“Building bridges” to the leaders of the anti-vaccine movement?

But isn’t this Chris Mooney’s MO? Doesn’t he want to tone down the evolution rhetoric, too? I, personally, am tired of this wishy-washy crap, especially when so much is at stake.

I completely agree that the leaders of this have to be written off as a lost cause. It is not worth the effort to reach them.

Seems to me we (defenders of science and evidence) need to get out where the mushy middle sits and convince them. I did a post on that after I attended a CDC flu vax meeting a few months back.

But what I could have used was backup. Unlike the crank network, the science network was _not_ activated for this. And I don’t know how to do that. I reached out to a couple of people and places that I thought had megaphones, but it didn’t have any impact. I had only accidentally found out about this meeting, and found out late, after the crank bat-signal was already aware.

@Mattand:

I was thinking the same thing. I recall many of PZ’s posts dealing with Chris Mooney’s attitudes towards creationists. So it wasn’t completely surprising to hear that Mooney’s suggesting the same sort of approach to another band of pseudoscience advocates.

AutismNewsBeat is correct to point out that we need to change the public narrative from “vaccines might cause autism” to “vaccine rejectionists are barking loons who endanger us all”

The tide is already turning. The comments in the NY Times on the vaccine articles this week have been running heavily against the anti-vaxxers. People are starting to get the message, so it’s just a matter of building on the momentum.

Huh. I guess Chris Mooney is a broad-spectrum accommodationist. With religion, at least it kinda makes a little bit of sense (it’s hard to go against so much entrenched history), but to try and accommodate the desires of some weird fringe group? Are we going to start accommodating the 9/11 troofers or the teabaggers or the Raelians next?

Seriously, there’s a point at which you have to stop and say “look, you’re wrong. Reality is on this side of the line, and you’re all the way over there.”

When the rate went to 1 in 110 I decided to look at the problem. Since the experts had looked at all the chemical compounds I looked for nonchemical enviromental causes of autism. These could be cosmic radiation, ultraviolet radiation,sound, light and touch. Taste and smell would have a chemical base.
I found that about 25% of children born blind become autistic. So could light or the lack of it be part of the cause? Is there a visual component to autism? Then I found a study by David Fitzpatrick and others at Duke using ferrets that was interesting. They raised 3 groups, normal, total darkness and with eye lids fastened shut so that the only light filtered through their eye lids. The ones raise in darkness showed normal but diminished brain development but the ones with closed eye lids had no normal development, so the conclusion was that abnormal light input was far worse than no light. Could this be why blind autistic children respond to training and treatment better than other autistic children? So how do autistic children get an abnormal light input? The only possibility is fluorescent lighting, which is actually strobe lighting. Fluorescent lighting turns completely off 120 times per second, that is the room goes completely dark 120 times per second. The infant brain is unencombered by speach, memory, planning ahead or a thousand other things that the adult brain is doing. Because of this I think the visual input of infants can be very rapid and they see this intermittant light and this disrupts the normal development of the mirror neuron system in the brain. The mirror neuron system allowes us to recognise emotions in others and to develope our emotional system. Dysfunction of the mirror neuron system has long been thought to be the core cause of autism.
Now let’s compare histories, the first cases of autism were diagnosed in the early 1940s,fluorescent lighting started to be sold in 1938.the autism rate has gone up 1000% since 1996, screw in fluorescent lights came to the market in 1995, the 220,000 Amish use no electricity and have virtually no autism, The correlation between rain fall and autism in the pacific north west is caused by the additional light required for overcast conditions, the 1 in 58 rate in the U.K. is caused by their electricity which is 50 cycle so the visual input of their infants has to slow down much more than ours to avoid the strobe effect and finally the report of the California clusters. Educated couples of child bearing age living in affluent neighborhoods usually both work to get by so the children go to day care. The first cluster is centered around Culver City so I went to the yellow pages and found six day care centers and their address’s. Then I went to google earth and looked at them, 5 of the 6 were in commercial buildings so any ambiant light if any had to come in through the front. Those children got fluorescent lighting at home at night and at day care during the day. Double the exposure double the rate. Case closed.

That would be very, very, weak suggestiveness even if there was any biological plausibility. Since the strobing of florescent lights is too fast to be perceived by the human eye, there is none.

“There is no reputable link between vaccines and autism.”

A-ha. So you admit there is a link, you just refuse to accept it because it goes against your religion.

Scotty, it’s not that easy.

Skeptico–

The strobing of a properly functioning fluorescent light is too fast to be consciously perceived by the human eye. That said, there are people for whom even slightly imperfect fluorescents are a migraine trigger. So clearly they can perceive it.

And then there are some of us who will be bothered for days or weeks as an old-style fluorescent light at the office or in the classroom slowly fails, and it isn’t replaced because most people don’t care. There’s a built-in fluorescent light at my desk. It flickers. I can’t get it replaced, so I work by the overhead lights and the light from my monitor (even when doing paperwork).

I don’t know whether fluorescents are connected to autism, but I don’t think we can dismiss the idea on the grounds that the human eye can’t perceive the flickering. Some people’s eyes can. And one thing we do know about autism is that it affects about 1 percent of the population; maybe they’re some subset of those who are unusually sensitive to strobing and/or defective fluorescent lights. Or include such a subset: this may be a case where “yes, there are Amish children with autism” is relevant.

i am with Scott. i doesn’t seem plausible that lighting has anything to do with it. also, i don’t have the references, but i am sure i have seen posted here by Orac that the Amish/no-autism connection is completely false. the Amish *do* have autism at rates comparable to the general population.

The Onion chimes in on the Lancet retraction:

http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/lancet_retracts_autism_paper?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

I agree. It would be a “bridge to nowhere”: there are those who cannot be reached, cannot be taught,and cannot be influenced, who are highly invested emotionally and/or financially.I suspect that in many cases, using an external,controllable cause(i.e. vaccines, toxins)is protective of the “believer’s” self-esteem(“Nothing wrong with *my* genes or *my* parenting behavior!”)- those whose *business* (or *raison d’etre*) is anti-vax, as well as general “contrarians”.They are probably a small(but very vocal) minority…..Perhaps our job is something like that of a tennis player who tries to anticipate/”cover” the majority of most likely “shots” delivered by the opponent-we want to reach the greatest number of (most likely to be) *influencable* people, discounting the impossible ones .

You can’t build bridges to people who are eager only to blow them up.

and

It would be a “bridge to nowhere”

While these statements are pithy, I think they fail to reflect the problem that is at hand with such efforts. My pithy comeback would be, “You don’t want to build bridges to people who will use them carry out an assault on you.”

As Orac describes, we already have situations where there have been bridges, and all that happens is that they mobilize to cross it into the enemy territory. Once there, they use filibusterish techniques to get their way and increase their presence. Why in the hell would they want to demolish that opportunity by blowing up the bridge?

THEY want the bridge, because THEY are the ones who benefit from it. It’s not advancing science at all.

If you’ve got the Rhein separating you from the German army, you don’t build a bridge to give them a means to attack.

point at them and exclaim they’re naked

That makes my German army analogy a lot more interesting.

You’re surprised this is coming from Chris Mooney? He of the “if religious wackjobs don’t believe in evolution, it must be the fault of those nasty atheist scientists!” fame? Please. Whatever great work Mooney may have done in the past, nowadays he has this accomodationist bug so far up his ass that, if he were living in 1938 Germany, he’d say the Jews weren’t doing a good job of “framing” their plight to the National Socialist Party.

FWIW, I do think many physicians/pediatricians can do more to build bridges to the marks of the anti-vaccine movement. The leaders? The advocates? They are already irrevocably gone over to the dark side. But the frightened first time mom who thinks, “Well, maybe there is something to this… maybe I should talk to my doctor about an alternative vaccination schedule?”, these are the people who are still very much reachable. I have heard horror stories of pediatricians becoming angry and derisive when their patients’ mothers inquire about anti-vax propaganda (in one case I am directly aware of, a doctor called a 20-year-old mom “stupid” for asking about a delayed schedule). I’m sure most pediatricians are more patient, but it never hurts to remind them that the marks are not the enemy; they have merely been conned, and patience and compassion, and maybe even a willingness to compromise (if a patient is really adamant, a delayed-but-complete schedule is still better than no shots or an incomplete schedule) are the appropriate responses.

Mooney’s suggestion that the leaders of the anti-vax movement can be swayed with honey? Insane, inane, immature, and dare I say, self-serving, since Mooney’s making a name for himself as Mr. Accomodationism.

James Sweet – you say this doctor calling the mom stupid something you are “directly” aware of. I am curious, were you actually in the room and heard it? Or did she tell you? Or did the doctor tell you?

As we know, patient’s versions of what doctors say are not always accurate (like Suzanne Sommers?). I would especially be cautious about it coming from a 20 year old mom, who I know from a lot of experience (including now) are extremely sensitive about any comment that doesn’t blow fluff up their pants. They can consider everything to be an insult (if the doctor even used the word stupid in the room, it can be misinterpreted, “Well, if the tonsils show signs of serious infection, we could do a tonsilectomy, but it would be stupid to do surgery if it is just a runny nose” “He said I was stupid!”)

Re the suggestion to mobilize scientists/doctors as “go-to” folks on vaccine-related issues:

I think this may have a chance in a local media market. But nationally, the media loves nothing better than an argument, leading to the drafting of scientists and doctors for exactly the sort of “tell both sides” presentation that Orac decried a couple of posts ago.

As a late friend of mine used to say, “You got a better chance of seeing God” than of getting movement from the firmly cemented positions of the vaccine/autism folks, no matter how well “framed” and no matter how much more scientific evidence accumulates. What I think might work better to change public opinion are items orthogonal to autism, such as recent stories saying (1) 40% of cancers could be prevented with vaccines and a healthy lifestyle, and (2) higher vaccination compliance by seniors could help prevent 40-50,000 deaths and $10 billion in extra medical costs annually in the U.S. alone.

Thank you Coryat. It’s hard to dismiss the near perfect correlation of the history of autism and the history of fluorescent lighting as well as the other 4 correlations. I have UC Davis and childrens Hospital of Philidelphia interested in this theory. They may be willing to run EEG or brain scans on very young children to see if they can detect a change when going from incandescent to fluorescent lighting. If they can I think we have a solution.

James, #31. Thanks for that last paragraph. I agree with that and it is a point I do not see brought up very often. People really need to grow up and be a little bigger when it comes to dealing with those who disagree with them. If you look at Dawkins or PZ it seems they are more than willing to interact and discuss things with religious communities. I think I remember at least one occasion, though perhaps there are more, where PZ has gone and talked in churches about science. I think they would be more than willing to team up to promote good science as well.

It seems building bridges is often expected to be a one way endeavor.

@Oren Evans,

As an automotive engineer who has become rather a specialist in PWM lighting technologies, I can assure you that an adult human takes, at it’s fastest rate about 20 milliseconds to react to a change in light. (This does vary a bit between people and color vs. black and white vision, and the various frequencies of color.) That’s about 50 Hz. (Frankly, if you can see a 50Hz flicker you are superhuman, most humans can’t see better than about 20Hz and the frame rate of movies is between 24Hz and 30Hz.)

Even if a newborn’s eyes can react twice as fast (and I have no reason to think that it does, I’ve never looked into the question), your hypothesis doesn’t hold much water. Note, looking around I find a 1995 study by Bieber, et.al., suggests that infants and adults have similar reaction times, See Spectral efficiency measured by heterochromatic flicker photometry is similar in human infants and adults, Vision Res. 1995 May;35(10):1385-92.

Next, you are jumping to conclusions about the type of light used in day care facilities, a simple search of on google maps is not sufficient to show that these facilities only use fluorescent lighting. I wouldn’t be surprised that they do, but you haven’t shown that they do.

Third, there are well documented cases of autism among the Amish. Do a search on this blog to get some links.

Forth, I’m certain you are aware that differences in reported rates of autism between different countries can be more easily explained by the differences in reporting criteria than by difference in AC frequencies. Autism is a spectrum disorder, it’s not like a broken bone where a simple test verifies the diagnosis. The rise in reported autism rates in the US are most likely due to increased awareness of the condition, diagnostic substitution [There were a couple children I went to school with who, on reflection, were probably autistic. We just called them retarded. I haven’t seen that term used in a long time.], and the expansion of the diagnostic criteria in the mid-1990’s. The higher rate that you claim for the UK (I hadn’t heard that particular number before) is still very likely to be related to the differences in diagnostic criteria.

Checking this is simple, is the reported rate in all countries which use 60Hz the same? How about all countries which use a 50Hz system? If you claim that different reporting criteria explains those differences, why is it different because of power line frequency?

Fourth, repeat after me the mantra of statistical epidemiology, “Correlation is not Causation”. Yes, in 1936 fluorescent lighting was introduced. Also in 1936 British television broadcasts started, and the first practical helicopter was invented. In 1937 Britain deploys radar stations. In 1938 the first ball-point pen was patented by Biro, and DuPont starts selling nylon. In 1939 Birds Eye started production of pre-cooked frozen foods. And in 1940 freeze-dried foods are introduced. I could go on, but I think you see my point.

What you have is an observational hypothesis, and not a particularly good one, that the introduction of fluorescent lighting into delivery rooms increased the rate of autism.

This is based on a few observations;
1. the rate of autism in the population has increased (not demonstrated).

2. 25% of children born blind are autistic (I’d not see this figure before, got a source.) Even if true, it’s even more evidence for a genetic condition. Of course, since autism is a popular diagnosis these days, your claim about children born blind having a better response to teaching than non-blind born autistic children may simply be a case of a number of children born blind are mis-diagnosed with autism and thus they respond very well.

3. A study on ferrets. Please provide the cite, I’ve read the three papers Fitzpatrick has written using ferrets to model vision and none of them match the description of what you claim. The closest I could find was this one; White, L.E., D.M. Coppola, and D. Fitzpatrick (2001) The contribution of sensory experience to the maturation of orientation selectivity in ferret visual cortex. Nature 411: 1049-1052. And it compares directional sensitivity between light-reared and dark-reared ferrets, I can’t find anything about ferrets reared with their eyelids fastened shut (and I suspect an ethics board might have some difficulty with that one too). If this is indeed the paper you are referring to, it doesn’t claim what you think it does.

In short, the evidence you provide is flimsy (and in some cases false) and your hypothesis will need much stronger evidence than that to be considered a reasonable one. I’d start, if I were as convinced about it as you seem to be, by proving that the reported increase in autism rates is real and not an artifact of the changing diagnostic criteria. If you can do that, you are going to be much more likely to get the attention of someone who will study it.

But I do offer you one consolation. The new LED lights oscillate at about 1000 Hz, not 60 Hz, so the room goes dark (well, aside from the reflected light) 1000 times a second. (They are DC PWM controlled, not AC.) So, as the technology changes, and LED lighting is introduced into delivery rooms, if your hypothesis is true we will see a decrease in the rate of autism over the next 20 years or so.

Actually, as you see, I was quoting someone else as an example of two unreconcilable parties, but point taken. Even so, remember that Sweet’s example was, in essence, claiming that Mooney would have taken the side of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Not nice.

It’s hard to dismiss the near perfect correlation of the history of autism and the history of fluorescent lighting as well as the other 4 correlations.

If you consider that a “near perfect correlation”, then you know absolutely nothing about science, statistics, or the history of autism.

Various gargantuan problems in Oren’s argument:

1. Conflating the original characterization of autism with its appearance.

2. Unsubstantiated assertion that “25% of children born blind become autistic”.

3. Completely ignoring potential confounders between blindness and autism to assume a causal relationship.

4. Reading far too much into a single study in ferrets showing that sensory experiences have impact on brain development – at best this is a demonstration of possibility, NOT evidence in favor.

5. Bald assertion that “the only possibility is fluorescent lighting” without any attempt whatsoever to justify why there is no other possibility.

6. Ignoring the difference between increased diagnosis and increased incidence.

7. Assumption that the rainfall/autism correlation is real as opposed to data mining AND that the correlation must obviously be due to lighting.

8. Extrapolation of the differing effects of different cycle rates without any foundation.

9. Completely ignoring confounders such as socioeconomic status impacting quality of medical care when assuming that California “clusters” are real.

And that’s just on a superficial survey. It puts the argument that global warming is caused by a lack of pirates to shame, since THAT correlation actually exists while not a single shred of the ‘evidence’ cited here convincingly supports the existence of a correlation, much less causation.

I do think this retraction might be a good idea after all. The general public knows what it means when a journal retracts something. They know it means that whatever it was sucked. This does not require a PhD to get.

I suspect complete bollocks.

Flex:
thanks!
i was trying to think of some reason why you would run a LED on AC and could think of none. the pulse width scheme you mention makes sense wrt dimmable lights. however, why not just vary the input bias level to vary the brightness? heating issues? probably easier to implement with existing dimmer light switches? hmm.

The big fail in the science-based medicine community is in attempts at “countering their misinformation in uncompromising terms.” It seems every time I see a news report on this subject, they turn to the rational clinical view and get “There is no conclusive evidence that vaccines cause autism.” Of course, the corollaries are that evidence exists it is just not conclusive and/or there is no evidence that vaccines do not cause autism. Anyone who might lean somewaht toward the anti-vax viewpoinmt will not be swayed by this statement.

What is needed is to come up with short statements that will get the average listener angry about the anti-vaxxers. The appeal to risk of disease is not doing it because vaccines have made the diseases so rare and people think their vaccinated kids are safe.

How about an appeal to the pocketbook? Something like: We studied this possibility years ago and found no evidence of a link. But, because of the anti-vaxxers, we have had to revisit the question again at again, perform studies, create committees. And again and again, we find no link. Of course this all comes at taxpaayer expense and removes funds that could be used to find the true causes of autism or cancer or whatever.

Rob:

LED are, as you mentioned above, semi-conductor diodes operating in a forward bias state. This means that based on the material, silicon is the common ones, and the doping, a very specific voltage drop occurs across the junction.

Adjusting the current can make minor changes in the voltage drop, but not a great deal. Forward conducting diodes are pretty well self-regulating. As an example, taking an LED from 2mA to 40mA may change the voltage drop from 1.8V to 2.1V. The light output of an LED depends directly on it’s current, so a 20-times (2000%) increase in light only corresponds to a 300mV or 16% change in voltage. It’s hard to control the light output of an LED by using voltage.

Further, most LEDs turn on at around 2mA of current, that is the light is perceptible. A certain amount of charge carriers have to pass the threshold level before light is emitted (kinda), so the dimmest and LED can get by controlling the voltage isn’t particularly dim.

Beyond that, once you get into white LEDs they actually change color at different current levels. White LEDs are really blue LEDs with a phosphor lens to absorb the higher frequencies of the blue light and re-emit them in the red side of the spectrum. This requires a balancing act in manufacturing LEDs, too much phosphor and the light is orange, to little and the light is blue. The balance is tuned toward the nominal operating current, 20-40mA depending on manufacturer, and below 10mA of current most white LEDs look decidedly blusish.

So turning them on and off at high frequencies, which is fine because their slew rate is very high, is the best way to vary the light output on white LEDs.

wrt fluorescent lightin

Fluorescent lighting has been increasing it’s flicker rate. A modern CFL ranges from 10,000-24,000 Hz, a modern T8 w/ electronic ballast as high as 120,000 Hz. If it were the flicker rate, we should have seen a decrease in the autism rate since the mid-90s, not an (alleged) increase!

You’d think this problem would be self-correcting.

Jayk,

A simple FFT of a real circuit (not the perfect environment that most analysis uses) will show that there are a lot of frequencies that will dim an LED, not just slower freq = dimmer or such.

Um,

I’m not talking about changing frequencies to adjust light output of LEDs. I’m talking about PWM, pulse-width-modulation. By using a square-wave (on/off), at a specific frequency say 1kHz, and turning the LED on for 50% of the time, and off for 50% of the time, you get about 30% of the light output that an LED would have if it was on 100% of the time. (The relationship between PWM duty-cycle variation and LED light output is not linear.)

I’m not talking about a sine-wave. I have no experience on how sine-wave frequency shifts change light output on LEDs. I don’t know of anyone who tries to dim LEDs that way, when PWM works so much better. Especially with the modern switching power supplies.

And, if you don’t believe me that LED’s do go entirely off during the off portion of the PWM cycle go ahead and take a high-speed film and slow it down and look at it. If your circuit allows that much current through an LED during the off portion of the cycle you have something else wrong with the circuit. I’m speaking from 15 year of automotive lighting design experience largely focused on using PWM to vary the light output of LEDs, not sitting at a bench doing FFT’s. The slew rate, i.e. time it takes an LED to go from on to off, is measured in nanoseconds.

BTW, thanks W. Kevin Vicklund @58. I haven’t paid attention to fluorescent lighting in the last decade or so. It’s good to know that the modern ballasts are running at a much higher frequency. Back in the day I used the 60Hz output from our fluorescent fixtures as a strobe to align reel-to-reel data tape recorders. (Hey, they were ancient when I got to them!) But I haven’t paid much attention to them recently.

kittywampus: agreed completely.

I am somewhat faced with this right now. My wife and I are (as of a week ago Wed) expecting our second offspring. Obviously, we are very excited. I have been again hanging out in the pregnancy forums on-line (not sMothering.com), and so see a lot of discussions among moms. The topic of vaccines and autism has already come up, prompted by the Lancet retraction. Now, you have to be very careful in those places or get shunned, but fortunately, the response was generally very good, with just a few of the “H1N1 vaccine was too rushed” and crap like that.

There was only one real issue, with a mom (who I don’t like anyway) spouting about the problems with THIMERASOL, and she heard that vaccines that are stored on the shelf are bad (her sister in law had a bad reaction) and those stored in the fridge.

Well, I just responded with statement that thimerasol is not in any pediatric vaccines except for multidose flu vaccines, and then provided a little more info about how actually, Wakefield’s initial accusation was about the combined MMR, which never contained thimerasol, and that he stood to gain with his own, separated, vaccine.

So she gets all huffy (see my comment above about how moms are offended if you don’t blow fluff up their pants), about how she never said anything about MMR (it was a thread about Wakefield, for pete’s sake, it’s all about MMR), how vaccines from the shelf are bad blah, blah, blah, with a link to something like http://www.vaccineinfo.edu. I don’t know the link, but I don’t trust it because edus are usually reserved for educational institutions, and someone grabbing a domain name like that has an agenda. I just came back with the link the FDA tables about thimerasol content in US vaccines (that I got from antiantivax – Thanks, Todd!) and described very clear with that data about how thimerasol is not present in pediatric vaccines except for multi-dose flu vials, as shown clearly here on the FDA website.

In the end, her steam diminishes, but she has to have the last word to say, “I’m still not taking any vaccine unless its from the fridge.” I held my tongue, but it would have been real easy to retort, “I don’t give a shit what you do, but don’t blame thimerasol, that has nothing to do with it.” The stupid thing is, in principle a thimerasol containing vaccine COULD be stored in the fridge, and she wouldn’t have any problem with it. A case where a little knowledge is dangerous.

But the point is that I provided a very clear demonstration that thimerasol is not present in vaccines, and so was hopefully able to allay some fears (for the non dingbats) about it, without having to resort to telling them that their concerns were unfounded.

Congratulations, Pablo! All the best to you, your wife, and future child.

Doh!

Of course! I tend to write far too much too quickly then edit down and missed the material change when I stopped discussing straightforward silicon and germanium diodes (a discussion about both normal and zener, subsequently edited out) and leaped into LEDs. My bad.

I’m trying hard not to be as loquacious as Orac himself.

@Pablo

Glad my site could help. And as an FYI to those who consider trying to get through to the AoA crowd, I’ve created a new site, Silenced By Age of Autism. It’s a place where you can cross-post your comments from Age of Autism, in the event they decide to censor you.

Just posted a comment on an article by Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey.

I’m speaking from 15 year of automotive lighting design experience largely focused on using PWM to vary the light output of LEDs, not sitting at a bench doing FFT’s. The slew rate, i.e. time it takes an LED to go from on to off, is measured in nanoseconds.

And precious few of them, at that. There are these things called “optocouplers,” after all, made of an LED and a photoreceptor switch. I was making them switch in nanoseconds almost forty years ago, and they’ve gotten faster since.

Stop pretending that studying thimerosal or the MMR can equate to “vaccines in general”, whatever that means

I might agree, but I have to say, we aren’t the ones doing that!

We aren’t the ones who have moved from “MMR causes autism” to “all vaccines are bad.”

Whenever the question of the flu vaccine comes up by the anti-vax nuts that show up here, I always ask the same question: MMR at least has an association with the onset of autism symptoms, and so at least has the possibility of creating a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. However, as far as I know, know one ever has ever suggested that the flu vaccine is associated with anything, much less autism! So why the big outrage, especially among the AoA-type community?

No one has ever answered that, and just whine about Desiree Jennings. We are the ones who keep pointing out that thimerasol is not present in pediatric vaccines, so what does that have to do with anything?

No, it is the anti-vaxxers that keep throwing up red-herrings. They rely on the autism scare to get everyone opposed to vaccines, despite the vaccines that only MMR has ever been associated with autism (incorrectly). Thimerasol is a red-herring, and moot, anyway, since it isn’t used. DTaP (like prevnar) is given already at 2 months, long before autism symptoms, so all those who say, “My son was fine until he got the MMR shot” have vindicated DTaP. etc

We focus on MMR and thimerasol because those are the ones that are actually the issue. Constantly bringing in other vaccines is total obfuscation.

“We’ve already spent enough time and money searching for a link and keep coming up empty. It’s time to stop wasting resources and move onto something productive.”

This is exactly the message of the Autism Science Foundation, which I hope will eclipse the woo-susceptible Autism Speaks as the nation’s preeminent autism organization. http://www.autismsciencefoundation.org/

Just switch to electronic ballasts, they run at 10K-20K hz and the glow decay of the bulb is slow enough that the light never goes out.
As Lincoin said, I will stick to my line of reasoning until someone shows me a better one.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you. But it is kinda fun thinking about the world being turned on its head to the point where supplement makers would advertise the effectiveness of their wares using headlines that praise vaccines.

Were that to happen, yes, but it won’t. The vaccines part will be ignored. In fact, when I heard the comment the other day (from a doctor on Dr Radio), it didn’t say vaccines. It was only about “lifestyle choices.” That would include vaccination, true, but it also includes issues such as cancers that result from HIV and HPV.

What do you think is going to highlighted? Certainly not vaccination and smoking.

As Lincoin said, I will stick to my line of reasoning until someone shows me a better one.

Not a good argument. If I hold to a line of reasoning, which leads me to a particular conclusion, and someone demonstrates to me that it is correct, the proper new conclusion is “I don’t know,” not “the conclusion is still assumed correct until the correct one can be demonstrated.” It’s pure intellectual laziness.

Oren wrote:

As Lincoin said, I will stick to my line of reasoning until someone shows me a better one.

Please see posts 40, 46, and 53.

I have Asperger syndrome and am always deeply offended whenever I hear these nitwits. There should be an organization, if not already existing, of people with autism who are angry at the faux “pro-autism” pseudoscientists.

@ Cory Miller- Agreed.

When I was a kid, everyone just thought I was really shy. In my 20s, I was diagnosed as having various social anxiety disorders. A couple of years ago, at age 31, I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. The diagnostic criteria has certainly changed.

And, considering that I have two post-graduate degrees, a professional job in an office environment, a wife and a nine month old baby girl (who’s had all her vaccinations to this point, and will continue to get them), I think I’m doing fairly well for myself. Which is why I continue to be offended by the “Their lives are ruined!” talk at AoA.

While I find all this electrical engineer stuff interesting, I think you two (or three) are getting a little off-topic and have more that made your point to Oren–who is obviously not equipped to do battle with any of you. I am saying this with a smile as I have enjoyed reading (as best I can) your posts and I really liked Flex’s (I think) smack down of Oren’s “theory”!

Old-style florescent lights make me “agitated” (anxiety?) and the new curlycue ones bother my eyes after a few hours (but don’t agitate me). I don’t have enough direct experience with LED’s so can’t say. Anyway, all these posts have helped me to understand that a bit better (but only a bit). So now I’m the one who is off topic. Sorry.

I agree with Orac on all of this, and find these comments some of the best and most insightful I’ve ever seen on this blog. It’s very important to keep trying to get to those who haven’t started barking yet. I cannot tell you how many alt med devotees have told me that doctors have called or made them feel “stupid”, so whether or not this actually happens the way it is perceived, docs need to be aware and do their best not to lose ground with those who are still open to reason. I speak as a mother who was young and susceptible to all sorts of things I would read about on a casual basis. Had I not gone to college (after babies) and taken some science courses, I’m not sure I’d be reading this blog today instead of AoA. I was in college when Mothering Magazine started up and they almost got to me with their early vax stuff.

Communication with people who are on the edge of this group is a really interesting and important problem that should be taken very seriously. As Orac pointed out, it does closely mimic the evolution-creation problem, with a large group of people on the fence over the issues. Obviously, it is pointless to try to convince the converted, but what should you do with those undecided?

There was a great article in Nature about communicating with people in a different social group: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7279/full/463296a.html (might be behind paywall, sorry!) It says that you are more likely to hold the same beliefs as other members of your social group, regardless of the evidence or science behind one position or the other. In other words, they accept whatever position “reinforces their connection to others with whom they share important commitments.” It references primarily the divide between global warming acceptance vs. deniers and giving HPV vaccine to schoolgirls.

So it seems like the anti-vaxxers have a substantial advantage, not only because they use emotional arguments to convince parents, but also because they are most likely in the same social groups as these parents.

Some suggestions that the authors make are 1) presenting arguments and evidence in a way that “affirms rather than threatens peoples’ values.” 2) Make sure evidence is vouched for by several, diverse experts.

I think the suggestions are excellent, easy, and good to keep in mind when communicating facts surrounding intensely emotional issues.

Full citation: Kahn, D. Fixing the communications failure. Nature 463, 296-297 (21 January 2010).

My mistake: the author’s name is Kahan, D. NOT Kahn.

Mooney suggested a way out of this problem that is profoundly misguided, naive, and reveals a profound misunderstanding of the anti-vaccine movement.

This sort of mistake is getting to be a bad habit of his.

Many of the comments by the vaccination defenders here sound just as strident as those of their most fundamentalist and “unreachable” opponents, promoting an unconditional belief in so-called science whithout assessing the credibility of their own priesthood.

What is an outsider to think of the great fanfare about the Lancet’s retracting the Wakefield study when the medical literature remains riddled with flawed and bogus “studies” that falsely promote dangerous medications? See, for instance, the recent article by Martha Rosenbarg “Why are Pfizer’s Ghostwritten Hormone Therapy Articles not Retracted?”

Similarly, see retinopathyofprematurity.org about the built-in lack of self-correction in medical “science”, and the revolting examples of clinical research frauds to the detriment of premature babies documented on that entire site. For instance, the 1995 LIGHT-ROP study exposed preemies knowingly to overdoses of fluorescent light, including the allegedly “protected” group, to arrive at the predictable (and liability-deflecting) conclusion that this light had not changed the incidence of blinding among the study grooups and was therefore unrelated to the blinding.

These medical reserachers bluntly denied and then ignored the easily calculated fact that the still extremely vulnerable retinae of a preemie in a typical fluorescent-lit intensive care nursery are exposed during their first ten to fifteen minutes to more damage-weighted retinal irradiance than what the US Occupational Safety Guidelines consider as the danger limit for adult industrial workers over an eight-hour shift.

(Note to Oren Evans: This blinding overdose has nothing to do with the flickering rate but with the high intensity of the mercury emission line at 435.8 nanometers in the spectrum of virtually all fluorescent lamps. This wavelength is right in the most retina-damaging region of the entire visible spectrum, as established by Occupational Safety researchers.)

The New England Journal of Medicine published that intentionally misleading paper although its editors had been alerted to the rigging of the study and to many other ethics violations in its design. The epidemic of baby-blinding from retinopathy of prematurity continues therefore to generate large revenues for pediatric retinal surgery and diagnostic apparatus as well as drug trials.

This epidemic began in the US with the introduction of fluorescent lamps and repeated that parallel in other industrial countries after World War II when fluorescent lamps became available there. However, some eugenics- minded doctors preferred to blame the blinding on oxygen breathing help. They had openly stated that they wanted to eliminate the babies with the “defective germ plasm”, and by rigging their study they succeeded in having unwitting neonatologists asphyxiate the most vulnerable preemies in large numbers to so reduce the number of babies having to grow up blind.

Any rational observer is inevitably led to conclude that as long as medical “science” continues to deny and cover up such blatant and patient-harming frauds the rest of its pronouncements is not to be trusted either. Those who demonize the vaccination opponents should therefore first ask themselves what they can do to restore credibility to their own guild before they can blame parents for not entrusting their children to the so far unproven medical assertions of vaccinations’ long-term safety.

Respectfully submitted,
Peter Aleff

Mooney doesn’t seem to realize that saying “Come, let us reason together” to an anti-vaxer is like saying “here, kick me in the stomach” to a kick-happy 8 year old.
Or, to steal from someone else: “there’s no use telling the other side when the other side is complete bollocks!”

Peter Aleff

That’s a good conspiracy theory you’ve got there. It could do with a few more Freemasons though. And perhaps a connection to HAARP and the LHC.

Peter Aleff: A couple people on a blog thread mocking you for proposing giant conspiracies and generally failing to comprehend how things work hardly means medical science lacks self-correction mechanisms.

It just means that making random blog posts really isn’t one of them, and that’s a good thing.

You could also point out the unethical, high-risk treatments alternative practitioners foist on children.

Simply because a child has been diagnosed with autism does NOT provide medical justification to perform colonoscopies, lumbar punctures, or chelation on that child.

Chelation in particular is being performed by practitioners with no specialized training in that field, and people have died as a result.

Hi Pablo –

I might agree, but I have to say, we aren’t the ones doing that!

David Gorski writes:

Moreover, the claims of proponents of an increasingly untenable hypothesis to the contrary, there is no convincing evidence that thimerosal-containing vaccines, or vaccines in general, have anything to do with the etiology of autism.

Or Orac, here:

Or Stephen Novella, at SBM

In reality, the weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly against a link between thimerosal (or vaccines in general) and autism or any other neurodegenerative disorder.

These are people that know full well that there simply haven’t been any studies one way or the other on the vaccination schedule, but the spin is to consistently imply that there has been research. This isn’t being lazy or not knowing better, Orac and Mr. Novella are obviously very smart and capable of generating a lot of content. This is intentionally trying to cover up an inconvenient fact; our studies are incomplete.

The media coverage of the retraction is the same, “The question has beeen answered.”

As the thread was about reaching out to people, my thoughts were that you can’t be seen as deceiving them. It doesn’t matter if people find both JB Handley and mainstream medicine as deceptive, that’s still a parent you lose.

Thimerasol is a red-herring, and moot, anyway, since it isn’t used. DTaP (like prevnar) is given already at 2 months, long before autism symptoms, so all those who say, “My son was fine until he got the MMR shot” have vindicated DTaP. etc

Hehe. While I’m in full agreement that the thimerosal issue was way overblown, but your statement reveals a lot about the problems with how this is being approached. With autism being a disorder that outwardly manifests itself behaviorally, I’d love to hear your description of how we could tell, behaviorally that a child was affected by their two month shots? Did the child stop talking? Did they start spinning in circles? What does an autistic two month old look like?

The implicit arguement is that because we cannot observe acute, immediate changes in an infact, there must not be any effect. It would be one thing if this wasn’t just a matter of conveniently skipping past the point that we haven’t done any evaluations of the early shot schedule; but the reality is, we have a growing body of evidence that disturbances to the immune system early in development can have lifelong effects on immune function and behavior. The paper I linked to above, Early-Life Programming of Later-Life Brain and Behavior: A Critical Role for the Immune System is a review of a series of studies by several groups regarding subtle but real effects of immune disturbances during early life. Another paper, Postnatal Inflammation Increases Seizure Susceptibility in Adult Rats decribes cytokine mediated alterations in seizure succeptibility into adulthood, if the animal was challenged during specific developmental timeframes. There are many, many more.

The reason studies like this are salient is that our population of interest, autism, has been shown again and again to not only have disturbances in immune function, but indeed, to have exaggerated innate immune responses, for example, Enstrom, Jyonouchi, or Ashwood.

So, we have increasing evidence that immune disturbances during early development can have lifelong influences and a population with curious immunological profiles indeed, a straightforward pathway towards a dose relationship regarding innate immune response.

The Bigfoot defense gets thrown out a lot regarding vaccines and autism, but the facts on the ground are that we have a growing body evidence that abnormal immune function is playing a part in autism. Consider the Fragile X study I posted above; just by evaluating blood samples for cytokines, I can beat Vegas odds at determining which child with Fragile X also has a diagnosis of autism.

At the same time we seem to be observing unprecedented increases in the rates of autism, we have dramatically increased the frequency and strenght of the immune reactions we create during the first months of a childs life. If this makes you curious, you are out of luck because one thing you aren’t going to find is anything other than evaluations of a vaccine given between one year and eighteen months; long after the majority of our schedule has already been implemented. If it doesn’t make you curious, it should.

When someone wonders aloud about the fact that the history of our historical prevelance studies are by necessity worthless if our current evaluations have meaning, the fact that the people at AOA are idiots is used as an arguing point. It doesn’t matter if the people who want to use Desiree Jenkins as a takling point are morons. The fact that the campers at AOA or Natural News or whatever have problems getting their facts straight does absolutely nothing to make our existing suite of research any more robust; instead of arguing against them, why isn’t anyone worried that what we do know is woefully inadequate, but is nonetheless used to paint a picture of scientific certainty?

– pD

The problem isn’t with what Mooney advocates or what people like Orac want to do.

The problem is when people set these two approaches up as a needless false dilemma and pretend that theirs is the silver bullet. As that link shows, it’s been happening with religion and climate skepticism, and now anti-vax. I think we’ll have to move past our own willful ignorance about how to approach communication if we’re going to ever make progress at killing off all forms of anti-science silliness.

I believe that we should build bridges, not with hardened ideologues, but with those who can be reached. I like Chris Mooney a lot because he is dedicated to diplomacy and building bridges, and while I don’t agree with everything he says, I do think that what he is saying is very important. I also think it would be cool to see Orac interviewed on a major news outlet such as CNN at some point.

@ young skeptic needing help:(about the “deciding factor” you describe)-if only!!!!Jenny & Company have an audience precisely *because* people *don’t* look at the science.However,I’m emphatically *not* saying to mimic the woo-meisters’ methods:but we should be aware of *why* parents may fall into the emotion-laden lures (and advertising techniques)of the anti-vaxers.Quackwatch & Autismwatch discuss this.Also some commenters here-kwombles,Prometheus,Todd W.- have sites to consider.(Those who combat HIV/AIDS denialism are in the same boat).And why *not* chime in?

Travis, if the topics I document about clinical research frauds had been addressed over and over again, as you claim, then why did none of the scientists “tired of hearing about the same old things” do the ethical thing and stop the routine medical abuses of preemies resulting from those frauds? Instead, you arrogantly dismiss out of hand arguments which you did not even examine. Can you refute any of the evidence of scientific misconduct that I present? If you cannot, then why are you not helping to expose those frauds as any ethical people would do?

To hyperdeath: your logic seems to be that not all criticism of medical science is valid, and that therefore none of it is valid. This is not how science is supposed to work. Also, you ask me whether I have any actual evidence for my claims, but you omitted to check the link where I provide a full and so far never refuted documentation of what I say. By summarily ignoring the evidence provided to then question its existence you don’t act as a scientist. But to judge from your posts, your wagon-circling denial mentality appears to have exempted you from this basic requirement.

Peter Aleff:

“Thank you again for having so vividly demonstrated the need for my criticism.”

Funny, your post seems to mostly be Simon Jenkins’ criticism.

The article you’re referring to is here. Was it so very hard to link?

As to the portion of the (thoroughly mendacious) article that you quoted above: blaming scientists and government health organizations for the fearmongering perpetrated by the media is unfair. Then again, the situation is essentially no-win for said health organizations: if they warn the public that a new strain of flu is dangerous and mass deaths don’t occur, they’re blamed for exaggerating the threat, even if it’s the vaccines they promote that headed off the threat in the first place, and even if it’s loudmouthed media figures who exaggerated their warning into SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING. If they don’t warn the public and more people than usual die, they’re blamed for not taking the virus seriously.

More generally, it’s hilarious, in a sad sort of way, that the one discipline of human thought that has a formal process of self-review and self-criticism is being criticized for thinking itself infallible. Yes, occasionally peer review fails. No, this does not mean that peer-reviewed literature, in general, is no more reliable than somebody’s forum post about florescent lights causing autism (no offense, Owen). I don’t even want to get started on Jenkins’ misinterpretations (to be charitable) of ‘Climategate’, etc., but in general, he seems to be a fine example of the typical modern ‘skeptic’, insisting that claims made by scientists about science are no more reliable than claims made by anyone else about science, and, moreover, that this is all the fault of scientists for not being perfect. Sheesh.

Off topic, but Novella’s Neurologica is suspended. Would anyone have any idea what’s going on?

Peter Aleff @ 115:

No, my claim is that some criticism is valid, and some isn’t valid. Nothing more. The point I was making is the existence of the former doesn’t add any weight to the latter.

As for evidence, do you have anything besides websites that assert the same thing as you do? I can find websites which “prove” that Barack Obama is a reptilian alien. It doesn’t make it true.

(Incidentally, the impressive looking numbers in brackets count for little. For a reference to count for anything, it actually has to be relevant to the conclusions being drawn.)

@ Young Skeptic

Judging from the average intelligence and thoughtfulness of Orac’s readers I’m sure someone here has an answer.

Thank you. And now to your question.

Shouldn’t the deciding factor among people be what the science says and not our rhetoric? If we do make it about the rhetoric (which is what Mooney seems to be advocating) what then? If the public bases its decisions on who makes their message mot appealing aren’t we back at square one? Where’s the progress?

The goal is to vaccinate by any means necessary. Everything else is immaterial. Beside people are too stupid to understand science.

“Shouldn’t the deciding factor among people be what the science says and not our rhetoric?”

Good science and ineffective persuasion can be trumped by bad science and appealing rhetoric (accompanied by a heavy dose of scare-mongering).

Good science needs to be communicated effectively. We’re at a point where this is increasingly realized, and the hardcore antivaxers are starting to be pushed back on both fronts.

Understandably they’re not happy about it.

What a reality check I got this week when I talked with my health provider’s travel clinic about prescriptions and immunizations for an upcoming trip to India. Because I’m stopping over in the UK, I am being advised to get another MMR because measles is now considered to be endemic there. Great work anti-vaxxers!

Ok, what’s with the anti-light-bulb conspiracies?

Aleff, my clueless chum, surely even a climate change denialist, anti-medicine and anti-health nut like you MUST be able to spot the glaring ignorance required to simultaneously claim that the medical establishment is actively rejecting and silencing criticisms… and then using as an example the fact that the medical establishment took ten years to punish Wakefield for fraud-based criticisms (your post 107, the MMR scare reference).

Don’t kid yourself, the MMR scare was an attack on the medical community’s consensus that vaccines are recommended. If outright fabircation of evidence leading to fraudulent criticism leading to dead children takes a decade for the scientific establishment to get off its butt to defend itself against, if a decade goes by while fake data against vaccines is allowed to stand in the medical records, then this has to be the most inept, slow-moving conspiracy ever. What, is the Illuminati run by sloths? Were secret orders given out, but they were so secret that the agents responsible for action were never allowed to know what those orders were? Or do we just have the one black helicopter, and are now a decade backlogged in our operations? Circling the wagons doesn’t take a decade to accomplish.

Shorter science to Aleff: “Evidence first, then we’ll talk.”

As for Jenkins… ehh. He speaks with the absolute certainty of 20:20 hindsight and the authority of zero responsibilities. Perhaps his opinions should be weighted with that in mind?

To Azkyroth and hyperdeath: you are proving my point about medical “science” lacking any self-correction mechanism. All you can do is call my argument “bullshit” and “conspiracy theory” without having the guts to engage the facts. Anyone can resort to name-calling, particularly those who cannot refute basic and inconvenient arguments. This is not the way to gain any bystander’s trust, or to start correcting any of the glaring frauds and other flaws in the medical doctrine.

The facts have been engaged. Repeatedly. I’m not going to do your homework on this for you.

The nonexistence of a link between vaccination and the increasing rate of autism diagnoses in the general population cannot be proven beyond an unreasonable doubt. You will not find any scientist who denies this, since nothing can be proven beyond an unreasonable doubt.

BTW, pD, do you see that the CDC’s methods are largely passive (i.e. they don’t exhaustively look for autistic children who might be undiagnosed) and therefore it’s not surprising that their counts would increase over time? This seems straightforward to me.

With the 19K hz there is no flicker because the glow decay is slow enough so that the light is never dark.
I see a lot of banter at this site but not many new ideas or other helpful suggestions.
I’m not saying that my theory of fluorescent lighting as the cause of autism is correct but it wouldn’t harm any young children to keep them away from it as much as possible. If we did this and there is no reduction in the rate then at least we have eliminated another possibility no matter how remote. How terrible is that!

I’m not saying that my theory of Oren Evans as the cause of autism is correct but it wouldn’t harm any young children to keep them away from it as much as possible. If we did this and there is no reduction in the rate then at least we have eliminated another possibility no matter how remote. How terrible is that!

I see a lot of banter at this site but not many new ideas or other helpful suggestions.
I’m not saying that my theory of fluorescent lighting as the cause of autism is correct but it wouldn’t harm any young children to keep them away from it as much as possible. If we did this and there is no reduction in the rate then at least we have eliminated another possibility no matter how remote. How terrible is that!

Depends on how much the dramatically increased bills (either for electricity to run dozens of small space heaters that generate light as a byproduct, AKA “incandescent bulbs,” or for buying terrifyingly expensive LED lights) cut into providing for the children’s demonstrated needs. Your irresponsible promotion of a poorly supported and theoretically implausible hypothesis potentially harms children in ways not (probably) related to autism by convincing gullible parents that keeping them away from fluorescent lighting is important enough to be worth sacrificing, say, fresh fruits and vegetables or an adequate supply of books in the household, in order to pay the higher bills that result.

This is me face-planting my head into my keyboard. My fundamental problem with your hypotheses, Oren, is that you presume that autism wasn’t around before the use of fluorescent lights. However, I submit that autism and Asperger’s have been around a hell of a lot longer than fluorescent lights. Look at Isaac Newton. Lots of evidence he had Asperger’s. Except back then there wasn’t Asperger or Kanner who took the time, effort, and/or energy to describe the condition.

And really? If the Amish have autism (which they do), your whole theory is shot to heck. Deal. And I say that with compassion and understanding.

Again all I see is venom. Give me a better theory or any new theory.

Primarily genetics.

Or tell me what is the maximum price you would pay to potentially keep your child from becoming autistic and I’ll see if I can come up with something cheap enough for you.

She, like myself to a lesser degree, is. Having understood and accepted that her condition is a difference, not a disease (think of a computer running a different operating system than the Windows everyone is accustomed to), and that it is primarily genetic in origin, I am concerned with helping her learn how to function in the world in a way her differently-wired brain can understand, and take a dim view of unproductive “just-so story” speculation about the possible cause of what is naively and dehumanizingly characterized as “damage.”

Hi DoC –

The argument is only absurd to a straw man who assumes that the CDC’s estimate of an average 90 in 10,000 (1 in 110) is a methodological apples to apples comparison to the papers Fombonne reviewed.

Fombonne reviewed 43 different papers. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that there were a variety of methodologies in use in these 43 papers. Given the veritable fruit buffet of procedures used here, I’d be interested in knowing what you think we could learn, at all from such a mishmash? If there isn’t something that can be gleaned from looking at studies with different methodologies, why did Fomobonne bother at all? Fombonne used to get cited a lot when it was useful to discredit the MMR, but suddenly he’s dumb enough to perform an apples to oranges to bananas to strawberries comparison of over forty studies without realizing the futility of of such comparisons?

As a skeptic, I have not ascribed any comparable (to the past) relevance of the current CDC estimates, as they likely employ differing methodology, as I noted. Apparently, you are willing to inflate the actual CDC estimate of the average, and call it a reality reference for past studies that used different ascertainment methods to make your argument.

What about previous CDC estimates, which used similar, passive techniques then? None of them were within a lightyear of 100 per 100,000K. My argument is that all of our studies show a consistent trend upwards, regardless of methdological processes in use, and that I consider it wildly irresponsible to assume that all of this increase is due to artifact considering the amount of reckless environmental engineering we, as a species, have been embarking on. [My concerns happen to extend far beyond vaccines, but there rarely seems a forum where anything else gets discussed.] Throw out the latest CDC studies if you want and you still see the same pattern.

pD, you’re slipping.

I guess I should be happy that someone thought I had a way to go backwards!

Knowing this, why are you so willing to jump the gun and assume that current CDC estimates have real comparative meaning in the context of the mixed epidemiological landscape?

I was alarmed long before the latest batch of CDC numbers came out. The numbers the CDC came out with previously were scary. Fombonne’s numbers were scary in 2008, and 2003. If we can’t trust any study due to mixed methodologies, why does everyone keep on trying these kinds of studies?

Most skeptics have long acknowledged the possibility of some sort of real increase. Empricizing it, if it’s there, would be difficult, if not impossible. I don’t think that necessarily leads to uncomfortable questions as you imply.

My thoughts are to assume some of it is real, maybe a lot, which means we should be applying a lot more resources towards environmental changes. I’m not making the charge that genetic studies are useless, or that some resources aren’t being applied there, but rather, this should be being treated as more of an emergency.

The comforting part of the usual argument, is that ‘hey, we don’t have to worry about these numbers, after all, we shouldn’t assume any of it is real, if you know how to read the studies.” [see Scott @69 for an example of this].

But we have evidence that less controversial things, like increasing parental age are associated with autism. No one is going to deny that our parents are getting older. So now the argument is, ‘well, some of our increase is real, but it can’t be much.’.

Considering the ramifications of being wrong in this assumption, I find the followup questions, like, ‘how can we be confident ‘most’ of our increase is artifact’ to be very uncomfortable, because we can’t get any decent answers. Maybe we just differ on what constitutes uncomfortable.

If you wanted to claim that it’s possible that some vaccine etiology for some small number of cases of autism exists, I would say that is absolutely possible. If you want to claim beyond possibility, and for actual existence, bring good evidence.

I wrote a large post on a dozen or more studies involving emerging research on immune challenges in early life and subsequent immune and behavioral changes in the treatment group that I touched on above, aa well as on a post for this thread that is sitting in moderation. The evidence seems to point to the idea that the immune system is highly maleable during critical developmental timeframes; there are lots of studies on this involving more classical immune disorders such as asthma.
As we seem to have established, as we have zero studies actually studing vaccination up and above the MMR, I have no real studies to post one way or the other.

As I stated above, however, my concerns are far greater than simply vaccines. For example, there is a lot of evidence that common environmental pollutants such as PDBEs can interferre with thyroid hormones, and hypothyroidism is associated with a ton of developmental problems, including autism. [avoiding linking due to spam filtering]

You started out with inflated CDC average numbers that essentially include anything on a behaviorally described spectrum. Can you be more specific and clearly define “health emergency”?

Great question that requires more attention than I can allocate right now. Let me put some thought towards this.

– pD

Given the veritable fruit buffet of procedures used here, I’d be interested in knowing what you think we could learn, at all from such a mishmash?

@pD: You can learn all sorts of things from such an effort. For example, you can model ascertained prevalence as a function of case-finding method, location, criteria, and perhaps, year of survey. I recall something like that was done in Williams et al.

If we can’t trust any study due to mixed methodologies, why does everyone keep on trying these kinds of studies?

Who says you can’t trust them? For example, I completely trust that Lotter (1966) found that only 4.5 in 10,000 children were autistic, within the limits of the criteria and methods used.

But we have evidence that less controversial things, like increasing parental age are associated with autism.

Yes, but that’s not the argument. In fact, I will grant that a true increase of a few points per 10,000 – since 1980 – is possible if not likely. (I actually modeled this recently based on the rates of the Israeli study and maternal age data from US Census.)

If you want to be convincing, here’s what you need to do. Show us data on, say, housing for developmentally disabled individuals as a whole. Are rates of institutionalization increasing, when you consider all developmentally disabled persons? If not, what is the basis of any alarm?

Despite fabricated claims to the effect that autism will overwhelm social services and so on, trends in the data simply don’t support them.

@Azkyroth

Having understood and accepted that her condition is a difference, not a disease (think of a computer running a different operating system than the Windows everyone is accustomed to),

This is exactly how I feel about my son. It is refreshing to hear another mother speak these thoughts.

I am concerned with helping her learn how to function in the world in a way her differently-wired brain can understand, and take a dim view of unproductive “just-so story” speculation about the possible cause of what is naively and dehumanizingly characterized as “damage.”

Once again you hit the nail right on the head. The world will not conform to our children, they need to find a way to ‘fit’ the best they can. It is our responsibility as parents to help them find a place where they can be happy and productive, and to equip them to handle the challenges that come.

I don’t tolerate anyone calling my son ‘damaged’, he is not! He is different, and in my opinion his different makes him who he is. I would not make him ‘normal’ if I could.

Regarding Chris Mooney’s article, I find it interesting that the comment sector contains comments from a representative (billy bob) of the very sort of people that Mooney think we should try to build bridges to.

The commenter in question calls modern science “fraud”, and claims that is is discredited. How can one build bridges to someone so delusional?

Kristjan –

I don’t know, but for everyone else who might be reasonable but on the fence, responding to them is really important. billy bob and you aren’t the only people who read those comments! I believe that making a sane, respectable and reasonable response to that sort of thing goes a long way for the *other* people that read the comment string. Or you could ignore him, which seems to happen more often than not to my comments. 🙂

Of course, it is much more fun to call him a delusional idiot, which he might be, but it doesn’t really benefit the argument.

Joseph–

Are institutionalization rates actually a good proxy for the rates of the conditions you’re interested in? Those rates are driven at least in part by changes in policy and attitudes. People used to routinely institutionalize children who couldn’t walk, for example, from some combination of inability to deal with physical issues (in a world where almost no public place was wheelchair accessible) and embarrassment, shame, or fear of being shunned as different or potentially contagious. I see more people in wheelchairs now than I do twenty years ago: that doesn’t mean there are more people who need them, it may mean that people who use wheelchairs are spending more time in public places like buses and stores.

Autistic people may be living in ways much like neurotypicals, alone or with a roommate, or with a spouse or their own parents. I know one person with Asperger’s who is living with his husband, and has shared custody of his children with his ex; another is sharing a home with her mother, sister, and nieces. Neither of them is going to show up if you work with institutionalization rates, because they aren’t institutionalized. Other people with autism may be in group homes of some sort, which may or may not count in the same way that a larger and more medicalized institution would. Shifts in how many autistic people can cope with the ordinary world (are not presented with expectations they can’t handle) will affect institutionalization rates, but maybe not diagnosis rates.

Similarly, there are trends in whether to institutionalize people with certain mental disorders. (The rate of mental disorders did not change drastically when community-based mental health was introduced.) That many places are de facto using the prison system to handle some of these problems means that it’s hard even to figure out how many people are institutionalized for schizophrenia, since instead of a diagnosis they may have a felony conviction and sentence.

pD,

As we seem to have established, as we have zero studies actually studing vaccination up and above the MMR, I have no real studies to post one way or the other.

I haven’t gone through the previous 100-some-odd posts, so I don’t know if this point has been made.

Eery childhood vaccine that is licensed in this country basically constitutes a test of said vaccine schedule. Why? Because when they test vaccines, the subjects are given the freakin’ current vaccine schedule plus the new vaccine.

Why is this so hard to understand? This “vaccines haven’t been tested” argument is such utter, complete bull and is little more than the anti-vaxers going to the end game: a nearly impossible hypothesis to test that will keep their disease promotion business in place for generations to come.

a-non:

Eery childhood vaccine that is licensed in this country basically constitutes a test of said vaccine schedule. Why? Because when they test vaccines, the subjects are given the freakin’ current vaccine schedule plus the new vaccine…Why is this so hard to understand?

You have nothing to compare this to… you cannot say that the schedule has been tested in its entirety and there are no more [insert condition / adverse event here] in this population than its counterpart because you have no background data. You have no control group. An observational study of both groups on a long term level (like the Italian study used to exonerate thimerosal) would be helpful in defense of your argument. Just like raw data on the schedule in its entirety with a bona-fide control (animals only, I realize the ethics involved for humans) would also defend your argument.

But saying that the actual implementation of the program is its own evidence fails.

Hi Josesph –

If you want to be convincing, here’s what you need to do. Show us data on, say, housing for developmentally disabled individuals as a whole. Are rates of institutionalization increasing, when you consider all developmentally disabled persons? If not, what is the basis of any alarm?

and

Yes and no. They are to the extent that people have claimed states will be overwhelmed economically trying to care for autistic people. If there’s no increase in the numbers of institutionalized developmentally disabled persons (relative to general population growth) then that particular argument falls apart. I believe in 5 or 10 years we’ll be able to make a definite argument that this didn’t come to pass.

Fascinating idea, although one seemingly fraught with so many confounds it makes teasing out “greater awareness” seem tame in comparison. By way of example, I’ve spent near 50K over the past three years on traditional therapies for my son; i.e., ABA / Speech. In order to do so, I’ve sacrificed a lot of other opportunities. If I keep doing this for another twelve years, and my son becomes self sufficient (in my dreams), does this mean there hasn’t been a societal cost?

Our other potential measurements are just as problematic to measure efficiently, IMO. For example, in the state I live in (Florida), about 2/3 of the people on the wait list for services from the State are under the age of 18. The state has been providing services for a long time; there are complaints about how good it is, but there are some things available for (some) people. [On a side note, the list is sort of a joke, it is a rolling list, and people are only moved up to get services as someone else ‘moves off’. My son is around 8,000 in line, and last year, about 300 people became qualified.]

What do you think we could learn by analyzing things like age comparisons of people looking for respite or other services? There are adults on these lists, but as a percentage, they are in the minority, at least in my state. Does anyone have information about other states?

A lot of the people actually getting services are still living with their parents, who receive things like respite care. A common refrain I’ve heard, and how I tend to feel, is that it will take a hell of a lot before a parent willingly consents to have their child put in a group home; but this doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.

I agree with you that in five to ten years, we will have a better idea of how things pan out. I hope you’re right, but fear I am.

– pD

There is some truth to the argument that vaccine testing – while it does use what I would call “incremental controls” (i.e. it compares the “current standard” vaccine regimen to the “current standard” plus one) – does not use completely unvaccinated subjects as controls. The reasons for that are many – ethical considerations, shortage of completely unvaccinated controls, differences between completely unvaccinated subjects and the general population, etc.

It is also true that vaccine safety studies do not use neurological disorders, autism, asthma, etc. as specific “end points”. However, vaccine safety studies look at any change in health, so autism occuring months after vaccination (or, as some parents and practitioners have claimed, days after vaccination) would be detected.

The retrospective studies looking at thimerosal and the MMR vaccine were triggered by anecdotal reports of association between thimerosal, MMR and autism. They were, in fact, done in response to parental concerns which have been shown to be unfounded.

The irony of using these studies – which, it must be noted, found no association between either thimerosal or the MMR vaccine and autism – as an indicator that vaccines have not been adequately studied is apparently lost on some people.

Let me be blunt: parents (and “Brave Maverick Doctors”) said that thimerosal and/or the MMR vaccine were “the” cause – or the major cause – of autism based on flimsy (or no) data. Then, when studies were done that confirmed thimerosal and the MMR vaccine were not associated with autism, these studies – studies done at the insistence of the “vaccines-cause-autism” movement – are used as “proof” that vaccine safety studies are inadequate.

I’d laugh if it weren’t so sad.

What next? If a study shows that the prevalence of autism is no higher among fully vaccinated children than it is in unvaccinated children, will the goalposts be moved again? Will it change from “Too many, too soon!” to “Random acts of vaccination”?

Why do we keep wasting time, money and resources chasing a hypothesis that is so obviously not productive?

Prometheus

Scott — The truely discerning stopped reading pD’s tripe quite a few posts back.

Prometheus — “Let me be blunt” You mean you havent been blunt till now, Mr. “at this point they can fucking swim?”

That was helpful Dave… please continue to backwardly contribute.

pD and tripe don’t quite go together in my mind… feel free to be more specific next time you hurl insults so I might actually be able to agree about something.

Mooney did a good job. In fact, he did a better job than Nancy Snyderman as my upcoming post will explain. I give props where props are due and throw brickbats when indicated. This time, Mooney deserves kudos.

Cut the tail off
Bert took his Saint Bernard to the vet.
“Doctor,” he said sadly, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to cut off my dog’s tail.”
The vet stepped back, “Bert, why should I do such a terrible thing?”
“Because my mother-in-law’s arriving tomorrow, and I don’t want anything to make her think she’s welcome.”