autism
oracknows | June 26, 2007The Autism Omnibus trial continued last week, which was devoted primarily to the government's case. Consequently, there were a variety of real experts, as opposed to the pseudoexperts called by the prosecution last week. With only the occasional hiccup, they are taking serious bites out of the plaintiff's case, as documented on a near daily basis by Autism Diva and Kevin Leitch. Today, I want to focus on Day Eight of the testimony, not so much to beat up on those claiming that vaccines cause autism (although there's plenty of opportunity to apply some much deserved Respectful Insolence⢠to…
oracknows | June 21, 2007Has it really been two years?
Amazingly, it has indeed. On June 16, 2005, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. deposited the biggest, steamingest, drippiest (not to mention stinkiest) turd I had as yet seen in my then young blogging career, specifically an article published simultaneously by both Salon.com and Rolling Stone entitled Deadly Immunity. Along with David Kirby's Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Mystery, which had been published a couple of months earlier, RFK, Jr. arguably did more than almost anyone else besides the aforementioned David Kirby to…
oracknows | June 19, 2007While I'm back on the topic of vaccines and autism after a long hiatus, thanks to the Atuism Omnibus, don't know how I missed this article by Sharyl Attkisson, entitled Autism: Why the Debate Rages. I can't recall the last time I saw so many logical fallacies and doggerel packed into an article on an ostensibly "mainstream news" site. In fact, I don't think I've seen such antivax idiocy on a mainstream news site ever, but it's possible that I blocked it out of my mind. I don't have time to do a thorough fisking, but I will hit the main points. Here are the "reasons" that Attkisson lists as…
oracknows | June 19, 2007If you leave aside the problem with the Autism Omnibus trial, which has just entered its second week, that annoys me the most, namely a hypothesis so poorly supported by science and so badly argued by a panoply of nonexperts could make it so far in our legal system and possibly even endanger the Vaccine Injury Compensation System with 4,800 almost certainly frivolous claims that vaccines or the mercury in the thimerosal preservative in vaccines, you're left with the more minor annoyances that this whole trial brings. Foremost among these lesser annoyances, which, let's be frank, do not…
oracknows | June 16, 2007With the Autism Omnibus trial having finished its first week looking at the first test case of Michelle Cedillo, a very unfortunate girl with multiple medical problems and autism, for whose "vaccine injury" her parents are seeking compensation, it's not surprising that we'd find some slime bubbling up to the surface. First off, we have the ludicrous spectacle of a website that's allegedly supposed to be a source of good information about autism providing a forum for a lawyer named Robert J. Krakow looking to encourage parents of children with autism to sue. Negative comments over his being…
oracknows | June 12, 2007I normally like Crooks and Liars.
However, this time around, while blogging about the Autism Omnibus, Nicole let me down. Saying that "I don't pretend to have any special medical knowledge; so I will link both sides of the thimerosal debate," she then linked to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s totally dishonest fearmongering piece of crap from two years ago and Arthur Allen's voice of reason.
This is the sort of lack of critical thinking that comes from "presenting both sides of a debate" as though they are roughly equivalent when they are not. It's like the press presenting creationist arguments…
oracknows | June 12, 2007The first day's testimony for the Autism Omnibus has been posted, and Autism Diva has the scoop.
I haven't had a chance to peruse the PDF file of the testimony, but what the Diva reports is plenty damning. Maybe I was wrong to be so pessimistic in my earlier post. Dr. H. Vasken Aposhian's testimony is even lamer than my post suggested. On the other hand, the emotionalism in this trial still worries me, as does the uncritical press coverage concentrating on the plaintiffs' "feelings" and only mentioning in a single sentence or two, down near the end of the article or report, that--oh, by the…
oracknows | June 12, 2007The Autism Omnibus is now officially under way, having begun with the first test case, that of Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Omnibus proceeding is the culmination of the legal cases brought to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program by nearly 5,000 families who "feel" that their children's autism was in fact caused by vaccines. Most, but not all, of the plaintiffs blame the mercury in the thimerosal in childhood vaccines, despite there being no good evidence to support such a link, so much so that both David Kirby, whose book Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and…
oracknows | June 10, 2007Here is the myth of Simpsonwood being memorialized on the seventh anniversary of the meeting where, if you believe the mercury militia, the CDC, in cahoots with big pharma, tried to suppress the "truth" that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. it is a myth that was popularized by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s misinformation-laden Salon.com article two years ago that trotted out every pseudoscientific and fallacious argument claiming that vaccines, specifically the mercury in the thimerosal preservative used in vaccines, causes autism.
Here are some commentaries that reveal the myth for what it…
oracknows | June 5, 2007One of the common refrains you'll hear from alties about "conventional" medicine is that it's a business, that it's all about money. Never mind that, for instance, it's not uncommon for primary care doctors like family practice and pediatricians to net well under $100,000 a year and that many physicians are struggling to maintain their practices, squeezed between lower reimbursements and higher office expenses. Don't get me wrong; I'm not claiming that most doctors aren't making a comfortable living. Most are. Some even do quite well, particularly procedure-intensive specialties, although the…
oracknows | June 4, 2007It was a nondescript room, a board room much like board rooms found in corporate offices across the length and breadth of the U.S., or even around the world. There was the tasteful built-in wood bookshelves loaded with books and journals, for instance. Given the nature of this company, the journals included titles such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Pharmacology, and other scientific titles, and the textbooks included Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, among other weighty tomes. Lining the walls were pictures of men in either suits or lab coats, the…
oracknows | June 2, 2007Those who still desperately cling to the concept that mercury in thimerosal in vaccines causes autism have been known to write some really stupid stuff trying to justify their position or attack someone else's rebuttal of the whole "hypothesis." This week has produced a bumper crop of such fallacy-laden "defenses" of the thimerosal gravy train--I mean, hypothesis--that two of them are worth a brief mention.
Beware, though: The stupid, it burns.
First up is a guy named Mike Wagnitz, who bills himself as having "over 20 years experience evaluating materials for toxic metals" and currently…
oracknows | May 31, 2007I've been a bit remiss when it comes to writing about the lunacy in which it is claimed that vaccines cause autism, allegedly due to the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that was in most childhood vaccines until the end of 2002, when it was removed from all but flu vaccines. It turns out that the class action suit by parents who think that vaccines caused their children's autism will be going to court in June. Hearings for this suit, known as the Autism Omnibus, will mark a new phase in the pseudoscientific pursuit of "compensation" for nonexistent "vaccine injuries." Even though…
purepedantry | May 8, 2007Less than a week after I had to correct myself on autism and face perception, I read another article on the subject that has me skeptical.
Let's see if we can apply what we learned before. The conclusions from my earlier piece were a couple: 1) people with autism do not seem to possess a global deficit in face perception although they may evaluate faces differently and 2) the evidence with respect to fMRI is mixed.
Here is the new work (unfortunately not available as a paper yet):
In a report to be presented May 5 at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Seatlle, researchers…
oracknows | May 3, 2007You may remember how, almost in passing as part of a longer post, I mentioned how much cranks can't stand critics of theirs who write under a pseudonym and try to out them at every opportunity. Indeed, one of the biggest cranks of all, J.B. Handley, the man whose mantra used to be that autism is nothing more than a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning but who is now backpedaling furiously to blame "live viruses" and "toxic loads," tried to do just that the other day in the comments of this post (as if I'd let that happen on my own blog).
Not all outing is always bad. Kevin Leitch, in fact, has…
oracknows | May 2, 2007Dr. Steven Novella, an academic neurologist, President of the New England Skeptical Society, and organizer of what's become my favorite skeptical podcast, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, took the time to weigh in on the Nature Neuroscience article that I discussed the other day and that engendered dozens of comments, as posts about antivaccination irrationality tend to do around here.
Besides my being interested in what a neurologist has to say about these issues, the reason that I want to bring your attention to his article is because he issues a clarion call to arms for those who…
oracknows | May 2, 2007One amusing little tidbit that came out of my recent post about how the mercury militia tries to intimidate scientists who are willing to speak out against the antivaccination wingnuttery is that the Generation Rescue website, home of J. B. Handley and his merry band of mercury militia chelation junkies, has undergone a makeover. Gone is the dogmatic site that proclaimed that autism and autism spectrum disorders are all "misdiagnoses" for mercury poisoning. Here now is a kinder, gentler Generation Rescue site, although it's still chock full of the same looniness that you've come to expect…
purepedantry | May 1, 2007Earlier this week in the post Neurological "Personhood," I made a comment about individuals with autism. My comment was as follows:
1) Some individuals do not show normal development in the system of identifying personhood described. For example, individuals with autism sometimes show deficits in this area. What does the fact that this system is not universal say about ethical behavior? Clearly, many autistic people are still getting there, but they must be getting to ethical behavior by some other route.
I realized later on that I was not being particularly clear about where I was going…
oracknows | April 30, 2007Now here's something you don't see every day. Nature Neuroscience has weighed in about the pseudoscience that claims that mercury causes autism. Based on British experience with animal rights activists, it points out a parallel that I hadn't considered before:
The idea that autism is caused by vaccination is influencing public policy, even though rigorous studies do not support this hypothesis. Legislators are right to take into account the concerns of parent groups and others directly affected by autism, but policy decisions should be based on hard evidence rather than anxiety. More…
oracknows | April 23, 2007Those arguing the "conventional" view that sound science and epidemiological studies have failed to find a link between vaccines and autism are often tarred with the "pharma shill" brush. Meanwhile, researchers who have ever taken drug company money (particularly if it's from a drug company that makes vaccines) are castigated for having a serious conflict of interest, even to the point where conflicts of interest are invented or exaggerated beyond any reasonable recognition to tar the investigator with the dreaded "pharma shill" label.
Don't get me wrong. Possible conflicts of interest should…