Leaving the cult of antivaccinationism and alt-med

Isolationism

I would posit that limited isolationism also counts as cult-like. See the Hubologists* for an example. They are not living a secluded life, but members of this cult are still encouraged to segregate and flee from “negative” people.

* followers of Dick Hubbell. See the Fallout 2 wiki for more info. Any resemblance to a real cult is purely coincidental, I swear.

Threats of Satanic Attack

Calling Sandlin “brainwashed” and promising her eternal damnation her children will become autistic definitively has shades of “lost to the Devil”.
A lot of Alt-Med uses a rhetoric akin to the Evil Eye, of being punished for not following the path of purity. I agree, these are cult-like behaviors.

Ah, my html tags for striking words didn’t carry out.
Guessing which words I wanted to strike out is left as an exercise for the reader.

Preview, where are you?

I agree that the anti-vaccine folks don’t have a single charismatic leader- they have about 12. More like the Greek gods:

Tenpenny, Larry Palevsky ,Sayer Ji and Kelly Brogan at Greenmedinfo, Mercola, Gary Null, Barbara Foe Fisher, Dr. Sears, Aviva Romm, Jay Gordon, Mayer Eisenstein, Suzanne Humphries, and Toni Bark.

Of note, most sell their own or directly profit from the sale of supplements, in ways that would make them lose their license if they were doing this with pharma companies.

Nice post, Orac. Just the other day, I had someone comment on my post about the deep pockets of the anti-vaccine movement, saying that they understand how funding from pharma can be a red flag (after all, they’re out to make a profit), but they couldn’t understand why someone (Tomljenovic and Shaw) would jeopardize their scientific careers just based on belief. I tried to explain how powerful belief can be, and how there are other motivations that may not necessarily have anything to do with money.

Then I came across Ms. Sandlin’s account, which perfectly illustrated a couple of the points I was trying to make. Wonderful timing.

Good for Megan.
If she thinks she was being picked on before for her conversion to rational thinking, she had better be prepared for a hurricane of vicious antivax backlash, now her opinions have been more widely disseminated on the web.

IMO, like most cults and cult-like organizations, anti-vaccine organizations, and their analogues in the wider world rank quackery alternative “medicine” emphasize the concept of ritual purity, and the formation of a community dedicated to maintaining it, almost above all others.

I mean, what is a wishy-washy concern about “toxins” (as compared to a concrete concern about specific known dangerous organisms or compounds – e.g. measles or lead poisoning) other than a desire to be physically/ritually pure? In this view, a vaccine could be a contamination of one’s purity, especially if one takes the view that vaccines cause a variety of developmental or other disorders.

Admitting a genetic factor in autism spectrum disorders, among parents who say such things as “the light left my child’s eyes”, would be admitting that they themselves are somehow “contaminated”, or inherently impure. Displacing this horror onto vaccines, and the potential self-loathing onto external enemies – doctors, the government, vaccine manufacturers, and skeptics – seems like a very natural reaction if physical/ritual purity is a priority.

The formation of a more-or-less insular community dedicated to maintaining, and even promoting this notion of purity also strikes me as a very natural thing to do. People like to be in community with like-minded people. When the community has a general feeling of being “under siege”, or at risk of contamination from malevolent outside forces, it strikes me as very natural that the reaction would be to close ranks – and to punish or expel doubters in the community’s midst.

All of the above is idle speculation, of course.

This story resonates strongly with Bruce Bartlett’s extraordinary article, “Revenge of the Reality-Based Community”, on the American Conservative site. It’s a great piece, and not too long, either — recommended to all.

In 1994 I was diagnosed with tinnitus and told to just “live with it.” Nurses I worked with told me I should be “glad I didn’t have cancer.” NEVER ask someone to make that kind of comparison, the guilt is overwhelming.
So I turned to the alt/med community…bc there is always something they can offer. None of it worked, but I certainly felt like I had some control.For a while.
It wasn’t until I totally fell apart and was put in anti anxiety/anti depressants that my head cleared up, the noise calmed down. -I still hear the noise, but I no longer listen to it
Now—thanks to information on blogs like yours (and with permission from you and yours), I teach my students critical thinking skills in a topic “skeptic’s guide to complementary & alternative medicine.” I haven’t quite lost friends, but my oldest friends are quite into homeopathy, one’s brother in law is a naturopath…it is a challenge, but at 59, I guess you pick your battles.

OT: I don’t know if anybody has already shared this, but it is disgusting:
https://www.facebook.com/powerm1985/photos/a.267403889986893.65529.177637432296873/656515964409015/?type=1

An AIDS denialist is trying to silence a skeptic with fake claim. Suceeding, too.

#11 I enjoyed your list and I’d like to add the following:
* Sex for any purpose other than reproduction.
* Antibiotics.
* Pain medication.
* Hospitals.
* Cooking.
* Artificial lighting and heating.
* Reading and writing.
* Religion.
* Telephones.
* Television.
* Toilets.
* Transportation.
* General knowledge.
* And last, but not least, critical thinking skills (the only item on our lists that all cult members seem to have successfully avoided using).

@ Pete Attkins

Just to split hairs:

The Bonobo tribe next door would have liked to lecture you on the naturalness of your first item, but they are busy having an orgy.
(on second thoughts, let’s not start a debate on which type of sexual intercourse is natural – quite a hot topic)

I would also nitpick on your last item, critical thinking, and move it into a different list: “things which are natural but apparently the all-natural brigade didn’t get the memo.”
A bit long for a title, but self-explanatory.

Until people accept their their “noggin” is a deception engine and embrace the evolutionary path it has taken and the reasons we are wired that way can a person truly begin to develop critical thinking skills. And it is only then that a person can truly be free of the shackles of irrationality and magical thinking. Acknowledgement of my ability to be fooled is what has helped me in my path to a greater understanding of what ot means to be truly human.

A “friend” of mine of facebook who is rabidly antivax has absolutely no problem taking bong rip after bong rip of marijuana all day long. She also is very grateful for the new mouthful of dental implants she got and for the anti-nausea meds she took all throughout her pregnancy. When I asked her about that, she told me that her doctor assured her it was safe during pregnancy.

Yes that is just an anecdote, but I am sure she is pretty close to representing the deep thinking skills of most antivax moms. They absolutely do not reject modern medicine at all; when it is convenient and rewarding for THEM, then they absolutely love being in the pockets of big pharm and big medicine.

Another antivax “friend” immediately took her baby to the hospital when she suffered a bad burn. But then she was having a huge ethical and moral crisis when the doctors said her baby needed a tetanus shot. You could tell from her post that when she made the decision not to vaccinate, that it never even occurred to her that there is a very real reason why babies need vaccines. Until it happened. To HER. This is the selfishness, the obsession with one’s own brilliance, and the belief that YOU always know what is best for YOUR baby that has sparked the whole thing.

There is only one link to the SafeMinds website…and it is a dead end link.

Seems to be working now. IIRC, Thompson is “sdtech,” which would add amusement value to the screwup.

Or worse Brock, the morons in the UK that turned loose thousands of Minks (who are rather vicious to begin with) into the wild, only to see most of them get run over by cars & numerous others attack small children, pets, etc….these people really don’t have a rational bone in their body.

Until people accept their their “noggin” is a deception engine and embrace the evolutionary path it has taken and the reasons we are wired that way can a person truly begin to develop critical thinking skills.

Oh, I’d dispute that. In fact, I’d never even come across this seeming article of faith until running into self-labeled skeptics. There’s no evolutionary explanation needed for a simple desire to avoid being wrong and directing attention to recognizing when you don’t actually know something. It’s not as though analytical thinking didn’t exist before evolutionary theory.

(In the third grade, we actually had a weeklong exercise that culminated with a prize of being awarded a small pin with text reading something like “when I don’t know, I look it up” around a question mark. The eight-grade science teacher did something similar every Friday, handing out completely optional questions designed to send us scurrying off to the library. I think the prize was exemption from the next week’s quiz. Two of the questions were “What are the bond angles in H2O?” and “What’s the world’s largest wooden structure?” It’s just cultivating basic research skills.)

#32 Narad,

Am i right that the answers to the questions are about this much ( waves hands vaguely) and George W Bush?

but also although an evolutionary knowledge is not necessary for critical thinking the avoidance of wrong is not the same thing- thats what the antivaxxers do. they avoid being wrong by making sure that their version of events is trumpeted by the choir.
I suspect that past a certain level a knowledge of neuroscience is necessary to understand how wrong our instincts are, and why.

One of the most telling features of altmed/ anti-vax cults is that they instruct followers into what is taboo to eat or drnk and what particular foods/ beverages increase your ‘mana’ or chi** ( so to speak). Obviously they also subscibe to a variety of ritual purifications.

Ingesting food and drink enables us to incorporate parts of the external world and transform them into *ourselves*: symbolically this is a big deal- altho’ it is strictly true on a chemical level: we eat calcium and turn it into bone and need iron for haemmoglobin, etc.

But the religious aspect of alt med declares that there are ‘good and bad’ choices that go beyond whether they are nutritional or not: in particular quarters, meat, dairy products, processed foods or GMOs arescorned and characterised as quite evil and damaging to life; I occasionally hear more than a hint of self-righteous indignation that people who eat fast foods and standard fare are somehow corrupt and decadent, being made so by their dining choices. Thus they deserve their ultimate fate: the wages of sin is death.

** many arcane vegetable-based nutrients too numerous to name but easy to merchandise.

#35 your answers may be superficially true but mine have a deeper spiritual meaning

@ Shay:

But you see, giving birth is a rite of transformation changing a woman into a demi-goddess. If you have more than one, you are officially a full** goddess- these things add up.

What did Goethe’s Faust say: “The Mothers!” (( shudder))

** which may be spelt differently if referring to TMR.

You’re the one in a cult, Orac. And your god is vaccine. Everyone else just wants to be left alone but you and your cultist followers have to use the law to force vaccination on the public. Vaccine extremists such as yourself tell each other what a miracle vaccines are, imagine mild illnesses to be killer diseases and celebrate occassions such as teen vaccine week, adult immunization month etc. Most of you have no lives and vaccine worship and or fantasizing that you are saving lives is a mechanism you use to delude yourselves into thinking your lives have meaning. They don’t. You’re simply a bunch of science nerds and or germaphobes rejected by mainstream society that have developed a fixation on vaccies in order to generate a false sense of self importance. This is usually the case with people who must meddle in the lives of others

I’ve got a bottle of that regular cherry juice in my fridge right now. Good stuff, but I don’t need an excuse to drink it.

your answers may be superficially true but mine have a deeper spiritual meaning

“One morning, during Yong Maeng Jong Jin at the Providence Zen Center, a student walked into the interview room and bowed to Seung Sahn Soen-sa.

“Soen-sa said, ‘What is the true way?’

“The student shouted ‘KATZ!!!’

“Soen-sa said, ‘That answer is neither good nor bad. It has cut off all thinking, so there is no speech, no Buddha, no mind, no way. Tell me then: what is the true way?’ The student said, ‘The sky is blue.’

“Soen-sa said, ‘That’s true enough, but it is not the way.’

“Then, holding up his Zen stick, ‘What color is this?’

“‘Brown.’

“‘Yes. When I ask you what color is the stick, you don’t answer, ‘The bell is yellow,’ even though that’s perfectly true. It would be scratching your left foot when your right one itches. It’s the same when I ask you what is the true way and you answer, ‘The sky is blue.’

“‘Go ask a child about the true way. A child will give you a good answer. Zen mind is children’s mind. Children have no past or future, they are always living in the truth, which is just like this. When they are hungry, they eat; when they are tired, they rest. Children understand everything. So let me ask you again: what is the true way?’

“The student stood up and bowed.

“Soen-sa said, ‘This is the Great Way, the Buddha Way, the Tao. It is not the true way. Do you hear the sounds outside the window?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘What are they?’

“‘Cars.’

“‘Where are these cars driving?’

“‘Over there.’

“‘What is the name over there?’

“The student was confused and said nothing.

“Soen-sa said, ‘It is Route 95. That is the true way. Hope Street is the true way. Doyle Avenue is the true way. The way is only the way. There is nothing beyond.’

“The student bowed and said, ‘I understand. Thank you.’

“Soen-sa said, ‘You’re welcome. Now what is the true way?’

“The student said, ‘Route 95 goes from Providence to Boston.’

“Soen-sa closed his eyes.”

Most of you have no lives and vaccine worship and or fantasizing that you are saving lives is a mechanism you use to delude yourselves into thinking your lives have meaning. They don’t.

When’s Pigasarius Publishing going to release its next first title?

@sid

There, there little one. Got that little temper tantrum out of your system now?

Building the fan base first. Almost 45,000 Facebook fans. It’s called pretending to have a business.

FTFY.

President
Pressarius Publishing

March 2009 – Present (5 years)

Groups and Associations:

Book Publishing Professionals
Book Writing, Self Publishing, and Marketing for Business
On Startups – The Community For Entrepreneurs
Publishers & Book sellers association
ThoseinMedia

These aren’t even real trade associations, they’re LinkedIn “groups.” You’re a random dildο with a Facebook page and delusions of grandeur, not the president of a publishing company or, for that matter, seemingly competent at your self-identified specialty of “writing and editing.”*

How are your engagement numbers? Oh, right, you can’t afford professional metrics.

* Check out this declaration of war on style and usage.

Narad…I already checked out Offal’s most recent blog post. How proud he must be that L. Hubbs posts comments on his blog.

“You spread your legs, popped out the kid, and now you’re an Oracle? Hell, my cat can do that.”

I’ve always wanted an Oracle cat. You should put him/her on Twitter.

You’re the one in a cult, Orac

A cult supported by 30 years of legitimate research, dickwad.

I got my flu vaccine a mere 49 days ago, and now I am struck with the dreaded coryza AND steternation AND tussis WITH sputum. It’s a vaccine injury, I tell you.

Further to Mrs Grimble #59:

This is well illustrated by the fact that you can, if you wish, purchase “GMO-free” salt.
[…]
In other words, ordinary chemicals can be magically contaminated and made ritually impure by second-hand and even third-hand contact with GMOs.

“Support for my theory continues to accrue at an alarming rate.” 🙂

/(hyperlinks provided to provide context for reference)

Mrs Grimble @59: Two days ago I listened to a man talk to himself (or his phone, it was hard to tell) about if he should buy the regular saline nasal spray, or the organic saline nasal spray. I desperately wanted to ask how any carbon-free chemical could possibly be organic, but I’ve learned not to ask chemistry questions of the possibly crazy people at my grocery store.

Just wanted to say thanks for discussing my article! Your commentary was spot on. The cult similarities became so apparent once I began questioning the antivaccine movement.

Rustichealthy found naturalmomma

http://naturalmomma.tumblr.com/page/2
Thank you for your response

So, you’ve not tried vitamins and natural remedies for yourself, and that’s what I was wondering. I’m in process of writing (trying to finish:) a book on what I call “rustic” healthy i.e. natural health 🙂 having lots of information, (based on science too 🙂 I’m not a professional, just my experience, and what I’ve found in the last few years. But, thank you again, wish you the best, hope your little one is doing better. Peace.

———————————————————-

Whoa whoa whoa. You don’t have my permission to use anything I’ve said in your book. I have tried natural remedies for myself, some of them at least, but I do not give you permission to use anything in your book. Asking me a question meant for a book without telling me is dishonest.

It apparently doesn’t contain any Celts either.

How disappointing :).

The other day my hubby went into a grocery store for bread, and the woman at the cash register enthusiastically told him that they had organic bread. He said, “Oh, good. That must mean that you also have inorganic bread.” She paused, and said, “I’ll have to check on that”. Heh.

Ms Klemperer-Wells: “Rustichealthy found naturalmomma”

Oh, deer. Rustichealthy is very special:

WLU….small pox, diptheria, viruses, measles, mumps… even polio..are all actually nutrient deficiencies…babies/children, especially, with low immunities contract them..of course, if they’re living in climates that don’t have all the healthy food they need. Today we have not only the food available, but the vitamins to boost immunity. They’re vitamin deficiencies. Perhaps before the discovery of vitamins..vaccinations (called immunizations) were warranted..not now.

Chris you just don’t understand — those of us Baby Boomers who got measles, mumps, and all those other childhood diseases back in the 50’s and 60’s did so because places like Scranton and Pasadena and Ann Arbor were cesspools of malnutrition 50 years ago.

Plus, vitamins hadn’t been invented yet!

Rusty on SBM promised to move out of the United States, if President Obama got reelected.

IIRC, Rusty couldn’t define the differences between fascism, socialism and communism.

Whether skeptic or antivax there’s a lot in common with teen gangs and fringe churches. Violate the code, and you’re an outcast, or worse.

Yeah, that ol’ “I’m moving to Canada if (fill in the blanks) is elected!”

I must admit, I now scratch my head when I see this claim. Generally, the people who make this threat/claim/whatever are of a Republican/Conservative bent, correct?
Yet Canada is far more liberal than the US, correct?
I can’t see the logic.

[email protected] Go and view the comments, filled with all sorts of invective, conspiracy, theories of genocide, and vows to criminally prosecute each and every researcher ever involved in vaccine development.
This sounds pretty much like what we get some of the more ‘extreme’ anti-fluoridation activists, here in NZ. Plus, of course, the inevitable claims about corruption & being bought by Big Fluoride (who, frankly, could take a leaf out of Lord Draconis’s book – long may his scales be bright – when it comes to regularity & quantity of largesse 🙂 )

I suppose Orac will start telling us to eat more fruit next. Shilling for Big Banana.

Jeff1971 – TMR are already shilling for Big Coconut. I’ve asked them how much they got paid for the advertorial, but my comment is mysteriously still in moderation.

http://thinkingmomsrevolution.com/coconut-oil2/

The wonders of social media and GMO-free salt. I found this entry on Facebook: “… This one is not only GMO-free, but doesn’t contain any chemicals either!”

Correct me if I’m wrong: salt that doesn’t contain any chemicals would have zero mass.

Dietary salt (sodium chloride) consists of at least four chemicals: 23Na, 35Cl, 37Cl, and trace amounts of the radioactive isotope 36Cl. I would have thought that those worried about “chemicals” would be raving about the benefits of “low radiation salt” rather than GMO-free salt.

You’re simply a bunch of science nerds
That’s so not fair. We also have grammar and spelling and history nerds.

@Pete Attkins – I’m amused at the concept of chemical free salt as well. However, you’ve listed isotopes instead of chemicals. I’m sure isotopes are even scarier than chemicals because some of them might be radioisotopes (the older cousin of TVisotopes?). Table salt also contains ions (typically Na+ and Cl-, though possibly a few others as well depending on impurities); I suspect ions may be OK but they are suspect and bear watching.

So Thinking Moms Revolution sold itself for a paid advertorial and a bunch of links, telling parents that coconut oil treats autism?

What disgusting assholes.

@72
I imagine inorganic bread would be like the dwarf battle bread in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld stories? Made with only the finest grit!

@Jeff1971 – That’s certainly how it looks to someone who works in publishing…

@Helianthus #97: Good point, see below.

@Mephistopheles O’Brien #94
Some chemicals have no known isotopes, but sodium and chlorine do have known isotopes. The sodium component of sodium chloride is 23Na (its only stable isotope), but the chlorine component is approx. 76% 35Cl and 24% 37Cl (both stable isotopes), and a trace amount of the unstable radioisotope 36Cl.

IIRC, salt ions exist only when in solution e.g. in our “wet” bodies. Ions are essential to all cell-based organisms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_channel

A point continually missed by those obsessed with “natural” is that humans consist of many radioisotopes (carbon-14 being just one example). Humans emit enough alpha and beta particles each day that even just shaking hands with someone does increase one’s likelihood of getting cancer (albeit minutely in my opinion). Sleeping every night with a partner multiplies this risk manyfold, as does having close contact with pet animals. Do I worry about this risk? Of course not, but I’m not an alarmist who constantly worries about GMO salt (whatever that is) or the incredibly low probability of harm that might result from immunization.

The long-term effect of raised cortisol levels in those chronically stresses by fears of GMO, vaccines, etc. will be many orders of magnitude worse than any possible harm done by the things they are worrying about. Marketing does, of course, rely almost entirely on messing around with our cortisol level and our fight-or-flight and reward mechanisms.

@Pete Attkins,
Just to go chemical geek for a moment, all salts are a different class of compounds from molecular compounds like water or CO2.
The metal atom like sodium is fully ionized, giving it a positive charge, while the electron(s) tightly bind to the electronegative element in the compound like chlorine. These ions are arranged in a crystal lattice which is overall neutral.
As you pointed out, the ions are freed up to float around in a solution like water.
And, as you noted, all humans are naturally radioactive.
I have a shirt I got from the ANS that points it out like these stickers:
http://www.ans.org/store/i_750046/r_a

It also amuses me when health food sites tout Brazil nuts as one of the healthiest nuts. I think they’re grown in a region that has a lot of uranium in the soil and they’re the most radioactive nuts in the world, mainly from radium.

Radioactive Nuts, now that makes a nice groupname.

Even Greg is tolerated here. He clings desperately to his idée fixe, playing a weird deranged game* in which he is the one with the truth and everyone else secretly knows it, though his claims have been repeatedly and comprehensively dismantled.

Does anyone know if Greg has ever made a statement of fact that has been verified to be true? It’s no doubt confirmation bias on my part, but I don’t recall an occasion.

Squirrelite isn’t the only nuclear geek in this here crowd, yanno… 🙂

Any examination of the yearly annual radiation dose for a given location has to take into account all that lovely natural radon seeping out of our radioactive planet.

Don’t forget thorium toothpaste to “radiate cavities away”.

But seriously, it’s an article of faith with the crunchy-granola crowd that there was no such thing as radioactivity before 1945, and that it’s all manmade.

Let’s try that again, with correct tag punctuation:

And back in the 20′s, people used to deliberately get dosed with radon because they thought it was healthy!?!?!?

Some people still do. Or you can buy
uranium-containing stones or mudpacks if you prefer. Madness.

Believe it or not, Mikey is now publicising results from his “lab” that show how often natural foods have deadly radiation. ( Natural News)
None of *his* products, of course.

@squirrelelite #75

Berkeley… Isn’t that where DANA ULLMAN hangs out?!

@RobRN,
I wasn’t aware of that, but I see he got his MPH there before going to instruct at UCSF.

Too bad. Berkeley and the LBL have a great tradition in science. But, it seems the area is awash with free non-thinkers.

@Denice #116 — I wonder if Mikey has all his sooper-special equipment set up on real granite countertops? I wonder, I does.

@ Mewens:

I can’t wear the cleverest shoes for more than an hour as I hurt my foot 2 years ago so I have to think either more ‘Marie Antoinette’ or “Expeditionary Forces’- both of which work surprisingly well. Also smarter than you-know.

@ Scottynuke:

I would guess that he’d have no idea whatsoever ‘scientist’ that he is and all.

However he is very worried about the hidden metals in Chinese rice. Mikey and Food Babe ( I swear I didn’t make that nym up- she did) are busy confronting companies who sell bad, contaminated stuff that they laughingly call ‘food’.

#88 Rebecca, I have made a similar comment about the incestuous nature of the ads for coconut oil appearing along with the article touting its benefits; mine is also “in moderation.” Some nut named “Free People” on NaturalNews recommended I try it for my “dementia.” Of course, she/he also discusses chemtrails, so.

@ palindrom:

Of course.
HOWEVER Mikey seems more concerned about *other* metals than arsenic. He has a petition up about those ( @ Natural News).

He would have you believe that NO ONE looks at levels of lead et al in foods. He’s the ONLY one concerned about public health ( Don’t trust governmental agencies or universities) and he ISN’T being paid off by Big Farmer. He praises small concerns- like a rice company founded by nice Swedish people in California- which is surprising as he usually writes how toxins in the wind from massive, polluting industrialisation in China and radiation from Fukushima settle in the agricultural valleys of that state.

Mikey’s greatest concern is about how these metals show up in rice protein products like those that he and his followers consume several times a day as many of them shun meat and/ or dairy- so rice protein it is!

Interesting how natural food gurus ™ ingest mountains of dried vegetable and fruit powders and vegan proteins from rice or soy in order to get “back to Nature’.

He praises small concerns- like a rice company founded by nice Swedish people in California

Sure enough, it’s Lundberg. They’re not all that small.

The bit about the “secret phone meeting” is a riot, though. And I’m sure Lundberg would be fascinated to know that Mikey’s “tests” yielded results for arsenic that are drastically elevated compared with their own, particularly given the amount of effort they’ve already put into establishing credibility with consumers on this subject.

Perhaps he didn’t have any money left over to test other brands.

At the risk of inflating Gurg’s already delusional sense of self-importance, I must say that “hee hee” makes me mental. I had a secretary for a few years who was fabulously competent and organized. That said, she would do this sort of little girl voice and would say “hee hee” whenver she thought something was cute or funny. Not actually laughing, but just saying it. I think it was totally unconscious and I knew if I said anything about it I’d be the bad guy. So I let it slide until I was two or three “hee hees” away from exploding when she announced that she was moving to a new company. Saved by a competitor.

I must say that Olmsted may have something of a talent for puzzling attempts at metaphor. In today’s “Weekly Wrong Wank Wrap,” the lede is

Mainstream medical and media types have decided to kick Andy Wakefield in the terminal ilium [sic] again.

Does this mean Wakefraud’s already down on the mat? The slot must have loathed him when he worked as a reporter: “Yong [sic*] is a junior fellow at Emory University [beg pardon?] in Atlanta, a virtual [sic] assisted living facility for emeriti [double sic] CDC vaccine officials like [sic] Walt Orenstein and Robert Chen [whoops]. I’m sure they cabled [sic] their approval.”

* He actually gets the name wrong all four times.

“Mainstream medical and media types have decided to kick Andy Wakefield in the terminal ilium [sic] again.”

Does Olmsted mean Andy’s ass?

Someone should give Dan a lesson in basic human anatomy:

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-terminal-ileum.htm

@ Narad:

He tested a US product in contradistinction to those from
China ((shudder)): he seems to really loathe their products esp supplements so I guess rice should also be a polluted monstrosiity.

I believe that he has business concerns with the *other* China.

I think that MIkey’s Meister plan is to serve as an altie FDA for the woo-centric: he’ll tell you which woo is the better woo as that is not the business of a governmental organisation.
So previously, he “educated” his followers about how miserably deficient *standard* foods are and NOW he’ll “enlighten” them about the pitfalls of *other* people’s woo/ product lines.

Perhaps he’ll discover that several rice protein powders utilise Chinese rice.

Wait’ll he gets to green tea.

Oddly enough, Mikey( and Food Babe) attack/s companies that sell ‘toxin-laced’ rice protein whilst he himself sells Rejuvenate Plus – green or red- which both list ‘rice protein’ as the protein ingredient.
Must be pure as the driven snow.

Someone should give Dan a lesson in basic human anatomy

I doubt that he realized he was also invoking this, but yah, you’d think he would at least have figured out where it is by this point.

Ooh, Jenny Allan is even more clueless:

Yes- This IS suspicious. To recap, the three judges in Texas are NOT judging the Wakefield V BMJ Godlee and Deer litigation

Well, to the extent that he’s already lost, sure.

but are deliberating over whether or not this action should be heard in a Texas Court.

Apparently, the whole of the case record has sailed over Ms. Allan’s head. Wakefraud is hanging his hat on the notion that the jurisdictional claim was waived by virtue of the filing of the anti-SLAPP. It’s not really about the long-arm statute any more, but whether Wakefraud can make an end run around it.

Godlee, Deer & Co are trying to convince the judges this is an ENGLISH issue and should be decided in the UK.

Not even close.

Dr Wakefield has lived in Texas for the past twelve years and has brought up his family there. The BMJ article was published Jan 2011, and was available in both online and hard copy form in Texas at that time. Non BMJ subscribers worldwide could access the article free via the internet.

You don’t understand that you just shot yourself in the foot, do you, Jenny?

There are several legal precedents. In theory at least, all Dr Wakefield has to prove to the court is that Deer’s BMJ article was available and delivered to Texas subscibers.

You might actually want to read those precedents, which, y’know, state the opposite.

Judge Amy Meacham took only a few hours to ‘throw out’ the Wakefield case, stating this did not come under the ‘jurisdiction’ of the Texas Courts.

This is apparently a novel definition of “hours,” given that it took eight months from start to finish.

Dr Wakefield’s faith in ‘Texas Justice’ appears to have been misplaced, from my side of the Atlantic. I pray I am wrong!!

If you mean you hope he wins the appeal, so does everybody on the sidelines, Jenny, because that anti-SLAPP would leave a mark in more than one place.

Where’s Kent Heckenlively? He’s an attorney and could be checking the status of the Texas lawsuit for Dan.

I wouldn’t leap to assumptions; he’s only an ‘attorney’ if he’s actually representing someone. There’s not really anything to check about the Wakefield suit: Wakers seems to be getting antsy, so they submitted a postsubmission brief and exhibits with no sign of having been asked for anything, in which case a good bet is that the net effect will be simply to annoy the court.

Parker showed up to post comments on Olmsted’s article. She bragged that she “strafed” the CNN opinion article where Dan’s comments were removed. I’ve been posting back at her and I’m a bit lonely there.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/06/opinion/wong-scientific-fraud/

He may have been struck off, but they cannot remove his medical qualification, so he remains a doctor, unfortunately.

I see the Times article has 5 comments so far (but cannot view). What’s the bet at least 2 or 3 of them are from John Stone, Wakefraud apologist?

dingo 199: Go back to see the oldest comments on top where I and some other posters have commented back at Parker…and she keeps on posting back at us.

Our Ileum-Kissing Troll just posted a comment at Parker, complementing her for her carpet bombing strafing remarks on the CNN site.

Sure, he can’t practice, but he can still call himself a doctor.

Antivaxers are undoubtedly stamping their little cultish feet in frustration over publicity for the new C. difficile vaccine. Recruitment is underway for 200 clinical trials around the world:

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/Feb/03/cdiff-vaccine-san-diego/

What a great thing this will be if susceptible people have a way to protect themselves against life-threatening C. diff colitis. If I fit the study criteria I’d definitely sign up for a trial in my area.

Yoghurt is the perfect protection.

Re: use of the title, “Dr”

In the UK, where Wakers qualified, the basic medical degree is a bachelor, not a doctorate. Only a minority go on to obtain a higher degree, eg PhD, MD etc. Technically, therefore, the appellation “Dr” is an honorary title for most UK qualified
physicians. I don’t know if Wakefraud obtained a PhD or similar. If not, it is perfectly correct to refer to him as “Mr”.

“Yog Hurt!” is the Lovecraft equivalent of Stan Lee’s “Hulk Smash!”

‘Nuff said.

@DrBollocks, I understand that Wakefield has the basic medical degree, not a doctorate. He therefore is not entitled to the honourific.

@ Narad

C. difficile, which can be life-threatening, has a place in the healthy gut of many people. In fact, C. difficile is not necessarily an invasive pathogen.

I would be interested to know if the original writer thinks the same thing of Candida albicans. You know, this awful fungus (yeah, I know), source of all ills.

decided to kick Andy Wakefield in the terminal ilium

When I was younger (and not held back by a sense of decency and decorum) my business card proclaimed me to be a representative of the ‘Topless Towers of Ilium’, a novelty tow-truck company.

Off topic, sorry, but relates to the Cia Parker CNN post earlier of Lilady.
I see Cia has left 1300 antivaccine comments on the CNN board Impressive. Doesn’t she have a child to care for, or something?

I see Cia has left 1300 antivaccine comments on the CNN board Impressive. Doesn’t she have a child to care for, or something?

Seriously? All that to make what, a few fringe friends for AoA?

Alain

I usually refer to the creature as AJW, Andy or Wakefield because using ‘Mr” implies respect or that he’a surgeon; ‘Dr’ implies that he’s either a physician or a scholar- which is why the alties afix that title frequently even if they acquire their degrees by mail-order.

I DO however like the sound of ‘Wakefraud’- nice ring to it.

I see Cia has left 1300 antivaccine comments on the CNN board Impressive.

According to Parker, her daughter was deprived of oxygen before birth by what Parker termed “a true knot” in the umbilical cord that necessitated an emergency C-section. (She wrote, “So my baby was asphyxiating both during and between contractions, and probably would have died without the C-section.”) This can only mean that her daughter’s developmental problems have nothing to do with being deprived of oxygen before birth via emergency C-section: it’s the vaccines!

According to Parker, she and her brother have autism, her brother’s son is autistic, and her daughter is autistic. Since Parker denies that autism has a substantial genetic component. this can mean only one thing: it’s the vaccines! This is similar to AoA editor Kim Stagliano’s claim that since her two older, vaccinated daughters have autism and her third, unvaccinated daughter is autistic, it can mean only one thing: it’s the vaccines!

Brian: Since Cia’s claim of autism is a really recent thing, and she is known to lie like a rug, I’d take the claim of her ‘autism’ with a salt lick. It’s extremely possible that she made it up to score sympathy points. I find this lie especially disgusting given her known hatred of people with autism.

@ Lawrence,

Yes, it’s weird that Parker chooses to blame vaccines for her daughter’s autism, while ignoring both the genetics and the the risks associated with her daughter’s difficult birth (e.g., abnormal presentation, umbilical-cord complications, fetal distress. [Pediatrics Vol. 128 No. 2 August 1, 2011: 344 -355])

It’s weird, too, that Parker bangs on about HepB vaccine-induced (Parker-diagnosed) “encephalitis,” while ignoring that hypoxia (such as caused by a “true knot” in the umbilical cord) is a common cause of neonatal encephalopathy.

But it’s always the vaccines.

@brian – and unless her obstetrician was a complete idiot (and woefully negligent) everything she says happened would have been caught either at the delivery or before she left the hospital…..

Parker’s latest “theory” about her own ASD and her family members’ ASDs/developmental disabilities, is that they have a gene…which cannot handle any vaccine. It’s the anti-vaccine gene, folks.

@ dingo 199: When did you count Parker’s 1,300 comments on the CNN board? She’s posted more comments.

@ Lawrence, if she *isn’t lying* about her age, she would have been considered a high risk pregnancy, based only her advanced age.

Parker’s past activities are the subject of a blogger’s post:

http://musasha.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/vaccines-autism-two-letters-to-the-editor/

I know a woman whose nephew supposedly died from an MMR vaccine. She always goes on about how vaccines are evil and how her four youngest kids are all unvaccinated. The youngest three are triplets… who are also all autistic.

@lilady,

A good blog post.
I saw your comment and added a couple of my own to the fray.

I’m not a reader of Mother Jones, but I am impressed that the writers managed to piss off some of the anti-vax people who are!

notation & dedicated lurker: I never ask a troll about claims for vaccine injuries, unless I have researched the U.S. Court of Federal Claims website.

Go back to Mother Jones…”Wynena” never made a claim for her infant’s death.

Dorit…I don’t know whether or not her infant died. I do know that she’s lying, when she stated that her doctor and the “coroner” told her that her baby died as a result of the vaccine(s) she received.

Dorit: “That doesn’t necessarily means she’s lying, Lilady. She comes across as not particularly sophisticated, and her claim of being unaware of NVICP is plausible.”

She was a lawyer, plus she has a PhD in Spanish. Unfortunately something has happened to her that has nothing to do with vaccines. I have seen it in our extended family. Something that happens to at least one in a hundred in the population, and no one knows why.

Our relative did spend several weeks in our county’s psyche ward. When she was released after treatment from real doctors she reverted back to quacks, and deteriorated. But due to state laws her family could not help her.

The resolution was not pretty. Yes, I can now visit her a few blocks away. But that is just because that is where the local Catholic cemetery is located. She is under an incredibly beautiful rhododendron next to her step-father. A site chosen for him because he was a wonderful gardener.

This is why I beg her and her sock puppets to get real help. Not for herself, but for her family.

(Narad, I doubt she posted over a thousand comments, but when she does post she is very prolific. It is much like our relative during her manic stage. While I spent almost an hour scrolling quickly through the comments this morning, Ms. Parker actually posted several… the site’s website notified me there were more comments, most were from her.)

Drug Pushers,

How is everything going in ‘autism denialism land’? My pals over at AoA are sensing a shift in your time tested strategy of denying that there has been a real increase in autism, to now admitting it, but explaining that it is due to other environment factors and not vaccines. Anyway, just curious: Is the no real increase argument officially dead? Or, will you continue to make use of it now and again, and even if it contradicts the new argument of other environmental factors causing an increase except vaccines?

Your ‘friend’, Greg

Glug. You need to get a basic education. Because you were never able to accomplish that, there is too much that you don’t understand.

You may think it is somehow funny to make your points, or that, for all your lack of knowledge, you are somehow, deep down, very smart. But you are not. People here pity you.

Greg: so now you and your buddies are to the point of inventing arguments for the other side? I suppose it saves you the bother of actually listening to the other side, though one has to wonder what point your arguments have, then, other than your own self-aggrandizement.

Dorit: “The human mind is an amazing thing, and I think – and hope – most people don’t consciously lie.”

And that is the problem when the human mind goes haywire. The young man in the link I gave sincerely believed he was being chased by zombies.

Dorit: The human mind is an amazing thing, and I think – and hope – most people don’t consciously lie.

You’re too smart to be that naive. Humans lie all the time.

Wynena just posted a vicious post at me i.e., “you don’t walk in my shoes” and claims that her older child just received the separate H1N1 vaccine which caused narcolepsy

Pandemrix, which was never used in the U.S.?

@ A Mom WCTFH: I’m glad to see you back here; you’ve been missed.

Those “Autism Is Medical” mommies are the same biomeddlers who influenced Dorothy Spourdalakis, who, planned and brutally murdered her son, Alex.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/tag/autism-is-medical/

^ Yup, Gerg is channeling the utterly deranged “ottoschnaut.” Since he’s cackling about “silence,” Gerg, perhaps you’d like to ask him why his long-standing Schnautlove for Pattimmy has suddenly disappeared.

btw, have you seen how the vaccine came to cause narcolepsy? Fascinating. All to do with molecular mimicry and autoimmune destruction of hypocretin producing cells in the brainstem. Haven’t the reference just now, but its quite elegant an explanation.

Greg: so now you and your buddies are to the point of inventing arguments for the other side? I suppose it saves you the bother of actually listening to the other side

The point of trolling is to provoke the other side into maximum effort while investing as little of one’s own effort as possible. If the giggler broke a sweat reading arguments, or staying consistent, he’d have failed in trolldom.

@ dingo 199: I stated that I do know if her infant died following immunization(s)…but her posts about SIDS (later changed to myocarditis) and the claim that a physician and a “coroner” told her that her child’s death was caused by a vaccine/vaccines, convinced me that she is a b.s. artist.

http://www.chop.edu/service/cardiac-center/heart-conditions/myocarditis.html

@ Lawrence:

“Our lilady has quite the reputation among the anti-vax community (and I assume, earned a place in whatever hell they’ve conjured up for the pro-vaccine folks) – if I could only be enough of a thorn in their side to earn a spot as well…….maybe someday”.

You’re well on your way Lawrence. 🙂

Looks like the cavalry’s arrived.

@ notation

The “hee hee hee” makes Dreg appear to be 13.

I have had more enriching conversations with some really smart 13-year-old teenagers than with a few “thinking-to-be-smart” adults.

For some reason, when reading the troll’s prose, I’m seeing a slimy slug.

@will motil, it’s thimerosal, not mercury. Thimerosal is a compound that has mercury as a constituent.
So if you put thimerosal on a spoon, swirled it around let it slide off then told meu to put that spoon in your mouth and swallow, I would.

C`mon guys — what`s with you drug pushers and not answering straight questions? Is the ‘no real increase’ meme officially dead? Again, just a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice.

@Helianthus
“For some reason, when reading the troll’s prose, I’m seeing a slimy slug”

But you are still reading! What a perverse fixation. Perhaps that old saying that likes attract applies. (Hee hee hee.)

will motil:

if i put a little mercury on a spoon swirled it around let it slide off
then told you to put that spoon in your mouth and swallow who here would be willing to put thier mouth were there money is ?

Metallic mercury? Why yes, I would do that. You mentioned money. How much are you offering?

@Gregger #200:

My pals over at AoA are sensing a shift in your time tested strategy of denying that there has been a real increase in autism, to now admitting it, but explaining that it is due to other environment factors and not vaccines.

AoA has a propensity to see what they want to see, regardless of what the evidence actually says. So I’m going to need supporting evidence for the claim that someone has admitted that the ratio of autistics to neurotypicals is increasing.

Is the no real increase argument officially dead?

Until you stump up the evidence I asked for above, no.

He thinks people here are like Wakefield: they know the answer in advance of research.

Thanks. I appreciate that, Lillady. I try to keep track on here as much as I can but it can be hit and miss some weeks. ;). Thanks for the link and reminder of the disgust I feel for how this group interfered in that boy’s life and how they glorify murderers. I’ve noticed Orac has been threaded about his conflict of interest (I don’t see any) with writing this blog, I am amazed no one sees a big issue with people with nursing degrees recommending doctors and treatment options. Crazy world.

Oh Dreg, it must be that I am the proud father of two fully vaccinated (on schedule) boys who both excel at school and sports, with a wide social circle of friends – all of whom have been vaccinated on schedule as well & are doing great.

It must also be that I am part of a community that embraces Science and Education – where community vaccination drives are extremely well attended, in a state with one of the highest vaccination rates in the country.

I’m glad that you idolize me Dreg – perhaps with a bit of jealously, that you too want to be part of such a community as well – too bad your stuck with those guys over at AoA – such venom and self-pity, especially aimed at their own children & those with autism in general.

Maybe one day Dreg, you might just be as happy as me – if only you can get past your own childish insecurities.

@Denise – now that Jake has his own forum, it does highlight his “one track” thinking about vaccines – it is always about the mercury, all the time….and he has certainly collected an interesting group of followers as well – they Godwin every single post within one or two comments.

Dingo199: At mother Jones, after being pushed to explain why she claims to have some familial predisposition to vaccine damage in her family history, Parker has finally announced they have the “NRXN1 gene deletion”.

Is that actually a thing, or is it something else Parker made up? At this point, if she said the sky was blue, I’d break out the fact-check.

@ Lawrence:

You are correct.
Wasn’t it your ‘alter-ego’, BD, who noted that anti-vaccinationists are divided into 3 parts ( like Gaul) with the Mercury Mavens being the most outlying of this outre assemblage- welcome to Jake’s outer limits.

I find it intriguing that Barry’s money has found a new home. AND a few of these creatures will be swanning around at AutismOne. It should be interesting. Don’t we have a highly esteemed minion ( Narad) who lives near that woo-fest?
Heh.

@ PGP:

Perhaps this is a minor step towards belief that genes are implicated in the causation of ASDs ALTHOUGH she still needs the intervening external causation of vaccines in order to ‘save face’.

Can’t these people see that if several family members have similar qualities genetics just might possibly be involved?
My father’s family are all white like friggin’ sheets but we don’t blame it on toxins or the moist atmosphere. It’s who we are- we deal with it and make jokes about it.

@Dorit – so am I. If she does in fact have that condition – it does blow huge holes in her already swiss-cheeselike story.

will motil: “i have looked into it a little and learned there is in fact mercury in these shots, which i find a bit disturbing”

Do tell. So when you looked into it a “little” what vaccine on the American pediatric schedule only comes with thimerosal. Be specific and provide link.

I reckon Parker just plucked that particular “genetic” problem out of her backside.
She had said on several occasions that there was a family history of “problems” she ascribes to vaccines – her own “MS”, her father’s schizophrenia, her child’s autism and so on. She then said there was a genetic defect in the family which explained the “susceptibility to vaccine reactions” causing the problem.
Then, when repeatedly asked what it was, she eventually came out with the NRXN1 deletion concept. I think she “borrowed it from Age of Autism” where Blaxhill had been pretending to be a genetic expert.

But now she has said that, it throws even more water on her idea that her child has vaccine induced damage.

We have the intrapartum hypoxia secondary to umbilical cord problems, now we have genetic syndromes…whatever next? I can’t wait to see what pops up next.

@ Lawrence:

I think that Dorit is referring to what PGP said about herself @ # 223.
Although what PGP says might be- in some sense- true for everyone who lives in society and doesn’t want to rock the
boat- we all don’t reveal everything about what we think or feel to anyone we happen to meet. I wouldn’t necessarily call that ‘living a lie’- it’s social aplomb or caution..
If I spoke about my politics or some other beliefs, I’m sure I’d get into many pointless, unproductive arguments. And I live in Leftie-Land.

@ PGP:

And who gets to define ‘good person’?
What’s wrong with being ‘not fond of people’ or a pessimist?
What makes their set of beliefs or how they behave COUNT more than your own or what you do?
Do you think that that’s the only reason that people tolerate you? Maybe you need to meet other people.

I find you very interesting and would enjoy talking with you.

“I did recall you referring to us somewhere as a ‘dirt-bag’, sir We, blah, blah, ….”

Methinks someone is channeling Garth of Izar

Julian’s blockquote tip didn’t work. Bad Julian — bad!

So you’re too stupid to follow the explicit instructions you required for a trivially simple task, and it’s Julian’s fault?

Politicalguineapig: from the viewpoint of the rest of the world, it doesn’t matter whether you refrain from attacking people because you don’t want to hurt them, because you believe doing so would be wrong, or because you’re afraid of getting caught and punished. What matters is that you do not attack people. Similarly, if someone does attack their neighbors, “I didn’t want to, but the voices in my head told me to” doesn’t do their victims any good; it might mean the attacker gets locked up in a mental hospital instead of a regular prison.

What you’ve described doesn’t make you a bad person; it may make you an unhappy person, which is unfortunate but in different ways.

1) Anything the Dalai Lama says about scientific matters must be true.

In practice he’s doing reasonably well — his pronouncements about scientific matters seem to be limited to (a) quantum theory has nothing to do with mysticism, and (b) if scientific discoveries come into conflict with the tenets of Buddhism, then Buddhism must adapt to reality. But this could change.

will motil,

i have looked into it a little and learned there is in fact mercury in these shots, which i find a bit disturbing
so are we here denying that there is mercury or
accepting that is ok

Perhaps you are not aware of how little mercury there is in any vaccine shot. There is 50 micrograms of thimerosal, a mercury-containing compound, in some (but not all) flu shots, which is the same as 0.05 milligrams. A teaspoon* of water weighs 5,000 milligrams, and a single drop of water weighs about 35 milligrams, or 35,000 micrograms. You should now have a better idea of just how vanishingly tiny the amount of mercury in that flu shot is.

Put simply, the thimerosal in 700 flu shots weighs as much as a single drop of water. That is too little mercury to hurt a mouse, much less a human (I estimate the lethal dose of thimerosal in a human to be in excess of 5 million micrograms)

* More or less. It’s not my fault that teaspoons (and drops of water) are not always the same size.

quantum theory has nothing to do with mysticism

Too bad the Lamaists can’t get to “mysticism has nothing to do with Buddhism.”

“For example, he refused to accept that we cannot know which path a photon takes in a two-path quantum interference experiment. Zeilinger notes that continuity of existence is very important to Buddhists because it leads to reincarnation.”

Yah. Maybe if you’re running a syncretic franchise based on reincarnation.

@Narad
I executed the blockquote trick exactly as Julian explained. Nothing happened except the prompt going missing from the text when I posted.

Derg is completely ridiculous – I find him to be a great case study, a stereotypical anti-science anti-vaxxer.

First, one would need to explain how a vaccine that has not yet been given can “create” an over-abundance of neurons found in autistic brains, in infants, in the womb?

And the answer to “why and how” should not be: “The Dalai Lama says autism is an immune-mediated condition.”

MI Dawn, as kids, we were e allowed to actually play with the mercury from a broken thermometer for a little while, rolling it around in our hands and marveling at its silvery liquid beauty. Horrors!

So how many minions has the creature already imagined as possible friends, drinking pals, heart-to-heart confidantes, soulmates, lunch dates et al?

Ok, Narad, lilady, Dawn, Kreb…

Aren’t the ‘cranks’ and ‘quacks’ right in arguing the basic scientific fact that there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic?

No, but that’s neither here nor there.

BYW, since you idiotically decided to mention Confuscious again, were they right in arguing that 2009 H1N1 wasn’t pandemic?

Are you familiar with the Rectification of Names yet? It might come in handy here.

@Denice

So how many minions has the creature already imagined as possible friends, drinking pals, heart-to-heart confidantes, soulmates, lunch dates et al?

Ok, Narad, lilady, Dawn, Kreb…
——————————————————————————-

I see you hinting that you may need some attention there, so maybe I will throw you a bone and pay you a little visit.

I don’t know how to say this Denice, but it’s over between us. O-V-E-R!

Yes, at one time I found it quite interesting that we both studied psychology (even though you have your Masters, and I only have a piss-ass Bachelors); as well, we both like tennis. At one time, I got thinking that maybe we may even be kindred souls. With summer approaching, I was even thinking of inviting you as my partner for our annual mixed-doubles tourney.

And then Denice, everything went sour. You went on with your ‘woo-meister this’, ‘woo-meister that’ comments, and how the loser ‘quack’ moms are all just jealous of you intellectual elites. You went on with this non-sense over, and over, and over. And, I got thinking that I could never last playing tennis with this woman. I would probably dump the water cooler over her head during the change-overs. And, I realize that this wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do to a lady, so I had to call off your tennis invite. It’s over Denice! OVER!

So, is there any female VCADODer –other than Denice– who knows how to play tennis? Vicki, do you know how to play? C’mon Khani –what about you? How about Heliantus? Anyone but Denice! Heck — Lilady do you know how to play tennis?

Now Lilady, if all goes well (and you are not actually a dude in drag as the librarian type) maybe we could grab a bite after the game. I know Lilady — who am I kidding?- it would never work out between us! We would be like oil and water: I am a staunch anti-vaxxer, and you are a vaccine zealot. We would probably start shouting over the topic during our restaurant date and get kicked-out.

Even if by the oddest chance, it things proceeded further, imagine gift exchanges between us. It would be an absolute disaster. I would give you the latest DVD movie exonerating Wakefield –you would give me Offit’s book collection. And God forbid if there were kids in the picture, Lilady. Imagine the fun we would have at the pediatrician’s office around vaccination time.

Anyway, I got off topic there. Yes Denice, you bore me, so I am no longer paying you any mind.

I strongly suspect Greg doesn’t have any friends, not since grade school, back when he could get away with being a bully without fear of arrest or harassment suit. But everyone else grew up, saw him for what he is, leaving him behind, a pathetic sadistic bully with nothing left for him but trolling what few sites haven’t banned him for life.

By the way, thank you skepiquette for the syllogism in #271. It describes things excellently.

Ok, thanks Julian, let’s try this blockquote trick again.

Testing 1-2-3…..
Shills, drug pushers, pharma whores –oh my!
Testing 1-2-3…..
Shills, drug pushers, pharma whores — oh my!

Greg: First of all, there’s no way you have a Bachelor’s. Secondly, you are the only person who believes vaccines cause autism. The rest of us know they don’t.

@PGP
You’re so predictable. You won’t provoke me. I’ll have nothing to do with you.

Thank you, Antaeus, for provoking Dreg’s hilarious response at #287.

Greg, in your own words, what is a syllogism?

re the above;
My fellow and sister minions may now understand why I was once hired to interview people… I bring out interesting material.
And I hereby rest my case.

( Oh and -btw- now lilady is also a dude- along with Chris and myself -courtesy of *other* visitors- if there’s another maybe we could play golf!)

The conclusion of a syllogism is only guaranteed to be true if the form is valid and both premises are true.

We have no reason to believe there is any truth to the conclusion of the syllogism at #287, because this premise of it:

2) … it appears that [some of] you do believe that vaccines do cause autism

is hippo turds. Anyone who wants to argue otherwise is invited to spell out their syllogism to that effect.

Darn – been wanting to get together with everyone in the DC area for a while now……maybe at some point.

Greg: First of all, there’s no way you have a Bachelor’s.

I stated this previously, but will repeat: If Griggles does in fact have a bachelor’s degree, both he and the college he graduated from should be ashamed.

Chris quotes and asks:

“A) Autism appears to be an immune mediated condition (at least in a subset of individuals)”
Why, and how?

Well, statement A is a reflection of the multiple lines of evidence pointing towards immune system abnormalities in autism, including clinical studies, epidemiological studies, multiple different animal models, etc. all of which collectively support the notion that autism appears to be an immune mediated condition in a subset of individuals.

In order to offer support for the above and to help answer the how part of the question I will (heavily) reference this recent mini-review paper:

Converging pathways in autism spectrum disorders: interplay between synaptic dysfunction and immune responses.

By Irina Voineagu and Valsamma Eapen, who recently performed a genome-wide assessment of gene expression in multiple brain regions, which further validated previous findings from diverse research groups situated around the world.

What are the molecular pathways that mediate the phenotypic expression of this myriad of genetic variants into a recognizable triad of symptoms? Here we review recent studies demonstrating a convergence of ASD genetic changes toward two main biological processes: synaptic function and immune responses, and discuss their functional interplay, with a focus on immune modulation of neuronal synapses.

We found that the neuronal genes downregulated in ASD, but not the immune/inflammatory genes, showed an enrichment for genetic association, as measured by a large ASD GWAS study(Wang et al., 2009). These results supported the heritability of synaptic gene dysfunction in ASD and suggested that the upregulation of immune and inflammatory genes is likely environmentally mediated or secondary to the synaptic dysfunction.

Although gene expression analyses of ASD brain are just beginning to emerge, several studies have evaluated gene expression in readily available peripheral tissues (blood and lymphoblast cell lines) from ASD patients (Hu et al., 2006, 2009; Gregg et al., 2008; Enstrom et al., 2009). A common result of these studies was the demonstration of increased expression of immune and inflammatory genes in ASD. Moreover, a comparison of gene expression studies of peripheral tissues in idiopathic autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders showed a convergence of gene expression abnormalities on genes involved in immune responses (Lintas et al., 2012).

The involvement of synaptic dysfunction and immune responses in ASD had been demonstrated by multiple approaches (Betancur et al., 2009; Pizzarelli and Cherubini, 2011; Wright and Washbourne, 2011; Grabrucker, 2012; Onore et al., 2012; Zoghbi and Bear, 2012; Ebert and Greenberg, 2013), but it was not until largescale genomic studies that these biological processes could be regarded as points of convergence of the heterogeneous genetic variants underlying ASD.

It has also been proposed that a second wave of microglia, originating from blood monocytes, may populate the CNS during the early postnatal period, a period particularly important for neurodevelopment (Davis and Carson, 2013). Microglia actively survey the brain parenchyma, constantly extending their processes to survey their microenvironment every few hours (Nimmerjahn et al., 2005). Importantly, microglia are required for synaptic pruning during postnatal neurodevelopment (Paolicelli et al., 2011)

Thus immune cells could affect neuronal synaptic function either as a result of their activation during immune responses, or due to a failure of their non-immune roles in the brain (Figure 1). Recent evidence supports the potential involvement of both of these mechanisms in ASD pathogenesis.

While it is not clear what is the cause of microglial activation in ASD brain, the cytokines produced by activated microglia have been demonstrated to affect neuronal synaptic function (Onore et al., 2012). TNF-a regulates neuronal cell proliferation and synaptic pruning (Cacci et al.,2005), and modulates synaptic scaling (i.e., the adjustment of synaptic strength for all synapses on a neuronal cell in response to prolonged changes in electrical activity) (Stellwagen and Malenka,2006). IL-1b regulates long-term potentiation and alters synaptic plasticity (Schneider et al., 1998)

Unlike peripheral macrophages, microglia are long-lived, and thus it has been hypothesized that they could maintain an “immunological memory” of an early immune insult, leading to long-term neuronal deficits (Davis and Carson, 2013).

At the same time, understanding the role of immune cells in regulating synaptic function is also a newly developing field. As discussed above, accumulating evidence supports the notion that immune cells play important roles in normal brain function, outside of neuroinflammation. Of particular relevance to ASD is the role of microglia in synaptic pruning during postnatal brain development, a period that coincides with the onset of ASD symptoms. While it has been demonstrated that increased numbers of activated microglia are present in brain parenchyma of ASD patients (Vargas et al., 2005; Morgan et al., 2010; Suzuki et al., 2013), these studies have not captured the early postnatal development window.

Since microglia and astrocytes have been shown to play a role in synaptic formation and maturation, and mutations in neuronal cell adhesion molecules have been associated with ASD, it is also tempting to speculate that ASD neurons might be particularly vulnerable to immune cell dysfunction in the brain. Given the large amount of data supporting the role of immune responses in ASD and other neuropsychiatric disorders, advances in deciphering the functional interplay between immune cells and neuronal synaptic function will likely provide vital insights into the mechanisms and potential therapy of neurodevelopmental disorders.

I know I blocked out quite a few paragraphs there, but I wanted to make sure that your question was adequately answered and if you need any clarifications or further support for statemnent (A) that I made above, I would be happy to provide you with further relevant references.

So, based on my familiarity and understanding of the relevant literature, I feel comfortable endorsing that statement.

First, one would need to explain how a vaccine that has not yet been given can “create” an over-abundance of neurons found in autistic brains, in infants, in the womb?

I am certainly not discounting a prenatal origin or contribution to autism.

What research are you referring to regarding the over-abundance of neurons? Courchesne (2011)?

if so, that was a preliminary study and specific criticisms that were levied pointed out that those findings couldn’t be extrapolated to the entire population of autistics.

I think it is more prudent to consider that a multi-factorial disorder could also have post-natal contributions, seeing as both language and social skills are acquired during these early and critical months of development.

Why do you see it differently?

Thanks,

Skeptiquette

Hi Alain,

A thesis or a list?

I would like to, but I really don’t have the time to write a thesis ( I have a full time job and I am starting to dabble in real estate investment, which is eating up my time).
A list is another story.

I would be happy to email you publications. skeptiquette at yahoo.com

There are a lot of diverse findings wrt immune/autism and integrating into a whole is obviously the next step. I have been keeping up on advances in how the immune system is involved in normal brain development, which has certainly offered more insight into how the findings are implicated and interconnected.

I really think this is the next frontier for autism research (IMHO.) I was actually just thinking that you would probably be really intrigued and find interest in all of this as well.

Cheers,

Skeptiquette

Hi Antaeus,

You sucked me in… here is the basic syllogism that I have in my head.

All right! ^_^ Let’s look at the premises and the form, and see where we agree and where we may differ… (Forewarning, though: my reply ended up being really long, so I’m posting part one first, and later tonight hopefully I’ll follow up with part two.)

A) Autism appears to be an immune mediated condition (at least in a subset of individuals)

To be honest, I do not feel I’m qualified to say how true this premise is. (I’ve seen it asserted many times, but then again you can find people asserting just about anything about autism.)

However, I’m willing to stipulate it for purposes of argument.

B) Vaccines can modulate the infant immune system, including the innate arm of the immune system.

C) The immune system is a critical component of normal brain development.

D) Immune system dysfunction/disturbances during this critical period can have long lasting effects on behavior and cognitive functioning.

Others have already pointed out some problems with these premises, such as there being evidence that neurological features of autism are formed pre-natally (thus before “this critical [post-natal] period” during which vaccines are administered.) But for purposes of argument, let’s stipulate those premises and move on.

E) Therefore, we should explore the possibility of vaccines contributing to both the prevention and etiology of autism within this conceptual framework.

Here is actually where the big problems come on. You may remember, when I was explaining syllogisms earlier, I said that we could substitute letters for the entities that we were talking about (for instance, “all statements by the Dalai Lama are true statements” becoming “all A are B”, where A = “statements by the Dalai Lama” and B = “true statements”)? Well, if we did that substitution here, this conclusion would suddenly introduce new letters that weren’t used anywhere in our premises, which means we don’t have a syllogism that links our premises together with irrefutable logic.

Let me try to rework it a bit, so that it fits proper syllogism form. Let’s start with the conclusion:

1)
2)
3) Therefore, vaccines are something that should be thoroughly investigated as a possible cause of autism.

And let’s take all the premises we stipulated above for sake of argument, and combine them into one:

1) Vaccines have an effect on the infant immune system during crucial periods of brain development.
2)
3) Therefore, vaccines are something that should be thoroughly investigated as a possible cause of autism.

If we tried letter substitution at this point, we’d find that our syllogism so far follows this form:

1) A (vaccines) is a B (things that have an effect on the infant immune system during crucial periods of brain development).
2)
3) Therefore, A is a C (things that should be thoroughly investigated as a possible cause of autism).

The only premise that makes sense to put into 2, which completes the form of the syllogism and makes it valid, is “All Bs are Cs”: that is, “all things that have an effect on the infant immune system during crucial periods of brain development are things that should be thoroughly investigated as a possible cause of autism”.

So here’s our complete, valid syllogism:

1) Vaccines are a thing that has an effect on the infant immune system during crucial periods of brain development.
2) All things that have an effect on the infant immune system during crucial periods of brain development are things that should be thoroughly investigated as a possible cause of autism.
3) Therefore, vaccines are a thing that should be thoroughly investigated as a possible cause of autism.

Now, it might seem to you like it was a waste of time to go spelling out premise 2; doesn’t it go without saying?

And that’s exactly why it is NOT a waste of time to spell out syllogisms and state the unstated premises. Because even if I stipulate all of premise 1 for the sake of argument, I do not agree with premise 2. I do not think it makes sense that “All things that have an effect on the infant immune system during crucial periods of brain development are things that should be thoroughly investigated as a possible cause of autism.”

@Skeptiquette,

A thesis indeed; or at least, a resume written by you of each finding in the publications you have read. The reasoning behind that is that no one share your perception of each studies and no one can share the finding of your studies better than yourself according to your perception.

In my case, I would very likely have a different perception of the studies involved. That is the strength of the scientific method; it allow different perceptual mechanism to come to a similar set of conclusion according to the data.

Alain

MOB and Alain,

I will do my best to provide a reference list with a brief statement of findings (this is basically what the abstract is for) or as you wish, the importance of findings from my perspective.

I’ll try to pump out a short list tonight and add to it as I have time.

@Skeptiquette,

Thanks.

Alain

Time for lilady’s Media Update And A Warning:

There’s an “opinion piece” up on the Liberty Guardian that is full of false information about vaccines and autism. Many of the RI Regulars posted comments, which were removed by the author.

The author removed at least five of my comments, yet the bot’s Spamming comments replete with links, are posted.

Take a look at the top comment from the owner of the Liberty Guardian, Dr. Durig…who is a publicizing his book. It’s a gem.

Do Not Post There…your comments will be moderated and removed:

http://guardianlv.com/2014/02/what-is-the-true-cause-of-autism/

tVRBoK,

I think you have misunderstood my intentions. Im not trying to come up with any causal mechanism. Ive told you guys, I don’t have a dog in this fight, at all… seriously. Who cares if I find it a hobby to read scientific literature.

I definitely don’t find it a waste of brainpower to look at the literature relating autism and the immune system. In fact, I see it quite the opposite.

As someone trained in immunology and microbiology, I am intrigued by the neuroimmunological connections to autism. I am also intrigued by some of the paradigm shifts in immunology wrt innate immunology and the microbiome that have been evolving over the past several years. It just so happens that all of this intersects in very important ways with autism research (another thing that i am interested in.)

I don’t waste my time other places than RI and SBM because Im not looking for an echo chamber, Im looking to better my understanding of science and hone my critical thinking skills.

So, I used to play video games, like mario bros. when I was 8-10 yrs old.

I recently played flappy birds and oh boy is that an addicting sink hole of brain power! I had to give it up (after only 1 day), I swear it sucks you into the obstacles…

Thanks for your concern.

Skeptiquette

Dreg sez: “Perhaps we will have time to discuss the matter when I return.”

Perhaps your plane will take a nose-dive into a pile of manure.

skeptiquette,

I think the better approach would be to assess all the relevant information and research, i.e. consider the entirety of the evidence.

Why focus on vaccines out of all the very many things that affect the immune system? If autism is mediated by immune dysfunction (which is itself a questionable premise, as any unusual immune function seen in autism may not be a cause of the autism, but due to common developmental causes), why would anyone expect vaccines to have anything at all to do with it when they simply stimulate the immune system in much the same way as a million antigens in our environments?

If antigenic challenge by vaccination at a specific age is a cause of autism, why wouldn’t exposure to pathogens at that age also cause autism? I find it hard to believe that we can detect the effect of prenatal valproate or rubella, but not postnatal infection or vaccination.

Antigenic challenges do not generally cause immune dysfunction or dysregulation; they are part of normal immune function. Why not instead point the finger at one of the many substances in our environments that are immunomodulators, broccoli for example? I often joke about broccoli, but I have a serious point too. It contains 3,3′-Diindolylmethane which according to Wikipedia “is a potent modulator of the innate immune response system”. Between 1970 and 2010 US consumption of broccoli tripled, and over the same period the reported incidence of autism greatly increased.

Is it impossible that DIM ingested during pregnancy, or passed to a child in breast milk could not have some modulatory effect on the developing immune system, preventing, perhaps, the usual trimming of neurones that happens in the neurotypical at a crucial moment? I think this is a logical possibility, along with a million others. The mere fact that something is not impossible does not make it a good candidate for investigation. We need a great deal more than that.

It seems to me that not only do we we have no plausible mechanism for vaccines causing autism, we have no epidemiological evidence that this is the case, and in fact a considerable amount of epidemiological evidence that contradicts the idea.

If I had to find areas of research into autism worth spending money on, vaccines wouldn’t even make it onto my list. I think the only possible purpose of further research in this area would be to convince those who are at all persuaded by the anti-vaccine lunatic fringe (who themselves are clearly, like Greg, beyond rational persuasion).

@ notation:

Whilst I don’t have any gods to thank for this marvelous good fortune, I do intend to take a drive to the sea side as an early rite of spring tomorrow and drink something, gather branches, light a fire, whatever.
Does that sound pagan enough? I hope so.

@Denise: all my best wishes for your early spring celebration. Can you perhaps find a way to create an effigy of the Glerg to burn as a token of thanks for the blessing of his being absent from your life today and always? It would be only right to do so.

Alain: Thing is, at least in the university I went to, taking at least one general science course was required, even if the student majored in a different field. And you’d expect someone in psychology to at least have a nodding acquaintance with biology; neither Greg or Ms. Conrick, who claim to have degrees and work in the field, demonstrate that they have learned any biology at all- not even high school level!

Most of my comments are gone from the Liberty Guardian website.

I posted several times about the author’s source, Dr Bob Sears’ “The Vaccine Book”, Sears’ “Alternative Vaccine Book”, Sears’ telling parents to “hide in the herd” and Sears’ deliberately unvaccinated 7-year-old patient who was identified as the “index case” for the 2008 San Diego measles outbreak.

As soon as I read that the author was quoting “Dr. Carley”, I knew it was an anti-vaccine “opinion” piece.

Dachel included the article in tonights “Media Update”.

Wow. Look at the long periods of time that the suspect measles case spent in the emergency room.

Sad, that the measles outbreak in the Philippines, has resulted in so many deaths:

“In San Diego, this is the first diagnosed case of measles in the county since July 2013. Health officials say there is an ongoing measles outbreak in the Philippines responsible for 1,700 cases of the disease and 21 measles-related deaths in 2013.”

For you newbies here, the 2008 measles index case identified after trace back investigation, was Dr. Bob Sears deliberately unvaccinated patient:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5708a3.htm

Perhaps we will have time to discuss the matter when I return.

I see that Gerg’s Colonel Blimp routine continues unabated. One might wonder how many times he’s flounced with such utterances only to forget all about them when he slinks back in, but one would have to give a rat’s ass. Of course, given that it’s transparently obvious that he continues to skulk around despite such bold declamations as “Woo hoo! The weekend is here and I am outta here,” perhaps I’ll get back around to his profoundly stupid suggestion that the magic “vax/unvax” study can be swapped out for some sort of animal study to evade the “ethical problems” that he now hides behind for lack of being able to say anything in the absence of this deflection.

Chemmomo: *** Do you remember the discussion I had with Dr. Bob Sears on the Ho-Po?

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2012/03/27/dr-bob-sears-vs-seth-mnookin-measles-out/

@ AC: IMO, doctors who deliberately misinterpret or lie about studies for financial gain, face no repercussions…unless you think that bloggers such as Orac and Seth Mnookin mete out those repercussions to celebrity doctor/authors.

*** I seem to have problems with pediatricians whose practices are located in California.

Thanks for the link Chemmomo.it was really interesting/scary to read about how quickly the infection vectors spread. Without a decent herd immunity that could have been a true disaster.

The more I read about Dr. Tenpenny, the more I wish Orac would rip apart her website in a way I’m not capable of.

You might find something in here to slake that a bit.

@Narad – I searched this blog with “Tenpenny”, and 13 blog posts came up. None directly ripping apart her shoddy website bit-by-bit, unless I somehow missed one. I’ll go back and double check. And try Google.

@lilady – Thank you 🙂 I’ve read posts by other scientific bloggers, which were very good.

Sorry for not being clear; it’s not material on her I was expressing interest in, but an actual deconstruction of her entire website. I don’t actually expect anyone to take the time to do this…

pD,

If vaccines are just like ‘a million things’ why does the DTaP cause a fever in 1/3 of recipients? I’m not sure how many infants you have been around, but I’m here to tell you, most of them don’t have a fever one in three days, but the CDC schedule tells us that DTAP causes an fever in 1/3 recipients.

I’m not sure what your point is, as DTaP isn’t given every day, and neither is any other vaccine. DTaP causes high fever, greater than 105 degrees Fahrenheit in about 1 child out of 16,000, by the way. What child in the pre-vaccine era did not experience a few of those?

Many viruses cause a fever in more than one in three children that get them. I’ve been around enough infants to know that they get plenty of viral infections, especially after they start daycare or school. Infants get on average 5-8 infections such as colds, ear and GI infections every year, and are more likely to suffer fevers than adults. These, and other assorted infections, are likely to provoke a more robust immune reaction than any vaccine on the schedule.

What should we make of this paradox if vaccines are the same as ‘a million other antigens’?

I didn’t say they are the same, but from our immune system’s point of view they are just another challenge. Why vaccines should provoke a qualitatively different response isn’t clear to me.

I wonder, why do we add adjuvants to vaccines?

I hope you know perfectly well why by now. The idea is to provoke an adaptive immune response with the minimum possible risk.

After all, if antigens are just like eating broccoli, why bother?

Antigens and broccoli are in the same class of ‘things that can affect the immune system’. Since there is evidence that ‘autism might have something to do with the immune system’, I don’t see why vaccines are a more plausible culprit than broccoli or a number of other things that can affect the immune system.

What a complete waste of resources, spending all those dollars and researcher hours to develop and study adjuvants when they are completely not necessary to insuring a robust immune response. Those crazy scientists adding all those unnecessary things to our vaccines. Why not just add broccoli?

That’s a rather silly strawman. Cut to the chase: why is your vaccine-autism hypothesis more compelling than my broccoli-autism hypothesis?

Antigenic challenges do not generally cause immune dysfunction or dysregulation; they are part of normal immune function.

Your assertion is at odds with a great amount of literature when developmental timeframe is taken into consideration.

Here is an example of this:

Acute neonatal infections ‘lock-in’ a suboptimal CD8+ T cell repertoire […]

That’s not an example of an antigenic challenge causing immune dysfunction, it’s an example of a less robust immune response by neonatal primary CD8+ T cells to an acute infection (not a vaccine) as compared to adult memory T cells, in mice. This less robust neonatal response is “outgrown by the adult primary response”.

What might account for the fact that only the treatment group showed differential immune capacities in adulthood, if, indeed, antigenic exposure was not causing persistent immune dysregulation? Do you suppose the treatment group also got broccoli.

A less robust response to a specific antigen that neonatal primary CD8+ T cells were previously exposed to does not constitute, “persistent immune dysregulation”. I fail to see even a tenuous connection to your hypothesis.

Or, alternatively; Postnatal inflammation increases seizure susceptibility in adult rats […]

So, injecting bacterial endotoxins into newborn rats increases their future risk of seizures. Is this really surprising? Head injuries in newborn, infant and adult humans increases their risk of seizures. Specific windows of development are interesting, I agree, but they aren’t in any evidence that vaccines are causing autism. Yes it’s possible, yes here’s a vague possible mechanism. Where’s your evidence that this is actually happening?

The facts are that our vaccine schedule is heavily clustered in the first few months of life; that is the timeframe during which persistent dysregulation can occur..

It is also historically the period when infants have been exposed to a much wider range of pathogens than today, though this range has been dramatically reduced by vaccination. As I pointed out above, the number of fevers you might expect to be induced in a child by vaccines is far smaller than the number induced by natural, mostly viral, infections.

Vaccination has markedly reduced the amount of time children spend fighting off (or succumbing to) infections, as well as the severity of their immune responses in general. I don’t buy this idea that fewer and less severe immune responses somehow damage the developing immune system less than more frequent and more severe ones.

It wasn’t so long ago that half of all children died of contagious diseases, and many still do in the developing world. If autism was the result of an immune insult during childhood I would expect there to have been far more cases in those that survived childhood diseases, and far more cases in the developing world than in the developed.

We do see some increased risk of autism with early infection (I see you cited the Danish study that found this), but I think this supports the idea that vaccination reduces the risk of autism by reducing the frequency and severity of infections.

Show me a study that demonstrates 200 kids that got nothing in the first six months and 200 kids that got vaccinated and then the children were evaluated for autism or other developmental issues?

You must know that a prospective study would be unethical, and that a retrospective one would be riddled with bias.

If you are suggesting that vaccination during the first six months of life causes autism, that is a testable hypothesis. It can’t be MMR as that is given too late, and has been around since 1968 in the US anyway. DTaP perhaps? That or the DTP have been around for far longer than the increase in autism incidence, so it can’t be them. If you compare other countries’ schedules, I think you quickly run out of possible culprits. Do you have a specific window and a specific vaccine in mind?

When SBM and Orac and others went over the data on vitamin usage not helping, and in fact, potentially hurting, life expectancy, the cohort size was in the tens of thousands. Now either the people running those studies were overshooting their necessary number of participants by a *lot*, or ‘considerable’ evidence means that you need *big* populations to study for differences. If there actually is ‘considerable’ evidence with those effect sizes, providing a link to said evidence should be a rudimentary task.

You need to educate yourself about statistics some more, especially about statistical power and sample sizes. You can calculate how large a sample of a population you need to detect a specific effect size with a specific degree of confidence. That means you can also calculate how small an effect would have to be for it not to be detected in a specific study. The larger the effect you are looking for the smaller the required sample size.

The vitamin studies were looking for very small effects, and needed large samples sizes. The effect sizes claimed for vaccines on autism are very much larger, with many anti-vaccine activists claiming that most or even all autism is caused by vaccination.

However, if you look at the epidemiological studies on vaccines, you can’t rule out a small effect, but it seems very clear there isn’t a large one.

I do understand where you are coming from. It isn’t impossible that autism is sometimes caused or exacerbated by a robust immune challenge at a moment of neurodevelopmental vulnerability. That would appear to be the mechanism by which prenatal rubella greatly increases the risk of autism, for example – infection before or after that window period does not cause autism or CRS. It isn’t impossible that there might be more than one window of vulnerability like this. However, lots of things are not impossible.

Let me put this a little differently. What evidence is better explained by your hypothesis than my hypothesis that there is no connection whatsoever between vaccines and autism apart from, perhaps, a modest preventive effect?

@ notation:

I appreciate your kind words.
My father always told me that delivery is key.
Oh, wait you can’t actually hear me.

Unfortunately, I think that my ‘bonefire’ must remain only an ardent wish because everything is wet and disgusting but I’ll still take one of my cohorts to the waterside to see how much storm damage has occured over the past few months and then get Thai food. Ancient European ritual.

But effigies are ALWAYS a good idea. Instead of Burning Man, it’ll have to be Soggy Man.

@ PGP:

Conrick too? Holy crap. Let’s see: Ginger Taylor, Alison MacNeil, Katie Wright, TMR’s Saint, CONRICK – all have degrees in psychology or related areas and/ or work as counsellors / therapists.

I somehow doubt that they have much bio/ physio background- there are ways to get a Master’s degree without physio in psych – but it may be a degree requirement for a doctorate as are lots of statistics/ research design but more recently, there be alternative doctoral requirements in certain locales. I split my degrees Clinical/ Experimental so I do have a wider background than most. Social work degree requirements may focus on aspects other than medical/ psychological systems.

Thus, these anti-vax creatures do upset me when they parade their job titles and speak as it were *ex cathedra* but I always remember that there are woo-drenched doctors and nurses as well.

@ Lawrence:

Same here.
I’d like to know how a minuscule amount of mercury can utterly transform brain development :
does it induce time travel, reaching back two years to affect and change pre-natal development, adding cells, moving neural pathways around, re-arranging them and all the while evading detection by CAT scan, MRI, EEG, video and trained observers?

Also if there is no correlation between vaccination and autism why postulate mechanisms?
Immunological difference may be due to whatever causes autism not a cause of autism mediated by vaccines.

Diagramming possible causation can sometimes provoke eye-opening revelations.

Altho’ I can’t look it up right now- my computer is a-fussing and unhappy- IIRC she didn’t have a degree in psych but had some sort of training and did rape counselling.
Yeah. I know.

Here we go- from Safe Minds-
she has an *undergraduate degree* from Boston U ( doesn’t say in what) and a Master’s in Ed from Columbia U and a *certificate* in counselling psych ( doesn’t say from where/ could be somehwere else); she was the director of a sexual assault crisis centre and resigned to take care of her child with autism.

Unbelievable. It would be hard to think of a more hate-filled individual ever to expose themselves in this autism thing.

Oh my. Don’t I feel stupid. Sorry, blushing now…

That wasn’t my intention; I just thought the Craig Egan–Tenpenny interaction, which resulted in her FB page completely disappearing for a while, might provide some alternative entertainment.

Craig Egan…bless him…has been busy:

http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2014/02/vactruth-writers-defending-baby-murderers.html

my point is your concerned for disease so you immunize
if you concerned for edge case’s of neurological damage from mercury remove the mercury seems pretty simple to me

problem solved , so what am i missing ?

@ will
let me correct that, you are assuming that methyl mercury is a component of thiomersal when it is actually ethyl mercury. They are not the same.

I really wish there was an edit button or preview function, ugh.

Thank you lilady, for saying it much better than I ever could. The technical details don’t stick in my head as well as they should, which tends to make me generalize things a lot more than I want to. A few more years of reading this kind of stuff over and over again and some of it might take hold enough for me to rattle off the correct details (like all the wonderful regulars here).

“Thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines, based only on methyl mercury research.” – lilady [sorry, I don’t know how to italicize]

I thought it was removed after the EPA directed that all government departments review the presence of mercury, and that in vaccines it was removed after AAP and PHS raised a purely theoretical risk, rather than any specific research.

BTW, Jeff 1971: IMO, the original AAP Statement about removing Thimerosal, “disappeared” from the AAP Policy Statements page just a few short years after Thimerosal was removed from multi-dose vials and the switchover to only single dose vials/single dose preloaded syringes.

My personal belief is that the AAP could have (should have) issued an additional (Interim?) Statement about the completed research studies showing safety of Thimerosal, as they were reported in the science and medical journals, before the AAP finally issued the Statement (December, 2012) in support of the Who policy for the use of multi-dose vials.

@ motil some facts i found
thiomersal is 50% mercury by weight

Table salt is 50% sodium ( In pure elemental form -sodium is explosive when mixed with water)
Table salt is 50% chloride ( In pure elemental form as chlorine gas, will turn to corrosive acid when mixed with water)
So why doesn’t my mouth dissolve or explode off my face when I eat salt?

Because the compound sodium chloride has completely different properties than it’s components alone.

Elemental Hydrogen will explode when ignited.
Elemental Oxygen will give a huge flame when ignited.
So why can I throw H2O on a fire and not create a crater from the explosion?

Because the compound H2O – water – has completely different properties from that of it’s components alone.
See where I’m going with this?

Just like thimerosal (ethyl mercury) has completely different properties from elemental mercury AND methyl mercury.

Now that this has been pointed out to you I can assume there will be no more pesky wilful ignorance.

@Narad – Oh, it most definitely will! Sorry, I misunderstood initially then. I thought you were taking the piss with the link ..

So, for a newbie such as myself – safe to say the following is correlation and not causation, right?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21623535

And anything mentioning VAERS is a write-off I assume, yes?

or am i wrong that is not its purpose ?
cause i seem to remember that there is some live bacteria in these vaccines ??? so now im really getting confused

Thimerosal was not used in live vaccines. For obvious reasons.

“Here’s a recent statement from the AAP in support of Thimerosal preservative in … Multi-dose” ?
…wait are they recommending upping the amount taken in at one time ?

No, one vial with enough doses for multiple people. Packaging