Autism News Beat

Shorter Jeni: Sure I misinformed the public about vaccines and added to the fear mongering and ignorance that is harming children, but it’s not my fault because I didn’t know what I was talking about. And talk radio is hard work, so please knock it off with the challenging questions.

I am not a scientist, I would not claim to be a scientist. When tested on the contents of the MMR vaccine I told the truth. I did not have the facts to hand. Was I ill informed? Yes.As a responsible broadcaster I should have been better prepared as a parent, however, I can fight my corner. I don’t know everything that goes into cigarettes but I do know they are harmful.

And I do not accept that my position, as a radio broadcaster, is irresponsible if I should choose to share my own personal dilemma. I would like some of my critics to try and run a three hour programme.

The “I am not a scientist” canard is a favorite among the vaccine illiterati. It frames the issue as “us against them.”  Instead of presenting science as a way of thinking that has served our species well over the last 400 years or so, the S-word becomes a stand-in for all the people Barnett disagrees with. So much easier to knock down straw men than actual facts.

Barnett could give her flagging confidence a boost if she took to time to learn a few basic facts about science, and how it works. Fortunately, some of the comments on Barnett’s site address this very topic. Here are some of the very best.

#4 - Richard Thomsett:

Anecdotal evidence and “common sense” often lead us to wrong conclusions. That’s the whole point of the scientific method - we often spot patterns that aren’t really there, for example, and the scientific method helps us eliminate errors like these. This is why scientists can be so passionate about the results of their studies: they’ve performed incredibly in-depth, scrupulous research using the scientific method, and it can be very frustrating when people favour anecdotes or their uninformed gut feeling over this.

#6 - David:

I am sure you are not a liar, but, there is a difference between the truth and your opinion (one is based on unequivicable facts and the other is based on interpretation of facts and knowledge etc). In this case the scientific research shows that the jab is safe and the scientist who created the stir about autism has scince been discredited and his work rubbished as inaccurate. Secondly, you mention cigerettes. I believe, like you, that they are not good for your health, but, why do you accept this research and not the MMR reasearch which shows that the jab is safe ?. Unfortunately, your minor celebrity status has given you extra weight behind scientific arguments that you have no grasp over with the public at large. How did you come to your conclusions, why do you believe one scientist against the many in one case and the reverse in another?

#8 - Simon

Unlike a scientist, it appears you have already made up your mind what you believe before looking at the evidence. You have also decided that ‘others’ (I assume you mean those that accept conventional scientific theories and evidence-based medicine) aren’t interested, or are somehow suppressing, alternative medicines. In fact, many alternative medicines (for example St John’s Wort) have been extensively investigated and are realised to be efficacious. One final point. I completely agree, you should be allowed to voice an opinion (as does everyone) but surely you understand that your opinion is not as valid as, for example, the professional opinion of a doctor? You crave a debate, yet when people (with perhaps a slightly greater understanding of the evidence than you) disagree with your opinion, you describe them as ‘vicious.’ If everyone agrees, then it isn’t a debate is it?

It’s encouraging to see the commune rising up against the old media overlords. Vive la resistance!

Apparently, the decades-long innovation know as the world wide web is not diffusing fast enough for old media types. Lawyers for LBC 97.3, a London-based talk radio station, are learning the hard way that censorship doesn’t work on the internet, and that which was supposed to be censored is merely amplified, a phenomena known as the The Streisand Effect.

Talker Jeni Barnett of LBC 7.3

This latest example involves Dr. Ben Goldacre who writes the indispensable Bad Science blog and a weekly Guardian column. Goldacre rightly trained his sites on LBC talker Jeni Barnett, an British actress who feels obligated to share what she knows about vaccines and measles. But since she knows so little, Barnet was compelled to fill the rest of her three hour time slot with anti-vaccine talking points, addle-pated weltanschauung, and other assorted brain farts. In the pre-internet age such mindless drivel passed quietly into the ether, and was easily ignored.

But ignore, being the root word of ignorance, is not something Goldacre is comfortable with. He spends too much time exposing ignorance, and when Jeni Barnett, a former cooking show hostess, served up a steaming bouillabaisse of crass indifference to our mechanistic universe, well, Goldacre sprang into action. One of his readers kindly edited Barnett’s three-hour crankfest down to 44 minutes, and Goldacre posted the audio file on his website.

LBC 97.3 was not amused. Goldacre explains:

LBC’s lawyers say that the clip I posted is a clear infringement of their copyright, that I must take it down immediately, that I must inform them when I have done so, and that they “reserve their rights”.

To me this raises several problems:

Firstly, I don’t even know what “reserving your rights” means. They are a large corporation worth around a billion pounds (genuinely), I am some bloke, they have a legal team, I have no money, they are making threats using technical terminology and I actually don’t understand what those words mean.

Secondly, more importantly, as I have written at length, the media have systematically and irresponsibly misrepresented the evidence on MMR. It is my view that individuals like Jeni Barnett  - but more importantly, organisations like LBC and Global Radio who give them a mouthpiece and a platform - pose a serious danger to public health, with their ignorant outbursts, disseminated to the nation. This clip was extremely instructive as an example of that recurring theme, and it deserves to be freely accessible and widely discussed.

MMR vaccine uptake has dropped from 93% to around 75%, and to below 50% in London. Furthermore, the media have shown no sign of recognising and acknowledging their role, and so it seems likely that they will go on to cause further harm on this but also, more importantly, on many other issues. I write about all this because I think it is interesting, and extremely important.

But thirdly, there is a question of the basic tools you need to illustrate a point. The clip I posted was, to my mind, hideous and unremitting: it went on for so long.

In fact it was so long, so unrelenting, and so misinformed that I really couldn’t express to you how hideous it was. If I tried, without the audio, you might think I was exaggerating. You might think that I was biased, that I was misrepresenting Jeni’s demeanour and views in this broadcast, that and their parent company are living up to the standards of basic responsibility which we might reasonably hold them to, as they shepherd Jeni’s views and explanations into our cars and kitchens. You might think that I was quoting Jeni out of context, cherry picking only the ridiculous moments from an otherwise sensible, proportionate and responsible piece of public rhetoric.

Goldacre removed the audio from BadScience.com and,  predictably, the file instantly appeared on a dozen other sites. There’s even a written transcript. Highlights include:

JB: But why give them the vaccine if they get the measles? I never can understand that.

Critical MD caller: We don’t give vaccines to children who have had measles. They need a combined vaccine of measles, mumps and rubella.

If they have one dose the studies show that they possibly need to be revaccinated within a couple of years to make sure that that protection carries on for life.

*  *  *

JB: I’m going to ask you something here, have you had the flu jab? And still you’ve got the cold?”

Sneezing physician caller: The vaccine protects you from influenza. It doesn’t protect you from the cold.

* * *

JB stream of -consciousness: Back in the day, children got measles, children got mumps. I’m not suggesting - I am not suggesting - that we got backwards where some children, where we have one in fifteen children die of it (then a minute later) What is wrong with childhood illnesses? Is it - to hark back to the first hour - because we don’t have parents at home looking after the children? What’s going on? Is there something wrong with having mumps, is there something - you know is it - most people aren’t that one in fifteen?

* * *

I, however, have talked to many people over the years - 22 years I’ve lived with my daughter - and over the years many many people have said the same thing, that when we were little, chicken pox, you took your kid to get the chickenpox, you made sure your child was near somebody who had it. My brother got mumps, he lived to tell the tale. I don’t know if we had measles. I was sitting next to Nick Owen on the settee at TV AM when his children were incubating rubella which is measles, and I was pregnant!

Barnett’s recurring themes, as Goldacre called them, are not unique to LBC 97.3. Such gross distortions of  science and reason are the fruit some faulty, but widely held assumptions* held by the news and entertainment media. A few include:

Complicated answers are suspect. Antigens-schmantigens, just give it to us straight.

Certainty is strength. Doubt is weakness. Nothing cements certainty like personal experience, confirmed by anecdotes on the internet.

Your opinion matters as much as anyone else’s. Of course you’re biased, but so is everyone else!

If it’s good for you, it’s good. Better to bark like a loon than run with the herd.

Radio personalities such as Jeni Barnett are a symptom of a much larger problem - the dumbing down of the consumer population. As news and entertainment media meld into a single, amorphous glob, the line between science and wishful thinking becomes hazier. Exposing Barnett and LBC 97.3 is a little like putting on a pair of reading glasses - it helps us to see the line more clearly, and perhaps recognize our own biases and misperceptions.

_______________________________________________________

* From Peter Klausler’s intriguing Principles of the American Cargo Cult. [Read more →]

Philadelphia’s Action News 6 covered all the bases when reporting on parents who deliberately expose their children to a potentially dangerous disease via chicken pox parties. Cue well-meaning but dangerously misinformed mother. Quote doctors who set the record straight. Close with mom’s opposing view. It’s a wrap.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The piece opens with “Carrie”, a pseudonymous parent more concerned with privacy than flesh eating bacteria.

“My 7-year-old daughter has been to six of these parties,” said Carrie, who also runs an online forum that helps parents organize and find parties in their neighborhoods. “Unfortunately, we have not caught the pox yet, but I’m keeping my eye out for more parties.”

Carrie, who also believes that vaccines cause autism,  explains why it’s better to “catch the disease naturally” than succumb to medical experts with their “diplomas” and their “knowledge”.

“When I found out that children require booster shots, what that said to me was that there is no prolonged effect and that the vaccine doesn’t work in the long term,” Carrie said. “If it did, there would be no need for multiple shots.

“In my mind, that puts children at greater risk because they get vaccinated when they’re young and if, for some reason, they don’t get the booster shot or the booster shot isn’t effective, the virus will be significantly more dangerous as they get older,” she said.

It’s only after we hear from the concerned parent that Action News 6 introduces us to the experts. First we hear from Dr. Lou Cooper, a former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“I’m aghast at the thought of these parties,” said Dr. Louis Cooper, a spokesman for the Infectious Disease Society of America and a professor emeritus of pediatrics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.

“I deeply regret that parents who are trying to do the right thing just don’t get it,” Cooper said. “The fact is that they’re right, chickenpox for most children is a mild illness. But when you see children who have the misfortune of one of the complications that are possible, you never forget it.”

Cooper said that he has seen children contract conditions as serious as encephalitis, a brain infection, and has even had young patients die from the virus after developing flesh-eating bacteria.

“The child does not need to be immune-deficient or malnourished to have these complications,” said Cooper, who recommends that all parents vaccinate their children against the virus. “It can be an ordinary healthy child, it’s Russian roulette.”

Next we hear from Dr. Paul Offit, a widely-quoted infectious disease expert from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The thinking many parents have is that the natural infection is more likely to induce higher levels of antibodies and longer-lasting immunity than vaccines,” Offit said. “That’s generally true but the problem is if you make that choice you are also taking the risk of a natural infection, which can mean hospitalization and sometimes death.”

…

Researchers now say the chickenpox vaccine has slashed the occurrence of the disease in children by 90 percent but still worry that parents like Carrie are preventing the virus from disappearing all together.

Offit believes that if the chickenpox vaccine becomes as widely used as the measles vaccine was back in 1963, chickenpox would go the way of the measles: away.

“When we introduced the measles vaccine, which is another virus that gets worse for patients as they get older, in 1963, we dramatically reduced the instance of measles,” Offit said. “That is what will happen here with chickenpox.”

Pretty tough stuff coming from top experts in the field. So why aren’t their comments in the lead? A couple thoughts come to mind.

First, the reporter doesn’t understand that chicken pox, despite the wacky name, is dangerous. Sure, most kids suffer without complications, and people who didn’t die from complications of varicella might tell you who that chicken pox was no biggie back then. But the fact is, this is a contagious disease with potentially serious consequences. Would Action News 6 treat the story any differently if parents were holding polio parties? You betcha.

A second thought is that Action News 6 didn’t want to upset the mothers of Philadelphia. Lots of women I’m sure identify with “Carrie”, and have heard about chicken pox parties. Best not to upset the viewers too badly. It’s one thing to hear about Philadelphia gang wars and young lives cut short by violence. It’s another to find out what you thought you knew about your child’s health and well being was all wrong. Best to break it to them slowly.

Finally, we come to the big finish - “Carrie” rebuts the experts.

“When we introduced the measles vaccine, which is another virus that gets worse for patients as they get older, in 1963, we dramatically reduced the instance of measles,” Offit said. “That is what will happen here with chickenpox.”

But Carrie doesn’t agree. She says that the fact that some children still get the virus despite being vaccinated is evidence that chickenpox will never disappear completely.

“Something like this will continually mutate and potentially be worse than before,” Carrie said. “Kind of the way the overuse of antibiotics has happened.”

As for what doctors say about how parents who don’t vaccinate their children might be putting them at increased risk, Carrie is unconvinced.

“Everything you do every day puts my child at risk,” she said. “Putting her in a car puts her at risk.

“We can all only make the decisions that are right for our families, and this is what happens to be right for my family at this moment in time.”

No vaccine is 100% effective, which is why herd immunity is so important. Vaccines helped eradicate smallpox, and  decrease polio cases to about 1,600 cases a year. Measles was on track for eradication in Europe until some parents thought they knew better than the immunologists and started withholding the MMR vaccine from their children.

“Carrie” is right about one thing - everything in life involves risk. When a news outlet reflexively seeks balance between two points of view, when the evidence overwhelmingly points to only one side being right, that news outlet puts everyone at risk.

The prestigious Michigan Law Review just fell victim to the celebritization of science, publishing a “legal and medical” analysis by Jenny McCarthy’s pediatrician, Dr. Jay Gordon, on the ‘liability for exercising personal belief exemptions from vaccination.”

Gordon has no credible expertise in immunology, epidemiology, biochemistry, or any other area that qualifies him to speak with authority on vaccines and the law. He is a star-struck pediatrician from Los Angeles who poses as McCarthy’s science adviser and mentor. His notoriety comes from talk shows and being photographed with Jim Carey at Hollywood fundraising parties, and not from any serious scholarship or study.

His law review article is rife with half-truths and misinformation. Most curious was this statement:

When children or babies who have been in contact with other children (or adults) contract most illnesses, there is no feasible way to know from whom they got the disease.

This is demonstrably false. Last year’s outbreak of measles in San Diego was directly traced to an unimmunized seven-year-old who contracted the disease while on vacation with his family in Switzerland. After returning home, the child infected four other children in a doctor’s waiting room. One of those children, an 11-month-old too young for the measles vaccines, later boarded a plane for Hawaii, where he exposed 250 passengers to the disease. According to Gordon, these facts are unknowable.

Additionally, Gordon is apparently unaware that in viral illnesses, hypervariable regions in the genome can be used to “fingerprint” the organism and trace the path of the infection. It is very practical, and done all the time in tracing outbreaks.

Gordon’s muddled thinking is on further display when he tells us:

There are also situations—medical and personal—which justify waiving all or some childhood vaccines, but these are not good reasons to abandon vaccines altogether.

That’s a false choice. One must not abandon vaccines altogether in order to jeopardize public health - simply discouraging ten percent or more of parents from immunizing their children will do. For decades, the nation’s vaccine program has depended on the public’s confidence and trust in public health officials. But that confidence is undermined by uninformed and biased spokespersons such as Dr. Gordon, who use their positions for personal gain and ego gratification. Vaccines are far safer than the diseases they protect against, a point Gordon ignores throughout his piece.

Gordon says parents who don’t vaccinate are being vilified, and he cites press accounts of last year’s measles outbreak where most cases were traced to children whose parents chose not to vaccinate. But the public’s fear of vaccines can also be traced to the unfounded vilification of vaccines by Gordon and others who continually misrepresent the science, and even lie about vaccine ingredients. For example, Gordon has claimed that vaccines contain anti-freeze and ether, which they do not. He has since recanted, but we must ask ourselves why a self-described spokesperson for the “Green Vaccines” movement would make such a reckless statement in the first place. Gordon has also warned parents of the dangers of formaldehyde, which is present in vaccines. Here our Pediatrician to the Stars shows his ignorance of the biochemistry he surely studied in medical college - formaldehyde is a natural by-product of single-carbon metabolism, and a 12-pound infant makes far more formaldehyde every day than is present in any five childhood vaccines combined.

It’s been 500 years since the Swiss physician Paracelsus coined the phrase “dose makes the poison.” When Gordon and his fellow travelers in America’s anti-vaccine movement forget that lesson, they discourage more and more parents from protecting their children against the same diseases that stalked our 16th century ancestors. Gordon talks about parents’ right to choose, but those choices must be made in the light of knowledge and truth. Gordon’s dark suspicions, both baseless and self-aggrandizing, contribute nothing to the important decisions that parents are asked to make.

The legal theories behind compulsory vaccination statutes are worthy subjects for a law review, and I commend the Michigan Law Review for tackling this subject. But the cause of scholarship is best served by informed comment and knowledgeable experts in relevant fields. It’s bad enough that the line between news and entertainment has all but disappeared. Let’s not make the same mistake with the law.

Overall, mainstream press coverage of autism spectrum disorders improved in 2008, as more major media outlets bravely recognized that deadly childhood diseases are a bad thing, and it is a good thing when we can prevent them. And there seemed to be a growing recognition that “overwhelming scientific consensus” is not the same as “according to Jenny McCarthy.”

Unfortunately, some news coverage experienced signs of developmental regression, including incomprehensible script talk and ratings-driven self stimulation. The most tragic examples are hereby recognized with the first-annual Ashley Award for Credulity in Science Journalism.

The first envelope please.

In the category of Most Uncritical Repetition of Urban Myths by a Local News Celebrity, the first Ashley goes to Steve Wilson of WXYZ in Detroit, for Some Vaccines Still Contain Mercury.

It’s tough to beat Wilson for sheer tenacity as he packs 16 false and misleading claims into 7 minutes of wasted air time, for a nonsense/minute ratio of 2.3. Examples include:

• The Amish “generally shun” vaccines, and autism is rare in their population.
• Eleven scheduled pediatric vaccines still contain as much thimerosal as ever.
• Boyd Haley is a leading vaccine researcher.
• The feds conceded that vaccines caused autism in Hannah Poling.

What Wilson fails to mention: No respected medical body or government institution has ever found a connection between vaccines and autism.

Bonus points: Wilson attempted to defend himself to a critical science blogger by repeating the same false and misleading anti-vaccine talking points.

•  •  •

The award for Creating an Illusion of Balance to Overcome Unequal Evidence goes to the eponymous Ashley Reynolds of KOMU-TV for Combating Autism from Within, an hour-long paean to medical quackery and child abuse.

Reynolds’ unflinching assault on reason and best available evidence combines shameless voyeurism with jaw-dropping credulity, thus setting the standard for the year’s most notable anti-vaccine propaganda. Anti-vaccine zealots returned the favor last May by inviting Reynolds to join a media panel with the same folks who think the Amish don’t vaccinate.

What Reynolds fails to mention: Dr. David Ayoub, whom Reynolds positions as a leading vaccine expert, openly states that the World Health Organization, Bill Gates, and the Rockefeller Foundation, use immunizations to sterilize poor women in Third World Countries.

Bonus points: A pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Missouri’s School of Medicine wrote that he was “utterly horrified” at KOMU for “promoting a fear that endangers children.”

•  •  •

A late, late entry from Deborah Kotz at US News and World Report snags the Clear Conflict of Interest award, for this clear case of unclear attribution:

What’s worse, the lead author, Paul Offit, who heads the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, clearly has a conflict of interest. He’s one of the patent holders of RotaTeq, a vaccine against rotavirus that’s on the AAP’s vaccine schedule. That means he stands to lose money if parents shun RotaTeq.

Kotz works with Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of the NIH and outspoken vaccine critic, and current medical editor at USN&WR. So clearly Kotz has a conflict of interest when reporting on vaccines.

Just kidding. See how easy that was?

What Kotz fails to mention:  Offit clearly has no conflict of interest. He assigned the rights for RotaTeq to his institutions and the institutions have sold future rights to another group.

Bonus points: Information on the RotaTeq patent is clearly public and clearly accessible to anyone clear on the concept of responsible journalism.

Larry King Live’s program featuring anti-vaccine activists Jenny McCarthy, Stan Kurtz and J.B. Handley, originally scheduled for today, has been postponed. In the meanwhile, you can let the show’s producers know what questions you would like to hear McCarthy, Handley and Kurtz answer. You can email your questions and comments to:   larrykingguests@cnn.com .

Here are some suggestions:

Dear Mr. King:

As well intentioned as you may be, you are not doing children any favors when you invite Jenny McCarthy and her friends to spread misinformation about vaccines and autism. McCarthy’s most basic claims are unsupportable, and her statements about vaccine ingredients are demonstrably false. But that has not discouraged some in the news and entertainment media from handing McCarthy unchallenged public forums to repeat her baseless allegations.

If you do invite McCarthy back, could you please ask her some challenging questions so that parents can better decide if she is qualified to speak for them? Here are a few that come to mind:

• Who is your medical science adviser? Did he/she tell you that vaccines contain anti-freeze and ether?
• How do you define “recovery” from autism?
• When you refer to the “explosion” in autism diagnoses over the last 25 years, are you referring to autistic disorder only, or all pervasive development disorders?
• Most of today’s 3-5 year olds have never received a vaccine containing thimerosal. So why haven’t ASD diagnoses fallen among that cohort?
• Formaldehyde is a natural bi-product of single carbon metabolism, and the quantities found in an infant’s blood are several times greater than what is contained in any five pediatric vaccines combined. Why do you believe that formaldehyde, in the quantities found in vaccines, is harmful?
• Is Evan’s autism diagnosis medical or educational?
• How does Evan’s “recovery” from autism affect his status as an Indigo Child?

Questions for Mr. Kurtz:

• As a high school drop out, are you concerned that you may not have the necessary science education and background to fully appreciate the complexities of immunology, pediatric neurology, toxicology, and other scientific disciplines?
• What is the status of DAN!’s relationship with the American Academy of Pediatrics? Are you still optimistic that unproven bio-medical treatments for autism will soon go “mainstream”?

Questions for Mr. Handley:

• You recently wrote in the comment section of a skeptical science blogger that the other side is winning, since most research dollars are going to projects that are unsupported by groups such as Generation Rescue. Why has the mainstream science community so roundly rejected your claims?
• Why have you never offered solid proof that children have “recovered” from autism? How do you define recovery?
• You claim that the symptoms of autism are nearly identical to the symptoms of mercury poisoning. It is well documented that fetal exposure to mercury leads to microcephaly in infants. But in autism, head and brain sizes are larger than in neurotypical infants. How do you explain this?

Please do the autism community a favor and show some skepticism.

Thank you.

J.B. Handley is the media’s go-to guy for crazy quotes, or what editors like to call “balance”. By his own estimate, Handley, who founded the radical anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue, has spoken with a hundred or more reporters over the years, and his half-baked conspiracy theories and junk science rarely disappoint. A Handley quote is to a dull public health story what an overturned semi-tractor trailer is to a monotonous road trip.

But Handley met his match last Friday in New York Times senior medical reporter Donald McNeil, a 32-year vet of the Grey Lady. McNeil has reviewed plays, written about the environment, and filed stories from 49 countries. He’s also witnessed the terrible price of contagion during his travels in the Third World: AIDS, malaria, avian flu, SARS, mad cow disease and other killers. Clearly, this man has been around the block a few times.

McNeil was writing an article about Autism’s False Prophets, Dr. Paul Offit’s page-turner about the phony autism cure industry and the hucksters who keep it viable, and the book’s impact on the debate over the nation’s vaccine program. He wanted a quote from Handley, who rates a mention or two in Offit’s book. We’ll let J.B. take it from here:

The interview began…Donald McNeil was a pleasant guy from the outset, clear and straightforward in his goals. He mentioned Offit’s book, that there was certainly some controversy, and what did I think about it all.

I think my initial answer surprised him. To paraphrase myself I said:

“Offit’s book is a disappointment. For something like autism, where none of our health authorities have any explanation of cause or cure, we have a whole community of doctors and parents who are actually recovering children. And, without ever treating an autistic child, interviewing a DAN! doctor who treats them, or exploring the several hundred case reports of complete recovery and thousands of stories of improvement, without ever looking into any of this, Offit says its all bullshit. I just don’t understand how someone who considers themselves a doctor could do that.”

And here is what I am going to tell you about Donald McNeil: he was completely and utterly clueless. He’d never heard kids actually recover. He’d never heard of cases of children, now neurotypical, with detailed medical records and case reports charting their recovery. He didn’t know tens of thousands of kids are truly recovering from autism and being treated by doctors with medical degrees just like Offit.

Bluster and misdirection are a favorite tactics of Handley and other anti-vaccine activists, and they usually work on reporters who are new to covering autism, and imagine that yes, there could be thousands of children who have been cured of autism spectrum disorders. Somehow I don’t think McNeil was having any of it.

The conversation continued. He said Offit has a simple position on our community: greedy lawyers and opportunistic doctors prey on desperate parents, and that’s all we are. What did I think of that?

I told him Vaccine Court lawyers are paid by the hour, as far as I knew, so hard to fathom they are chasing a great fortune. On the quack doctor side, I took him through my own neighborhood. Six kids with ASD at my son’s school. Three completely recovered, all from the same doctor. Doctors don’t stay in business very long without results, and I have seen some great results. Has he ever looked? Of course he hasn’t. He had no idea.

That’s not much of a defense. Vaccine court lawyers do indeed bill by the hour, and are paid if they win or lose, no matter how improbable their claims. Kathleen Seidel has covered their abuses well, and gives an eye-opening overview of the process here.

On the quack doctor side, the overwhelming evidence, gleaned by researchers around the world over several decades, says that autism currently has no cure, and is not associated with vaccines. But J.B. Handley, the P.T. Barnum of confirmation bias, will have none of that.

We went on to the next topic, which was probably my favorite. I took him to task on the sweeping statements he and his colleagues make that the science proves “vaccines don’t cause autism.” I took him through how every single study Offit and others cite only compare vaccinated kids to other vaccinated kids… I explained how important it is to look at unvaccinated kids, something people like Offit never advocate doing.

There’s a reason that best and brightest vaccine researchers don’t advocate comparing vaccinated kids to unvaccinated - there aren’t enough totally unvaccinated kids in the US to get a meaningful result, and it’s not necessary.  Handley of course buys the urban myth that the Amish don’t vaccinate - his editor at the Age of Autism, Dan Olmsted, fabricated that story three years ago.

But none of this matters to Handley and his posse. As long as can spoonfeed “balance” to the media, Handley will be cooking up his own reality, and stewing in his own juice.

Autism blogger ThoJ has written this open letter to anti-vaccine blogger David Kirby which perfectly captures how the former war correspondent has twisted the journalistic enterprise into something is was never meant to be.

But first some context. Kirby is the author of Evidence of Harm, an anti-vaccine page turner that has arguably discouraged thousands of parents from vaccinating their children. The book alleged that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative once found in scheduled pediatric vaccines, is responsible for a precipitous rise in autism diagnoses since the 1980s. The thesis is flawed in several ways. First,  there is no compelling evidence that the increase in diagnoses is due to anything more than a broadening of diagnostic criteria, increased physician and lay awareness of the disorder, wider availability of services and other factors apart from vaccines. Second, even though today’s five year olds are far less likely to have ever received thimerosal than kids born 10 years ago, the incidence of autism has not declined

But Kirby soldiers on, aided and abetted by the mob mentality he helped create. And though he left journalism long ago for the green pastures of public relations, he still carries a scent of the ink-stained scribe, the tireless investigator, seeker of justice. It’s an astonishing performance made possible by the willing suspension of disbelief of his fans, and the news media’s easy addiction to fabricated controversies. ThoJ’s letter is in response to this November 28 entry on Huffington Post, where Kirby tries yet again to link vaccines to autism.

David,

Believe it or not, this is meant as constructive commentary.

You need to reformulate your approach, and this post proves it.  You have slipped entirely from journalism into public relations and low-grade blogging.  Looking over this post, it should be clear even to those who don’t already know it that you aren’t working from sources anymore.  You aren’t quoting sources at all in the above.  The reason, which you should make clear, is that your sources are so annoyed with the way that you have garbled the message of mitochondria and autism that they don’t return your emails and calls.  You have not only muddied the water, but you have made it more difficult for real journalists to work with the experts in this field.

Your weak attacks on Dr. Offit are made from a position of considerable weakness.  Yes, you’ve given disclosure of how much money you’ve made from your autism related activities–but you’ve given only partial disclosure.  Who is paying you?  You left that part out, David.  Who is paying you?  Is it enough to make a difference in the way you present your messages?  Why do you go on the radio and state that autism takes away from your day job, and then claim that autism has been paying your rent for many years?  Something that pays your rent *is* your day job.

When you present your mangled version of the facts to congress, why don’t you have a conflict of interest statement discussing who is paying you?

Your mish-mash of poorly understood facts and past interviews are pieced together to continue a message that you don’t have the scientific acumen to put together, let alone lead others into believing.  You really need to leave the world of yes-men and yes-women and ask some real experts in the field to give you a blunt assessment of your efforts.  It will be difficult to listen to, but the stakes for our community (not your community - our community) are too high.

If you want to talk about retractions, how about a really strong, clear post devoted to the fact that your book of the rise in autism diagnoses being linked to thimerosal is bunk, plain and simple. How about apologizing to all those kids who have been and are being needlessly chelated based on a message promoted by you and your team of scientific illiterates?

I am sorry to put this so bluntly - but you don’t know what you are talking about.  Seriously, you don’t know what you are talking about. The experts aren’t talking to you because they’ve seen how you can take on this topic as your own personal hobby horse and make massively irresponsible statements.

David, you left real journalism many years ago.  Maybe it could be in your future again, but  it surely isn’t in your present.

I recall a Seinfeld episode that reminds me of the position that Kirby finds himself in. George Costanza had proposed marriage to Susan, and her parents were meeting their future son-in-law for the first time. Susan’s parents are rich, and talk about their cottage in the Hamptons. Not to be outdone, George says that he, too, has a place in the Hamptons. The parents are skeptical, and in the ensuing back and forth George commits to driving his future in-laws to Long Island to see his house, which of course doesn’t exist. Toward the end of the show, there’s a very funny exchange in the car. Susan’s mother sees a fruit stand and says “George, we should stop and get some flowers if we’re going to be staying at your house in the Hamptons!” George replies, “OK, you want to take it up a notch? We’ll stop and get some flowers!”

In 2005, Kirby wrote that if autism rates don’t decline among 3-5 year olds by 2007, then he would have to reconsider his hypothesis. Of course 2007 came and went, Kirby said Chinese industrial pollution and crematoriums keep California’s numbers from falling, and he’s moved the date to 2010, or 2012, or 2020. It doesn’t matter. He placed his bet and he lost.

However, like George Costanza, Kirby will keep taking it up a notch. He only has two choices, really: admit that the centerpiece of his recent career is based on a big mistake, or “take it up a notch”, hoping we won’t notice.

Shock comedian Denis Leary does not learn from other people’s mistakes. It seems he would know better than to insult autistic children after the shellacking that shock jock Michael Savage took for a similar rant just three months ago.

In his new book, Leary writes parents “want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can’t compete academically,” so they consult psychologists. “I don’t give a fuck what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you, yer kid is NOT autistic. He’s just stupid.”

Here’s what Savage said in July:

“I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.

Savage’s vapid analysis was met with howls of protest from parents and autism advocacy groups, and sponsors fled his insipid Savage Nation radio show. Parents and advocacy groups also piled on Leary, exposing his ignorance and selfishness. Leary quickly held a press conference so he could explain that by “kids” he really meant “adults”, then he plugged his book.

Proving that there’s plenty of ignorance to go around, a Boston Fox News affiliate turned to Mark Blaxill, a biased and ill-informed anti-vaccine activist for a “fair and balanced” view on Leary’s skewed world view. Blaxill is vice president of Safe Minds, a non-profit organization that falsely characterizes autism as “a novel form of mercury poisoning.”

Blaxill believes that we are in the throes of an autism epidemic. In fact, nearly everything he says assumes that is true. “The reality of the autism epidemic is very, very real,” he told the equally credulous reporter. “And to make light of that is really a bad idea.”

But Blaxill has been making light of published science for years, as he tap dances around inconvenient facts and reams of data. Speaking at an AutismOne media roundtable discussion last spring, Blaxill called on his favorite straw man when asked to defend the epidemic - “There is (sic) no data that it’s better diagnosis. That’s just something people say to make themselves feel better,” said Blaxill.

Blaxill is partly right. Changes in diagnostic criteria alone are not enough to explain the rise is autism. But nobody is saying that. D’oC at Autism Street explains:

The classic straw man argument. No one is saying that it’s only better diagnosis - so it’s unlikely that there would be any data presented to that effect - ever. What’s being said is that there is no evidence of any autism “epidemic”, and that better, earlier, and very different diagnoses are taking place than in previous years. Here’s a quick summary of my take on what’s really being said by the scientific community:

1. There is no scientific evidence of an autism “epidemic” - not from CDDS autism caseload data, not from special education data, and not from the descriptive epidemiology.
2. The diagnostic criteria have changed.,
3. Average age of diagnosis is decreasing.
4. Better awareness and recognition are likely (if not certain).
5. Diagnostic substitution has taken place.
6. There are probably numerous other factors influencing the number of autism diagnoses.

Anthropologist and author Richard Grinker makes a more thorough case against the epidemic in his bookUnstrange Minds.

Blaxill’s argument for an autism epidemic comes down to this:

But if you believe that it’s always been with us then, something, a population epidemiologist, or a population statistician once calculated that were, before 1930, there were, uh, a 100 billion born, in the history of the world. Homo Sapiens. You know, rough calculation. If you take 30 per 10,000, 60 per 10,000, 70 per 10,000 that means that before Leo Kanner discovered autism, there would have been 300 million, 600 million, 700 million people born in the history of the world with autism. You don’t miss these children, you don’t miss these people. Where were these people before 1930? They did not exist.

Not very convincing. Most of the people who ever walked the earth lived out their nasty, brutish, short lives before Columbus set sail. It’s hard for us pampered moderns to really understand what life was like before antibiotics, vaccines, public sanitation, refrigeration, and surgery, much less even a rudimentary understanding germs, nutrition and disease processes. The worst infant mortality rate today for children under five is 28%. What chance would a two-year-old with classic autism have in, say, a 12th century peasant family in northern Europe? Or a west African hunter gatherer clan? Furthermore, he conflates classic autism, which comprises one-third of the autism spectrum, with higher functioning forms such as Asperger’s syndrome. Blaxill’s “evidence” is ludicrous, sloppy, and dishonest.

But good enough for Fox News.

Amanda Peet is a rare species of Hollywood celebrity - thoughtful, humble, serene, and strangely not self-absorbed. That makes her the perfect spokesperson to help the American Academy of Pediatrics inject some much-needed sanity into the manufactured debate over vaccines. The contrast between Peet, who supports vaccines, and Jenny McCarthy, who loudly opposes them, couldn’t have been more obvious during a recent Good Morning America interview. The contrast also illustrates fundamental differences between the two spokeswomen’s science advisers.

Peet discovered her celebrity PSA niche after consulting with Dr. Paul Offit about the safety of vaccinating her infant daughter. Offit is a pediatric immunologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, an ivy league professor, researcher, author, and oft-quoted source for news stories about vaccines. Peet says she was surprised at the ignorance and fear (funny how they go together) regarding vaccines, which are arguably the single greatest achievement in medical history. She’s a quick study, and now understands that dose makes the poison, and “toxic” substances such as mercury occur naturally. On GMA she talked about antigens and implored the news media to get this story right.

And then there is Jenny McCarthy’s de facto science adviser, Dr. Jay Gordon, Pediatrician to the Stars, who sat by her side during a memorable Larry King interview. His wise counsel was full on display during a brief clip when McCarthy explained why vaccines are the devil’s brew:

The FDA still has 11 shots that contain mercury and other ingredients like ether and anti-freeze, that we believe played a role in my child’s autism… In 1983 the shot schedule was ten and that’s when autism was 1 in 10,000. Now, today, there are 36 shots and autism is 1 in 150. If you put those two side by side comparisons, you will see what parents are talking about. You can see the blood work-up after we test our kids for heavy metal poisoning or other toxins, or viruses. All the arrows point in one direction.

McCarthy packed three confabulations and one intentionally misleading phrase into that 10 second sound bite. First the lies. She said that vaccines contain ether and anti-freeze, which they do not. Even McCarthy’s Pediatrician to the Stars now admits vaccines do not contain anti-freeze. She said that in 1983 the autism rate was 1:10,000. The real number is 1:2,500. The present day 1:150 prevalence is for all autism spectrum disorders, not just autism.

McCarthy’s claim that 11 vaccines contain thimerosal is irrelevant if her concern is autism, a disorder whose symptoms first appear in the child’s first 36 months. None of McCarthy’s Gang of Eleven are scheduled childhood vaccines. Some are booster shots given to teenagers. Flu shots with thimerosal are not given to infants. Once again, McCarthy aimed to scare, not to inform. And so it goes with the anti-vaccine activists and, too often, the news coverage.