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Former Head of NIH Says Link Between Autism & Vaccines Should Be Investigated
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Posted by sylvia on Monday, August 03, 2009 (09:15:23)
American Free Press By Melanie Phillips
Good to see that the Telegraph of London has picked up on developments I wrote about here in the U.S., where a head of official steam is building behind the perception that there is a troubling relationship between certain childhood vaccines, including MMR (mumps/measles/ rubella), and autistic symptoms and other damage in a subset of particularly vulnerable children. As I have written, this has been prompted by recent U.S. cases in which multiple vaccinations have aggravated an underlying mitochondrial weakness to produce catastrophic effects, leading Dr. Bernardine Healy, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, to tell CBS News:
“I think that the public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the [autism link to vaccination] hypothesis as irrational.”
In addition, the Telegraph reported this: “The vaccine hypothesis was bolstered recently by a five-year study in monkeys who were given the same vaccinations that American children are routinely given. Last week, Dr. Laura Hewitson, a specialist in obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, told the International Meeting for Autism Research in London that in the double-blind placebo-controlled study, 13 vaccinated animals showed increased aggression, impaired cognitive skills and developmental delay. The three unvaccinated animals in the study developed normally.”
“There was a significant difference between the two groups,” said Hewitson. “The vaccinated group had trouble developing reflexes. . . . They also became more insular and more aggressive. There was an increase in aggressive behavior after they had their MMR vaccines, and they stopped exploring their surroundings as much.”
Abnormal brain activity was found in the monkeys, and higher sensitivity to a naturally occurring brain chemical linked to sleeplessness, hallucinations, lack of social skills and a high pain threshold—all symptoms found in children on the autistic spectrum. The monkeys also exhibited abnormalities of the amygdala, the part of the brain which regulates emotions.
“We can’t conclude that vaccines cause autism from this study,” said Hewitson. “What we can conclude is that the vaccinated monkeys showed significant negative behavioral differences before and after the MMR.”
This research, carried out at five U.S. research centers, including The University of California, Washington National Primate Research Center, Seattle, The University of Kentucky and the Thoughtful House Center for Children, Texas (founded by the man at the eye of this storm, Andrew Wakefield) has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Some suspicious minds may think (however unfairly) that Wakefield’s involvement taints it. And it must be stressed that the other American developments involve certain differences from the British childhood vaccination regime, including multiple jabs in the course of one day and the use of mercury-based preservatives.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the suspicion gathering momentum in the U.S., that a vaccine schedule including MMR may trigger a catastrophic reaction in both brain and gut among a small proportion of children who are vulnerable, is almost exactly the claim made by Wakefield, now fighting for his professional life before the General Medical Register for making it—in the teeth of a medical establishment in Britain that states categorically there is no truth in it whatsoever.
Melanie Phillips is an acclaimed and controversial columnist for London’s Daily Mail. Educated at Oxford, she won the Orwell Prize for journalism 1996. She is the author of All Must Have Prizes and other books. Her website, which collects many of her essays, is www.melaniephillips.com. Please take a look. This article was edited for length.
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Memo to McCain: Vaccines Not Linked to Autism
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Posted by lightfoot on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 (18:25:40)
By Dr Manhatten
There is no hard evidence linking autism to vaccinations. So why did John McCain choose the losing side in this debate?
We’re all used to watching presidential candidates torture facts in unspeakable ways.
Recently, however, the presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain took a break from the usual distortions of foreign policy, taxes, and the federal budget in favor of a new topic: whether thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines, causes autism.
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Read More... (10.77 KB) | comments? | |
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Mercury remains in flu vaccine
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Posted by lightfoot on Thursday, January 24, 2008 (22:04:53)
by :Curtis and Theresa Johnson, Springfield
The California Department of Public Health is using a rather flawed method to attempt to show the safety of the mercury vaccine preservative Thimerosal. Epidemiological studies are hardly science.
"Epidemiological studies" (group question-answer surveys) are done in much the same manner that producers use to secure "sets of answers" for the television show "Family Feud."
However, in this light, those who perform such studies would need to explain (from other epidemiological studies) why there has not been an "autism explosion" in Amish communities, who do not vaccinate their children.
For some reason, the FDA and CDC refuse to provide a routine safety study for Thimerosal which has been used in millions of doses of pediatric vaccines. Thimerosal was "grandfathered" into FDA vaccine use with rather pathetic data from the 1940s. The preschool vaccination schedule has increased from five or six shots in the 1980s to the present schedule of about 25.
If you "study or survey" the right group, you can find that Thalidomide is safe; if you "study or survey" the right group, you can find that Vioxx is safe. Out of 132 million doses of flu vaccine for the 2007-08 flu season, only 8 million doses are Thimerosal/ mercury free.
Many parents of autistic children (just in case the Center for Disease Control and the FDA are wrong again) have treated their children for mercury poisoning with moderate success. One possible source of mercury exposure could be flu/vaccine injections into the toddlers bloodstream.
News-Leader
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Health : The MMR story that wasn't
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Posted by sylvia on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 (08:44:46)
The Guardian
By Ben Goldacre
Whatever you think about Andrew Wakefield, the real villains of the MMR scandal are the media. Just one week before his GMC hearing, yet another factless "MMR causes autism" news story appeared: and even though it ran on the front page of our very own Observer, I am dismantling it on this page. We're all grown-ups around here.
The story made three key points: that new research has found an increase in the prevalence of autism to one in 58; that the lead academic on this study was so concerned he suggested raising the finding with public heath officials; and that two "leading researchers" on the team believe that the rise was due to MMR. Within a week the story had been recycled in several national newspapers, and the news pages of at least one academic journal.
But where did the facts come from? I contacted the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge: the study the Observer reported is not finished, and not published. The data has been collected, but it has not been analysed. Unpublished data is the antithesis of what science is about: transparency, where anyone can appraise the methods, and the results, and draw their own conclusions.
This study is the perfect example of why this is important: it was specifically designed to look at how different methods of assessing prevalence affected the final figure. So it is no surprise that one of the results from an early analysis is high, "one in 58", using techniques which deliberately cast the widest net. But even other figures in the initial analysis were less dramatic, and similar to current estimates, and the Observer admits it was aware of them. It seems it simply cherry picked the single most extreme number and made it a front page splash story.
The Observer is unrepentant: it says it has the "final report", from 2005. I can't get it to show it to me but the Cambridge team suspect the paper has seen the last of the quarterly progress reports to the funders. So how did the Observer manage to crowbar MMR into this story?
First, it claimed that the lead researcher, Professor Simon Baron Cohen, "was so concerned by the one in 58 figure that last year he proposed informing public health officials in the county." Prof Cohen is clear: this is inaccurate and scaremongering.
And the meat? The Observer claims that "two of the academics, leaders in their field, privately believe that the surprisingly high figure [one in 58] may be linked to the use of the controversial MMR vaccine." This point is repeatedly reiterated, with a couple of other scientists disagreeing to create that familiar, illusory equipoise of scientific opinion which has fuelled the MMR scare in the media for almost a decade now.
But in fact, the two "leading experts" who were concerned about MMR, the "experts", the "leaders in their field", were not professors, or fellows, or lecturers: they were research associates. I rang both, and both were very clear that they wouldn't describe themselves as "leading experts". One is Fiona Scott, a psychologist and very competent researcher at Cambridge. She said to me: "I absolutely do not think that the rise in autism is related to MMR." And: "My own daughter is getting vaccinated with the MMR jab on July 17."
She also said, astonishingly, that the Observer never even spoke to her. And in the Observer's "readers' editor" column one whole week later, where the Observer half heartedly addressed some of the criticisms of its piece, the Observer persisted in claiming she believes MMR causes autism: it believes it knows the opinions of this woman better than she knows her own mind. Despite her public protestations. The only voice that Dr Scott could find - bizarrely - was in the online comments underneath the readers' editor piece, where the Observer continued to call her an MMR "dissenter", and where she posted an impassioned and slightly desperate message, protesting her support of MMR, and threatening legal action.
That's one of the leading experts. The other is Carol Stott. She does believe that MMR causes autism (at last). However, she is no longer even a "research associate" at the Autism Research Centre.
Carol Stott works in Dr Andrew Wakefield's private autism clinic in America, which the Observer failed to mention, and she was also an adviser to the legal team which failed in seeking compensation for parents who believed that MMR caused their child's autism, which the Observer failed to mention. She was paid £100,000 of public money for her services. She says her objectivity was not affected by the sum, but even so this seems an astonishing pair of facts for the Observer to leave out.
And were Stott's views private, or secret, or new? Hardly. Stott is so committed to the cause against MMR that when the investigative journalist Brian Deer exposed the legal payouts in 2004, although she had no prior contact with him, she spontaneously fired off a long series of sweary emails titled "game on": "Try me, shit head ... Believe me, you will lose ... so go fuck yourself. Got it yet shit head. Try me ... Twathead ... waiting ... oh yes ... Stick that where it feels good. Shit head ... well, ur a bit slow on the uptake ... Give it time I s'pose. Twat." And so on.
On the phone I genuinely warmed to her, and she regrets that many people have fallen into entrenched positions on MMR on both sides. But she's not a leading expert (as she herself agrees); she's not a sombre Cambridge academic suddenly expressing a fresh concern (her views are very public); and in any case, even she is very clear that this new research reported in the Observer would tell us nothing whatsoever about MMR causing autism.
Nothing has changed, and this scare will never be allowed to die. If we had the right regulatory structures, almost every section of the media would be in the dock, alongside Wakefield.
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Mercury : Child vaccines under threat in pay row
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Posted by sylvia on Saturday, March 25, 2006 (09:57:45)
Times Online
By Nigel Hawkes
VACCINATIONS for children could be under threat from changes to the way that family doctors are paid. A survey suggests that more than one in seven GPs is considering opting out of providing immunisations and another 10 per cent may stop chasing up children’s vaccinations because the money they are paid for doing them has dropped by more than half.
Any reduction in vaccine coverage would be “a population health disasterâ€, Mark Lambert, director of public health at Gateshead Primary Care Trust, told the medical newspaper Pulse, which has been conducting a campaign on the issue.
GPs complain that the changes in payments were introduced surreptitiously. Many are angry at the British Medical Association (BMA) for allowing the changes to go through.
To maximise coverage, GPs are paid extra if they achieve 90 per cent of childhood vaccines. Until April this was counted by totalling up four vaccines — MMR, DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) polio and Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b, a vaccine against bacterial meningitis). Doctors who achieved coverage of more than 90 per cent, with each vaccine counting for a quarter, were paid an average of £8,500 for a three-partner practice.
The rules then changed to reflect the introduction of a five-in-one vaccine, Pediacel, which covers diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Hib and polio. This meant that the vaccine payments were based on just two vaccines, MMR and Pediacel.
Many parents remain reluctant to have their children immunised with MMR, a hangover from the discredited claims that it is linked to autism. Since it now counts for half of the calculation rather than a quarter, the low take-up means that many GPs cannot achieve the 90 per cent target. Instead, they get a lower payment on reaching 70 per cent — a significant drop in income.
Dr Jenny Lebus, a GP in Putney, southwest London, said that her practice had been assured that there had been no change in calculating targets.
“But at the end of June we failed to achieve our targets for two-year-olds for the first time, with a huge loss of income,†she said. “With warning, we might have been able to chase up a few. We were well over 90 per cent under the old scheme.â€
In Kent, the estimate is that the number of practices hitting the target has fallen from 92 per cent to 16 per cent. Dr Susan Toothill, from Sevenoaks, said that her practice was on course to lose £9,000 this year.
Pulse conducted a survey among GPs to assess the extent of the losses. The first 200 responses showed that one in seven GPs was considering not providing childhood vaccinations, and another 10 per cent said that they would not chase parents who had not actively sought vaccination.
The Department of Health said that, because only two vaccines are now administered, the workload is less and the pay cut justified. It also claimed that it offered the BMA a compromise that would have involved including meningitis C vaccinations in the target, but that this was rejected.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA GP committee (GPC), denied that this was ever offered formally. The GPC argues that the MMR target should be relaxed to allow GPs to count as vaccinated those children whose parents had been counselled but still refused MMR, but the department has declined.
So the negotiations are at a stalemate. Dr George Kassianos, spokesman on vaccination for the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: “There will be dire consequences, huge consequences. The department will have the biggest problem it has ever had on vaccination.â€
THIS MIGHT HURT
# Childhood immunisation is the single most effective medical intervention
# Polio, which killed 270 people in Britain in 1955, has been eliminated here
# A practice that reaches 90 per cent of children with MMR and the five-in-one jab gets a bonus. With MMR uptake in England at 81 per cent, for a bonus the average GP must give 99 per cent the five-in-one jab
# MMR uptake in London was 71.4 per cent in 2004, making a bonus impossible for the average doctor
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