Vaccines Work

Moving to new blog

2011-03-14T10:55:00.001-04:00

I'm moving to a new blog, www.sheldon101blog.blogspot.com. I've copied over all the postings from this blog.

john and harold

2011-03-08T14:54:00.002-05:00

Here's a familiar scenario. Meet John and Harold.

John, a vaccination opponent (not AnimlNitr8) visits his 75 year old parents at their home. Mom and Dad had been vaccinated. Mom got influenza, dad did not. Mom got it from him. The vaccination opponent didn't realize that one becomes infectious before the first signs of influenza appear.

So why didn't the vaccine work on Mom? Because Mom has a weaker immune system, which didn't respond to the vaccine. Mom ends up in hospital and is very sick, She does recover, but isn't the same afterward.

Harold has a strong immune system. He is immunized from influenza through vaccination. Harold .(not AnimlNitr8) visits his 75 year old parents at their home. Mom and Dad had been vaccinated.. But only Dad is protected. Harold has a nice visit. Mom and dad are fine.

BRUESEWITZ v. WYETH LLC

2011-02-23T02:29:00.000-05:00

The dissent in BRUESEWITZ v. WYETH LLC is stupid. Thankfully it is a dissent.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory - New York Times

2011-02-22T17:58:00.001-05:00

My grandfather's sister, Fanny Rosen. got her picture in the New York Times in February 21, 2011 nearly 100 years after her death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire of 1911. She was the last to be identified in 2010.
In Records, Portraits of Lives Cut Short

100 Years Later, the Roll of the Dead in a Factory Fire Is Complete

An update: Fanny came to the United States by herself. When she died in the fire, an insurance company paid out. The money was used by grandfather and grandmother to pay for their passage to Canada in 1912.

Finally Saw This - New York Times

2011-02-21T18:52:00.000-05:00

Autism Fraud
New York Times Editorial
January 12, 2011

The report that first triggered scares that a vaccine to prevent measles,mumps and rubella might cause autism in children has received another devastating blow to its credibility. The British Medical Journal has declared that the research was not simply bad science, as has been known for years, but a deliberate fraud.

The study, led by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was published in The Lancet in 1998. It was based on just 12 children with supposedly autismlike disorders and purported to find a link between the vaccine, the gastrointestinal problems found in many autistic children, and autism.

While parents around the world were understandably alarmed, many scientists rejected the claims, including, eventually, 10 of Dr. Wakefield’s co-authors. A high-level British medical group, after an exhaustive fitness-to-practice hearing, found Dr. Wakefield guilty of dishonesty and misconduct. The Lancet retracted the article in part, it said, because the authors had made false claims about how the study was conducted.

Now the British Medical Journal has taken the extraordinary step of publishing a lengthy report by Brian Deer, the British investigative journalist who first brought the paper’s flaws to light — and has put its own reputation on the line by endorsing his findings.

After seven years of studying medical records and interviewing parents and doctors, Mr. Deer concluded that the medical histories of all 12 children had been misrepresented to make the vaccine look culpable. Time lines, for example, were fudged to make it seem as though autismlike symptoms developed shortly after vaccination, while in some cases problems developed before vaccination and in others months after vaccination.

Dr. Wakefield has accused Mr. Deer of being a hit man. But the medical journal compared the claims with evidence compiled in the voluminous transcript of official hearings and declared that flaws in the paper were not honest mistakes but rather an “elaborate fraud.”

Some parents still consider Dr. Wakefield a hero, and others have moved on to other theories, equally unsupported by scientific evidence, as to how vaccines might cause autism.

They need to recognize that failure to vaccinate their children leaves them truly vulnerable to diseases that can cause enormous harm.
[emphasis added]

Krigsman 2010 and Constipation

2011-02-21T13:50:00.003-05:00

Krigsman’s 2010 paper
Krigsman’s 2010 paper Clinical presentation and Histologic Findings at Ileocolonoscopy in children with Autistic spectrum Disorder and chronic Gastrointestinal symptom reported on “143 consecutive patients with ASD/developmental disorder, undergoing ileocolonoscopy and biopsy as part of routine investigations of persistent GI symptoms.”

Considering that the paper doesn’t even mention the phrases inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis, it seems likely that Krigsman did in New York State with 143 chldren (and elsewhere to total 275?) what Wakefield, Walker-Smith and others did with many children at the Royal Free hospital in London --- perform colonoscopies that were not clinically indicated.

Krigsman. a gastroenterologist, is a follower of Wakefield’s discredited theory. He worked with Wakefield at Thoughtful House in Austin, Texas until February 2010, when both he and Wakefield left. Until February 2010, he and Wakefield and Professor Stephen Walker were on the editorial board of Autism Insights where Krigsman’s paper was published. Krigsman and Lenox Hill hospital, where the colonoscopies were performed, parted company over concerns that these colonoscopies were done as an unapproved research project. For details read results from this search query site:www.briandeer.com krigsman

Krigsman, as an acolyte of Wakefield, believed that persistent measles virus from the MMR vaccine caused autism. So he took biopsiers to Professor Stephen Walker at Wake Forest University. Walker reported preliminary results in 2006. in a poster presentation at IMFAR in Montreal S. Walker, K. Hepner, J. Segal, A. Krigsman “Persistent Ileal Measles Virus in a Large Cohort of Regressive Autistic Children with Ileocolitis and Lymphonodular Hyperplasia: Revisitation of an Earlier Study”

According to the results of Dr. Walker’s study, 82 children with regressive autism and bowel disease, 70 have so far proved positive for the measles virus. The team will be examining a total of 275 children with regressive autism and bowel disease.

As the title indicates, this was the study that was going to prove Wakefield right and the world wrong. Except….it is now 2011 and Walker hasn’t published his results –most likely because he has negative results. Note that the summary is wrong. The children in the study didn’t have bowel disease. Rather as the title states they had Ileocolitis (whatever that is) and Lymphonodular Hyperplasia (recall that Wakefield’s 1998 paper was titled Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.

Professor Booth and Constipation

I've had Crohn's disease for decades. More recently, I've added a condition which can cause constipation. So when I was reading the GMC transcripts and Professor Booth's discussion of colonoscopy and spurious diarrhea, it really hit home.

Simply put, a colonoscopy is done to diagnose Inflammatory Bowel Disease. If you don't have reason to believe you will find inflammatory bowel disease, you don't do a colonoscopy --- it isn't clinically indicated. Using a criminal standard of proof page 2 , the UK medical licensing board found that

In respect of the clinical care of the children, Professor Walker-Smith assessed nine of the Lancet children in the outpatients’ clinic, prior to admission and all eleven children were admitted to hospital under his clinical care. The public is entitled to expect that patients entrusted to the clinical care of a doctor will be treated in accordance with their best clinical interests.
With regard to Child 2, 1, 3, 9, 5, 12 and 8, Professor Walker-Smith caused all seven of them to undergo colonoscopies that were not clinically indicated. Walker-Smith sanctions determination

From the Transcripts (available online through here)

Q [Ms. Smith for the GMC] Could we go to page 40 for the moment? That is the offices within medical societies. You [Professor Booth] have been President of the British Society of Paediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, Chairman of the Paediatric Committee of the British Society of Gastroenterology and Council Member of the Paediatric Research Society, amongst others.
A [Professor Booth]Yes.
Day 40 page 2 of transcripts
Q With regard to your own clinical practice, do you regularly see children as patients?
A Yes, I do.
Q Does that include, amongst of course many other children, children with autism?
A Yes.
Q Do you yourself personally carry out colonoscopies?
A Yes, I do.
Q When did you last do a colonoscopy?
A Last week.
Q Do you have out-patients clinics every week with children?
A Yes. 40/3

Professor Booth referred to a 1992 textbook.
Q Turning on to page 23, the indications for the procedure, at the bottom right-hand column:
“The symptoms that lead to a request for proctocolonoscopy in children may be summed up as follows:
1.recurring rectal bleeding with no anal lesions.
2. signs indicative of colitis; that is mucousy and/or blood diarrhoea, abdominal pain which may or may not be combined with emaciation, and a febrile state.”
That is in 1992. Would you agree that in broad terms those are the indications?
A Yes. They had not really changed. When we published the first description of colonoscopy in children ten years earlier, those were essentially the same indications.
Q Thank you. Is constipation, as a general proposition, ever an indication to undertake a colonoscopy?
A I cannot think of an indication. Expressly, it would be a contra-indication because you would find it hard going to see anything.
Q If there is a problem which involves constipation as a symptom, is it sometimes the case that it is assisted by the preparation for the colonoscopy; in other words, the clearing out of the colon?
A Yes, the preparation for colonoscopy is a very effective treatment for constipation.
Q When you say you cannot think of a situation where constipation would be an indication, do you sometimes have a situation arising where there is an overflow problem?
A Yes, one of the problems sometimes with making the diagnosis of constipation is that it can present with what is loose stools, which parents interpret as diarrhoea. Not surprisingly, often there is abdominal pain because the colon is full of stool and the colonic muscles are trying to empty the colon against an obstruction. In patients who have severe constipation, eventually the colon reaches its capacity for the amount of stool that it is possible to hold and stool starts leaking out from the anus, often uncontrollably. It is called “spurious diarrhoea” and in fact the patient is constipated but the parents come along and say, “My child’s got diarrhoea.” 40/9 40/10

Krigsman knew that his 143 consecutive colonoscopies would be suspected of having been done for research purposes or without the proper indications for a colonoscopy. That’s why there is such a long-winded description of the subjects in the paper that concludes:

Patients refractory to conventional non-invasive management of gastrointestinal symptomotology underwent subsequent diagnostic ileocolonoscopy with
mucosal biopsies. The specific indications for ileocolonoscopy were thus chronic diarrhea, constipation, and abdominal pain, either alone or in combination, that were (a) of unknown etiology, (b) refractory to conventional, noninvasive therapy and (c) significantly impacted quality of life. All colonoscopies were performed in the endoscopy unit of Lenox Hill Hospital, New York.

But when you get down to it, these were very likely kids with bad constipation who had colonoscopies that weren’t clinically indicated as part of an unapproved research project.

Transcripts for Wakefield Hearing Online

2011-02-21T10:11:00.007-05:00

update- the transcripts zip file has been fixed

Transcripts and GMC decisions

Gathered here are links to the GMC transcripts, the Fact Finding Decision of January 2010, the Good Medical Practice Guidelines, and the three Determination on Serious Professional Misconduct (SPM) and sanctions of May 2010

Transcripts

The transcripts can be downloaded as a single zip file of 10 mb

The transcripts of the GMC hearing against Wakefield, Walker-Smith and Murch make great reading. They make nonsense of all the claims by Wakefield supporters against the process.
It took me a bit of trouble to get my own copies of the transcripts of the GMC hearing against Wakefield, Walker-Smith and Murch. I had to exchange a few emails and call Manchester, UK. And I had a lot of trouble downloading the files
At the time, I promised to agree to any privacy requirements, but I wasn't asked to make any promises. Having seen the transcripts, I understand why. The children are referred to only by number. And other identifying information has been left out. There no longer is a privacy concern.
Probably because I've been referring to the transcripts so much, someone emailed me a link to them at Google documents.
The transcripts can be downloaded as a zip file of 10 megabytes.

Software

The transcripts are in .doc or Microsoft Word. If you don't have Word, download the free OpenOffice. Because there are over 150 files, a text searching tool is a great help. I recommend File Locator Lite, also known as Agent Ransack. It is also free. When using it, I turn on Word Wrap

GMC Fact Finding Decision January 28, 2010

Good Medical Practice

The obligations of the doctors are set out, very broadly, in the Good Medical Practices guidance booklets. They were discussed on day 217, in the Determination of Serious Professional Misconduct (SPM) and sanctions.
From the GMC web site Good Medical Practice (1995) "This guidance was withdrawn in July 1998 and is no longer in effect." The birthday party used the 1998 guidance. Good Medical Practice (1998) "This guidance was withdrawn in September 2001 and is no longer in effect."

Determination on Serious Professional Misconduct (SPM) and sanctions May 2010

Wakefield
Wakefield had his name erased,filed an appeal, but abandoned it in December 2010. His name has been erased from the GMC register.

Walker-Smith
Walker-Smith had his name erased, but filed an appeal. As of February 2011, it is not in force.

Murch

In these circumstances it was therefore not necessary to consider a sanction and Professor Murch is free to continue unrestricted medical practice.

The Panel concluded Professor Murch acted in good faith albeit it has found he was in error. His actions, although comparable to professional misconduct in respect of undertaking procedures which were not clinically indicated, were mitigated by the fact that he was under a false impression that they were clinically indicated and this could not reach the threshold of serious professional misconduct...
Taking all of the above into account, the Panel concluded that Professor Murch demonstrated errors of judgement but had acted in good faith and that any professional misconduct on his part, such as his failing in duties of research governance and performing colonoscopies that were not clinically indicated, could not reach the threshold of serious professional misconduct because of the circumstances in which he found himself.
Accordingly the Panel found that Professor Murch is not guilty of serious professional misconduct.
In these circumstances it was therefore not necessary to consider a sanction and Professor Murch is free to continue unrestricted medical practice.

Free 2 step verification with Google -Get it

2011-02-18T15:44:00.002-05:00

Google is now offering free two step verification for its products.

One step verification

username: john

password: password

password:12345

This is pretty weak as it can be defeated by a hack of passwords elsewhere and you use the same username and password OR if someone can use a dictionary attack and guess your password

Two step verification

username:john

password: password

Please enter verification code

It works like this. You sign up for 2 step verification after logging in normally through the gear symbol to account settings. You supply google a phone number (can be a mobile or landline) to call with a verification code. They call, you enter the verification code. They supply a list of 10 backup codes,which you print off and put in your wallet or purse. You supply a backup phone number. You log back in and google calls you. You enter the code and tick the box that asks them to verify from this computer every 30 days.

If you're calling from a different computer, google will call and you enter the code. If you don't have your phones, you use the backup codes you've kept in your wallet or purse.

Brian Deer Toronto Feb 16, 2011

2011-02-16T23:05:00.002-05:00

Brian Deer came to Toronto to take part in a public forum at Innis College at U of T. I missed that. But I wondered if he was going to be speaking elsewhere. He was.

So I and 200 journalism students filled the Eaton lecture hall at Ryerson. His talk concentrated on the history of his involvement with MMR and was similar to this podcast.

I got someone to take a picture of me and Brian Deer. It isn't one of my better ones.

The Moderator is the Problem

2011-02-13T00:29:00.002-05:00

A major update for Write it Moderate it at Huffington-Post

This is a strange story. The moderation on a blog entry on homeopathy is a stark change from that for months and months. Kwombles thought that Dana Ullman was to blame. He wasn't. I thought that Dr. Larry Malerba was to blame. He wasn't. The moderation by Huffington-Post has changed. Whether or not that change is in accordance with Huffington-Post policy is a matter of opinion.

There are a number of regular who comment on homeopathy at Huffington-Post in response to blog entries by Dana Ullman. For the last few months, there haven't been problems with moderation. Even better, comments accusing those who disagree with Dana Ullman of being shills for Big Pharma don't appear, although Dana snuck one through by spelling shill as schill.

But with the blog entry by Dr. Larry Malerba, February 8, 2011 Homeopathy College: Now You Can Get a Doctorate in Homeopathic Medicine that's changed drastically. A lot of the regulars have complained. Comments complaining about the moderation either never appeared or were removed.

Let me emphasize: The problem arose with this blog entry and this set of comments and at least six regulars have written complaining comments.

Kwombles wrote in her own blog Ullman Calls Me a Conspiracy Nut There are screen prints and an exchange with Dana Ullman where he proclaims (accurately) his innocence.

When I learned that authors were allowed to moderate their blog entries, I wrote comments blaming the change in moderation on Doctor Malerba. The rules allow one to be as rude and insulting as one likes to homeopathy --- but prohibits insults directed against Dr. Malerba. I assumed that Dr. Malerba was equating some comments regarding homeopathy as if they were comments against him. After all, the level of moderation had stayed the same for months --- all that changed was Doctor Malerba.

I had an email exchange with Huffington-Post. It turns out that Doctor Malerba had done some moderating, but it was pretty minor and I accept that it was appropriate. So it wasn't Dr. Malerba.

The moderation/censorship had been done by a Huffington-Post staff moderator.

With an email, the Huffington-Post staffer suggested that I apologize to Dr. Malerba. I wrote a comment and posted it. It did not appear. But I really didn't have anything to apologize for, as my comments regarding Dr. Malerba's moderation did not appear.

In our email exchange, the Huffington-Post staffer suggested that I let others know, so they could submit details to Huffington-Post. I wrote a comment. But it did not appear.

At that point, I gave up. But, surprisingly, there were two comments that appeared complaining of the moderation. I thought that I would now be permitted to explain the issues with moderation for this blog entry. I thought to include the full email from Huffington-Post explaining their findings --- including the suggestion that I apologize to Dr. Malerba. When I went to post the comment, it was rejected because I was replying to a deleted comment.

This is just bizarre. As I read the rules, polite and honest discussion of moderation issues is allowed when it forces itself into comments for a specific blog entry.

I think everyone would just like the level of moderation to return to what is has been before this last blog on homeopathy. You know, Dana Ullman writes a blog entry and preemptively insults those he knows are going to disagree with him. And Dana will make additional comments that certainly are ad hominem by Huffington-Post standards. And he gets criticized for them.

There are few insult or ad hominem comments directed at Dana or other homeopathic supporters. One reason, is that we are afraid of having them not appear. A second reason is that there is just no reason to insult Dana to make the argument. Homeopathy is ridiculous enough on its own.

And the Moral of the Story i

2011-02-11T01:04:00.000-05:00

Apparently, we get pleasure out of moral certainty. Bill O'Reilley gets pleasure out of being sure that he is right and everyone else gets pleasure out of knowing he is wrong.

The program explains the inquisition in terms of moral certainty.

A great show to listen to is from CBC Ideas from September 2010. And the moral of the story is. I've put the audio file up on my google docs. The url is very long, so I've shortened it. The link is http://preview.tinyurl.com/andthemoralis . The preview links to the tiny url website and shows that the link is actually to google docs.

Really, really worthwhile listening. It is morally certain that is useful to understanding vaccination opponents.

Write it Moderate it at Huffington-Post

2011-02-10T18:33:00.002-05:00

There's been a lot of censorship on a blog entry on homeopathy by Dr. Larry Malerba at Huffington-Post
Homeopathy College: Now You Can Get a Doctorate in Homeopathic Medicine

The moderation was bizarre, because thecomments weren't rude to Dr. Malerba, but rude to homeopathy. I couldn't understand it. Then I saw the community moderator 1 badge and put two and two together and got four. So I wrote a few comments accusing Dr. Malerba of censorship. And I wrote Huff-Po.

I got back an answer that at first blush clears Dr. Larry. I even wrote an apology comment. But the response isn't as clear as it should be --- it clears Dr. Malerba as a community moderator. It doesn't clear him as an author. So I don't know.

I admit I'm astonished. I didn't think that authors had special moderation privileges over what they wrote.

Here is the response which I'm free to pass on, the email address for responses is community-support@huffingtonpost.com

That comment was sent to me for investigation.
Let me first address your accusations against docmalerba. I have checked his account, and although he has a CM1 badge, he has not flagged a comment in over 6 months, so your accusation is unfounded.

Next, there are several misconceptions you have about the privileges assigned to our Community Moderators. CMs can only take action on comments that have already been through the moderation process and have been published. They have nothing to do with the pre-moderation of comments. CM1s only have the ability to flag comments, although their flags assure that a staff moderator will review a comment they have flagged. Staff Moderators still review all flagged comments and either clear the flags or remove the comment, based on whether it meets our guidelines or not.

Blog articles - those appearing in the leftmost column of the site, and authored by one of our bloggers, as opposed to a staff writer or editor, are always fully moderated by our Staff Moderators.

Bloggers can, if they choose, moderate comments on THEIR OWN articles, but otherwise carry the same privileges as normal users. I am not aware if Ullman moderates his own comments or not, but that is his prerogative, and we usually defer to our bloggers, unless there is a compelling reason not to. A quick check of a few deleted comments on his latest article show no deletions by him - only our Staff Moderators.

I do not have the time or the resources to do a full review of every comment on the article(s) in question, but if you can provide some general information - article URL, approximate time/date the comment was submitted, text of the comment, etc. I would be more than happy to investigate. Please pass along this offer to other users that may be having problems as well.

In the meantime, I will visit the issue of moderation of homeopathy articles with our Comments Ombudsman, and see if we can get a more consistent result with comment approvals on those articles. [emphasis added, slight change to formatting]

What Murch's lawyers wrote in 2004

2011-02-07T19:48:00.000-05:00

At the disciplinary hearings held by the UK GMC, Wakefield, Professor Walker-Smith and Professor Murch never admitted they did anything wrong.

But in the fall of 2004, it sure looks like Murch's lawyers were trying to get a deal where he would admit to some wrongdoing but it wouldn't be important to require him to face a disciplinary hearing.

For whatever reason, this never was carried through. Surprisingly, the letter was made part of the case against Murch at the GMC. Perhaps the solicitors for Murch didn't specify that the letter was without prejudice or perhaps specifying without prejudice doesn't prevent the use of a letter at a GMC disciplinary hearing.

But it sure is fascinating.

From the transcript for day 117 of the hearing starting at page 32.

Q [Ms. Smith] Ultimately, I think it is right that in August 2004 – 27 August 2004 – you did indeed receive a letter from the General Medical Council indicating that they were inquiring into the matter?

A [Professor Murch] Yes. I could not be precise about the date, but around that time, yes....

Q Solicitorswere instructed in the normal way on your behalf and I think it isright that they responded to the allegations that were being made ina letter which in fact I can tell you, and I think there will not beany dispute about, was dated 6 October 2004.

A Surely. I know that a response was sent at some very early stage in thematter.

Q That was as a result of theinstructions that you had given them, that that letter was sent?

A Yes. I was told that a response wasnecessary and we drafted one, yes. Whether that is my instructions Ithink is difficult to say.

Q They said in this letter:

“Westrongly submit that Dr Murch participated at the periphery of theresearch leading to the publication of the 1998 article. Dr Murchacknowledges with the benefit of hindsight that his conduct was naïveand ill-advised. However, we submit that it cannot be said that DrMurch’s behaviour throughout the period of research, publication ofthe article or indeed to this day raises even a question of seriousprofessional misconduct.”

What I want to ask you, first of all,is in what regard were you acknowledging, with the benefit ofhindsight, that your conduct was naïve and ill-advised?

A I cannot even recall what specificallegation that referred to. Really so much has gone on since then. Naïve and ill-advised – Ms Smith, I just cannot remember. I thinkwe were dealing with preliminary charges. It reflected my state ofmind at the time and I cannot for the life of me remember what it isthat I was saying that about or what my lawyers, my legal team, wereputting in on my behalf. So it is very difficult for me to answerand I really am sorry.

Q You are not suggesting that they putit in without your approval, are you?

A Not at all... [page 33]

.........

Q AndI think you would accept that nowhere – nowhere – in thatletter that was sent some eight months after The Lancetstatement, nowhere do you suggest that The Lancet childrenwere not subject to Ethics Committee approval 172-96?

A Myunderstanding had always been that the Ethical Committee had approvedthe nature of the investigations, thought them reasonable andI thought that the paper, although a case series initiallysubmitted without mention of ethical approval, in my naivetyI thought it was perfectly reasonable that such a statement hadbeen included. I had not considered the whole presentation inthe depth I now realise I should have done....

Q You see, I have to suggest toyou when you said in The Lancet that these children wereinvestigated under research permission 172-96, you were in factcorrect?

A We seem to keep going full circle,but I actually do not think I was correct. I thinkthey were investigated in the form that was considered acceptable bythe Ethical Committee, that plainly a child who is coming in onclinical grounds before that time cannot be viewed to be under thatprotocol. He may have been investigated broadly in a format ofprotocol that was put in later.

Q The first time – the very first time, Professor Murch – that you have suggested other than that the children were investigated under 172-96 is when you are giving evidence in relation to charges of misconduct in these proceedings. That is the case, is it not?

A It would be likely to be the case. I expressed inadequately in my letter in 2004 in response to specific allegations the history or the evolution of this. ... [page 36]

Am I to be censored for writing about censorship?

2011-02-06T20:29:00.009-05:00

Over at Age of Autism we find

So I write a comment.

and we shall see what we see.

No surprise, I'm censored. If I wasn't censored, my comment would have appeared between these two.

Wakefield's own Words - Didn't have Informed Consent

2011-02-05T18:45:00.000-05:00

Using Wakefield's own words, he doesn't qualify for the Wakefield loyalty oath.

Over 3000 names are 'signatories' to th Wakefield loyalty oath at http://www.wesupportandywakefield.com It begins,

We declare that:

1. Dr. Wakefield is a man of honesty, integrity, courage, and proven commitment to children and the public health.

Wakefield's own evidence has him disagreeing. Because his own words demonstrate that he didn't have what he recognized he needed to have blood taken from children at a birthday party: informed consent. That's ignoring the issue of proceeding without permission he would never have gotten.

Q You have already accepted – and I do not propose to rehearse it – the Panel will remember right at the beginning of your evidence you accepted that you were completely wrong in thinking that ethics committee approval was not required.

A That is correct. As I now know, it was required.

Day 67 page 17

Source for this quote and others: Transcripts retrieved electronically from a secure directory of the GMC computer in Manchester, UK

That's an admission of error. But let us go farther. The previous Q and A is:

Q Didnot that difficulty, which, as I say, appears to have beenencountered by researchers other than yourself, indicate to you thatthere were ethical considerations about undertaking this procedure onnormal children?

A Yes. The ethical considerations that I considered were clearly that therewas full informed parental and child consent. As I have said, myunderstanding at that time was that ethics committees existed for theprotection of NHS patients

In the real world, Wakefield knew that he needed advance ethic committee approval. He also knew that he would not get such approval. Taking of blood from healthy children for research purposes is of zero benefit to the children. That makes is non-therapeutic research. Getting ethics approval for taking blood from healthy children for non-therapeutic research is extremely difficult if at all possible.

If we believe Wakefield (I did say pretend), then he needs, as he says " fully informed parental and child consent." Pretending that a 4 year old can give fully informed consent to have blood taken at a birthday party (page18) there's not even a written record that the child's parent had consented.

Q The difficulty is, doctor, that youapparently think that a four year-old can give consent. Did youunderstand even the basis upon which children are consented forprocedures and whether they have the capacity to consent or not?

A If it is explained in terms that areappropriate, yes.

Q Aged four?

A Yes.

And the consent wasn't given to Wakefield, but to his wife and could have been a long time before the party.

Q With regard to the other children,you have no idea at all whether they were consented properly, haveyou, because you were not there, as I understand it and you have noidea how their parents presented it to them?

A They were consented long in advanceof the party by my wife, who knew them extremely well. Several ofthe parents were medical. The parent of one was a dentist. So theywere in a sophisticated position to be able to make that judgment andexplain it to their children. Based upon what I had told my wife andwhat I am absolutely certain she will have told them, then I have nodoubt that the appropriate process of parental consent and childexplanation and consent was obtained.

Q Doctor, you say it was done a longtime in advance. How can you have been satisfied that these childrenwere happy to do this, or, even if they were, that they were stillhappy when it came actually to having to stick their arms out and doit?

A Because it was entirely voluntary. They were very happy to do it. As I say, and as Professor Hull hasalluded to, the children are altruistic and I think for that reasonactually it was a very positive experience.

Wakefield is happy with informed consent of children and parents to draw blood for non-therapeutic use when there is no written record, he didn't obtain the consent and the consent was obtained long in advance.

For Andy Wakefield supporters informed consent from 4 year olds, given to his wife, a long time in advance and without written record for research purposes is in keeping with the Wakefield loyalty oath.

We declare that:

1. Dr. Wakefield is a man of honesty, integrity, courage, and proven commitment to children and the public health.

Wakefield is a master with words, so it is nice to see him convict himself out of his own words.

The Transcripts are coming, the Transcripts are coming

2011-02-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

The transcripts are coming, the transcripts are coming

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060921/

Wakefield and those of his supporters who know the facts have a big problem: the transcripts are coming. Until now, they've been able to make up lies and get away with them. The classic is that no parents were allowed to testify at the GMC hearings. And reasons could be thought up to reject anything to the contrary and especially anything by evil Brian Deer.

And even though the BMJ articles were based on the transcripts and vetted using the transcripts, creative excuses and arguments could be used against them.

But now the actual transcripts are becoming available directly from the GMC. The transcripts can be compared with Brian Deer's writing and the BMJ articles. The transcripts can be compared with Martin Walker's fantasies. The transcripts can be compared with the lies of Andrew Wakefield. The transcripts can be compared with the lies of those pushing the vaccines are evil agenda.

You can see that Mrs. 12 did testify at the GMC. She put into evidence a document sent to her, before her son goes to the Royal Free hospital for a week of tests. by the lawyer Mr.Barr that is the document given the number 172-96 by the ethics committee.

MS SMITH: The tests that are referred to in that document, Mrs 12, the tests and investigations on pages 256 and 257, and the plan on 259 for admission for those investigations, do you recognise those as something that ultimately bear any resemblance to what your son was treated for at the Royal Free?

A Yes. day 28 page 19

Wakefield's defense is that research project 172-96 or very close to it never was carried out. The transcripts make that logically untenable. But it won't have much effect on Wakefield's true believers.

Mrs. 12 Proved that the Lancet Study was indeed 172-96

2011-02-03T02:16:00.000-05:00

According to Martin Walker, the editors and censors at Age of Autism and the parents of the Lancet children, parents were not allowed to testify at the GMC disciplinary hearing against the three doctors.

That's not true.The mother of child 12 was called to testify by Sally Smith, QC prosecutor for the GMC. Like all of the parents, with the exception of the father of child 11, at the time of the GMC hearing, she had no problems with the doctors or the procedures her son underwent.

The testimony and documents of Mrs. 12 proved that the research project 172-96 was carried out on her child before ethical committee approval and that The Lancet paper was 172-96.

Ms. Smith opening submissions Day3 Page 3

The testimony and documents of Mrs. 12 demonstrated that The Lancet children were indeed undergoing the procedures of project 172-96 without the needed ethics committee approval. The lawyer, Mr. Barr, even sent the protocol to Mrs. 12

Title Page for Day 28

Day 28 page 5 Mrs. 12 testimony

She first thought of a link between vaccines and her son's problem at a meeting with the mother of children 6 and 7.

Day 28 page 8

Mrs. 12 requested and was sent a copy of the Proposed Clinical and Scientific Study

Day28 page 16 and 17

Only Mr. Miller who represented Professor Walker-Smith asked questions
Day 28 41-42

And here is 172-96 from www.briandeer.com

kkk

Natural News Article Exonerating Wakefield Rejected for Publication

2011-02-02T02:07:00.000-05:00

TWIV Read my Letter on Virus Like Particles

2011-02-01T17:46:00.001-05:00

The nice and very smart folks at This Week in Virology www.twiv.tv read my letter on episode 118, starting at 1 hour and six minutes in.

Here's what I asked.

Hi:

Although they aren't viruses, could you please explain how virus like
particles are created and used in vaccines like Gardasil and Cervarix?
And that are being developed for flu vaccines as explained here
http://news.discovery.com/human/vaccine-virus-particles.html

It seems somehow magical that you can build something that is
structurally a virus on the outside, but is essentially an empty
shell. And that VLPs may be better than inactivated vaccines because
you get the all of the outside of the virus rather than perhaps just
broken parts (split virion flu vaccine) or selected parts (sub unit
flu vaccine).

Thanks
Sheldon
Toronto

I liked how the answer begins. You put it perfectly

Wakefield and a Tissue of Lies

2011-02-01T16:54:00.002-05:00

Tissue paper is very weak and rips and tears easily. Wakefield's story and the believability of those running the Andy Wakefield is wonderful machine have a minor problem.

They lie. They lie. They lie and lie and lie. And they allow lies to stand, even whey they aren't central to the story.

They've had the advantage of the records not being available. That's changed with the transcripts of the GMC hearing.

Except for the father of child 11 (which we just learned about) the parents have supported the procedures their kids underwent and are very satisfied with Wakefield. Ok. But they go on to say over and over and over again that they wanted to testify on behalf of their child, on behalf of Wakefield, at the GMC disciplinary hearings and that the parents were not allowed to do so. This is a minor detail.

Wakefield, or his lawyers, could have told them, that it wasn't good for Wakefield if they testified That if they did, the clever lawyers for the other side would twist their words. Probably Wakefield or the lawyers did tell them that they were not being called.. It isn't a big deal that they didn't testify.

But stating or allowing others to state that the parents were not allowed to testify is a huge problem. Because, they so obviously could have testified.

As many know, at Age of Autism, comments are moderated (censored) for content. Landscaping Wakefield's Grave by Martin Walker, MA is dated January 11, 2011. For years, including 'reporting' at the hearing, Walker has said the parent were not allowed to testify. The January 11, 2011 is just very recent.

Read the sentence again: Although the entire persecution/prosecution was based on multiple lies, the fact that the parents themselves were not permitted to testify is a statement in itself.

That's untrue. AutismGrandma might not have known it was a lie, but Martin Walker knows it is untrue. And the motley crew of big time vaccination opponents including Stagliano,Blaxhill, Handley, Kirby, Jacob Crosby and John Stone know it is a lie. And have known it is a lie for years.

Of course, Brian Deer knew it was a lie. In 2007, when the hearing started, he wrote in Families duped by sad smearmaster of MMR fabrication and hatred

And yet, once again - and almost unbelievably - here was another remarkable inversion of the truth. Walker had personally interfered with a GMC witness, after she concluded giving evidence to the panel. In August 2007, one of the parents of 12 children enrolled in Wakefield's research appeared for the doctors' regulator and gave critical insights into the conduct of the Royal Free project. Explaining how she had been convinced by another mother that her child with Asperger's was vaccine damaged - four years after he was vaccinated - she gave pivotal documents to the prosecution's lawyers and oral testimony on what had transpired. But the smearmaster not only approached her immediately after she left the witness chair, but later self-published two "books" explicitly premised upon what he knew to be a lie: that parents weren't allowed to take part.

But that's a story by the devil incarnate, Brian Deer. And he posted it on his website, www.briandeer.com , where many vaccination opponents refuse to visit.

To repeat, having none or only one of the parents testify at the hearing isn't that important. That the leadership of the we love Andy Wakefield movement allowed the lie to stand is huge. On a minor point, they've allowed a lie to their followers to stand. If they can betray the trust of their followers on a minor point, they may and can be lying to their followers on important issues.

Thanks to the GMC transcripts, there is public proof of the lie.

First, in the opening submissions of Sally Smith, QC, for the GMC on day 3 at page 3:

The parents in this case, with the exception of the mother of child 12, to whom I am going to be referring later as “Mrs 12”, are not going to be giving evidence, and it is not part of our case that they were anything other than content with the investigations which were carried out on their children. Indeed, as you will be hearing, some of them positively encouraged those investigations to be carried out, but in the last analysis it must never be forgotten that the patient is the child.

Day 28 is taken up with the testimony of Mrs. 12. For the doctors, only the lawyer for Professor Walker-Smith questions the witness.

MRS A, Affirmed,

Examined by MS SMITH

Cross-examined by MR MILLER

Re-examined by MS SMITH

questioned by THE PANEL

There's good reason for the lawyers not calling any of the parents to testify and for only the lawyer for Professor Walker-Smith to ask questions. Mrs.12, by herself provides lots and lots of evidence proving the allegations against the doctors.

Q I want you to go in the GP records to page 126, so backwards again from where you were. This is a letter dated 19 July 1996 to you from Dr Wakefield. Do you recall receiving that at around that time?
A Yes.

Q If we look at it, it says, “Dear [Mrs 12],
Thank you for your letter regarding your son. We have recently taken a profound interest in this subject, particularly in view of the link between bowel problems and Asperger’s Syndrome. I would greatly appreciate if you would mind calling me at the Royal Free before 3rd August and in addition I would like you to seek a referral from your GP to Professor John Walker-Smith, Professor of Paediatric Gastroenterology at the Royal Free Hospital, for investigation. It will be necessary for me to discuss the nature of the referral with your GP and I would be very grateful if you could let me have his/her name and telephone number. Also could you please let me have your telephone number so that I can speak to you directly on the subject.”
Do you recall that there was indeed a telephone conversation between you and Dr Wakefield?
A Yes.

Q Can you help us as to when it was. It appears that you wrote to him in order to get this letter in response.
A Yes.

Q Do you think that the phone call was after you received this letter with the suggestion that you phone or do you think that you had phoned before?
A I really cannot remember.

Q In broad terms, Mrs 12, and I know that it is a long time ago, can you tell us what was said during that telephone conversation. First of all, what was your understanding of what Dr Wakefield was doing?
A I understood that there was a research programme going on seeing if there was a link between the vaccine and the problems my son was experiencing...

...Q I think it is right that at aroundthe same time, as well as that contact with Dr Wakefield, didyou also have some contact with a firm of solicitors called Dawbarns?

A Yes, that is right.

Q Can you tell us how that came about. Why did you get in touch with them?

A The same mother [of child 6 and child 7] told me about them aswell.

Q What was your understanding of whatthey were doing?

A They were trying to really put a stopto the MMR vaccine being used and obviously to stop any damage thatwas being done to children.

Q What about any children who had beendamaged by the vaccine? What was your understanding of what Dawbarnswere going to do about it?

A I think at that time I had not really… It was really a case of trying to find out whether there wasthis problem with the vaccine and to stop the vaccine.

Q At that stage when you contactedDawbarns first of all, had you any knowledge of any kind ofassociation or connection of any sort between Dr Wakefield andDawbarns?

A I do not think that initially, veryinitially, I realised that there was a link....;

.... Q The next document was a fact sheet,and that apparently comes from the Royal Free Hospital School ofMedicine, as you will see at the top of the page. If I can just runthrough what some of that says, it is headed, “Inflammatory Bowel Disease, measlesvirus and measles vaccination."

The article explains Inflammatory Bowel disease and goes on to:

...What should we do?

If you suspect that your child has inflammatory bowel disease, prompt referral to a specialist centre is essential. Either the diagnosis will be excluded and your mind put at rest, or it will be confirmed and the appropriate treatment instituted. As a first step you should contact Dr Andrew Wakefield at the Royal Free Hospital”,

There's a September 1996 newsletter from the lawyer suing the MMR vaccine maker:

....To obtain theevidence to do this, we will be running a pilot study. Around10 children with symptoms which are closely linked to thevaccine will be extensively tested by a team of doctors headed by DrWakefield at the Royal Free Hospital in London. We will be selectingchildren to take part in the study from details and medical notes wealready have. The investigations will involve a whole battery oftests to be carried out by a number of leading experts in theirfields. We will of course be liaising closely with the familiesconcerned and the doctors will be giving very full details of whatwill be involved”. ...........

Mrs. 12's testimony just gets worse and worse.

Then if we go on to the next letterwhich you received, Mrs 12, that is at page 246, this is a letter toyou from Mr Barr at Dawbarns:

“Dear Mrs [12]

As requested, I am enclosing a copy of the Proposed Clinical andScientific Study, as requested by you recently.

I am sure you will be aware that this information is confidentialand should not be disclosed to anyone else.”

If you turn over on to the next page,247, Mrs 12, you can see the study that was with that letter,“Proposed clinical and scientific study” with the coordinatinginvestigator Dr Wakefield. I am just going to go brieflythrough this because we may at a later stage have to compare it withother documents, and then I am going to ask you a question or twoabout it. At 248 we see the “Investigators” at the top of thepage, “Department of Paediatric Gastroenterology”, “ProfessorWalker-Smith, Dr Murch”, and then at the bottom of the page“Department of Histopathology ….. Dr Andrew Wakefield”, and onto page 249 “Department of Child Psychiatry Dr Mark Berelowitz”and 250 “Department of Neurology Dr P Harvey”. At 251:

It is 172-96, of course.

The day 28 transcript is worth reading in full. Here's another gem.

“Dear DrWakefield,

Following our firstcommunication in the middle of July this year, [Child 12] has at lastbeen seen by Professor John Walker-Smith. His appointment was lastFriday the 18 October 1996. Professor Walker-Smith took some bloodfrom [Child 12] for analysis but did not feel sure that [Child 12]would need referring to yourself for further investigations. Hismain reasons were the absence of blood in the faeces and the lack ofdiarrhoea..........

.......

Finally, I wouldlike to say how nice it was to meet you at the JABS open meeting on 4October in London. I found your short discourse both informative andinteresting. I wish you all the best with your research.

Kind regards.”

I'll shorten this entry. Child 12 had a colonoscopy even thought it should not have been done. The results were that the child's guts were normal. The discharge summary says the kid has constipation and prescribes a laxative.

According to the 1998 paper, child 12 had regressive autism and chronic non-specific colitis.

Footnote 91 of How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed Web Extra is

No autism diagnosis was made, and no evidence adduced that this child suffered developmental regression. The diagnosis at admission was “an impairment in respect of language,” given by Gillian Baird at the specialist developmental unit at Guy’s hospital, London. Michael Rutter, for the GMC, said in evidence to the fitness to practise panel that there was “no evidence that I could identify” in the child’s examined records indicating any significant regressive element in his disorder.

Footnote 92

Histology report. “I-IV. Pieces of large bowel mucosa including lymphoid follicles with germinal centres. There is no architectural abnormality and no increase in inflammatory cells in the lamina propria. No organisms or granulomas are seen.”

Coming back to the beginning, that only one parent testified isn't that important or surprising. Lying that parents were not allowed to testify is worse. That the leaders of the vaccine cause autism and the vaccines are bad movement, lie to their followers is much, much worse. It easily demonstrates the tissue of lies.

If they're willing to lie and/or allow obvious lies to be repeated on minor issues ---- imagine how much they are willing to lie on important issues.

Spurious Diaherrea and Conflict of Interest.

2011-02-01T08:10:00.000-05:00

Most of the kids in Wakefield's study had gut problems. If you have bad constipation, eventually liquid will get through and you have what appears to be very bad diarrhea (spurious diaherrea) To prep for a colonoscopy, PEG, a strong safe laxative is used. . Now sold in small amounts as Miralax etc. Adults drink 4 litres and try not to throw up.. The kids much less.

The cleanedout kid isn't constipated. That's better for everyone for a while.

Constipation isn't a reason for a colonoscopy. Suspecting IBD (Crohn's or UC) is the reason for a colonoscopy. A lot of the kids were so unsuitable that despite a world renowned GI saying the procedure was needed (Walker-Smith), another eminent GI (Booth) found that they were not clinically indicated. The panel was able to find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the procedures were not clinically indicated and were against the interest of the child.

The parents had doctors and others spend a lot of time listening and talkiing to them.

*Conflict of Interest. I've had Crohn's for decades. Due to other issues, I've had a bout or two of spurious diarrhea. Prepping for a colonoscopy solved that problem.

I took part in two research studies. One was a Phase III study. I got the drug. It didn't work as well and was dropped. Researchers spent a lot of time talking to me. For the other, they wanted the gut removed during surgery.

Your Turn

2011-01-31T11:27:00.000-05:00

I looked at the 5 page (large font) response There's nothing I haven't read from Wakefield before.

As evidence see my personal blog www.vaccineswork.blogspot.com

Now it is your turn. But it will take a lot more time.

Most importantly

The Web Extra and Brian Deer's Interview on the BMJ podcast

Then read these

1. The GMC fact finding decision

2. Wakefield's GMC sanction decision

3 BMJ 1

Lying to their Supporters -

2011-01-28T15:30:00.000-05:00

You would think that extremist groups would avoid lying to their supporters. By that I mean deliberate dishonesty. Because that can turn the supporters away.

Age of Autism has just done this. By linking to an article by Mike Adams of Natural News. Mike's revelation proving that Wakefield was done wrong is to point to a presentation by Professor Walker-Smith in December 1996, some 14 months before the 1998 paper came out. In that presentation, Walker-Smith reported finding very similar to those that would be made in 1998. According to Mike Adams, these were independent.

Now Mike Adams might have been so ignorant that he, despite repeatedly writing on the subject, doesn't know that Professor Walker-Smith was the second (though by custom listed last) author on the paper. He might not know that Walker-Smith did the initial clinical examinations of the children. Certainly Walker-Smith wasn't independent.

But Age of Autism certainly knows. Yet they put a link to the article and allow (because they censor) comments supporting this nonsense. So yes, AoA deliberately lies to its readers.

More Idiocy on behalf of Wakefield

2011-01-27T22:53:00.000-05:00

There were 12 authors for the notorious 1998 paper that linked MMR to autism.

You would think that those who comment on it and especially those who write long articles about it, would know who the key players are. They were Wakefield, Walker-Smith (by custom listed last as an author) and Murch.

All 3 faced a UK medical licensing hearing. Wakefield had his name erased. He had an appeal, but has abandoned it. Walker-Smith is retired, he also had his name erased, but is appealing. Murch lucked out as although the fact-finding decision went against him, he wasn't even reprimanded. I think it has to do with his status as a professor of medicine.

So Wakefield and his sycophants are looking for ways to defend him. The latest is to point to a presentation in December 1996 on 7 of the children. Supposedly it is independent evidence that Wakefield's idea was correct. The article is by Mike Adams of Natural News.

Guess who were included in the presenters.

No, it wasn't Wakefield and Walker-Smith. Even Adams isn't that stupid. No, the presenters included Walker-Smith.

Sharyl Attkisson CBS News Wakefield Sympathizer Keeps Quiet

2011-01-24T00:19:00.000-05:00

Sharyl Attkinsson is a Wakefield sympathizer and a critic of current vaccination policies. She lies.

But I didn't remember seeing any story or comment by her on the articles in the BMJ that demonstrated Wakefield didn't accurately report the medical histories of the children. Fraudulently, he reported them differently in the 1998 paper.

So I did a site search at cbsnews.com "wakefield Sharyl Attkisson news site:cbsnews.com" (without quotes) and limited the search to the last month. There were 5 results, but four were comments on the fifth result. Here it is:

So in the month when everyone else is writing stories about the BMJ articles that demonstrate Wakefield's fraudulence, Ms . Attkinsson doesn't write on that story.

Instead it is a The Search for Safer Vaccines, a story about the death of a child after DTaP vaccination. It looks like the vaccine actually caused the death. But there is nothing in the story about the search for safer vaccines. There are the quotes from the usual suspects. And there is the usual Sharyl Attkinsson lie.

The vaccine compensation programs vaccine court has never determined that compensation should be paid because there is a biologically plausible mechanism (a lot less than caused) linking vaccines to autism.
Similarly, the US government has never made such a concession. Rather compensation has been paid because the government conceded that there was a biologically plausible mechanism linking vaccination to autistic-like symptoms. Notice the difference. One is a diagnosis, autism. The other is a symptom of another condition and that symptom is also a symptom of autism.

CBS should require her to investigate the BMJ articles and write an article. Then, as a journalist who has lied about a subject, at the minimum CBS should take her off writing on vaccines.

Deer saw the records of the kids in the Wakefield paper legally

2011-01-11T22:14:00.000-05:00

An irrelevant attack on Brian Deer is that he didn't see the medical records of the kids in the 1998 Wakefield paper legally.

Brian Deer explained how he saw the records legally.

"To clarify a point I have clarified many times. I read the children's hospital records, under legal supervision, as the result of an order against Andrew Wakefield issued by a High Court judge. Thus there can be no question of any wrongdoing whatsoever. Since Wakefield abandoned his action against me and, very sadly, we didn't get him to trial, I could make no collateral use of the knowledge I had obtained by reading the records.

However, one cannot un-know something. I determined that the best course of action would be to attend the Wakefield GMC where, as it happens, those medical records, plus a great deal more were introduced in public. I think I was the only non-participant who took any notice, although the anti-vaxxers paid someone to sit through the hearing.

This is how the critical patient data has come to be published in the BMJ, after staff checking, independent of me, and peer review.

I hope that makes it clear, since it seems some people are interested.

Posted by: Brian Deer | January 10, 2011 2:36 PM

I missed this when reading the comments, thanks to highnumber at Huff-Po for the link

Read the BMJ article on Wakefield

2011-01-08T21:04:00.000-05:00

I've been following the saga of Andrew Wakefield and his 1998 study closely. However, I'm still surprised by the extent of Andrew Wakefield's deception in that study.

Wakefield's study noted that of the 12 children in the study, 6 of them had regressive autism and non-specific colitis and the symptoms of regression starting within days of MMR (measles mumps rubella) vaccination. A close examination of the records and interviews with the parent reveals that of the 12 children in the study, this was true of 0 children. That's the bottom line. When you look at each of the 12 children, 0 children. were accurately described on all 3 criteria. No wonder the BMJ article is titled How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed

Especially for those who somehow think that Andrew Wakefield is an honest and ethical man, this article should end that delusion. But I really doubt that it will. For those who have stood with him until now, I doubt that any new information will make a difference. In the vain hope that they might actually look, the full article is available for free. The table described above is included. The table is repeated with 93 footnotes (click on Data Supplement) for those who really want the details.

The article is I an amazingly detailed, painstaking piece of work. And the BMJ went out of their way to preempt some of the criticisms that would be hurled at it. At the end of the article we find:

Funding: Brian Deer’s investigation was funded by the Sunday Times of London and the Channel 4 television network. Reports by Deer in the BMJwere commissioned and paid for by the journal. No other funding was received, apart from legal costs paid to Deer by the Medical Protection Society on behalf of Andrew Wakefield.

Competing interests: The author has completed the unified competing interest form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from him) and declares no support from any organisation for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organisation that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; BD’s investigation led to the GMC proceedings referred to in this report, including the charges. He made many submissions of information but was not a party or witness in the case, nor involved in its conduct.

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

The good news is that many vaccination opponents and their organizations are defending Wakefield. That's bad from the perspective of seeking the truth, but great for using as a weapon against them.

Not a Conspiracy

2011-01-08T20:31:00.000-05:00

Vaccination opponents don't really think it is a conspiracy.

In Too Many People, Julie Obradovic argues that it isn't necessary for there to be actual conspiracy amongst a great many people that hides the truth of the link between vaccines and autism.

Contrary to what my critics might believe, I agree keeping a secret among that many people is preposterous. Heck, it's hard enough to keep a secret between two people. But I do believe keeping a secret is quite different than perpetuating an untruth or manipulating an unpleasant one. We commonly refer to it as denial, and I know we can all point to some part of our life when we used masterful mental tricks to convince ourselves of something we really wanted to be true that wasn't (or vice versa), especially when we may have been the ones to cause the problem in the first place.

Ok. But there is a problem. Age of Autism strictly censors the contents of comments. You write a comment that isn't in keeping with what they like and it never appears. But the comments they publish in response are interesting because a fair number of them do believe that there is an actual conspiracy. Oops.

Goldacre and Wakefield

2010-12-15T13:56:00.000-05:00

John Stone is a great example of an Andy Wakefield sycophant to whom the actual facts do not matter. I personally know this as he and I have butted heads at Huffington-Post.

His latest whitewashing of the unethical liar (proven beyond a reasonable doubt) is a bit unusual. It is Ben Goldacre, Can We Have it Straight Now about Wakefield and the GMC? Goldacre's view as it relates to the role of the media in reporting on medicine and medical studies in the underlying article isn't new for him. Goldacre argues that there will always be doctors or researchers with every conceivable idea and that they get published so that the news media in reporting or not reporting on these 'stories' must actually read and understand the study and the context of the study. The media bears some of the responsibility and cannot merely blame everyone else.

OK. I don't have much of a problem with that. But then Goldacre uses Wakefield's infamous 1998 paper as an example and actually does a bit of rehabilitation of the study as published in The Lancet. I disagree with that.

But what Goldacre does not do is say anything about Andy Wakefield or the GMC (UK medical licensing organization. So that should be that. But that's not good enough for Mr. Stone. Despite not saying a word about Wakefield or the GMC, apparently we now have a defense of Andy Wakefield and a condemnation of the GMC.

Goldacre's comments are about the article as published with the assumption that the article as published in 1998 was reasonably accurate. If the paper had been reasonably accurate as to what it reported then there never would have been a GMC hearing. Being stupid or wrong in published research is not a disciplinary matter.

What made it a disciplinary action was evidence of unethical behavior, unneeded procedures and lying about the research. You see, doctors are held to a higher ethical standard than the proverbial used car salesman. Sadly this is something that Wakefield sycophants such as John Stone somehow leave out.

I've read the actual GMC decision a few times and while I have some disagreements, they are pretty minor. It takes amazing blinders to read it through and still believe there weren't more than sufficient grounds to yank his license.

Acupuncture - Hardly an Ancient Chinese Remedy

2010-12-04T12:33:00.001-05:00

From my comment at Huffington-Post.

Acupuncture, as largely practiced today just isn't that old. What is old is Chinese bloodletting, whose history has been appropriated by acupuncture. According to one of the links below, it was only in the 1930s that acupuncture points were moved to their current locations.

"To start with, this ancient Chinese treatment is not so ancient and may not even be Chinese!"

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=252

"What’s maddening about the acupuncture longevity myth is that it isn’t true, and demonstrably so."

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=252

"In addition, the alleged predominance of acupuncture amongst the scholarly medical traditions of China is not supported by evidence, given that for most of China’s long medical history, needling, bloodletting and cautery were largely practiced by itinerant and illiterate folk-healers, and frowned upon by the learned physicians who favored the use of pharmacopoeia."

and

"However, in the early 1930s a Chinese pediatrician by the name of Cheng Dan’an (承淡安, 1899-1957) proposed that needling therapy should be resurrected because its actions could potentially be explained by neurology. He therefore repositioned the points towards nerve pathways and away from blood vessels-where they were previously used for bloodletting. His reform also included replacing coarse needles with the filiform ones in use today."

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=583

It is also true of acupuncture for animals.

Staring at the Moon Because of Gardasil

2010-11-25T11:58:00.001-05:00

Update 10:24 PM November 25, 2010
Age of Autism has removed the Staring at the Moon Comment. But they've left up some that are nearly as looney.
Age of Autism is supposed to be about autism. Actually, it is almost entirely about opposing vaccination. And that includes opposing HPV vaccination which takes place at ages 12 and up. Which is certainly older than the age of onset of almost all autism.

For the US thanksgiving, they picked out a story of something going wrong after HPV vaccination.

The story is the typical atypical anecdote. But it is the comment that is truly priceless. For those who don't know, AoA carefully moderates (actually censors) views it doesn't like. Yet this comment got through.

For people who don't see the humor, consider this --- vaccinations are usually given during day time and indoors. So how did they determine that she was immediately staring at the moon?

A great sign for the times

2010-11-17T12:07:00.000-05:00

A smile thanks to Age of Autism.

2010-11-17T01:31:00.001-05:00

Updated November 17 10:30 a.m. AofA censored my response.

Age of Autism has made me smile, thanks to a comment. I post at Huffington-Post under the user name sheldon101.

Over at Age of Autism JB Handley has posted a great bit of investigative reporting designed to prove that the blogger Sullivan most often found at the Left Brain/Right Brain is actually the pediatrician Dr. Bonnie Offit, wife of Dr. Paul Offit, so much hated by vaccination opponents.

What's really funny is that the major piece of evidence is based on sloppy reading of a comment. JB thinks that the comment has someone referring to Sullivan as a female. In fact, the comment is partly about Sullivan and then switches to discuss an article by Amanda Peete. JB goofed.

Anyhow, I'm reading the comments and I come across this:

Ok. Now who is Sheldon on huffpo?

Posted by: HFAmomto3HFAgirls | November 16, 2010 at 06:44 PM

To which I replied, but expect AoA won't publish.

Re: Ok, Now who is sheldon at huffpo?

I am and I would like thank HFAmomto3HFAgirls for making my day.

Posted by: sheldon101 | November 17, 2010 at 01:19 AM

He Who Pays the Piper --- I am Bonnie Offit.

2010-11-16T15:59:00.000-05:00

Age of Autism is a web site that is truly anti-vaccine, with all the weirdness, illogic and inconsistency that this requires. They have 3 editors. I think they've finally demonstrated to one and all that they've gone off the rails because they've published a very long article where one of their favorites JB Handley of Jenny McCarthy's Generate Rescue nonsensical website claims that Sullivan is actually Dr. Bonnie Offit.

Sullivan is a long time blogger and commenter on autism and autism and vaccine. Dr. Bonnie Offit is the wife of Dr. Paul Offit, a world-renowned expert on vaccines, one of the inventors of Rotateq vaccine and an outspoken advocate of vaccination. Vaccination opponents really, really hate him.

It is a bizarre article. But leaving aside the contents of the article, the question is why did A of A publish it? Because it makes not only JB look foolish, it makes AofA look foolish. And AoA has published comments on the blog entry that are critical of it.

Applying AofA logic to the problem, there is only one possible conclusion. JB gives so much money to AoA that they have to publish what he writes. They are creatures beholden to him. And here we thought that AoA was a hard hitting, carefully edited web blog. Now we know better.

A Better HPV Vaccine in Phase III Trials

2010-11-15T03:07:00.000-05:00

When I learned that the HPV vaccines only contained the strains that caused 70% of cervical cancer, I assumed that there would be a vaccine coming sooner or later that protected against additional strains. After all, the infants pneumonia vaccine, the PCV vaccines, started with 7 strains and just recently added 6 more strains and in particular strain 19A which was increasing in frequency. And that's what I've written in comments at Huffington-Post.

I finally got fed up with hearing that HPV vaccinces didn't protect against all the strains that I started looking around on the internet. It took a bit of time to track down, but at least one better vaccine, codenamed V503 by Merck is undergoing Phase III studies, the ones used to approve a vaccine, with FDA filing planned for 2012.

Over and over those opposed to HPV vaccination complain that the vaccines don't protect against all the strains of HPV that cause cancer. That's true. The vaccines are near 100% effective in protecting against the strains in the vaccine. The high percentage results from the vaccines using virus like particles (VLP) which are remarkably effective in stimulating the immune system.

In 70% of cervical cancer cases caused by HPV, the strain was either 16 or 18. That's Gardasil. It turns out that a 2009 study shows Cervarix seems to also be pretty effective against other strains, so it is covers the strains causing the cancer in 80% of the cases. That's in this part of the world.

But it is also true that in other parts of the world different strains cause more of the cancer. That's important because you want to sell the same vaccine all around the world. And a vaccine that protects against additional strains would make a more effective vaccine and one easier to sell.
Merck is now conducting five phase III studies on V503. It protects against 9 strains. The four in Gardasil, 6 an 11 for genital warts and 16 and 18. It adds 31, 33, 45, 52 and 58. That should cover the strains that cause almost all cases of cervical cancer caused by HPV.

The most important study is V503-001 it compares Gardasil to V503 in over 14000 women. It has been ongoing since 2007 with the primary data completion date of November 2011 . Merck plans to file for approval in 2012. It should be a pretty easy approval process as they are merely adding additional strains of vaccine made by the same processes and for which there is robust safety and effectiveness data.

Details on the study

Study Type:	Interventional
Study Design:	Allocation: Randomized Control: Active Control Endpoint Classification: Safety/Efficacy Study Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment Masking: Double Blind (Subject, Investigator) Primary Purpose: Prevention
Official Title:	A Randomized, International, Double-Blinded (With In-House Blinding), Controlled With GARDASIL, Dose-Ranging, Tolerability, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy Study of a Multivalent Human Papillomavirus (HPV) L1 Virus-Like Particle (VLP) Vaccine Administered to 16- to 26- Year-Old Women

Further study details as provided by Merck:

Primary Outcome Measures:

Incidence of HPV-related cervical, vaginal or vulvar disease [ Time Frame: Up to end of study ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
Geometric mean titers (GMTs) to HPV types contained in the vaccine [ Time Frame: 4 weeks post dose 3 ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]

Secondary Outcome Measures:

Combined incidence of HPV-related persistent infection from two or more consecutive visits [ Time Frame: 6 months or longer apart ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
Seroconversion percentages to HPV types contained in the vaccine [ Time Frame: 4 weeks post dose 3 ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]

Estimated Enrollment:	14620
Study Start Date:	September 2007
Estimated Study Completion Date:	June 2013
Estimated Primary Completion Date:	November 2011 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure)

Judicial Watch and HPV - Scaring the Unwary

2010-11-14T14:23:00.000-05:00

Based on comments first researched and posted at Huffingon-Post in August 2010.

It cost me 48 cents and a bit of time to prove that Judicial Watch, a conservative judicial watch dog that seeks honesty and transparency in government does not practice this itself.

Judicial Watch went way outside their normal area of interest and decided to go after HPV Vaccination. They made a Freedom of Information Act request of the FDA and ended up getting no more information than was publicly available without a FOIA request and their subsequent FOIA lawsuit.

But that's not the way they make it sound on their website, retrieved in August 2010, where they write:

On August 20, 2007 Judicial Watch filed a request for updated adverse event reports and received 1,824 reports on September, 13 2007. Judicial Watch then filed a complaint against the FDA on October 3, 2007 for failing to fully respond to the May 9, 2007 FOIA request.

Judicial Watch has posted links to the adverse event reports below and continues to monitor VAERS reports submitted to the FDA in relation to Gardasil.

The case was closed in April 2010.

This statement has confused those who don't understand the details into believing that the FOIA request and lawsuit were productive in providing information that wasn't available to the public without a FOIA request or lawsuit. And that the information they report is evidence that getting the vaccination makes what happened next more likely than if they didn't get vaccinated.

Judging by their FOIA lawsuit complaint, the court docket and the agreed dismissal by the parties, they got nothing that wasn't available to the public with a bit of work.

What actually happened? Most of what they got were reports that FDA employees generated from the VAERS database, which the FDA provided in response to the FOIA request. That database is available to anyone in both raw form and through an online tool. To see this for yourself click on the I have read and understood the preceding statement box at the bottom of the page on the uses and limitations of VAERS. On the resulting page, select CDC-Wonder in the second paragraph.

You now have an online database tool that you can use to generate the same reports that Judicial Watch filed a FOIA to receive. And that they are trumpeting to those who don't better.

So what did their lawsuit accomplish? Nothing, except a lot of time and money wasted by those who had to respond to it.

Don't believe me? Read the complaint, the docket and the agreed dismissal of the case at google Documents where I've posted them
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B7TTKX7laEzvMzhhMjkyYWMtM2UxNi00N2EzLWE0OTUtZTVhYmRlYzY3OWJm&hl=en What I really like is their concession to only getting the publicly available correspondence for the vaccines.

Why the 48 cents? That's what it cost me to get the documents not available at Judicial Watch's web site using PACER, Public Access to Court Electronic Records (United States).

The Funny Numbers from HPV Studies

2010-11-13T23:05:00.000-05:00

This blog entry was originally a number of comments at Huffington-Post researched and posted in late August 2010. You can find them by looking here.

Leslie Botha of holy hormones, sane vax and a radio show wrote:

According to FDA documents if a woman is exposed to HPV and gets vaccinated with the HPV vaccines her risk of getting cervical cancer increases to 44.5% with Gardasil and 32.5% with Cervarix.

And "FDA reports also state that 73.3% of women getting Gardasil will develop a 'new medical condition." The last claim is really funny, but you have to read through this article to find the joke.

I strongly believe that anyone reading anything should consider the plausibility of the claim. How likely is that these numbers 44.5% with Gardasil and 32.5% with Cervarix, even if accurate mean "The FDA knew that the many women who were already infected with HPV would double their risk of cancer if they got vaccinated, but approved the vaccine anyway."

I've been able to track down all three numbers. Not surprisingly, the people who license vaccines are not insane.

Gardasil
The Gardasil document in question is VRBPAC Background Document Gardasil™ HPV Quadrivalent Vaccine May 18, 2006 at pages 13 to 15. It is a pdf file, so best to save to a file.

I don't know where the story originated. Natural News provides the misleading information in some detail in a 2008 story.

Much more egregious is that the number got used in this quote in a news release.

Vaccinating a woman infected with vaccine-relevant types of HPV with Gardasil® may enhance the risk of developing precancerous cervical lesions by 44.6%, as detailed in the study supporting Gardasil® approval.

It is egregious because it is a press release from a company run by Dr. Lee, a respected pathologist and PCR expert, who is currently suing the FDA (so far unsuccessfully) to get his HPV test classified as a class II device. Dr. Lee appeared on Botha's radio show in August 2010. Dr. Lee. He is pushing women to get tested for HPV infection before they get vaccinated. See

So what's the truth? On the face of it, it is bizarre. Getting infected with various HPV strains (even those that cause cancer) is normally no big deal. You get infected, your body clears the infection through the immune system and you are OK. The problem is in the small percentage of those infected who can't clear the infection, who are persistently infected. Remember that a vaccine stimulates the immune system the same way a natural infection does. So if you are currently infected with a strain of HPV, you would already have antibodies to that strain so you would not expect that the vaccine would have any effect at all if they are currently infected.

So what happened? In one of the studies for licensing, they did find that the subgroup of women getting vaccinated against a strain they were infected with did make things worse. That's the -44.6% number in the table on page 13.

So the applicant and the FDA looked for reasons in pages 13, 14 and 15. The FDA concluded:

Therefore, while the subgroup from study 013 remains a concern of the clinical review team, there is some evidence that this represented an unbalanced subgroup where Gardasil™ recipients at baseline had more risk factors for development of CIN 2/3 or worse. Furthermore, when the subgroups from three studies are combined, these groups appear to be more similar. Finally, there is compelling evidence that the vaccine lacks therapeutic efficacy among women who have had prior exposure to HPV and have not cleared previous infection (PCR positive and seropositive), which represented approximately 6% of the overall study populations. (emphasis added)

Put simply, there's no scientific reason for thinking that Gardasil increases the rate of cancer in women who are already infected AND the test data when combined doesn't show a problem.

So an honest approach is to either ignore this issue completely or use the 44.6% number but then provide the explanation given by the FDA. Of course, if you did this, then it wouldn't be important and you would just leave it out.

Cervarix
The pdf is FDA Briefing Document Vaccines & Related Biological Products Advisory Committee Meeting September 9, 2009 Cervarix GlaxoSmithKline

Leslie Botha and her co-conspirators have done exactly the same thing with Cervarix as they did with Gardasil. Find a number that they like and leave out any explanation.

This time they pick out the number -32.5%. Yup, in one of the two major studies on Cervarix, a higher number of those infected with strains 16 or 18 at the start of the study ended up with bad things (CIN2+) than those on the placebo. That's on page 18. Of course, on page 19 we learn:

The sponsor also notes that when considering the overall number of subjects with abnormal cytology at entry progressing to CIN2+ (a total of 1484 subjects had abnormal cytology at baseline), there were 103 subjects in HPV group (13.6%) and 101 in the HAV group (13.9%) with progression to CIN2+. Therefore, administration of vaccine subjects with abnormal cytology did not enhance the risk of developing CIN2+.

Read pages 18 and 19 for more details.

New Medical Condition
Leslie Botha stated "FDA reports also state that 73.3% of women getting Gardasil will develop a 'new medical condition." That sounded bizarre to me as stated. She then supplied some details.

Here is what I found on her website:

New Medical Conditions Reported in Subjects through Final Close-out data in studies HPV-007, 013, 015, 016, and 018, 73.3% participants in the Gardasil group experienced new medical conditions within 1 to 15 days after receiving the HPV vaccination.

No document states this. It is the title of table 79 on page 137 of a very long memo in pdf format with the Subject: Clinical Review of Biologics License Application Supplement for Human Papillomavirus Quadrivalent (Types 6, 11, 16, 18) Vaccine, Recombinant (Gardasil®) to extend indication for prevention of vaginal and vulvar cancers related to HPV types 16 and 18.

Now it gets hilarious, in a sad sort of way. You see here is what the top of the table states

Gardasil N=11778 (N is number of subjects)
Placebo N=9686
Subjects with new medical history
Gardasil 8628 (73.3%)
Placebo 7390 (76.3%)

With N being so high, 3% more is probably statistically significant. That is, if you wanted to avoid getting a new medical history get the vaccine.

A long blog entry that demonstrates (a) that the people who approve vaccines are not crazy and (b) vaccination opponents love to cherry pick information they like and then present it without putting it into context.

When does homeopathy work?

2010-11-13T10:16:00.002-05:00

The classic answer comes from Mitchell and Webb:

That's crazy talk, Simon. Ok, so you kill the odd patient with cancer or heart disease or bronchitis, flu, chickenpox or measles. But when someone comes in with a vague sense of unease or a touch of the nerves or even more money than sense you will be there for them with a bottle of basically water in one hand and a huge invoice in the other.

That's about 2 minutes in on the great "Homeopathic A&E" by Webb and Mitchell. (A&E is the UK term for a hospital Emergency Room). If you haven't seen it, watch it now. You can find it along with some other great videos at http://www.1023.org.uk/videos.php

http://www.1023.org.uk is a UK website that has in the past and will in the future gather those skeptical of homeopathy to take massive overdoses of homeopathic remedies in public and observe the results. So far, no one has died.

Why fear of vaccination is spelling disaster in the developing world:

2010-11-10T21:46:00.001-05:00

Just came across this October 2010 piece in the UK Guardian via Jabs Loonies (in the UK vaccine shots are called jabs. JABS is also a UK group opposed to vaccination.

Why fear of vaccination is spelling disaster in the developing world: Anti-vaccination scares are as old as vaccination itself – but now they are putting lives at risk in the developing world

Well worth reading.

Ingredients of vaccines: Enjoy!

2010-11-08T21:19:00.001-05:00

A comment and my response to the blog entry 9 Ways To Avoid The Flu This Season at Huffington-Post

Independent1969 8 hours ago (1:36 PM)

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Ingredients of vaccines: Enjoy!

http://www.advancedhealthplan.com/bhvaccineingredients.html

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Sheldon101 3 hours ago (5:47 PM)

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Ingredients of McDonald's Oreo McFlurry: Enjoy!

Vanilla Reduced Fat Ice Cream: Whole milk, sucrose, cream, nonfat milk solids, corn syrup solids, mono- and diglycerides, guar gum, imitation vanilla flavor, carrageenan, cellulose gum, vitamin A palmitate. Oreo® Cookie Pieces: Sugar, enriched wheat flour, (contains niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate {vitamin B1}, riboflavin {vitamin B2}, folic acid), vegetable shortening (partially hydrogenated soybean oil), cocoa (processed with alkali), high fructose corn syrup, corn flour, whey, baking soda, cornstarch, salt, soy lecithin (emulsifier), vanillin an artificial flavor, chocolate. http://everything2.com/title/Oreo+McFlurry

Having recently had an Oreo McFlurry, when I saw this comment,I just wondered.

Listing the ingredients in vaccines is an attempt to scare people. When it comes to flu vaccine, the only ingredient some might want to worry about is thimerosal. There's a very strong consensus that the amount of thimerosal in flu vaccines is perfectly safe for everyone. Those experts who have a concern with thimerosal (UC Davis Mind Institute in particular) merely recommend that infants and pregnant women get vaccinated with thimerosal-free influenza vaccine.

Don't give in to the fear mongers.

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Vaccinating Kids Against the Flu Helps Others - More Evidence

2010-11-08T13:34:00.003-05:00

2010-2011 and The Elderly
History says 2010-2011 influenza should just be 2009 H1N1. That's not happening. The mix of infecting strains that are 2009 H1N1 (great antigenic matches to vaccine), a new H3N2 type (great match) and influenza B (very good match) isn't clear. The better the match, the more likely the vaccine will work. That's good for those under 65, bad for those older.

The MMWR study also found that during seasons when influenza A (H3N2) viruses were prominent death rates were more than double what they were during seasons when influenza A (H1N1) or influenza B viruses predominated. In addition, the study confirmed previous findings that about 90% of influenza associated deaths occur among adults 65 years and older.

Typing of strains in the US from the start in October (week 40 to week 43) (information will change week by week) has 83 H3, 30 2009 H1N1 and 90 influenza B. CDC International Surveillance update as of November 4, 2010 (link is to current information which will change) has Canada reporting predominantly H3N2 strains. China is also predominantly reporting H3N2 strains.

The elderly were protected last year because they had either vaccine or natural infection protection against 2009 H1N1. They don't have protection against H3N2 that's new this year. So much more so than last year, they need to be vaccinated. In the US, consider Fluzone HD.

Source drying and Herd Immunity
Elsewhere I've plugged a great article from the World Health Organization that explains many of the concepts relevant to vaccines and vaccination. In particular, the related concepts of source drying and herd immunity called in the WHO article herd protection. Herd immunity/protection requires vaccinating (getting the vaccine) a high enough percentage so that the percentage actually immunized (prevented from becoming infected) stops the disease from spreading amongst those who are still susceptible. When there is herd immunity, an outbreak will not occur.
The explanation of source drying from the WHO article is worth quoting in full:

Source drying is a related concept to herd protection. If a particular subgroup is identified as the reservoir of infection, targeted vaccination will decrease disease in the whole population.

In North Queensland, Australia, there was a high incidence of hepatitis A in the indigenous population. Vaccination of indigenous toddlers, with catch-up up to the sixth birthday, had a rapid and dramatic impact in eliminating the disease in the indigenous population and in the much larger non-indigenous population (who were not vaccinated) across the whole of Queensland.³⁵ Similar approaches have been very successfully applied in several other larger settings, including Israel and the USA.³⁶The success of source drying justifies vaccination of special occupational groups, such as food handlers, to control typhoid and hepatitis A.³⁷

Pertussis vaccine boosters for close contacts (such as parents, grandparents, nannies, siblings and baby unit nurses), who are the most common sources of transmission to infants, protect those too young to be given primary vaccination with a surrounding “pertussis-free cocoon”.³⁸

For a vaccine to be effective, it needs a strong response from the immune system. That's a major problem with protecting the elderly against influenza because they have weaker immune systems that don't respond as well to vaccination. One answer, being tried in the EU (FluId/Intanza 15mcg) and the United States (Fluzone HD) for the 2010-2011 influenza season is vaccines with higher amounts of virus stuff. Fluzone HD has 60mcg of each of the 3 strains in the trivalent vaccine as compared to the normal 15 mcg. FluId/Intanza uses a teeny tiny needle that goes into the skin only. Regular FluID/Intanza has 9 mcg per strain while the vaccine for the elderly has 15mcg per strain.

What else can be done? Vaccinate infants and children against influenza not only to protect themselves but also to protect others. There is the Japanese experience of mandatory vaccination of school children. It resulted in many fewer deaths from influenza in the elderly.

In 2010, there was the study in JAMA Effect of Influenza Vaccination of Children on Infection Rates in Hutterite Communities The full article is free.

Immunization of children and adolescents aged 3 to 15 years with the trivalent influenza vaccine formulated for the 2008-2009 influenza season conferred 61% indirect protection against influenza among persons who did not receive the study vaccine. The protection conferred to all study participants was similar. Our data suggest that a significant herd immunity effect can be achieved when the uptake of vaccine is approximately 80% in clusters in which children and adolescents aged 3 to 15 years are immunized...

Conclusion: Immunizing children and adolescents with inactivated influenza vaccine significantly protected unimmunized residents of rural communities against influenza.

Now there's a new study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases that shows vaccinating 50% of school children makes a big difference to others. The editorial comment A Paradigm for the Control of Influenza and the major article Direct and Indirect Effectiveness of Influenza Vaccination Delivered to Children at School Preceding an Epidemic Caused by 3 New Influenza Virus Variants are free.
From the editorial comment:

The study by Glezen and colleagues investigates the effectiveness of immunizing 47.5% of elementary‐school children 5–11 years old in 25 public schools and 3 parochial schools in which 1 dose of live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) was administered (intervention group), relative to a comparable community in which vaccine (LAIV or trivalent inactivated vaccine [TIV]) was administered in an off‐protocol manner. A significant degree of herd protection (reduction in the number of medically attended acute respiratory illness [MAARI]) was seen in all age groups except 12–17‐year‐olds, with risk ratios for all age groups >18 years old being lower even than that for the target group of 5–11‐year‐olds. This occurred despite there being an excess of persons >75 years old in the intervention community. Furthermore, LAIV was 1.7 times more effective in the prevention of proven influenza virus infection in the target group than among those who received TIV and was 6 times more effective than among those who did not receive vaccine.

The editorial is worth reading in full.

Cross-protection in the face of new influenza variants
The influenza season studied was 2007-2008 and the infecting viruses found in the study region in Texas were not antigenically similar to those in the vaccine. So it isn't surprising that the injected inactivated influenza vaccine wasn't very effective. However, Flumist, the Live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) was effective in protecting both the school children and others in the community. LAIV, as expected, provides much better cross-protection in the face of new influenza variant.

2010-2011
What about this flu season? As usual, there are three strains in the 2010-2011 seasonal flu vaccine. There's the same vaccine strain used last year for 2009H1N1. There's a new strain of H3N2 for infecting strains of H3N2 that are new this year. And there's the same influenza B strain as last year. Since, as expected, there hasn't been much change antigenically in 2009 H1N1 it will be a great match. Because it is a new type of H3N2, the strains haven't had time to mutate and will also be a great match to the vaccine. There is only influenza B vaccine strain and two families of influenza B strains. So far it looks like most strains of influenza B that are infecting are from the vaccine virus family --- so it is a very good match.

Protecting Others
The Flu Vaccine is very, very safe. Those concerned with thimerosal (although they shouldn't be) can vaccinated with thimerosal free vaccine. Flumist, the LAIV vaccine doesn't contain thimerosal. This is the first year that Flumist has been licensed in Canada. Because there is an antigenic match between the infecting strains and the vaccine strains, the choice between LAIV and the injected TIV is less important. But in any case, get vaccinated. Not just for yourself, but to protect those who aren't protected well by influenza vaccine.

American Capitalism at Work

2010-11-06T21:37:00.001-04:00

Via Shot of Prevention

There's money to be made in vaccines (or at least getting people to come to your store, get vaccinated and feel loyalty or buy other stuff).

So it shouldn't be surprising that an advertising insert in the LA Times (as it is a pdf file, best to save it by right clicking here rather than opening in your browser) is all about vaccines. But it is surprising.

The insert is "Distributed within: Los Angeles Times, November 2010 This section was written by Mediaplanet and did not involve Los Angeles Times News or editorial Departments. Mediaplanet’s business is to create new customers for our advertisers by providing readers with high-quality editorial content that motivates them to act."

The main advertiser -- Target. A number of non-profit groups also have ads.

There's a full page ad by Sanofi Pasteur recommending that teens and adults who come into contact with infants get vaccinated against Pertussis. There are two such vaccines. Sanofi Pasteur's Adacel is made a few miles away from where I live in Toronto. The site was originally the Connaught Antitoxin Laboratories and University Farm and has been used for vaccine research, development and production for nearly a hundred years.

There are some great stories in the supplement. Go take a look.

Oscillococcinum - Truly Bizarre Even by Homeopathic Standards

2010-11-05T12:43:00.000-04:00

Oscillococcinum is a very popular remedy for influenza and cold symptoms. Even by the bizarre standards of homeopathy, it is bizarre. When history passed it by in the 1930s, it should have gone onto the trash heap of history.

Oscillococcinum isn't a classic homeopathic remedy made by finding substances that make a group of test subjects feel similar to the disease or condition and then diluting it until their isn't a molecule of the substance left in the remedy or preventative (homeoprophylaxis). Sometimes a homeoprophylaxis vaccine has been made using the infecting virus or bacteria and then diluting it so there isn't a molecule left.

Even by these bizarre ideas, Oscillococcinum is truly bizarre. A French doctor found a oscillating bacteria in the blood of those with 1918-1919 Spanish Flu, chickenpox, shingles and other diseases. He looked for the bacteria in animals and found it in the liver of a duck and named his product Oscillococcinum in 1925.

At the time, (the 1920s) many experts believed that influenza was caused by a bacteria. The usual culprit was the bacteria named in 1920 Haemophilus influenzae. In the 1930s the cause of influenza was determined to be a virus (which cannot be seen using a light microscope, but only by an electron microscope invented in the 1930s)

Hi type B, causes bacterial meningitis has been greatly reduced by the Hib vaccine.So even going by the inventor's beliefs, there is no reason to believe that ground up duck parts diluted to nothing should help with influenza.

Borion, the maker of Oscillococcinum has a US website, www.oscillo.com. A site search using site:www.oscillo.com duck found only a reference to a Wall Street Journal article that is no longer available. But I predict that even that article never mentioned that it was invented because of a historical error in determining the cause of influenza and other diseases.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillococcinum
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/964317-overview

The History of Vaccines

2010-11-04T18:44:00.000-04:00

A plug for a new website on the History of Vaccines found at http://www.historyofvaccines.org/

To shed some light on the history of these illnesses, and the development of vaccines to prevent them, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has created The History of Vaccines, a website dedicated to exploring the role that immunization has played in the human experience and its continuing contributions to public health.

Well worthing looking at. It includes a History of Anti-vaccination Movements http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination-movements showing that they are not a new phenomena.

On the Board of Advisor of this Philadelphia initiative are Dr. Stanley Plotkin, developer of the Rubella vaccine used worldwide and Dr. Paul Offit , co-inventor of the Rotateq rotavirus vaccine.

Rotateq and PCV2 - ACIP October 27-28

2010-11-02T14:35:00.000-04:00

In the spring of 2010, concerns were raised when a new technique discovered DNA from a pig virus (PCV1) in the rotatvirus vaccine, Rotarix. PCV1 is harmless in pigs. At the same time, no PCV1 or PCV2 (which causes disease in pigs was found in the Rotateq rotavirus vaccine.

Of the two vaccines, Rotateq is the one most commonly used in Canada and the US.

Further testing of Rotateq using more sensitive means found PCV2 DNA in finished lots of Rotateq vaccine. By June 2010, the source of the PCV2 DNA had been traced to trypsin, an enzyme from pigs used in producing the vaccine. The trypsin had been treated with radiation (irradiated) to eliminate concerns with any viruses or bacteria in the trypsin. No PCV1 or PCV2 DNA was found in the materials used to originate the production vaccine.

During the October 27-28 meeting of the group that recommends the use of vaccines in the US, ACIP, Merck provided an update on Rotateq and PCV virus from what they had stated earlier in the year. They found only pieces of PCV2 DNA in the bulk trypsin or the finished vaccine. They did not find any actual virus. What was new in the October 2010 meeting was the testing of blood and stool samples gathered over the years were tested to see if they had antibodies for PCV1 or PCV2. None were found. In an October 28th press release Merck states that it is "Developing approaches to enhance screening and removal of PCV from Rotateq."

There was no new presentation on Rotarix at the October meeting. With Rotarix, PCV1 was found in materials from the beginning of the development of the vaccine. PCV1 is the virus that is harmless in pig and humans. Actual PCV1 virus was found in stool samples of those vaccinated with Rotarix. Tests on samples found no antibodies against PCV1 in those vaccinated with Rotarix. The conclusion is that humans are not infected with PCV1. Removing any PCV1 virus from Rotarix will be difficult as it would require producing the rotavirus vaccine from the beginning and require testing again.

Unfortunately, the ACIP meeting minutes and slide presentations of October 27-28, 2010 have not been posted. The June 2010 ACIP Minutes are available as are the presentations from the makers of Rotateq, Rotarix and the CDC.

What's Acceptable Amongst Vaccination Opponents

2010-11-01T19:11:00.000-04:00

In honor of Vaccine Awareness Week

Age of Autism is the primary propaganda machine for the vaccines cause autism movement. As others have pointed out, they now go well beyond autism as one of the sins of vaccines as they now react such as hysterically to reports on HPV Vaccine.

Age of Autism censors the comments that are sent to them. I've had that happen to me, even when the comments were polite and accurate. You post a comment, it has to be approved before it appears. What's fascinating is the limits of the comments that they allow to appear. If you want to explain that there are errors in a blog entry --- it almost certainly won't appear.

Eugenics - It's Not Just for Poor Countries Anymore
There's a claim floating around the internet that Bill Gates and his billions are trying to reduce the population of poor countries through the actual vaccines they are funding that are being used in poor countries. The sliver of truth is this: Gates and others believe that if they can reduce childhood deaths in poor countries through vaccination, then parents will choose to have fewer children because they will be more confident that their children will reach adulthood. This is explained in a 2009 letter from the Foundation.

So there's a morsel of truth because there's a connection between vaccines and population control. And there have been claims that vaccines for poor countries have contained ingredients that caused sterility. No matter how false that claim is, it does sound like it could possibly be true.

But Age of Autism doesn't have a problem with a comment that reminds me of William Cooper, whose solution to criticisms of his conspiracy theories was to expand them until they included those who criticized him. My personal connection to Bill Cooper is an email telling me, that come the revolution, I would be hung as a traitor to the US Constitution. I explained that I was Canadian and so, by definition, could not be a traitor to the US Constitution.

The comment (full text below) has a Cooperesque view of the enemy. Who are they?

These people control our media, health care, science, banks, governments but they have little control over social networking which is our strength. We may not have there money or power but we can summon our own individual power which I call the power of one...fight back, resist now!

What are these people all over the world trying to do?

What what we are seeing is part of a new and very sophisticated global eugenics movement that seeks to identify and catalogue mitochondrial genetic defects that predispose the human population to disease.

The purpose of identifying these MtDNA defects is not to cure disease but to purify the gene pool by removing these defects. This is the ultimate goal.

Wow. Now that's a great worldwide conspiracy.

If you choose to control through censorship comments that disagree with your views, then you are also responsible for those you do accept. And this is what Age of Autism believes is acceptable. Here's the comment in its full glory.

Anonym,

You are defintely not alone in thinking we are part of a large scale human experiment..many, many people feel this way. That what we are seeing is part of a new and very sophisticated global eugenics movement that seeks to identify and catalogue mitochondrial genetic defects that predispose the human population to disease.

The purpose of identifying these MtDNA defects is not to cure disease but to purify the gene pool by removing these defects. This is the ultimate goal.

Vaccines are a tool to help bring these otherwise hidden MtDNA defects to the surface. Vaccines are designed to provoke a powerful immune response that results in a mitochondrial dysfunction. Dysfunction presents as behaviors or a disease state which signal a underlyng genetic defect probably in the MtDNA.

This explains the true intent for the human genome project and Mitomap and the steadfast allegiance to vaccines.

To a sane person, it's sick and unfathomable that there are people out there that would do this but there are scientific extremists and unfortunately for the rest of us that have power, money and influence.

These people control our media, health care, science, banks, governments but they have little control over social networking which is our strength. We may not have there money or power but we can summon our own individual power wich I call the power of one...fight back, resist now!

Here are some folks who expose the true agenda:

http://www.youtube.com/user/StopEugenicsDotCom

http://blacknwhitesense.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-we-must-stop-eugenics.html

Posted by: Sarah | October 30, 2010 at 11:15 AM

Influenza - A Great Presentation from the CDC

2010-10-30T17:41:00.000-04:00

August 30th Presentation by the CDC
---------------
There's a great powerpoint presentation from the CDC dated August 30, 2010. It includes a discussion of the disease, the varying death rates (in years when H3N2 predominates there are 2.7 times more deaths than when H1N1 or Influenza B dominates). There's a discussion of the recent Hutterite colony study showing that vaccinating children protects others. There's even an explanation of blood levels of antibodies. You really don't need a medical or scientific background to understand the presentation.

A lot of great information.

Hepatitis B at Birth or For The Very Young

2010-10-29T20:31:00.000-04:00

The US is unusual in vaccinating all newborns against Hepatitis B at birth. Much more common is only vaccinating high risk babies at birth. The definition varies by country but it always includes mothers known to be Hepatitis B positive.

Because Hepatitis B is often transmitted sexually, there's a concern that vaccinating against Hepatitis B somehow sexualizes the innocent newborn as Hep B is usually transmitted through sexual contact.. But here's the punch line most don't know: While vaccinating all newborns is unusual, vaccinating very young infants against Hepatitis B is not.

Parents who are concerned about Hepatitis B vaccination of newborns and the very young should have their concerns allayed when they realize that: "As of 2007, 171 of the 193 member countries of the World HealthOrganization (WHO) had implemented the recommendations of theExpanded Programme on Immunization to offer universal hepatitisB vaccination to infants"

I live in the province of Ontario, Canada, which only vaccinates high risk infants at birth and vaccinates the rest of the population in Grade 7 through a school vaccination program. That's quite unusual. A recent article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal Hepatitis B immunization strategies: timing is everything explains the benefits of universal vaccination of infants. I strongly recommend that concerned parents read this article..

For the American view on vaccination at birth see A Comprehensive Immunization Strategy to Eliminate Transmission of Hepatitis B Virus Infection in the United States Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Part 1: Immunization of Infants, Children, and Adolescents December 23, 2005

My personal view: There's no downside to the American practice except cost and causing unfounded fears in some parents. In a country where health care isn't supplied universally, a system that provides a safety net by vaccinating at birth seems to make sense.

In any case add Hep B to the DTaP or DTaP-IPV vaccine series that starts at 2 months so that an additional injection isn't needed.

The evidence doesn't support waiting until adolescence to protect against Hepatitis B.

Here's a great quote from the CMA Journal article

Chronic HBV infection, with the attendant risk of cirrhosisand hepatocellular carcinoma, occurs in 1%–5% of adultsand up to 90% of infants who are infected with HBV. Providing vaccinations during adolescence without offering vaccinationsduring infancy misses this critical period when the acquisitionof a HBV infection can be the most harmful. Epidemiologic studiesshow that the age distribution of HBV varies by jurisdictionand suggest that roughly one-third of chronic infections areacquired during infancy and early childhood. An idealvaccine schedule should protect against infection both in infancy,when the risk of becoming a chronic HBV carrier is highest,and in adolescence, when high-risk sexual and drug-using behavioursoccur more frequently.

Epidemiologic data are critical for informing decisions aboutvaccination. Estimating the age-specific incidence of acuteinfections is valuable for planning prevention measures. However,acute infections in infants and toddlers may be missed becauseHBV infection is often asymptomatic in young children. In manyjurisdictions, the age-specific incidence of HBV infection isunknown.

Thimerosal and Light Tuna

2010-10-29T18:51:00.000-04:00

A full dose of flu vaccine that uses thimerosal as a preservative contains 25 millionths of a gram of ethylmercury or 25mcg or 25ug. That's the amount you find in flu vaccine that comes in ten dose vials. Vaxigrip (approved for use in Canada) has much less thimerosal in each dose from a 10 dose vial because they've shortened the time from first dose to last dose allowed from the usual 30 days down to 7 days. See my blog entry.

20mcg is the usual amount of methylmercury found in a can of 'light' tuna. There are difference between methylmercury and ethylmercury, but the similarity in the amounts of a can of light tuna fish, which Canada, doesn't restrict in the diets of pregnant women and a once a year flu shot, helps put the amount of thimerosal in flu vaccine in perspective.

And for those who believe that injection versus eating matters, here's a surprise. If you were to accidentally or deliberately swallow the mercury from an old thermometer, without inhaling it, you would be OK. Because almost all the mercury goes straight through your body. But almost all the methylmercury from food you eat does reach the bloodstream. Eventually it will be excreted, but that's also true of the ethylmercury in thimerosal.

Scripter, who comments at Huffington-Post has put together a nice list of resources on the can of tuna versus flu vaccine issue. Here it is.

Scr1pter 11 hours ago (7:29 AM)

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As if it would do any good. Once someone latches onto a conspiracy theory, there's no letting go. Unfortunately, this is a dangerous one, since some people will be scared into not getting immunized for a variety of diseases, which could lead to their reintroduction to the general population (see, whooping cough) So, OK, I'll bite:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169364.php
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index.html
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/alert-alerte/h1n1/vacc/options-eng.php
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/flu-vaccine-no-more-dangerous-than-a-can-of-tuna-547642
http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/statement_jul2006/en/index.html
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/QuestionsaboutVaccines/UCM070430
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/swine+flu+vaccine+your+questions+answered/3395297.html
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/thimerosal_faqs.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20091027/ai_n39370235/
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/link-vaccine-mercury-autism/
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/819872-overview
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/10/18/innoculation-misinformation.html

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Analysis of Oral Argument of Vaccine Case Before the Supreme Court.

2010-10-20T01:20:00.000-04:00

An appellate lawyer did a 5 minute video discussing the oral argument of the vaccine case before the US Supreme Court. He wrote the brief for the US Chamber of Commerce supporting the vaccine maker.

He explains the issue very well.

He's got a great analysis of the oral argument. How do I know it is great? It matches the views I had before watching the video. In particular, he (and I) would stress the importance of the argument on the timing of the switch from OPV to IPV. He ends the video by saying that he was fairly confident that the decision would be the one he wants. I also scanned his brief. This is one impressive lawyer. Here is his CV.

Consider spending 5 minutes listening to what he has to say.

Source Drying, Not Herd Immunity, But Wow

2010-10-18T20:04:00.000-04:00

Many vaccination opponents scoff at the idea of herd immunity. This is a great document by the World Health Organization that explains many of the concepts important in vaccination, including herd immunity.

When there is herd immunity, there won't be an outbreak of a disease. Here, I'm not referring to herd immunity, but to source drying. Source drying occurs when vaccinating a target population benefits another population. It is explained in the WHO document.

Go look at pages 8 and 13 of the CDC's June 2010 slide presentation to the US vaccine recommendation body, ACIP, on the effectiveness of Rotavirus vaccines. 2008 was a year in which zero two years old had been vaccinated against Rotavirus, but younger children had been. Even though the percentage of younger kids vaccinated wasn't that impressive, there was a huge decrease in the number of serious Rotavirus infections in the 2 year olds --- none of whom had been vaccinated against the disease. Wowser.

Another example of source drying is the recent study that concluded: "Immunizing children and adolescents with inactivated influenza vaccine significantly protected unimmunized residents of rural communities against influenza." The study is "Effect of Influenza Vaccination of Children on Infection Rates in Hutterite Communities A Randomized Trial" Targeted vaccination of children can make a difference to others.

Vaccinating your child can protect others even without herd immunity because of source drying. And if other people have vaccinated their children, it makes it less likely your child will be sick if they aren't vaccinated or if the vaccine doesn't result in a strong immune response.

Urabe MMR in the UK 1988-1992

2010-10-06T12:20:00.000-04:00

Dyson wrote a nice comment at Huffington-Post on the history of the use in the UK of MMR vaccines that contained the Urabe strain of mumps vaccine from 1988-1992.

The US, Canada and UK use only the Jeryl Lynn strain of mumps vaccine in Merck's MMRII vaccine. It does not cause aseptic meningitis. Urabe strain based mumps vaccine causes aseptic meningitis. That's not a nice adverse event. However, aseptic meningitis caused by vaccine strain mumps virus does not cause permanent damage. Considering that aseptic meningitis from wild mumps strains only very rarely causes permanent damage that isn't so surprising. Vaccines that include Urabe strain mumps virus are still used today.

Here's the comment.

There seems to be a lot of misinformation and uninformed speculation being put about regarding this, so I thought I’d just establish some basic medical facts.

• Meningitis (inflamed lining around the brain) is different from encephalitis (brain inflammation), though sometimes infections can cause both problems (meningo-encephalitis)

• Aseptic meningitis from mumps virus is a mild illness, hardly ever associated with long term neurological consequences.

• Natural mumps causes “aseptic meningitis” in around 10% of all cases – so it is quite common, and one source indicates up to 30% incidence.

• Encephalitis from mumps is rare – it is commoner to get this in measles (and if it happens after MMR is likely to be due to the measles component, not mumps)

• Mumps vaccine is a weakened/attenuated live strain of mumps virus, so it might also be expected to cause aseptic meningitis sometimes, albeit a milder form than usual.

• Urabe strain is associated with aseptic meningitis in around 1 in 10,000 shots (ie it is about a thousand times LESS likely to happen than after natural mumps infection.

• Encephalitis/encephalopathy from natural measles occurs in about 1 case in 1000. (After MMR vaccine it occurs in about one case in 10 million).

• Without MMR vaccination, ALL children will get the natural measles and mumps (ie one in ten of all children will get meningitis, and one in a thousand will get encephalitis).

When MMR was introduced into the UK in October 1988 there were 2 varieties of vaccine in use – two with Urabe mumps strain (Pluserix and Immravax) and another with Jeryl-Lynn mumps strain. The Urabe type was in more common use, probably because it was the cheapest.

A report of aseptic meningitis associated with MMR first emerged in Canada in 1986/7. subsequent cases were reported in Japan in 1988, though other countries reported no problems at that time.

In Canada only a Urabe mumps strain MMR was in use (Trivirix), and they recommended it not be used (but did not withdraw it from production) and to use Jeryl Lynn instead.
This was noted in the UK by the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) who were unable to determine at that time whether the problem was specific to Urabe strain or also might affect Jeryl Lynn strain.

The JCVI decided in 1989 to monitor the incidence of reactions in the UK, and 3 cases were reported (all following Urabe MMR vaccine). By May 1990, 2.5 million doses of Urabe and 0.5 million doses of Jeryl-Lynn had been given. The JCVI discussed the reports from Japan at their May meeting, and noted it was unclear from the Japan reports which vaccine was responsible for their increase in cases of meningitis, but Urabe was probably the strain at fault.

An enhanced UK surveillance system was introduced, with the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit (BPSU) reporting on a month to month basis any instances of meningitis or encephalitis following MMR.

By the end of 1991, The BPSU surveillance indication was that the meningitis risk might be as low as one in 270,000 Urabe strain vaccine doses (3.7 per 100,000). The JCVI decided to do a more active surveillance, linking all hospital admissions of possible meningitis with National PHLS laboratory reports and vaccination data. Immunogenicity studies were also being conducted, since it appeared that Urabe was more effective than Jeryl Lynn strain at inducing protective immunity.

In July 1992, data from the PHLS indicated the risk was 1 per 11,000 doses of Urabe, and data from Nottingham indicated that locally the rate could be as high as 1 per 3800 (95% CI of 1 in 2000 to 1 in 19,000)

These data prompted the JCVI to recommend withdrawal of Urabe strain, and use only of Jeryl Lynn strain MMR (Priorix).

By my calculations, since 2.5 million doses of Urabe had been given over the 2 years 1988 to 1990 in the UK, one would anticipate that there would have been around 250 cases of aseptic meningitis caused in that time by the vaccine (1:10,000).

However, without vaccine, there would have been 800,000 cases of natural mumps, and therefore about 80,000 cases of meningitis, all occurring after childhood mumps infection (1:10).

There would have been no cases of aseptic meningitis if Jeryl Lynn had been the only MMR vaccine available, but as discussed above, there were good grounds for suspecting that Urabe was a superior vaccine in terms of efficacy, and at the time it was unclear whether other non-Urabe MMR vaccines might still cause meningitis. Canada decided early on to act, and they were in retrospect shown to be correct, but their action was rather precipitous and could have backfired badly (had Jeryl Lynn also be shown to cause meningitis).

In Japan, MMR vaccine was withdrawn altogether in 1993 because of meningitis reactions. The folly of this action soon became apparent, as over the next decade there were several major measles epidemics, the one in 2001 causing 265,000 cases of measles (which equates to 250-300 cases of neurologically disabling measles encephalitis and about 50 deaths)

So would anyone rather their child got natural mumps, measles and rubella, or got Urabe strain MMR vaccine?
Any takers? Heather, Jon, NG, Schwartzz?

Knowing what we know now, and given a choice between Urabe and Jeryl Lynn, I’d take the latter, obviously, but around 1990 the choice between them was not clear.

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/165/6/704.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3242901
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8741307
http://www.dh.gov.uk/ab/DH_095169

Now That's Some Mercury

2010-09-28T00:48:00.001-04:00

With the heating season, I got called in to fix a thermostat that would heat but only if it was either on or off --- it didn't work as a thermostat any more. It was an old round themostat and it operated using a big ball of mercury. Considering all the concern with millionths of a gram of ethylmercury (from thimerosal), this was a fair bit.

It got replaced with a programmable thermostat that doesn't use mercury, the cheapest one I could find. Honeywell says that it can be installed in 15 minutes. It took me an awful lot longer. Amongst other things, they supply you with plastic shield and screws, but they don't tell you the size of drill you need --- now that is stupid. I even called Honeywell as it wasn't clear where one of the wires went. Eventually I learned that I should ignore that wire. Anyhow, eventually I got all the wires hooked up and I set it to turn on the air conditioner. Nothing happens. Turn off and turn it back on. Nothing happens. Read the instructions and find in the smaller print that this is a precaution to prevent cycling the compressor on and off --- and it can take 5 minutes before the thermostat will turn it on. After 5 minutes, it does work.

Tada--- considering how unhandy I am, I'm pleased with my work. Thermostat should pay for itself very, very quickly with lower energy costs.

Vaccination Coverage - Immunization Schedules WHO

2010-09-23T02:12:00.000-04:00

Which countries vaccinate which diseases? What's their vaccination coverage. I just discovered that the WHO (World Health Organization) has a nice database on this and other issues.

Start here and play around.

70% - The Silent Majority

2010-09-23T00:37:00.000-04:00

The story of autistic children is sad. Some people may be moved by what the parents have to say about their personal beliefs on vaccines causing autism. And some people may feel these beliefs are relevant to their decisions on having their children vaccinated.

Personally, I think that this is nonsense. But let us say you disagree.

What little survey work has been done shows only 29% of parents of autistic children blamed vaccines. The impression vaccination opponents give is that almost all parents believe what they do. But we don't hear much from them.

If you are a parent trying to decide whether to vaccinate your child, you have two choices.

Jenny McCarthy is right: Mommy knows

If the personal experience and beliefs of the parents matter, then you should go with the 70% who don't blame vaccines. Or the 80% who haven't changed their views on vaccination to be more wary of them.

Mommy doesn't know

That makes sense. Because the opinions of 70% of parents aren't any better than the opinions of 30%. So we should throw out what the parents believe and ask what the evidence shows. And the answer is that the studies and the research from many disciplines and methodologies show that vaccines do not cause autism.

So the next time you read a sad story from a vaccination opponent, remember that most of the sad stories don't have the parents blaming vaccination.

Ignorant Vaccination Opponents and Dunning-Kruger

2010-09-22T16:41:00.000-04:00

A vaccination opponent who regularly comments at Huffington-Post wrote:

Some people come here with their minds made up and you can't teach them anything. They are called prejudiced, they've made up their minds before they've heard all the evidence. None of us has heard all the evidence. An attitude of humility promotes objectivity, unlike arrogance. (Eric Fromm's writing on this in his book, "The Art of Loving," is one of my favorite pieces."

To which I replied:

Arrogance isn't such a problem when it results from a great understanding of an issue. The problem, woefully demonstrated here is when arrogance is coupled with ignorance. It turns out that those who don't know much about a topic have a tendency to be overconfident about their skills and knowledge --- the Dunning-Kruger effect. And those most knowledgeable are less confident.

A new study, the Price study , is a case control study that showed that when you compared the medical records of the cases (kids with autism) with matching kids without autism (the controls), there wasn't a difference in the amount of thimerosal they received.

Vaccination opponents had argued that there was a dose response to the amount of thimerosal infants received. The study showed that there wasn't.

Case control studies have been used for many years. Understanding the concepts takes a bit of time. What's sad is that those who haven't spent the time end up pontificating their ignorance, that the study is a fake and a fraud, demonstrating Dunning-Kruger at work.

It is vitally important to keep Dunning-Kruger in mind when comparing what vaccination advocates and opponents have to say. The opponents are often ignorant, but come across as certain. Vaccination advocates know the qualifications and come across as less certain. These are challenges for vaccination advocates as you can see from the nuanced (somewhat uncertain) discussions here and here.

Insensitive to Parents

2010-09-19T12:54:00.002-04:00

I get accused of being insensitive to parents of kids with autism who blame vaccines. Here's what one parent, fazergadget9, wrote at Huffington-Post . (with spelling corrections made)

My son Nathan was developing a little slower than his one year older big brother had at the same age, but he was a chatty, playful, gregarious little boy who we had earmarked as a future diplomat.We were both very wary of vaccination using multiple strain shots as we could not believe that an infants' partially developed immune system could cope with the load especially if they had other problems. BUT I caved in to peer, medical and pundit pressure at around 2 and a half years and allowed Nathan the MMR. Only with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight can we see the negative effects - he began a slow regression and started to lose a little each month. I allowed the DTP/h [? DTaP] at three and a half years and within three months my son nearly died and when he recovered he had lost ALL speech, ALL eye-contact, All cognitive skills, ALL play and ALL that was left was a clinging, screaming, head banging bundle of fear.

I have had lab tests run on saliva, stools, urine blood and skin - my boy's immune system was SHOT, his GI tract was rotten with Candida and his liver overloaded with unchelated heavy metals. He was diagnosed as severely childhood autistic at FOUR years old and had been the delight of his play school previously. HE is recovering through massive dietary/biomedical/homeopathic/therapeutic intervention - - BUT VACCINATION NEARLY KILLED MY SON and left him severely disabled. There is a link Vaccine Autism

Human nature being what it is, this Mommy Knows Best argument is very effective. People listen carefully to anecdotes and they are easy to understand and very effective. Here's my reply (scroll down).

We know that infectious diseases kill, scar,sterilize,deafen, blind, disable, paralyze and can cause severe brain damage. We know they can weaken the immune system so other diseases, normally under control, can now cause damage. We understand how various vaccines can prevent disease. We have proven that vaccines are effective. We know that vaccines aren't perfect and they can cause harm. Most harm is short term and goes away [shortly]. In a biological sense, it doesn't make sense for vaccines to cause autism because with the exception of Rubella we don't see the actual diseases causing autism (please correct if the last sentence is wrong). A lot of research has been done and none of it shows vaccines causing autism.

That's one side. On the other side, we have your observations that after your child was vaccinated he changed very much for the worse. And then, for whatever reasons, you made the leap and concluded that vaccines caused the damage. You seem to be in the minority of parents with autistic kids. Most parents make the same observations but don't blame vaccines. See http://kwomblescountering.blogspot.com/2010/09/line-up-how-we-count-divide-in-vaccine.html

Vaccination opponents love the Mommy Knows Best argument. Their stories are heart-rendering tales of how their perfectly normal child went wrong and vaccines are to blame. Humans pay great attention to stories like this, it's just the way our brains are wired. But they don't provide a single piece of evidence that vaccines caused the damage. And according to what surveys have been done (see above), they are merely the vocal minority. The majority, who believe differently just aren't that interested and we rarely hear from them.I'm not insensitive to the pain and anguish those parents feel and the hell autism can make of their lives. But parents who have completely and totally swallowed the vaccination opponent Kool-Aid are a lost cause when it comes to persuading them that Mommy Doesn't Know Squat when it comes to personal observations (anecdotes) providing evidence that vaccines cause autism. If they can't reject the Mommy Knows Best argument, they're not going to be persuaded by the facts on causation and correlation.

But by directly confronting the argument, I think you might begin to persuade some parents, uncertain of vaccines, to reject it, so that they can move on to the arguments (on both sides) that might have some merit, those on correlation (there is a statistical link between vaccines and autism) and causation (explanations of how the body reacts to vaccines such that they can cause autism).

Confirmation Bias Forever - For the Bias Keeps Us Pure

2010-09-18T00:48:00.000-04:00

I just saw Mike Adam's Vaccine Zombie video. The man's ideas are loonie tunes, but he's got a decent voice and the lyrics are catchy. I can't begin to match him.

But there was a comment at Huffington-Post where it seemed appropriate and so I posted the following. The tune and adapted lyrics are from Solidarity Forever.

Confirmation Bias Forever

When the anti-vaxxer's inspiration through Jenny's pictures shall run,

There can be no argument greater than Mommy knows

Coming in second is the cry of shill, shill, shill

For the bias keeps us pure

(chorus)

Confirmation Bias forever,

Confirmation bias forever,

Confirmation bias forever

For the bias keeps us pure

(chorus)

Understanding the Vaccine Wars.

2010-09-17T16:17:00.000-04:00

Kwombles at Countering as written a great blog entry. I knew some of the information, but she adds a lot more. I heartily recommend it. Line Up: How We Count the Divide in the Vaccine Wars, or We All Started on the Same Darn Road, so WTF Happened?

Shills and my Credentials

2010-09-17T15:34:00.001-04:00

My comments at Huffington-Post are different from most, because I spend the time to research them first. They are almost always responses to vaccination opponent nonsense. They are more like blog entries or articles. That's deliberate. I'm not the only one who does this, but it isn't that common at Huffington-Post.

And I comment an awful lot. And I'm currently obsessed with this issue, for a variety of personal reasons that have nothing to do with personal experience with vaccines or vaccine preventable diseases. So there is nothing personal.

This gets under the skin of many vaccination opponents. So they love calling me a shill, in this case someone who gets paid to make comments at Huff-Po. Calling someone a shill, isn't relevant to the truth or falseness of any claim or argument --- so it is always an ad hominem argument. However, human nature tells us that people who are being paid to write something on behalf of those with vested interests may, I repeat, may, inadvertently or deliberately not provide a 100% accurate report. So while it is an ad hominem argument, it is one that is fair to make. Providing you have some evidence.

I'm not a shill. Huff-Po comment policy doesn't allow ad hominem arguments. Yet they allow vaccination opponents to accuse they disagree with, of being shills. There is one commenter, Time4TruthNow (Marsha), whose comments make this and other scurrilous claims with zero evidence most of what she writes So recently I have stated that in doing so she is immoral.

Which is where we get to this exchange of comments with neutralground. First on being a shill and integrity.

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neutralground 2 hours ago (1:18 PM)

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[Sheldon] You make a lot of assumptions without basis in fact, and this is one of them, Sheldon. Please don't make allegations unless you have actual facts to back them up. Not everyone goes by your definitions. I do wish HuffPost would require that people who are getting paid to comment disclose it. That is a conflict of interest, and integrity should require of these people that they disclose it voluntarily. Integrity should also require that they post honestly, and if they know of data contrary to their position, that they put it right out there and deal with it, don't ignore it.

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To which I replied:

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Sheldon101 29 minutes ago (2:34 PM)

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Too many errors, so amended.
Truly Hilarious
---------------
I agree with you that those who are paid to comment here demonstrate a lack of integrity when they don't voluntarily disclose that fact. I agree with you that anyone who gets paid to comment "post honestly, and if they know of data contrary to their position, that they put it right out there and deal with it, don't ignore it."

Since you believe that identifying someone who is being paid to comment here is so important, integrity and morality require that you have evidence before making this scurrilous claim. And you have none, except as anyone volunteers. For example, Monsanto has employees whose job has included commenting at Huff-Po. How do I know? Because the commenter identified herself as a Monsanto employee using her real name. I then searched and found out her job title.

I've made zero assumptions. I'm merely stating the facts. Marsha and other vaccination opponents have zero evidence that anyone is getting paid to comment here. Making that claim without evidence is immoral and wrong and demonstrates a lack of personal integrity.

I have no problem if vaccination opponents claim:
"Even though I have zero evidence to support this claim, I believe that X is being paid by someone to make these comments."

But they don't. Granted that it is a very useful tactic, but making accusation with zero evidence is wrong and demonstrates a lack of personal integrity.

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Actually, neutralground has some evidence that I'm a shill. It is that I write like an expert.

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neutralground 1 hour ago (1:28 PM)

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You don't "KNOW" anything; you assume. Science makes assumptions until they have better data. Scientists can't see inside the human body. They can't even assume every human body is the same as another, especially with an immature infant. They used to think toxins didn't cross the blood brain barrier of the placenta, now they know they do.

As David wrotes in Psalms, "I will praise Thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." There is a lot more scientists DON'T know than they admit. Remember when doctors used to tell pregnant women it was okay if they smoked, their babies would just be born smaller? They used to not put preservatives in vaccines, then babies died from that, so they LEARNED. You write like you are an expert [emphasis added] and use a picture of a physician for your profile; what are your credentials? Are you an expert? What are your sources for the information you give?

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Sheldon101 27 minutes ago (2:49 PM)

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Wrong. I know all too well that scientists can see inside the human body. I've got Crohn's and every few years they take this long black tube and shove it up as far as it goes. In the past, they've even offered to let me watch on a monitor.

I appreciate that you think that I "write like an expert." You misunderstand the picture. It is a famous picture of Dr. Jonas Salk giving a polio vaccine.

On more than one occasion, I've volunteered my medical and scientific credential in comments here. They are well enough known here that JonGH stated them in a recent comment.

The most detailed description of my medical and scientific and relevant vocational credentials can be found by selecting the picture of Dr. Salk at my blog,www.vaccineswork.blogspot.com.

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I really wish Kwombles at Countering (formerly Countering Age of Autism) was a regular on the vaccine wars. Her formal credentials aren't much better than mine, but does she know what she writes about. So if writing like an expert matters to accusations of being a shill, they'd go after her more than me.