Scientists Retract Study on Positive Autism-Vaccine Link

[No_Baseline]

http://digitaljournal.com/article/286879

This article is interesting for a couple of reasons -

First, Lancet is supposed to rigorously peer review articles...how did this one get published?

Second, the vilification of research scientist Paul Offit, co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, is absurd. Although it's been a while since I have read anything on the potential vaccine/autism link, it was my understanding that the suspensions used to contain the biological matter were in question, not the actual biological matter itself.

Many people believe autism is caused by vaccines. They cite a scientific study as evidence. The group that originally published the story now retracts it. But has the damage already been done?

[i]CBS reported today that the British medical journal The Lancet has retracted their research results on the link between vaccinations and autism because it says the mechanics of the research were flawed in how population samples were taken.. Objectivity and certain scientific statistical standards are required for research to be valid. The original study looked at several vaccines, including those for measles, mumps and rubella, determining thosechildren who had these vaccines were more vulnerable to autism than those who had not had the vaccines
The original study by Andrew Wakefield was published 11 years ago. Since that time the rate of certain childhood diseases such as measles and rubella have increased as some parents refused to have their children vaccinated.. These diseases were among those listed in the study where prevention vaccines were said to cause autism. This parental fear of vaccines even as study after study following Lancet's report revealed no link between vaccines and autism.. For example in 2008 CNN reported follow-up research on the autism - vaccination link showed no evidence there was a link between vaccinations for such diseases as measles, mumps and rubella and children becoming autistic.

The debate over the autism - vaccination link has been serious enough for major scientists studying immunization to be publicly vilified. Wired took a look at what happened to one of these scientists. Paul Offit is the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save many thousands of children's lives, yet he has been vilified publicly by such celebrities as the actor Jim Carrey and John F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy called Offit a "biostitute" for being in league with the pharmaceutical company. Carrey's girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy, who has an autistic child, has been a major player in getting parents to stop vaccinating their children and has singled out Offit's vaccine as well as his work. Jim Carrey was quoted in reference to childhood vaccinations as a process of "grab 'em and stab 'em.

Thousands of people have participated at rallies where Offit has been the target. He has had death threats as well, and many people target him on the Internet with abusive language. One of them said, "I will hang you by your neck until you are dead."
One parent in an online publication on parenting observes how risky it is for parents to believe everything they read or hear without examining follow-up investigations, especially when it comes to the health of their children.

The serious consequences of this original study and now its restraction, according to experts, is that many parents won't examine follow up material, and retraction of the original story supporting the autism - vaccination link might never be read or believed.. Many children will continue not bo be vaccinated because of their parent's fear of the link between autism and vaccinations, that has even influenced some parents' decisions not to have teenage girls vaccinated against HPV.

The summation of critics on medical research is how important validity and the right scientific principles be applied to research so results can be trusted. Without having trusted results, there will still be people, as CNN pointed out this morning, who won't change their behavior with regard to vaccines and as a consequence puts children at risk.

[norton ash]

Well, the retraction was important enough to lead CNN's 1 pm news.

Then there were a whole bunch of commercials for prescription drugs.

[compared2what?]

Well, the retraction was important enough to lead CNN's 1 pm news.

Then there were a whole bunch of commercials for prescription drugs.

Interesting. So are the reasons for the retraction. There was a long thread about them last February, actually. Because there was a very comprehensive and still unrebutted three-part expose by the Times/Channel 4 of the wholesale fraudulent fabrication of the data used in that study right around that time. You can read a multiply linked, up-to-date and pretty comprehensive account of the entire story here:

Part one

Part two

Part three

Or you can read a summary here. Or you can read a longer narrative recapitulation by the same reporter here.

I know that's probably not enough repeatedly and reliably attested to and proven sourcing there to persuade absolutely everybody that all the results reported in that retracted study (the publication of which was the trigger for the following twelve years of fear, anger and strife, during which nobody has been able to replicate it) were fraudulently fabricated by a man named Dr. Andrew Wakefield in exchange for $800,000 up front, plus the prospect of all the unreimbursed-by-insurance money that he's made off of deceiving the desperate parents of helpless and unhappy children since then.

So fwiw, there's lots of even more abundant and detailed evidence of the total absence of scientific support for the vaccine hypothesis in the thousands and thousand of pages of court documents submitted by the expert witnesses for both sides of the Omnibus Autism Proceedings that have been going on for some time in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

There's a short pdf-file background summary on how that's been going down here.

And although they're kind of heavy going, there are links to all the major rulings from those proceedings here.

More in a bit.

[justdrew]

Wakefield was bad, but what's going to happen to the rest of the gang? Richard Barr and the rest (there were other doctors as well as lawyers involved) should be forced to disgorge every dime he made off of this scam. A very serious example must be made of ALL these people.

[compared2what?]

Wakefield was bad, but what's going to happen to the rest of the gang? Richard Barr and the rest (there were other doctors as well as lawyers involved) should be forced to disgorge every dime he made off of this scam. A very serious example must be made of ALL these people.

It should, although I doubt it will. But the thing is that even if it did, they wouldn't be exemplary of more than a small part of the much bigger and more deeply rooted systemic problem with health care and medical science generally. That's why...Oh. Wait. Before I forget:

I said in my first post that he did the research that didn't find any of the things he said it did in exchange for $800,000. But that was a pound-sterling not a dollar figure. So the 1998-Lancet-study-related pay-off was more in the $1.2 or $1.3 million range, actually. I regret the error.

However. As I was saying when I so rudely interrupted myself:

That's why I get as upset as I do when there are threads that demonize the genuinely demonic heartless and homicidal assholes who run Big Pharma for crimes they haven't committed rather than crimes they have. And equally so when there are threads insisting that any and every alternative treatment that's being marketed as a thumb in the eye of Big Pharma that's shown the slightest sign of having some real or perceived benefits is a miracle cure. Because that shows about as much real sympathy for and/or attention to the plight of the truly sick, sad, abused and oppressed peoples of this world as attributing their ills to Satan and consigning their treatment to the grace of God. And does them about as much good, too.

It's more human nature than it is a crime against it for people to prefer belief and easy answers over reason and unsolvable problems, imo. I should probably say. Because it's not like I'm standing on a soapbox getting my hate on about that tendency as it effects the general understanding of what autism and ADHD and their treatment or causes are, or anything even remotely close to it. If you love people at all, including yourself, that tendency in all its infinite forms is just a part of what you love, as far as I'm concerned.

But a little more nuanced consideration would be nice. And I don't think it's really that much of a burden to ask people to bear relative to the overall potential gain in the health and well-being of thousands and thousands of unhappy, unwell and helpless children who suffer more than they have to either because they take medications that don't help them or because they don't take medications that can. And for no other reason than that people like things to be cut and dried. I mean, that's just not necessary.

And nobody really gains by it, it just obscures reality and renders progress impossible. I mean, among other things, the health care system in general and the mostly notional mental health care system in particular are just totally out-of-date. From med school or the way to hospice care. The institutions that compose it just weren't designed for the implementation of what would be best medical practice by contemporary standards if there was any such thing for anybody besides the very rich and very lucky few.

So of course they end up irresponsibly over-treating/diagnosing or under-treating/diagnosing disorders that nobody actually understands. And of course every occupational or professional discipline that serves the weak and needy in exchange for monetary compensation is totally crawling with charlatans, oppressors, crooks and killers. That's not really a Big Pharma thing. It's just a thing.

And of course, there's no one-size-fits-all treatment for and/or cause of autism. There's not really any conclusive evidence that a fair percentage of the conditions presently diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorders are caused by or might respond to the same thing, except in a very superficial sense. I mean, they're not well-understood. So just because they look like each other to a third party, that doesn't mean they'll eventually turn out to be cousins, necessarily.

Which is not to say that some things aren't pretty damn conclusively established. One of which is that the MMR vaccine prevents people from getting measles, mumps and rubella. All three of which are on the short list of infectious viral diseases that reams and reams of reliable research suggest are a lot likelier to be the cause of what later manifests itself as Multiple Sclerosis than what's known so far about the Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency hypothesis of Dr. Zamboni's that we were chatting about here just the other day does.

Although again, no one really understands that condition well enough to be in any position to speak with full confidence about single causes and treatments for every single person who has it. Basically, it can't really hurt to consider all the possibilities as thoroughly as you possibly can before you decide to buy when it comes to this stuff.

Or before you decide how to vote. As the case may be. There's more than enough unavoidable suffering in the world as it is. There's no point in going out of your way to keep the avoidable suffering going at more robust levels than it has to. Vaccination rates for measles in England are still lower than they were in 1998. Low enough that they have outbreaks of it every couple years.

Which kind of makes me more inclined to root for Dr. Zamboni and CCVI, actually. And not at all oddly, if you think about it for a moment.
_____________

Hey! Wait two seconds and I'll post the self-evident rebuttal to myself, thus saving someone else the trouble, okay?

[compared2what?]

Jim Moody, a director of SafeMinds, a parents’ group that advances the notion the vaccines cause autism, said the retraction would strengthen Dr. Wakefield’s credibility with many parents.

“Attacking scientists and attacking doctors is dangerous,” he said. “This is about suppressing research, and it will fuel the controversy by bringing it all up again.”

Dr. Wakefield is part of a small but fervent group of doctors who discourage vaccinations because of a seeming link with autism.

That's from The New York Times, barely doing its job only when forced to and even then not doing it thoughtfully, as usual. So I don't specially endorse the linked article, btw. Or specially condemn it, either. It's the basics. You probably already know what it says and could write it yourself.

I just thought that quote really stood out for the enormous and obvious quantities of concern for autistic children it conveys. That's all.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Lots of CIA-Hollywood vaccine propaganda movies since epidemics are considered to be a national security threat.

When the question of mercury and vaccines possible creating autism popped up in 1998 we got a Bruce Willis movie about a USG agent protecting a kid over a top-secret code called 'Mercury Rising' -

[compared2what?]

Lots of CIA-Hollywood vaccine propaganda movies since epidemics are considered to be a national security threat.

When the question of mercury and vaccines possible creating autism popped up in 1998 we got a Bruce Willis movie about a USG agent protecting a kid over a top-secret code called 'Mercury Rising'

It's more human nature than it is a crime against it for people to prefer belief and easy answers over reason and unsolvable problems, imo. I should probably say. Because it's not like I'm standing on a soapbox getting my hate on about that tendency as it effects the general understanding of what autism and ADHD and their treatment or causes are, or anything even remotely close to it. If you love people at all, including yourself, that tendency in all its infinite forms is just a part of what you love, as far as I'm concerned.

But a little more nuanced consideration would be nice. And I don't think it's really that much of a burden to ask people to bear relative to the overall potential gain in the health and well-being of thousands and thousands of unhappy, unwell and helpless children who suffer more than they have to either because they take medications that don't help them or because they don't take medications that can. And for no other reason than that people like things to be cut and dried. I mean, that's just not necessary.

And nobody really gains by it, it just obscures reality and renders progress impossible.

[catbirdsteed]

http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55679/

Elsevier published 6 fake journals

It has recently come to my attention that from 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures," said Michael Hansen, CEO of Elsevier's Health Sciences Division, in a statement issued by the company. "This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place."

When confronted with the questionable publishing practices surrounding the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine last week, Elsevier indicated that it had no plans of looking into the matter further, but that decision has apparently been reversed.

Read more: Elsevier published 6 fake journals - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/displ ... z0gIjYWozQ

Neurotoxicology is owned by publishing giant Elsevier. It is the journal that published the now beleaguered Wakefield monkey MMR study late last fall, prior to the GMC ruling. They have recently decided not to put it into the print edition. As we can see, they have published bad science before, at the behest of pharma interests. They just choose not to print this version of bad science this time, again- probably- at the behest of some of those same interests. Apologies for not acknowledging this thread in the one I started in Health after this one. I don't often do my homework. I appreciate those who do.


If the links don't let you view the complete article:
[url]
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009 ... -more.html[/url]

Open Access News has the story, and some excellent comments citing other Elsevier activism against open access practices.