Autism/Vaccination doc falsified data.....

[docm]

Uh-Oh.....

Link.....

Quote:

British Doctor Who Launched Vaccine-Autism Scare Falsified Data

Investigative reporting sheds light on what may be a shameless case of medical alarmism

There's plenty to be worried about when it comes to medicine. From toxins, to cancer, and even medicines with unexpectedly nasty side effects, doctors have their hands full dealing with real problems. While some in the medical and scientific community tend to ignore such dangers, sometimes to gain esteem or funding, others gravitate to the opposite extreme of spreading alarmism.

The latter may be the case with Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the British physician who fathered the scare about the possible link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. According to extensive investigative reporting by Sunday Times of London, a British newspaper, Dr. Wakefield falsified data and lied to make his case in his 1998 Lancet journal paper.

In his paper, Dr. Wakefield claimed that 8 of 12 families of autistic children who attended the clinic at his hospital began to show signs of the illness immediately after getting the "jab" -- the British name for the MMR vaccine. In the paper, he claimed that the measles virus infected the children's bowels, giving them inflammatory bowel disease, which in turn triggered the autism.

However, the Sunday Times of London found a far different story. Investigative reporter Brian Deer, who has been covering the story since its start, found that hospital and other records showed signs that the children were already developing autism before they had received any injection. And while that difference might be attributable to innocent oversight, the newspaper discovered even more shocking allegations.

According to Mr. Deer, the physicians working under Dr. Wakefield were unable to find signs of inflammatory bowel disease in many of the children, but Dr. Wakefield ordered his team to falsify the data to indicate they had. Furthermore, one of the children deemed to have the condition was taken by a parent to three other labs which were unable to find signs of the illness.
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[CalliArcale]

Shame on  Dr Wakefield.  I wish I could say I was surprised, but I've been following this story for several years, and there have been signs of malarky before.  This just proves those signs were not isolated but rather part of a pattern of unethical behavior.  Strange how Wakefield's fans accuse his detractors of being in the pay of vaccine manufacturers trying to protect their patents, when Wakefield himself published this study only a month after securing a patent for a single measles vaccine.

At least the South Korean cloning research fraud didn't cost any lives.  Wakefield's fraud did.  Measles, once extirpated in Britain, has returned, and it has claimed two lives there already.  (I have no data on how many have suffered encephalitis, mental retardation, blindness, or other severe impairments as a result.)  And all so he could play the savior, clear away potential competition for his vaccine, and secure lucrative payments from lawyers busily suing vaccine manufacturers.  (Hundreds of thousands for his services as an "expert witness" alone.)

One thing not mentioned in the article is that the samples taken from the children to "test" them for inflammatory bowel disease and measles RNA were biopsies taken during colonoscopies.  Colonoscopies are uncomfortable and somewhat humiliating procedures, and in children require general anesthesia.  They also carry a risk of bowel perforation.  One of the children in the study wound up with a bowel perforated in several places, which suggests some very serious incompetence on the part of the doctor who was hired to perform the colonoscopies.  (I don't think that was Wakefield himself.)  In any case, a colonoscopy is a pretty serious thing to put a little kid through, especially one who is autistic.

Another thing not mentioned was that another group attempted to replicate the measles RNA findings and were unable to do so.  Furthermore, they concluded that there was so much contamination in Wakefield's lab that it would be impossible to determine whether measles virus was present in the specimens or not -- especially since he failed to test any controls (a normal procedure in PCR analysis, done precisely to test for contamination, since if you find measles RNA in the controls, something is seriously wrong).

 

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"

[xXTheOneRavenXx]

Actually, my oldest son is mild autistic. Many hospital's & even our family doctor at the time agreed that there is a possibility of some vaccines trigging autism is children that had NOT shown previous signs. My son was born in 2000, so the above story is a little older then that.

This link provides the history you posted, as well as some further studies:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080201/thimerosal_080202/20080202?hub=Specials

 

However, with that said, here is a REALLY recent ruling on the topic:

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/02/12/autism-vaccine.html

 

But can you answer this. If the health community were wrong, and given the number of children that developed autism right after receiving the vaccines, do you think for a second that the government would allow themselves to lose so much money? The health community suffers significently from lack of funding. I think the last thing they would want is to lose hundreds of millions of dollars to these families. Think about that for a moment. Many people do not believe in cover-up's or hidden truth's... but those people are walking through life with blind-folds on if they believe that never happens. Weither this is a case of that or not... we may never know.

[CalliArcale]

There has been vaccine/autism fearmongering since before Wakefield stepped into it, certainly.  The thing is, it's not as if the Autism Omnibus is the only thing going on.  There have been a lot of studies in the past ten years, investigating whether or not there is any kind of statistical link between autism and vaccinations.  Some tested for correlations between specific vaccines (particularly but not exclusively MMR) and the autism rate.  Others looked to see whether the "autism epidemic" was even real, with several good studies indicating that the more likely reason for the rise in autism diagnoses is the expansion of the criteria, with the most intriguing showing that as the rate of classic autism went up, the rate of mental retardation went down by very nearly the same amount, which strongly suggests a diagnostic substitution.  (That is to say, kids of the current generation are not really any different, demographically, than those of the previous one.  They're just being categorized differently.)  Some looked at rates of autism in populations that received different vaccine schedules (eg. certain religious communities).  The autism rate does not seem to have any relationship whatsoever to the vaccination rate, or the types of vaccines, or the total dose of vaccines.

I think the vaccines-cause-autism hypothesis has been pretty solidly discredited.  The Autism Omnibus proceedings do not tell us anything new, but I nevertheless find them encouraging because they mean that the courts are listening to science and not just emotion.  You have to remember that in the vaccine injury compensation program, you don't have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you or your child was actually injured.  You just have to prove by a preponderance of the evidence (50% plus a hair, as the lawyers put it) that it is plausible that you or your child was injured.  If I'm not mistaken, that's the lowest standard of evidence required in any American court.  Even tort lawsuits require more evidence.

Is the health community and the government conspiring to save money by declaring that vaccines do not cause autism?  If they are, not only are they perpetrating a truly impressive conspiracy, rivalling the Apollo hoax, without anyone being any the wiser, but they are also being extremely foolish.  Autism is very expensive, and as time has gone on, the government has added more and more taxpayer-funded services to aid autistic children.  The cost of these programs is very high, and indeed, the cost of supporting the wonderful special ed programs that many of our public school systems now have is often coming out of the budget for other things.  If autism rates could be abated by reducing or altering vaccinations, the government could save millions and millions.  Health insurers would also save millions, because suddenly they wouldn't be having to pay for psychiatric care for so many autistic children.  And in the longer run, reducing the autism rate might even benefit the economy by increasing the number of productive citizens.  (Many autistics can work, but many others cannot, and cannot live independently.  Instead, they must be cared for by their families, or by society if their families cannot bear it.  This is a cost to society.)

So I think that if the government knew that vaccines cause autism, they'd be the *first* ones acting to do something about it.  But the science is just not supporting that conclusion, despite quite a lot of effort to explore the question over the past decade or so.

 

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"

[MeteorWayne]

Replying to:

Posted by CalliArcale

Calli, it's great to have you back. I think you are one of the top 10 people at SDC who can write with such a depth of knowledge and so clearly explain an issue.

But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id. 

I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function 

[xXTheOneRavenXx]

I have to disagree with your last statement. Though the costs of treating autistic children & their programs are costly, and by finding a "cure" for it would save millions... it is millions of dollars less that the government would have to put anywhere else. It's like for the military here in Canada. If the military doesn't spend their yearly budget they lose it, meaning the money is no longer available to anyone. This affect many organizations such as pharmaseutical companies. They must have a reason to substantuate their budgets. If these autism programs gives them an excuse to create more jobs, raise wages, and to increase their yearly budget then they'll do just that. Don't kid yourself into thinking that all the money the government pours into these programs actually all goes into the programs themselves and would be just as easy to take back if it wasn't needed anymore. There are many people in the government level that I feel would reward themselves will a little pay increase for taking on these "extra" programs in the health services department, and would be most reluctant to take a pay cut if they were suddenly no longer required to oversee these programs. Budgets are a funny thing that way. Their easy to get when it necessary; but nobody wants to give up that money when it's no longer necessary. I see that all the time. When I lived in Ontario my son had to go to a seperate school then my daughter because he "had to be" in a class for special needs children. However the aid he had was only qualified in general special needs and no specifically in the field of autism. So my son's interaction with other classmates was limited to other children with special needs. Then of course the programs he was involved in wondered why his progress was slow. His aid worker was also shared with a number of other students in the class. It wasn't until we moved to Nova Scotia that he actually had an aid worker that was qualified in the field of autism. Being a much smaller province, I found it unbelievable that it had a much better program. He is now in a class interacting with children with and without special needs. All the children are combine and not seperated due to their special needs. His progress came along 10x's faster then what it was in a segrigated class.

Replying to:

So I think that if the government knew that vaccines cause autism, they'd be the *first* ones acting to do something about it.  But the science is just not supporting that conclusion, despite quite a lot of effort to explore the question over the past decade or so.
Posted by CalliArcale

[origin]

Replying to:

His progress came along 10x's faster then what it was in a segrigated class.
Posted by xXTheOneRavenXx

That is great - continued good luck.

[CalliArcale]

Replying to:

I have to disagree with your last statement. Though the costs of treating autistic children & their programs are costly, and by finding a "cure" for it would save millions... it is millions of dollars less that the government would have to put anywhere else. It's like for the military here in Canada. If the military doesn't spend their yearly budget they lose it, meaning the money is no longer available to anyone.
Posted by xXTheOneRavenXx

Here in America, it is much the same.  However, with a growing budget deficit, the government is cutting programs wherever it can, and one frequent target is one which is already robbing some of its own programs in order to pay for other programs, and that's the educational system.  Reducing the rate of learning disorders really would help them.

And it's not just the government, anyway.   Insurers would also benefit if there were no new cases of autism.  If, as the antivax scare groups claim, vaccination harms kids without really protecting them from diseases, then insurers would save bucketloads of money by not having to pay for the vaccines *and* by not having to pay for the long-term treatment of autism.  They are already balking at a lot of care; parents often have to fight them tooth and nail to get them to cover behavioral therapies.  But if the insurers believed that they could make the problem go away by stopping vaccination, they'd have a huge motivation to stop it.  Why, then, do they continue to reimburse for vaccines?

Note: vaccinations are not a money-making business, contrary to the most common antivax claim, not for anyone involved.  Some new ones, like Gardasil, might be for now.  But the mandatory childhood ones are all priced by the government so that the government can see that they are funded, and in many cases, clinics actually lose money when they provide them to patients.  Yet insurers see vaccines as a good investment, knowing that a patient who is fully vaccinated is likely to cost them less than a patient who eschews vaccination.

So the conspiracy theory idea really doesn't hold up.

It wouldn't matter, anyway.  There is no connection between vaccines and autism, so we don't need to look for a motive.  This doesn't halt reimbursement for actual vaccine damage, by the way.  The Autism Omnibus hearings just eliminate the option of getting reimbursed for your child being autistic, since that can't have been caused by the vaccine.   If your child gets Guillain-Barre syndrome, on the other hand, they'll be happy to compensate.  It's a very rare, but devastating and potentially lethal illness.  (The syndrome can be triggered by natural infection as well, it is worth mentioning.)  Although the risks of vaccination are very low, they are nevertheless real.  The logic behind the vaccine compensation program is that since routine vaccination is done for the benefit of society as well as the child, then society owes the child a debt if the child is injured.

 

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"

[xXTheOneRavenXx]

lol, is that what you think I'm doing is upholding or creating some conspiracy theory? One fact is that the US highers companies outside it boarders to do a lot of research for them for a lower cost. These companies (ie. Mexico for example) trades services to the US in return. It's a polotical exchange rate that is in everyday lives. I'm not sure where you are getting your information from about vaccination not being a money making business for the government or pharmaseutical companies, but I will let you know it's false. People pay everyday for vaccinations. Almost everyone I know pays into a health plan that also pays for their vaccines... however since you are paying a low rate over a longer period of time, you actually end up paying 3-4 if not more times the amount it would cost if you walked into a clinic and paid cash for each vaccine you received. Since the rate you pay over a longer period is greater then the normal cost, where do you think the extra money goes? curtainly not all back into the research, the government is paying for that at a discounted rate already... so you guessed it, back into the government. It is them who always makes the extra. What they do with this money is decided by them. Every year you hear of the cost of health care rising. People are quick to blame it on the extra services people receive. I don't think so. It was quite funny when I worked for NORAD I also worked next to members of the US Military. A buddy of mine was showing me the types of courses that was avaiable to him that was provided by the military and he could complete them solely online. One of these courses was Early Childhood Education. This course happened to have the same responsibilites as our one here in Canada. It also involves working with special needs children, a great deal of work with them actually. I found it amazing that here in Canada anyone taking this course MUST spend hour of hands on work with children, record and study their interactions, behaviours, etc... whereas the US version my friend could sit behind a pc and read about it and get his certification without ever having seen a child at all. This shows me how much money the US government is sinking into their programs for special needs children. Hiring some website designer to upload a program online really costs the government tonnes on money huh. I'm sure not nearly as much as our program of all the technical equipment, the classroom time, the instructors time, the studies, etc... I know a little more about these program differences then one would think. Many people are blind to how much money is REALLY spent on these programs. Look more at who is getting the pay increases for taking on these "extra" responsibilities.

Another thing is that if there were no need for vaccines suddenly for whatever reason, then numerous agencies would find themselves laying off hundreds if not thousands of employees throughout the US. With that many people out of work, the Federal Government would have a tougher time recovering from it's already hardships. If you look at the bigger picture, one thing always affects the other in some way. In this case a big way. If autism was suddenly abolished, then there would be obviously no need to outsource research & development for a "cure". Less money to these countries means less of and/or more expensive incoming services. Companies within the US would also have to cut many jobs, again raising the unemployment rate. More then just a few million would be lost if this were to happen. Not at all a conspiracy theory, it's actual 100% genuine fact. Everyone loses money if vaccines are no longer required.

However, back to the topic... No I couldn't say if autism and vaccines are indeed connected; but our family doctor seemed to have belief that they may be, and so did a number of her counterparts. Again, I'm not pervi to what all they knew about it, but seriously; there is tonnes of money to be lost if vaccines were no longer required. Can you imagine if all the deseases in the world were suddenly cured? Imagine how many millions would be lost then, and how many people would be out of a job.

Thank you BTW. My son is doing great. His marks in school came up considerably. There are many combined tasks that he can do on his own now that he couldn't do before, and he's begun doing them on his own:)

[silylene]

I was always skeptical that the autism frequency increase was real. This study for the first time does indeed demonstrate that it is real.

We had big debates in the SDC forums on heavy metals as the origin (especially Hg, Pb, Cd). I still think this is a role, but if it were heavy metals as the source, then autism should be reducing since heavy metal exposure has decreased a lot since the '30s - '70s with far more stringent pollution laws, no more lead in gas and paint, thimerosal removed from all but flu vaccines and removed from over the counter nasal sprays.

In the last six years, Pb exposure in many cities is increasing significantly again due to many municipal water supplier switching from chlorine to chloramine as a biocide agent (under initiatives from Homeland Security, govnmt grants, and a in my opinion a very misguided EPA initiative to reduce the trace amounts of chlorinated organics in tap water.) Pb of course is a potent neurotoxin, at any level , and cause permanent loss in IQ even if it doesn't cause autism. But this is perhaps another subject for another thread.

Some non-environmental effects of autism which could be the cause (I can supply links to recent scientific studies if anyone disputes), and should be examined in follow-up studies include:
maternal age: older mothers (older than 30, and especially 35+) are at much higher risk. As you know, motherhood is being delayed by cultural changes and older marriages
lack of sun exposure: skin-synthesized vitamin D significantly reduces autism risks. As you know, due to hysteria, too many women now avoid sun exposure, or lather themselves with sunblock, and because of cultural reaons, more women stay indoors.
premature childbirth: premature babies are at much higher risk of autism. And now technology keeps more preemies alive, so autism rates increase. And cause of pre-mature babies is high in the US: lack of pre-natal health care among poor, the obseity epidemic causes diabetes and more preemies; and pregannt women continue to smoke and drink and use cocaine, which causes premature births.

Study shows California's autism increase not due to better counting, diagnosis

A study by researchers at the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute has found that the seven- to eight-fold increase in the number children born in California with autism since 1990 cannot be explained by either changes in how the condition is diagnosed or counted — and the trend shows no sign of abating.

Published in the January 2009 issue of the journal Epidemiology, results from the study also suggest that research should shift from genetics to the host of chemicals and infectious microbes in the environment that are likely at the root of changes in the neurodevelopment of California's children.

"It's time to start looking for the environmental culprits responsible for the remarkable increase in the rate of autism in California," said UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute researcher Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of environmental and occupational health and epidemiology and an internationally respected autism researcher.

Hertz-Picciotto said that many researchers, state officials and advocacy organizations have viewed the rise in autism's incidence in California with skepticism.

The incidence of autism by age six in California has increased from fewer than nine in 10,000 for children born in 1990 to more than 44 in 10,000 for children born in 2000. Some have argued that this change could have been due to migration into California of families with autistic children, inclusion of children with milder forms of autism in the counting and earlier ages of diagnosis as consequences of improved surveillance or greater awareness.

Hertz-Picciotto and her co-author, Lora Delwiche of the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences, initiated the study to address these beliefs, analyzing data collected by the state of California Department of Developmental Services (DDS) from 1990 to 2006, as well as the United States Census Bureau and state of California Department of Public Health Office of Vital Records, which compiles and maintains birth statistics.

Hertz-Picciotto and Delwiche correlated the number of cases of autism reported between 1990 and 2006 with birth records and excluded children not born in California. They used Census Bureau data to calculate the rate of incidence in the population over time and examined the age at diagnosis of all children ages two to 10 years old.

The methodology eliminated migration as a potential cause of the increase in the number of autism cases. It also revealed that no more than 56 percent of the estimated 600-to-700 percent increase, that is, less than one-tenth of the increased number of reported autism cases, could be attributed to the inclusion of milder cases of autism. Only 24 percent of the increase could be attributed to earlier age at diagnosis.

"These are fairly small percentages compared to the size of the increase that we've seen in the state," Hertz-Picciotto said.

Hertz-Picciotto said that the study is a clarion call to researchers and policy makers who have focused attention and money on understanding the genetic components of autism. She said that the rise in cases of autism in California cannot be attributed to the state's increasingly diverse population because the disorder affects ethnic groups at fairly similar rates.

"Right now, about 10 to 20 times more research dollars are spent on studies of the genetic causes of autism than on environmental ones. We need to even out the funding," Hertz-Picciotto said.

The study results are also a harbinger of things to come for public-health officials, who should prepare to offer services to the increasing number of children diagnosed with autism in the last decade who are now entering their late teen years, Hertz-Picciotto said.

"These children are now moving toward adulthood, and a sizeable percentage of them have not developed the life skills that would allow them to live independently," she said.

The question for the state of California, Hertz-Picciotto said, will become: 'What happens to them when their parents cannot take care of them?'

"These questions are not going to go away and they are only going to loom larger in the future. Until we know the causes and can eliminate them, we as a society need to provide those treatments and interventions that do seem to help these children adapt. We as scientists need to improve available therapies and create new ones," Hertz-Picciotto said.

Hertz-Picciotto and her colleagues at the M.I.N.D Institute are currently conducting two large studies aimed at discovering the causes of autism. Hertz-Picciotto is the principal investigator on the CHARGE (Childhood Autism Risk from Genetics and the Environment) and MARBLES (Markers of Autism Risk in Babies-Learning Early Signs) studies.

CHARGE is the largest epidemiologic study of reliably confirmed cases of autism to date, and the first major investigation of environmental factors and gene-environment interactions in the disorder. MARBLES is a prospective investigation that follows women who already have had one child with autism, beginning early in or even before a subsequent pregnancy, to search for early markers that predict autism in the younger sibling.

[color="#FF0000"]"We're looking at the possible effects of metals, pesticides and infectious agents on neurodevelopment," Hertz-Picciotto said. "If we're going to stop the rise in autism in California, we need to keep these studies going and expand them to the extent possible."[/

petet = silylene

Please, please give me my handle back !

[docm]

I'm betting on a combination of genetic predisposition and either (or a combiunation of) viral infection, plastic volatiles & pesticides.

[CalliArcale]

That's a very interesting study, petet, and I will have to look into it in more detail, because it contradicts three other studies that I'm aware of, all using the same data set as this one -- the California educational data.

 

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"

[Jashu]

Just adding my two cents here. I feel that vaccinations in the past may have caused a small percent of the Autism cases, but not all them. Some people might be more sensitive to heavy metals than others, which is a common allergy trait from my observations (i.e. some people have more severe allergies to pollen than others)

As for the whole conspiracy theory thing about the docs falsifying info to gain money, I heard, but not sure if it's true, that the doctors and scientists who had found a link between vaccines and Autism hid the information, keeping it quiet so that they don't get blamed for poisoning millions of children. From this rumor, I think that the guys hid this so as to avoid being considered terrorists.