Wakefield’s “monkey business” hepatitis B vaccine study withdrawn?

“If I had to guess, I’d speculate that either the University of Pittsburgh IACUC had second thoughts or that there was a major deviation from the protocol approved by UPitt’s IACUC.”

My thoughts exactly. It seems odd that Hewitson would have abandoned what was a promising career for exile (in academic terms) with Wakefield unless it was clear that her presence at Pittsburgh was no longer welcome.

I am still very disappointed that a proposal which included Wakefield et al. was ever given consideration by the IACUC at all, their names alone should have sounded alarm bells straight off.

Pittsburgh should now be open about what went wrong and what steps they have taken to ensure that this debacle is never repeated. I dare say that they are reluctant to expose themselves to bad publicity but the sooner they demonstrate that they have got their house in order the better. They wouldn’t be the first to have been taken for a ride by the anti-vaxers, and sadly will probably not be the last. Wakefield is a slippery customer, no doubt his lawyers have tied Pittsburgh up in knots, but that shouldn’t be used as an excure to avoid taking the actions necessary to restoring the reputation of primate research at their University.

As someone who has to deal with my own IACUC all the time and the immense amount of paperwork and oversight over mouse studies, I really have to believe that, like you said, UPitt’s IACUC had some sort of problem with the monkey study. I still cannot wrap my head around how they’d approve a monkey study with such disproportionate groups, leading me to suspect that they didn’t. Of course, that’s mere speculation.

Neurotoxicology’s a third-tier journal with an impact factor (and, yes, I know IF isn’t perfect) hovering in the 2.4 – 2.6 range. I’m not entirely sure where a paper withdrawn from there would go. Well, actually, in this case I’m pretty sure it’ll go to a non-peer reviewed alt-med journal. Might as well cut out the middle-man as long as you’re not concerned with scientific ethics.

He’ll publish it in his new for-money journal Autism Insights, which is plainly being paid for out of the same pots of cash that Wakefield controls. This is the scam he obviously learnt from his old buddies at Merck.

The material will be worthless in litigation, which is plainly what it was done for, but it will keep a few of the Age of Autism believers sending their children to his operation in Austin.

This guy is finished as a researcher, and has no license to practise medicine. I don’t know how many paperclips they have to count at Thoughtful House, but I think a lady called Anissa Ryland does that for $100K plus, so what Wakefield will be doing for his $280,000 (out of the pockets of families with autistic children) we can only imagine.

Just noticed that in the older post (https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2008/05/some_monkey_business_in_autism_research.php) the criticism of the array study harped on “fold-change>1.5”, ignoring the more important “p<.001" criteria, indicating that the insolent one may need an extra hand on occasion. Offer: I am willing to make array studies pee in a cup for a good cause. Of course no one can detect if a study started with 7 vs 7, but after peeking got reduced to 5 vs 3 or such, in order to optimize the number of significant differences found. (Takes 5 minutes to peek at the first few principal components.) If you do that, the differences might just reflect RNA quality (or who-knows-what) though. I've previously noticed that Neurotoxicology does not seem to require making array data publicly available like good journals do. Not coughing up array data (and the like) is an abomination.

I’d be willing to bet money that it eventually ends up in JPANDS.

Still nothing up on AoA. With the speed they reacted to the Lancet retraction, you would have thought that they would have something up by now. Then again, another thought occurred to me: if they wanted to remove the evidence of a bad study so they could fix it up, they might have spoken with the editor, expressed their concerns about the public having access to it and suggested that the editor remove it.

If that’s the case, then I can see why they wouldn’t want to bring any attention to it. But then, the internet holds many wonders.

Orac “Do we know that Wakefield’s name was even on the IACUC application? It might not have been; maybe only Hewitson’s name and those of other UPitt faculty and lab personnel were on it.”

A good question, I was assuming that Wakefields name would be on it because he was the PI (his name is the final one on the Neurotoxicology paper author list) but as you say it may well not have been.

That would certainly make sense than them not realising who Andrew Wakefield was. Poor bastards didn’t know what was about to hit them.

@RJ

Maybe these dip-turds should focus on autism, people with autism, and support services for families instead of their full-frontal assault on science to cast blame on someone else for their “misfortune”.

Exactly. They have a post up today about a woman who poisoned her autistic son with bleach. The comments are in the “the vaccines poisoned her” and “blame the evil Big Pharma^TM/Gov’t” vein. I posted a comment along those lines (more education/support needed), but I’m sure it was censored. You can read it here.

The Science Direct link specifically says ‘this article was withdrawn at the request of the editor’.

IANAL, but I can think of several valid reasons to suppose that if the authors actually want a given article to be withdrawn, the notice would specify ‘at the request of the authors’. Given the extent to which the Wakefield camp has been touting the appearance of this study in a ‘highly respected journal’, I have a harder time believing that the authors were really the ones who pulled the plug.

I agree that the most likely course of action from here on will be to publish in a non-peer reviewed and/or quack-friendly rag that can subsequently be waved in the faces of the desperate, confused families seeking answers at Thoughtful House as PROOF of the OSUM SCIENZ.

Ugh. I’ve just killed my schadenfreude buzz with that thought.

One other strange thing – when you search for Hewiston in the directory at U Pitt, you find that she is listed as a “volunteer”.

http://accounts.pitt.edu/Public/find.asp?FoundCDS=onoACoCnECgx&AuthCode=2W9k8j8z7j87jz6

I am on the faculty at Univ. of Pittsburgh, although in a different department, and it pains me to no end that Hewitson is still listed on the web site. My guess is that she didn’t actually quit, but took a leave of absence, which will hopefully be permanent. As for grant support, she is listed as the PI on a primate core grant, but that’s it for NIH.

Always preview is my new motto.

If you use escape codes, though, don’t post from the preview. It horks them up. Preview, then go back and post from the main window.

This has been a rough week for Andy and J.B. Perhaps Andy will learn something about his new home country, and JB…well….

http://age-of-ignorance.blogspot.com/2010/02/wakefieldbaseball-and-monkeys.html

@ #19 Broken Link:

Just FYI: Don’t know how it works at U. Pitt, but we have volunteer faculty at the Big Medical School(tm) I work with. Usually just means they’re not “core” paid faculty. Most of them teach students and residents at their facilities in the community. They do it for free, and in exchange they get the benefit of being able to say they are faculty at BMS. So there’s nothing necessarily shady about Hewiston being a volunteer.

RJ @26; Take a look at http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=178 for Atwood’s involvement. Yes, it’s with Boyd Haley.

The IACUC data (i.e., PI, researchers) have always been publicly available at the universities where I’ve worked. Are they not at Pitt?

I think I’m probably the one who first brought up Yokel, give that two or three other authors on the paper were Kentucky and his involvement with “chelators.” Just seemed too much for a coincidence, and I couldn’t think of another reason even a third-tier journal like this one would let that study get by them. As for whether or not editors have any such power, just revisit the Lynn Margolis debacle in PNAS of recent vintage.

I just looked at the list of “publications” of the “research” produced by Thoughtful House on their web page. I really like the link that leads you to the journal Neurotoxicology abstract with the glaring ‘WITHDRAWN’ in big, pretty letters!

Some of the other ‘publications’ are in some real winner journals. What a sham!

It would be nice if their was some follow up on what is going on at TH.

@31: Ugh don’t get me started on PNAS…

I am sure that this observation must have been made already on this blog, but the conspiracy theorists that keep pushing the anti-vax line are doing the rest of us an enormous disservice. From time to time pharmaceutical companies actually do the wrong thing and the ongoing cries of ‘wolf! wolf!’ from antivaxers may end up covering for wrong on the occasions when it is being done.

Well. . . at the rate Wakefield is going he’ll be out of papers to retract soon. Which rather kills his credibility.
Of course, Jenny McCarthy will happily go on bleating out that Wakefield’s studies are her proof, and that Wakefield’s being jobbed by The Man.
Me, I’ll just do what I always do. point at her and laugh.
Sorry, sometimes derision is the proper response.

BrokenLink “Hewitson is still listed on the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine site:

http://www.pdc.magee.edu/faculty/hewitson.html
”

Although she is listed on a 2009 paper by Gerald Schatten’s group I suspect that her involvement with this work was several years ago…those studies take time. It’s a shame to see a scientist who was involved in some very interesting work throw her career away on anti-vaccine crankery.

I wonder if her methylmercury study, supported by a pilot grant from Pitt, was ever even started. As to her still being on the websites in my experience universities are often very slow in updating group and department websites, they can easily be a couple of years out of date. Though in this case you’d think they’d have got a wiggle on.

I couldn’t see the IACUC summaries anywhere obvious on the Pitt IACUC website http://www.iacuc.pitt.edu/, though it should be possible to FOI them.

@ Rita Wing: Yes. About another retraction(of Duesberg)9/15/09 @ Respectful Insolence.I believe that Medical Hypotheses retracted another HIV/AIDS Denialist article by an Italian, Ruggiero;recent talk of changing the journal to peer review(see Seth Kalichman’s blog, Denying AIDS and other oddities)

@David N. Brown

It looks like they did not let your comment through. Please feel free to copy it at Silenced by Age of Autism.

Amomwho – it’s not very clever to insult and slate the very people you are attempting to educate, especially not on a blog where a significant minority are significanly more educated in medicine, health and science than the average person.

“Its unbelievable to me that Dr. Wakefield is being penalized for actually looking into what ails a whole generation of children.”

First, he focused on a small number of a very small sub-section of a small sub-section, not a ‘whole generation’.

Second, he was penalised for misbehaviours that have nothing to do with contact with the children in his study. He was charged – and found guilty – of research and ethical violations, as well as misreporting of his role.

Actually reading the charges and findings would have been helpful.

Amomwho,
Not that I expect you will care but vaccines are tested in groups the way they are used. If your son suffered I am sorry but correlation does not equal causation. Any number of events could have triggered the symptoms or none. You nail vaccines because it is easy. Genetics anyone?

MikeMa-

Feel free to post links that show that childhood vaccines have been tested together 6 or 7 at a time as they are administered, using vaccines with adjuvants, and on children not free from family history of common ailments. There aren’t any that I am aware of.

While you are at it, post data showing that HepB administered at 12 hours of age was tested to be safe. If it takes you a while to track that down, I understand, given the data doesn’t exist.

Robert Krakow (the pro autism-vaccine solicitor) seems to have decided to try poke at blogs writing about this, such as my own (see link on my name). I would gather this has been is style for a good number of years.

Can someone tell me if he is on Thoughtful House’s board or has other professional association with Wakefield’s or his group?

“I was talking about the monkey study, not the case study. Wakefield is conducting research on the entire vaccine schedule and comparing a vaccinated population with an unvaccinated population. To even the uneducated, it would seem such a study should have been done a long time ago.”

To even the uneducated, it would seem that it might be difficult to diagnose autism in monkeys.

Further to my previous comment, is Krakow the lawyer/solicitor for Hewitson and Hollenback in their suit for “HHS for vaccine injury visited upon their son Joshua”, as per the first link Orac cites above

In a way, and possibly, perhaps. He is listed on the Petitioners Steering Committee (the PSC) of the Omnibus Autism Proceeding. In think that means he’s part of leadership of the group of attorneys representing all those petitioners.

http://tinyurl.com/yan2xrq

I suppose it’s possible that the cited petition (that of Hewitson and Hollenbeck), is not part of the Omnibus Autism Proceeding, and is some separate non-autism claim.

“Amomwho…” comments:

“Its unbelievable to me that Dr. Wakefield is being penalized for actually looking into what ails a whole generation of children.”

I agree, absolutely! I find it so unbelievable that I don’t believe it one little bit!

“Its shocking to me that so many people are incapable of critical thought.”

Again, I find myself in complete agreement with “Amomwho…”, just not in the way she might think.

I truly is concerning that so many people – hundreds at the least – are so lacking in rudimentary critical thinking that they would believe that a conspiracy as vast as the one “Amomwho…” proposes could maintain secrecy for a month, let alone several years.

Prometheus

Given I am an engineer and registered patent agent, I am educated in science

Apparently not enough if you think Wakefield’s monkey study is good science:

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2008/05/some_monkey_business_in_autism_research.php

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2009/10/some_monkey_business_in_autism_research_1.php

http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=178

But, it should raise at least some suspicion that so many, many parents relay the same anecdotal tales. Each tale is substantiated by individual home movies,

I’m not going to dismiss your anecdotal stories. I tend not to dismiss them off hand. But I will dismiss your claim that many (as in hundreds or thousands, I presume) such stories exist and are substantiated by home movies, unless you provide means to verify said claim.

Still patiently waiting on that safety data.

And, an ad hominem attack occurs every time you attack me instead of my argument.

MAny of you seem quite MMR fixated. MMR is administered with several other vaccines at 12 months. The most profound reaction we saw was after MMR (et.al) because he was screaming for a full 24 hours afterward – but he was continually ill from the very first HepB onward, and it wasn’t until we stopped vaccinating that he went for any length of time without getting an ear or sinus infection. It was vaccines that caused his ill health and neurological impairments and developmental delays, I can’t point to any one as the only cause.

I provided a link about the Wakefield witch hunt. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing he did that was questionable is take blood samples at a birthday party. I think he has been singled out to make an example of…

There are hundreds if not more parents with videos. I know they were being compiled, but I don’t know where they are now. For a good sampling of videos of recovering children, see Dr. Neurbranders website. Pay particular attention to the parent videos where the parents are also doctors, pediatricians. They come around, when its their kid afflicted. Go figure.

“And, an ad hominem attack occurs every time you attack me instead of my argument.”

You weren’t asked for a definition, you were asked for an example. Anyone of the ones that prompted you to accuse people will do.

I’ve looked at all the replies since your February 13, 2010 3:17 PM post, and the nearest I can find is Orac pointing out that you are not as well versed in science as you claim. He then linked to articles that oppose your belief.

You do realise an ad hominem is an attempt to invalidate your arguement on the basis of an irrelevent personal characteristic, not determining a characteristic on the basis of your arguement?

Please use an appropriate definition, and not one you appear to have made up to suit yourself.

“I provided a link about the Wakefield witch hunt. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing he did that was questionable is take blood samples at a birthday party.”

Then you are at complete odds with the findings of the GMC. If you were to imagine this from a unbiased observers view, why should anyone believe Wakefield over the GMC?

That you are determined that it was a witchhunt would explain why the only thing you think is questionable is the blood-taking. Ironically, this false belief then perpetuates the interpretation that it was a witch-hunt.

Where is the evidence that the GMC was actually wrong?

“For a good sampling of videos of recovering children, see Dr. Neurbranders website.”

*sigh* This was not what was under discussion. We were talking about the hypothesis that vaccines cause autism. You have suddenly started talking about videos showing recovery without apparently bothering to tell anyone else that that was what you were doing.

Please tell us what you’re talking about next time. It will save some confusion.

Wakefield talkin’ to me – tryin’ to run me up a creek.
Says you can buy my research now – you can pay me next week, ahh!
Too much monkey business. too much monkey business.
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

(with apologies to Chuck Berry)

But, it should raise at least some suspicion that so many, many parents relay the same anecdotal tales. Each tale is substantiated by individual home movies

Provably untrue. In what was supposedly a gold-standard case for the vaccines-cause-autism movement, it was actually the home movies that disproved the hypothesis that the vaccinations caused autism, as the child was seen displaying autistic behaviors well before the vaccination on which the parents had decided all the blame must rest.

Oh, and to answer your other question, “since [the Wakefield paper] has been retracted, does that mean we an infer a link has been proven?” there is only one set of circumstances where this is accepted scientific practice. This occurs when Bizarro, the imperfect clone of Superman from the planet of Htrae, announces “Me am worst scientist! Me retract paper!” Because everything Bizarro says is the opposite of what he means, we are able to safely deduce that Bizarro does indeed stand by the conclusions of the paper.

Trying, in any other circumstances, to seriously put forth the suggestion that the double negative of “the paper didn’t state a link” and “the paper is retracted” constitutes a positive, indicates only that the person putting forth the suggestion has a grasp on Earth logic no better than that of Bizarro.

wow, you have continually attacked and insulted me. Say whatever you’d like – it doesn’t change the fact that kids like mine get better thanks to doctors like those at Thoughtful House.

Perhaps you should read Dr. Jepson’s book?

still no safety data proving he safety of the Hep B – doesn’t it take a lot of gall to find fault with a study using only 13, 16, 20 monkeys when the powers that be decided HepB was safe using ZERO – zerp, zip nada zilcho. a Big goose egg- no testing what so ever.

Since this vaccination is given at birth, it is impossible to comment about any child showing signs of autism before vaccination. How did you master critical thinkers miss that one?

I know my son would not have gotten well had I not sought out Dr. Jepson at Thoughtful House because he did not get properly diagnosed until that time. He would have gotten worse, his pediatrician missed completely that his bowels were completely impacted and was encouraging, take a wild guess… prescription psychiatric meds. Yea, right, my son would have gotten better anyway.. Who lives in bizarro?

Yes, chelation is the proper treatment for heavy metal toxicity. And when a little boy asks to go back for more IV chelation, you know its because it makes him feel better. When my MD saw my sons porphyrin data, she said he needed chelation. But you idiots on the internet know more than all my doctors, MD or ND, right?

Most parents like me don’t bother with forums like this…. Now I know why. The mainstream medical adherents would rather we let our kids remain ill than challenge their vaccine paradigms. Sorry, we aren’t that stupid. And we aren’t going away.

Did you get that NO SAFETY DATA TO JUSTIfY GIVING HOURS-OLD INFANTS VACCINES!!! If that doesn’t attest to the strength of paradigms surrounding vaccines, I don’t know what can.

still no safety data proving he safety of the Hep B – doesn’t it take a lot of gall to find fault with a study using only 13, 16, 20 monkeys when the powers that be decided HepB was safe using ZERO – zerp, zip nada zilcho. a Big goose egg- no testing what so ever.

That’s just demonstrable nonsense.

I know my son would not have gotten well had I not sought out Dr. Jepson at Thoughtful House because he did not get properly diagnosed until that time. He would have gotten worse,

How could you possibly know that? It’s actually rare for autistic children to get “worse” over time.

@MikeMa

Your second link does not appear to be working.

I know my son would not have gotten well had I not sought out Dr. Jepson at Thoughtful House because he did not get properly diagnosed until that time. He would have gotten worse, his pediatrician missed completely that his bowels were completely impacted and was encouraging, take a wild guess… prescription psychiatric meds. Yea, right, my son would have gotten better anyway.. Who lives in bizarro?

This is another theme amongst those defending DAN! quackery and biomed woo. It’s positively amazing how no physicians can competently treat co-morbidities that can accompany autistics. Well, I’m afraid that again, many more parents that don’t do the alt-med route have something vastly different to say.

Yes, chelation is the proper treatment for heavy metal toxicity. And when a little boy asks to go back for more IV chelation, you know its because it makes him feel better. When my MD saw my sons porphyrin data, she said he needed chelation. But you idiots on the internet know more than all my doctors, MD or ND, right?

Yes, chelation is the proper treatment for ACTUAL metal toxicity, not as a result of the dubious tests that DAN!s routinely give, which involve a chelation challenge prior to testing and/or creative interpretation of the results from custom labs. My children ask for ice cream for dinner because it will make them happy, but I am their mother and as such, know better. It is nothing short of disgusting that you would justify a dangerous procedure on your own child because you say he asked for it. Not only do we ‘idiots’ here know more than your physicians or NDs about these untested, dubious ‘treatments’, but scientists and medicos that halted a chelation study on heart patients and cancelled a chelation study for autism because of the dangers that presented themselves. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Dec06/LeadChelation.kr.html

Most parents like me don’t bother with forums like this…. Now I know why. The mainstream medical adherents would rather we let our kids remain ill than challenge their vaccine paradigms. Sorry, we aren’t that stupid. And we aren’t going away.

No, most parents like you don’t like to venture outside of their communal reinforced sites is because you don’t want your paradigm challenged. Your charge that we want children to remain ill is just another indication of the pathological need to justify untested, potentially dangerous treatments for your children.

As for safety data, this took me ~15 seconds to find: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11734710 and you can also look up the clinical trials listed on the package inserts. You may also wish to consider that most other countries do not administer a hep B birth dose, have lighter schedules in general and have the same or even higher rates of ASDs. What you and the rest of your hive-mind collective claim is simply not borne out in the real world. Now why don’t you cough up some safety and efficacy data for the garbage that you have subjected your child to.

Lots of links to HebB data – but none of it performed before HepB was approved for use on hours old infants. No HepB data showing it is safe to use on newborns. I looked though the crap you linked to, none was performed to show safety before it was added to the vaccine schedule. What a bunch of lemmings we’ve become.

Attack me all you want. I’m glad I didn’t come on this type of forum when I was trying to figure out what to do to help my son – I might have incorrectly concluded that things were as dismal as the mainstream doctors claimed. To conclude otherwise would have required questioning the sacred cow paradigms.

Years have gone by, and the best mainstream medical has to say about autism is: Its not vaccines. You are genetically defective. And the doctor who shows there is a GI link – well he’s unethical. Go take some psychiatric meds and shut up. Your recovered kid was never autistic, but if he was, he would have gotten better without biomedical interventions anyways. Never mind that mainstream medical has no children recovered without biomedical. We control the news. So we are right. And no one wants to doubt us because its unfathomable that anyone is either as stupid or unethical as we must be to allow this travesty to continue without ever studying the afflicted children.

Isn’t it interesting no one bothers to study the afflicted children? hm…

Lots of links to HebB data – but none of it performed before HepB was approved for use on hours old infants. No HepB data showing it is safe to use on newborns. I looked though the crap you linked to, none was performed to show safety before it was added to the vaccine schedule. What a bunch of lemmings we’ve become.

Then you lack the critical-thinking skills that you claim to possess. There were more than enough studies there to support the existence of testing on neonates, here’s more:
http://tinyurl.com/ydqwt3t
I have no expectation that you will or can even read the relevant studies but it is important to refute your very erroneous statements that no safety testing for vaccines is performed.

Attack me all you want. I’m glad I didn’t come on this type of forum when I was trying to figure out what to do to help my son – I might have incorrectly concluded that things were as dismal as the mainstream doctors claimed. To conclude otherwise would have required questioning the sacred cow paradigms.

Dismal? Don’t be ridiculous; there are many parents of autistic children that post here and simply prefer to accept their children for who they are and provide them with proven therapies to assist with their inevitable development. If you had sought out sites that employ evidence-based therapies for autism, then you could have enjoyed watching the developmental progression of your son without pumping him full of untested, unproven crap.

Years have gone by, and the best mainstream medical has to say about autism is: Its not vaccines. You are genetically defective. And the doctor who shows there is a GI link – well he’s unethical.

Wakefield et al. did no such thing, many of the children in his original study didn’t even have GI pathology as he reported. So of course he is unethical, also, the fact is, is that there are no more GI pathologies found in autistic children than in the general population. A couple of studies came out about this last year, I guess you didn’t get the memo? Or would that be that your sources of information didn’t like those results?

Never mind that mainstream medical has no children recovered without biomedical.

This is just delusional. Those that eschew the alt-med rubbish have children that have progressed and even to the point that they have had their diagnoses changed and/or removed. They just don’t go about obsessing about ‘fixing’ their ‘broken’ and ‘damaged’ children, nor treating them as such.

Isn’t it interesting no one bothers to study the afflicted children? hm…

You may want to point that question to your altie-quacks. The fact is, is that there are thousands of studies that have been published and underway. Your lot just don’t like the research direction because they don’t have to do with vaccines. Did you also miss the studies on GFCF diets? Why don’t DAN!s perform any safety and efficacy studies on their protocols? They are, after all, the ones that are making the claims and whining about non-acceptance by the medical community. And I am still waiting for those chelation studies for autism.

momwhobelieves:

Since this vaccination is given at birth, it is impossible to comment about any child showing signs of autism before vaccination. How did you master critical thinkers miss that one?

My son had neonatal seizures. There are those who have suggested that it was due to the HepB vaccine, but start stuttering and spitting when I tell them that he is 21 years old. They, like you, belong in the same category as the loon who told me his seizures were from drinking milk. Of course when I reminded that the infant was only getting breastmilk he sputtered and spitted that is was because I drank milk!

Of course, since he had a history of seizures he had another big one as a toddler when he had what is now a vaccine preventable disease. That seizure is probably why he is now permanently disabled.

Guess what, momwhoguessedwrong (and when I saw the moniker, I actually thought she was part of pkids.org, where there are parents of kids with chronic Hepatitis B), things happen to kids even without vaccines. Your blathering about beliefs, and the use of dangerous medical interventions does not help here. Neither does going on about Jepson (who does not have much credence here).

Also, I agree with Militant Agnostic when he says:

I have never ceased to be appalled at the lack of understanding of science and the scientific method by engineers. The unjustified extrapolation of a single experience is very common. Ever notice how many engineers are creationists or IDiots. Several engineers have been featured in ORAC’s Friday dose of woo.

Before I had to quit working as an engineer to be with my disabled child I was often amazed at the same lack of understanding from some co-workers. Then, again, I also had to explain in minute details some basic math relationships (relative coordinate systems), and how to use some simple graphics software (where in one case I had a guy not understand the basics, and where the one page of simple commands were in the manual finally tell me “I don’t have time to read the book”… to which I responded I did not have time to help him!).

The momwhobelievesanddoesnotcareaboutthescience sounds just like those guys.

Not one of the HepB neonate studies cited vaccines having adjuvants. I looked. If I missed it, please do particularly point it out. “http://tinyurl.com/ydqwt3t
I have no expectation that you will or can even read the relevant studies but it is important to refute your very erroneous statements that no safety testing for vaccines is performed.”

NO safety testing for HepB at birth with adjuvants was performed before this vaccination was added to the schedule. Show me that data, it doesn’t exist. This is not an erroneous statement, much less a “very erroneous statement”

One study you linked did indicate the vaccine was safe because there were no febrile seizures or sepsis. Well, loss of the ability to nurse is neither of those things – but loss of the ability to nurse is hardly ‘safe’ for newborns.

Chris, its true, sometimes things ‘just happen’ to children. But, for my son, it wasn’t a ‘just happen’ it was a ‘just triggered’ – and triggered by his vaccines. And, whether he is genetically predisposed or whether other, additional environmental factors played a role is hardly the point. Of the three, only when and whether to vaccinate is squarely in my control, other environmental factors being controllable, marginally controllable only if they are known. I know my son had a loss in ability to nurse between the moment he first nursed immediately following his birth and after he got the HepB – had he been my first child I probably wouldn’t have noticed, given how hard it was for me to learn to nurse my first baby. I know my son was continually sick as an infant. I was foolish for not learning more before blindly following the untested, recommended vaccine schedule – I would have done things much differently. The data to support his receiving so many adjuvanted vaccinations so soon and so many at a time did not exist then, still does not exist now. So, accuse me of ‘experimenting’ on my kid – undeniably my son has been ‘experimented’ on – but that experimentation began with the unproven vaccinations he received starting with the HepB at birth and the experiment continued with each vaccine.

I’m grateful I had experience as an engineer – for many years I was a process engineer in a high-volume semiconductor manufacturing fab. I was familiar with having to take the incomplete data I had and make important decisions with it to either keep the line up, or get it back up. Had I not been successful with using incomplete data, I might have been a lot more worried about embarking on the biomedical pathway we eventually took. Somehow I have just known the right thing to do, without knowing why, exactly. No one at work ever really cared that I wasn’t able to explain how I knew what would ‘fix it’ – they were just happy I fixed it. Assert that my son would have gotten better somehow anyways – I don’t know how you think you could know without knowing anything about him. Certainly his own mainstream doctor told me to continue with biomed after he saw the improvements my son experienced due to biomed. Have you ever seen a doctor’s chin hit the floor in astonishment? I have.

Yes, we did the therapies mainstream medicine promotes – with underwhelming results. If he made any progress with those therapies, the progress was so slow as to be unrecognizable. Until his underlying bowel disease was diagnosed and treated, he didn’t improve. I don’t know how he could have gotten better without diagnosing and treating the bowel disease, as you imply would have happened.

Dr. Jepson ordered x rays at our first appointment = and they confirmed his diagnosis. My son’s bowels were impacted. His mainstream doctors missed it completely. My son never mentioned it, he knew nothing other than pain his whole life so he didn’t KNOW to say that he was in pain.

Be as hateful to me as you wish – accuse me of abusing my kid (yea, I would have to agree signing for vaccinations that weren’t tested was abusive). Doesn’t change the fact that my son has made huge improvement through bio-med. Doesn’t change the fact that my son’s GI problems were causing “autistic symptoms” – and once his GI problems were eliminated, the “autistic symptoms” abated. Sorry it isn’t what you want to hear, doesn’t make it less true. Sorry you can’t believe there is no safety data for the vaccines my son received in the manner he received them, it doesn’t make it less true. Don’t attach a bunch of links that answer the wrong questions about vaccines… show me data that answers the right questions – oh, wait, it doesn’t exist.

Not one of the HepB neonate studies cited vaccines having adjuvants. I looked. If I missed it, please do particularly point it out. “http://tinyurl.com/ydqwt3t
I have no expectation that you will or can even read the relevant studies but it is important to refute your very erroneous statements that no safety testing for vaccines is performed.”

NO safety testing for HepB at birth with adjuvants was performed before this vaccination was added to the schedule. Show me that data, it doesn’t exist. This is not an erroneous statement, much less a “very erroneous statement”

What on earth are you talking about? Hep B vaccines are adjuvanted. Did you just read the titles or actually retrieve any of the articles of interest?

Or better yet, I suppose your ridiculous red herring is just a deflection from the fact that you are using completely untested, potentially dangerous treatments for your son. Several of us posted the studies you asked for, in spite of your dislike for the results but I have yet to see a single study for the safety and efficacy of your biomed.

amom: you need to realize that to Chris you are all just “anecdotes” and tiny “percentages.” Your stories of vaccine damage are qualitatively different, apparently,compared to people who have the real disease for which a vaccine milght be intended. Apparently.

@Jen

I was just speaking with a co-worker the other night. Her son died from a vaccine-preventable disease, this is not different than a child who is actually injured by a real vaccine reaction both lives are equally important.

Autism is not a vaccine injury, and no amount of stomping your feet a screaming that it is will make it such. Just because amom believes her child’s autism to be related to vaccines doesn’t make it true.

Thanks for playing, Josh, but both those studies are for moms who actually test positive for HepB at the time they deliver. The other links were inaccessible. I don’t know what kind of women you hang with, but I am neither a prostitute nor IV drug user – those are typically the only moms who have HepB in the first place.

Not one person has provided a link to a study conducted BEFORE the addition of the neonate HepB dose to the vaccine schedule. No testing was done whatsoever. This is just a fact. Moreover, no good explanation for adding this particular vaccine was provided. Maybe for HepB positive moms it was justifiable, but there is and was no MEDICALLY justifiable reason to give it to every newborn infant.

So, my point is, chide Wakefield for only having 13 monkeys. Its 13 more than the government had before it decided to add the HepB vaccine to the schedule. And, ridicule his results if you want, but he found exactly what I saw with my son.

Thanks for playing, Josh, but both those studies are for moms who actually test positive for HepB at the time they deliver. The other links were inaccessible. I don’t know what kind of women you hang with, but I am neither a prostitute nor IV drug user – those are typically the only moms who have HepB in the first place.

Amomwhocan’tfindalibrary, Studies on neonates born to Hep B positive mothers are perfectly valid. But your goalpost shifting is typical of anti-vaxers who get their questions answered but refuse to accept them.

Don’t vaunt your superiority, about 1/3 of Hep B positive people have no known risk factors. It really is annoying and doesn’t do anything for your claims when you are presented with literature searches and you just dismiss them. For you to be making the claims that you do, you should be even more familiar with the literature than we. But the fact is, you’re not and just want choice works spoon-fed to you. Here are just a few of the many clinical studies done on neonates:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2940334
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2943811
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2947953
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3541427
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3317357

Start doing your own damn work and access these, something you should have done long ago if you weren’t so lazy.

Last part-

The reason was to prevent certain types of liver cancers. SBM went over that.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2849
I believe Orac referenced it already.

I’m still curious – The hep B vaccine was not recommended by the cdc for all newborns until about 2002, why did autism rates start to “rise” before that?

Josh,

The hepatitis B vaccine was recommended for all infants (in the US) starting in 1991 – about six years after the “autism epidemic” allegedly began. Given that this recommendation wasn’t adopted overnight, the lag between the putative start of the “autism epidemic” and widespread hepatitis B vaccination of infants is even longer.

By 2002, the children’s hepatitis B vaccine was only available without thimerosal. The sudden withdrawal of thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccines led to a dramatic drop in the number of infants receiving the vaccine for about a year. There was not a corresponding drop in autism prevalence for that group of children.

I could go on, but it seems pretty clear that vaccines aren’t linked to autism. Those that fail to see that are victims of their own closed minds.

Prometheus

At Prometheus-
Thanks,
I got my words completely mixed around. To have all newborns vaccinated against Hep B started in 2002
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5102a4.htm
The years before that it seems that if the mom was HepB antigen negative, then you don’t have to vaccinate until 2 months old. Thanks for correcting me.

Thank you Calli, thank you. You have far more patience than I do and have written so much. It is sad that if you receive a reply it will almost certainly ignore everything you have pointed out about the studies and the problems with the previous statements made by the poster. But I can hope that someone else who is less entrenched will come here and see your posting and possibly question what they had read. Those flaws should be plain to everyone on either side of this issue and anyone who was honest should seriously be concerned with them rather than brush them off.

I don’t get it. On what basis could one even accuse the HepB vaccine of causing autism? As I’ve said before, at least the “MMR causes autism” crowd has a post hoc ergo prompter hoc possibility. Autism symptoms do indeed become apparent more around the time that the MMR vaccine is given, so at least there is an apparent association. The association has been testing and found to be not true, but at least you can understand the basis for the claim.

However,HepB is given to newborns, for pete’s sake. Why in the world would anyone associate that with autism?

If you think about it, the HepB causes autism advocates are in opposition to the MMR group, because the HepB causes autism claim requires that autism originates long, long before MMR comes along. So in that respect, why would someone who thinks autism is caused by HepB support Wakefield, whose work, if it were to be believed, contradicts that hypothesis?

Of course, the answer is that for these dorks, as long as you are anti-vax, you must be ok, regardless of whether you are completely opposite. It’s like how all JFK conspiracists stick together, despite the fact that they all have different conspiracies.

@Calli Arcale

brilliant post. Cut, paste, frame.

Pablo @ 107 – this is just a guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some anti-vaxxers think Hep B is an acceptable target. Most people think of it as an STD, so they believe children are at nearly 0 risk of contracting it except from an infected mother. (I know this isn’t true, but I don’t think the majority of the population does.) So giving the Hep B shot to infants can seem unnecessary to the uneducated. This shuts off one of the standard pro-vaccination arguments – even if vaccines do cause autism, the benefit from not getting the diseases outweighs the detriment of a small number of children developing autism.

Wow. Thanks for the kudos, folks! I had to respond, especially when I saw the engineering comment. Engineering is *infested* with this sort of attitude, and it really does hurt the field in the long run. That inspired me to do the larger response, because this mother is clearly not doing due diligence but is instead seeking information which confirms her views and rejecting information which doesn’t, with all other considerations secondary.

You may not be consciously seeking information which confirms your views, but it sure looks like you are rejecting information out of hand if it contradicts your views. In particular, your rather outrageous statement that you didn’t care about data on HepB vaccine safety in newborns if it wasn’t premarket data. Regardless of whether or not the vaccine was proven safe in infants before it was used in them (and it *was*), the postmarket data exonerates it, and you didn’t give any reason whatsoever for rejecting that.

You also are accepting rather hazardous substances which have not been studied (much less approved) for the indications which you are using them, while simultaneously criticizing vaccines for rather nebulous reasons. I do not understand that. Why are you okay with intravenous DMPS, but not okay with Hepatitis B vaccine? DMPS is not harmless at all. (No chelating agent is, because they are not terribly discriminating. They *like* metals, though some like certain metals more than others. Not even the all-natural oxalic acid, which is what makes rhubarb dangerous for people prone to kidney stones.) And there’s no evidence it helps autism, nor that autism is caused by mercury poisoning (which has distinctly different symptoms in any case).

Though it does not pertain directly to autism, you may be interested in this paper, which pertains to long-term use of DMPS in a child being treated for chronic exposure to mercury vapor. (In other words, DMPS being used for its actual approved use.) Make sure you click through to the full text, and not just the abstract.

Stevens-Johnson syndrome in a child with chronic mercury exposure and 2,3-dimercaptopropane-1-sulfonate (DMPS) therapy

Want to know the first full sentence I remember? “Thanks for getting all that poop out of me, Mom.” That was spoken almost immediately after I learned from Dr. Jepson that his bowels were impacted.

Severe constipation is not common, but more common in autistic children. There are several proposed reasons, but one thing which is undeniable is this: it’s very uncomfortable (even painful), and the child will progress much better once that discomfort is relieved. That’s even true of non-autistic children. I’m glad you pursued your son’s bowel issues, because those are important.

My autism-spectrum daughter does not have bowel issues, but her “neurotypical” sister does. I feel so sorry for her when she gets blocked up. For her, I’ve found the best remedy is glycerine suppositories. Icky, yeah, but it’s better for her than drug-based laxatives. Laxatives work, but they have their own unpleasant side-effects.

BTW, what makes you think I didn’t investigate my daughter’s medical ailments? She actually takes medication for her attention problems, and for her acid reflux disease. (Family curse; I have that too.) She’s also been seeing a wide range of child psychologists, psychiatrists, and learning disorder specialists for over three years (since before her diagnosis, actually), in addition to her regular pediatrician. We are also fortunate in that we have a mental health care insurance plan. The coverage isn’t stellar, but it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing, and it does cover her treatment. Also, the local school district has been nothing short of AWESOME. We’re extremely fortunate to live in a district with excellent services for autism. Most districts don’t have that.

It is unlikely that there will never be an end to the vaccination debate. The “parents are idiots” position of the pro-vaccination medical community simply alienates those that have seen extreme reactions to vaccines, and subsequent regressive autism.

In my personal experience with a relative that experienced febrile seizures starting within a day of the MMR, the pediatrician’s response was that the febrile seizures were not related to the vaccination received the day before. If this rather obvious temporal co-incidence is dismissed, it is no wonder that the loss of verbal communication, affection and so on that also followed the seizures culminating in a diagnosis of autism many years later was also dismissed. Nope, JAMA and NEJM have published articles that shown no correlation.

Pretty much all research on both sides can be torn apart using various means – e.g. possible subject selection bias, subgroups not identified, changes in diagnostic criteria or increased “awareness”. If that fails, then there is the ever-present lack of detail and transparency in peer-reviewed literature. In some, or many cases, the references used are not particularly appropriate or properly analyzed (especially the ones added for padding the list). Before I would accept a statistical evaluation, I would want to check the raw data, accuracy and percision of measurments etc. Unfortunately, using these criteria, I find precious little peer-reviewed literature regarding vaccination to be useful. Even thorough review may not reveal the impact of conflicts of interest. I’m left with having to find non-sequitors in various conclusions compared to the evidence presented, and
having to speculate on the validity of the methods used, statistical analysis and the auhours’ bias.

But, then, I’m an engineer. But a dangerous one, as I am also have a doctorate in engineering, and a patent. In my field I much prefer conference proceedings that are not peer-reviewed to peer-reviewed literature in general because usually the raw data is much more transparent in the former.

If there is any doubt, my children have not been vaccinated.

It is unlikely that there will never be an end to the vaccination debate. The “parents are idiots” position of the pro-vaccination medical community simply alienates those that have seen extreme reactions to vaccines, and subsequent regressive autism.

Straw man argument. No one here says that “parents are idiots.” What we do say is that they share with all human beings certain cognitive oddities that lead them to confuse correlation with causation very easily. For instance, take a look at what I said just yesterday:

After all, the “stereotypical” (or “prototypical”) story of the anti-vaccine movement is of the child between the ages of 1 and 3 who is brought to the pediatrician, receives vaccines, and then shortly thereafter loses language and social skills and develops regressive autism. Never mind that, given the number of children who are vaccinated every year and the number of children who develop regressive autism, there are bound to be overlaps such that by random chance alone there will be many children who regress in reasonably close temporal proximity to vaccination. Never mind that no one has ever shown that this regression occurs more frequently in vaccinated children. Anecdotes like the ones JB was touting up until (apparently) now are the very “evidence” that the anti-vaccine movement uses to blame vaccination for autism. And, in all fairness, in a single child not studied in the context of populations, such an event can look all the world as though the vaccine caused the regression even when it did not. Even so, the point is that parents who believe vaccines caused their children’s autism don’t blame a process. They blame vaccines, often specific vaccines like the MMR.

In other words, it’s not being “stupid” to confuse correlation with causation in these cases. It’s being a human being who sees only one data point and not the whole picture.

Now, that doesn’t mean that some parents aren’t stupid. Jenny McCarthy, for instance, is flamingly stupid. J.B. Handley, while not stupid about other matters, is blisteringly ignorant of science and so arrogant that he refuses to be educated, despite many attempts by many different people.

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