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Has Google finally adjusted its algorithm to deprioritize quack content? Dr. Mercola thinks so.

Everyone’s favorite quack Joe Mercola is ranting about Google. It’s not surprising, given how Google has apparently deprioritized content from quack websites..

Over the last few days, I’ve sensed a disturbance in the quackosphere. That disturbance involves Google and a great deal of concern about that be-all and end-all of quack websites, Google rankings. I’ve said many times before that, when it comes to people like Mike Adams, Joe Mercola, Kelly Brogan, and various other purveyors of the “holistic lifestyle,” alternative medicine, and hostility towards conventional medicine, it might not start out as grift (although in Mike Adams’ case, it did), but inevitably it becomes all about the grift. And how do these sellers of the quack lifestyle make their money? They sell things: supplements, books, videos, and the like, as well as advertising by other quacks. Their key tool for making their money is, of course, their websites, many of which have for a long time ranked very high on Google searches. Over time, they learned, often skillfully, to use social media, especially YouTube and Facebook, to promote their brand and wares. YouTube and Facebook were particularly valuable because they allowed quacks to host their videos free of bandwith charges. Not only that, but they provided means of monetization of those videos, while Facebook allowed the formation of public pages that could become quite popular and provided further means for quacks to promote their brand.

Of course, we are now in the midst of the largest measles outbreak in a generation, an outbreak largely fueled by vaccine hesitancy, in turn fueled by antivaccine propaganda. This outbreak also capped off a period of time around the 2016 election, when society started really feeling the effects of fake news spread virally through social media and noticing the toxic effect of trolls and an online culture of harassment. Antivaccine conspiracy theories were only part of the misinformation and fake news that were having an effect. In any event, social media platforms have been under enormous pressure to clean up their acts and take action to develop tools to halt online harassment and to blunt the spread of fake news and, with the current measles outbreak, especially fake news of the antivaccine variety. Indeed, I’ve mentioned some of these measures, such as when Facebook banned Mike Adams from its platforms a week and a half ago and when Amazon, Facebook, and other social media platforms were trying to crack down on antivaccine misinformation by demonetizing their content by not letting them run ads during their videos and deprioritizing it in their internal search engines, as YouTube promised to do for antivaccine misinformation and removing antivaccine movies from Amazon Prime.

Of course, quacks did not like this because these measures were a knife to the heart of their income stream. For instance, when Google briefly delisted Mike Adams in 2017 for what were probably SEO shenanigans that were against Google policy, he lost his ever-lovin’ mind (as he usually does when something doesn’t go his way) spinning conspiracy theories. So it was with interest that I saw this Facebook post by “holistic” psychiatry quack and antivaxer Kelly Brogan:

Brogan, you might recall, gained some notoriety when she was featured at one of Goop’s wellness summits, particularly because of her promotion of antivaccine nonsense. My first reaction to her graph was: WTF? Look at all that traffic! And look at that traffic plunge. I noticed a commenter named Joanna Sochan chiming in:

This happened to my website as well, from 50K+ views per month to barely registering in search results. I’m a Naturopath in Australia and a great fan of yours:)

Her website looks like a typical naturopathic quack website, with the same fake diagnoses like adrenal fatigue and parasitosis. Brogan also noted:

Aha! So Joe Mercola is complaining too because his website’s traffic has plummeted 99%:

Google traffic to Mercola.com has plummeted by about 99% over the past few weeks. The reason? Google’s June 2019 broad core update, which took effect June 3,1 removed most Mercola.com pages from its search results. As reported by Telaposts.com:2
“The June 2019 Google Broad Core Algorithm Update impacted the rankings of websites in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages. Several aspects of the algorithm were changed which caused some sites to gain visibility and others to lose visibility. Generally speaking, sites negatively impacted will see a drop in rankings for many or all of important keywords or key phrases which they used to rank well for … The June 2019 Google Broad Core Algorithm Update impacted sites across the web, however, I am personally seeing the most impact on News and Health sites.”

Mercola continued his complaint:

Now, any time you enter a health-related search word into Google, such as “heart disease” or “Type 2 diabetes,” you will not find Mercola.com articles in the search results. The only way to locate any of my articles at this point is by searching for “Mercola.com heart disease,” or “Mercola.com Type 2 diabetes.” Even skipping the “.com” will minimize your search results, and oftentimes the only pages you’ll get are blogs, not my full peer-reviewed articles. Negative press by skeptics has also been upgraded, which means if you simply type in my name none of my articles will come but what you will find are a deluge of negative articles voicing critiques against me in your searches. Try entering my name in Yahoo or Bing and you will see completely different results.

Of course, it was a travesty, a major flaw in the Google algorithm, that allowed content from quack sites like Mercola.com to show up high in its search results. On the other hand, being the skeptic that I am, I wasn’t just going to take Joe Mercola’s word for it that this is what had happened. So I did some searches of his name on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. On Google, Mercola’s website came up #1 on the search, with his Twitter feed second, a page on his website touting his qualifications third, and his Wikipedia entry fourth. Then the rest of the results on the first page were mostly, but not all, all links to material critical of his quackery, including two Science-Based Medicine posts, his Quackwatch and RationalWiki entries, and a news story about him from a few years ago delving into his business. The Yahoo! search results were similar, but with somewhat more results from his sites arranged in a different order and only one of the two SBM articles. Bing also had that SBM article on its first page of search results, but appeared to have a lot more material from websites owned by Mercola.

So, yes, Google made a significant tweak to its algorithm, that it rolled out in early June. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. This is Mercola’s take:

As explained by Telapost,3 a core update “is when Google makes several changes to their main (core) algorithm.” In the past, Google search results were based on crowdsource relevance. An article would ascend in rank based on the number of people who clicked on it. Traditionally, if you produced unique and high-quality content that matched what people were looking for, you were rewarded by ranking in the top of search results. You would find Mercola.com near the top of nearly any health search results. So, let’s say one of my articles on diabetes was seventh on the page for your search; if more people clicked on that link than, say, an article listed in third or fifth place, my article would move up in rank. In a nutshell, Google search results were, at least in part, based on popularity. That’s no longer the case. Instead, Google is now manually lowering the ranking of undesirable content, largely based on Wikipedia’s assessment of the author or site. Wikipedia’s founder and anonymous editors are well-known to have extreme bias against natural health content and authors. Google also contributes heavily to funding Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is near the top of nearly all searches — despite the anonymous aspect of contributors. Who better to trust than a bunch of unknown, unqualified contributors?

Of course, again, this was one of the aspects of Google’s search algorithm that was always troublesome, because “popular” does not necessarily mean high quality. The fact that Mercola.com articles routinely showed up high on Google search results was evidence of that. Of course, popularity wasn’t everything. Google hires quality raters to evaluate the quality of websites, and apparently it issued an update to its quality raters’ guidelines in May:

Google hires “quality raters”, people who visit websites and evaluate their quality. Their feedback doesn’t directly impact your site; it goes to engineers who update the Google algorithm in an effort to display great websites to their users. The guidelines give us great insight as to what Google considers a quality web page. Now here, Telapost compares 2018 reviewer guidelines to 2019 reviewer guidlines:

Google uses two acronyms to describe what it’s looking for in terms of quality webpages: measurements, E-A-T and YMYL. E-A-T means “Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.” High-quality pages have a high level of E-A-T while low-quality pages don’t. Of course, how does Google measure E-A-T? There are a number of metrics, but one metric is important:

In order to be deemed high-quality, Google states that “websites need enough expertise to be authoritative and trustworthy on their topic.” It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that what comprises “Expert” content can vary depending upon a page’s type and purpose. For example, while high-level medical advice needs to be written by an accredited doctor in order to be considered “Expert” content, general information supplied on medical support forums can be considered “Expert” even if it’s been written by a layperson. Some topics inherently require less formal levels of expertise and, for these pages, Google is predominantly looking at how helpful, detailed, and useful the information provided is.

Of course, Mercola is a DO; so as a doctor he was considered an expert on medical topics by Google. There’s another aspect to Google rankings known aas YMYL, which stands for “Your Money or Your Life.” Basically, YMYL is a quality rating for websites that ask for your money or your life; i.e., usually financial transactions or medical advice:

YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life” pages and are comprised of pages that are important enough that, were they low-quality, they could have a potential negative impact on a person’s life, income, or happiness. As a general rule, the pages that Google requires to be written by experts are known as YMYL pages. Google thinks of the following categories as examples of YMYL pages:
  • Shopping or financial transaction pages
  • Pages that offer financial information, for example, investment or tax information
  • Pages that offer medical information about specific diseases or conditions or mental health
  • Pages that offer legal information about topics like child support, divorce, creating a will, becoming a citizen, etc.
  • Any page that has the potential to be dangerous or detrimental if it possessed low levels of E-A-T (car repair and maintenance, for example)
When it comes to these pages, Google has incredibly high page quality rating standards. This is Google’s effort to protect Google users from low-quality complex content that doesn’t possess the needed levels of E-A-T.

Basically, for pages that aren’t YMYL, Google doesn’t consider expertise as critical as it does for pages that are YMYL. Google’s own guidelines take this into account, although I truly cringed when I saw this section in the Google FAQ regarding its page quality rating FAQs. You’ll see why in a minute. But first, I note that Mercola quotes this rather deceptively, mixing up commentary by Jennifer Slegg on TheSEMPost with actual excerpts from the Google FAQs. Here’s how Mercola does it:

There has been a lot of talk about author expertise when it comes to the quality rater guidelines … This section has been changed substantially … [I]f the purpose of the page is harmful, then expertise doesn’t matter. It should be rated Lowest!”

And here’s how it actually read, first the part by Jennifer Slegg:

There has been a lot of talk about author expertise when it comes to the quality rater guidelines, particularly with how site owners and authors can showcase their expertise. This section has been changed substantially to address this a bit more from Google’s perspective. Previously, it was implied that all content creators should have expertise. But they have lessened this slightly, for topics that don’t fall into YMYL pages.

And here’s the section from Google’s FAQ:

Pretty much any topic has some form of expert, but E­A­T is especially important for YMYL pages. For most page purposes and topics, you can find experts even when the field itself is niche or non­-mainstream. For example, there are expert alternative medicine websites with leading practitioners of acupuncture, herbal therapies, etc. There are also pages about alternative medicine written by people with no expertise or experience. E­A­T should distinguish between these two scenarios. One final note: if the purpose of the page is harmful, then expertise doesn’t matter. It should be rated Lowest!

Notice how Mercola used ellipses to stitch together Slegg’s commentary with the last sentence of the above answer to a question on Google’s FAQ. Of course, the example that Google uses in its FAQ is indeed cringeworthy, because experts in alternative medicine are quacks, and allowing quackery to rank on YMYL sites goes against Google’s own policy because by definition quackery has low E-A-T and is by definition harmful. Of course, what probably torpedoed Mercola’s and Brogan’s sites according to Google is that last section about how harmful content should always be ranked Lowest. As Slegg notes, that part was not text that had been added or changed in the May update, but Mercola deceptively stitched together bits of text to make it seem as though it was part of that update. What might be different is that Google is now actually enforcing that guideline for antivaccine content, likely goaded by the light the current measles outbreak is shining on social media and search engines.

Joe Mercola, of course, views this as a huge conspiracy on Google’s part. He spends a fair amount of verbiage bragging about how his content used to show up near the top of Google search results, his expertise as a physician, how he even created a peer review panel of medical and scientific experts that review, edit and approve most of his articles before they’re published, and how his articles are “fully referenced, most containing dozens of references to studies published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.” He then laments that “none of this now matters, as the very fact that the information I present typically contradicts industry propaganda places me in the lowest possible rating category.” No, Dr. Mercola, your information glorifies quackery, such as the time when you promoted cancer quack Tullio Simoncini, who thinks that all cancer is a fungus and that baking soda is the cure. I kid you not. Mercola’s been promoting quackery for 22 years now. His content has always been low quality, quackery disguised as real medical advice.

There’s also another reason why Mercola.com results were deprioritized. It came in the form of Tweets from Google:

Basically, as is explained on Search Engine Roundtable, Google is also instituting a change that will restrict search results to only two listings from the same domain for most searches. The intent behind the change is to show more diverse results from different domain names and that Google will generally treat sub-domains as part of the main domain. This change, too, could easily have affected various quack websites. Indeed, Telapost listed Mercola.com as one of the biggest losers after the early June algorithm update, along with DrAxe.com, which no longer ranks highly for searches for “keto diet.” (Interestingly, the Daily Mail was also a big loser.)

In much of the rest of his article, Mercola then tries to channel Mike Adams and go full conspiracy nut. If you need tinfoil, you’d best buy it now, because Mercola’s trying to corner the market on tinfoil hats:

Here’s just a taste:

My information was frequently at the top of many health searches, because many people like you found it to be the most valuable. But as Google’s power grew to enormous proportions, the goal of providing this service to you changed. The goal now is to become even more powerful by uniting with other powerful industries and government to force their beliefs on the masses and manipulate the future itself. Crowd sourcing has become crowd control. Google began by giving you everything you want so it can now take everything you have. Google has changed from looking at users as customers and giving them what they want, to making users custodians of their will — essentially making you a host of a virus to carry out their agenda. Google has become the ultimate puppet master, infecting people and manipulating them without even knowing it. Their true goal is to be in complete control of all of us, directing our behavior — and should we rebel, they also have partnered with the military to create drones utilizing artificial intelligence to ensure resistance will be defeated. This is eerily reminiscent of many science fiction books and productions, but we have proof of what Google is doing — and we cannot go along with it. Google refers to the goal of controlling humanity as “The Selfish Ledger,” described in the video below.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if Mercola had hired Mike Adams to write this for him here…and here:

After all, if you want to find an answer on the web what do you do? You Google it, you don’t just “search.” Google worked for many years to earn your trust, but it was just setting a trap to twist that trust into powerful control. Unfortunately, even if such an idea were to gain traction (which it has not), it still wouldn’t solve the problem, as Google is not acting independently, but rather is merely fulfilling a role within a much larger complex that includes the U.S. government, its military and national security apparatus, as well as several of the wealthiest and most powerful industries on the planet. I’ll delve into these issues in part 2 tomorrow. All of these “partners” have a vested interest in censoring information addressed by yours truly on a daily basis; information relating to nondrug options for the prevention and treatment of disease and/or warnings about dangerous treatments, drugs and vaccines, for example, or the benefits of regenerative agriculture over conventional farming and fake meat, or the hazards of toxic chemicals found in everyday products and food.

And then Mercola wrote part 2 of his rant against Google. Naturally, he’s incensed that Google quality reviewers are instructed to use Wikipedia to evaluate expertise and trustworthiness of sources. Amusingly, he cites RationalWiki along with Wikipedia. Never mind that nothing in the Google guidelines instructs its reviewers to use RationalWiki, which has nothing to do with Wikipedia. The rest of the article is basically one long anti-Wikipedia rant. Of course, I’ve had issues with Wikipedia, but Mercola’s anti-Wikipedia rant is just beyond the pale. I’ve also had my issues with Google, but in this case I’m glad Google is finally trying to deprioritize antivaccine and quack information.

I’d like to end here, as I began, by reminding my readers that it’s all about the grift. Mercola is upset because he’s spent 22 years building an “alternative health” empire that’s raked in a whole lot of money based on his ability to sell his wares online, an ability that has depended on his ability to build and maintain a highly trafficked website. The same can be said about basically every famous quack out there. Since Google is by far the number one search engine, every website lives and dies by its Google ranking. Anything that threatens that is a threat to his grift. Remember that. It’ s why he’s so upset.

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]

212 replies on “Has Google finally adjusted its algorithm to deprioritize quack content? Dr. Mercola thinks so.”

Mercola

Who better to trust than a bunch of unknown, unqualified contributors?

Answer: that amounts to another bunch of unknown, unqualified contributors?

I mean, when you [Mercola and other alt-health purveyors} claim to have expertise and you put all your opinions on a fancy website with your name on it, you are still some dude I don’t know, whose credentials I can’t confirm, operating from another part of the world. Double so if you put the quack Miranda on your website.
Now, if your claims were supported by some well-done studies and not by what is at best cargo cult science…

I think the new Google changes might make it difficult for me to locate a specific webpage if I can only remember a segment of text.

But honestly the changes actually seem like a good idea. Hopefully they will also lessen the impact of sites like Mercola.

This food free service is terrible, and the servings are so small!

Changes to the Google algorithms mean that all the money Mercola spent on search-engine optimisation is wasted? Dude, you should ask for your money back.

You jest, but SEO is a business that makes a lot of people a lot of money. If Mercola hired someone to SEO his site(s0, he’s probably spent well over 15k to “optimize” his search result placement.

Than again, maybe he gets hints from the Healthtwit, and tries to game the system.

It is not if. A Linkedin job ad:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Specialist
Mercola.com Makati, PH
2 months ago 0 applicants
Apply on company website

I get this by googling Mercola search engine optimization.

Do you think it’s a new position or a replacement of one he already had?

I do not know. But I would say that being first in all health searches is highly susceptible. Mercola is not that famous.

Mike Adams is doing his best to rake in the dough before civilization collapses (due to nefarious factors like climate change amelioration, glyphosate and “bioengineered vaccine contaminants” etc.).

He’s one of the speakers at an upcoming “True Legends” conference in Branson Mo., and says tickets are”very affordable”, though he doesn’t mention they’re $125 apiece.

So drop everything and attend, or at least subscribe to the live stream to learn all about scary technology, UFOs and Mike’s delusions. He says it’s likely his last public presentation before global chaos unfolds, so act now!

they also have partnered with the military to create drones utilizing artificial intelligence to ensure resistance will be defeated.

This despite the fact that Google engineers have rebelled in the past against contracts taken by the company for the U.S. military. One hopes that this helps send Mercola and his ilk back to the street corner where they belong.

Woo-merchants have had to spend a lot of time countering recent developments. Less time to “teach” followers how to defeat cancer, live forever and avoid children’s vaccinations. It’s about time.

Wikipedia is their bete noir:
as Null explains ( paraphrase): if a listener looks up his name, Wikipedia is one of the first entries that appears. Its bio uses Dr Barrett and SBM amongst other sources ( sceptics, newspapers) which “mis-represent” him..
A while back he tried to replace the content with his own – briefly, Null’s confabulations were presented as I reported here but the Guerilla Sceptics took care of that. Hoo-ray!

Look this is a guy to claims to have “cured” hiv/ aids with supplements and a vegan diet. He has unrelated, ‘alternative pathways’ and mail order degrees. He is a business. He doesn’t want his audience to know that. He complains that Wikipedia doesn’t use “experts”- as if he could tell what an expert is.

He admits that his bio has affected his bottom line because he is not being invited to speak at conferences ( even woo-fests have standards?), has lost a major book deal and his sales have suffered.

Adams has had to do repair work as well as Mercola- many articles and videos bemoaning tech giants. Kim Rossi complains that her books won’t appear on Amazon.
Isn’t it a great first step?

Sharyl Attkisson is currently having some success at whitewashing her Wikipedia entry. It has started in earnest in the last few weeks and I can’t but help thinking the timing is significant.

Attkisson is one of those PRN mentions as being “smeared”. Others are Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake, Abby Martin and Null. Looking at her current bio, I’m glad to see that the “anti-vaccine” material remains. Also “hacking”,
Supposedly, Null’s lawyers are helping other “victims” to fix their bios. ( His remains intact)

Note:
I recently wrote that Mercola earned 7 millions USD and couldn’t provide the source: it was Wikipedia.

Ahh, SoothSayer Ji joins Mercola and Mikey Adams, heading for the catbox of history.

One reason you might be getting search results that don’t look like what others are getting, is Google’s bad habit of “personalizing” searches. Using cookies and other measures, they keep track of who you are and what you “like,” and then give you more of what their algorithms think you “like.”

So if you do a lot of searching on Mercola, for example, or quackadoodles in general, the algorithms will think you’re sympathetic to his cause(s) and probably feed you more of his catbox contents than they’d give to someone else.

The remedy is to use Startpage.com, which is a privacy-protected front end into Google (they pay Google to use its search engine without all the spyware crap, and they anonymize the searches). Thus you get essentially “clean” Google search results, with no “personalization.”

Additionally, try DuckDuckGo.com , that runs its own native algorithms on its own servers, rather than using anything Google-related.

On my first page of Startpage.com results I get: Top two results are from Mercola’s site, followed by one from Quackwatch, two from ScienceBasedMedicine, then Chicago Magazine, RationalWiki, TheRinger, and Twitter.

On my first page of DuckDuckGo results I get: Wikipedia, Mercola, Quackwatch, two more from Mercola, ScienceBasedMedicine, and four more Mercola.

So at this point it would seem that the Duck needs to catch up with the Goo.

It would be useful for someone to do some research using computers with good privacy software such as EFF’s Privacy Badger dialed up to max, use Google as it’s delivered, and clear the cookies & cache after each run. Set up different search profiles: one that starts by looking for results about a particular disease and then follows any Mercola link that comes up; then clear cookies & cache and run one that starts with sites such as Rational Wiki, ScienceBasedMedicine, etc.; and so on. Keep track of what you get each time. Try it for different diseases e.g. cancer, diabetes, etc.

No doubt Mercola is busy trying to beat the algorithm, and he may even succeed for a while. What’s needed is to blackhole him and the rest of them so thoroughly that their businesses crash and they can’t recover.

It’s a start but it ain’t perfect. I tried a few searches on Google to see what’s what.

Search on “stem cell therapy” and the 1st page main results are all conventional science and the FDA warning on scams. However, this is preceded by several ads by stem cell scam clinics.

A search on “diabetes cure” was a little better. All the 1st page links were conventional science. But there was one ad on top from Amazon on diabetes cures in their store. I didn’t click on it.

For the present ads are one way to put scams at the top of the 1st page.

“Joe Mercola, of course, views this as a huge conspiracy on Google’s part. He spends a fair amount of verbiage bragging about how his content used to show up near the top of Google search results, his expertise as a physician, how he even created a peer review panel of medical and scientific experts that review, edit and approve most of his articles before they’re published, and how his articles are “fully referenced, most containing dozens of references to studies published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.” He then laments that “none of this now matters, as the very fact that the information I present typically contradicts industry propaganda places me in the lowest possible rating category.” No, Dr. Mercola, your information glorifies quackery, such as the time when you promoted cancer quack Tullio Simoncini, who thinks that all cancer is a fungus and that baking soda is the cure.”

Well, I do see it as a “conspiracy”, though not a “conspiracy” on Google’s part. It’s a “conspiracy” organized by all people who do believe that beliefs inform action and therefore wish to minimise the impact of false beliefs.

It’s not one I object to, in its current form.

I just think we should reflect on where to put the limits of that “conspiracy”.

As I do have an interest in dissecting the minds of quack psychiatrists, I noticed Orac talked about Kelly Brogan. Maybe the following link would be a nice recall of her positions:

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2017/12/18/dr-kelly-brogans-e-book-vaccines-and-brain-health-a-cornucopia-of-antivaccine-misinformation-and-pseudoscience/

The videos at the bottom are indeed “fascinating”.

Google has changed from looking at users as customers and giving them what they want…

Google has NEVER, EVER looked at its users as “customers”. When was the last time you gave Google a red cent for using their search? The true customers who have made Google a billion-dollar company aren’t the people who use their search but the people who actually pay them money: advertisers. The attention of people using their search engine is the product they sell to advertisers. That makes their business model a lot like that of broadcast television. A television station needs to broadcast good shows so people will watch them, which in turn makes their channel an attractive one to advertisers, otherwise people will just change the channel and watch something else instead. Likewise, Google needs to make their search engine work well or else their product is going to turn to some other search engine instead. That the search engine should give people what they want or need doesn’t enter into it. They just have to be giving results that are reasonably good enough such that their users don’t start using something else instead. Thus, producing quackery for their results as opposed to more reliable results is neutral as far as they’re concerned, unless someone with an interest one way or the other is able to pay them money or is able to exert pressure on them.

“Since Google is by far the number one search engine, every website lives and dies by its Google ranking.”

Websites that contain information counter to your position aren’t the only thing dying.

““Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
― United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media has been murdered & the death of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is imminent. Assuming that your position on vaccine safety does not deviate from that of the authorities:

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” ― Albert Einstein

You may be more anti-truth …

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” ― Benjamin Franklin

… Than those who question would be anti-vaccine. Fortunately for you; both Einstein & Franklin are dead, human rights & freedom as per the U.N. are dead & your authority just killed truth. Ironically, the Measles patients infected during the outbreaks that were hyper-inflated in order to justify this carnage? Are alive.

Your ancestors, however; must be rolling over in their graves.

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” ― Albert Einstein

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” ― Benjamin Franklin

Interesting. You view provaxxers as “blindly believing in authority”. Did it not occur to you that we support vaccines not because we blindly trust authority, but because we looked at the evidence and listened to the experts, and realised that getting the vaccines was orders of magnitude safer than getting the diseases?
These diseases are still killers. Measles may develop into Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis in as many as 1 in 609 cases. SSPE can occur years after Measles and is invariably fatal.
Source for number.
We hear and read all these claims of harms caused by vaccines, but when researchers look, they find nothing. In addition, as shown above, antivaxxers downplay the harms and risks of these diseases.
The simple fact is, the evidence supports vaccinating, but you don’t want to believe it, so you try to insinuate that we’re just “following authority blindly”. We’re not. Sometimes “The Man” is right, and vaccination is one of those times.

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” ― Benjamin Franklin

You have just confused Benjamin Franklin with Timothy Leary. I grant that it is an easy mistake to make.

The moral is that when you come across a list of impressive-sounding “Question Authority” quotes on a website somewhere, you shouldn’t just trust the website, you should question its authority.

Having just been told by a local science teacher that I should “Question everything!”, Smut Clyde, I am going to ‘borrow’ your moral about questioning authority <3

Leary said; ‘Think for yourself and question authority.’ Two quote sites validate Franklin as credible for my initial posts quote but seriously …

Two quote sites validate Franklin as credible for my initial posts quote

I am going to guess that neither of these sites provided a location anywhere in Franklin’s actual writings. Your search for confirmation does not alter the fact that the quotation is recent, and a spurious attribution. You need to think for yourself.

Two quote sites validate Franklin as credible for my initial posts quote but seriously …

“Seriously” what? Attempted argument by aphorism is always a trite activity and generally embarrassingly wrong.

^ There was supposed to be a Snopes link there, but I’m tired and ultimately don’t give tinker’s damn.

“The freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media has been murdered…”

Really? So Mercola and other quacks are now completely unable to get their messages out? Nobody in the world can find what he and his ilk have to say? Hyperbole much?

Yet I am able to just type in their names/ websites’ names** and get ALL of their complaints about being censored as well as hundreds of pages of their articles from past years and lists of products to buy from them.

** mercola.com, prn.fm, naturalnews.com

Yet I am able to just type in their names/ websites’ names** and get ALL of their complaints about being censored as well as hundreds of pages of their articles from past years and lists of products to buy from them.

I noticed this as well. I did not even have to type the website in, a search for Mercola cancer was enough to get a complete listing of all his nonsense articles about cancer, its causes and his quack cures.

Obtuse much? I don’t care about finding Mercola. I think I’ve stumbled onto his webpage twice, ever. I’m sorry but honestly; nobody is doing Antivaccine outreach, or recruitment.o

I’m irked about this media blackout because it’s evidence that the NIH is not any closer to transparency than they were the day that Bernice Eddy told her boss that all the hamsters had died, in 1959.

In 2017 I debated for 3 months straight on another online forum about sv40. Orac has written about Sv40.

I was right about sv40; it DOES cause cancer in humans. The new narrative is now; ‘just because it is causing cancer in humans, doesn’t mean the sv40 came from the sv40 contaminated vaccines’. Brother.

https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/sv40

Okay, WTF. Is that like the homicide investigations where the suspect finally says; ‘Okay, so I buried the body … that doesn’t mean I killed her!’

So it doesn’t bother anybody here that the NIH lied about sv40 for 60 years? Lied about sv40 to Congress in 2003? You’re all cool with that? Because supporting this recent act of desperation, this manipulation of keyword search results; only enables more lies.

My other problem with it is that it conveys how little your authorities think of the intelligence of mothers. As if erasing every antivaccine statement from public view would make a difference? Assuming that we go online & are scooped up by some Antivaccine guru & given a script?

You could turn off the web in its entirety but as long as children are given vaccines; there will be more ‘antivaccine’ mothers next year, than there are this year.

…nobody is doing Antivaccine outreach, or recruitment.

Robert F. Kennedy’s very public lies about vaccination; Del Bigtree producing Vaxxed; Andrew Wakefield’s many public appearances; antivaxxers showing up to comment on SB277.

sv40; it DOES cause cancer in humans.

The falsity of your claim was addressed above. Repeating a false claim doesn’t make you right. It just makes you a stubborn fool at best, and a liar at worst.

I’m irked about this media blackout because it’s evidence that the NIH is not any closer to transparency

It is not immediately clear to me how a change in Google’s algorithms to stop scammers gaming the system is evidence of NIH policies or priorities. You do know that NIH do not run Google?

For people who have been silenced and deprived of their income, they certainly seem to be making an awful lot of both noise and money.

christine wrote:

” Ironically, the Measles patients infected during the outbreaks that were hyper-inflated in order to justify this carnage? Are alive.”

You seem a bit disappointed. Were you hoping for dead children? If so, why?

Thank you for mentioning Ben Franklin though – he was strongly pro-vaccine, writing

“In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it, my example showing that the regret may be the same either way and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.”

(sorry for showing you someone sad about the death of a child – I hope that doesn’t trigger you)

That’s very interesting about Ben Franklin; I didn’t know that.

Triggered? ASD here; I’m not certain about how literally you meant that statement. Did you say that because you know (about or of) me & you wanted to be terribly mean? Or did you say that because you are clueless & were trying to be just a little mean?

“The freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media has been murdered”

DuckDuckGo (another search engine) seems to work just fine if you’re not OK with Google.

Also, no. Don’t even begin to try to compare “no longer getting a full page of hits on Google” with actual journalists being actually murdered for their work. Don’t even start.

DuckDuckGo (another search engine) seems to work just fine if you’re not OK with Google.

They could always use Good Gopher!

This is one of the things I find most hilarious about this whole episode. Mike Adams created Good Gopher so his marksfollowers would not have to see all those science-based websites that contradicted Mikey’s conspiracy theories. Yet when Google de-emphasises his conspiracy theories, Mikey goes all ape-sh!t.

Actual journalist what? Seriously. Apparently I’m not the only ASD’er here.

I refer you to something in your frst comment on this post.

both Einstein & Franklin are dead, human rights & freedom as per the U.N. are dead & your authority just killed truth.

JustaTech is pointing out that quack sites losing Google rankings is not only not a “loss of rights and freedoms”, but a very offensive claim for you to make when journalists have been murdered for exposing truths that those in power would rather keep hidden. Journalists like Jamal Khashoggi.
By the way, I’m also on the spectrum, and we’re not the only ones who comment on this site who are.

Spare me the martyr complex.

Mercola hasn’t been deprived of his free speech rights. He can say what he likes and grift as he likes. But Google is not obligated to spread the word for him, especially since his word is false.

Note the word “blind” in the Einstein quote. Blind belief, not belief. People who understand and accept science are not doing so blinding.

You really should learn something about the people you quote. Both would be appalled by the quacks, grifters, and nuts that comprise the alt health movement.

Christine, unless you have the qualifications to check all of the calculations and methodology and reasoning behind the multitude of trials, tests and studys showing vaccines to be far safer than disease…….. who’s authority are YOU blindly following?

Also, you should apply some of your critical thinking to your statement about the right to impart information. If it held the way you seem to think it does then I should be able to force quack websites to host pictures of horses arses.

Number,
I am not qualified to check calculations at all, unless you are looking for a good laugh or comedy relief. Nor do I have the credentials required to formally critique the methodology & reasoning behind the studies of vaccine safety.

My only asset is that I am pathologically literate & since the advantages of hyperlexia are only achieved through dysfunctional time-management; it’s only barely an asset.

I’m not following any authority whatsoever. I’m following a huge amount of information & my opinions are never final. Vaccines have a lot of potential but that potential has been underestimated by both the pro & anti vaccine. It’s an uncomfortable place to ‘be’ but being blind isn’t an option.

My only asset is that I am pathologically literate

“Prolix” should not be confusied with “coherent.”

“Ironically, the Measles patients infected during the outbreaks that were hyper-inflated in order to justify this carnage? Are alive.”

What was hyper-inflated?

The freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media has been murdered & the death of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is imminent.

You mean it will no longer be valid as a cause of action in the U.S.? Oh, wait.

Not a huge surprise, given Mercola’s attitude that science ITSELF is one big conspiracy: why else would it have all these rules and standards about evidence, deliberately screening out anyone with radical new ideas that have never been tested or even tried? It’s not FAIR! pout

“Ironically, the Measles patients infected during the outbreaks that were hyper-inflated in order to justify this carnage? Are alive.”

“Ironically”, the 82 who’ve died in recent European measles outbreaks are still dead, along with the approximately 100,000 who die globally from this disease every year.

It’s OK, they’re not American.

Yet.

As much as I agree with your approach to quackery the real problem is Google deciding what you find. It may have gone the right direction now, it might go the wrong direction the next time.

So who’s gonna control Google’s algorithm using criteria agreed upon by whom?

(Interestingly, the Daily Mail was also a big loser.)

I’ll try not to lose any sleep over this.

I was right in 2017 when I spent months on an online debate arguing the position that sv40 did cause & is now causing cancer in humans. https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/sv40

That’s the link to the quiet admittance, not the debate, although that’s easily googled. Or is it … ?

Cue the ‘okay, it causes cancer in humans but that doesn’t mean its the vaccines fault!’ Seen frequently in homicide investigations; ‘okay, so I did bury the body but that doesn’t mean I killed her!’

Orac has specifically addressed SV40 here & maintained ‘The Man’s’ 50+ year long position that ‘sv40 does not cause cancer in humans’ & none here did dissent. https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2013/09/11/a-zombie-meme-rises-from-the-grave-maurice-hilleman-the-polio-vaccine-sv40-and-cancer/

Orac was right that the evidence did not demonstrate a risk but he was wrong that sv40 could not cause cancer in humans. The biological research spanned decades & was highly contentious with allegations of laboratory contamination & NIH scientists being demoted to broom closets. Literally.

‘The Man’ likely understood that if sv40 proved to cause cancer in humans just after the polio vaccine used in mass immunization campaigns was found to be contaminated with sv40; that public confidence in the immunization program would be irreparably destroyed. Given that pre-ELISA research confirming sv40 in human tumors was inconsistent, a false sense of security ensued.

The epidemiology was erroneously used to form a consensus because the biological process of the latency periods of sv40 tumors was misunderstood. Not all pathological exposures resulted in pediatric brain cancers during the 1960s or adolescent osteosarcomas in the 1970s. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma wouldn’t statistically manifest until the 1980s & Mesothelioma may not develop until a person is in their 60s.

So no; vaccination is not one of those times. Intellectually you must know that the burden of proof for vaccine safety has not been met. All we have is the Big Data epidemiology from first-world subjects that are looking specifically for risk of alleged disorders. SIDS. ASD.

Yet admittedly, not much is known about the biological process behind SIDS or ASD. How can studies that are not precepted by discovery of confounders be considered valid? Instead, risk factors that correlate are being used. So I’m sorry but despite that the epidemiology hasn’t shown vaccines to be associated with ASD; saying that there is proof that vaccines don’t cause autism is wrong.

In order to say that, the epidemiology must demonstrate a negative association & there must be biological evidence suggesting a different cause. But there is none.

Dial it back. Look at the research done to assess mortality in third world settings regarding vaccines against specific pathogens, given at various ages & in different sequences. The non-MMR Measles vaccine has been shown to decrease mortality. The DPT has shown to increase mortality, in females. Both discoveries are examples of good science, as both will lead to better health.

If The Man were to engage in science that led to a new hypothesis every once in a while, I’d be on board. Instead, I’m hearing; ‘The science is settled so shut up.’ Realistically, the science of vaccines will many times result in pro-vaccine results but sometimes they will not. That is a pro-science acknowledgement, because pro-science is pro-health.

Why has your Man felt it necessary to enlist the media in pro-vaccine antiscience? How do men of science see that as adventitious?

That’s the link to the quiet admittance, not the debate, although that’s easily googled. Or is it … ?

That link says nothing of the sort. Here’s what it does say:

Polio vaccines used in the late 1950s and early 1960s were contaminated with a virus called simian virus 40 (SV40) present in monkey kidney cells used to grow the vaccine. Subsequently, investigators found SV40 DNA in biopsy specimens obtained from patients with cancers such as mesothelioma (lung), osteosarcoma (bone) and non-Hodgkins lymphoma (lymph nodes). However, several facts should be noted:

  1. SV40 was present in cancers of people who either had or had not received the polio vaccines that were contaminated with SV40.
  2. SV40 has not been present in any vaccine since 1963.
  3. People with cancers who were born after SV40 was no longer a contaminant of the polio vaccine were found to have evidence for SV40 in their cancerous cells.
  4. Epidemiologic studies do not show an increased risk of cancers in those who received polio vaccine between 1955 and 1963.

Taken together, these findings do not support the hypothesis that SV40 virus contained in polio vaccines administered before 1963 cause cancers. In addition, available evidence suggests that SV40 virus is likely be transmitted to people by a mechanism other than vaccines.

No, existing evidence does not support a link between SV40 in early batches of the polio vaccine and an increased risk of cancer later in life.

No, I wasn’t clear enough but thank you for your reply. It took 60 years for any admission that sv40 caused cancer in humans; regardless of the source.This was despite that 60 laboratories from around the world were finding cancer in anywhere from 41%-86% of human cancer tumors.

Dr James Goedert of the NCI & NIH denied it in sworn testimony in 2003:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-108hhrg91047/pdf/CHRG-108hhrg91047.pdf

Pages 10-12.

There has never been an admittance that the sv40 contaminated vaccine cause sv40 cancer in humans but that paragraph is dishonest. The IOM declared all the epidemiology as flawed because there was no record of which batches were contaminated.

Pages 70-71.

And the original, contaminated seed lots were used to manufacture the master lots for the OPV; used into the 1990s.

Page 260 (among others)

It was discovered and fixed over fifty years ago. Why are you so behind the times?

There is no reason to admit to a cause of cancer that never existed. As far as your bits about pages 70 and 71, you need to provide something more scientific than hearsay testimony by Gazdar (did you even read it?). By the way it is an investigation by Dan Burton, who was biased.

Congressional testimony is not scientific evidence. Especially if the guy behind was Dan Burton.

Also, Dr. Goedert’s testimony starts on page 6, and starts with: “In 48 mesotheliomas from the archives of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology we found no SV–40 DNA despite the use of two laboratory methods, each able to detect 10 or fewer molecules of SV–40 DNA. Other highly experienced laboratories also did not detect SV–40 DNA in mesothelioma. Still others were detecting SV–40 DNA in a wide variety of tumors and at the same time at extraordinarily high rates in normal blood and tissue samples.”

And concludes with: “In sum, on the basis of the available data we do not have evidence that SV–40 causes human cancer. Only through rigorous,disciplined and transparent science will we find the insight and the means to prevent and relieve the suffering of the cancers being considered by the committee today.”

Perhaps you should actually read the “cites” you give instead of relying one certain websites for that information.

So … what does it say?

I think it says that SV40 has been found in human mesotheliomas, osteosarcomas & non-Hodgkins lymphomas.

I mean; Offit reviewed it. Wouldn’t he know? Rotarix, deep sequencing … & all that …

Two things:
The rate of SIDS decreased dramatically (50%) after the “back to sleep” campaign, which shows that sleeping position is a cause of SIDS. (https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/4/630) It’s not a mystery. And it’s not new; see “cot death” or “crib death”.

Second, why are you so darn sexist? “The Man” “men of science”. What about ‘women of science’? What about all the women in vaccine research and immunology and oncology? Why are you perpetuating harmful stereotypes about women in the sciences? Hmmm?

Sarcasm: Generations upon generations of women have laid their newborns on their tummy’s to sleep & suddenly, in 1992; doctors knew better. Mystery solved; mom’s were just doing it wrong. Just like they don’t know any better so they imagined what precepted their child’s regression into autism. Obviously, mom’s should never be taken seriously. End sarc

And I’m sexist.

Maybe contempt just feels patriarchal to me. What about women of science? Like my late aunt & my mom? PhD Immunology & MD. PhD Immunology & PhD Biochem.14 patents held for a biologic. A vaccine. Oh & great-great aunt Amy. An MD in the early 1900s, married to my great-great uncle who was a director of public health during the 1918 Influenza epidemic.

He ruffled feathers by demanding the churches cancel their services & even banned the geezers from gathering at the barber shop.

But I digress. Everyone else in my family is science-ey but I just had to be spectrum-my.

One last thought. SIDS. The baby died suddenly & the cause of death is sudden baby death. Genius.

Do you know who else has to do ‘back to sleep’? People with Epilepsy. It’s called SUDEP.

So mabey it’s not vaccines & maybe it’s not baby sleeping on tummy. Maybe the vaccines caused a seizure while baby was on tummy.

In response to your first paragraph, two things:
1) Sometimes it takes genius to see the obvious. “Back to sleep” was composed by an expert in SIDS.
2) As Narad pointed out, it cut SIDS deaths in half.

Now on to your main point. Memory is unreliable and can be tricked. After Andrew Wakefield published his fraudulent “Case Study” a number of parents came forward claiming their children had regressed, but when the medical records of the children were checked, in case after case clear signs were showing before the MMR vaccination was administered. Jenny McCarthy’s story about her son Evan kept changing.
In the Omnibus Autism Proceedings before vaccine Court, Michelle Cedillo was one of the first three test cases. As part of their case, the Cedillos introduced video evidence of Michelle at 15 months, before her MMR vaccination. An expert in autism was able to show that even then, Michelle was engaging in autistic behaviours and her parents were unknowingly adjusting their interacting to her.

We have looked and looked and looked, and every single time, there has been no “there”, there. The stories do not match up with the medical files, and/or there were signs of autism before the MMR vaccination.

So I’m sorry but despite that the epidemiology hasn’t shown vaccines to be associated with ASD; saying that there is proof that vaccines don’t cause autism is wrong.

Actually non correlation does strongly imply no causality. If vaccines do cause ASD, epidemiological studies should show this. Can you suggest some way the signal would be missed ? Besides, vaccines are very different. Please select your vaccine first.
Can you cite study concerning DTaP and mortality, so that we can read it. Did you actually read SV40 paper ? Same thing could have happened again.

“Men of science” want prevent children’s deaths. Antivaxxers cause epidemics, and it is adventitious enlist media to prevent this.

Christine, do American, Canadian, and European have a high chance of getting yellow fever, malaria, dengue, typhoid, cholera, and other tropical diseases?

Why do you think the health systems and economies of North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan are equivalent to Guinea-Bissau, one of the poorest countries on this planet? I think we should all raise money to fund you a one way ticket to Bissau with just the number of CFA francs equivalent to the average monthly earnings (and no credit cards allowed!). Then see how well you live off of the economy. Try to stay away from the drug trafficking.

If The Man were to engage in science that led to a new hypothesis every once in a while, I’d be on board. Instead, I’m hearing; ‘The science is settled so shut up.’ Realistically, the science of vaccines will many times result in pro-vaccine results but sometimes they will not. That is a pro-science acknowledgement, because pro-science is pro-health.

Why has your Man felt it necessary to enlist the media in pro-vaccine antiscience? How do men of science see that as adventitious?

Why am I reminded of Rigoletto? Questions, questions.

Intellectually you must know that the burden of proof for vaccine safety has not been met.

Is that an order?

I noticed something in your comment that can’t be allowed to pass unchallenged.

Yet admittedly, not much is known about the biological process behind SIDS or ASD…saying that there is proof that vaccines don’t cause autism is wrong.

In order to say that, the epidemiology must demonstrate a negative association & there must be biological evidence suggesting a different cause. But there is none.

Your argument is wrong in several ways.
Firstly, we don’t need to know what causes autism to show vaccines don’t. A huge meta-analysis comprising over 14 million subjects looked at whether vaccines cause autism. The verdict? It didn’t.
If vaccines had caused even a minority of cases of autism, the study would have detected a difference.
Secondly, there is strong evidence pointing to a genetic cause of autism.
Both arms of your claim are wrong.

The meta-analysis … The Danish study? It was regarding the MMR, not ‘vaccines’, although I think there were two studies & the second one ‘adjusted” for prior vaccination. I spent hours trying to find more information on just exactly what that meant but was not able to find it.

Would you happen to know what that means? If ‘vaccines’ are considered an indication of advantage for health & especially against mortality … would a study that was looking for a risk (non-mortality) from vaccines; adjust up for receiving prior vaccines or down? Per vaccine or just ‘vaccinated’?

Because in a study looking for risk; you could not assume an advantage.

I do not believe I am wrong about my claims. Epidemiology, by US law, cannot be considered as proof of causation. Trying to prove a negative with a method that cannot legally prove a positive is two wrongs. Not right.

One of those Danish studies, I think the latter; demonstrated an overall autism rate of 1 in every 200 which is half of the reported rate in Denmark of 1 in every 100. I haven’t looked at the other one yet but wouldn’t that be an indication to an epidemiologist that something was off?

And second: if you are unsatisfied with studies done on vaccines in the last two decades, do what any who wants some done right… do it yourself.

Design a study, make sure it complies with the Belmont Report, get it approved by a real IRB (none of your relatives allowed), then write a grant to get it funded. Submit that grant to places like Safe Minds and Generation Rescue. Sorry, Mr. Dwoskin is no longer funding vaccine studies.

Then get it done. Come back when your study has been published in a highly ranked journal (remember, you know much more than all the medical researchers, epidemiologists and bio-statisticians, even though you did not read one of the cites you gave where you mixed Gazdar with Goedert).

The Danish study?

No. A 2012 meta-analysis.

I do not believe I am wrong about my claims.

Of course you don’t, otherwise you wouldn’t make them.

Epidemiology, by US law, cannot be considered as proof of causation.

Citation needed.
The bottom line is this: we have looked repeatedly at the question of if MMR vaccines cause autism. Several large, well designed studies have turned up no correlation between the two. There comes a point in every question where either it is proved, or the absence of evidence reaches a point where it must be considered evidence of absence. And we have reached the latter point in the question of if vaccines cause autism.
Unless some quite dramatic new evidence emerges, we have to assume that MMR vaccination is not a cause of autism.

Epidemiology, by US law, cannot be considered as proof of causation.

Still waiting for that citation.

In order to say that, the epidemiology must demonstrate a negative association

Well, if no association doesn’t count as ‘negative’, are you demanding that vaccines be shown to protect against ASDs? (You just might get it.)

& there must be biological evidence suggesting a different cause.

This is nonsensical. I am quite confident asserting that stop signs do not cause ASDs. Or zorses. Stepladders. No different cause required.

But there is none.

Aside from genetics?

What I meat was that two things should occur in order to reasonably consider an epidemiological study as viable proof of ‘not causing’ something: 1. A negative association per the epidemiology. 2. A different process noted.

No, not stop-signs. That would be weird. The current hypothesis is MIA (maternal immune activation). The ‘M’ seems to be of utmost importance. God forbid the ‘M’ cannot be justified.

That would leave IA.

And yes, genetics! Yet, no; not genetics. ASD is multi factorial. The genes are already a given.

That’s the next weird thing; autistic traits prior to vaccination is exactly what we should see if it IS the vaccines, not if it’s not the vaccines. The traits are from the phenotype … before the exposure causes the pathological process.

So have you read the science here: https://sparkforautism.org/portal/page/autism-research/

You remind me of those parents at the PTA meetings who kept requesting this that and the other thing, but refused to lift a finger to make “this that and the other thing” happen. The solution for those time leeches was to appoint them as the chair of the “This That and the Other Thing” Committee.

So, again, if you are disappointed with the twenty plus years of studies encompassing hundreds of thousands of subjects, then go do it yourself. Now get going with designing that study that will dazzle everyone!

Or just join an huge ongoing study that is recruiting fifty thousand families. They even provide a gift card for the child.

That’s the next weird thing; autistic traits prior to vaccination is exactly what we should see if it IS the vaccines, not if it’s not the vaccines. The traits are from the phenotype

This is gibberish. Is It actually necessary to trot out Kim Rossi’s third daughter?

Oh sorry @ Narad,

I forgot to ask about ‘Kim Rossi third daughter’? She writes for an autism blog? What does BAP have to do with her third daughter? How strange for her to have 3 female children, all with autism. Not impossible just strange.

“Not impossible just strange.

Not if you actually understand genetics. The Simons Foundation is a real research body that understands HIPAA… so really, sign up for the SPARKS for Autism study.

Yes it can, or are you being mean? I am not as smart as most here but according to the Stanford-Binet; 99.5667513617% of the population will be less smart than I. And who even cares.

It’s like being all dressed up with no place to go, in hot, itchy stuff with stiff tags; while I’d prefer to be comfortably dressed down & out & about, having fun.

“It’s like being all dressed up with no place to go, in hot, itchy stuff with stiff tags; while I’d prefer to be comfortably dressed down & out & about, having fun.”

What does that mean? What does it have to do with Google, or Mercola or vaccines?

And yet you have demonstrated you have not read your cites, you are just parroting things you have read from Mercola, Age of Autism, and other dubious places. We have seen all of those arguments, and they do not hold water.

You misquoted one of your “citations” which was a congressional testimony organized by a congress critter with an agenda. You seem to think Guinea-Bissau in the 1980s is equivalent to 21st century North America and Europe. Plus you think you know all about how to create the “perfect” study to end all studies.

Now you have just declared you are in the top 0.5% in intelligence, therefore proclaiming to be smarter than most medical researchers, epidemiologists, and bio-statisticians.

So get off teh internets and design that study. Come back when you have published your study that will dazzle all of us.

@Christine Kincaid

99.5667513617% of the population will be less smart than I. And who even cares.

Well, you obviously care, otherwise you wouldn’t have posted that.

@Meg, Christine is trying to voice her frustration at being challenged and having her arguments questioned. She claimed to be ASD. Well, Sensory Processing Disorder is common among those on the spectrum. She was comparing wearing uncomfortable clothing to the situation she’s currently in – arguing with people who demand evidence and won’t just take her claims at face value.

“She claimed to be ASD.”

All the more reason for her to sign up her family for the SPARK for Autism study.

My favorite book exposing the SV40/vaccine conspiracy is one that also ties it into the Kennedy assassination conspiracy – ”Dr. Mary’s Monkey”.

The intrepid author reveals a massive plot, involving various unnamed Men of Mystery, a Brave Maverick Researcher (later spectacularly murdered in an effort at coverup by government agents) and a shadowy hairless figure with fake eyebrows. The BMR and the hairless dude conducted groundbreaking research* in an apartment containing hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of rodents, without arousing the suspicions of the building’s other tenants, who apparently had no sense of smell whatever.

http://amazon.com/Dr-Marys-Monkey-Cancer-Causing-Assassination/dp/1634240308

”I spent months on an online debate arguing the position that sv40 did cause & is now causing cancer in humans.”

Months you will never get back. 🙁

*in a lab that undoubtedly rivaled that of the Geiers for technological sophistication.

I thought the pro vaccine were above the harassment of grieving mothers? Which is truly as it should be, as the pro vaccine will always have less ‘skin in the game’.

Lame.
So, so lame.
Calling out people for claiming that vaccines cause harms that they couldn’t possibly isn’t harassment. But do you know what is?
Meryl Dorey, former President of the Australian Vaccination (Sceptics) Network attacking the McCaffreys after the daughter Dana died from Whooping Cough, and trying to access Dana’s medical records in an attempt to disprove that Whooping Cough is what killed her.
Antivaxxers posting vicious personal attacks on the “Light for Riley” pages, named for Riley Hughes who died from Whooping Cough at just four weeks old.
There’s a saying – lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. You might want to look very closely at your feloow “vaccine sceptics”.

@Christine Kincaid:
“DTaP” It was DTP, and country was Guinea Bissau. Curious, that antivaxxers always say diseases kill people only in developing countries, and developed countries are so different, but still cite developing countries data as highly relevant to developed countries.

SV40: This virus is indeed present in cancer cells, but that does not mean that it causes cancer. Epidemiological studies has always been negative, e.g:
Thirty-five year mortality following receipt of SV40-contaminated polio vaccine during the neonatal period
C Carroll-Pankhurst, E A Engels, H D Strickler, J J Goedert, J Wagner & E A Mortimer Jr
British Journal of Cancer volume 85, pages 1295–1297 (2001)
Feel free to cite study that shows that SV40 do cause cancer.

SIDS is exactly that, an infant dies without any apparent reason. This does not mean vaccines cause it. Please comment this paper:
Do immunisations reduce the risk for SIDS? A meta-analysis
M.M.T. Vennemann, M. Höffgen, T. Bajanowski, H.-W. Hense, E.A. Mitchell
Vaccine Volume 25, Issue 26, 21 June 2007, Pages 4875-4879

Aarno, the reply from 0532 below was supposed to be attached to this post of yours. Sorry about that.

@Christine Kincaid There is longer epidemiological study about SV40 and cancer:
Potential exposure to SV40 in polio vaccines used in Sweden during 1957: no impact on cancer incidence rates 1960 to 1993.
Olin P , Giesecke J
Developments in Biological Standardization 1 Jan 1998, 94:227-233

Thank you, Aarno. but if all of the epidemiology was declared flawed by the IOM in 2002, how can more epidemiology be used to clarify?

I understand that Sweden may have kept better records than the US but they & most of the rest of the world got the vaccine from the US to begin with & we can’t prove who got which lots. Not all of the seed lots used cells from infected monkeys.

I doubt that at this late date, there will ever be sufficient evidence to accurately study if the sv40 in the vaccine caused the prevalence of sv40 cancer seen today. If the FDA & NIH were ‘still looking’ in 2003, how reasonable can it be to assume they would ‘find’ the records now. Maybe they will find them after the Boomers & their immediate families are gone, who knows.

Is that a victory?

Perhaps IOM was wrong ? If SV40 caused cancer, polio vaccination should cause cancer as such, though exact numbers cannot be figured out (because number of contamined lots) is not known.
Sweden certainly keep vaccination records.

the prevalence of sv40 cancer seen today

This is just intellectually dishonest.

@Christine Kincaid Quote from the Danish study:
“The crude effect sizes of sex, birth cohort, other early childhood vaccinations, sibling history of autism, and autism risk score are presented in Tables 2 and 3 of the Supplement. The highest risk for autism was conferred by being a boy (HR, 4.02 [CI, 3.78 to 4.28]), being born in a late birth cohort (2008-2010; HR, 1.34 [CI, 1.18 to 1.52]), having no early childhood vaccinations (HR, 1.17 [CI, 0.98 to 1.38]), and having siblings with autism at study entry (HR, 7.32 [CI, 5.29 to 10.12]). The autism risk score had a modest effect on autism risk compared with sex and sibling history of autism (highest-risk group versus moderate-risk group; HR, 1.38 [CI, 1.28 to 1.48]).”
So all vaccinations were assessed, and they reduced autism. In addition, autism is highly genetic. So by your own criteria, it is proven that vaccines do not cause autism.

“One of those Danish studies, I think the latter; demonstrated an overall autism rate of 1 in every 200 which is half of the reported rate in Denmark of 1 in every 100. I haven’t looked at the other one yet but wouldn’t that be an indication to an epidemiologist that something was off?”
You cite Lyons-Weiler’s “discovery”. 1 per 100 was autism rate at 2016, study ran from 1999 to 2013. So, obviously autism rate is different.

And there is a Wikipedia page for age adjustment, which I found in seconds.

“The study ran from 1999-2013 …” Aarno; thank you for making that point & you would be correct. I was referencing Denmark’s autism rate from 2016.

I appreciate that you make valid arguments that do not entertain the ad hominem.

I appreciate that you make valid arguments that do not entertain the ad hominem.

As much as I appreciate the No Wave reference, I’m not seeing any ad hominems that have been pointed in your direction. You might want to review the definition; for example, “weaselly gasbag” is not an ad hominem.

Christine: “I doubt that at this late date, there will ever be sufficient evidence to accurately study if the sv40 in the vaccine caused the prevalence of sv40 cancer seen today.”

I doubt there will ever be sufficient evidence to convince antivax conspiracy theorists, who continue to make unfounded claims about “sv40 cancer”, an entity which has not been shown to exist in humans.

Well,… I guess it hasn’t been shown to exist in Finnish humans.

They didn’t start vaccinating against Polio until 1957 & did not receive any of the contaminated lots. And they haven’t had any mesothelioma tumors test positive for Sv40.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10506753

“Wikipedia’s founder and anonymous editors are well-known to have extreme bias against natural health content and authors”. Not true. We have extreme bias toward reliable independent sources. Mercola’s problem is with reality, not Wikipedia. Reality proves him wrong, we merely point that out.

Chris,
I can’t seem to find ‘reply’ link on any of your posts. That other reply was to a poster who stated my stupidity couldn’t be measured … said without an example of what struck him as so infinitely stupid. Annoying.

BTW Yes I registered with SPARK a while back & then worried about issues with Luke providing a sample. Not privacy issues, more like autonomy issues. I like having options with the raw data, which I would’t have through them & it feels weird that someone else would have that option but not I.

I recently decided to just go for it. I want Luke to be counted. I want to be counted. Luke was vaccinated according to the schedule. I was as well, along with X3 with the MMR (non-responder), additional vaccines required by military for overseas born, prn boosters for healthcare employment & Rhogamed anywhere from 15-20+ times (lost track) as an Rh-, great-grand multip.

Recent research suggests that with that amount of atypical immune activation, I’d be headed for Alzheimer’s right now if it were not for the ASD. I already know you will not agree. I know I was not a Zombie-Mommy (no prenatal viral infections) & it’s of utmost importance that we contribute to the prevalence of BAP (broad autistic phenotype).

If I had money, I’d wager on BAP being the deal-breaker. I’m thinking that BAP coincides with a genetic susceptibility to atypical cytokine responses involving a BBB potentiating agent + specific pathogen(s). Again, I already know you will not agree.

Betting that an increasing BAP prevalence is both an evolutionary requisite & response to human advancement beyond the industrial age & has recently tipped the scales of herd immunity. I already know you will not agree. Wondering if this has already been considered by a very few with WHO/CDC, etc … & their response was to allow ASD to run amok through the ranks while they scramble; versus screening for BAP & exempting.

Hoping the world will know anything & everything anybody finds out despite the cuckold Google’s damage control.

Why are you saying ‘go do my own research’? I’m not qualified to research. I could eventually be but I’m where I’m needed most: Here with Luke, riding out puberty + ASD; both alternative & prescription psychotropic free. Waiting for that neurological young adulthood transition to occur. No money, stupid A/C isn’t working, both my forearms bloodied from his last two meltdowns. So many others do research but only I could do this. Hoping somebody might hear my ramblings before ‘but that’s anti-vaccine!’ drowns me out. Thank you again for the hookup with SPARK.

The comments are nested, the “reply” only exists on about two to three nests, because the space gets narrower and narrower. This avoids the case seen in some blogs where the comment space is reduced to one word wide. This means you have to scroll up to find the “reply” on a previous comment.

“Why are you saying ‘go do my own research’?”

Because I am sick and tired of folks like you demanding more studies that include special requests. My telling you to design and the study done is due to my experience being active in PTA. Every meeting some very non-active parent would come and insist the PTA provide “this, that and another thing”, but they would not lift a finger to help. So we started the habit of immediately nominated as the new Chair of the “This, That and Another Thing” committee, and to be sure to come back to the next meeting with their plan to implement “This, That and Another Thing”, and to include how it was going to be paid for. We either never see that parent ever again, or we discover someone who is really willing to volunteer.

Don’t be the PTA parent who demands but never volunteers.

Unlike the attempt by the Geiers to get personal information from data, the Simon’s Foundation does protect your information. They actually have real consent forms.

I started to enroll, but got stopped because my son is over eighteen years old and we do not have legal guardianship, just durable power of attorney over his finance and medical care (essentially we are allowed to know his medical issues despite HIPAA, that is it… he must still sign the consent forms). As it turns he has to fill out the forms himself, and he does not want to bother with it.

Please, sign up for SPARK for Autism. You should check to see if you are near any of their clinical partners, and actually seek them out for help working with your kid: https://sparkforautism.org/portal/page/meet-our-clinical-sites/

If anything, they may help you navigate getting help from your state’s disability health services. This is how I got help for my son. I went to our local clinic, got a good diagnosis and referrals to many services. Including the local ARC (the national website is just that with a dot org, I am active with our local county ARC).

Recent research suggests that with that amount of atypical immune activation, I’d be headed for Alzheimer’s right now if it were not for the ASD.

Hello, citations?

You like reading research too? Or are you just doing the ‘quick-scan for usual suspect authors & Antivaccine catch-phrases’? Well, I don’t mind, I just hope you read them.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25047996
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27241247
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26996178

It’s very interesting research, I think. I have a novel mutation on my MECP2 (but I do not have Rett syndrome); it’s reverse to the genome.

Um, that none of those studies have anything to do with vaccines. And that autism is protective against autism were the themes of the first two. The third sounded like an opinion piece, not a study.

Did you actually ever read the abstracts, or did you just cut and paste from a site like Age of Autism. I am not seeing an original thought in any of your comments.

Here is a novel idea: have you tried finding the evidence yourself, and thinking on your own?

When two out of three are Medical Hypotheses, I’m disinclined to stay up late in the first place.

I wouldn’t say diseases don’t kill people in first world countries. They do & not just the health-compromised; they kill young, healthy people too. Diseases will always impact the first vs third world differently & socio-economic status will always impact mortality.

Would it be safe to assume that an intervention that could improve child mortality in Guinea-Bissau, would not be harmful here?

Because in Guinea-Bissau; the child mortality rate is 88.1 (per 1,000) (In the US, it is 5.6. In the UK it is 4.7) & the DPT did not improve that but worsened it (esp. in females). This has been an oft-repeated finding. Would that be repeatable here? Probably not to that extreme & of course, we now use the DTaP.

Is it possible that the third world studies are more valid due to lack of healthy-user bias?

You asked for a study & I gave you one. I honestly don’t know if I’m behaving like a stereotypical antivaxxer but I’m thinking that most wouldn’t want to use anything from The Bandim Health Project due to their well known studies of the non-specific effects of vaccines, in particular; the positive benefits from the Measles vaccine.

I think that’s awesome news but I admit to having to work through some dissonance at first. I started reading everything I could find done by this group; supposedly 700+ articles & Ive got a long way to go but I have to admit that if it was not for the fact that the initial article I read validated my own very difficult history with DPT; I might not have continued to read & learn. The Measles vaccine wasn’t the only surprise; there have been many non-specific effects from several vaccines, both positive & negative.

I’m sorry I can’t comment yet on your other links, I’m getting that PubMeds ‘server is down’. I do want to point out to everyone giving me a hard time about the ‘sv40 as cause for human cancer’ thing. Please refer upthread here at Orac’s first reply to me where he copy/pasted from the link I provided.

Do you know who showed me that article? The woman I debated for three months in 2017. The woman who repeatedly, almost daily said; ‘you have not shown us that sv40 causes cancer in humans … blah, blah, blah …’..she finds me having mentioned sv40 on another sub forum of the same site & replied; ‘are you saying there is a conspiracy to cover up sv40 cancer in humans?’ & provided that link.

I was so pissed off. Three months of ‘yes, it does’ & ‘no, it doesn’t’ & she sees that first & frames me as a conspiracy theorist because ‘nobody is trying to cover up that sv40 causes cancer’. Notice that neither Orac nor the article deny sv40 cancer in humans; just that the sv40 cancer wasn’t caused by the sv40 contaminated vaccines. Bah.

Notice that neither Orac nor the article deny sv40 cancer in humans; just that the sv40 cancer wasn’t caused by the sv40 contaminated vaccines. Bah.

You are commiting the fallacy “begging the question”.

Well, damn … did you read the article aka paragraph? That’s literally all there was. Begging for an answer is more like it.

Has any argument ever been made where the fallacies have not been used on both sides? Use of fallacies is not proof-positive of a weak argument; it can also indicate fatigue in … well; me.
Its fine.

I would love to know what others think the article states. Orac quoted it upthread.

I already know exactly what the article did not state. It was from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Accompanied by 18 citations; 9 of which are attributed to various combinations of the Engels, Strickler, Shah & Goedert researchers who’s methods were alleged to be at best; sloppy & at worst; fraudulent. Only 1 by Butel & none by Carbone. “Reviewed by Paul Offit …” not sure why that’s a thing. Maybe it’s Googles ‘green light’.

You can do Google Scholar search “DTaP safety”. It returns 14300 hits. DTP is a different vaccine entirely.
For SV40 and cancer, “SV40 cancer”. We still do not know, expect that polio vaccine did not cause any.

I have lived in the tropics where I saw the poverty first hand. Plus I actually had dengue fever, and I had a classmate who almost died from amoebic dysentery. I think it is idiotic and deplorable that you dare compare one of the poorest countries on this planet in the 1980s with the USA and UK of the 21st century.

Please stop, because you do not have a clue. Or just buy a one way plane ticket to Bissau, and only have enough of their currency that is equivalent to one month of average income. Trust me, it is not much.

I wasn’t comparing them as comparable, I used the US & UK as a point of reference, to show just how high child mortality is there. Am I that hard to understand? Non-rhetorical.

Because I’m starting to wonder if you can’t understand what I am saying because you have been indoctrinated to resist rational thought from what you believe is an irrational source. When I said that Guinea Bissau’s child mortality rate was 88.10, it would have been irrelevant without a context so I provided one.

There is no comparison between Guinea Bissau & any first world country. That was my point. If something … anything … improved mortality there: It won’t hurt us here, either.

The DPT made mortality worse there. The trees are not in the way of the forest. The trees ARE the forest.

Is this why everyone here so desperately wants me to ‘come from’ or ‘be with’ a group of antivaxxers? You must know thy enemy?

First it was not a large study. Also, it is a country where girls are not exactly valued as much as boys. Half of the women have endured female genital mutilation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_Guinea-Bissau

No. There is no comparison, especially since that vaccine was probably a DTP never used in the USA. Each country has a slightly different versions of vaccines. Also a DTP vaccine has not been used in the USA for years.

Never bring it up again. It is not relevant to countries that do not have high child mortality from lots of other things than vaccine preventable diseases. It is also an ignorant but common uneducated antivaccine argument.

If you wish to show the dangers of vaccines in the United States of America, then present PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers who were not paid by the Dwoskins that any vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule cause more harm than the disease.

I’m thinking that most wouldn’t want to use anything from The Bandim Health Project due to their well known studies of the non-specific effects of vaccines, in particular; the positive benefits from the Measles vaccine.

Well, then why did you use it as your initial volley in this tedious exercise in tail-chasing and dropping chaff?

“Is it possible that the third world studies are more valid due to lack of healthy-user bias?”

No. And I have explained why many times. You just do not understand that there are so many other things that can kill you in those countries than you can imagine. Never use an extremely poor country with an almost nonfunctional government in a tropical country as a reason to discuss health issues in the USA, Canada, UK, Japan, Australia,… etc.

So how many cases of cholera are in your community? How about malaria, dengue fever or yellow fever? Is typhoid or dysentery a concern where you live? If not… stop using studies in countries where they are common.

@ Chris;

If you were comprehending the research at all; you would understand that there are both positive & negative non-specific effects of vaccines.

You would understand that some vaccines have shown the capability to improve immunity against other infectious causes of mortality, such as the ones you mention above. The Measles vaccine is one of those.

You would understand that you are disparaging the data obtained & methods developed by a Demographic Surveillance System of over 40 years, involving hundreds of thousands of women & children, who’s founder was awarded Novo Nordisk Prize in 2000.

Do you believe in the benefits of vaccines or not? Or only what the CDC says in press releases, regarding healthy children in a first world country?

Because whether or not ‘the anti vaccine’ know about this research or not; they are instinctively aware of the counter-intuitive totalitarianism on the part of the pro-vaccine & it is diminishing their trust in any authority you would hope to impart. It is also impacting the ‘apathetic-about-vaccines’ & the vaccine-hesitant.

Bet: This, in conjunction with the ‘gagging of Google’ will amplify & then result in what is always the demise of totalitarian regimes & any chance for globalized public health will be destroyed.

I know more of the science than you. I actually comprehend the concept of “relative risk.”

Please get a one way ticket to Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau. Try to live there on the economy with just the average income. Be careful of the water and the drug cartels. And the mosquitoes. No bug repellent for you.

I’m speechless. This is the first and most certainly the last timei have visited this person’s views. What a nasty ill informed person he is too. Orac are you on Big Pharama payroll ? Why so much nasty negativity towards alternative medicine . If it’s no threat to conventional medicine why all the removal by other parties. Why are doctors of other medicines murdered? Why has the magazine WDDTY been removed from certain surmarket shelves? It is blatantly obvious , the intelligent among you can work it out for yourselves. Good bye and take care!
From the UK

“surmarket shelves”

Must be a UK thing. But it does sound higher class than the sousmarkets I know.

Alternative medicine is as best useless, and as worst deadly. Are you in pay of supplement industry ?

I almost died from an autoimmune cascade that numerous “Top Docs, Mayo, etc” told me was “all in my head.” To adhere to a locked down Rx view isn’t bias? Ahem. One “third world” grown botanical shut down and reversed numerous attacks that were killing me and that others have died from. Which led to a career assisting so called “quacks” who reversed end stage liver, pancreatic, heart disease, and other “uncrable” diseases. Pray forward and remember King Ahab who “only went to the physicians.” Knowledge is great, wisdom better.

@ Peter, you asked: ‘Orac are you on Big Pharama payroll ?’

My (limited) perspective: I believe he has received awards; as is customary in that industry & he should be compensated for any engagements, just as you or I would expect to be paid for our time & trouble. He is an expert in his field & held in high regard by his peers. There is nothing unethical about this.

I think that on the subject of vaccines, there is little potential for real ‘pharma shills’, beyond your everyday marketing & basic damage control.

They (pharma) are rouges & if their initial conduct with biologics was any indicator; not to be trusted. It would be like giving top-secret clearance to the frat boy who needs to be bailed out of the drunk tank every weekend. No government authority would be willing to wager public policy or program on that sort of behavior.

Pharma has nothing to do with this. They don’t have to.

“Why are doctors of other medicines murdered?”

We’re jealous because they live in mansions, drive expensive sports cars and date aging supermodels.

“Why has the magazine WDDTY been removed from certain surmarket shelves?”

What Did you Do To Yourself is still sold down at my local Kroger supermarket. The black salve ads are a real appetite-killer though.

@ Christine K:

( explaining what Narad referenced )
Kim Rossi writes / edits AoA. She had 2 daughters with ASD/ ID then didn’t vaccinate the third who has ASD/ ID – and is also non-verbal. They are now young adults in day programmes or school. She would say that the youngest had ASD because of KIM’S
i.e. her own childhood- vaccines

@ Narad:

Of late ( twitter) Kim has been blaming her youngest daughter’s condition on a difficult birth – “:like CP” she says.

@ Chris:

I am not referencing, copy-pasting, sourcing, following, reading or believing any Anti vaccine site, book, article, spokesperson, politician, physician, philanthropist, author, researcher, guru or celebrity.
The majority of PubMed articles I cite will be ‘Free Text Available’ because I filter with ‘Free Text Available’ because abstract titles can be very misleading. Sometimes studies are titled to intentionally trip-up keyword search results; vaccine safety articles especially; will be worded to mislead.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that I ‘unknowingly’ cite articles that ‘aren’t about vaccines’, when I cite articles about dysfunctional Microglia/synaptic pruning:

-Dysfunctional Microglia/synaptic pruning has been noted in the postmortem brains of people with ASD, Schizophrenia & Alzheimer’s.

Microglia cells are the immune cells in the brain.

-Synaptic pruning involves the Microglia cells maintaining the rapid growth of learning based synapses during early development. The older synapses are cleared to make way for the new. When Microglia cells are not functioning; synapses continue to form over & around the old, to the point where a 5 year old child with ASD may have a brain volume of 5-10% larger than expected for their age.

Social awareness development & requisite synaptic growth begins at age 2.
Again; The Microglia are the immune cells of the brain that ensure proper synaptic growth & pruning. When I cite those studies, I am referencing an immune-mediated event that takes place around the age of 2 years old that might be due to vaccination or might not.
Studies involving immune-mediated events & ASD are highly relevant but can not & will not ‘be about’ vaccines. Yet.

Because that would be anti vaccine.

You wrote: “Here is a novel idea: have you tried finding the evidence yourself, and thinking on your own?”

Good God; there are those damn trees, blocking your view of the forest again.

You wrote “There is no comparison, especially since that vaccine was probably a DTP never used in the USA. Each country has a slightly different versions of vaccines. Also a DTP vaccine has not been used in the USA for years.

Never bring it up again. It is not relevant to countries that do not have high child mortality from lots of other things than vaccine preventable diseases.”

We do not have high child mortality from VPD’s. We have high child mortality from several different causes of accidental death. Vehicular. Drowning. Birth trauma.
We are absolutely vaccinating against Diptheria, Tetanus & Pertussis. You are making the mistake of assuming I am hyper-focused on ‘vaccine ingredients’. I am interested in not just the potential of vaccines but the actual response to vaccination & non-specific effects of vaccines & vaccination.

Do you not yet understand? I am not antivaccine. I am anti-provaccine narratives that are interrupting science.

We do not have high child mortality from VPD’s.

Gee, ya think that maybe VACCINATING against VPD’s is what keeps the death toll so low? And that if we stopped vaccinating against said VPD’s, they might just start killing large numbers of people again? Like in the former USSR when diphtheria came roaring back after vaccination programs collapsed? Or Syria, where a similar breakdown saw polio make a return?
Your comment is the epitome of the arrogance of ignorance. Like so many other antivaxxers, you see today’s World, largely free from VPD’s and you overlook that vaccination is what keeps these diseases in check. Before vaccination, these diseases cut down thousands every year. In areas without vacciantion, they still kill.

“I am not referencing, copy-pasting, sourcing, following, reading or believing any Anti vaccine site,…”

Then come up with something more original. Perhaps you can be specific on what type of autism you talk about. There are several different kind, and over half of the genetic sequences of the spectrum are known. Too bad you are too scared to find out which type your son has.

So how many kids in your area die from cholera, neglect typhoid, malaria, malnutrition, dysentery, dengue and from being sold into slavery: https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-trafficking-in-persons-report-2/guinea-bissau/

You really do not have a clue, so stop exploiting those children even further.

Oh. Thank you. She thinks her third child who was not vaccinated is autistic due to the vaccines she herself received as a child? It sounds more like actual CP or possibly a mitochondrial disorder. I wonder how she reconciles the impossibility of an infant being able to regress into autistic behaviors after (I assume) watching the process in her two older daughters?

@ Narad.
No, no, no. That’s not what I meant at all. I was trying to suggest BAP as a reason why a child would display ASD traits prior to the vaccines & ensuing regression. BAP being the phenotype that is exacerbated by an atypical immune response & results in the pathological presentation of ASD.

Preferring a rigid routine, inclination towards STEM disciplines, introversion … those are ASD-like traits but not prohibitive to living a productive life. There is still executive functioning & an ability to bond with family & friends. If those traits are neurological & inheritable as BAP, then it’s possible that the phenotype could contribute to or interact with; susceptibility to an atypical immune response.

In other words, the incidence of the BAP is increasing & the immune response in the brain (not necessarily always & only due to vaccines) is causing the pathological transition from BAP to ASD.

Or I’m totally off base. It’s a hypothesis. That’s why the research I cite are what you call hypothetical. I have no pre-approved or endorsed playlist of ‘How to pin autism on vaccines’. I’m trying to think it through because I don’t believe for one minute that “parents are poor historians’ & I myself, for sure; am not confused.

re Rossi:

Until recently I’ve never heard her call her daughter’s condition “CP-like”- this is new. It was always “3 daughters with ASD” and the youngest being non-verbal. The CP/ difficult birth was never mentioned- perhaps she overheard what SB people said ( scoffed) about it being maternal vaccines in an unvaccinated child. Similarly, she never mentioned a dx related to her revelations: I would think that if her daughter had that type of rx to birth, it would be noted by the doctors, therapist, nurses etc who had treated her over the past 18 years. Their dxs are ASD. They are ID and the eldest has seizures.

Christine,

Have you ever thought that neuron size and count might have a big variation between any normal brain and any kind of “clinical” brain (be it neurodevelopmental or mental illness)?

Have you ever looked at any other hypothesis such as this one, compared to any immune issue resulting in autism or other neurodevelopmental issues?

We are now able to grow brain cell in petri dishes ( https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/making-mini-brains-from-stem-cells/ and http://theconversation.com/to-cure-brain-diseases-neuroscientists-must-collaborate-thats-why-im-giving-my-data-away-118672 ) and I do know there has been research work done on post-mortem brain regarding neuron size and count so I don’t believe there is no research to be found on actual brain tissues but no one look for them in the antivax community; yet, it’s there. Some of it even public access.

Alain

@ Julian Frost. You wrote; ‘Gee, ya think that maybe VACCINATING against VPD’s is what keeps the death toll so low?”

My answer: Of course.

Why the tirade directed at ME about ‘antivaxxers who have never seen blah blah blah …??’

Neither I nor the poster I was replying to were discussing ‘VPD mortality’. It was about if studies that showed a risk in a third world country would imply a risk in the U.S. And in that specific country, Pertussis happens to be endemic.

Keep up.

Why the tirade directed at ME about ‘antivaxxers who have never seen blah blah blah …??’

Because for someone who denies she’s antivaccine, you certainly are using a lot of antivaccine arguments and statements. And “We do not have high child mortality from VPD’s.” is one of them.
A lot of antivaxx “logic” is based on a miscalculation of risk. They underplay the risks of the diseases and exaggerate the risks of getting vaccinated. Yes, vaccination has risks, but the diseases have far more significant risks.

@ Julian Frost!

Ahem. Had Chris said: “We WOULD have high child mortality from VPDs IF we didn’t vaccinate”. And IF I would have replied “No we wouldn’t, the mortality rate was going down before the vaccines were available.” THEN, you could accuse me of using an ‘antivaccine argument’. But Chris didn’t & I didn’t so … you can’t.

Data regarding mortality from VPDs:
‘https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/e/reported-cases.pdf (DPT was recommended in 1948 but I have’t been able to find coverage rates starting prior to 1955)

Here’s Chris: “Overall U.S. mortality in 2017 from Diphtheria + Pertussis + Tetanus = 17. High? YES!”

Here’s you: “Overall U.S. mortality in 2017 from Diphtheria + Pertussis + Tetanus = 17. High? Nobecausewevaccianteyouantivaccinemoron!”

Here’s me: “Overall U.S. deaths in 1950 = 1,481,091. Overall U.S. mortality in 1950 from Diphtheria + Pertussis + Tetanus = 1,864. High? No.

Overall U.S. mortality in 2017 from Diphtheria + Pertussis + Tetanus = 17. High? No.”

That’s not an ‘anntivaccie thing’ to say. It’s … just saying.

Overall U.S. deaths in 1950 = 1,481,091. Overall U.S. mortality in 1950 from Diphtheria + Pertussis + Tetanus = 1,864. High? No.

Slightly over 1 death in 1000 is not low.

Overall U.S. mortality in 2017 from Diphtheria + Pertussis + Tetanus = 17. High? Nobecausewevaccianteyouantivaccinemoron!

That’s a drop of over 99%, and that’s before you consider population growth since 1950. So yes, vaccines clearly had a massive impact.
You’ve also misunderstood my argument. I was not claiming you were using the “diseases were going away on their own” argument. You said “We do not have high child mortality from VPD’s.” That’s an antivaccine argument – claiming that the diseases are “not that bad”. That’s what I was arguing against.

“Here’s Chris: “Overall U.S. mortality in 2017 from Diphtheria + Pertussis + Tetanus = 17. High? YES!””

Direct link to where I said that. I have tried to explain to you that you cannot compare vaccines in countries with vastly different qualities of life, including actual high child mortality (and slavery) that has nothing to do with vaccine preventable diseases… because there are so many other ways to die in the Guinea-Bissau.

So when are you moving there, Christine?

“That’s a drop of over 99%, and that’s before you consider population growth since 1950. So yes, vaccines clearly had a massive impact.”

Especially since the DTP vaccine came out after World War II (the three separate vaccines has been developed in the 1920s and 1930s). The problem was getting kids vaccinated, but that became easier after the polio vaccine came out. After 1955, the parents of the Baby Boomers were more likely to get their kids vaccinated (it helps to know a little history, along with political geography).

I have data on pertussis and diphtheria incidence from the same US Census data on the 20th century that I base my measles question on: http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec31.pdf

Unfortunately, the table did not include tetanus. But here is what I do have, check the differences between before and after WW II:

Year Rate per 100000 of Diphtheria in the USA
1912. . . 139
1920. . . 139
1925. . . 82.1
1930. . . 54.1
1935. . . 30.8
1940. . . 11.8
1945. . . 14.1
1950. . . 3.8
1955. . . 1.2
1960. . . 0.5
1965. . . 0.1
1970 0.2
1975 0.1
1980 (Z)
1985 (Z)
1990 –
1991 –
1992 –
1993 (NA)
1994 –
1995 (NA)
1996 (Z)
1997 (Z)

Year Rate per 100000 of Pertussis
1912 (NA)
1920 (NA)
1925 131.2
1930 135.6
1935 141.9
1940 139.6
1945 101
1950 80.1
1955 38.2
1960 8.3
1965 3.5
1970 2.1
1975 0.8
1980 0.8
1985 1.5
1990 1.8
1991 1.1
1992 1.6
1993 2.6
1994 1.8
1995 2
1996 2.9
1997 2.5

It was about if studies that showed a risk in a third world country would imply a risk in the U.S. And in that specific country, Pertussis happens to be endemic.

Pertussis is endemic in the U.S.

Keep up.

Indeed.

@ Chris:

LOL; providing a citation as requested is not ‘exploiting’, regardless of the dissonance it induced. It’s an uncomfortable process to begin but you will be better off for it in the end. The polarization of both the provaccine & the antivaccine is a threat to the cognitive process, not to mention science.

Next LOL; ‘I’m scared’ to find out what ‘type’ of autism my son has? He likely has a high prevalence of the variants that contribute to the Broad Autistic Phenotype so well expressed in my family. He does not have Phenylketonuria, Fragile X syndrome, Congenital Rubella syndrome, Rett syndrome, Mowat-Wilson syndrome, Adenylosuccinate lyase deficiency, Pitt-Hopkins syndrome, Downs, nor Angleman. He is not microcephalic & shows no facial feature anomaly.

Blatant brag: He is very handsome & both of us, per facial analysis, have the ‘golden ratio’ face. For some reason; petite, Hispanic females seem especially attracted to him, to the extent that one 29 year-old grabbed his face & planted a kiss on his lips before I had the chance to tell her; He’s not playing hard to get, he’s autistic!’

He had that pre-pubescent obesity that occurs in males that will be very tall when fully grown & is now 6’3″ & 220lbs at age 15 with a 14 EE shoe size & is expected to be 6’7″ after adolescence. He is beautiful & perfect in my eyes & has been diagnosed with Severe Regressive Autism. Level three.

The very first pre-regression symptom occurred with the low-grade (99.8) fever he developend after his first HepB shot at two days old. That temperature, with a normal WBC, has become his constant baseline; it never came down but I am grateful for that immunization, nevertheless.

After every vaccination, he developed circumoral pallor which subsided but he was left with a permanent bilateral ‘hand slap’ (fifth disease) marking on his cheeks (never had). His soft, dark wavy hair became straight, coarse, wiry & orange-tinged. Analysis showed extremely high levels of Aluminum. During puberty, his hair started reverting to it’s natural state, although it still does not hold water, rather; the water sits ‘on’ it. His regression was profound & terrifying; you could see the terror in his glassed-over eyes. He has recurring splotches of a post-viral-like rash that seem to worsen with escalation of aggressive behaviors, as do the red cheeks.

I can think of nothing that would scare me more than the reality of my son’s autism during these times of hyper-phobic, public health matters. Nothing.

The list of genetic causes of syndromes that are on the spectrum is now much more than you listed, like well over a hundred with more being discovered. Stop being paranoid and join that study.

Yes, you are exploiting the misery of that country. And every time you bring up any Aaby study I will ask you when you plan to move to Guinea-Bissau to prove that its quality of life is equivalent to the USA.

The saliva kits are being shipped as we speak. Funny; I don’t recall seeing an Aaby study proving equivalency in quality of life.

Citation?

Good for you.

You were citing the Aaby studies done in Guinea-Bissau, and I gave you several articles about the lack quality of life there. One even included the children being sold into slavery!

So when are you flying to Bissau?

@ Chris.

I cited studies done in Guinea-Bissau. Admit it. You said ‘children are sold into slavery there’ because you can’t claim that my citation was done by an Antivaccine scientist or funded by Antivaccine philanthropy.

Some vaccines have shown negative non-specific effects in GB. Repeatedly. For decades. And GB is not the only third world country. Vaccines that increase mortality rather than decrease it, will not be received well, regardless of the WHOs predictable ‘head in the sand’ response.

I am more concerned about vaccine safety than I am about effectiveness but you are not. Does the thought of globalization involving unvaccinated third world populations bother you?

If so, then safety studies in GB should interest you, from that standpoint at least.

Why do you want me to go to Guinea-Bissau or are you being sarcastic?

“I cited studies done in Guinea-Bissau. Admit it. You said ‘children are sold into slavery there’ because you can’t claim that my citation was done by an Antivaccine scientist or funded by Antivaccine philanthrop…”

The studies were by Aaby.

“by an Antivaccine scientist or funded by Antivaccine philanthrop.”

Direct quote from me for not accepting Aaby studies on safety of vaccine. I objected to the the use of a study conducted over thirty years ago in a country with very different health issues, which now includes kid being sold into slavery.

You have some deep cognitive issues if you do not understand why populations in Guinea-Bissau in the 1980s are not equivalent to populations in the USA, Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

Again, it was not because of Aaby’s thoughts on vaccination, it was because his studies have nothing to do with vaccines in the United States of America.

His soft, dark wavy hair became straight, coarse, wiry & orange-tinged. Analysis showed extremely high levels of Aluminum. During puberty, his hair started reverting to it’s natural state, although it still does not hold water, rather; the water sits ‘on’ it.

This is, impressively, the weirdest screed I have seen in all my natural born days. Who did this “analysis”? If you take your son to a pool, all but the outermost is dry?

@Christine Kincaid “Extreme high aluminum level”. Have you checked the aluminum level of your son’s drinking water and food ? There are cases when a liter of water contains more aluminum than a vaccine shot.

Who said it came from a vaccine? What would be more interesting (to me, at least) is to be able to run another analysis now that his hair appearance is improving & see if the level is coming down.

It still would’t be proof of anything … just interesting. I can’t even state with any certainty that the level was related to the autism, or even the appearance of his hair strands. Since I didn’t have a pre-autism, pre-vaccine or pre-appearance baseline; I can’t say much at all, except; ‘That’s interesting’ …

And before I’m asked/accused/assumed: No I did not even consider Chelation . Kids have died from that & although it is an effective treatment for heavy-metal poisoning, aluminum is not a heavy metal & there is no proof that my son has been poisoned by anything. The most relevant KNOWN symptom would actually be the circumoral pallor, not the hair but I included the hair due to it’s being an obvious & tangible observation.

Yes, it is weird. I would be willing to provide photographs on a non-public venue.

The analysis was not something I was interested in at the time; I consented to it because my mom paid for the ordering doctor & lab work, saying she just wanted me to have the ‘paper trail’ (records). Mom was dual PhD; Immunology/Biochem. She did not say why at the time but we had previous arguments about vaccines before he was even born, regarding my older children.

I was provaccine; she was skeptical, just not until after her first PhD. She chose her words very carefully; at one point simply stating; ‘We … have a problem with vaccines’ & handing me a folder of documents from her laboratory.

I threw them away. Never even looked at them. It didn’t occur odd to me until after she died in 2017, that she had not said; ‘there are problems with the vaccines’ or ‘my lab had a problem with the research’. She said; ‘We have a problem’. Her focus was in genetics. But I didn’t bother to look.

The sample had to be shipped, a lab in the Midwest, I believe. I was concerned, due to that people that hadn’t seen him in a few months would run up to me saying; “What HAPPENED to him?”

His mercury levels were within normal limits, for whatever that’s worth,

You are correct; when he is submerged in water, he comes up with only the top layers wet; the underneath is still dry. To shampoo his hair, I add baking soda to the shampoo & that helps to create the suds to get down to his scalp.

The only time someone seemed to have prior knowledge of hair + autism was when the director of Early Childhood Intervention for our school district saw him & she said; ‘Wow, he sure does have that Autism-hair!’ Wish I would have stopped her & asked her exactly what that meant.

@ Alain, I am so sorry! I’m not yet used to the flow of the comments here. And thank you for the links; very interesting.

The neuroanatomical changes I refer to have been confirmed by imaging (MRI) in living subjects.

https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brains-people-autism-may-enlarged-throughout-life/

The overgrowth of synapses is measured in ‘amounts of’ versus size of neurons.

https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2016103

Forgive my fairy tale analogy but autism is both beauty & horror at the same time: The Garden of Autism in the brain, is like the brambled briar that grew around Sleeping Beauty’s castle during the century-long sleeping spell. The synapses grow as the Microglia cells, the immune system’s synaptic pruners; sleep & the brain becomes covered, maybe to protect; in it’s own thorny roses.

Christine,

For one, I never spoke about the large brain issue which muddies the water. Did it occur to you that neuropathologist who studies neuron size and count use brains or brain tissues coming from brains with the same weight, i.e.:

3KG normal brain, 3KG autistic brain, 3KG whatever brain…

As for autophagy, they measured on mice and furthermore, did it occur to you that an autistic brain might be deficient in autophagy when compared to a normal brain? Would the autistic brain be deficient in autophagy in its own right if it wasn’t compared to a normal brain but rather, examine if autophagy is a problem regarding the normal functioning of an autistic brain? Would the autistic brain function better with more autophagy, less autophagy or the autophagy that is currently done in autistic brain?

Finally, need I stress to you that better functioning does not necessarily mean behaving like a normal brain or indistinguishable from a normal person, it can also mean functioning better according to ourselves, our skills, aptitude and disabilities which is vastly different than putting on the normal mask.

Alain

The sample had to be shipped, a lab in the Midwest, I believe.

So, Doctors Data?

If she is being truthful, to the Simon’s Foundations SPARK for Autism genetic study: https://sparkforautism.org

Where did Christine state that?

Like I have been asking her to do for quite a while. Do you have a problem with that?

I’m really not sure where you’re coming from here.

In most of my comments I have told her to join that study…. almost daily for the past few weeks. Sorry you missed it. It is usually when she is doing her “oh, pity me! Vaccines destroyed my kids… oh, poor me!” performance.

This was when I was trying to explain to her that the population of Guinea-Bissau is not equivalent to other nations that have actual functioning governments with safe water. I’ve taken to telling her to buy a one way ticket to Bissau and try living off the economy without bug repellent.

Oh, good grief… she has responded on another older dead thread with her “Oh pity me! Vaccines have destroyed my life. Oh, poor me… look at me” act. Ugh.

Great Plains Laboratories.

A quick glance suggests that they and Doctors Data are peas in a pod. I was surprised that there are even more such outfits than these two.

Are christine kincaid and Christine K the same person? I’m super confused.

Yes, I am. When I post from the iPad it auto-fills differently than on my PC. I’m not very good at anonymity, there are some here that could expose skeletons; don’t much care! What I say is the truth; a vaccination given against recommendations caused my ASD in 1970. A vaccination shown to increase mortality in females in a third-world country caused my daughter’s death within 12 hours in 1994, here in the USA & administering ‘catch-up’ vaccines in conjunction with the scheduled ones; caused my son’s ASD in 2005. Obviously, there is DNA at play here; which is why I’m participating in SPARK.

I can’t be bothered to try and look anyone up. What’s the fun in that?
I just asked because we generally have rules about name consistency (ie, no sock puppets), but since the names are so similar, and you’ve been really clear about being the same person with both names, and it’s a technical issue, it’s fine.

@ Christine Kincaid You may want to go to gene.sfari.org and search for autophagy. You will find many genes, a symptomatic one causing DeSanto-Shinawi syndrome, which however is rather lethal.

@ Aarno,

Very, very interesting information, thank you.

@ Narad, the reply above about Great Plains was for you.

@ Chris,

Why are you being mean to Narad? Your comments to me about Bissau are weird. I noticed Aaby’s work because I had a female infant who was highly compromised as a twin with PROM at 23 weeks & emerg c-sec delivery at 29 weeks due to chorioamnionitis, after 6 weeks inpatient bed-rest for me & she died 4 months later, within 12 hours of immunization.

You CAN be compromised in the U.S. & therefore; non-specific effects of vaccines in compromised populations matter to me. Count yourself as blessed that you & yours are not compromised.

I read somewhere that your son wasn’t diagnosed with ASD until he was in his 20s? Obviously YOU won’t be saying ‘poor me’. It takes about 20 seconds for the average cashier at the grocery store to look at my son & ask me; ‘Autism’? Despite them having zero scientific knowledge at all.

“No credit cards or bug spray’? I’ve been care-giving for a severely impaired child for 12 years. Unemployable. Guess how many credit cards I have right now?

I’ve had no respite care, By the time the funding was available, I had started cancelling his therapists because he was frankly becoming too violent & too big. I couldn’t get to the doctor in time for severe bleeding & six of the nine blood transfusions I’ve had to have were done in the ER with my kid laying in a gurney right next to me. Now I have microcytic anemia.

Funny thing about having a hemoglobin of 7 when you live at 7,000 ft elevation … Mosquitoes don’t even realize your ALIVE. Surely; you will tell me this isn’t relevant to third-world mosquitoes …

@ Alain,

My understanding of the relevance of those studies is that the autistic brain WAS a normal brain until the microglial autophagy was disrupted.

This makes sense. The social processing synapses don’t start the rapid growth that the microglia maintain until age 2, while the other synapses controlling things like gross motor skills & language benefit until age 2. The kid meets all developmental milestones until the microglia are disabled & the social functioning synapses; never had a chance.

I say it all the time I could be wrong.

Everything you type is wrong, you simply do not understand the science of population studies. You simply refuse to learn, and your pity party is now getting tedious. Please call your local ARC to get some support, not here.

By the way, The Arc will not be pleased with your math illiterate anti-science ableist rants on vaccines: https://www.thearc.org/ . I have met parents with worse problems than you, including a few single parents.

Also, since I spent over a third of my youth living in developing tropical countries that had it better than Guinea-Bissau, but still high child mortality rates: I am actually offended that you use that one study with a small sample size to compare to comment on vaccines used in the United States of America. You really don’t have a clue.

What you need to be pitied for is you are both gullible and ignorant to a very dangerous degree.

My understanding of the relevance of those studies is that the autistic brain WAS a normal brain until the microglial autophagy was disrupted.

It never was normal to begin with. For one, there’s 23% more neurons in the autistic brain and twice as many synapses compared to a normal brain.

I’ll be coming up with the citations for these after a good night sleep (it’s 2:30am currently) but in the meantime, you can have a closer look at some publications here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=minicolumns%5BAll+Fields%5D+AND+%22humans%22%5BMeSH+Terms%5D

Alain

@ Chris,

I am gullible & mathematically compromised but I am not ignorant. I could be wrong but that’s better than being desperate to be right.

IDC who you know & what they would think of me; I do hope you know those ‘worse off than I’ (so that you acknowledge the devastation) but why don’t you ever mention them here when the conversations turn to normalizing ASD? Why do you only say that ‘my son is ASD but it’s not the vaccines’, while conversing with others here who have ASD & desperately want to be part of something? To belong.

Why don’t you ever tell anyone about how marginalizing & mitigating ASD can be? Instead you trot the people you know out just to contradict my appeal to pity. Well, I earned that appeal to pity. Sorry not sorry.

I’m sure you are an intelligent & wonderful woman; let that light shine.

Because you do it wrong. If you have met one autistic person, you have met exactly one autistic person. In the future, please refer to their level of autism as defined by DSM V… mine is level 2.

Marginalizing those the the spectrum is not helpful, it is actually harmful.

Also, you are not the only person who has lost a child. Fortunately, it did not happen to me… but I know many who have lost children. I know those who have had still births, even one from rubella in the 1960s. Plus those who have died from HIB. I met a woman whose son died from the same genetic heart disorder that my kid has, a week before his open heart surgery.

Your stories are not unique. But they are not the worse I have heard… and they are not caused by vaccines. One parent I know with an autistic kid who was very violent was never vaccinated.

So, yeah, your pity parties are not relevant.

Actually they seem to a form of trolling.

@ Chris:

I notice that Christine K has not reacted to any of the historical references I supplied ( on the other thread) which illustrate how ASD/ID/SMI are nothing new and that institutions took care of these individuals for centuries: i.e. they did not just pop up after 1990 as Ann Dachel/ Wakefield believe.

As Alain writes, ASD happens/ exists prior to vaccines- a few years ago, I would supply all the studies that showed it present at before birth or soon thereafter : brain wave differences, brain differences, head size differences, differences in patterns of gaze in young infants, movement patterns, in videos etc etc. etc.
Parents notice differences around the time of the MMR because that is usually when kids begin to communicate in words and show more social activities. But I’m too tired to do that whole show now.
Easy to look up if you want to learn. Some people rather not learn.

“Easy to look up if you want to learn. Some people rather not learn.”

Exactly.

Denice, Chris,

Exactly. Usually, autistic in general get along fine but usually, when peoples ask me whether I should date an autistic girl, I answer no because it feel like being copilot in a rally where the driver is deaf and the copilot who handle the GPS is blind.

With NT, things are easier because they are more predictable to me and the different cognitive advantages (autistics: perceptual ability, detailed thinking, superior deep empathy. NTs: social world navigation, etc…) the whole weight more than the sum of each parts (kinda saying that 1+1=3) and it shows with some autistic who have won the Nobel prize.

Alain

@Christine Kincaid High level of aluminum in blood indicates, quite obviously, kidney problems.
Microglia is macrophages in the brain. Nerve cells are ones involved with speech, amongst other brain functions

@ Aarno, I will have to retrieve ALL of his labs because I’m pretty sure a serum level was done too. Unfortunately, my son’s regression & my resulting lack of employment coincided with the housing recession & much of the paper trail my mom paid for was lost in the process, along with the house.

Are you saying that nerve cells (for speech) are not maintained by the microglia? I remember when my son was 4, still in the rapid phase of regressing but could say single but jumbled words & he used to point at images on Google for me to type into the search bar so he could have a whole page of similar images to choose from & he was looking at weather related videos, pointing to fallen down buildings.

So I typed in ‘Earthquake’ (or so I thought) but his behavior continued to escalate, with grunting & flailing arms. Then he quietly said ‘fawtacue’. Over & over; ‘fawtacue fawtacue.’ So I looked & sure enough, I had typed ‘Earthuake’. I had ‘forgot the Q’. How does a 4 year old that can’t say ‘my tummy hurts’ know how to spell ‘earthquake’? And sit there & get frustrated but not just type in ‘Q’?

It’s like I was seeing an over connected reading brain, a jumbled connection language brain & an inability to socially communicate brain all at once. Was I seeing the effect of microglia that became disabled at a specific time in development? Because I sure as heck wasn’t seeing the effect of microglia that had always been disabled.

Microglia are macrophages of brain. There are other types of glial cells.
You are right about neuronal overgrowth. But this itself causes the problem:
Mapping Early Brain Development in Autism
Eric Courchesne, Karen Pierce, Cynthia M.Schumann, ElizabethRedcay, Joseph A.Buckwalter, Daniel P. Kennedy, John Morgan
Neuron Volume 56, Issue 2, 25 October 2007, Pages 399-413
As an aside, neuronal overgrowth is not an autoimmune lesion.

@ Denice,

I’ll look for that post but I know or a fact that when I was labelled ‘mentally retarded’ & that label was quickly removed, that the school administrators had told my parents they had ‘never seen anything like me before’. That was in 1976 & I believe them.

My point is that prior to de-institutionalisation, there was a huge population of people ( across the “western” world) who were labelled as “mentally retarded” or “childhood schizophrenics” who would today be labelled as having ASD- most of the more severe did not live at home,. This is diagnostic substitution: around 1994, the DSM changed its criteria for autism and related conditions. There have been other changes in the DSMs since. AS Chris notes, the level is important: much of the growth in recent numbers have been the inclusion of the higher functioning who previously had not been included at all or were called
“Asperger’s”- i.e. not having an ID.

People with lower levels of functioning ( due to SMI and/ or ID) have always been around. The word “cretin” comes from the French, * un bon Chretien*- “a good Christian” – what the religious caretakers labelled their charges. Freud, more than 100 years ago, wrote about people who were probably autistic – they couldn’t attach to people, they couldn’t speak or learn. France engaged a psychologist to differentiate youngsters who would benefit from public education from those with lower abilities- thus the first IQ tests. Similarly, US psychologists tested recruits to separate out those who didn’t have abilities to learn and serve in WWI- those psychologists included Binet ( France) and Watson ( US).

In the wake of diagnostic changes, the growth of the internet and changes in the vaccine schedule ( 1990s), alternative health advocates and charlatans like Wakefield took advantage of parents’ lack of science-based information.

“AS Chris notes, the level is important: much of the growth in recent numbers have been the inclusion of the higher functioning who previously had not been included at all or were called
“Asperger’s”- i.e. not having an ID.”

My son would have never gotten a diagnosis of Asperger’s because the big criteria is that they have no speech/language delays at the age of three. My kid’s vocabulary was about a dozen mono-syllable utterances. After ten years of speech therapy he does speak, but some cannot understand him, especially on the phone.

That was just one reason why he fell through the cracks. Because even though he was nonverbal at age three the neurologist assured me he was not autistic because he smiled and laughed. Of course it was often inappropriate. This was in 1991.

@ Denise,

How very interesting; thank you! ” * un bon Chretien*- “a good Christian” … That is beautiful. It gives me chills.

@ Aarno,

Thank you for your patience with me. I am paying very close attention to what you are saying because of how you say it. I’m not sure I was thinking ‘autoimmune’ exactly. I’m concerned with the cytokine presentation too.

Of course, there are many cytokines. Be more specific, please.

I did more on HPV thread but have been awaiting moderation.

@Christine Kincaid
Conclusions: These results suggest differences that could be related to different pathophysiological mechanisms in ASD. There is not a specific profile for the expression of relevant plasma cytokines, adhesion molecules or growth factors in children with ASD compared with that in typically-developing children. However, in the ANMR and AMR subgroups, some of the adhesion molecules and neuronal growth factors show differences that may be related to synaptogenesis.

Your other posts have same problem (“no specific profile”).

@ Aarno,

I think Julian was trying to make me respond like a scientist. My brain thinks in abstract mode all the time & the way he started talking to me was providing structure. Even when I f*** it all up & misunderstand; I am learning.

I may very well learn that I am wrong but nobody has shown me that yet. I am going from ‘A to Z’ & I understand that I need to start at ‘A to B’ & proceed in that manner but it doesn’t mean it won’t result in ‘Z’.

Oh no, an autistic’s analogy. I am here to make it to ‘Z’, one way or the other & then we will see if I am wrong.

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