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Poor, poor pitiful Andy (Wakefield): Dissed again, this time by the Oregon Senate Committee on Health Care

Poor Andy Wakefield.

Beginning in the late 1990s until around six years ago, Andy was the premiere “vaccine skeptic” in the world. His 1998 case series published in The Lancet linking bowel problems in autistic children to the measles vaccine, the one where in the paper itself he was careful not to blame the MMR vaccine for autism but elsewhere was not so shy, launched a campaign of fear and loathing for the MMR vaccine that continues to this day. In his heyday, Wakefield was quite the figure, showing up on the media everywhere, treated with undeserved respect by much of the tabloid press and downright reverence by the antivaccine movement. (Indeed, Age of Autism founder J.B. Handley once famously referred to Wakefield as our “Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one.” Of course, thanks largely to the efforts of Brian Deer, the wheels came off a five years ago. That year, Wakefield lost his license to practice and his (in)famous case series in The Lancet was retracted, as it had been demonstrated rather conclusively that Wakefield had committed scientific fraud in that study. Even the antivaccine quack mill Thoughtful House, where Wakefield had reigned supreme as chief antivaccine autism quack couldn’t take it any more, and its board of directors rather unceremoniously gave him the boot.

Of couse, since then, Wakefield has done pretty well for himself, remaining a figurehead adored by credulous antivaccine activists, a veritable hero. He was still flown to antivaccine conferences in nice hotels in places like Jamaica. He still manages to live quite a comfortable lifestyle, in part thanks to the generosity of of the deep pockets behind the antivaccine movement, as reported by CNN, in part thanks to his Strategic Autism Initiative. Another times, he exploited the tragedy of the murder of an autistic boy, Alex Spourdalakis, in a most shameful fashion.

So, two days ago, when I saw this story, I couldn’t believe it:

Andrew Wakefield, the British researcher who was made famous by his 1998 study that linked autism to a childhood vaccine, is coming to Salem next month to testify before the Legislature, a health care lobbyist confirmed Tuesday.

The Senate Committee on Health Care is exploring a bill, sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Beaverton, that would ban parents from claiming nonmedical exemptions from their children’s school immunizations.

By the time I saw the story, it was too late to blog about it for yesterday; so I put it in the hopper for today. However, two days ago, I did blog about the Oregon bill to which the article refers. The bill, SB442, was originally intended to clarify the procedure for parents to get non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. However, in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak consideration was being given to amending the bill to eliminate non-medical exemptions altogether. As I pointed out, the very fact that a state like Oregon, which is a hotbed of antivaccine activity (J. B. Handley, for instance, lives there) would even consider such a bill, is a sea change in attitude in the wake of continuing measles outbreaks.

Of course, antivaccine activists weren’t going to take this lying down, and they didn’t. J.B. Handley, for instance, submitted testimony to the Oregon Senate Committee on Health Care on February 18. Not surprisingly, he pulled out the same old tropes that I’ve seen him using over the decade that I’ve been blogging and since I first encountered him: “too many too soon“; argument by package insert; the pharma shill gambit; and, of course, the antivaccine dog whistle that ties vaccine “choice” to parental rights and freedom.

Still, I couldn’t understand why on earth anyone would think that tarting up old, discredited Andy Wakefield, flying him up to Oregon, and plopping him in front of the Senate Committee on Health Care would serve the cause of “vaccine choice.” I mean, seriously. Is there any “vaccine skeptic” currently more discredited than Andrew Wakefield in the mind of the public? Sure, there are actually more despicable antivaccinationists, but few people have heard of them. Wakefield, on the other hand, is famous, but he’s famous because he’s a discredited fraud who did antivaccine research for money. Brian Deer showed us that. And there are many victims. I know that Wakefield’s visit was arranged by the Oregon Chiropractic Association, but I didn’t think that even chiropractors were so deluded to think that a discredited fraud like Wakefield would help their case. In fact, when I first heard of the story, I was almost happy. The more quacks and cranks antivaccinationists trotted in front of the committee, the better. What better way for them to shoot themselves in the foot, to self-immolate? I was even thinking of suggesting more cranks to testify, such as Mark and David Geier or Christopher Shaw. Heck, why not get Sharyl Attkisson?

Oh, wait. I had heard it through the grapevine that others scheduled to testify included Tetyana Obukhanyeh, PhD., and Lucija Tomljenovic, PhD.

Sadly, my anticipation of the spectacle of Andrew Wakefield testifying was not to be. Yesterday, many of you sent my way this story:

Oregon legislators have canceled a meeting to discuss a bill that would eliminate nonmedical exemptions from Oregon’s school immunization law, after it became clear that a controversial vaccine researcher who linked the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine with autism was planning to testify.

The Statesman Journal reported Tuesday that Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 study was retracted from The Lancet and refuted by subsequent studies, was planning a trip to Salem to testify against Senate Bill 442.

He said in a phone interview on Wednesday that he objected to allegations made by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, the bill’s sponsor, that he committed scientific fraud in his research.

Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, chairwoman of the Senate health care committee, said she canceled the March 9 informational meeting because she felt the first public hearing, on Feb. 18, provided enough information.

Poor, poor pitiful Andy! He’s so toxic that the very mention of his potentially showing up to testify can shut down a legislative committee informational meeting. I don’t believe it for a minute when Anderson claimed:

Monnes Anderson said her decision did not have anything to do with Wakefield’s intentions to testify.

The March 9 meeting will only take invited testimony from constitutional law experts who will weigh in on the legality of SB 442, she said. During a work session, committee members can tweak the bill as well as vote on it.

Come on. Does Anderson really think her constituents are that stupid? Maybe she does. In any case, I’m torn by this decision. On the one hand, it would have been grand entertainment to see Andy trotted out in front of the committee to spew his usual brand of antivaccine misinformation, and I bet that he would not have been particularly impressive, old fraudster that Deer showed him to be. In fact, I rather suspect he would have inadvertently helped the cause of eliminating non-medical exemptions in Oregon. After all, what better weapon would those supporting the bill have than to be able to attach the name of someone as disreputable as Andrew Wakefield to opposition to SB442? On the other hand, there would have been a chance that letting him testify would have actually elevated him, made him less disreputable. In any event, my guess is that Anderson saw that letting Wakefield testify would turn her committee’s “informational event” into a media circus. No, strike that. It would have turned it into a circus. So she wisely canceled, because Wakefield is just that toxic.

My only consolation in this is that antivaccinationists seem to be their own worst enemies. As I said before, anyone with an ounce of political savvy would have realized that letting someone like Andrew Wakefield testify, someone who is (1) famous, (2) discredited, and (3) highly disreputable, testify is the same thing as putting his face on the opposition. There’s no way this could have ended well for antivaccinationists. In fact, the chiropractors and antivaccine “health freedom” types who pushed to get Wakefield on the list of people giving testimony should thank Monnes Anderson profusely for saving themelves from themselves.

They won’t, of course, They are just that deluded as to believe that having Wakefield’s chance to testify yanked hurt them. But, hey, according to news reports, Wakefield wants to hold a town hall meeting in Portland. Somehow, I doubt that will go very well, either. After all, remember what happened the last time Wakefield tried to have a “town hall” meeting to protest to what he viewed as a pro-vaccine provocation. “Pitiful” doesn’t begin to describe it.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

776 replies on “Poor, poor pitiful Andy (Wakefield): Dissed again, this time by the Oregon Senate Committee on Health Care”

He was invited by Oregon Chiropractors – just more evidence of how anti-science (and anti-vaccine) they are.

A. Andrew Wakefield can appear reasonable and convincing to those who do not know his record, as long as he doesn’t let himself go, as in the Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot video. But he has that record, that’s very easy to point to.

B. I hope Oregon legislators remember, nonetheless, that these people were offering, as their main witness, a man found guilty of serious ethical violations with a documented history of less-than-dubious credibility.

I’m actually shocked that J.B. Handley was allowed to testify. This is someone who has no scientific credentials to speak of and has often been laughably wrong about vaccines, And that doesn’t even get into his very public bullying (including threats of legal action) against anyone who disagrees with him.

There’s nothing in J.B.’s testimony that you couldn’t get from spending a half-hour perusing any anti-vax website, and the Oregon Senate, by allowing Handley to address them, elevated him to someone with credibility to speak on the topic. I find that almost as offensive as Andy Wakefield nearly getting to speak in front of them.

A legislative hearing isn’t a scientific forum. One of its appropriate goals is to allow affected citizens to voice their point of view. Mr. Handley is an affected citizen, and letting him testify was the right thing.

The committee treating him as a scientific source would be an error, and it’s more than fair to point out the problems in his claims, but of all forums, a legislative policy making process is one that should be open and inclusive in hearing views. However extreme and unfounded.

Well, whilst there might be no debate scientifically, there clearly is politically. By not having the various anti-vax proponents testify surely there is the danger of these people asserting that their voice wasn’t heard and generally feeding into their persecution complex.

Much better would have been a public detailed examination of Wakkers – unless these legislaors though tthey wern’t up to it!

Oregon seems poised to become the go-to state for quackery. I’m interested but not entirely surprised to see chiropractors stirring the pot on this. Does anyone know if there are any national chiro organizations with position statements on vaccines?

Dorit it correct. Legislative hearings serve the function of allowing the public to have a say on matters that affect them. Not all testimony is created equally nor does it have equal impact. Legislators are savvy to those offering testimony with an axe to grind.

There is this collections of positions.
http://www.acatoday.org/level2_css.cfm?T1ID=10&T2ID=117

“Resolved, that the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) recognize and advise the public that:
Since the scientific community acknowledges that the use of vaccines is not without risk, the American Chiropractic Association supports each individual’s right to freedom of choice in his/her own health care based on an informed awareness of the benefits and possible adverse effects of vaccination. The ACA is supportive of a conscience clause or waiver in compulsory vaccination laws thereby maintaining an individual’s right to freedom of choice in health care matters and providing an alternative elective course of action regarding vaccination. (Ratified by the House of Delegates, July 1993, Revised and Ratified June 1998).”

He said in a phone interview on Wednesday that he objected to allegations made by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, the bill’s sponsor, that he committed scientific fraud in his research.

Maybe he should threaten a defamation suit instead.

Narad and Dorit:

Seriously- what else does he have?

I mean other than the estate, the entourage and the legion of adoring acolytes?
Maybe money in the bank, stocks, bonds,..
Poor Andy!

Perhaps Wakefield can establish a new “Center for Legislative Integrity” and use the contributions that he solicits from his adoring fans to pay himself a salary as its director.

Well, he currently doesn’t have any outstanding lawsuits to solicit money, and he’s been rather unsuccessful in raising funds for his documentaries….I have no idea what he has left up his sleeve.

Seriously- what else does he have?

Well, there’s the ORI complaint, which has likely been filed appropriately.

Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, chairwoman of the Senate health care committee, said she canceled the March 9 informational meeting because she felt the first public hearing, on Feb. 18, provided enough information.

Do we know Sen. Anderson’s views on the subject? IOW, is she opposed to the bill and thought (likely correctly) that having Wakefield testify would strengthen the pro side? Or does she favor the bill, and suspect that some of her fellow senators might fall for Wakefield’s schtik? Gresham is in the Portland area, and IIRC Portland is an anti-vax hotbed, but I don’t know if Gresham is one of the suburbs that attracts well-off granola types (as Marin County does in the Bay Area).

Eric, like I said elsewhere, Andy may be our un-intentional ally- at least to the general public’s ear- what he says and his presence alone- may strengthen the SB position.

Is it realistic at this point for Wakefield complain about allegations of fraud, as if the fraudulent nature of the Lancet publication had not been demonstrated?

Such sessions are generally open to the public. Were others denied their chance to speak for 3 minutes because this session was cancelled on account of Wakefield? And how much damage could Wakefield have done when lumped in with dozens of other speakers, all getting the same allotted time?

But now…Surely Wakefield and his supporters are going to make a lot of hay about cancelling this session because of him — it is mana from heaven for the anti-vaxers. Especially in Portland where Wakefield townhall meetings are being planned by the chiros.

Orac. it seems, will never learn…

I don’t know if Gresham is one of the suburbs that attracts well-off granola types (as Marin County does in the Bay Area).

No. It’s basically just a big, bland place with no real distinguishing characteristics at all. The only good thing about it is that it’s on a MAX line.

I heard Wakefield speak at a medical postgraduate meeting.

He may be deluded and a fraud; he had been successful because he is a skilled and persuasive rhetoritian. Even if you are very knowledgeable and aware of the falsity off his arguments he’ll beat you in a debate unless you’re also a skilled debater. Don’t underestimate him. He’s too dangerous to dismiss lightly.

J.B. Handley, for instance, testified in front of the Oregon Senate Committee on Health Care on February 18.

He appears to have submitted written testimony (PDF, pp. 36–43, although he himself seems to have been unable to put together a PDF, hence the scan).

In repeatedly using the phrase “the free world,” he fails to document his claims; I’ve already posted the Israeli schedule, for example – he changes how he “counts” as convenient.

It’s a small committee, and my sense from some brief email communications with several members is that most if not all are favorable to the bill.

I’m not sure where the suggestion to have an additional public input session on vaccine safety information originated, but it seems that they received enough feedback to realize that it was a counterproductive idea. The work session on March 9 will now only deal with constitutionality of the bill, and the only speakers will be the invited contributors with Con Law expertise.

SB 442 not only proposes to end non-medical exemptions, but also seeks to clarify the definition of what medical conditions qualify for exemptions. This last bit is just as important as the first. Right now in Oregon personal exemptions are ridiculously easy to get. One only has to ‘watch’ a video to obtain an exemption certificate, and by ‘watch’, I mean, ‘let it play in the background, give it an occasional prompt until it finishes, and then print out your certificate’. But, even if this option goes away, there are still many ‘vax-choice’ docs afoot, some of whom are already declaring that they will “find a way to get you a medical exemption if that’s what it comes to”.

Thus, it seems particularly important to clarify the kinds of medical conditions that qualify so that these docs can’t just substitute one loophole for another.

Calling Andy Wakefield as your expert witness on vaccination policy is akin to calling Bernie Madoff as your expert witness on financial investments.

My only hope when I saw that article was that some of the local Oregonian pro-vaccine advocates would provide the lawmakers with the pertinent information on Wakefield so he could provide an hilarious exhibition of hubris as did Dr. Oz when grilled by Sen. Claire McCaskill.

@Reality–
The lawmakers who co-sponsored the bill are well aware of Wakefield’s history–Senator Steiner is the one he’s pissed at for calling his work ‘fraudulent’. Note also that he was not “called him in to testify”. He was summoned by private groups and lobbyists to contribute to continuing public comments for and against the bill during the upcoming Health Committee Work Session. There’s no Q&A there–no ‘grilling’–just an opportunity to read something into the record.

#4: “A legislative hearing isn’t a scientific forum. One of its appropriate goals is to allow affected citizens to voice their point of view. Mr. Handley is an affected citizen, and letting him testify was the right thing.”

So what was Wakefield’s standing? How is he affected by an Oregon law? What are his scientific credentials to speak knowledgeably about vaccines?

As an aside, has anyone else seen a questionable ad asking “Should children be forced to vaccinate?” from a place called Easy Health Options? Now I don’t know that place from Adam, but it sure sounds susspect. I think Orac needs to look into it and tear it a new one. Anyone else think so?

@Ken–
like a lot of state-level issues, people are using this one to push a national agenda. We went through this even more intensely when we had a GMO labeling initiative on the ballot last November (which failed narrowly). Anti-GMO speakers/debaters from of out of state came on the run for various speaking engagements and debates to support the measure. Even the ‘No on 92’ campaign was run by an out of state org.

Oh, definitely. When right-to-try came to Michigan, many of those who testified were Goldwater Institute flacks flown in from Arizona.

@lucario#28- I’ve been clicking the report as inappropriate option on those.

No way I’d let my kids vaccinate. Well, maybe my daughter-at 6, she can already sew and use scissors so she could probably give a flu shot. But the boy, nope, not on your life.

Next step in Oregon-figure out where this new governor is at on immunizations. The yoga practitioner thing already has me a little nervous.

Mark my words: Mr. Handley will probably spin this as, “the other side suppressed Andrew Wakefield’s testimony; they were afraid to let him be heard.”

“By not having the various anti-vax proponents testify surely there is the danger of these people asserting that their voice wasn’t heard and generally feeding into their persecution complex.”

“Mr. Handley will probably spin this as, “the other side suppressed Andrew Wakefield’s testimony; they were afraid to let him be heard.”

This is pretty much what we can expect.

A better committee response would have been to reject Wakefield’s appearance, while inviting any non-fraudulent antivax proponent with scientific credentials and published research respected in the medical community to testify.
Then, after an embarrassing period of dead silence, they could get on with their bill.

@ Matt #26

The Dwoskins are friends and major supporters of Bill and Hill. Their influence was probably responsible for Hillary’s little nod to the anti-vaxers in ’08. But with the GOP all lining up for ‘parents rights’ ‘medical choice’ and FREEDUMB, and HRC likening anti-vaxers to flat-earthers on Twitter, the Dwoskins aren’t gonna touch Andy Wakefield with a ten-foot pole. I think they’ll have to cut their sizable contributions to Generation Rescue too. Al Dwoskin probably gets an ambassadorship if he and Claire play nice, and they get blackballed from Washington parties if they don’t.

After the election, the Dwoskins might away with sliding a little cash towards whatever new media-voice RFKJ’s dug up, but with Trace Amounts he’s already scraping the bottom of the filmmaking barrel.

Andy could still find some wing-nut bazillionaire whale, I suppose, but if wanted to pimp the ‘parents rights / vaccine freedom’ take a la Rand Paul, I could find scores of better spokespersons than Andy Wakefield.

We’re way past ‘proving vaccines cause autism’. Vaccines cause everything, because the parents say so. And it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. They’ve got rights, and it’s none of Big Guvment’s business!. Forget the science frauds. It’s all back to parents’ individual stories from here on out. New anti-vax films will all feature reasonable-seeming, sympathetic and media-genic parents. They’ll have fewer negatives in the Q scores than Jenny McCarthy. If I was working anti-vax PR with funds to buy a new movie, I’d go strictly ‘delayed vax is good but it’s your choice’ on the surface with tons of sub-text dog-whistles. I’d try to enlist Dr. Jay as my ‘medical expert’, and get someone like Mayim Bialik from his Hollywood connections as the star.

First, Brian Deer,
Have you written any news story other than “Andy Wakefield” in the last 5 years?
Please post examples, so I can believe it is true.

“The Statesman Journal reported Tuesday that Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 study was retracted from The Lancet…”

Could you please explain why the Lancet published Wakefield in the first place?
I’ve never heard THAT explanation.

Brian, have you ever considered visiting Denmark?
It is a great opportunity to fill in your “journalism gap”.

“The Dwoskins are friends and major supporters of Bill and Hill. Their influence was probably responsible for Hillary’s little nod to the anti-vaxers in ’08.”

LOL! Nice try Sadmar. #35

Hillary has bigger fish to fry:
“The Daily News on Tuesday reported that Clinton aides have already scoped out office space in BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, just across the river from Manhattan.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/231671-can-cool-brooklyn-rub-off-on-hillary

Isn’t this near the major ANTI-VAX VOTING BLOC I’ve been blogging about?
http://www.timesofisrael.com/measles-vaccine-developer-warns-jewish-anti-vaxxers/#ixzz3Sni3t3qp
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6236a5.htm
http://www.notfortourists.com/Hood.aspx/NewYork/BoroughPark
http://forward.com/articles/199430/jewish-pro-hillary-clinton-group-is-launched/
Oy vey!

panacea – I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Reinforce their biases, validate their inner narrative, and they will react in ways that makes them look even crazier and further diminishes their credibility.

I deleted this a couple of times, knowing that some of those folks probably lurk here, but in all honesty, they couldn’t intentionally moderate their message if their lives depended on it. They are unraveling. Our task now is to pursue an endgame strategy for the eradication of bullshit.

@Dorit
“A. Andrew Wakefield can appear reasonable and convincing to those who do not know his record, as long as he doesn’t let himself go, as in the Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot video. But he has that record, that’s very easy to point to.”

Could you please cite the “record” you refer to?
Some of us do not know what A. Andrew Wakefield’s record is.

Could you please post a link to the “Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot” video? I can’t imagine what that is!

Also there are several unanswered questions addressed to you over on the earlier “Dog whistle” blog.

Expect a “spin” at AoA…but no one cares…except for us lurkers who derive pleasure from the posts and comments at AoA.

The Dwoskin Family Foundation’s spokesperson opines….

“Is There a Vaccine Debate Occurring? It Doesn’t Seem Like It.”

You bet there’s debates occurring in several State legislatures to tighten up/eliminate vaccination exemptions…and more parents are getting involved to support legislators who propose bills to eliminate those exemptions.

http://dwoskinfamilyfoundationvaccinesupport.com/

P.S. Diane Harper is again cited as one of the developers of the HPV vaccine.

@Deer Brian,

Let me entice you. This could be the news scoop OF THE YEAR. It has drama, treachery, theft, and the health of millions of children at stake, and it is in SCENIC DENMARK. Aren’t you sick of “Wakefield”? The fair city of ATLANTA (remember Scarlet?) Georgia, would fill the streets shouting HOSANNAH! if you aid in the return to them, their not-so-native son and alleged THIEF of over $1 MILLION CDC $$$$$$$$$. He would stand trial, and be brought to justice, and go to a place where he would know if his vaccines actually work.
YOU CAN GET STARTED RIGHT AWAY!
Here are the details:
http://www.rescuepost.com/files/thorsen-indictment.pdf
“OIG Fugitive: Poul Thorsen
Poul Thorsen
From approximately February 2004 until February 2010, Poul Thorsen executed a scheme to steal grant money awarded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC had awarded grant money to Denmark for research involving infant disabilities, autism, genetic disorders, and fetal alcohol syndrome. CDC awarded the grant to fund studies of the relationship between autism and the exposure to vaccines, the relationship between cerebral palsy and infection during pregnancy, and the relationship between developmental outcomes and fetal alcohol exposure.
Thorsen worked as a visiting scientist at CDC, Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, before the grant was awarded.
The initial grant was awarded to the Danish Medical Research Council. In approximately 2007, a second grant was awarded to the Danish Agency for Science, Technology, and Innovation. Both agencies are governmental agencies in Denmark. The research was done by the Aarhaus University and Odense University Hospital in Denmark.
Thorsen allegedly diverted over $1 MILLION of the CDC grant money to his own personal bank account. Thorsen submitted fraudulent invoices on CDC letterhead to medical facilities assisting in the research for reimbursement of work allegedly covered by the grants. The invoices were addressed to Aarhaus University and Sahlgrenska University Hospital. The fact that the invoices were on CDC letterhead made it appear that CDC was requesting the money from Aarhaus University and Sahlgrenska University Hospital although the bank account listed on the invoices belonged to Thorsen.
In April 2011, Thorsen was indicted on 22 counts of Wire Fraud and Money Laundering.
According to bank account records, Thorsen purchased a home in Atlanta, a Harley Davidson motorcycle, an Audi automobile, and a Honda SUV with funds that he received from the CDC grants.
Thorsen is currently in Denmark and is awaiting extradition to the United States.”
https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/fugitives/profiles.asp
http://www.naturalnews.com/046644_MMR_vaccine_autism_scientific_fraud.html##ixzz3SoV3Sljs

Good luck! I see FRONT PAGE headlines in your future…….

CALLING ALL OREGON ANTI-VAXXERS:
This is all you need:
Google:
client=safari&rls=en&q=WHO+%22Global+Manual+on+Surveillance+of+Adverse+Events+Following+Immunization%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Click on the one with PDF file at top.

and this….

“Statement on RISK vs Benefit of Vaccinations by David Satcher, M.D., PH.D.
Assistant Secretary for Health and Surgeon General
U.S. Public Health Service
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Before the House Committee on Government Reform
August 3, 1999

…Vaccine approval also REQUIRES the provision of adequate PRODUCT LABELING to allow health care providers to understand the vaccine’s proper use, including its POTENTIAL benefits and RISKS, in order TO COMMUNICATE with patients and PARENTS and to SAFELY deliver the vaccine to the public. Vaccines are also subject to lot release testing and protocol review to further ENSURE their quality.

Although extensive studies are REQUIRED for licensure, post-marketing research and surveillance are necessary to identify SAFETY issues which may only arise or be detected FOLLOWING vaccination of a much larger population. Rare events may not come to light before licensure, or, if noted, the evidence may not be adequate to prove that such events were due to a vaccine. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a valuable post-marketing tool for just such safety surveillance. I will describe VAERS later in the testimony. In addition, post-marketing STUDIES of a SPECIFIC vaccine are REQUIRED by FDA in order to obtain additional SAFETY or other data. Also, after licensure, MONITORING of the product and of production activities, including periodic facility inspections, MUST CONTINUE as long as the manufacturer holds a LICENSE for the product.

No system is perfect and NO medicine or VACCINE can EVER be GUARANTEED to be 100 percent FREE OF possible side effects or ADVERSE EVENTS, particularly when administered to millions of people. For these reasons, the Department, its constituent agencies (FDA, CDC, NIH, HRSA), the scientific community, and industry strive for continuous improvements in VACCINE SAFETY. Speaking for the Department and its agencies, we WELCOME all constructive input and CRITICISM in this regard….”
http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t990803a.html

NOTE: You can’t have informed consent AND forced vaccination.
ALL VACCINES CARRY RISK.

“In addition, post-marketing STUDIES of a SPECIFIC vaccine are REQUIRED by FDA in order to obtain additional SAFETY or other data.”

Here is what coauthor and WHISTLEBLOWER Dr. William Thompson had to say about one of these studies:

““FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-AUGUST 27,2014

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. THOMPSON, Ph.D., REGARDING THE 2004 ARTICLE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM

My name is William Thompson. I am a Senior Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, where I have worked since 1998.

I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed…..

My concern has been the decision to omit relevant findings in a particular study for a particular sub­ group for a particular vaccine. There have always been recognized risks for vaccination and I believe it is the responsibility of the CDC to properly convey the risks associated with receipt of those vaccines.”
http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-william-w-thompson-ph-d-regarding-the-2004-article-examining-the-possibility-of-a-relationship-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/

NOTE: NOTHING has been done to investigate this. Thompson has not testified. He sent an estimated 100,000 pages of related CDC documents to Congressman Bill Posey on Sept. 8, 2014. No statement has been made to the public regarding this and the documents have not been made available to the public. Call the House Space, Science, and Technology Committee and demand to know what is in them so you can have informed consent regarding any future vaccinations.

#42 CORRECTION. Google the following:
WHO “Global Manual on Surveillance of Adverse Events Following Immunization”
Click on the one with PDF file at top

Oregon anti-vaxxers:

Take a tip from Angelina Jolie :
Tell them you won’t vaccinate until ALL children have “safe” vaccines….
http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-william-w-thompson-ph-d-regarding-the-2004-article-examining-the-possibility-of-a-relationship-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/

And don’t forget,
NEVER FORGET!
MISSISSIPPI 99.7 % vaccination coverage
http://www.msdh.state.ms.us/msdhsite/_static/23,15969,341.html

MISSISSIPPI 38% African-American population
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb12-ff01.html

MISSISSIPPI 1 in 88- AUTISM rate. A 563% RISE in the number of public school children with autism in the past 11 years.
http://www.dmh.ms.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2013-MAAC-Report-Final_1.13.2014.pdf

@ #34 Dangerous Bacon

“while inviting any non-fraudulent antivax proponent with scientific credentials and published research respected in the medical community to testify.”

As opposed to pro-vax scientists who said things like this IN 1966?

“All of this has now changed. With the isolation of the measles virus
and extensive field testing of several potent and effective vaccines, the tools are at hand to eradicate the infection.With the general application of these tools during the coming months, eradication can be achieved in this country in the year 1967.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1919891/pdf/pubhealthreporig00027-0069.pdf

REALLY?

Dear Toto:

Thorsen is working in Denmark. He’s not under arrest, and he won’t be getting extradited to the US anytime soon. Also, charges against him in Denmark were dismissed.

Currently Dr. Thorsen (and he is still a Doctor – unlike Wakefield, his license to practice medicine hasn’t been stripped) is I believe working as a GYN either in Odense or somewhere on Jutland.

@Darwy: I don’t think I knew about Thorsen’s charges being dismissed in Denmark. Do you have a link please?

Thanks,

Becky.

#46 Thanks for the update Darwy!
Mr. Thorsen is still very much WANTED in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Grand Jury charges have NOT been dropped. Thorsen’s DeKalb County house: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2657-Briarlake-Rd-NE-Atlanta-GA-30345/14552734_zpid/ (notice that the 2006 sell date matches the itemized Grand Jury count), cars, and motorcycle have not yet been sold to REPAY the CDC and the citizens of Georgia: The U.S. can put DIPLOMATIC pressure on this case. Thorsen’s CDC reports, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, were used to “defend” vaccine safety. http://www.rescuepost.com/files/thorsen-indictment.pdf
His protocols have been formally questioned. Between his unresolved alleged criminal activity and the admitted scientific fraud of CDC senior scientist, William Thompson, and the SUPRESSION of his released estimated 100,000 pages of CDC documents, IT IS NO WONDER THAT CITIZENS QUESTION VACCINE SAFETY!

Brian Deer: We need you do an investigative report on Poul Thorsen.
WE ARE TIRED OF WAKEFIELD! WE ARE TIRED OF CDC CORRUPTION!

@Becky

Apparently they’ve brought new charges against him – forgery.

It’s not double jeopardy (not that that exists in DK anyhow), but I doubt these charges will go any further, it’s been nearly 3 years.

Ah, Toto’s found a new thread to run up and down with his underpants on his head. It is a harmless outlet.

…and I have to mention, should Brian Deer come to Copenhagen, I’d be more than happy to give him the 10dkk tour.

“Here we have Statens Serum Institute, Panum Institute…”

Beer included.

@Darwy
So, is his house just going to sit there until it falls down?
Why would an innocent man FLEE THE COUNTRY?
Is any one living in the Atlanta house?
Regardless, HIS REPUTATION IS RUINED.

@Toto

“Flee the country”

Oh, you mean he WENT HOME. That’s what people do after they’ve been on a trip. THEY GO HOME.

I would agree his reputation as a researcher is ruined. That’s why he pursued other qualifications, and is now employed with them.

Toto,

The argument you are making seems to be:

Wakefield is a fraud. He is anti-vaccine.
Thorson is a crook. He is pro vaccine.

Therefore……….?

What exactly is your argument?

“Statens Serum Institute”
Looks like the Danish version of the CDC. Is the “good old boys” club surrounding the wagons? U.S. citizens take note!

Interestingly, Denmark is now IPV. Doesn’t that conflict with countries using OPV?

Well, NO MORE DANISH COOKIES or Hans Christian Anderson stories for me! And I won’t be visiting the very Little Mermaid until it gets below freezing in a very warm place.

DARWY: “Hey Brian! Here’s D’Beer!”
I AM SURE THAT HE WOULD NEVER SUCCUMB TO SUCH A CHEAP SHOT.

@Darwy

Excuse me? Our Federal government has listed him as a “fugitive” and put him on a MOST WANTED LIST because he unlawfully left the country (fled) in order to avoid facing trial for the GRAND JURY INDICTMENTS. This is serious stuff.
ANTI-VAXXERS, PLEASE TAKE NOT OF THIS PERSON’S CALLOUS DISREGARD FOR OUR LAWS. WOULD YOU ENTRUST THE SAFETY OF YOUR CHILD WITH SOMEONE SUCH AS HIM??????

“The argument you are making seems to be:
Wakefield is a fraud”

Nope. I know nothing of the case. I AM JUST SICK OF HEARING HIS NAME, WHEN IT IS TOTALLY IRRELEVANT.
If you have a scientific reason to invoke the name “Wakefield”, then please follow it with a well reasoned CITED (link) statement.
Your faux “neurolinguistic propaganda” has fallen flat.

THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN
THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN.

Sadmar: We’re way past ‘proving vaccines cause autism’. Vaccines cause everything, because the parents say so. And it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. They’ve got rights, and it’s none of Big Guvment’s business!.

And this is why no amount of facts will work, even if the parents hadn’t slept through high school biology. Taking vaccines away for a few years in places like Marin or instituting a two or three tier system in the doctor’s office is much more likely to work. Like for instance, if the family doesn’t vaccinate, they have to wait in the waiting room with no toys, or the doctor makes sure to praise other families in their presence.

<killfile>

If you have a scientific reason to invoke the name “Wakefield”, then please follow it with a well reasoned CITED (link) statement.
Your faux “neurolinguistic propaganda” has fallen flat.

THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN
THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN.

Heh.

<killfile>

I just love the idea that we have a commenter who has given themselves the nickname of a professional wrestler.

It’s ok, Toto, I smelll what “The Rock” is cooking.

a-non: I hope Dwayne Johnson sues Toto for slander. Actually, from what I hear, he’s intelligent, whereas Toto would lose a game of chess to a mass of algae.

SSI is more or less the Danish counterpart to the CDC, with a few notable distinctions – it does fall directly under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, it is the producer for all the vaccines used on the Danish vaccine schedule, and has an excellent record of research publications and opportunities for PhD scholarships.

As far as Thorsen, he’s practicing medicine. That’s what doctors do. Unless they’ve had their license revoked.

Toto, Wakefield is being discussed because, as per the OP, he was invited by some berks to testify to the Oregon legislature…

By the way, you (and anyone else) do realise how difficult it is to actually get struck off by the GMC over here, don’t you? You really do have to try hard and screw up most royally. And to be removed from (so I am informed by someone in a position to know) from fellowship of a Royal College…

It is not coincidental that Wakefield hightailed it out of here, as his name is now officially “The disgraced former doctor” Wakefield.

http://tinyurl.com/no65ams (w. links to video)
“Freshman congressman Barry Loudermilk, (R – GA) hosted his first town hall meeting last week. On vaccines, he told the crowd:

I believe it’s the parents’ decision whether to immunize or not. – most of our children, we didn’t immunize. They’re healthy. Of course, home schooling, we didn’t have to get the mandatory immunization.

He was responding to a question about whether there’s been a cover-up in certain studies about the link between autism and the MMR vaccine. He continued:

The Committees on Energy and Commerce and Government Oversight are already looking into this issue, and we’ve been assured they will continue to investigate the matter fully. We look forward to hearing the findings of both committees.

Loudermilk was recently named to the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Toto, Wakefield is being discussed because, as per the OP, he was invited by some berks to testify to the Oregon legislature…

You’re failing to grasp that Tutu doesn’t actually read the posts; all comment threads, by definition, are about Tutu.

I note how Handley miscalculates the number of vaccines given “before” the age of 6 years again, arriving at a total of 37 when some are given only at 6 years (not before) and some can be combined.
He also tells blatant lies about the vaccine schedules for other countries. For example:
Norway is 15 (not 13)
Iceland is 16 (not 11)
Sweden is 15 (not 11)
Denmark is 16 (not 14)
Japan has 21 (not 11)

If he has such a great scientific case against vaccines, why does he need to lie?

Handley also lies about the combination vaccines – he says Merck states that: “Routine administration of DTP and/or oral polio vaccine is not recommended because there is limited data on the simultaneous administration of these vaccines.”

Huh?
Is he trying to kid them that we are still back in the 1980s, when we used to give OPV and DTP vaccines? Neither of these is in current use routinely, so why does he even mention them?

…he says Merck states that: “Routine administration of DTP and/or oral polio vaccine is not recommended because there is limited data on the simultaneous administration of these vaccines.”

Strange that neither Handley nor any of the antivaxers reading this seem to draw the obvious inference: that, contrary to what they repeatedly claim, the effects of giving multiple vaccines together are studied and recommendations are based on the outcomes of those studies. To hear them talk you’d think the pediatric vaccine schedule was decided by throwing darts.

To hear them talk you’d think the pediatric vaccine schedule was decided by throwing darts.

I believe that that’s what they think.

I am highly amused (but not surprised) that the Oregon chiropractors wanted Wakefield to pontificate at the committee. After all chiropractors still hold to a set of ideas that have been surpassed by at least a century. Nothing like living in the past where Andrew Wakefield appeared to be relevant.

Of course Wakefield has no compunction to prostitute himself to whomever will pay the food and drink bills.

Poor, poor pitiful Mary Holland.

Then again, the whole “analysis” is hopelessly confused anyway:

As in the Milan case, the Ministry of Health’s compensation program had denied compensation to the family, yet after a presentation of medical evidence, a court granted compensation.

No, the question was who had to pay for the compensation. The disability was on the state’s tab one way or the other.

How do we reconcile the difference between the U.S. and Italian decisions in similar cases? What’s different about Italy? Well, there may be many differences, but a critical one is that in the U.S., if someone loses in the government vaccine injury compensation program, she cannot sue the government in civil court; she can sue only the manufacturer.

What the hell do you think the Court of Federal Claims is?

Reality @ 24;
Calling Andy Wakefield as your expert witness on vaccination policy is akin to calling Bernie Madoff as your expert witness on financial investments.

In fairness that is the same argument ‘psychics’ et al. use when refusing to be tested by James Randi.
I’d rather have Madoff point out a ponzi scheme than someone from, oh I don’t know, let’s say HSBC.
But I take your point.

Well, lovely comments here but this got me: I’m actually shocked that J.B. Handley was allowed to testify. This is someone who has no scientific credentials to speak of and has often been laughably wrong about vaccines, And that doesn’t even get into his very public bullying (including threats of legal action) against anyone who disagrees with him.

How will you allow someone w/out a background in health to testify or give health related ideas?

Steve of: http://groomiest.com

I’d post this in the laughing, yawning hyena thread, but Orac has shut it down without a single response, unable to defend his weak position about biological plausibility, even in his impudent style:

VACCINE INJURY: First the Gut, Then the Brain
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain?page=1

Meanwhile, you’re all behaving as if vaccine injury doesn’t exist while the industry does absolutely nothing to improve safety.

The above post could only have been written by someone suffering from either a severe reading comprehension problem or a terminal case of confirmation bias.

shay: “The above post could only have been written by someone suffering from either a severe reading comprehension problem…”

Seriously. I don’t think there has ever been an article without any comments in the years I have been reading this blog.

Keith Bell writes at Green Med Info.

And apparently doesn’t get enough attention, which is why he’s taken to spamvertising his dreck here (also Nos. 219, 510, 529, and 537).

He seems to really dislike being ignored, as one can see again here:

I’d post this in the laughing, yawning hyena thread, but Orac has shut it down without a single response, unable to defend his weak position about biological plausibility

Note that it didn’t, say, automatically close after three months, it was “shut down” out of cowardice in the face of KEITHBELL.

Time to update the killfile.

What thread is he even talking about? The only thing I can think of is it’s a thread that’s more than 90 days old. Threads auto-close at 90 days because rarely are there any good comments after that length of time, just spam.

Meanwhile, you’re all behaving as if vaccine injury doesn’t exist while the industry does absolutely nothing to improve safety.

No one is do this, however. what we are doing is we’re noting (accurately) that the adverse consequences causaly associated with vaccination are well understood; that those which are common (e.g., soreness at the site of injection, low grade fever) being both minor and transient and those that are serious (e.g., encephalopathy) all but vanishingly rare.

it’s also false to claim that the industry is doing nothing to improve safety: wherever safety concerns associated with a vaccine safety have been deminstrated the industry has rapidly taken corrective action, up to and including withdrawing the product from the market (as was done with respect to RotaShield).

By “without a single response”, Keith presumably means the umpteen responses in the laughing, yawning hyena thread in which his GreenMedInfo fomites were refuted, and attention was called to his well-rounded ignorance on an impressive range of topics.

Here’s another vaccine safety article for anyone interested in safety which is very few of you, if any:
http://www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com/gut-microbiota-infant-vaccine-protocol-7324

Good to know posts are closed after 90 days. This is the heinous Orac post I referred to; no response from Orac while Narad had nary a thing to add:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2014/10/01/antivaccine-cranks-try-to-create-vaccine-injury-awareness-month/

You might regain some lost customers if you concentrated on safety.

@keith

Thanks for the laughs at your ignorance and lack of reading comprehension. I did need a good laugh, and you seem like the perfect fool for a good chuckle.

Please keep on posting, show the world your complete lack of basic scientific knowledge, and we all could use a laugh at your expense.

shay
The above post could only have been written by someone suffering from either a severe reading comprehension problem or a terminal case of confirmation bias.

Denice Walter
Keith Bell writes at Green Med Info.

You two should be in vaudeville.

Keith should be careful. If he annoys me enough, I might just start blogging about some of his spew over at GreenMedInfo. 🙂

no response from Orac while Narad had nary a thing to add

Didn’t they tell you? ‘Narad’ is just another of Orac’s noms-de-guerre. In fact we all are.
I had a nom-de-beurreonce, which I used for spamming on behalf of the NZ dairy industry.

I’d be honored, Orac. You of all people must realize there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Have you done much research into the microbiome and cancer? Some cancer drugs fail without microbes and the same is true of vaccines:
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/21/three-cancer-drugs-dont-work-without-gut-bacteria/

http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/249.full

I’d be impressed if you demonstrated grasp of the constructs. Narad and one other from your gang were the only people demonstrating understanding while others like Skeptiquette went on and on like windbags without really understanding microbial predisposition. I’ll admit, she was very sweet though . . . and helpful as opposed to novalox and bimler who are heavy on insolence, low on respect.

Looking forward to even an ounce of substantive response given the US government has already compensated vaccine-injured families $3 billion.

You two should be in vaudeville.

At least we’ll never sink to the level of greenmedinfo.

hdb: “Keith presumably means the umpteen responses in the laughing, yawning hyena thread in which his GreenMedInfo fomites were refuted, and attention was called to his well-rounded ignorance on an impressive range of topics.”

It seems he is upset that his claims did not elicit a reply by Orac. Though it is quite clear he does not understand the several dozen responses by others.

Though I would love to have him answer one question I had about the MMR vaccine: since it was first introduced in the USA in 1971 (with a slight change of rubella strain in 1978), surely he as documentation dated before 1990 that it caused all those terrible things in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s.

The USA is much larger and had been using it much longer before Wakefield was even aware it existed… so the effects would have been noticed much earlier if they were real.

Oh, and Mr. Bell, I want verifiable documentation dated before 1990… not an Age of Autism article by some financial dude. I can really see why you did not understand the responses if you think 2010 was before 1990.

Chris, how do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units? This resulted in a huge spike in autism cases.

Are you up to date with your vaccines, btw? I’d bet you need a few boosters, especially MMR. You’re a carrier if I ever met one. Hopefully, your immune system reliant on flora balance can handle the vaccine challenge.

Mr. Bell: “Chris, how do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units? This resulted in a huge spike in autism cases”

Unless you provide some kind of verifiable documentation (not AoA or your website), we will assume you are just making it up. I am not even talking about the 1990s, I am asking about the years between 1971 and 1990. Do try to keep up.

Since I was born after 1956 and no one in my family remembers if I had measles (though I definitely had mumps, twice!) I got an MMR vaccine about a month ago. This was prompted because we are going to travel to California in a couple of months.

So I am not a carrier, and you still need to come up with actual verifiable documentation dated before 1990 that the issues you claim are caused by the MMR vaccine were there in the 1970s and 1980s.

I’d be impressed if you demonstrated grasp of the constructs.

And to what greater heights could anyone aspire, than to impress Keith Bell of GreenMedInfo?

On the contrary, you’re definitely a carrier since you were recently vaccinated with MMR. How long do you plan on shedding? Any rashes?

Thanks for the inspiration to research 1971 to 1990; I’ll get back to you if I have any answers. One obvious concern is the difference in the overall protocol. Safe journey.

And, btw, being a carrier isn’t such a bad thing if your immune system keeps the problem in check and you don’t infect anyone vulnerable. Did you know 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic? This means millions of people are carriers and don’t even know it . . . so how can we improve natural immunity? There are lots of good ways not yet implemented. One is improved sanitation. Another is nutrition.

Chris, how do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units? This resulted in a huge spike in autism cases.

Keith, your evidence factually establishing the existence of a causal association between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorders would be…what, exactly? Be specific.

You do have some, right? Your claim is founded in something other than a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy?

You cited “Age of Autism”? Seriously Ken?
Also, are you a sockpuppet of Keith Bell?

Lower-case ken has been here much longer, and has a distinctive style of commenting. His revelations are more entertaining if you have the Dramatic Gopher playing in a background window while you read them.

ow do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units?

This ‘fact’ seems to have become an article of faith in anti-vax circles, passed from hand to hand in the manner of a well-sucked lollipop, and it would be foreign to its catechistic nature for them to load it down with sources. The nearest thing one can find to evidence is a known bullsh1t artist attributing the claim to “an informal conversation with a Merck scientist.”

In some versions of the story. Merck are further accused of perfidiously reducing the number of mumps virions in Varimax, in 2007… but are they given any credit for reducing the incidence of autism?

Since MMR consists of live (attenuated) viruses there is no connection between the number of particles initially injected and the number of particles in one’s body while the immune system does its thing, but there you go.

Did you know 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic? This means millions of people are carriers and don’t even know it

I’m glad that I’m just now getting around to a machine that hasn’t had the latest Plonk-O-Matic patch installed yet. This triple-decker failburger is delicious.

Mr. Bell seems to be playing the “thingy-card” – whereas the only people who are “infected” are those who get vaccinated.

Until I got interested in this topic, years ago, I never imagined that there were people as both stupid and crazy, as the likes of Keith Bell.

how do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units?

Hey, Keith – quick, what’s the name for these units?

If Jake Crosby is to be believed, the units are numbers of virions. Each injection of Merck MMR contained precisely 5000 virus particles prior to 1990, and precisely 20,000 afterwards. They are measured out with a very small pipette.
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2009/09/14/the-national-autism-associations-embarassing-spitefullness/comment-page-1/#comment-27382

However, the story had already passed through several digestive systems before it reached Crosby.

Did you know 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic? This means millions of people are carriers and don’t even know it . . .

If this clumsy non sequitur is accurate, how is it that polio has been eliminated from India, going from 500-1,000 children being paralyzed every day in the early 90s to zero cases since 2011? It’s almost as if Keith is spouting easily refuted nonsense, and there is no asymptomatic carrier state except in immune deficient persons.

Ah yes ken, the pharma shill gambit, a sure sign as of any that you have no coherent argument to speak of and admit that you cannot bring a barely cogent argument to the table.

#112 Mr Price. Chris you appear to be suffering from schizophrenic symptoms, possibly due to your recent MMR vaccination. Or, you’ve been doing a lot cooking using the Vincent Price cookbook for your husband, Narad, especially fond of the gnotobiotic pig dish. (Denice got a kick out of that re: this incestual group.)

Are you constipated? This leads to serotonin deficiency and glutamate excitotoxicity. Please don’t sleep in the face-down prone position to avoid stimulation of the serotonergic sytstem by CO2 and cardiac arrest.
http://www.europeanneuropsychopharmacology.com/article/S0924-977X(14)00215-6/abstract
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163834313001898
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121003111503.htm
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain?page=1

Kreb, great to read you. Narad, riotous (I love that guy).

“Up to 95% of all polio infections are inapparent or asymptomatic.”
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/polio.pdf

Kreb, you’re absurdly behaving as if polio has actually been eliminated in India. Who pulled the wool? Later we can talk about the thousands of people paralyzed by the polio vaccine, but for now you need to understand polio is alive and well, kept in check by intestinal mucosal cells working synergistically with microbes in a body near you. See here:
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/201/10/1535.long

Mr. Bell: “Chris you appear to be suffering from schizophrenic symptoms, possibly due to your recent MMR vaccination.”

It was a typo because I was sitting down quickly while making dinner. And I am definitely not constipated, never have been due to a good diet and exercise.

Now, where is any real evidence that the MMR causes the issues you claims it does, and that documentation dated before 1990 that they happened in the 1970s and 1980s.

Oh, and as far as the mumps component in the MMR, there is the Table I in Increasing exposure to antibody-stimulating proteins and polysaccharides in vaccines is not associated with risk of autism.. The MMR only has 24 antigens per dose, so you better find out what Young Master Crosby means by “units.”

Thanks for your response, Chris. Glad to hear you’re not constipated and wish you the best in mental health. But the fact you’ve had mumps twice is concerning as it’s associated with psychosis later in life. Instead of MMR to prepare for your trip to California, you might have considered boosting innate immunity with probiotic therapy, heavy on bifidobacteria along with things like organ meats for vitamin A. Vitamin D3 and especially zinc may be good supplements for you.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18056223
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485564/#bb0055

Also, you may consider lowering carbs, dairy and intermittent fasting.

So much crazy packed into a single individual – I do hope Keith hangs around, he’s fun to watch….like a slow-motion train wreck.

Chris — do you really expect a straight answer? He’s dodging faster than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

The MMR only has 24 antigens per dose, so you better find out what Young Master Crosby means by “units.”

I know exactly what it means. It’s even been handed to you in the replies, but you don’t seem to have been able to figure it out.

Yet you are the one who invoked the “fact.”

Anyway, the “millions of polio carriers” bit was a knee-slapper, but you’re not worth my not updating this box as well.

Keith Bell #98:

“You might regain some lost customers if you concentrated on safety.”

Interesting word use. Mr. Bell might be interested to know that unlike greenmedinfo, for example, this website doesn’t have a store.

Yeah, shay, I don’t expect much from Mr. Bell, a guy who thinks he can diagnose someone due to one typo. Narad, would you accept a diagnosis from Mr. Bell because you mixed up replies?

Especially since he lists actually getting a disease as a precursor to mental illness… but thinks kids would be better with the diseases than with the MMR vaccine. By the way, Brain Trust Bell, every kid got those infections before wide use of vaccines (and Sweden is one of those countries that had low vaccine uptake, see Impact of anti-vaccine movements on pertussis control: the untold story).

Keith,

Kreb, you’re absurdly behaving as if polio has actually been eliminated in India. Who pulled the wool?

It has, and if you believe otherwise you are the one who has had the wool pulled over your eyes. Do you believe that the 27,281 negative stool tests on patients with AFP in India last year were all faked?

Later we can talk about the thousands of people paralyzed by the polio vaccine,

Thousands? There were 35 cases of vaccine-derived polo globally last year, according to the WHO (see link above), not a single one in India. If you mean VAPP, it occurs after 1 in 2.7 million doses of OPV, and is the reason countries where polio has been eliminated move to the IPV.

but for now you need to understand polio is alive and well, kept in check by intestinal mucosal cells working synergistically with microbes in a body near you.

I’m curious, why do you think this asymptomatic infection fails to show up in stool samples? Why do you believe it exists?

See here:

I always enjoy it when antivaxxers present a study they have misunderstood that says the opposite of what they think it does. That study was carried out in 2003–2008, before polio was eliminated in India, on children who had been in contact with suspected polio cases. These were people with asymptomatic active infection, not carriers, and virus was only detected in their stools for a limited period. I very much doubt there are any bodies near me that have been in recent contact with polio sufferers. As the study makes clear, the OPV is somewhat effective at preventing gut infection with polio virus, but is much more effective at preventing the virus from causing paralysis.

@ken – I thought you weren’t coming back?

Also, once you start looking for something, you’re going to find a lot more of it…..and none of those cases were Polio.

ken,

#135 AFP is a serious problem –

Of course it is. Do you have a point? Did you expect polio vaccination to eliminate other causes of AFP, like snake bites and car accidents? Other enteroviruses are another cause of AFP, which is why drug companies are working on vaccines to prevent them and antiviral drugs to treat them.

#138 Never said it was. You are certainly showing your lack of compassion. So if it’s not polio it doesn’t matter. That’s what’s wrong with the narrownwss, snarkiness of this blog. If it doesn’t support your gospel it’s irrelevant. Empathy impairment- how many Asberger’s on this blog?

Narad please exercise your high IQ and search for grammar errors in #141 Thanks really relevant.

Jacob Puliyel, who compiled data from the national polio surveillance project, found a link between the increase in dosage of polio vaccination and the increasing cases of NPAFP.

That’s very probably because the places where vaccine coverage is highest are also the areas where active surveillance is greatest.

“Most experts will tell you the cases of NPAFP have increased because of better surveillance. This is bunkum,” said Puliyel. “As per global benchmarks, as polio incidence comes down, the rate of NPAFP should also reduce. Instead, AFP cases have been increasing steadily.”

Why would he expect reducing polio incidence to reduce non-polio AFP? As I wrote above AFP can be caused by car accidents and snake bites, both of which as not uncommon in India, and by other enteroviruses. None of these are prevented by the polio vaccine.

Nice insult against people with Asbergers there ken, such a kind and considerate person.

Things that aren’t Polio, aren’t Polio – what’s your point?

ken,

#138 Never said it was.

You rarely do, you just copy and paste stuff and expect us to divine what it is you think it shows. I can only base what I think you mean on your previous offerings here.

You are certainly showing your lack of compassion. So if it’s not polio it doesn’t matter.

How does me agreeing that AFP is a serious problem show a lack of compassion precisely?

That’s what’s wrong with the narrownwss, snarkiness of this blog. If it doesn’t support your gospel it’s irrelevant. Empathy impairment- how many Asberger’s on this blog?

What was your point in posting that link? The polio eradication program wins an astonishing victory by eliminating polio in India and all you can do is whine about non-polio AFP. Don’t you have any compassion for the hundreds of thousands that were crippled by polio in India every year (I met several when I was in India in the late 80s), and the millions that will now have active healthy lives thanks to vaccination?

Kreb, re: asymptomatic polio in India:
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/210/suppl_1/S252.abstract

Why do you think up to 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic? I think it’s about protective gut flora balance. And it seems the same applies to why measles is lethal in some while mild in most.

I came here to share my new article about how the same mechanism may apply to vaccine injury and learn a few things in conversation. It’s about vaccine safety, not elimination of vaccination.

Chris, I’m not diagnosing you in the least, don’t take it personally. I was merely using you as way of describing how a gut injury leads to brain injury.

Vincent

Mr. Bell: “Chris, I’m not diagnosing you in the least, don’t take it personally. I was merely using you as way of describing how a gut injury leads to brain injury. ”

Thoroughly demonstrating you are completely clueless. Which was made abundantly clear when you refused to answer my questions on the other thread, but floundered about by changing the subject.

@Keith – if everyone is vaccinated for Polio, then yes, it isn’t a problem, is it?

Are you really that stupid by nature, or did you get a degree in it?

Let’s see – vaccination will prevent the spread of disease quickly and inexpensively in the absence of work on sanitation. Improved sanitation will reduce the spread of some diseases, but will take decades to implement and cost significantly more. And not do anything about diseases that aren’t spread by tainted water.

I’m a big fan of providing people safe water and properly treating their wastes. I think much more effort should go to that in those countries that don’t have safe water and sanitary sewers. But vaccines for water-borne diseases is a quicker win.

BTW – see http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Reinvent-the-Toilet-Challenge if you want more information on the Gates initiatives on human waste disposal.

bimler, let’s talk about your specialty

Let’s not. Why shift to an entirely new topic, when earlier you stated as a fact that “Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units”?
You have been invited to buttress that claim with evidence. I hope you’re not running away from it.

He’s dodging faster than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
I would have said “dodging faster than a blindfolded clown in a room full of rakes”, but Shay’s version is also good.

@ken – again, what does that have to do with Polio, which is almost eradicated & we have a vaccine for?

It’s Science- not myriad snarky comments.

I have read enough and written enough critical reviews to break down Science roughly as follows:
Inspiration: 5%
Lab work: 10%
Writing grant applications: 15%
Writing manuscripts: 10%
Hanging out at conferences: 10%
Snarky comments about other scientists: 50%.

Actually, it is science. Please provide your proof that something that is not Polio is actually Polio.

hdb: “Let’s not. Why shift to an entirely new topic, …”

Notice how Bell said: “bimler, let’s talk about your specialty:..” to get off the topic, right after my observation of “…but floundered about by changing the subject.”

#159 If you had read the article you would not have made such a dumb remark. Something that is not polio is not polio according to the article which has examined the AFP cases in CA. Some people were concerned about this having a possible relationship to the polio vaccine.

Keith Bell,

Why do you think up to 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic?

Only about 1% of cases lead to paralytic polio because only in 1% of cases does the virus get into the nervous system. In the other 99% of cases it leads to mild influenza-like symptoms at most. As for why that 1% ends up paralyzed, it appears to be down to chance whether or not the virus makes it into the nervous system.

I think it’s about protective gut flora balance.

What makes you think that?

And it seems the same applies to why measles is lethal in some while mild in most.

Do you any particular reason to believe this? Measles is most dangerous in the very young and in adults. Why would these groups be more likely to have gut dysbiosis?

Over 43 million people in Pakistan practice open defecation. Do you really think polio is a vaccination issue?

Even more people practice open defecation in India (I could tell some tales) yet they haven’t had a case of polio for 4 years. So, yes, polio is definitely a vaccination issue.

Another article on AFP which clarifies some points.

Like I wrote above, “AFP can be caused by […] other enteroviruses. Polio was the low-hanging fruit, now we need vaccines or effective treatments for the higher hanging fruit like enterovirus 68.

but for now you need to understand polio is alive and well, kept in check by intestinal mucosal cells working synergistically with microbes in a body near you.

I’m curious, why do you think this asymptomatic infection fails to show up in stool samples? Why do you believe it exists?

The great thing about this is that if Keith weren’t so dense, he could have at least reasonably attempted to make a case for invisible persistence in the environment. Not anyplace where OPV is used, mind you, but still.

If IPV induced no mucosal immunity at all,* the virus could simply run its course in the gut** without the infection’s being noticed. This isn’t an unreasonable concern, and it would require wastewater surveillance in places like, y’know, the U.S..

IPV, however, looks to boost mucosal immunity, preserving the viability a ring strategy – still with wastewater monitoring, I’d say – PMID 19624278 notwithstanding.***

* I’ve brought all this up before; it was Vincent Racaniello’s blog at virology[.]ws that clued me in, but in the names of link parsimony and laziness, I’m just going to fly by the seat of my pants.
** No, it doesn’t shack up and get manicured by optimally tuned intestinal flora – and really, this could some sort of specific analogy, e.g., athlete (see Ewry, Ray)? musician? compost pile? Spencer Tunick group photo? – like some sort of goat-feeding operation involving a sod roof.
*** The related articles on this item look quite interesting. Only part of the Philosophical Transactions issue is open-access: h_tp://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1623.toc

Yeah, shay, I don’t expect much from Mr. Bell, a guy who thinks he can diagnose someone due to one typo. Narad, would you accept a diagnosis from Mr. Bell because you mixed up replies?

Oh, that’s a go-to trip for Keith. Recycling runs deep.

Narad, you’re invited for dinner. We can talk all about the gut-connection. Know anything about photosensitive seizure? And since it appears you weren’t breastfed, we’ll have something with plenty of GOS to feed your reduced or absent bifidobacteria. GOS is a prebiotic, btw.

Meanwhile, less than 2% of Gates Foundation budget goes toward improving sanitation, the lion’s share toward vaccination.

They spent $338,010 on vaccine delivery and $21,760 on vaccine development in 2013,

They had total expenditures of almost $3 million on global health and development for that year,

So the $359,770 for vaccines wasn’t the lion’s share of it. By any definition.

Jerusalem artichokes are packed full of prebiotics, mostly inulin. This is how I discovered that ‘prebiotic’ is altmed code for ‘flatulence-inducing’. If you are doubled up with abdominal cramps from gas, you know your microbiome is on good shape, apparently. A horrible memory of making fermented cabbage just surfaced, shudder…

Narad: “Recycling runs deep.”

Well, Keith is very good at recycling bovine excrement.

@#161 —

I read the article. And I not only didn’t see word one about some people being concerned that it had a possible relationship to the polio vaccine. I didn’t see word one about any people being concerned that it had a possible relationship to the polio vaccine.

Please elucidate.

They spent $338,010 on vaccine delivery and $21,760 on vaccine development in 2013,

They had total expenditures of almost $3 million on global health and development for that year,

So the $359,770 for vaccines wasn’t the lion’s share of it. By any definition.

Yeah, I mindlessly copied those figures from the website without thinking about anything besides what was or wasn’t a lion’s share of the total, proportionally speaking.

So I didn’t notice that they were way too low. Which they are, because (as they plainly state):

The amounts are in thousands of US dollars.

So add a few zeros.

They have an insane amount of money, I must say.

Jerusalem artichokes are packed full of prebiotics, mostly inulin.

As good as the Steinerite CCA that I subscribed to was in prime season, the massive filler loads of these things in autumn figured heavily into my decision to abandon the project.

So far, it appears no one is interested in the gut-brain mechanism of vaccine injury I describe in my new article. And I doubt Orac will be brave enough to approach the subject, no matter how annoyed.

So now the conversation is reduced to gut flora mechanism in polio; a fine subject. Kreb, I linked you the CDC page above about 95% of polio cases being asymptomatic, surprisingly not common knowledge.

Here’s some new knowledge and some old:
http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v12/n3/full/nrmicro3219.html
http://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/abstract/S1931-3128(13)00437-X?innerTabgraphical_S193131281300437X
1951 insights:
http://www.mercola.com/article/sugar/polio_sugar.htm

ann, thanks for researching, but $3 million falls out of Bill Gates’ nose every hour. Dig deeper and factor BMGF working in concert with major pharmaceuticals. Vaccination dwarfs sanitation.

Chris, I still love you and don’t believe you’re actually schizophrenic. Narad, open invitation. I meant to say “gut-brain connection”. Kreb, your reaction to inulin may actually be a sign of dysbiosis which may also explain your decade of giardia.

Here’s one of the 2014 study references from 2011:
“Intestinal microbiota promote enteric virus replication and systemic pathogenesis”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222156/
“We found that poliovirus binds lipopolysaccharide, and exposure of poliovirus to bacteria enhanced host-cell association and infection.”

So, it appears an imbalanced gut high in Proteobacteria and Bacteroides, gram-negative LPS-producers overgrown from a high sugar diet and/or toxic environment reducing gram- positive lactic acid bacteria (Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus), make one more prone to polio symptoms.

I’d bet the same is true of measles. In the unfortunate loss of Roald Dahl’s young daughter to measles, it’s worth considering what kind of diet she was raised on given her father did more to promote sugar consumption than any person in the history of art and literature. What should have been a mild childhood disease became lethal.

blockquote>In the unfortunate loss of Roald Dahl’s young daughter to measles, it’s worth considering what kind of diet she was raised on given her father did more to promote sugar consumption than any person in the history of art and literature. What should have been a mild childhood disease became lethal.

What a loathsome asshole you are.

Here’s Kevin Bell last October, having announced that Einstein’s autism was the subject he wanted to talk about, reacting to the skepticism of more knowledgeable people by changing the subject to something completely different:

Plenty of evidence Einstein was autistic. And did you know about John Nash self-medicating as a child?

Is there any argument he hasn’t run away from?

ann, thanks for researching, but $3 million falls out of Bill Gates’ nose every hour. Dig deeper and factor BMGF working in concert with major pharmaceuticals. Vaccination dwarfs sanitation.

You’re welcome.

I was in error. They spent $3.6 billion in 2013, not $3.6 million.

If you want any digging done that’s deeper than their almost 1,000-page Form 990, I’m afraid you’ll have to do it yourself.

But FYI: Their investment in pharmaceuticals is dwarfed by their investments in energy, technology, and a number of other industries.

Seriously. There’s just no way to read their financials as reflecting a hand-in-glove, related-party-type collaboration with drug companies. They don’t have one.

However. If you think it would be more globally philanthropic to put more money into sanitation than into vaccines, you’re free to start your own $40 billion private foundation.

That’s how liberty works.

Keith Bell,

So far, it appears no one is interested in the gut-brain mechanism of vaccine injury I describe pull out of my ass in my new article.

FTFY

And I doubt Orac will be brave enough to approach the subject, no matter how annoyed.

I doubt it’s keeping him awake at night.

So now the conversation is reduced to gut flora mechanism in polio; a fine subject. Kreb, I linked you the CDC page above about 95% of polio cases being asymptomatic, surprisingly not common knowledge.

What makes you think that? It has been discussed here many times before. A person with asymptomatic polio will clear the disease and is not a carrier, as you claim. The CDC page you linked to clearly states this:

There is no asymptomatic carrier state except in immune deficient persons.

I suppose the CDC is a reliable source of information only when it supports your mistaken ideas. This asymptomatic carrier state is very rare even in immune deficient people so your claim that “millions of people are carriers and don’t even know it” is wrong.

Here’s some new knowledge and some old: [snip] 1951 insights:

I can see how a pathogenic gut infection might increase the chances of polio virus invading the nervous system, but the studies you cited don’t appear to support your claims. Immune deficient mice with their gut bacteria reduced a million-fold by antibiotic treatment are less susceptible to polio than those not treated with antibiotics:

Despite the well-known beneficial effects of intestinal microbes, we discovered that they augment enteric virus pathogenesis by enhancing viral replication.

This supports your claims how? Benjamin P. Sandler was crank who has his own pages on whale.to and whose theories about polio being caused by sugar were discredited decades ago – he claimed that the increase in polio cases in the summer was because children consumed more sugary sodas and ice cream then.

Kreb, your reaction to inulin may actually be a sign of dysbiosis which may also explain your decade of giardia.

Given my excellent GI health before I contracted giardia and after successful treatment with an anti-protozoal drug (over 15 years ago now), I somewhat doubt that. I love the way any altmed treatment is working if it makes you feel better and if it makes you feel worse that means it’s working too.

@#172/#173

I didn’t mean anything nearly so ZOG.

I was really just thinking that they must have a little bit of a hard time coming up with enough worthy endeavors to meet the 5% minimum requirement some years.

That’s a lot of money.

This 2014 paper states 2.4% of healthy people were shedding wild poliovirus in their stool. You don’t have to be immune compromised to be a carrier.
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/210/suppl_1/S252.abstract

The sugar in question is a component of the cell wall of microbes where viruses have a preference for certain microbes. In fact, viral infection is known to temporarily improve the ASD condition.

Kreb, you’re not factoring microbial predisposition and how people are different in this way. It makes perfect sense antibiotics would lead to reduced chance of polio infection.

There are over 1.25 billion people in India with plenty of healthy people shedding polio.
http://globalhealth.thelancet.com/2014/03/19/taps-and-toilets-essential-maintain-indias-polio-free-miracle

“Since 2000, the Gates Foundation has committed a total of more than $4 billion to GAVI.”
http://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/gates-foundation-pledges-1.55-billion-to-gavi-alliance

In contrast, their paltry, unviable Reinvent the Toilet campaign is a publicity stunt hiding their true agenda. But they have made the issue somewhat of a priority, however backward, educated the public and also doing some great work in fecal sludge removal/management.

Unfortunately, Bill Gates is still promoting the mixing of human waste with water:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/01/10/janicki-omniprocessor/

Keith Bell,

This 2014 paper states 2.4% of healthy people were shedding wild poliovirus in their stool. You don’t have to be immune compromised to be a carrier.

This was in India before polio was eliminated and the title is ‘Prevalence of Asymptomatic Poliovirus Infection in Older Children and Adults in Northern India’. These are “healthy contacts of case patients with polio” i.e. people with asymptomatic infections, not carriers.

Kreb, you’re not factoring microbial predisposition and how people are different in this way. It makes perfect sense antibiotics would lead to reduced chance of polio infection.

So antibiotic use leads to gut dysbiosis except when it doesn’t?

There are over 1.25 billion people in India with plenty of healthy people shedding polio.

That article says no such thing. It says India had been polio free since 2011. How can people be contacts of case patients with polio if there are no cases of polio?

What a loathsome asshοle you are.

Oh, G-d, I can’t resist looking.

Here’s one of the 2014 study references from 2011: …
“We found that poliovirus binds lipopolysaccharide, and exposure of poliovirus to bacteria enhanced host-cell association and infection.”

One might note the preceding sentence:

“Exposure to bacteria or their N-acetylglucosamine-containing surface polysaccharides, including lipopolysaccharide and peptidoglycan, enhanced poliovirus infectivity.”

So, it appears an imbalanced gut high in Proteobacteria and Bacteroides, gram-negative LPS-producers overgrown from a high sugar diet and/or toxic environment reducing gram- positive lactic acid bacteria (Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus), make one more prone to polio symptoms.

Didn’t look too closely at Figure 4, did you? (Guess who makes 10 times as much PG.)

Hey, I wonder whether Kuss et al. have been cited by anybody.

“We determined that exposure to bacteria increased infectivity of poliovirus virions. After exposure to Gram-positive or Gram-negative bacteria, we recovered up to 5-fold more plaque forming units (PFU) than we started with. Since only ~1 of every 200 picornavirus particles are infectious, these data suggest that exposure to bacteria ‘resurrects’ infectivity for some particles, reducing the particle:PFU ratio…. [V]iral stabilization required an acetylated GlcNAc-containing polysaccharide longer than 6 units.”

One more to come.

I’d bet the same is true of measles.

Because, of course, measles is actually transmitted by the fecal-oral route.

In the unfortunate loss of Roald Dahl’s young daughter to measles, it’s worth considering what kind of diet she was raised on given her father did more to promote sugar consumption than any person in the history of art and literature.

I’m sure Keith Bellend’s elaboration of the basis for this will be fascinating.

What should have been a mild childhood disease became lethal.

Hey, Keith, what’s your mailing address?

So far, it appears no one is interested in the gut-brain mechanism of vaccine injury I describe in my new article.

Dawn breaks over Marblehead.

Keith:

In the unfortunate loss of Roald Dahl’s young daughter to measles, it’s worth considering what kind of diet she was raised on given her father did more to promote sugar consumption than any person in the history of art and literature.

How did Roald Dahl “promote sugar consumption”?
You are a noxious, poisonous, hateful, vile individual.
GFY, FOADIAF and then GTH.

Julian Frost: “How did Roald Dahl “promote sugar consumption”?”

Apparently by writing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Which if you read his one of his autobiographies was inspired by his boarding school being near Cadbury’s, which tested new treats on the students.

And if Bell had bothered to actually learn about Roald Dahl, he would know that he was an avid vegetable gardener:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/6156852/Roald-Dahls-garden-revealed.html

After his daughter’s death he created a special memorial garden for her.

You know, I am really glad that Mr Dahl is dead so he can’t see the absolutely loathsome comment by Keith. Or, alternatively, I wish he were still alive so he could punch Keith in the face for that comment. If I ever had any interest in reading what Keith wrote (which I don’t), it would have been completely destroyed by that comment.

OTOH, “George’s Marvellous Medicine” was clearly written to promote alt-health and probiotic supplements.

And James and the Giant Peach of course, is a paean to an all-raw vegan diet.

Since 2000, the Gates Foundation has committed a total of more than $4 billion to GAVI.”
http://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/gates-foundation-pledges-1.55-billion-to-gavi-alliance

In contrast, their paltry, unviable Reinvent the Toilet campaign is a publicity stunt hiding their true agenda.

Well.

OBVIOUSLY, if you compare 14 years of spending to one, relatively recent campaign, the former will be larger.

In fact, they do spend more on vaccines than on water/hygiene/sanitation.

But the amount they spend on vaccines is (ahem) dwarfed by the amount they spend on other things.

If we’re talking about spending since 2000 (minus the grants to GAVI) that sum would be approximately $29 billion.

I mean, Keith Bell.

Are you suggesting that they sit around at the Gates Foundation, saying to themselves:

“Hey, I know! Let’s spend $29 billion on stuff we don’t care about at all — such as agricultural development and HIV/AIDS treatment and scholarships — in order to disguise our true agenda, vaccines!”

That doesn’t make much sense.

In fact, they do spend more on vaccines than on water/hygiene/sanitation.

In this context, it is worth recalling how Bellend began his recent, dismally failed, dalliance with poliovirus:

This means millions of people are carriers and don’t even know it . . . so how can we improve natural immunity? There are lots of good ways not yet implemented. One is improved sanitation.

It is a testament to his idiocy that he fails to realize that it was precisely the improvement of sanitation that led to the creation of ever-worsening epidemics of poliomyelitis in the U.S. in the first place. Yet, if one were to accept his (risible) premise of endemic, occult circulation, this is exactly what his proposal would encourage.

@Julian Frost

Well what else would you expect from someone so morally challenged and intellectually deficient as keith?

You think you won’t be surprised at how low the depths anti-vax posters will go but but they always seem to impress how far they’ll dig themselves under.

I’m not surprised by the cowardice of this group (given its blog owner), unable to discuss the mechanism behind a young girl’s death by measles for sake of future generations.

The mechanism as described and cited is strongly associated with sugar. The candy man, Dahl, also wrote “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” but Willie Wonka is a classic. Didn’t know he was a vegetable gardener. Do you think it’s possible he condoned a high sugar diet, skewing flora balance? This would make a child more vulnerable to viral infection.

@keith

Again, thanks for proving my point, that you are an reprehensible individual and glory in the utterly preventable death of a young girl.

You are your ilk deserve all of the scorn and disgust you deserve.

@ ann

“Hey, I know! Let’s spend $29 billion on stuff we don’t care about at all — such as agricultural development and HIV/AIDS treatment and scholarships — in order to disguise our true agenda, vaccines!”

I met a scientist who was working on agriculture sustainability; Because he got negative results with his preliminary studies, he was afraid of not being funded and let pass the deadline for applying to the BMGF.

He was contacted by a representative of the Foundation and encouraged to re-apply anyway, even if the deadline was passed. Last I heard, the new project he put together was convincing enough and is likely to be funded.

First time I heard of a funding agency contacting a scientist. They really wanted these lines of inquiry to be explored.

As you said, if they only cared about vaccines, that doesn’t make much sense.

@ Keith Bell

Do you think it’s possible he condoned a high sugar diet, skewing flora balance? This would make a child more vulnerable to viral infection.

Running around making baseless assumptions over dead people is a sure way for you to lose the debate. You know that they say about people assuming things.

Also, nice job at missing that it’s LPS and freeling peptidoglycan which could be catching viruses. Like, the most ubiquitous bacterial component.

Oh, and Mr Bell? That Julian Frost said.

Keith Bell,

Do you think it’s possible he condoned a high sugar diet, skewing flora balance? This would make a child more vulnerable to viral infection.

I always wondered how a high sugar diet is supposed to be capable of “skewing flora balance”, or feeding candida in the gut (the probably imaginary ‘fungal-type dysbiosis’). Sugar is rapidly hydrolyzed and absorbed in the duodenum, so it never makes it to the parts of the GI tract where the vast majority of bacteria live, and in non-diabetics it doesn’t elevate blood glucose enough to feed ‘bad’ (or good) bacteria in the colon (even if gut bacteria had access to blood glucose which as far as I know they do not).

Low glycemic index foods, conversely, make it further down the GI tract before being broken down to monosaccharides and absorbed. It seems likely that it is low GI carbohydrate intake that encourages dysbiosis rather than high GI sugar intake.

I’m not aware of any evidence that a high sugar diet leads to vulnerability to viral infections like measles, but do provide some if you have any. As far as I know the only problems that excessive sugar causes are obesity and tooth decay. I’m not convinced that sugar causes insulin resistance except by leading to obesity, though sugar consumption is an efficient way of consuming a lot of calories.

Keith Bell:

The candy man, Dahl, also wrote “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

Are you off your rocker?!?! I have read “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”. It’s about a wealthy layabout and gambler who teaches himself a method to see through the back of cards to win at gambling because he’s greedy, but the self-discipline he acquires learning the technique leads him to become a Robin Hood, taking casinos for fortunes and giving it to charity. And you think that the name led to increased sugar consumption?!?!

Here Kreb:
“Regardless of the genetic backgrounds the mice, fecal analysis revealed that the high-fat, high-sugar diet increased the abundance of members of the Firmicutes phylum and decreased the abundance of members of the Bacteroidetes phylum.”
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/12/122151/mix-bacteria-gut-may-depend-more-diet-genes

Perhaps one of the members of raised Firmicutes is Bacillus cereus, a gram-positive organism (hat tip, Narad):
“Exposure to B. cereus increased poliovirus infectivity over 500%. Enhancement of poliovirus infectivity did not require live bacteria”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222156/

Refined grains may be more a culprit in duodenal microbial overgrowth than even refined sugar. The duodenum is last place you want overgrowth, the beginning of the end. Thanks for input, Kreb.

Anyone wanna talk about measles virus found in the guts of autistic children being vaccine strains? What causes it to become a chronic infection?

Perhaps origin of measles brain infection is intestinal as studies report a large percentage of autistic children carry measles in their intestines:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10759242

http://www.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2006/Wake_Forest_Researcher_Warns_Against_Making_Connection_Between_Presence_of_Measles_Virus_and_Autism.htm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-388051/Scientists-fear-MMR-link-autism.html

“Now a team from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina are examining 275 children with regressive autism and bowel disease – and of the 82 tested so far, 70 prove positive for the measles virus.

Last night the team’s leader, Dr Stephen Walker, said: ‘Of the handful of results we have in so far, all are vaccine strain and none are wild measles.”

Willie Wonka is a classic.

For encouraging sugar consumption?
If I recall correctly, the boy who is responsible, parsimonious and respectful was rewarded, while the kid mashing chewing-gum non-stop and the other kid stuffing himself senselessly with chocolate-laden sweets both got punished for their sins.

Do you think it’s possible he condoned a high sugar diet

I think it’s far more possible that Bell has never read any of the Dahl books he’s citing.

And…he still hasn’t answered Chris’s question.

# 206 @ bimler

The Kawashima paper has been repudiated by Kawashima himself, and Wakefield admitted in an expert report years ago that he could not rely on it.

http://briandeer.com/wakefield/hisashi-kawashima.htm

The work of Nick Chadwick showed that Kawashima’s results were the result of contamination. Kawashima acknowledges that the purported strains he thought he’d found were not in vaccines.

Why the paper hasn’t been formally retracted is just another of the abuses by medical publishers, who simply can’t be assed.

Speaking of assed, Brian, have you flushed your toilet today? What viruses are you shedding?

Are you loaded with Proteobacteria feeding your virome? And how might this microbial predisposition affect how you react to your next MMR booster? Who’s living in your Peyer’s patches regulating antibody response leading to autoimmune disease, beginning in the gut leading to brain damage?

Children born with imbalanced intestinal microbiota (poor microbial predisposition) are vaccinated within 12 hours of birth, insult to injury.

The issue is overstimulation of an already compromised immune system based on flora imbalance. The actual adjuvant or vaccine strain is not relevant.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/03/29/vaccine-adjuvants-brain-effects.aspx
“Important testimony was delivered by one doctor who had treated over 20 cases of MS after Gardasil vaccination. Pharmaceutical representatives were trying to say that such side effects are psychogenic, but how can a psychogenic disorder cause MS lesions in a person’s brain—and in a girl who was perfectly healthy prior to vaccination? “They didn’t have an answer to that,” she says.”

Vaccine injury (and MS) begins in the gut where 70% of the body’s immune system resides based on flora balance. Then the brain is attacked:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain

So, what is the vaccine industry doing to make their products safer?

Mr. Bell, do tell us why we would think that the fevered blathering from Mercola or yourself would be given any kind of consideration, other than for comic relief.

Also, where is any real evidence that the MMR causes the issues you claims it does, and that verifiable documentation dated before 1990 that they happened in the 1970s and 1980s. Note: links to Mercola, Natural News, greenmedinfo and other nonsense are not acceptable.

Mercola??? A reference to Mercola?

Seizing upon Pubmed keyword searches didn’t work out all that well for him, after all.

Keith Bell #202 that Daily Mail article you linked to was from 2006. In addition, the study lead was Stephen Walker.
That name sounded familiar, so I googled it. Ping!

In 2006 Dr Stephen Walker presented a poster at the Montreal IMFAR meeting claiming to have identified measles virus in intestinal biopsies of children with autism. These preliminary, provisional, unconfirmed, non-peer-reviewed findings in an uncontrolled study (which does not mention MMR) were widely reported – and enthusiastically acclaimed by Dr Andrew Wakefield.

But…

In a subsequent statement issued by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, Walker denied that he had shown any link between measles virus and autism.
The Walker study has never been published.

Furthermore:

The Walker study was dismissed as evidence in the 2009 Omnibus Autism Proceedings in the USA after a detailed critique by expert witnesses.
Though reports claimed that the Walker study had ‘replicated’ the work of Wakefield’s Dublin collaborator John O’Leary published in 2002, this work has been thoroughly discredited, most comprehensively by Professor Stephen Bustin.

The Daily Fail is not a reliable source for autism news, as far as I’m concerned. It reported on the Court Case in Italy where a Lower Court in Rimini found that the MMR caused autism, but typed not a single word when that verdict was overturned by the Higher Court.

“Now a team from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina are examining 275 children with regressive autism and bowel disease – and of the 82 tested so far, 70 prove positive for the measles virus.
Last night the team’s leader, Dr Stephen Walker, said: ‘Of the handful of results we have in so far, all are vaccine strain and none are wild measles.”

Skipping past the Daily Fail, that would be this study:
PERSISTENT ILEAL MEASLES VIRUS IN A LARGE COHORT OF REGRESSIVE AUTISTIC CHILDREN WITH ILEOCOLITIS AND LYMPHONODULAR HYPERPLASIA:
REVISITATION OF AN EARLIER STUDY
Steve Walker, Karin Hepner, Jeffrey Segal, Arthur Krigsman,
Wake Forest University School of Medicine

It later emerged the last author there, Krigsman, responsible for the biopsies and the lab-work, is a dishonest incompetent with a track-record of lying about his qualifications. He is also Wakefield’s BFF.

It emerged that he left New York following disciplinary action at his former hospital and was fined $5,000 on arrival in Texas for misrepresenting his registration status.

@ K Bell

Children born with imbalanced intestinal microbiota (poor microbial predisposition) are vaccinated within 12 hours of birth

Let me see if I got it straight.

– Newborns could have an “imbalanced intestinal microbiota”.
I guess that may be true for about 100% of newborns, if you define “imbalanced intestinal microbiota” as “none”.
Unless something went wrong during the pregnancy, newborns fresh out of the womb don’t have bacteria in their guts – yet.

– an injected vaccine is going to sneak around its injection site in muscle tissues to slither up to the baby’s guts, where the absence of the right bacteria will cause the vaccine to head for the brain, passing through about every organ of the baby during this unexpected journey.

Right.

Maybe you should stop watching the TV series Stargate. You are seeing Goa’uld everywhere.

Keith Bell,

Here Kreb:
“Regardless of the genetic backgrounds the mice, fecal analysis revealed that the high-fat, high-sugar diet increased the abundance of members of the Firmicutes phylum and decreased the abundance of members of the Bacteroidetes phylum.”

A high fat high sugar diet affected the microbiome of mice – interesting, but where’s the evidence that a high sugar diet increases susceptibility to viral infections in humans? I’m not disputing the fact that obesity is a bad thing, and that consuming lots of sugar is a good way of becoming obese, especially when combined with fats, but I’m not convinced that sugar is any worse than consuming excess calories in another form.

Perhaps one of the members of raised Firmicutes is Bacillus cereus, a gram-positive organism (hat tip, Narad):
“Exposure to B. cereus increased poliovirus infectivity over 500%. Enhancement of poliovirus infectivity did not require live bacteria”

But B. cereus is a probiotic (some strains, anyway) – are you saying that probiotic bacteria make us more susceptible to polio? That study suggests that killing our entire microbiome would protect us from polio – this doesn’t strike me as a very good idea.

Refined grains may be more a culprit in duodenal microbial overgrowth than even refined sugar. The duodenum is last place you want overgrowth, the beginning of the end. Thanks for input, Kreb.

Why do you think refined grains, or sugar for that matter, preferentially feed bad bacteria and not probiotic bacteria?

Anyone wanna talk about measles virus found in the guts of autistic children being vaccine strains? What causes it to become a chronic infection?

Measles virus hasn’t been found in the guts of autistic children; as others have pointed out this was either a mistake or in some cases (i.e. Wakefield and Krigsman) fraud.

Helianthus stated:
“Unless something went wrong during the pregnancy, newborns fresh out of the womb don’t have bacteria in their guts – yet.”

That’s the biggest fallacy without evidence in 20th century “science.” It’s where science meets religion. Evidence is accumulating showing babies are not born sterile and that the fetal GI tract is teeming with life. Meconium should be tested for every newborn pre-vaccination and stool before one year of age.

Kreb said:
“Why do you think refined grains, or sugar for that matter, preferentially feed bad bacteria and not probiotic bacteria?”

There are hundreds of studies about how diet shifts flora.
http://gut.bmj.com/content/63/1/116.abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448089/
“Refined sugars mediate the overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria like C. difficile and C. perfringens . . . “

Keith, the native Hawaiian had a diet rich in vitamins, no refined sugars and fats, and hygiene equivalent or better than the Europeans at the time. Why did measles nearly drive them to extinction?

Well, what would you expect Keith to say, Krebiozen?

The micro-biome/ autism connection is all the rage:
if you scan presentations at Autism One 2015, you’ll notice that many of the ‘experts’ discuss this along with other GI and dietary issues .Teresa Conrick perseverates at AoA.

Andy apparently left his mark with thought leaders.

I will leave out the obligatory STB reference.
Oooops!.

Keith Bell,

There are hundreds of studies about how diet shifts flora.

I’m aware of that, but are there any in humans that show that refined carbohydrates cause gut dysbiosis? I know its part of the altmed litany, but is there any actual evidence in humans? All the studies you cited are, or themselves cite studies, on mice.

Oddly your second reference states:

Refined sugars, on the other hand, mediate the overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria like C. difficile [54] and C. perfringens by increasing bile output [55].

Yet reference 54 is ‘Clostridium difficile infection in the inflammatory bowel disease patient; I don’t have access to the full-text, but I can’t find anything to suggest that C. diff overgrowth is caused by refined carbohydrates in IBD patients or anyone else. Reference 55 is ‘Bile salt hydrolase activity in probiotics’ and does not mention either sugar or refined carbohydrates. How would refined carbohydrates increase bile output anyway? I thought it was fats that did that.

That’s SFB reference
( sometimes I can’t see this keyboard as It is black – and I am not a 100% touch typer)

Keith: Sorry, that failed to answer the question at all. First of all, you have nothing showing that obesity isn’t a recent issue, not a historical one. And sanitation in Europe was just as bad.

There is a far simpler, more parsimonious explanation that doesn’t require any speculation on our parts: That the native Hawaiians immune systems simply wasn’t adapted to the disease. Simple as that.

Keith, seriously.
The native population of Alta California ate a diet consisting primarily of acorns, fish and game – unlike Pacific Islanders- and didn’t live on ‘closed island systems’ but still succumbed to epidemics when living amongst Europeans in the 19th Century. ( see wikip— California Indians)

Keith: None of which answered my specific question. I don’t need speculation.

“That the native Hawaiians immune systems simply wasn’t adapted to the disease. Simple as that.”

Now that’s what I call science. What about the immune system’s reciprocal relationship between genes and microbes regulated by diet and environment?

Keith: That fails to explain why so many American Indian tribes died from disease. At all.

To be specific, most American Indians had much better nutrition than the European invaders, and they still died off in droves from European disease. Why is that?

But there’s also the genetic component of the immune system based on host glycans which are carbs/sugar feeding our microbes

Sweet Jesus. I see that Keith promptly took to G—ling after the peptidoglycan debacle, with predictable results.

And? They aren’t dying like flies now. Genetics doesn’t work as an explanation.

Keith, let me explain your situation to you clearly. You are the prosecutor accusing someone of being a murderer. I am the one with the alleged victim on the witness stand. The evidence is simply too strong for you to contend with.

See 1950 chart here

How was I able to guess in advance that this was going to involve the comically stupid “Blood Type Diet”?

There is evidence that island obesity is not a recent phenomenon.

Something tells me that Keith is not going to provide any of that evidence. Making stuff up is easier.
Against this nebulous unspecified “evidence”, there are descriptions of the Hawaii’ans from Captain Cook and his officers, impressed by their health and physical perfection. But who to believe? Eye-witness accounts, or “evidence” freshly invoked to shore up a failed hypothjesis?

Mr. Bell: “The US government has already compensated vaccine-injured families $3 billion and counting. The case is closed, I’m only trying to describe mechanisms of injury via the gut-brain.”

No, you are showing you don’t understand basic math. Looking at the data from 2006 to the present we see that 2,236,678,735 doses were given between 2006 to 2013, or about 319525534 doses per year. So the total is with 2014 added about 2556204269 doses.

Looking a few columns over on that first graph that 1,672 claims were compensated. So that is one claim per 1528830 doses. So that is one claim in over a million doses.

Since most of them were of the “settlement” type of compensation where the vaccine causing the injury was not actually proved.

Any chance, Mr. Bell, that you will provide actual PubMed indexed studies showing the MMR vaccine causes more harm than measles, mumps and rubella… and that it had been documented happening in the USA prior to 1990?

The case is closed, I’m only trying to describe mechanisms of injury via the gut-brain.
h[]tp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-18/vaccine-court-s-tough-standards-may-face-supreme-court-test

This one-off link was an extremely poor choice, but one of course understands that you likely stopped at the hed.

You really don’t want to add law to the list of subjects you enthusiastically embarrass yourself with.

I also question sanitation and drinking water on closed island systems.

Pre-European Hawaiian sanitation was a lot better than their European contemporaries. with strong tabus about separating sh1t from the rest of life. They favoured long-drop toilets, I recall.
If saving a hypothesis required me to dream up a whole series of secondary hypotheses, which all ran up against reality and proved to be wrong, I would think about abandoning the original hypothesis.

Evidence is accumulating showing babies are not born sterile and that the fetal GI tract is teeming with life.

Ah? Fine. Any citation for me to be less stupid at the end of the day?
Since you are at it, any evidence of this “imbalance” you talk about happening in newborns?

You know, it’s how science, religion or not, works. It’s fine to rewrite the holy texts every so often, but if you forget to pass me the new missal, don’t blame me for singing out of turn.

@ Bell

But there’s also the genetic component of the immune system based on host glycans which are carbs/sugar feeding our microbes:

No, wait.
Did you just picked up five different sentences from three different books and mashed them together?
I simply just cannot parse this word salad.
And the article you linked to is completely irrelevant, unless you just wanted to remind us that viruses dock on glycoproteins. That’s nice, but most of us already knew it.

Please elaborate. With citations.

American Indians are the only group known to have 100% secretor status. This affects gut flora balance as the genes regulate host glycans making them susceptible to diabetes, but also viral-glycan interaction as posted above.

We seem to have gone from “Vaccine-preventable diseases are only a risk to people with poor diets or poor santitation” to “Vaccine-preventable diseases are only a risk to people with a particular common gut-enzyme blood antigen (and also Polynesians, because reasons)

We seem to have gone from “Vaccine-preventable diseases are only a risk to people with poor diets or poor santitation” to “Vaccine-preventable diseases are only a risk to people with a particular common gut-enzyme blood antigen (and also Polynesians, because reasons)

Yeah. Don;t forget people whose parents write books that have the word “chocolate” in the title, though.

I mean, that evidently puts you at such high risk that it can kill you two years before it even happens.

Pitiful Roald Dahl had a rough life and apparently put his children through a lot of pain. He was obsessed with candy and medicine. I wouldn’t doubt he was feeding sweets to his daughter as she was battling measles. Of course, he was also a well-known bigot. And I wonder what kind of medicine his poor wife was taking as possible cause of her strokes. After all, so-called medicine is the 4th leading cause of death in the USA. Vaccines are also known to cause stroke, cerebral microbleeds possibly due to high levels of uric acid and low levels of serotonin (gut origin).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2186961/Tessa-Dahl-Roald-Dahls-daughter-life-father-best-selling-childrens-author.html

Speaking of OCD, it’s associated with mumps and schizophrenia.
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/28/prevalence-autism-past-may-have-been-underestimated
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2967113/

Pitiful Roald Dahl had a rough life

[Citation required], and the Daily Fail does not qualify as a reputable or credible source.

and apparently put his children through a lot of pain.

[citation required.]

He was obsessed with candy and medicine.

[citation required.]

I wouldn’t doubt he was feeding sweets to his daughter as she was battling measles.

No citation is needed for your self-described conjecture.

Of course, he was also a well-known bigot.

[citation required.]

And I wonder what kind of medicine his poor wife was taking as possible cause of her strokes.

No citation needed for this self-describeed conjecture.

After all, so-called medicine is the 4th leading cause of death in the USA.

[citation required.]

Vaccines are also known to cause stroke, cerebral microbleeds possibly due to high levels of uric acid and low levels of serotonin (gut origin).

[citations required.]

@keith

Thanks for saying that you are a bigot. Guess that you cannot proving your assertions, you have to rely on defaming people’s character with your own shortcomings to boost yourself.

You are just a pitiable individual, and I truly feel sorry for your children, if you do have any, who have to be raised by such a vile individual.

I wouldn’t doubt
We have noticed. I imagine it simplifies life immensely.

Vaccines are also known to cause stroke, cerebral microbleeds possibly due to high levels of uric acid and low levels of serotonin (gut origin).

Oh, goody, Keith Bellend is trying to hook his moron caboose to Moulden’s idiot train.

From The Jewish Chronicle- Roald Dahl: proudly antisemitic

Ah, yes, when all else fails, the classic irrelevant ad hom.

I simply just cannot parse this word salad.

The funny thing is that he almost has an “out” for part of it, but he’s never going to figure that out by himself.

@#242 —

Even if you take that article at its word, it doesn’t accuse him of anything worse than being unable to sustain a series of sudden, unexpected traumatic losses that devastated his family without being negatively affected by them. As just about anyone would be.

I mean, did you read it?

I want to make one thing clear. My parents did their best. My father drove me to day school every single morning. Then, he wrote to me every day at boarding school – first at Roedean, which I hated, and Downe House near Newbury, Berkshire, which I loved. It was just day-to-day things – what the dogs were doing, funny things at home. He always managed to turn them into stories.

Even though he was present for me physically, he was not emotionally. bad luck, that I had been present both for my brother’s accident and my mother’s strokes. That my older sister Olivia had been the love of Daddy’s life. That both of us contracted measles, but that she had died.

I think he gave me drugs because he knew no other way to communicate with me to calm me down.

I had seen three different occasions when ambulances came and took away my beloved family never to return them – or to return them as very different people.

These days we know what post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is. I had it.

She doesn’t even say that he was the cause of her pain. And she certainly doesn’t say he was obsessed with sweets, or fed his children sugar, or anything of the kind.

He didn’t write that book until two years after the death of his daughter. And now you’re holding him responsible for his wife’s strokes? All else aside, she was an independently functioning adult.

Seriously. Have a heart.

@#245 —

Even if those things had been said by someone who was not born in 1916 and raised in an era during which worse sentiments than that were more the rule than they were the exception, I’m not sure I would conclude that he or she was truly an antisemite simply for having said them.

I mean, they’re more antisemitic than political condemnation of Israel needs to be. But he’s mostly condemning Israeli conduct, not Jews.

Antisemitism doesn’t cause measles anyway, however. So moot point.

ann, I’m only using the story of Roald Dahl to bring attention to the dietary/microbial mechanisms of disease. We all have our demons and I’m sure he could also be a great person and loving human being.

I doubt anyone here has ever factored sugar of the microbial cell wall in viral infection and how imbalanced flora makes one more prone to injury. This includes vaccine injury which is more common than anyone here is willing to admit. Most of you can’t even acknowledge vaccine injury including death exists. Lives are being shattered.

Even the mighty Mayo Clinic doesn’t acknowledge differences in people based on flora regarding why Somali people react to rubella vaccination with twice the antibodies when it’s known Bacteroides dramatically induce high IgA production:
http://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-discovers-african-americans-respond-better-to-rubella-vaccine/
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1271/bbb.80612?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&#.VRrKNTsbAay

Mr. Bell, what documentation dated before 1990 shows the MMR caused the issues you claim in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s?

Chris, did you miss my OCD dig at you at #242?
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/28/prevalence-autism-past-may-have-been-underestimated

I’m still working on answering your question. I’m not a vaccine historian, but can assume the vastly increased vaccine schedule has a lot to do with it, i.e., administering MMR along with other vaccines, as previously stated. What were the differences in measuring autism? Age-based? What was coverage in the early days of MMR?

What about generational differences (microbial predisposition) due to environmental factors such as heavy use of glyphosate? We receive our flora from our mothers, so successive generations may become more vulnerable to vaccine injury.

Denmark associates MMR with autism with historical perspective beginning 1987:
http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/goldman.pdf

And as previously stated, a change in the MMR is strongly associated with dramatic increases in autism in the 1990s.

#251 Interesting study- Effects of Vitamin A Supplementation on Immune Responses and Correlation with Clinical Outcomes
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1195969/
WHO recommends Vit A supplementation for measles-All children in developing countries diagnosed with measles should receive two doses of vitamin A supplements, given 24 hours apart. This treatment restores low vitamin A levels during measles that occur even in well-nourished children and can help prevent eye damage and blindness. Vitamin A supplements have been shown to reduce the number of deaths from measles by 50%.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/

Keith Bell:

I’m not a vaccine historian

Gee, really? I’d never have guessed.

but can assume the vastly increased vaccine schedule has a lot to do with it

And you’d be wrong. “Too many, too soon” has been looked at and disproven.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2013/04/01/the-death-of-too-many-too-soon-not-a-moment-too-soon/

We receive our flora from our mothers, so successive generations may become more vulnerable to vaccine injury.
Supporting evidence definitely needed.

Denmark associates MMR with autism

False. In fact, horse droppings. A study performed in Denmark looked at every child born over several years. The sample size was over half a million. No difference between the autism rates of the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

And as previously stated, a change in the MMR is strongly associated with dramatic increases in autism in the 1990s.

The DSM-V changed the process for diagnosing autism. Also, citation needed for the “change in the MMR.

#251 “Many children in developing countries have a disordered gut, which contributes to their poor response to oral vaccines, Kang said. They suffer from a complex syndrome that involves gut inflammation, altered gut microbiome, intestinal infections with several putative pathogens, impaired nutrition, and impaired growth, according to Chris Wilson, director of discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But understanding the underlying causes for this syndrome and why vaccines don’t work in this environment isn’t easy, he said.Malnutrition seems to cause the gut to fail to maintain its immune and barrier function from pathogens, causing diarrhea and infections. This causes further gut damage and affects the gut’s ability to absorb nutrients, which makes the malnutrition worse, Kang said.”
http://www.iavireport.org/Back-Issues/Pages/IAVI-Report-15(6)-AGutResponsetoVaccines.aspx

And as previously stated, a change in the MMR is strongly associated with dramatic increases in autism in the 1990s.

I take it you missed the part where regurgitating D’Ohlmsted didn’t pan out so well.

I’m only using the story of Roald Dahl

All this digging up of corpses, you seem to have confused Respectful Insolence with Necrophiliacs Anonymous.

Narad, have you been breastfed yet? Better late than never.

Getcher bifidobacteria while you can, strongly associated with centenarians. They cross-feed butryate-producing clostridia. I suspect low bifidobacteria means higher risk of vaccine injury.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930426/
Impact of diet in shaping gut microbiota revealed by a comparative study in children from Europe and rural Africa
We can hypothesize that the reduction in richness we observe in EU compared with BF children, could indicate how the consumption of sugar, animal fat, and calorie-dense foods in industrialized countries is rapidly limiting the adaptive potential of the microbiota.

Narad, have you been breastfed yet? Better late than never.

In other words, you concede that you have no evidence whatever that the actual formulation was changed at any time, something that would require explicit regulatory approval, yet you just keep repeating the same thing anyway.

Are you going to get around to “host glycans … are carbs/sugar feeding our microbes”? Given that this is your avowed specialty, the level of rank ignorance that you display on basic matters is astonishing.

Mr. Bell: “Chris, did you miss my OCD dig at you at #242?”

Not the data I seek, especially since a BMJ rapid response is not verifiable documentation. The MMR was the preferred vaccine for the 1978 Measles Elimination Program. Now get to it.

Also, what is the ratio of the compensated NVICP claims to the total number of vaccines doses given in the USA since 2006? How big a number is it?

Also, the Midlands is in the UK, where there was not MMR vaccine being used until 1988. So that letter basically backs up that autism rates have not changed, it is just that they are being diagnosed now. Just like my son, who has just been recently diagnosed with autism, even though I was assured in 1991 he was not autistic. Apparently the criteria changed.

Also, Goldman and Yazbak are not qualified nor reputable. Goldman has a PhD in computer science from a diploma mill, and Yazbak defended a child murderer.

ken, that’s great stuff. Regarding vitamin A and measles, beta carotene is converted to vitamin A in the presence of bile acid. Quality of bile acid is regulated by flora, especially the BSH of B. longum. So there’s a root cause of vitamin A deficiency due to flora imbalance, especially when organ meats like liver are not part of the diet.

Narad, here ya go:
http://glycob.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/9/1038
http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v10/n5/execsumm/nrmicro2746.html

It’s how genes play a role in regulating microbial balance. Bifidobacteria are known to be low in some groups based on genes regulating secretor status:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0020113
So non-secretors found high in African Americans would be reduced in bifidobacteria, potentially at greater risk of vaccine injury. It’s possible males have lower amounts of bifidobacteria than females, never studied.

I’m only using the story of Roald Dahl to bring attention to the dietary/microbial mechanisms of disease.

No, you’re now just trying to wriggle away from again proving that when you find yourself hemmed in by your own stupidity, you’re left with nothing but your genuine nature, i.e., thoroughgoing asshοle, to fall back on.

Here you started with the comically brain-dead misreading of Kuss et al., which led you to say something stupid about poliovirus, and extended it with “I’d bet the same is true of measles,” which – on top of the failed premise – makes no fυcking sense whatever.

Naturally, the thing to do is start babbling with gems such as “of course, he was also a well-known bigot” and Andrew Freaking Moulden: “Vaccines are also known to cause stroke, cerebral microbleeds possibly due to high levels of uric acid and low levels of serotonin (gut origin).”

This further demonstrates, by the way, that you’re so g-ddamned stupid that you think 5-HT appears in brain by virtue of transport from the gut.

Chris, I’m very sorry to learn about your son. I would bet there’s much that can be done for him to reverse symptoms. Let me know if you’d like to talk about it directly. My email address is on my recent article. And thank you for the education in general.

Narad, do me the favor of reading my two page article where I briefly discuss the origin of serotonin in the brain. I’m sure you’ll have a field day.

I would deduce that Dan Olmsted fabricated his “informal conversation with a Merck scientist”, who he claims gave him information that we now know is provably wrong: there was no change in the potency of the mumps vaccine.

This doesn’t surprise me: when the father of one of the children in the Wakefield 98 fraud wrote to Olmsted and told him that Wakefield’s claims regarding the child were an “outright fabrication”, Olmsted lied on his website, omitting this information and pretending that the father criticised me.

Here is the letter:

http://briandeer.com/solved/dan-olmsted-child-11.pdf

Narad, do me the favor of reading my two page article

No, you’re free to spell it out here.

Gee you mean there was a reason that in the 1990s and 2000s there was all kinds of drug development for GI problems that were compounds that fit into serotonin receptors?

Who knew?

Mr. Bell: “I would bet there’s much that can be done for him to reverse symptoms.”

You are an idiot. He is twenty six years old, and he was not diagnosed as a child because while he could not speak he had the audacity to smile like any other three year old when he was diagnosed in 1991 under the DSM III.

You seriously don’t get that more forms of autism are covered under both the DSM IV and DSM V. The biggest difference between the two latest DSMs is that Aspergers and PDD-NOS are now both under the full autism spectrum umbrella. My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.

If you don’t know this bit of basic information, why would anyone believe anything you say.

Plenty of geniuses have had delayed speech including Einstein. Does your son have any GI symptoms? Has he ever had a PCR stool test? Recent article talks about up to 40% of those with autism also suffer epilepsy:
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/29/autism-ill-health-learning-disabilities-non-verbal-patients

Narad, where’s Science Mom when you need her? I’d also recommend Bimuno out of the UK (Kreb, I think you’ll also like this product), a GOS prebiotic to feed bifidobacteria.

Popular myth of Einstein speech delay: Unsupported by reality.

When he was between two and three, [Einstein] formed the ambition to speak in whole sentences… Then, when it seemed all right, he would say it out loud.

(Pais, 1982, p.36)

There is an Einstein family story from two well referenced biographies, The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Roger Highfield and Paul Carter, 1993 and Albert Einstein by Albrecht Folsing, 1997, translated from German by Ewald Osers. That story describes Albert’s comment when he was told he had a new baby sister to play with. He said “But where are the wheels?” AND he was 2 years and 8 months old when he said that. At that age my son had a dozen poorly enunciated single syllable approximations.

I learned to hate the lie about Einstein over twenty years ago. Just as I hated being told to read Thomas Sowell’s Late-Talking Children.

Mr. Bell, when you have dug as big as a hole you as you have, it is time to put away the shovel.

Did your son receive MMR? I thought the Danish autism study analyzing MMR beginning 1987 was quite good Have you ever considered microbial predisposition since you’ve had mumps twice? I maintain there’s much that can be done for your son you may not have considered. Plenty of people have reversed autism and associated epilepsy.

@ Bell

when it’s known Bacteroides dramatically induce high IgA production:

You will have to make up your mind at some point.

First, way upthread, you tell us that gram-neg bacteria are promoting virus infection and a gut flora with these bacteria is “unbalanced”.

Now, you quote an article about freeling gram-neg Bacteroides enhancing IgA production.
(interesting article, BTW. Thanks, I learned something.
See? Was it that hard to substantiate your claims?)

So, which is it? Should we have gram-neg bacteria in our guts, or not?

Narad, where’s Science Mom when you need her? I’d also recommend Bimuno out of the UK (Kreb, I think you’ll also like this product), a GOS prebiotic to feed bifidobacteria.

Your continued evasions are duly noted, Bellend.

ann, I’m only using the story of Roald Dahl to bring attention to the dietary/microbial mechanisms of disease.

Well.

Unless it’s your contention that the words a parent writes on a page have the power to affect the dietary/microbial mechanisms of a disease that killed his daughter two years earlier:

There’s nothing you know about his story that does that.

Mr. Bell: “Did your son receive MMR?”

This is amazing. You just keep digging. How, pray tell, does a vaccine given after a child is a year old cause neonatal seizures?

So, again, where is that verifiable documentation dated before 1990 that the MMR caused the issues you claim in the USA (do make sure you get the country right) during the 1970s and 1980s?

Serotonin imbalance of gut origin leads to glutamate excitotoxicity which in the prone sleeping position leads to SIDS when CO2 stimulates the serotonergic system. And also associated sugar imbalances leading to hypoglycemic seizure. And other ways such as clostridial toxin breach of BBB. Does your son have epilepsy? MMR in 1989?
http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/goldman.pdf

Amplified insulin secretion via alcohols produced by overgrown gammaproteobacteria and/or fungi lead to reactive hypoglycemic seizure. Was he preterm?

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Do you even know what neonatal seizures are? How does a vaccine only given after age one cause SIDS, which by definition means death of an infant of unknown reason under age one year? And how does breast milk cause sugar imbalances?

And why would I care about a paper published on an anti-reality political screed by a guy who bought his computer science PhD and another who helped get a baby killer out of jail?

Since you keep digging, you have a new task: provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that the American MMR causes more seizures than measles.

Did your son suffer Infantile Spasm currently treated from the neck up? You’ve misconstrued what I stated about SIDS and breast milk. The pertussis and pneumococcal vaccines are infamously associated with causing seizure.

Ever try a low carb diet with him?

What do you recommend to reverse an intractable-to-treatment seizure disorder for those who have Lennox Gastaut seizures, Keith Bell.

(hint) low carb diets do not reverse seizures of any type; strictly adhered to ketogenic diets only “work” for a small percentage of people.

Narad, see #265.

I only have a moment for this, but there’s one part that’s such a howler I can’t let it pass. The first link in #265 is

h[]tp://glycob.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/9/1038

Hearken back, it you will, to #230:

American Indians are the only group known to have 100% secretor status. This affects gut flora balance as the genes regulate host glycans making them susceptible to diabetes, but also viral-glycan interaction as posted above.

For this assertion, Keith refers the reader to “Blood Type Diet” D’Adamo. Now, let’s grab a quick passage from Marcobal et al. (citations omitted):

“FUT2, known as the secretor locus in humans, encodes a polymorphic α1-2-fucosyltransferase. Non-secretors, which are homozygous for non-functional alleles and lack α1-2-fucose residues in secretory tissues and on mucus, are at increased risk for several diseases including Crohn’s disease and celiac disease and have gut communities that are distinct from secretors, who possess the functional fucosyltransferase.”

Now, let us visit D’Adamo’s definition of the term:

“A ‘Non-secretor’ is someone, who through their own genetics, carries a gene which inhibits them from secreting their ABO blood type in their secretions. By secretions we mean saliva, semen, etc. Eighty-five percent of the population are secretors, so non-secretors are in a minority. If you are a secretor, you express more of your blood type in your body.

G—le is not your friend, Keith.

Mr. Bell: “The pertussis and pneumococcal vaccines are infamously associated with causing seizure”

Even before a kid got their first vaccine? That is remarkable. Especially years before one of those vaccines was available, and since due to the neonatal seizures the first pertussis containing vaccine he got was almost twenty years later. Wow. You are very stupid.

You really need to put that shovel away, dude.

Bellend’s #224 also immediately collapses as a consequence of this gaffe:

There is evidence that island obesity is not a recent phenomenon. But there’s also the genetic component [D’Amado] of the immune system based on host glycans which are carbs/sugar [which mucin is not, but he stopped with the first sentence of the W—pedia ‘glycan’ entry] feeding our microbes [Marcobal et al.]: [completely irrelevant reference]

This is a classic.

@Bell

Heli, of course you need gram-negative bacteria, but in balance.

The answer I expected.
And, pray tell, how do you know what this “balance” is?

For all we know, we may need a level of gram-neg bugs to have the positive effect on the immune system as described in the article in #251, which will turn out to be higher than the minimal level at which these bacteria will be helping virus infection, if your hypothesized mechanism turns out to be true.
Before listening to you and grafting myself some bifido, I think I will just keep eating my greens and regular yoghurt and let my gut flora sorts itself out.

On the other hand, thanks for the links. Again, interesting readings.
I noticed, in the second study, the authors claimed they didn’t found much difference between bacteria population following normal birth versus c-section. It’s funny, a few months ago someone published a book on the microbiome differences between children born one way or another (albeit after normal pregnancies, not ones complicated by diabetes), and one of his major finding was that there were differences. Although the same author noted that the microbiomes between the two groups converged after one year or such.
I would agree that there is plenty of things we don’t know about our microbiomes, and it’s a much worthy area of research, but I cannot help feeling we are still in the preliminary stages of discovery. It’s more buzz than science, right now. Well, I’m no expert, so my judgement is of limited value.

Apparently, Narad has never heard of mucin oligosaccharides. Makes one wonder what else he doesn’t know. He’s too proud to acknowledge he didn’t know our microbes consume host glycans, instead taking us of on yet another meaningless tangent about the source of a 1950 secretor status chart.. I’m still a fan, however condescendingly trenchant.

Chris, last I heard the CDC and AAP base their cruel vaccine protocol on the work of an criminal fugitive:
http://sharylattkisson.com/researcher-who-dispelled-vaccine-autism-link-most-wanted-fugitive/
So, your son suffered seizures before any vaccination. Sorry to hear that. That’s what I call microbial predisposition. Dravet syndrome accounts for only 2.5% of seizures post vaccination, btw. I’d bet he’s suffered gastrointestinal symptoms his entire life. There’s a lot you can do for him and, hopefully, he’ll take matters into his own hands sooner than later. Anticonvulsants only mask the problem and don’t work half the time, often exacerbating seizure disorders. Did he suffer any negative reaction to the pertussis vaccine he received possibly leading to this recent autism diagnosis? Any regression?

Heli, you’re a refreshing person on this page. Ever hear of PCR stool testing? Organic acid urine testing for microbial metabolites?

lilady, LGS Foundation has yet to receive a funding request to study gut origin of seizure. But they’re interested; I spoke with them about it last week. I don’t believe mechanism of the ketogenic diet is really about ketones, but flora shift. Plenty of evidence. “A more recent report demonstrated a significant rate of seizure freedom (30%) after 12 months in patients with LGS (Kang et al., 2005):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2676569/#R13

Keith Bell:

Chris, last I heard the CDC and AAP base their cruel vaccine protocol on the work of an criminal fugitive.

You heard wrong.

Young Julian Frost of small head. Last we communicated you were flying out of the womb wearing a cape, hitting the nearest wall. I apologize for hurting your feelings and destroying your childhood image of Roald Dahl, the bigoted sugar monster.

And the fool refuses to put away the shovel and stop digging.

If my son had been born a few years earlier, he would have been institutionalized for not being able to speak as a three year old. Instead he got lots of speech therapy and a diagnosis of a speech disorder. He has normal intelligence but other deficits, and diagnoses have changed over the years, and still more with DSM V.

Please clarify, Chris, did he receive HepB vaccination at birth or before age 3?

While the antivax crowd continues bleating “THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN” at any mention of Andrew Wakefield’s transgressions, one wonders why they haven’t dropped poor old Poul in favor of the CDC employee(s) who were charged in an alleged child molestation/bestiality case (starting back in 2011).

That should have been so much juicier a case to harp on (though last I heard, one suspect had been cleared and the other was a long way from being convicted):

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/lawyer-for-cdc-official-accused-of-molestation-see/nXmpp/

And I bet there is someone at Orac’s workplace (maybe in the laundry department, or more likely Administration) who has a prior criminal record, a stack of unpaid parking tickets or who once lived in Indiana. Can’t Olmsted, Attkisson or another ace reporter come up with such evidence and discredit this blog once and for all?

Mr. Bell: “Please clarify, Chris, did he receive HepB vaccination at birth or before age 3?”

I gave you his age, it is up to you to figure it out. Then no more prying into anyone else’s medical history. You have demonstrated you are totally incompetent.

#297 Excuse me? What country were you living in? Institutionalized for not being able to speak? This, I don’t believe.

Keith Bell, where did I mention that my “son” has Lennox-Gastaut seizures and where did I mention that the individual who has L-G seizures has Dravet Syndrome…or autism? Could it be that you heard about Dravet Syndrome being diagnosed as the real cause of L-G seizures following vaccination with the whole cell pertussis vaccine? The individual’s L-G seizures started after birth before any vaccines were administered and are caused by being born with zero platelets which caused a brain bleed and the development of a porencephalitic cyst which covers a large portion of the left hemisphere of his brain.

A real doctor would never make assumptions, about the etiology of seizures of any type and not attempt to tie his bullsh!t advice into his pet theory about gut flora.

No one believes you just happened to discuss L-G seizures with someone at the L-G Syndrome Foundation last week.

Keith Bell:

I apologize for hurting your feelings and destroying your childhood image of Roald Dahl, the bigoted sugar monster.

The only thing you have destroyed is your credibility.

@ Bell

I thank you for your kind words, but giving you a chance to elaborate on your assertions was just the right thing to do.
That doesn’t mean I’ll give you a pass when you keep bullsh!ting us. An activity I strongly suspect you are doing right now.

Apparently, Narad has never heard of mucin oligosaccharides. Makes one wonder what else he doesn’t know. He’s too proud to acknowledge he didn’t know our microbes consume host glycans,

What does the freel this has to do with anything?

To some extend, you are right, most people here don’t know much about glycoproteins. I will tell you why: not only it’s a very specialized area of research, but it’s also a freakishly complicated one.
The regulars could make fun of people ignoring basic chemistry, like sodium chloride being the name for table salt, but they don’t mock people for ignoring highly arcane science. You are showing the very arrogance and religious fervor you were claiming is ours.

So, since you claim to have some insight, unpack.
What’s all this furor about host glycans and bacteria?

#297 I have to admit they are pathologizing too many children.
It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys. If he is not seriously depressed what’s the point of that diagnosis. It is helpful if it makes him eligible for enriched programs for whatever limitations he has.

#301 What country do you live in that never at any point in history warehoused the developmentally disabled in institutions?

I think at least here part of the “OMG where did all these disabled people come from they didn’t exist before” is that they stopped putting them all in homes for the disabled and started providing community-based services where kids could live at home as long as possible.

I mean maybe one country or two could gave gone from locking them in the attic or letting them starve on an ice flow to fully modern community-base care in one big leap but I thought most at least for some time did the institution thing.

I know a lot has changed but it really wasn’t that long ago when it was pretty routine to institutionalize kids pretty early on if they had issues.

ken: “What country were you living in? Institutionalized for not being able to speak? This, I don’t believe.”

Look up the Willowbrook School for starters (there was a news documentary on it in the late 1960s). Then look up the “Education for All Handicapped Children Act” of 1975:
http://commons.trincoll.edu/edreform/2012/05/the-education-for-all-handicapped-children-act-a-faltering-step-towards-integration/

There are stories of deaf kids and intellectually normal kids in wheel chairs being refused access to public schools. It was very common to warehouse children in schools for the deaf, blind and “feeble minded.” Just go watch the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus” to see how recent that option was presented.

ken, your lack of historical knowledge is quite telling. The point is that things have changed greatly in even the last ten years on autism diagnoses, which is why my son and many of his special ed. preschool classmates are only recently getting an autism diagnosis.

ken: “It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys”

Ken, you are continuing to show your ignorance. While his IEP gave him the services he needed in high school, it was not complete, especially for the social communication aspect. In order to get supported housing, it turns out “autism” is the magic word for social services, plus the detailed evaluation.

Ooops, the quote “I know a lot has changed but it really wasn’t that long ago when it was pretty routine to institutionalize kids pretty early on if they had issues” was from Kaymarie.

I guess I just saw the first initial.

#307 Parents yes parents put their kids away. I had an aunt with a braindamaged child born in 1960 (NJ) who would never consider this. My friend taught in a school for the deaf 1970 NYC, another worked in south NJ at an institution. I was a caseworker in NYC 1969 ,had some child abuses cases reported, but no one forcibly took someones child away.

lilady, reread my post as what I said about a “son”, etc. was clearly directed at Chris, not you. What do you think causes Thrombocytopenia (low platelets)? Infection. Provide your email address and I’ll forward my conversation with LGSF.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22443637
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059131114001691
You say the problem began before vaccination? I don’t buy it considering protocol begins within hours of birth. It’s barbaric here in the USA. Europe doesn’t suffer such madness.

Heli, I’m sure you’re capable of answering that question. I’ve already unpacked enough here. Good day all. And thanks to Chris for being so forthcoming. And thanks to nobody here for reading my new article:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain

p.s.- Kreb, your views on sugar consumption are primitive. Here’s an article published today:
http://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/is-sugar-the-new-tobacco/Content?oid=2327174

#307 You seem to be of superior intelligence. Why didn’t you tutor him? Or are you just railing about the unfairness of it all?

ken, are you really that clueless? One thing I learned about having a child with multiple issues is how little I do know.

Something you seem to not understand, since you are completely clueless that you are completely clueless.

#297 You said “If my son had been born a few years earlier, he would have been institutionalized for not being able to speak as a three year old. Instead he got lots of speech therapy and a………..” This was your statement. So you would have instutionalized you child?

#314 You said he is of normal intelligence. What issues would have institutionalized him? Not speaking? WTF are you talking about.?

@ Kaymarie

I know a lot has changed but it really wasn’t that long ago when it was pretty routine to institutionalize kids pretty early on if they had issues.

A French actress once reported in an interview about her family life on how, a few decades ago, as she was walking with her disabled son, they met the old lady next door who, upon seeing her son, primly told her:

“When one has a child like this, madam, one hides it!”

She was quite glad that our western societies have evolved and became more inclusive.

@ken – given the lack of social services for those individuals back in that time, being institutionalized was perhaps the only option available to many families…especially ones that lacked financial resources.

Before making a bunch of stupid assumptions, why don’t you read about the Institutional system that used to exist in this country?

In the early 80s my son was born with severe spina bifida and hydrocephalus. The hospital staff put him on clear fluids only, told us to leave him at the hospital and “pretend you never had a baby” as he wouldn’t survive. Instead we took him home. He is now 34 years old and living independently.

Shortly afterwards his mother got talking to an old lady in the street. She said she used to be a nurse and added, with a disparaging look at my son, “in my day we would just drop them in a bucket”. Attitudes have, thankfully, changed.

#322 Good God! Sorry to hear this! In my hometown (nj) they were more compassionate. Growing up in the 50’s I remember the sweet little girl with the very large head. No one would say anything like that. In my HS we had a girl with severe scaling psoriasis that left her skin bright red. She also had an odor but we were all kind to her.

Jeebustapdancingchrist. . . are there any successful treatments for f**faceitis?

Chris, last I heard the CDC and AAP base their cruel vaccine protocol on the work of an criminal fugitive:

Meanwhile in the factual (non-Attkisson) world, Thorsen is not a criminal, is employed in Denmark in a non-fugitive capacity, and the papers in which he was a minor author were not the bases for anyone’s vaccine protocol. Kevin has struck a trifecta of misinformed stupidity.
He seems to be a bit needy for attention.

I’m actually amazed by ken.

Hey, ken, I was born in the 1960’s. We still had the “retard” room (sorry for the term, all, but that’s what we called it back then) where all children who didn’t fit into a regular classroom setting were kept. We had no interaction with them except to pass by the door and stare at them like they were monkeys in the zoo. They didn’t eat with us, they didn’t have playground time with us. They basically arrived at the school, were locked into their room, and let out back onto their special bus at the end of the day. We didn’t even know a single name of a child in there – OR even the teacher’s name.

Kids who probably now would be considered mildly autistic (I had one classmate who would throw violent temper tantrums when stressed) but who could talk, walk, and hear, were put into regular classrooms. They rarely thrived there, and often ended up being expelled. (The local Catholic schools had a thriving business taking in the kids the public schools kicked out as impossible discipline problems. I don’t know if the families paid – which, with all the blue-collar families might have been a financial problem – or if the school district had a special arrangement with them and paid part or all of the cost.)

But we never had “different” kids in our classes – not even kids who had ambulatory issues only (a broken limb was different). Everyone was either dumped into the “retard” room or not in the public school.

ken: “So you would have instutionalized you child?”

How would I know? I was never given the option because of a law enacted eighteen years before his birth. It was at that time that I asked the preschool teacher what happened to kids like him, and she said most likely only allowed in an institution. This was just after autism became part of the disabilities served under IDEA in 1990, it took a few years to become policy.

From ken’s CDC link: “The prevalence of any DD in 1997–2008 was 13.87% ”

Anyone with a modicum of statistical knowledge will know this is actually less than the percentage of the normal distribution below the first standard deviation.

From clueless ken: “Sorry to hear this! In my hometown (nj) they were more compassionate. ”

You really don’t know that, since you were a child. No one knew about Arthur Miller’s child until shortly before is death. The 1950s was the time of “family secrets”, some of which only get uncovered years later. It took some digging to find out what happened to one of Henrietta Lacks’ children.

The fact remains that there were places like Willowbrook and others like Belchertown. Your anecdotes do not wipe out all of history, it just shows you are a clueless jerk.

#312 There were gains prior to 1975-
“In 1963, Kennedy established the Division of Handicapped Children and Youth and revitalized the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped. He sent missions to study international programs for disabled children and pushed for greater rights for the disabled, especially those with mental disabilities. Grassroots movements were instrumental in creating awareness of the inequalities facing the disabled but the movement also benefited greatly by having someone of Kennedy’s stature behind it.”
http://www.commons.trincoll.edu/edreform/2012/05/the-education-for-all-handicapped-children-act-a-faltering-step-towards-integration/

#330
Yes, you have superior anecdotes. You supply insufficient info then attack when someone questions exactly what you mean.
I really feel sorry that you all have to shore up your egos by nasty remarks.

ken: “Yes, you have superior anecdotes.”

The blue words are links, click on them. The link you gave was a more formal paper of the one you just posted.

Mr. Bell: “What do you think causes Thrombocytopenia (low platelets)? Infection”

Yes, mostly from measles, which is one reason we try to prevent it by the MMR.

“Provide your email address”

You are obviously too stupid to understand why I will not do that.

Keith Bell. What kind of doctor are you? You never even inquired about the individual’s age. He is 39 years old…born in 1975 before the implementation of the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine and born seven years before the development and licensing of the first hepatitis vaccine. You’re a health care professional wannabe, a poseur and a liar.

http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p4205.pdf

Ken, do you realize you are commenting on a thread with people who have developmentally disabled children and who are far more educated about the federal and state laws enacted to educate those children and to provide funding for the development of alternative living arrangements outside of those large institutions?

I should perhaps point out that my experiences were in the UK, but from what I have read things were much the same in the rest of the (so-called) developed world. I remember reading in Stephen Jay Gould’s books about the horrific way the disabled were treated relatively recently (very recently in some countries). Eugenics was popular among many otherwise great people – Marie Stopes and George Bernard Shaw spring to mind, but there were many others. For some reason eugenics went out of fashion when Nazi Germany slid right the way down its slippery slope.

@Kreb – and we are still talking about compensating victims of the American Eugenics program, where those of “feeble-mind” were routinely sterilized….

ken: “It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys”

Ken, you are continuing to show your ignorance. While his IEP gave him the services he needed in high school, it was not complete, especially for the social communication aspect. In order to get supported housing, it turns out “autism” is the magic word for social services, plus the detailed evaluation.

No kidding. ken would probably say that it’s sad that I have to think of myself as disabled –that VA check every month takes away the sting, though.

@Lawrence
Not so long ago they were still finding old ladies, tucked out of sight in institutions, who had been forcibly sterilized and institutionalized for getting pregnant out of wedlock when they were girls. Maybe it still happens. IIRC Scandinavia was particularly bad in this regard.

Keith Bell isn’t a doctor. According to greenmedinfo.com he’s a veteran of the recycling industry and is about as qualified to speak on medical issues as your local sanitation worker.

@Kreb – it was a “not-so-little” secret, especially across the American South – particularly in Virginia, North Carolina and Mississippi, where active programs victimized thousands, if not tens of thousands – most of whom are no longer alive to testify to the horrors they were subjected to, of course, completely against their will.

Once you scratch the surface, you really begin to see exactly how many people disappeared into the “Institutional” system, and those who were carefully hidden away by their families.

@#331 —

Meanwhile, his sister Rosemary was hidden away in an institution, which he used to explain by saying she was reclusive, back when he was Senator Kennedy.

It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys

What an absolutely awful thing to say. I mean, talk about bigotry.

It’s not an either/or, ken.

@ann – which is why it pisses me off when anti-vaxers try to claim that these people didn’t exist in the past…..they were always there, hidden out of sight and certainly not discussed in “polite company.”

@CTGeneGuy #342

So the oriental medicine guy is also the veteran of the recycling industry? Or are they two different people with the same wacky views, which would be a stunning coincidence…

#344 You completely took this out of context. This is what Chris said #273 “He is twenty six years old, and he was not diagnosed as a child because while he could not speak he had the audacity to smile like any other three year old when he was diagnosed in 1991 under the DSM III.
You seriously don’t get that more forms of autism are covered under both the DSM IV and DSM V. The biggest difference between the two latest DSMs is that Aspergers and PDD-NOS are now both under the full autism spectrum umbrella. My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.”
I suffered from depression- I would not like to have my identity
known and broadcasted as a depressive. I sometimes relapse.
My point-“labels”- good only for increased services for that diagnostic category. Not an “identity” as in he’s an “OCD” etc.
even though labels explain atypical behaviors.

It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys

You completely took this out of context.

Well, can you clarify, ken, how – instead of as “someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys” – will someone diagnosed with autism have to think of themselves?

a-non: Wow, it is a coincidence! I googled Keith Bell and just assumed the deep woo acupuncturist that popped up was our Keith (for obvious reasons). But you’re right – the greenmedinfo bio is clearly the recycling guy.

Sorry Virginia acupuncturist guy, for confusing you with someone who is deep into pseudoscience and…wait…

Ken seems to think that life for the disabled back in the “day” was nothing but wine and roses it seems……what arrogance and stupidity combined.

#351 Wow this is such a dumb remark with no basis in reality I can only assume you like to bait people with outrageous statements. I think you are the arrogant and stupid one. I worked in social services in NYC for 10 years in the 70’s and was well aware of problems of the disaabled having WWII vets,children with sickle cell anemia,schizophenics, mentally retarded, alcoholics etc on my caseload who had to depend on Public Assistance.

Then you’ve just proven that your statements before are completely off-base and stupid.

If you do have that experience, then you should know better – your remarks up to this point have been nothing but trollish and vile.

I think the Kennedy’s kept Rosemary in some of the finer institutions after her royally botched lobotomy, but for most I’ll bet it was grim as hell.

I suffered from depression- I would not like to have my identity
known and broadcasted as a depressive. I sometimes relapse.
My point-“labels”- good only for increased services for that diagnostic category. Not an “identity” as in he’s an “OCD” etc.
even though labels explain atypical behaviors.

I’m not quite sure what you mean here. I’m a depressive myself, and I don’t exactly want that “identity” broadcasted, I suppose, but I am open to a reasonable degree IRL about the fact that I have/have had mental health issues. I think it’s important, actually, to be more open about these things, because making them into closet skeletons only adds to the general feeling of shame and stigma a lot of people feel about them, feelings that lead a lot of people not to get help when they need it, and subsequently to extra pain and suffering, possibly death, etc. I have to admit that I am not open with most people IRL about things like past suicide attempts, hospital stays, etc., since the stigma around those things is still pretty damaging, actually. It’s apparently still funny to make jokes about “crazy” people being locked up, etc., after all.

I mean, labels can be useful sometimes. All that language even is is a collection of labels, and it’s how we communicate with each other. Is “depressive” an “identity”? I don’t know, but it’s a word that references a thing I experience, maybe partially as a consequence of the way I am generally wired.

In any case, you’ve repeatedly failed to show any sort of sensitivity, intelligence, nuance, or actual compassion here, particularly in regards to the way you’ve treated Chris, so I’m not sure who I’m actually saying this to, but whatever.

@#348 —

I second the request for clarification. Because I saw the context. And I still can’t see another way to read that sentence.

If you wouldn’t say “It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as diabetic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to find meaningful activities that he enjoys,” why would you say it about autism?

It’s stigmatizing, bordering on dehumanizing.

ken @ 52: If you really worked in social services in NYC during the 1970s, then you must be aware of the deplorable conditions that existed in the Willowbrook institution located in the borough of Staten Island, which required Federal Court intervention and the signing of the Willowbrook Consent Decree:

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/archives/consent.htm

Senator Robert Kennedy (Dem-NY) visited Willowbrook during 1965 and appropriately described it as “a snake pit”. Geraldo Rivera, a local TV reporter gained entrance into Willowbrook, as the “Willowbrook Class” had just filed suit in Federal Court. Surely you must remember the film that showed the deplorable conditions that existed at Willowbrook that was shown on New York television, ken:

JP: “particularly in regards to the way you’ve treated Chris”

Thank you. That sentiment is quite appreciated.

ann; “I second the request for clarification. Because I saw the context. And I still can’t see another way to read that sentence.”:

Thanks to you also. Tomorrow I need to call a mail order pharmacy because they will not fill his heart meds due to outdated insurance information (despite my efforts to update it). I will introduce myself as his authorized representative, but because I have not signed the paperwork to that effect specifically to them… I will force dear son to give it to them himself. It will both give him some experience in self-advocacy and illustrate how the system works for those with speech/language disabilities.

@Chris —

You’re welcome.

@ken —

First, and most importantly:

I’m not saying you’re a bad person, or trying to make you feel bad. Please take my word for that. It’s just that if you were responding to this…

My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.

…you make the situation worse not better by endorsing the stigma.

Secondly, by way of illustrating the point:

I suffered from depression- I would not like to have my identity
known and broadcasted as a depressive. I sometimes relapse.

I’m sorry that you suffer from depression, and glad to hear that you were able to avail yourself of an effective treatment.

But if you grew up in the ’50s, it should be well within your living memory how vanishingly slight the chances of that would have been a very short time ago. Because until very recently, depression was popularly regarded as a character defect and/or sign of weakness, due to stigma. Especially in a woman. (Hysterical, neurotic, etc.)

I mean, ineffective as antidepressants are for many people (and overprescribed as they are, too), they’re a workable option for some. And forty years ago, it would have been even more definitively unavailable than CBT. At least that existed.

That’s progress of a kind.

So there you have it. Calling things what they are without prejudice is not a cure-all. Obviously. But it’s a start.

Apparently, Narad has never heard of mucin oligosaccharides. Makes one wonder what else he doesn’t know. He’s too proud to acknowledge he didn’t know our microbes consume host glycans, instead taking us of on yet another meaningless tangent about the source of a 1950 secretor status chart..

There’s so much comedic posturing in here that it’s going to take hours, which I didn’t have yesterday and probably won’t have tonight. I’ll start with the easy one.

Bellend tosses out out “secretor status” for no discernible reason in #230, citing D’Amado citing Genetics and the Races of Man citing “Matson, G. A., and C. L. Piper, A. 1. P. A., 5, 357-368 (1947).”

Add competence in citation to the list of talents that D’Amado the Lesser, naturopath, does not possess.

“A. 1. P. A.” turns out to be the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, with 1947 being – as W—pedia informs me – still within the tenure of its founding editor, who forbade standard deviations. It’s DOI 10.1002/ajpa.1330050307, but I’ll save you the trouble.

This is clearly embedded in D’Amado’s boneheaded worldview in which O is the first blood type, etc., time to make up diets! This is far dumber than the competing pseudo-evolutionary claims of both vegetarian and “paleo” True Believoroonies.

And now, even the easy part necessitates a break. It will pick up with Keith’s previously spamvertised “Part 2.”

* “It should be mentioned also that A₂ is lacking or extremely rare among native Hawaiians (Nigg, ’30) in which the distribution of the 4 blood groups resembles that of the Blackfeet Indians…. It seems that the incidence of A₂ is low or absent in the more primitive and isolated races.”

(and also Polynesians, because reasons)

“It should be mentioned also that A₂ is lacking or extremely rare among native Hawaiians (Nigg, ’30) in which the distribution of the 4 blood groups resembles that of the Blackfeet Indians…. It seems that the incidence of A₂ is low or absent in the more primitive and isolated races.”

Eeeew.

Eeeew.

I thought the title of the journal and the year would suffice as a tip-off to the nature of the literature. You know what the WAPF logo is supposed to signify, right?

You know what the WAPF logo is supposed to signify, right?

I did not, but now I do. Bleh.

@ ann

Calling things what they are without prejudice is not a cure-all. Obviously. But it’s a start.

Precisely.
I had the feeling that two issues were conflated in the conversation.
On one hand, there is the accuracy of the diagnostic done for one’s issues.
On the other hand, there is the level of “broadcasting” of said diagnostic.

The latter may lead to social stigma and peer pressure, including “you have to think of yourself as broken” issues. One can hope it can also lead to getting support and help from friends.

The former is about knowing that ails you or yours. If one wants to “take control of your own health”, to use an alt-med motto, getting a proper diagnostic is the mandatory start. Pussyfooting around frightening words is not helping.

#360 “My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.”
Ann said…you make the situation worse not better by endorsing the stigma.
My point was that it says very little about the person. This blog villifies Jake Crosby who happens to have Asperger’s.

I second Calli, Militant Agnostic!!!

I had just been discussing the putative benefits of yogurt with my wife before I came to the computer and read your link.
It got my day off to a good start.

My point was that it says very little about the person. This blog villifies Jake Crosby who happens to have Asperger’s.

Maybe, but it’s not because Crosby has Asperger’s – it’s because of his actions and general cluelessness. A person with autism or a mental illness or whatever can still be a dummy or lack a moral compass or do awful things – just like a “normal” person can. The whole point is not to conflate having some condition or other with being a crappy person.

I don’t think enough has been said about parents like mine,and like the others here,who went against the conventional wisdom of the day to keep their children out of homes an institutions back in the day.

I know I have told this before,but I am probably about the same age as MI Dawn.I had many serious developmental delays,learning disabilities,and behavioral issues.I was diagnosed with autism in 1971,when the DSM-II was in use.I was diagnosed right after my second major regression,when a severe head banging meltdown in gym class triggered an evaluation that led to my autism diagnosis.My diagnosis was such,that the psychiatrists and psychologists that did the evaluation thought I was severe enough to be put in the infamous Rosewood State Hospital,which was just down the road from where we lived at the time.

http://www.asylumprojects.org/index.php?title=Rosewood_State_Hospital

Rosewood itself has an interesting connection to Leo Kanner and the history of autism.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/03/baltimore_s_rosewood_scandal_wealthy_families_sprang_asylum_inmates_to_be.html

My mother was so appalled and scared by this,that we went to court to keep me out.I spent a couple of years in and out of the special education “retard rooms” of the time,so I know all to well what these classrooms were like.Children with intellectual disabilities were thrown in with kids who were simply trouble makers,who would no doubt spend the rest of their lives in trouble with the law.It was chaos,and no one learned anything.

It was about this time I also developed my many serious medical problems,that would remain undiagnosed until my late 40s and 50s.Cerebral folate deficiency,inborn errors of metabolism,and mitochondrial disease.It was only because I lived with my mother until she died,that I was able to survive to where medical science could identify my problems,but I nearly died several times along the way.

One big problem with the anti vaccine movement is they are completely ignorant,one might say willfully so,of the way disabled people were treated,warehoused,and ignored by society not that long ago in our history.This is one reason why the likes of Anne Daschel,and the rest flying monkeys at AoA can get away with saying what they do.Daschel and AoA are definitely some of the worst,but Safe Minds and the rest are not that far behind.They completely gloss over the fact there are those like liladay and Krebiozen here who were fighting in the trenches long before anybody knew who Andrew Wakefield was.

@ken:
Care to explain how much of that money would he personally see as opposed to, say, paying for equipment and for running the lights and water and for supplies and for research assistants and for sweeping the floors and for lots of other researchy things?

#370 #371 Obviously.

Well, it sure didn’t seem like it was obvious to you, ken. You were apparently objecting any sort of criticism of Jake Crosby because he “happens to have Asperger’s.”

Actually, like many cranks, you seem to have difficulty understanding causal relationships in general; I have remarked before that a lot of cranks and quacks and what-have-you may, on occasion, even have their facts relatively straight, but they seem to have problems with the understanding and correct usage of the words “thus” and “therefore.”

For instance, in the several-years-old bizarre conspiracy theorizing of Crosby’s that you linked to, he is correct that Orac once received a 30,000 euro grant from Bayer. However, he then somehow leaps to the conclusion that he is therefore a PHARMA SHILL and also, since Bayer has some tangential relationship to to GMOs and Orac received a grant through Bayer for breast cancer research, Orac is also therefore a GMO shill or something. If you can’t see the flaws in logic and thinking there, I don’t know what to tell you.

Roger @374: I thought the name Rosewood sounded familiar. My brother’s elementary school was right next door, so we occasionally drove through the grounds. When I saw it (in the mid to late 90’s) most of the buildings were boarded up.

At one point they housed a few mentally ill patients with criminal records, but one escaped and attacked a rabbi, so they stopped that program. (My brother’s school had to go on lockdown.)

It always struck me as a weird and creepy place.

By which I mean: Why would Orac need to address you directly? You’ve already been proven wrong on every possible level.

@ ken

Perhaps Orac’s simplistically dismissive answer can best be explained by the 30,000-euro grant he received directly from Bayer

Money which he has to spend to buy stuff for his lab, pay the electric and phone bills and provide a stipend to the occasional student.

You have no idea how little € 30,000 is, for a biological or chemical lab. And you have no idea how stiff private companies could be when entertaining the idea of having an academic doing a bit of scientific research for them.
Not enough to buy our everlasting loyalty, that’s for sure.

Give me public or NGO funding any day.

The Pharma shill gambit. How cliché.

Well, I was entertaining some doubts about our current visitors, but they went out of their way to show their true colors in their last posts.

@ Keith Bell

Do you want a glass of water?

Keith Bell – I read your article and clicked on the links. I’m not impressed, to be honest. The first article simply wondered if oral vaccines were impacted by an infant’s gut flora, and they looked at both oral and parenteral vaccines. However, at least in the abstract, they didn’t give enough information to me about the results (and I can’t check the full article).

Not all mothers can breastfeed. Not all infants can be fed at birth for various reasons. Most premature infants are vaccinated on a modified schedule until they have “caught up” with their birth cohorts.

Your article seems to me like it’s simply a lure for people to buy your items. Again, not impressed.

#377#386 You can’t connect the dots. It is obvious to me your thought processes are not objective nor unbiased.

I am sure that Orac is a skilled and highly competent breast surgeon and dedicated to providing the best possible care to his patients.

Ken, let’s connect the dots. Which would bring a greater profit: Prevention of diseases, or treatment? How do we know you’re not being paid to make sure diseases like measles and mumps come back and bring in new profits for the hospital supply companies?

@ken:

So what? I’ll happily “defend” GMOs as well – I think they’re products of great technology and have the potential to be very beneficial from both an ecological and human welfare standpoints. I’m not getting paid to say that, either, but I kinda wish I were. It’d be a nice supplement to my grad student pittance. (My U takes unusually good care of us, actually, so I shouldn’t complain too much.)

I’m often a fan of Mother Jones, actually, but that article you linked to is crap. Neonics are not responsible for colony collapse disorder. This has been established for a while now. And that other link you provided, to that screed on some crank conspiracy website? Puh-lease. Gimme a break.

Honestly, I was willing to give you at least some kind of benefit of the doubt, ken, but you have repeatedly demonstrated the intelligence of somebody who’s been brained with a f*cking two-by-four, and been an a**hole to boot.

@Helianthus:

You have no idea how little € 30,000 is, for a biological or chemical lab.

I have no doubt that he’s diligently looking up what the expense breakdown on a typical grant of that amount is. After all, that’s the intellectually honest thing to do.

#377#386 You can’t connect the dots. It is obvious to me your thought processes are not objective nor unbiased.

The reason I can’t “connect the dots,” deary, is that I actually have some functioning gray matter between my ears.

“Connecting the dots” can be fun when you’re stoned or writing poetry or whatever, but it’s not exactly a great way to understand cause-and-effect relationships. I’d suggest you get your thinking straight if you can, which I’m beginning to seriously doubt.

#391#393 Citations please for your endorsement of GMOs. I like to hear both sides of the story without stooping so low as to insult .

Well, ken, despite the fact that GMOs are apropos of nothing here, maybe you’d like to take a look at this review of 1,783 studies concerning the safety of GMOs for a start.

And I don’t want to hear any sort of whining from you about “stooping so low” after the way you have comported yourself here.

@ken – perhaps because once you get past the “anti-Monsanto / anti-GMO” scare-tactics, you realize that there is quite a bit of actual real information on the safety profile of GMOs…..and that very little, if any of the science that shows they might “not” be safe is factual.

XKCD for the win. 😉 Thank you for that chuckle, MA.

Swallowing flies and spiders is the start of a slippery slope.

@ken:
Have you found that breakdown of grant spending yet? That seems like an important part of connecting the dots.

Thank you, Mr. Kulp, for telling us your story. Your mother sounds like a wonderful person.

By the way, biggest difference between Young Master Crosby and my son, my son is actually a nice polite young man who would never ever stalk anyone (well, he is too shy, and has anxiety).

#395 I see nothing here about the human consumption of GMOs

I am shocked – SHOCKED! – at your utter lack of reading comprehension. Try looking under the heading nteraction of GE crops with humans and animals, sugar.

#395 I see nothing here about the human consumption of GMOs

I suggest reading down as far as the second page of JP’s linked review article:
Interaction of GE crops with humans and animals (GE food & feed) ……………….770 ………………. 43.2

@ Chris:

Speaking of Jake, his blog has gone nowhere quickly.

Similarly, Stagliano writes at an actual newspaper about April being the cruellest month or something ( see AoA).

#101 Orac the cowardly putz unable to defend his view or even address me directly after 300 posts on his heinous blog.

Kevin is coming across as a bit needy. Someone give him a hug.

#395 and BTW this was not a debate about deplorable conditions in institutions which I was more than aware of having heard of the horrors of Greystone in my state of NJ. I didn’t know what Chris was talking about. I assumed she would never ever consider placing her child of normal intelligence in an institution for not being able to speak by the age of 3. She was not clear on what she meant. Yes parents
were advised to do this. My aunt in 1960 had a brain damaged child(lack of oxygen at birth) who she loved dearly and would never ever consider this.

My point was that it says very little about the person.

If that was your point, I agree with you.

But what you said was:

It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys

And by characterizing autism as “sad” and incompatible with enjoying meaningful activities, that makes the opposite point.

This blog villifies Jake Crosby who happens to have Asperger’s.

This blog doesn’t treat Jake Crosby any differently than it does anyone else who expresses the same or similar views.

@ken:

Well, look who’s the Mayor of Excusesville. When you ask somebody, sweetheart, point blank if “[they] would institutionalize their child,” you are insinuating that yes, they would. If you can’t see or cop to that, you are either dishonest or exceptionally intellectually and linguistically challenged. I suspect both.

You are also an a**hole when you say things like that, because you are making assumptions about and passing judgment on someone about whose situation you know nothing, and you are deliberately trying to cause guilt, self-doubt, and emotional pain. If you can’t understand what’s wrong with that, then you are severely morally challenged, and I suggest you go crawl back into whatever swampy, stagnant pool you emerged from and stay there.

This blog villifies Jake Crosby who happens to have Asperger’s.

We seem to agree that Crosby’s neurotypicality or atypicality is not relevant to his intellectual dishonesty.

#408 You cannot grasp rhetorical questions?

Yes, scuzzbucket, I can. That’s the whole f*cking point.

#408 “disappointed” was the operative word in the statement he made.
This is what Chris said “My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.”
Please explain what he meant.

JP: “You are also an a**hole when you say things like that, because you are making assumptions about and passing judgment on someone about whose situation you know nothing, and you are deliberately trying to cause guilt, self-doubt, and emotional pain.”

That is how these guys work, JP. It is part of the anti-vax autism hate playbook. Since I have been dealing with these folks for around fifteen years, I have cast iron backbone and generally ignore the crass heartless idiocy.

It was quite common on a listserv I was on for my son’s disability to have folks lay on all sorts of guilt trips if someone did not do the latest quackery. A little over ten years ago it was chelation, and I researched it, posted an email titled “Bad Idea” and got lots of nasty-grams posted to my email directly (avoiding the listserv moderator).

One of the “parents” turned out to be an employee of Jeffrey Bradstreet. She was trolling the listserv to get more victims to his quackery. After I found out, I quit that listserv.

Then a week later a little boy was killed by chelation. He was executed just because he had autism.

It is people like that little boy’s executioners that ken celebrates as heroes.

@Chris:

I’m sorry that you’ve had to put up with that kind of crap; it bothers me that you do, and I’m glad you don’t let it get to you.

I do feel it worthwhile, at least the moment, to explain all of ken’s failings to in exquisite detail and simple, easy-to-comprehend language. For the sake of her own edification.

@JP:
She still hasn’t figured out how little a €30,000 grant will get you. It’s almost like she’s afraid of the answer.

$32, 685 (in USD) is barely going to pay the salary of the department’s administrative assistant for one year.

#416 disappointed” was the operative word in the statement he made.
“My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.”
Please explain what he meant.

Mg G-d, but you’re a moron. I am neither Chris nor her son, but please allow me spell out for you, O Stupid One, what I am quite sure her statement meant:

Asperger’s is perceived as a less socially, and otherwise, stigmatizing diagnostic label than autism is. So her son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s.

#424 Writers are encouraged to be cautious when using scare quotes, because they can be an evasive way of expression that will distance the writer, and leave the reader wondering if the author means what he or she is saying
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

Neonics are insecticides, so it makes sense that they could be deadly to bees at certain levels of exposure; I highly doubt that they are the sole cause of colony collapse disorder, which is indeed a worrying problem, although one that I feel has been the source of a needless amount of Chicken-Little-ism lately. There’s some evidence that it’s a cyclical phenomenon to an extent; I might try to find that article. It’s definitely a good idea to look into the possible effects of neonics, which is being done.

The EPA ban seems to me to have more to do with politics than it does with science, much like the EU ban on GMOs. I’m not totally certain about that, though.

In any case, I was sitting here scratching my head and trying to imagine what you could possibly think this or your link has to do with anything, and it came to me: Oh, right. Bayer. You somehow think that because Orac received a 30,000 euro grant for breast cancer research, he’s somehow also involved in neonicontinois, GMOs, the Illuminati and the New World Order or whatever, because Bayer. Uh-hunh.

I don’t know if I am surprised or not that ken has not yet thought about the origin of the name of Bayer and “done some research” to help “connect the dots” in a Godwin-type way.

JP, I’d be careful mentioning the Illuminati around here.
The comment section is infiltrated, you know.

Jake’s bizarre ideas about people being bought by Big Pharma always make me laugh. I have actually been wined and dined at Bayer’s expense, albeit the diagnostics division, some years ago. They were trying to persuade me and my colleagues to lease a big expensive machine, but it didn’t work. In the discussions we had about choosing which machine to choose the quality of the food provided by the various companies’ reps did not figure at all, it was all about the price of the lease and the reagent kits, whether we could use home-brewed reagents and what assays the machine was capable of doing. The idea that I would support Bayer’s products because of this is ludicrous.

I remember, with a pleasant glow, the free bar at a bash thrown by another diagnostics company in Glasgow, again some years ago. They were a Finnish company so we were offered a literal smörgåsbord too (pickled herring goes great with beer). That bought them nothing at all, since we were already using their system and had no plans to change, but it was a hell of a night, and I found myself dancing wildly with a biochemistry professor at one point. The free fizzy vitamin C tablets at the Roche stand at the biomedical sciences conference the next day did nothing for my hangover, as I recall, nor did they buy any loyalty from me.

Based on some of the stories my father used to tell about his student days — never drink with Finns.

OK, so now that the kenkillfile is reenabled with Keith Bell commented out, I should return to my previous task. It’s not going to reach “part 2,” but that can wait, given that his most recent entry was simply a return to form:

Orac the cowardly putz unable to defend his view or even address me directly after 300 posts on his heinous blog.[*]

Anyway, I screwed up in #361, to wit:

Bellend tosses out out “secretor status” for no discernible reason in #230

There was indeed a stimulus, which I suppose is close enough to “a reason” in this case. But it started with #217 and culminated with the hopelessly diversionary response to GF’s comments 227&ndash228, in short, why did New World aboriginal populations succumb so readily to Old World disease importations?

American Indians are the only group known to have 100% secretor status.

It is an impressive feat to generalize to a continent from an N = 79 result among (a convenience sample of Utah) members of the Ute tribe.

At this rate, I’m never going to get to vaccines causing “excitotoxicity” causing “strokes” etc.

* I seem to recall that Keith had a loose grasp of the difference between F—ook, SBM, and here, but maybe that was someone else who was bitching for personal attention.

American Indians are the only group known to have 100% secretor status.
It is an impressive feat to generalize to a continent from an N = 79 result among (a convenience sample of Utah) members of the Ute tribe.

It’s a long time since I had any physical-anthropology classes, but IIRC the secretor status varies widely between Native American groups.
D’Adamo is simply equating O-group with Secretor because accuracy about the finicky details of the Lewis antigen system are not relevant to his purpose of selling books & merchandise. Keith Bell is passing on that simple-minded equation, because (1) Keith Bell, and (2) the details are equally irrelevant to *his* purpose of sheltering some ad-hoc hypothesis from a hostile world of facts.

It’s a long time since I had any physical-anthropology classes, but IIRC the secretor status varies widely between Native American groups.

I don’t imagine much of “substance” is going to be coming from KEITHBELL any time soon, but I’m sure the $6-and-change Microbiotanic Man* would have a quite a comprehensive tale to tell about the treponematoses were he only afforded the respect he deserves.

* Not a deliberate Venus and Mars reference, but whatever.

never drink with Finns.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia, and never try to out-drink Finns. They are professionals.

@ JP

Neonics are insecticides, so it makes sense that they could be deadly to bees at certain levels of exposure;

Neonics are already more or less banned in my part of Europa. We still have a few bee colony collapsing.

@ Narad

It is an impressive feat to generalize to a continent from an N = 79 result among (a convenience sample of Utah) members of the Ute tribe.

WTF?

*beat*

Sorry, I was busy having hysterics. And these wannabe “doctors” want to be taken seriously?
My old teacher in population biology would have had a fit.
Anyone with a passing knowledge in population dynamics – taught in the 2nd year in French universities – would expect populations organized in a constellation of tribes to follow the archipelago model: due to limited exchanges between distant “islands”, each island will tend to have a homogeneous population, and there will be big differences between islands, the more distant the higher the differences.

tl;dr: a sample size this low is bad enough with a well-mixed population, it’s beyond incompetence to use it on one restricted group of people among many populations segregated in tribes.

Neonics are already more or less banned in my part of Europa. We still have a few bee colony collapsing.

The other funny thing is that they are (I think still) used quite widely in Australia, and Australia’s never had a CCD problem. I won’t say they couldn’t be part of the problem, but it seems more likely to me that it has to do with parasites/viruses. Most likely it’s complicated and involves a lot of things, in any case.

Meantime, U.S. bee populations seem to be recovering despite continued use of neonics, and researchers in a recently published study presented evidence suggesting neonics did not drive CCD.

“The scientists—all independent and working in a cooperative agreement with the USDA-ARS Bee Research Laboratory—found that many past researchers often based their experiments on extremely high amounts of pesticides—far more than a bee would normally encounter in its life. They looked instead at field realistic doses of pesticides, although always testing at the high end of what bees might actually experience.”

“They deliberately fed honeybee colonies the neonic pesticide imidacloprid in a dose-response experiment based on real-world pesticide levels: 5 and 20 µg/kg doses are in the reported high range of residues present in pollen and nectar in seed-treated crops. They also included a 100 µg/kg dose as a worst-case exposure level, representing imacloprid applied to flowering crops. (That level caused a large kill of bumblebees in a 2013 Oregon incident.) Bee exposure occurred over nearly three weeks, longer than bees are usually exposed to neonics, so they they could not be accused of under-dosing them.”

“What did they find? Even at the highest dose of pesticide exposure, the researchers found no difference in the performance of the treated and untreated hives. They found no evidence that imidacloprid affected foraging activity during and after exposure in their experiments.”

“Directly contradicting claims by advocacy groups whose complaints prompted the forming of the White House task force, the longer the time period the less pesticides were found. “Bee Death Study Clears Bayer’s Insecticide as Sole Cause [of CCD],” concluded Bloomberg in its summary analysis. “A widely used insecticide developed by Bayer AG and tied to deaths of honeybees isn’t the main cause of the fatalities, University of Maryland researchers said in a study that may weaken arguments used by environmentalists seeking to ban the chemical.”

http://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/03/usda-study-concludes-neonics-not-driving-bee-de…

Mr. Bacon, the link is broken, although it seems to be on the website’s end.

Bees have gut flora, too, where microbial diversity is shifted due to toxic chemicals. There are lethal and sublethal effects. Chemicals like fipronil and imidacloprid cause a kind of “bee autism” including seizure activity:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.2889/abstract
http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004596
There are many papers about bee gut flora. Reduced or absent lactic acid bacteria in bees make them (and humans) more susceptible to gut injury leading to brain injury.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain

It’s not a simple matter of vaccines directly causing brain damage, but about susceptibility to intestinal injury based on flora balance which is different across individuals and races.

Bees have gut flora, too, where microbial diversity is shifted due to toxic chemicals. There are lethal and sublethal effects. Chemicals like fipronil and imidacloprid cause a kind of “bee autism” including seizure activity

It’s great how Keith throws out two unrelated papers – one of which he assuredly hasn’t read – as though they connect together to demonstrate his thesis and then just tacks on imidacloprid out of the blue for the hell of it.

Narad didn’t know bees have gut flora because he lives in a sterile world disconnected from the web of life. I sincerely doubt a single person here has ever considered the gut flora of bees. Certainly not Orac.

And there are still no studies about how any of the childhood vaccines affect flora balance or how microbial predisposition affects vaccine safety. Helianthus was still under the false impression the fetal gastrointestinal tract is sterile. What a joke.

If vaccine scientists are LUCKY, new probiotic adjuvants in development to improve vaccine response will also reduce risk of injury.

I sincerely doubt a single person here has ever considered the gut flora of bees.

Consider the gut flora of the bees, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin…

never try to out-drink Finns.

Amen. Sounds like the voice of experience.

And yet another article-which concludes-“It is … concerning that the same data set can be interpreted in such wildly contrasting ways by different scientists, for this is likely to undermine confidence amongst the general public in the scientific process.”
UK drew wrong conclusion from its neonicotinoids study, scientist says
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/26/uk-drew-wrong-conclusion-from-its-neonicotinoids-study-scientist-says

Fipronil, imidacloprid reduce honeybee mitochondrial activity

It’s like clockwork. When it’s pointed out that he has added two things to his original citation (that it had anything to do with imidacloprid and that the two insecticides are “like” each other), KEITHBELL frantically G—les for a word association, and to top it all off, stops with a press release for an in vitro paper that is wholly unrelated to the first one, simply lifting the word “immunoexcitotoxicity” from Russell Freaking Blaylock and tacking on some word salad to try to hold the mess together.

All the while ignoring the withering criticisms of Chengsheng Lu’s work, because all he knows how to do is take two conclusions (“something bad!” + “gut flora!”) and pretend to connect them regardless of whether Something Bad! is real or not.

American Indians are the only group known to have 100% secretor status.
It is an impressive feat to generalize to a continent from an N = 79 result among (a convenience sample of Utah) members of the Ute tribe.

Let us not forget that the whole “secretor” subject-change to a new area of ignorance originally metastatised from Kevin Bell’s claims about common illnesses — that vaccination is unnecessary because only unfit and unworthy people die from measles.
He addressed contrary evidence by ignoring it and shuffling to a new position, that only people with the “secretor” phenotype are endangered by measles.
IOW, about 75% of Europeans.

bimler, that’s not at all what I’ve said. Moreover, that’s not even my name. What I’ve talked about is vaccine safety, not elimination. And I brought up secretor status only related to the discussion about vulnerability of Native Americans/Hawaiians to disease. In fact, it’s the non-secretors known to have reduced levels of bifidobacteria making them potentially vulnerable to vaccine injury (which is not the same thing as death by contagious disease, as you’ve confused the issues). African Americans apparently have the highest rate of non-secretors according to the 1950 chart. This may be consistent with CDC fraud as admitted by William Thompson.

Keith: Then why aren’t African-Americans dying left and right to measles? It’s a contradiction that blows your absurd hypothesis out of the water.

Gray, read the paragraph I just wrote again and get back to me. The issue is African American males being more prone to autism by MMR per CDC. There are several reasons males are more vulnerable outlined in my latest article, but why African American males? My theory is reduced or absent protective bacteria such as Bifidobacteria, a matter of poor microbial predisposition. Moreover, they may also naturally have higher levels of Bacteroides known to increase antibody response compared to Lactobacillus.

@ K Bell

I sincerely doubt a single person here has ever considered the gut flora of bees.

Funny you should mention it. Wanna bet?

Funny you should mention it. Wanna bet?

“Veteran of the recycling industry” KEITHBELL has perhaps forgotten that he’s recycling this as well.

Keith, you brought that up in response to the question as to why American Indians were dying of measles. If that logic applies to one race, it applies to all of them.

African Americans apparently have the highest rate of non-secretors according to the 1950 chart.

I take it that direct replies are a bit much for you to figure out.

JP @450 — In physics lectures about Atwood machines, idealized systems of pulleys and ropes that are used to demonstrate how to use coupled equations to solve problems, I often say:

Consider the pulleys. They do not toil, but they do spin.

The students look even more confused.

Note to Orac: I hope you’re paying Narad well, he’s worth every cent.

And, interestingly, American Indians were found to be the only group of 100% secretors, directly opposite of African Americans.

Most people would think genetic predisposition explains “Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most”
http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/features/why-7-deadly-diseases-strike-blacks-most
(some studies show Whites suffer far more Parkinson’s than Blacks; lower levels of neuromelanin?)

But what about microbial predisposition?

I wish I could pay Narad to post comments on the many blogs where I have to contend with the relentless drivel from the AoA denizens.

Keith Bell, you never replied to my comment about Lennox-Gastaut seizures. Your copy pasta from the Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome website is a spectacular display of your ignorance:

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2015/02/26/poor-poor-pitiful-andy-wakefield-dissed-again-this-time-by-the-oregon-senate-committee-on-health-care/#comment-393203

Heli, perhaps because I brought it up last October, #372 here

Once again, a demonstration that nobody understands anything about the meanings of words or their combinations until KEITHBELL G—le-mines them for co-occurence.

Which does not “collapse the wavefunction” under any circumstances.

^ Ah, screw it, it’d take forever to do this systematically.

KEITHBELL: Why, precisely, do you think that microbial consumption of the intestinal mucosal barrier is a Good Thing?

Take care not to try to get away with the attachment/real-estate charade again.

Keith Bell@446

I sincerely doubt a single person here has ever considered the gut flora of bees.
Certainly not Orac.

Certainly not me. And I think rightly so. The problems with translating animal models to humans are well known. Even more so across classes. Still more so considering intestinal flora aren’t homogenous amongst our own species. And even still more so for complicated interactions between systems. Especially when we don’t are only beginning to understand of one of those systems.

All that is irrelevant though, because it makes no sense to be searching for a why when a there’s so much quality data showing a lack of even correlation.

@467

Note to Orac: I hope you’re paying Narad well, he’s worth every cent.

Everyone knows Orac doesn’t personally pay anyone. They’re both paid by Big Pharma.

Narad@465

I take it that direct replies are a bit much for you to figure out.

It’s like playing whack-a-mole. Except even when you get one it doesn’t give you the points. And the moles aren’t quite as intelligent.

@ K Bell

Heli, perhaps because I brought it up last October

Actually, no. Pretty sure the honeybee scientist I was discussing with doesn’t even know you exist.

It is impossible to appropriately respond to Keith’s posts without knowing the precise constituents of his intestinal flora (and percentages thereof).

Maybe his comments are influenced by a raging case of Candida overgrowth.

lilady, I certainly did answer your question and suggested focus on the gut in LGS. What do you think LGS really is? It’s just an umbrella term for describing seizures largely of unknown cause.
https://www.facebook.com/lgsfoundation1/photos/a.819161508167946.1073741827.100426110041493/819169274833836/?type=1&theater

I suggested LGSF add vaccine injury to their broad list of causes (30% unknown). Both LGSF and CURE have yet to receive a funding request to study gut origin of seizure while mechanism of the highly effective ketogenic diet is still up for debate.

Perhaps they’ll be some answers from a new project, the Rare Epilepsy Network (REN), including vaccine injury and gut connections.

#472, Narad, it’s not just about consumption as microbes play a huge role in the creation and maintenance of our first line of defense, stimulating mucin release from goblet cells. We feed them and they feed us including required vitamins and amino acids, a reciprocal relationship.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/73/6/1131S.long
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1471992/
http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/v8/n11/full/ismej201464a.html

#472, Narad, it’s not just about consumption as microbes play a huge role in the creation and maintenance of our first line of defense, stimulating mucin release from goblet cells it is my gigantic pile of errors that counts, not any specific one.

FTFY, Keith.

Keith Bell@477

lilady, I certainly did answer your question and suggested focus on the gut in LGS.

Lilady is absolutely correct given that the study you linked to in #294 makes no mention of an effect on the microbiome as a mechanism for the ketogenic diet.

[Ketogenic diet’s] utility in a variety of different epilepsies suggests that it might have multiple mechanisms of action.

“Multiple mechanisms of action” is not free license to insert your preferred nonsense as one.

What do you think LGS really is? It’s just an umbrella term for describing seizures largely of unknown cause.

Nope. That’s epilepsy you’re thinking of.

From the LGS Foundation website:

Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS) is a rare and often debilitating form of childhood-onset epilepsy. The syndrome is characterized by a triad of signs including multiple seizure types, moderate to severe cognitive impairment, and an abnormal EEG with slow spike-wave complexes. This triad of mixed seizures, abnormal EEG and intellectual impairment represents one of the most difficult forms of epilepsy to treat. LGS is also a physically dangerous epilepsy syndrome of childhood because of the frequent falls, injuries, and cognitive impairment that can severely limit quality of life.

How can you possibly torture that into the conclusion that LGS is an umbrella term for all idiopathic seizures?

I suggested LGSF add vaccine injury to their broad list of causes (30% unknown).

And why would they do that? Where is your evidence?

I do so love Keith calling us all Pharma Shills when all he’s trying to do is get us to buy the stuff off his website to balance our guts…

Pot, meet Kettle.

palindrom #466, consider the moments of inertia of a frictionless cat pinned to inverse, non-venting, lossless buttered toast…

capnkrunch

It’s like playing whack-a-mole.

More like whack-a-sealion.

To be fair though, Narad has not addressed the effect of the gut macrobiome.

Militant Agnostic@483

To be fair though, Narad has not addressed the effect of the gut macrobiome.

To be fair to Narad though, Keith has not made it easy. Have you taken a look at his article? It’s incredibly link dense and he never seems directly to a study so you need to get the name from of it from whatever site (ScienceDaily, etc.) he links to and put it into PubMed. And he makes a lot of claims so it’s incredibily work intensive.

The way I see it Keith’s arguments boil down to:
-Vaccines can cause injury to the microbiome
-Injuries to the microbiome can affect neurotransmitter levels, particularly serotonin
-These changes can have a neurotoxic effect that manifests as autism, epilepsy, etc.
-Probiotics*, particularly bifidobacterium, has an antinflammatory effect on the gut which translates to also being neuroprotective

But that premise and its relevant citations are mixed with a large amount of irrelevant (at least for the purposes of mounting a counterargument) talk of micriobiodiversity and other such. If Keith would be so kind as to provide the references for those base claims on which his platform rests without any hand waving I’d imagine Narad would have a much easier time.

*Which you can convienently buy directly from the same site the article is, GreenMedInfo. Only $42.95 for 60! What a steal!

A “salty” (as the aussies call them) might be a more appropriate treatment for Keith’s gut macrobiome than the marcoprobiotic suggested by Randall Munroe.

Injuries to the microbiome can affect neurotransmitter levels, particularly serotonin

I haven’t even gotten to reading that mess. KEITHBELL seems, on the surface, to have (1) asserted that excitotoxicty causes strokes, rather than the other way around, and (2) failed to take note of the fact that the brain makes its own serotonin and glutamate. I can scarcely imagine the horror if he tries to claim that the endogenous surplus can’t be handled as usual because something something Goaʾuld something.

Should this be Canis lupus? If so, would it be C. lupus lupus or C. lupus familiaris? Or might it just be a screwball, but existent reference to any C. lupus individual of color canus (grey)?

In any case, I have some C. lupus familiaris (um) material on the poopy pad downstairs, that I haven’t cleaned up yet.. I’m not about to use it as a suppository, so if anyone wants some…

Bill Price@489
It should indeed be Canis lupus. C. l. irremotus is the most natural and therefore best but due to government regulations they can only offer C. l. occidentalis. There’s also a blend of C. l. occidentalis and C. l familiaris that is a more gentle preparation.

Compulsive sea-lion syndrome is probably best treated with something more aquatic such as a salty.

#485, capnkrunch, thanks so much for reading and that’s a decent summation (and the most relevant feedback I’ve yet to receive anywhere) other than omitting the most important message: microbial predisposition. It’s not a simple matter of vaccines damaging flora balance, but what’s present at time of vaccination potentially dysregulating immune response. Btw, within all the article links are also links to the actual papers. Of course, there are also several direct links to papers.

Regarding LGS, may as well add ASD to causes as up to 40% of those with autism also suffer epilepsy. LGS is definitely a very broad umbrella.

Dawn, that’s not my website and I’m selling nothing, though I’d like to . . . lots of bills to pay and worlds to change.

Adam, she passed Sept. 2012 from a photosensitive seizure-related accident.

Narad, I’m not in disregard of the brain manufacturing serotonin and glutamate, but factoring the gut in this process. The brain is also known to make its own insulin, i.e., type 3 diabetes (Alzheimer’s). All the major neurodegenerative diseases including MS, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are now thought to begin in the gut.

Gut-brain is new territory for everyone, most especially the vaccine industry while Orac doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. No wonder he refuses to participate in this conversation given four (4) opportunities thus far since he has an entire company here willing to display barbaric oblivion:
http://www.brainfacts.org/across-the-lifespan/diet-and-exercise/articles/2015/the-mind-bending-power-of-bacteria/

“I can scarcely imagine the horror if he tries to claim that the endogenous surplus can’t be handled as usual . . . ”

I’m more concerned about serotonin deficiency than surplus since it’s correlated with SIDS and constipation.

Better to be a little behind than a big ass, Orac.

Btw, within all the article links are also links to the actual papers.

And, as you’ve already demonstrated here, you’re completely incompetent at reading the parts that you can see and almost too G-ddamned lazy to get copies of the ones that are paywalled.

Here, for example, is Keith’s incisive “analysis” of neurotoxicity. It’s no surprise that he ignored a request to summarize it here, because it’s word salad – a disjointed set of assertions with nothing more than links to random papers.

Check this out:

It’s stated boldly in many papers that serotonin doesn’t cross blood-brain barrier (BBB) as if gut-derived serotonin doesn’t enter the brain, yet papers show serotonin penetrates BBB.

The “studies” is this rarely cited 1967 entry, which is essentially impossible to evaluate without the whole thing, something I’m not doing for KEITHBELL today.

It’s not even clear why he includes it, but such is the nature of a blizzard of shіt. It’s a monument to his word-association modus operandi. Oh, and sure enough, Russell Freaking Blaylock.

This is a person who demonstrably can’t think and is really, really impressed by the “talent.”

Narad: “Russell Freaking Blaylock.”

This weekend I listened to one of Dr. Crislip’s podcasts. This one included jokes on how to hide a five dollar from certain medical specialists. Apparently you can hide cash from a surgeon by putting it in a text book.

Hey, I’m still learning about how the gut affects brain serotonin levels and gave a brief overview, including how serotonin crosses BBB into circulation and how tryptophan of gut microbial origin crosses BBB as precursor for serotonin production in the brain.

But in your small, compartmentalized world, Narad, it’s all about the brain. I’ve got news for you: your BBB is a joke. You can’t even acknowledge role of the gut in serotonin deficiency associated with SIDS (including vaccine-induced SIDS).

Gray, do you understand the concept of hypothesis? Who else is talking about gut origin of vaccine injury and epilepsy? You think it’s not a worthwhile avenue of study?

Gray, do you understand the concept of hypothesis?

It’s pretty apparent that KEITHBELL doesn’t, given the fact that he phrases his random connections as facts and is singularly uninterested in coming up with ways of falsifying them rather than simply churning out more.

Who else is talking about gut origin of vaccine injury and epilepsy?

Now, there’s a notable lacuna in Keith’s otherwise, ah, “remarkable” dot-connecting skills.

It’s not a simple matter of vaccines damaging flora balance, but what’s present at time of vaccination potentially dysregulating immune response.

Ah ha! I was so busy digging through the trees I didn’t see the forest. The microbiome is actually the least important thing here since you’re not claiming it as a mechanism. Here’s a revised list of my points of contention:
-Vaccines cause inflammatory intestinal injury
-The resultant elevated blood serotonin levels lead to neurological damage that manifests as autism, epilepsy, etc

Btw, within all the article links are also links to the actual papers. Of course, there are also several direct links to papers.

Not the Alzheimer one which was the first I tried. After that I just grabbed the title and Pubmed’d instead of searching for the link. It’s generally good practice to link either directly to the study or to the Pubmed entry when you are referencing studies.

Regarding LGS, may as well add ASD to causes as up to 40% of those with autism also suffer epilepsy.

Ah, I see what’s going on. You’re confusing correlation with causation. Don’t worry about it. All quacks make that mistake.

LGS is definitely a very broad umbrella.

I can’t figure out where you are getting that from. As I quoted from the LGS Foundation before, it is a very specific type of childhood onset epilepsy and by no means a wastebasket diagnosis for seizures of unknown etiology.

Dawn, that’s not my website and I’m selling nothing, though I’d like to . . . lots of bills to pay and worlds to change.

Sure but that’s your article endorsing bifidobacterium on a website that happens to sell it. Sure seems like far more of a COI than Orac has ever had.

Sure but that’s your article endorsing bifidobacterium on a website that happens to sell it. Sure seems like far more of a COI than Orac has ever had.

It may well not be Keith Bell’s COI, but it certainly appears to be one for the web site.

Correction: For a scientist, a hypothesis is where science begins, for a false scientist, a hypothesis is where it ends. We still require evidence.

Keith Bell: “Gut-brain is new territory for everyone.”

Yup, because Wakefield made it up wholesale ten years ago. The only people who are dumb enough to think it exists are laypeople who think they know everything (and are wrong about almost everything) and doctors who’ve let their brains fall out or graduated by accident.

capnkrunch said:
“Ah ha! I was so busy digging through the trees I didn’t see the forest. The microbiome is actually the least important thing here since you’re not claiming it as a mechanism.”

On the contrary, I am claiming the microbiome as mechanism. Doesn’t that feel good to consider vaccines aren’t the only problem in vaccine injury?

Politicalguineapig, you really don’t believe the gut-brain connection even exists? Tough crowd!

Good day all. It’s like pissing up a rope with this crowd.

Keith, if you want us to believe that something exists, you had best provide us with evidence of it. If I accused you of being a warlock and placing curses on people to make money selling medicine, would I have to provide evidence for my claim, or should we just set you on fire, just to be sure?

Good day all. It’s like pissing up a rope with this crowd.

I believe this calls for a little Ween.

The brain is also known to make its own insulin, i.e., type 3 diabetes (Alzheimer’s). All the major neurodegenerative diseases including MS, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are now thought to begin in the gut.

Ah, Passive Voice! Is there anything that can’t be done by it?

Keith Bell@510

On the contrary, I am claiming the microbiome as mechanism.

In what way? Everything you’ve been saying sounds like the microbiome predisposes some children to inflammatory intestinal injury from vaccines. Predisposing factors are not a mechanism. I’ve yet to see you explain how exactly the injury occurs.

Better to be a little behind than a big ass

should read as ‘better to be an asshole than a whole ass’, Keith Bell #496.

PgP makes me want to copulate. With extreme predjudice.

KBell: Dude, I’m still not convinced of oxytocin, and that, unlike the gut-brain connection, has been documented. Oh, and before you go on about how gut-brain has been ‘documented’ try finding sources who wouldn’t need to be double-checked if they stated the sky was blue. Heck, if Wakefield or you predicted rain in my area, I’d assume a drought was imminent.

Gray Falcon@511

If I accused you of being a warlock and placing curses on people to make money selling medicine, would I have to provide evidence for my claim, or should we just set you on fire, just to be sure?

You’d have to at least check if he weighs the same as a duck first.

-The resultant elevated blood serotonin levels lead to neurological damage that manifests as autism, epilepsy, etc

No, it’s serotonin deficiency, silly. Or maybe both, whatever.

Now that he’s flounced off yet again to bask in the satisfaction of another successful round of demonstrating that Orac is powerless in the face of KEITHBELL generally Sad Sacking the joint up, though, I suppose there’s nothing left to do but wait for someone to translate his concepts, kinda like with Shin Mochizuki.

It’s like pissing up a rope with this crowd.
I live a sheltered life and I have no experience of that particular cabaret act.

Poli-pig would probably have a very hard time believing in the gut-brain-heart connection where CO2 imbalances of gut origin affect the brain via the serotonergic system leading to cardiac arrest in SIDS.

Today’s news: “researchers induced cardiac arrest in rats by having them breathe carbon dioxide”
http://www.livescience.com/50389-cardiac-arrest-dying-brain-signals.html

CO2 is also used to quickly halt seizure. Who’s soaking-up CO2 in your intestines, pig? Or are intracellular microbes interfering with CO2 production in your Krebs cycle?

This group treats the body as would an auto mechanic. Parts are parts, but we’re not the only part. The vaccine industry doesn’t factor microbial predisposition in causing injury. Narad’s correct, we need science in this area, but so far I can’t find a willing vaccine scientist; struck out with three labs so far, probably all based on fear of jeopardizing future Pharma funds. Vaccine scientists aren’t really interested in safety.

Poli-pig would probably have a very hard time believing in the gut-brain-heart connection where CO2 imbalances of gut origin affect the brain via the serotonergic system leading to cardiac arrest in SIDS.

The words are English, correctly spelled and organised in a grammatically correct way, but make as much sense as “colourless green ideas sleep furiously”. If it were true that carbon dioxide was entering the bloodstream from the intestine, then wouldn’t methane and hydrogen sulphide do the same?

Not sure about hydrogen sulphide but hydrogen and methane do get into the blood stream from the gut and are transported into the lungs to be exhaled.

This is why hydogen and methane breath tests post indigestible by humans and fermented by bacteia carbohydrates produce data (some question as to how well they work for diagnosing things from the data).

They typically focus on those gases that humans generally don’t release as part of their normal metabolism. Some nonsense about signal to noise ratio or other.

do get into the blood stream from the gut and are transported into the lungs to be exhaled.

That’s the thing about carbon dioxide in the bloodstream… whereever it comes from — exercise, or basal metabolism, or someone blowing smoke up one’s ass — we have this mechanism called “breathing” that gets rid of it.

@ken:
Aren’t you at least a little bit curious about how a €30,000 grant will typically get spent?

Julian, the liver receives 80% of its blood flow via the portal vein from the intestines and other gut organs. Blood gases are definitely affected by intestinal flora. People with liver diseases also have abnormal blood gases.

Methane in the blood can only be the product of bacteria/archaea. Btw, methane cause constipation leading to low levels of serotonin.

“Various studies demonstrated that blood-borne methane in humans is mainly originating from
anaerobic fermentation in the large intestine. Methane can then traverse the intestinal mucosa
and be absorbed into the systemic circulation.”
http://staff.technikum-wien.at/~teschl/FFOeFH2015_UT.pdf

if it were true that carbon dioxide was entering the bloodstream from the intestine, then wouldn’t methane and hydrogen sulphide do the same?

I’ve an idea that it may be possible with higher absolute pressure across selective membrains; Particularly hydrogen sulphide. I suspect it *does* happen in some individuals.

I can attest that drinking ‘young’, unclarified wine with still active yeast can lead to spectacular results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharomyces

Auto-brewery syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is a rare medical condition in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system. Numerous cases have been documented in the medical literature. One gastrointestinal organism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has been identified as a pathogen for this condition… It has also been investigated, but eliminated, as a possible cause of sudden infant death syndrome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-brewery_syndrome

Auto-brewery syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is a rare medical condition in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system made-up bullsh1t. Numerous cases have been documented in the medical literature invented.

It was laughed out of court in a 2000 review:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10976182

The most recent case-study — featured heavily in the Whackyweedia article — was the work of an aromatherapy quack, published in a bottom-feeding mockademic ‘journal’… which was no obstacle to the HuffPost picking it up, followed by Fox News (by way of the Daily Fail and the Torygraph).

The Whackyweedia entry is deeply dishonest; the authors cite the critical 2000 refutation as support for the imaginary condition’s existence.

Right on cue, ken links to “The most recent case-study […] the work of an aromatherapy quack, published in a bottom-feeding mockademic ‘journal’ “.
It’s still the same fraudulent case-study from an essential-oil grifter.

I think the devil has a very good case for acquittal on appeal, based on complete incompetence of council.

1]
K. Iwata, “A Review of the Literature on Drunken Syndromes Due to Yeasts in the Gastrointestinal Tract,” University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1972, pp. 260-268.
[2]
H. Kaji, Y. Asanuma, H. Ide, N. Saito, M. Hisamura, M. Murao, T. Yoshida and K. Takahashi, “The Auto-Brewery Syndrome—The Repeated Attacks of Alcoholic Intoxication Due to the Overgrowth of Candida (Albicans) in the Gastrointestinal Tract,” Materia Medica Polona, Vol. 4, No. 29, 1976, pp. 429-435.
[3]
A. Dahshan and K. Donovan, “Auto-Brewery Syndrome in a Child with Short Gut Syndrome: Case Report and Review of the Literature,” Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2001, pp. 214215. doi:10.1097/00005176-200108000-00024
[4]
E. Jansson-Nettelbladt, S. Meurling, B. Petrini and J. Sjolin, “Endogenous Ethanol Fermentation in a Child with Short Bowel Syndrome,” Acta Paediatrica, Vol. 95, No. 4, 2006, pp. 502-504.
[5]
A. Hunnisett and J. Howard, “Gut Fermentation (or the ‘Auto-Brewery’) Syndrome: A New Clinical Test with Initial Observations and Discussion of Clinical and Biochemical Implications,” Journal of Nutritional Medicine, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1990, pp. 33-39. doi:10.3109/13590849009003132

To his credit, KEITHBELL* at least comedically demonstrated yet more of his trademark word association–based “reasoning.”

Julian, the liver receives 80% of its blood flow via the portal vein from the intestines and other gut organs. Blood gases are definitely affected by intestinal flora. People with liver diseases also have abnormal blood gases.

This is a weird attempt to… wait for it… recycle #265, with the bonus of utterly failing to understand what high pCO₂ means.

* I should perhaps clarify that I use this as his Name Of Power, whereas “Bellend” is reserved for his descents into utter scumbaggery.

1]
K. Iwata, “A Review of the Literature on Drunken Syndromes Due to Yeasts in the Gastrointestinal Tract,” University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1972, pp. 260-268.

[2]
H. Kaji, Y. Asanuma, H. Ide, N. Saito, M. Hisamura, M. Murao, T. Yoshida and K. Takahashi, “The Auto-Brewery Syndrome—The Repeated Attacks of Alcoholic Intoxication Due to the Overgrowth of Candida (Albicans) in the Gastrointestinal Tract,” Materia Medica Polona, Vol. 4, No. 29, 1976, pp. 429-435.

[3]
A. Dahshan and K. Donovan, “Auto-Brewery Syndrome in a Child with Short Gut Syndrome: Case Report and Review of the Literature,” Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2001, pp. 214215. doi:10.1097/00005176-200108000-00024

[4]
E. Jansson-Nettelbladt, S. Meurling, B. Petrini and J. Sjolin, “Endogenous Ethanol Fermentation in a Child with Short Bowel Syndrome,” Acta Paediatrica, Vol. 95, No. 4, 2006, pp. 502-504.

[5]
A. Hunnisett and J. Howard, “Gut Fermentation (or the ‘Auto-Brewery’) Syndrome: A New Clinical Test with Initial Observations and Discussion of Clinical and Biochemical Implications,” Journal of Nutritional Medicine, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1990, pp. 33-39. doi:10.3109/13590849009003132

[6]
K. Eaton, “Gut Fermentation: A Reappraisal of an Old Clinical Condition with Diagnostic Tests and Management: Discussion Paper,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. 84, No. 11, 1991, pp. 669-671.

[7]
A. Al-Awadhi, I. Wasfi, F. Al-Reyami and Z. Al-Hatali, “Autobrewing Revisited: Endogenous Concentrations of Blood Ethanol in Residents of the United Arab Emirates,” Science and Justice, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2004, pp. 149-152. doi:10.1016/S1355-0306(04)71707-4

[8]
S. Fleming, D. Marthinsen and H. Kuhnlein, “Colonic Function and Fermentation in Men Consuming High Fiber Diets,” Journal of Nutrition, Vol. 113, No. 12, 1983, pp. 2535-2544. http://jn.nutrition.org/content/113/12/2535.full.pdf+html?sid=ca1b1840-1887-4cc6-936d-1844793aa52c

[9]
S. Rao, C. Edwards, C. Austen, C. Bruce and N. Read, “Impaired Colonic Fermentation of Carbohydrate after Ampicillin,” Gastroenterology, Vol. 94, No. 4, 1988, pp. 928-932.

[10]
J. Sauer, K. Richter and B. Pool-Zobel, “Products Formed during Fermentation of the Prebiotic Inulin with Human Gut Flora Enhance Expression of Biotransformation Genes in Human Primary Colon Cells,” British Journal of Nutrition, Vol. 97, No. 5, 2007, pp. 928-938. doi:10.1017/S0007114507666422

[11]
W. Bivin and B. Heinen, “Production of Ethanol from Infant Food Formulas by Common Yeasts,” Journal of Applied Bacteriology, Vol. 58, No. 4, 1985, pp. 355-357. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2672.1985.tb01473.x

[12]
A. Enache-Angoulvant and C. Hennequin, “Invasive Saccharomyces Infection: A Comprehensive Review,” Clinical Infectious Diseases, Vol. 41, No. 11, 2005, pp. 15591568. doi:10.1086/497832

[13]
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A. Riquelme, M. Calvo, A. Guzman, et al., “Saccharomyces cerevisiae Fungemia after Saccharomyces boulardii Treatment in Immunocompromised Patients,” Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2002, pp. 41-43. doi:10.1097/00004836-200301000-00013

[15]
W. Olver, S. James, A. Lennard, A. Galloway, T. Roberts, T. Boswell and N. Russell, “Nosocomial Transmission of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in Bone Marrow Transplant Patients,” Journal of Hospital Infection, Vol. 52, No. 4, 2002, pp. 268-272. doi:10.1053/jhin.2002.1314

[16]
J. Perapoch, A. Planes, A. Querol, V. Lopez, I. MartinezBendayan, R. Tormo, F. Fernandez, G. Peguero and S. Salcedo, “Fungemia with Saccharomyces cerevisiae in Two Newborns, Only One of Whom Had Been Treated with Ultra-Levura,” European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Vol. 19, No. 6, 2000, pp. 468-470. doi:10.1007/s100960000295

  

Well done ken, you have copy-pasted from Cordell’s mendacious “case study”. Would you care to make a point in your own words?

so far I can’t find a willing vaccine scientist; struck out with three labs so far, probably all based on fear of jeopardizing future Pharma funds

Thank G-d you’re not just whining that Orac trembles before the Zardoz-like visage of KEITHBELL.

#538 No point- No time to read links. What’s the problem? It’s weird and funny and maybe true. Do you always “kill the messenger”. One thing I know for sure-the sun will rise tomorrow.
Descartes famous line-“The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.”
Rene Descartes

No time to read links.

I shall take this as advice on how to deal with ken’s comments.

My point would be, herr doktor bimler #538, that whatever is going on, it takes a few days and a handfull of probiotics to rid one of increased, continuous ‘squirting, rumblings’ and obnoxious miasmatic effluence.

If one is dependent and thinks he may be going to jail for a short stent, then perhaps it would be prudent to induce this condition and watch your starch intake only so much as required to ‘sedate’ and ‘keep one’s mouth shut’.

I do note that those ‘probiotics’ come in ‘targeted release’ capsules which bypass stomach acid (although, some such as K1-V1116 (Lalvin) survive the trip through anyways.

“It was laughed out of court”

herr doktor bimler #529, It was also *laughed out of court* on many occasions that I have suggested that officer Fuckme was not able to show any indication of ‘impairment’ or acting out of any concern for safety — Your demeanor matters, slaves.

JF: I know, I’m having a hard time figuring out the post too. It doesn’t help that Keith has a weak grasp on everything, from anatomy to mammalian orders. Rodents aren’t the same as pigs.

KBell: I looked at the link and it says zilch about the gut. The cardiovascular system doesn’t have much to do with the gut- and farts are made of METHANE, not carbon dioxide. As a rule, it’s very hard to die from your own gas. (Which, unfortunately, means you will probably live a long time.)
Sure, there’s a connection between the heart and gut via blood cells, but it’s a weak one.
As long as you and Ken are here, would either one of you care to explain how, if autistic children have “leaky-gut” syndrome, they aren’t dying left and right of sepsis? Because that’s the usual result of having a hole in one’s gut.

Narad, you’re the only reason I’m here. Let’s pick out the curtains next Monday.

Seems people here are beginning to see Wakefield’s point after this lengthy, educational thread. Even pig is beginning to recognize his own gut-brain connection after just two (2) beers. Young Julian is beginning to see the light.

“KEITHBELL: Why, precisely, do you think that microbial consumption of the intestinal mucosal barrier is a Good Thing?”

That’s the kind of question I’d sooner expect from Orac .

Ken: Oh, boy, Descartes the failed philosopher. The man was a good mathematician, but he couldn’t reason his way out of a paper bag.

#509 PGP http://www.brainfacts.org/across-the-lifespan/diet-and-exercise/articles/2015/the-mind-bending-power-of-bacteria/
The Mind-Bending Power of Bacteria-“OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH MICROBES is usually described as an arms race, with humans and bacteria on opposing sides. But, as new research is showing, a better metaphor is “brothers-in-arms.” The 10,000 or so different types of microbes, including bacteria, viruses and fungi, that inhabit our bodies form a balanced ecosystem called the microbiome. They are mostly beneficial – as integral to our survival as we are to theirs – helping us to digest food, make vitamins, combat infection and much more. 
In fact, evidence accumulated in the last five to 10 years shows that these microbes, which predominantly live in the gastrointestinal tract, shape the development and function of the brain. They influence a range of complex human behaviors, including learning and memory, mood and emotion, and appetite and satiety. They have also been linked to disorders of the central nervous system including anxiety, depression, autism and multiple sclerosis, which may be a consequence of an ecosystem that has fallen out of balance.”

Intimate knowledge of the gut microbial ecosystem is essential to prevent devastating explosions during colonoscopy:

“Colonic Gas Explosion During Therapeutic Colonoscopy with Electrocautery,” Spiros D Ladas, George Karamanolis, Emmanuel Ben-Soussan, World Journal of Gastroenterology, vol. 13, no. 40, October 2007, pp. 5295–8.

“Argon Plasma Coagulation in the Treatment of Hemorrhagic Radiation Proctitis is Efficient But Requires a Perfect Colonic Cleansing to Be Safe,” E. Ben-Soussan, M. Antonietti, G. Savoye, S. Herve, P. Ducrotté, and E. Lerebours, European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, vol. 16, no. 12, December 2004, pp 1315-8.

Ken: That’s covered by #2 : “doctors who let their brain fall out.”

Even pig is beginning to recognize his own gut-brain connection

Let me explain something very fυcking clearly to you, shіtwit: The last asshοle who tried to parade that “Look at the lima bean that got stuck to my dong!” routine around was the dental student.*

Things were going all too poorly for you already, Don’t assume that “watch your tongue” represents a question, your demonstrably unhinged notions of symmetry notwithstanding.

* Did the meme-link comments get deleted? I can’t find the one that linked to a memorialization of the former pronouncement.

#547 Authors of Study in #545 Are you simple-minded?
TRACY BALE, PhD – is a professor of neuroscience at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is studying the effects of early prenatal stress on fetal brain development and has shown that they are partly mediated by the microbiome.
CHRISTOPHER LOWRY, PhD – is an associate professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology an Center for Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder and director of the Behavioral Neuroendocrinology Laboratory. Lowry is developing new strategies to prevent and treat anxiety and depression, including the use of beneficial microbes that live in the gut.
SARKIS MAZMANIAN, PhD – is the Louis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology at the California Institute of Technology and a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. A microbiologist and immunologist by training, Mazmanian studies how the brain, the immune system and the microbiome interact in health and disease, including autism spectrum disorder.

Keith Bell@521

Poli-pig would probably have a very hard time believing in the gut-brain-heart connection where CO2 imbalances of gut origin affect the brain via the serotonergic system leading to cardiac arrest in SIDS.

So the mechanism of SIDS is metabolic acidosis? I’d like to see your sources for that one. Since intestinal flora is a complicated subject and one rather outside my area of knowledge I’ve been (to an extent) giving you benefit of the doubt and assuming that things you said that didn’t quite make sense were simply due to my own lack of knowledge. However, your apparent lack of understanding of blood gases, something I am rather familiar with seems to confirm my earlier suspicions that you are typing series of words that are, as Julian Frost put it, “…English, correctly spelled and organised in a grammatically correct way, but make as much sense as ‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’.”

It’s also somewhat telling that the more you’re called on your misinformation the fewer references you’ve provided and the more you have peppered your replies with name calling.

Spontaneous combustion in humans is a matter of microbial imbalance

If today is Self-Parody Day, I will be annoyed with everyone who didn’t tell me.

Not for the first time I amused and a little bemused by yet another person who has seized upon an idea, presumably after some kind of religious conversion experience, and now sees everything through in terms of that idea. For Keith everything, even spontaneous human combustion it seems, is about the microbiome. Not long ago we had APV who believes everything is about food allergies. Then there’s the dingbat who shall not be named who is obsessed with l@tex allergy (he probably has a Google alert set up so I won’t mention it in full). A couple of years ago there was the chap who was obsessed with blood glucose, and thought everything was caused by undetectable spikes in our blood glucose, and that epilepsy was our body’s attempt to increase blood glucose by getting muscles to convert glucagon to glucose. There have been many others, stuck on mercury, or aluminum, or acidity, or imaginary healing energies (remember Bengston and his mice?).

There is so much information now available that it is possible to cherry-pick information to support just about any bat-sh!t crazy hypothesis that anyone can imagine. We see it so often, people who dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their idée fixe and who have only a rudimentary understanding of the science involved so they will even believe studies that flatly contradict their beliefs actually support them. These ideas are often unshakable and impervious to information that throws any doubt upon them, which is often dismissed as coming from sources that are trying to cover up the truth. Once a person decides that shadowy elements (the CDC, FDA, Big Pharma or whoever) are working to cover up what is really going on they can justify throwing out anything that doesn’t fit their beliefs. It’s as if they have cut the last threads anchoring them to reality since literally nothing can ever convince them they are mistaken. It’s sad, but I find it somehow fascinating.

KBell: And once again, you continue to be wrong about *everything* including the person who you’re talking about. I never comment after 2 beers. (One, maybe, but usually taken with food.)
I may have limited knowledge of anatomy, but I know enough to tell you that you are wrong. What you eat very rarely affects your brain unless the item was poisonous or made the person ill. If, for example, I took a history exam, what I ate will have no influence on the outcome of the test. Ditto if I had a colonoscopy, although it might provide the doctor with something interesting to look at.

For your education: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_pig

Since you seem to be confused about your mammals. Actually, you seem to be confused about *everything*, but at least I can help with the zoology.

Everyone: please don’t tell KBell about his biggest mistake about me. I’d prefer *not* to break the site with profanity, and it’s raining for the next few days.

Concerning SIDS. You know, when I was born it was discouraged for a baby to sleep on its back. Nowadays, it is chastized to allow a neonatal to sleep on its stomach.

I’m getting the idea that it is 50/50 or none. That is to say, the neonatal has a greater risk of dying if allowed to sleep in the position it is most comfortable in; Perhaps due to an incomplete carbon dioxide reflex??

I note that, even before I became an amature some-time static apneist, it was pleasant to have dreams where I was breathing water or otherwise holding my breath for a long time.

It was a pleasant feeling to hyperventilate and show off my 5 min+ submersions.. this was before I learned of ‘freedive samba’:

is a loss of consciousness caused by cerebral hypoxia towards the end of a breath-hold dive in water typically shallower than five metres (16 feet), when the swimmer does not necessarily experience an urgent need to breathe and has no other obvious medical condition that might have caused it. It can be caused by taking several very deep breaths, or hyperventilating, just before a dive. Victims are often established practitioners of breath-hold diving, are fit, strong swimmers, and have not experienced problems before.

One simply looses the reflex to need to breath.

@ Krebiozen:

So true.
It is actually quite pathetic how alt med advocates go to such great lengths to cobble together material that, through fevered twisting and splicing, appears to support their fondest dreams. In truth, it’s more like a collage.

I find it fascinating though disturbing. One small consolation is that many of these advocates are doing it for money thus it’s not entirely beyond understanding.

I took a history exam, what I ate will have no influence on the outcome of the test

You need to print the crucial facts and dates

on a thin wafer, with ink composed of a cephalic tincture. This, the student was to swallow upon a fasting stomach, and for three days following, eat nothing but bread and water. As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposition along with it.

hdb: never tried that.Does “of a cephalic tincture” indicate the ink should be squid ink or some sort of brains ground fine enough for use in ink?

Kreboizen@556
It reminds me of dealing with actively hallucinating or delusional patients. Of course you don’t play along with their but you also don’t try to rationalize them away. If it were that easy they’d already be cured. Fortunately we have pretty effective antipsychotics for patients. I don’t know if there’s a solution in these cases.

Certainly, trying to mount a rational argument against word salad seems like a losing proposition, and when it sounds so science-y and complex it’s easy to assume (as I initially did) that you simply lack the knowledge to see why the conclusion follows the argument. Lack of a response or requesting explanation or clarification is easily (mis)construed as a concession.

Orac is quite effective at deconstructing these types of arguments but unfortunately not all of us are blessed with his Tariel cell-powered processing ability. And much like delusional patients a rational argument almost never works to convince True Believers.

Spontaneous combustion in humans…

No. Anything that is 70% water will not spontaneously combust.

The thing is, you want to sell toilets, and that’s OK with me, because I think toilets are a good thing. You don’t need to say gut bugs have the ability to make fire to do it. Just say they make the stinky potty stuff go away.

I especially like this one, capn:
Central serotonin neurons are required for arousal to CO2
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2941296/
“We propose that serotonin neurons mediate the potentially life-saving arousal response to hypercapnia. Impairment of this response may contribute to sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, sudden infant death syndrome, and sleep apnea.”

Capnkrunch: ” It reminds me of dealing with actively hallucinating or delusional patients.”

I’ve had to do that twice, only I never got paid for it. The first time, I got a pamphlet which I had to deliver to a priest, despite not being Catholic. It was the easiest way to make the person go away. (How she got onto campus, I have no idea, but I think I still have the pamphlet somewhere.)

The second time, I had to reassure a friend who was smelling cologne at her house and assumed she was being stalked. I suggested it might be a hallucination, and that I could loan her my bo if she wanted. (It’s basically a long stick.)

Wrong again, bud. Infants don’t have serotonin.

Spontaneous combustion in humans is a matter of microbial imbalance, though most doctors would never suspect it since they live a sterile world. Let’s call it Orac World, disconnected from the web of life…..

“Honey, the baby’s on fire again.”
ht[]p://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/doctors-suspect-rare-disease-might-have-afflicted-indian-child/?_r=0 [sic]

You are so fυcking stupid that it’s not even funny, Bellend. Would you like to get back to to how measles is just like polio, O craven shіt?

Keith Bell@563
Nope, nope, nope. Here’s your claim:

…CO2 imbalances of gut origin affect the brain via the serotonergic system leading to cardiac arrest in SIDS.

The study you cite looks affect of prior impairment of serotonin neurons in the presence of hypercapnia. That is significantly different from your claim. The reason why impaired arousal to hypercapnia is a life threat because increased CO2 is an indicator of ventilatory insufficiency and should stimulate the respiratory drive. If the increased CO2 is of gut origin then even if the serotonin neurons are impaired and the person is not aroused is will not cause immediate death. Buildup of CO2 from any origin will lead to acidosis but that will not kill quickly enough to account for SIDS.

I also can’t help but note that there is no mention of the gut or microbiome in that paper. The serotonin neurons in the mice were genetically deleted as opposed to affected by increased CO2 as you claim and hypercapnia was induced by increasing the percentage of inhaled CO2 as opposed to the gut origin you claim. Sorry guy, try again.

Nope, nope, nope. Here’s your claim

You’re being quite uncharitable. Keith went so far as to extend his usual title-word associations by actually selecting a sentence from the abstract.

Does anyone else find it funny that KBell doesn’t think doctors breathe or go outside?

Re: “spontaneous combustion”

Burning baby may be a victim of abuse

Unfortunately, India had until quite recently a strong tradition of “spontaneous combustion” and other “domestic incidents” involving e.g. mother-in-law accidentally spilling a bowl of fuel on wife and husband accidentally setting her on fire while rushing to help – in his hurry, he forgot to discard the lit rolled-up newspaper he was carrying around for some reason…

Not that domestic abuse is non-existent in my country. Mentalities are changing, but slowly…

#566: “Infants don’t have serotonin.”

About 95% of the body’s serotonin is intestinal, regulated by flora. What happens in the brain when serotonin and CO2 levels are out of balance? It’s associated with glutamate excitotoxicity and mitochondrial damage.

Time to factor the gut-brain in vaccine injury beginning in the gut.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969996114003611
http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v18/n2/full/cdd201092a.html
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0120881
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014299912009004
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/aa/964518/
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40263-015-0225-3
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165572801003587
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165572802000292
http://jvi.asm.org/content/85/23/12464.full
(I’ll refrain from posting the work of Russell Blaylock here to save Narad from spontaneous combustion.)

What can the vaccine industry do to protect the vulnerable from injury? Probiotics? Never studied.

KBell: I don’t think you read any of those links or paid attention to what I said earlier about unreliable sources. The Nature link says nothing about serotonin, and two of the authors sound like they’re from woo-infested instituitions. The rest are from journals that will publish anything so long as they’re paid.

The vaccine industry already takes thousands of precautions to avoid long-term injury, and in many cases, the best way to protect the ‘vulnerable’ is to get them vaccinated. “Vaccine Damage” is the invention of a coalition of grifters and the dim- no wonder you believe in it, because you’re both.

Helianthus,

Re: “spontaneous combustion”

In India about 25 years ago I read accounts of these ‘accidents’ over and over again in The Times of India. The tradition of sati (bride-burning) may have something to do with it. I remember at the gate to a fort in Rajastan (I forget which) seeing hand-prints in the plaster that our guide told us were of the brides of some Raja who had died and was being cremated with all his wives. They were so tiny that they must surely have been children. It was a sickening sight. Surprisingly it still happens occasionally today.

pig, the source of serotonin used in fetal brain development is the placenta. Of course, we now know the healthy placenta is packed with microbes, once considered sterile. So, how might these microbes contribute to tryptophan metabolism, precursor of serotonin?

Gestational diabetes rates on the rise are a matter of microbial imbalance, associated with fetal serotonin imbalances:
http://stke.sciencemag.org/content/8/358/ec1.abstract
http://www.nature.com/news/bacteria-found-in-healthy-placentas-1.15274
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7343/full/nature09972.html
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/20/135569520/babies-developing-brains-fed-by-placenta-not-mom

This is about microbial predisposition of the very real problem of vaccine injury.

In a Women’s Studies seminar I took some years ago, I remember reading an article about those “accidents” – as I recall, it wasn’t so much to do with sati as it was with bride price extortion. Basically a new husband would make all kinds of demands for possessions/money, and if the bride’s family didn’t or couldn’t pay up, he’d set her on fire or throw acid on her face.

Wondering how pig became such an impudent turkey. Never thought it possible for a single individual to embarrass such a sorry group of vaccine injury denialists.

Never thought it possible for a single individual to embarrass such a sorry group of vaccine injury denialists.

Of course, no one here has advanced the position that vaccines are incapable of causing adverse events (i.e., ‘vaccine injuiry’).

What is being acknowledged–accurately–is that the adverse consequences associated with vaccination are well understood, with those that are common being both transient and minor (e.g., soreness at the site of injection, low grade fever) and those that are serious being all but vanishingly rare (e.g., encephalopathy) such that any rational comparison of relative risk strongly argues in support of routinechildhood vaccination.

Keith Bell predictably follows the standard quack pattern. Make BS claims. Cite irrelevant or grossly misinterpreted references when challenged. When this is pointed out enough, fling poo.

I’m still waiting for Keith Bell to get a research team funded to look into his claims for the gut microbiome (not to be confused with the gut Thuderdome, though there are similarities).

capn, please explain the mechanism behind vaccine-induced seizure. I’ve already provided my construct, what’s yours?

JGC, you may not believe vaccines can cause autism, epilepsy and SIDS, but there are plenty of people who do, including the CDC. What I’ve done is try to provide biological plausibility. Vaccine injury is not nearly as rare as you believe. What can be done about it?

@ MO’B

I’m still waiting for Keith Bell to get a research team funded to look into his claims for the gut microbiome (not to be confused with the gut Thuderdome, though there are similarities).

I personally would like him to explain how an unbalanced gut microbiome is the reason behind spontaneous combustion, alluded in #550.
The way the thread is devolving right now, let’s be proactive and ask also what’s the relationship between the gut microbiome and alien abductions.

Dude, I’m just pointing out that you are a fool. Actually, you’re more than that, but any synonyms I can think of are glaringly inadequate. I could happily insult you all day long. If you ever want to do some actual learning, you could start with the wikipedia link I posted and then actually read the stuff Orac and the others posted.

And I never said vaccines don’t come with risk, I just said that long-term effects are very rare. Longterm effects of mumps, measles and rubella are a lot more common and very devastating.
Oh, and the CDC does not believe vaccines cause autism, epilepsy or SIDS. One amazingly dim former employee did, but there”s a reason he’s no longer employed there.

Keith Bell@582

capn, please explain the mechanism behind vaccine-induced seizure.

We were talking about SIDS, no? Let’s try to stay on topic.

I’ve already provided my construct…

And I’ve already voiced my concerns with it, in particular how little your reference had to do with your claim. I’ll quote myself (and fix up the grammar a bit while I’m at it) since you apparently didn’t read my comment:

The study you cite looks at the effect of prior impairment of serotonin neurons in the presence of hypercapnia. That is significantly different from your claim. The reason why impaired arousal to hypercapnia is a life threat is because increased CO2 is an indicator of ventilatory insufficiency and should stimulate the respiratory drive. If the increased CO2 is of gut origin then even if the serotonin neurons are impaired and the person is not aroused is will not cause immediate death. Buildup of CO2 from any origin can lead to acidosis but that will not kill quickly enough to account for SIDS.

I also can’t help but note that there is no mention of the gut or microbiome in that paper. The serotonin neurons in the mice were genetically deleted as opposed to affected by increased CO2 as you claim and hypercapnia was induced by increasing the percentage of inhaled CO2 as opposed to the gut origin you claim. Sorry guy, try again.

How about you address my comments instead of redirecting?

…what’s yours?

Just because we don’t know the cause of SIDS doesn’t make you any less wrong.

JP,

In a Women’s Studies seminar I took some years ago, I remember reading an article about those “accidents” – as I recall, it wasn’t so much to do with sati as it was with bride price dowry extortion.

Agreed, but I suspect the cultural history of burning women makes it a little less horrific in some people’s eyes.

Quite possibly, but then Europe and America don’t actually lack a cultural history of burning women either.

OK. Now I know Keith Bell is a fool (with apologies to Fools throughout the ages).

Keith: Placentas ARE sterile. So is amniotic fluid. So is a baby’s urine and intestinal tract *until* they go through delivery. A non-sterile placenta usually means a very nasty infection for mother and child. Strangely enough, most of the insides of a human being, barring those that are exposed to the outside world (respiratory and GI tracts come to mind) are sterile.

bacteria: you keep using that word….

pig, since when is William Thompson no longer a senior scientist at the CDC? Did I miss some big news?

Dawn, you’re amazingly misinformed. Please do some research. Nothing is sterile.
http://www.nature.com/news/bacteria-found-in-healthy-placentas-1.15274
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/science/human-microbiome-may-be-seeded-before-birth.html?_r=0

capn, of course that one study doesn’t completely back my theory. It’s just one of many citations and it shows pieces of the puzzle . . . CO2, serotonin, thalamocortical networks/glutamate receptors. I just wanted you to see how CO2 is involved in SIDS and SUDEP. Combine this with serotonin imbalances of gut origin and you have a recipe for brain injury/fatality with and without vaccination.

Keith seems determined to put together the most convoluted and complicated matrix of cause and affect to show….something?

Maybe I missed it, but by what method are vaccines (delivered in a variety of different ways, from injection to ingestion to inhalation) supposed to do all of the things that he says they do?

JGC, you may not believe vaccines can cause autism, epilepsy and SIDS, but there are plenty of people who do, including the CDC.

Keith, are
you suffering from the dual misapprehension that 1) Thompson possesses the authority to speak for the CDC and 2) that he’s provided any evidence whatsoever supporting a causal association between vaccination and ASD’s?

Keith bell, please put William Thompson into the search box at the top of the page. Orac has discussed him before. Suffice to say, if you’re bringing him up to support your case, you’re naive.

Keith Bell@590

It’s just one of many citations and it shows pieces of the puzzle . . .

It’s shows pieces to >a puzzle, but not the one you’re doing.

CO2, serotonin, thalamocortical networks/glutamate receptors.

Well, it contains all those words; I’ll give you that.

I just wanted you to see how CO2 is involved in SIDS and SUDEP.

It’s not in the way you think it is. Recall:

…CO2 imbalances of gut origin affect the brain via the serotonergic system leading to cardiac arrest in SIDS.

Note that CO2 imbalances of gut origin would not be associated with ventilatory failure. From your reference:

However, when an individual is asleep with the face covered by a blanket or pillow, the hypercapnic arousal response can be just as important as the hypercapnic ventilatory response, because waking up is necessary to relieve the airflow obstruction.

Infants with SIDS are also often found prone (46), and it has been proposed that a defect in the response to CO2 and an impaired ability to arouse from sleep both contribute to the death of these infants (46, 47).

Hypercapnia is a symptom of respiratory failure. It is not the causal factor. How about you try showing how hypercapnia without associated ventilatory insufficiency is associated with SIDS?

Note: I said CO2 imbalances, not necessarily metabolic acidosis.

Can’t quite help but tip your lack of a hand even in the best of circumstances, can you?

Narad@595
I missed that one. The nice thing about Keith Bell is he casts his net so wide that he’s almost guarenteed to hit on something that you understand well enough to see his bull for what it is. I don’t know (nor do I really care to learn) much about intestinal flora but when he starts talking blood gases I can see Keith’s basic A&P failures clear as day.

@Keith Bell,
Some blood gas 101 seems to be in order. Most CO2 is transported in the blood as carbonic acid, therefore increased CO2 leads to acidosis. Acidosis not of respiratory origin is called metabolic acidosis, therefore acidosis caused by CO2 from the GI tract is metabolic acidosis.

I was throwing you a bone man. If you could’ve produced references showing that metabolic acidosis could cause sudden death I would’ve had to admit you had an interesting point. Instead your reference was about failure to clear airway obstruction causing SIDS. CO2 in that case is only relevant as a sign of the ventilatory failure not a causal mechanism.

I took a look at your other studies in #563. In order:

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is postulated to result from abnormalities in brainstem control of autonomic function and breathing during a critical developmental period.

Central chemoreception is the mechanism by which the brain detects the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the arterial blood and alters breathing accordingly in order to maintain it within physiological levels.

Serotonin is known to play a role in central chemosensitivity, and we hypothesized that increasing the availability of 5-HT in this mouse model would improve their respiratory response to CO2.


I already covered this one.

Skipping this one on epilepsy. I’d like to stay focused on SIDS.

SIDS is postulated to result from failed autoresuscitation and inadequate or inappropriate cardiorespiratory network function and responses to challenges such as hypoxia and/or hypercapnia. Multiple postmortem reports of SIDS victims indicate that hypoxic episodes precipitate respiratory distress which is accompanied and/or preceded by bradycardia before the fatal event (Meny et al., 1994).


This one is bizzare. CAD is not an issue in infants and the people studied were 41-90 with a mean age of 65.

The ones I just quoted all postulate a respiratory cause of death. CO2 levels in these cases is important because it is the primary respiratory drive. CO2 of gut origin would not be associated with respiratory failure and you have yet to say how exactly it causes sudden death.

This is another fine example of KEITHBELL being just too darn busy to actually read his sources:

What happens in the brain when serotonin and CO2 levels are out of balance? It’s associated with glutamate excitotoxicity and mitochondrial damage.

Time to factor the gut-brain in vaccine injury beginning in the gut….
http://jvi.asm.org/content/85/23/12464.full

Nice concession here from sterile Orac World™:
“I don’t know (nor do I really care to learn) much about intestinal flora” – capnkrunch

I’m more concerned about CO2 deficiency due to imbalanced flora dysregulating the serotonergic system. Perhaps it’s not a matter of CO2 of gut origin, but lack of CO2. Microbes use CO2 to make other things. capn, have you ever heard of CO2 used to immediately halt seizure suggesting deficiency?

Similarly, serotonin deficiency in linked with SIDS and constipation (95% of our serotonin is intestinal):
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=185314

The only thing not sterile around here is Narad’s shorts. capn, I suggest you begin integrating the gut with your knowledge of blood gases; you might just become a pioneer in the field. Interesting how CO2 diffuses in either direction across intestinal mucosa:
http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/largegut/flatus.html

I’m more concerned about CO2 deficiency due to imbalanced flora dysregulating the serotonergic system…. (95% of our serotonin is intestinal)

Jesus Christ, you just can’t stop digging that hole, can you? I mean, I’ve only sat in one one graduate neuropsychopharm class, but at least I passed the freaking final.

You’re babbling incoherently. All you’re able to do is express “concerns”* and try to Gish gallop around by tossing out papers that (1) you don’t understand, (2) you haven’t even read, (3) have nothing to do with any of your random “points,” or (4) all of the above.

Perhaps this impresses the shіtwitted denizens of GMI; I suggest that you stay there.

* Previously, “I’m more concerned about serotonin deficiency than surplus since it’s correlated with SIDS and constipation.” Now, “have you ever heard of CO2 used to immediately halt seizure suggesting deficiency?” And you have no fυcking idea of the undiluted idiocy of that statement. Not only have you studiously ignored the clue provided to you about respiratory acidosis, the effect isn’t mediated by 5-HT, not that there was any G-ddamned reason to think it would be in the first place. It would have taken you five freaking minutes to sort that out if you were only able to read your own source.

Keith Bell,
Let’s keep it simple this time. I just have 2 requests:
1. Please provide a reference for “co2 deficiency due to imbalanced flora dysregulating the serotonergic system.”

2. Please be specific as to what you propose fatal event is in your model of SIDS.

Here’s some hints:
-Every reference you gave before was about hypercarbia.
-Cause of death and fatal event are not neccessarily the same. Eg. cause of death – cancer, fatal event – stroke.
-You are missing a few steps showing how exactly serotonin dysregulation due to flora imbalance leads to death.

What I stated was CO2 imbalances affect the serotonergic system leading to glutamate excitoxicity and SIDS. This could mean either high or low CO2.

The “respiratory cause of death” in SIDS is about the brain turning off the heart via dysregulation of cardiac vagal neurons and parasympathetic activity to the heart. It’s not about respiratory acidosis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215848/
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/100/5/483.full

This dynamic was illustrated in the news a couple days ago:
“researchers induced cardiac arrest in rats by having them breathe carbon dioxide”
http://www.livescience.com/50389-cardiac-arrest-dying-brain-signals.html

That said, lungs may be involved in some cases (infection); lung-brain connection including hypercapnia and hypocapnia. There’s also the connection of gut to lungs via the liver. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099516/

There’s also such thing as paradoxical acidosis due to low CO2: http://jap.physiology.org/content/17/2/283

Hypercapnia as cause of seizure during recovery suggests CO2 levels swinging like a pendulum negatively affecting the sertonergic system where serotonin itself fluctuates based on state of intestinal health: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8858699

“1. Please provide a reference for “co2 deficiency due to imbalanced flora dysregulating the serotonergic system.””

There are none I’m aware of, that’s my theory. Thanks for asking.

“2. Please be specific as to what you propose fatal event is in your model of SIDS.”

The “respiratory cause of death” in SIDS is about the brain turning off the heart via dysregulation of cardiac vagal neurons and parasympathetic activity to the heart. It’s not about respiratory acidosis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215848/
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/100/5/483.full

This dynamic was illustrated in the news a couple days ago:
“researchers induced cardiac arrest in rats by having them breathe carbon dioxide”
http://www.livescience.com/50389-cardiac-arrest-dying-brain-signals.html

“Research” being code for rectally sourced, but everyone probably knows that by now.

pig, I suggest you grab the next opportunity to eat a placenta for the serotonin and other brain chemicals produced:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mothers-who-eat-a-newborn-s-placenta-may-or-may-not-benefit/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3632750/
http://www.newsweek.com/placenta-eating-mothers-face-witch-hunt-trend-takes-315185

And if it’s a good placenta, you’ll also receive probiotic therapy. People here is Orac World™ need to know placentas aren’t sterile.

What I stated was CO2 imbalances affect the serotonergic system leading to glutamate excitoxicity and SIDS. This could mean either high or low CO2.

It just gets better and better as Bellend, to whom I shall herewith refer as “Meatotomy,” starts blowing gaskets. Let’s review again:

Are you constipated? This leads to serotonin deficiency and glutamate excitotoxicity. Please don’t sleep in the face-down prone position to avoid stimulation of the serotonergic sytstem by CO2 and cardiac arrest.

—–

I’m more concerned about serotonin deficiency than surplus since it’s correlated with SIDS and constipation.

—–

I’m more concerned about CO2 deficiency due to imbalanced flora dysregulating the serotonergic system. Perhaps it’s not a matter of CO2 of gut origin, but lack of CO2. Microbes use CO2 to make other things. capn, have you ever heard of CO2 used to immediately halt seizure suggesting deficiency?

Similarly, serotonin deficiency in [sic] linked with SIDS and constipation (95% of our serotonin is intestinal):
h[]tp://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=185314

“We hypothesize that TPH2 levels are reduced in the medullary 5-HT system for as-yet unknown developmental, genetic, and/or environmental reasons, with a secondary reduction in 5-HT levels and impaired 5-HT neurotransmission.[33] We further propose that insufficient 5-HT levels early in development, potentially as early as the first or second trimester, result in a compensatory increase in immature 5-HT neurons with immature (decreased) 5-HT1A binding and 5-HT transporter levels.[34]”

Yes, this was proffered on the juxtaposition of two words in the title.

You still can’t read, Meato, which I suppose is why you opted for more of the usual – which might be summarized as being so unable to keep your shіt straight that you can’t identify internal contradictions – rather than addressing this.

Keith Bell
Unfortunately, I won’t have time to do a proper reply until at least Monday. Narad did a good job already though. In the meantime there’s some very low hanging fruit I can’t help but pick.

The “respiratory cause of death” in SIDS is about the brain turning off the heart via dysregulation of cardiac vagal neurons and parasympathetic activity to the heart. It’s not about respiratory acidosis.

I see your references aren’t the only things you misrepresent. Remember how I kept harping on CO2 only being relevant because it is an indicator of respiratory failure and primary respiratory driver? Apparently not. Respiratory failure doesn’t kill because of the acidosis, it’s because of a lack of oxygen supply to the heart and brain. I never argued otherwise.

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/100/5/483.full

Once again you bring up this study about CAD and serotonin. I can’t imagine why except that earlier you used the words “cardiac” and “serotonin” together and this study also contains both those words. Atherosclerosis is essentially a non-issue for infants (there may be some rare congenital issues that cause it but I am unaware of any). Also, it has nothing to do with your “argument”. The fact that you have brought this study up not once but twice shows a level of ignorance that is absolutely astonishing. That alone should be enough to discredit you entirely among any group of reasonable people.

This dynamic was illustrated in the news a couple days ago:
“researchers induced cardiac arrest in rats by having them breathe carbon dioxide”

Didn’t we already talk about how it’s generally good practice to link to Pubmed not articles? Asphyxia-activated corticocardiac signaling accelerates onset of cardiac arrest. First sentence:

The mechanism by which the healthy heart and brain die rapidly in the absence of oxygen is not well understood.

Ok, I get it now. You didn’t link there because it actually doesn’t do anything to further your argument. Just the title and first sentence make it abundantly clear that both the cause of death and what is being studied is lack of oxygen, not hypercarbia.

I’m siding with environmental reasons re: ASIC1a as Dravet Syndrome accounts for only 2.5% of seizures post vaccination:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0065758

Narad, if you’re female, I’m quite interested. Denice, you’re invited to join us twice weekly, of course. I’ll learn more about ASIC1a, muchas gracias, not that I haven’t seen it before, but it definitely deserves more attention.

Keith Bell,

I’m siding with environmental reasons re: ASIC1a as Dravet Syndrome accounts for only 2.5% of seizures post vaccination:

I think you have misunderstood yet another paper. Vaccination may lead to a fever that may trigger febrile seizures in some children, just as a fever from any cause may do. Since vaccinations dramatically reduce the incidence of fevers, by preventing diseases like measles, mumps and rubella, they also reduce the incidence of febrile seizures. Vaccination does not cause Dravet Syndrome or any other seizure disorder, as the paper you cited makes very clear. Dravet Syndrome makes febrile seizures more likely, including seizures after vaccination, so parents may wrongly attribute continuing seizures to vaccination instead of to Dravet Sydrome.

KB: That’s pure b.s., food-grade fertilizer. Placentas, once they are expelled, are waste. Animals only eat them to hide the existence of offspring- the best thing a human can do with a placenta is bury it in the garden. And pro-biotics are a marketing gimmick.

You still haven’t answered my question- why aren’t we seeing waves of autistic children dying from sepsis in their first year from their ‘leaky gut?”

Also, stop being a creep.

I’m siding with environmental reasons re: ASIC1a as Dravet Syndrome accounts for only 2.5% of seizures post vaccination

That non sequitur/word salad would be a FAIL, Meato. The effect that you’re senselessly waving around has nothing to do with 5-HT. This is not surprising given that its receptors are slow, but there’s a reason you just aimlessly refer to “the serotonergic system” and random “deficiencies” and inexplicably toss out papers about point mutations in a coronavirus: you’re pig-ignorant about “the system.”

You have failed to advance anything even resembling a coherent remark. WTF is a “CO₂ deficiency” even supposed to mean in this context? Intra-/extracellular acidification is a result of sustained neuronal activity; this does not imply that some sort of mysterious, chronic, gut-related neural hypocapnia is the wellspring of epileptogenesis.

Placentas, once they are expelled, are waste. Animals only eat them to hide the existence of offspring…

Well, there might be other reasons.

See http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/686/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-placenta-stew

The rationale for placenta eating, apart from the fact that it doesn’t entail snuffing animals, is that since it nurtures the child during pregnancy it must contain all sorts of valuable nutrients. My medical informant knows of no research supporting this view, but it’s not implausible. Mama cats and dogs eat their placentas, and some say that a chemical in the stuff stimulates contractions of the uterus. Luckily for humans, breastfeeding and the drug Pitocin do the same thing. Parvati says some American Indian tribes had placenta rituals, although none of them apparently went so far as to eat the stuff. Leave it to the white man to get ridiculous about it.

There may be dozens of reasons animals eat the placenta, or no reason at all other than the animal mother looking at the placenta and thinking, ‘hey, free protein’.

And from the same page, for your entertainment…

A friend has sent me recipes from the summer 1983 issue of Mothering magazine for the following mouth-watering dishes: placenta cocktail (1/4 raw placenta, 8 ounces of V-8 juice, 2 ice cubes, 1/2 carrot, blend for 10 seconds at high speed), placenta lasagna, placenta spaghetti sauce, placenta stew, and placenta pizza. The last one will definitely stop conversation at your next Super Bowl party…

KB: I don’t think you read that link before you posted it. Even the most rudimentary reading indicates the writer is satirizing the placenta fad. So, that’s not actually an argument in favor of placenta eating- if anything, it supports my theory. Dogs and cats have also been known to eat their own vomit, among other things.

capnkrunch, looking forward to your feedback regarding this paper I linked in #602:
“5HT1A Receptors Inhibit Glutamate Inputs to Cardiac Vagal Neurons Post-Hypoxia/Hypercapnia”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215848/

Remember, 95% of the body’s serotonin is intestinal and brain serotonin also relies on tryptophan of gut origin. I maintain vaccine injury including SIDS is a matter of microbial predisposition. First the gut, then the brain includes autoimmunity . . . what a shame the excruciating problem Infantile Spasm is treated from the neck up.

Dude, I hope you didn’t pay for that education. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter- neuro as in, it is part of the brain. There is no serotonin in the gut. There’s nothing in the gut but cilia and whatever food particles are trucking along in the system- I learned that before I graduated middle school. Tryptophan is only found in the gut after a person eats, say, turkey or some other tryptophan-bearing food. You seem to believe it’s native to the gut.
I’d like to point out that this is stuff I learned before graduating middle school. I’m not sure how you think the human body works, but what you think seems to have little relation to, you know, Earth. Have you ever actually taken an anatomy class? Heck, any sort of science class at all?

I’m not sure what you mean by “infantile spasm.” There are a lot of things that could be covered by that. Epilepsy is treated from the neck up because it’s a neurological problem. It’s also fairly rare in infants.

PgP #617,
There is an interesting discussion on seratonin at a particularly di-versed university:

Approximately 90% of the human body’s total serotonin is located in the enterochromaffin cells in the GI tract, where it is used to regulate intestinal movements.

Consuming purified tryptophan increases brain serotonin whereas eating foods containing tryptophan does not. This is because the transport system which brings tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier is also selective for the other amino acids contained in protein sources. High plasma levels of other large neutral amino acids compete for transport and prevent the elevated plasma tryptophan from increasing serotonin synthesis.

In humans, defective signaling of serotonin in the brain may be the root cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Depletion of serotonin is common between disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and anxiety. However, Dr. Marazziti and his researchers at the University of Pisa in Italy found that depletion of serotonin also occurs in people who have recently fallen in love. This leads to the obsessive component associated with early stages of love.

Despite the blood-brain barrier, the loss of serotonin production in the brain is partially compensated by intestinal serotonin.

The gastrointestinal parasite Entamoeba histolytica secretes serotonin, causing a sustained secretory diarrhea in some patients. Patients infected with E. histolytica have been found to have highly elevated serum serotonin levels, which returned to normal following resolution of the infection. E. histolytica also responds to the presence of serotonin by becoming more virulent. This means serotonin secretion not only serves to increase the spread of enteamoebas by giving the host diarrhea but also serves to coordinate their behaviour according to their population density, a phenomenon known as quorum sensing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin
=============================

Concerning ‘SIDS’; I hypothesize it is the dysfunction of the reflex to need to breath, whatever the mechanism.

I take it that there is a ‘state switch’ akin to differing voltage levels in a computer corresponding to ‘off’ or ‘on’ whereby there is some point between alkalosis/acidosis, (hyper/hypo) (oxia/capinia). Like with an electronic circuit, I propose that this ‘reference value’ may subtly *drift* until the response now lays outside some viable value or some feedback or component derated — A skater oscillating through an imperfect ‘half-pipe’ is unlikely to spontaneously return, should he drift too far outside the pipe.

under normal circumstances the breathing rate dictated by the body alone already leads to 98-99% oxygen saturation of the arterial blood and the effect of over-breathing on the oxygen intake is minor. What is really happening differs from divers’ understanding; these divers are extending their dive by closing down the body’s natural breathing mechanism, not by increasing oxygen load. The mechanism is as follows:

The primary urge to breathe is triggered by rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the bloodstream. CO2 builds up in the bloodstream when O2 is metabolized and it needs to be expelled as a waste product. The body detects CO2 levels very accurately and relies on this to control breathing. Hyperventilation artificially depletes this (CO2) causing a low blood carbon dioxide condition called hypocapnia. Hypocapnia reduces the reflexive respiratory drive, allows the delay of breathing and leaves the diver susceptible to loss of consciousness from hypoxia. For most healthy people the first sign of low O2 is a greyout or unconsciousness: there is no bodily sensation that warns a diver of an impending blackout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow_water_blackout

It does not seem to be a simple matter of just hypoxia — freedive samba sufferers often have total saturation above 30-50% with greater concentrations in the brain.

CPR recommendations are noteworthy, I think. We used to be taught 1-2-3-4-5-breath! Now it is 30:1 15:1 or none:

As per the American Heart Association, the beat of the Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive” provides an ideal rhythm in terms of beats per minute to use for hands-only CPR. One can also hum Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust”, which is exactly 100 beats-per-minute and contains a memorable repeating drum pattern. For those with non cardiac arrest and people less than 20 years of age, standard CPR is superior to compression-only CPR.

The brain may sustain damage after blood flow has been stopped for about four minutes and irreversible damage after about seven minutes. Typically if blood flow ceases for one to two hours, then body cells die. Therefore, in general CPR is effective only if performed within seven minutes of the stoppage of blood flow.

WhackyWeedia/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation#Compression_only

^^ I take it that in most cardiac arrest situations there is still ample oxygen in the blood as well as some stimulating reflex from increasing CO2.
===========

Anything that is 70% water will not spontaneously combust.

Johnny #64, yet a body is able to combust itself to ash — Usually being blown with only oxygen after ignition.

There is plenty of energy stored in sugars, proteins, fats to support the total vaporization of the remaining 50 kg of water — some reactions are fed by water vapor such as the combustion of iron.

Stay out of those death beams or microbiome imbalances that liberate all the elemental calcium, phosporus, magnesium, and sodium at once into serum liquid contact.

A typical 70 kg adult human has about 170 kJ of energy in the form of glucose circulating in the blood, about 2600 kJ of energy stored in the muscles and liver as glycogen (a polymeric form of glucose), about 100,000 kJ stored in the form of protein (primarily muscle tissue), and almost 500,000 kJ in the form of fats

http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/principles-of-general-chemistry-v1.0/s22-08-thermodynamics-and-life.html

Now, that adds up to 602,770 kJ.

(70 Kg)X.7 yeilds 49 Kg water.

Q==mXcXdeltaT

(49 Kg)X(4.2 kJ/kg)X(100-37) or 12,965 kJ gets us to boiling.

Q=(mass)X(heat of vaporization)
(49 Kg)X(2260 kJ/Kg) == 110,740 kJ.

That leaves 479,065 kJ to contribute to brilliance.

That leaves 479,065 kJ to contribute to brilliance.

In practice, however, running a crematorium requires lots of fuel.
What puzzles me about “spontaneous combustion” is that’s only reported for humans. With all the lifestock in the world, you’d expect to hear reports of spontaneous bovine combustion, or spontaneous ovine combustion, but no.

running a crematorium requires lots of fuel.

Don’t they usually first need to burn through the relatively stable, decorative $2000 coffin, herr doktor bimler #620.

Besides, they’re still probably infused with formaldehyde so there is something left to display during the protracted pity party. — Perhaps, this may be supplanted with the sweet-smelling nitromethane and crepe-paper coffins for future *green* cremation efficacy?

Or seratonin superstimulation might be induced into the soon-to-be succumbed:

Johnny #64, yet a body is able to combust itself to ash — Usually being blown with only oxygen after ignition.

I am not saying you can’t burn up a body. I was able to fit mom and dad in a little hole in a wall, and carry them, one under each arm, from the car up to said wall. They didn’t take up a lot of room in the state they were in at the time, nor did they weigh a lot.

If you think a living thing will catch fire without an external source of energy, you’re darn stupid. If you think that microbes in your gut can build a fire and let it get out of control, you as stupid as Mr. Bell.

I’ve built a fire or two in my life, and even wet wood isn’t easy to burn. Building a fire out of people, at about 70% water, would be even harder.

Tim: You are an unreliable resource, and that page was heavily edited 2 days ago. Serotonin doesn’t exist in the gut, regardless of whatever fly-by-night organization says.

Frankly, your understanding of how things work is about as poor as Phillip’s.

Tim may be unreliable.

However that doesn’t mean the serotonin found in the enteric nervous system and other cells needed to regulate and coordinate digestion is a figment of his and other’s collective imaginations.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3272651/#B5

From the July 2001 Discover Magazine (which tends to be written for lay people but is usually not completely unreliable has this bit of serotonin history.

“Serotonin, also known as 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT), was first isolated in 1933, when it was discovered in the gut and called enteramine. In 1947 it was found in blood platelets, and the molecule earned its current name, serotonin, when it also proved to constrict blood vessels. Soon after, serotonin was identified in the brain. But its role was unknown until some drug tests in the 1950s drew unexpected results. Researchers found that three drugs–isoniazid and iproniazid, both antituberculars, and imipramine, an antihistamine–improved the moods of test subjects”

Now the web of whatever woven from this factoid….well just because you start with one fact and word associate your way to whatever your bugaboo is may not resemble reality.

FWIW most of the drug development for functional GI disorders for the last couple of decades has focused on serotonin receptors in the gut. Which one and how you effect it will cause things to either speed up or slow down.

This is also why it seems so many antidepressants have GI side effects. The drugs don’t know they are supposed to effect the receptors on your mood nerves and leave the rest alone.

Kaymarie: Information from an unreliable source is unreliable in and of itself. For instance, I still have trouble believing oxytocin exists because I first heard of it from people lamenting hook-up culture. If people like Tim and the other Johnny say serotonin is in the gut, even Discover Magazine won’t make me believe in it.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been on two anti-depressants, three if you count imapramine, which never did anything. The only effect I noticed was a bit of weight gain with Paxil. It’s possible I don’t have any serotonin at all.

Don’t they usually first need to burn through the relatively stable, decorative $2000 coffin, herr doktor bimler #620.

A coffin of dry, thoroughly-varnished wood is not the energy-intensive part of crematory activities. Wooden coffin or trendy low-impact cardboard… the burn still consumes 30-odd cubic metres of natural gas. Or there is the Indian funeral-pyre tradition of making a few half-arsed attempts to burn the body before the wood runs out, and then throwing the calcined corpse down the ghat into the river.

Fire is not an efficient way of disposing of bodies — to be clear, I am *not* speaking from experience! — though it makes the job of forensic pathologists even more unpleasant than it would otherwise be.

Don’t they usually first need to burn through the relatively stable, decorative $2000 coffin, herr doktor bimler #620.

There is a point to be made, I suppose, about the general ghastliness of the funeral home industry. My dad was cremated, but even so, I remember conversations about the funeral home trying to get as much money out of my poor widowed mother as they could. There was an actual coffin involved, I believe, though I never saw it, since I didn’t want to. It certainly wasn’t an open-casket funeral, for reasons related to the manner of my father’s death, and I don’t think the coffin was even on display at all. A cardboard box would have been perfectly sufficient, and more within my family’s income range.

@Keith: Neither of which explains why so main American Indians died of measles. Yes, I’m going to keep bring that up until you properly address it.

@PGP which is why I also inclued a pubmed resource but gave you something that was the backstory.

If you really need for serotonin to only exist in your brain but it really isn’t a science-based opinion to deny it.

Now if you really need a Gish Gallop of pubmed sources I can do that, but I don’t know that anything will change your mind no matter how many Glaxo and Novartis scientists believed in it enough to get FDA approved drugs developed from what is obviously mass hysteria and delusion.

I get it that it hurts when the crazies find one thing that actually has some basis in reality but the best pseudoscience always hangs off of some bit of fact or other. Part of how you sell the rest of the nonsense.

But believe what you will. Your gut is the one gut in all the world that doesn’t have an enteric nervous system and every nerve below your neck somehow functions without the use of neurotransmitters. 🙂

For instance, I still have trouble believing oxytocin exists because I first heard of it from people lamenting hook-up culture.

Well, it is probably unethical to rub it on your bo’s deodorant stick. Still, I’ll bet the word ‘petocin’ slides out your lips like oversalivated lollypop squirt when bestowing birthin’ advice upon acutely rotund acquaintances.

Yep
http://www.rxlist.com/pitocin-drug.htm

Alphas SO1EP5, “Never Let Me go”

Jessica Elkhart (Isabella Hofmann)- An Alpha with the ability to induce oxytocin addiction via touch. The recipients of her touch feel loved by Jessica and though not mind-controlled exactly, will feel compelled to do whatever Jessica wants. If Jessica intentionally breaks off her ‘love’ by hurting the person (emotionally) the affected individual’s brain, as a result of heightened stress, starts rapidly mass-producing cortisone in such a large quantity that it leads to cellular breakdown and eventual death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Alphas_characters#List_of_other_known_Alphas

JP
I know someone who recently arranged a cremation and was told by the undertakers that a coffin was required – sort of implying regulatory requirement. There was no such regulation, but many undertakers require a box with handles. The undertakers did not try to sell an expensive coffin, but I believe it was still about $400. Given how many people are cremated, it strikes me as absurd that the undertakers and incinerators aren’t properly equipped to handle bodies in cardboard boxes or even plastic bags or paper shrouds, especially where the cremation is done on the same premises that accepted the body originally. My conclusion is that it would be against their financial interests.

As far as energy consumption for cremation of the average adult, I doubt if it is much beyond rounding error for the sum energy consumed by the person during their lifetime.

doug – i found the following at the National Funeral Directors Association web site in the creamation FAQs: http://nfda.org/planning-a-funeral/cremation/160.html#individual

Is a casket required?
No. For sanitary reasons, ease of placement and dignity, many crematories require that the deceased be cremated in a combustible, leak proof, rigid, covered container. This does not need to be a casket as such. What is required is an enclosed, rigid, container made of wood or other combustible material to allow for the dignified handling of human remains. The type of casket or container selected is really a personal decision. Caskets and containers are available in a wide variety of materials ranging from simple cardboard containers to beautifully handcrafted oak, maple or mahogany caskets.

I presume it’s considered bad form to put one’s loved ones in a paper bag and haul lit around like a bag of dog chow, so can understand the desire for a rigid container with handles.

Kaymarie: “But believe what you will. Your gut is the one gut in all the world that doesn’t have an enteric nervous system and every nerve below your neck somehow functions without the use of neurotransmitters.”

I know neurotransmitters exist, I just don’t think serotonin exists in my system. I suspect that sometime soon we’re going to find out this whole gut-brain thing was a giant hoax.

capnkrunch, looking forward to your feedback regarding this paper I linked in #602:
“5HT1A Receptors Inhibit Glutamate Inputs to Cardiac Vagal Neurons Post-Hypoxia/Hypercapnia”

Recall:

Serotonin imbalance of gut origin leads to glutamate excitotoxicity which in the prone sleeping position leads to SIDS when CO2 stimulates the serotonergic system.

Except that Meatotomy also is “more concerned about CO2 deficiency.”* Whatever.

“This study demonstrates that under control and H/H conditions, 5HT1A receptors do not alter excitatory neurotransmission to CVNs. However, during recovery from H/H an endogenous serotonergic pathway, acting via 5HT1A receptors and likely via a presynaptic mechanism of action, is recruited to inhibit glutamatergic neurotransmission to CVNs.”

In other words, 5-HT via 5-HT3** (and ATP via P2X) is the desired excitatory signaler for the post-H/H bradycardic correction, but glutamate – which is a normal participant anyway – remains a fallback option.

The process is modulated by 5-HT1A binding (ignore the gene variants, which are tossed under the bus anyway; I figured Meato might need a picture, even if he’s going to use it as free-association fodder).

So:

1. Has no causal role whatever for excitotoxicity.
2. Points, as usual (e.g., PMID 20124538, 19247214), to a problem with serotonergic functionthat leads to an exaggerated response to H/H episodes. This is structural (and hence developmental) in nature.
3. As a corollary, has nothing to do with a global brainstem “deficiency” of 5-HT, much less an imaginary “gut origin” one.

Well played, as usual. I can’t wait to find out how the gut flora control the inner ear connection (PMID 24021919).

* No, epilepsy does not get you off the hook.
** I actually edited it out from #611: figure out the difference between ligand-gated and G-protein coupled, Meato.

“Bifidobacteria are known to raise tryptophan, precursor of brain serotonin production”

Proof that if Lubitz’s doctors had injected bifidobacteria into his brain, he never would have crashed that Germanwings plane.

OK, whatever, if you are going to remove whole body systems from existence every time one wacko finds one small part of it to base some wacky on you are going to be missing a lot of body parts/systems/chemicals in a hurry.

If you can figure out how you have the only gut in the world that works perfectly without all the regulatory stuff the rest of us need you can probably make a fortune. 🙂

Just deciding things do not exist because a wacko uses the word once seems like a silly way to determine what to believe in.

Do you decide all computer chips do not exist because some wacko thinks the government implants them in people and no evidence in all the world will ever prove that thing in your computer is a chip or that it has anything to do with being able to surf the web?

I mean I knew you seem to think the world only exists as you believe when it comes to what one group of people are like, I really didn’t think that extended all the way down to something science has found actually exists, even in guinea pig guts. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21226885

Perhaps it would have mediated the response to his sporadic access to SSRIs (aka mass-murder suicide pills), Dangerous Bacon #638.

I know neurotransmitters exist, I just don’t think serotonin exists in my system.

There is still hope, PgP #635

Serotonin-deficient mutants respond to fluoxetine, but confoundingly the putative worm homolog of the human serotonin reuptake transporter hSERT – the conventional protein target of SSRIs – is still present. As luck would have it, two years later Bob Horvitz’s lab independently replicated the general observation of serotonin-independent activity of fluoxetine in worms

http://www.ethanperlstein.com/do-worms-get-depressed/

I’ve built a fire or two in my life, and even wet wood isn’t easy to burn.

When wood is wet, build a fire and dry it out, Johnny #623 — you need to be able to access the parts of the wood that are not wet, or have elemental sodium, magnesium, or lithium (stored in oil vials or big chunks which are initially coated with a protective oxide layer) on hand:

31 And Elijah took twelve stones…***

32 And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD: and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed.

33 And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.

34 And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.

35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.

36***

37***

38 Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.

1 Kings 18:31-38

*** “Skip abit, brother.”

“magnesium”?? Fail, acolyte — Try potassium:

I could loan her my bo if she wanted. (It’s basically a long stick.)

Pgp #566, in ‘murica, it is a good bit shorter and called a ‘skater hater'(not to be confused with Kahuna Big Stick):
http://www.galls.com/batons

Ohh, you mean this kinda stick (at 54:20):

Beastmaster

Also, Bifidobacteria are known to raise tryptophan, precursor of brain serotonin production:
h[]tp://www.journalofpsychiatricresearch.com/article/S0022-3956(08)00074-5/abstract

You are just painfully stupid, Meato. (I suppose this goes without saying, given that you continue to cite things that you can’t be bothered to attempt to read.)

We have here an N = 12 treatment group of male Sprague-Dawley rats. The treatment produced no statistically significant difference in brain monoamines (Table 1), although there was a p < 0.05 (actual value conspicuously omitted) decrease in frontal-cortex 5-HIAA, which is pretty much meaningless overall and entirely meaningless in the context you’ve blundered into.

There was no effect on the forced-swim test (i.e., antidepressant), which is what the whole point was.

“[T]he present measures of tryptophan represent total tryptophan concentrations in the plasma, and do not allow a distinction to be made between the protein-bound fraction and levels of bioavailable tryptophan. In addition, as tryptophan relies on a competitive transport system to enter the brain, variations in the concentrations of competing large amino acids in the plasma may affect the transport of tryptophan from the periphery to the brain. The present study is limited by the absence of peripheral measures of these large neural amino acids that can affect central concentrations of tryptophan. Therefore, these results must be interpreted with caution.

Except by you, of course. I’m certainly not wasting any more time by getting into the mechanism for the sake of GMI’s self-anointed gut microbiome expert, who nonetheless was willing to produce this catastrophe:

I’m still learning about how the gut affects brain serotonin levels and gave a brief overview, including how serotonin crosses BBB into circulation and how tryptophan of gut microbial origin crosses BBB as precursor for serotonin production in the brain.

But in your small, compartmentalized world, Narad, it’s all about the brain. I’ve got news for you: your BBB is a joke. You can’t even acknowledge role of the gut in serotonin deficiency associated with SIDS (including vaccine-induced SIDS).

If anybody can read this scoffing about “it’s all about the brain” to mean anything other than that Meatotomy thought that his declared SIDS connection didn’t involve the brain, I’m all ears.

^ There’s a missing closing quotation mark after the boldface “caution,” sorry.

If anybody can read this scoffing about “it’s all about the brain” to mean anything other than that Meatotomy thought that his declared SIDS connection didn’t involve the brain, I’m all ears.

You’ve hit upon something, Narad #642. Perhaps, it is not *in the brain* per se but rather signaling to the brain/autonomic system. I note that shallow water blackout usually has plenty of oxygen still concentrated ‘in the brain’.

How would it compare to, say, going from a mild buzz to narcoleptically passing out mid-coherent-sentence with ingestion of exotic alcohol (amino acids introduced during ferment)?? Not ‘walking, talking blacking out’; Stone cold out with no memory of the preceeding moments before one wakes up at his keyboard to find drewl all over his mouse.

I’m thinking the mechanism is something more along the lines of a ‘vasovegal’ reaction — A reaction that invariably, even if offhandedly, involves the gut.

I’m beginning to think that PGP is JP playing mind games and laughing.

PGP is, in fact, a member of the Babylonian Brotherhood, the one who sang about the man you call Jesus: yea, that he was a Capricorn and ate organic foods. I her* I am well pleased.

*It’s sort of complicated – it’s only her hologram which has the appearance of a bearded human male.

@Keith Bell

capnkrunch, looking forward to your feedback regarding this paper I linked in #602:
“5HT1A Receptors Inhibit Glutamate Inputs to Cardiac Vagal Neurons Post-Hypoxia/Hypercapnia”
h[]tp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215848/

Well, Narad nailed that. I’d also point out that CO2 chemoreceptors are centrally located. The stimulation of cardiac vagal nerves by hypercapnia occurs in the CNS, not the gut.

Remember, 95% of the body’s serotonin is intestinal…

Doesn’t really matter since the serotonergic neurons in the CNS produce their own serotonin and that is the relevant pathway here.

…and brain serotonin also relies on tryptophan of gut origin.

Just like it relies on absorbtion from dietary sources for all essential amino acids. Do you ever think before you type?

It’s telling that from my last post yku summarily ignored every point I made except the one that I would respond to the rest later. Is it because you don’t have a leg to stand on or is it that you have trouble reading past the first sentence of anything, not just academic papers? I’m still very much interested in why you think a study on CAD is relevant to a discussion on the etiology of SIDS. Is it because of this?

Conclusions—The study suggests that serotonin is associated with coronary artery disease and occurrence of cardiac events, particularly in younger age groups. [emphasis added]

PGP,

For instance, I still have trouble believing oxytocin exists because I first heard of it from people lamenting hook-up culture. If people like Tim and the other Johnny say serotonin is in the gut, even Discover Magazine won’t make me believe in it.

You remind me of people who say, “don’t tell me what to do, I’ll just do the opposite”, which makes them ridiculously easy to manipulate, something they were presumably trying to avoid in the first place. IMO it’s a better strategy to assess any claim based on evidence, not by jumping to conclusions based on an emotional reaction. That way you might avoid making a twit of yourself by uttering such demonstrably untrue statements.

Oxytocin does undoubtedly exist – it’s used to induce labor – though some of its claimed effects on human emotions are probably overstated. Most serotonin is indeed in the gut, and if you had no serotonin in your body you would very probably be dead, given the range of essential functions it performs. Also, the microbiome is undoubtedly of great importance and we have a lot to learn; the fact that Keith seems to have picked up this particular ball and disappeared over the horizon with it does not change that.

“In addition, as tryptophan relies on a competitive transport system to enter the brain”

That’s an interesting dynamic regulated by insulin allowing tryptophan of gut origin to cross BBB. So, we’re back to sugar. Seems E. coli also have a hand in tryptophan level. Microbial degradation and synthesis of tryptophan in microbial overgrowth/imbalance makes this a sticky subject:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4202342/

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

capnkrunch:

Just like it relies on absorbtion from dietary sources for all essential amino acids. Do you ever think before you type?

You mean slathering ourselves in food to allow it to be absorbed transdermally doesn’t work?

I wonder sometimes how my children survived that six-to-eight month period when babies are learning how to work this whole “food” business. 😛

Calli Arcale@655
I find better results by filtering it through my clothes first. Particularly white ones. The stains are how you know the toxins were filtered out.

Also, Bifidobacteria are known to raise tryptophan, precursor of brain serotonin production:

We have here an N = 12 treatment group of male Sprague-Dawley rats.

Rats have that whole coprophagy thing to ensure that the products of gut bacteria can go through a second time and be absorbed in the small intestine. It requires very dedicated subjects to replicate this in humans.

“In addition, as tryptophan relies on a competitive transport system to enter the brain”

That’s an interesting dynamic regulated by insulin allowing tryptophan of gut origin to cross BBB. So, we’re back to sugar.

Your irredeemably brain-dead desperation is noted. LNAA transport is not “regulated by insulin.”

The statement itself is shockingly stupid on its face, and I’m sure the f*ck not going to be the one to try to salvage meaning from it for you.

^ Although I will note that all tryptophan is “of gut origin,” making this filip a further indictment. It’s not the “gut origin” that you imagine, but that’s scarcely relevant at this point.

Seems E. coli also have a hand in tryptophan level.

Any living organism will either use or produce (or both, depending on circumstances) tryptophan and about any other aminoacid in existence.
So do probiotics bacteria. I wouldn’t be surprised if your beloved Bifidobacterium consumes tryptophan present in guts. And I know E. coli does produce tryptophan if there isn’t enough for its needs.

With declarations that sweeping, you cannot go wrong. What’s your point?

In other news, water is wet, sun rises East, and bears may or may not sh!t in the wood*.

* There aren’t many people who complain about walking in the wood and setting foot on bear stuff. Um, maybe because the ones who did also met the bear itself.

Most serotonin is indeed in the gut, and if you had no serotonin in your body you would very probably be dead, given the range of essential functions it performs.

I sort of assumed that when PGP made the comment about “not having any serotonin at all,” it was sort of dark humor or whistling in the dark vis-a-vis antidepressants not being helpful. I guess the oxytocin statement has made me reconsider that assessment. Serotonin is undoubtedly real, although I suppose it is a little bit “spooky” in a sense that we don’t know exactly how antidepressants work, or why different antidepressants do or don’t work for different people. It doesn’t make serotonin, or the fact that SSRIs affect serotonin levels “not a real thing” though.

There aren’t many people who complain about walking in the wood and setting foot on bear stuff. Um, maybe because the ones who did also met the bear itself.

Either that, or they never learned to identify scat. It was fairly plentiful in my own native woods, especially in late summer/early fall, when the pears and so on were ripe.

@ JP

Either that, or they never learned to identify scat.

I have to admit the latter would be a better hypothesis 🙂

I was messing around with a joke I read a long time ago on a British webcomic, “Extermlnatus Now” (described as Sonic meets W40K, slightly NSFW due to crude language and innuendo).

Either that, or they never learned to identify scat. It was fairly plentiful in my own native woods, especially in late summer/early fall, when the pears and so on were ripe.

My knowledge of the lexicon of venery comes mainly from T.H. White, but IIRC if bears are the source then the correct term is ‘lesses’.

I’ve been on two anti-depressants, three if you count imapramine, which never did anything. The only effect I noticed was a bit of weight gain with Paxil.

PgP #626, before there were SSRIs there was tryptophan 5-hydroxytryptophan. 5-htp is the precursor to seratonin (thus melatonin and dopamine(??) ) so instead of blocking reuptake you’re making more of it.

I found it great stuff. However, I became afraid of it as per the will of Big Pharma. I stopped taking it because of some disturbing physiological changes (intermittent missing pulse, for one thing) though I don’t know it was the cause. I do wish the brains here could give me an honest assessment of the amino acid.

In the spirit of it being relegated to ‘woo’:

Curiously, banning tryptophan – a safe, inexpensive, effective, and natural precursor to serotonin – opened the door for Prozac and its imitators which have enjoyed huge financial success in the 1990s as synthetic mood elevators, despite their considerable side effects.

… Another report compared the results of three studies involving 5-HTP and imipramine** (another standard antidepressant). All three trials showed no difference in the effect of the two substances. Once again, 5-HTP performed as well as the conventional drug and 5-HTP did not produce the side effects of dry mouth and tremors typically caused by imipramine.

http://lightparty.com/Health/5-HTP.html

There are always caveats. Much 5-HTP on the market comes bundled with a whopping dose of vitamin B6 as it is used in the conversion to seratonin. The problem with this is that the 5-HTP needs to be past the BBB before being converted. Otherwise, you’re left with increased serum seratonin and melatonin which can cut both ways — Excess is stored in red blood cells and ‘drawn’ to inflammation. This can be good for a bad liver. This can be bad for inflammation in the vascular system.

Addition of small amounts of 5-hydroxytryptamine to whole blood altered the tendency of the platelets, leucocytes, and red blood cells of dogs, cats, and rabbits to aggregate. The magnitude of this response to 5-hydroxy-tryptamine was dose dependent and biphasic.

http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/13/5/392

Elevated serum serotonin is associated with carcinoid heart disease, the hallmark of which is valvular thickening. Yet, the mechanistic role of serotonin in carcinoid heart disease is poorly understood. We postulated that serotonin has a direct mitogenic effect on cardiac valvular subendocardial cells, and that this effect is mediated by serotonin receptors.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11767194

In retrospect, it is probably not such a good idea to take the B6 concurrent with the 5-HTP; I was probably really messing up by taking it with P-5-P as what I believe were mild ‘seratonin storms’ were only a few chuncks of cheeze (tyrosine) away.
=========================

*5-htp imipramine* into PubMed yeilds 155 results. Here, we find the sickest one:

The regeneration of explants prepared from goldfish retinas with a prior crush of the optic nerve is…

In the present work we evaluated the effect of serotonin and some serotonergic agonists on the neuritic outgrowth from goldfish retinal explants. Serotonin, its precursor, 5-hydroxytryptophan, and the 5HT1A receptor agonists, 8-hydroxy-2-(di-n-propylamino)tetralin and buspirone, inhibited the outgrowth. The blockers of serotonin uptake, imipramine and citalopram, were also inhibitors of neurite sprouting.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7523693

Raise your hands if you’ve never ever crushed a fisheye.

For “an honest assessment of the amino acid”, nothing beats the online reviewer of a an antivax book (authored by No-Clue Habakus).

The reviewer (who styles herself as a pediatric nurse) informed her audience on Amazon that Evil Pharma places such horrific chemicals as amino acids, dextrose and mineral salts in vaccines. Imagine – injecting _amino acids_ into your fragile infant!!!

I had to inform her and her readers that these toxic chemicals can also be found in infant formulas.

Maybe they will contact the Food Babe to start an anti-amino acid campaign.

@ Dangerous Bacon

Evil Pharma places such horrific chemicals as amino acids, dextrose and mineral salts in vaccines

Oh the Horror!
It’s so disgusting. Let me go juicing a few veggies to put myself together. I have better hurry, it’s almost time for my vit C IV session.

Believe it or not, this terrifying agenda has already infiltrated health food stores: they sell ((shudder)) branch chain amino acids in plastic containers.

All the more reason to grow whatever you eat yourself ( see Mike Adams’ new home farm system at Natural News)

@hdb:

Perhaps, although The Straight Dope indicates that “lesses” is boar droppings, not bear droppings – they’re only one letter off, after all.

Scat, of course, is the more polite of the general terms, sh*t being probably my go-to. Although, oddly enough, one never really speaks of “deer sh*t” or “rabbit sh*t” – perhaps they are too cute.

(I recommend the link above.)

#659: Why do you think the world is addicted to sugar and carbs? It’s a feel-good diet, a temporary fix, raising insulin to remove competing amino acids allowing tryptophan into the brain to raise brain serotonin. This should be common knowledge:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5120086
“Insulin, in turn, decreases plasma levels of large neutral amino acids that would ordinarily compete with tryptophan for transport across the blood-brain barrier. Resulting brain changes in serotonin provide a plausible mechanism whereby diet could affect behaviour. ”
http://nah.sagepub.com/content/3/1-2/55.abstract

But poor, pitiful, bigoted Roald Dahl didn’t factor flora shift in his candy-assed books. He didn’t factor how viruses bind to sugar in the cell wall of microbes to exacerbate viral infectivity. Was he feeding sugar to his poor daughter on her deathbed? Probably, since he was obsessed with sugar and medicine.

Speaking of bigoted, what you think is important as emotional stress also leads to flora shift.

“But poor, pitiful, bigoted Roald Dahl didn’t factor flora shift in his candy-assed books.”

You are both an idiot and a heartless bigoted jerk.

So where is the verifiable documentation dated before 1990 showing autism went up in the 1970s and 1980s coincident to the use of the MMR vaccine in the USA?

HDB: With all the lifestock in the world, you’d expect to hear reports of spontaneous bovine combustion, or spontaneous ovine combustion, but no.

Actually, given that cows produce a ton of methane, you’d think they’d be more likely to combust than humans.

JP: The serotonin thing was a joke. I’m in the middle of a long depressive episode, and woomongering about serotonin makes me snappish. I still don’t think there’s any there to the gut-brain thing and I doubt oxytocin has any effect on non-pregnant women, besides use as a shaming tactic to get them addicted to romance.

Ken: See: unreliable sources. KB’s one of them, therefore any of his links are trash.

KB: WTF is your problem with Roald Dahl? Are you going to say he supported child abuse because he also created Miss Trunchbull? Have you ever actually read any of his books? Or do you just use him to keep banging on about how much you hate sugar?

@ K Bell

I could grant you some true in the Insulin/free sugar part of your last post.

About carbohydrates, one of the point of going for starchy veggies is precisely to avoid insulin spikes, as long carbohydrates will need time to be digested and assimilated. (although that’s no excuse to go on a diet of French fries – but here, it’s more about all the oil and salt coming with them)
So I would respectfully disagree on putting them in the same boat.

But now:

He didn’t factor how viruses bind to sugar in the cell wall of microbes to exacerbate viral infectivity.

You know, bacteria are not Hermit crabs. They don’t build a wall of sugar because we are eating sugar. The bacteria wall is more akin to an insect exoskeleton, at least in function: to protect from the outside.

So, sugar or no sugar in your diet, your bacteria are going to have a wall of sugar.

Actually, the shell of arthropods (insects, shrimps…), the cell wall of plants and of mushrooms? All made of carbohydrates. Mostly indigestible by humans, but sugar polymers nonetheless.

Sugar everywhere. There is no escape.

@PGP:

The serotonin thing was a joke. I’m in the middle of a long depressive episode, and woomongering about serotonin makes me snappish.

I kinda figured. Good luck trying to deal. If SSRIs aren’t helping, there are other medications out there that might help, or there’s counseling, etc. Seriously, check out your insurance information and see what’s covered. You can’t be kicked off your insurance for using it for what it covers.

There are also other various ways of sort of shaking things up or getting out of a rut; I ought not recommend some of them here, due to their illegality. But just doing something different can sometimes help, I find; going on a trip, changing your routine, stuff like that. And it might be worth taking a look at your general situation and deciding if something really needs to change, like your job or living situation or whatever.

Of course, Heli, there’s even sugar found in outer space. I’ve never suggested dietary sugar affects the cells wall of microbes, though it may. Ocean creatures can’t build their own shells these days due to ocean acidification. Dietary sugar does, however, affect the balance of microbes and feeds overgrowth of opportunists.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448089/

Speaking of sugar imbalances, Chris, were you a gestational diabetic (GDM) by chance? Today’s news:
“Association of Maternal Diabetes With Autism in Offspring”
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2247143

GDM is a global epidemic based on flora imbalance. How is this affecting fetal brain development, i.e., Narad’s point about structural development #637? And then how do vaccines affect infants born to these mothers, adding insult to injury based on poor microbial predisposition?

“Placental Source for 5-HT that Tunes Fetal Brain Development”
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v37/n1/full/npp2011194a.html

“Probiotics for preventing gestational diabetes”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD009951.pub2/abstract;jsessionid=C3A7ACFFBA6352D313E061F59FFFCD96.f04t01

ken, good luck with ridding your body of every last glycoprotein (and the glycolipids while you are at it).

They are not abnormal body parts that only occur from excess sugar consumption; they are important bits your body needs. That is one of the reason infectious organisms use them to enter cells. Because they are bits of our body that are required and vital for our continued existence and we can’t live without them. If we could just stop making them the poor little buggers would be out of luck. But since we need them to live they exploit exactly those things.

And while you are eating zero sugar and zero carbs make sure you turn off your gluconeogenesis apparatus as your body will find a way to make the sugars it requires to keep you alive by sticking those evil sugar molecules onto the proteins that require them to function and we wouldn’t want to give it a work around your diet now would we.

Kay -Thou dost assume too much. I love my carbs too too much esp dark choc, flan, ice cream.

Why do you think the world is addicted to sugar and carbs? It’s a feel-good diet, a temporary fix, raising insulin to remove competing amino acids allowing tryptophan into the brain to raise brain serotonin.

Do you also need help crossing the street? Have you ever wondered why SSRIs, which produce a nearly immediate increase in intracellular 5-HT, take weeks to show any effect, which most certainly is not euphoriant?*

You don’t even understand the postulated mechanism behind the 44-year-old abstract that your lone “research” ability – primitive word association – disgorged, because you’re too dense to figure out how to follow it down even without having to get off your lazy ass. Instead, you make one up: insulin somehow “remove[s] competing amino acids.”

The idea was that an overall reduction in the free LNAA pool would leave only the albumin-bound tryptophan, which would be dissociated by vaguely specified means. Perhaps it also “should be common knowledge” that not even Fernstrom still believes this.

You’re wasting everyone’s time, Bellend.

* Wrong system.

@KayMarie:

I wouldn’t bother trying to discuss anything with ken. All she really does is go around posting random links that she has not read or understood, with maybe an accompanying sentence, which are tangentially related to the topic, and claiming to be “playing the devil’s advocate” or “doing research” or something.

Tim:
an honest assessment of the amino acid.

The Cochrane collaboration found a lot of studies designed to pimp the benefits of tryptophan or 5-Hydroxytryptophan products, but only two studies of any value:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD003198/full

Available evidence does suggest these substances are better than placebo at alleviating depression. Further studies are needed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of 5-HTP and tryptophan before their widespread use can be recommended. …[Health concerns]… Because alternative antidepressants exist which have been proven to be effective and safe the clinical usefulness of 5-HTP and tryptophan is limited at present.

There was at least one study they didn’t include (single-blind, negative outcome)… I was a guinea-pig, it was how I met the Frau Doktorin. [/romantic story]
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yvxRXnObxjM/T3eN83CJgRI/AAAAAAAAD0s/TYN9T4quoe0/s1600/guinea2.PNG

I doubt oxytocin has any effect on non-pregnant women, besides use as a shaming tactic to get them addicted to romance.

There’s plenty of research on the effect of oxytocin on both men and women, actually, mainly in terms of how it affects trust, social cohesion, etc. It does apparently affect men and women somewhat differently, but it’s not a “woman’s hormone” or something.

I actually don’t really see how it could be used to as a “shaming tactic” to get women “addicted to romance,” actually. If anything, it’d make me feel less inclined to take initial romantic feelings too seriously. Someone I know noted a decade or so ago that it’s easy to have much bigger feelings for somebody than are really warranted once you have sex with them; you could say it’s “just the oxytocin talking,” maybe, though that’d be pretty reductive.

@ KayMarie

I concur wholeheartedly.

[Glycoproteins] are important bits your body needs

The non-glycosylated form of normally glycosylated proteins are often non-functional. There are actually a few genetic diseases due to improper glycosylation.
Heck, blood groups are due to specific chains of sugars on the outside of our red cells. And our HLA system is also based on glycoproteins (the molecules used by our immune system to distinguish us versus not-us). You don’t want to mess with either of these carb chains. Our immune system may become a bit confused if half-glycosylated molecules start showing up.

If we could just stop making them the poor little buggers would be out of luck.

And this is actually a mechanism of defense, but mostly for the viruses. Change the form of the glycoproteins on the surface of the virus, and suddenly our immune system cannot recognize these proteins anymore.

Conversely, in a third of the cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a carbohydrate chain belonging the bacterium Campylobacter jejuni is triggering an autoimmune reaction against one of our own molecule, because they are highly similar. In this case, we are the ones out of luck…

gluconeogenesis

Oh yeah. While I would agree that eating buckets of sucrose is not healthy, going for a no-carb diet isn’t solving much regarding glycoproteins or carbohydrate lattices. A ketogenic diet doesn’t stop people from having about 1 g/l of sugar in blood. It certainly won’t stop our bacteria and yeasts from making sugars out of fatty acids or amino-acids.

Well, that’s not to say that looking at which human glycoprotein is targeted by some pathogen is useless. There could be ways to disrupt this interaction without penalizing the human protein normal function.

PgP Sorry to hear that. I had one hell of a post-partum depression in the late 60’s which was treated by a course of about 4 different medications. Luckily it abated after several months.

Given that Meato also “thinks” that Alzheimer disease is gut origin (based on nothing whatever in the paper being referenced), I might as well cross this one off the to-do list while I’m at it:

“We initially predicted that the WFD [whole-food diet] would ameliorate behavioral deficits by enhancing brain insulin signaling and reducing neuroinflammation. In fact, the results indicate that an interaction between transgene driven Aβ deposition and the WFD produced a heightened neuroinflammatory response that coincided with exacerbation of behavioral deficits.”

P.S. Do not miss this: h[]tp://drbganimalpharm.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-to-cure-sibo-small-intestinal-bowel.html?showComment=1386349649469#c3545979288889654122

In addition to more babbling about insulin (T1D has nothing to do with the pancreas), one is informed that “the main mode of death in a nuclear holocaust is sepsis via translocation of gut microbes.”

Tim:

“Curiously, banning tryptophan – a safe, inexpensive, effective, and natural precursor to serotonin – opened the door for Prozac and its imitators which have enjoyed huge financial success in the 1990s as synthetic mood elevators, despite their considerable side effects.”
http://lightparty.com/Health/5-HTP.html

That article there — a reprint from a 1999 advertorial in “Alternative Medicine” — is a window into a distant, simpler past, when even the CAM-scammers accepted the pharmaceutical paradigm that framed depression as “serotonin deficiency syndrome”.

Despite the money invested in developing SSRIs they didn’t work any better than good old-fashioned non-selective tricyclics, but the investment had to be recovered anyway, so we went through the years of “Prozac Nation” SSRI-promotion — and the idea that *everyone* should take them as a dietary supplement whether clinically depressed or not.

I can’t really blame the Alt-Health grifters for trying to get a slice of the pie.

Despite the money invested in developing SSRIs they didn’t work any better than good old-fashioned non-selective tricyclics, but the investment had to be recovered anyway, so we went through the years of “Prozac Nation” SSRI-promotion — and the idea that *everyone* should take them as a dietary supplement whether clinically depressed or not.Despite the money invested in developing SSRIs they didn’t work any better than good old-fashioned non-selective tricyclics, but the investment had to be recovered anyway, so we went through the years of “Prozac Nation” SSRI-promotion — and the idea that *everyone* should take them as a dietary supplement whether clinically depressed or not.

I thought that the main reason for preference of SSRIs over TCAs was higher tolerability.

I do remember at least the tail-end of the whole idea that Prozac and its ilk should be taken as “personality enhancers” by people without any mental health problems at all who just happened to be sort of shy or introverted or whatever. Peter Kramer’s Listening to Prozac was particularly brain-dead and irritating, as I recall. Actually, it’s one of the things that made me avoid any kind of psychiatric treatment for as long as I did.

I thought that the main reason for preference of SSRIs over TCAs was higher tolerability.

My recollection is that the “fewer side-effects” rationale came along later, after the initial promotional promises of”less depression” were not supported by facts.

Tricyclics worked for me although I cannot recommend taking 15 amitriptyline at a time and washing them down with a 1/3-bottle of whisky.

Heli, there’s even sugar found in outer space.

Do tell, Meato. Hand-waving about interstellar grains isn’t going to get you there.

Tricyclics worked for me although I cannot recommend taking 15 amitriptyline at a time and washing them down with a 1/3-bottle of whisky.

There’s overall less caution about drinking on SSRIs than on TCAs, but I remember the first six months to a year that I was on them, I had some interesting experiences. I’d be out drinking and feel perfectly fine – after a few beers or so – and then it was like some switch would flip and I’d be suddenly, completely, embarrassingly drunk. Luckily my friends were understanding.

Wait a minute, fifteen Elavil and a 1/3-bottle of whiskey? I’m glad you made it.

TCAs don’t have a terribly forgiving therapeutic window. Wasn’t part of the rationale also that giving potentially suicidal patients easy access to a potentially fatal OD was a bad idea? Not that that rationale is correct, someone who’s serious is going to find a way regardless.

On the other hand have seen a couple children ingest their parent’s TCAs and can’t help but think reducing that risk is a good thing. Children getting into SSRIs isn’t nearly as dangerous.

Evidently my heart is not prone to fibrillation.
Apparently I tried to climb a bookcase under the impression that it was a stairway to heaven or something, then slept for 24 hours.

TCAs don’t have a terribly forgiving therapeutic window. Wasn’t part of the rationale also that giving potentially suicidal patients easy access to a potentially fatal OD was a bad idea? Not that that rationale is correct, someone who’s serious is going to find a way regardless.

I was once given scripts for a ridiculous amount of citalopram – to be fair, I was going on a trip to Russia and Poland, so I had a 90-day script, plus a couple, two or three, regular ones, since I was planning to go back to Oregon for a few weeks and would need to go to a different pharmacy, and the psychiatrist I was seeing wasn’t aware of how badly I was doing at the moment, since I tend to understate things. If I’d gotten them all filled, which would probably have been tricky in practice, I’d have had enough to OD. I ended up giving them to a friend and having him give them back to me at a later date.

Speaking of sepsis and translocation of gut microbes, I’ve been learning today about sepsis and autoimmunity:
“Infections sometimes produce a catastrophic body-wide inflammation known as sepsis. It is thought to strike around a million people a year in the USA alone, up to half of whom die. For years, scientists thought that a bacterial toxin might cause the immune system to malfunction in this way – but sepsis is actually just an exaggeration of one of the usual immune defences against bacteria and other invaders. Instead of acting locally, the immune system accidentally responds throughout the body.”
http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies

Perhaps probiotics should be used pre-vaccination to prevent an overactive immune response including anaphylaxis.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mnfr.201300028/abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1398-9995.2010.02501.x/abstract

Thx, herr doktor bimler #686/#692.

I’m in a bit of a ‘pickle’. I went to one of these ‘order-your-own’ testing labs and underwent *CMP12+8AC+CBC/D/Plt+Ua; … Vitamin B12 and Folate; Tsh; ALT (SGPT, liver function).

Most of the values came back relatively happy (liver enzymes and whatnot)– Some of the differential white blood cell count is probably attributed to skin irritation from HE detergent. Most. Although I eat salt like candy, my sodium and chloride was flagged low. I have been having episodes of peeing what looks like lowfat milk, off and on. My (formerly perfect) teeth have rapidly resorbed. I note that I now realize I had rhrabdomyolysis from pushing a ‘people powered’ mower while drinking and in the heat a few years ago (deep, thick red-brown pee that immediately fell to the bottom of the bowl — I attributted it to some component of my wet snuff which was of the same color and specific gravity).

I have been taking the supplement levomefolic acid and .25mg of methylcobalamin but I stopped 72 hours before the test for B12. The B12 came back 1266 pg/ml and folate 18.5 ng/ml.

I see there are some paradoxical conditions (functional metabolism derated) that can cause some symptoms of deficency yet read high on the test. I also see that serum B12 elevation is not a good sign.

Simple google points out that you can’t elevate your serum B12 with supplements; Oxford seems to imply a halflife of 6 days.

I have acidic saliva and my teeth dissolved to deep into the dentin (I lost 2mm, that night) during an 8-hour stint in jail.

I’m in a pickle because ‘the man’ has it out for me (long sob story) and the last time this happened was a threat of jailtime for the offense of ‘improper lane change’ in a vehicle that was not moving and that I was not occupying. I need to figure this out before telling the clown-in-a-gown, cash-register-in-a-robe to go fuck himself with one of officer Fuckme’s jobdoers.

I’ve suspected for a few months that I have a PTH secreting tumor somewhere. Serum phosporous was normal and calcium only a little elevated; but I’m literally eating my teeth and peeing it out.

I’ve not yet got the MMA test or direct PTH test. I’m pretty much without futher funds.

The pathophysiology of elevated vitamin B12 in clinical practice:
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/27/qjmed.hct051

^^ Any comments?? (obviously, the first step would be to ‘retest’ but the blood draw lady had all the comfort of a butch prison guard and I go vasovegal at the sound of ‘next’. )

Apparently I tried to climb a bookcase under the impression that it was a stairway to heaven

Did you find that the stores were all closed? It makes me wonder.

I know someone for whom tricyclics actually work _somewhat_ while SSRIs are fraught with difficulty and therefore rejected.
AND he’s played with alcohol combos as well.

As I usually remark in cases like this:

Something is Better Than Nothing
( old family motto)

I forgot one other glaring issue with the “analysis” by Mr. “Serotonin Is an Amorphous Blob”:

Why do you think the world is addicted to sugar and carbs? It’s a feel-good diet, a temporary fix, raising insulin to remove competing amino acids allowing tryptophan into the brain to raise brain serotonin. This should be common knowledge

Leaving aside the small issue that rats aren’t people, the effect of ATD – the very existence of which in the general public has been skipped by the GIT Expert – on TRP/∑ LNAA is abolished in rats by the addition of 5% high-quality protein to the meal.

Therefore, cheese fries, Boston crème doughnuts, and allies are safely nonaddictive.

#691 Thanks so much for digging-up that June, 2013 post on Dr. Perlmutter’s Facebook page. This was a time when I constantly teasing him for having a sterile construct, pre-bestseller, Grain Brain. I’d like to think I had a hand in his becoming a champion of the subject with the release of his new book this month:
“Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain–for Life”
http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Maker-Microbes-Protect-Brain%C2%96/dp/0316380105/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

And his new peer-reviewed journal, Brain and Gut, is supposed to begin 2016.
http://www.liebertpub.com/images/cover.ihax?w=209&id=2391&g=

When will the vaccine industry finally acknowledge role of the gut in damaging the brain?

MO@702
I hope he’s changed the road he’s on. If not, there’s still time in long wrong.

Denice Walter@703
My understanding was that TCAs are still the go to for otherwise refractory depression. They’re safe as water compared to MOAIs.

JP@703
That’s a hug everyone benefits from.

Kind of seems like clinical depression is somewhat overrepresented here. I wonder if that’s really the case and if so why. Anyone on SNRIs? I take (generic) Effexor and also took Wellbutrin to quit smoking. I’ve been on everything up to risperidone and SSRIs didn’t do much and everything else was too side effect-y (I must have a predisposition to extra pyradimidal effects because I had them pretty much whenever they were an option).

Nothing is quite as effective as good old ETOH in my experience. You guys probably know how that goes in the long run though.

@ capncrunch:

Right.

And depression overrepresented? Perhaps. Also, people who like to write and who enjoy alcohol. Sure.
Sounds like a winning combination which has been noted in other places than RI.

Keith Bell@708
There’s been a lot of talk of how intestinal injury might cause neuro injury. Even if you could make a good case for that (which you haven’t) you still are missing the more important part: how vaccines cause the initial gut injury. Ideally you’d be able to cite some good references to back your points but absent even a single study you should still be able to demonstrate prior plausibility. Your assignment is:
How do vaccines cause gut injury? Be specific and use your own words. Where relevant cite sources to support your position, not as your argument.

I’m also still waiting to hear why you think that CAD study was relevant enough to cite twice.

Kind of seems like clinical depression is somewhat overrepresented here.

Well, maybe it’s karma.

I take (generic) Effexor and also took Wellbutrin to quit smoking. I’ve been on everything up to risperidone and SSRIs didn’t do much and everything else was too side effect-y (I must have a predisposition to extra pyradimidal effects because I had them pretty much whenever they were an option).

I took Wellbutrin in addition to Lexapro for almost a year. It kept me up at nights, and I was given a script for Trazadone to help with sleep, and the whole thing started to seem like a big clusterf*ck to me, which is one of the reasons I ended up going off of meds in general.

Nothing is quite as effective as good old ETOH in my experience. You guys probably know how that goes in the long run though.

This is the traditional coping strategy among my dad’s side of the family. My dad himself became a teetotaler a couple years before having kids, I think partially in reaction to the general family tendency. (Well, he also totaled his car one night and got a very stern talking-to from my maternal grandfather, a big, imposing Norwegian dude: “You are godd*mned lucky my daughter wasn’t in that car with you.”) On the other hand, he’s the one who ended up blowing his brains out, so one of my rationalizations for my own behavior is, “Well, at least the drunks are still alive.” He was also forever taking responsibility for everyone and everything, so one of my own reactions to that has apparently been to just be a crazy f*ck-up.

Nothing is quite as effective as good old ETOH in my experience.

Beer & akvavit are a cultural heritage rather than a personal choice.

I drink gin in order to remember my ancestor who produced excellent products the formulae of which he sold for real money. So it’s a tribute to him. That’s all.
And I am named after Dionysus thus excusing the wine.

Doesn’t tryptophan show up in white wine, or am I thinking of something else?

I know a nice Spaetlese always makes me feel better.

Vaccination can lead to hyperactive immune response based on microbial predisposition where the gut is damaged first. This mechanism is illustrated by the new MS paper linked at the beginning of my article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140904084603.htm
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain

No studies exist about how any of the childhood vaccines affect gut flora balance or how microbes present affect childhood vaccine response.

The rotavirus vaccine is now part of the government vaccine injury compensation program for causing severe intestinal injury: intussusception.

Funny how many of these OMG vaccines cause this thing are caused with startling regularity by getting the disease. Generally at much higher rates.

But better your kid gets a serious complication from an all natural illness, right?

http://jvi.asm.org/content/80/24/12377.full While it is a study in mice looking to the mechanisms notes the various infections associated with this problem.

It is a relatively common problem and to date the most likely cause is GI infections. I mean how do you account for all the times it happened before the vaccine came out?

‘improper lane change’ in a vehicle that was not moving and that I was not occupying.

^^ That came out abit ‘glib’, didn’t it?

The vehicle was 90 ft off the road in a parking lot where I was invited by the owner to attend a 4’th festival. My bedroll was 300 ft from the truck. It probably didn’t help my case that, upon grilling, I informed the officer that I did not wish to take him to the owner because “You are a cop; I’m not the one to be inviting flies to the picknick.”

Keith Bell@717
You couldn’t craft a meanful thought if someone held a gun to your head and said “think,” huh?

Vaccination can lead to hyperactive immune response based on microbial predisposition where the gut is damaged first.

All you’ve done here is restate yourself. How does the normal immune response or even an exaggerated one become an autoimmune response? How does the microbiome factor in exactly?

This mechanism is illustrated by the new MS paper linked at the beginning of my article:

See, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid when I said DO NOT use papers as your argument. Your MO seems to be make vague general statements that go something like “vaccine…microbes…gut…brain” without explaining how they one follows the other. Then you cite an article that contains some or all of the words you just used without explaining what about your statements it supports. It’s like the underpants gnomes.

Please explain step by step for me. When you cite a source say why. Not “the me mechanism in this paper” but actually say what the mechanism you are referring to is. That’s the proper way to use a reference. Explain your ideas like you are talking to the brain dead Pharma sh(eep)ill you know I am.

Ken: “I had one hell of a post-partum depression in the late 60’s which was treated by a course of about 4 different medications. Luckily it abated after several months.”

If that’s true, then why do you hate doctors so much? How come you’ve told your ‘kids’ never to take your ‘grandchildren’ to doctors and want everyone in your circle to use homeopathy and naturopathy instead?

HDB: Aquavit is one of those things I just don’t get. I assume it gets you drunk quick enough that the taste isn’t noticeable.

KBell: You do realize Rotashield was recalled? That it’s no longer used at all?

KEITHBELL’s only real superpower, running like hell from details, is once again losing its amusement value; the continued linking to press releases, while gratuitously highlighting the dismal substitute that his Gut Brain has provided in lieu of actual thinking doesn’t help.

Yet, there is one nugget of gold that has turned up in the Wide Wide River:

And his new peer-reviewed journal, Brain and Gut, is supposed to begin 2016.
h[]tp://www.liebertpub.com/images/cover.ihax?w=209&id=2391&g=

In consequence, I now have one more reason to view The Butterfly dimly: they have outdone Elsevier by creepifying NIH Public Access Policy as follows:

“Liebert, Inc. publishers will deposit the final accepted article (after copy-editing and proofreading) to PubMed Central (PMC) on behalf of the authors. Authors need not take any action. The manuscript’s public access posting on PMC will occur 12 months after final publication. This service is provided free of charge. Please note that authors may not deposit manuscripts directly to PMC or other sites without permission from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Um, that would be a big GFY negatory, Mary Ann.

@ JP # 706

Weeeeeh! So cute!
I love cats.

And hdb, I’m glad too you’re around.

@ Narad

“the main mode of death in a nuclear holocaust is sepsis via translocation of gut microbes.”

That’s… an interesting way to put it.
I would have thought that a disrupted immune system and breached intestinal walls would be cause for concern.
It’s a bit like saying that the main mode of death in plane accidents is hitting the ground.

“main mode”? Ruptured intestines will happen in the fraction of people which were close enough to ground zero to receive a lethal dose of radiation, but far enough to survive the blast itself and the heatwaves.

Fallout will be an issue for the survivors, and I wonder if sepsis is really the main concern.

(anecdotal in a gruesome way, that reminds me of an article I read a dozen years ago about Hiroshima survivors. One Japanese, who was still alive by then, was close enough to the blast to have one of his arm melted by the heat)

The rotavirus vaccine is now part of the government vaccine injury compensation program for causing severe intestinal injury: intussusception.

Whoops.

“XI. Rotavirus vaccine   No Condition Specified”

“(3) Rotavirus vaccines (Item XI of the Table) are included in the Table as of October 22, 1998.”

RotaShield was licensed 1998 August 31. The Senate amendment bill was introduced 1998 October 22 (144 Cong. Rec. 24,560) with no mention of a contraindication – it’s necessary to authorize the excise tax first. Earliest reported intussusception onset date was 1998 November 21 (48 MMWR 577).

Oh, wait, silly me. Your inability to read of course extends to an inabllity to write.

It will not be until 2015 July that “now” may arrive.

“main mode”? Ruptured intestines will happen in the fraction of people which were close enough to ground zero to receive a lethal dose of radiation, but far enough to survive the blast itself and the heatwaves.

IIRC, the US armed forces invested a lot of research into the question of what level of performance could be expected from troops who had been irradiated to various degrees and were dead men but still walking. At one end of the exposure spectrum there is the “brain death” cohort whose lifespans are limited by the damage done to neural membranes by the ionizing radiation; they might shamble around for a few hours (showing little difference if they’re Marines) until too many cells die and they can’t brain any more. At the other end are the “blood death” cohort who have only had the equivalent of full-body radiotherapy in the absence of a bone-marrow donor; their lifespan is limited by their supply of red and white blood cells. In the middle is the ‘bowel death’ range where epithelial cells have also taken a lethal hit (fast-dividing, therefore vulnerable), and after a few days when they all die you no longer have an intestinal wall and the gut bacteria have an entire body laid like a banquet before them.

Such was the theory, anyway. I imagine that Chernobyl provided a lot of data points.

Teh Merck Manual informs me that these are now known as Cerebrovascular syndrome, Hematopoietic syndrome and Gastrointestinal syndrome respectively.

You could describe that third scenario (6 to 25 Grays) as “translocation of gut microbes”, I suppose.

I assume it gets you drunk quick enough that the taste isn’t noticeable.

“Taste”? Akvavit has a thousand tastes. All vile, but subtly different.

Keith Bell,

Speaking of sepsis and translocation of gut microbes, I’ve been learning today about sepsis and autoimmunity:

Then why do you link to an article about a scientist’s research on IgE that mentions sepsis only in passing, because of the scientist previous work on toll receptors, and nothing at all about autoimmunity?

Why do you follow that with a complete non sequitur?

Perhaps probiotics should be used pre-vaccination to prevent an overactive immune response including anaphylaxis.

Accompanied by links to two articles about food allergies in mice that have nothing at all to do with vaccines?

I find watching your inept blundering around misunderstanding and misinterpreting cherry-picked studies is horrifying and fascinating in equal measure.

BTW, you might find it less time-consuming to list things that you don’t think are intimately linked to the microbiome.

Kay, thanks for posting that paper #720. Risk of intestinal injury by vaccination especially high in preterm infants where flora is undeveloped, i.e., high LPS-producing gammaproteobacteria. Current, cruel protocol is to vaccinate as full term when weighing 2.2 lbs..

Similarly, people like Narad and Orac who were not breastfed suffer low protective Bifidobacteria which would otherwise regulate immune response in Peyer’s patches. Unfortunately, they were also spanked heavily as children leading to low self-esteem, substance abuse and criminal behavior. Corporal punishment is now banned in 46 nations:
http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/pages/progress/prohib_states.html
(Narad, do you spank and/or humiliate your children?)

capn, who’s guarding your Peyer’s patches, training your immune system? Are they Bacteroides, Firmicutes or Actinobacteria? Are they LPS-producers? It makes a difference, perhaps life and death.
“Researchers also were surprised to find that bacteria present in the body’s gut flora, also known as commensal bacteria, helped the human norovirus infect B cells. Karst said scientists have long known that noroviruses need a particular kind of carbohydrate to infect cells . . . UF scientists detected virus in Peyer’s patches, pockets of lymphoid nodules that line the intestine and survey the organ for pathogens.”
http://www.news4jax.com/news/uf-researchers-discover-how-to-cultivate-norovirus-in-human-cells/29571716

I suggest capn do some research on the reciprocal relationship between microbes and host immunity. Links can be found in Part 2 of my series:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/critical-role-microflora-vaccine-injury

Just how do the following critters tell you anything about pre term infants, or give you full knowledge of any human’s infancy of spanking??

“Specific-pathogen-free female outbred CD-1 or inbred BALB/c mice were obtained from Charles River Laboratories (Portage, MI) and were 6 to 8 weeks of age at the time these studies were undertaken. Mice were divided randomly into treatment groups, housed in microisolator cages, and provided with autoclaved water and laboratory autoclavable rodent diet 5010 (Purina Mills, Inc., St. Louis, MO) ad libitum. For rotavirus infections, the mice were moved to a physically separated animal facility and housed under BSL-2 conditions. ”

These are mice who were in the study during mouse puberty, not even infant mice.

This weird obsession with intestinal flora and vaccines almost has me nostalgic for the Th1Th2 crowd.

The common thread is Google U. students who quote science without comprehending it, while lecturing those who actually do.

Radiation can do a whole lot of nasty to the body, and not all of the US Army’s work on radiation mortality was planned. The story of the Demon Core is instructive; it provided a lot of unscheduled radiation exposure data in two different criticality accidents. (It was later destroyed during an atomic bomb test.) It killed two people directly, and many of the survivors participated in studies to determine how their bodies were responding to the exposure. The two that died directly were Harry Daghlian (fell into a coma soon after the accident and died 25 days later of acute radiation radiation syndrome, specifically affecting the generation of new blood cells; numerous blood transfusions failed to save his life) and Louis Slotin (who was mostly affected in the intestines). Slotin’s case would be the most interesting to Mr Bell, as gangrene due to severe intestinal damage was certainly a factor in his death. Wikipedia describes “severe diarrhea, reduced urine output, swollen hands, erythema, massive blisters on his hands and forearms, intestinal paralysis, gangrene, and ultimately a total disintegration of bodily functions”. Observers present during the test (many of whom had to be treated for severe radiation poisoning) reported seeing a flash of blue light and perceived heat on their bodies; it’s never been clear whether these were actual sensations or whether the radiation was triggering nerves — both are entirely plausible, and difficult to judge as the exact dose isn’t known due to film badges having accidentally been left in their locked, lead-lined safe during the accident, making them useless. Slotin himself also reported a sour taste in his mouth during the excursion.

KBell: Dude, you might want to tone down the projection. Right now, you’d rival an Imax. You’re already an unpleasant specimen-calling you a slime mold would be an insult to those hardworking critters- do you really have to cement your image as a bottom-feeding scumbag. (Apologies to the catfish.)

Bacon, is all this talk of intestinal flora giving you the heebie-jeebies here in Sterile Orac World™? Feeling queasy?

The sterile “Th1Th2 crowd” has also yet to integrate flora in their understanding of the immune system. But they’ll get around to it. How about mothers doing everything they can pre-pregnancy including probiotic therapy if necessary to help avoid vaccine injury? Or, do healthy people even need vaccines? Remember, 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1398-9995.2010.02501.x/abstract

“The sterile “Th1Th2 crowd” has also yet to integrate flora in their understanding of the immune system. ”

Trolls are sterile?

They look kinda grimy to me, and FSM knows they seem to reproduce like rabbits.

Anyone want popcorn while we wait to see how Kbell tries to use FSM in a sentence?

Keith bell:

Risk of intestinal injury by vaccination especially high in preterm infants where flora is undeveloped, i.e., high LPS-producing gammaproteobacteria.

Citation needed for this claim. There are currently no good, plausible, repeatable studies to in support of your claim.

KB: STOP BEING CREEPY.
There’s a reason I’m skeptical about the g-b connection, most of the supporters are discredited whackaloons or grifters. As for the other stuff- I don’t share personal info on the net, especially not with creeps.

#684, not impressed by the Fernstroms of Pittsburgh where their sterile view doesn’t include effect of exercise on insulin sensitivity:
https://www.thieme-connect.com/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-2000-8847
http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/10/1/10

Julian, doctors can barely tell the difference between NEC and intussusception in preterm infants. Meanwhile, it’s now known flora is based on gestational age such that preterm infants are high in gammaproteobacteria:
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/34/12522.abstract

Is there any wonder preterm infants would be at greater risk of autism by vaccination? How can we have the nerve to stick a needle into any newborn (NOT done in Europe) leave alone a 2.2 lb. infant? Barbaric Orac World™.

Keith Bell:

Is there any wonder preterm infants would be at greater risk of autism by vaccination?

Yes, there is wonder. Your comment above is a complete non-sequitor. How would vaccination either:
a) interact with the gut flora to cause damage? (And don’t mention “leaky gut”. That’s discredited) or;
b) change the gut flora in such a way that changes resulting in autism occur?
I believe you are begging the question. You started with the premise that vaccines cause autism, and you are looking for ways to see how that could be, but there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism.

Keith Bell continues to quote and cite papers without actually explaining why. His posts are emtpy word salad that fails to be even internally consistent. He continually fails to make direct responses to criticism. All this was starting to bore me already but now he’s insulted Orac’s and Narad’s parents. That’s just something you don’t do. I’m going to walk away because I refuse to engage someone who thinks that is acceptable. Keith Bell, thank you for the amusement and for once again demonstrating just how dispicable the antivax movement can be. On top of being a willfully ignorant fool you are a terrible human being.

Anyone like the idea of Sterile Orac World™ brand homeopathic probiotics?

Julian, thanks for approaching the heart of the matter. How do vaccines interact with gut flora to cause damage? It’s the flora regulating immune response, so different types of flora have a different immune effect. Flora is different by individual, race and gender.

capn, thanks for trying to understand the concepts and flesh them out. Please remember the tone of this blog is about insolence, so it’s perfectly acceptable to mock the vaccine injured as well as point out how Orac was repeatedly punished in his youth as analogy to the current vaccine schedule.

Keith Bell:

It’s the flora regulating immune response, so different types of flora have a different immune effect.

Your answer is deeply unsatisfactory. It simply raises more questions.
Where is your evidence that the vaccines alter the gut flora?
What evidence do you have that the gut flora regulates the immune response?
You say flora differs from person to person. How do these differences have an effect and what evidence do you have that they do?

On top of being a willfully ignorant fool you are a terrible human being.

Oh, this has been known for some time. At this point, he’s just flailing wildly again to try to distract from the explicit, abject failures that inevitably result when someone bothers to actually pay attention to his random spew.

Since his entire post-recycling identity is seemingly built on his routine’s making him RLY SMURT, it’s little surprise that what oozes out is malodorous when the gut–brain connection in his case is demonstrated more accurately to be a shіt–head connection.

He’s going to stay here until he can get a reply from Orac. This is Gergles all over again (not to mention Johnny Manynames).

Unless they can get some kind of reaction from our esteemed box of blinky lights, their lives have no meaning.

As a case in point:

so it’s perfectly acceptable to mock the vaccine injured

Along with the return to Peyer’s patches, this makes it quite clear that he’s been reduced to trying to have a do-over of his previous dismal appearance.

I’ve written four published articles in attempt to inspire research and concern regarding your questions

Five’ll get you 10 that he also doesn’t understand what “rel=nofollow” means.

In other news, his “published articles” are merely the exact same crap that he’s been dribbling out here gathered into larger piles.

This thread has actually managed to surpass this one on the spamvertising front, with nine comments devoted to trying to drive traffic to GMI versus five the last time.

Narad, would love to see your published articles/papers. Are there any you’d like to share? But I understand, you’d rather remain anonymous.

Btw, several of your recent responses/arguments have actually caused me to feel sorry for you. Seriously, I’m finding you to be quite out of touch. I don’t like feeling sorry for you because you obviously have a lot of potential. Kreb, on the other hand, appears to be a lost cause; quite a dinosaur, believing the only problem with dietary sugar is obesity.

Mr. Bell: “Narad, would love to see your published articles/papers.”

I am still waiting for you to post the verified documentation dated before 1990 that the MMR vaccine has caused the issues you attribute to it in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s. Less then ten year blog posts do not count.

Narad, would love to see your published articles/papers.

Note the sadly defensive escalation. I’m reminded of back when John Stone used to boast that he had Pubmed-indexed “published papers” that ultimately turned out to be two letters to the editor amounting to four or five column-inches total.

I have no need to try to boast about poorly reasoned, high-school-level, three-page essays that have been “published” by Sayer Ji; I don’t hold myself out as a writer, much less as a researcher and science writer, which you embarrassingly do.

The demonstrated fact that you can’t even coherently respond to freaking blog comments that people have wasted their time composing only to have you studiously avoid them is more than adequate to demonstrate the point.

Btw, several of your recent responses/arguments have actually caused me to feel sorry for you. Seriously, I’m finding you to be quite out of touch. I don’t like feeling sorry for you because you obviously have a lot of potential. Kreb, on the other hand, appears to be a lost cause; quite a dinosaur, believing the only problem with dietary sugar is obesity.

As though the point needed hammering home, that is. This is simply pathetic sniveling. Anyone with two neurons to rub together would readily appreciate that Krebiozen – among many others here – is vastly more knowledgeable than I am in addition to being blessed (or cursed) with a saintlike patience.

Despite the bluster, you’re merely a classic sad sack. It’s time to pick up your marbles until you have another “published article” to promote on another unrelated comment thread.

How do vaccines interact with gut flora to cause damage?

I’m sorry, but you’ve yet to demonstrate that vaccines do interact with gut flora and cause the damage you claim they do.

What test could one do on one’s gut flora to show that one would not be affected by the various complications of, say, polio? Besides being injected with the polio virus, I mean.

Thanks.

Narad, speaking truth to Keith Bell:

Despite the bluster, you’re merely a classic sad sack.

Methinks the link I used makes your characterization of KB more appropriate. It’s the classic Sad Sack.

So “sad sack” basically means the same thing as shlemiel?

No. He’s done all this before. He knows what’s going to happen. It’s all about craving attention and hoarding indignation.

I was referring to the comic that Bill Price linked to, actually, which is called “Sad Sack” but presents a classic picture of what I’d think of as a shlemiel.

According to the PffffT! of all knowledge, the comic’s name was short for the US Army WW2 usage, ‘Sad Sack of Sh¡t’. The similarity to ‘shlemiel’ is left to the reader’s judgment. The applicability to KB is obvious.

I asked Keith Bell:

Where is your evidence that the vaccines alter the gut flora?
What evidence do you have that the gut flora regulates the immune response?
You say flora differs from person to person. How do these differences have an effect and what evidence do you have that they do?

Keith Bell replied:

Julian, those are excellent questions. Nobody has all the answers yet.

Yet Keith assumes that vaccines do cause damage.
Keith, before you can hypothesise how something might be caused, you have to show that it is in fact happening.

Keith, before you can hypothesise how something might be caused, you have to show that it is in fact happening.

This is a recurring rhetorical tactic for Keith. Honest people don’t feel the need to constantly sneak their intended conclusions in through the back door and disguise them as part of the antecedent. Nor do honest people try to disguise the absence of evidence for their idees fixes by resorting to the fraudulent objectivity of Passive Voice and telling that “X is thought” or “Y is believed”.

It’s almost as if his appearances are simply to pimp links to his screeds in the hope of gaming Google, rather than any intention to change minds.

Commenters have described Keith’s alarums and excursions as “Gish gallops”. I am also reminded of the Goon Show episode where Friar Balsam stands on Eccles’ shoulders, and Seagoon stands on Balsam’s shoulders, and because they still can’t reach the window, Eccles stands on Seagoon’s shoulders.* Much as Keith dashes from one intellectually-bankrupt claim to another in the hope that the general flurry will leave people convinced that they support one another and together form a coherent scholium.

* Ladies and gentlemen. The feat now being performed is extremely dangerous and should only be done on radio by experienced idiots.

This is a recurring rhetorical tactic for Keith.

This is nonsense. “Keith” has no conventional identity; “he” and “his” words are merely transient instantiations of a mechanistic Gut Brain.

Nothing that he types has any meaning unless fully qualified by a dietary and excretory inventory, and even then, the interpretation of the lab results would be casually left as an exercise for the awestruck recipients, who are by definition incapable of even bounding the requisite poles in the KEITHBELL plane.

incapable of even bounding the requisite poles in the KEITHBELL plane.
These are Complex Analysis power-words. I do not conduct complex analysis unless someone is paying me.

In any event, now that the Power of KEITHBELL’s Gut Brain seems to have finally gotten The Message through again, I’ll note that not even the reply to these guys offers little solace (footnote omitted):

Although existing positron emission tomography studies in humans are suggestive of serotonergic mechanisms in ATD, improved 5-HT tracer ligands are critically needed to reliably measure endogenous 5-HT. Additional techniques for altering 5-HT function in humans, such as selective receptor antagonists, are also needed. Developing these techniques is especially important because the relevance for humans of ATD studies in rats is
unclear.

Perhaps I’ll leave a prediction of what he should blunder into from here in a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnall’s HDB’s doorstep, but the fact that KEITHBELL’s Bifidownership plainly doesn’t encompass competent operation of the magic box with the papers inside, it’s not striking me as particularly pressing.

Ah, it turns out that Crockett et al. themselves received a reply in Molecular Psychiatry, although Pubmed doesn’t have a forward link (footnotes omitted):

Previously we reviewed the literature and concluded that there is no evidence for ATD-induced decreases in rodent, primate or human 5-HT release, unless 5-HT synthesis is already decreased or 5-HT utilization is increased…. [T]he microdialysis studies embraced by Crockett et al. to show ATD-induced reductions in 5-HT release do not provide the direct evidence that is needed to show that ATD decreases extracellular 5-HT concentrations.

Say good night, Gracie.

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