Green Our Vaccines
Join our family on June 4th, 2008 in Washington DC!
Get all the details on the TACA web site.
Showing posts with label Jenny McCarthy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jenny McCarthy. Show all posts
April 9, 2008
The Green Our Vaccines Rally and March with Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey
UPDATE: Photos of the rally can be seen Here:
Green Our Vaccines
Join our family on June 4th, 2008 in Washington DC!
Get all the details on the TACA web site.
Green Our Vaccines
Join our family on June 4th, 2008 in Washington DC!
Get all the details on the TACA web site.
April 7, 2008
The American Academy of Pediatrics Shows Up in Autism Treatment
The Defeat Autism Now! Conference was last weekend and the big news was not that Jenny McCarthy showed up, but that the American Academy of Pediatrics showed up.
After years of inaction and obfuscation, this was action number two taken by the AAP in just one week.
AAP not only showed up, from what I can put together, they really listened. They saw that the doctors presenting were their doctors and that the families in the audience were their patients. They got that the research and the interventions had a solid base and that medical approach to treating what is currently diagnosed as ‘autism’ has already begun with out them. They got that it is time for them to begin investing in what we have started.
I hear that they understand the multisystem failure that is going on in our kids and the multi system approach that is needed to address it.
I think they got a taste of how wrong it has been that parents complaints to, and questions of, doctors have been treated with such hostility, and that doctors who spoke up for our children were ostracized.
… and I got the feeling that they might even have been a little impressed with the way that our community has taken back an entire arena of medicine from drug companies and insurance companies and hospital systems and all other things big medicine.
The first step in building bridges, real relationships, is to show up and listen. They have done that.
But now comes the hard part for the AAP… what to do with that information. They know it is real, they know that we are on the level, and they know that the treatments are working. Can they take that and do what really needs to be done, no matter where the trail leads?
Are they ready to announce that vaccines are the big trigger? I don’t think so. I would be surprised if they were ready to do that yet. Vaccination changed their profession dramatically, and for the better, and to come to terms with the fact that it has crossed the line and gone too far… to admit out loud that they have caused so much damage… that will be very difficult. Not just for the AAP body as a whole, but for each individual pediatrician.
Are they ready to start participating in real research with us? I think they very well might be on treatment options, but good vaccine research, a real vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study? That is the million dollar question.
In this Age of Autism (to borrow from Dan Olmsted), where parents like me have been burned and burned hard, action talks and bullshit walks. We watch every move that docs make and judge carefully who is really looking out for the best interests of our vulnerable children, and who is looking out for their own interests.
I have, in no way, hidden my contempt for the actions of the AAP over the last decade for what they have and have not done in the autism epidemic, and for the potential disaster that will take place if in fact David Tayloe does take charge of this body.
But the current leadership of the AAP has gotten my attention with their actions in the last week. I think that they are in a rare moment in time where a state of flux is occurring, and there is a possibility of them turning a corner and making a real attempt to redeem themselves.
Voices that are usually squelched are being heard.
I think this is a fragile window. Failing to continue to move forward with real action, and assuming that reverting to bullshit public statements will placate autism moms and dads, would start closing that window quickly. The reign of David Tayloe would kill it stone dead.
I have a few words of advice for the AAP if they are concerned with stopping the slide of public trust and keeping the vaccine program from crumbling:
1. Say goodbye to your ego.
If you got into this business to be treated like the big guy and want to stay the big guy, then you will only get in the way of bringing our children back. If you can get past yourself, you will start to see beautiful stories of healing in families that have been devastated. You have the chance to become a part of something amazing that is happening in families who were told that their child was no longer functional and should be put away. Choose to see life return even at the expense of your pride (and your Mercedes and your vacations).
2. Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. No matter what happens, no matter the fall out, no matter the shame. You have one chance here to clean out the cancer that is the lies that have been told to American parents by the CDC about vaccine safety. If you take this time to CYA, then you won’t get another chance.
3. Find a nice, dignified excuse to set David Tayloe aside as the next AAP president and choose someone of integrity and character like Jay Gordon who will treat vaccine injury with seriousness and the intricacies human body with humility. I personally won’t listen to any doctor who listens to David Tayloe.
4. Actually participate in real vaccine debate. When what passes for a debate only includes those whose livelihood depends on vaccination continuing, it is not a real debate.
What has been referred to as the ‘vaccine debate’ for the last four years since the IOM decision has looked like this: A panel of doctors from the CDC, AAP, IOM, NIH, HHS having mutual admiration society catered by GSK while congratulating themselves on eradicating polio and rubella, inside a building owned by a hospital that is owned by an insurance company that is owned by Merck, while parents and the doctors who listen to them and heal their children are locked outside banging on the door trying to get in.
None of the parents’ points, complaints or questions are addressed, and if one does manage to get in, she is told to sit down or is escorted from the building.
Literally.
Registered nurse, Lyn Redwood, one of the first mercury moms, a very smart, dignified and soft spoken woman who had testified before congress, when attending a CDC public meeting, asked why the committee would not state a preference for pregnant women to get thimerosal free vaccines. She was told to sit down.
When CDC held a press conference on vaccines in 2005, we went to the HHS building in DC, but weren’t allowed in the room to ask questions. Parents were escorted to a ‘holding area’ with a TV so we could watch it remotely. Lyn was there with us.
Later, we tried to talk directly to pediatricians. Generation Rescue, a brand new organization at the time, rented a booth at the 2005 AAP convention in DC, and Lyn and her husband, physician Tommy Redwood, were among the parents there to share with your doctors.
Our message was printed on a large banner that stretched across the back of the room, “Autism is Preventable and Treatable”. When we arrived, The Redwoods, along with other parents who had been raising valid and responsible questions about the vaccine program, were prevented by security from entering the building to work at the booth.
The most heart breaking thing about that fear based, controlling decision, was that Lyn’s recovered son was also turned away from the building. His name was actually printed on the list given to us as to who would not be allowed to man the booth. Pediatricians from around the world had a chance to meet and interact with a recovered child face to face three years ago. The pictures I brought of Chandler were paltry replacement for a real live talking boy, but you locked him out.
If you want to build faith with us, then a good sign that you are ready to take responsibility for your actions would be to apologize to the "DC 7" Scott Bono, Laura Bono, Lyn Redwood, Tommy Redwood MD, Will Redwood (now 14 years old), Wendy Fournier and John Gilmore.
And then continue the REAL vaccine/autism debate that begun on Larry King last week. Get a hall in DC, a really big one, and let’s face each other and slog through all the research and records and deal with this. You are gonna get yelled at, just like Jenny yelled at Karp, you are gonna see a lot of tears, you are going to have to eat a lot of crow and it will all be on the record. But that is what it is going to take to put humpty dumpty back together.
5. Apologize for harming our children, not treating the injury and not listening to parents when they tried to tell you about vaccine regression and recovery.
We know that you were lied to. We know that you have to depend on the CDC to give you guidance. We know that they have orchestrated this nightmare charade.
But you did not meet your ethical obligations to proof them. Your leadership continues to hold out crap studies like Verstaeten, Denmark and Fombonne to disprove the vaccine autism link. You need to remove your stamp of approval from them, admit that they don’t prove what people have claimed that they prove, and join us in asking that they be retracted. If you do that there is still a chance to salvage something.
You have serious culpability here, but we know that you are not the source of the big lie.
6. Clean up this mess. Take action now. If you try to play the ‘death by committee’ game like the IOM did, parents will start tuning you out at the first mention of the words ‘task force’.
You have to start with this: Autism treatment is not a top down operation like other approaches to defeating an illness you are used to. If you could have understood it the way we have illnesses like rubella, you would have by now. If it could be tackled the way HIV was, then the Autism Speaks modus operandi would have yielded results, but it hasn’t.
Autism, or ‘Autisms’ as successful practitioners have come to define it, is not one thing, and is extremely complicated. So you can’t start with the ‘disease’ and then apply lessons to the child. You have to start with the individual child to get to the ‘disease’
It is a varied syndrome and our kids pick a la cart from a long list of physical problems.
Get a copy of Bryan Jepson’s book, Changing the Course of Autism in the hands of every one of your members.
Tell them to call their patients who are diagnosed with autism into the office for a long sit down to find out what parents have been trying with them, what is working and what is not. Have them listen to the child’s whole story, a COMPLETE history of all that has happened since before conception. They will learn huge amounts of information doing this.
Walk into the DAN! docs offices and start putting eyeballs on our kids. Physically examine them and start testing.
Get DAN! docs to hold training sessions all over the country for AAP members.
Invite local parents to speak to your pediatricians and tell them what they know. We are not doctors but we are experts on our children.
(You wanna be really smart? Do what the smart DAN! docs do. Encourage your docs to find the brightest autism mom in town who is treating her child, the one that the other mom’s call with questions, and hire her as their research assistant and parent liaison. They are plowing through the research every day, they live in an autism lab, and they talk to all the other researcher moms every day.
They are expert medical investigators.
Take advantage of them.)
And when your members start reporting the things that they are seeing to you, listen to them and coordinate that information.
Bottom up, bottom up, bottom up.
7. What ever you do, you better do it with the doctors we already trust.
8. What ever you do, go where the results are. Your work towards recovering our kids should not include learning from people who have not contributed to the recovery of a child with autism. Look for the people who are bringing children back and find out what they are doing.
And if you give people who still aren’t sure that there is even an actual increase in the rate a seat at the table, you will just be wasting our time. This is about discussion and cooperation that leads to action, not pontificating and lecturing in order to hear yourself talk. If they are interested in genetics or counting heads, then leave them to their business. Their business is not the business of treatment, and this is about treatment.
9. Whatever you do, you have to offer total and complete transparency about everything.
10. And whatever you do, please understand, you have to do it fast.
With our autistic children, we have a window of time, starting when their injury happens, to heal them. That clock starts the minute we get a diagnosis and we work like madmen to heal our children before that window begins to close.
Now you are in our shoes. You have been given the diagnosis, that parents were right and that you have lost them. You have a window of opportunity to heal that broken relationship before that window starts to come down hard and fast.
I hope you understand that you have to work smart, work quick and work from our organizational model, not yours, to keep that window from slamming shut on you.
And I hope you understand that the window will start falling hard and fast on June 4th.
Because if you are not with us in Washington, we will know that what you have done this week is bullshit.
UPDATE: Katie Wright comments:
"It was great that the AAP finally showed to a DAN! conference. Jenny McCarthy had to shame them into it, but it is good they came. Dr. Cooper did not just walk in and out he sat through several presentations over three days. I told Dr. Cooper that the AAP needs to get up to speed- NOW. There is no time to waste, they need to send TEAMS of physicians to DAN! and Autism One. If they want to start earning the respect, rather than the ire of the parent community, the AAP should start booking those hotel rooms in Chicago now. They can also make inexpensive and easy changes by updating the website so their autism information can reflect 2008, not 1998. The AAP has much to prove to our families, let's hope they take on this challenge."
After years of inaction and obfuscation, this was action number two taken by the AAP in just one week.
AAP not only showed up, from what I can put together, they really listened. They saw that the doctors presenting were their doctors and that the families in the audience were their patients. They got that the research and the interventions had a solid base and that medical approach to treating what is currently diagnosed as ‘autism’ has already begun with out them. They got that it is time for them to begin investing in what we have started.
I hear that they understand the multisystem failure that is going on in our kids and the multi system approach that is needed to address it.
I think they got a taste of how wrong it has been that parents complaints to, and questions of, doctors have been treated with such hostility, and that doctors who spoke up for our children were ostracized.
… and I got the feeling that they might even have been a little impressed with the way that our community has taken back an entire arena of medicine from drug companies and insurance companies and hospital systems and all other things big medicine.
The first step in building bridges, real relationships, is to show up and listen. They have done that.
But now comes the hard part for the AAP… what to do with that information. They know it is real, they know that we are on the level, and they know that the treatments are working. Can they take that and do what really needs to be done, no matter where the trail leads?
Are they ready to announce that vaccines are the big trigger? I don’t think so. I would be surprised if they were ready to do that yet. Vaccination changed their profession dramatically, and for the better, and to come to terms with the fact that it has crossed the line and gone too far… to admit out loud that they have caused so much damage… that will be very difficult. Not just for the AAP body as a whole, but for each individual pediatrician.
Are they ready to start participating in real research with us? I think they very well might be on treatment options, but good vaccine research, a real vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study? That is the million dollar question.
In this Age of Autism (to borrow from Dan Olmsted), where parents like me have been burned and burned hard, action talks and bullshit walks. We watch every move that docs make and judge carefully who is really looking out for the best interests of our vulnerable children, and who is looking out for their own interests.
I have, in no way, hidden my contempt for the actions of the AAP over the last decade for what they have and have not done in the autism epidemic, and for the potential disaster that will take place if in fact David Tayloe does take charge of this body.
But the current leadership of the AAP has gotten my attention with their actions in the last week. I think that they are in a rare moment in time where a state of flux is occurring, and there is a possibility of them turning a corner and making a real attempt to redeem themselves.
Voices that are usually squelched are being heard.
I think this is a fragile window. Failing to continue to move forward with real action, and assuming that reverting to bullshit public statements will placate autism moms and dads, would start closing that window quickly. The reign of David Tayloe would kill it stone dead.
I have a few words of advice for the AAP if they are concerned with stopping the slide of public trust and keeping the vaccine program from crumbling:
1. Say goodbye to your ego.
If you got into this business to be treated like the big guy and want to stay the big guy, then you will only get in the way of bringing our children back. If you can get past yourself, you will start to see beautiful stories of healing in families that have been devastated. You have the chance to become a part of something amazing that is happening in families who were told that their child was no longer functional and should be put away. Choose to see life return even at the expense of your pride (and your Mercedes and your vacations).
2. Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. No matter what happens, no matter the fall out, no matter the shame. You have one chance here to clean out the cancer that is the lies that have been told to American parents by the CDC about vaccine safety. If you take this time to CYA, then you won’t get another chance.
3. Find a nice, dignified excuse to set David Tayloe aside as the next AAP president and choose someone of integrity and character like Jay Gordon who will treat vaccine injury with seriousness and the intricacies human body with humility. I personally won’t listen to any doctor who listens to David Tayloe.
4. Actually participate in real vaccine debate. When what passes for a debate only includes those whose livelihood depends on vaccination continuing, it is not a real debate.
What has been referred to as the ‘vaccine debate’ for the last four years since the IOM decision has looked like this: A panel of doctors from the CDC, AAP, IOM, NIH, HHS having mutual admiration society catered by GSK while congratulating themselves on eradicating polio and rubella, inside a building owned by a hospital that is owned by an insurance company that is owned by Merck, while parents and the doctors who listen to them and heal their children are locked outside banging on the door trying to get in.
None of the parents’ points, complaints or questions are addressed, and if one does manage to get in, she is told to sit down or is escorted from the building.
Literally.
Registered nurse, Lyn Redwood, one of the first mercury moms, a very smart, dignified and soft spoken woman who had testified before congress, when attending a CDC public meeting, asked why the committee would not state a preference for pregnant women to get thimerosal free vaccines. She was told to sit down.
When CDC held a press conference on vaccines in 2005, we went to the HHS building in DC, but weren’t allowed in the room to ask questions. Parents were escorted to a ‘holding area’ with a TV so we could watch it remotely. Lyn was there with us.
Later, we tried to talk directly to pediatricians. Generation Rescue, a brand new organization at the time, rented a booth at the 2005 AAP convention in DC, and Lyn and her husband, physician Tommy Redwood, were among the parents there to share with your doctors.
Our message was printed on a large banner that stretched across the back of the room, “Autism is Preventable and Treatable”. When we arrived, The Redwoods, along with other parents who had been raising valid and responsible questions about the vaccine program, were prevented by security from entering the building to work at the booth.
The most heart breaking thing about that fear based, controlling decision, was that Lyn’s recovered son was also turned away from the building. His name was actually printed on the list given to us as to who would not be allowed to man the booth. Pediatricians from around the world had a chance to meet and interact with a recovered child face to face three years ago. The pictures I brought of Chandler were paltry replacement for a real live talking boy, but you locked him out.
If you want to build faith with us, then a good sign that you are ready to take responsibility for your actions would be to apologize to the "DC 7" Scott Bono, Laura Bono, Lyn Redwood, Tommy Redwood MD, Will Redwood (now 14 years old), Wendy Fournier and John Gilmore.
And then continue the REAL vaccine/autism debate that begun on Larry King last week. Get a hall in DC, a really big one, and let’s face each other and slog through all the research and records and deal with this. You are gonna get yelled at, just like Jenny yelled at Karp, you are gonna see a lot of tears, you are going to have to eat a lot of crow and it will all be on the record. But that is what it is going to take to put humpty dumpty back together.
5. Apologize for harming our children, not treating the injury and not listening to parents when they tried to tell you about vaccine regression and recovery.
We know that you were lied to. We know that you have to depend on the CDC to give you guidance. We know that they have orchestrated this nightmare charade.
But you did not meet your ethical obligations to proof them. Your leadership continues to hold out crap studies like Verstaeten, Denmark and Fombonne to disprove the vaccine autism link. You need to remove your stamp of approval from them, admit that they don’t prove what people have claimed that they prove, and join us in asking that they be retracted. If you do that there is still a chance to salvage something.
You have serious culpability here, but we know that you are not the source of the big lie.
6. Clean up this mess. Take action now. If you try to play the ‘death by committee’ game like the IOM did, parents will start tuning you out at the first mention of the words ‘task force’.
You have to start with this: Autism treatment is not a top down operation like other approaches to defeating an illness you are used to. If you could have understood it the way we have illnesses like rubella, you would have by now. If it could be tackled the way HIV was, then the Autism Speaks modus operandi would have yielded results, but it hasn’t.
Autism, or ‘Autisms’ as successful practitioners have come to define it, is not one thing, and is extremely complicated. So you can’t start with the ‘disease’ and then apply lessons to the child. You have to start with the individual child to get to the ‘disease’
It is a varied syndrome and our kids pick a la cart from a long list of physical problems.
Get a copy of Bryan Jepson’s book, Changing the Course of Autism in the hands of every one of your members.
Tell them to call their patients who are diagnosed with autism into the office for a long sit down to find out what parents have been trying with them, what is working and what is not. Have them listen to the child’s whole story, a COMPLETE history of all that has happened since before conception. They will learn huge amounts of information doing this.
Walk into the DAN! docs offices and start putting eyeballs on our kids. Physically examine them and start testing.
Get DAN! docs to hold training sessions all over the country for AAP members.
Invite local parents to speak to your pediatricians and tell them what they know. We are not doctors but we are experts on our children.
(You wanna be really smart? Do what the smart DAN! docs do. Encourage your docs to find the brightest autism mom in town who is treating her child, the one that the other mom’s call with questions, and hire her as their research assistant and parent liaison. They are plowing through the research every day, they live in an autism lab, and they talk to all the other researcher moms every day.
They are expert medical investigators.
Take advantage of them.)
And when your members start reporting the things that they are seeing to you, listen to them and coordinate that information.
Bottom up, bottom up, bottom up.
7. What ever you do, you better do it with the doctors we already trust.
8. What ever you do, go where the results are. Your work towards recovering our kids should not include learning from people who have not contributed to the recovery of a child with autism. Look for the people who are bringing children back and find out what they are doing.
And if you give people who still aren’t sure that there is even an actual increase in the rate a seat at the table, you will just be wasting our time. This is about discussion and cooperation that leads to action, not pontificating and lecturing in order to hear yourself talk. If they are interested in genetics or counting heads, then leave them to their business. Their business is not the business of treatment, and this is about treatment.
9. Whatever you do, you have to offer total and complete transparency about everything.
10. And whatever you do, please understand, you have to do it fast.
With our autistic children, we have a window of time, starting when their injury happens, to heal them. That clock starts the minute we get a diagnosis and we work like madmen to heal our children before that window begins to close.
Now you are in our shoes. You have been given the diagnosis, that parents were right and that you have lost them. You have a window of opportunity to heal that broken relationship before that window starts to come down hard and fast.
I hope you understand that you have to work smart, work quick and work from our organizational model, not yours, to keep that window from slamming shut on you.
And I hope you understand that the window will start falling hard and fast on June 4th.
Because if you are not with us in Washington, we will know that what you have done this week is bullshit.
UPDATE: Katie Wright comments:
"It was great that the AAP finally showed to a DAN! conference. Jenny McCarthy had to shame them into it, but it is good they came. Dr. Cooper did not just walk in and out he sat through several presentations over three days. I told Dr. Cooper that the AAP needs to get up to speed- NOW. There is no time to waste, they need to send TEAMS of physicians to DAN! and Autism One. If they want to start earning the respect, rather than the ire of the parent community, the AAP should start booking those hotel rooms in Chicago now. They can also make inexpensive and easy changes by updating the website so their autism information can reflect 2008, not 1998. The AAP has much to prove to our families, let's hope they take on this challenge."
April 4, 2008
David Kirby: CDC Has Lost Control of the Autism Argument
CDC Has Lost Control of the Autism Argument
David Kirby
Huffington Post
April 3, 2007
On Wednesday, CNN's Larry King hosted Jenny McCarthy, myself, and several others to discuss the growing evidence of a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The CDC refused to send someone to appear on the show. Instead, on Thursday, the agency issued a statement meant to reassure the American public that all vaccines are safe for all kids.
But the CDC statement only served to show how out of touch the Administration of George (Really? Gas costs 4 dollars?) Bush really is.
A recent government decision to award nine-year-old Hannah Poling taxpayer dollars for her multiple vaccine-induced autism, has left parents anxious and alarmed, especially when their own kid has a pending appointment to receive 5 or more vaccines in one sitting (Hannah had 9 at once).
So the CDC now issues a written statement meant to soothe jittery parents, by saying that "the recommended vaccine schedule is flexible." Such decisions, the friendly announcement said, "are best made in consultation with the child's doctor, and parents shouldn't be reluctant to have such discussions."
Of course parents shouldn't be reluctant to have this discussion, but they are. I get nasty emails from some pediatricians, and the number-one complaint I get from them is that, because of people like me, they must now "waste" (their word, not mine) precious billing hours talking to layperson parents about vaccine science.
These doctors' hostility is palpable, (and they hopefully represent a minority of pediatricians). And while I cannot imagine ever consulting anyone of such temperament for medical care in the first place, many parents are simply cowed into silence. For them, the CDC suggestion to ask vaccine safety questions at a well-baby visit is laughable, if not risible.
Interestingly, after years of being told that autism is purely genetic, and not some environmentally triggered epidemic, parents now learn that the CDC has begun a massive investigation, called the SEED study, to look at "genetic, environmental and hormonal factors, as well as selected mercury exposures," that cause autism
This is encouraging news, though one can assume that thimerosal is not among those mercury exposures that have been "selected" for study.
But the real problem here is the track record and credibility of the CDC to continue conducting any vaccine safety studies at all. This is not helped when the CDC continues to issue statements such as:
"Top scientists -- with the open-mindedness that characterizes good science -- planned and conducted the highest-quality, large-scale (vaccine safety) studies. No links to autism have been found."
Now, I have no doubt that CDC officials believe these truly were the "highest quality" studies available. But but many scientists, including some who authored the studies, disagree. They say many of the studies were flawed and/or inconclusive.
THE US STUDY
The flagship study was a four-year analysis by the CDC of a large US database called the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). This study, published in the journal Pediatrics, was authored by Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, a visiting researcher from Belgium.
The final, published version of the study found no evidence of a link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism, though earlier analyses - discovered through the Freedom of Information Act - showed remarkable correlations.
At the time, the CDC called it one of the highest quality studies of its kind ever conducted.
But in 2006, Congress asked the National Institutes of Health to convene a special panel to investigate the quality and usefulness of the VSD database - and by extension, the Verstraeten study itself - as a means of investigating such a link.
The panel determined that there were "several serious problems" with the database and the study, including many "weaknesses" and "limitations" that could render certain analyses "uninformative and potentially misleading. "
The NIH Panel was "concerned" about how autism diagnoses were made and recorded by HMOs who take part in the database, and questioned if the HMOs had adequate services for autism families, who might seek care elsewhere. Panelists said these and other problems likely led to an "under-ascertainment" of autism cases in the HMOs.
The panel also cited many problems with the Verstraeten study design. It warned that a "large proportion, around 25%, of births were excluded from the analysis." Panelists wrote that these same children "may represent a susceptible population whose removal from the analysis might unintentionally reduce the ability to detect an effect of thimerosal."
Other "serious problems" were the facts that there was no consideration of pre-natal thimerosal exposures from immune globulin, or "other vaccinations given during pregnancy," (i.e., flu shot), and no accounting for, "the cumulative exposure to organic mercurials through diet or other environmental sources. "
The NIH panel determined that these problems, "reduce the usefulness" of the VSD to prove or disprove a link between thimerosal and autism.
Shortly thereafter, panel chair Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Professor of Public Health at U.C. Davis School of Medicine, told Dan Olmsted (formerly) of UPI that the VSD study "was not the last word... things need to be looked at again, perhaps with different methodology."
And Verstraeten himself said the study proved nothing. In a letter to Pediatrics, he wrote that, "We found no evidence against an association, as a negative study would. On the contrary, additional study is recommended, which is the conclusion to which a neutral study must come."
THE DENMARK STUDIES
Two studies conducted in Denmark are always referred to by the CDC and others when trying to defend the injection of organic mercury into the systems of newborn babies and infants. These are among the best of the "highest quality" studies, we are told, that show no link between vaccines and autism.
The main Denmark study reported that the removal of mercury from vaccines was followed by a sharp increase in reported autism cases. But the authors admitted that much of this increase was possibly due to a major change in the way Denmark counted its autism cases during the study period (switching from inpatient diagnosed cases only, or about 13% of the total, to cases diagnosed in inpatient AND outpatient settings, or 100% of the total).
The CDC touts the high quality of the study, even though the authors cautioned in the study itself that "methodological limitations" - such as the exponential expansion of patients (due to counting both inpatient AND outpatient cases) -- "may have spuriously increased the apparent number of autism cases."
Adding insult to understatement, Dr. Hertz-Piccotto said that, as bad as the VSD study was, the Denmark papers were even worse. "Some studies are stronger than others," she said. "The Verstraeten study was an improvement on other studies, including the two in Denmark, both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs."
THE IOM REPORTS
In 2004, a committee of the Institute of Medicine reviewed the US, Denmark and a few other similar studies (whose methodology have been questioned in other venues including my book, "Evidence of Harm").
The IOM committee relied almost exclusively on large population studies (epidemiology), and virtually ignored the growing body of evidence emerging from clinical, animal and test tube studies from the fields of toxicology, immunology and other scientific disciplines.
(Interestingly, the US Federal Court system has determined that epidemiology alone is "insufficient" when trying to disprove a link between exposures and outcomes in an individual).
The committee concluded that the evidence did not support a vaccine link to autism. But it added that, "We cannot rule out, based on the epidemiology, the possibility that vaccines contribute to autism in some small subset," something that parents have been saying all along.
Finally, in 2005, another panel of the IOM criticized the CDC for a "lack of transparency" in its vaccine safety programs, particularly the VSD database. The IOM panel report noted that a CDC official had testified that some of the original datasets in the Verstraeten study, "had not been archived in a standard manner," and, "may not allow all the re-analyses that one might want to do, or in fact may not be available at all."
This same IOM committee, citing the Federal Information Quality Act, which makes it a felony to intentionally lose or destroy any publicly funded records, recommended that vaccine officials at the CDC's National Immunization Program "seek legal advice."
And despite all of this (and more) the CDC wants us to believe that these studies represent the "highest quality" analyses available.
The leadership of CDC Director Julie Gerberding has been replete with crushing morale depletion, embarrassing media coverage, congressional investigations into Katrina trailers, and a general sense of an agency in decline.
Sadly, the words "CDC" and "highest quality" can rarely be used in the same sentence anymore.
David Kirby
Huffington Post
April 3, 2007
On Wednesday, CNN's Larry King hosted Jenny McCarthy, myself, and several others to discuss the growing evidence of a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The CDC refused to send someone to appear on the show. Instead, on Thursday, the agency issued a statement meant to reassure the American public that all vaccines are safe for all kids.
But the CDC statement only served to show how out of touch the Administration of George (Really? Gas costs 4 dollars?) Bush really is.
A recent government decision to award nine-year-old Hannah Poling taxpayer dollars for her multiple vaccine-induced autism, has left parents anxious and alarmed, especially when their own kid has a pending appointment to receive 5 or more vaccines in one sitting (Hannah had 9 at once).
So the CDC now issues a written statement meant to soothe jittery parents, by saying that "the recommended vaccine schedule is flexible." Such decisions, the friendly announcement said, "are best made in consultation with the child's doctor, and parents shouldn't be reluctant to have such discussions."
Of course parents shouldn't be reluctant to have this discussion, but they are. I get nasty emails from some pediatricians, and the number-one complaint I get from them is that, because of people like me, they must now "waste" (their word, not mine) precious billing hours talking to layperson parents about vaccine science.
These doctors' hostility is palpable, (and they hopefully represent a minority of pediatricians). And while I cannot imagine ever consulting anyone of such temperament for medical care in the first place, many parents are simply cowed into silence. For them, the CDC suggestion to ask vaccine safety questions at a well-baby visit is laughable, if not risible.
Interestingly, after years of being told that autism is purely genetic, and not some environmentally triggered epidemic, parents now learn that the CDC has begun a massive investigation, called the SEED study, to look at "genetic, environmental and hormonal factors, as well as selected mercury exposures," that cause autism
This is encouraging news, though one can assume that thimerosal is not among those mercury exposures that have been "selected" for study.
But the real problem here is the track record and credibility of the CDC to continue conducting any vaccine safety studies at all. This is not helped when the CDC continues to issue statements such as:
"Top scientists -- with the open-mindedness that characterizes good science -- planned and conducted the highest-quality, large-scale (vaccine safety) studies. No links to autism have been found."
Now, I have no doubt that CDC officials believe these truly were the "highest quality" studies available. But but many scientists, including some who authored the studies, disagree. They say many of the studies were flawed and/or inconclusive.
THE US STUDY
The flagship study was a four-year analysis by the CDC of a large US database called the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). This study, published in the journal Pediatrics, was authored by Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, a visiting researcher from Belgium.
The final, published version of the study found no evidence of a link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism, though earlier analyses - discovered through the Freedom of Information Act - showed remarkable correlations.
At the time, the CDC called it one of the highest quality studies of its kind ever conducted.
But in 2006, Congress asked the National Institutes of Health to convene a special panel to investigate the quality and usefulness of the VSD database - and by extension, the Verstraeten study itself - as a means of investigating such a link.
The panel determined that there were "several serious problems" with the database and the study, including many "weaknesses" and "limitations" that could render certain analyses "uninformative and potentially misleading. "
The NIH Panel was "concerned" about how autism diagnoses were made and recorded by HMOs who take part in the database, and questioned if the HMOs had adequate services for autism families, who might seek care elsewhere. Panelists said these and other problems likely led to an "under-ascertainment" of autism cases in the HMOs.
The panel also cited many problems with the Verstraeten study design. It warned that a "large proportion, around 25%, of births were excluded from the analysis." Panelists wrote that these same children "may represent a susceptible population whose removal from the analysis might unintentionally reduce the ability to detect an effect of thimerosal."
Other "serious problems" were the facts that there was no consideration of pre-natal thimerosal exposures from immune globulin, or "other vaccinations given during pregnancy," (i.e., flu shot), and no accounting for, "the cumulative exposure to organic mercurials through diet or other environmental sources. "
The NIH panel determined that these problems, "reduce the usefulness" of the VSD to prove or disprove a link between thimerosal and autism.
Shortly thereafter, panel chair Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Professor of Public Health at U.C. Davis School of Medicine, told Dan Olmsted (formerly) of UPI that the VSD study "was not the last word... things need to be looked at again, perhaps with different methodology."
And Verstraeten himself said the study proved nothing. In a letter to Pediatrics, he wrote that, "We found no evidence against an association, as a negative study would. On the contrary, additional study is recommended, which is the conclusion to which a neutral study must come."
THE DENMARK STUDIES
Two studies conducted in Denmark are always referred to by the CDC and others when trying to defend the injection of organic mercury into the systems of newborn babies and infants. These are among the best of the "highest quality" studies, we are told, that show no link between vaccines and autism.
The main Denmark study reported that the removal of mercury from vaccines was followed by a sharp increase in reported autism cases. But the authors admitted that much of this increase was possibly due to a major change in the way Denmark counted its autism cases during the study period (switching from inpatient diagnosed cases only, or about 13% of the total, to cases diagnosed in inpatient AND outpatient settings, or 100% of the total).
The CDC touts the high quality of the study, even though the authors cautioned in the study itself that "methodological limitations" - such as the exponential expansion of patients (due to counting both inpatient AND outpatient cases) -- "may have spuriously increased the apparent number of autism cases."
Adding insult to understatement, Dr. Hertz-Piccotto said that, as bad as the VSD study was, the Denmark papers were even worse. "Some studies are stronger than others," she said. "The Verstraeten study was an improvement on other studies, including the two in Denmark, both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs."
THE IOM REPORTS
In 2004, a committee of the Institute of Medicine reviewed the US, Denmark and a few other similar studies (whose methodology have been questioned in other venues including my book, "Evidence of Harm").
The IOM committee relied almost exclusively on large population studies (epidemiology), and virtually ignored the growing body of evidence emerging from clinical, animal and test tube studies from the fields of toxicology, immunology and other scientific disciplines.
(Interestingly, the US Federal Court system has determined that epidemiology alone is "insufficient" when trying to disprove a link between exposures and outcomes in an individual).
The committee concluded that the evidence did not support a vaccine link to autism. But it added that, "We cannot rule out, based on the epidemiology, the possibility that vaccines contribute to autism in some small subset," something that parents have been saying all along.
Finally, in 2005, another panel of the IOM criticized the CDC for a "lack of transparency" in its vaccine safety programs, particularly the VSD database. The IOM panel report noted that a CDC official had testified that some of the original datasets in the Verstraeten study, "had not been archived in a standard manner," and, "may not allow all the re-analyses that one might want to do, or in fact may not be available at all."
This same IOM committee, citing the Federal Information Quality Act, which makes it a felony to intentionally lose or destroy any publicly funded records, recommended that vaccine officials at the CDC's National Immunization Program "seek legal advice."
And despite all of this (and more) the CDC wants us to believe that these studies represent the "highest quality" analyses available.
The leadership of CDC Director Julie Gerberding has been replete with crushing morale depletion, embarrassing media coverage, congressional investigations into Katrina trailers, and a general sense of an agency in decline.
Sadly, the words "CDC" and "highest quality" can rarely be used in the same sentence anymore.
April 2, 2008
Jenny McCarthy and David Kirby on Larry King
Tonight was another hallmark in the national vaccine/autism debate.
Never before has there been REAL debate.
A pissed off autism mom, a smart investigative journalist asking the hard question, an experienced pediatrician frustrated with his own profession, all face to face with hard core denial doctors like Harvey Karp and my pal David Tayloe who does not believe that vaccine injury even exists, and does not know how to read vaccine safety package inserts.
I have never seen David Kirby, usually the mellow, middle ground man, calling for more study, and 'let's see where things go', be so passionate. "The Debate Is Over"!
The very mature and measured Jon Poling could only shake his head at the AAP doctors misinformation.
Jay Gordon was clearly working hard to hold back his annoyance with his own AAP's party line and their lack of ability to reason beyond "vaccines good... make public health good...", to the varying health needs of individual children.
I have to guess that the Kirton's were booked on the show to make the 'genetics' point, and I have to wonder if they were disappointed when John Kirton said the word, "vaccines".
And then there is Jenny... shouting "Bullshit"!
And then there is my husband and me, jumping up and down in our living room!!!!
NOW the main event has started!
I want 10 more shows like this, but with fewer guest and with Larry asking questions that progress the debate a little better. ("Why do you keep having children?" Seriously Larry?)
Let me say outright, I cannot imagine for the life of me why the AAP has chosen David Tayloe as their new chief. He is a PR nightmare for them! In the current climate, when every day more and more parents quit vaccinating all together, choosing a dinosaur like Tayloe who is stuck in the 1950's polio epidemic, and who does not seem to notice that the threats to children's health have dramatically changed in the last half century, is just plain stupid.
I am going to say something here... and it will be the most harsh thing I have ever said about anyone on this blog before, but it needs to be said.
Dr. Tayloe said that in his practice that has seen 100,000 patients that he has never referred one person to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. If he has never seen a serious vaccine injury, it is not because he has not come across one, it is because he has his head up his ass.
Tayloe is just dangerous.
This man has GOT to be removed from the position that he has been elected to before he takes office. I would take Karp in a second over this guy. Karp was wrong, but he wasn't crazy person saying insane things with a smile wrong.
Jay Gordon gives me hope that there are doctors out their who recognize that we have gone to far with vaccines and it is time to re-examine.
RISE UP WISE AND COMPETENT PEDIATRICIANS EVERYWHERE! RISE UP! Who do you want to take recommendations from, Jay Gordon, or David "The Dinosaur" Tayloe?
I know I am biased, way biased, but our guys won and the other guys just looked foolish.
Question of the evening goes to David Kirby who exposed the AAP docs for the close minded relics that they are:
David Kirby: "There is a bill in congress to study vaccinated v. unvaccinated populations in this country. Doctor would you support that legislation?"
David Tayloe: "Please allow me to talk around the answer by saying something politically correct but not going on record for supporting the legislation."
Jenny McCarthy: "Will you support the vaccinated v. unvaccinated study?"
David Tayloe: "We support lots of things, like flowers, and lemon drops and My Little Pony."
Yeah... they don't support that legislation.
The quote of the evening goes to David Tayloe who, when Jenny pointed to the chart of 36 vaccines and asked, "Do we really need ALL of these?", nodded his head and replied, and this is really great... listen to this:
"They're recommended!"
Well Doctor Tayloe... if 12 guys in Atlanta who tell mom's with good questions like, "Why don't you make a recommendation for pregnant women to receive only thimerosal free flu shots?", to sit down and stop asking questions in public vaccine policy meetings designed to let the public ask questions, then dammit... that is good enough for me! Bring on the vaccines!
36 Vaccines! It's Recommended!
(Check this space for more footage when I get around to it.)
[UPDATE: OMG! Turns out the Vaccine Injury Compensation Court exists in part due to the 3.5 million dollar malpractice suit that Dr. David Tayloe lost in 1985 when a child he gave the DPT shot to magically got permanent brain injury!! That Asshole just got on TV and implied that he had never SEEN a vaccine injury in his practice!!!
Here is what he said:
Tayloe: "I have yet to see a patient who I sent to the compensation program because I thought they had a permanent injury. Extremely rare."
He lost 3.5 million dollar lawsuit, apparently one of the biggest awards ever, the year before the vaccine court was created!
And then BRAGGS about not sending any other children to the injury program?!
And having a court force him for giving a shot to a kid who could not handle it was still not enough to teach him the lesson that not all vaccines are safe for every child, because he went on the Today show and said that ALL VACCINES ARE SAFE FOR EVERY CHILD!!!!
AAP you have lost your collective mind putting this man in charge!? Are you kidding me!!!! I think I am gonna have an aneurysm.
[More UPDATES: Gotten more information that this may have been Tayloe's father David Tayloe Sr. Which would make David Tayloe Jr. a little less evil, but sill evil. I am trying to confirm details but I am traveling today and only have like 10 more minutes of wifi.]
[YET MORE UPDATES: Thanks for your patience as I got reconnected after a day of travel. I got an email from someone Tayloe went to med school with that says this was his father. In thinking about where to adjust my judgmentalism meter, I think that I will retract my declaration that he is an asshole, and say that he is a dangerous, foolish man.
A jury told his own father that he was more than three million dollars worth of wrong for administering a shot that plunged a boy into brain damage, and he learned nothing from it, continuing to claim that 'all vaccines are safe for every child', and that there is no such thing as serious vaccine injury. (or maybe, but barely ever, as his statement last week was that there was not "any relationship between vaccines and permanent injury", and this week he has downgraded his stance to "extremely rare".) Even though it was not directly his, he should still know better because of his father's legacy.]
Info on David Tayloe's Malpractice Suit [HT: Kevin Barry]:
Never before has there been REAL debate.
A pissed off autism mom, a smart investigative journalist asking the hard question, an experienced pediatrician frustrated with his own profession, all face to face with hard core denial doctors like Harvey Karp and my pal David Tayloe who does not believe that vaccine injury even exists, and does not know how to read vaccine safety package inserts.
I have never seen David Kirby, usually the mellow, middle ground man, calling for more study, and 'let's see where things go', be so passionate. "The Debate Is Over"!
The very mature and measured Jon Poling could only shake his head at the AAP doctors misinformation.
Jay Gordon was clearly working hard to hold back his annoyance with his own AAP's party line and their lack of ability to reason beyond "vaccines good... make public health good...", to the varying health needs of individual children.
I have to guess that the Kirton's were booked on the show to make the 'genetics' point, and I have to wonder if they were disappointed when John Kirton said the word, "vaccines".
And then there is Jenny... shouting "Bullshit"!
And then there is my husband and me, jumping up and down in our living room!!!!
NOW the main event has started!
I want 10 more shows like this, but with fewer guest and with Larry asking questions that progress the debate a little better. ("Why do you keep having children?" Seriously Larry?)
Let me say outright, I cannot imagine for the life of me why the AAP has chosen David Tayloe as their new chief. He is a PR nightmare for them! In the current climate, when every day more and more parents quit vaccinating all together, choosing a dinosaur like Tayloe who is stuck in the 1950's polio epidemic, and who does not seem to notice that the threats to children's health have dramatically changed in the last half century, is just plain stupid.
I am going to say something here... and it will be the most harsh thing I have ever said about anyone on this blog before, but it needs to be said.
Dr. Tayloe said that in his practice that has seen 100,000 patients that he has never referred one person to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. If he has never seen a serious vaccine injury, it is not because he has not come across one, it is because he has his head up his ass.
Tayloe is just dangerous.
This man has GOT to be removed from the position that he has been elected to before he takes office. I would take Karp in a second over this guy. Karp was wrong, but he wasn't crazy person saying insane things with a smile wrong.
Jay Gordon gives me hope that there are doctors out their who recognize that we have gone to far with vaccines and it is time to re-examine.
RISE UP WISE AND COMPETENT PEDIATRICIANS EVERYWHERE! RISE UP! Who do you want to take recommendations from, Jay Gordon, or David "The Dinosaur" Tayloe?
I know I am biased, way biased, but our guys won and the other guys just looked foolish.
Question of the evening goes to David Kirby who exposed the AAP docs for the close minded relics that they are:
David Kirby: "There is a bill in congress to study vaccinated v. unvaccinated populations in this country. Doctor would you support that legislation?"
David Tayloe: "Please allow me to talk around the answer by saying something politically correct but not going on record for supporting the legislation."
Jenny McCarthy: "Will you support the vaccinated v. unvaccinated study?"
David Tayloe: "We support lots of things, like flowers, and lemon drops and My Little Pony."
Yeah... they don't support that legislation.
The quote of the evening goes to David Tayloe who, when Jenny pointed to the chart of 36 vaccines and asked, "Do we really need ALL of these?", nodded his head and replied, and this is really great... listen to this:
"They're recommended!"
Well Doctor Tayloe... if 12 guys in Atlanta who tell mom's with good questions like, "Why don't you make a recommendation for pregnant women to receive only thimerosal free flu shots?", to sit down and stop asking questions in public vaccine policy meetings designed to let the public ask questions, then dammit... that is good enough for me! Bring on the vaccines!
36 Vaccines! It's Recommended!
(Check this space for more footage when I get around to it.)
[UPDATE: OMG! Turns out the Vaccine Injury Compensation Court exists in part due to the 3.5 million dollar malpractice suit that Dr. David Tayloe lost in 1985 when a child he gave the DPT shot to magically got permanent brain injury!! That Asshole just got on TV and implied that he had never SEEN a vaccine injury in his practice!!!
Here is what he said:
Tayloe: "I have yet to see a patient who I sent to the compensation program because I thought they had a permanent injury. Extremely rare."
He lost 3.5 million dollar lawsuit, apparently one of the biggest awards ever, the year before the vaccine court was created!
And then BRAGGS about not sending any other children to the injury program?!
And having a court force him for giving a shot to a kid who could not handle it was still not enough to teach him the lesson that not all vaccines are safe for every child, because he went on the Today show and said that ALL VACCINES ARE SAFE FOR EVERY CHILD!!!!
AAP you have lost your collective mind putting this man in charge!? Are you kidding me!!!! I think I am gonna have an aneurysm.
[More UPDATES: Gotten more information that this may have been Tayloe's father David Tayloe Sr. Which would make David Tayloe Jr. a little less evil, but sill evil. I am trying to confirm details but I am traveling today and only have like 10 more minutes of wifi.]
[YET MORE UPDATES: Thanks for your patience as I got reconnected after a day of travel. I got an email from someone Tayloe went to med school with that says this was his father. In thinking about where to adjust my judgmentalism meter, I think that I will retract my declaration that he is an asshole, and say that he is a dangerous, foolish man.
A jury told his own father that he was more than three million dollars worth of wrong for administering a shot that plunged a boy into brain damage, and he learned nothing from it, continuing to claim that 'all vaccines are safe for every child', and that there is no such thing as serious vaccine injury. (or maybe, but barely ever, as his statement last week was that there was not "any relationship between vaccines and permanent injury", and this week he has downgraded his stance to "extremely rare".) Even though it was not directly his, he should still know better because of his father's legacy.]
Info on David Tayloe's Malpractice Suit [HT: Kevin Barry]:
Medical Malpractice/Negligent Administration of the DPT Vaccine
$3,500,000 Jury Verdict, May 1, 1985
The Minor Plaintiff, Bernard Forehand, Jr., was seriously injured when the Defendant Pediatrician's Nurse failed to communicate to the Defendant Pediatrician, David Tayloe that the Minor Plaintiff had an adverse reaction to the first vaccination shot. The administration of the second shot left the Minor Plaintiff with a significant brain injury. The Defendant Pediatrician, David Tayloe, who at that time was the President of the National Pediatric Association, strenuously fought this case all the way to a jury verdict. On May 1, 1985, the jury handed down what was at that time the largest jury verdict in a medical malpractice case in the State of North Carolina, in the sum of 3.5 million dollars.
***********
Following is a newsletter article that I (Barbara Loe Fisher) wrote in the summer of 1985 on the Forehand lawsuit:
"In May, a North Carolina jury in the Wilmington U.S. District Court decided that David Tayloe, M.D. and T. Frank Stallings, M.D., of Washington Pediatrics, P.A., were guilty of medical malpractice in the pertussis vaccine-induced brain damage suffered by Beau Forehand, Jr. The child was awarded $3.5 million in compensatory damages by the jury but the judge overturned the verdict and it was appealed.
It was the highest medical malpractice award in North Carolina history. Beau was represented by attorneys Anne Werum Lambright and Richard Polling of the Charleston West Virginia firm of Preiser and Wilson. The defense claimed that the two doctors were following the vaccination guidelines contained in the American Academy of Pediatrics 1970's "Red Book" which was in effect at the time Beau Forehand received his first DPT shot in January of 1974.
Beau reacted to his first short with a 103 degree fever and inconsolable crying, which his mother reported to the doctors. Six weeks later, Beau had a febrile seizure and was hospitalized. However, despite the reaction to his first shot and the subsequent seizure, he was given another DPT shot even though he had a cold and a slight fever at the time of the second vaccination. Within three hours of his second DPT shot he went into a major seizure and has had an uncontrolled seizure disorder ever since. He was left with severe mental retardation.
The 1970 RedBook did not list inconsolable crying, a fever of 103 degrees, a history of convulsions or a cold at the time of vaccination as contraindications to the pertussis vaccine. Attorney Lambright stated that the jury's verdict in the case sent a clear message to physicians that "The American Academy of Pediatrics Red Book should not be used as the sole guide to contraindications or adverse reactions to vaccines. The basic premise in the Forehand case is that doctors have to use their common sense, medical training, skill, knowledge and experience to make appropriate determinations for vaccination on a case by case basis."
If the jury's verdict is upheld on appeal, the Forehand case will be an important precedent-setting case. It would mean that individual physicians are responsible for obtaining knowledge and making decisions about the advisability of vaccination in individual cases which go beyond automatic reliance on the recommendations listed by the AAP or the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Examples of additional information available to physicians are the vaccine manufacturer's product inserts included in vaccine packages. which historically have listed more contraindications than those listed by either the AAP or ACIP, and the more than 40 years of scientific literature on the subject."
In a Winter 1986 newsletter, I wrote:
"On September 18, 1986, Forehand V. Tayloe and Stallings was settled for $1.1 million in North Carolina. A North Carolina jury had concluded that two pediatricians were negligent in the pertussis vaccine induced brain damage of Beau Forehand, Jr. and had awarded the boy and his parents $3.3 million. The judge overturned the verdict and the case was appealed on behalf of Beau by the law firm of Preiser and Wilson, of Charleston, West Virginia, before the Sept. 18 settlement ended the lawsuit."
BRIEF VACCINE INJURY COMPENSATION SYSTEM (VICP) BACKGROUND:
The Forehand settlement was one of a series of DPT vaccine malpractice cases against negligent physicians, as well as a few high profile punitive damage awards for DPT vaccine brain damage that went against vaccine manufacturers between 1981-1985 which persuaded Congress that both drug companies making vaccines and doctors giving vaccines should be protected from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths. The vaccine manufacturers threatened to leave the country with no vaccine if they did not get protection. Doctors threatened to stop giving vaccines if they weren't protected. Both doctors and the companies wanted a federal compensation system that banned all vaccine injury lawsuits for all time. We fought for protection of the right to access the civil justice system to sue companies or doctors if the child was turned down for federal compensation or offered too little or if it could be proved the vaccine manufacturer engaged in criminal fraud or gross negligence in the manufacture the vaccine or the doctor did the same in administering the vaccine.
I hope this is helpful.
Best,
Barbara Loe Fisher
March 26, 2008
My Friend's Pediatrician: Jenny McCarthy's Son Never Had Autism
I got an interesting call yesterday. A friend of mine, who has read Jenny McCarthy's book, took her healthy baby into the pediatrician and began asking questions about vaccine safety. Her doctor got annoyed and told her that they were safe and had no link to autism.
Then she mentioned Jenny McCarty. "Medical people do not like Jenny McCarthy", my friend said to me.
Her doctor, now much more annoyed, then told her that Jenny's son Evan was not autistic, he was epileptic.
(I suppose since they can't argue with Evan's recovery, they want to argue that he was never had autism to begin with?)
She didn't believe the doc, and I further told her what the evaluation process is like to try to get services for a child in California (we were living there when Chandler regressed). An autism diagnosis costs the state a great deal of money (I added it up once and Chandler got almost $100,000 worth of services from the state that year), and they don't give 299.0s (the diagnostic code for autism) out capriciously.
So I am curious about this... is this the denial process of just one doctor, or was this information offered to said doc as some sort of 'talking points to counter the McCarthy vaccine backlash'.
Has anyone else heard anything like this from the medical professionals in their life?
Then she mentioned Jenny McCarty. "Medical people do not like Jenny McCarthy", my friend said to me.
Her doctor, now much more annoyed, then told her that Jenny's son Evan was not autistic, he was epileptic.
(I suppose since they can't argue with Evan's recovery, they want to argue that he was never had autism to begin with?)
She didn't believe the doc, and I further told her what the evaluation process is like to try to get services for a child in California (we were living there when Chandler regressed). An autism diagnosis costs the state a great deal of money (I added it up once and Chandler got almost $100,000 worth of services from the state that year), and they don't give 299.0s (the diagnostic code for autism) out capriciously.
So I am curious about this... is this the denial process of just one doctor, or was this information offered to said doc as some sort of 'talking points to counter the McCarthy vaccine backlash'.
Has anyone else heard anything like this from the medical professionals in their life?
March 25, 2008
Horton Hears An "Ow", And Swats It Down Right Quick
Props again to Jim and Jenny for putting the kibosh on New Mexico's plan to vaccinate kids at the movies.
Again... vaccinations=medications, not popcorn. Our lives stand as a living testament that they are not one size fits all. Vaccines should be given only after a full review of a child's medical history and a checkup on the current state of their health.
I don't know any parents who go to the movies with their kids medical records in tow.
Again... vaccinations=medications, not popcorn. Our lives stand as a living testament that they are not one size fits all. Vaccines should be given only after a full review of a child's medical history and a checkup on the current state of their health.
I don't know any parents who go to the movies with their kids medical records in tow.
March 20, 2008
Jenny McCarthy on The Hour
So apparently The White House called Jenny and asked her to tell people to stop calling.
Apparently Jenny didn't feel like passing on the message because I have not heard her to tell us to stop calling.
When George Bush fires Julie Gerberding and shows up at a DAN conference with the new head of the CDC, then we can stop calling.
202-456-1414
Apparently Jenny didn't feel like passing on the message because I have not heard her to tell us to stop calling.
When George Bush fires Julie Gerberding and shows up at a DAN conference with the new head of the CDC, then we can stop calling.
202-456-1414
March 14, 2008
March 7, 2008
Jenny McCarthy Calls For Julie Gerberding's Resignation
And she is not alone.
A number of different people have been calling for her ouster for a while now. Most significantly many from inside the CDC
A number of different people have been calling for her ouster for a while now. Most significantly many from inside the CDC
I’m asking all parents and autism groups to join me in demanding Julie Gerberding’s immediate resignation as Director of the CDC.
On Monday, March 10th, beginning at 9:00am Eastern Daylight Time, let’s all start calling the White House and ask President Bush & Laura Bush to demand Julie Gerberding’s resignation for incompetence during the autism epidemic. The White House switchboard can be reached at:
202-456-1414
Also, on the same day, please call your local Congressperson and Senators from your state and ask them to call for her resignation, too.
Julie Gerberding has led the CDC for 6 years during a time when the autism epidemic has only gotten worse. Despite tens of thousands of children who declined just like Hannah Poling, Ms. Gerberding stood before cameras yesterday defiant, cold, and defensive. Where is her humanity in the face of such tragedy? Why couldn’t she have said, “We at CDC want to make sure what happened to Hannah doesn’t happen to any other children, we want to make vaccines safe”?
Rather than listen to the heartbreaking stories of so many parents, you can be sure that Ms. Gerberding is spending her time right now trying to get the Spin Machine up and running to minimize, confuse, and deceive the American public.
The autism epidemic won’t end until we fix the vaccine schedule by reducing total vaccines, separating shots, waiting until our kids are older to begin shots, greening our vaccines, and screening for at-risk kids. Ms Gerberding has stood by and watched self-interested parties more than triple our vaccine schedule and I’m certain her inactivity to help our kids will continue.
The chances of Ms. Gerberding taking the radical steps to reform the CDC and reform our vaccine schedule to make it kid-safe are zero! We need a new CDC Director who is an open-minded reformer and who recognizes that we are experiencing an epidemic of autism, which Ms. Gerberding has never publicly admitted.
Please, parents and national autism organizations, let’s all help make our voices heard on Monday.
Thank you,
Jenny McCarthy
February 21, 2008
Jenny Goes To Atlanta And She Wants Us To Come!
Sign up and let her know you are coming.
See you in Atlanta!
UPDATE: I won't be seeing you in Atlanta. Too many people are coming and they won't fit in front of the CDC any more. So things are moving up to DC. Proposed date June 4th.
Stay tuned for updates.
See you in DC!
February 15, 2008
AAP Has To Search For Autism Parents Who Support Vaccination
The PR department of the American Academy of Pediatrics, concerned with all the bad press that vaccines are getting since Jenny hit the talk shows and Eli hit prime time, have put out a call to find parents who can counter the message of parents like be who believe that vaccines triggered their child's regression into autism.
The outspoken JB Handley of Generation Rescue responds to the architect of this manufactured PR blitz (while it is still in the manufacturing stage) by calling attention to the fact that while she needs head hunters to find her parents to make vaccination look appealing, all you have to do to find parents who can tell the story of the destruction that vaccination has brought into their family is to swing a dead cat.
As has now become the norm in this country, rather than taking responsibility for bad practices, dangerous policies and harmful products, the AAP adopts the corporate model of 'why fix the problem when a PR campaign is so much cheaper and easier!'
I wonder how hard Ms. Martin would have to look to find parents who not only had a sympathetic story to tell about why everyone should vaccinate, but to find parents like those of us who have spent thousands of (unpaid) hours on trying to get their vaccine message out. Because those of us with autistic, vaccine injured children who have become active activists are kind of everywhere. We can't leave home too often to give interviews, and writing is our best tool, but we are everywhere.
I am reproducing Handley's article in full, and I will add this to his comments:
Dear Ms. Martin,
You and the AAP need to realize that continuing on the course of denying your blinding love affair with vaccines combined with the permanent damage to our kids health from over vaccinating them (both of which are readily apparent to anyone with eyes) is destroying your credibility very quickly.
Conversations on the playground between mothers about their children's health is not, "Well the AAP says vaccines are safe, thank goodness. I am going to stop by today and get a flu shot for Johnny". They are about your conflicts of interest, your failure to take the questions asked by parents seriously, and "I am not going back to Dr. Smith because he yelled at me when i asked him if getting 4 shots at once was safe for my three month old baby. Do you know of a pediatrician who is OK with not vaccinating on schedule or at all?"
No one disagrees that viral infections suck, but no one on the playground knows any children who have died or suffered long term problems from getting a viral infection. Sadly, most of those mom's saw what happened to little Jimmy with their own eyes. He looked completely normal to them last month, and now, after being vaccinated and getting a little sick right after, Jimmy can't come to the playground any more because he is in therapy and will be for the rest of his childhood. And many of them have sat and cried at the kitchen table with Jimmy's mom who thought she was doing the right thing when she gave him all his shots, and doesn't understand why her pediatrician keeps saying that they could have nothing to do with his autism. Isn't it as obvious to him as it is to her and everyone else who knew Jimmy before?
Please, stop playing PR games and face the problem. Too many vaccines, too close together, not tested in combination, given to soon, to children who have no medical history and are not screened in advance to see if they have a healthy enough immune system to handle the vaccines, is adding up to tens of thousands of children with life long health problems and developmental disabilities.
The AAP has over estimated what children could handle and it is time to roll back the vaccine program and put common sense safety measures in place.
And Please... Please... stop your pediatricians from sticking their heads in the sand and ignoring vaccine reactions in children. Unexplained fevers and crying for three months is not something that just happens. Years of constipation and bowel problems cannot be explained away with, "some kids are just like that". The answers that my pediatricians gave me when I raised these concerns with them about my child were malpractice and they were fed to them by you.
After Chandler was diagnosed and I went back into my ped with all my research and tried to get him to read the safety and risk information on the actual package insert on the first vaccine my child reacted to. Although he was nice about it, he told me he didn't have time to read what I had to give him because he could barely keep up with all that you had to give him. When I asked him, 'who do i talk to about this then', he said, 'Talk to the AAP, I go by their direction'.
But you don't listen to me. Who cares if I raise reasonable and important questions about the shoddy research you use to promote vaccine safety and can offer you video tapes of my son before and after his 18 month vaccination/autistic regression, right?
After all, I am just another "scientifically illiterate" and "desperate" parent looking for someone to blame for my son's autism.
(Wait a minute, so if the public is supposed to dismiss autism parents stories about vaccine triggering their children's regression because those parents are emotional and not scientific experts, then shouldn't the public also be dismissing the stories of the parents that you are planning on trotting out because their tragedy has made them emotional and they are not scientific experts? Are people supposed to be listening to parents anecdotal stories or not... I am confused...)
I stopped listing to you when you stopped listening to me. Parents are asking questions, lots and lots of parents. If you stop listening to those questions, and pass on giving real answers, not thinly veiled BS flackery, but truthful and earnest answers, they are all going to stop listening to you too.
Admit that there is a problem and fix it. Any other faux solution, like this stupid PR move, is just throwing your time and money, and many children, down a black hole.
Sincerely,
Ginger Taylor, M.S.
AdventuresInAutism.com
From: Susan Martin (ssmartin@aap.org)
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 2:29 PM
To: SPOKESPERSONS@LISTSERV.AAP.ORG
Subject: parent spokespersons
Hello,
As part of our ongoing response to media stories regarding autism and vaccines, the AAP communications department is compiling a list of parents who support the AAP and are available for interviews. We are looking for two types of parents who could serve as spokespersons:
Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders who support immunization and who do not believe there is any link between their child’s vaccines and his or her autism.
Parents of children who suffered a vaccine-preventable illness. This could be a parent who declined immunization, whose child became ill before a vaccine was available, or whose child was ineligible for immunization.
We are asking for your help identifying parents who would be good spokespersons. They do not need to be expert public speakers. They just need to be open with their story and interested in speaking out on the issue. We will contact candidates in advance to conduct pre-interviews, to offer guidance on talking to reporters and to obtain a signed waiver giving us permission to release their name.
If a parent were placed on our list, we would offer their name and contact information to select media. We hope to build a list of parents from a wide range of geographical areas.
As the Jenny McCarthy and “Eli Stone” stories illustrate, this issue is likely to recur in the national and local media. The AAP is committed to doing all we can to counter such erroneous reports with factual information supported by scientific evidence and AAP recommendations.
The anti-vaccine groups often have emotional family stories on their side. The ability to offer a reporter an interview with a similarly compelling parent who is sympathetic to the AAP’s goals is a powerful tool for our media relations program.
Please contact me if you have any questions or to suggest a parent to interview.
Thank you,
Susan Stevens Martin
Director, Division of Media Relations
American Academy of Pediatrics
847.434.7131
The outspoken JB Handley of Generation Rescue responds to the architect of this manufactured PR blitz (while it is still in the manufacturing stage) by calling attention to the fact that while she needs head hunters to find her parents to make vaccination look appealing, all you have to do to find parents who can tell the story of the destruction that vaccination has brought into their family is to swing a dead cat.
As has now become the norm in this country, rather than taking responsibility for bad practices, dangerous policies and harmful products, the AAP adopts the corporate model of 'why fix the problem when a PR campaign is so much cheaper and easier!'
I wonder how hard Ms. Martin would have to look to find parents who not only had a sympathetic story to tell about why everyone should vaccinate, but to find parents like those of us who have spent thousands of (unpaid) hours on trying to get their vaccine message out. Because those of us with autistic, vaccine injured children who have become active activists are kind of everywhere. We can't leave home too often to give interviews, and writing is our best tool, but we are everywhere.
I am reproducing Handley's article in full, and I will add this to his comments:
Dear Ms. Martin,
You and the AAP need to realize that continuing on the course of denying your blinding love affair with vaccines combined with the permanent damage to our kids health from over vaccinating them (both of which are readily apparent to anyone with eyes) is destroying your credibility very quickly.
Conversations on the playground between mothers about their children's health is not, "Well the AAP says vaccines are safe, thank goodness. I am going to stop by today and get a flu shot for Johnny". They are about your conflicts of interest, your failure to take the questions asked by parents seriously, and "I am not going back to Dr. Smith because he yelled at me when i asked him if getting 4 shots at once was safe for my three month old baby. Do you know of a pediatrician who is OK with not vaccinating on schedule or at all?"
No one disagrees that viral infections suck, but no one on the playground knows any children who have died or suffered long term problems from getting a viral infection. Sadly, most of those mom's saw what happened to little Jimmy with their own eyes. He looked completely normal to them last month, and now, after being vaccinated and getting a little sick right after, Jimmy can't come to the playground any more because he is in therapy and will be for the rest of his childhood. And many of them have sat and cried at the kitchen table with Jimmy's mom who thought she was doing the right thing when she gave him all his shots, and doesn't understand why her pediatrician keeps saying that they could have nothing to do with his autism. Isn't it as obvious to him as it is to her and everyone else who knew Jimmy before?
Please, stop playing PR games and face the problem. Too many vaccines, too close together, not tested in combination, given to soon, to children who have no medical history and are not screened in advance to see if they have a healthy enough immune system to handle the vaccines, is adding up to tens of thousands of children with life long health problems and developmental disabilities.
The AAP has over estimated what children could handle and it is time to roll back the vaccine program and put common sense safety measures in place.
And Please... Please... stop your pediatricians from sticking their heads in the sand and ignoring vaccine reactions in children. Unexplained fevers and crying for three months is not something that just happens. Years of constipation and bowel problems cannot be explained away with, "some kids are just like that". The answers that my pediatricians gave me when I raised these concerns with them about my child were malpractice and they were fed to them by you.
After Chandler was diagnosed and I went back into my ped with all my research and tried to get him to read the safety and risk information on the actual package insert on the first vaccine my child reacted to. Although he was nice about it, he told me he didn't have time to read what I had to give him because he could barely keep up with all that you had to give him. When I asked him, 'who do i talk to about this then', he said, 'Talk to the AAP, I go by their direction'.
But you don't listen to me. Who cares if I raise reasonable and important questions about the shoddy research you use to promote vaccine safety and can offer you video tapes of my son before and after his 18 month vaccination/autistic regression, right?
After all, I am just another "scientifically illiterate" and "desperate" parent looking for someone to blame for my son's autism.
(Wait a minute, so if the public is supposed to dismiss autism parents stories about vaccine triggering their children's regression because those parents are emotional and not scientific experts, then shouldn't the public also be dismissing the stories of the parents that you are planning on trotting out because their tragedy has made them emotional and they are not scientific experts? Are people supposed to be listening to parents anecdotal stories or not... I am confused...)
I stopped listing to you when you stopped listening to me. Parents are asking questions, lots and lots of parents. If you stop listening to those questions, and pass on giving real answers, not thinly veiled BS flackery, but truthful and earnest answers, they are all going to stop listening to you too.
Admit that there is a problem and fix it. Any other faux solution, like this stupid PR move, is just throwing your time and money, and many children, down a black hole.
Sincerely,
Ginger Taylor, M.S.
AdventuresInAutism.com
AAP WAGS THE DOG: FIND US SOME SICK KIDS PRONTO!
American Academy of Pediatricians email reveals panic and new low in “media planning.” (Full email at end of post.)
By J.B. Handley
Dear Ms. Martin:
I understand you are the Director of Media Relations for the American Academy of Pediatrics. I read your email of February 13th to medical practitioners (that I have included below in its entirety) describing a nationwide search for parents that, in your words, fit one of two profiles. First:
“Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders who support immunization and who do not believe there is any link between their child’s vaccines and his or her autism.”
Second:
“Parents of children who suffered a vaccine-preventable illness. This could be a parent who declined immunization, whose child became ill before a vaccine was available, or whose child was ineligible for immunization.”
Apparently, you are trying to establish connections with these families because:
“The anti-vaccine groups often have emotional family stories on their side. The ability to offer a reporter an interview with a similarly compelling parent who is sympathetic to the AAP’s goals is a powerful tool for our media relations program.”
It sounds like you have a system in place to prepare these parents to meet the media, according to your email:
“We will contact candidates in advance to conduct pre-interviews, to offer guidance on talking to reporters and to obtain a signed waiver giving us permission to release their name.”
As the father of an autistic child and the leader of a national autism organization, I found myself sitting at my desk, my chin nearly hitting the floor, in stunned astonishment as I read your email. Where, exactly, has the AAP’s humanity and moral compass gone?
Ms. Martin, let me give you a little insight into my world. If I wanted to find parents who had autistic children and who believed their child’s autism was impacted by vaccines, I wouldn’t need to email the nation’s pediatricians hoping I might find one or two. I could just open my window and yell, because these parents are everywhere in my neighborhood and town! Worse, our numbers continue to grow.
You see, not a day goes by without Generation Rescue receiving an email from a new parent who watched their child decline following a vaccination appointment with their pediatrician. While you search for the handful of parents with autistic children who may support immunizations, we can’t respond to emails fast enough from the thousands we hear from who feel vaccines contributed to their child’s autism. You may think our organizations have some sort of well-orchestrated system for having “emotional family stories” teed up for reporters. What’s actually true is that within a phone call or two, any reporter worth their salt could find parents anywhere in the country who feel exactly like I do.
And, that gets us right back to the problem with your organization as many of us see it. When Generation Rescue rented a booth at your national convention 2 years ago, we were stunned by how many AAP members came to our booth, quietly mentioned that they supported what we were doing, and encouraged us to keep fighting for the kids.
Let me repeat that: Hundreds of your members congratulated my organization for fighting for the kids!
Meanwhile, employees of the AAP like yourself have your head in the sand:
Where is the media story of the AAP sounding the alarm that the prevalence of autism continues to rise?
Where is the media story of the AAP digging into the growing number of stories of children recovering from autism?
Where is the AAP when parents return to the pediatrician and explain to the doctors they trust that their child disappeared after receiving multiple vaccines?
Where is the AAP to help protect our kids from a growing, devastating epidemic of Autism, ADHD, PDD-NOS, asthma, food allergies, learning disorders, and other autoimmune issues?
You are nowhere.
You are looking for the needle in the haystack parent with the autistic child who supports vaccines.
You are looking for the parent with the illness to exploit to scare the masses.
What you should be looking for, Ms. Martin, is your own soul, which you seem to have lost somewhere along the way. Worse, particularly if you are a parent yourself, you also seem to have lost the ability to listen to the parents and to put the needs of our kids first.
Shame on you, Ms. Martin, for planning such blatant manipulation of the media.
Shame on you for being part of an organization that has done nothing to respond to the growing epidemic of autism.
Shame on you and your organization for never exploring the growing body of stories of recovered children.
With deep disappointment and disgust,
JB Handley
Co-Founder
Generation Rescue
JB Handley is Co-Founder of Generation Rescue and Editor at Large for Age of Autism.
September 30, 2007
TACA Offers A Guide To Your Journey With Autism
Jenny has brought biomedical autism treatment to the forefront of the country's mind, and my blog stats are through the roof, so for all those parents and friends that are new to the world of autism treatment, I wanted to point you in TACA's direction.
Talk About Curing Autism, the group that Jenny McCarthy represents, has a get started guide that my husband and I wish had existed when we started out on this journey three years ago. It covers all the bases.
It is a great one stop for what you need to know to get your child the help they need. If you are the friend or family member of someone with a child with autism, get one for them and one for yourself. They will need lots of help in the journey, and you can't claim that you really love them if you don't shoulder their burden.
Talk About Curing Autism, the group that Jenny McCarthy represents, has a get started guide that my husband and I wish had existed when we started out on this journey three years ago. It covers all the bases.
It is a great one stop for what you need to know to get your child the help they need. If you are the friend or family member of someone with a child with autism, get one for them and one for yourself. They will need lots of help in the journey, and you can't claim that you really love them if you don't shoulder their burden.
September 25, 2007
America, Meet Your Unvaccinated Kids
The Rescue Post is calling your attention again to the first study of vaccinated v. unvaccinated children and their risk for disorders like Autism, ADHD, Asthma and the like. The study was released in June and ignored by the mainstream media.
Those of you who are here because you saw Jenny MCCarthy, our new autism spokes mom, on the tele should take a look at the survey.
If you vaccinated your son, they have a %155 higher chance of having a neurological disorder had you chosen not to vaccinate.
The question that we have been screaming at the CDC for years, and they will not answer, is this:
Are we trading curable communicable diseases for incurable neurological diseases by over vaccinating our children, and by not screening to see which children cannot tolerate vaccination.
Those of you who are here because you saw Jenny MCCarthy, our new autism spokes mom, on the tele should take a look at the survey.
If you vaccinated your son, they have a %155 higher chance of having a neurological disorder had you chosen not to vaccinate.
The question that we have been screaming at the CDC for years, and they will not answer, is this:
Are we trading curable communicable diseases for incurable neurological diseases by over vaccinating our children, and by not screening to see which children cannot tolerate vaccination.
September 19, 2007
Jenny McCarthy on Oprah: Vaccine Injury Finally
(Update 2009 - This has become a very popular blog post, especially for those who are looking for information on just what Jenny McCarthy is talking about when she writes about vaccine injury and autism treatment. Much disinformation is out there on what she is 'preaching'.
No she is not advocating the abandonment of vaccination, but a reexamination and easing off of the overly aggressive/untested CDC vaccine schedule, and stricter safety standards of individual vaccines. Currently the vaccine schedule has more than tripled since I was a child, as it has gone from 10 vaccines to 66 vaccines, and 36 alone in the first 18 months of life. There is no safety testing of the vaccine schedule as a whole, and public health agencies have refused to do any, despite parent protests. Safety standards are very poor and Pharma is asking for even regulatory standards to even be lowered for them.]
She is also advocating medical treatment for children with autism. No these are not HER treatments, they are emerging treatments that began to be put into use at least 15 years ago, and now are in use by most parents of young children with autism. (She is just the most well known and vociferous advocate of these medical interventions) For example, CDC now recommends that children with autism be screened for gastrointestinal damage. Treating this damage often improves the cognition and functioning of people with autism.
In short, in case after case that is properly medically investigated, doctors are finding that children with the behavioral diagnosis of "autism" have neuro immune disease. These kids have an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system has attacked the central nervous system. Onset is often directly following vaccination (or other environmental insults), and we know that vaccination causes autoimmune disorders (check the VCIP "vaccine encepalopathy" and individual vaccine package inserts for details). At issue is whether many cases of "autism" are in fact neuroimmune disease in a genetically vulnerable subset of the population, triggered by an over reaction of the immune system to the ingredients in the vaccine.
The testing that would prove or disprove this theory have never been done.
Further, most of these children have serious GI damage that causes malabsorption of nutrients, resulting in further damage to the brain and related systems.
Jenny McCarthy's book about autism treatment is a collaboration between Jenny, and a very well respected physician in the autism community, Dr. Jerry Kartzinel. "Healing and Preventing Autism: A Complete Guide" is a book in which Dr. Kartzinel discusses the treatments and McCarthy discusses her experience of the treatments.
For more information on environmental causation and treatments feel free to explore this site or contact me personally. My son has been on said treatments for five years and has responded very well.
Recommended posts for you to visit:
Thank you for visiting and enjoy the site.)
No she is not advocating the abandonment of vaccination, but a reexamination and easing off of the overly aggressive/untested CDC vaccine schedule, and stricter safety standards of individual vaccines. Currently the vaccine schedule has more than tripled since I was a child, as it has gone from 10 vaccines to 66 vaccines, and 36 alone in the first 18 months of life. There is no safety testing of the vaccine schedule as a whole, and public health agencies have refused to do any, despite parent protests. Safety standards are very poor and Pharma is asking for even regulatory standards to even be lowered for them.]
She is also advocating medical treatment for children with autism. No these are not HER treatments, they are emerging treatments that began to be put into use at least 15 years ago, and now are in use by most parents of young children with autism. (She is just the most well known and vociferous advocate of these medical interventions) For example, CDC now recommends that children with autism be screened for gastrointestinal damage. Treating this damage often improves the cognition and functioning of people with autism.
In short, in case after case that is properly medically investigated, doctors are finding that children with the behavioral diagnosis of "autism" have neuro immune disease. These kids have an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system has attacked the central nervous system. Onset is often directly following vaccination (or other environmental insults), and we know that vaccination causes autoimmune disorders (check the VCIP "vaccine encepalopathy" and individual vaccine package inserts for details). At issue is whether many cases of "autism" are in fact neuroimmune disease in a genetically vulnerable subset of the population, triggered by an over reaction of the immune system to the ingredients in the vaccine.
The testing that would prove or disprove this theory have never been done.
Further, most of these children have serious GI damage that causes malabsorption of nutrients, resulting in further damage to the brain and related systems.
Jenny McCarthy's book about autism treatment is a collaboration between Jenny, and a very well respected physician in the autism community, Dr. Jerry Kartzinel. "Healing and Preventing Autism: A Complete Guide" is a book in which Dr. Kartzinel discusses the treatments and McCarthy discusses her experience of the treatments.
For more information on environmental causation and treatments feel free to explore this site or contact me personally. My son has been on said treatments for five years and has responded very well.
Recommended posts for you to visit:
- Maine CDC Autism Conference - GI dysfunction in autism, Environmental causation in autism, Vaccine causation in autism.
- Julie Gerberding Tells CNN that Vaccines Trigger Autism
- An article on just how bad the research is that CDC uses to exonerate vaccines in autism causation.
- Jenny's book with Dr. Kartzinel on autism treatment was directed at parents, but this could be considered the companion piece for physicians on the state of research into the treatments that are successful in recovering children from autism: Changing the Course of Autism. If you are serious about finding out why Jenny's message has resonated with so many parents, but don't think that she is a credible source of medical information, please read Dr. Jepson's book. This is the book that Martha Herbert of Harvard mentions in her speech at the Maine CDC autism conference.
- The head of the AAP's very easily disprovable lie that vaccines do not cause long term damage.
- Contradictory rulings in the Vaccine Court that vaccines cannot cause autism, but the MMR absolutely did cause Baily Bank's autism. The media did not pick up the Banks ruling.
- A partial list of research for those who have come here under the assumption that the only evidence of the link between vaccines and autism is temporal correlation and who are tempted to comment and make the "correlation does not prove causation" arguement.
Thank you for visiting and enjoy the site.)
Jenny McCarthy on Oprah
Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:
When she was not yet a superstar or even broadcasting nationally, in early 1985 a friend gave Oprah a copy of "DPT: A Shot in the Dark," which was the first report of an association between autism and vaccination. "We're waiting until it comes out in paperback," a producer told her friend. The paperback version was published in 1986 but, by then, Oprah had starred in "The Color Purple," her show had been nationally syndicated and the vaccine safety debate had become a heated controversy. Over the last two decades, many parents of vaccine injured children have written letters to Oprah in hopes that she would do a show about vaccine risks.
Yesterday, after 22 years, Oprah finally talked about vaccine injured children when she interviewed Hollywood Moms, Jenny McCarthy and Holly Peete. Jenny has written a book on her experience of watching her two and a half year old son regress into autism after an MMR shot.
On the show, Jenny talked about the increases in autism among children and asked what parents of vaccine injured children have been asking for a quarter century: "What number will it take for people just to start listening to what the mothers of children who have seen autism have been saying for years, which is, 'We vaccinated our baby and something happened."
Jenny says even before Evan received his vaccines, she tried to talk to her pediatrician about it. "Right before his MMR shot, I said to the doctor, "I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autism shot, isn't it?' And he said, 'No, that is ridiculous. It is a mother's desperate attempt to blame something,' and he swore at me, and then the nurse gave [Evan] the shot," she says. "And I remember going, 'Oh, God, I hope he's right.' And soon thereafter-boom-the soul's gone from his eyes."
The CDC's prepared response to a query from the Oprah Show staff about whether there is a link between autism and vaccines was "CDC places a high priority on vaccine safety and the integrity and credibility of its vaccine safety research. This commitment not only stems from our scientific and medical dedication, it is also personal-for most of us who work at CDC are also parents and grandparents. And as such, we too, have high levels of personal interest and concern in the health and safety of children, families and communities. We simply don't know what causes most cases of autism, but we're doing everything we can to find out. The vast majority of science to date does not support an association between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. But we are currently conducting additional studies to further determine what role, if any, thimerosal in vaccines may play in the development of autism. It is important to remember, vaccines protect and save lives. Vaccines protect infants, children and adults from the unnecessary harm and premature death caused by vaccine-preventable diseases."
It is curious that the CDC would confine its response regarding the autism-vaccine connection to thimerosal, when MMR vaccine has been strongly associated with regressive autism and live virus MMR vaccine never contained thimerosal. The National Vaccine Information Center, which has operated a Vaccine Reaction Registry since 1982, continues to receive reports from parents describing how their children regressed after receiving live virus or non- mercury containing vaccines, often after being given 8 to 12 vaccines on one day. The most heart-breaking stories are when children are vaccinated over and over again despite deteriorating health because their pediatricians are in denial about vaccine risks.
Jenny McCarthy gave a star turn on Oprah when she clearly, simply and passionately described what happened to her son after vaccination and how she was empowered by information she found on the internet to find ways to cure his vaccine-associated regressive autism. She listened to her mother's instinct and pursued a course of treatment that involved nutrition and other alternative therapies. It is a story of a mother's love and determination to heal her son after he was given the diagnosis of autism, a neuroimmune disorder that so many pediatricians are taught is untreatable.
In the early 1990's, a mother in California, Cindy Goldenberg, was the first Mom to cure her son of regressive autism by listening to her mother's instincts and doing her own research into vaccine-induced neuroimmune dysfunction. Her son experienced regressive autism after receiving MMR vaccine. Cindy sought out IVIG therapy as well as nutritional and probiotic therapies that she said "healed his gut." Her son was soon in a regular classroom and this year he graduated from high school.
As of last night, there were nearly 2,000 messages, primarily from Moms, for Jenny and Holly posted on Oprah's website at http://www.oprah.com/community/thread/1812
Bravo, Oprah. You allowed Jenny to tell it like it is. You have helped millions of Moms across America understand what happened to their children, who changed physically, mentally and emotionally after getting vaccinated, and now suffer with autism and other kinds of vaccine-induced brain and immune system dysfunction such as learning disabilities, ADHD, seizure disorders, asthma, and diabetes.
If your child stopped speaking, wouldn't look you in the eye and completely ignored the world around them, what would you do? In her new book, Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism, actress Jenny McCarthy shares her emotional story of diagnosis, hope, faith and recovery-a journey many thousands of parents now face.
National Vaccine Information Center
email:news@nvic.org
voice: 703-938-dpt3
web: http://www.nvic.org
June 11, 2007
Jenny McCarthy Reps TACA
The first mom that I met that pointed me toward biomed was Lisa Ackerman of TACA. I am eternally grateful to her. The works she has done has been wonderful.
I understand that Jenny's son has fully recovered. I couldn't be happier for them.
I understand that Jenny's son has fully recovered. I couldn't be happier for them.
Jenny McCarthy to represent autism group
By Sue Thoensen
Reader Feedback - Currently 1 comment(s) Comments
Talk About Curing Autism, a Newport Beach-based organization helping families with children affected by autism, has announced that actor Jenny McCarthy will be its new spokeswoman.
McCarthy, whose son Evan was diagnosed with autism in 2005, is the author of the book "Louder than Words — A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism," set to be released in September.
McCarthy will be involved with the group's fund raiser "Ante Up for Autism" in October. She will participate in live online chats via the group's website and will post her own ongoing blog once the book has been published.
Lisa Ackerman, founder and director of Talk About Curing Autism, said her organization is blessed to have "such an outspoken friend" in McCarthy, and that "her story, her son's journey with autism, and her efforts to advocate and reach out to help families affected by autism should be commended."
For more information, call Talk About Curing Autism at (949) 640-4401 or go to www.tacanow.org.
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