July 2, 2008
Hey Dr. Gerberding.. What is this "Autism-Like Syndrome"
"While we recognize, and have recognized, mitochondrial disorders are associated with... autism-like syndrome, there is nothing about this situation that should be generalized to the risks of vaccines for normal children," said Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. - The Washington Post
Hey Julie... What is this "Autism-Like Syndrome" you speak of?
How does it differ from actual "Autism"?
Does my child have "Autism" or "Autism-Like Syndrome"?
Where is my resource to find out about this "Autism-Like Syndrome" that CDC has recognized both now and in the past that is associated with mitochondrial disorders? I have checked the CDC's web site and can't find anything.
Are there some case studies you can point me to?
Is this the same as the "Symptoms of Autism" that Hannah Poling got from her Vaccines?
Is this the same thing as "Vaccine Induced Encephalopathy"? 'Cause that has the symptoms of autism too.
Is CDC going to put out an "Autism-Like Syndrome Alarm" like the Autism Alarm that you put out for pediatricians so that they can tell the difference between these syndromes, correctly diagnose their patients and get them appropriate care?
What about a "Vaccine Induced Encephalopathy Alarm"? I just talked to a soon to be pediatrician graduating from med school who said she was not taught about Vaccine Induced Encephalopathy. She had never heard of it. Pretty poor on the medical establishments part not to teach their own doctors to look for known, permanent, kinda brain damagie side effects of pharmaceuticals that they are administering DOZENS OF TIMES A DAY!
Wait... CDC lady... aren't you the one who is supposed to be setting standards for medical care in this country? Have you not made sure that medical doctors look for medical conditions like Vaccine Induced Encephalopathy that explains "Autism Like" symptoms right off the bat?
I mean shouldn't doctors rule that out first before jumping to a psychological diagnosis of Autism with 'no cause and no cure'?
And how can they rule out that diagnosis if they are never even taught of it's existence? Hmmmm....
... and what about your comment about not generalizing vaccine damage in children with mitochondrial disorders to "normal" children? Which are the "normal" children?
Hannah Poling seemed to everyone a "normal" child before her vaccine induced, mitochondrial related, regression into "encephalopathy" with "autism like" "symptoms" that was diagnosed as "autism".
My son was "normal" too. Or was he? How can I know?
If we can't see the not "normal" kids with the naked eye, then why are we not testing for not "normal"? Or should pediatricians just be checking birth certificates for any child named "Abby Normal" and assume THAT is the "rare" child who has an undiagnosed mito disorder and will get "Autism Like Syndrome" from vaccines?
Come to think of it, if Hannah didn't show any outward symptoms that she was not "normal", how can ANY parent know that their baby is "normal"?
This is all so confusing for my tiny little, desperate, emotional, non vaccine expert, parent mind. I better rest it before I give myself a headache.
So many questions... absolutely no answers.
Speaking of no answers, I have been emailing CDC since March asking for those "15 good studies" that CDC stands behind and is basing it's "no link between vaccines and autism" stance on. I just keep getting responses that CDC will get back to me.
It has been three months. If you don't have 15 good studies that prove no link, then can you just send me a note to that effect so I can stop bugging you guys every two weeks?
But seriously...
When is the media going to stop giving CDC a pass on these increasingly absurd statements? Shankar Vedantam is given the chance to actually question a 'vaccine expert' who is an autism dad and should have answered to these essential questions to his satisfaction before spiking the vaccine autism connection, and there is no sign that any of these important questions were even considered. But we did find out that Hotez is insulted at the idea that anyone would cover up a vaccine/autism connection.
Has the medical community not noticed that we don't care if anyone is insulted by this anymore? Because that concern was last seen somewhere in the spring of 2004 around the time of the IOM "don't even bother looking at vaccines" decision. And the Simpsonwood transcripts put the last nail in that coffin.
Dear Media,
DO YOUR JOB!
Autistic children have been being paid from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund for more than 15 years!!! How many clues do you need that there is a big fat link between vaccines and autism before you call shenanigans on the AAP, CDC and HHS!
How much easily disprovable "Bullshit" do they need to shovel for you guys to report that their story is not adding up?
... and Shankar, I feel for the thousands of African children struggling with diseases that I have never heard of before, but the reason that I have never heard of them before, is because they are not a threat to my American child. Please stop trying to change the subject of the American autism epidemic by mentioning that other diseases exist in other places. Either vaccines can cause autism or they can't. The fact that they also may or may not help with other illness does not change that. Safety and effectiveness are two different issues.
... and please stop falling for this "talking about vaccines and diet treatments distracts from genetic biomarkers" crap. Untold millions in research has been poured into genetic causes for three or four decades now with ZERO applicable results and with a comparative nothing going into treatments that are actually working for our kids. Do your research before quoting a college sophomore. You are using up valuable space in one of the world's most influential papers interviewing a 19 year old who 'might' study autism one day.
Julie Gerberding has already gone on TV and admitted that vaccines can cause autism and explained how it happens. Please get your head out of the sand.
God bless the few of you reporters that are out there doing your jobs for real. I hope you all get Pulitzers when this is done with.
Ginger... getting snarky and annoyed
Top 10 Reasons NJ Needs Vaccine Exemptions
Top 10 Reasons NJ Needs the Conscientious Exemption to Mandatory Vaccinations Bill A260/S1071
1. Vaccination is the only mandated medical procedure whereby adverse reactions pose significant health risks to children.
Adverse reactions to one vaccine include: Encephalitis (brain damage), Diabetes, Arthritis, Anaphylaxis, nerve deafness, febrile convulsions and seizures, Pneumonia, Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS), atypical measles and death. Source: MMR II Package Insert, Merck: 12/2007.
2. Vaccination is the only medical procedure that does NOT require industry-standard, double-blind, placebo-controlled safety studies.
Vaccination studies are NOT performed according to the industry-standard protocol: instead, both sets of children are administered vaccines and then analyzed for adverse reactions, efficacy, etc. A “placebo-controlled” unvaccinated group is never used in studies. An example of these flawed studies is as follows: Ten double-blind studies involving 2,252 subjects showed no significant difference in the frequency or severity of adverse experiences between ENGERIX-B and plasma-derived vaccines. Source: SmithGlaxoKline Vaccine Package Insert: 12/2006. U.S. populations of unvaccinated children are readily available for studies: children with religious and/or medical vaccine exemptions; children (15,000) in the Chicago-area HomeFirst practice; and the Amish population. Additionally, vaccines are NOT evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or potential to impair fertility. MOST, if not all, vaccine studies are actually performed by the vaccine manufacturers themselves.
3. Vaccination mandates the injection of known toxic ingredients into children.
Vaccine ingredients/mediums include neurotoxins, carcinogens, foreign denatured viruses, DNA derived from aborted fetal tissue, and antibiotics. Examples of vaccine ingredients include: aluminum* (heavy metal neurotoxin conclusively linked to Alzheimer's Disease and other neurological disorders.), formaldehyde (carcinogen), bovine casein (animal protein/foreign DNA), glutaraldehyde (dangerous toxin), monkey kidney cells (animal/foreign DNA), calf serum (animal/foreign DNA), neomycin sulfate and polymyxin B (antibiotics), yeast protein, diphtheria toxoid (foreign virus), tetanus toxoid (foreign virus), Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 poliovirus (foreign viruses). Source: Pediarix Package Insert, GlaxoSmithKline Biologics and Norvartis: 6/2007. Additionally, thimerosal is still found in most flu vaccines, now mandated annually for NJ children 6 to 59 months.
*According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Aluminum is now being implicated as interfering with a variety of cellular and metabolic processes in the nervous system and in other tissues (Aluminum Toxicity in Infants and Children,1996).
4. U.S. Federal and State Government agencies and the American Academy of Pediatrics have conflicts of interest and are NOT protecting our children.
On June 7-8, 2000, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) assembled an invitation-only meeting, entitled “Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information” at the Simpsonwood Conference Center in GA. There were fifty-two attendees, including high ranking officials from the CDC, FDA, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization and representatives from all major vaccine manufacturers, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth, and Aventis Pasteur. The objective of the conference was to discuss the findings of CDC epidemiologist, Tom Verstraeten, regarding a link between thimerosal in vaccines and a dramatic increase in autism and other neurological disorders as analyzed in the federal database of 100,000 children. In the end, the group withheld Verstraeten’s findings, and told other scientists that the data was lost. By the time the study was finally published three years later, Verstraeten was hired by GlaxoSmithKline and the data was adjusted to discredit the link between thimerosal and autism. Source: Simpsonwood Transcripts, 2000; Robert Kennedy Jr., Deadly Immunity; Rolling Stone,1995.
Another example of conflict of interest: Paul Offit, MD, of University Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia, is a member of the CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee and was one of the members who voted to add the rotavirus vaccine to the Vaccines for Children’s program. Offit is a patent holder of a rotavirus vaccine and admitted to receiving $350,000 in grant money from Merck to develop the vaccine. The rotavirus vaccine was approved by the FDA in August 1998, then recommended by the CDC for universal use in March 1999. During safety trials and the vaccine’s introduction, children developed serious bowel obstructions and many had to undergo surgery, while some died from intussusception . The vaccine was pulled from the U.S. market in October 1999. According to a federal hearing on conflicts of interest, Rep. Dan Burton stated, “No individual who stands to gain financially from the decisions regarding vaccines that may be mandated for use, should be participating in the discussion or policy making for vaccines.” He went on to say that the CDC "routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines," even though they have "interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight." The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of eight CDC advisors who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine." Source: FACA: Conflicts of Interest and Vaccine Development: Preserving the Integrity of the Process, June 15, 2000.
In first quarter 2008, Offit participated with Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, former NJ Deputy Health Commissioner, at a Vaccine Ethics Panel in Philadelphia. Eddy Bresnitz, NJ Deputy Health Commissioner and state epidemiologist, recently announced he is leaving public office to become Merck’s medical director of adult vaccines.
5. Informed Consent is limited or non-existent because vaccine manufacturers and physicians bear NO liability for vaccine injuries and deaths.
Vaccine manufacturers and doctors bear NO liability for vaccine injury or death once a vaccine is mandated or recommended for the Childhood Vaccination Program, as stipulated in the U.S. National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act of 1986. This act also established VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System), a government tracking system for vaccine injuries and deaths: 236,756 vaccine adverse reactions, including deaths, were reported between Jan 1990 and Feb 2008, by doctors and individuals. Inherent in this legislation, physicians no longer represent their patients, but act as agents of the state in requiring their patients be vaccinated. Parents are consistently not informed of the risks of vaccination vs. the diseases, nor have the ability to make informed vaccine choices through a conscientious exemption.
6. Nineteen other states currently have the conscientious/philosophical exemption.
Currently nineteen other states provide its citizens with the right to informed consent for vaccinations by providing them with a conscientious/philosophical exemption to mandatory vaccinations. NJ Parents deserve these same basic rights. In 2003, Jane Orient MD, FACP, executive director of the Assn. of American Physicians and Surgeons stated, “Parents should be offered vaccines for their children, with full disclosure, and without the pressure of a "requirement." The question remains, why is it that children need 36 vaccines for fear of rampant disease epidemics and the notion that children will become sick and/or die; yet the currently “undervaccinated” population of adults in our country who received eight or so vaccines as children and whose “protection” dwindled within a few years, are not causing epidemics or ill and dying from Chicken pox, diphtheria, polio, mumps, Hepatitis B or any other diseases?
7. The NJ vaccine mandate process bypasses our legislative process and is managed by the Public Health Council, a Government-appointed panel.
New Jersey’s childhood vaccines are voted on and mandated by the Public Health Council, a Governor-appointed panel of 7 voluntary members. The PHC members are NOT representative of NJ citizens, are NOT an elected body, may have conflicts of interest, and consistently ignore public comment. New Jersey deserves the right to have all medical procedures, especially those that are recommended to be mandated, pass through our state legislature and include thorough, unbiased review, a full public hearing and inclusion of public comment.
8. Vaccination has been proven to cause Autism.
In 2007, Hannah Poling, the first of 4,900 autism cases being considered by Federal Vaccine Court, was conceded by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, confirming a causal link between vaccines and autism. According to a CNN Interview (March 28, 2008) with CDC director, Julie Gerberding, she admitted that Hannah Poling’s “autism-like symptoms were caused by vaccine-induced fever.” Additionally, Dr. Bernadine Healy, former NIH director and a cardiologist, stated publicly that when she began researching autism and vaccines she “found credible published, peer-reviewed scientific studies that support the idea of an association. The government has quite simply refused to conduct the studies, so others have come forward.”
In June 2007 an independent national research firm, SurveyUSA, posted results of an extensive survey “of more than 9,000 boys in California and Oregon and found that vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a neurological disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys." - Generation Rescue, June 26, 2007: Data was gathered by SurveyUSA, a national market research firm, which surveyed parents on more than 17,000 children (http://www.generationrescue.org/survey.html). It must be noted that New Jersey has the most mandated vaccines throughout the world and the highest rates of Autism.
Also, since 1991, when the CDC and FDA recommended three additional thimerosal-containing vaccines for infants, the estimated number of autism cases increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166. According to Dr. Bill Weil, an American Academy of Pediatrics consultant attending the meeting, “You can play with this all you want; the results are statistically significant.” Source: Simpsonwood Transcripts, 2000.
9. The current religious and medical exemptions in NJ are often challenged and have inconsistent requirements.
School principals/nurses, and preschool directors, as well as NJ Health Department officials often challenge and reject vaccine exemptions submitted by parents. The approval process for vaccine exemptions is inconsistent and confusing. Additionally, the religious exemption is all-or-nothing and does not allow a parent to make informed choices. For instance, many parents are aware of the ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine and do not want to give it to their child, but parents cannot choose to eliminate one vaccine from their child’s schedule; they must reject all vaccines. There are no options.
10. The premise that a certain number of our children may become disabled and die so that other children may escape a possible disease is unethical and unacceptable.
Does our state government have the ethical right to require that a number of children die so other children can possibly avoid a disease? As citizens and parents, we expect and deserve the right to protect our own children. Children are dying every day from adverse reactions of vaccinations; in fact, the Federal Vaccine Court compensates families $250,000 for each child proven to have died as a result of vaccination. The Federal Court web site verifies that more than 12,500 claims have been filed since creation of the program in 1987, including more than 5,300 autism cases, and more than $1.7 billion has been paid in claims. Shouldn’t parents have the right to informed consent in order to determine the risk they are willing to accept for their own children? Are you willing to sacrifice your child for the sake of others?
NJ Needs Vaccination Choice, not MORE Mandates.
Since 1983, there has been a 260% increase in vaccine mandates for NJ children. As of December 2007, NJ just mandated four new vaccines for our children, as young as 2 months old. NJCVC and other organizations are voicing opposition to the disturbing trend. Parents should have the right to informed consent regarding vaccinations for their children, just as they do with any medical procedure. Dr. Lawrence Rosen, a board certified pediatrician and Chief of Pediatric Integrative Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center notes, “There are risks associated with all medical practices, including vaccines, so it is important for parents, along with their doctors, to evaluate an individual child’s medical history and health, including genetic predispositions and allergies, to determine what is appropriate. Informed consent is a key ethical principle in medical practice.”
We thank the current 10 senators and 25 Assemblypersons who are sponsors of bill A260/S1071 and ask others to support this important legislation by making it into NJ law as soon as possible.
June 27, 2008
Autism Speaks Undercuts the Children of PA
What Autism Speaks is doing in PA is just another example of how they use their considerable resources to bring about the PERCEPTION that our kids are being helped, rather than giving them the ACTUAL help they need.
Families who have worked on the insurance bill in PA for years are now being undercut by Autism Speaks, because they want to use the PA legislation, not in the best interests of the children of PA, but to build a national movement to get autism covered in all the states.
Don't get me wrong... I want that national movement to happen, but we DO NOT compromise the treatment and care of the children of Pennsylvania to do it.
It is just another example of crappy 'greater good' logic that takes from one child to give to another. Each child needs what they need, an it is our job as a society to give it to them.
Autism Speaks... stop using children THAT ARE NOT YOURS to advance your agenda that will not be best for those specific children!
It passed:
Families who have worked on the insurance bill in PA for years are now being undercut by Autism Speaks, because they want to use the PA legislation, not in the best interests of the children of PA, but to build a national movement to get autism covered in all the states.
Don't get me wrong... I want that national movement to happen, but we DO NOT compromise the treatment and care of the children of Pennsylvania to do it.
It is just another example of crappy 'greater good' logic that takes from one child to give to another. Each child needs what they need, an it is our job as a society to give it to them.
Autism Speaks... stop using children THAT ARE NOT YOURS to advance your agenda that will not be best for those specific children!
Friends:
There can be no question in the minds of Pennsylvanians with autism and their families that Speaker Dennis O'Brien has unfailingly been our community's champion in the Pennsylvania General Assembly for decades.
Dennis has seized every opportunity to advance the best interests of our community, sometimes at political peril to himself, but always with the unwavering goal of pushing forward the rights of the community that he loves so much.
Dennis O'Brien sponsored the autism insurance bill now before the General Assembly, the bill that aimed to require health insurers to step up and cover diagnosis and treatment for persons with autism. At every turn, Dennis has worked with families, with advocates, with
policy makers, and with those aligned with the insurance industry to craft and push forward a bill that would truly benefit the Pennsylvania autism community.
Autism Speaks, through its Government Affairs Department (who are not Pennsylvanians and who had no previous experience with Pennsylvania families, the service terrain, or with its legislative process) came to Pennsylvania with the promise that they would help Speaker O'Brien in his efforts to enact a sound autism insurance bill that would, above all, help our community.
In the last several days, it has become apparent that, through the efforts of the health-insurance lobby and its allies in the General Assembly, what had been an important and helpful bill, that won the overwhelming approval of a panel of national experts, has been mutated into something that lacks the most important safeguards for
Pennsylvania families and that could, if enacted in its present form, actually harm the very community Dennis O'Brien intended to help.
Dennis has made clear that, no matter how fervently he believes in legislation to force health insurers to do what they should have done years ago, he will not support his own bill if the changes forced upon it by the insurance industry and its allies actually undermine the purposes of the bill and pose too great a risk of harming the
community. If that is his decision our community as a whole must accept that he has done so carefully, after excruciating deliberation, and with sound counsel, and only because he believes the current version of the bill would likely hurt the people he has spent his entire career helping. Dennis has earned our faith in him.
I have learned recently that Autism Speaks' Government Affairs team are now suggesting that they want to push the bill forward regardless of what Speaker O'Brien believes and regardless of the perils it poses to our Pennsylvania families. Recently, a leader of Autism Speaks indicated his desire to cause the "sense of a wave" in the states toward a larger National agenda. I responded to him that, in
Pennsylvania, we need to have more than a "sense" of a wave - an "illusion" of a wave - but a REAL wave that meaningfully benefits Pennsylvania's families. Many of us with considerable experience navigating the Pennsylvania service systems believe that the bill as reported out of Senator White's Committee is an "illusion" of a mandate. In other words, an insurance bill is being prepared for passage that lacks any concrete assurance that it will actually help Pennsylvanians with autism and their families. We are the people who will live with what happens in the General Assembly in the next few days. We must be the voice the Pennsylvania legislature hears and we must be the people who stand behind Speaker O'Brien during the next several days.
In deciding which of the competing positions to support, our community must consider our history. Dennis has been our standard bearer for decades. He has been in the trenches with us on every important issue we have faced. We know this man. We know his integrity and we know his heart. He is one of our own. On the other hand, the Autism Speaks' Government Affairs team are tourists in our community, and unfamiliar with the lay of Pennsylvania's service terrain. They have their own agenda, and it apparently focuses more on their national goals than on what actually happens on the ground here in Pennsylvania. If Autism Speaks tells you to ignore Dennis's position or to support the stripped-down version of HB 1150, ask yourself two simple questions: (1) Where were they in the hard times during which Dennis fought for us against MA caps and premiums and for an adult autism waiver, and (2) where will they be months or years from now if this fatally flawed bill they are endorsing starts eliminating services our children so desperately need?
In the next few hours or days, our Speaker will tell us what he believes must be done with respect to this bill – this bill that he sponsored and championed and which many of us invested many, many hours in advocating. Listen to him. Follow his lead. Do not be distracted by those who share neither our history nor our future. Our Speaker Speaks for me and I ask you all to let our Speaker speak for us as well.
Jim Bouder
It passed:
Proponents become opponents on autism bill
Intelligencer Journal
Published: Jun 30, 2008
00:06 EST
By DAVE PIDGEON, Bird's-Eye View
Private insurance companies will continue denying coverage of autism treatments under a bill passed 49-1 by the state Senate on Sunday, opponents said prior to the vote.
The opponents originally stood as proponents of a mandate forcing private coverage, but the final version of the bill was so amended, they said, the proposed mandate would actually hurt families dealing with autism.
The original version — authored by state House Speaker Dennis O'Brien, who slammed the final Senate revisions prior to its passage Sunday — would have forced insurance
companies to cover autism treatments up to $36,000, with the state's Medical Assistance program helping families with any costs above the cap.
A report commissioned by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council said
last week that the original mandate would end up costing all insurance customers about $1 per month.
The Senate Banking & Insurance Committee, however, amended the bill last week.
According to O'Brien and others who once supported the bill, the revisions passed Sunday by the Senate allow insurance companies to decide for themselves what services to cover.
While the bill sets up a system to challenge any denial, disappointed former supporters said the bill now makes affording vital but expensive treatments prohibitive.
"When insurers deny coverage, families will have no alternative but to reach into their own pockets to pay for the medical treatment," Estelle Richman, a one-time supporter and secretary of the Department of Public Welfare, wrote in a letter Sunday to Republican Sen. Don White, a former insurance broker and chairman of the Banking & Insurance Committee. "This means they will be worse off ... ."
O'Brien, who has placed much of his legacy as a legislator into getting this mandate
passed, called the bill an "illusion" of insurance coverage for autistic children.
"That's because the current version gives the insurance companies a back-door way to
continue denying coverage for autism services," he wrote in a statement. "Insurance
companies will continue to second-guess these kids' doctors and refuse to pay for autism services. The Senate-amended version gives them the power to unilaterally deny that coverage ... ."
Also rejecting the new bill were AutismLink and the Autism Center of Pittsburgh, but the national organization Autism Speaks announced its support of the current version as did Sen. Jane Orie, co-chair of the Autism Caucus.
"The bill now moving forward, if signed into law, would be the strongest autism insurance mandate yet achieved in the nation," said Elizabeth Emken, vice president of government relations for Autism Speaks.
Supporters also trumpet other amendments to the bill, including government oversight of a pending merger of two large Pennsylvania insurance companies — Highmark and
Independence Blue Cross — and insurance coverage of colorectal cancer screenings.
June 24, 2008
Age of Arrogance OR We Are All Going To Die
In Switzerland, the EU and the US Department of Energy have just finished construction on the world’s largest supercollider.
Now generally I believe in the principle that ‘science is fun’, but there is one small potential downside on pressing the start button on this mother. There is a teeny, weenie speck of a chance that… theoretically… it could open up a black hole on the suburbs of Geneva.
World’s Largest Supercollider Could Destroy the Universe – Tech Freep
But don’t panic, because scientists say it “PROBABLY” won’t happen.
When I heard this my mind went back to a sermon I heard from a very bright pastor in Manhattan named Tim Keller who made the point that there are many things that you can be wrong about, that won’t cause that big of a problem. But that there are a few things that are so important, the consequences of which are so dire, that you can’t just THINK they aren't true, you have to KNOW that they aren't true.
Examples of such dangerous assumptions might be that God does not exist, that vaccines don’t cause life long neurological impairments in children, and that your science experiment will not open up a black hole on the surface of the earth and suck in the planet, the sun and the rest of the solar system just like in Poltergeist when the whole house got sucked into the closet.
What do black holes have to do directly with autism? Nothing that I know of. Although I would not be surprised to hear that Autism Speaks is considering funding a study to see if there is a relationship between black holes and autism under their ABV* program. (*Anything But Vaccines)
I raise the topic for two reasons.
One, to point out what arrogant SOBs we really are.
Two, as a public service announcement on the off chance that on some sunny day this summer you find yourself suddenly flying through the air in the general direction of Europe, so that you will know what is happening and be able to take a moment to decide that you are completely right on your position on the God question, and to forgive those who were wrong about the vaccine and the black hole questions.
But don’t worry. It probably won’t happen.
Now generally I believe in the principle that ‘science is fun’, but there is one small potential downside on pressing the start button on this mother. There is a teeny, weenie speck of a chance that… theoretically… it could open up a black hole on the suburbs of Geneva.
World’s Largest Supercollider Could Destroy the Universe – Tech Freep
But don’t panic, because scientists say it “PROBABLY” won’t happen.
When I heard this my mind went back to a sermon I heard from a very bright pastor in Manhattan named Tim Keller who made the point that there are many things that you can be wrong about, that won’t cause that big of a problem. But that there are a few things that are so important, the consequences of which are so dire, that you can’t just THINK they aren't true, you have to KNOW that they aren't true.
Examples of such dangerous assumptions might be that God does not exist, that vaccines don’t cause life long neurological impairments in children, and that your science experiment will not open up a black hole on the surface of the earth and suck in the planet, the sun and the rest of the solar system just like in Poltergeist when the whole house got sucked into the closet.
What do black holes have to do directly with autism? Nothing that I know of. Although I would not be surprised to hear that Autism Speaks is considering funding a study to see if there is a relationship between black holes and autism under their ABV* program. (*Anything But Vaccines)
I raise the topic for two reasons.
One, to point out what arrogant SOBs we really are.
Two, as a public service announcement on the off chance that on some sunny day this summer you find yourself suddenly flying through the air in the general direction of Europe, so that you will know what is happening and be able to take a moment to decide that you are completely right on your position on the God question, and to forgive those who were wrong about the vaccine and the black hole questions.
But don’t worry. It probably won’t happen.
June 23, 2008
Sharyl Attkisson Reports on the Governmnets "See No Evil" Behavior
CBS is catching on to the fact that the government does not ask the questions that one would naturally ask if they actually wanted to know if and how vaccines cause autism.
And she correctly points out that the question of "Do vaccines cause autism" is now off the table with the Hannah Poling case. The question now in play is "How to vaccines cause autism".
And she correctly points out that the question of "Do vaccines cause autism" is now off the table with the Hannah Poling case. The question now in play is "How to vaccines cause autism".
Vaccine Watch
by Sharyl Attkisson
June 19, 2008, 10:34 AM
(AP)
After a decade of denying any possible association between vaccines and autism, the government quietly settled a vaccine-autism case last fall. When news of the case leaked out to the public months later, government officials labelled the case of Hannah Poling an "anomoly." The truth is, nobody is in a position to know whether Hannah's case is an exception. Government officials have told CBS News that they have not tracked vaccine-autism claims to see how many of them might involve children with the same undetected mitochondrial disorder Hannah had... one that may have made her susceptible to side effects from vaccines, triggering her autism. Government officials have also acknowledged to CBS News that they haven't looked for common denominators in other autism-related cases which have been compensated in federal vaccine court. Yes, there are other cases that have been paid. As CBS News has reported, the government has been settling vaccine injuries that resulted in autism and/or autistic symptoms since at least the early 1990's, while at the same time telling the public there is no cause for concern. Not all of the cases are published, but some of them are and can be found by searching legal case databases. That... with the help of some well-placed sources... is how CBS News turned up at least nine more cases... and counting. Considering that only a tiny fraction of vaccine-autism claims find their way to the little-known vaccine court, these cases are just a sampling of the total that may actually exist in the population. Further, according to knowledgeable sources, vaccine injuries compensated in the past due to encephalopathy (or brain damage) "often" resulted in autism, but the autism label was not used. Again, the government does not track how many of the encephalopathy cases involved children who got autism or ADD after their vaccinations.
One important factor is often lost in the discussion of a handful of cases: the fact that the debate has shifted from whether vaccines have any relationship to some cases of autism... to what is the role of vaccines in some cases of autism. And how big is the pool of cases. If vaccines can trigger autism in any way, directly or indirectly, that contradicts all the rhetoric and dogma heard from many public and government health officials for the past decade. And it supports what many other researchers have been saying for a decade, often to deaf ears, even after they published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Which is probably why Hannah's case is resonating under the radar in the medical community. A government conference has now been scheduled for later this month to examine mitochondrial disorders like hers and autism or neurological "triggers" (i.e. vaccines). See below.
Workshop
Mitochondrial Disorders of Childhood: Testing, Potential Relationships to Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Triggers for Neurological Deterioration June 29, 2008
Workshop Goals and Objectives
"Mitochondrial Disorders of Childhood: Testing, Potential Relationships to Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Triggers for Neurological Deterioration" is a workshop to be held on Sunday June 29th after the close of the United Mitochondrial Disease Meeting in Indianapolis at the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis. The workshop will convene 11 experts in mitochondrial disorders or autism to discuss how the neurology of mitochondrial disorders might inform autism research.
The conference is sponsored by a number of Federal agencies including DHHS, CDC, FDA, NINDS and NIMH. Observers are welcome as seating allows.
Location
Hyatt Regency Indianapolis
June 21, 2008
Ken Stoller's Letter to Pediatrics on the Verstraeten Study
Thimerosal Mea Culpa from the CDC
Kenneth Stoller,Pediatrician
International Hyperbaric Medical Association
Letter sent to Pediatrics:
In 2003, Dr. Eric Coleman (LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Ethylmercury in Vaccines
Pediatrics, Apr 2003; 111: 922 - 923.) was able to have a letter printed in Pediatrics, undoubtedly because of his affiliation with the FDA, defending the decision to pull the Hep B vaccine until a Thimerosal or ethylmercury free version became available. He said the AAP and USPHS should be commended for this proactive decision for "the fact is, no preclinical or clinical studies were ever conducted to specifically examine the safety of thimerosal (ethylmercury) at the doses found when used in multiple infant and childhood vaccines. Thus, there was no conclusive evidence because there were no studies."
The Coleman letter is of historical importance because of what what took place next.
What followed was insanity. The CDC forced flawed and perhaps fabricated ecological
studies down the throats of pediatricians and the AAP. Pediatrics published the
Verstarten and Madsen studies, to name two, despite glaring methodological errors.
The CDC then used this planted intelligence, if you will, to not only defend the continued presence of Thimerosal, but to obfuscate the rising numbers of children with neurobehavioral disorders, including Autism, and controlled the IOM in the process to make it all but impossible for any one in academic medicine to point out the obvious and still be taken seriously.
Valuable time was lost for affected children and families were destroyed in the ensuing years when legitimate interventions and research could have been taking place.
Thimerosal continues to this day to be given to 3rd world children with the blessing of the WHO and without protest from those that know better within the USA. Meanwhile
the CDC line was all the "new" cases of affected children were but do to better diagnosis.
After numerous unanswered Data Quality Act complaints filed with the the CDC, Director Dr. Julie Gerberding has
A 2006 report from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS),
concluded that the CDC's infamous Verstarten Thimerosal safety study publish in this journal was riddled with "several areas of weaknesses" that combined to "reduce the usefulness" of the study.
"CDC concurs," Dr. Gerberding wrote in an undated confession (see above link) to Congress, (provided to journalist David Kirby through a Capital Hill staffer) adding that her agency "does not plan to use" the database in question, the Vaccine Safety Datalink, (VSD) for any future "ecological studies" of autism.
In fact, Gerberding's report said, any continued use of the VSD for similar ecological studies of vaccines and autism "would be uninformative and potentially misleading."
After Verstarten revealed the link between Thimerosal and neurobehvioral disorders in the report presented to the secret Simpsonwood meeting in June of 2000 (http://www.putchildrenfirst.org/media/2.9.pdf) CDC officials conducted at least five separate analyses of the data. The first analysis revealed at Simpsonwood showed that children exposed to the most Thimerosal by one month of age had extremely high relative risks for a number of outcomes, compared with children who got little or no mercury: The relative risk for ADHD was 8.29 times higher; for autism, it was 7.62 times higher; ADD, 6.38 times higher; tics, 5.65 times; and speech and language
delays were 2.09 more likely among kids who got the most mercury.
Verstarten, who did NOT disclose to this journal that he was now an employee of vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline (not the CDC) diluted his data five times The relative risk for autism plummeted from 7.62 in the first analysis, to 2.48 in the second version, to 1.69 in the third round, to 1.52 in the fourth, and down to nothing at all in the fifth, final, and this was what was published in November of 2003 (Pediatrics 2003; 112:1039-1048).
The new and improved Verstarten VSD study was the main pillar of a hugely influential 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine, which was essentially ordered to conclude that there was no evidence of link between mercury, vaccines and autism.
The AAP published VSD study has long been held up as the best and brightest of all epidemiology studies(the others were in Sweden, the UK, and two in Denmark).
There is now not a single pediatrician in the USA who can not quote from at least the AAP (Verstarten) study.
In 2005, a group of Senators and Representatives headed by Sen. Joe Lieberman wrote to the NIEHS (an agency of the National Institutes of Health) saying that many parents no longer trusted the CDC to conduct independent minded studies of its own vaccine program. Lieberman et al asked NIEHS to review the CDC's work on the vaccine database and report back with critiques and suggestions.
The final NIEHS report detailed where the CDC went wrong in its design, conduct and analysis of the study. The NIEHS panel "identified several serious problems," with the CDC's effort, criticism to which the agency had not responded until Dr. Gerberding delived her undated report referenced above.
The NIEHS had criticized CDC for failing to account for other mercury exposures, including maternal sources from flu shots and immune globulin, as well as mercury in food and the environment.
"CDC acknowledges this concern and recognizes this limitation," the Gerberding reply
says.
The NIEHS also took CDC to task for eliminating 25% of the study population for a variety of reasons, even though this represented, "a susceptible population whose removal from the analysis might unintentionally reduce the ability to detect an effect of thimerosal." This strict entry criteria likely led to an under-ascertainment" of autism ases, the NIEHS reported.
"CDC concurs," Gerberding wrote, again noting that its study design was "not appropriate for studying this vaccine safety topic. The data are intended for administrative purposes and may not be predictive of the outcomes studied."
Another serious problem was that the HMOs changed the way they tracked and recorded autism diagnoses over time, including during the period when vaccine mercury levels were in decline. Such changes could "affect the observed rate of autism and could confound or distort trends in autism rates," the NIEHS warned.
"CDC concurs," Dr. Gerberding wrote again, "that conducting an ecologic analysis using VSD administrative data to address potential associations between thimerosal exposure and risk of ASD is not useful."
So, the Director of the CDC is now saying that its most powerful and convincing piece of exonerating evidence for Thimerosal is, in effect, "useless." This after years of
propagandizing the American public in violation of the law, after holding the illegal secret Simpsonwood meeting when all of this was revealed - including to a representative of the AAP!
Now we have a generation of pediatricians, who face perhaps the greatest iatrogenic accident in the history of pediatrics, who actually need to be deprogrammed to understand what the true nature of all the neuro-behvioral problems are that they confront without any understanding of etiology or potential interventions.
The most serious message that affected children have sacrificed themselves for still goes unheeded. The message is that the level of industrial pollution we are exposing ourselves to is so great now, that just a little more toxic load will push us over the edge.
It pushed a generation of children over the edge and so while we ponder who is going to pay for the many who will go on full disability, we should ponder the fate of our species as well.
(Special thanks to the journalist David Kirby.)
Kenneth Stoller,Pediatrician
International Hyperbaric Medical Association
Letter sent to Pediatrics:
In 2003, Dr. Eric Coleman (LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Ethylmercury in Vaccines
Pediatrics, Apr 2003; 111: 922 - 923.) was able to have a letter printed in Pediatrics, undoubtedly because of his affiliation with the FDA, defending the decision to pull the Hep B vaccine until a Thimerosal or ethylmercury free version became available. He said the AAP and USPHS should be commended for this proactive decision for "the fact is, no preclinical or clinical studies were ever conducted to specifically examine the safety of thimerosal (ethylmercury) at the doses found when used in multiple infant and childhood vaccines. Thus, there was no conclusive evidence because there were no studies."
The Coleman letter is of historical importance because of what what took place next.
What followed was insanity. The CDC forced flawed and perhaps fabricated ecological
studies down the throats of pediatricians and the AAP. Pediatrics published the
Verstarten and Madsen studies, to name two, despite glaring methodological errors.
The CDC then used this planted intelligence, if you will, to not only defend the continued presence of Thimerosal, but to obfuscate the rising numbers of children with neurobehavioral disorders, including Autism, and controlled the IOM in the process to make it all but impossible for any one in academic medicine to point out the obvious and still be taken seriously.
Valuable time was lost for affected children and families were destroyed in the ensuing years when legitimate interventions and research could have been taking place.
Thimerosal continues to this day to be given to 3rd world children with the blessing of the WHO and without protest from those that know better within the USA. Meanwhile
the CDC line was all the "new" cases of affected children were but do to better diagnosis.
After numerous unanswered Data Quality Act complaints filed with the the CDC, Director Dr. Julie Gerberding has
produced a reportdelivered to the House Appropriations Committee, in which she admits to a startling string of errors in the design and methods used in the CDC's landmark 2003 study that found no link between mercury in vaccines and autism, ADHD, speech delay or tics.
A 2006 report from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS),
concluded that the CDC's infamous Verstarten Thimerosal safety study publish in this journal was riddled with "several areas of weaknesses" that combined to "reduce the usefulness" of the study.
"CDC concurs," Dr. Gerberding wrote in an undated confession (see above link) to Congress, (provided to journalist David Kirby through a Capital Hill staffer) adding that her agency "does not plan to use" the database in question, the Vaccine Safety Datalink, (VSD) for any future "ecological studies" of autism.
In fact, Gerberding's report said, any continued use of the VSD for similar ecological studies of vaccines and autism "would be uninformative and potentially misleading."
After Verstarten revealed the link between Thimerosal and neurobehvioral disorders in the report presented to the secret Simpsonwood meeting in June of 2000 (http://www.putchildrenfirst.org/media/2.9.pdf) CDC officials conducted at least five separate analyses of the data. The first analysis revealed at Simpsonwood showed that children exposed to the most Thimerosal by one month of age had extremely high relative risks for a number of outcomes, compared with children who got little or no mercury: The relative risk for ADHD was 8.29 times higher; for autism, it was 7.62 times higher; ADD, 6.38 times higher; tics, 5.65 times; and speech and language
delays were 2.09 more likely among kids who got the most mercury.
Verstarten, who did NOT disclose to this journal that he was now an employee of vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline (not the CDC) diluted his data five times The relative risk for autism plummeted from 7.62 in the first analysis, to 2.48 in the second version, to 1.69 in the third round, to 1.52 in the fourth, and down to nothing at all in the fifth, final, and this was what was published in November of 2003 (Pediatrics 2003; 112:1039-1048).
The new and improved Verstarten VSD study was the main pillar of a hugely influential 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine, which was essentially ordered to conclude that there was no evidence of link between mercury, vaccines and autism.
The AAP published VSD study has long been held up as the best and brightest of all epidemiology studies(the others were in Sweden, the UK, and two in Denmark).
There is now not a single pediatrician in the USA who can not quote from at least the AAP (Verstarten) study.
In 2005, a group of Senators and Representatives headed by Sen. Joe Lieberman wrote to the NIEHS (an agency of the National Institutes of Health) saying that many parents no longer trusted the CDC to conduct independent minded studies of its own vaccine program. Lieberman et al asked NIEHS to review the CDC's work on the vaccine database and report back with critiques and suggestions.
The final NIEHS report detailed where the CDC went wrong in its design, conduct and analysis of the study. The NIEHS panel "identified several serious problems," with the CDC's effort, criticism to which the agency had not responded until Dr. Gerberding delived her undated report referenced above.
The NIEHS had criticized CDC for failing to account for other mercury exposures, including maternal sources from flu shots and immune globulin, as well as mercury in food and the environment.
"CDC acknowledges this concern and recognizes this limitation," the Gerberding reply
says.
The NIEHS also took CDC to task for eliminating 25% of the study population for a variety of reasons, even though this represented, "a susceptible population whose removal from the analysis might unintentionally reduce the ability to detect an effect of thimerosal." This strict entry criteria likely led to an under-ascertainment" of autism ases, the NIEHS reported.
"CDC concurs," Gerberding wrote, again noting that its study design was "not appropriate for studying this vaccine safety topic. The data are intended for administrative purposes and may not be predictive of the outcomes studied."
Another serious problem was that the HMOs changed the way they tracked and recorded autism diagnoses over time, including during the period when vaccine mercury levels were in decline. Such changes could "affect the observed rate of autism and could confound or distort trends in autism rates," the NIEHS warned.
"CDC concurs," Dr. Gerberding wrote again, "that conducting an ecologic analysis using VSD administrative data to address potential associations between thimerosal exposure and risk of ASD is not useful."
So, the Director of the CDC is now saying that its most powerful and convincing piece of exonerating evidence for Thimerosal is, in effect, "useless." This after years of
propagandizing the American public in violation of the law, after holding the illegal secret Simpsonwood meeting when all of this was revealed - including to a representative of the AAP!
Now we have a generation of pediatricians, who face perhaps the greatest iatrogenic accident in the history of pediatrics, who actually need to be deprogrammed to understand what the true nature of all the neuro-behvioral problems are that they confront without any understanding of etiology or potential interventions.
The most serious message that affected children have sacrificed themselves for still goes unheeded. The message is that the level of industrial pollution we are exposing ourselves to is so great now, that just a little more toxic load will push us over the edge.
It pushed a generation of children over the edge and so while we ponder who is going to pay for the many who will go on full disability, we should ponder the fate of our species as well.
(Special thanks to the journalist David Kirby.)
June 20, 2008
Julie Gerberding Tells Congress That The Verstraeten Study is Junk!
I am stunned.
I can't even think of a snarky comment to write.
My only question is, when is the press release from the CDC retracting Verstraeten coming out?
David Kirby "CDC: Vaccine Study Design "Uninformative and Potentially Misleading"
For those of you who may not understand the significance of this development, Julie Gerberding, the head of the CDC, has just taken down the tent pole arguement in the "vaccines don't cause autism" claim, on her own, with her bare hands.
UPDATE:
Pamella Addresses the AAP and All Star Pediatrics about the Gerberding report and their continued disrespect for parents.
The American Academy or Pediatrics in an Awkward Position after CDC Takes Thimerosal Safety Studies Off the Table
I can't even think of a snarky comment to write.
My only question is, when is the press release from the CDC retracting Verstraeten coming out?
David Kirby "CDC: Vaccine Study Design "Uninformative and Potentially Misleading"
For those of you who may not understand the significance of this development, Julie Gerberding, the head of the CDC, has just taken down the tent pole arguement in the "vaccines don't cause autism" claim, on her own, with her bare hands.
UPDATE:
Pamella Addresses the AAP and All Star Pediatrics about the Gerberding report and their continued disrespect for parents.
The American Academy or Pediatrics in an Awkward Position after CDC Takes Thimerosal Safety Studies Off the Table
AAP Decides that Insulting Parents Will Increase Vaccination Rates
The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends (see update) that pediatricians tell parents who don't vaccinate their children that they:
Are "Selfish"
Are "Self-Centered"
Are "Complacent or Lazy"
Are often "Emotional" decision makers
Have "Unacceptable attitudes"
But they do not believe that insulting you like this is in any way coercing you to vaccinate your child.
Further, they kindly tell you that if you decide to only get one or two shots at a time, your child might die, but they are not trying to scare you into sticking to the full CDC schedule.
'Oh... and vaccinate or you are out of our practice and we won't recommend any other docs to you... but seriously... don't feel pressured.'
I have criticized the AAP in the past for making today's vaccine decisions based on the health threats that my father faced when he and his brother contracted polio, and lost their father to the disease, in the epidemic of the 1940's, rather than basing them on the modern heath threats my child, who contracted autism, faces a full sixty years later, in the current epidemic of developmental and immune disorders of the early 21st century.
But now they have topped themselves. In the letter that they are holding out to pediatricians as a model of what to tell their patients (from All Star Pediatrics), they are citing the small pox threat (which was eradicated 30 years ago) that Ben Franklin's son faced, and died from, in 1736!
They reiterate that they believe that neither vaccines nor thimerosal causes autism, or other any other developmental disabilities, and that "ALL children and young adults should receive ALL of the recommended vaccines according to the schedule published by the Centers for Disease Control." [emphasis mine]
This despite the multitude of research to the contrary, and in complete contradiction to the vaccine safety package inserts themselves that list contraindications and say that certain people should not receive certain vaccines.
All this is a part of the collaborative effort between the AAP and other organizations (yes of course Pharma and Paul Offit are among them, I can't believe you even asked) under their new "Childhood Immunization Support Program" or as they might as well call it, "We Know Everything and Parents Are Idiots Program".
Like pediatricians, and many of you reading this, I make my living by providing a service to people. I wonder how many of my clients and potential clients would still want to do business with me if I handed them a letter that in any way even remotely suggested that they were selfish, self-centered, complacent, lazy, emotional people with unacceptable attitudes if they didn't take my recommendations on which services of mine they should purchase? Any one of you wanna give it a try for a week in your business and see what happens?
By digging in and taking this increasingly absurd stance they are not just potentially damaging the vaccine program, they are putting at risk parents trust in their their statements about EVERYTHING. When you stand in front of your doc and hear him make the statement that vaccines have nothing to do with autism, then watch Hannah Poling get a million or so check from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund for her "autistic symptoms", then listen to the head of the CDC explain how vaccines cause autism in the presence of mitochondrial disorders on CNN, then go back and ask him about the whole thing and hear him reiterate that vaccines don't cause autism, but this time handing you a piece of paper that insults you, are you going to take his word about about anything else?
What do they plan on doing if the VCIP Omnibus Hearings find for the petitioners with Autism?
Do they understand that they are moving from shooting themselves in the foot to shooting themselves in an artery?
Two weeks ago Jim Carrey asked, "How stupid do you think we are?"
The AAP has answered, "You are so stupid that we can not only keep telling you obviously disprovable lies, but we can also insult you, and you will not only CONTINUE to entrust your children to us, you will pay us money to do it!"
Last April the AAP took the wise step of attending the DAN! conference. They said that they were impressed and thought we were on to something.
I wrote a piece on the AAP's chance to mend the widening rift between parents and pediatricians, and to regain the lost trust that was growing by leaps and bounds due to the obvious overstatements on vaccine safety that they were making to patients and their families.
I warned that they had a small window of opportunity to work to change course, work in good faith, and begin to make statements about the true risks of vaccination that abandons the now untenable assertion that vaccines don't cause autism or contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders. I warned that the window would only be open for a short time unless we saw real action, and would probably close around the time of the Green our Vaccines Rally if they didn't show up for us in some respect.
Well the AAP didn't show up for the rally and well... this certainly signals that the window is closed. They want it closed. And it looks like they may be locking it.
UPDATE:
An addendum to address critique that this post has received elsewhere.
-One person seems to have been concerned that I was personally insulted by the AAP and All Star Pediatrics. I want to assure that I am at peace on the matter. After having my son become sick due to AAP's bad policy, not much that they simply say about me, or people like me, hurts my feelings.
Insults given do not necessarily need to be received.
In my life, personally, I believe it is wise to work toward not being "insulted" by insults. Because really, either the person insulting you is right, and you need to do some self examination and change, or they are wrong, and (to be frank) who cares what they think about you.
In this case, I think that Dr. Dyer and his crew are wrong. Deciding not to vaccinate based on your best judgment is not selfish, self-centered, or a product of 'unacceptable attitudes'. (Come to think of it, how exactly does Dyer and company read minds to know what peoples motives are? Especially people he has never met, as the statement is a blanket one?) We are charged with making the best choices for our kids that we can given the information we have. Reducing that decision making process to the motives Dyer wants to believe are behind those decisions is just speculative bullying and communicates low regard for parents.
Especially parents who are earnestly struggling with the issue.
And it is not me being insulted that is the problem. It is the parents on the vaccine bubble. Treat their legitimate concerns with contempt and you only risk making complete vaccine refusal more widespread.
-Umbrage seems to have been taken at my use of the word "recommends" in the opening sentence, "The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that pediatricians tell parents who don't vaccinate their children that they..."
I am making the assumption, a reasonable one I think, that choosing only one medical practices vaccine policy letter to patients (one would think there are a thousand out there to choose from) and placing it prominently both on your newsletter and website whose purpose is to give guidance to pediatricians who are members of the AAP constitutes a 'recommendation'. If not a recommendation, it certainly represents a ringing endorsement.
For the sake of accuracy, I will contact the AAP on Monday and ask that they clarify if this was a 'recommendation' or an 'endorsement'.
But, if we can cut the crap and get real for a moment, it does not matter what semantics the AAP decides to play with this. They are holding it out for their members as an example to be followed and even if they DID run a disclaimer (which they didn't) that they don't recommended the letter at all, the message would still be loud and clear to peds.
'Feel free to insult your patients, use coercion to get them to fully vaccinate and dismiss them if they don't. We might 'have' to officially say don't do it, but really, you won't get any arguments from us! (wink)'
Kinda like the conversation I had with my seven year old yesterday, "Son, it is totally wrong to steal cars. Did I ever tell you about Jonsie "Zoom Zoom" Mcgillicutty? Man that guy was great at stealing cars. Here is what he did... now here is how you jimmy the lock to break in... and here is how you hot wire it... and once you have the car you..."
They can say all day they want their docs to 'work with' parents, but what they DO gives us the real message of what they are all about. And what they have DONE is tell peds how to treat patients with earnest vaccine concerns with contempt.
Addendum:
Links to the AAP Newsletter have disappeared, so I am copying the letter here in case the rest do as well:
"All Star Pediatrics’ Vaccine Policy Statement
Are "Selfish"
Are "Self-Centered"
Are "Complacent or Lazy"
Are often "Emotional" decision makers
Have "Unacceptable attitudes"
But they do not believe that insulting you like this is in any way coercing you to vaccinate your child.
Further, they kindly tell you that if you decide to only get one or two shots at a time, your child might die, but they are not trying to scare you into sticking to the full CDC schedule.
'Oh... and vaccinate or you are out of our practice and we won't recommend any other docs to you... but seriously... don't feel pressured.'
I have criticized the AAP in the past for making today's vaccine decisions based on the health threats that my father faced when he and his brother contracted polio, and lost their father to the disease, in the epidemic of the 1940's, rather than basing them on the modern heath threats my child, who contracted autism, faces a full sixty years later, in the current epidemic of developmental and immune disorders of the early 21st century.
But now they have topped themselves. In the letter that they are holding out to pediatricians as a model of what to tell their patients (from All Star Pediatrics), they are citing the small pox threat (which was eradicated 30 years ago) that Ben Franklin's son faced, and died from, in 1736!
They reiterate that they believe that neither vaccines nor thimerosal causes autism, or other any other developmental disabilities, and that "ALL children and young adults should receive ALL of the recommended vaccines according to the schedule published by the Centers for Disease Control." [emphasis mine]
This despite the multitude of research to the contrary, and in complete contradiction to the vaccine safety package inserts themselves that list contraindications and say that certain people should not receive certain vaccines.
All this is a part of the collaborative effort between the AAP and other organizations (yes of course Pharma and Paul Offit are among them, I can't believe you even asked) under their new "Childhood Immunization Support Program" or as they might as well call it, "We Know Everything and Parents Are Idiots Program".
Like pediatricians, and many of you reading this, I make my living by providing a service to people. I wonder how many of my clients and potential clients would still want to do business with me if I handed them a letter that in any way even remotely suggested that they were selfish, self-centered, complacent, lazy, emotional people with unacceptable attitudes if they didn't take my recommendations on which services of mine they should purchase? Any one of you wanna give it a try for a week in your business and see what happens?
By digging in and taking this increasingly absurd stance they are not just potentially damaging the vaccine program, they are putting at risk parents trust in their their statements about EVERYTHING. When you stand in front of your doc and hear him make the statement that vaccines have nothing to do with autism, then watch Hannah Poling get a million or so check from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund for her "autistic symptoms", then listen to the head of the CDC explain how vaccines cause autism in the presence of mitochondrial disorders on CNN, then go back and ask him about the whole thing and hear him reiterate that vaccines don't cause autism, but this time handing you a piece of paper that insults you, are you going to take his word about about anything else?
What do they plan on doing if the VCIP Omnibus Hearings find for the petitioners with Autism?
Do they understand that they are moving from shooting themselves in the foot to shooting themselves in an artery?
Two weeks ago Jim Carrey asked, "How stupid do you think we are?"
The AAP has answered, "You are so stupid that we can not only keep telling you obviously disprovable lies, but we can also insult you, and you will not only CONTINUE to entrust your children to us, you will pay us money to do it!"
Last April the AAP took the wise step of attending the DAN! conference. They said that they were impressed and thought we were on to something.
I wrote a piece on the AAP's chance to mend the widening rift between parents and pediatricians, and to regain the lost trust that was growing by leaps and bounds due to the obvious overstatements on vaccine safety that they were making to patients and their families.
I warned that they had a small window of opportunity to work to change course, work in good faith, and begin to make statements about the true risks of vaccination that abandons the now untenable assertion that vaccines don't cause autism or contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders. I warned that the window would only be open for a short time unless we saw real action, and would probably close around the time of the Green our Vaccines Rally if they didn't show up for us in some respect.
Well the AAP didn't show up for the rally and well... this certainly signals that the window is closed. They want it closed. And it looks like they may be locking it.
UPDATE:
An addendum to address critique that this post has received elsewhere.
-One person seems to have been concerned that I was personally insulted by the AAP and All Star Pediatrics. I want to assure that I am at peace on the matter. After having my son become sick due to AAP's bad policy, not much that they simply say about me, or people like me, hurts my feelings.
Insults given do not necessarily need to be received.
In my life, personally, I believe it is wise to work toward not being "insulted" by insults. Because really, either the person insulting you is right, and you need to do some self examination and change, or they are wrong, and (to be frank) who cares what they think about you.
In this case, I think that Dr. Dyer and his crew are wrong. Deciding not to vaccinate based on your best judgment is not selfish, self-centered, or a product of 'unacceptable attitudes'. (Come to think of it, how exactly does Dyer and company read minds to know what peoples motives are? Especially people he has never met, as the statement is a blanket one?) We are charged with making the best choices for our kids that we can given the information we have. Reducing that decision making process to the motives Dyer wants to believe are behind those decisions is just speculative bullying and communicates low regard for parents.
Especially parents who are earnestly struggling with the issue.
And it is not me being insulted that is the problem. It is the parents on the vaccine bubble. Treat their legitimate concerns with contempt and you only risk making complete vaccine refusal more widespread.
-Umbrage seems to have been taken at my use of the word "recommends" in the opening sentence, "The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that pediatricians tell parents who don't vaccinate their children that they..."
I am making the assumption, a reasonable one I think, that choosing only one medical practices vaccine policy letter to patients (one would think there are a thousand out there to choose from) and placing it prominently both on your newsletter and website whose purpose is to give guidance to pediatricians who are members of the AAP constitutes a 'recommendation'. If not a recommendation, it certainly represents a ringing endorsement.
For the sake of accuracy, I will contact the AAP on Monday and ask that they clarify if this was a 'recommendation' or an 'endorsement'.
But, if we can cut the crap and get real for a moment, it does not matter what semantics the AAP decides to play with this. They are holding it out for their members as an example to be followed and even if they DID run a disclaimer (which they didn't) that they don't recommended the letter at all, the message would still be loud and clear to peds.
'Feel free to insult your patients, use coercion to get them to fully vaccinate and dismiss them if they don't. We might 'have' to officially say don't do it, but really, you won't get any arguments from us! (wink)'
Kinda like the conversation I had with my seven year old yesterday, "Son, it is totally wrong to steal cars. Did I ever tell you about Jonsie "Zoom Zoom" Mcgillicutty? Man that guy was great at stealing cars. Here is what he did... now here is how you jimmy the lock to break in... and here is how you hot wire it... and once you have the car you..."
They can say all day they want their docs to 'work with' parents, but what they DO gives us the real message of what they are all about. And what they have DONE is tell peds how to treat patients with earnest vaccine concerns with contempt.
Addendum:
Links to the AAP Newsletter have disappeared, so I am copying the letter here in case the rest do as well:
"All Star Pediatrics’ Vaccine Policy Statement
Editor’s note: The following document is available for download on
the AAP
Member Center
allstarpediatrics.doc, and may be adapted for use by practices.
We firmly believe in the effectiveness of
vaccines to prevent serious
illness and to save lives.
We firmly believe in the safety of our
vaccines.
We firmly believe that all children and young
adults should receive
all of the recommended vaccines according to
the schedule published
by the Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy
of Pediatrics.
We firmly believe, based on all available
literature, evidence and
current studies, that vaccines do not cause
autism or other developmental
disabilities. We firmly believe that
thimerosal, a preservative
that has been in vaccines for decades and
remains in some vaccines,
does not cause autism or other developmental
disabilities.
We firmly believe that vaccinating children
and young adults may
be the single most important health-promoting
intervention we perform
as health care providers, and that you can
perform as parents/
caregivers. The recommended vaccines and their
schedule given
are the results of years and years of
scientific study and data-gathering
on millions of children by thousands of our
brightest scientists
and physicians.
These things being said, we recognize that
there has always been
and will likely always be controversy
surrounding vaccination. Indeed,
Benjamin Franklin, persuaded by his brother,
was opposed to smallpox
vaccine until scientific data convinced him
otherwise. Tragically,
he had delayed inoculating his favorite son
Franky, who contracted
smallpox and died at the age of 4, leaving Ben
with a lifetime
of guilt and remorse. Quoting Mr. Franklin’s
autobiography:
In 1736, I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by
the
smallpox…I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had
not given
it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents
who omit
that operation, on the supposition that they should never
forgive themselves
if a child died under it, my example showing that the regret may
be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be
chosen.
The vaccine campaign is truly a victim of its
own success. It is
precisely because vaccines are so effective at
preventing illness that
we are even discussing whether or not they
should be given. Because
of vaccines, many of you have never seen a
child with polio, tetanus,
whooping cough, bacterial meningitis or even
chickenpox, or known
a friend or family member whose child died of
one of these diseases.
Such success can make us complacent or even
lazy about vaccinating.
But such an attitude, if it becomes
widespread, can only lead to
tragic results.
Over the past several years, many people in Europe have chosen
not to vaccinate their children with the MMR
vaccine af ter publication
of an unfounded suspicion (later re tracted)
that the vaccine
caused autism. As a result of
underimmunization, there have been
small outbreaks of measles and several deaths
from complications of
measles in Europe
over the past several years.
Furthermore, by not vaccinating your child you
are taking selfish
advantage of thousands of others who do
vaccinate their children,
which decreases the likelihood that your child
will contract
one of these diseases. We feel such an
attitude to be self-centered and
unacceptable.
We are making you aware of these facts not to
scare you or coerce
you, but to emphasize the importance of vaccinating
your child.
We recognize that the choice may be a very
emotional one for some
parents. We will do everything we can to
convince you that vaccinating
according to the schedule is the right thing
to do. However,
should you have doubts, please discuss these
with your health care
provider in advance of your visit. In some cases, we may alter the
schedule to accommodate parental concerns or
reservations. Please
be advised, however, that delaying or “breaking
up the vaccines”
to give one or two at a time over two or more
visits goes against
expert recommendations, and can put your
child at risk for serious
illness (or even death) and goes against our
medical advice as
providers at All Star Pediatrics. Such additional visits will require
additional co-pays on your part. Furthermore,
please realize that
you will be required to sign a “Refusal to
Vaccinate” acknowledgement
in the event of lengthy delays.
Finally, if you should absolutely refuse to
vaccinate your child
despite all our efforts, we will ask you to
find another health care
provider who shares your views. We do not keep
a list of such
providers, nor would we recommend any such
physician. Please recognize
that by not vaccinating you are putting your
child at unnecessary
risk for life-threatening illness and
disability, and even death.
As medical professionals, we feel very
strongly that vaccinating
children on schedule with currently available
vaccines is absolutely
the right thing to do for all children and
young adults. Thank you
for your time in reading this policy, and
please feel free to discuss
any questions or concerns you may have about
vaccines with any
one of us.
Sincerely,
Bradley J. Dyer, M.D.
Jennifer Melnychuk, M.D.
Robert C. Duncheskie,
M.D."
June 19, 2008
Ginger Taylor, BS, MS, AM
Recently I was preparing a list of bios in order to introduce a group of researchers to one another, most of whom were autism parents. I listed their credentials and then wrote "Autism Mom" or "Autism Dad" following.
Then it occurred to me that those titles really should be part of their credentials. You certainly learn more in a year of autism parenting than you learn in a year of schooling.
So I am proposing that we start listing our hard earned credentials. Add A.M. or A.D. to the end of your alphabet soup.
You sure as hell have earned it.
Then it occurred to me that those titles really should be part of their credentials. You certainly learn more in a year of autism parenting than you learn in a year of schooling.
So I am proposing that we start listing our hard earned credentials. Add A.M. or A.D. to the end of your alphabet soup.
You sure as hell have earned it.
June 18, 2008
June 14, 2008
Two More Gardasil Deaths Bring The Total To Five
"Two Less" - Egran03
From Natural News:
From Natural News:
Two More Girls Die After Receiving Gardasil Cervical Cancer Vaccination
by David Gutierrez
(NaturalNews) The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has reported that
two young women died shortly after receiving Merck's Gardasil, a
vaccine against several varieties of human papillomavirus (HPV).
Gardasil and Glaxo SmithKline's Cervarix protect against the two
strains of HPV that are responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancer
cases. Gardasil also protects against two HPV strains that cause 90
percent of genital warts.
The EMEA did not release the names or ages of the women who died, and
said the cause of death was still unknown. It described their deaths
as "sudden and unexpected."
"In both cases, the cause of death could not be identified. No causal
relationship has been established between the deaths of the young
women and the administration of Gardasil," the agency said.
The recent deaths mark the fourth and fifth to occur shortly following
vaccination with Gardasil and the first in Europe. Previously, three
young women, aged 12, 19 and 22, died in the United States within days
after receiving a Gardasil shot. In addition, 1,700 cases have been
reported of patients suffering non-lethal adverse reactions.
Health officials believe that adverse effects of medication are widely
underreported.
Starting in September, the United Kingdom's Department of Health is
launching a yearlong campaign to vaccinate British girls between the
ages of 11 and 13 with one of the HPV vaccines. The program is
expected to prevent 1,000 cervical cancer deaths per year, the
department says.
In response to the EMEA's announcement, the Department of Health said
it had no plans to reconsider the program or change its advice on
vaccination against HPV.
An estimated 1.5 million people in Europe have already received an HPV
vaccine.
In the United States, three states have passed laws mandating HPV
vaccines for school-age girls, and 38 others have considered similar laws.
Mandatory vaccination has been opposed by the American College of
Pediatrics and the New England Journal of Medicine.
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