March 31, 2011

Proof that Brian Deer Has No Idea What He Is Talking About

Today on another blog, a link to a UK governmental published supplimental on autism was mentioned and Brian Deer stopped by to visit.

Although the piece in question didn't address the environmental causes of autism, Deer left a note about the environmental causes of autism.

It said that if it turned out that autism was environmentally caused, that the public would look back in hatred at those who advocated that autism was environmental. I kid you not:

Brian Deer
March 31st, 2011
13:48:59

"Looks like the NAS is getting its shit together. It has taken them long enough, if you ask me. But I’m sure everyone will be glad to see them going out to spread their message. Ditto Bob MacNeil coming back for a PBS series of reports.

If those who believe that there may be environmental causes of developmental disorders turn out to be right, people will look back at this interlude caused by Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy, the Age of Hatred site and so forth with burning outrage.

If there are toxic substances out there doing harm to children (and I recall Tom Insel at NIH pretty much saying that there were too many candidates to know where to start) then there’s not one minute of time and not one cent in public money to be wasted over those lying fools."

The only way I can reckon that he thinks this makes sense is if he believes that vaccine causation was different than environmental causation rather than a part of environmental causation. And the only way that the thinks that, is if he actually doesn't even know what environmental causation arguments are being offered by Jenny McCarthy, Age of Autism, Me, my readers and that guy he probably should have heard of by now, Andrew Wakefield. (He has been in the press a LOT. Not sure how Deer could have missed it.) His comment on Insel seems to betray that he does not realize that Insel had to begrudgingly admit that we were right about environmental causes, and that he had to say, "who knows where to start" to throw people off of the obvious place, the two studies that show that mercury emitting coal plants raise autism rates.

Brian... Vaccine induced autism IS PART of the environmentally induced autism theory. Here... let me draw you a diagram.

What the medical authorities used to push (and the Offiteers are still pushing):







Now they can't get away with that any more. We have enough information to know and our government has now admitted, that is the scenario in play:







Deer seems to be under the impression that:







Study carefully Mr. Deer. Let us know when you catch on that we are being proved right, not on the road to being hated. And that you are going to be listed among the villains list under Bettelheim.  Because in the good old US of A, our health department has already said that MMR causes vaccine encephalopathy, which causes autism.

Research Review Finds Vaccine Encephalopathy One Cause of Autism

Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes—A review

Journal of Immunotoxicology, January-March 2011, Vol. 8, No. 1 , Pages 68-79

Helen V. Ratajczak, PhD

Autism, a member of the pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs), has been increasing dramatically since its description by Leo Kanner in 1943. First estimated to occur in 4 to 5 per 10,000 children, the incidence of autism is now 1 per 110 in the United States, and 1 per 64 in the United Kingdom, with similar incidences throughout the world. Searching information from 1943 to the present in PubMed and Ovid Medline databases, this review summarizes results that correlate the timing of changes in incidence with environmental changes. Autism could result from more than one cause, with different manifestations in different individuals that share common symptoms. Documented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis following vaccination. Therefore, autism is the result of genetic defects and/or inflammation of the brain. The inflammation could be caused by a defective placenta, immature blood-brain barrier, the immune response of the mother to infection while pregnant, a premature birth, encephalitis in the child after birth, or a toxic environment.

CBS reports on the study:

Vaccines and autism: a new scientific review
by CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

For all those who've declared the autism-vaccine debate over - a new scientific review begs to differ. It considers a host of peer-reviewed, published theories that show possible connections between vaccines and autism.
The article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology is entitled "Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes--A review." The author is Helen Ratajczak, surprisingly herself a former senior scientist at a pharmaceutical firm. Ratajczak did what nobody else apparently has bothered to do: she reviewed the body of published science since autism was first described in 1943. Not just one theory suggested by research such as the role of MMR shots, or the mercury preservative thimerosal; but all of them.

Ratajczak's article states, in part, that "Documented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis [brain damage] following vaccination [emphasis added]. Therefore, autism is the result of genetic defects and/or inflammation of the brain."

The article goes on to discuss many potential vaccine-related culprits, including the increasing number of vaccines given in a short period of time. "What I have published is highly concentrated on hypersensitivity, Ratajczak told us in an interview, "the body's immune system being thrown out of balance."

University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Brian Strom, who has served on Institute of Medicine panels advising the government on vaccine safety says the prevailing medical opinion is that vaccines are scientifically linked to encephalopathy (brain damage), but not scientifically linked to autism. As for Ratajczak's review, he told us he doesn't find it remarkable. "This is a review of theories. Science is based on facts. To draw conclusions on effects of an exposure on people, you need data on people. The data on people do not support that there is a relationship. As such, any speculation about an explanation for a (non-existing) relationship is irrelevant."

Ratajczak also looks at a factor that hasn't been widely discussed: human DNA contained in vaccines. That's right, human DNA. Ratajczak reports that about the same time vaccine makers took most thimerosal out of most vaccines (with the exception of flu shots which still widely contain thimerosal), they began making some vaccines using human tissue. Ratajczak says human tissue is currently used in 23 vaccines. She discusses the increase in autism incidence corresponding with the introduction of human DNA to MMR vaccine, and suggests the two could be linked. Ratajczak also says an additional increased spike in autism occurred in 1995 when chicken pox vaccine was grown in human fetal tissue.

Why could human DNA potentially cause brain damage? The way Ratajczak explained it to me: "Because it's human DNA and recipients are humans, there's homologous recombinaltion tiniker. That DNA is incorporated into the host DNA. Now it's changed, altered self and body kills it. Where is this most expressed? The neurons of the brain. Now you have body killing the brain cells and it's an ongoing inflammation. It doesn't stop, it continues through the life of that individual."

Dr. Strom said he was unaware that human DNA was contained in vaccines but told us, "It does not matter...Even if human DNA were then found in vaccines, it does not mean that they cause autism." Ratajczak agrees that nobody has proven DNA causes autism; but argues nobody has shown the opposite, and scientifically, the case is still open.

A number of independent scientists have said they've been subjected to orchestrated campaigns to discredit them when their research exposed vaccine safety issues, especially if it veered into the topic of autism. We asked Ratajczak how she came to research the controversial topic. She told us that for years while working in the pharmaceutical industry, she was restricted as to what she was allowed to publish. "I'm retired now," she told CBS News. "I can write what I want."

We wanted to see if the CDC wished to challenge Ratajczak's review, since many government officials and scientists have implied that theories linking vaccines to autism have been disproven, and Ratajczak states that research shows otherwise. CDC officials told us that "comprehensive review by CDC...would take quite a bit of time." In the meantime, CDC provided these links:

Interagency Autism Coordination Committee: http://iacc.hhs.gov

Overview of all CDC surveillance and epi work: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/research.html

CDC study on risk factors and causes: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/seed.html

March 30, 2011

The US Government Wants You To Have 167 Doses of Vaccine

The department of Health and Human Services has built a new web site with your tax dollars. Vaccines.gov.

(How 'bout that tag line, eh?  You think they could back up that advertising claim in court?  I'm thinking no.)

It has a list of all the vaccines that it wants you to have even though it is not your doctor, doesn't know you and frankly doesn't care what happens to you.

We were upset last year to find that Big Brother had added its 70th doses of vaccine to the childhood schedule. From this new site we learn that adults like me should be getting another 91 doses of vaccine if I live to the age of the average American, 78 long years.

This is 167 doses of vaccine over a life time.

167.

One hundred and sixty seven.

I am just blown away.

How many tens of thousands of dollars is your family worth to Pharma, for them to sell you things. When you are healthy to begin with. I know the childhood schedule gets them about $2,500.00. So maybe 4 or five grand per person?

And no liability!

March 17, 2011

A New Documentary: The Greater Good

Call your local theater, college or library and ask them to book a showing of this film.

The Greater Good




Pause the trainer at 1:48 and see my sweet husband with my beloved Chandler on his shoulders and holding my darling Webster's hand, as they walk with Ashley Brock's parents in the Green our Vaccines rally in 2008.

March 15, 2011

Mainstream Medicine: The Abusive Boyfriend That I Can't Break Up With


Looking back on my relationship with mainstream medicine, it has done some nice things for me, made me feel good on a few occasions, but it has also beat the crap out of me. And my children.

Yet I cannot leave it. I keep going back. Only to be disappointed.

Long story short, Chandler has developed vocal tics. Docs tell us to live with it and figure out a way make it work. Which is what I knew they would say going in. Because that is what they always say. Which makes me wonder why I still go.

Cause I know it is only a matter of time until it beats me up again, and it has been a long, long time since it has done anything nice for me.

March 9, 2011

Seth Mnookin is Offended and Repulsed by Parents Who Want to Make Their Own Vaccine Decisions, and Thinks That They are "Total Assholes"

Additionally, he notes that 10 children died last year from pertussis, but fails to mention that 39 children died following their pertussis containing vaccines last year. (Update: CDC wonder has apparently updated their numbers since I checked last. it is up to 41 deaths according to the VAERS database. And that is the lowest death count from it since 1989. Apparently the drop in pertussis vaccine is saving lives in total. 42 in 2009, 76 in 2008, 82 in 2007... 126 in 1994, 148 in 1993... Is Mnooking weeping for the more than 1,750 children who have died from this vaccine since 1989? Thanks to Vaccination News for updating me.)



All this in a speech on How to Communicate with Anti-Vaccine Parents at American University's School of Communication.

March 8, 2011

SCD Conference at The Gottschall Autism Center

I am attending the "When the Belly is the Beast: How Intestinal Health Impacts Brain and Behavior" conference at The Gottschall Autism Center in MA on April 1.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that going SCD (after being GFCF for two years) was a HUGE boost for my baby.

They are having some delicious speakers like Martha Herbert, and Dr. Alessio Fasano. Any Mainers who wanna skate on down with me, lemme know.

March 7, 2011

Drug Firms Need You To Fully Vaccinate Now More Than Ever

If you won't vaccinate for the sake of your kids, then good god man... do it out of pity for Pfizer and Sanofi. Profits are down and going to drop like a stone soon, and Japan just dropped two of their vaccines because they killed 4 children.

Good news for Merck though... even though 93 girls have died after Gardasil, the US FDA still doesn't give a damn. Thank god for corruption and revolving doors... am I right fellas?




Japan drops two vaccines after four deaths
Published: March. 6, 2011 at 11:46 PM
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Related Company
Pfizer, Inc.
TOKYO, March 6 (UPI) -- Japan's Health Ministry says it has suspended use of two vaccines after four children died after receiving them, Kyodo News reported.

Sources told the Japanese news agency the ministry decided Friday to stop administering the Hib vaccine to prevent bacterial meningitis and a vaccine to protect against streptococcus pneumoniae.

So far, no direct causal relationship has been established between the vaccines and the children's deaths, but the ministry intends to convene an expert panel in the coming days to look into the issue, the sources said.

The four fatalities were a 3-month-old girl in Kawasaki who died Feb. 20, a 2-year-old boy in Takarazuka who died Tuesday, a 1-year-old girl in Nishinomiya who died Wednesday and a 6-month-old girl in Kyoto City who died Friday.

Some of the children had underlying illnesses and others did not.

Kyodo said all four children received a vaccine against streptococcus pneumoniae manufactured by Pfizer Inc., based in New York, and all but the girl in Nishinomiya received ActHIB, made by Sanofi Pasteur Inc., based in Lyon, France.

Except for the boy in Takarazuka, all also received a mixed vaccine against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus the same day they received other vaccines.

Millions of doses of the vaccines have been administered in Japan in recent years.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/03/06/Japan-drops-two-vaccines-after-four-deaths/UPI-43921299473201/#ixzz1Fy5o7dlp

Drug Firms Face Billions in Losses in ’11 as Patents End

By DUFF WILSON

At the end of November, Pfizer stands to lose a $10-billion-a-year revenue stream when the patent on its blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor expires and cheaper generics begin to cut into the company’s huge sales.

The loss poses a daunting challenge for Pfizer, one shared by nearly every major pharmaceutical company. This year alone, because of patent expirations, the drug industry will lose control over more than 10 megamedicines whose combined annual sales have neared $50 billion.

This is a sobering reversal for an industry that just a few years ago was the world’s most profitable business sector but is now under pressure to reinvent itself and shed its dependence on blockbuster drugs. And it casts a spotlight on the problems drug companies now face: a drought of big drug breakthroughs and research discoveries; pressure from insurers and the government to hold down prices; regulatory vigilance and government investigations; and thousands of layoffs in research and development.

Morgan Stanley recently downgraded the entire group of multinational pharmaceutical companies based in Europe — AstraZeneca, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Novo Nordisk and Roche — in a report titled “An Avalanche of Risk? Downgrading to Cautious.” The analysts wrote, “The operating environment for pharma is worsening rapidly.”

The same concerns apply to drug giants in the United States. They are all struggling with research failures as they scramble to replace their cash cows, like Pfizer’s multimillion-dollar gamble on a replacement for the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, which failed miserably in clinical trials. Drug companies cut 53,000 jobs last year and 61,000 in 2009, far more than most other sectors, according to the outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“This is panic time, this is truly panic time for the industry,” said Kenneth I. Kaitin, director of the Center for the Study of Drug Development at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. “I don’t think there’s a company out there that doesn’t realize they don’t have enough products in the pipeline or the portfolio, don’t have enough revenue to sustain their research and development.”

While industrywide research and development spending has nearly doubled to $45 billion a year over the last decade, the Food and Drug Administration has approved fewer and fewer new drugs. Pfizer and Eli Lilly had major setbacks last year in once-promising Alzheimer’s drug experiments. Merck discontinued one of two major clinical trials testing its top acquisition from its merger with Schering Plough, a blood thinner that caused dangerous amounts of bleeding in some patients.

Drug company executives have begun addressing the calls for reinvention.

“We have to fix our innovative core,” Pfizer’s new president, Ian C. Read, said in an interview recently. To do that, the company is refocusing on smaller niches in cancer, inflammation, neuroscience and branded generics — and slashing as much as 30 percent of its own research and development spending in the next two years as its scientists work on only the most potentially profitable prospects.

Consumers should see a financial benefit as lower-cost generics replace the expensive elite drugs, but may suffer in the long term if companies reduce research and do not produce new drugs that meet the public’s needs.

“You don’t lay off R&D if it’s just a cycle,” says Erik Gordon, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan business school who follows the pharmaceutical industry. “That kills progress.”

The federal government is also concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming from the industry. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, recently proposed a billion-dollar drug development center at the agency.

“We seem to have a systemic problem here,” Dr. Collins said, adding that government research efforts were intended to feed the private sector, not compete with it.

Mr. Read of Pfizer says new products can replace some but not all of the patent losses.

“The hurricane is making landfall,” said Jeremy Batstone-Carr, an analyst at Charles Stanley Securities, but he added that Pfizer is among several drug companies giving solace to shareholders by returning money through stock buybacks and dividends. Pfizer’s best asset, he said, is its $20 billion stockpile of cash. Yet since 2000, Pfizer’s and Merck’s share prices dropped about 60 percent, while the Dow rose 19 percent.

Several of the drug titans have bought competitors with newer products to fill their own sales gaps, essentially paying cash for future revenue as their own research was flagging. In the last two years, Pfizer paid $68 billion for Wyeth, Merck paid $41 billion for Schering-Plough, Roche paid $46 billion for Genentech, and Sanofi-Aventis paid $20 billion for Genzyme.

Henry G. Grabowski, a professor of economics and director of the Duke University program in pharmaceutical health economics, likened the recent pharmaceutical megamergers to those that occurred in the banking and telecommunications industries when they were hit by financial shocks in the 1990s.

But he warned that this wave would not guarantee significant research developments in the long term.

“It’s never been shown that these big horizontal mergers are good for R&D productivity,” Dr. Grabowski said. “I’m in a show-me mode that they get you any real advances other than some short-term cost efficiencies that wear out.”

As they move beyond the blockbuster model, companies are refining their approach toward personalized medicines and forming more partnerships. Using genetic or other tests, the plan is to sell new drugs not to millions and millions of people, but to those who would most clearly benefit.

Still, the industry faces intense pressure from generic competition and has tried every tactic to ward it off, including extended-release versions of the same medicine and new pills that combine two ingredients. But 75 percent of all prescriptions in the United States are now low-price, low-profit generic drugs.

At the same time, pharmaceutical companies are being urged by managed care and government health programs to cut prices and improve reimbursement terms for their most profitable pills.

That follows similar practices in Europe, where Germany and the Britain, among other countries, are all increasing pressure for lower drug prices.

“Europe is an ugly place to do business today and will be in five years’ time,” Christopher A. Viehbacher, chief executive of the French drug giant Sanofi-Aventis, said in an interview.

In the United States, Mr. Viehbacher said generic drugs were taking over the primary care market, leaving the best growth potential in specialty markets and in emerging nations like China, Brazil and Indonesia.

Even in those markets, health systems will not be the profit centers that the United States has been. China, emerging this year as the third-largest pharmaceutical market behind the United States and Japan, plans to cut hundreds of drug prices by an average of 40 percent.

The drug industry has long said that Americans fueled the research engine, spending much more per capita on prescriptions than in any other nation, and paying the highest prices for prescribed medicines.

Drug industry lobbyists have beaten back Democratic proposals to set prices at the lower levels of nations like Canada or to allow Medicare to directly negotiate prices. The industry, by supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul, capped its contribution at $90 billion over 10 years in return for the promise of up to 32 million newly insured customers starting in 2014.

The new law also contains a major threat to drug industry profits in a little-known section that would allow centralized price-setting. Beginning in 2015, an independent board appointed by the president could lower prices across the board in Medicare unless Congress acted each year to overrule it. Medicare pays more than 20 percent of the nation’s retail drug bills.

The industry has also been unsettled by the scores of fraud, bribery and kickback cases involving conduct that federal investigators contend have added billions to the nation’s drug bill. The penalties have been stiff, and the settlements steep.

In 2009, Pfizer paid the largest criminal fine in the nation’s history as part of a $2.3 billion settlement over marketing drugs for unapproved uses. Some analysts say larger fraud and foreign bribery cases will come. The drug companies are responding with extra-careful sales training and vows to restrain marketing zeal. But the change in corporate culture could cost them: internal documents show some of the companies have profited spectacularly from seeking federal approval of a new drug for a limited use, then marketing it far more widely off label.

Other changes are afoot that will no doubt affect the bottom line. They include growing restrictions on gifts, fees and trips to influence doctors to use their products; curbs on the ghost writing of medical journal articles and a push for more disclosure of negative study results. As the golden age of blockbuster drugs fades, so are some of the marketing excesses of the past two decades — the tactics that helped bring in immense profits.

Some analysts see the industry’s decline as an investment opportunity. They say drug stocks are good buys because of low price-to-earnings ratios, which typically reflect industry decline or investor pessimism, and high dividend yields averaging more than 4 percent a year.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 7, 2011


An earlier version of this article misstated the status of some drug trials involving a blood thinner. Merck discontinued one trial, but another trial continues, although some patients have been removed from the study.

March 4, 2011

Alms for the Poor

UPDATE: THANK YOU MY WONDERFUL READERS! The goal was reached Saturday night! It totaled $1,151.15. Thank you so much for helping my little guy's recovery along! His birthday is this Friday and you guys have blessed him with a wonderful birthday present. Thank you for your love.

Now we can finally afford that surgery to get the Nerf Darts removed from his head.


As I am sure you can imagine, the social stigma has been terrible for him.  ;)

Original post:
I come to you to entreat you to give to the needy. Me.

We we finished a really productive round of HBOT for Chandler in Jan, and I wanted to start a new course of treatment in March only to come face to face with the fact that I have spent the last six months writing and not working, so the $$ is not there to start. I have not focused on monetizing the blog, which I probably need to do, or on making any of my writing pay in any way, which I probably also need to do. If for no other reason, so that I can do more of it. So I think that I will just to a little fundraising directly at my readers.

I want to raise $1,000. Not tax-deductable or anything. You are basically just giving me cash and saying, "thanks for neglecting your family's needs to write all this stuff that I wish I never needed to know in the first place.... have some money."

So if my writing has been of help or encouragement to you over the years, please consider dropping a little sumpin' sumpin' in the tip jar.

All proceeds go to my baby's brain and belly. And perhaps a Green & Black's Chocolate Bar with Almonds for mommy.





I was going to find one of those donation counters that had a little progress bar that goes to $1,000 or a thermometer or something, but I am to lazy. So no fun graphics.

I would ask Bill Gates for a scrap from his foundations 33.5 billion dollar table, but... well you know.

Oh... and if anyone wants to buy ad space, let me know.

Thanks in advance. I love my readers.

March 2, 2011