So Wakefield's Talking

He was discredited or fired by all the jobs he knew and loved, and all just because he was an unethical little liar - or just a bad scientist with lots of conflicts of interest. One of the two, but unethical either way. Boo hoo.

Now he's apparently broken the silence and spoken to the friendly audience over at Age of Woo.

“There has been an extraordinary outpouring of support from the autism community in response to the events of the last two weeks”

Let me just extend to you, on behalf of my corner of the autism community, a heartfelt "fuck you." How's that for support? Take your Piltdown vaccine fears, and let the real scientists do some work. Oh, and thanks a lot for all that herd immunity your fear-mongering cost us. All the kids with cancer who can't get vaccines find that extra special, you bastard.

Meanwhile, he's supposedly got a new gig:

"The most exciting part of it has been the opening up of an entirely new sort of opportunity that will allow me to continue my work on behalf of autism families.”

Um, yeah. That's super exciting. Not. My guess is that his super awesome opportunity is speaking gigs, huffpo posts, and a new book series a la Jenny. That or he decides to open a Geiers castration med franchise. There's some indication he's looking for a PR makeover, so I'm sure Oprah's couch is ready for him to start jumping on it soon.

Still busy

Or else I'd be having a field day. Wakefield gets crucified for his saintly ethical violations motivated by profit by the evil evil pharmaceutical industry he'd hoped to employ with that vaccine he patented. It's ok when Wakefield patents a vaccine but not when Offit does it, most likely because Wakefield didn't make millions from his vaccine. Instead he just makes piles of cash by recommending that kids have unnecessary cameras stuck up their ass for the treatment of imaginary measles that don't cause a neurological condition. Poor, poor needlessly persecuted Wakefield. 


I'd also be having fun with politically-correct-but-only-when-it's-a-Democrat Sarah Palin and her call for Rahm Emanuel but not Rush Limbaugh's resignation over use of the same R word she's alleged to have lobbed about herself a time or two in reference to her little campaign prop. What horrible thing in a past life did we do to deserve either her or McCarthy as spokespeople?
  

Getting Inside a DAN! Head

So I went to a presentation from a DAN! doctor. I'm already a skeptic, I'll own that. And yes, I knew I was mainly there for the snark, but I'm also curious. What is the appeal?

Ok, so her background. She's a health administrator who went back to school to become a chiropractor with DAN!, "detoxification," and HBOT certifications. That's a lot of woo in a very concentrated package, but she's labeling it "integrative care." And there's not a single one of those things with any solid, evidence based science behind it, but all of those treatments do require regular, repeated visit$.

Anyway, as she was giving her presentation, she focused on tests. Tests are good. Tests sound very scientific, don't they? Turns out DAN!s love their tests. Actually, I'd gathered that from listening to other parents.

It was rather vague about why they chose particular testing. It sounded a lot like a shotgun approach - give them tons of tests and then treat anything that comes back abnormal.

On the surface that doesn't sound too bad, except for a couple of things. For one, she already questioned the test range. She seemed to think that the labs determined their normal ranges from people who submitted samples and were "mostly sick," so she seemed to think a result in a normal range wouldn't necessarily indicate a realistic normal range. I didn't get a chance to ask her how exactly she determined a normal range, since the labs apparently didn't do it. Does she guess? If so, why test?

Anyway, another problem is that when you take enough statistical samplings, you will eventually find something that isn't in the normal range. Because it's an average, and some people are going to normally and naturally fall at either end of the curve due to natural variation, lab errors, etc. That doesn't always indicate a problem. If someone isn't showing symptoms, chances are there isn't a problem. She seemed to think people wouldn't always exhibit symptoms when they came back with abnormal results, but they should still be treated. She also seemed to think some people would exhibit symptoms but have normal lab results. Those people should also be treated. So people should be treated whether or not they had symptoms and whether or not they had abnormal test results.

There were blood tests - too hight of cholesterol was a problem, as was too low. Normal results could also indicate a cholesterol problem. That seemed to be a theme. Even if the tests come back negative, you're still sick and need treatment.

Allergy tests - and beyond the blood IgE testing, (not as accurate as skin testing, but not as traumatic on the child) she liked to do IgG tests and claimed allergies could have a 72 hour reaction. Ok, first off - IgG is not in any way shape or form a valid allergy test. But now picture this. Your trusted practitioner gives you a laundry list of allergies and tells you that you could see "symptoms" up to 72 hours later. So for three days you're chasing shadows to find some vague symptom. Oh, a headache - must be an allergy. My kid must have had something he shouldn't have had. I've already got a taste of this with lactose intolerance, which does manifest itself the next day as a nasty diaper, but 72 hours later? Good golly, I'd never get any work done with the backtracking to figure out what he ate.

You somehow get past the impossible allergy and cholesterol testing? Well how about yeast. Yeah, we can find some yeast in your poop. We can find yeast in just about everyone's poop, because that's where it grows, but now you get the disgusting and OCD inducing joy of knowing just how much and what type if they can culture it.

I asked if yeast was always a problem or if she had a level at which she thought it should be treated. She gave a vague answer that some yeast would be ok in a normally functioning gut but that other people would need to have it entirely eliminated. In other words, if she deems your child to have a bad gut - and autism, according to her, involves "toxin and bacteria" in the gut - she's going to say you've got to get rid of all the yeast. Ever try to get rid of a standard, common yeast overgrowth in a young child's mouth? Let me tell ya, that stuff doesn't want to go away. Now I'm trying to picture getting rid of it entirely, and I'm thinking she's got a cash cow. If only cash cows were bulls, because we could... never mind.

Toxins, oh the toxins. She does indeedy chelate. My partner in crime asked her several questions about the safety of chelation, and she seemed to think that oral chelation was hunky dory in the hands of a qualified specialist like herself and that any safety/ethical concerns about clinical studies on chelation involved IV administration. The chemical involved is EDTA, which could be either IV or orally administered. If anyone in the know could tell me if the proposed studies involved oral or IV EDTA, I'd be much obliged.

Celiacs, celiacs, oh my.

One of the other things she finds is a lot of "non enteropathic celiac disease" My Google tells me that enteropathy is a disease of the intestines, and celiac disease is gluten sensitive enteropathy by definition. So a non enteropathic version would be an IgE reaction to wheat? Or possibly another case of "even if the test comes out negative, you're still sick."

IgA deficiency. This seemed to be the only thing she mentioned that when I Googled actually existed as a real problem. And, surprisingly enough, you can have it and be asymptomatic. Score one for the testing.

HBOT

Yes, HBOT therapy. It's the new secretin. She cited a study by BMC Pediatrics, and my thought was what's so special about HBOT? What's different that couldn't be done with a weighted vest and an O2 tank? My partner in crime asked her if there were any studies available in journals that weren't open access and then suggested several reputable journals where one might find medical research. She answered that the study met with the approval of some HBOT industry group. Isn't that a bit like Toys R Us approving a study that claims people should buy more toys?

Anyway, I'm sure I'll remember more at some other point in time. I've got some good thoughts from the conference to blog about, too.

I can't believe she went there

No, it's not Jenny McCarthy. It's Sarah Palin. She went there.

And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Quit it. Just quit it.

A system where profit determines who gets health care and the sick, elderly, and disabled are denied services because they don't help the company bottom line is just evil. And when you act like a douchey cheerleader for their cause, you're not helping matters at all. I particularly love the implication that those of us who want greater health care regulation are not only unamerican, we're also pro-slaughter of the elderly and disabled. That's so sweet of you.

Stupid in My Inbox

Yeah, I'm not sure why I end up on mailing lists sometimes. Someone sent me an invitation to this conference. It wasn't to a newsgroup or something. They sent it directly to me. Odd.

Anyone who has talked to me for more than two seconds would probably know that this conference? Do. Not. Want.

Doesn't it look nice and professional? I particularly enjoy the gigantic and random fonts used everywhere. Yeah, ok, I'm a design snob sometimes, but make an effort, people!

Anyway, the list of speakers is like a who's who of people who make me angry they're getting a platform to speak. Seriously. The Geiers? Of chemically-castrate-children with Lupron fame? Lisa Sykes, the sue-happy-go-lucky mom who thinks this Lupron and chelation stuff is awesome? Lori Knowles and Dr William Shaw, who are also trying to sell you crap science in a bottle? BTW, she's another example of someone who uses conventional speech therapy and dietary woo and credits the success to the woo. Now she'll happily sell it to you! Oh, and there are more pill pushers there, too. But don't let those evil pharma shills attend the conference with all their science and reason. They're just trying to sell you drugs, man.

So I should ask for the time off work, hop in the car, and shell out $100 by August 1st so I can get the "free" copy of the Geirs/Sykes book, right?

A Demonstration in Speculation

So you take your kid to see the doctor. Your kid is vaccinated. Within a week, they develop a fever and start losing language and showing signs of regressive autism. It must have been the vaccine, right? Not necessarily.

Here's a great example of that sort of thinking. Billy Mays. Here's how Fox News reported the story. (This isn't meant to pick on Fox. Other news sources speculated along the same lines.)

They report the timeline: Billy Mays flew in on Saturday. He hit his head in a rough landing. That night, he didn't feel well when he went to bed. He was dead by morning.

It must have been just like Natasha Richardson, right? She hit her head while skiing and didn't initially even appear to be that hurt, but she later died from a brain injury.

Well, wrong. The autopsy says Billy Mays died of heart disease. The rough plane landing was a coincidence.

So, now back to that regressive autism. Was it obvious cause and effect, or was it all a coincidence? After all, kids get sick and have fevers. Sometimes they have harmless fevers as a mild reaction to a vaccine, too. Kids get a lot of vaccinations. Kids typically show noticeable signs of autism around the time they're getting vaccines. I even read one article on *gasp* Huffpo, that says about 600 hundred kids a year would show signs of autism within one week of a vaccine just by random chance.

So when studies and scientists tell you that they can't find a connection between vaccines and autism, they're not doing it to piss you off or discount your personal experiences. Nor are they part of some vast conspiracy to poison children for money. Not that I expect this message to ever get through to the people who really need to hear it, but I'm going to keep saying it.

Why Wolfram Alpha Sucks

Wolfram Alpha is this new computational search engine that is supposed to be finding answers to search queries by searching through a curated list of sites. Rather than showing you sources, it shows you the results. Pretty cool, right?

 A search on autism?

autism | (psychiatry) an abnormal absorption with the self; marked by communication disorders and short attention span and inability to treat others as people

Yeah, thanks. That's ever so helpful. I'm sure that's exactly what people searching for autism want to see. Add vaccines to the mix, and it doesn't know what to do with your search query at all. 

If I want to find out why the sky is blue or how far Mercury is from Venus, it's all over those answers, though. 

| current distances | light time Mercury to Venus | 0.406 AU | 202.6 s

Maybe in the future it will be the awesome research tool they claim it will be. 

Jenny McCarthy Is Full of Poop

Warning. This is a gross post. 

Ok, so I read Jenny McCarthy's blog over on Oprah's site, and it's pretty much as vapid as I thought it would be. A recent post illustrates this about as well as anything. She waxes poetic about poop. About how she regularly has her son's analyzed, I guess so she can have an OCD meltdown about all the bugs that are in everyone's poop.

Seriously? That's what poop is. That's why you wash your hands after you come in contact with it. It's full of bacteria. That's normal. It's true of everyone's poop. And if it's not, you're in for a world of hurt, 'cause you've killed off things that help you digest. Sheesh! 

I guess that's a big thing in the woo-sphere now, though, to be convinced that some product is clearing your poop of all the hordes of hidden parasites. Someone even once linked me to some forum where they actually *gag* examined the stuff with a pokey stick to see what all imaginary critters from the black lagoon they were killing off. 

Anyway, she was shocked to find out her poop was just as full of yeast and bacteria as her son's. Gosh golly gee, it couldn't have anything to do with that being normal, ordinary, everyday poop, now could it? It must mean she should immediately consume evil big pharma products that kill yeast. (You see, big pharma is ok when they kill naturally occurring internal flora, and it's ok when it paralyzes part of your face to hide wrinkles from all the chain smoking you used to do, but it's not ok if it saves the lives of children from measles. )  Everyone clear?

Anyway, who does this? Seriously. I've heard about taking a crap all over the blog, but she's doing just that literally. I bet her tweets about crapping are just as entertaining. That woman craps pure yeast and bacteria infested gold. Speaking of gold, this post on it was hilarious. 

Let's finish up with a song, shall we?

Jim Carrey Talks Out of His Ass

Yeah, remember this scene?

It's being reenacted over at the Huffpo, only not as intelligently. 

Jim Carry decided to weigh in on the whole vaccine issue, since he's such a huge expert. Now, I've heard from other parents who are confused as to why I call this anti-vaccine, so I'll explain. Jim Carry's technique is what's known as concern trolling.  

He pretends to be on the side of vaccines with concerns, but the intent is really to get people to stop using vaccines. Some of his concerns are hyperbole. Some of them are outright fabrications.  No matter how many times he and Jenny McCarthy and their ilk say they're "not anti-vaccine," it's a lie. Repeating the phrase doesn't make it true.  

Apparently back in February, CNN commentator Campbell Brown said:

"As a mother, with a second child on the way, I believe this is vital to the safety of our children and must be said. The verdict is in. There is no connection between vaccines and autism. And it is time that all of us get our children vaccinated."

Seems a reasonable enough statement to me. But what do I know, I'm just a highly educated mother. It's not like I'm some famous Canadian actor or something.  

Carry's take on it:

But with all due respect to Ms. Brown, a ruling against causation in three cases out of more than 5000 hardly proves that other children won't be adversely affected by the MMR, let alone that all vaccines are safe. This is a huge leap of logic by anyone's standards. Not everyone gets cancer from smoking, but cigarettes do cause cancer. After 100 years and many rulings in favor of the tobacco companies, we finally figured that out.

Firstly, calling the Omnibus decision a "ruling against causation in three cases out of more than 5000" is disingenuous. What actually happened is that the lawyers representing all those claims found their three best cases, their three most clear-cut slam-dunk cases to represent the three most popular theories on how vaccines could cause autism. The three theories were:  thimerosal-containing vaccines cause autism, the MMR vaccine causes autism, or that the MMR vaccine causes GI problems (ie Wakefield's leaky gut theory.)

Not only did they present their three best cases, they didn't have nearly as much of a burden of proof as they would to scientifically prove MMR causes autism. They only had to show "50% plus a feather," meaning it was possible that the MMR could cause autism in the way they outlined, not that it was probable, not that it was the best theory around. They failed. The courts ruled that none of the three theories were at all plausible, and in fact “The evidence was overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners’ contentions.”

So, Mr Carry, put a fork in it. It's done. Campbell Brown is right. 

But no, he goes on to claim that "no one without a vested interest in the profitability of vaccines has studied all 36 of them in depth." That's  a cruel thing to say to researchers who work to try and save the lives of children. If profit were the only motive, we'd have fewer vaccines. Medicines to try and treat infections are far more profitable.

 

Anyway, he goes on to smear anyone who works for the CDC and the AAP along with anyone who ever took research money from a pharmaceutical company.  And, of course Dr Paul Offit, because he once worked on a Rotavirus vaccine, which means he's tainted for life and unable to articulate any opinion on vaccine safety. 

Not only did I forget to wear my tinfoil hat, which I think is a requirement to truly understand this vast government conspiracy to vaccine injure children, but it overlooks the obvious and clear profit motives of vaccine opponents. Seriously. Wakefield anyone?  Geier?  

  

Carry also moves the goal posts and throws ADHD into the mix with autism as something that vaccines supposedly cause. That's handy, because if you add enough conditions in there, you'll eventually find a few that haven't had vast amounts of research done showing there's no connection to vaccines. 

Carry keeps up with the "too many too soon" argument, confusing children with dogs and some condition they supposedly get, claiming that since the US gives children more vaccines we must somehow be injuring them. (Except that we don't have a higher rate of autism than countries that vaccinate less often.)  Too many too soon is still an anti-vaccine argument, especially when you don't define which are too many and how often is too soon. The net effect is that parents will vaccinate less "until we know the answers,"  and we'll lose herd immunity on all vaccines. 

Then he tries for the "vaccines are full of poison" argument. He contends that vaccines are full of "aluminum, mercury, ether, formaldehyde and anti-freeze." Ugh. 

Ok, ethyl mercury has been removed from all vaccines except for the flu shot and trace amounts from manufacturing.  Aluminum? I really don't get tired of this one. Hello, you get exposed to so much more aluminum just from eating food. Opponents argue that "yeah, but you don't inject it into your body!" The aluminum in breast milk goes straight into a baby's blood stream from their natural open gut system. Formaldehyde is in our bodies, too. It's in the food we eat. It's everywhere. 

Ok, and ether and antifreeze? Please! There is not antifreeze and ether in vaccines. This part is straight Ace Ventura ass talking. 

For the love of  children, Mr Carry, please go back to making movies. You really are miscast when you try to play Dr Carry, Concern Troll.  Orac is so right when he calls him Fire Marshal Bill. You should his post on this, btw. It's brilliant. 

Fixating on vaccines as cause harms our children. It takes away from real research and it encourages parents to not vaccinate, which increases the risk that all of us will be exposed to vaccine preventable illness. 

Kirby also needs to go away

Ok, here's the story. Olbermann does his "worst person in the world" stick. 

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It's Wakefield! For forging data. And deservedly so. 

But noooo, that's so not fair, since according to David Kirby, (a man with a huge financial interest in maintaining vaccine paranoia) Brian Deer, the reporter who broke the Times story, was the original complainant in the medical review of Wakefield and this fact was not disclosed in the article.  

Which prompted Olbermann to name Deer the next day:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Well, aside from the fact that I wouldn't be bothered by a reporter calling the police on a criminal and then later reporting more about the bad deeds of the criminal, it turns out that the accusation was flat out not true.  Deer didn't make the complaint. As is easily shown with the power of a bit of Google-fu. Sheeesh. 

And Kirby wrote Evidence of Harm, one of the reasons vaccine paranoia jumped to the US.  I didn't see Kirby post this conflict of interest over at Huffpo. I just saw links to his book. 

Oh, and in case you're not tired of Kirby and Olbermann smackdown, here's some more. 

Allergy tests...

I asked a friend of mine who is an ND about those allergy tests I keep hearing other moms talk about. They always end up with really weird results like, cheese but not milk or chicken, celery, apples, and rice. Inevitably they end up having to prepare every single dish at home and do this whole rotating food thing and get an already picky eater to accept an even more restricted diet. 

There would have to be a whole slew of very concrete results for me to accept such a thing. 

Anyway, from what I've read, there isn't any sort of large double blind, peer reviewed study that backs the finding of these tests. There is some sort of reaction for some people when you mix their blood and certain food items, but they don't have proof that this actually indicates an allergy. I mean, some people have different colors of eyes but that doesn't have a thing to do with how well you see. 

Anyway, I asked my friend, and he confirmed that. No studies. They don't actually know. They're just guessing that this indicates an allergy. He says this just gives them a direction to go and really they should pay attention to their children and how they react. 

Compare and contrast that with the parents. They seem to think a blood test is all scientific like and wow isn't it awesome that they get instant results without having to do all that guesswork and elimination diets to find hidden allergies! 

Next time I see him, I'll ask him about the food sources. I get that they can test against pure casseins, but how do they test against chicken? Do they raise the chickens in a lab? What if the allergy is to the feed, not the animal? Or celery - how do they remove possible outside  contaminates?  Just too many questions. Plus, if it really was this easy, why doesn't the average pediatrician offer allergy testing as part of their standard services? 

A Decade of Torture

Ok, so last Thursday I went to this presentation, against my better judgement.  

It was just as bad as I thought it would be. And in many ways it was worse. 

They started out with a mom getting up to speak about her experiences with "natural healing" and autism. She talked about how she avoided most pharmaceuticals, and yes, she pronounced the word with derisive italics. She started out by showing a picture of her kid at age two, miserable.  Sensory overload, not having a good time of life, cranky kid.  

She then started treating her for yeast, put her on a casein/gluten free diet, gave her every trendy supplement under the sun including B6 injections. She had alternating diarrhea and constipation, so she got treatments for each extreme. She got chelated for a year. At one point they had her scoped to check for H pylori from some supposed specialist they had to fly to, even though this is something they can check for locally (and much less invasively I might add). And on and on.  

She got a bit teary eyed as she admitted that her now 12 year old was still not "recovered" but don't give up hope! Her 12 year old was not going to sleepovers and making lots of friends, but she was smiling, talking and obsessing about airplanes, probably, as she put it "because she's been on so many of them to see all these specialists." As proof, she presented a picture of her 12 year old smiling. 

The whole thing just pissed me off. What I saw was probably different than what the rest of the audience saw, but what I saw was that this woman had tortured her daughter for ten years with invasive and unnecessary medical procedures. That poor girl. And I'm willing to bet any benefits she thinks she got out of it were just from the passage of time. I'm sure I could find a whole gallery of autistic, miserable 2 year olds that smiled and talked at the age of 12.

And yet, here she was, totally enthusiastic about how awesome naturopathic medicine was. This wasn't an evil woman, and I know she thought she was doing things for the best interest of her child. She clearly spent a lot of money trying to "fix" her, but she's never going to get the results she thinks she wants this way. 

Ok, and I'm not necessarily anti naturopathic medicine. In fact, I have good friends who are naturopaths. I just think you have to really step back and evaluate whether or not you're doing something that even makes sense, or you're going to end up riding the crazy wagon and torturing your kid instead of enjoying them. 

The Media Is Not Your Friend

Ugh. My Google Reader has a news feed for stories on autism. After reading this one, I'm now totally depressed, since the article is warning me that my son is going to suddenly die from a seizure disorder, get raped, and then drown after committing some other act of self injury.

I think I need to put a positive story filter on my reader or something.