This time in the form of a court ruling:
A special federal court ruled yesterday that vaccines do not cause autism and that thousands of families with autistic children are not entitled to compensation, delivering a major blow to an international movement that has tried for years to link childhood immunizations with the devastating disorder.
The ruling closes one chapter in a long feud that has pitted families with autistic children against the bulk of the scientific establishment. Those who believe passionately that routine childhood shots are to blame for the rising toll of autism feel they are locked in a David-and-Goliath struggle against vaccine manufacturers, corrupt scientists, federal agencies and the mainstream media. It remains to be seen whether yesterday’s ruling will end the controversy — or be seen as just more evidence of what some call a conspiracy.
The vast majority of credible scientific studies have shown — and all federal health agencies have strenuously argued — that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. And public health officials have repeatedly warned that fewer immunizations will endanger children’s lives.
Nevertheless, concerns about vaccines such as the “MMR” shot, which protects children against measles, mumps and rubella, have grown so widespread that some parents are choosing to forgo vaccinations. About one in 12 children does not receive the MMR vaccine in the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
On top of the information that the author of the study that started this may have faked his data, this has not been a good couple of weeks for those who believe in an autism/vaccine link. Again, hopefully Tim F. will have some time to talk about this, but he has been swamped lately.
DougJ
My sister is an autism researcher. That autism-vaccine link is utter, total, complete bullshit.
Here’s the thing: the consensus is that you’re born with it. There may be a prenatal environmental trigger.
The shots these jack asses claim cause autism are the MMR ones, which come at 18 months. There is no one — NO ONE — who believes autism develops that late. You’re probably born with it, and if not, it certainly develops within the first year. Experts can diagnose at 10 or 12 months.
On top of which, there’s no science suggesting that there should be a connection between autism and vaccines, and there’s plenty of data suggesting that there is no connection.
But the big thing for me is that you already have it, or you don’t, at 18 months. There is no possible way it can be caused by anything at 18 months.
These idiots are worse than global warming deniers.
sgwhiteinfla
I don’t know if you caught this but on KO the other night he had the guy who reported on the doctor’s work being bogus as the world’s worst person because evidently that very same reporter is the guy who got the investigation into the doctor who came up with the link between the vaccines and autism initiated in the first place. Now KO didn’t say and I don’t necessarily believe that just because the guy reporting it was actually a part of the story that makes the story false. However it does raise some ethical questions about conflict of interest.
Xenos
I am happily living in an Imus-free zone. Is he still going on about this?
Cathy W
You know, I’ve wondered if the tide could be turned back in the other direction by widely publicizing the fact that male sterility is a potential outcome of mumps, the second M in MMR…
Nobody in my generation had any of these diseases, nobody in my generation even knows anyone who had any of these diseases, because the vaccine is so blessed effective. So we forget things like ‘measles can cause potentially fatal encephalitis’ and ‘mumps can damage your testicles’.
jibeaux
@sgwhiteinfla:
Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Reporters dig into things all the time, and their investigations may lead to a more formal investigation. See Woodward, Bob. That is the very nature of what true investigative journalism is supposed to do. Do you have a link that would provide more context?
BDeevDad
The author of the faking story was called a worst person by Olbermann and is demanding a retraction.
SGEW
Much as I agree that the Autism/Vaccine link is bullshit on par with AGW denial, "Intelligent Design," or homeopathic "medicine," I take issue with this. Many of those who are most vocal pushing the link have family members who are autistic – they have a very personal stake in it, and (giving them the benefit of the doubt) mean well. Most AGW deniers, IDiots, and homeoquacks are simply hacks who have their own agenda (either JebusJuice or th’ $$$).
I would say that they’re more akin to 9/11 victims’ families who believe the whole inside job thing. I feel bad for them, wish that they could appreciate rational thinking, but don’t believe that they have any ulterior, questionable motives (unlike, say, Sen. Inhofe (R – Pluto)).
NS
The multiple epidemiological studies on vaccines and autism are as convincing as the evidence can get. These studies can find vaccine side-effects that occur in 1 in 10,000 cases, but they show no link with autism which is much, much more common (like 1 in 150 children).
I will say that the scientific community has done a bad job in trying to make their case to the general public. We know the media sucks at this type of thing, but you have to able to debate Jenny McCarthy in public if you want your ideas to win the day.
John Cole
What is the tl;dr version of the KO story?
jibeaux
@Cathy W:
Hell, you can die from mumps. One of the take-away lessons of the story This American Life did on this topic is that vaccine deniers are unswayed by the argument that their own kids and other people’s kids are put at risk by their choices. They acknowledge this, but do not care. They weren’t even swayed by an actual honest to God outbreak of mumps. I am really at a loss as to the best way to approach the profoundly irrational.
BDeevDad
@John Cole: See my link above
DougJ
I think they’re worse, because (a) the whole inside job thing is much more plausible than the autism-vaccine link (not that it’s all that plausible) and (b) the 9/11 victims’ families aren’t possibly causing a horrible outbreak of measles with their craziness.
And what about someone like RFK Jr. (a big pusher of this lie)? He doesn’t have autistic kids, he’s just an asshole who tries to get attention by making shit up.
Cathy W
@John Cole: KO claimed the reporter (Brian Deer) had a conflict of interest, because he was allegedly a complainant in a disciplinary action against Wakefield. Except Deer says he wasn’t.
DougJ
That’s another difference between them and some of the 9/11 truthers. The thing about a lot of conspiracy theory stuff is that believing it is harmless. That’s not the case here.
Zifnab
@NS: They shouldn’t have to debate Jenny McCarthy. This is a debate people should be having in the New England Journal of Medicine, not on Ellen and Oprah.
Now, if the upshot of all this is increased scientific funding into the causes and treatments for autism, then maybe there’s a healthy silver lining in it all. But given the pernicious ant-science vibe that runs through our social discourse, I’m not particularly hopeful.
DougJ
That’s not what happens. What happens is that money that should get spend on valid research of the causes of autism gets shunted into these crazy vaccine bullshit.
There’s no silver lining to living in an irrational, anti-science, pre-Enlightenment society.
Punchy
Activist judges, natch.
this: KO does the WWP bit on the bullshit researcher. Then, the next day, he talks to that researcher’s supporter, who dumps tons of lies at KO about the reporter who broke the story. KO checks NONE of the lies, and decides to WWP the journalist who breaks the phony research story.
Meanwhile, everyone and their mother knows the journalist is legit, the supporter was completely full of shit, and KO royally fucked up his fact-checking.
Xenos
@jibeaux:
Krugman refers to the proliferation and promotion of junk economics as a new dark ages for the field. A similar rise in psuedoscience can be seen in other politically sensitive fields, like genetics, alternative medicine, and public health. Pick your field – the crackpots are on the rise. And the shameless frauds in the arts and the humanities seem to be ascendant, too.
What sort of moral crisis causes a successful nation to prefer superstition and hype to the rationality that created its success? Whatever it is, we need to get a handle on it or we will eventually find ourselves in a real dark age.
TheFountainHead
In a somewhat unrelated thought, I had an idea the other day that may be half-baked, but seemed good at the time.
I think the Senate and the House should introduce rules stating that no member of Congress may introduce as evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, any published scientific paper, study, or report unless they can also provide at least two other published papers, studies, or reports on the same topic that support the original. That might help to keep some of this shit from gaining too much traction politically as well as with the public.
BDeevDad
That pisses me off because trying to explain herd immunity to an anti-vaxer is like talking to a brick wall.
sgwhiteinfla
BdeevDad
There is only one problem with the guy’s response, KO didn’t say that his reporting on the story made it false. What he said was the guy was wrong for not ACKNOWLEDGING that he was a part of the story. Here is the clip and you can judge for yourself if he said the story was false. I seem to vividly remember him explicitly stating that the doctors work may well be in doubt. He was talking about journalistic ethics not attesting to the veracity of the report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#29148912
SGEW
@DougJ: Fair points. But the plaintiffs in this lawsuit do have autistic children. I have a great deal of sympathy for their intentions here, despite their blockheadedness.
Ok, you’re right there. Fuck that asshole.
passerby
What other conclusion would you expect from an industry that runs on billion$$ of federal AND big pharma dollars every year?
Shorter Federal Agency speak: Be afraid. Be very afraid. Booga-booga-booga!
Steve
DougJ, what about the parents who report their child behaving normally up until a certain point, when they suddenly start regressing rapidly or what have you? What’s the scientific take on those stories?
sgwhiteinfla
Punchy says
What fact in the clip I linked to above did KO get wrong about Deer? Did he infact disclose in the article that he had helped to lodge the complaint? Because thats what KO said he did wrong. And if you look at the guy’s response he NEVER asserts that he actually disclosed his role in the investigation. Again KO called him out for journalistic ethics, not for having the story wrong.
Zifnab
@DougJ: In the short term, yeah. Just like in the short term, scientists had to get together and prove AIDS didn’t come from a toilet seat and diabetes wasn’t caused by lack of baby Jesus power.
But in the long term it can focus attention on autism as an enduring problem and channel folks like McCarthy and Imus to search for actual cures (assuming they don’t just keep dogging away at their witch hunts). Now that you’ve galvanized all these parents with autistic kids and kicked the issue into the limelight, I imagine any doctor doing autism research (of the legitimate variety) has a better chance of getting grants, patients, or whatever else he needs.
jibeaux
I would not want to be an NBC lawyer round about now, is all I can say. UK antidefamation law is a lot tougher on the alleged defamer than US law, although jurisdiction could certainly be an issue.
In related law wonkery, it stands to reason that a journalist would not be a complainant against the Dr. in a disciplinary hearing, because although I don’t know what the procedures and rules of this disciplinary process would be, as a general rule in civil proceedings, typically reproduced in quasi-judicial settings, a complainant has to have standing. So, say, the parents of a child hurt by alleged medical malpractice can bring a disciplinary complaint, but a journalist who reported on eight different examples of alleged malpractice against the doctor would have nothing. It’s hard for me to picture how a journalist who was not personally affected by the doctor’s actions could be a complainant in an action like this and not be immediately dismissed.
This part was not smart, either:
DougJ
A layperson can typically notice symptoms of autism starting at around 18 months, right around when kids get their MMR shots. That’s where this whole kooky theory comes from. Kids have it, probably from birth, but parents can only notice the symptoms starting much later in many cases.
Steve
Any time a journalist uncovers something, and the authorities decide to investigate, they’re going to talk to the journalist who broke the story to see what evidence he’s willing to share. It’s entirely standard procedure. In fact, you’d be shocked if the authorities didn’t at least try to have a conversation with the one person who’s done the most digging into the issue, whatever the issue may be.
I’ve never heard it suggested that once the journalist talks with the authorities, about the evidence underlying a story he’s already written, he suddenly needs to disclose that he’s part of the story because someone might think he has a conflict of interest. It’s a silly idea.
Zifnab
@Steve: It’s not that the kid doesn’t have autism. It’s that the kid is less than 1 year old. You don’t really notice until 18 months or so when you bring the child out to mingle with others and realize he’s acting differently. But before that he’s just an eating, crying, pooping machine. Autism doesn’t really swing that behavior one way or the other.
Bob In Pacifica
If you follow the scientific studies that come out on the subject you find that the vaccine-autism link is fading. Soon it will take its rightful place next to the flat-earth society and evolution non-believers. Studies have shown that there is a greater increase in autism in countries that do not use the thimerosal than in countries that do or have done so.
There are probably three reasons for the increase in reported cases of autistic syndromes. First, they are reported more. If you live in Marin County you are more likely to get a diagnosis than if you live in a rural Georgia county. And in fact you do. A hundred years ago if Clem didn’t understand things normally you could still put him behind a plow or plant on the porch where’d he whittle.
The second reason relies on an interesting theory, that many mental conditions can be placed on a graph from male to female in character. That is, a condition like schizophrenia is "feminine" in that it is a sensory overload of information coming in while autism is the opposite. I’m incompetent to explain this adequately, but if you google the topic you can get a better read of it. This theory essentially places the origin of these diseases of communication at the level of genes, where male and female genes battle it out. If one side overwhelms the other either you have autism where you don’t communicate or schizophrenia where you are always communicating to the voices in your head. So why guys don’t ask directions is essentially a mild symptom of autism.
As a corollary to the last thingie, the third reason, in today’s society "male" characteristics are favored. Analytical thinking, which is considered a "trait" of maleness, is favored in high technology societies. So people whose genetic makeup carry a lot of these male thingies are more likely to have autistic children. And scientific minds are more favored in Western societies.
If you go back to the early explorations of autism when they first theorized it was caused by cold, emotionally distant mothers you can see how this would fit. Under the above theory those mothers may just have been carrying a lot of male genetic material relating to brain structure. That is, those women, or their ancestors, probably didn’t ask for directions either. This would also explain the emotion around parents who want to find a reason other than themselves for why their child is autistic.
I don’t know if I covered it all. When I refer to male v. female I’m not talking about sexuality or sexual preference, merely how the brain is organized in its thinking.
Hope I didn’t confuse anyone too much.
DougJ
Pharma doesn’t make much money on the shots and they’re not liable in the suits (there’s a special vaccine court). They don’t give a fuck about this issue at all.
jibeaux
@sgwhiteinfla:
No, he didn’t "disclose" lodging a complaint, he denied it.
BDeevDad
@sgwhiteinfla: From his letter:
Also, KO does not disclose getting his diatribe from David Kirby, an anti-vax profiteer?
DougJ
Yes, that’s exactly right. And well put.
gex
@Steve: That’s completely unscientific. It’s the old "the plural of anecdote is not data" situation. Perhaps they just didn’t really notice or pay attention to autism like symptoms before. Others have noted that MMR is given at about the same time that autistic symptoms start showing – so it could be coincidence. And at this point, the activists have put it in some people’s minds that there is a causal relationship. Humans have a remarkable ability to see patterns where there aren’t any.
What bothers me most in this saga is that the guy who started this scare not only faked his data, but was working on an alternative vaccination that he hoped to have approved and patented. Leaving that part of the story out makes it harder for people to see why they should be suspicious of his results, particularly when no other corroborating studies exist.
Xenos
@Steve: I will jump in on this. There are so many vaccines now for young children that for the first couple years kids are getting shots four or more times a year, sometimes three or four shots at a time. One pediatrician we used had us come in every six weeks so he could avoid having to give so many at once.
If you think you have a healthy kid who suddenly stops progressing, or start regressing, you are going to look for a cause. There is a strong chance that kid got a vaccination within a few weeks of the parentally observed ‘onset’ of autism. Most people, as poorly educated as they are even when they are college graduates, are not mentally equipped to distinguish between causality and correlation in the midst of a crisis. The most proximate event is assumed to be the most likely cause.
bill
Re Olbermann’s Worst Persons: Maybe I missed something, but when he was calling out the researcher for having faked his data, he noted that the research was published in The Lancet. My thought was, What the hell is up with The Lancet for publishing the paper in the first place? Shouldn’t they be sharing the glory?
Cat Lady
@Steve:
The anecdotes from acquaintances with autistic children who saw their babies change before their eyes within days or weeks of the immunizations are pretty compelling. My children weathered their jabs, but they did get pretty "sick" from them – fevers, etc. I don’t think all autism is from immunizations – I think genetics does play a large part, but why does it have to be all one, or all the other?
NS
@Zifnab
Of course, they shouldn’t have to debate Jenny McCarthy, but they better learn how. Scientists along with other academics (especially those employed at public institutions) have a duty to explain controversies like this to the rest of us. It is going to take place on Ellen and Oprah whether you like it or not, and scientists need to start communicating to that audience. I think this is true for all policy, but for vaccines it’s especially important because we can’t simply make them mandatory; parents have to have the information so they can make the right call. The way to succeed in academia is to write for journals that only other academics can read in a language that only other academics can understand. Until we demand that public outreach is major part of the jobs of our most knowledgeable scientists, prejudice and superstition are going to win more public debates and cause more damage.
Reverend Dennis
@DougJ:
Maybe these parents of autistic children were desperately hoping that the cause was something simple and preventable. Maybe they were anxious to spare other parents a lifetime of worrying what would happen to their kids once they became too old, too infirm or too dead to take care of them any more.
Maybe they, like my wife and I, have a twenty-four-year-old autistic child who still calls us "mama and daddy." Try living with that and not becoming a bit desperate.
I never believed in the vaccine-autism link. There were too many studies too early on for it to have have true. Others did believe in it. To characterize them as "idiots," or worse than 9-11 conspiracy theorists might just say something about your own lack of compassion and insight.
liberal
@jibeaux:
This is a really important point: the way herd immunity works, you can get sick even if you’re vaccinated, but if enough people are vaccinated, you won’t get sick because the disease won’t find enough victims to spread.
IMHO these people aren’t just stupid, they’re extremely selfish.
DougJ
@BIP
The consensus is that there’s a real increase, not just an increase in diagnosis. Beyond that, no one really knows, but there is a possibility that there is a pre-natal trigger of some kind. It’s probably mostly genetic, but it may be a matter of predisposition rather than predetermination, and those predisposed to have it may get it sometimes because of exposure to a trigger.
No one really knows. It’s like those crazy autoimmune diseases. Did you know that the best predictor of whether you will develop MS or not is the latitude you lived in during your mid adolescence? No one knows why that could possibly be or if it explains anything at all.
There’s a lot of diseases that science has almost understanding of. The miracle probably is that we understand any at all.
passerby
@DougJ:
DougJ, what do you mean Pharma doesn’t make money on this? School me, please. They manufacture and sell vaccines, they have stock holders, hence, their primary raison d’etre is making profit. They’re interested in expanding markets. How do they expand the markets? How do they create demand for their products?
No, they don’t. They give a fuck about money.
jibeaux
@Cat Lady:
It doesn’t have to be all anything. The point is that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever saying vaccines have anything to do with anything. My kids starting walking soon after getting their first teeth. Correlation, not causation.
DougJ
Fuck you.
What about the parents who know it’s bullshit and are tormented by the fact that research goes down the drain on a nonexistent link? I guess they don’t count because they’re elitists, right? One of my best friends falls into this category in fact. Where’s your compassion for her?
liberal
@DougJ:
Agreed. There are lots of families out there who think the right thing to do is research into autism "cures," when in fact right now the only good places to put money are (a) basic science behind the syndrome, and perhaps (b) research into the efficacy of behavioral treatments.
Xenos
Actually, it does. If one takes a kid diagnosed with autism at 2 1/2 and review the home movies of the kid playing at age 1, a trained professional can see plenty of indicators. The parents, especially if it is the oldest or only kid, have no clue.
My second oldest kid (of five) nearly fits an Asperger’s diagnosis. I knew there was something really different about him at nine months. If he had been my first I would never have noticed it until he was preschool age. Now he is ten years old, reads at a tenth grade level, and can not tie his shoes. I despair of his ever learning to tie his shoes, but I think it is about time to teach him to read stock price tables in the WSJ.
DougJ
Vaccines aren’t profitable. Neither are antibiotics, for that matter. Once the patent is gone on these things, they don’t make much money on them.
liberal
@DougJ:
I agree, but my guess is that the vast majority of parents don’t fall in that category.
Stupidity ain’t an excuse, of course.
jibeaux
@passerby:
Because there’s no money in prevention, and vaccines prevent. In a world motivated purely by profit, a long-term treatment drug that would keep measles or mumps in check would be far better for big pharma than a vaccine. See also, conspiracy theories about HIV cocktails as a deliberate choice over an HIV vaccine. This is just one of the many ways in which the interests of capitalism do not go hand in hand with public health.
liberal
@DougJ:
Really? I thought informed consensus was that it’s likely to be increased reporting.
sgwhiteinfla
I shouldn’t have used the word complainant. What I am saying is that from his own words his work on story about Wakefield was at least somewhat the basis of the investigation. If that is not true why did the GMC ask him for his journalistic findings? Now I don’t know the rules about disclosure but I would think that a relevant point. As for David Kirby I don’t have a clue about that other than Deer supposes that this is where Olbermann got his information from. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t but what I do know is that in the rest of his letter Deer goes on to state that KO made allegations that he never made. That to me is a curious thing.
Again I didn’t see KO say anything about the guy’s ability to continue covering the story, nor anything that suggested his reporting invalidated the allegations, nor anything that suggested he was simply reporting his prior allegations. Maybe that is just hyperbole on his part but it doesn’t comport with what was actually said IMHO.
DougJ
I have no idea what the percentages are. But I don’t see why the ones who are wrong deserve our compassion and the ones who are right don’t.
Reverend Dennis
@DougJ:
I’m tormented by the fact that there’s no cure, not even an identified cause. The link between vaccines and autism was disproved by the research, mostly in the form of surveys. Without the research and surveys there was no way of knowing whether the link existed or not. There are dead ends in research for the cause of every disease, this was one of them.
You seemed to miss the point of my post: desperate people do desperate, often wrongheaded things. They’re not idiots – they’re just humans.
DougJ
There’s increased reporting as well. But there are probably also more real cases. To be clear: the idea that something that we’re doing is actually making more kids have autism is not crazy. It’s what many researchers believe. People are right to be worried about the increased rate of autism. It’s just that the specific idea of a link between autism and vaccines is bs.
DougJ
Fair enough. My friend with a severely autistic child is apoplectic about the backwardness of the vaccine-link-believers (as I would be if I were in her shoes), so I may tend to see this from her point of view.
What do you think of someone like RFK Jr. pushing the link, btw?
NS
@liberal
I’m not sure you can say absolutely if it’s one or the other. There is certainly increased reporting. Many children with severe disabilities could be diagnosed as cognitively disabled (or mentally retarded) or as autistic. The numbers for the former have dropped as the numbers for the latter have risen so some individuals are just getting a different label. Add to the fact that milder forms of autism (including Aspergers) were not diagnosed much at all a generation ago, then increased reporting is certainly part of the picture. I don’t think you can say for sure that autism rates are not increasing, however.
jibeaux
@Xenos:
Stock prices? What’s wrong with good old counting cards? I’d take Vegas’ odds over the current market any day. :)
liberal
@Cat Lady:
Because AFAICT the evidence is pretty strong that the "insult" behind autism occurs prenatally.
The point that the vaccine BS is just "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" is a very convincing one: if thousands of children come down with autism, and if signs of autism visible to non-experts often manifest at an age that happens to coincide with age of vaccination, then from chance alone you’d expect lots of parents to "see" a link to vaccination that simply isn’t there.
Cat Lady
@jibeaux: I understand the issue correlation/causation issues, but like everything else controversial, it seems, there seems to be a need by those invested in the issue to take hard sides in the debate, when as DougJ says above, it could turn out to be some combination of genetic pre-disposition with a triggering event, i.e., a vaccine. Or something else in the environment. Or something yet to be understood. I have nothing but sympathy for those who are trying to just make sense out of it.
liberal
@NS:
I’ve long suspected this, but haven’t had time to look into it.
Right.
I agree. However, I think the starting position for this kind of thing should be to assume that rates are not increasing, and then go from there.
jibeaux
On the topic of desperate people, I do wonder how many of the plaintiffs in the vaccine court do not particularly believe in the link, or are neutral on the subject, but are primarily trying to get some much-needed financial help for their kids’ needs.
les
@NS:
You’re probably right, but having watched the Kansas evolution "debates," scientists are in a really tough position whether it’s a debate or on Oprah–since they’re not bound by facts or the truth, the deniers can put out more BS in 30 seconds than can be responded to in an hour. On top of that, deniers push nice little anecdotes and "theories" that seem to make common sense; reality is complex and often hard to explain to non-experts. After years of downgrading expertise and knowledge, this country is ripe for a return to dark ages indeed.
DougJ
They know the triggering event is not the MMR shot with close to 100% certainty. The trigger, if there is one, is almost certainly *prenatal*.
Evinfuilt
Wakefield and reporters who pushed his false story have literal blood on their hands. People like RFK Jr and Jenny McCartney should have to spend time in jail for all the lives put at risk, or killed by their Hysteria.
These people are doing the same crime as shouting fire in a crowded theater, except this time they’ve put the entire country at risk. People will die, many will grow up blind. All because of a deadly conspiracy theory, with zero evidence (of course the lack of evidence is used as evidence of the conspiracy.)
I know it all started in England, but unfortunately the way their Libel laws are setup, I think they hysteria starting journalists will get a free pass, when they at least need to be fired and sent into the wilderness.
—-
Reality says that all the people that caused the Iraq war and torture will get away with it, so why should I have any hope that these people will be punished. I know they won’t.
The Moar You Know
I remember when Roe V. Wade ended the controversy about abortion, and when the Warren Commision report put to rest all the conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.
liberal
@Cat Lady:
Sure, but the evidence that it’s a prenatal insult is strong.
There was a really good article in Scientific American a few years ago that looked at the observation that many people with autism have funny ears. The author used that, in conjunction with the "thalidomide clock," to conclude that the insult occurs rather early in pregnancy (I think it was day 30, though I don’t recall if that was gestational or embryonic age).
The other point is that a lot of the money required to investigate the basic science of autism is instead being pissed down the drain on "cures."
Reverend Dennis
I think that he should know better. The evil side of me wants to say that he’s the first harbinger of the sort of degeneration that eventually showed up in the great ruling families of old Europe.
jibeaux
@Cat Lady:
I agree that the causes are not well-understood. My point, and I’m no scientist but I believe this principle to be accurate, is that the burden is on the people wishing to show a link, to show a link. You shouldn’t be able to just assert things without any evidence beyond a vague and occasional temporal relationship, then when there is repeatedly shown to be no support for your assertion, continue to say that there is no definitive scientific research proving a negative. It would very much be like my claiming my kids’ baby teeth gave them the power to walk. Nothing in the data about normal timelines for infant development disproves my theory that the baby teeth gave them the power to walk, does it?
liberal
Just so people know, the evidence for a genetic link is the "recurrence risk": if you have one autistic child, each following child has a 6–8% chance of having it, which (even given today’s baseline estimates of incidence that are well more than 0.1%) is very elevated.
I doubt it’s a 100% genetic phenomenon, however: IIRC the rate at which one identical twin has it implies the other one does is extremely high, but not 100%.
Xenos
@jibeaux:
My wife has absolutely forbidden me from teaching the boy to gamble. She has a few relatives with limited interpersonal skills but a talent for calculating odds on the fly (all the interesting genetics seem to come from her side of the family) and it tends not to work out well in the long run.
Now the stock market… that is not gambling, is it?
SGEW
@jibeaux: I kinda prefer not to speculate about that, and am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, it’s better to ascribe to incompetence before assigning malice (or whatever). Anyway, they lost, so phew!
dr. bloor
@Xenos:
Your pragmatism is really commendable. Get him a brokerage account, and watch him go! As for the shoes, well, God gave us loafers and velcro for a reason.
jibeaux
@Reverend Dennis:
RFK has a child with "Vieques" in his name as part of a protest of that area being a (former) Navy bombing range. If that doesn’t make your roll your eyes, nothing will. Nothing wrong with protest, of course, but I don’t think kids should have to go through life with middle names like "Waterboarding" or "False Intelligence" or "Improper expansion of the proper role of signing statements"…
Evinfuilt
I do recall a second theory that’s getting a lot of research is age of the father. The older the father, it seems to become much more likely a child will have Autism Spectrum Disorder.
And there is no epidemic of Autism, its not really increasing, just the diagnosis since they moved it from a single disease to a spectrum of mental disorders. Lots of people who would have been labeled with something else 20 years ago is now part of the ASD nation. Asperger’s has not increased in how common it is. Mostly likely all of this is simple genetics, just sadly many people don’t want to admit that it was their genes that led to their childs lifetime of trouble and heartache.
NS
@les
The evolution debates are another perfect example of this phenomenon. Steven Jay Gould was extremely adept at fighting these battles, but how many Steven Jay Goulds are there out there? I took several courses in college dealing with evolution and whenever his name came up he was referred to as "just a popularizer". You don’t get any points in the academic world for acting like Gould, and that is the problem. I don’t deny that the propagandists like creationists and the anti-vaccine crowds are slippery, but generally speaking it’s easier to win an argument when the truth is on your side.
4tehlulz
@jibeaux: Unless their last names are "Zappa."
jibeaux
@SGEW:
I guess I wonder primarily because I wonder if more direct government assistance to families with autism would help tamp the movement down. It could be in the form of grants to pay for educational interventions, etc. It probably wouldn’t, but is a thought.
SGEW
False Intelligence Katrina Zappa will hereby be the name of my firstborn chld.
John Cain
@sgwhiteinfla: You apparently missed David Kirby crowing about how he pressured Olbermann to add this "clarification", to the point that Olbermann ran his remarks by Kirby before airtime. KO’s just regurgitating what some loon told him.
TheFountainHead
It’s threads like these that make me strongly, strongly consider adoption. Maybe that sounds incredibly selfish (As I typed it read that way) but there are so many healthy babies out there that are lacking for healthy childhoods, it’s hard to make the case for playing roulette with your genetic chips.
SGEW
@jibeaux: I don’t know if it would help stop these kinds of complaints either, but it’s a bloody good idea nonetheless.
TheFountainHead
Ooo, I went into moderation purgatory…por que?
liberal
@jibeaux:
In Virginia, they tried to get a bill passed that would force insurers to spend up to circa $30K/yr on behavioral interventions.
Cat Lady
@DougJ:
Thanks for the info. I’m just glad I dodged that bullet. I would be reluctant to tell anyone who didn’t, that the research shows that this is most likely just their fate. I’m sure there’s a strong inclination to blame it on something that was done to them, and I think that’s why the issue creates such a passion to pick sides.
liberal
@TheFountainHead:
How can you tell if an apparently "healthy" baby you plan on adopting won’t come down with autism?
Mike
I wrote a bad paper a few months back about how this debate plays out on new media and the Web. Just like with our right-wing friends, there’s total cocooning, "experts" reinforcing the credibility of other "experts," etc. Big Pharma may be their MSM.
It’s really easy to see how a parent just hit with a really tough autism diagnosis could fall in with that crowd. They have lists of reinforcing studies published in scientific journals. Most are complete bullshit, but most people aren’t going to do the legwork. They’ve got arguments crafted for most talking points. When I was halfway through my paper, I’d had a weird morning or something, and I (a biology major) somehow got convinced for 15 minutes that these people were onto something. The autism-MMR link provides not only a cause of their kid’s problem but also a bad guy, a compelling archetype.
I think the person above who argues that the 911 victims’ families who believe in the Truther stuff are more rational than autistic families who buy the MMR link is crazy. Both groups are wrong. One is absolutely batshit.
Xenos
@SGEW: Indeed. The hysteria arises out of the stress that families with disabled kids face. A social and legal commitment to take care of one another would do a lot to improve the mental health of the population.
liberal
@SGEW:
Yes, but it’s extremely expensive.
Maybe we as a society should agree to pay for this, out of compassion (though there are plausible arguments that there are benefits that would lead to long-term recouping of part of the costs), but IMHO we can’t just say "oh, X is terrible, therefore we should spend money to mitigate X."
In DC, there’s apparently some kind of statute or DC council policy that if you have a child with mental disabilities, and you claim that the public school system isn’t helping your child enough, you can send the kid to a private school and bill the District school system. It’s now eating up a very large fraction of educational funds.
Yes, in a perfect world, we might have more money to spend on these things if we pissed less money down into the Pentagon rathole. Though we don’t live in that world right now.
jibeaux
@TheFountainHead:
Adoption’s great, but the demand for healthy American-born infants available for adoption greatly exceeds the supply, unless something has changed that I definitely need to notify my infertile friends about…
TheFountainHead
@liberal: You can’t obviously, there are always risks for disease, but even at 18 months, a perfectly normal adoption age, many of the major life-long developmental ones can be screened for.
@jibeaux: I’m not in any way opposed to adopting from outside the US.
jibeaux
Adopting outside the U.S. also can take quite a while and a fair bit of money, and involve no small amount of frustration with the vagaries, inconsistencies, bureaucracies, bribes, and changes to procedures and policies. Some people can successfully adopt from China within a year or so, other friends have been waiting for going on seven years now. And I think right now China is about the adoption-friendliest country there is.
The Other Steve
Amanda Peet is so going to kick Jenny McCarthy’s ass.
http://www.vaccinateyourbaby.org/
Interesting detail… This group. Every Child by Two, was founded by Rosalynn Carter back in 1991.
The Other Steve
I am not a fan of the Kennedy family, and certainly not RFK Jr. who I would be extremely happy to never see in any government position.
4tehlulz
That’s actually federal law. I can see why DC parents would take that option, even given the hurdles one would have to go through. I looked into this with our kid because the old school system we were in was awful with their special ed. (Luckily we moved to a district that didn’t suck and the kid is doing very well.)
I can see how it would kill DC’s school budget, and I have sympathy for the administrators there, but if they improved their care, that money would stay in district.
itsbenj
@jibeaux: the point KO was making was that this journalist wrote about a request to investigate this now-discredited scientist’s work, without mentioning that it was in fact he himself who had made the request. failure to note such a thing is a conflict of interest – writing favorably about yourself without mentioning that that’s what you’re doing is something not to be done.
passerby
@DougJ:
Big pharma lobbyists were the ones who made sure that all neonates are "required" to receive their first inoculations before leaving the hospital. It’s SOP, a built-in market.
Big pharma lobbyists were the ones who made sure that school children were federally mandated to have these inoculations as prerequisite to enrollment, another form of built-in markets.
The whole annual flu-shot thing is purely a money making endeavor as the strain of flu in the vaccine is not likely to be the strain of flu that may be going around. Since they cannot mandate these inoculations, they use fear to drum up business.
We’re a long way from the glory days of the successful (virtual) eradication of polio and smallpox when the promise of science was for the betterment of mankind versus the betterment of corporate shares.
On another point, when it comes to scientific research, I think it should be mandatory that the original source of the funding for these studies (any studies) be included with the abstracts so that when we read them, we can weigh the outcomes with the possibility of conflicts of interest. The experimental design of some these "studies" generate self-fulfilling-prophesy types of outcomes.
Think about it, the company providing the research is the same one that stands to profit from the research having an outcome that benefits their bottom line. And we’ll believe them because, after all, they’re scientists.
"Back off man. I’m a scientist."—-Dr. Venckman.
Shorter Venckman: Shut up and sit down you ignorant fools.
[As a eye-opener, read “Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science” by Devine, MD. written, I think, in the late 80s.]
Other than that, David Byrne had an interesting observation about "facts": "…facts are lazy and facts are late…facts all come with points of view, facts don’t do what you want them to…" or something like that.
jibeaux
@itsbenj:
And it appears to be Brian Deer’s point to deny that he made the request, stating instead that it was the General Medical Council’s request. You cannot disclose that which you deny.
The Other Steve
@Evinfuilt:
Causual, or coincidence?
Wouldn’t a person with an Autism Spectrum Disorder who has difficulty socializing also find it difficult finding a mate? As such, wouldn’t this person be more likely to not have children under later in life… And could it not be possible then that this is genetic and inherited from parents?
I’m confident I have Aspergers although I have not been diagnosed by a doctor. I’m confident it is genetic.
I actually think understanding and knowing about this relieves the trouble and heartache. I’m really at a loss to understand the parents who are freaking out over this.
4tehlulz
YES WE SHOULD ALLOW OUTBREAKS OF POLIO AND MEASLES THAT’LL SHOW BIG PHARMA WHOS BOSS
Punchy
Because he didn’t help lodge the complaint. The Health minister did.
The Other Steve
@passerby:
You ever known someone who had one of these diseases? Polio, Measles, etc?
My father contracted Tetanus at age 18 and spent 3 months in the hospital. Weeks in intensive care with a tube down his throat forcing him to breath and then weeks of recovery.
You do not want to contract this disease… flat out.
Same with polio, smallpox and all the rest.
Tsulagi
So when do wingnuts grow out of that?
If you look at the small print in a video game manual likely you’ll find a medical warning. Odds are very low, but some kids have suffered epileptic seizures while playing video games. Some parents have sued companies like Nintendo and Sony claiming they actually caused their child’s epilepsy.
A few won. You can always find quack doctors for a fee. And naturally juries can be sympathetic to distraught parents. But those judgments were reversed on appeal.
It’s just a matter of their child’s epilepsy first surfacing while playing a video game. Some epileptics are sensitive to flashing lights, light patterns, that kind of thing. So while the video game might have been the first trigger (traffic lights could too) for a seizure, it didn’t cause the epilepsy.
Bob In Pacifica
DougJ, what’s the rate of autism in Chad? Up or down? I’m just saying that all the data is not in and autism is being seen more in places where they’re looking for it. By the way, I saw the study which said autism is up actually (as opposed to just being reported more) and I was unimpressed. Not entirely dismissive, but as I recall the authors seemed to make pronouncements that their data didn’t seem to back up fully. Clearly, if my exemplar, Clem, had been born a hundred years ago he wouldn’t have been autistic because the disease hadn’t been recognized and invented. And he most likely would have died of old age because all those other diagnoses weren’t around.
But a general increase in autism fits into the theory I mentioned above, that people who are more technologically-oriented (male-brained) are more favored in Western societies, have more children and thus produce more autistic children. (Now the converse of that is that schizophrenia seems to be up too. Maybe that’s also being reported more now. Or maybe Western societies reward the extremes more than traditional societies or that schizophrenia may be caused by environmental triggers.)
That doesn’t leave out the possibility that there may be an environmental link to autism, or that environmental triggers may also produce kinds of autism in a parallel manner. But that’s the beauty of science. Next week there’ll be new information to digest.
I’m still pondering the study that says that women who are exposed to teflon are less fertile.
gwangung
You can show HOW MUCH business, neh? How much does it add to the bottom line? This isn’t a binary characterization after all.
Punchy
Wow. If you think Big Pharma makes any money charging for a one-time shot, you have absolutely NO IDEA what R&D costs are for these things. Reason #9,128 why many vax development needs to be subsidized by the govt — there’s no profit in making vaccines, so little incentive for a company to do so.
Media Browski
BTW John, and interesting thing about the evolution of your blog from right to left:
I posted here back before your conversion in a post about the MMR/autism studies. Back then, your commenters went right down my throat claiming that there was a scientific conspiracy and such.
Now, well . . . it’s interesting how the baseline for scientific understanding changed as your blog’s political identification changed.
Bob In Pacifica
The vaccine-disease link I think that does bear some investigation is the polio vaccine-soft tissue cancer one. Early polio vaccines were grown in monkeys which carried SV-40 (Simian Virus #40; maybe it’s SMV-40 or SM-40). In any case, I recall a Dr. Carbone around ten years ago suggesting that the huge increase in soft tissue cancers in the last half of the 20th Century could be linked to the monkey virus, which can cause cancer and has been found in various human cancer tumors. The theory was that the virus was introduced into the human population through the polio vaccines.
It’s an interesting theory but no one seems to be researching that one.
BDeevDad
Maybe because they know that all vaccines, and all medications for that matter, do not work 100% of the time. Also, there are children with legitimate medical issues that prevent them from getting vaccinated and who depend on herd immunity which becomes less effective when less folks are vaccinated.
Maus
Just like any other "truther", it would be yet something else for them to be denialist about, or claim that "the risks outweigh the benefits".
Maus
Hahaha, what a hypocrite you are. Stop using these ridiculously weird appeals to authority, nobody believes you here. It’s plenty possible to distrust Big Pharma AND tolerate them for specific issues of public health. This whole RonPaulentologist "BIG PHARMA IS EEEEEVIL IN EVERY WAY" fearmongering is ridiculous and counterproductive.
Cat Lady
@Bob In Pacifica:
I’m waiting for the comprehensive and definitive research results that deal with phthalates and their relationship to reproductive system disorders in offspring, and women’s toxic loads in general. I say this, because we as women are exposed to so many more chemicals through our routine use of cosmetics – hair, skin and nail products which rely heavily on phthalates for their look and feel. That’s a huge stinky turd still to be poked.
aaron
Guys, I’m an academic scientist and hate the big pharma/big medicine thing as much as the next guy.
But trust me — there is NO money in vaccines! Your customer "buys" your "product" once, and then there are no more sales! In fact, this is a major problem — there simply isn’t much of an incentive for companies to invest in new vaccines.
If you want to rail against big pharma, please direct your rants appropriately… i.e., towards the whole viagra/statins/etc. cycle wherein you convince a customer that he needs your product and needs to keep taking it for the rest of his life (and/or that your new product which is patented is much, much better than your old, but very similar product, which is off-patent).
bcw
Anecdotes and Big Pharm. Do the Math.
There are 4.2M children born in the US every year. Something like 1/200 (21,000) will be diagnosed with autism. Assuming only one vaccination a year, and pure chance, 1/52 of those, or 400 children will be diagnosed in the same week as a vaccination. 400 every year! That’s a lot of frightened parents ready to blame vaccines for their child’s problem and they’re completely wrong.
Big Pharm makes it’s money from new, patented, many-pills-a-year drugs (Vioxx, Zyprexia,Viagra,Oxycontin) not from vaccines.
Tim
@jibeaux and
@liberal
Adoption is wonderful but not a guarantee of a healthy child whether the adoption is domestic or international. There are still risks. The real issue in all this is whether the prospective parent is willing and able to accept the risks inherent in having a child by any means. Children are not products that come with guarantees or warranties. If you can’t accept the risk of a bad outcome and the responsibility of dealing with it should one occur, then maybe parenting should be put off until such time as you can. That’s what we did.
I’ve two daughters, both adopted from China. The process is long, expensive and not perfect. There a no guarantees that come with it. With any adoption there is always the risk of unethical behavior at any point in the process. All you can do is educate yourself going in and keep an eye on the process and hope for the best. But in the end it’s worth all the hassle and frustration. I could not have asked for two more wonderful children no matter how they came to us.
I can’t speak for other countries but China’s process is pretty well delineated and above board. It’s also multi-track. There is the normal track for non-special needs infants and another for special needs and older waiting children. The former can take a couple years at this point. The latter is expedited and can take as little as six months. As with anything involving children and international migration there’s nothing simple, easy or quick about it.
solarjetman
@passerby:
What makes you think that the mainstream scientific and medical community is utterly corrupted by economic incentives, and yet purveyors of alternative medicine and pseudo-scientific attempts to discredit mainstream research (such as Dr. Wakefield) are not?
Trollhattan
@TehFountainhead
There’s a gal in SoCal that will probably cut you a deal, stat.
jibeaux
@Tim:
Congratulations on your family and I’m glad it worked out so successfully. I am not sure why my friends have waited so long, they haven’t really volunteered the details and I don’t feel comfortable enough to ask.
It is definitely true about accepting risks regardless. After thinking about TFH’s point (my first thought was, a gene pool is a gene pool, your chances are not any better with an adopted child), I realized that if you are talking about a child who is born apparently healthy, then you have presumably eliminated the risk of all the things which would have already developed and would be identifiable at birth or a young age.
passerby
@solarjetman:
Huh? I didn’t say anything about alternative medicine.
But, in my jaded view, it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that any and all manner of chicanery can be found in the quest for the Almighty Dollar to include the supplement and herb industry. After all, they are fast becoming corporate giants themselves.
Effective medicinal tools are out there from both big pharma and the herb world, but, to heal, cure, or ease the suffering others requires sincerity. It happens on a one-on-one basis. You don’t find compassion emerging from corporate boardrooms regardless of what their mission statements profess.
I once had an "Herb" rep claim, to my face, that "studies" have shown that a particular proprietary blend of mushrooms her company was selling (renown for its anti-inflammatory effects), was effective in managing diabetes. People will say anything to make a sale.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
These Canadian ads about mumps are pretty amateurish IMHO, but they are trying to use people’s squeamishness and vanity to encourage vaccination.
passerby
@aaron:
But, aaron, my point here is that millions of "customers" are born everyday. It’s not only volume, but, perpetually renewing volume. There’s money there. They may even be able to consider it a fixed asset on their ledgers.
Sheer volume makes vaccines big business.
Media Browski
@passerby: The money is in antibiotics, and treating thousands of peole with a disease, not in 1-off vaccinations.
Keep trying, you’re sure to hit on a good argument someday, by sheer brute force.
gaffer
The comments here are why the issue is so contentious. My eldest son has asd, (autism spectrum disorder). I can trace his condition not to the month, not to the day, but the hour.
He was a perfectly formed child, went to every developmental check-up, maxed out on the developmental charts, was speaking and was a happy, socially-engaged and conversant toddler. Around 18 months he got ill and was running a minor temperature. I went to the doctor with him where they gave him (1) an antibiotic for the infection fever and (2) took the opportunity to give him his MMR booster. After getting home, within 1 hour, he had gone literally comatose. From that moment forward, he did not just progressing, he regressed. He lost almost all previous speech ability which was not regained for approximately 4 years. He became aggressive and anti social. It’s been 10 years of incredibility hard work just to get him functioning in a semi-capable manner. It’s all documented with charts, pictures and videos.
Now if my story is just one out of millions, it’s an outlier. But it not 1, or 1,000, or 10,000 but literally 100,000 of parents across the US (and worldwide how can tell the exact same tale.)
If you spend 10 years living with it, and researching it you come to realize there is no one answer but a multiplicity of explanation and likely causes.
1. Was thimerisol in vaccines a trigger: Likely yes. The problem for the parent of ASD children is that it doesn’t affect all. Why is that? Because (1) each of us individually, has a genetic predisposition as to how the body excretes heavy metals and (2) males because of or brain chemistry and hormonal balance excrete heavy metals less well than females. (Go look at the chemistry associated with mercury compounds in the presence of an aluminum stabilizer).
2. Are vaccines a trigger? Likely yes. The great spike in autism correspond (yes correlation is not causality) with (1) the late 80s early 90s massive increase in the number of vaccines and dosing done during the first 24 month of a newborns life. Again, it likely comes down to the genetic strength and predisposition of the individual immune system.
3. Yes there is better diagnosis, but better diagnosis cannot explain statistical rates which equate to epidemic under CDC guidelines.
So why does all the intelligentsia say they is no link. They say no link because otherwise it would be a catastrophe for too many powerful entities.
1. The vaccination program would be horribly tarnished and diminished. I am not anti-vaccine (typical straw man argument made vociferously and mightly throughout even these comments). Vaccinations must continue because they’ve save billions of lives. What I am “anti” is accelerated and unnecessary multiple vaccination with newborns when they is no medical and social danger from elongating the schedule. I am anti "combo" vaccine when there is NO testing on the combo effect isolated from the individual vaccine. I am anti preservative / sterilization agents in vaccines which only serve to increase shelf live an improve gross margin for the provider at unknown medical risk to the patient. I am anti injecting toxic heavy metals into human beings.
2. Pharma could be bankrupted by millions of claims.
3. Every pediatrician who administered a claim could either be bankrupted or their insurance carrier could be bankrupted or both.
The above 3 is a pretty powerful collection of vested interests to never let the truth be known, at least in their lifetimes. What the commenters on this thread don’t know or see, is that for most of the hundreds of thousands of parents who have seen their child’s potential destroyed, don’t want revenge, they want honest research but they can’t get that because that would be, in and of itself, an admittance that there is substance to the hypothesis.
People have no difficulty believing that the stakeholders would bury the truth about torture, or bury the truth about warrantless wiretatpping, or bury the truth about climate change, or bury the truth about the economy or bury the truth about steroid usage in sports for god’s sake, but when it comes to the what may have happened to a generation of newborns, the effected groups have somehow found their honesty and integrity.
(end of annual rant…)
Media Browski
I’ve always found that conspiracy theories are the hallmark of a well-reasoned opinion.
gaffer
The comments here are why the issue is so contentious. My eldest son has asd, (austirm spectrum disorder). I can trace his condition not to the month, not to the day, but the hour.
He was a perfectly formed child, went to every developmental check-up, maxed out on the developmental charts, was speaking and was a happy, socially-engaged and conversant toddler. Around 18 month he got ill and was running a minor temperature. I went to the doctor with him where they gave him (1) an antibiotic for the infection fever and (2) took the opportunity to give him his MMR booster. After getting home, within 1 hour, he had gone literally comatose. From that moment forward, he did not just progressing, he regressed. He lost almost all previous speech ability which was not regained for approximately 4 years. He became aggressive and anti social. It’s been 10 years of incredibility hard work just to get him functioning in a semi-capable manner. It’s all documented with charts, pictures and videos.
Now if my story is just one out of millions, it’s an outlier. But it not 1, or 1,000, or 10,000 but literally 100,000 of parents across the US (and worldwide how can tell the exact same tale.)
If you spend 10 years living with it, and researching it you come to realize there is no one answer but a multiplicity of explanation and likely causes.
1. Was thimerisol in vaccines a trigger: Likely yes. The problem for the parent of ASD children is that it doesn’t affect all. Why is that? Because (1) each of us individually, has a genetic predisposition as to how the body excretes heavy metals and (2) males because of or brain chemistry and hormonal balance excrete heavy metals less well than females. (Go look at the chemistry associated with mercury compounds in the presence of an aluminum stabilizer).
2. Are vaccines a trigger? Likely yes. The great spike in autism correspond (yes correlation is not causality) with (1) the late 80s early 90s massive increase in the number of vaccines and dosing done during the first 24 month of a newborns life. Again, it likely comes down to the genetic strength and predisposition of the individual immune system.
3. Yes there is better diagnosis, but better diagnosis cannot explain statistical rates which equate to epidemic under CDC guidelines.
So why does all the intelligentsia say they is no link. They say no link because otherwise it would be a catastrophe for too many powerful entities.
1. The vaccination program would be horribly tarnished and diminished. I am not anti-vaccine (typical straw man argument made vociferously and mightly throughout even these comments). Vaccination must continue because they’ve save billions of lives. What I am “anti” is accelerated and unnecessary multiple vaccination with newborns when they is no medical and social danger from elongating the schedule. I am anti combo vaccine when there is NO testing on the combo effect isolated from the individual vaccine. I am anti injecting toxic heavy metals into human beings.
2. Pharma could be bankrupted by millions of claims
3. Every pediatrician who administered a claim could either be bankrupted or their insurance carrier could be bankrupted or both.
The above 3 is a pretty powerful collection of vested interests to never let the truth be known, at least in their lifetimes. What the commenters on this thread don’t know or see, is that for most of the hundreds of thousands of parents who have seen their child’s potential destroyed, don’t want revenge, they want honest research but they can’t get that because that would be, in and of itself, an admittance that there is substance to the hypothesis.
People have now difficulty believing that the stakeholders would bury the truth about torture, or bury the truth about warrantless wiretatpping, or bury the truth about climate change, or bury the truth about the economy or bury the truth about steroid usage in sports for god’s sake, but when it comes to the what may have happened to a generation of newborns, the effected groups have somehow found their honesty and integrity.
(end of annual rant…)
ColoRambler
I have an older adopted daughter (adopted just before her 7th birthday) from China. She was classified as technically "special needs", and hence was on a faster track, but it’s such a minor medical condition that no one’s worried about it. We knew we didn’t want a baby or toddler (been there, did that, have the stained T-shirts), so older/waiting children was the way to go. The whole process still took 9 months, and that 9 months was after some very good luck (identifying this girl almost immediately after we started looking).
It is an expensive process (I think it worked out to around $20K for everything). There is a very generous tax credit that covers a lot of that, but it only kicks in at tax time the next year (and it’s nonrefundable, so it might spread out over a few years), so you still have to pay a lot up front.
Recently China tightened the requirements for prospective adopters, including a net worth requirement of $80K, so younger couples with new house purchases in this declining market are massively screwed. We would have met that requirement easily if it were it in place back when we adopted; if we were trying now, I’m not sure we would.
The agency we went through is no longer doing international adoptions, possibly in part because fewer U.S. families can expect to afford it compared to even a couple of years ago.
Orac
Except that it was a lie by David Kirby that Brian Deer had made the complaint against Andrew Wakefield. His work was cited by the person who did push for an investigation, but Deer himself was not the person who instigated it. See:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/brian_deer_responds_to_keith_olbermann.php
Basically, Keith Olbermann was played for a fool by the chief apologist for the antivaccine movement:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/keith_olbermann_played_for_a_fool.php
BDeevDad
@gaffer: I’m sorry, but you are talking about a conspiracy the size of the moon landing involving tens of thousands of people. The problem with burying the truth is that someone always blabs. No one has done that to date even though they’d be welcomed as a hero.
I am not saying your individual child was not affected by the vaccine. But it was not necessarily thimerosol.
passerby
@Media Browski:
"What other conclusion would you expect from an industry that runs on billion$$ of federal AND big pharma dollars every year?"
Wow, whatta zinger!
But you haven’t addressed the question I posed. Did you even bother to formulate an answer? Though you’re treating it as a rhetorical question, it is not. So I’ll repeat it here for emphasis:
What other conclusion would you expect from an industry that runs on billions of federal and big pharma dollars? and
Do you think for a moment that they would willingly admit a fault that could lead to law suits that would probably run into the Trillion$?
It’s sorta like the Vatican protecting their molesting priests–to admit fault would cost lots and lots of money, so they find a way to relocate them or quietly defrock them and set ’em loose.
Admit fault? not when money is involved.
Hob
@bcw: "Big Pharm makes it’s money from new, patented, many-pills-a-year drugs (Vioxx, Zyprexia,Viagra,Oxycontin) not from vaccines."
Which is why I’ve sometimes wondered if there might be an incentive for pharma to promote some of the more specific anti-vax theories, because it’d be an excuse to roll out a series of shiny new (patented) ReallyReallySafe versions of the old, boring, low-margin products.
I don’t think any of them would really try that strategy, because ironically they tend to be more averse to the appearance of risk than to actual risk, but I bet someone thought of it.
Hob
Ha, now my comment is in moderation because I replied to & quoted bcw’s message where he mentioned something that starts with V and ends with agra.
aaron
@ passerby
I’m sorry, passerby, but you’re wrong. If the millions of one-off customers argument worked, we would have vaccines for many other diseases, now, and we would see commercials for vaccines on the teevee. But we don’t, because there’s just very little vaccine development going on in the world right now. The big Pharma companies are all spending their resources developing erectile dysfunction drugs and the like.
Again, I’m not saying that your distaste for the pharmaceutical industry is misplaced. I’m saying that vaccines are not blockbuster money-makers, and thus there is very little R&D towards developing new ones. This, imo, is a big problem.
Wile E. Quixote
DougJ @ 12
Bobby Kennedy Jr. is the worst Kennedy out there. His anti-vaccination crusade is driven by nothing more than his ego and I have to wonder if he’ll pen a retraction to his Rolling Stone article on the subject. His article justifying why they shouldn’t build a windfarm off of Cape Cod by the Kennedy compound was as big a load of shit as anything published over in K-Lo’s crazy corner in the last eight years. I’m so glad that that fucker has vocal dystonia, because sounding like Froggy in The Little Rascals means that he’ll never be able to run for office and fuck things up even more than he has already.
Of course the fact that RFK Jr. is a complete asshole shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows anything about his father. RFK senior palled around with Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, did nothing to rein in J. Edgar Hoover in the early 1960s, was pro-Vietnam until early 1967 and didn’t decide to run for president in 1968, after Eugene McCarthy had already started his run and tested the waters by running an anti-war campaign. RFK was a nasty, moralizing, opportunistic little shit and his son is no different.
gwangung
Nor have you.
And the questions I asked are key to your position.
You could be right…but you’d never know if you never bother to answer the question.
Wile E. Quixote
@gaffer
You’re full of shit. You sit there and tell us that you can trace your son’s condition to the hour it happened. Maybe you can but it sounds like hindsight to me and inferring causation from correlation. Your son was sick, you took him to the hospital, they gave him drugs and he got worse. Obviously the drugs did it. Correlation, causation, post hoc ergo propter hoc, ever hear of any of those things? You claim that you have, but I doubt it.
You can’t point to any real science to prove your beliefs, just a bunch of hypotheses which you rattle off so you can sound authoritative ("Go look at the chemistry associated with mercury compounds in the presence of an aluminum stabilizer" is my favorite. It sounds authoritative but is really meaningless.) none of which has any actual science behind it. You blame thimerosal, except for the fact that whoops, the elimination of thimerosal from childhood vaccines did not cause any reduction in the number of autism diagnoses.
Of course facts like that one don’t matter to you any more than the lack of WMDs, our original justification for going into Iraq, mattered to the neocons, they just shifted the goal posts and claimed that we were doing it to make Iraq a stable and prosperous democracy. Anti-vaxxers confronted with this study either threw out the usual conspiracy theory horseshit, or shift the goal posts by claiming that autism was caused by some immune reaction to the vaccines or because we give children too many vaccines at once or because the Jews are poisoning the wells and baking matzos with the blood of Christian children. Oh wait, those last two were someone else. Sorry, getting my paranoid cranks and tools confused there.
Want to see actual causation and some actual science? In 1945 my father fell ill with a stomach bug, he was a healthy and perfectly formed three years old boy. He ran a high fever and then couldn’t move his legs. My grandmother took him to the hospital and he was diagnosed with poliomyelitis. My Dad was one of the lucky kids, he lost use of his left leg and his right leg was partially crippled, but the disease didn’t kill him, or completely paralyze him, or paralyze his diaphragm so he had to spend the rest of his life in an iron lung. He got off easy wearing a couple of leg braces and using crutches. He spent years in and out of hospitals as a child learning how to walk. Go look at pictures from a polio ward back in the 1950s, those kids are every bit as damaged as yours is, and those are the ones who lived, the few thousand kids every year who died from the disease aren’t pictured. This was real science, you had thousands of people doing research to figure out what caused polio, how it was transmitted and how to prevent it, and it worked. Not a single one of the anti-vaccination researchers has done anything even remotely comparable, all that these frauds have done is offer up conspiracy theory and red herrings.
I’m sick and tired of the belief that we can’t tell anti-vaxxers with autistic kids that they’re full of shit because their kids are fucked up. You posit a massive conspiracy consisting of pediatricians and pharmaceutical companies, whom you refer to as the "intelligentsia" who are keeping the TRUTH from us. You offer no facts that can be verified, only vague conjecture and then attempt to gloss over this failure by linking this hypothetical conspiracy to the activities of the Bush administration. I suppose that I should give you some credit, at least you didn’t use the Holocaust as your example. You accuse everyone involved in this industry of having nefarious motives and covering their own asses for fear of the consequences if the truth was ever revealed. Of course the fact that so many prominent members of the anti-vaccination movement are idiots like Jenny McCarthy, self-aggrandizing hacks like RFK Jr., frauds like Andrew Wakefield or quacks who kill kids with chelation therapy by pumping them full of drugs that have FDA Black Box Warnings attached to them doesn’t seem to bother you as much as the stakeholders in the hypothetical pharma/pediatrician/intelligentsia conspiracy you posit.
Listening to you reminds me of nothing so much as listening to the wingnuts over at RedState talking about Obama. "He’s not an American", "He’s secretly a Muslim", "He’s not really our president because he didn’t take the oath of office.", "He’s a socialist", "He’s a black supremacist" blah, blah, fucking blah. Of course the wingnutteria has their own explanation for why this massive conspiracy has to put an Socialist, black supremacist Muslim in the highest office in the land, it’s because Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and the liberal media want to destroy America and are in a sinister conspiracy to suppress the TRUTH. Anyone who attempts to make any argue with these cretins is either dismissed as a dupe and a tool of the liberal media who doesn’t know the TRUTH or is part of the conspiracy themselves.
What happened to your son is a tragedy, but just because you’ve been through a tragedy doesn’t mean that you get to be a paranoid asshole, a crank and a tool.
Ed Sanders
Forgive me if this has been said before, but in post 32 DougJ wrote:
Pharma doesn’t make much money on the shots and they’re not liable in the suits (there’s a special vaccine court). They don’t give a fuck about this issue at all.
I have no idea how much money Pharma makes on vaccines, but I’m quite sure they aren’t taking a loss.
It’s the "special vaccine court" that really irks me. I only know a little about this (always dangerous) but any time people or corporations can’t be held fully responsible for their actions I have a problem. You can’t really sue the nuclear power industry either.
Also, in gaffer’s post above he jumps ugly on a parent for making a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" argument. I don’t know the family and I doubt gaffer does either, but why is her "evidence" of observation worthless?
Step back far enough and the same thing could be applied to vaccines themselves. Do diseases have patterns where they are more or less prevalent or even die out? Do other changes in society decrease the likelihood of epidemics?
If we’re going to get all scientific about this stuff, lets be logical about it.
Shouldn’t this conversation start with the studies that show vaccines safety and effectiveness in clinical trials?
Ed Sanders
excuse me, the post above is a response to gaffer by Wile E. Quixote
It is Quixote who is jumping ugly.
Laura Roslin
Why no autism in unvaccinated populations?
Holy Prepuce!
The Vaccine Court’s release of its opinion on Darwin’s 200th birthday was fortuitous, seeing as the vaccine-autism faithful have a good deal in common with religious fundamentalists. They are so invested in their ideas that they ignore or attack any evidence to the contrary, and treat gaps in the opposing evidence as further proof in their favor.
The obscenity of the "anti-vax" movement is stupefying– a campaign to reinstitute open sewers or ban refrigeration could scarcely threaten greater violence to the public health.
I have much more to say on this topic here.