Monkey Business: Debate with Randy, Part 2
Part I:
http://bitterbonker.livejournal.com/91876.html
Randy said:
“Oh, look. Now we've got an animal study (remember back when you were insisting they're totally not predictive of human outcomes?) showing a theoretical link between a military vaccine adjuvant and a disease totally unrelated to autism [Aluminum adjuvant linked to gulf war illness induces motor neuron death in mice -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17114826 ].”
Well, well, well. Randy, the man who absolutely refuses to debate fairly. Since you seem to be so keen on putting words into my mouth, let me clarify that I never said that animal tests are “totally not predictive of human outcomes”. The truth is more subtle than that… although it is true that in many cases animal tests hopelessly confuse the issue of drug/chemical safety.
In some cases, they can be quite accurate. For example, I don’t know of a SINGLE animal test, or biological test such as in vitro tissue culture, that shows that Thimerosal is not harmful. The crap seems to be universally dangerous to all living things (except for pathogenic bacteria, ironically-it has been shown to be a poor vaccine preservative). Please refer to RFK jr’s “Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal Scandal” [http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/docs/ThimerosalScandalFINAL.PDF ] for references to animal tests that have shown the neurotoxicity of Thimerosal, and evidence that Thimerosal doesn’t even effectively sterilize vaccine mixtures.
If it were up to me, we wouldn’t have to do animal tests to show that substances like mercury and aluminum compounds (which are in many vaccines, not just “military” vaccines) should not be injected into young children. But you would likely counter that this is an emotional, not scientific point of view. So I provide animal tests, which is presumably what you wanted to see. The study has already been done, it doesn’t make a difference for the victims whether I use it here or not.
Yet you still shoot it down. Funny thing is, this is what I predicted. I said that animal tests tended to be ignored when they provided unfavorable outcomes, and promoted when they showed the desired outcome. Your arguments support this contention, because you are doing this yourself. So I guess we can end this debate now! You seem to concede (a) that animal tests are not a reliable predictor of human outcomes-comparable results can only be verified after knowing the effects in humans.
You said, earlier in this discussion:
“As for your quote ‘More than 800 chemicals have been defined as teratogens in laboratory animals, but only a few of these, approximately 20, have been shown to be teratogenic in humans. This discrepancy can be attributed to differences in metabolism, sensitivity and exposure time.’ (Dr Beat Schmid, Trends in Pharmacological Sciences; 8:133, 1987)
“--This is hardly surprising. This exact notion was also examined by Schardein. First, this does not mean 780 chemicals were teratogenic in animals, but not in man. Only one substance known to be teratogenic in humans had not been found to be teratogenic in animals as of 1985.
“Consider:
1. Most of these compounds aren't drugs, so they have never been systematically administered to humans. They are typically things found in occupational settings, in the environment, in food, etc.
“2. Schardein notes that human epidemiological data outside of the clinical setting is not reliable, and has only ever discovered 3 teratogens. Thus, for most of these 780 substances, there is no means to confirm human teratogenicity.
“3. The only way to prove that these substances are not human teratogens would be to conduct a clinically controlled trial. (Good luck convincing expectant mothers to eat pesticide to see if their babies become deformed).”
Very fascinating testimony. Since “this does not mean 780 chemicals were teratogenic in animals, but not in man”, and since you *insist* that animal tests are generally predictive of human outcomes, even if more than one species needs to be cross-referenced, wouldn’t the logical conclusion be that a good proportion of the chemicals on the market ARE teratogenic? Even if the animal tests provide little insight into precisely which ones? So you concede (b) that animal outcomes “can be deemed inapplicable when necessary, ignored when convenient”, in the words of Dr Robert Sharpe.
By the way, it isn’t a given that GWS is “totally unrelated to autism”, as you say. For example, please reference the paper Chronic Mycoplasmal Infections in Gulf War Veterans’ Children and Autism Patients
(http://www.gulfwarvets.com/chronic_infections.htm):
“Autism patients have systemic bacterial, viral and fungal infections that may play an important part in their illnesses. We found that immediate family members of veterans diagnosed with Gulf War Illnesses (GWI) often complain of fatigue and other problems, and upon analysis they report similar signs and symptoms as their veteran family members, except that their children are often diagnosed with Autism.”
Dr. Blaylock explains, “Most neurological disorders, both acute and chronic, have a common set of pathological events despite their varying clinical presentations.” Indeed, we are dealing with autistic SPECTRUM disorders. So, despite the bewildering variety of disorders with confusing names and huge wealthy charities seeking “cures” that will never be found, perhaps the truth is that research into the alleged “genetic” basis of these disorders only serves to hopelessly overcomplicate the issue and distract from real solutions.
Here’s an interesting example (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/08/11/peds.2010-0887.abstract):
“Dravet syndrome is a rare epileptic encephalopathy linked to mutations in SCN1A (neuronal sodium channel α1 subunit) and characterized by an onset in infancy with polymorphous seizure types and developmental decline. It was reported recently that a proportion of patients previously diagnosed with alleged vaccine encephalopathy might possess SCN1A mutations and clinical histories that enabled a diagnosis of Dravet syndrome, but these results have not been replicated.
“We present here the cases of 5 children who presented for epilepsy care with presumed parental diagnoses of alleged vaccine encephalopathy caused by pertussis vaccinations in infancy. Their conditions were all rediagnosed years later, with the support of genetic testing, as Dravet syndrome. We hope that these cases will raise awareness of Dravet syndrome among health care providers who care for children and adolescents and aid in earlier recognition and diagnosis.”
How convenient that we can always make up new “genetic” diseases to avoid the diagnosis of vaccine complications. However, according to Dr. Michael Godfrey, "It is impossible to have a sudden epidemic of a genetic disease. The genetic factor or other predisposing weakening factor is there but it needed the environmental trigger to make it surface. That's why we think the genetic inability to excrete mercury e.g. Apo-E4 and/or a metallothionine abnormality underlies those that crash after being exposed to mercury injections."
Note that autism has overlapping symptoms with “Dravet syndrome” as well as epilepsy:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21620773
You said:
"Finally, a paper that's actually good [Neurotoxic Effects of Postnatal Thimerosal are Mouse Strain Dependent -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15184908 ]. It only supports a theoretical link between thimerosal and disruption of neural development a completely abnormal strain of mice though. Now, tell me how well does this strain (whose genetic problems are not limited to auto-immunity) represent human auto-immune susceptibility. The study definitely suggests a link may exist and warrants further examination--but even the authors note that this isn't conclusively demonstrated by this paper.”
Well, see, once more, you’ve called attention to the questionable benefits of animal testing. You ask how this strain of mouse represents human auto-immune susceptibility. Then how does any strain? Why even do the tests at all?
Do you remember when I pointed out that Dr. Somers’ studies that found teratogenicity in mice were dismissed by Chemie Grunenthal on the grounds that he must have been using a “particularly sensitive strain of mouse”? History is repeating itself.
This is what IOM panelist Steven Goodman, MD, MHS, PhD, an associate professor of oncology and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, told Medscape: "This type of study, while certainly interesting, in no way substitutes for actual human evidence. We don't have an animal model for autism” [it’s highly debatable that we have an animal model for ANY human disorder] “and we don't understand exactly what causes autism or what its exact pathophysiology is in humans.” [and how is animal testing supposed to lead us to this?] “So we don't understand it completely in either system at the moment, and we certainly don't understand to what extent one is a model for the other."
Here is what the author of this study, Associate Professor Dr. Mady Hornig, said: “The same immune response genes in mice that predict mercury-related immunotoxicity also predict neurodevelopmental damage in our model and are associated with the development of features reminiscent of those observed in autism. These include generalised impoverishment of behavioural responses and abnormal reactions to novel environments, brain enlargement, correlated closely with the observed behavioural abnormalities in exploration and anxiety, increased cell packing in the hippocampus, and disturbances in glutamate receptors and transporters.”
This is all very interesting, but the bottom line is that both you and this Medscape article are beautifully demonstrating my point that animal tests are open to interpretation, and this is abused for political-economic purposes.
The article continues: ‘"We didn't say that investigations shouldn't continue in the lab on the effects of mercury, on the effects of thimerosal, and on the causes and profiles of autism," Dr. Goodman said. "Where the committee thought that research dollars probably shouldn't go, at least for the moment, are these large-scale epidemiologic studies linking autism and thimerosal exposure."
‘But Dr. Hornig countered that the design of published epidemiologic studies may have been inadequate to appropriately estimate risk. Although MHC and non-MHC genes, age, sex, nutrition, route and frequency of administration, and maturity of the metabolic, immune, and nervous systems are known to affect mercury toxicokinetics, previous studies have not evaluated such factors.
‘"The pronouncement that research funds are better applied elsewhere effectively forecloses any possibility of federal funding for an entire field of research," she said. "The timing is particularly unfortunate given that we are only just beginning to define the mechanisms by which environmental factors such as thimerosal interact with immune response genes during early development."’
VERRRRY interesting. One of the most important things that you and this article (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/480683) indicate is that all animals, including humans, differ substantially in their genetics even within the same species, meaning that even if the majority are relatively unharmed, there can still be severe adverse reactions in a minority of the population.
"Even without knowledge of a specific gene association, we can consider the impact of gene prevalence on our statistical capacity to demonstrate effects of potential toxins in a population, should they exist," Dr. Hornig said. Note that there hasn’t been any effort to determine if a small percentage of children are genetically susceptible to being harmed by ‘one size fits all’ mass vaccination policies.
You said:
“This [Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11339848 ] doesn't link vaccines and autism. It attempts to equate autism with mercury poisoning.”
-This article points out that autism shares many common features with acute mercury poisoning. It’s ignorant to deny that, and there is no reason to consider it inconsequential.
“…At best, even if this assumption is correct, it still only suggests a possible theoretical mechanisms by with thalidomide [sic] may trigger autism.”
I assume you meant thimerosal, but you actually point to something noteworthy in that Freudian slip. It is not controversial that thalidomide can trigger autism.
Even the shameless Dr. Paul Offit notes: “children whose mothers took thalidomide during pregnancy had birth defects, including malformed ears and shortened limbs. But they also had a significantly greater incidence of autism than babies born to mothers who never took thalidomide. Thalidomide clearly caused autism, but only if mothers took it early in pregnancy. If mothers took thalidomide in the second or third trimester of pregnancy, their babies weren’t at increased risk of autism.” This establishes both that autism can have multiple causes and varying degrees of susceptibility, and that it can be inflicted iatrogenically.
But anyways, as far as the mechanisms of thimerosal and autism, they are indeed “possible theoretical”, because so few proper biological/clinical studies have been done in humans or their cell cultures. The handful of studies that have been cherry-picked to “disprove” the vaccine-autism connection are ALL epidemiological, and these are notoriously susceptible to manipulation. In the words of former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus, “risk assessment data can be like the captured spy: If you torture it long enough, it will tell you anything you want to know.”
For example, the “study” ‘Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence From Danish Population-Based Data’ (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/112/3/604) reported a 20-fold increase in autism in Denmark after that country banned thimerosal in its vaccines. Yet, it even admits: "since 1995 outpatient activities were registered as well...the proportion of outpatient to inpatient activities was about 4 to 6 times as many outpatients as inpatients...this may exaggerate the incidence rates."
They try to cover this up by saying: “In additional analyses we examined data using inpatients only … to elucidate the contribution of the outpatient registration to the change in incidence. The same trend with an increase in the incidence rates from 1990 until the end of the study period was seen.” Are we just supposed to take their word on this? Where is the data? It’s an awful stretch to say there’s a 4-6 fold difference in the data sets, but that the outcome was the same.
And in an earlier study, ‘A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism’ (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134) based on the same data, they report: “In our cohort, 93.1 percent of the children were treated only as outpatients, and 6.9 percent were at some point treated as inpatients in a psychiatric department.” Sooooo… is there a 13-fold difference, a 4-6 fold difference, or no effective difference?
Ironically, in this case changes in diagnostic criteria seem to have been deliberately used in order to achieve a negative association. After all, one of the authors of the studies, Dr. Poul Thorsen, was found to have falsified documents, and was indicted on fraud, money laundering and tax evasion after stealing $1-2 million in research grant money from the CDC. Yet his “research” is still listed on the CDC website without reservation (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/articles.html).
Notice that Wakefield’s research was crucified, but this research is widely considered as definitive exoneration of vaccines without any question. And why weren’t the authors of “Lack of Association” accused of child abuse, by the way, when they performed the same testing procedures as Wakefield et al? The hypocrisy is truly staggering.
You said:
“It appears that the "evil" FDA and pharmaceutical industries are coming around to this way of thinking as well considering thimerosal has mostly been phased out. In fact, we should know if this is the cause of the autism increase relatively soon, shouldn't we?”
So you’re basically admitting that what this amounts to is a huge public health experiment on American children. Indeed, here is part of the Joint Statement of The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service (FDA & CDC), July 7, 1999:
"The recognition that some children could be exposed to a cumulative level of mercury over the first six months of life that exceeds one of the federal guidelines on methyl mercury now requires a weighing of two different types of risks when vaccinating infants. On the one hand, there is the known serious risk of diseases and deaths caused by failure to immunize our infants against vaccine-preventable infectious diseases; on the other, there is the unknown and probably much smaller risk, if any, of neuro-developmental effects posed by exposure to thimerosal. The large risks of not vaccinating children far outweigh the unknown and probably much smaller risk, if any, of cumulative exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines over the first six months of life.”
Let me repeat that: “the unknown and probably much smaller risk, if any, of cumulative exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines”. So what we have here is a situation where the risk is UNKNOWN but it is ASSUMED that the risk is relatively small. Why aren’t you up in arms that the shit was injected into our children in such large amounts for over a decade, when our regulators (claim they) didn’t have a clue if it was safe?! Seems awfully reckless, wouldn’t you agree? Somehow, no, and yet, yes, it seems you would, based on something you said earlier:
“So what you'd need to do to declare animal testing ineffective is prove that animal testing has failed to keep teratogenic [or dangerous] drugs off the market AFTER tests for it had been designed and implemented.”
By your own admission, albeit indirectly, this is precisely what happened! So now you have thoroughly eradicated any claims you could have made as to the necessity or efficacy of animal testing, or our regulatory framework in general. In short, it would appear that the system is designed to fail.
As for the “phase-out”, please don’t forget that the full dose of mercury is still to be found in most of the annual flu shots… for some crazy reason. These shots are even recommended in the first trimester of pregnancy, even though we have already established that this can cause harm that may not manifest if the same insult is suffered later, even later in pregnancy.
Indeed, according to David M. Ayoub and F. Edward Yazbak (http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/165/3/351.full), “several studies have reported dose-dependent fetal deaths in various animal models exposed to thimerosal or its by-product, ethyl mercury (16). Even thimerosal's Manufacturing Safety Data Sheet* discloses teratogenic and reproductive toxicity. A recent review of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System showed a temporal-geographic cluster of late-trimester fetal deaths following flu vaccination, some with shared vaccine lots (17).”
*[http://www.vaccine-tlc.org/docs/Thimerosal%20Material%20Safety%20Data%20Sheet.pdf ]
So it’s really not clear if we can expect autism rates to decline… the only thing we can determine is that our leading medical authorities are total jackasses, if not sociopaths.
You said:
“Of course, setting aside that none of your articles actually directly link vaccination to increased autism,” (except when they did, and you just chose to ignore it) “most of the hypothetical factors presented by them are proposed to function in a manner that disagrees with Blaylock's theory of repeated immune stimulation which you currently ascribe to. Some papers claimed heavy metal toxicity (which is not equivalent to repeated immune stimulation). Others claimed measles persistence (which results from a single exposure to measeles).”
First of all, Blaylock, like any sensible researcher, knows that the causes of autism are likely multifactorial. I have demonstrated this repeatedly. None of these mechanisms contradict each other. Indeed, Blaylock writes: “It is known that numerous pathological events can trigger excitotoxicity, including ischemia, hypoxia, hypoglycemia, viral and bacteriological pathogens, toxic metals, trauma, autoimmune diseases, and free radical excess.”
This is from ‘The Central Role of Excitotoxicity in Autism Spectrum Disorders’ (http://www.dorway.com/blayautism.txt), a paper which summarizes the diverse factors that evidence would suggest interplay to trigger onset of autism. Note that this isn’t just Blaylock’s theory, he has just done a great job of summarizing the current state of research… since we can’t count on the CDC to do so. I recommend you read this paper if you’re actually interested in getting some answers, and not in just pulling the wool over your own eyes.
Referencing the ‘Multiple Causes’ paper again: “According to Dr. Ellen Grant, nearly all the Autistic children tested at Biolab had zinc, copper, SODase and magnesium deficiencies. We know that mercury displaces essential elements like magnesium, zinc and copper from cells causing disruptions of enzyme systems in the process. Serious vitamin and mineral deficiencies weaken the immune system and lead to developmental problems independently of other factors. Knowing that mercury leads to such deficiencies further worsening any dietary deficiencies fits our multiple causes model.”
C’mon Randy, you’re a big boy-don’t tell me you can’t comprehend that biological-environmental systems are incredibly complex, and diseases are not the result of simple single-cause factors? But then, isn’t this myopic reasoning the very basis of the vaccination program?
Backtracking a bit, you said:
“I also can't get over all your bashing of government disease control institutions considering they're doing these studies that overtly recognize that disease control entails far more than just vaccinating everyone. Vaccines have even been removed from the market once surveillance suggests that they are no longer necessary. Yet you consistently take the view that regulatory agencies are only interested in lining their own pockets by taking substances orally from the flesh-syringe of big pharma three times daily after meals.”
Well, for example, the smallpox vaccine is no longer used. I wonder, why hasn’t smallpox returned, like the media is always trying to scare us into thinking will happen with diseases like measles if people don’t get the MMR? However, take a look at this fascinating case study, ‘Apparent Paradox of Measles Infections in Immunized Persons’ (http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/154/16/1815):
“Results
We found 18 reports of measles outbreaks in very highly immunized school populations where 71% to 99.8% of students were immunized against measles. Despite these high rates of immunization, 30% to 100% (mean, 77%) of all measles cases in these outbreaks occurred in previously immunized students. In our hypothetical school model, after more than 95% of schoolchildren are immunized against measles, the majority of measles cases occur in appropriately immunized children.
“Conclusions
The apparent paradox is that as measles immunization rates rise to high levels in a population, measles becomes a disease of immunized persons. Because of the failure rate of the vaccine and the unique transmissibility of the measles virus, the currently available measles vaccine, used in a single-dose strategy, is unlikely to completely eliminate measles. The longterm success of a two-dose strategy to eliminate measles remains to be determined.”
Why haven’t we been beaten over the head with this information? Why is reporting always so skewed towards scare tactics that one-sidedly tout the purported necessity of vaccination? Why do the authors conclude that the solution might be a ‘two-dose strategy’, and fail to consider that the children would be better off not getting vaccinated at all, as their data suggest?
Part III:
http://bitterbonker.livejournal.com/92255.html
http://bitterbonker.livejournal.com/91876.html
Randy said:
“Oh, look. Now we've got an animal study (remember back when you were insisting they're totally not predictive of human outcomes?) showing a theoretical link between a military vaccine adjuvant and a disease totally unrelated to autism [Aluminum adjuvant linked to gulf war illness induces motor neuron death in mice -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17114826 ].”
Well, well, well. Randy, the man who absolutely refuses to debate fairly. Since you seem to be so keen on putting words into my mouth, let me clarify that I never said that animal tests are “totally not predictive of human outcomes”. The truth is more subtle than that… although it is true that in many cases animal tests hopelessly confuse the issue of drug/chemical safety.
In some cases, they can be quite accurate. For example, I don’t know of a SINGLE animal test, or biological test such as in vitro tissue culture, that shows that Thimerosal is not harmful. The crap seems to be universally dangerous to all living things (except for pathogenic bacteria, ironically-it has been shown to be a poor vaccine preservative). Please refer to RFK jr’s “Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal Scandal” [http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/docs/ThimerosalScandalFINAL.PDF ] for references to animal tests that have shown the neurotoxicity of Thimerosal, and evidence that Thimerosal doesn’t even effectively sterilize vaccine mixtures.
If it were up to me, we wouldn’t have to do animal tests to show that substances like mercury and aluminum compounds (which are in many vaccines, not just “military” vaccines) should not be injected into young children. But you would likely counter that this is an emotional, not scientific point of view. So I provide animal tests, which is presumably what you wanted to see. The study has already been done, it doesn’t make a difference for the victims whether I use it here or not.
Yet you still shoot it down. Funny thing is, this is what I predicted. I said that animal tests tended to be ignored when they provided unfavorable outcomes, and promoted when they showed the desired outcome. Your arguments support this contention, because you are doing this yourself. So I guess we can end this debate now! You seem to concede (a) that animal tests are not a reliable predictor of human outcomes-comparable results can only be verified after knowing the effects in humans.
You said, earlier in this discussion:
“As for your quote ‘More than 800 chemicals have been defined as teratogens in laboratory animals, but only a few of these, approximately 20, have been shown to be teratogenic in humans. This discrepancy can be attributed to differences in metabolism, sensitivity and exposure time.’ (Dr Beat Schmid, Trends in Pharmacological Sciences; 8:133, 1987)
“--This is hardly surprising. This exact notion was also examined by Schardein. First, this does not mean 780 chemicals were teratogenic in animals, but not in man. Only one substance known to be teratogenic in humans had not been found to be teratogenic in animals as of 1985.
“Consider:
1. Most of these compounds aren't drugs, so they have never been systematically administered to humans. They are typically things found in occupational settings, in the environment, in food, etc.
“2. Schardein notes that human epidemiological data outside of the clinical setting is not reliable, and has only ever discovered 3 teratogens. Thus, for most of these 780 substances, there is no means to confirm human teratogenicity.
“3. The only way to prove that these substances are not human teratogens would be to conduct a clinically controlled trial. (Good luck convincing expectant mothers to eat pesticide to see if their babies become deformed).”
Very fascinating testimony. Since “this does not mean 780 chemicals were teratogenic in animals, but not in man”, and since you *insist* that animal tests are generally predictive of human outcomes, even if more than one species needs to be cross-referenced, wouldn’t the logical conclusion be that a good proportion of the chemicals on the market ARE teratogenic? Even if the animal tests provide little insight into precisely which ones? So you concede (b) that animal outcomes “can be deemed inapplicable when necessary, ignored when convenient”, in the words of Dr Robert Sharpe.
By the way, it isn’t a given that GWS is “totally unrelated to autism”, as you say. For example, please reference the paper Chronic Mycoplasmal Infections in Gulf War Veterans’ Children and Autism Patients
(http://www.gulfwarvets.com/chronic_infections.htm):
“Autism patients have systemic bacterial, viral and fungal infections that may play an important part in their illnesses. We found that immediate family members of veterans diagnosed with Gulf War Illnesses (GWI) often complain of fatigue and other problems, and upon analysis they report similar signs and symptoms as their veteran family members, except that their children are often diagnosed with Autism.”
Dr. Blaylock explains, “Most neurological disorders, both acute and chronic, have a common set of pathological events despite their varying clinical presentations.” Indeed, we are dealing with autistic SPECTRUM disorders. So, despite the bewildering variety of disorders with confusing names and huge wealthy charities seeking “cures” that will never be found, perhaps the truth is that research into the alleged “genetic” basis of these disorders only serves to hopelessly overcomplicate the issue and distract from real solutions.
Here’s an interesting example (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/08/11/peds.2010-0887.abstract):
“Dravet syndrome is a rare epileptic encephalopathy linked to mutations in SCN1A (neuronal sodium channel α1 subunit) and characterized by an onset in infancy with polymorphous seizure types and developmental decline. It was reported recently that a proportion of patients previously diagnosed with alleged vaccine encephalopathy might possess SCN1A mutations and clinical histories that enabled a diagnosis of Dravet syndrome, but these results have not been replicated.
“We present here the cases of 5 children who presented for epilepsy care with presumed parental diagnoses of alleged vaccine encephalopathy caused by pertussis vaccinations in infancy. Their conditions were all rediagnosed years later, with the support of genetic testing, as Dravet syndrome. We hope that these cases will raise awareness of Dravet syndrome among health care providers who care for children and adolescents and aid in earlier recognition and diagnosis.”
How convenient that we can always make up new “genetic” diseases to avoid the diagnosis of vaccine complications. However, according to Dr. Michael Godfrey, "It is impossible to have a sudden epidemic of a genetic disease. The genetic factor or other predisposing weakening factor is there but it needed the environmental trigger to make it surface. That's why we think the genetic inability to excrete mercury e.g. Apo-E4 and/or a metallothionine abnormality underlies those that crash after being exposed to mercury injections."
Note that autism has overlapping symptoms with “Dravet syndrome” as well as epilepsy:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21620773
You said:
"Finally, a paper that's actually good [Neurotoxic Effects of Postnatal Thimerosal are Mouse Strain Dependent -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15184908 ]. It only supports a theoretical link between thimerosal and disruption of neural development a completely abnormal strain of mice though. Now, tell me how well does this strain (whose genetic problems are not limited to auto-immunity) represent human auto-immune susceptibility. The study definitely suggests a link may exist and warrants further examination--but even the authors note that this isn't conclusively demonstrated by this paper.”
Well, see, once more, you’ve called attention to the questionable benefits of animal testing. You ask how this strain of mouse represents human auto-immune susceptibility. Then how does any strain? Why even do the tests at all?
Do you remember when I pointed out that Dr. Somers’ studies that found teratogenicity in mice were dismissed by Chemie Grunenthal on the grounds that he must have been using a “particularly sensitive strain of mouse”? History is repeating itself.
This is what IOM panelist Steven Goodman, MD, MHS, PhD, an associate professor of oncology and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, told Medscape: "This type of study, while certainly interesting, in no way substitutes for actual human evidence. We don't have an animal model for autism” [it’s highly debatable that we have an animal model for ANY human disorder] “and we don't understand exactly what causes autism or what its exact pathophysiology is in humans.” [and how is animal testing supposed to lead us to this?] “So we don't understand it completely in either system at the moment, and we certainly don't understand to what extent one is a model for the other."
Here is what the author of this study, Associate Professor Dr. Mady Hornig, said: “The same immune response genes in mice that predict mercury-related immunotoxicity also predict neurodevelopmental damage in our model and are associated with the development of features reminiscent of those observed in autism. These include generalised impoverishment of behavioural responses and abnormal reactions to novel environments, brain enlargement, correlated closely with the observed behavioural abnormalities in exploration and anxiety, increased cell packing in the hippocampus, and disturbances in glutamate receptors and transporters.”
This is all very interesting, but the bottom line is that both you and this Medscape article are beautifully demonstrating my point that animal tests are open to interpretation, and this is abused for political-economic purposes.
The article continues: ‘"We didn't say that investigations shouldn't continue in the lab on the effects of mercury, on the effects of thimerosal, and on the causes and profiles of autism," Dr. Goodman said. "Where the committee thought that research dollars probably shouldn't go, at least for the moment, are these large-scale epidemiologic studies linking autism and thimerosal exposure."
‘But Dr. Hornig countered that the design of published epidemiologic studies may have been inadequate to appropriately estimate risk. Although MHC and non-MHC genes, age, sex, nutrition, route and frequency of administration, and maturity of the metabolic, immune, and nervous systems are known to affect mercury toxicokinetics, previous studies have not evaluated such factors.
‘"The pronouncement that research funds are better applied elsewhere effectively forecloses any possibility of federal funding for an entire field of research," she said. "The timing is particularly unfortunate given that we are only just beginning to define the mechanisms by which environmental factors such as thimerosal interact with immune response genes during early development."’
VERRRRY interesting. One of the most important things that you and this article (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/480683) indicate is that all animals, including humans, differ substantially in their genetics even within the same species, meaning that even if the majority are relatively unharmed, there can still be severe adverse reactions in a minority of the population.
"Even without knowledge of a specific gene association, we can consider the impact of gene prevalence on our statistical capacity to demonstrate effects of potential toxins in a population, should they exist," Dr. Hornig said. Note that there hasn’t been any effort to determine if a small percentage of children are genetically susceptible to being harmed by ‘one size fits all’ mass vaccination policies.
You said:
“This [Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11339848 ] doesn't link vaccines and autism. It attempts to equate autism with mercury poisoning.”
-This article points out that autism shares many common features with acute mercury poisoning. It’s ignorant to deny that, and there is no reason to consider it inconsequential.
“…At best, even if this assumption is correct, it still only suggests a possible theoretical mechanisms by with thalidomide [sic] may trigger autism.”
I assume you meant thimerosal, but you actually point to something noteworthy in that Freudian slip. It is not controversial that thalidomide can trigger autism.
Even the shameless Dr. Paul Offit notes: “children whose mothers took thalidomide during pregnancy had birth defects, including malformed ears and shortened limbs. But they also had a significantly greater incidence of autism than babies born to mothers who never took thalidomide. Thalidomide clearly caused autism, but only if mothers took it early in pregnancy. If mothers took thalidomide in the second or third trimester of pregnancy, their babies weren’t at increased risk of autism.” This establishes both that autism can have multiple causes and varying degrees of susceptibility, and that it can be inflicted iatrogenically.
But anyways, as far as the mechanisms of thimerosal and autism, they are indeed “possible theoretical”, because so few proper biological/clinical studies have been done in humans or their cell cultures. The handful of studies that have been cherry-picked to “disprove” the vaccine-autism connection are ALL epidemiological, and these are notoriously susceptible to manipulation. In the words of former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus, “risk assessment data can be like the captured spy: If you torture it long enough, it will tell you anything you want to know.”
For example, the “study” ‘Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence From Danish Population-Based Data’ (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/112/3/604) reported a 20-fold increase in autism in Denmark after that country banned thimerosal in its vaccines. Yet, it even admits: "since 1995 outpatient activities were registered as well...the proportion of outpatient to inpatient activities was about 4 to 6 times as many outpatients as inpatients...this may exaggerate the incidence rates."
They try to cover this up by saying: “In additional analyses we examined data using inpatients only … to elucidate the contribution of the outpatient registration to the change in incidence. The same trend with an increase in the incidence rates from 1990 until the end of the study period was seen.” Are we just supposed to take their word on this? Where is the data? It’s an awful stretch to say there’s a 4-6 fold difference in the data sets, but that the outcome was the same.
And in an earlier study, ‘A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism’ (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134) based on the same data, they report: “In our cohort, 93.1 percent of the children were treated only as outpatients, and 6.9 percent were at some point treated as inpatients in a psychiatric department.” Sooooo… is there a 13-fold difference, a 4-6 fold difference, or no effective difference?
Ironically, in this case changes in diagnostic criteria seem to have been deliberately used in order to achieve a negative association. After all, one of the authors of the studies, Dr. Poul Thorsen, was found to have falsified documents, and was indicted on fraud, money laundering and tax evasion after stealing $1-2 million in research grant money from the CDC. Yet his “research” is still listed on the CDC website without reservation (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/articles.html).
Notice that Wakefield’s research was crucified, but this research is widely considered as definitive exoneration of vaccines without any question. And why weren’t the authors of “Lack of Association” accused of child abuse, by the way, when they performed the same testing procedures as Wakefield et al? The hypocrisy is truly staggering.
You said:
“It appears that the "evil" FDA and pharmaceutical industries are coming around to this way of thinking as well considering thimerosal has mostly been phased out. In fact, we should know if this is the cause of the autism increase relatively soon, shouldn't we?”
So you’re basically admitting that what this amounts to is a huge public health experiment on American children. Indeed, here is part of the Joint Statement of The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service (FDA & CDC), July 7, 1999:
"The recognition that some children could be exposed to a cumulative level of mercury over the first six months of life that exceeds one of the federal guidelines on methyl mercury now requires a weighing of two different types of risks when vaccinating infants. On the one hand, there is the known serious risk of diseases and deaths caused by failure to immunize our infants against vaccine-preventable infectious diseases; on the other, there is the unknown and probably much smaller risk, if any, of neuro-developmental effects posed by exposure to thimerosal. The large risks of not vaccinating children far outweigh the unknown and probably much smaller risk, if any, of cumulative exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines over the first six months of life.”
Let me repeat that: “the unknown and probably much smaller risk, if any, of cumulative exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines”. So what we have here is a situation where the risk is UNKNOWN but it is ASSUMED that the risk is relatively small. Why aren’t you up in arms that the shit was injected into our children in such large amounts for over a decade, when our regulators (claim they) didn’t have a clue if it was safe?! Seems awfully reckless, wouldn’t you agree? Somehow, no, and yet, yes, it seems you would, based on something you said earlier:
“So what you'd need to do to declare animal testing ineffective is prove that animal testing has failed to keep teratogenic [or dangerous] drugs off the market AFTER tests for it had been designed and implemented.”
By your own admission, albeit indirectly, this is precisely what happened! So now you have thoroughly eradicated any claims you could have made as to the necessity or efficacy of animal testing, or our regulatory framework in general. In short, it would appear that the system is designed to fail.
As for the “phase-out”, please don’t forget that the full dose of mercury is still to be found in most of the annual flu shots… for some crazy reason. These shots are even recommended in the first trimester of pregnancy, even though we have already established that this can cause harm that may not manifest if the same insult is suffered later, even later in pregnancy.
Indeed, according to David M. Ayoub and F. Edward Yazbak (http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/165/3/351.full), “several studies have reported dose-dependent fetal deaths in various animal models exposed to thimerosal or its by-product, ethyl mercury (16). Even thimerosal's Manufacturing Safety Data Sheet* discloses teratogenic and reproductive toxicity. A recent review of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System showed a temporal-geographic cluster of late-trimester fetal deaths following flu vaccination, some with shared vaccine lots (17).”
*[http://www.vaccine-tlc.org/docs/Thimerosal%20Material%20Safety%20Data%20Sheet.pdf ]
So it’s really not clear if we can expect autism rates to decline… the only thing we can determine is that our leading medical authorities are total jackasses, if not sociopaths.
You said:
“Of course, setting aside that none of your articles actually directly link vaccination to increased autism,” (except when they did, and you just chose to ignore it) “most of the hypothetical factors presented by them are proposed to function in a manner that disagrees with Blaylock's theory of repeated immune stimulation which you currently ascribe to. Some papers claimed heavy metal toxicity (which is not equivalent to repeated immune stimulation). Others claimed measles persistence (which results from a single exposure to measeles).”
First of all, Blaylock, like any sensible researcher, knows that the causes of autism are likely multifactorial. I have demonstrated this repeatedly. None of these mechanisms contradict each other. Indeed, Blaylock writes: “It is known that numerous pathological events can trigger excitotoxicity, including ischemia, hypoxia, hypoglycemia, viral and bacteriological pathogens, toxic metals, trauma, autoimmune diseases, and free radical excess.”
This is from ‘The Central Role of Excitotoxicity in Autism Spectrum Disorders’ (http://www.dorway.com/blayautism.txt), a paper which summarizes the diverse factors that evidence would suggest interplay to trigger onset of autism. Note that this isn’t just Blaylock’s theory, he has just done a great job of summarizing the current state of research… since we can’t count on the CDC to do so. I recommend you read this paper if you’re actually interested in getting some answers, and not in just pulling the wool over your own eyes.
Referencing the ‘Multiple Causes’ paper again: “According to Dr. Ellen Grant, nearly all the Autistic children tested at Biolab had zinc, copper, SODase and magnesium deficiencies. We know that mercury displaces essential elements like magnesium, zinc and copper from cells causing disruptions of enzyme systems in the process. Serious vitamin and mineral deficiencies weaken the immune system and lead to developmental problems independently of other factors. Knowing that mercury leads to such deficiencies further worsening any dietary deficiencies fits our multiple causes model.”
C’mon Randy, you’re a big boy-don’t tell me you can’t comprehend that biological-environmental systems are incredibly complex, and diseases are not the result of simple single-cause factors? But then, isn’t this myopic reasoning the very basis of the vaccination program?
Backtracking a bit, you said:
“I also can't get over all your bashing of government disease control institutions considering they're doing these studies that overtly recognize that disease control entails far more than just vaccinating everyone. Vaccines have even been removed from the market once surveillance suggests that they are no longer necessary. Yet you consistently take the view that regulatory agencies are only interested in lining their own pockets by taking substances orally from the flesh-syringe of big pharma three times daily after meals.”
Well, for example, the smallpox vaccine is no longer used. I wonder, why hasn’t smallpox returned, like the media is always trying to scare us into thinking will happen with diseases like measles if people don’t get the MMR? However, take a look at this fascinating case study, ‘Apparent Paradox of Measles Infections in Immunized Persons’ (http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/154/16/1815):
“Results
We found 18 reports of measles outbreaks in very highly immunized school populations where 71% to 99.8% of students were immunized against measles. Despite these high rates of immunization, 30% to 100% (mean, 77%) of all measles cases in these outbreaks occurred in previously immunized students. In our hypothetical school model, after more than 95% of schoolchildren are immunized against measles, the majority of measles cases occur in appropriately immunized children.
“Conclusions
The apparent paradox is that as measles immunization rates rise to high levels in a population, measles becomes a disease of immunized persons. Because of the failure rate of the vaccine and the unique transmissibility of the measles virus, the currently available measles vaccine, used in a single-dose strategy, is unlikely to completely eliminate measles. The longterm success of a two-dose strategy to eliminate measles remains to be determined.”
Why haven’t we been beaten over the head with this information? Why is reporting always so skewed towards scare tactics that one-sidedly tout the purported necessity of vaccination? Why do the authors conclude that the solution might be a ‘two-dose strategy’, and fail to consider that the children would be better off not getting vaccinated at all, as their data suggest?
Part III:
http://bitterbonker.livejournal.com/92255.html