[grannynurse FNP student]

Originally Posted by rpggyr

Melissa,

If you added up all the homeschoolers, the Jehova Witness's, the Christian Scientists, and the Amish. (something that should be easy enough) they would have a diverse enough genetic population to do this study. I think while they are at it, they should check for a few other things like juvenile diabetes, asthma, and other chronic diseases that are on the rise in this generation. No, instead they will go to Denmark and do the study there. They will never undertake a study like this because they already know what they'll find.

Peggy

The Amish are not a genetically diverse population as one might think they are. They have a small population that generally tends to intermarry. There is an excellent book, regarding the beliefs and practices, of the Amish, as well as their health practices. Unfortunately, it is in my storage area, up in NYS, and I can't recall the title. I got the book because of exposure to Amish patients, in Sarasota.

Grannynurse

[grannynurse FNP student]

For anyone interested, in learning more about the Amish, I have found the title and author.

"Amish Society", by John A. Hostetler

Grannynurse

[mercyteapot]

Ok, maybe I'm posting more than anyone else cares to know, but here's another good article. I've added the text in italics.

The Age of Autism: But what about 1930?
By Dan Olmsted, UPI Consumer Health Editor


http://tinyurl.com/cohvu
NOTE: You'll need to sign up for free registration at the Washington Post site to read this article.

UPI — Sunday's debate on NBC's "Meet the Press" over vaccines and autism gave welcome exposure to an issue that won't go away quietly. Moderator Tim Russert asked Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine -- part of the National Academy of Sciences -- this question: "Do you think there's an epidemic of autism or do you think it's simply a change in defining it?" Fineberg answered: "There's definitely a huge number of cases diagnosed with autism. ... It's also clear that the
definition was broadened markedly in the 1980s and 1990s, and there were increased incentives to recognize children from increased awareness and availability of services.

"No one knows with certainty what part of the increase is genuine, a genuine increase in numbers, and what part is from increased recognition of people who were already there but not previously recognized." As readers of this column know, we believe this is the core issue in trying to understand the disorder. If in fact autism has strikingly increased in prevalence --not just in recognition -- the idea that autism is primarily a genetic disorder doesn't hold up. No genetic illness could rise so rapidly.

But if there have always been people with autism in reasonably similar
numbers, then the idea that some new trigger -- vaccines, for example -- is
behind autism begins to look implausible if not impossible. Fineberg appeared on the show with David Kirby, author of "Evidence of Harm," a new book that looks at the debate through the eyes of parents who believe vaccines triggered their child's autism. Because of the flow of the conversation, Kirby did not have a chance to address the "epidemic" issue directly. If he had, he could have pointed to a number of studies that suggest the increase -- to 1 in 166 children -- is real; he could have cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's own statement that one in six children has some kind of neurodevelopmental disorder. He could have noted the parents and education professionals who believe something bad has happened to this generation of children -- not just autism, but learning disabilities and behavior problems, asthma and diabetes that have never
occurred in such numbers.

Still, it's a complicated topic, one that is not easily resolved merely by citing statistics and diagnostic categories. That's why our approach has been slightly different: We've set out to describe the natural history of autism from the beginning. That means we looked at where and when autism was first diagnosed as a separate disorder; what kind of families had autistic children; how that demographic broadened to include a wider swath of society; and whether autism is as prevalent in some communities -- the Amish being our prime example -- as it is in others.

What we can't get past is this: The first person to diagnose autism said he'd never seen it before, and neither had anyone else. His name was Leo Kanner, and he was not some country doctor; he was the leading psychiatrist of his day, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He wrote the book "Child Psychiatry." In fact, he's been called the dean or father of modern child psychiatry. Beginning in 1938 he saw children with a behavioral syndrome that differed "markedly and repeatedly from anything reported so far." Kanner wrote the landmark 1943 paper, "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact," about the first 11 cases.

It goes on to talk about how, within 20 years, Kanner, who had never seen autism before, had seen 150 children with the disorder, and how Hans Asperger experienced a similar trajectory. It speculates on the reasons behind this continuing phenomenon and closes with this....

We think we may have found something, which will be the subject of the
next several columns.

Stay tuned! It should be a really interesting series!

[happthearts]

I Had vacunated my child when he was young and then My husband when to chriopratic school and did a study about Vacinations .He found when reading that the AIDS virus was transferd by Vacinations in Africa Via the Boevine Virus .Plus I have had a child Pt that was damaged by Vacinations because of the serum they used and she now has CP and mental retardtion .

I have really reconsiderd my thinking on this and so has my Primary MD, he even told me not to get the Hep B shot to do the waiver instead because The Hep B is still not perfected yet.
I know personally after takeing all those Vacination shots when I was in the miltary. I have never really felt up to snuff ever since then That was in 1975 . Before I had tons of get up and go. Could run all day and not get tired . So I really feel theres something Not so great about injecting our bodies on purpose with a disease.

Originally Posted by mercyteapot

This is a hot topic in the autism community, especially amongst parents who have to make a decision about vaccinating their children. My son had already had all his vaccinations before I even heard of the controversy, so I didn't have to make the decision. I probably would have chosen to vaccinate anyway, given that when we were little, my sister contracted encephalitis from the measles and nearly died. It caused pretty significant neurological damage for her. The irony is that the vaccine actually was available at the time, but it was fairly new, and the pediatrician told my parents, who didn't have health insurance for us, that "kids get the measles all the time and do just fine."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...ion=6.0.12.872

[judyblueeyes]

Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s completely dishonest thimerosal article
I’m referring to his scare piece in Salon and Rolling Stone, linking Autism to the Thimerosal (mercury) preservative used in vaccines. Kennedy’s article has been roundly criticized by Orac (also here), Autism Diva, Blendor, Soapgun and no doubt others. I decided to hold off a detailed post until I had read the report in question. Even so, I felt Kennedy’s article had gotten off to a rather inauspicious start:

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy.

Note the emotive language – an “isolated” conference center “nestled in wooded farmland… to ensure complete secrecy”. Sounds suspicious, yes? Well, not really. Perhaps Kennedy should have read the actual full 286 page transcript of the meeting because then he would have learned (page 257) that it was only held there because there had been a Super Comp Computer Conference at the same time and that the Simpsonwood center was the only place available in Atlanta at such short notice. He might also have noted the closeted location had “created a spirit that (the meeting) benefited from”. But that would have robbed Kennedy of his sensationalist opening, I guess.

And the conspiracy mongering didn’t stop there. At the end of Kennedy’s first paragraph is:

All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

Sounds shady, right? Wrong. Again, if you read the transcript you’ll find the participants were actually told:

…consider it embargoed and protected until it is made public on June 21 and 22 at the ACIP. There is a plan to do that. (Page 256)

Completely different: it was only embargoed until official release later that same month. Kennedy seems intellectually dishonest in taking these non-issues and writing them up to make it sound as though there is something fishy going on.

Anyway, having set the scene to his satisfaction he launches into his sensationalist story.

The “Secret” Meeting

The experts were meeting to discuss a CDC study to evaluate if there were health risks from mercury in vaccines. Kennedy quotes scientists at the meeting agreeing that Thimerosal was responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. He goes on to state:

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.

(My bold.)

Wow! Serious charges that appeared to be supported by the selected quotes linked from the article. (And you’ll note, he only has these thanks to the Freedom of Information Act – we should be grateful to relentless investigative reporters like Kennedy, right?) However, having read the full 286 page transcript I am honestly at a loss to understand how anyone could possibly come to that conclusion. In fact, the meeting did not conclude that thimerosal was responsible for an increase in autism and did not discuss any cover up. It did discuss possible future studies.

The actual transcript shows this was phase one of a two phase study. The second phase would be carried out if phase one gave “any hint of an association” (page 30) that needed investigating. The first day of the meeting (pages 1 to 167), consisted of presentations of the data with much questioning and discussion of: the meaning of the results; what evidence there might be (or not) for a causal link; confounding factors (ie other things that might have caused the results). This is an honest group of scientists interested in getting to the truth, not a group “discussing how to cover up the damaging data”. Not even.

Then it gets interesting. On day two, the experts each get a turn giving their view on whether there is a causal link between thimerosal and autism. The participants were asked to rate the possibility of a causal link on a scale of one to six: one being a weak causal link, six strong. From page 189 to 222 you can read of one attendee after another (with just one exception) grading the likelihood of a causal relationship as being either a one or a two out of six. The mean value given by the group (page 253) was 1.8 - very little evidence for a causal link.

There was only one exception (Dr. Weil) who gave it a four. Guess which one Kennedy quoted? (No prizes.) Here are some more representative quotes I pulled from the transcript:

Part one, is there a causal association between ethylmercury and neurological effects noted in the Vaccine Study Datalink project? The answer is no. Why not? From a toxicologists (sic) viewpoint there is no dose response relationship (Page 191)

To me the increasing mercury levels in your population at one month… is so small that it would suggest to me that you have a confounder here. That this is not due to mercury. (page 213)

I gave it a value as 1. I think the strength of the associations are mostly weak and the weaker the associations, the more likely bias might explain some of this. (Page 217)

This is not designed as a study to look at the effects of these vaccines on the different outcomes, but it is using data collected for other reasons, so it is not a carefully controlled prospective cohort study to study. We are using data that was collected for other purposes. (Page 218)

Kennedy’s version is totally inconsistent with the transcript. Quite honestly, only someone with a preconceived belief in a causative relationship and who was fixed in that view no matter what the evidence, would view this meeting as “discussing how to cover up the damaging data”.

The “Paid” Cover-up

But it gets worse. Kennedy continues:

The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated.

(My bold.)

I have searched Kennedy’s article including the “Thimerosal resource guide” page provided by Salon and I have not found one shred of evidence that the CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to “whitewash” any thimerosal / autism link. It’s certainly a very serious accusation that I am not prepared to take on Kennedy’s say-so (especially considering the dishonesty in the bits of his article I have been able to check).

I presume he’s referring to Institute of Medicine reports of 2001 or 2004 that stated that there is no link between mercury and autism. I guess it would be too much for Kennedy to show what is actually wrong with these studies, rather than making wild accusations of a cover-up. And too much to show what is wrong with this comprehensive review of the literature in 2004 that also failed to find a link. I guess so.

Old Fallacies

The article goes on to repeat the old “links to vaccine industry” ad Hominem that both Orac and I have debunked before, and also quotes the (flawed) studies by the Geiers (ditto). I won’t labor the point – you know Kennedy is using fallacious reasoning.

When I first read Kennedy’s piece, I was shocked that there had apparently been some kind of cover up about thimerosal. It seemed I would have to re-examine my previous views on the subject as all good skeptics should when new evidence appears. And that was even though I have full knowledge of studies in Denmark and Canada that show autism rates increasing even though thimerosal has been banned in those countries for years. Even though I knew this, the article still sounded convincing. So I can well understand people reading this article and believing it and being livid with the vaccination industry, the CDC and everyone else involved.

But I now know Kennedy’s article is a shockingly dishonest piece of crap from beginning to end. Dishonest and manipulative. He starts with sensationalist language to imply there is something wrong going on, softening up his readers for what comes next. The scene set he, frankly, lies about what happened at the meeting. (Either that or he didn’t read the transcript – your call.) And in the absence of evidence to back up his claim, I suggest Kennedy also made up the bit about the Institute of Medicine whitewashing any embarrassing results. Kennedy wrote his alarmist piece in the knowledge that very few people (in reality – virtually zero) would bother to read the lengthy transcript to find out what actually happened. It’s nothing short of shameful from someone who I had previously believed to have the highest integrity. My only question is, why? Perhaps he’s just losing it, I don’t know.

So does thimerosal in vaccines cause autism? Honestly, I have no idea although I doubt it – the increasing incidence of autism in Canada and Denmark despite bans of thimerosal would appear to falsify a causative link. But I do know that this piece of garbage from Kennedy has not advanced our knowledge. In fact it has probably put us back, as focus will be placed back on thimerosal rather than on looking for what really causes autism.

[judyblueeyes]

Sorry- new here. The above should be linked to the author. Here is the link (if I do it right) http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2682208

[judyblueeyes]

trying again http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/0...lity-down.html

[mercyteapot]

The surgeon takes Kennedy to task for using "emotive" language, and then goes on to lambast Kennedy's article as a "shockingly dishonest piece of crap". Right. Just so long as we're keeping our emotions out of it, Doc. He is certainly entitled to his opinion, but in reality, he was pulling bits and pieces of the transcript out to make his points, which is the very thing he claims makes Kennedy's piece so unbelievable. Hello, kettle? This is the pot....

[barbara44]

The IOM has criticized Kennedy's article as well. Here's Kennedy's response:

http://www.salon.com/news/letters/20...al/index1.html

And if anyone's interested, here's a 65 page report on thimerosal/autism by RFK Jr.

http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/docs...itics_6_23.pdf

[judyblueeyes]

Autistic 5-year-old dies during chelation.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has reported that a 5-year-old boy went into cardiac arrest and died during chelation therapy for alleged lead and mercury toxicity. [Hasch M. Autistic boy, 5, dies after disputed therapy. Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Aug 26, 2005] http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-.../s_367277.html
Chelation therapy for autism is a fraud. The state police and county coroner are investigating the boy's death.