I was on Channel 4 News last night talking about the MMR Scare – up against Richard Halvorsen – which you might like to take a look at.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
In the interview, I make a claim that Halvorsen personally profits from mistrust in the MMR vaccine – the reference for this is the price list of the company which Halvorsen runs, here; http://www.babyjabs.co.uk/baby_vaccines_prices.htm
In terms of the background of my involvement with all this, I attended the ‘showdown meeting’ at The Lancet with the investigative journalist Brian Deer the week before original allegations of conflict of interest were officially made. We identified the serious problems of medical and research ethics raised by the intrusive and burdensome procedures carried out.
I wrote about the ethical concerns in the Sunday Times at the time and raised the matter in Parliament, demanding an inquiry.
Just before the findings were announced at the GMC yesterday, I made a press statement, saying; “If the GMC finds against Dr Wakefield on the major issues of research ethics involving children, I will be calling for the strongest sanctions to be imposed.
As well as being an MP interested in science, health, and evidence-based policy-making, I’ve been a long-standing member of the BMA’s Medical Ethics Committee, and at the time of Dr Wakefield’s research was a member of a leading Research Ethics Committee in Oxford, responsible for deciding whether or not to approve similar intrusive medical studies on children.
This blog has moved 
January 29, 2010 at 16:04 |
That’s a good interview, “the coverage of this of this bad science has damaged confidence in the MMR vaccine” – and that’s really the point of this.
It’s a big challenge that we need to focus on – gaining the trust of parents in the vaccine. At Sense, the charity for deafblind people, we work with families still living with the effects of previous rubella outbreaks, and so don’t want to see it happen again. We’re put our full response to the story on our website http://bit.ly/dARXbU
January 29, 2010 at 17:09 |
Full marks, Evan.
Well done.
January 29, 2010 at 17:43 |
Good interview. Thought the bit about books with ‘the truth’ in the title was a bit off topic and unfortunate this came at the very end, but made some very good points.
Curious about Halverson’s assertion the evidence is unable to show that MMR is not responsible for up to 10% of autism cases. Where did that come from? What does this even mean? I assume for this to be true there must be an established correlation, but it is as yet undetermined whether there is causality. Sounds like a lie to me.
r
January 29, 2010 at 17:55 |
Bravo Evan. Am I the only who felt Halverson was reminiscent of Jeffery Archer? Halverson’s 10% is an appalling statistic plucked basically out of thin air. It’s not even about a false idea of protecting children, it’s about them being unable to say they were/are wrong.
January 29, 2010 at 18:27 |
I was watching that when it aired last night — fantastic. I am always thrilled to see someone science-literate not backing down, and even better, going on the counter-attack, and handling the facts accurately. More of this, please!
January 29, 2010 at 18:38 |
Nice interview – I think you could ave got in the fact that Wakefield had a stipulation in his contract that he should not have a role in the clinical management of patients.
Yes, he’s a doctor but he is not a practicing clinician – he is a medical researcher. This image that he performed these unethical procedures as part of the treatment of these children rather than what they were – unsanctioned and unapproved research interventions – is very unfortunate.
January 29, 2010 at 19:13 |
I found the comments by Halvorsen regarding complaints the most disturbing – just because no parents complained doesn’t mean that the kids had a good time, does it? I would imagine that having procedures like these must be even worse than usual for autistic children, and there’s probably less chance that they could communicate how they felt anyway.
January 29, 2010 at 19:31 |
“I found the comments by Halvorsen regarding complaints the most disturbing” –Hugh
What about his trying to stir up the MMR scare again at the end there?
January 29, 2010 at 19:49 |
Great Job Evan!
January 30, 2010 at 11:20 |
Thank you for speaking sense. If only voices like yours were heard amidst the panic.
January 30, 2010 at 12:33 |
I was staggered to hear Halvorsen claim MMR scare was ‘appropriate’ and ‘not dangerous’ (or words to that effect). That the Lancet paper was never strong enough evidence to show a connection between MMR and autism makes the scare inappropriate. That people have died from measles since the newspapers brought their considerable talent for distortion to bear on the issue makes the scare dangerous.
I’m glad you brought up Halvorsen’s conflict of interest. I looked at this in a blog post and found that the full alternative vaccine schedule from his clinic would cost around £1500-1600 per child.
It’s also worth noting that Halvorsen’s schedule does not include MMR, gives the rubella vaccine only to girls (and only at the age of twelve), and does not currently include the mumps vaccine. This could potentially have serious repercussions.
Instead of being vaccinated against rubella at thirteen months, girls would be unprotected until they were twelve years old and boys would remain unprotected. As the mumps vaccine is unavailable, parents who follow Halvorsen’s schedule would be putting their sons at risk of infection with mumps. Infertility and subfertility are not unknown following mumps infection.
Thank you for challenging Halvorsen’s nonsense.
January 30, 2010 at 15:01 |
How many negative comments have you censored and how much money have you made in your roles as a GP and MP? You are not to be trusted.
January 30, 2010 at 16:13 |
jdc325 — Seriously? THAT is Halvorsen’s schedule? That’s just insane. Insane AND unethical.
Deborah Nash — ironic you should claim censorship, given that *your* comment showed up here. And do you have actual evidence that Dr. Harris has done something unethical? See, we have actual evidence Wakefield has done things which are badly wrong. That makes a difference.
January 30, 2010 at 18:28 |
Deborah,
Evan has never been an MP. He was trained as a hospital doctor and worked as a Registrar in the NHS in Oxfordshire before being elected as MP for Oxford West & Abingdon in May 1997. Since then he has been a full time MP.
Evan therefore has no financial interest either way in this debate and therefore no financial interest to declare.
Dr Halvorsen has a financial interest in parents believing that there is a problem with the MMR jab because he profits from parents choosing to have the seperate jabs instead.
There is nothing wrong with this in itself but it would certainly be more transparent if he declared it.
February 1, 2010 at 12:00 |
Apolgies, I meant ‘Evan has never been a GP’ – he has obviously been an MP!
January 30, 2010 at 21:28 |
Liberal Neil and Luna the Cat (Scared of using your real names!)
Evan Harris is an MP and even if he was never a GP he has been shown to have milked the MP’s expenses. He is obsessed by money as he brought up Dr Halvorsen’s single vaccine fees on the first day of the GMC Hearing. He failed to answer any of our letters to him that were passed to him by the Lib Dem Leader for reply . If the Government had not withdrawn the choice of single vaccines no one would have to pay for them. I would like to know if Dr Harris had the Swine Flu vaccine? If not I recommend he has it soon as there might be an epidemic. Dr Wakefield has more honesty and integrity than Evan Harris will ever have
January 30, 2010 at 21:37 |
I was very disappointed to see Evans response to Jim Moody outside of the GMC, making all sorts of faces as the man explained the complaint 21 Autism organisations from UK and USA sumitted to the GMC about false testimony in the hearings.
I’d like to know if Evan has read the document, available at this link
Click to access 100120—gmc—first-amended-complaint-1.pdf
Thankyou
January 30, 2010 at 21:53 |
Evan Harris and his merck-y life and past are well documented by John Stone here..http://www.whale.to/vaccine/stone.html
Dr Evan Harris MP and MMR
14 February 2008
By John Stone
http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk
Dr Evan Harris resigned his position of Liberal Democrat health spokesman in 2003 due to the illness of his partner. Shortly afterwards he appeared in the MMR ‘Hear the Silence’ debate on Channel 5 along side Michael Fitzpatrick and Anjana Ahuja. In February 2004 he accompanied Sunday Times journalist Brian Deer to the Lancet offices to level accusations against Andrew Wakefield. Although Harris’s accusations of unethical practices in regard to the treatment of patients were endorsed neither by the Lancet or the Sunday Times he led a debate in the House of Commons, re-introducing the accusations under protection of parliamentary privilege.
In this debate he did disclose recent hospitality from MMR defendants Aventis, but failed to acknowledge earlier hospitality from Glaxo, by that period merged with SmithKline Beecham, and also an MMR defendant. When this was brought up in BMJ Rapid Responses a defence of Harris came through from a senior officer of the Health Protection Agency, Prof Brian McCloskey.
In 2006 Harris was on the panel of judges for the Association of British Science Writers Awards which awarded Ben Goldacre for the second time the prize for best feature article (2005).
Although Goldacre, too, was a prominent opponent of the MMR-Autism hypothesis it is curious that in the prize-winning article he seemed to reject the claim of unethical procedures in the 1998 Lancet article:
January 30, 2010 at 21:58 |
I WOULD BE HAPPIER IF EVAN HAD ACTUALLY SEEN OR READ ANY PARENTS COMPLAIN AGAINST ANDREW WAKFIELD. THE FACT IS THAT PARENTS KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THIER CHILDREN, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THIS DOCUMENT WHICH SHOWS THAT THE GOVERNMENT AND VACCINES DO NOT CARE ABOUT OUR BABIES AND CHILDREN. http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/secret-british-mmr-vaccine-files-forced-open-by-legal-action/
THE VACCINES IN COMBINATION HAVE NOT BEEN TESTED, THEY JUST KEEP ADDING VACCINES INTO THE SCHEDULE. EVAN DOES NOT KNOW THE QUANTITY OF VACCINES THAT BABIES HAVE IN ONE JAB OR WHAT THE INGREDIENTS ARE. HE HAS NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE DANGER OF COMBINED VACCINES AND NEEDS TO READ UP ON THE SUBJECT.
January 30, 2010 at 21:59 |
So sorry I posted before i had finished ..
“Now, even though popular belief in the MMR scare is – perhaps – starting to fade, popular understanding of it remains minimal: people periodically come up to me and say, isn’t it funny how that Wakefield MMR paper turned out to be Bad Science after all? And I say: no. The paper always was and still remains a perfectly good small case series report, but it was systematically misrepresented as being more than that, by media that are incapable of interpreting and reporting scientific data.”
In January 2007 Harris entered in the Register of Members Interests:
“I have been provided with the services of an intern to conduct research work and co-ordinate a project by Sense About Science, an independent charitable trust.”
However, Sense About Science could more accurately be described as as an aggressive industry lobby organisation. It lists as its contributers:
“the ABPI, AstraZeneca plc, BBSRC, The Biochemical Society, Blackwell Publishing, BP plc, British Institute of Radiology, Dixons Group plc, Elsevier, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, The Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Garfield Weston, GE Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline, Halifax Bank of Scotland, Health and Science Communication Trust, Institute of Physics, Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, John Innes Centre, John Innes Trust, Medical Research Council, NESTA, New Scientist, Oxford GlycoSciences plc, Pfizer plc, The Physiological Society, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Astronomical Society, Royal College of Radiology, Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, Royal Society of Chemistry, Science Careers.org, Social Issues Research Centre, The Society for Applied Microbiology, The Society for Endocrinology, The Society for General Microbiology, Unilever plc. Help with equipment, facilities and services has been received from: AXA Investment Management, Horticultural Research International, Institute of Biology, The Natural History Museum, Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, and WPP.”
Much of the prosecution case at the GMC hearing was based on Harris’s accusations of unethical invasive procedures, although it is less clear that much headway was made with them, as extensively reported by Martin J Walker.
Much of Harris’s case seems to rest on the circular argument that autistic children do not have bowel disease. However, he is under a serious misapprehension as the National Autsistic Society have pointed out:
“The National Autistic Society (NAS) is keenly aware of the concerns of parents surrounding suggested links between autism and the MMR vaccine. The charity is concerned that the GMC hearing, and surrounding media coverage, will create further confusion and make it even more difficult for parents to access appropriate medical advice for their children.
“It is particularly important that this case is not allowed to increase the lack of sympathy that some parents of children with autism have encountered from health professionals, particularly on suspected gut and bowel problems. Parents have reported to the NAS that in some cases their concerns have been dismissed as hysteria following previous publicity around the MMR vaccine. It is crucial that health professionals listen to parents’ concerns and respect their views as the experts on their individual children.
“There is an urgent need for further, authoritative research into the causes of autism, to improve our understanding of the condition, to respond to parents’ concerns and to enable us to ensure that there are appropriate services and support in place to meet people’s needs.” See here
As we know, in many cases this lack of sympathy has degenerated into Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy allegations – meanwhile the public and professional perception of what has been going on has been largely influenced by Harris’s misconceived allegations, and much of the responsibility for this confusion must lie on his head.
Fascinating, more than four years on to read this comment from the much lamented Paul Foot, the last journalist ever to say a sceptical word about MMR in the Guardian:
“Last week’s Channel Five programme Hear the Silence about the MMR controversy was one of the best dramas I have seen. It was not just a moving true story, beautifully acted. It was also a shocking indictment of the medical establishment. A group of parents were confronted with the fear that their children had become autistic after having the triple vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. A responsible authority should surely take such fears seriously and deploy the full extent of scientific research to testing the fears, if only to allay them. The reaction of the authorities was exactly the opposite.
“The one senior doctor who took the parents seriously, Andrew Wakefield, had his research stopped and was effectively banished to the US. Despite his record as an often published scientist, he was widely smeared. Legal aid for the parents to sue the government was cut off.
“On the programme, the two sides confronted each other. On the parents’ side there was anguished concern, backed by sober science from Wakefield. On the other was outraged impatience, led by two slightly fanatical GPs, including Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West. He insisted there was no link between autism and MMR, and loudly failed to prove that this was so. Instead, he went some way to proving the time-honoured medical principle that doctors know everything, and patients nothing.”
John Stone
January 30, 2010 at 22:05 |
Oh Deer you can see is it Dr ,MP, or pharma skes person tel me who does he represent as was asked in this video…filmed at the GMC …
January 30, 2010 at 22:07 |
Eh while were at it heres the one his mate, pharma mate ,Deer tried to ban
January 30, 2010 at 22:09 |
If mr Harris believes in free speech , why has he not taken the time to listen to all of the evidence , and why does he dismiss the parents with such remarks as PARENTS ARE OFTEN DESPERATE AND WILL PUT THEIR CHILDREN THROUGHTHINGS THAT ARE NOT APPROPRIATE , if Mr Harris new anything about Autistic children he should know that even a dentist appointment is a challenge therefore almost all medical procedures need to be carried out while the child is lightly sedated or heavily sedated , depending on the procedure , you really ought to do your homework Mr Harris
January 30, 2010 at 22:11 |
And this is just 3 of the parents attending the GMC kangaroo circus..never mind the 4000 who were denied legal aid by the UK unless you were Tom Dick or Harry the terrorist..
January 30, 2010 at 22:39 |
“The GMC have behaved like puppets for the pharmaceutical companies and the medical cartel. I’ts all about money and reputation and keeping ones job no matter what the outcome is to the stupid decisions they have made for mankind. I will never give up making people aware of MMR vaccine damage, this is my right as a citizen and the sooner people wake up to the fact that yes thousands of children have been brain/gut damaged the better, and I have no doubt about that.
Vaccine damage is recognised all over the world so what is the UK coming to or what are they hiding. We know what they are hiding but we never got a voice at the GMC. Luckily for us parents we have a very strong support group and parents that attended the hearing by God let the panel know their strong feelings on the matter. Tons of support from America and it was great to hear Jim Moody from NAA in America have his say. Another man who knows what he is talking about and is not afraid to have his say. No children were failed by the doctors and no parents. Are you too afraid also to speak out, well shame on you all that believe the lies of Dr Evan Harris and Brian Deer.”
January 30, 2010 at 22:51 |
Mr Harris, what you very conveniently manage to forget when “discussing” this issues is that
a) children with autism are very VERY sick
b) many (if not most) of children with autism suffer gastrointestinal problems, in addition to
By attacking doctors who investigate VERY sick children through “unnecessary invasive procedures” you very conveniently FORGET to suggest what the Necessary and Non-invasive procedures would be, that would be able to reveal why these children are suffering.
Let me ask you something Dr Harris, and if you cannot answer this question in public, please do consider it quietly, in private:
what would you, as a doctor, suggest as an investigative procedure in a case where your patient is suffering the following symptoms: frequent and severe pains in the areas of stomach and oesophagus, long-term and severely abnormal bowel and bladder movements, immune system abnormalities, hormonal abnormalities, neurotransmitter abnormalities, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, gross and fine motor skills deterioration, abnormal pain perception, lack of coordination, abnormalities of vision and auditory systems, mitochondrial dysfunction, brain hypoperfusion, brain vessels vasoconstriction and lastly chronic microglial (brain) inflammation (all of which are by the way very very common in autism, see http://www.autismcalciumchannelopathy.com/Abnormal_biomed_findings.html).
Or would you rather send your patient home, to avoid the risk of some very inconvenient issues becoming apparent as a result of “unnecessary” medical investigations?
Or maybe you send the patient home because it simply does not matter at all – as long as the patient is not your own child, why bother?
January 30, 2010 at 23:31 |
Heres some of the thousands who attended The Autism Rally in London
Evan has the head very far into the sand,it gets hot after a while and sometime he will have to come up and smell the sweet smell of rosies..
January 30, 2010 at 23:32 |
For the above back slappers of Evan above and the sad uninformed comments they make…
Double Talk and Creative Logic. Medical advisers were using this ploy as far back as 1806. In that year Edward Jenner, the dubious “father of modern vaccinations,” was under examination by a College of Physicians committee. Numerous members of the English population who had recently been vaccinated with Jenner’s concoction, and who were therefore considered immune to smallpox, had caught the disease. Many were afflicted with painful skin eruptions and died. When the commonly relied upon denial ploy was no longer effective, it was revealed that “spurious,” or phony, cowpox was the cause. As the number of vaccinated people afflicted with the disease grew, so, too, did public fear. How, Jenner was asked, could spurious cowpox be identified and avoided? Spurious cowpox, he explained, wasn’t meant to describe irregularities on the part of the cow, but rather certain quirks in the action of cowpox on the part of the vaccinated. In other words, when the vaccinated recovered from the ordeal, and did not contract smallpox, the cowpox was genuine; otherwise it was spurious.(139)
Current uses of the double talk ploy may be found at almost any forum or seminar where vaccine policymakers congregate. For example, at a recent FDA workshop officials indicated they were justified in administering new and unproven vaccines by claiming it is unethical to withhold them!(140)
Here is another example of the “unethical” argument: A recent study found that the AIDS virus directly causes cancer. You’d think this would stifle the researchers’ goal of creating an AIDS vaccine. In fact, Gerald Myers, director of the HIV Sequence Database Analysis Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory, warrants that a live vaccine would carry a risk of causing cancer — both in the vaccinated person and in their offspring. Nevertheless, he claims that “the risk might be worth it” to prevent the spread of AIDS. “It could be unethical not to try it.”(141)
A common use of the double talk and creative logic ploy may be found whenever health officials make the outrageous claim that unvaccinated children are a threat to the rest of society. This argument indicates how little faith authorities place in their own vaccines. If the vaccines were truly effective, only the unvaccinated would be at risk. This argument also overlooks the potential for vaccinated individuals to spread the virus to unvaccinated populations. For example, in separate scientific studies, the new rubella vaccine introduced in 1979 was found to be a cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, an immunological disorder first reported in the United States in 1982. Given to children, the vaccine was shown to linger in their systems for years and the vaccine virus can be passed on to adults through casual contact.(142-144)
In an attempt to conceal vaccine failures, medical authorities will often resort to the double talk ploy, sometimes in conjunction with the scare tactics ruse. In spite of their enterprising babble, however, they can’t always hoodwink the public. For example, the international Medical Observer states that “a new strain of measles resistant to vaccine” has been discovered. This is immediately contradicted by the statement: “Those who have been lax about vaccination will be unprotected.” Although the implication is that everyone should get vaccinated, a vaccine is obviously useless if a new strain of measles is resistant to it!(145)
More examples of the double talk ploy:
Scientists seeking human volunteers to test a new experimental AIDS vaccine try to assuage fear and mistrust by claiming there is “no evidence” it will cause AIDS. How could there be evidence? It is new and experimental and hasn’t been tested yet! And, of course, there is “no evidence” that it won’t cause AIDS.(146)
In an attempt to convince the public that vaccines offer the best of all worlds, medical researchers, and the journalists who quote them, often get tangled in their own webs of deception. For example, in a recently published pro-vaccine article, the author claims that unvaccinated children are susceptible to infection. He then contradicts himself by claiming that vaccinated children “insulate” or protect, the unvaccinated. The illogical implication is that when unvaccinated children contract an infectious disease it is because they are unvaccinated. However, if they remain free from disease, it is because the vaccinated are providing them with immunity.(147)
Every so often the double talk employed by authorities is so transparent it’s bewildering that so few people question its validity. In a recent promotional blitz, flu vaccine manufacturers and public health officials made the claim that the new and improved flu vaccine “is prepared from inactivated flu virus [Translation: “dead” flu virus — see Euphemisms addressed below] and cannot cause the disease.” (A rare admission that earlier versions did cause the disease.) In the same paragraph they warn that “some individuals might develop a mild fever and feeling of malaise” for a few days after receiving the shot.(148) (Sounds like the flu to me!)
Other times the double talk employed by vaccine researchers is remarkably elaborate. Although it is a simple matter to determine the efficacy of a vaccine — give it to people who want it, withhold it from those who don’t, and tally the incidence of disease — some scientists have other ideas. One writes: “Under heterogeneity of vaccine effect, a general expression for a summary vaccine efficacy parameter is a function of the vaccine efficacy in the different vaccinated strata weighted by the fraction of the vaccinated subpopulations in each stratum. Interpretation and estimability of the summary vaccine efficacy parameter depends on whether the strata are identifiable, and whether the heterogeneity is host- or vaccine-related.” To support this garrulous babble, a full-page mathematical model is provided.(149)
A final look at the double talk and creative logic ploy yields the following revelations: children who keep to “appropriate” vaccine schedules are “protected,” unless they haven’t yet received the full battery of shots and contract the affliction — in which case they are evidently “still susceptible to the disease.”(150) In such instances the vaccine does not fail, or worse, cause the disease; these become “non-preventable” cases!(151)
January 30, 2010 at 23:40 |
“Luna_the_cat” is my online identity, which I’ve used for a long time. One of the reasons for my pseudonymity is the fact that we have a vulnerable autistic child in the family…but when I have made it clear, in the past, that I do not subscribe to the “vaccines cause autism” panic, nor am I willing to put this boy through untested and potentially very damaging “treatments” to “cure” him, I’ve gotten hatemail and harassment (from members of the Wakefield fan club, among others). I’m sure that someone who is a dedicated enough stalker could probably figure out who I am, but I figure any barrier that I can put between my online statements and resultant harassment of my family is probably a good thing.
Now, Angus Files: you have just cited whale.to. I invoke Scopie’s Law: “In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately..and gets you laughed out of the room.” The link is to a discussion of precisely why.
LARA HAWKINGS (please, abuse of the Caps Lock key does not lend credibility to any argument): The simple fact is, EVERY new vaccine is tested in combination with all the previously approved vaccines in a normal schedule — seriously, do you think they withhold all the other proven vaccines from the children testing the new one? Now *that* would be unethical.
And finally, regarding the question of whether desperate parents will willingly, even happily submit autistic children to painful and damaging unnecessary procedures in the hopes of curing them — all I have to say there, is “Lupron Protocol.” This is the vile invention of the Geiers in the US, adopted by one other quack, in which early adolescent autistic children are treated with an extremely powerful anti-androgenic called Lupron. Lupron strips the body of sex hormones. This is done on the purely fictional basis of testosterone somehow interfering with the body clearing the (also purely fictional, by all available physical evidence) supposed “mercury contamination” from vaccines, so according to this untested, unproven, unlikely “protocol”, clearing the body of testosterone “allows” kids to clear the body of mercury. Anyone with genuine medical or biological training can spot this for the worst kind of snake oil. However, it does have a visible effect that parents can see: it sure does calm hormonal early teen boys right down, when they are stripped of their testosterone. ~~Of course, it also damages bone growth and has a 30-40% rate of complication with cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. But leaving your 16-year-old with the body and health problems of a 70-year-old is perfectly ok if you are “curing” him of autism, right? Right?
The best studies available have not demonstrated a higher incidence of GI problems in autistic kids than in neurotypical kids, except for constipation — and the point has been made that this can be *caused by* the eating behaviour of autistic kids. Evidence which was given, and supported in the trial by hospital medical records, was that of the children in the Lancet paper the vast majority did NOT have the GI symptoms ascribed to them in the Lancet paper, or manifested the symptoms months before the MMR jab was given (which makes the assertion that the MMR jab caused the symptoms clear nonsense).
A real problem, and one which the general medical community could take more seriously, is the problem of diagnosing and treating pain or GI symptoms in a patient who cannot communicate in words what is happening. In that way, Wakefield won himself a fan following of parents by listening, taking complaints seriously, and moreover saying “you are right about there being a definite cause and something else is wrong and to blame.” However, that does not mean that the scapegoat he then targetted is correct, or that anything else he said is true, or that he acted in an ethical manner. But because he acted *sympathetic*, desperate parents are willing to overlook all manner of behaviour that they would (rightly) condemn violently in any mainstream doctor.
January 31, 2010 at 03:22 |
Luna the Cat –
So you really think that I am a “desperate parent who willingly and happily subjected my kid to a painful unnecessary procedure just to cure” her? You have got to be kidding or a complete idiot. My kid is 11 and weighs 50 pounds has had chronic loose stools as long as I can remember. She has pain so severe she has pulled her hair out and scratched the skin off of her face. How come when a GI doc like Dr. Wakefield scopes a child and/or conducts research into treatments that will help these kids it is unethical but when another GI dr did it years before and just shrugged his shoulders and said “gee – maybe give her some prevacid for a month to treat the inflammation – I have no idea why it is there and I don’t have any other ideas after that. We see this a lot in kid’s w/ autism.” Just who are the unethical quacks here? So the thousands of parents with the same stories are all just a bunch of desperate fools and these kids arent worth helping – is that your argument? Stick around at this rate your family could be next – you would be surprised how easy it is to join this club of “crazy desperate parents” – membership is rising exponentially every year and The GMC and the AAP seem more interested in spending money going after the few doctors who are trying to do something to help.
January 30, 2010 at 23:43 |
When Evan Harris makes comments about parents getting tests done on their disabled children that are wrong; he is way out of line. A mother knows when her child is in pain, even if they have no speech. When parents look after their children 24/7, they are the experts. That is the view of the National Autistic Society. Evan Harris has no experience of families like mine and for him to stand outside the GMC with a smirk on his face is insulting to all the children who have been vaccine damaged.
January 30, 2010 at 23:45 |
As so many mainstream pediatricians fail to do, Dr. Harris does not recognize all the physcial symptoms that are involved in autism, a total metabolical disease. Tens of thousands of Americans in the autism community believe that Dr. Wakefield truly cares about our children and we trust him completely. Compare this to so many conventional pediatricians, other doctors, scientists, drug companies, government health officials who don’t have our childrens’ interest first.
January 30, 2010 at 23:47 |
Back slappers if your still slapping Evans back heres the Head of the CDC Julies Gelberding,admitting and telling the Senate “THAT VACCINES TRIGGER AUTISM” So wheres the justice in the GMC circus ,Wheres the clever Dicks on here who denounce Halverson eh!! !Not a single real name or face willing to be counted..
January 30, 2010 at 23:50 |
I have a daughter with autism and serious bowel disorder. The consultant who diagnosed her in 2002 told us that he believed that it was possible that the MMR may have been a contributory factor to our daughter’s autism. When we saw him in 2007 he was as convinced as ever that there may be a connection between the MMR and autism. While he acknowledged that there is no scientifically proven link he dismissed the various studies which the DH say proves there is no link as ‘rubbish’. I am not making this up, it is absolutely true. The Dr in question is a leading expert on autism and he also told us that there was an epidemic of autism, something the DH denies. The community paediatrician who dealt with our daughter, while not agreeing with her colleague about the MMR being the possible cause, acknowledged to us that there had been an increase in the number of cases of autism, again something that the DH even now would not readily acknowledge.
I therefore have an interest in this subject. I do not know whether the MMR contributed to our daughter’s autism but I believe that it may have done and we have not given the MMR to our 3 year old son for that very reason. We have asked if we can have the single vaccines on the NHS but have been told that we cannot even though our doctor said that he could not rule out the possibility that the MMR had contributed to our daughter’s autism.
I therefore watched the Channel 4 News item with interest. I am well aware of your stance on this issue which I respect. You are entitled to your view. Your conduct though I do not find acceptable. Frankly I do not understand where you are coming from on this. You are prefectly entitled to attack the science, to express your view that the MMR is safe but I think your are wrong, and in fact do yourself no favours, when you start attacking the integrity of Andrew Wakefield and others who share Wakefield’s concerns about the safety of the MMR. You have stopped playing the ball and are now playing the man.
I personally have no doubt at all that Andrew Wakefield is a decent, honest man who has genuine concerns about the safety of the MMR and is committed to finding out what has caused the autism and bowel disorders in children like our daughter. The most serious finding against him by the GMC is essentially that he treated the children in the study like guinnea pigs. It is therefore extraordinary, is it not, that not one parent of those children has complained about him? Your comments about the parents being in distress and that he took advantage of them is the sort of patronising nonsense that I am afraid is rather typical of the medical profession, and certainly is something we got in spades from our GP when our daughter was disgnosed.
But more serious. I felt, were your comments about the individual (I don’t know his name) who appeared on the show alongside you. You accused him, without showing any evidence to back up your claims, of seeking to make a profit at the expense of public health by advocating, and offering single vaccines. In effect you accused him of being motivated purely by money. This is clearly defamatory. How on earth can you be so sure that money is his primary motive to make such a serious allegation as that on live TV? And you appear to be proud of it too judging from this website! I would like to give our son single vaccines but cannot. If I wanted to vaccinate my son against measles I would have to go to a private clinic. Can you not see the absurdity of accusing an individual of profiteering in this way, when, if he and Wakefield and others had their way, the single vaccines would be available on the NHS? The individual on the wshow came across as a more reasonable and plasuible person than you.
I have lodged an official complaint about this with your party.
Stephane Pendered
January 30, 2010 at 23:59 |
In 2002, Wakefield et el found measles virus in the bowel of 75 out of 91 autistic children who had had MMR but not wild measles, but rarely in the controls (Uhlmann et al, ‘Potential viral pathogenic mechanism for new variant inflammatory bowel disease’, Jnl of Clinical Pathololgy: Molecular Pathology, 55). There has never been a full replication study of Wakefield’s work with findings of no link. The only study to partially replicate Wakefield’s 2002 study and find no link in the autism sample studied only five children (out of a total of 25) who had received MMR before onset of autism and bowel disease, compared with 75 such children in the 2002 (Hornig et al (2008) ‘Lack of Association between Measles Virus Vaccine and Autism with Enteropathy: A Case-Control Study’, Plosone). (This study did find measles in one of the autism sample.) This is why it is simply untrue to say Wakefield’s work has been discredited.
January 31, 2010 at 00:38 |
Dear Luna the cat
It’s a shame to tie such a lively loving and lovely creature in with such a patronising tone of writing’s and a callous overtone. Using this make believe made up name makes me believe that you could post on here and elsewhere and give the impression to the unsuspecting public that you are many different persons with the same view .At the same time I have no idea who you are and I feel very sorry for your son with Autism .So far as you say about your boy”this boy(strange to say “this boy” when it should be “my son” a tone of un caring in that ) through untested and potentially very damaging “treatments” to “cure” him,” people like you would probably prefer to use tested treatments such as chemo rather than the “Lupron Protocol.” treatment(first I have ever heard of it you mention for autism and tie in with various names and the autistic community trying to validate it as used by the autism community ,but reading what you have written it seems to target and is specific and descriptive in what it does ,might work for some , Anyway I put it to you Luni,sorry Luna Imagine that you own a house that is absolutely perfect and beautiful with all the necessities, except that it has some rodents inside. When you call the exterminators, they tell you that they won’t be able to target just the rodents, as these rodents are of an especially stealthy breed. They tell you they’re just going to set off a series of explosions in your house that may kill the rodents. They warn you, “Oh yeah, it may destroy some of your house in the process, but, hey, you want those rodents out of your house, right?” There’s probably no way you would allow that; instead, you would do some research and find other, more specific and less generally destructive ways of getting rid of the rodents autism in this case right eh!.
The allegorical exterminators’ logic makes no sense; yet, it’s the same logic that doctors who prescribe chemotherapy. Like the exterminators’ explosions, chemotherapy doesn’t exclusively target cancer cells it also harms your good cells, destroying some of your body – your “house” – in the process. As a result, many chemotherapy patients lose their hair, develop immune deficiencies,lose and vomit. Chemotherapy poisons your body as a whole in an attempt to kill the cancer before the “treatment” brings your body to an unrecoverable state. Where as the “Lupron Protocol.” does not wipe the whole body out its specific.. but hey you stick to doing nothing for your son that way you cant be criticised aint that right Luni sorry Luna
As for WHALE you stick to Walt Disney Hey whats the diffrence between Walt Disney and Brian Deer Walt knows and Brian Disney..
Like Evan it gets hot having your head stuck in the sand all the time..
January 31, 2010 at 05:22 |
Not only is this a shame for lovely cats, but to the lovely moon (“luna”) as well.
January 31, 2010 at 01:33 |
Martin:
This is PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/.
PubMed is a database of primarily medical and biology papers published in peer-reviewed journals. It is comprehensive. If a journal isn’t in here, it is because it isn’t peer-reviewed.
Go to the search box at the top of the page. Type “MMR AND autism” or “measles AND autism”.
See all those results you get? Among these are the teams who tried to replicate Wakefield’s results, and/or to determine any link at all between autism rates and MMR vaccination. Happy reading.
Also: the Uhlmann paper from 2002? This is a discussion of that which you need to read. What it boils down to is that (a) the lab that Uhlmann et al. used was rubbish, and (b) the results were apparently altered, anyway.
Stephane Pendered: The problem is, your pediatrician has chosen to believe something without any evidential support at all. And you have chosen to defend a man who was paid by trial lawyers to find a certain result, and who altered medical records in order to do so. The evidence presented to the trial has been made available at various places on the web. When Wakefield originally threatened Brian Deer with a libel lawsuit for making some of that public, despite the notoriously plaintiff-friendly libel law in this country Wakefield ended up withdrawing the suit and paying Brian Deer’s legal expenses. Doesn’t that tell you anything? …It tells ME that these are not actions of a “decent, honest man.”
Maurine Meleck: There are undoubtedly thousands of people in the autism community who are Wakefield fans. I honestly do not understand this cult of personality. I can assure you that there are also tens of thousands more people who are angry that his medical malfeasance has put many children in danger once again from profoundly dangerous contagious disease by scaring parents away from vaccines, and diverted countless research hours and research $$ and ££ away from the investigation of real possible causes and treatments. He doesn’t have children’s interests first, or he wouldn’t have acted and continued to act as he does, for some very nice remuneration.
Something to think about: mainstream doctors and scientists can be brusque, appear uncaring, and occasionally be jerks. There are reasons for this that you might not have thought of. First, is that ethical doctors and scientists are constrained to telling the truth — and often, the truth is unpleasant, like “we don’t know what causes this” and “there isn’t much we can do about it.” People HATE hearing things like this — Christ, who wouldn’t? And it does sound uncaring. But that doesn’t make it not true. That doesn’t make it wrong. And while quacks can exploit peoples’ absolute need to have answers, and can promise miracles, that doesn’t make what they say, right.
Second, is that these doctors and scientists are also generally familiar with real research and how physiology works, and they suffer from the mistake of thinking that facts speak for themselves — and that if you don’t understand the facts, it’s because you aren’t paying attention. The “mistake” part of this is that for most people, those without the technical background to make sense of the research, no, facts DON’T speak for themselves; there is no way to tell what is biologically plausible and real except for what “experts” tell you, and there, even evaluation of levels of expertise tends to depend on the emotional reaction that people evoke, not so much on technical criteria.
Con men, on the other hand, KNOW that the facts don’t speak for themselves, and generally consider this a good thing because the facts wouldn’t speak for them. But any good con man is a very “caring, sympathetic, sincere” person. (After all, a con man who is patently untrustworthy or skeevy soon gets caught, or simply starves.) The best con men understand that if they can make people *like* them, then people will do 7/8 of the work of fooling themselves, by defending him and themselves from any evidence which makes that sympathy and trust look bad. And people will defend and believe any evidence that makes their belief look reasonable, no matter how shaky that evidence is.
I suspect that Wakefield actually has come to believe in his own assertion, despite the out-and-out fraud which was used to support it in the first place. He has a profound emotional investment in the belief, after all, with all the fame and fan following he has attracted, not to mention a profound financial interest in it as well. But that does not make the physical evidence any different. And the nature of the physical world is what really counts, here.
February 1, 2010 at 13:37 |
Luna, the problem is our paediatrician is a well respected expert on autism who has given us his personal opinion. I can assure you that he is a serious man who does not strike me as the sort who would say something if he did not sincerely believe it, and would not sincerely believe something unless he had grounds to do so. In short, I believe him. On the other hand, perhaps he is part of some anti-MMR conspiracy and is getting a cut of the ‘£100 a pop’ Dr Harris referred to? I want to give our son the single vaccines on the NHS but cannot even though our doctor has said there may be a connection between the MMR and autism. How is that right?
I have met Wakefield, once, and I believe that he is sincere in his beliefs and an honest and decent man. That is what I believe. I have not met Brian Deer but I have seen him on TV and am not at all impressed with him or with what he has to say – and I do have an open mind about this. He had a lot to say about Wakefield’s treatment of those children in that Lancet study but he could not persuade a single one of those parents to come on his programme and complain about him. That is what strikes me as so strange. The GMC say that wakefield had a ‘callous disregard’ for those children and yet not one parent complained. How do you rationalise that? Deer strikes me as a reporter with all the journalistic ability and integrity of Michael Moore. The only difference between them is that Moore is funny.
January 31, 2010 at 01:40 |
Oh, Angus Files? If the boy in question were my son, I would call him my son. Our exact relationship is frankly none of your business. Aside from that — seriously, you need help. You do not appear entirely sane.
January 31, 2010 at 04:03 |
I am in the U.S., where Andrew Wakefield is currently…not practicing medicine, evidently, as he is not licensed here. However, he is drawing a salary of about a quarter of a million dollars from Thoughtful House, which is the top 5% of all US household incomes. It may be in the top 1% for Austin (haven’t been able to find data).
Reactions to the GMC ruling internationally (although most are US & UK bloggers):
I sometimes write a post that collates blog responses, both positive and negative, to a given issue.
I’m keeping one now on responses to the GMC’s ruling on Andrew Wakefield’s conduct.
I’ve added this blog to the list.
The post is at
http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2010/01/andrew-wakefield-dishonesty-misleading-conduct-and-serious-professional-misconduct.html
Are vaccines perfect? Not by a long shot. But they are safer than the diseases they prevent.
I am not sure about supports for people and their families affected by autism in the UK. The US concerns:
Here is what I object to about Wakefield (and Thoughtful House, Age of Autism, Generation Rescue, and even Autism Speaks). Their focus on “a cure for autism” sucks up the time and money that should be going to
* Increasing support for families who have one or more members with autism
* Increasing educational opportunities for people with autism — safe, welcoming, and effective educational opportunities
* Increasing opportunities for dignified, meaningful employment for people with autism
* Increasing safe and dignified living arrangements for those with autism who cannot manage independent living.
January 31, 2010 at 04:36 |
Liz Ditz, how will educational and employement opportunities and safe and dignified living arrangements help with chronic diarrhea, constipation, and intestinal inflammation?
January 31, 2010 at 05:37 |
Luna & some others, your comments are incredibly condescending towards parents whose children suffered severe gastrointestinal disorders. You totally discount these parents’ descriptions of the extent of these problems. You seem to think that these health conditions should just be left untreated and unstudied, and that routine procedures such as endoscopic exams should not be done. The “desparate parent” sterotype is extremely tiresome.
And is the vaccine program so fragile that nobody should even talk about possible problems? Is this a totalitarian dictatorship where nobody is allowed to raise questions?
We hear certain falsehoods repeated over and over about Dr. Wakefield which are simply not true. See h t t p : / / w w w .autismfile.com/ and h t t p : / / w w w .ageofautism.com/ for some other sides of the story on Dr. Wakefield.
January 31, 2010 at 05:42 |
Oh, and Dr. Evan Harris — if you want to have a good debate, you should allow your opponent to finish his sentences instead of interrupting so much — very rude.
January 31, 2010 at 08:40 |
Dr. Harris,
as the parent of a young autistic child, I thank you very sincerely. We need more people looking out for the interests of our children.
Twyla,
people should talk about vaccine safety…responsibly. Dr. Wakefield went WAY beyond responsible in his actions. His comments at the press conference at the Royal Free were irresponsible given the information he had–even had it been good information.
That point needs to be repeated–even if he was right in The Lancet, his comments were not supported by his own work.
As we see now, the article in The Lancet was based on bad data. Dr. Wakefield’s paper stands as a literally textbook example of bad science.
Add to that the fact that (a) he started treating his patients as research subjects before he got ethical approval (b) he put his research interests ahead of his patients’ clinical needs–in other words he was doing medical procedures that were unwarranted just so he could collect data. We don’t even need to get to (c) fiscal dishonesty: he collected money from the Legal Aid Board for procedures, then went ahead and billed the NHS for them, diverting the LAB funding to other projects or (d) he had plans for a company which would, amongst other things, explore an alternative single measles vaccine–a product which could only stand to profit if the confidence in the combined MMR was attacked.
The autism communities, of which I am a part, deserve better than this.
The entire world deserves better than this.
It is concescending of you and any of his supporters to expect us to accept that this dishonest man
Liz Ditz,
We don’t know Dr. Wakefield’s income. We know that he makes a mimimum of US$270,000. We do not know how much he makes from speaking engagements, for example.
To Mr. Halvorsen and anyone else who keeps airing the talking point that none of the parents have complained. First, it is the children who were forced to undergo painful and sometimes completely uncalled for procedures whose opinion counts the most. Second, are we forgetting the child from the study who suffered multiple bowel punctures and whose family sued the Royal Free. Is there some rule that because this happened after the article in “The Lancet” was published that somehow it doesn’t count? Or is it that we don’t know who did the procedure, only that one of Dr. Wakefield’s colleagues recommended it?
The parent of Child 11 was quote in a Sunday Times article as having taken his kid’s samples to 3 other labs to try to confirm the supposed “persistent measles” in his child’s intestine. Three separate labs told the same story–no measles virus. The article doesn’t describe the reaction of the father. I know mine woud be rather critical of Dr. Wakefield.
The Sunday Times article ended with this paragraph:
“When asked why his parents took him to the Royal Free, his father answered: “We were just vulnerable. We were looking for answers.” ”
If one of the parents of Dr. Wakefield’s subjects can make that statement, it should be heard and not drowned out.
Lastly, consider the parent who would step forward. Consider the reaction from the Wakefield loyalists.
Another paragraph from the Sunday Times article:
“Many of the parents of the original 12 children continue to support him and campaign vigorously on his behalf. But others whose children took part in the Lancet project are too burdened and traumatised for campaigning.”
January 31, 2010 at 09:20 |
Sulliavan well then another blogging parent supporting Evan Hariss funny in all my 11 years in Autism with my child I have never met one of you types face to face not one anywhere but you come on here and hey presto,two of you on the one blog …will you just tell us your names and stop hiding under multiple id`s???
Hey Sully a few [posts for you today in the great UK this is how Pharma spends the billions of tax payers money ..and how Dr Wakefield has come out of this harshly treated would be the verdict…guilty only of CARING \abusing only the shift lock Luna Luni not my child…
January 31, 2010 at 09:53 |
Funny that all you “parents” here who are attacking Dr Wakefield and agreeing with the views of Mr Harris … funny how you say that you would never subject your children to “unnecessary” medical procedures, and how their autism is nothing to worry about medically (ever been told that “your” children run 1:3 risk of developing epilepsy? which than more than doubles their risk of dying before reaching adulthood? Oh but so what, I hear you say, epilepsy is just a natural discourse, the beauty of autism, and nothing to investigate or treat. Dying is natural, too).
What exactly are you trying to protect your children from, by hiding your identity? Just curious ☺
January 31, 2010 at 10:41 |
Sullivan, you said “First, it is the children who were forced to undergo painful and sometimes completely uncalled for procedures whose opinion counts the most.”
Well, one of the children, who now is very improved and able to speak (thanks to “unnecessary” medical procedures and treatments), said the following: “Mum, I was dying after MMR”.
I guess his opinion and experience should count, no?
January 31, 2010 at 11:30 |
What kind of egoistical self-gratifying massaging is this? Where were your loyal followers when the police and security ushered you inside the GMC to protect you from angry parents last Thursday, quite a different sight it was then from the comfy studio where you resorted to personal attacks as your only form of defence.
In your video you asked “find an Independent Paediatrician who finds it ever ethical to subject children with autism to major intrusive investigation like that [lumbar puncture]” well you will be pleased to hear I have got you one, infact elevated within the profession for doing just that and for the last 17+ years to my knowledge!
Obviously and as you have proved, you are not only entirely detached from the general public at large but from the NHS, which makes sitting there pontificating all the more repulsive and your political party will be made aware of that.
Blood Tests, an MRI Brain Scan and a Lumbar Puncture was and still remains the standard investigative protocol for children with autism in 1992 as it does today and I have proof of that.
At the time we refused the lumbar puncture as too invasive and as the findings would not be used to determine any treatment programme but only for essential research! So I am really not sure whether that rings any bells on the planet you are on but you have simply added to the fabricated nonsense spewed out by the GMC.
On account of such bizarre behaviour you will now be responsible for depleting your own ‘profession’, as you have opened the doors of the GMC to a surge of medical professionals to be hauled infront of them, guilty of anything that remotely resembles what those three wonderful, superb and distinguished experts have been so falsely accused of.
Thankfully no amount of self-satisfying delusion on your part could detract from what the GMC did actually do, it served to emphasise the dedication, care and courage of these three men in the face of a political trial that was triggered by your chum, a failing but attention craving journalist and manipulated by a desperate system.
January 31, 2010 at 11:50 |
Hi Evan,
I’d just like to say I’m proud we have MPs, like yourself, who know the real value of evidence and ethics. Please don’t stop, especially your select committee work; it is most appreciated.
Gift.
January 31, 2010 at 13:14 |
Twyla: Far from leaving things unstudied and untreated, I am a hug fan of study and treatment. The difference is, I like it to be real studies of plausible causes, and evidence-based treatments.
I’m sorry you think that the “desperate parent” classification is untrue and a stereotype, but I have no other explanation for behaviour I’ve seen over and over again, subjecting autistic kids to completely untested and implausible “treatments” which the parents are quite open about expecting a cure from. If you don’t think this is parental desperation, what is your explanation?
Once people have made a choice of what to believe, they become emotionally invested in the correctness of that choice. The question is whether they are able to modify what they believe in response to evidence. You have a gleeful time accusing Wakefield’s detractors of not doing this, but look at what you’re doing. If a mainstream doctor had this level of evidence of malfeasance against him , in the form of lab notes, hospital records and financial transactions, you would be outraged; the lack of ability for anyone to replicate the results or find a statistical link would be meaningful to you. Instead….this. This isn’t really about evidence any more, for you, is it.
Natasa Stokic: There are reasons why we subject potential treatments to blinded studies. These are:
1. regression to the mean — the fact that autism, even low-function autism accompanied by epilepsy, is a disorder of developmental DELAY, not developmental status. These kids improve with time, especially around late adolescence, even in the absence of any other treatment. (And our boy, who was non-verbal, definitely low-function and epileptic, is now verbal and stable and capable of holding a part-time job as a gardener.)
2. Placebo effect — which works even on infants and animals, because the carer administers the treatment with increased attention and with the expectation that the patient will get better, and this has an effect — even infants and animals respond to increased attention and expectation. Whether there is anything at all biological or medical going on beyond placebo is what needs to be separated out with studies where the subject gets the same level of attention, expectation and care regardless of whether they are receiving a treatment or a placebo, then objective criteria measure if there is any difference in outcome between the two groups.
3. confirmation bias, along with its close cousin attentional bias — the fact that people see and remember what they WANT to see and remember, and discount contradictory information. This is not something that “uneducated” or “ignorant” or “delusional” people do — this is something that everyone does, across the board, no exceptions. We are wired that way. This is why it is important to have objective measures in place which do not rely on subjective memory and reporting alone. For everyone. Including researchers.
Science isn’t magic — it is a methodology, a set of techniques to sort out reality from belief.
If you don’t think that *your* decision to blame the vaccine has anything to do with your son’s decision to blame the vaccine, then you *are* fooling yourself.
Back to Stephane Pendered: My apologies, it is not your pediatrician who believes in something with no evidential basis. It is the consultant you refer to as “a leading expert on autism.”
The leading expert on autism in the UK is arguably Simon Baron-Cohen, and I very much doubt you are referring to him. He has spoken about the “autism epidemic” a few times, and his opinion is based on study after study after study after study which turns up no evidence of a real increase in the absolute rate of autism — but definitely an increase in detection. As Baron-Cohen says,
In other words, when you look closely, the “epidemic” becomes the result of diagnoses being offered now that would not have been offered 15-20-30 years ago.
And, interestingly, surveys of prevalence rates show absolutely no correlation with MMR vaccination rates. How can this possibly be taken to mean that a link has not been investigated?
January 31, 2010 at 14:43 |
I have posted many times and none have gone through. If this does, it will be a miracle.
Who is moderating–Evan himself?
January 31, 2010 at 14:51 |
Here is a good summary, with heartfelt comments –
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/01/eye-witness-report-from-the-uk-gmc-wakefield-walkersmith-murch-hearing.html#more
January 31, 2010 at 15:19 |
Teresa Conrick Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
January 31, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Teresa Conrick Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
January 31, 2010 at 2:52 pm
2 comments- hopefully they will go through.
January 31, 2010 at 15:54 |
This is an experiment to see if this goes through…..
Autism Explosion Followed Big Change in MMR Shot
http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/02/olmsted-on-autism-autism-explosion-followed-big-change-in-mmr-shot.html
January 31, 2010 at 16:33 |
Teresa Conrick: I invoke Orac’s Law (citation
In any discussion involving science or medicine–and especially vaccines–citing any material published by Generation Rescue or Age of Autism as a credible source loses you the argument immediatel …and gets you laughed right out of the room.
January 31, 2010 at 17:14 |
Olmsted is discredited in my eyes already because he has in the past propagated blatantly false and easily debunked information (for example: “the Amish are only forced into vaccinating and they have a lower rate of autism.” This is absolutely false on both counts. They vaccinate and use normal modern medical care entirely voluntarily and extensively, although at a very slightly lower rate than surrounding populations, and they certainly have autistic children, although lower rates of formal diagnoses.)
However, in the link above, here he is (as per his usual practice) taking a few partly true snippets of information and “spinning” them. His assertion about the amount of mumps attenuated virus in various vaccines is not even fully factually correct — look at the first comment beneath the story. In fact, as far as I can tell the mumps component has NOT been reduced, either, but is still at 20,000 TCID50.
What you need to understand is that Age of Autism is not about autism advocacy so much as they are against vaccination. First they blamed mercury in vaccines — but MMR has never contained mercury, and besides, study after study found no link between mercury and autism in any country, and autism rates did not drop after removal of thiomersal from vaccines in the US. Then they adopted Wakefield and his MMR scare, except that autism rates did not drop even where MMR uptake dropped radically. So then they claimed it is “other toxins” in vaccines…except that, once again, they can’t demonstrate either biological plausibility in the lab or a statistical link between autism rates and vaccination rates. Unvaccinated religious populations, for example, have just as high a rate of autism as vaccinated cohorts. This makes no difference to what AoA and Olmsted claim — which, if they were interested in what is truly behind autism, is inexcusable.
Also, for the record, the thing that Olmsted is blaming for “viral interference” — MMRV — is not offered in the UK, has never been offered in the UK, and is not even in general use in the US.
What it boils down to is this: the idea has been investigated. There is no evidence to support it. But AoA hate vaccines so violently and passionately that they are unwilling to update their opinions even a little, so they keep trying to find ways to blame vaccines regardless.
We would be a lot further forward in the investigation of autism if so much time and money weren’t diverted to keep investigating already-debunked blind alleys which people still insist must be real. And the vaccine scare tactics have already resulted in both the deaths of children and in brain damage because of measles encephalitis, and there is a risk of the inevitably fatal subacute sclerosing panencephalitis a few years down the line. See official descriptions of the effects of these infectious diseases.
What the AoA advocates is to expose children to the proven, measurable, documented harm that these diseases cause because of an evidence-free belief that vaccines have some chance of causing autism, an idea which originated in false data paid for by trial lawyers. How is this caring for children?
January 31, 2010 at 18:34 |
Liz Ditz, your comment at 4:33 p.m. on 1/31 simply shows your bias and prejudice.
January 31, 2010 at 19:24 |
Both Luna and Ditz lost all credibility as they cannot have a civil discussion.
Age Of Autism scares you both as the science and politics are discussed there and both of those may put you out of a job soon.
January 31, 2010 at 19:25 |
Dr. Evan Harris does not like the truth and like pharm shills here in the states, he does the ad hominem attacks.
Here are some things he would like you not to know:
This is a recent symposium and consensus fro the American Academy of Pediatrics
“Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Gastrointestinal Disorders in Individuals With ASDs: A Consensus Report”
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/125/Supplement_1/S1
January 31, 2010 at 19:25 |
“Recommendations for Evaluation and Treatment of Common Gastrointestinal Problems in Children With ASDs”
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/125/Supplement_1/S19
from that report: “Children with altered intestinal motility may have underlying mitochondrial disease.12
January 31, 2010 at 19:26 |
Recent studies have suggested a frequent association of ASDs and mitochondrial dysfunction.”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/06/vaccines.autism/index.html
January 31, 2010 at 19:27 |
Government Again Concedes Vaccines Cause Autism
“The Court found that Bailey would not have suffered this delay but for the administration of the MMR vaccine…a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from vaccination to PDD [Autism].”
http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/02/government-again-concedes-vaccines-cause-autism.html
January 31, 2010 at 19:45 |
Click to access BANKS_CASE.pdf
“The Court found, supra, that Bailey’s ADEM was both caused-in-fact and proximately caused
by his vaccination. It is well-understood that the vaccination at issue can cause ADEM, and the
Court found, based upon a full reading and hearing of the pertinent facts in this case, that it
did actually cause the ADEM. Furthermore, Bailey’s ADEM was severe enough to cause lasting,
residual damage, and retarded his developmental progress, which fits under the generalized heading
of Pervasive Developmental Delay, or PDD. The Court found that Bailey would not have suffered
this delay but for the administration of the MMR vaccine, and that this chain of causation was not
too remote, but was rather a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from
vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay.
Based upon that finding of fact, it follows as a natural conclusion that Petitioner has carried
his burden of proving to a preponderance that the MMR vaccine at issue actually caused the
condition(s) from which Bailey suffered and continues to suffer.”
January 31, 2010 at 20:16 |
Sullivan’s statements are incorrect. For Dr. Wakefield’s side of the story see:
h t t p : / / w w w .autismfile.com/Library/Documents/AF_Wakefield1.pdf
h t t p : / / w w w .autismfile.com/Library/Documents/AF_Wakefield3.pdf
For a detailed analysis of the history of this case, see William Long’s artcle at:
h t t p : / / w w w .autismfile.com/Library/Documents/AF_Wakefield2.pdf
Also see today’s article by Martin Walker at:
h t t p : / / w w w .ageofautism.com/2010/01/eye-witness-report-from-the-uk-gmc-wakefield-walkersmith-murch-hearing.html
The facts that Dr. Wakefield states are backed up by the evidence, as will be shown when the records are released from the GMC hearing and when this case is appealed.
January 31, 2010 at 20:44 |
Luni and sully and all doubting Evan`s and Thomas`s et-al here are references to 10 papers. 4 replicate the findings of a new inflammatory bowel disease and 5 support the original finding published in The Lancet.
(Krigsman et al.), published on Thursday
http://la-press.com/article.php?article_id=1816
Papers Supporting the Original Finding
The claim to have found a new inflammatory bowel disease published in the 1998 Lancet paper as ‘consistent gastrointestinal findings’ involving ‘nonspecific colitis’ were supported first by a series of peer reviewed papers including in The Lancet itself:-
Furlano R, Anthony A, Day R, Brown A, Mc Garvey L, Thomson M, et al. “Colonic CD8 and T cell filtration with epithelial damage in children with autism.“ J Pediatr 2001;138:366-72.
Sabra S, Bellanti JA, Colon AR. “Ileal lymphoid hyperplasia, non-specific colitis and pervasive developmental disorder in children”. The Lancet 1998;352:234-5.
Torrente F., Machado N., Perez-Machado M., Furlano R., Thomson M., Davies S., Wakefield AJ, Walker-Smith JA, Murch SH. “Enteropathy with T cell infiltration and epithelial IgG deposition in autism.” Molecular Psychiatry. 2002;7:375-382
Wakefield AJ, Anthony A, Murch SH, Thomson M, Montgomery SM, Davies S, Walker-Smith JA. “Enterocolitis in children with developmental disorder.” American Journal of Gastroenterology 2000;95:2285-2295
Ashwood P, Anthony A, Pellicer AA, Torrente F, Wakefield AJ. “Intestinal lymphocyte populations in children with regressive autism: evidence for extensive mucosal immunopathology.” Journal of Clinical Immunology, 2003;23:504-517.
Papers Replicating The Original Finding
Another series of papers replicated the findings of The Royal Free Hospital London’s 1998 Lancet paper which journalist Brian Deer and The Sunday Times have falsely claimed is discredited:-
Gonzalez, L. et al., “Endoscopic and Histological Characteristics of the Digestive Mucosa in Autistic Children with gastro-Intestinal Symptoms“. Arch Venez Pueric Pediatr, 2005;69:19-25.
Balzola, F., et al., “Panenteric IBD-like disease in a patient with regressive autism shown for the first time by wireless capsule enteroscopy: Another piece in the jig-saw of the gut-brain syndrome?” American Journal of Gastroenterology, 2005. 100(4): p. 979- 981.
S. Walker, K. Hepner, J. Segal, A. Krigsman “Persistent Ileal Measles Virus in a Large Cohort of Regressive Autistic Children with Ileocolitis and Lymphonodular Hyperplasia: Revisitation of an Earlier Study” (last accessed June 2007) (paper submitted for publication)
Balzola F et al . “Autistic enterocolitis: confirmation of a new inflammatory bowel disease in an Italian cohort of patients.” Gastroenterology 2005;128(Suppl. 2);A-303.
January 31, 2010 at 20:58 |
Another little bit Deer Brian has never mentioned in his blogs
Selective Hearing, Brian Deer and the GMC, Dr Wakefield Autism MMR Film
http://www.viddler.com/explore/ziggy/videos/1/
January 31, 2010 at 21:01 |
or you can watch it on You Tube
January 31, 2010 at 21:09 |
I find it quite laughable that the crowd from JABS are complaining about censorship. Try rational debate over at their site – you will quickly get banned.
January 31, 2010 at 21:25 |
John whats that to do with the GSK hearing sorry the GMC hearing .I dont know about JABS andI did read that Salisbury was
http://www.whale.to/v/salisbury1.html
was in the midst of sending anyone that had said a word in supporting vaccines and Autism, writs…maybe thats whats happened to JABS..If so see Evan or Deer Brian both mates of Salisbury they might sort your beef out…
January 31, 2010 at 21:33 |
From Left: Professor David Salisbury, UK Head of Immunisation
One Click Group Director Jane Bryant
http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?start=2680&end=2700&view=yes&id=3384#newspost
On 4 March 2009, the One Click Group published its response to the litigation threatened against us by Dr David Salisbury, the Head of Immunisation at the Department of Health, through his lawyers, Blake Lapthom, based in Eastleigh. Outraged of Eastleigh demanded via his solicitors that we remove from the website two documents concerned with the vaccine industry – one a Complant to the General Medical Council and the other, a generalist essay – and apologise to him for having the temerity to publish these documents.
Using satire as our favoured response, we instructed Salisbury to shove his litigation right up his vaccine pipeline and offered him extensive Right of Reply. See UK Government Vaccines Director Threatens Legal Action Against One Click.
Yesterday, Jeremy Laurance of The Independent newspaper, broke the story across Britian under the title of So who now is the Basil Fawlty of the MMR controversy?
January 31, 2010 at 23:09 |
Evan, you rock!
Ignore the invasion of antivaccination stupid – there’s not an original thought among the dozens of repetitively facile posts.
I find it laughable that they complain their posts are being moderated – as someone said above, just let a rational person try and post anything on one of their blogs or sites and see how far they would get. Most of the posts here are from them, and conform to the usual antivax spam formula.
And their bleating about your supposed “conflict of interest”? Even more laughable. That their hero can have got nearly £500,000 from antivax lawyers trying to conjure up a link is ignored.
How much do they say you got from Glaxo again? Was it £150 to attend a scientific meeting or something equally horrific?
January 31, 2010 at 23:35 |
Whatever arrogance that drives dysfunctional thinking to condemn those who have witnessed the devastating effects that the MMR vaccine has had upon their precious children and the life sentence of disability that it imposes, be it ignorant selfishness or personal gain by vested interest, never let it be said that this is anything to do with anti-vaccine.
Our children have suffered life-long damage BECAUSE we were pro-vaccine, witnessing this and the destructive effects with our own eyes, so now we are pro SAFE vaccines but this sensible and rational view seems to escape those concerned only to ridicule.
More despicable than that is the further insult of suggested ulterior motive, when what we want is treatment for this man-made condition, which we are being denied as our children are nothing more than embarrassments to the government and medical establishment. What sickness of mind in those unaffected by this tragedy would so callously want to mock and prevent this? or dash what little hope we have that doctors will be brave enough to treat them, when the GMC has behaved towards such brilliant caring doctors in the way they have and purely for political reasons.
If you are not directly affected by the destruction that the MMR vaccine has caused upon a loved one, other than suffering the fallout of a Broken Society created by such a multitude of vaccines now injected into under developed bodies, then refrain from such pompous self-righteousness, the truth will out and you will be seen for the blinkered indoctrinated misguided individuals you really are.
I remain entirely emphatic that I would have far sooner taken the chance of my child catching wild strain measles or mumps, even if it did have fatal consequences but in this day and age the reality is it wont, rather than playing Russian Roulette with a lethal concoction of vaccines that has resulted in a living dead existence each and every waking moment of our lives.
The ease with which a death from measles has been used with no mention of underlying causes but as a means to excuse the continuation of such barbaric damage to 1 in 60 children in this way is inhumane and shameful.
February 1, 2010 at 00:45 |
It is hard to accept truths sometimes. What may have caused autism is often just not possible to say. It is quite logical to try and apportion blame for the event on something, anything, when no-one can tell you what has caused the problem. But autism is a neurodevelopmental problem, and the underlying vulnerability and features are present from early life or prenatal development. Features may become noticeable around 1 yr of age, just when children are starting to receive vaccines like MMR. It is natural to make a link, but it is an erroneous one – merely a form of post hoc ergo propter hoc association.
MMR has been researched extensively in around 15 major studies, none of which revealed any link.
What is obviously very hard for parents to accept is the betrayal of trust by Wakefield. Indeed it is psychologically so hard to accept that the brain deliberately ignores evidence it does not wish to hear and the original thoughts become reinforced, not weakened. This is called cognitive dissonance, and it is clear that many parents are in this state. How could the man purported to be their saviour be linked with such shoddy, dishonest and unethical research practice? “Impossible” their brains say. despite the evidence.
We are now hearing from people (such as Halvorsen) that parents have not complained. Yet why would they? A doctor was trying to find the cause of their child’s suffering – that alone is sufficient to engender faith and trust in him. Their children may not have liked getting their colons invaded, or needles stuck in their spines, but any discomfort would be regarded with the view that the end would justify the means. Yet Wakefield betrayed this trust. He performed this research as a means to an end, but it is plain his “end” was to find a link, whatever, and so what if children suffered- they would be righteous martyrs to the cause.
The children, sick as they were, did not merit these painful, invasive procedures. Indeed, were another doctor to propose these on your child without clinical reasons to do so, he would be rightly condemned and you would scream for his head on a plate. Biopsying the bowe under anaesthesia? Lumbar punctures, which even Walker Smith said not to do?
And what of his conflicts of interest? Paid half a million to find evidence for a link, do you not regard this as a problem? Setting up a company to sell a patented single vaccine product which would only do well if MMR’s reputaion was besmirched? That people like the parents and other supporters can ignore this all is quite unbelievable, quite beyond my comprehension.
February 4, 2010 at 14:45 |
MikeS. You say that the belief that some people have that the MMR has damaged is an erroneous one. What you should say is that you believe it is erroneous. You do not in fact know. How could you? Nobody knows. I have no confidence in anyone who makes such a statement. Blair used to say the MMR is 100% safe. That of course is not true. No vaccine is 100% safe, even Dr Harris would have to admit that.
I have referred above to the consultant who diagnosed our child with autism. Yes, Luna the Cat, it is not Sacha Baron Cohen, but he is a respected doctor. He believes there may be a connection between the MMR and autism. He also believes that the evidence which the DH relies on to say there is no link is ‘rubbish’. Those were his words. I did not ask him why he believed that evidence was rubbish but I think what he would say is that the studies which have been carried out were carried out with the purpose of proving there was no connection between the MMR and autism rather than a genuine attempt to find out whether there was a link.
Your comments about Wakefield and the parents of the children in the study I believe are quite wrong. Those parents are perfectly capable of making a rational judgment about whether Wakefield has maltreated their child. The fact that no parents have complained is a real problem for those that want to attack Wakefield. The only asnwer to it is to patronise the parents of those children. I think those parents would find the GMC’s findings insulting because the GMC by making such a finding appears to be saying that it cares more about those children than they do. I would be very angry about that if I were one of those parents, though if their experience of the medical profession was the same as ours I would not be at all surprised by it.
I believe your comments about Wakefield are also unfair because he appears to have been genuinely trying to find out whether there was a connection. It may well be the case that his personal opinion about the possibility of a connection between the MMR and autism coloured his judgment about the way in which he carried out the research but he would not be the first (afterall our doctor believes that the sudies the DH relies upon to show there is no connection are similarly flawed) but I have no doubt at all that were it not for the fact that Wakefield is saying things that the DH does not want to hear he would have been nowhere near a GMC enquiry let alone found guilty of ‘unethical behaviour’. As for the accusation that Wakefield is in it for the money I have never seen any evidence of this. I think the suggestion that Wakefield or Halverson for that matter, are motivated by financial gain is absurd.
February 1, 2010 at 00:47 |
Oh Elayne, such the martyr.
Here’s the problem — if, indeed, MMR were the cause of such suffering, I would be behind you 100%. But you have decided that MMR is genuinely to blame, because you need something to blame, and it was offered to you, and you immediately had this feeling, I bet, because after all, the symptoms of autism generally become apparent right around the age that the vaccination is given. You need a reason, and “correlation == causation” is too easy to believe whether or not it is so. And having latched onto this reason, no amount of evidence that this is not the reason for your child’s autism will ever shift you away from it. And _that_ is what makes the rest of your post just…pointless.
No-one here is mocking or belittling anyone’s struggle living with autism. (I mean, except for Angus.) On the contrary, you know, if there WERE a evidence that such an easily addressed issue as changing vaccines were a cause of any of this, then it would have been changed, and I would have been one of the ones behind the effort of changing it. Since it isn’t, and isn’t anything that simple, many of us here are fully supportive of real research to find causes, and increasing provision of support and evidence-based mitigating treatments right now. Nothing is being swept under any carpets. And those poor, persecuted “brave, maverick doctors” are not exactly heroes.
The fact that you are experiencing heartbreak at not having a normal child, does not mean that you have chosen the correct scapegoat, or the right path to any cure.
Also, such barbaric damage to 1 in 60 children?? The situation isn’t bad enough, you have to exaggerate it beyond reality to get everyone properly shocked and horrified? The highest estimate for prevalence in the world which can point to any sort of methodology for acquiring numbers (as opposed to just making stuff up) is the October CDC estimate of between 1 in 90 and 1 in 100 of children being somewhere on the ASD spectrum, including Aspergers.
Here’s what it boils down to: do you need your righteous rage so much that facts don’t matter? Do you not care what’s actually true, so long as you have something to believe in? That doesn’t work for me; I want answers too, but I want them to be real ones.
Speaking of which, Teresa Conrick: the problem with how the case of Bailey Banks is presented in the HuffPo source is this — he didn’t have PDD-NOS (“pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specialized”), which is part of the ASD. He was diagnosed with PDD (“pervasive developmental delay“), which is not actually a diagnosis, it’s an umbrella term which includes autism and many things not autism. Go to the Banks case .pdf, scroll to page 27, look at the paragraph beginning “The Court finds…”. This clearly states his official complaint. PDD or PDD-NOS may seem like sophistry to you, but these are medical terms, and mean specific things — it’s more than semantics. Details matter.
Nobody claims that it is impossible to have a bad reaction to vaccines. What is being claimed by Wakefield and the AoA, however, is that serious vaccine reactions are far more common than the actual recorded rate of 1 in 1,000,000, and that there is some causal link to autism. I’m sorry to make things so complicated for you, but there genuinely isn’t any evidence to support this. Not even that court case.
Angus: you don’t seem to get why a site that hosts Holocaust denialism and asserts that CPR equipment is used for mind control (yes, I do mean whale.to) is not a good source. However, you made some pretence of work by posting what looks like a list of actual scientific papers. I will respond to these later, but I’m willing to put a £50 bet on the table now that you have not even looked at these, much less read them. By the way, that second paper you list, supposedly by “Sabra S, Bellanti JA, Colon AR”? That is not “support for Wakefield’s study.” That is actually the title and publication details of Wakefield’s original 1998 paper, with substitute authors slapped on. That fails at so many levels.
Meh. Later. Tonight’s a school night.
February 1, 2010 at 03:00 |
Regarding Bailey Banks, in the fourth footnote to the “Entitlement Ruling” in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims which can be read at
h t t p : / / big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/BANKS_CASE.pdf
the Special Master states, “Pervasive Developmental Delay describes a class of conditions, and it is apparent from the record that the parties and the medical records are referring to Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (‘PDDNOS’).”
The record documents Bailey Banks’ autistic characteristics, including a neurologist’s report from 2001 which said that he had “speech delays, and social interactive difficulties (e.g., poor eye contact and biting)” and “limited to no imaginary pretend play”.
In 2004 Bailey Bank’s pediatrician referred to him as having autism, but later changed this to PDD. The ruling also states that, “Dr. John MacDonald is a pediatric neurologist and has been board certified in neurology with special competence in child neurology since 1980.” “Regarding the medical records that indicated that Bailey was or is autistic, Dr. MacDonald said, ‘I think he falls into that autistic spectrum pervasive developmental disorder category, and that seems to be fairly consistent.’ Tr. at 84. He noted, however, that a majority of people ‘use these terms somewhat interchangeably.’”
The ruling also states that “a neurologist named Dr. Ivan Lopez personally examined Bailey and diagnosed Bailey as follows: This patient has developmental delay probably secondary to an episode of acute
demyelinating encephalomyelitis that he had at 18 months of age after the vaccine. He certainly does not ___ [sic] for autism because over here we can find a specific reason for his condition and this is not just coming up with no reason.” And later, “Speaking more directly, Dr. Lopez
stated that ‘Bailey does not have autism because he has a reason for his deficits.’”
Got that? It’s not autism, because there is an identified cause, which was MMR-induced Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM). By that definition of autism, causes for autism will never be found because whenever a cause is identified it is no longer called autism.
Bailey Banks received the MMR on March 14, 2000, and on March 31, 2000, “an MRI scan was taken of Bailey’s brain, which was interpreted by the treating radiologist, Bret Sleight, M.D., as ‘most consistent with a demyelinating process of immune etiology such as may be seen with ADEM or perhaps post-vaccination.’” This is what differentiates his case from other very similar cases of MMR followed by seizures and regression into autism; in most cases an MRI is not done so soon, and so this kind of evidence does not exist.
It appears that the petitioners were reluctant to use the term “autism” because that is a red flag which makes a case harder to win in vaccine court. Instead, they stuck with the specific physical mechanism of neurological injury, ADEM.
February 1, 2010 at 03:10 |
There are certain statements that get repeated over and over again, as if repeating them will make them true, such as all reports of regression into autism (often w. IBD, seizures, etc.) after vaccines is just a coincidence and correlation does not equal causation, that vaccines have been proven safe, that there is no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism. You can convince some people by saying these things over and over, but the fact is these statements are not true.
As Dr. Bernadine Healy (former head of the NIH) told CBS news, “According to Healy, when she began researching autism and vaccines she found credible published, peer-reviewed scientific studies that support the idea of an association. That seemed to counter what many of her colleagues had been saying for years. She dug a little deeper and was surprised to find that the government has not embarked upon some of the most basic research that could help answer the question of a link.
“The more she dug, she says, the more she came to believe the government and medical establishment were intentionally avoiding the question because they were afraid of the answer.”
H t t p : / / w w w . cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/05/12/couricandco/entry4090144.shtml
H t t p : / / w w w . cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/12/cbsnews_investigates/main4086809.shtml
And it’s ridiculous to say that research on vaccines and autism would divert resources from the “real” causes. For decades research dollars have gone to anything but vaccines – primarily to genes, brains, and behavior. As Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto (Ph.D., M.P.H., Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine, UC Davis) said, “Right now, about 10 to 20 times more research dollars are spent on studies of the genetic causes of autism than environmental ones. We need to even out the funding.”
H t t p : / / w w w . niehs.nih.gov/news/newsletter/2009/february/autism-rates.cfm
February 1, 2010 at 03:12 |
Luna the cat said, “Oh Elayne, such the martyr,” and then said, “No-one here is mocking or belittling anyone’s struggle living with autism.”
Those two statements are quite inconsistent.
February 1, 2010 at 04:01 |
Mike S-
You really need to stop with the inaccurate info-
http://www.14studies.org/
February 1, 2010 at 06:45 |
MikeS, you may have heard in the news that a number of people have reported uncontrollable acceleration in some Toyota and Lexus models. There have been a number of recalls, and the government and car manufacturers are trying to figure out whether the problem is due to faulty gas pedals, carpets, electronics, or something else. Do you think that those who reported these problems and those who are investigating are “anti-cars”?
February 1, 2010 at 13:31 |
I’d like to thank Luna_the_cat for correcting some of the misconceptions introduced by other commenters. I’d also like to point out a couple of things:
There were twelve children in the Lancet paper. To find a small, rare effect, like a small number of kids developing autism from MMR, you need a big sample.
Madsen, for example, compared 440,000 children who had MMR with 97,000 children who didn’t. The children who had received the vaccine were no more likely to develop autism than the children who didn’t.
In Finland, a group looked at 3 million MMR vaccinations, found only 31 cases of related gut symptoms, and not one of these children went on to develop autism in the next 10 years.
Here’s what Ben Goldacre wrote about the Lancet paper:
Here’s what Dr Horton of the Lancet said, with the benefit of hindsight:
Wakefield’s co-authors? Ten of them retracted an ‘interpretation of the paper’ that involved the measles virus and an association with autism.
For an overview of the research into MMR and autism as it looked in 2008, people might find this PDF useful: Link.
February 1, 2010 at 13:35 |
Worse than that jdc, you will see that of Wakefield’s Lancet 12 only in 8 did the parents link to the vaccine, and in one child the problem apparently followed natural measles!
February 1, 2010 at 14:13 |
Medical records, oddly, had different descriptions of the children’s conditions to the Lanet paper:
February 1, 2010 at 15:09 |
“Do you think that those who reported these problems and those who are investigating are “anti-cars”?”
No, Twyla, but what I see is a small handful of people deciding that their Toyotas accelerator pedals stuck because they had heard Bruce Springsteen singing on the car radio the week before. They mention this to a lawyer, who decides to sue Springsteen’s producer, and he employs a mechanic to find evidence the phenomenon is real so he can then use this in as evidence in court. The mechanic checks out a dozen Toyotas and tells the press Springsteen is responsible for the accidents and why don’t people listen to R&B (He conveniently and “coincidentally” has just sponsored a new R&B group touring the UK). Anti-Bruce fanatics set up “Bruce Kills” websites and flood the internet and media with anti-Bruce propaganda, and sales of Bruce’s albums plummet. Then it is discovered by the Automobile Association that the mechanic is irresponsible, dishonest and unethical, and that he had torn the engines out of people’s Toyotas when this was unnecessary and without proper authorisation. A diligent reporter has even discovered that the Toyotas the mechanic siad were damaged by Bruce’s songs didn’t even have a radio in them. This makes the “Kill Bruce” people madder than ever, and they start howling about conspiracies and that the head of the Automobile Association must have once bought a Springsteen CD. The mechanic has by now moved abroad, but no matter, the “Kill Bruce” crowd flood to his Texas garage so their cars can be tinkered with to guarantee they cannot pick up Bruce on the airwaves even though they still don’t have a radio or CD player, and the mechanic makes loadsamoney, far more money than he could even have dreamed of back in the UK, so he buys a massive house in the suburbs with waterfalls and paintball zones and the like.
You get the idea – correlation, not causation, and the link is not proven despite major research into the association.
End of story.
It is you lot who needs to stop with the inaccurate information. It appears the main beef antivax loons have about these 14 studies is not the science, but possible conflicts of interest in that the uncle of one author knew someone who once swept the floors in Merck’s offices, or something similarly specious and financially irrelevant. (However direct payment of £430,000 is a sum worth conflicting one’s interests for, wouldn’t you say? That’s what Wakefield got – aren’t you bothered by that?). Anyway since then the 14 has risen to 16, or so I believe. Of course you won’t accept any of this evidence – dissonance rules OK.
ADEM – this is quite an unusual and specific neurological condition. It is important to draw the distinction between episodes of ADEM which can follow vaccination with MMR (1 per million) and cases following measles infection (1 per thousand).
I’d prefer to let my kid take his chances with the vaccine, rather than the infections thank you.
February 1, 2010 at 15:21 |
Dr. Harris,
you are calling for the strongest possible sanctions. This still is pretty weak. I appreciate all the GMC has done and may do, but aren’t there any legal actions that can be brought?
Dr. Wakefield used developmentally disabled children for research to support litigation. He charged the Legal Aid Board for work he knew the NHS would fund. He was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds–has there been any accounting of that? Has anyone checked to see if it was even possible for him to log that many hours?
What sort of sanctions are even possible? What, 14 years after the paper (18 years after the offenses), he may lose the right to practice medicine in the UK? What will that do except enhance his prestige as the martyr doctor for the cause, driving more business to his pseudo autism clinic.
February 1, 2010 at 16:38 |
MikeS says “antivax loons”. So much for his dispassionate objectivity.
For the record, I am not anti-vaccination. I believe that vaccines are an important weapon in the war against disease. But I also believe that we are currently giving too many too soon, with inadequate study of long-term combined effects and adverse reactions.
I vaccinated my children with complete trust according to the standard schedule. I later realized that the vaccine for hepatitis B which my autistic son received on the day he was born contained mercury (in the preservative thimerosal) and that the vaccine had no benefit to him since he (like most infants) had not been exposed to hepatitis B. I also learned that the safety of thimerosal had never been established, nor the safety of aluminum which is also an ingredient of many vaccines. (And, yes, thimerosal has been removed from most vaccines but is still present in supposedly “trace” amounts in many, and in full preservative-level amounts in some vaccines such as flue shots.)
This decision to give all newborns a vaccine on the day of birth for an illness that affects only a handful whose mothers are carriers of the hep B virus, without education/information for parents to evaluate whether their baby may need this vaccine, is an example of how out of kilter our system is. It’s a matter of weighing the risks and benefits accurately. What are the risks of a vaccine on the first day of life to an infant whose health status is still unknown, whose kidney and liver are not fully functional yet? Shouldn’t this unknown risk be saved for more serious prevalent diseases than those encountered by most newborns today?
There is currently too much financial interest involved — including pharma influence on the AAP, politicians, gov’t agencies, medical journals, universities, and research funding. When vaccine problems occur, they are summarily dismissed as “coincidence” and “anecdotal” instead of studied.
If we were to leave our vaccine program exactly as is, at the very least there should be a better understanding of adverse reactions, what are susceptibility factors, and how to treat them, instead of cavalier disregard of the collateral damage of this program. Problems are denied and swept under the rug instead of studied. Reporting of vaccine adverse events is voluntary, and the small fraction which are reported simply sit on a list where people can just say, “probably just a coincidence, no proof of causation”. Of course there is no proof if nobody is looking.
My daughter had a febrile seizure a few days after receiving the MMR at the same time as the varicela (chicken pox) vaccine. As of a few years ago, the CDC web site cited a NEJM article (since removed from the site) stating that there is an increased risk of febrile seizures after the MMR and also after the DPT, but the CDC site said that this was nothing to worry about. But doesn’t this study lend credence to the many reports of children receiving vaccines and then having high fevers and seizures and regressing into autism? Thank goodness my daughter did not receive additional vaccines at the same time. Hannah Poling, for example, received 9 vaccines at once and then became autistic. The combined effect of vaccines has not been studied. We are giving too much too soon with unintended consequences. As with any medicine, the rate of adverse reactions increase with higher dosages. Just because a medication is safe for most at one level does not mean that an overdose is safe too.
Yes, natural measles infection can cause encephalitis. This also lends plausibility to the vaccine causing encephalitis. I grew up at a time when we all came down with measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, flu and whooping cough. The rate of autism, allergies, and asthma was much lower then than it is today. It is extremely rare for these diseases in their natural state to cause autism. But there is something different about exposure via injection, bypassing the body’s normal defense mechanisms and organized immune system response. And vaccines contain many ingredients besides the microbes, including adjuvants such as aluminum designed to intensify the immune system’s response, and proteins such as the substrates in which the microbes are bread.
Yes, these diseases can have serious effects. Infants can die of whooping cough. But the question is, how do these effects compare with the risks of the vaccines? Currently, the risks of diseases are being exagerated, and the risks of vaccines are denied even when real. A good vaccine program requires looking at the bad and good.
See h t t p : / / w w w . cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/05/12/couricandco/entry4090144.shtml
and h t t p : / / w w w . cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/12/cbsnews_investigates/main4086809.shtml
This isn’t a matter of “all or none”. It’s a matter of whether everything is being done to make our vaccine program as safe as possible, or whether more and more vaccines are simply being added based on the assumption that there’s no such thing as too many vaccines, and that all vaccines inherently have less risk than all diseases.
February 1, 2010 at 16:43 |
typos — “flue” should be “flu” and “bread” should be “bred”…
February 1, 2010 at 16:58 |
Win-win for Wakers I guess, Sullivan.
He charged £150 an hour I believe, which means he would have done 3000 hours or so of legal work. This all took place between 1996 and 1998?? At the same time he was bringing up 3 young kids and had a full time job. Thats amounts to 30+ hours a week or 6 hours for every working day of the week and no holidays.
This guy is either superman, or the MPs could learn a trick or two from him about expenses claims.
February 1, 2010 at 19:56 |
Luni the cat, you really do epitomize the inhumanity and arrogance of such dysfunctional thinking, to salvage yourself from such shameful ignorance read my earlier post.
Fact: my son lost consciousness, was given the last rites and arrested within six hours of being injected with the MMR, how deranged do you have to be to doubt the Emergency Services? and have you received treatment for this self-inflicted disorder? maybe there is some man-made lethal cocktail to cure it!
I have come across much skewered psychosis in my time but none so demonized as yours thankfully, I will therefore not contaminate myself by any further posting with one so evidently unhinged.
February 1, 2010 at 21:11 |
http://www.thecenternj.com/
Scientific Link to Autism Identified
If it hadn’t been for so many parents insisting that vaccines were responsible for the condition, we might never have found the fact that the stabilizer in MMR and a few other vaccines is hydrolyzed gelatin; a substance that is approximately 21% glycine. It appears that, based on readily verifiable science, the use of that form of glycine triggers an imbalance between the amino acid neurotransmitters responsible for the absorption rate of certain classes of cells throughout the body. It is that wide-spread disruption that apparently results in the systemic problems that encompass the mind and the body characterized in today’s ‘classic’ autism.”
February 1, 2010 at 22:18 |
Luna Cat
“The simple fact is, EVERY new vaccine is tested in combination with all the previously approved vaccines in a normal schedule — seriously, do you think they withhold all the other proven vaccines from the children testing the new one? Now *that* would be unethical.”
Please post the tested vaccine results if you can,
You simply will not be able to find them and there is NOTHING normal about our vaccine schedule.
February 1, 2010 at 22:29 |
Evan & Luna
Strange you aknowledge here in The House of Commons that a vaccine is being ‘rushed’ in it’s production
14th May 2009
Dr. Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon) (LD): Will the Secretary of State clarify whether the delay is caused by scientists all around the world going flat out to devise a vaccine, or perhaps it lies in the production of the vaccine once it has been designed, because it takes so long when we use an egg-based system? Are there new systems that mean that once we get the vaccine and manufacturers allocate capacity to it—if that is the decision—it will be available, at least for the countries that buy it?
Can you show me the testing in combination with all 19 vaccines at 4 months old or even indeed with a grand total of 25 at 13 months or 32 at 3 yrs and 4 months.
I await your reply
February 1, 2010 at 22:55 |
De Souza et al studied blood not bowel samples, therefore not a full replication. As you will know Honig study used three PCR labs, including O’Leary’s (who did the PCRs in Uhlmann 2002) and arrived at very close agreement between the three using the same methods has O’Leary in the 2002 study.
I’m aware of the trashing O’Leary got at the Omnibus hearing from Drs. Bustin, Rima and McDonald– a trashing including insinuations of fraud delivered under protection of the court. It often happens in scientific disputes that substantive issues (eg does MMR cause autism) get lost in technical issues. This is what happened in the Omnibus hearings. These hearings sought and got the British judge in the MMR litigation to release the expert papers for the manufacturers (which remain under lock and key in the UK. So no one has seen them here.) The issues – substantive and technical – still have a long way to go, despite all the efforts to shut down the MMR debate. The crude question that no scientist has answered is why a 30-fold increase in ASD children between 1987 (the year before MMR was introduced) and Baron-Cohen’s findings in 2009. Granted this will in part be because of social and definitional changes; but part is also real.
If it were possible to come up with an alternative explanation for the real increase in autism, which could generate some form of treatment or environmental change that had the beneficial effect of reversing the 22 year trend, doubters of MMR-safety would start to rethink their position. But sadly (for the children first and for the antagonists on both sides of the MMR question) I don’t see any signs of this.
February 1, 2010 at 23:00 |
Sorry Luna, the above posting was a reply to your reply to me much earlier. at January 31, 2010 at 1:33 am
February 2, 2010 at 01:57 |
“The crude question that no scientist has answered is why a 30-fold increase in ASD children between 1987 (the year before MMR was introduced) and Baron-Cohen’s findings in 2009. Granted this will in part be because of social and definitional changes; but part is also real.”
I guess the NAS survey showing 1 in 100 adults is ignored in the above statement?
The statement “it is also real” is an assertion, not a fact. It is also rather vague. An increase in prevalence due to better ascertainment is “real”.
What I assume you mean is that there is an increase in the true fraction of the population who are autistic over time.
We won’t know the answer to that unless we take a careful look. Unfortunately, Dr Wakefield has had us looking in the wrong place for 12 years. That would be fine if it were an honest mistake. But he has cause millions of dollars of research money and, worse, many man-years of effort to be focused on MMR.
He can’t repay the money wasted. Worse yet, he can’t repay the time wasted.
In the search for real answers to what autism is and how best to support autistics, Dr. Wakefield has been a costly sidetrack.
February 2, 2010 at 02:10 |
Luna,
“The simple fact is, EVERY new vaccine is tested in combination with all the previously approved vaccines in a normal schedule — seriously, do you think they withhold all the other proven vaccines from the children testing the new one? Now *that* would be unethical.”
Luna.. when you look into vaccine testing, it is actually quite appalling.
Vaccines are tested on only healthy children, but delivered to ALL children almost regardless of health status.
Vaccines are not tested against a true placebo. They are compared to the last version of the vaccine OR against a solution that will contain many of the chemicals of the vaccine, but not the viral agent. So, for example, if the aluminum in a vaccine (included to provoke an immune reaction to the virus) causes autoimmune disease, it will do it both in the test group AND the control group so the study does not reveal that a vaccine can cause autoimmune diseases (like type 1 diabetes, asthma, and autism).
Vaccines are compared to other brands of vaccines and combination shots are compared to single jabs, but almost no TRUE PLACEBO studies are carried out.
Vaccines are almost never tested in combination with one another. My son regressed into autism following his 18 months shots that included Hepatitis B, Polio, HIB, Pnumo and DTaP. I have looked everywhere and there is no research into how these shots behave in combination, much less how each of the different brands of these vaccinations behave in combination.
And consider this, if a single vaccine has enough adjuvant in it (a small amount of toxin like aluminum that causes an immune reaction so that the virus will be recognize and be reacted to by the immune system) to create a sufficient immune response to a vaccine’s virus, what happens when a baby is given two, three, four, five and six shots at once? They will get double, triple, …and onward… times the amount of adjuvant that has tested and been found to be appropriate to create a typical immune response in a healthy child. And what if that child was already prone to autoimmunity or worse, already had a mild autoimmune state (like eczema) at work in their body?
Read the package insert of ANY vaccine. They are all known to cause autoimmune disorders. Autism in an autoimmune disorder associated with inflammation in the brain.
My first question to my pediatrician after my son’s regression, as I began to read the product package inserts, “If the Hepatitis B vaccine can cause Guilliam Barre Syndrome, an autoimmune reaction in which the immune system attacks the central nervous system, then why can’t it cause autism, an autoimmune reaction in which the immune system attacks the central nervous system”?
His response… Go ask the American Academy of Pediatrics. After five years of asking, it is pretty clear to me that they are just NOT going to answer any questions like this one.
Vaccines are never tested on pregnant women, but are recommended to pregnant women. Our CDC recommends the flu shot to pregnant women, but when you pull the package insert and read it, it clearly states that it can make no claim of safety for pregnant women, it is not tested to see if it is carcinogenic (cancer causing) or mutagen (screws with the baby’s or momma’s DNA) or if it will cause reproductive harm.
Fraudulent studies are put out purporting to show vaccine safety, and when they are picked apart and even quietly disavowed or retracted by their publishers, it is not publicized (see Verstraeten) and physicians never get the word that the study was crap.
No safety study on the US vaccine program as a whole exists. In 1982, when thimerosal was removed from over the counter products, but not vaccines, the government recommended that CDC do a vaccinated v. unvaccinated study to see if mercury in vaccines was causing any damage to children. Close to thirty years later, no such study has ever been done, parents are screaming for it, medical associations are fighting it (including the American Academy of Pediatrics who, if they were actually acting in the best interests of children, and not their own wallets, would presumably WANT to know if the vaccine schedule is to heavy and causing damage). Three years ago a US Congresswoman from NYC entered a bill into congress to FORCE the National Institutes of Health to perform such a study that would determine if kids who get the full schedule of vaccines have higher rates of autism, asthma, seizure disorders, neurological problems, ADD/ADHD, MS, etc than children who are unvaccinated. It still languishes on no where land, because the medical and pharmaceutical industries DO NOT want this study done.
Luna, you have made many assumptions about vaccine safety. And some of them are reasonable. You look at how important the vaccine program is and how important child safety is and think.. “well of course they are going to do these studies, do them honestly, and not ever put our kids in danger”. Sadly, like me, you don’t start thinking critically about these safety claims, and checking them out, and actually reading vaccine package inserts until AFTER your child sustains a vaccine injury.
Please take some time to try to back up your own statements. Find me the study that shows that the vaccines my child got at 18 months of age were safety tested together. You will be upset to find out just how many safety statements that you believe have no source or basis in fact.
February 2, 2010 at 12:19 |
Dear Dr Harris,
I wonder if you could explain to me an apparent paradox? Why is that whe vaccine injury awards are made on an individual basis that epidemiology has been such a big weapon in the alleged refutation of the Wakefield hypothesis?
Perhaps you would also comment on the 2008 Hornig study. While the headline story was that this refuted the Wakefield hypothesis it actually – with a different study group to the Uhlmann paper – confirmed (verified by three independent laboratories) the presences measles virus in the ileum of two sick patients (one autistic, one control but both with gut disease and having had MMR). The paper also stated:
“Our results differ with reports noting MV RNA in ileal biopsies of 75% of ASD vs. 6% of control children…Discrepancies are unlikely to represent differences in experimental technique because similar primer and probe sequences, cycling conditions and instruments were employed in this and earlier reports; furthermore, one of the three laboratories participating in this study performed the assays described in earlier reports. Other factors to consider include differences in patient age, sex, origin (Europe vs. North America), GI disease, recency of MMR vaccine administration at time of biopsy, and methods for confirming neuropsychiatric status in cases and controls.”
The paper also demonstrates that irrespective of the MMR issue such investigations may often be appropriate – on the other hand two leading, experience paediatric gastro-enterologists now stand bizarrely convicted of performing such procedure on children where it wasn’t indicated. I have no idea why they would do that – why would they conduct invsive procedure on children who don’t need them when there are many who do – particularly since they had no competing interest whether real or alleged. Nor am I am sure who there is that would have the competence and seniority to question their clinical judgement. Do you?
I would also be grateful if you would also comment on my post addressed to Ben Goldacre:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jan/28/mmr-vaccine-ben-goldacre?showallcomments=true#CommentKey:9b3e2d88-c840-4ba2-b233-df408339345e
and I would also point out that you were on the ABSW Syngenta panel of judges we gave Goldacre an award for article ‘Don’t dumb me down’ in which Goldacre originally gave the lie to the idea the Lancet study was a botched version of the LAB protocol. I don’t know about Goldacre being dumbed down, but he certainly now seems to be trying to dumb the rest of us down.
Finally, may I convey to you my utter disgust with the way these doctors – and particularly Prof Walker-Smith who was the leading paediatric gastroenterologist of his time – have been treated by a blatantly political process.
JohnS
February 2, 2010 at 20:43 |
The silence is deafening!!!
February 2, 2010 at 22:13 |
So sorry to take a long time with replies. Whilst I always enjoy arguing on the internet with people who will never be convinced no matter what, it is not always possible to dump work and family obligations in order to do so.
Never fear, Angus, takedown of your papers forthcoming.
I think you need to understand a few things, though.
There are a few genuine papers in the list, which deal with genuine GI issues. No-one has ever claimed that autistic kids do not ever have GI issues. However:
The argument Wakefield made was that measles from the vaccine was linked to GI issues, which was linked to autism. These few real papers do not support this. They do not support a link to vaccine strain measles. They do not support a causative link between autism and GI disorders (except that, as later studies have demonstrated, often eating behaviour can lead to GI discomfort and constipation, which is then exacerbated by the fact that many of these kids don’t have a way to communicate the discomfort they feel except by acting out, which leads to the discomfort not being treated).
Also — further papers by Wakefield are not “independent support.” You need evidence which is not tainted by being provided by a researcher already accused of fraud.
Anyway.
Isabella Thomas: I am disturbed that you feel a completely off-the-wall and medically unsupported idea in a press release from a marketing company, on which the only doctor listed is a psychologist, is equally plausible to actual studies with methodology and biological detail readily available to the medical community for examination.
LARA and Ginger Taylor, I really don’t think you understand how vaccine testing is done — it’s obvious that you think you do, but you don’t. I’ll address that soon as I can.
Elayne: Please make no mistake about this, I know that living with a child with a lot of needs and problems above and beyond the norm is difficult and can be heartbreaking, and I have no doubt that your pain is real. But when you start out with:
Whatever arrogance that drives dysfunctional thinking to condemn those who have witnessed the devastating effects that the MMR vaccine has had upon their precious children and the life sentence of disability that it imposes, be it ignorant selfishness or personal gain by vested interest, never let it be said that this is anything to do with anti-vaccine.
…
More despicable than that is the further insult of suggested ulterior motive, when what we want is treatment for this man-made condition, which we are being denied as our children are nothing more than embarrassments to the government and medical establishment. What sickness of mind in those unaffected by this tragedy would so callously want to mock and prevent this? or dash what little hope we have that doctors will be brave enough to treat them, when the GMC has behaved towards such brilliant caring doctors in the way they have and purely for political reasons.
If you are not directly affected by the destruction that the MMR vaccine has caused upon a loved one, other than suffering the fallout of a Broken Society created by such a multitude of vaccines now injected into under developed bodies, then refrain from such pompous self-righteousness, the truth will out and you will be seen for the blinkered indoctrinated misguided individuals you really are.
…Yeah, well, aside from the fact that purple-prose writers the world over are envious, you owe me a new irony meter. A man who took money he shouldn’t have and faked medical data is a “brilliant caring doctor”, and you accuse every other mainstream doctor, researcher and clinician who doesn’t think much of Wakefield’s behaviour or hypothesis of “ignorant selfishness or personal gain by vested interest” and THEN accuse US of “arrogance”, and in the same paragraph as you accuse the mainstream of being “blinkered indoctrinated misguided individuals” you also enjoin US against pompous self-righteousness. THIS is what I’m mocking. Figure it out.
Ta, and more later.
February 2, 2010 at 23:31 |
Quick additional note, while I have time.
Martin: If you are familiar with the testimony from the Omnibus hearings, then I’m sure you read the testimony section on day 8 about how PCR was done.
Let me make this clear: I have done PCR, mostly standard rather that Taq, but I know the techniques. The description of the techniques and the pitfalls provided in this section is absolutely accurate. And Stephen Bustin is one of the leading experts in PCR techniques — his papers and review articles on it are standard texts for students learning how to do PCR. Bustin’s description of why a search for measles was done in blood was biologically sound, and yes, I know this professionally. And furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, the description of how PCR was handled was not disputed, and the lack of negative control data in the Uhlmann paper was not disputed. And that means that everything which came out of the Unigenetics lab was, at best, highly suspect. When I say that that data was not to be trusted — it really isn’t. I’m not saying this because I believe mainstream medicine blindly, I’m saying it because I know the techniques and the technology and what proper lab protocols look like.
Aside from that — what Sullivan said.
John Stone: I know you asked Evan and not me, but you asked one pertinent question which I think it is useful to look at —
Why is that whe vaccine injury awards are made on an individual basis that epidemiology has been such a big weapon in the alleged refutation of the Wakefield hypothesis?
In every population study of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated cohorts, there was no difference in the prevalence of autism. That, right there, epidemiologically and logically casts a great deal of doubt on a link between vaccination and autism. (If you disagree, please explain. How exactly do you account for this lack of correlation?) It has also been impossible to reconstruct a general aetiology for how vaccination is supposed to cause the supposed “epidemic” of autism.
On the other hand, it is very well documented and accepted that about 1 out of every 1,000,000 children will have a severe allergic reaction to vaccines, and that such reactions can have different types of medical and physiological sequelae. To address this, it is possible for parents of such children to bring a case, and all they have to do is prove that it is physiologically possible that the vaccine reaction has resulted in such sequelae. They need to demonstrate plausability, not proof — and as such, this would not really be suitable for setting policy upending public health programmes which have saved millions of lives over the years.
Do you understand this? Why the difference?
Incidentally, somewhere upthread the AoA “14 studies” was mentioned. These have already been discussed in detail elsewhere. Worth reading the debunking — as with much that AoA produces as support, they make very official, sensible looking arguments which pretty much fall apart as soon as you look at the detail of what’s going on.
And — Twyla: page 6 of http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/BANKS_CASE.pdf —
I honestly don’t think it can get much clearer than that.
There’s a lot here I haven’t addressed yet and I know it, but I will come back to it. For now, well, I can only go so many days without sleep.
February 6, 2010 at 20:13 |
Luna
My previous reply seems to have met by some misadventure.
Sad to report that the Cochrane Review of MMR engaged in bureaucratic double speak but if it didn’t find evidence to support the autism hypothesis it found nothing to negate it either and my recent challenges to David Colquhoun, Ben Goldacre, Jeremy Laurance, Helen Bedford and Dvid Elliman have met so far with no response. I will post link separately below. The bottom line with Cochrane was that even the 31 best of related 5000 studies were “largely inadequate” and the 6 autism studies on their account particularly feeble. This is not a body of evidence, and they were equally dismissive the scientific base for effectiveness. They declared there to be no good studies (despite which none of the authors are on trial).
It looks to me like instead of good science we have totalitarian politics – not least the censuring of an outspoken journalist, Jeni Barnett, by large sections of the Parliamentary Lib-Dem Party in an Early Day Motion. I suspect Jeni understood more about the politics than the science and events were to prove her right in spades. This is a very odd Liberal party, though I have great regard for our local MP.
In regard to the Bailey Banks case, the Lopez argument is plainly circular – he is saying the Bailey’s autism is not autism because it has a known cause – ie the vaccine, so he places under the heading of PDD (which, incidentally, was the term used on the “Lancet” paper). Unfortunately, many of our children have not had the opportunity of diagnosis offered to Bailey but many have other areas of impairment like Bailey, which does not normally preclude an autism diagnosis. But we are in the area of tautology anyway.
I will post links separately.
February 6, 2010 at 20:34
Well, the links haven’t gone up again, so we will have leave it to Dr Harris’s good conscience to retrieve them.
February 2, 2010 at 23:34 |
I have another post as well, hung in moderation probably because of links.
February 3, 2010 at 09:06 |
Of course it may be appropriate to investigate a child with bowel pathology by doing an endoscopy. The fact that people have done this to autistic kids with bowel problems does not absolve Wakefield and cronies from what the GMC say he did, namely perform these inappropriately and without a clinical need to do so. Same applies for other tests that entail invasive tasks – spinal punctures and so on.
The pro-Wakefield people are clutching desperately at straws here I’m afraid. The GMC findings are quite unequivocal and very damning.
I wonder how many of the parents of these autistic kids would feel the same way about a doctor who conducted unethical, unapproved and unnecessary tests like this on their child because they happened to be paid a nice sum of nearly half a million pounds by lawyers to find evidence of some other link? What if the motivation of the doctors had been to find a link to something that would rule MMR out of the equation once and for all – say the doctors who did the tests were surreptitiously checking for genetic links or maternal factors, and performed this litany of investigations which had absolutely no clinical benefit for their children?
I suspect these parents would pursue these doctors with every means available to see them struck off, convicted and imprisoned for malpractice if they had their way. But because this gross misconduct was performed by someone who hoodwinked them into thinking they were trying to help their child, they suddenly think all this negligence and incompetence is perfectly acceptable and heap praise on the doctor concerned, even when he is found out.
February 3, 2010 at 09:53 |
MikeS
The trouble with your point is that the patients were referred by GPs to a paediatric gastroenterology department – why would they do that if there were no symptoms? Why would the two lead clinicians initiate investigative procedures – as very experienced men who had nothing to do with the MMR litigation – if there were no clinical grounds? We are supposed to believe that though there are autistic children with complex bowel conditions aplenty, they chose to investigate children with none. Well really – what on earth would they expect to find?
One of the bizarre aspects of this is that the three doctors were held to be in ethical breach of the Legal Aid Board protocol by the GMC just because the Lancet study in no way resembles LAB protocol. Any rational interpretation of the evidence would explain this by agreeing that it is simply a completely different study.
Meanwhile, it was Profs Walker-Smith and Murch who saw the patients and had to make clinical decisions, not Brian Deer, not Sally Smith QC, not the GMC panel and not you.
February 3, 2010 at 11:41 |
Luna (or may be Fitzpatrick as you sound just like him)
Still waiting ……………
February 4, 2010 at 06:05 |
“One of the bizarre aspects of this is that the three doctors were held to be in ethical breach of the Legal Aid Board protocol by the GMC just because the Lancet study in no way resembles LAB protocol.”
I find your statement bizarre. From the GMC ruling:
“In reaching its decision, the Panel is satisfied that the project
172/96 document is substantially the same as the protocol sent to
the LAB by Mr Barr in June 1996.”
Dr. Wakefield’s ethical approval was for project 172/96. This is the same protocol at the LAB protocol. And, yet, you assert that the study in The Lancet was different than the LAB protocol?!?
If your statement above is to be believed, what ethical approval did Dr. Wakefield have for his efforts at the Royal Free? By your assertion, it wasn’t project 172/96.
I will await your chance to email Dr. Wakefield and give us his answer here. Too bad he isn’t responding for himself.
As to your claim that the children were referred to a gastroenterology department…
“After his assessment of Child 2 at St Bartholomew’s
Hospital on 1 August 1995, Professor Walker-Smith concluded
that gastro-intestinal investigations were not indicated and he did
not arrange to see Child 2 again.”
Tell me, why was child 2 tested when Dr. Walker Smith himself concluded that no GI investigations were indicated?
The only explanation given is again from Dr. Walker-Smith:
“I think Crohn’s disease is unlikely. Dr Wakefield has the view that there may be some kind of other inflammation which may be a relevant factor in Child 2’s illness and we now have a programme for investigating children who have autism and a possible reaction to immunisation”.”
So, he was tested because Dr. Wakefield thought there “may” some kind of inflammation that showed no signs to a prominent GI doctor?
February 4, 2010 at 07:46 |
Sullivan
172-96 was Wakefield’s Legal Aid Board project – the defence have never agreed that the Lancet study was 172-96, and it is part of the anomaly of the panel’s decision that the 3 doctors have been found to have acted unethically just because the study in no way replicated the terms of the protocol, and was as Ben Goldacre pointed out “a perfectly good small case report”.
I don’t have the full transcript and while I did hear some of Prof Walker-Smith’s evidence regarding child 2 I cannot reliably recall all the details. However, I would point out that not arranging to see a patient again, or even using the terminology of the charge sheet “discharging” a patient, only means in UK practice not making the next appointment. I and members of my family have often been “discharged” by a consultants with an invitation to ring their secretary should anything arise. A lot of the problems with this case come from viewing perfectly normal past events in a highly prejudicial light. Also, if we take the view that investigations should be forbidden because they might endanger the reputation of the vaccine programme, that is prejudicial and also renders the vaccine programme unsafe by placing it beyond scientific investigation – which is presumably what Dr Harris wants.
February 4, 2010 at 18:25 |
“the 3 doctors have been found to have acted unethically just because the study in no way replicated the terms of the protocol”?
You claim to have attended the hearings. Did you sleep through the hearings?
They were found to have acted unethically for a number of reasons, including subjecting disabled children to unnecessary procedures in order to gather data for a study.
Dr. Wakefield was found to have acted unethically for taking money from the LAB for procedures that were funded by the NHS.
Shall we go on? “Just because” trivializes the extent of the charges found proven.
February 4, 2010 at 08:04 |
PS The ethical approval was held by the defence to be 162-95.
February 4, 2010 at 15:56 |
from the ruling:
“The Panel has heard that ethical approval had been sought and granted for other trials and it has been specifically suggested that Project 172-96 was never undertaken and that in fact, the Lancet 12 children’s investigations were clinically indicated and the research parts of those clinically justified investigations were covered by Project 162-95. In the light of all the available evidence, the Panel rejected this proposition.”
February 4, 2010 at 16:12 |
Yes, of course. The ultra-fastidious chairman of panel forgot to mention that he sat on two medicine licensing authority committees and owned shares in GSK:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/337/oct01_3/a1856#203466
February 4, 2010 at 18:21
John Stone,
Not a reply to my comment, is it?
Your assertion that the Wakefield team was working under a different project number was considered and rejected based on the evidence.
Dr. Wakefield’s team was using patients as research subjects without ethical approval. Why doesn’t that sort of arrogance bother you?
February 7, 2010 at 13:49 |
Ethical Approval 162-95 was a carry over when Prof Walker-Smith came from Barts to the Royal Free. He sought and got approval from the RF ethics committee to take two additional samples of gut tissue from sick children he was treating for research purposes (which the chair of the EC considered safe). This had first been approved at Barts and was granted at the RF. The 1998 Lancet paper was what it said a case series based on reporting children being treated (they were not research subjects alone) drawing on treatment notes (which would have included the reports of parents on when they first noticed their children’s decline into autism and bowel disease). It didn’t require additional approval. All this came out in the cross examinations of witnesses. This is the three doctors’ case, ie the paper was approved under 162-95 and that 172-96 was never done. It is not clear from the hearing summary that Sullivan quotes why the 1962-95 claim was rejected, given that the standard of proof was findings of fact beyond reasonable doubt. If there were the slightest doubt about the ethical provenance of the Lancet article, one would have expected the panel to go for 162-95 not 172-96. But by making the key decision to rejet 162-95, everything else that the doctors are condemned for follows. The goal posts were moved decisively.
February 7, 2010 at 15:07
DavidHume
Thank you for this clear and accurate statement. It should explained also that the panel found the doctors to be in breach of the ethical approval for 172-96 on the basis that the study didn’t resemble 172-96 – so they came to the most perverse reading of events and still managed to decide that this was so, beyond reasonable doubt. What is also strange is that the panel refer to project 162-95 which was not a project at all. Was this to avoid explaining to the assembled media the John Walker-Smith had the authority to make such decisions on h
February 7, 2010 at 15:09
on his own initiative – in which case the logical fallacy would have been immediately apparent.
February 4, 2010 at 16:11 |
According to Dr. Murch, in a letter posted here:
http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-murch.htm
“Thus, I can confirm that the patients presented in the Lancet study were investigated in accordance with the ethics committee approval of December, 1996, and that no attempt was made to seek retrospective approval. ”
December 1996 is when project 172/96 was approved.
February 4, 2010 at 17:45 |
Typical Deer, doesn’t give you the date.
February 4, 2010 at 18:11 |
“Responding to Deer’s investigation, the statement below was issued through the Lancet on February 20 2004 by Dr Simon Murch,”
February 4, 2010 at 21:46 |
Marshmallow Boy ,
only half the lies are true so it seems ,more sorries,to follow I believe..
.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7006525.ece
“Correction
Although the General Medical Council found that Professors Simon Murch
and John Walker-Smith, former colleagues of Andrew Wakefield, had
failed in their duties as responsible consultants such that they
continue to face charges of serious professional misconduct (“Fall of
‘dishonest’ doctor who started MMR scare”, January 29), it did not
find them dishonest or, in the case of Professor Murch, irresponsible,
contrary to our report. We were also wrong to say (“The men who
started the scare”, same day) that they had not retracted the claim
that MMR could be linked to health problems; they did so in The Lancet
in 2004. We apologise for the errors.”
February 5, 2010 at 20:41 |
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/02/a-statement-from-jenny-mccarthy-jim-carrey-andrew-wakefield-scientific-censorship-and-fourteen-monke.html
February 05, 2010
A Statement from Jenny McCarthy & Jim Carrey: Andrew Wakefield, Scientific Censorship, and Fourteen Monkeys
Los Angeles, February 5, 2010
Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published that for the first time looks at vaccinated versus unvaccinated primates and compares health outcomes, with potentially devastating consequences for vaccine makers and public health officials.
It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues.
The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England’s General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers served as judge and jury. Dr. Wakefield strenuously denies all the findings of the GMC and plans a vigorous appeal.
Despite rampant misreporting, Dr. Wakefield’s original paper regarding 12 children with severe bowel disease and autism never rendered any judgment whatsoever on whether or not vaccines cause autism, and The Lancet’s retraction gets us no closer to understanding this complex issue.
Dr. Wakefield is one of the world’s most respected and well-published gastroenterologists. He has published dozens of papers since 1998 in well-regarded peer-reviewed journals all over the world. His work documenting the bowel disease of children with autism and his exploration of novel ways to treat bowel disease has helped relieve the pain and suffering of thousands of children with autism.
For the past decade, parents in our community have been clamoring for a relatively simple scientific study that could settle the debate over the possible role of vaccines in the autism epidemic once and for all: compare children who have been vaccinated with children who have never received any vaccines and see if the rate of autism is different or the same.
Few people are aware that this extremely important work has not only begun, but that a study using an animal model has already been completed exploring this topic in great detail.
Dr. Wakefield is the co-author, along with eight other distinguished scientists from institutions like the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Washington, of a set of studies that explore the topic of vaccinated versus unvaccinated neurological outcomes using monkeys.
The first phase of this monkey study was published three months ago in the prestigious medical journal Neurotoxicology, and focused on the first two weeks of life when the vaccinated monkeys received a single vaccine for Hepatitis B, mimicking the U.S. vaccine schedule. The results, which you can read for yourself HERE, were disturbing. Vaccinated monkeys, unlike their unvaccinated peers, suffered the loss of many reflexes that are critical for survival.
Dr. Wakefield and his scientific colleagues are on the brink of publishing their entire study, which followed the monkeys through the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule over a multi-year period. It is our understanding that the difference in outcome for the vaccinated monkeys versus the unvaccinated controls is both stark and devastating.
There is no question that the publication of the monkey study will lend substantial credibility to the theory that over-vaccination of young children is leading to neurological damage, including autism. The fallout from the study for vaccine makers and public health officials could be severe. Having denied the possibility of the vaccine-autism connection for so long while profiting immensely from a recent boom in vaccine sales around the world, it’s no surprise that they would seek to repress this important work.
Behind the scenes, the pressure to keep the work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues from being published is immense, and growing every day. Medical journals take extreme risk of backlash in publishing any studies that question the safety of the vaccination program, no matter how well-designed and thorough the research might be. Neurotoxicology, a highly-respected medical journal, deserves great credit for courageously publishing the first phase of this vaccinated monkey study.
The press has been deeply misled in the way The Lancet retraction, and Dr. Wakefield’s mock trial, have been characterized. Led by the pharmaceutical companies and their well-compensated spokespeople, Dr. Wakefield is being vilified through a well-orchestrated smear campaign designed to prevent this important new work from seeing the light of day.
What medical journal would want to step in front of this freight train? Moreover, why now, after 12 years of inaction, did The Lancet and GMC suddenly act? Is it coincidence that the monkey study is currently being submitted to medical journals for review and publication?
We urge the media to take a close look at the first phase of the monkey study discussed above and to start asking a very simple question: What was the final outcome of the 14 primates that were vaccinated using the U.S. vaccine schedule and how did that compare to the unvaccinated controls?
The U.S. vaccine schedule has grown from 10 vaccines given to our children in the 1980s to 36 today, perfectly matching the dramatic rise in autism. The work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues deserves to be shared with the world to further, rather than censor, scientific progress.
February 6, 2010 at 12:47 |
still waiting Luna….. you won’t find the combined vaccine studies
accept not all vaccines suit all babies and children, penicillin does not suit everyone, for some it is dangerous, just like peanuts, some people are on restrctive diets such as gluten, for example harms thier bodies, not the majority but the minority, the minority still count and are growing. The pharma’s do not have our children’s health in their best interests only the lining of thier pockets, other wise the schedule would be safer and they would not be trying so hard to discredit any research.
times up I’m afraid
February 6, 2010 at 12:58 |
I note that a post of mine in reply to Luna went missing, perhaps because of the links – unfortunately I forgot to take a copy. I would be grateful to Dr Harris – if he has it – if he would please post it.
February 7, 2010 at 00:36 |
Yeh!! seen that John !!!probably prefer to GOOF on Deer than read fact!!!
GOOFEN ON DEER THE NEW PLANET????
February 7, 2010 at 00:40 |
February 7, 2010 at 00:43 |
Oh !! well Silli !wot! ya !got ta say??? Geezer???
February 7, 2010 at 00:46 |
Remeber 4 chords inthat song jest past geezer!!aye!!!
February 7, 2010 at 01:03 |
THE SHITUS ANNONYMOUS A.K.A. DEER !!
February 7, 2010 at 01:34 |
THE CONSCIENCE GETS TO MUCH TO SHOULDER R.I.P, Gigi.
http://www.ageofautism.com/
February 06, 2010
Gigi Jordan, Manhattan “Socialite” Kills Autistic Son, Fails Suicide Attempt
From ABC News.
New York police today discovered the body of a 9-year old autistic boy in a luxury Manhattan hotel room, possibly strangled to death by his “socialite” mother who was found nearby suffering the effects of a botched suicide, sources told ABC News. Gigi Jordan, 49, distraught over the recent end of her marriage, checked in to the Peninsula Hotel where she allegedly killed the boy and then tried to kill herself by taking an overdose of drugs, police said. Police say she was taken to Bellevue…
From The NY Daily News
Gigi Jordan just wanted the pain to end – for her, and for her beloved 8-year-old son.
In a bizarre message intended as a suicide note, the wealthy one-time pharmaceutical company executive detailed a life of sadness interrupted by a single ray of hope: her only child, Jude.
“I hope Jude is in a better place,” the 49-year-old Belgian wrote in the strange two-page note left in her 16th-floor suite at the posh Peninsula hotel.
At one point, Jordan suggested her son was a rape victim and “in constant pain.” She mentioned speaking with a Wyoming child porn investigator about the sexual abuse of kids…
Share on Facebook • Digg This!
February 7, 2010 at 01:37 |
WOT A DISSAPOINTMENT ! IT WOS HER AUTISTIC CHILD THAT DIED CRIMINAL!!!
February 7, 2010 at 01:40 |
R.I.P . JUDE Never forgotten by the Autistic Community another young life sold to the PHARMA gangsters on here for money R.I.P.
February 7, 2010 at 01:56 |
AND THE AUTISTIC COMMUNITY`S RESPONSE TO DEER AND THE GMC !!!
February 7, 2010 at 03:52 |
I and my family are members of the autism community. I quite frankly find your childishness to be an embarrassment.
The GMC has defended the rights of disabled children to be treated with the respect and protection due from ethical researchers.
I don’t know what community doesn’t adhere to that ideal, but it is certainly not one I am a part of.
February 7, 2010 at 06:55 |
Sullivan
Yes, I don’t think those kinds of posts are helpful – nor do I really see that they contribute to the discussion either way.
February 7, 2010 at 11:59 |
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/156662/Vaccines-kill-two-children-every-year
Sunday Express
VACCINES KILL TWO CHILDREN EVERY YEAR
Two children a year die after routine vaccinations
Sunday February 7,2010
By Lucy Johnston Have your say(0)
TWO children a year die after routine vaccinations, research has shown.
In some cases the Government has awarded parents up to £100,000 under its Vaccine Damage Payment Act 1979. In others, post mortem examinations concluded that the injection was the most likely cause of death.
The figures, compiled by vaccine damage support group Jabs, come in the wake of last month’s decision by the General Medical Council that Dr Andrew Wakefield, who sparked the MMR controversy, acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly”. The research also found that it has become more difficult to get compensation for vaccine damage despite no drop in the number of children being affected.
There were 970 payments made between 1979 and 1994, about 65 a year, to parents of damaged children.
Since then there have been only 28 payments, approximately two successful claims a year. Critics say this is because the criteria for making a claim have become so strict. Peter Fletcher, former chief scientific officer for the Department of Health, is demanding an overhaul of the payment system.
He said: “We need to point out in easy language that vaccines have always had a level of adverse effects.
“However, it is hard to meet the standard of proof to win compensation and awards have been miserly.”
Julie Roberts, 40, whose daughter Stacey died after an MMR jab, said: “The Government should take responsibility. It has never given proper warnings of the risk and still doesn’t despite the evidence.”
February 8, 2010 at 11:01 |
February 08, 2010
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/02/the-conflicting-views-of-dr-ben-goldacre-and-the-wakefield-affair.html#more
The Conflicting Views of Dr. Ben Goldacre and the Wakefield Affair
The conflicting views of Dr Ben Goldacre and the Wakefield affair: dumbing the public down.
By John Stone
Photo: Ben Goldacre receiving the 2003 GSK/ABSW award for his Guardian article on MMR,’Never mind the facts’, posing between Pallab Ghosh, science correspondent of the BBC, and Dr Alistair Benbow of GSK.
Not so familiar in the North American world Ben Goldacre, author of the Guardian’s Bad Science column, is perhaps the most prominent and prestigious scientific opinion leader in UK journalism, and at least since 2003 – when his career was effectively launched – he has carried a brief to defend the reputation of MMR vaccine. Essentially, this has consisted of a different strategy of that of Times Newspapers and Brian Deer, focussing on trying to damage Andrew Wakefield’s scientific reputation without the all-out assault on his integrity. Until the GMC brought in its verdict against Wakefield and his colleagues John Walker-Smith and Simon Murch this might have looked like a clever insurance policy, but now it has led to problems.
In his article ‘Don’t Dumb me down’ which won the 2005 Syngenta/Association of British Science Writers’ award Goldacre wrote something remarkably interesting (and accurate) (HERE ):
“…people periodically come up to me and say, isn’t it funny how that Wakefield MMR paper turned out to be Bad Science after all? And I say: no. The paper always was and still remains a perfectly good small case series report, but it was systematically misrepresented as being more than that, by media that are incapable of interpreting and reporting scientific data.”
Remarkably, too, there sat on the panel of judges for the award, Brian Deer’s associate and Liberal-Democratic member of parliament Dr Evan Harris. This nevertheless brought Goldacre into conflict with Brian Deer, or certainly led to Deer expressing public annoyance in an interview the Press Gazette last year.
On the other hand when the GMC panel announced its decision on 28 January Goldacre was hit by a sudden attack of amnesia, failing to recall anything of his earlier reasoned objection to the central charge of the GMC hearing. Even if for some reason he had changed his mind, the only mainstream journalist who had sufficient grip on the case to explain what was at issue held his tongue in his “expert view” comment in the Guardian on-line that evening (HERE).
The reality was that the panel had swallowed an astonishingly tenous case from the prosecution that the “Lancet study” was not “a perfectly good small case series report” – in Goldacre’s words – but a botched attempt at the protocol of what looked like a completely different study. The panel in fact found that the doctors were in breach of the terms of the protocol which had been granted ethical permission as project 172-96 (HERE):
“The Panel has heard that ethical approval had been sought and granted for other trials and it has been specifically suggested that Project 172-96 was never undertaken and that in fact, the Lancet 12 children’s investigations were clinically indicated and the research parts of those clinically justified investigations were covered by Project 162-95. In the light of all the available evidence, the Panel rejected this proposition.”
However, if the claim that the study was bungled version version of Project 172-96 was perverse they border on deception by claiming 162-95 as a “project” at all: 162-5 was nothing other than code for the ethical permission granted to Prof Walker-Smith, when he arrived at the Royal Free Hospital the previous year, to order biopsies according to his own clinical judgment: he was, after all, recognised as the leading paediatric gastroenterologist in the country at the time (HERE).
Of course, if the panel had explained what 162-95 was, instead of passing it off as an alternative “project” perhaps even the press room at the GMC might have worked out that something was amiss. The panel would have had to have explained why or how they had managed to retrospectively disable the discretion granted to John Walker-Smith to use his clinical judgment for the apparent purpose of bringing in a guilty verdict. Moreover, it is fairly hard to see how there was anyone present at the hearing who had the expertise or experience to second-guess Prof Walker-Smith’s clinical judgment anyway.
It is quite apparent Ben Goldacre did not originally announce his reservations abou
t this prosecution out of the sympathy for the predicament of the doctors or for the children injured by MMR vaccine. Infamously, his Bad Science blog site used to bear the advice (HERE):
“.. personal anecdotes about your MMR tragedy will be deleted for your own safety”
Goldacre, plainly adopted this line because he and many people like him in the medical establishment believed the prosecution would unravel. Well, it hasn’t yet, but he may live to regret his silence. That same Thursday evening his colleague Sarah Boseley wrote in the Guardian (HERE):
“Opinion is divided in the medical establishment on the wisdom of pursuing Wakefield – and particularly his colleagues who played a lesser role in the drama – at the GMC. Some say there was a clear case to answer and that the GMC had no other option but others believe that no good can come of it.”
Her choice of tense: “no good can come of it” is interesting.
John Stone is UK Editor for Age of Autism.
February 8, 2010 at 22:53 |
February 9, 2010 at 21:16 |
“Angus Files Says:
January 31, 2010 at 9:25 pm | Reply .I dont know about JABS”
Well Angus Files there must be 2 of you ’cause there is also Angus Files the well known “Guss the Fuss” a frequent poster on JABS with such pearls of wisdom as NEVER EVER use antibiotics and diagnose Candida infection by spitting in a glass of water etc etc I think you know all about JABS.
“Twyla Says: February 1, 2010 at 4:38 pm | Reply
For the record, I am not anti-vaccination.”
Oh no “Twyla” AKA Hilary Butler moderator in chief of the virulently anti vaccine New Zealand “Beyond Conformity” web site of course you’re not and of course pigs can fly!
Well done Evan (from a non-liberal democrat) great to see you putting Halvorsen in his place, a snake oil salesman with a medical degree.
What do Wakefields supporters not believe
That he didn’t take blood fom kids at a party??
That he deliberately supressed the negative PCR findings from Chadwick in the laboratory that did not support his less sensitive and specific immuno assay system?
That the Irish PCR data was clearly nonsense since a key enzyme in the PCR assay was missed out?
February 9, 2010 at 21:21 |
February 9, 2010 at 22:55 |
To Occam the Ostrich, and his dogpiling acolytes:
I am not Twyla, and on the rare occasion when I do chose to comment. I do so in my own name.
At least my walk, matches my talk. You truly, are known by the arrogance of your hypocritical ignorance. Keep prattling. It helps us know the “tree” by it’s “fruit”.
February 10, 2010 at 00:10 |
WTF Occam WhoTF is Guss the Fuss
February 10, 2010 at 00:19 |
February 10, 2010 at 01:44 |
Dear friend,
I found very helpful articels in here.
Thanks for the sharing and keep posting. OK
BR
Auliandri
Moderator of emiratesosteoporosissociety.com
February 10, 2010 at 22:15 |
Shall do BR
An update of the story from September – new on CHS,
UK “Faked” National Autism Data To Declare MMR Vaccine “Safe”
February 10, 2010
UK children are nearly 5 times more likely to have autistic conditions than adults according to the results of the first ever UK government survey to assess the numbers of adults with the condition: [“Autism Spectrum Disorders in adults living in households throughout England – Report from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007” The NHS Information Centre.]
But the British public were told instead that the survey shows rates in adults and children have always been the same so that that vaccines like MMR cannot be to blame for the increasing rates in children. The UK National Health Service funded the survey and made these claims.
Survey Authors Couldn’t Find Enough Adult Autistics
There were early rumours in 2008 the authors could not find numbers of adult ASC cases matching numbers in children.
The survey failed to find a single case of an adult with “typical” or “classic” autism, found in approximately 30% of ASC children. “Typical” or “classic” autism is a type of ASC controversially claimed in 1998 might be associated with the MMR vaccine.
The authors also failed to find sufficient adult ASC cases overall – just 19 in 7,451 adults, being “higher functioning” ASCs – mainly Asperger’s Syndrome. This represents an overall rate of just under 1 in 300 potential adults cases and not the officially claimed 1 in 100 for children.
Read on for more:
UK “Faked” National Autism Data To Declare MMR Vaccine “Safe”
February 10, 2010 at 22:17 |
so sorry no link,
February 11, 2010 at 20:40 |
February 15, 2010 at 23:13 |
The joke U OF K feels the same wheres J Stones questions Evan why are there no links to this blg from your homepage free speech buried more like!!!See ya in Hell!!
February 15, 2010 at 23:37 |
February 16, 2010 at 13:53 |
February 16, 2010 at 22:56 |
February 17, 2010 at 20:55 |
Every body remebers the day we spoke to Dr Wakefield thats what the goverments fear most his honest ability to translate such a complex problem into a few words..long live Wakefield.
February 17, 2010 at 22:42 |
Drug industry money to members of Congress, and the president, who led the effort to pass the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan. “The health industry gave $14 million total to the eleven elected officials largely credited with negotiating the bill. Pharmaceutical company PACs, employees, and their families gave more than $3 million in campaign contributions to (those) eleven elected officials.” Buying A Law: Big Pharma’s Big Money and the Bush Medicare Plan, Campaign Money Watch, January 2004.
Click to access donnelly$_1-15-04.pdf
February 25, 2010 at 01:29 |
What saddens me about this whole debate is that by fixating on a comparatively small number of children with conditions on the autistic spectrum, people have lost sight of the fact that the MMR vaccine protects against measles which is a dangerous disease WHICH CAN KILL (e.g. in 2008, there were 164 000 measles deaths worldwide. That’s approx. 450 deaths every day or 18 deaths every hour. Source: WHO). Many hundreds of thousands more are left permanently scarred, blind or with permanent severe brain damage.
Vaccination doesn’t just protect the person, it protects the population at large by preventing diseases spreading and by providing herd immunity. All the reliable evidence shows that there is no link between MMR and autism. By still insisting in the face of overwhelming fact that vaccinations are bad and should be stopped, the so-called “anti-vaxers” are putting all of us at risk. We’ve been lucky so far that in all the measles outbreaks in the UK as a result of the MMR hysteria, no-one has yet died (although there have been many who have been hospitalised). To those pro-Wakefield, anti-vaccination campaigners – Believe in your conspiracy theories if you like, but please, stop risking the lives of the rest of us on your little pet panic.
To Dr. Evans – carry on the good work. We need more MPs who are prepared to place evidence, reason and good practice above any need to score cheap political points.
February 25, 2010 at 22:53 |
COUGH! COUGH! cant read cant see above !!!
February 25, 2010 at 23:39 |
FREE SPEECH MY ARSE !NONE OF THE QUESTIONS ARSE ARSEWERED TO AND NONE APPEAR ,ARSE TO THE END…ARSE HOLES UNITED ON HERE..
February 26, 2010 at 23:08 |
Look tell ya !anyone out an about its like being an antropoligist on MARS posting on here just going of the fruity waiting for a reply,,,but then trolls dont reply do they>???only when it suits em!! mmmmm!!
February 26, 2010 at 23:15 |
Liberal Democrat Jokes ( UK Political Party )
Q: What do you get when you offer a Liberal a penny for his thoughts?
A: Change.
Q: How do you confuse a Liberal?
A: You don’t. They’re born that way.
Q: How do you keep a Liberal busy?
A: Write ‘Please turn over’ on both sides of a piece of paper.
Q: How do you keep a Liberal busy all day?
A: Put him in a round room and tell him to wait in the corner.
Q: How do you get a one-armed Liberal out of a tree?
A: Wave to him.
Q: What do you call a basement full of Liberals?
A: A whine cellar.
Q: What is the definition of gross ignorance?
A: 144 Liberals.
Q: What is the Liberal doing when he has his hands tightly clasped over his ears?
A: Trying to hold on to a thought.
Q: Why did the Liberal have blisters on his lips?
A: From trying to blow out a light bulb.
Q: Why do Liberals work seven days a week?
A: So you don’t have to retrain them on Monday.
Q: What the difference between a Liberal and the rear end of a horse?
A: I don’t know either.
Q: How is a Liberal different from a sewer rat?
A: Some people actually like sewer rats.
Q: How many Liberals does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. They prefer to walk in the dark.
Q: What is it called when a Liberal blows in another Liberal’s ear?
A: Data transfer.
Q: Why don’t they let Liberals swim in the ocean?
A: Because they can’t get the smell out of the tuna.
Q: How do you plant dope?
A: Bury a Liberal.
February 26, 2010 at 23:19 |
superb site talk to mee self all night its great!!!
February 26, 2010 at 23:19 |
love mee own company its fab no complaints from anyone!!
February 26, 2010 at 23:27 |
Brian Deer asks a patient in the GMC/GSK trial claiming to be Napoleon Bonaparte how did he indeed reach this conclusion.
“God told me that!”
Evan Harris interferes: “Certainly I did not!”
.
February 26, 2010 at 23:33 |
Brian Deer visits a State Hospital to gather info for an article in the Times (puke)about patient psychiatry in Autism . He sees all kinds of patients, one of whom is loudly claiming to be God.
Brian Deer approaches him and says: “Since you’re God – why don’t you come here and put your hand over the fire?” The patient looks at him and replies: “Look buddy – just because I’m crazy doesn’t mean that I’m an idiot too”.L.O.L.
February 26, 2010 at 23:44 |
BriaN Deer walks into the psychiatrist’s and says “Doctor,Evan doctor,Evan you’ve got to
help me! I keep thinking that I’m a deck of cards!” Evan says “Sit
over there and I’ll deal with you later.”
February 26, 2010 at 23:48 |
Brian Deer is a patient with a split personality,” boasted Evan Harris , “and Medicare pays for both of them!”
February 26, 2010 at 23:51 |
Brian Deer I keep thinking I’m invisible.
Evan : Who said that?
February 26, 2010 at 23:54 |
Brian Deer goes to Evan,Evan sez, “You’re crazy!”
Brian Deer sez, “I want a second opinion!”
Evan sez,
“OK, yer ugly, too!”
February 26, 2010 at 23:57 |
Brian and Evan meet on the street. One says to the other,
“You know, I thought I’d been completely analyzed, but yesterday
I experienced the most remarkable Freudian Slip.”
Evan nods and waits to hear more…
Brian continues, “I was having dinner with my
mother, and I meant to say, ‘Please pass the butter’, but instead
I said, ‘You miserable bitch, you’ve ruined my life!!!”.
February 27, 2010 at 00:03 |
How many Brian Deer`s the philosophist will it take to to change a light bulb?
Only one but the light bulb must want to change!
February 27, 2010 at 00:14 |
Evan on his rounds in the Times offices sees a couple of reporters behaving rather strangely. The first woman is sitting on the edge of her desk clutching an imaginary steering wheel and making loud train noises “Chooo-Chooo… Whoooo-Whooooo…”
“What are you doing?” enquires Evan.
“I’m taking a train down to the GMC ,” lies the woman.
Somewhat taken a back but not to be put off, Evan moves on to the next desk where he can see some very energetic activity going on underneath the covers. On pulling them back he finds BRIAN DEER totally naked face down into the mattress.
“And what are you doing?” asks Evan, a little perplexed.
“Well,” pants Deer, “While she’s at the GMC , I’m fucking Kumar.”
February 27, 2010 at 00:21 |
Evan Harris thought he was John the Baptist and was disturbing the neighborhood, so
for public safety, he was committed. He was put in a room with another crazy Brian Deer .
and immediately began his routine, “I am John The Baptist! Jesus Christ has
sent me!” Brian Deer looks at him and declares, “I did *not*!”
February 27, 2010 at 00:33 |
Evan and Brian if at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.
February 27, 2010 at 00:37 |
Brian and Evan unlike Wakefield it’s hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere.
February 27, 2010 at 00:39 |
Is reading Brian Deers blog in the bathroom considered multi-tasking?
February 27, 2010 at 00:44 |
As Deer and Evan does If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
February 27, 2010 at 00:46 |
Mercury vaccinated cats cats have 18 half-lives.
February 27, 2010 at 00:59 |
More to follow great site!!!
February 28, 2010 at 00:00 |
February 28, 2010 at 00:01 |
February 28, 2010 at 00:01 |
February 28, 2010 at 00:03 |
February 28, 2010 at 00:05 |
February 28, 2010 at 00:06 |
February 28, 2010 at 00:08 |
February 28, 2010 at 00:11 |
February 28, 2010 at 13:05 |
Guss the Fuss / Angus Files
Please get back in your box you’re an embarresment, while you’re there just ponder that it was Wakefield who took blood at a kids party, (& joked about it…) it was Wakefield who deliberatly supressed more sensitive analytical data from his lab showing his measles results were nonsense and the Irish lab just happened to have omitted an enzyme required to make the assay work.
Oh yes and Wakefield had a patent on a single measles vaccine, didn’t he, convenient at the press conference that he just happened to mention single vaccines might be advisable, handy that especially when he had no evidence to support this, now turn the light out & shut the lid!
February 28, 2010 at 23:10 |
Occam conlficts of interest I think your trying to dribble about.. let seemmm”Brian Deer in particular – the journalist whose three letters of com plaint to the GMC had led to the longest, and most costly, trial in that organisation’s 148-year history.”
Brian Deer works for News Corporation.
News Corporation’s boss is James Murdoch.
James Murdoch works for GlaxoSmithKline – where according to the Guardian of 2/2/2009 “He will serve as a member of GSK’s corporate responsibility committee, where he will help to review “external issues that might have the potential for serious impact upon the group’s business and reputation”.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Alarm bells anybody???!!!!!!
Very interesting now to compare this GMC case with that of “Gosport death ward” doctor Jane Barton, who was NOT struck off by the GMC Fitness to Practise panel despite killing twelve elderly hospital patients through careless/negligent prescription of drugs, and despite the firmly held views of those dead pateints’ relatives that she should not be allowed to continue as a doctor.
By contrast, who apart from vested interests, one journalist various shady politicians and NHS administrators wanted Andrew Wakefield to be struck off?
So, the conclusion from the two decisions is that taking blood samples from kids whose parents have agreed but without NHS approval is a crime that should lead to the destruction of a doctor’s life, but killing twelve elderly patients is not?
Thats what you dare not look at Occam Why do you post under a false name if your so sure of the facts and have nothing to hide??
March 1, 2010 at 10:42 |
I would say Angus Files has some kind of brain problem, which has probably come out in his family. Is there even any point in trying to explain to him that the Wakefield GMC investigation began in 2004: five years before James Murdoch became a nonexecutive director of GSK?
March 1, 2010 at 16:20 |
You dont need a brain to answer you lot..James Murdoch is to health as Charles Manson is to moral philosopphy(Brian knows how to spell it)
“The Sunday Glaxo”. The GSK Trial are but some of the headlines associated with the Murdochs ,New Labour and The Times.. and James lets not all believe that little Brian Deer put all this together by himself ..In Wakefield’s case, the public have clearly been lacking the information to make an informed decisions. Most people do not know for instance that a number of GMC prosecutions are organised by and arrive at the GMC via Medico-Legal Investigations, a company solely financed by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industries that sometimes uses journalists to report their cases. Nor do most people understand that in Dr Wakefield’s case, the complainant was journalist Brian Deer, the only person in the world to lodge a formal complaint against Dr Wakefield. Deer is published by the Sunday Times, and what do the public know about the secret ties of researchers, journalists and newspapers with the vaccine industry or any other industry. In 2009, the owner of the Sunday Times, James Murdoch was given a place as a non-executive Director on the board of GlaxoSmithKline the MMR vaccine manufacturers.
Charges were first muted in 2004, the year that the claim of over 1,000 parents against three vaccine manufacturers, that had been proceeding over ten years, was suddenly denied legal aid. The Appeal against the withdrawal of legal aid was heard by a judge whose brother was a non-executive director of GlaxoSmithKline and the managing director of Elsevier, publishers of the Lancet. Dr Horton the editor of the Lancet gave heavily disputed evidence at the hearing and was allowed not to appear a second time to answer serious questions about this evidence.
March 2, 2010 at 20:03 |
eh!! forgot to say ..heres the site (puke!)
http://www.medicolegal-investigations.com/
The only UK company specialising in research fraud/misconduct investigations now supported by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
We now offer our services outside the pharmaceutical industry and are presently involved with teaching interview technique to HR professionals as well as operating a debugging service utilising the latest, sensitive equipment. Whatever your problem contact us first for reliability, credibility, integrity and proven ability.
NEW! Debugging service utilising lastest technology. Our proven integrity and reliability should make us your first point of call.
March 2, 2010 at 20:51 |
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/03/silenced-witnesses-uk-autism-parents-speak-out.html
March 2, 2010 at 20:56 |
Also available on ,just going to amuze meeself trolls..
March 3, 2010 at 00:12 |
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/walker999.html
March 3, 2010 at 00:16 |
by Martin Walker MA MA for CryShame. http://www.cryshame.com
In February 2004, Brian Deer, a well established and capable investigative journalist, authored a front page article entitled ‘MMR RESEARCH SCANDAL’ for the Sunday Times.1 This apparently independent article focused on what Deer maintained was the unethical research of Dr Andrew Wakefield, the research gastroenterologist who had over the preceding decade questioned the safety of the combined Mumps Measles and Rubella (MMR) vaccine.2
Wakefield’s analysis of the adverse reactions to this vaccination had come to a head in 1998 with the publication of a case review of 12 children, published in the Lancet. Deer followed this Sunday Times article with a Dispatches programme3 in November 2004.
1 Brian Deer, MMR RESEARCH SCANDAL. The Sunday Times (London) February 22, 2004.
2 Dr Wakefield and his lawyers soon embarked upon an action for libel against Deer and the Sunday Times. However, as this case proceeded and the start date for the prosecution by the GMC began to get closer, the defendants in the libel action demanded disclosure of all defence material in the GMC case and the judge instructed that they had to comply or forfeit their case. Dr Wakefield was forced to withdraw from the case.
3 MMR: What they didn’t tell you – Channel 4 Television, Dispatches, November 18 2004.
In Deer’s Sunday Times article the then Secretary of State for Health, Dr John Reid4 called for Dr Wakefield to be arraigned before the GMC on unspecified charges. It transpired later that Deer was the sole complainant against Dr Andrew Wakefield, lodging his complaint within days of the Sunday Times article being published. Six months after the Sunday Times article appeared and a month before the television programme, the General Medical Council (GMC) served notice on Dr. Wakefield to appear before the Council’s Preliminary Proceedings Committee (PPC), a necessary step before possibly being brought before the Professional Conduct Committee.
4 Secretary of State for Health June 2003 – May 2005
From its very beginning, the case that developed around Dr Andrew Wakefield, inside and outside of the GMC was shot through with vested interests. Nothing about the case has been straightforward, nothing is clean or without the dirty finger marks of conspiracy. However, unlike other similar situations that have unfolded during New Labour’s decade of office, the government, because of an apparent moral clarity in any circumstance involving health and medicine, still appears to be winning hands down. Despite the support of a number of able journalists and campaign supporters, no cracks or fissures have appeared in the public façade of New Labours crucifixion of Dr Wakefield.
Ultimately, this failure in the public defence of Dr Wakefield probably hinges on the fact that when it comes to pharmaceutical medicine many commentators immediately suspend critical belief; drugs good all else bad. But it is also because the case of Dr Wakefield and his public criticism of vaccine policy has been the first and most substantial case to fall victim to a new corporate agenda for government in Britain. In the first years of the new century, high ranking corporate lobbyists partly funded by pharmaceutical interests and fated by New Labour embarked upon a strategy of defending corporate science by censuring the media.5
Throughout the second half of the 1990s, those cases of vaccine damaged children who had been affected by MMR and MR vaccination introduced in 1988, gained considerable publicity.6 By the early years of the new century, however, with the new policy of censorship tightening like a noose round the neck of free public debate, these children had vanished and for the children’s parents all the doors previously open to expressing criticism of the government and corporate malfeasance had been firmly closed.
This essay analyses perhaps the most singularly important strategic manipulations of the media that has played a decisive end-game role in the case of Dr Wakefield; his appearance with two other doctors before a fitness-to-practice panel at the General Medical Council (GMC) in London. The essay looks with a broad sweep at how Dr Wakefield’s prosecution by the GMC was constructed by Brian Deer, The Sunday Times and a small subsidiary investigation company of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI).
5 See this author’s Brave New World of Zero Risk.
March 4, 2010 at 22:04 |
HERE IS ONE FOR HIRED LIAR DEER BRIAN DEER
March 4, 2010 at 22:11 |
SOME ARE SUCKED IN !!NOT HERE DEER..
March 4, 2010 at 23:42 |
of course under the the guise of being a professional jounalist..my two year olf son could have backed this pile of lies..CLEVER ??yeh so clever ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! GASP!!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! BIGGER GASP!!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! FLAT LINNER!!!
March 4, 2010 at 23:56 |
PATSY DEER SOON TO BE AS ALL GOVERMENT DIRTY DOO`ERS HAVE IN THE PAST .LIKE A USED CONDOM DISCARDED WHEN USED ..PUKE!! YER TEA IS UP DEER!!
March 4, 2010 at 23:57 |
LOVE THIS FREE SPEECH ,PITY SOME OTHER MORE SENSIBLE QUESTIONS AREN`T ANSWERED….
March 5, 2010 at 00:09 |
AND EVAN IF THE HAT FITS WEAR IT AS THEY SAY!!! W.T.F.
March 5, 2010 at 00:17 |
OH! IS IT TRUE THAT BD IS A PEDO?JUST THOUGHT I WOULD ASK AS A COUPLE OF MY COP FRIENDS ARE LOOKING IN TO WHY HE HAS BEEN SO KEEN TO NAME AND SHAME ON HIS WEB SITE CHILDREN WHO HAVE HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE MMR AUTISM LINK..?? IS IT NOT ALL A BIT STRANGE AND GOING BEYOND JOURNO PRO..VERY STRANGE??
March 5, 2010 at 14:40 |
We need a Public Inquiry into the financing of Wakefield
The Fitness to Practice Panel at the General Medical Council has recently delivered the Findings of Fact following an investigation into allegations of “serious professional conduct” by Wakefield and two colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital.
Wakefield was one of the most highly- paid experts in the MMR 1 litigation to address a possible link between MMR/MR vaccines and Autism /IBD. He was contracted into this role by Mr Richard Barr, initially of Dawbarns solicitors, then Hodge Jones and Allen and later, Alexander Harris.
Charges 3 and 4 on the GMC charge sheet refer specifically to Wakefield’s role in supplying material to that Barr used to extract money from the Legal Services Commission. The Legal Aid Board, as it was then, awarded an initial £55,000 to the lawyers. Charge 4 (a) (i) was that Wakefield failed “to cause the legal Aid Board to be informed that investigations represented by the clinicians as being clinically indicated would be covered by NHS funding”. Charge 4(a)(ii) was that Wakefield “caused or permitted the money supplied by the Legal aid Board to be used for purposes other than those for which you said it was needed and for which it had been granted”
The findings on these two charges show that Wakefield acted dishonestly with funding while acting as an expert witness.
An investigation is needed into how the LSC was defrauded? Wakefield was hired by lawyers appointed by the LSC to represent the claimant children, and it is the lawyers who must explain how the money was purloined. What is the LSC doing to recover the money and ensure that such a fraud cannot be perpetrated again?
Lord Taverne asked about the squandering of £15m of public funding on the MMR-Autism IBD litigation in Parliament on 16th June 2004…“The Legal Aid Fund has been depleted and, indirectly, the access to justice for others who might have benefited from the proper use of the £15 million has been prejudiced”… “despite the lack of any evidence in support of them, in 1994 the legal Aid Board, as it was then, funded claims for compensation against the pharmaceutical companies”… “after 10 years and the expenditure of more than £15m, not surprisingly no evidence has emerged to provide a prima-facie case. Earlier this year the Legal Services Commission withdrew support and declared that the failure to find evidence meant that the case was very likely to fail. It also observed that aid should never have been granted, because the courts are not the place to prove new medical truths”
We need a Public Inquiry into how £15m was squandered on litigation that (a) by the LSC’s own admission should not have received legal aid, (b) was unable to provide a prima-facie case, (c) included the funding of a lead expert witness shown to have used the funds inappropriately, and (d) denied access to justice for non-ASD/IBD claims because Wakefield and the lawyers had walked away with the money.
Lord Taverne summed it up “it was a disgrace that legal aid was ever granted. The so-called research was, and was always likely to be a farce. None of the families benefited by a penny from the whole operation”
March 5, 2010 at 22:32 |
W.T.F. Deer complains about spurious harm to children ,when infact he NAMES AND SHAMES SEVERELY DISABLED CHILDREN ON HIS WEB SITE…ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! CANT BREATH !!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! GASP!!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! HUGE GASP!!!
ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! BREATH !!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !hPLEASE a!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! GASP OH! !!!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! HUGE GASPING!!!
!ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! CANT BREATH !!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha SAY THE WORD !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! GASP!!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! HUGE GASPING!!!
ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! CANT BREATH !!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha! GASPED!!!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!ha !ha!STILL LAAUGHING AND ENJOYING…KEEPP IT GOING !!NO WORD BEING SAID???PHONE THIS NUMBER IF YOU WANT TO BLOW THE WHISTLE 07765181237
ON DEER AND EVAN
March 5, 2010 at 22:44 |
And the obvious Bing without the Bling ,yep!phone the number…
March 5, 2010 at 22:52 |
I`M WAITING…GET IT RIGHT AWAY FROM YOU,YOU DONT NEED THIS PROBLEM WERE NOT GETTING THE MONEY EVAN AND BRIAN ARE ? ARE WE??MMMM!!!
March 5, 2010 at 23:14 |
Jim can you phone me back as the line went dead!!!
March 5, 2010 at 23:49 |
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’s
March 6, 2010 at 00:22 |
Scandal Looms Over Key Scientist In Danish Mercury Autism Study
By Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill
A website focused on flu vaccines, citing Danish news accounts and a statement from an official of Aarhus University, is reporting that “A Danish scientist who was the author of a key study that undermined the scientific basis for believing that mercury in vaccines caused autism was employed full time by Emory University in the USA without his university knowing, it has emerged. … Aarhaus University said in a statement today that they had “expressly prohibited” Dr Poul Thorsen from working for a second university, Emory. … The revelation that Thorsen had a second secret job will raise fears of a hidden bias in the studies and undermine the scientific case for thiomersal.” (HERE)
Poul Thorsen was a co-author on two influential papers on the link between autism and vaccines, one on MMR published in 2002 by the New England Journal of Medicine and another published in 2003 by Pediatrics on thimerosal. SafeMinds performed an extensive analysis (see HERE) of the close network of collaboration the included Aarhus University researchers, employees of the Staten Serum Institut (a vaccine manufacturer) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Thorsen was a central figure in that network, with close ties to CDC (Thorsen is 4th from left in photo, click to enlarge), and now stands accused of forgery and fraud. According to a statement from Aarhus University (see HERE for full text):
“The Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation (DASTI) has been a grant recipient as part of a cooperative agreement with the US National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, CDC, since 2001. The grant has been administered by Odense University Hospital and Aarhus University (AU) under the direction of Dr. Poul Thorsen. The grant has multiple components and involves collaborators at other institutions in Denmark, including the University of Copenhagen and SSI (Statens Serum Institut). This successful collaboration has resulted in numerous valuable scientific results, and many more are forthcoming.
“Unfortunately, a considerable shortfall in funding at Aarhus University associated with the CDC grant was discovered. In investigating the shortfalls associated with the grant, DASTI and Aarhus University became aware of two alleged CDC funding documents as well as a letter regarding funding commitments allegedly written by Randolph B. Williams of CDC’s Procurement Grants Office which was used to secure advances from Aarhus University. Upon investigation by CDC, a suspicion arose that the documents are forgeries.”
According to the university, “a police investigation is ongoing.”
Thorsen made important contributions to some of the most influential studies that have been claimed as evidence for no link between autism and vaccines. The Pediatrics paper is one of five major epidemiology studies cited by the Institute of Medicine in their 2004 report on thimerosal and autism. Based on these studies, three of which included the Aarhus team, the IOM concluded that “the evidence now favors rejection of a relationship between thimerosal and autism.”
Stay tuned for updates on this story as more details emerge.
Dan Olmsted is Editor and Mark Blaxill is Editor-At-Large for Age of Autism.
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The Wakefield Inquisition: Case Series Insanity
By Dan Olmsted
What, exactly, did Dr. Andrew Wakefield do wrong?
To most people who followed the drumbeat of news about the retraction of his 1998 Lancet paper – and especially to most of the mainstream media who did the “reporting” – that does not need to be put in the form of a question. Wakefield’s medical license is now in jeopardy because he did just about EVERYTHING wrong in an “Early Report”, (HERE) a case series on 12 children with regressive autism and a novel bowel disorder their parents or doctor attributed, in most cases, to administration of the MMR vaccine. Given the egregiousness of these wrongs and the prestige-ousness of those who announced them, the “question” moved almost immediately from who, what, when and where to why – why had the Lancet let itself be so misused as to publish the claim that vaccines cause autism based on a bogus study; why had it taken so long to disavow such fraudulent nonsense?
And now we’ve sunk to the seventh circle of journalism hell – based on this slapdash and slipshod reporting, the media says the entire debate over vaccines and autism has been settled. Nothing to see here. Please move along.
Not so fast. The media’s first job is to report the facts correctly, and a corollary to that is to “rely on your own original reporting” whenever possible, according to “The Elements of Journalism” by the respected journalism elders Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenthal. At a minimum in the Wakefield case, this would mean that key reporters breaking the story nationally – on the TV news networks and major online news sites, in the big dailies and magazines – needed to be familiar with three things: Wakefield’s original paper; the General Medical Council ruling from the week before that found his ethical behavior “dishonest,” and The Lancet retraction of the paper itself that quickly followed.
“Being familiar with” in this circumstance, it seems to me, means reading the paper (with comprehension, as they used to say in grade school) and retaining its key elements. This story had been coming down the pike for months, so there was no reason to be unprepared. Even if, given the 24/7 Internet exigencies of today’s news cycle, a reporter was caught flat-footed, the same Internet provides instant access to primary materials. What’s more, the Wakefield report is only five pages long and the relevant passages are in unusually plain English for a scientific report. (Anyone who thinks this level of diligence is asking too much of reporters and editors doesn’t really understand the value or purpose of journalism, or why the Amendment by which it is protected is the First.) It wouldn’t have hurt to talk to Wakefield or the parents of the children involved in the study, either, but that appears to be asking way too much.
So setting a very low bar — mere factual accuracy — how did the media do? They got just about EVERYTHING wrong, and persisted in error even when it was being pointed out to them. The media were not helped by The Lancet’s own strangely worded (and, ultimately, inaccurate) retraction and failure to fully explain itself, but that’s not a good enough excuse.
As a way to focus the issue, it is fair to say that Wakefield’s presumed offenses can be broken out into two categories: acts of commission or omission that were morally wrong – unethical – on the one hand, and those that were scientifically wrong on the other. Because of the demonstrably inaccurate reporting of the science – the heart, after all, of a scientific work, we will discuss that here. (THIS report by Dr. Bill Long in The Autism File magazine does a good job of laying out the ethics charges and demonstrating what we strongly believe is their lack of merit.)
In this case it makes narrative sense to start in medeas res, in the middle of things, with the Lancet’s retraction. It is short, and here it is in full:
“Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al. are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation. In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were ‘consecutively referred’ and that investigations were ‘approved’ by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.”
http://www.ageofautism.com/
One could watch news outlets grappling with this statement in real time. At Forbes.com, Senior Editor Michael Herper lampooned the Lancet’s language as “incomprehensible” and offered his own rewrite of what it was trying to say: “In particular, the patients were not ‘consecutively referred,’ raising the odds that the results were due to chance.”
Continue reading “The Wakefield Inquisition: Case Series Insanity” »
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March 8, 2010 at 17:35 |
Why is Wakefield dependent on support from crooks and idiots?
March 8, 2010 at 17:37 |
The Wakefield fraud was run by Hodge Jones and Allen, a law firm that was awarded the MMR contract without even tendering for it. HJA was given that licence to print money because Hodge was a Blair crony and a Labour Party donor. See http://www.mmrlawyers.blogspot.com
Why has the money defrauded from public funds not been recovered?
March 8, 2010 at 17:38 |
Wasn’t it convenient that HJA handled the case as if all MMR vaccines were the same, and then brought legal action against the manufacturers instead of against the Government – the most liable party? There wasn’t a single MMR vaccine, there were several different formulations each of which was known to have its own set of adverse reactions. That evidence never got to court because the entire litigation was based on Wakefield’s fraudulent drivel. Merck’s MMR1 had almost 20 years of usage in the USA when the UK eradication policy was introduced and it is probably MMR1 that was intended for use in the UK but at the last minute there was a shift to Pluserix. Very strange as Pluserix was known to cause meningitis, a defect that had already caused it to be removed from the Canadian market. Moreover, the defective Pluserix was much more expensive than the relatively safe MMR1. The manufacturers of Pluserix would have paid millions to be able to sell their unmarketable reject stock at a vastly enhanced price. So who trousered the cash, Sir Nicholas? Then came another formulation, Immravax, which was later withdrawn along with Pluserix, and they were replaced with a revised Merck product, MMR2. So there were four different formulations, and they involved different virus strains, adjuvants and manufacturing methods. They each had their own known adverse reactions – just about everything except autism – but all that evidence was suppressed. How much would the manufacturers and the Government have paid to keep embarrassing evidence out of court? About £18m, most of which went to the crooked lawyers, but Wakefield got enough to buy a decent house in Houston for providing the distracting drivel. But it gets worse. There is evidence that there was a fifth, secret formulation. Evans Medical’s notorious Liverpool factory produced 200,000 doses of an MMR vaccine based on BSE-suspect bovine material. Where did those doses go just at the time that the Joint Vaccination and Immunisation Committee was pondering the a 200,000 dose shortfall?
March 8, 2010 at 17:38 |
The incompetence of Augustus Ullstein, Richard and Kirsten Barr was obvious by 1999. So why were they were still in charge when the MMR action collapsed in 2004? See http://www.documentz.wordpress.com
March 8, 2010 at 17:39 |
The GMC is dealing with the abuse of children by doctors. But those children were the clients of lawyers who sent them for that abuse and profited thereby. When will the Law Society and the Bar Council deal with those lawyers? See http://www.solicitorsfromhell.co.uk
March 8, 2010 at 17:39 |
Nurse Sarah Dodd was employed by the lawyers to take samples from the children in their homes. Perhaps she would explain exactly what samples were taken.
March 8, 2010 at 17:40 |
Wakefield’s defence at the GMC and his previous fraudulent defamation suit against Deer was funded out of the earnings of honest doctors. When will honest doctors stop the looting of their bank accounts by crooks?
March 10, 2010 at 11:35 |
yea good information
March 15, 2010 at 23:44 |
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/755191/Mums-on-the-poll-for-kids-Polly-Tommey-copies-Wonderbrarsquos-quotHello-boysquot-ad-to-get-support-for-children-with-autism.html
Mum’s on the poll for kids
By Ian Kirby, 14/03/2010
A MUM is putting herself on show on billboards across the country to win greater political support for children with autism.
Polly Tommey, 42, is copying Wonderbra’s famous “Hello boys” campaign to convey her message that there are six million General Election votes in the bag for the party taking the condition most seriously.
Polly’s own son Billy, 13, is autistic. The posters will go up across the country this week.
Polly, 42, from Twickenham, Middlesex, said last night: “Autism affects many, many more people than the immediate family. It must be placed as a priority.”
Her Autism Trust says six million voters will back a party that includes proposals to look after kids in its manifesto.
Last year Polly was invited to Downing Street after putting her phone number on a billboard inviting Gordon Brown to call. She said: “Now I’m hoping the Conservatives will come back with some concrete policies as well.”
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HE’S SCOTT TALENT!
Your comments
This article has 28 comments
Well done Polly! Anything that makes people sit up and listen gets my vote!
By Clare.. Posted March 15 2010 at 10:46 PM.
I would really like the oppertunity to help these autistic children but where do i start? how do I find the families that could benifit from what I know
By Tricia.. Posted March 15 2010 at 10:21 PM.
Polly you are a fantastic courageous human being and the ultimate mother warriar for all of us autism mothers. We are 100% behind you, shame your not in the next election. Its about time autism became a priority and our children were helped to reach their true potential. Go polly ….looking great and a true role model as for Jane Smith your only jealous that polly is leading the way to get our children the services that every other child has in thisx country except ours , well done polly .
By nina lteif.. Posted March 15 2010 at 6:02 PM.
Superb work by Polly in geting some recognition for the problem the goverment dont want to see ..
By Angus Files.. Posted March 15 2010 at 1:06 PM.
wake up government and listen !!! autism is brain damage bowel disorder immune damage . 1 in 100 children, its a disgrace that its not top priority to treat these children and find out why this is happening or are we going to wait to the whole poulation is affected . well done Polly 1000 s and 1000s of parents stand with you.
By nicola Brady.. Posted March 15 2010 at 12:29 PM.
where do i put my boobs? I’m there.
By Michelle.. Posted March 14 2010 at 11:05 PM.
Wish there were a campaign like this here in the States. Universal Healthcare and Autism coverage is an issue that goes hand in hand. Yet it hardly gets a mention in the proposed healthcare bill.
By Joseph Fontanez.. Posted March 14 2010 at 10:26 PM.
Great message Polly. My vote will definitely only go to the party who treats autism with the concern it deserves.
By deejaynash.. Posted March 14 2010 at 10:02 PM.
Well done Polly. You did it again!
By Susan.. Posted March 14 2010 at 9:44 PM.
Way hey Polly! I love it! I don’t know where your inspiration comes from, but may it keep coming! Such a good idea to get a bit of humour into the campaign.
Jane Smith – and what is your plan to get help for autistic children??
By Janette Robb.. Posted March 14 2010 at 9:37 PM.
Jane Smith says:-
‘Pathetic what a disgrase to the autism community this woman isand whata a wate of moeny’ (I did not correct the spelling or grammatical ‘boobs’ in this piece of writing).
Each autistic child costs a great deal of public money. Most affected children have special educational needs. Many, also, have other physical problems to contend with too. The incidence of autism is increasing alarmingly, and yet very little research is being undertaken to find out the causes.
Successive government health department politicians and personnel have shown collective indifference to this growing problem within our population. Anything that makes them sit up and listen has to be worthwhile.
Well done Polly!!
By Jenny Allan.. Posted March 14 2010 at 9:36 PM.
Way to go Polly! Definitely money well spent!!!!
By Krystale Willet.. Posted March 14 2010 at 9:20 PM.
I haven’t been directly affected by autism and yet through the campaigning of this woman, have been made more aware of the terrible shortfalls which families have to go through everyday. She had single handedly made me and I am sure hundreds of others, sit up and think about this condition. Thank you Polly for making us all realise what this condition really means to society as a whole and how we need to start thinking about the future and not turn our backs on this.
By Emma .. Posted March 14 2010 at 8:58 PM.
Well done, Polly. We stand with you.
By MomOf3AU.. Posted March 14 2010 at 8:48 PM.
Hi Polly
Many thanks for your energy and commitment. I appreciate all that you have been doing and I shall pray for your Dad.
Happy Mother’s Day.
By Joan Campbell.. Posted March 14 2010 at 8:26 PM.
Jane Smith’s words speak for themselves. Well they’re alomost words anyway. What an embarassment she is to herself.
Polly Tommey ROCKS!! She is courageous, daring, intuitive, ingenuitive, well spoken and inspirational. Absolutley eveything the autism community is in need of. We stand proudly with you, Polly!! Rook on girlfriend!!
By Lin.. Posted March 14 2010 at 8:13 PM.
Thank you Polly for standing up for us all and for putting yourself on the line for so many. I hope this creative and inspired campaign creates the awareness to ensure Autism IS a priority for the UK Gov, especially for the sake of all of us affected and also the next generation just a vaccine or environmental damage away from the same fate…
By Simone Lanham.. Posted March 14 2010 at 8:16 PM.
Way to go Polly. Jane Smith you obviously have not been affected by autism looking at your comment. My 5yr old boy has autism & there is harldy anything out there to help him in his young years & being a single mum I shudder at the thought of him surviving on his own when he is older. Polly you are a wonderfull mother & what a great idea as you will get noticed as you are beautiful inside & out. x
By Gail Hamilton.. Posted March 14 2010 at 7:24 PM.
Jane smith you are the disgrace.
Go polly, the autism world needs you
money well spent 😉
By Kirsty allen.. Posted March 14 2010 at 6:10 PM.
What is pathetic Jane Smith, is your rude and unnecessary comments to a woman who is inspirational to us all. Polly, you are fabulous, keep up the good work.
By Jessica Cresswell.. Posted March 14 2010 at 5:16 PM.
Proud of you mother x
By Bella Tommey.. Posted March 14 2010 at 5:17 PM.
Thank you Polly! You have done it again. The autism community needs this very brave and enterprising mother.
Autism is the ongoing threat to the future of all our children if the vaccine issue is not addressed and drug companies are able to have power over the Government.
By Jill Southgate.. Posted March 14 2010 at 5:34 PM.
Absolutely fabulous! Polly is one mother that our governments should not mess with. And behind Polly are thousands and thousands more Autism Mothers just the same. We will not go away. Well done Polly for being such an inspiration and leading the way.
By nadine honeybone.. Posted March 14 2010 at 8:36 AM.
I think this beautiful mother is one of the most courageous women on earth. She stands up for autism, wishing to get it recognised as a major epidemic that not only has massive affects on the individual but the family, the extended family and all those involved in supporting autism and the autism community.
Looking into the causative issues, the diagnosis, the education, the care and the future for all individuals with an autism diagnosis is highly critical and must be placed on a political agenda. For those that cannot see this as a major priority must surely be those that are poorly educated, unaware and simply not caring and do seriously need to wake up and take a more serious attitude to this situation. It is worthy of over 6 million votes today but as numbers escalate what about in another ten years?
Well done to Polly Tommey, she is an inspiration to all who are passionate and concerned about this condition. Go girl!!!
By david lawler.. Posted March 14 2010 at 7:43 AM.
Well, 4 out 5 autism cases are boys, and 1 in 40 boys are now on the autistic spectrum, so hello boys, indeed!
And well done Polly, for highlighting the issue.
By Leo Kanner.. Posted March 14 2010 at 6:48 AM.
Sensational!
Key politicians ought to recognise, nearly every family in the country is either affected by or knows someone with autism – who could fail to miss this? Polly you are a brave, brave woman. Bravo.
By allison edwards.. Posted March 14 2010 at 6:13 AM.
March 17, 2010 at 21:59 |
http://www.ageofautism.com/
Vaccine Injury Story on American Idol? We Are the Mainstream. Public Health and Media is the Fringe.
Last night on American Idol, viewers heard that a contestant had had a “bad reaction to pertussis vaccine and seizures.” This the most mainstream program on television. Read JB Handley’s post on “The Tinderbox”” and how Americans no longer trust the overloaded vaccine schedule. Please comment if you watched American Idol last night.
Casey James, we learn, had a bad reaction to the pertussis vaccine — lots of seizures — and his mother was worried about his delayed speech, until he started humming songs in his crib. He sings “It’s All Over Now.” He has a great time on stage, rocking out. Randy says he is back. Ellen says for most women, their hearts will race just looking at him, but “for people like me … blondes … I thought it was fantastic.” Heh. Kara says he really was a rock star, unlike last week when he was just trying. Simon says he look great, sang well, played well, but it felt more like an audition than to him doing something incredible on this big stage. You can read more in The Baltimore Sun.
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March 17, 2010 at 22:02 |
No posts from the dark side??bit dark??
March 17, 2010 at 23:03 |
Until such time ENJOY!!!the waste of the population..
March 17, 2010 at 23:19 |
Noddy Deer anyone that does the dirty for the goverment in the UK is put to Nod themselves sooner or later good night Noddy Deer..
Angus
March 17, 2010 at 23:32 |
March 18, 2010 at 18:31 |
Thats Noddy Deer what a larf..Jesus loves ya! but your a prick..
March 18, 2010 at 22:09 |
JEEPERS I BET THE ONE CLICK,JABS ET-AL COULD GET AWAY WITH THESE POSTINGS NO WORRIES EVAN YOUR THE MANNA!!!PUKE!!!
March 19, 2010 at 06:43 |
Good arguments Guss, well thought out and powerfully persuasive for the influence of genetics
March 19, 2010 at 11:46 |
Connie Howard inadvertently revealed more dirt on Wakefield in her article http://www.vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14512
She asked Wakefield if he’d been paid over £ 400,000 pounds by lawyers who wanted to show that MMR vaccines caused autism. He replied “I worked as a medical expert for nine years on the MMR litigation. When the case folded because Legal Aid was withdrawn, the lawyers refused to pay what was owed and the costs judge took a lot of the fees back from the various experts. What I did earn was donated to an initiative to build a new centre for gastroenterology care and research at the Royal Free [in London]. Unfortunately I was forced out and it never got built.”
So the lawyers who employed Wakefield were dissatisfied with his work and he tried to swindle more than £400,000 but the judge turned him down.
What about the money going to a new centre at the Royal Free? Wakefield tried to buy a professorship by offering profits from his various frauds but he’d been kicked out of the Royal Free by the time he got the £400,000. Did he expect to buy his way back with £400,000? But why doesn’t he tell us where the money went. You pocketed it, didn’t you, Andy?
Wakefield did another piece of fancy footwork in his interview. He said “the case folded because Legal Aid was withdrawn”. Not true. His research was such rubbish that the lawyers who had employed him were forced to conclude that there was no case and reported that to the Legal Aid Board. The collapse of the litigation was absolutely due to Wakefield’s incompetence.
March 19, 2010 at 11:48 |
Dr Bill Long’s article “On Second looking into the Case Of Dr Andrew J. Wakefield” in the Autism File (Issue 31 2009) records how Rosemary Kessick in a phone call to Dr Wakefield of 19th May 1995 told the story of how her son had descended into autism after having the MMR vaccine. The Findings of Fact following an investigation by the Fitness to Practice Panel at the GMC into the conduct of Wakefield and two of his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital outline how nearly all the Lancet 12 children did not fit the inclusion criteria for the study because they had had the MMR vaccine, Ms Kessick’s son included.
Wakefield knew as far back as the 1995 phone call that Ms Kessick’s son had had the MMR vaccine and did not fit the criteria for in inclusion in the Lancet 12. How many of the others, found to have been wrongly included in the Lancet 12 because they had had the MMR vaccine, made that known beforehand? This is a clear demonstration of research fraud? Is this why Wakefield ensured that parents were not called as witnesses?
March 19, 2010 at 11:50 |
The Legal Services Commission undertook to send the Wakefield data to the Medical Research Council. Why did it renege on that undertaking?
March 19, 2010 at 11:52 |
Wakefield was a staggeringly incompetent researcher. So why was he a lecturer at University College London? Educational standards have fallen but this is ridiculous. Why is UCL permitted to continue to award degrees?
March 19, 2010 at 11:54 |
Wakefield was such an awful clinician that he was not permitted to act in that capacity at all. He was also a staggeringly incompetent researcher. So why was he employed by the Royal Free? And why did the management of the Royal Free not notice the “Wakefield Clinic” on their premises despite him being prevented by his contract from doing clinical work?
March 19, 2010 at 20:46 |
Occam and bing you are indeed clever bastards. I now step over you in admiration on the pavements of the streets where once i would have called the poop collector…have a look ,take a sniff now stick your heads back in the sand.. clever bastards!!…
http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/
March 19, 2010 at 20:47 |
March 19, 2010 at 21:39 |
If you wonder why Evan and Deers pictures arent up on Mr Durys film it`s because ,because because,because..there heads are so big they wouldnt fit in normal format…puke!!and puke again!!
March 19, 2010 at 23:49 |
Also is that the face of concern above mmmm….Jesus loves ya! all but your all pricks…
March 25, 2010 at 11:40 |
Brian Deer and the BMJ: Letters Removed but Questions Remain
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/03/brian-deer-and-the-bmj-letters-removed-but-questions-remain.html#comments
A sequence of letters appearing over the last two and a half weeks in on-line British Medical Journal, questioning how journalist Brian Deer could have had access to children’s medical records, have been removed following threat of legal action (See here ). The story was first reported on Age of Autism nine days ago (HERE). It is not clear what the basis of the legal action is, or from where it stems.
For the record, Deer states on his website in a notice regarding copyright and plagiary: “For reference, with regard to Brian Deer’s MMR investigation, almost all of the key facts and documents are not public domain, and, such is the culture of plagiarism, he will act against authors who represent his writing, interviews, documents, or other research, as the fruit of their own inquiries, whether referenced or not.” (HERE)
But what certainly is not public domain is how – six and half years on from the beginning of his investigation – he gained access to the confidential material, and why nothing is ever done about it, despite many complaints from parents. It is not alright for people to turn a blind eye over patient confidentiality because it is politically expedient, because that is the whole reason for patient confidentiality. This is particularly sensitive in the UK at the moment as the government plan to place everyone’s records on-line in the new National Health Service database within months.
John Stone is UK Editor for Age of Autism.
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March 26, 2010 at 14:48 |
WAKEFIELD, THE PARENTS’ FRIEND?
Dr Bill Long’s article “On Second looking into the Case Of Dr Andrew J. Wakefield” in the Autism File (Issue 31 2009) records how Rosemary Kessick in a phone call to Dr Wakefield of 19th May 1995 told the story of how her son had descended into autism after having the MMR vaccine. The Findings of Fact following an investigation by the Fitness to Practice Panel at the GMC into the conduct of Wakefield and two of his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital outline how nearly all the Lancet 12 children did not fit the inclusion criteria for the study because they had had the MMR vaccine, Ms Kessick’s son included.
Wakefield knew as far back as the 1995 phone call that Ms Kessick’s son had had the MMR vaccine and did not fit the criteria for in inclusion in the Lancet 12. How many of the others, found to have been wrongly included in the Lancet 12 because they had had the MMR vaccine, made that known beforehand? This is a clear demonstration of research fraud? Is this why Wakefield ensured that parents were not called as witnesses?
March 26, 2010 at 21:32 |
Whats that to do with price of bread?Your bonkers Bing is that your real name Bing Bonkers??
April 1, 2010 at 14:14 |
AF, every time you open your mouth I hear a cell-door clanging. I don’t want BILL knocking on my door, so STFU.
April 1, 2010 at 15:38 |
The Wakefield gang continues to try to deceive. Wakefield was never anything more than a means for the Government to hide the damage it had caused with Pluserix; nothing to do with autism. Civil servants and ministers faced jail and an investigation into why they over-paid for Pluserix when it was already known to be unsafe. The Government appointed lawyers who in return for vast sums took the legal action off –track and away from Pluserix.
Wakefield and O’Leary never came up with ANY evidence to support the utterly implausible theory that had been concocted by Mrs Kessick and Richard Barr’s moll, now Kirsten Barr.
So it’s not surprising that having squandered the budget, the claimants’ lawyers reported that they had no case. There never could have been a case based on Wakefield’s nonsense. The money was thrown at the Government’s friendly lawyers, Hodge Jones and Allen, for them to ensure that action on MMR/MR vaccines was sent straight up a blind alley. Hodge was a Labour donor, a pal of Bliar and a designer of the corrupt New Labour project. Just think of the research that could have been completed with the £15m plus that was squandered on Bliar’s corrupt lawyer pals.
The gravy train had to hit the buffers sometime and when the LSC said there was no more cash the lawyers said there’s no case, which ended the litigation. Davis J could do nothing but draw matters to a close and his decision was probably the least corrupt act in the entire farce.
April 3, 2010 at 20:54 |
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/04/dr-wakefield-in-his-own-words-video-series.html#comments
April 3, 2010 at 20:56 |
April 3, 2010 at 20:59 |
April 3, 2010 at 21:00 |
April 3, 2010 at 21:02 |
April 3, 2010 at 21:05 |
April 3, 2010 at 21:10 |
April 3, 2010 at 21:12 |
April 4, 2010 at 12:46 |
bing Says:
March 8, 2010 at 5:39 pm | Reply
Nurse Sarah Dodd was employed by the lawyers to take samples from the children in their homes. Perhaps she would explain exactly what samples were taken.
Where can we read more about Nurse Dodd taking blood?
April 4, 2010 at 22:48 |
Exactly!
By providing childrens’ medical records to an unauthorised party a criminal act was committed. Heads will have to roll.
Some very senior medical careers are about to end in disgrace and dishonour.
The parents are at long last starting to win this grossly uneven battle. The tide is turning.
Posted by: Osler | March 25, 2010 at 06:19 AM
Oh dear oh dear, this Brian Deer looks like a bad case of NPD.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/narcissistic-personality-disorder/DS00652/DSECTION=symptoms
April 4, 2010 at 23:45 |
JC dont worry about Bing as it has no Bling but then what do we expect from Pharma trolls????
April 6, 2010 at 22:40 |
And Dr Wakefield is “Shaken, not stirred” SLURP!!!
April 8, 2010 at 23:39 |
Once again Deer proves that he is a prize dumplin’! I’ll keep it simple because he couldn’t spell ‘tit’ backwards and he obviously is a paid up member of the hard of thinking club PHARMA Cartel,AINT YA!!!.
April 11, 2010 at 23:48 |
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/10/wakefield-interview.aspx
April 11, 2010 at 23:55 |
April 15, 2010 at 09:06 |
ril 14, 2010
Oxford West & Abingdon: Are your Patient Records Safe with Evan Harris MP?
A question for the electors of Oxford West and Abingdon – are your patient records safe with Evan Harris MP?
By John Stone
As the British government motors ahead to put all NHS patient records on-line the issue of patient confidentiality has become highly sensitive. Indeed, the question is only made more sensitive by the possibility that patient confidentiality could be broken for political ends.
These issues are now coming to a head in what has become known as the Wakefield affair, although they reach back more than six years to the original allegations against the three Royal Free doctors – who not only include Andrew Wakefield, but his colleagues Profs John Walker-Smith and Simon Murch – made by Liberal-Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris and Sunday Times journalist Brian Deer.
Even now Deer states on his website:
“For reference, with regard to Brian Deer’s MMR investigation, almost all of the key facts and documents are not public domain, and, such is the culture of plagiarism, he will act against authors who represent his writing, interviews, documents, or other research, as the fruit of their own inquiries, whether referenced or not.” (HERE)
But the problem should have been all too apparent from the beginning when Deer and Harris made allegations about patients in Wakefield’s Lancet ‘early report’ also being enrolled in the group litigation against the MMR manufacturers. While it is not possible for many of us to agree with the construction placed on events by Deer and Harris it remains a question how the claims about the overlap could have been made without reference to confidential patient records. Indeed, disturbingly Deer stated in a recent letter to on-line British Medical Journal:
“I know the names and family backgrounds of all 12 of the children enrolled in the study, including the child enrolled from the United States.” (HERE)
In his original Sunday Times report Deer wrote:
“Of the eight children whose parents were eventually reported in The Lancet as having associated the jab with the onset of their child’s autism, “four, perhaps five” were covered by the legal aid contract.” (HERE)
Harris had accompanied Deer to the Lancet offices four days earlier to ambush Wakefield and the other doctors with the allegations. Lancet editor, Richard Horton, later recalled in his book about the MMR affair:
“The tension had been heightened …by the shadowy presence of Evan Harris, a Liberal-Democrat MP.”
And goes on a little further down:
“A whirlwind of innuendo ensued which caught us all in its wake. Evan Harris, the MP who had mysteriously joined Brian Deer at the Lancet’s offices, called for an independent inquiry into Wakefield’s research. Put on the backfoot by the sudden escalation in media interest and by Harris’s calls for a public inquiry, Britain’s Health Secretary, John Reid, urged the General Medical Council…to investigate Wakefield as “a matter of urgency”. (HERE)
Whether or not Reid was really “on the back foot” (a cricketing expression) Deer and Harris’s allegation were rapidly supported by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson (HERE) while the National Health Service website ‘MMR the Facts’ had a page linking to Deer’s personal site (HERE).
Within three days Deer had lodged the first of at least three complaints to the UK’s General Medical Council against the doctors, although the GMC’s lawyers chose not to publicly acknowledge his role (HERE). The relationship between Deer and the GMC hearing remains troubling as the prosecution has been constructed on documents described by the journalist as “not public domain”, and without any public explanation of how they were originally obtained. Harris accompanied Deer to the first day of the proceedings in July 2007 and was also present at “the findings on fact” in January (HERE). These “facts” closely resemble the early allegations of Deer and Harris (HERE and HERE).
There are many questions here. When last year a radio journalist, Jeni Barnett, dared to criticise the defensive culture surrounding MMR vaccine she was censured by a large group of MP’s of which Harris was inevitably one of the leaders (HERE). This was an offensive episode in which a journalist who dared to open her mouth about the authoritarian nature of public health policy was bullied into silence, and it could not really have proved her point better. It really is time that Harris explained his role in the MMR business altogether. But it is also absolutely essential that all politicians understand that leaking our private documents for politically expedient ends is simply disgusting and unacceptable.
John Stone
April 17, 2010 at 15:30 |
April 17, 2010
Brian Deer in BMJ and Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s Response
Below is an excerpt from Brian Deer’s special report, Does autistic enterocolitis exist? this week in the British Medical Journal. He is a journalist who resides in the bowels of the Dr. Andrew Wakefield GMC hearing. Below it is Dr. Wakefield’s response, (also HERE in .pdf.)
Autism Research Wakefield’s “autistic enterocolitis” under the microscope
Brian Deer, journalist (HERE in full)
1 London
Andrew Wakefield’s claims for a new bowel condition in autistic children have been largely overlooked in the furore over MMR vaccination. Brian Deer reports
Twelve years ago, a now infamous and retracted paper appeared in the Lancet1 and launched a health scare. In it, researchers at the Royal Free medical school in London reported on 12 children with developmental disorders, and linked their problems to MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccination.
It was the proposed link between the vaccine and “regressive” autism that caught the headlines and sparked alarm. But the paper also claimed to have discovered a new gut pathology, reported in 11 of the 12 children, which the lead author, Andrew Wakefield, an academic gastroenterologist, would dub “autistic enterocolitis.” “Researchers at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine may have discovered a new syndrome in children involving a new inflammatory bowel disease and autism,” the institution announced in a press release in February 1998.2″Their paper . . . also suggests that in a number of cases the onset of behavioural symptoms was associated with MMR vaccination.”
Six years later, the vaccine link was dropped when 10 of the paper’s 13 authors retracted this claim3 in the wake of my investigation for the Sunday Times.4 And last month the entire paper was retracted,5 after a General Medical Council panel decided that Wakefield was “dishonest” and “unethical.”6
Not a lot was said during the GMC hearing about “autistic enterocolitis”, which Wakefield continues to insist is real. In 2005 he established a private clinic in Austin, Texas, focusing on researching and treating this “syndrome”. And, although he resigned his post there after the GMC verdict, patients have been drawn from throughout America, and even the United Kingdom.
“We continually find inflammatory bowel disease that is different from Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis,” explains a doctor on the clinic’s website.7 “This was initially named ‘autistic enterocolitis’ by Dr Wakefield because of the unique pattern of inflammation.” The Lancet, too, stood by this claim despite distancing itself from other aspects of the paper. “I do believe there was, and remains, validity to the connection between bowel disease and autism, which does need further investigation,” the journal’s editor, Richard Horton told the BBC in February 2004.8
Horton was speaking two days after I had presented him with the first findings of my now six year investigation for the Sunday Times that led to the GMC’s charges.4 Three weeks later came the paper’s partial retraction…. Read the full comment at British Medical Journal.
Response: BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL PUBLISHES FALSE CLAIMS ABOUT MMR DOCTOR HERE in .pdf
Journalist Brian Deer’s Allegations about Dr. Andrew Wakefield fails to disclose press complaint
LONDON, ENGLAND, April 16, 2010 —Today the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has published an online commentary authored by journalist Brian Deer in which he makes further allegations against Dr. Andrew Wakefield and the doctors involved in the 1998 Lancet study that first reported possible links between MMR and autism, without affording Dr. Wakefield an opportunity to respond simultaneously to these serious allegations online. Deer’s latest claims follow his February 2009 Sunday Times article accusing Dr. Wakefield of “fixing data” for which there is a pending complaint to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission (PCC). The BMJ’s press release regarding this latest published “special report” by Brian Deer, along with Dr. Wakefield’s point-by-point response, is below:
This week, the BMJ questions the existence of a new bowel condition in autistic children dubbed “autistic enterocolitis” by Dr Andrew Wakefield and colleagues in a now infamous and recently retracted paper published by the Lancet in 1998.
In a special report, journalist Brian Deer tries to unravel the journey of the biopsy reports that formed the basis of the study, while an accompanying editorial asks does autistic enterocolitis exist at all?
In 1996, Dr Andrew Wakefield was hired by a solicitor to help launch a speculative lawsuit against drug companies that manufactured MMR vaccine to find what he called at the time “a new syndrome” of bowel and brain disease caused by vaccines.
FALSE. I was not hired by a solicitor to find a new syndrome of bowel and brain disease caused by vaccines. I acted as a medical expert in respect of two matters: first, to provide a report on safety studies of measles-containing vaccines; and second, to look for evidence of measles virus in intestinal tissues of children with Crohn’s disease, and children with regressive developmental disorder and intestinal symptoms who were undergoing investigation for possible bowel disease.
The proposed “new syndrome” was not what Deer claims. At the material time, the “new syndrome” consisted of gastrointestinal symptoms (not disease) in children with developmental regression. Prior to the clinical investigation of these children, the presence of intestinal disease had not been determined.
Deer reveals that biopsy reports from the Royal Free Hospital’s pathology service on 11 children included in the Lancet study showed that eight out of 11 were interpreted as being largely normal. But in the paper, 11 of the 12 children were said to have “non-specific colitis”: a clinically significant inflammation of the large bowel.
FALSE. The findings were correctly reported in The Lancet paper. The meticulous process by which the diagnoses were made in the children reported in that paper has been described on numerous occasions, including in published papers, in Mr. Deer’s presence at the GMC, in the complaint filed against him to the PCC that is published online1. For the avoidance of doubt, the clinical process involved two stages: routine reporting of the pathology by the duty pathologist, followed by a combined review by Professor Walker-Smith’s team and Dr. Sue Davies. During this clinical review, it was recognized that significant disease was being overlooked. It was decided to have all biopsies reviewed by the senior pathologist with greatest experience in bowel disease, Dr. Paul Dhillon. This research review was undertaken in a blinded, unbiased manner such that Dr. Dhillon was not aware of the diagnosis in any child. Dr. Dhillon’s diagnosis formed the basis for the findings reported in The Lancet. Dr. Dhillon’s review is referred to in The Lancet and is described in detail in subsequent papers that confirmed the presence of bowel disease in many more children with autism. Mr. Deer was aware of these facts when making his false allegations but does not appear to have disclosed this to the BMJ..
So how did the mismatches occur?
Apparently, the biopsies were first reported on by Dr Susan Davies, a consultant histopathologist and co-author on the study, but they were also seen and interpreted by three other co-authors before final publication. When Dr Davies was cross examined before the General Medical Council she said that she had initially been concerned about the use of the term “colitis” in the Lancet paper because she herself had found nothing abnormal in the biopsy sections. But she was reassured, she said, by the “formalised review” of the biopsies by her three colleagues.
FALSE. This is not what Dr Davies said. Mr Deer fails to mention that Dr. Davies was referring, in her evidence, to her use of the term colitis only in terms of active colitis (involving an increase in pus-forming cells) rather than chronic colitis which was present in many children, In his selective misrepresentation of the evidence he also fails to mention that, later in her evidence, Dr Davies clarified how, as a distinct pattern of disease emerged in the autistic children (particularly following an unbiased review she undertook with Dr. Murch) this disease came to be termed ‘autistic enterocolitis’.
This apparent concurrence of four pathologists gave strength to the finding of a new bowel disease, writes Deer. But there is no suggestion in the paper that the second assessment caused findings to be substituted or changed.
How many peer reviewers would have felt comfortable approving the paper if they had known that the hospital pathology service reported biopsy specimens as largely normal, but they were then subjected to an unplanned second look and reinterpreted, he asks?
FALSE. A planned “second look” was undertaken routinely by Professor Walker-Smith and his team at the weekly clinical meeting he held with Dr. Davies for this purpose. This planned review has Is been part of Professor Walker-Smith’s clinical practice, and is essential for quality control. It was at this point that discrepancies were found, and it was these discrepancies that led to a further planned review by Dr. Dhillon.
Professor David Candy, paediatric gastroenterologist at St Richard’s Hospital, Chichester, who reviewed the paper in 1997, said “no”: he wouldn’t have felt comfortable. “That’s an example of really naughty doing – to exclude the original pathology findings.”
It is highly unlikely that Deer informed Dr. Candy of the extensive evidence refuting his false claims, or that on the basis of these false claims, Mr. Deer is the subject of a formal complaint to the PCC.
So what should we make of all this, asks Deer? The biopsy slides are no longer available, and cannot be re-assessed. All we have are Dr Davies’ pathology reports, and independent specialists seem to agree that she regarded what they showed as largely unremarkable.
FALSE. Contemporaneous reports based upon Dr Dhillon’s formal assessments are available that confirm the findings described in The Lancet.
Professor Tom MacDonald, dean of research at Barts and the London School of Medicine and co-author of Immunology and Diseases of the Gut said: “If I was the referee and the routine pathologists reported that 8/11 were within normal limits, or had trivial changes, but this was then revised by other people to 11/12 having non-specific colitis, then I would just tell the editor to reject the paper.” In an accompanying editorial, Sir Nicholas Wright also from Barts and the London points out that all histopathological interpretation is a matter of opinion, but we should always ask how reliable that opinion is.
CORRECT. It was precisely for this reason that the final diagnosis was left to the most senior pathologist with the most experience in bowel disease who assessed the tissues in an unbiased fashion.
In terms of whether autistic enterocolitis exists, several studies have shown an association between inflammatory pathology and autistic spectrum disorder, but he believes that, in view of the limited data, any firm conclusion would be inadvisable.
CORRECT. The finding of inflammatory disease of the intestine of autistic children has now been confirmed in 5 different countries.
Dr Wakefield said “It is extraordinary that a journal like the BMJ should have reduced itself to this sort of tabloid medicine from an entirely unqualified and biased source. The egregious errors in Deer’s report should cause embarrassment to the BMJ’s editors. In a relentless and misguided effort to distract attention from vaccine safety issues, agenda-driven journalism has once again made a mockery of medicine.”
*********
(1 http://www.cryshame.co.uk//images/stories/complaint_to_uk_pcc.pdf)
April 30, 2010 at 22:41 |
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/340/apr15_2/c1127#235073
Susan E Davies,
Consultant Histopathologist
Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge CB2 0QQ
Send response to journal:
Re: Caution in assessing histopathological opinions.
As one of the pathologists in question, I wish to respond to some of the issues raised in the recent article by Brian Deer(1), and accompanying editorial by Nick Wright(2), on the histopathological aspects of autistic enterocolitis. There is some misrepresentation of my involvement and lack of understanding of the process in studies involving histopathology.
Firstly, at the time in question I was working solely for the NHS and acted as the key pathologist for the clinical gastroenterology paediatric team. I was not the lead pathologist for this, or any other Wakefield project.
Secondly, I was not responsible for reporting the majority of the biopsy specimens from the twelve children, initially written up in the Lancet paper(3). This period predated the advent of subspecialty reporting and a number of consultants, each with varying levels of expertise and gastroenterology interest, were responsible for reporting these cases. It is erroneous to consider these reports to be more accurate than any subsequent review. Nick Wright writes that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such a review of the histopathology. I would state more strongly that ANY study of histopathology has more credence, with reduced inter- and intra-observer variation, when a systematic review, using defined structured criteria over a short time-frame, is performed.
As to the severity of any pathology, there was a gradual awareness by those attending the regular clinicopathological conferences that we were identifying subtle changes in some of the mucosal biopsies from autistic children. Subtle does not always indicate insignificant: the focal features of cow’s milk protein enteropathy may be misinterpreted as normal; the hidden pathogen in immunodeficient syndromes is identified only by close scrutiny; the presence of Helicobacter pylori in gastric biopsies was previously not recorded, as they were considered insignificant.
The significance of any minor changes cannot be determined at the outset; the natural history evolves and/or may be altered by any therapy, but the changes must first be recognised. It may not be widely appreciated that the separation of the upper limit of normal from the lower spectrum of abnormal in histopathology is not always clear cut (and not only in the gastrointestinal tract).
Without going into extensive detailed histopathological description, there does appear to be some confusion within the discussion of these cases. It should be appreciated that the term ‘colitis’ covers a range of changes from minimal, self-limiting and non-specific, to extensive, severe and characteristic; as such it is difficult to select a point from within a spectrum for a single definition. Reference was made to focal active colitis(4), although later it is stated that minor changes are not to be called colitis. In personal practice, as evidenced at the GMC hearing, I had a different threshold from the other co-authors who performed the review and translated those findings into words.
While a clinical gastroenterologist might consider caecal active inflammation with incipient crypt abscess formation to be normal in children(1), this is a significant finding to be recorded by pathologists. The dismissal of ‘a bit of architectural distortion’ as insignificant underscores the problem of histopathological complexity as this, in fact, is a key feature in the assessment of colonic biopsies(5).
Time may indeed bring greater clarity to our understanding of what, if any histopathological changes may be associated with autism.
References
1. Deer B. Wakefield’s ‘autistic colitis’ under the microscope. BMJ 2010; 340: 838-41.
2. Wright N. Does autistic enterocolitis exist? BMJ 2010; 340: 819-821.
3. Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, Linnell J, Casson DM, Malik M, et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, nonspecific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorders in children. Lancet 1998; 351: 637-41.
4. Greenson JK, Stern RA, Carpenter SL, Barnett JL. The clinical significance of focal active colitis. Hum Pathol 1997;28:729-33.[
5. Jenkins D, Balsitis M, Gallivan S et al. Guidelines for the initial biopsy diagnosis of suspected chronic idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease. The British Society of Gastroenterology Initiative. J. Clin. Pathol. 1997; 50; 93–105.
Susan E Davies
Competing interests: None declared
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April 30, 2010 at 23:00 |
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/04/mp-who-breached-patient-confidentiality-failed-to-disclose-competing-interest-in-mmr-debate.html#comments
MP Who Breached Patient Confidentiality Failed to Disclose Competing Interest in MMR Debate
By John Stone
Evan Harris, the MP who made allegations in a debate about MMR in the House of Commons in March 2004, disclosed that his father, Frank, was a recently retired professor paediatrics ((see TheyWorkForYou), but not that the latter had sat on the Committee on Safety in Medicines in 1990-92 (an appointment listed in his entry in Who’s Who) in the period leading to the withdrawal of the Urabe strain MMR vaccines in September 1992 .
A report in British Medical Journal testifies to the hectic manoeuvring that followed the sudden removal of these two vaccines:
“Last week the GMSC was worried that the vaccination programme would be put back by the debacle over the new arrangements for supplying the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR). The CMO has apologised to the profession that the information that two brands of the MMR vaccine were to be withdrawn was leaked before the profession was told. The department had planned to give doctors 48 hours’ notice. The information was leaked on 15 September and earlier in some places. But by the time of the MSC meeting (17 September) many members had still received no information. The department has advised doctors to return their stocks of Pluserix-MMR and Immravix [sic] and order extra supplies of MMR II.
“The chairman will draw the department’s attention to the possible effect on vaccination target levels if parents are deterred from bringing their children to be vaccinated because of the adverse publicity. Dr Eric Rose suggested that the department should mount a publicity campaign on the virtues of the MMR and the Hib vaccines.”
By contrast Evan Harris had written failing to recall the episode in the Sunday Times on 22 February 2004 (HERE):
“On the safety of MMR, the evidence and scientific consensus are overwhelming. There is a lot of good research that fails to find any significant safety problem with MMR…”
In the same article Harris made an accusation which apparently depended on sight of confidential patient records:
“At least four of the 10 patients paid for under legal aid were also apparently paid for by the health service.”
Without agreeing that Harris was correct in identifying the Lancet paper with protocol 172-96 which had been sponsored by the Legal Aid Board, it is hard to see how he could have formed this opinion or made such claims without reference to confidential patient documents.
Evan Harris’s close association with his father was attested in a Daily Telegraph report of the parliamentary expenses scandal when he sold on a flat, in part paid for by the tax payer, to his parents at a substantial profit (HERE).
As reported previously, Harris had worked closely with journalist Brian Deer in his “investigation” of Andrew Wakefield and colleagues John Walker-Smith and Simon Murch which led to their prosecution by the UK General Medical Council (HERE). He still needs to explain how he became involved in the affair, and what his views are on patient confidentiality.
John Stone is UK Editor for Age of Autism
May 8, 2010 at 23:12 |
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