations without Thompson’s knowledge.
“It’s the lowest point in my career that I went along with that paper,” Thompson tells Hooker in a recording played on the online Autism Media Channel. “I went along with this, we didn’t report significant findings.”
The CDC’s DeStefano acknowledges that he and his study co-authors changed their study analysis plan midstream, which resulted in reducing the statistical vaccine-autism link among black boys. But he says they did so for good scientific reason.
“[Vaccine] exposure around [three years of age] is just not biologically plausible to have a causal association with autism,” DeStefano says. “I mean autism would’ve already started by then…it probably starts in the womb. So I think from a biological argument, it’s implausible this was a causal association.”
—
The link:
https://sharylattkisson.com/cdc-responds-to-allegation-it-omitted-vaccine-autism-study-link/
PS Re: pilot studies – Nowhere is the DeStefano et al. study promoted as a pilot study. It was presented as real science, showing no association, Whatsoever. No qualifiers. No mention of the initial association result that was not reported.
Pilot studies should be labeled as such.
@ James and Joel
Who controls the media? Who monitors comments and has them deleted from Facebook and newspaper articles? And who deletes saved pages from the Wayback Machine?
Joel wrote: “I actually did go to the wayback machine; but since the quote said April 2013, it did NOT have anything before November 17, 2014.”
I looked today and there’s nothing before August 19 2015. It says: “Saved 6 times between August 19, 2015 and November 30, 2015”
http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum
Curious isn’t it, how all saved pages before August 19, 2015 have vanished since Joel was looking for “credible evidence” that Paul Offit made those statements about the safety of aluminum? Who had them deleted and when? How many vaccine zealots will use their absence to deny that Paul Offit ever said such nonsense, as Joel did, and suggest that “people with an agenda who believe in their cause” might embellish what he wrote, and that Dr Suzanne Humphries was using a slide with the quote in her presentation that “could quite easily have been photoshopped”?
Also curious is the disappearance of the letter that Jon and Terry Poling wrote to the editor about their daughter’s autism diagnosis following Paul Offit’s article Inoculated Against Facts in the New York Times (March 31, 2008).
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/opinion/31offit.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=paul+offit&st=nyt&oref=slogin
Here’s what they said:
“April 5, 2008
LETTERS; Vaccines, Autism and Our Daughter, Hannah
To the Editor:
Re ”Inoculated Against Facts,” by Paul A. Offit (Op-Ed, March 31):
Our daughter, Hannah, developed normally until receiving nine vaccines at once. She immediately developed a fever and encephalopathy, deteriorating into what was diagnosed, based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M. IV, as autism.
The federal government, not an ”unusual court,” made the concession. The decision wasn’t ”careless,” as your subheading called it. It was based on a thorough review of Hannah’s records by Health and Human Services doctors.
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program does rely on a ”preponderance of evidence” standard, which Hannah’s case met. It doesn’t necessarily compensate families ”quickly, generously and fairly.” We filed our claim six years ago, pain and suffering are capped at $250,000, and Hannah has yet to receive compensation.
Dr. Offit’s assertion that ”even five vaccines at once would not place an unusually high burden on a child’s immune system” is theory and risky practice for a toddler’s developing brain. No one knows if Hannah’s mitochondrial dysfunction existed before receiving vaccines. Dr. Offit’s claim that Hannah had ”already weakened cells” is unfounded.
We support a safe vaccination program against critical infectious diseases. We need straight facts, serious science and speedy answers on these important issues.
Jon Poling
Terry Poling
Athens, Ga., April 3, 2008
The writers are, respectively, a neurologist and a lawyer and nurse. ”
From the Transcript of the Proceedings of the April 11, 2008 Meeting of the Vaccine Safety Working Group of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, we read what Terry Poling had to say about her daughter’s autism, VAERS and the NVICP:
http://www.healing-arts.org/children/mercury_in_vaccines_autism_research/CDC_vaccinesafetyinformation.htm
“I am here today because HHS agreed that Hannah’s receipt nine vaccines in one day triggered her autism…. Hannah does have autism and the vaccines triggered it.”
“For 13 years I worked as a critical care nurse in both pediatric, neonatal, and adult ICU. I worked in the emergency room. I’ve seen kids come in with vaccine-induced seizures….I am a lawyer and a nurse, and I didn’t know about VAERS…So that’s really not a good assessment tool for determining whether or not the vaccines are safe, and the other problem is I interpret it as the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Again, a lawyer and a nurse, I didn’t know about it for over year. I did not know that it existed.”
@ Joel
Why was the Hannah Poling case one of the first three test cases chosen for the Autism Omnibus Trial involving almost 5000 families, if, as you claim, she wasn’t diagnosed with autism, and why was her case withdrawn, settled out of court and the documents sealed?
And what do you think autism is?
@ATSC, I had to manually type in the re-direct to find the embarrassingly misinformed claims – and the positive claims as if they did not indicate a problem. Most people would say “hmmmm… more aluminum in preemies… I wonder if it had anything to do w/the reason why the babies are premature” not “Ooh, look, a clinically opportunity to track aluminum concentrations in developing fetuses!” the logic error is to treat the population of babies as homogeneous population, when clearly we have “premies” vs. “full term”.
@ATSC
You write: “Curious isn’t it, how all saved pages before August 19, 2015 have vanished since Joel was looking for “credible evidence” that Paul Offit made those statements about the safety of aluminum? Who had them deleted and when?” AND “Who controls the media? Who monitors comments and has them deleted from Facebook and newspaper articles? And who deletes saved pages from the Wayback Machine?”
Yes, quite curious since I found the page doing a search as suggested by James. I guess you don’t really read what people write or have problems assimilating what you read. And just to be sure, I just searched the Wayback Machine again and it still has the earlier post with the Aluminum and Pregnancy section. It states “Saved 16 Times Between November 1, 2014 and November 18 2015. In addition, I have used the Wayback Machine for less controversial searches and found that it does not go back as far for all websites. Either you don’t know how to use the Wayback Machine or you are just plain lying because nothing has been deleted since I searched it before. Wow, I thought James was paranoid; but compared to you he is as close to normal as the come. I can’t speak for Facebook; but I’ve found lots of newspaper articles searching the web; but, of course, the web isn’t all that old, so, sometimes I have to go to the library, get out the microfilm or microfiche and make copies; but the library DOES HAVE OLD COPIES OF NEWSPAPERS. If they don’t have a particular paper, I have sometimes contacted the paper directly and, for a modest fee, they arrange that their archivist get a copy to me.
As for the Poling’s letter, I’ve read it and it isn’t surprising how they view things; but as I’ve written before, the Polings arranged for Hannah to be evaluated at an autism specialty clinic. She was and two separate experts did NOT diagnose her with autism. I guess they must be part of the vast conspiracy in your mind? Making a diagnosis of autism or autism spectrum disorder isn’t a simple matter. It involves certain standardized tests as well as differential diagnosis. As I wrote above, I was trained as a psychologist and such training included diagnostics; but I would NEVER try to diagnose someone based on what others say.
As for “that Dr Suzanne Humphries was using a slide with the quote in her presentation that “could quite easily have been photoshopped”?” As soon as I did the suggested search of the Wayback Machine, I admitted that I had been wrong.
As for “that Paul Offit ever said such nonsense,” I’ve discussed this above; but I’ll briefly repeat. Offit lists several findings and I went through a number of journal articles and book chapters and found that what he wrote was based on published literature. However, I intend to do a more thorough search to see if more than one article and/or book supports each of the findings he listed. Aluminum is one of the most abundant substances on the face of the Earth and we all have it in our bodies. It is not inconceivable that our bodies through evolutionary development have developed mechanisms to deal with small levels of aluminum, etc.
As for your never having heard about VAERS, incredible because I have found that almost everyone I’ve ever spoken to has. And, as usual, you and James continue to ignore what I’ve written that VAERS is only one of several surveillance programs and since it is a passive system based on voluntary reporting it is used because only a few reports of a serious condition are necessary to begin an investigation. I won’t bother to repeat what I’ve written several times because you obviously could care less. As I wrote, focusing on VAERS would be like discussing the US defense mentioning only the Coast Guard.
As for your experience of kids coming in with vaccine-induced seizures, that I have NO doubt. The Vaccine Information Statements list seizures and instructs parents if they should occur to get medical help immediately. However, most seizures following vaccines are febrile seizures that occur once and do not lead to long term sequelae. I would bet that, depending on your age, you didn’t experience ALL the kids coming to emergency rooms during the 1950s prior to vaccines. One of the main problems with vaccines is their success. People don’t see the natural diseases and only the few serious adverse effects. If we stopped vaccinating many of the vaccine-preventable diseases are still prevalent in the world and would take root once more in the U.S. In such a case you would be begging to get vaccinated. Imagine what it was like before the smallpox vaccine where every few years approximately 1/3 of children died, others became blind, and almost all suffered from horrible disfigurement.
Given that you can’t even use the Wayback Machine and that you continue to ignore everything I’ve written above, this is a waste of my time.
I am finishing another paper and then will begin working on aluminum paper which will probably take me 4 or 5 months to read everything, write, rewrite, and get feedback/critique from 10 or so experts who I ask to read my papers and to not be gentle.
@ Joel
James understood what happened (thanks James). I should have typed the address he gave directly into the search engine instead of clicking on the link, and copying and pasting the address of the article that came up into the Wayback Machine. If you copy and paste this into the address field you can see for yourself that it has been “saved 6 times between August 19, 2015 and November 30, 2015 “.
http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum
“Either you don’t know how to use the Wayback Machine or you are just plain lying because nothing has been deleted since I searched it before. Wow, I thought James was paranoid; but compared to you he is as close to normal as the come. ”
I have been using the Wayback Machine for many years, Joel, and I don’t lie. The original article is still so well hidden from public view that even you couldn’t find it.
How typical of you to duck awkward questions like these:
“Why was the Hannah Poling case one of the first three test cases chosen for the Autism Omnibus Trial involving almost 5000 families, if, as you claim, she wasn’t diagnosed with autism, and why was her case withdrawn, settled out of court and the documents sealed?
And what do you think autism is?”
When I asked, “Who monitors comments and has them deleted from Facebook and newspaper articles?”
perhaps I wasn’t clear that I was referring to comments being deleted from online newspaper articles, which they often are, or they’re not posted at all, or they get flagged by the vaccine zealots.
You wrote: “the Polings arranged for Hannah to be evaluated at an autism specialty clinic. She was and two separate experts did NOT diagnose her with autism.”
Please cite the source for this information.
You wrote: “As for “that Dr Suzanne Humphries was using a slide with the quote in her presentation that “could quite easily have been photoshopped”?” As soon as I did the suggested search of the Wayback Machine, I admitted that I had been wrong.”
Yes, you admitted you were wrong, but that’s not the point, you were willing to blacken the name of Dr Suzanne Humphries and all other vaccine-safety advocates and that’s what I objected to.
You wrote: “I guess you don’t really read what people write or have problems assimilating what you read.”
Seeing as you think that I am the nurse who hadn’t heard about VAERS or the NVICP, it is you who obviously doesn’t read well.
I believe intussusception after Rotashield was picked up by VAERS because they were looking for it. It’s a great pity that regressive autism after vaccine reactions is not reportable.
@ATSC
Step 1: type in search box http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center
From the Wayback Website:
http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center
Saved 16 times between November 1, 2014 and November 18, 2015.
Step 2: Look at line of years, notice vertical line in Year 2014, Click on 2014 box, it turns yellow
Step 3: Scroll down. Notice blue circles around November 1 and November 3, Click on either
Step 4: On Left Click on Vaccine Safety
Step 5: Click on Vaccine Ingredients
Step 6: Click on Aluminum
Step 7: Scroll Down to Aluminum and Pregnancy
You wrote: “The original article is still so well hidden from public view that even you couldn’t find it.”
As I explained in a previous comment, I found the site searching the Wayback Machine; but since the slide-show presentation by Suzanne Humphries showed a date of April 2013 and the Wayback Machine only went back to November 2014, I didn’t take the time to check it out, a mistake on my part. So, it was “so well hidden from public view that even [I] couldn’t find it”, I didn’t try to find it. Can’t you read? I made this quite clear in a previous comment!
You write: ““Why was the Hannah Poling case one of the first three test cases chosen for the Autism Omnibus Trial involving almost 5000 families, if, as you claim, she wasn’t diagnosed with autism, and why was her case withdrawn, settled out of court and the documents sealed?”
Can’t you ever get anything right? Hannah Poling wasn’t one of the first three test cases. The cases were:
Cedillo v. Secretary of HHS
Hazelhurst v. Secretary of HHS
Snyder v. Secretary of HHS
Go to: U.S. Court of Federal Claims:; Office of Special Masters: For Background Use Only: The Autism Proceedings at: http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/vaccine_files/autism.background.2010.pdf
You wrote that I wrote: “the Polings arranged for Hannah to be evaluated at an autism specialty clinic. She was and two separate experts did NOT diagnose her with autism.”
Please cite the source for this information.
David Kirby (2008 Feb 26). The Vaccine-Autism Court Document Every American Should Read at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-vaccineautism-court-d_b_88558.html
Read it for yourself!
You wrote: “Yes, you admitted you were wrong, but that’s not the point, you were willing to blacken the name of Dr Suzanne Humphries and all other vaccine-safety advocates and that’s what I objected to.”
I admit that I was wrong; but I am also planning to write a review of Humphries book and you won’t like it. As I found with Wakefield’s book, at least so far from the Chapter on Polio, she is wrong on almost every point she makes and I can prove it! But, again, I was wrong about the photoshopping. And just to be clear, I did NOT say it was photoshopped; but that it easily could have been. Still, I was wrong.
However, I also made another mistake. I read the quote by Offit, it didn’t seem right to me and I assumed it was wrong and, therefore . . . However, once I took some time, I realized that what I think on a subject I am NOT an expert on, that is fetal development, I decided to investigate further and found, so far, that several of the findings he listed were taken from medical journal articles and, as I wrote, I try not to rely on one article, so, as soon as I have the time, I intend to do a thorough search to see if what Offit wrote is valid. From what I’ve seen from antivaccinationists, often drawing conclusions from one article and basing choice of article on what fits what you wish to believe, I don’t work that way. Yes, I’m human and make snap decisions; but once I settle down, I question my decisions and investigate. If my further research shows that Offit was wrong on even one of the points, that is, it was in a journal article; but later research failed to replicate, I will include that in any paper I write. Once again, I made two mistakes: 1. when the Wayback Machine did NOT go back to 2013, I didn’t bother checking the 2014 and 2. I reacted to what Offit said based on my gut despite it NOT being an area I have expertise in which lead me to suspect Photoshopping.
One other mistake I made which you point out, I was tired and read what you wrote:
“For 13 years I worked as a critical care nurse in both pediatric, neonatal, and adult ICU. I worked in the emergency room. I’ve seen kids come in with vaccine-induced seizures….I am a lawyer and a nurse, and I didn’t know about VAERS…So that’s really not a good assessment tool for determining whether or not the vaccines are safe, and the other problem is I interpret it as the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Again, a lawyer and a nurse, I didn’t know about it for over year. I did not know that it existed.”
Which, of course, was what Terry Poling said. not you. So, it was Terry Poling who seemed to not know what many others did.
As for what is Autism, I direct you the DSM IV or V and to books such as a free book on internet: Recent Advances in Autism Spectrum Disorder, Volume 1 at: http://www.intechopen.com/books/recent-advances-in-autism-spectrum-disorders-volume-i
or go to university library and read: Fred Volkmar and Rhea Paul. Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders, 2 Volume set, 2014
You write: “I believe intussusception after Rotashield was picked up by VAERS because they were looking for it. It’s a great pity that regressive autism after vaccine reactions is not reportable.” Golly gee, that is exactly what they do, they look for serious conditions and intussusception is one of them. As for “regressive autism after vaccine reactions [NOT] being reportable, you really don’t understand VAERS. It accepts any report on anything. Nothing is booted out of the system; but, of course, the reports submitted signed by Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck don’t lead to further investigation. Take a case like Hannah Poling. If her parents had submitted a VAERS report that after receiving several vaccines on the same day she displayed a list of changes and they received a few more such reports then they would have investigated.
As for you claims: “When I asked, “Who monitors comments and has them deleted from Facebook and newspaper articles?” perhaps I wasn’t clear that I was referring to comments being deleted from online newspaper articles, which they often are, or they’re not posted at all, or they get flagged by the vaccine zealots.”
Given that I have seen letters to our local paper that are clearly antivaccine and when at the university library seen them when looking at other newspapers, not in my experience. Besides your beliefs, what proof do you have? As for FACEBOOK, I don’t belong; but I noticed quite some time ago that they did have a forum for antivaccinationists. Whether it is still there or not, don’t know. I was at a friend’s house and haven’t check in some time.
To sum up. You are wrong about the Wayback Machine. You are wrong about Hannah Poling being one of the three Autism Omnibus Test Cases. She was evaluated by two experts. You are wrong about VAERS not accepting any type of reported problem. And defining and diagnosing autism is NOT a simple matter. There are a number of conditions that, without differential diagnoses, including possibly genetic tests, that could be mistaken for autism and, for better or worse, classical autism is not subsumed under Autism Spectrum Disorders that have some things in common; but are also quite different. Personally, I don’t think in most cases that Asperger’s should even be considered as a psychiatric disorder. Just my personal opinion.
And the biggest mistake I am making is posting comments such as these. When I write articles, I devote months, many months, to reading, making notes, double checking, then writing, rewriting, and finally seeking critical feedback which often leads to quite a bit of revising. I sometimes read over 200 articles and documents for one article, sometimes even more. My articles give detailed references, including hyperlinks when available. Posting comments like these is NOT how I do my best. Had I been writing an article, I would have taken the time to check out the November 2014 Wayback Machine and I would have investigated what Offit had written rather than a gut-level reaction.
In any case, I am old; but try to keep in shape and the gym I go to is closing early today, so have to sign off.
By the way, James and I use our real names, why don’t you???
@ATSC & James
I made a screenshot of my Wayback Machine search; but couldn’t paste it into this reply. Any suggestions of how to make it work?
Step 1: type in search box http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center
From the Wayback Website:
http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center
Saved 16 times between November 1, 2014 and November 18, 2015.
Step 2: Look at line of years, notice vertical line in Year 2014, Click on 2014 box, it turns yellow
Step 3: Scroll down. Notice blue circles around November 1 and November 3, Click on either
Step 4: On Left Click on Vaccine Safety
Step 5: Click on Vaccine Ingredients
Step 6: Click on Aluminum
Step 7: Scroll Down to Aluminum and Pregnancy
You wrote: “The original article is still so well hidden from public view that even you couldn’t find it.”
As I explained in a previous comment, I found the site searching the Wayback Machine; but since the slide-show presentation by Suzanne Humphries showed a date of April 2013 and the Wayback Machine only went back to November 2014, I didn’t take the time to check it out, a mistake on my part. So, it was “so well hidden from public view that even [I] couldn’t find it”, I didn’t try to find it. Can’t you read? I made this quite clear in a previous comment!
You write: ““Why was the Hannah Poling case one of the first three test cases chosen for the Autism Omnibus Trial involving almost 5000 families, if, as you claim, she wasn’t diagnosed with autism, and why was her case withdrawn, settled out of court and the documents sealed?”
Can’t you ever get anything right? Hannah Poling wasn’t one of the first three test cases. The cases were:
Cedillo v. Secretary of HHS
Hazelhurst v. Secretary of HHS
Snyder v. Secretary of HHS
Go to: U.S. Court of Federal Claims:; Office of Special Masters: For Background Use Only: The Autism Proceedings at: http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/vaccine_files/autism.background.2010.pdf
You wrote that I wrote: “the Polings arranged for Hannah to be evaluated at an autism specialty clinic. She was and two separate experts did NOT diagnose her with autism.”
Please cite the source for this information.
David Kirby (2008 Feb 26). The Vaccine-Autism Court Document Every American Should Read at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-vaccineautism-court-d_b_88558.html
Read it for yourself!
You wrote: “Yes, you admitted you were wrong, but that’s not the point, you were willing to blacken the name of Dr Suzanne Humphries and all other vaccine-safety advocates and that’s what I objected to.”
I admit that I was wrong; but I am also planning to write a review of Humphries book and you won’t like it. As I found with Wakefield’s book, at least so far from the Chapter on Polio, she is wrong on almost every point she makes and I can prove it! But, again, I was wrong about the photoshopping. And just to be clear, I did NOT say it was photoshopped; but that it easily could have been. Still, I was wrong.
However, I also made another mistake. I read the quote by Offit, it didn’t seem right to me and I assumed it was wrong and, therefore . . . However, once I took some time, I realized that what I think on a subject I am NOT an expert on, that is fetal development, I decided to investigate further and found, so far, that several of the findings he listed were taken from medical journal articles and, as I wrote, I try not to rely on one article, so, as soon as I have the time, I intend to do a thorough search to see if what Offit wrote is valid. From what I’ve seen from antivaccinationists, often drawing conclusions from one article and basing choice of article on what fits what you wish to believe, I don’t work that way. Yes, I’m human and make snap decisions; but once I settle down, I question my decisions and investigate. If my further research shows that Offit was wrong on even one of the points, that is, it was in a journal article; but later research failed to replicate, I will include that in any paper I write. Once again, I made two mistakes: 1. when the Wayback Machine did NOT go back to 2013, I didn’t bother checking the 2014 and 2. I reacted to what Offit said based on my gut despite it NOT being an area I have expertise in which lead me to suspect Photoshopping.
One other mistake I made which you point out, I was tired and read what you wrote:
“For 13 years I worked as a critical care nurse in both pediatric, neonatal, and adult ICU. I worked in the emergency room. I’ve seen kids come in with vaccine-induced seizures….I am a lawyer and a nurse, and I didn’t know about VAERS…So that’s really not a good assessment tool for determining whether or not the vaccines are safe, and the other problem is I interpret it as the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Again, a lawyer and a nurse, I didn’t know about it for over year. I did not know that it existed.”
Which, of course, was what Terry Poling said. not you. So, it was Terry Poling who seemed to not know what many others did.
As for what is Autism, I direct you the DSM IV or V and to books such as a free book on internet: Recent Advances in Autism Spectrum Disorder, Volume 1 at: http://www.intechopen.com/books/recent-advances-in-autism-spectrum-disorders-volume-i
or go to university library and read: Fred Volkmar and Rhea Paul. Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders, 2 Volume set, 2014
You write: “I believe intussusception after Rotashield was picked up by VAERS because they were looking for it. It’s a great pity that regressive autism after vaccine reactions is not reportable.” Golly gee, that is exactly what they do, they look for serious conditions and intussusception is one of them. As for “regressive autism after vaccine reactions [NOT] being reportable, you really don’t understand VAERS. It accepts any report on anything. Nothing is booted out of the system; but, of course, the reports submitted signed by Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck don’t lead to further investigation. Take a case like Hannah Poling. If her parents had submitted a VAERS report that after receiving several vaccines on the same day she displayed a list of changes and they received a few more such reports then they would have investigated.
As for you claims: “When I asked, “Who monitors comments and has them deleted from Facebook and newspaper articles?” perhaps I wasn’t clear that I was referring to comments being deleted from online newspaper articles, which they often are, or they’re not posted at all, or they get flagged by the vaccine zealots.”
Given that I have seen letters to our local paper that are clearly antivaccine and when at the university library seen them when looking at other newspapers, not in my experience. Besides your beliefs, what proof do you have? As for FACEBOOK, I don’t belong; but I noticed quite some time ago that they did have a forum for antivaccinationists. Whether it is still there or not, don’t know. I was at a friend’s house and haven’t check in some time.
To sum up. You are wrong about the Wayback Machine. You are wrong about Hannah Poling being one of the three Autism Omnibus Test Cases. She was evaluated by two experts. You are wrong about VAERS not accepting any type of reported problem. And defining and diagnosing autism is NOT a simple matter. There are a number of conditions that, without differential diagnoses, including possibly genetic tests, that could be mistaken for autism and, for better or worse, classical autism is not subsumed under Autism Spectrum Disorders that have some things in common; but are also quite different. Personally, I don’t think in most cases that Asperger’s should even be considered as a psychiatric disorder. Just my personal opinion.
And the biggest mistake I am making is posting comments such as these. When I write articles, I devote months, many months, to reading, making notes, double checking, then writing, rewriting, and finally seeking critical feedback which often leads to quite a bit of revising. I sometimes read over 200 articles and documents for one article, sometimes even more. My articles give detailed references, including hyperlinks when available. Posting comments like these is NOT how I do my best. Had I been writing an article, I would have taken the time to check out the November 2014 Wayback Machine and I would have investigated what Offit had written rather than a gut-level reaction.
In any case, I am old; but try to keep in shape and the gym I go to is closing early today, so have to sign off.
By the way, James and I use are real names, why don’t you???
No one need use their real name here to chat. I interviewed a pediatrician for my book today, he cited 30 years of parents independently attributing regressive autism. He told me he had been persecuted, threatened and ostracized for daring to spread out the pediatric schedule to avoid too many jabs at once. He writes medical exemptions. He has asked me to not reveal his identity, and I will not here, nor in my book. The stigmatization for being daring enough to see the association, to see the effects of biased research by the CDC, to actually let in the consequences of admitting concern, all of those actions are risky. Josh when you see the mountain of evidence showing how excitotoxity is found in study after study, if you let it in, you will risk the same mistreatment. There is no need to pressure anyone to step forward and self-identified unless and until they are ready.
@James & ATSC
So, someone made a claim and with NO independent verification, you believe him because you want to. Is that what your book will be built on, anonymous claims? Sounds like hearsay to me. In addition, since there are lots of newspaper articles, journal articles, and discussions in books about regression, why would those you seem to speak to be afraid to speak out when so many others aren’t? In my life I have heard numerous claims about numerous issues from people, some eventually turned out to be true and others not so. Some of the people were clearly lying and others believed what they were saying. As a poor example, David Sackett related studies where doctors were asking what percentage of their patients, for instance, had had mammographies. Most were way off. The reason is they remembered the last few and assumed. One of the reasons that Clinical Epidemiology pushes data, not interviewing doctors; but actually auditing their medical records and COUNTING. Not, of course, exactly the same; but I would bet the doctor you spoke with has NOT actually gone through his records over, say, the past 10 years, counted how many total patients and then how many he believed to be regressive. Who knows? Maybe he is one of the few who somehow has accurately worked it out in his head.
I was just curious why ATSC doesn’t use his/jher real name. From his/her posts I highly doubt he/she is some professional who would be risking career; but asking isn’t exactly the same a “pressure.” You do like to embellish/exaggerate.
@ATSC
While you were wrong about Hannah Poling being chosen as one of the three test cases, according to a Wikipedia article on her father, Jon Poling: “Hannah’s case had originally been place with the almost 5,000 Autism Ominibus case pending hearing 5 years before her case was conceded administratively.” However, the article gives NO reference and I spent an hour searching Google and couldn’t find one. So, she may well have been among the circa 5,000; but that is NOT proof she had been officially diagnosed with autism. Unfortunately, for confidentiality, NO LIST EXISTS, not even a summary table of what the various types of diagnoses were.
Jon Poling wrote an article in the New England Journal of Medicine criticizing Paul Offit’s discussion of his daughter’s case; but he refused and continues to release the case files nor will he allow the various doctors involved to public comments, so all we have is his word for it. Imagine a court case where only one side presents and the other is not allowed to. How much credibility would most people give such a one-sided story? You can find the article by Poling, “Vaccines and Autism Revisited” at:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc086269
I gave in my previous post URL to the Hannah Poling case file that included the diagnoses. I did a further search and found that Age of Autism posted it as well. You can find it at:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/02/full-text-autis.html
As you can see from above, I have nothing to hide. I give you evidence that doesn’t totally support your claim of Poling being one of the test cases; but that she probably was included in the 5,000. And I give you URL to article by Jon Poling.
I have no problem admitting when I am wrong nor recognizing other points of view if they aren’t based on anonymous tips.
However, when I admitted I was wrong about responding to you regarding awareness of VAERS, I should have noticed it was Hannah’s mother; but it still really wasn’t completely an error. I write articles that often including quotes that support my point of view. As such, one can assume that the quotes reflect my position. If I quote from articles I disagree with, I make that quite clear. So, though I should have noticed it was a quote, you did include it in your comment and certainly didn’t do it because you disagree with it.
@James
I asked if you knew how I could put a screen shot in a comment? I made a screen shot of my Wayback Machine search and it would be nice if I could somehow post it. Perhaps, I could e-mail it as an attachment and you, having more control of this site, could insert it?
Joel,
If you email me screen shots I’ll see what I can do. I believe I can edit your comment and add and image.
Re: “One unverified source”, Joel, that is not a correct characterization. First, he told Hooker. Hooker analyzed the data and replicated the reported findings. He may have confused case/control vs. cohort study, but the result was the same. The fact that his journal article has been retracted is a shame – there are no specifics on the peer-review COI reported, and I report what Hooker has to say about that in my book “Cure vs. Profits”. Second, you cannot dismiss the fact that in examining the published studies themselves, witnessing first-hand (by reading) no report of positive association of African American males; you cannot dismiss the significance of DeStefano’s failed attempt to justify why they omitted the result. If everyone did science they way they report they did it, our pre-conceived notions would allow us to reject any finding, analyze the data 100 time with different methods, and choose the result on the basis of whether the results fit our notions, and publish only those results that want to bring forward. This is not science. We cannot learn from this type of activity. We can only confirm what we know. DeStefano’s ‘defense’ exists. You are not seeing that the admission of the omission is embedded in his defense – the defense of omitting data would not exist unless the data were omitted. We are beyond the question of whether the data were omitted, it seems you want to keep us from moving forward, and make it about belief. Do not expect us to “prove” to you that the data were admitted by argumentation, just look at the study, see that the result is not included, and move on.
So the results were omitted. Now that that’s settled, we’re good to go.
We can debate why, who was involved, whether it was something most people doing that kind of science (‘they are not the first to cherry-pick results’ is no defense). But before we engage, I’d like you to read “Whistleblower” and not try to make us defend others’ representation of what Thompson said. Please read it yourself, form your own opinion, and let’s go from there.
@ Joel
Sorry you went to all that trouble because I thought I’d made it clear that I’d found the quote by typing the following link into the WBM search engine:
http://vec.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum.html
Following the link directly by clicking on it, which is what everyone will do, arrives at the updated article which says at the bottom “Reviewed by Paul A. Offit, MD on November 04, 2014” and doesn’t have the section on Aluminum and Pregnancy. The mistake I made was to assume that the article reviewed over a year ago would have the same url as the one with the section I was looking for. I put address of the page I landed on into the WBM, and if you do the same, you will see that the address beginning: “http://www.chop.edu…..” only has “6 saves between August 19, 2015 and November 30, 2015”.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum
However, if the address beginning “http://vec. chop.edu…….” is TYPED into the WBM search engine, you will see it has been “Saved 20 times between November 17, 2014 and September 9, 2015.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20140315000000*/http://vec.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum.html
Clicking on any date before August 14 2015 will result in the Aluminum and Pregnancy section showing up, but on August 14 2015 you will see a redirect notice from “http://vec.chop” to “http://www.chop.edu….” which takes you to the updated article that omits the Aluminum and Pregnancy section, but still says “Reviewed by Paul A. Offit, MD on November 04, 2014” at the bottom.
However wrong I was about the original article with that section disappearing from the WBM, I am not wrong about it being hidden from view. Seeing that Offit’s review date hasn’t changed, ordinary people are going to assume that the article hasn’t been edited by him since November 2014, and few people will know how to dig deep to find that section.
You wrote “”So, it was “so well hidden from public view that even you couldn’t find it”, I didn’t try to find it. Can’t you read? I made this quite clear in a previous comment!”
By “it” I was referring to the section on aluminum and pregnancy. If we’re talking about the same thing, you did try to find it: evidenced by your post December 23, 2015 at 2:15 am: “I did a search of Google to find the quote used by jameslyonsweiler. “Aluminum quantities fluctuate naturally during normal cellular activity. It is found in all tissues and is also believed to play an important role in the development of a healthy fetus.” I found it repeated on lots of anti vaccine websites; but no where else and I found what I believe to be the source, a slide presentation by Suzanne Humphries. ”
You wrote: “Can’t you ever get anything right? Hannah Poling wasn’t one of the first three test cases. ”
I didn’t say it was. I wrote: “Why was the Hannah Poling case one of the first three test cases CHOSEN for the Autism Omnibus Trial involving almost 5000 families, if, as you claim, she wasn’t diagnosed with autism, and why was HER CASE WITHDRAWN, settled out of court and the documents sealed?”
Tell me, was Dr David Gorski wrong when he wrote: “…Hannah Poling was to be one of these test cases. Why Poling was removed from the case and settled separately is not known.” (Respectful Insolence March 10, 2008) “the Poling case was dropped as a test case from the Autism Omnibus.” (Science-Based Medicine March 10, 2008)
So I’ve read: “David Kirby (2008 Feb 26). The Vaccine-Autism Court Document Every American Should Read”. Presumably the two experts you’re referring to who didn’t diagnose Hannah with autism were Alice Kau and Kelley Duff who together “concluded that child was developmentally delayed and demonstrated features of autistic disorder”. Would you argue that she didn’t have a Pervasive Developmental Disorder, otherwise known as autism?
“As for what is Autism,I direct you the DSM IV or V and to books…”
I didn’t actually ask you what Autism is, I asked what YOU think it is. Is a psychiatric condition? A behavioural syndrome? ____?
You wrote that I wrote: “I believe intussusception after Rotashield was picked up by VAERS because they were looking for it. It’s a great pity that regressive autism after vaccine reactions is not reportable.” Golly gee, that is exactly what they do, they look for serious conditions and intussusception is one of them. As for “regressive autism after vaccine reactions [NOT] being reportable, you really don’t understand VAERS. It accepts any report on anything. Nothing is booted out of the system; but, of course, the reports submitted signed by Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck don’t lead to further investigation. Take a case like Hannah Poling. If her parents had submitted a VAERS report that after receiving several vaccines on the same day she displayed a list of changes and they received a few more such reports then they would have investigated.”
I meant that regressive autism is not one of the conditions on the Reportable Events Table which are required by law to be reported.
As to Terry Poling not submitting a report to VAERS, remember that even though she was a nurse for 13 years with some of that time spent in pediatric wards and had witnessed children having seizures after vaccinations, she hadn’t heard of VAERS or the NVICP.
Did you happen to notice that Hannah’s pediatrician told Terry Poling that her reactions were NORMAL? “According to her mother’s affidavit, CHILD developed a fever of 102.3 degrees two days after her immunizations and was lethargic, irritable, and cried for long periods of time. Pet. Ex. 2 at 6. She exhibited intermittent, high-pitched screaming and a decreased response to stimuli. Id. MOM spoke with the pediatrician, who told her that CHILD was having a normal reaction to her immunizations. Id. According to CHILD’s mother, this behavior continued over the next ten days, and CHILD also began to arch her back when she cried. ”
Tell me why a pediatrician would report reactions that he thought were normal? And why Terry Poling would disbelieve her daughter’s pediatrician?
At the time, hardly anyone knew about VAERS or the NVICP but more people do now, I dare say because of the hard work of Vaccine-Safety Advocates.
Regressive autism is also a serious condition but because autism was supposed to be a condition that a child had from birth, and until only recently few doctors believed parents who said their children were developing normally until they changed and became autistic after vaccine reactions. Now that regressive autism has become common, in 20 – 40% of children, and some say closer to 60%, the narrative has changed to “Autism typically appears during the first three years of life”. (Autism: Why Do Some Develop Then Regress? December 3, 2004 University Of Michigan).
It really is time for you and Paul Offit to wake up. Not that Offit knows anything about autism apart from the information he gleaned from newspaper articles for his book Autism False Prophets, and the input he had from a handful of people with children on the spectrum, including vociferous Neurodiversity activists Camille Clark and Kathleen Seidel who both mysteriously vanished from the Internet after Offit’s book was published.
You wrote: “Classical autism is not subsumed under Autism Spectrum Disorders that have some things in common; but are also quite different.”
Really?! I’m surprised that you don’t know that last year all previous PDDs had been subsumed under Autism Spectrum Disorder in the DSM-V , even Childhood Disintegrative Disorder which has made research into regressive cases impossible. It’s all Autism now, even Aspergers.
You wrote: “You are wrong about the Wayback Machine. You are wrong about Hannah Poling being one of the three Autism Omnibus Test Cases. She was evaluated by two experts. You are wrong about VAERS not accepting any type of reported problem.”
Twisting what I write is wrong, Joel.
You wrote: “And defining and diagnosing autism is NOT a simple matter. There are a number of conditions that, without differential diagnoses, including possibly genetic tests, that could be mistaken for autism”
Diagnosing autism shouldn’t be a simple matter of ticking the right number of boxes on a checklist and getting a positive score, but for many clinicians, perhaps most, it still is. History of illnesses or ill-health the child might have had before the onset of regression should be taken, but it is not. Is this because psychologists only think of autism in terms of a psychiatric disorder similar to Reactive Attachment Disorder, and not a medical one? For many years psychologists observing a child covering his or her ears would call it ‘typical autistic behaviour’, they wouldn’t look beyond that, or they would presume a child flinching away from touch had suffered parental abuse. It has only recently dawned on them that certain sounds, that don’t bother normal people, hurt their ears, and that these children are hypersensitive to touch. Right up until the early 90’s mental health professionals were still blaming cold, uncaring parents for their child’s condition.
We need to find out what happened to the brains of children with regression. When a person, regardless of age, can speak, then can’t speak; has good eye-contact, then hasn’t; responds to his or her name, then doesn’t; joins in family life, then doesn’t – there has to be a cause, the cause needs to be found, and it’s not autism. If a virus associated with this dreadful life-long condition were found, no doubt Dr Paul Offit would be working on a vaccine to prevent it.
Once again, it shouldn’t matter what my real name is so long as I’m speaking the truth, and I am. I will tell you that I have been participating in this ‘fight’, which is a far better word to describe it than ‘debate’, for a very long time. There is something about vaccines that is damaging to children’s brains, and we need to find out what it is, and which children are particularly vulnerable to the brain-damaging effects.
Actually I’ve read DSM-V, and RA is a type of CDD, and that’s how the research community addresses RA as well. If we can’t study “Regressive Autism” we can study CDD, a subtype of which is Rett’s, another is RA. As CDD is within ASD (as is classical autism, known as “autism” or “severe autism”, there are not classification-based impediments, in spite of best efforts to make RA disappear.
Joel is clearly here on mission – by his own words – “to debunk (what he sees as) false claims about vaccine safety”). The problem for him here is that we are not making false claims. He claims to be open-minded, but he is anything but. His is biased, incapable of objective analysis. When confronted with real answers to his supposed challenges, accusations, and questions, he acts as though those answers were never given. I’m not saying he’s paid to be here, but one might begin to wonder if he gets paid by the post.
Regarding not knowing what is going on in the child’s brain, we know much, much more than I suspected. There is a lot going on, the studies that look at behavior, fMRI, genes, and gene expression are all saying the same thing: It’s chronic microglial activation (CMA). How that occurs is key.
It will take me another 2 weeks to finish the book, genetics is no threat to understanding environmental causes. Heterogeneity is no threat. Complexity, no threat. Some of the genetic variation sheds a bright light on how aluminum, mercury and other toxins persist in the brain, how CMA gets started, how it stays going. … I can’t wait to share w/the world everything I’ve learned, so much good research done. It’s all coming together. I’ve very optimistic about treatments, too (for those who want their dendrites and neural precursor cells to survive the constant attacks by microglia).
Which basically at this point, in this polluted world, should be all of us.
@James
What is your e-mail address so I can send the screen shot as an attachment?
It isn’t worth responding to the claimed “omission” since you refuse to accept that if they did a number of post-hoc analyses, that they would be for generating possible hypotheses for future research, that they would NOT be considered valid. You don’t seem to understand the problems with small sample sizes nor the problems of multiple comparisons. And you continue to ignore that they did include race in one analysis. And you continue to ignore that if one is to accord credibility to Thompson’s allegation then one has to accept that the study’s findings of no associations for everyone; but Afro-American boys at a narrow age range should then result in a warning to delay the vaccinations for ONLY this group and that they are safe for everyone else. You can’t have it both ways!
As for a doctor telling you he has seen lots of cases of regression; but is afraid to talk about it, did you ask the following questions:
1. What evidence did he have, e.g. videos before and after vaccines?. Studies have found that where such videos existe that, despite what parents “remembered” children displayed clear indications of autism-type behaviors prior to vaccinations. When problems develop, people tend to search their brains, including what they have seen and heard (and there are plenty of websites claiming autism and vaccinations are associated) and often come up with memories that aren’t all that accurate.
2. What did he base his diagnoses on, e.g. standardized tests, etc? What expertise does he have?
3. Did he arrange for genetic tests? After all, the kids could have had Rett’s Syndrome or Landau–Kleffner syndrome and the regression following vaccinations would represent Post Hoc Ergo Prompter Hoc logical fallacy, that is, the regression would have occurred regardless.
3. Has he kept a running list of kids he thought had regressed? How many? During how many years? What is the denominator, that is, of how many patients he had during that time period?
Even if he were to answer affirmatively, there is always the possibility that one or a few doctors would see more cases of a condition than would be representative of the prevalence of the condition, just as the binomial allows for someone getting 100 heads in a row from tossing a balanced coin, a low probability; but not impossible. However, you give NO indication that you asked any of the above questions. As with everything you’ve written so far, you choose to believe what certain individuals say.
There is a fun book by David J. Hand entitled: The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day. Scientific American, 2014
There is also a good article by Ron Forthofer (1991). Streak Shooter: The Sequel. Chance; 4(2): 46-48
I don’t understand why you consistently characterize things in such a overly dramatic fashion: I don’t “refuse” to admit that they did a variety of post-hoc analyses – It is abundantly clear that they did, and is not debated.
However, you cannot have your cake and eat it to. They used the negative results in DeStefano et al. in part to justify and continue a public policy as if the entire suite of results from all reported subgroup analyses were valid.
Yes, in fact, the doctor I interview considers all available data for differential diagnosis. He and his partner are far ahead in the use of genetic testing, in fact.
And I outright reject the 100 heads in row argument. Even I accept for this one pediatrician, I can easily find another, and another, and another whose experiences have mirrored this MD’s experience.
How many pediatricians observed 100 heads in a row would it take for you to concede that vaccines can cause autism in some people? I think I can guess your answer, but I’d rather let you consider that point.
Also, the fallacy you cite does not apply in a situation in which we also know that the population-wide rates of regressive autism are increasing. You have to violate a few basic principles of logical inference to make that work, such as selectively ignoring available evidence.
the email address I gave you is ebolapromo [at] gmail.com
Joel:
You have said some pretty ridiculous things so far, now this takes the cake. It is patently absurd for you to think that I do not understand statistical power and the problem of multiple comparisons from what Ive written. I’ve made my living for 20 years doing high-dimensional data analysis (as you know) and have taught courses in -omics data analysis (as you know). It’s all very straightforward. Take your pick, Bonferroni, Benjamini-Hochberg, Storey’s method (pFDR)…. others…. Maybe you would like to learn about my method – the empirical false positive risk method – (which uses the number of discoveries made an in input parameter), others…. which do you think the CDC should have DeStefano used (but did not)? Regarding statistical power, it is my observation that you do not understand prevalence-informed power analysis, and you simply try to turn it around on me. Those who know my research and teaching history will find your comments amusing. Let me ask you – what was the a priori estimated effect size that DeStefano et al. used to power their study? What were the variance estimates for their power analysis, and their source? What was their a priori alpha? And which method of multiple hypothesis testing did they use?
Oh, that’s right. They didn’t!
And they cited that study as supporting the safety of vaccines. Positive knowledge from negative results. .Now that is an interesting trick.
I love how the accusations are applied against those critical of the study are not applied to the study itself.
In fact, which of the CDC’s studies listed had sufficient power to detect association? Interesting question, I think.
Your statement that the inference that is discovered on a population is restricted (for generalization) to the population defined for a study is correct, but is elementary. I do not care to try to have anything both ways. So had DeStefano et al., had published the association rather than change the study design to make the association disappear, the concern would have been (appropriately) applied to that subgroup. The next round of studies that should have been done, but that never did get done, should have been conducted to try to replicate the association, and, if necessary, to find out why the AA male group had increased risk.
As far as I’m concerned, it is 2005 when it comes to our knowledge about vaccine safety.
@James
You write several times: “(as you know)”
You promised some time ago to post your CV. Since I haven’t seen it, how should I know? Just one more example of you assuming facts that are NOT in evidence. If you did post your CV, tell me where?
As for DeStefano changing the study design, the only alleged change was NOT including a small post-hoc analysis which I’m not sure was even done. You trust what Thompson says. What are his motive you ask? But you are absolutely certain that all the other researchers at the CDC, the researchers in Denmark and Sweden and elsewhere are liars. And you continue to avoid the issue that even Thompson has said that vaccines are safe, except for the alleged group omitted. The sample sizes for the other analyses were more than adequate, just look at the confidence intervals. One doesn’t need to do a power analysis with a case-control study when one starts with almost 1,000 cases; but, if one does do a power analysis, they are seldom included in the articles I’ve seen. But as I assume you know, one can’t prove the null hypothesis, so all that any study can say is “no evidence of” or something similar, what you call a “negative result.”
To some extent I see a parallel between you and those who deny global warming. They also trot out studies and experts. They also claim that ALL the scientists who believe in global warming are dishonest and/or incompetent. I distinctly remember one scandal making a mountain from a molehill. Anti-global warmers got hold of some e-mails where they mentioned simplifying the results to make them more powerful. I don’t remember the exact wording; but it turned out that all they did was round, that the unrounded numbers were just about the same; but for the anti-global warmers that was enough to prove their dishonesty. Perhaps you also deny global warming??? In both cases, vaccines and global warming, the vast majority of scientists the world over are in the pro camp; but there are scientists opposing both and lots of people attacking the integrity of the pro-vaccines and pro-global warmers. I have asked you numerous times why you choose to believe one man and to at the same time believe that so many around the world are dishonest; but you have NEVER responded.
I have seven articles posted on ECBT. Pick any or all of them and try to find any major flaws in my reasoning and/or documentation. And I am working on one more just now which should be done by the end of January and a shorter one that should be ready in a couple of weeks. Both will be sent to around 10 people for their critique and then, as I’ve stated several times, I will start working on aluminum, which should take me four or more months. I have probably a 1,000 pages to read, make notes, outline, etc.
I keep hearing that DeStefano somehow admitted that they did remove the one analysis; but haven’t been able to find anything credible. All I have found is from antivaccinationist websites. If you know of a newspaper article in a major paper, Congressional hearing where he testified, etc., please give me enough detail to find it, e.g. URL.
I e-mailed you the screen shot, so, maybe you will be able to post it???
Now that’s even funnier Joel.
Listen, the Vostok ice core records are sufficient evidence for me. I did palecology in the neotropics for my master’s thesis with Paul Colinvaux at Ohio State University.
I also performed music for Pittsburgh’s Group Against Smog and Pollution and wrote an article for their newletter reminding people that in spite of the global warming deniers, the Vostok ice core records remain…..
The fact that you don’t see DeStefano’s own words as credible evidence that they omitted the results is beyond comprehension. You want to cast me as relying only on Thompson’s word, which you have not read yet.
Thank you for the offer, but I really don’t have any desire to spend my time reading your articles in search of flaws. I prefer to continue to read the studies published over the last 15 years that the CDC has ignored.
And yes, I will try to post the screen shot you made, no problem. The substance of Offit’s shallow consideration of aluminum neurotoxicity is already established.
Joel
Here is your screenshot
And here is mine
Not sure what you think you image implies, it just means that the current URL used by CHOP for that particular resources has been around a scant time.
Browsing the files back to the time when the web page said those silly things about aluminum is trivial. The wayback machine remembers everything….
@James
You write: “the empirical false positive risk method – (which uses the number of discoveries made an in input parameter)” Sounds something like Bayesian statistics?
You write: “As far as I’m concerned, it is 2005 when it comes to our knowledge about vaccine safety.”
The DeStefano study was published in 2004!
I am an old man in somewhat good health as far as my age. I live alone and have lots of time on my hands. You must be really insecure despite your bravado to be devoting so much time and energy in my directions.
Joel – I am aware it was 2004, I gave it a year because most people likely read it in 2005, accepting it as gospel truth because, well, they are the CDC….
Insecure? No. Devoted to the cause of improving vaccine safety? Yes. You are TERRIBLE at guess motivation.
PS All statistics can be phrased in terms of Bayesian stats – it’s what you do with the prior that counts. My empirical estimator provides a worst-case scenario for false discovery risk at a given threshold of significance. I will be publishing it in 2016.