Whew! Our Kids Don't Have Bowel Problems! What a Relief!

The award for the most hilarious and absurd research ever goes to....


PROFESSOR ALAN EMOND,
CENTER FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT HEALTH
UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL!

*LARGE CHEER*

The good doctor and his crack team have searched high and low and found that children with autism don't have bowel problems!

I can't tell you how relieved I to find that the constipation that Chandler had for TWO FREAKING YEARS was just a figment of my imagination. And how when he ate that bread three weeks ago at that wedding he was a nightmare for a week. Or how when his brother gave him a couple of slices of toast yesterday I had to pull him screaming from a grocery store, prying his clutching fingers off a refrigerator unit as if I was taking him to the gallows.

Make sure you get in touch with the good doctor and send him your appreciation for his revolutionary finding. Send him a few of your poop pictures and let him know that he might have missed something in his study. alan.emond@bristol.ac.uk

And thanks to the good people at the BMJ for bringing us the highest science that it is possible for mankind to produce.

Don't forget to call Dr. Tim Buie at Harvard and tell him his was mistaken about all those patients that he has with bowel problems.



... oh... also call CDC/HHS/AAP and tell them to change that part of the Autism Alarm that says, "Look for other conditions known to be associated with autism (eg, seizures, GI, sleep, behavior)" so that GI symptoms are taken off the list.

Any one wanna take bets on where the money for this study came? Just sayin'.

Update: Sorry for the sarcasm. It has been a hard couple of days and this piece of crap just took the cake.

BIGGER UPDATE: This story just took a very unfunny turn.

Our friend from across the pond, Mark at Something Beginning with an A, has realized that the Professor Emond is on the the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). The JCVI is the "non elected body our government has just handed the vaccine decision making to". Vaccine approvals have always had to go before the legislature. Now JCVI will approve them. The committee that is currently considering making the H1N1 vaccine compulsory for all Britons.

Ya think perhaps that this little something should have been mentioned as a BIG FAT CONFLICT OF INTEREST in this study?!

I went back to the study just to make sure that I didn't miss his mention of the fact that he is a vaccination official and found this conflict of interest statement:

"Competing interests: None."

Brilliant.

The balls these people have are astonishing.

And it doesn't stop there. Remember my little joke about the funding for this study?

Turns out the study was supported by The Wellcome Trust . As in Wellcome Pharmaceuticals that was purchased by Glaxo and is now part of GSK. Their charity arm funded this study. (don't miss the part of the site where Henry Wellcome was the first guy to visit his docs one on one and convince them to buy his Rx - he was the first pharma rep "How Wellcome transformed the marketing of pharmaceuticals").

No conflicts of interest there? Seriously?

And the pièce de résistance ? The study was funded by the Medical Research Council, the first body to go after Andrew Wakefield.

BRAVO! A symphony of conflicts of interests. Truly a masterpiece of scientific integrity.

The Adverse Vaccine Reaction blog has posted a planned rally to protest the JCIV in October.

If I had the time and the cash I would be out there with them. If you are in the neighborhood, I hope you will go and yell at Emond for me. He is not returning my emails.

UPDATE: An email on this from John Stone:

"Ginger,

Alan Emond is on the JCVI:

http://www.advisorybodies.doh.gov.uk/jcvi/DOI-2007.htm

While Emond declares no competing interests on the JCVI he is closely associated with ALSPAC which receives funding from the Wellcome Trust and the MRC (who funded the new paper), as well as historically many industrial sources. The change in status of the JCVI was not quite as you describe in your blog. The vaccine schedule in the UK has never been mandatory and has not required legislative acts. The state simply acted on the recommendations of the JCVI - and citizens could take it or leave it - the innovatory (and illegal) change earlier this year placed an obligation on the government to enact their advice, which led to reasonable suspicions that the government was trying to introduce compulsory vaccination by the back door. However, they seem to be backing off this at the moment.

Emond was involved early on in the Georgie Fisher case:

http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/12/mmr-and-the-inq.html

Georgie's dad wrote to JABS Forum in 2006:

'Hello to all thank you for your kind words and support. we had meeting wiyh the coronor today to talk about our concerns regarding George's symtoms before he died it made him raise his eyebrows when we showed him the leaflet from mmr manufactures.He cancelled the inquest due to further investigation. He has asked professor/doctor Emond who apparently an expert in mmr to have a look at our case.More samples are going to be tested with more sophisticated equiptment to find the virus that was responsable.We do feel that he listened to us and said he would do his best.We have also written a letter to mr blair to express our concerns and dissapointments as to MMR,NHS,and the secrets around it all. It all makes us sick they need telling in person not keep hiding away.'

http://www.jabs.org.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=198

I remember it was I who told Chris Fisher in an email that Emond was on the JCVI, so no one else had.

John"

Update:

From Scott Taylor:

The UK vaccine rally will be too late in October. They're starting [administering the vaccine] in August? That's 1-2 weeks from now?

Well looks like we will have some testing data after all - the UK population. Sorry Britain. Keep a stiff upper lip. We appreciate your sacrifice.

Europe fast-tracking swine flu vaccine

Update: More from John Stone.

UPDAE: For more on the machine that is driving all this bad research, Please see my post called "Anatomy of a Witch Hunt".