Autism scare a hoax

[Archangel M]

If not, it's hearsay from people that may simply have their own axe to grind, and it does not match with my experience at one of the top 5 pharmaceutical companies in the world at all.

Dude...your just part of the conspiracy man!!!

 

[Slipper]

...
There's no easy answer, and there's no quick way to solve this. I suspect that, in time, what we label as autism and autism spectrum disorders will be further broken down, and that some of the causes will be identified. Much like we've come to recognize different forms of depression, we'll probably identify different forms of autism. Some will be caused by structures within the brain or nervous system, some will be developmental, and some will be triggered by outside factors in a person with predispositions. Some will be treatable; some won't.

I think you are correct. Currently there appear to be two forms of autism (though the differences are not discussed often). There are children who seem to have been autistic from birth - classic autism. And there are children who developed to a point and then regressed - still autism, but more of a regressive type. I've always wondered if autism rates haven't changed for classic autism, but are affected by those who regressed, leading to a falsely inflated rate.

I've also wondered if those who regressed did so because of an insult of some type from environmental, etc factors (including vaccinations). However, there are plenty of parents who did not vaccinate their kids and still had a child diagnosed with autism.

 

[Makalakumu]

This is based on a few fairly isolated incidents where there was clear wrongdoing or outright greed that led an individual or a company to some bad decisions, and gives the entire industry a black eye.

It's always a few isolated incidents until you pay attention. Read the books I suggested and then you'll realize that its far from few or isolated. It's endemic.

If you have worked at the FDA and have observed the corruption you described, or have managed to get a drug to market through this revolving door, then I'll stand corrected, and will go find another line of work. If not, it's hearsay from people that may simply have their own axe to grind, and it does not match with my experience at one of the top 5 pharmaceutical companies in the world at all.

I have friends who are medical doctors, top professionals in public health, and researchers in the drug industry. When they have looked at the information, they have come to the opposite conclusion you have. You have to look or you'll remain ignorant.

That said, no one is saying that the whole industry is evil (and by association that you are evil). It can be scary and disheartening to wake up to the people you serve and realize that they don't have the best intentions in their hearts. I've experienced that personally in my career when I worked for the government (this is a long story, so I'll save it for another day). All I can tell you is that the good that you (or I) do and that the bad that others do is also real.

Have courage and learn about it. Don't ignore it because you don't want to believe it.

 

[Makalakumu]

This has already started to happen, and some of the genetic culprits of some forms of autism at least are starting to come to light. Intervention in these is tricky, but possible, and I know of groups working on the problem as we write this.

There is also good researching coming out indicating several environmental factors that cause autism.

 

[Makalakumu]

Dude...your just part of the conspiracy man!!!

Some people are going to go to their graves being right. Enjoy!

 

[Archangel M]

Have courage and learn about it. Don't ignore it because you don't want to believe it.

The truth is OUT THERE. :boing1:

 

[Archangel M]

It's always a few isolated incidents until you pay attention. Read the books I suggested and then you'll realize that its far from few or isolated. It's endemic.

Because it's in type its the truth? really??

Any evidence opposite your point of view is wrong (like medical studies) because the sources are part of the conspiracy, but your little lists of books are "truth"? Really??

 

[Archangel M]

Ill see your books and raise you these studies:

California study: "The DDS data do not support the hypothesis that exposure to thimerosal during childhood is a primary cause of autism." Click here:
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/65/1/19

Independent testing of Wakefield's MMR/autism hypothesis - test failed to support Wakefield's conclusions. Has links to several other supporting studies: Click here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080904145218.htm

Italian study looking at kids who received different levels of thimerosal, comparing their brain development 10 years later. Click here:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/123/2/475

Danish study of 440,000 kids who got MMR and 97,000 who didn't. No significant different in autism and ASD rates. Click here:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134#t=abstract

Japanese study to see if switching from MMR to single-dose vaccines affected autism rates. It didn't. Click here:
http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Vaccines/noMMR.html

Montreal study of 27,000 children actually found somewhat LOWER rates of developmental disorders in the children exposed to thimerosal. Click here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16818529

2010 Detailed study of 250 ASD kids versus 750 controls. No relationship between ethyl mercury exposure and ASD: Click here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20837594

Comprehensive list of science-based resources on vaccines and autism: Click here:
http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/vaccines-and-autism/

But now there is even more damaging information coming forward about the non-relationship between vaccines and autism. Here is what was published by NPR this week: (For an excellent analysis of the article and the research it's based upon I would click here and read the review in Science-Based Medicine: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=9552

Have courage and learn about it. Don't ignore it because you don't want to believe it.

 

[Makalakumu]

Have courage and learn about it. Don't ignore it because you don't want to believe it.

How about we do this. Lets have real competition and lots of different companies producing products for sale. If you want to buy a cheap Wal-Mart Vaccine with all of the mercury, aborted fetuses and animal parts, because you think that is safe. Go ahead. If I want to waste my money on my stupid Granola Crunching Birkenstock Wearing Organic Vaccine that doesn't have all of those things, then I should be able to do that.

We both look at each others choices, we both call each other stupid, we walk away and we both get what we want.

:angel:

 

[Makalakumu]

Because it's in type its the truth? really??

Any evidence opposite your point of view is wrong (like medical studies) because the sources are part of the conspiracy, but your little lists of books are "truth"? Really??

A wise man once said to me, "next time you feel like judging someone, judge yourself, and maybe you'll learn something."

99.9% of what I know is bovine fecal matter. Pass the salt.

 

[granfire]

A wise man once said to me, "next time you feel like judging someone, judge yourself, and maybe you'll learn something."

99.9% of what I know is bovine fecal matter. Pass the salt.

You spend way too much time in the barn....

 

[Makalakumu]

The truth is OUT THERE. :boing1:

Yeah, you betcha!

Need a light?

 

[Makalakumu]

Ill see your books and raise you these studies:

I'll raise your 9 link and add 76 studies on the adverse effects of thimerosal on the brain to the mix.

Funny how the internet skews the search for truth so that people think they can "win" by piling links on one side or another. Hmmmmmmm! Lol!

 

[Makalakumu]

Yeah, you betcha!

Need a light?

Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal Scandal

Thimerosal has been used in vaccines since the 1930s, and internal company documents indicate that the pharmaceutical industry was always aware of the chemical’s potential danger.5 The Eli Lilly Company, which first developed and manufactured thimerosal and owned the patent, knew from the start that thimerosal was unsafe—its testing consisted of administering the serum to 22 terminal meningitis patients, all of whom died within weeks of being injected—a fact not reported in Lilly’s study. For decades, Lilly portrayed this incident as proof of thimerosal’s safety.6

As early as July 1935, Lilly was warned by the Director of Biological Laboratories at the
Pitman-Moore Company that Lilly’s claims about thimerosal’s safety “did not check with ours.” Pitman warned that half the dogs it had injected with thimerosal-containing vaccines becamesick and concluded, “[T]himerosal is unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs.”7

When thimerosal was used by the army in the 1940s and 1950s (in vaccines), Lilly was required by the Defense Department to label the preservative “Poison.”8 It was well established by the 1940s in peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature that injecting thimerosal into sensitive individuals could cause serious injury.9

In May of 1967, a study published in Applied Microbiology found that Lilly’s thimerosal killed
mice when it was added to injectable vaccines.10 Four years later, in 1971, Lilly’s own tests found that thimerosal was “toxic to tissue cells” in concentrations of less than 1 in 1,000,000.11 Typical vaccine concentrations are 1 in 10,000, one hundred times the levels that Lilly knew to be dangerous. Yet Lilly continued to promote thimerosal in vaccines as “non-toxic when injected.”12

When on April 27, 1976, Rexall, which sold thimerosal under license from Lilly, asked Lilly’s permission to add a toxicity warning to thimerosal labels, Lilly ordered Rexall not to add thewarning and purposely misstated the potential hazards of a product it knew to be toxic: “the mercury in the product is organically bound ethyl mercury and has a completely non-toxic nature.”

The first known cases of autism were diagnosed in 1943 in children born in the first months after Eli Lilly began adding mercury to baby vaccines in 1931. Leo Kanner, who first described and named the disease based upon his encounters with 11 autistic children, was one of the fathers of American psychiatry. He described the disease as “a behavior pattern not known to me or anyone else heretofore.”13

In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal (like mercurochrome and merthiolate) because of the chemicals’ demonstrated toxicity to animal fetuses and humans.14 (The ban did not go into effect until October 19, 1998.)15

In 1977, five years earlier, topical thimerosal killed 10 babies at a Toronto hospital when it was dabbed ontheir umbilical cords as a disinfectant.16 In 1991, thimerosal was banned for use in injections for animals.17 By then, the peer-reviewed studies demonstrating thimerosal’s devastating toxicity to children, adults and animals could have filled a small library.18

Astonishingly, that same year, America’s public health authorities, in consultation with the pharmaceutical companies,mandated that infants be injected with a series of thimerosal-laced vaccines beginning on the day of birth.19

After all of that history, the FDA approves vaccines laced with mercury. Captured agency anyone?

Despite his professed efforts to manipulate the data to reduce the effect, Verstraeten’s
confidential report of February 2000 concluded that there was a ten-fold increased risk of autism and related neurodevelopmental problems, resulting from the mercury in the vaccines.

By June 2000, Verstraeten had prepared his study for publication showing thimerosal’s causative relationship to neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.48 Instead of publishing the article, however, he shared his findings that month at a secret meeting with sixty pharmaceutical industry representatives and public health officials at the Simpsonwood Retreat center in Norcross, Georgia. The meeting was held with no public notice and apparently convened at Simpsonwood to avoid the reach of the Freedom of Information laws which public health officials interpreted to cover only meetings at government offices. Attendees included numerous high ranking CDC and FDA representatives, vaccine officials from WHO (World Health Organization), and representatives of vaccine makers GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth, and Aventis, all of whom are named defendants in lawsuits by the parents of autistic children.49

Transcripts of those discussions were first obtained by a Congressional committee investigating thimerosal and more recently by Safe Minds, a group of anti-thimerosal advocates. Those transcripts paint an unsavory picture of frantic scrambling by vaccine makers and CDC reps who had seen Verstraeten’s unpublished study. We see leaders at the highest level of America’s medical community charged with protecting public health, hatching a plan with pharmaceuticals to hide the dangers of thimerosal from the public, protect the pharmaceutical manufacturers of the chemical and the regulatory agency bureaucrats who had approved its use from liability.

Collusion between government agencies and industry? Say it isn't so!

Indeed, the link between ethyl mercury and neurological disorders is as well-documented in medical and scientific literature as the link between tobacco and cancer.55 And the totality of the evidence is overwhelming. Scores of animal, DNA, epidemiological, clinical, cadaver and other studies point to mercury as a prime culprit in America’s epidemic of neurological disorders.56

Are these laced vaccines the new cigarettes?

Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado, who has done paid research for thimerosal distributor SmithKline Beecham, was concerned enough to worry about his own family members. “My gut feeling?” he said. “Forgive this personal comment, but I … do not want [my] grandson to get a Thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on…In the meantime … I think I want that grandson to only be given Thimerosal-free vaccines.”73

I share the good doctor's concern.

Please feel free to read the rest of this 66 page article. It's well sourced and argued much better then I can state posting on the internet.

 

[Makalakumu]

As many of you know RFK Jr. took up the cause and published an article in Rolling Stone and Salon called Deadly Immunity. Much of the information above can also be found in this article.

I found this recent story on the article interesting.

http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/rfk-jr-on-cdc-and-vaccine-autism-link/

What is most striking is the lengths to which major media outlets have gone to disparage the story and to calm public fears — even in the face of the questionable science on the subject. In a segment on World News Tonight titled “A Closer Look,” ABC pointed out that Kennedy is “not a scientist or a doctor” and dismissed his extensive evidence as nothing more than “a few scientific studies.” The network also trotted out its medical editor, Dr. Timothy Johnson, to praise the “impeccably impartial Institute of Medicine” and to again state that Kennedy is not a scientist.

This is what happens when the major networks are owned by the corporations. Hit pieces that are passed off as journalism in order to protect the interests of their owners/advertisers. It reminds me of the movie The Network.

The New York Times, in a front-page story on the subject, devoted only one line to Kennedy’s article, which it said accused public-health officials and drugmakers of “conspiring” to hide the data on autism — a word that our story neither used nor implied. (The Wall Street Journal, in an op-ed attacking the article, was even more misleading, using the word “conspiracy” four times.) The Times then went on, for more than a full page, to portray concerns over vaccines as nothing more than the misguided fears of parents who suffer from “scientific illiteracy,” unable to understand the medical studies that prove immunizations to be safe. It depicted studies reviewed by the Institute of Medicine as definitive without even bothering to address the host of serious questions raised about their validity: conflicting diagnoses of autism, mixed-up data from HMOs and research skewed to exclude many sick kids.

One thing this shows explicitly is that the NYT is a corporate whore. They publish all kinds of bogus stories and people eat them up because they assume that this paper has a good reputation. Remember, they are the ones that told us that Iraq had WMDs. :barf:

Also, I find it interesting that they opted on using the word "conspiracy" as a demonization strategy. For some reason, people have been taught to turn off their brains when it comes to that word. I understand why people are skeptical, there certainly is a lot of crazy stuff on the internet, however, that is still not a reason to hit the off switch and move on.

 

[Nomad]

I have friends who are medical doctors, top professionals in public health, and researchers in the drug industry. When they have looked at the information, they have come to the opposite conclusion you have. You have to look or you'll remain ignorant.

That said, no one is saying that the whole industry is evil (and by association that you are evil). It can be scary and disheartening to wake up to the people you serve and realize that they don't have the best intentions in their hearts. I've experienced that personally in my career when I worked for the government (this is a long story, so I'll save it for another day). All I can tell you is that the good that you (or I) do and that the bad that others do is also real.

Have courage and learn about it. Don't ignore it because you don't want to believe it.

I'm not ignoring it because I don't want to believe it. I'm ignoring it because it's a mixture of bad science, pseudo-science, made-up statistics, partial truths, and lies.

I am all for people making up their own minds in regards to their health choices and those of their children. I'd just like them to do so empowered with knowledge based on real science rather than myth.

Hey, look. Another massive conflict of interest and evidence of an extreme breach of ethics by Dr. Wakefield.

Andrew Wakefield, MD, the disgraced doctor who claimed there was a link between the MMR vaccine and autism and bowel disease, planned to make a vast amount of money as a result of the health scare, according to a new report in the journal BMJ.

The BMJ report says that Wakefield met medical school managers to discuss a joint business even while the first child to be fully investigated in his research was still in the hospital; and how just days after publication of his Lancet article, he brought business associates to his place of work at the Royal Free Medical School in London to continue negotiations.

Would-be investors were told that “the initial market for the diagnostic will be litigation-driven testing of patients with AE [autistic enterocolitis, an unproven condition concocted by Wakefield] from both the UK and the USA”.

The man is a scumbag, who has caused untold damage to people all over the world. I am hopeful that criminal charges will follow.

And with that, I'm tired of banging my head against the wall (or against the vast shadowy conspiracy theories), and will respectfully depart this thread.

 

[Makalakumu]

How can you call it a myth when I've posted over 150 scientific studies showing a direct relationship? How can you call it a "vast shadowy conspiracy" when I post documents about a real meeting between government officials and industry execs where they discuss how they are going to cover up and protect themselves against this information? Maybe some conspiracies are real? Why do you continue to insist that there is no scientific relationship? Why do you keep turning back to the discredited Dr. Wakefield in order to justify your position?

The least you can do is accept that there might be something to this and act accordingly. Believe what you want, but NEVER say that someone who believes in this is unjustified.

 

[Empty Hands]

How can you call it a myth when I've posted over 150 scientific studies showing a direct relationship?

How many studies show no relationship? Have you looked at one or more meta-analyses? That is a very important question that scientists must address in their fields - conclusions are decided by the weight of the evidence, not on a selected group of studies.

I mean, what would you say if there were 2000 studies (I'm just making up numbers to make a point) that showed no relationship? Would you still believe based on the 150?

 

[Makalakumu]

How many studies show no relationship?

Quite a few. I haven't made an effort to count them up, but I've easily looked at dozens.

Have you looked at one or more meta-analyses?

Yes. Some show a link and some do not. Some of the meta-analysis' done by various government agencies showed a direct link. This is what the Simpsonwood Retreat was supposed to address.

That is a very important question that scientists must address in their fields - conclusions are decided by the weight of the evidence, not on a selected group of studies.

When heads of the five major vaccine manufacturers secretly meet with heads of the governmental agencies in charge of regulation and they collude cover up evidence of the link and protect themselves from litigation, wouldn't any study that is connected with these groups in any way be tainted? How can anyone calculate the weight of evidence in that environment? The well is poisoned.

I mean, what would you say if there were 2000 studies (I'm just making up numbers to make a point) that showed no relationship? Would you still believe based on the 150?

I don't know for sure if there is a link. The point that I am making is that people are adamantly saying there is NO relationship and that it's just silly psuedoscience and conspiracy theory to say that there is. From what I've posted, I think one can draw the conclusion that this is NOT the case and that people are justifiably concerned.

I'm concerned enough to NOT want my children to be injected with any forms of mercury. If I have to flip a coin where one side is no effect and the other side is a negative effect when I give my family some medicine, I'm simply going to opt out of giving that medicine. Any reasonable and educated parent would do that, IMO.

 

[Makalakumu]

RFK Jr. on the Poisoned Well I mentioned above.