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Vaccine Injury Epidemic (VIE) Event: Antivaxers protest the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986

Yesterday, antivaxers held a protest event on the Mall in Washington, DC that they called the Vaccine Injury Epidemic (VIE) Event. Misnformation flowed fast and furious.

Antivaxers like rallies. They like protests. They think that their little gatherings (and they nearly always are pretty small) show overwhelming support for their viewpoint to the world in general and to legislators who decide vaccine policy in particular. The first time I wrote about one of these little confabs was an antivax “march on Washington” eleven years ago, led by none other than the then-queen of the antivaccine movement Jenny McCarthy and her then-boyfriend Jim Carrey. It was called the “Green Our Vaccines” rally, a slogan chosen based on the “toxins” gambit favored by antivaxers, in which vaccines are portrayed as being full of toxic chemicals without consideration to the well-known principle that the dose makes the poison. Despite the protestations of McCarthy and Carrey otherwise, the protest was antivaccine to the core. There have been other such protests over the years at different locales (although the CDC, particularly meetings of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and Washington, DC remain favorite locations, along with state legislatures). Three and a half months ago, I took note of the announcement of another such protest organized by Hillary Simpson and her self-described Crazy Mothers. Basically, it was another antivaccine protest in Washington, DC, this time on the Mall, and it was to take place in November. Well, it took place yesterday, and I’ve been reviewing the videos. I admit that I didn’t watch all the videos. There’s four and a half hours worth of antivaccine bloviation, rants, and conspiracy theories. The event was called the Vaccine Injury Epidemic (VIE) event.

First of all, let’s look at the poster with the schedule for the VIE Event:

Look at the list! Everybody who’s anybody in the antivaccine movement in the US was at VIE: Barbara Loe Fisher, Del Bigtree, James Lyons-Weiler, Mary Holland, Dr. Bob Sears, Dr. Jim Meehan, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, Mark Blaxill, Hillary Simpson, Andrew Wakefield, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. There are also some others, such as Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, a real crank whom I recently encountered on Twitter, who likes to brag about how he went to MIT and supposedly the “inventor of email.” He almost certainly didn’t. Of late, he’s been an excellent example of crank magnetism, though, including increasingly antivaccine statements.

So here’s the Facebook Live feed of the proceedings of the VIE Event:

The proceedings don’t actually start until around 7:45 in, the rest being taken up with Del Bigtree going, “Check, check, testing 1-2-3,” and other banter.

Again, no one expects you to watch it all, although if you’re a glutton for punishment go right ahead and subject yourself to as much of the VIE Event as you can stand. I’m quite the glutton for punishment, as I’ve demonstrated by watching things like this all the way through, but even I couldn’t watch it all. For one thing, I had clinic today, and I didn’t have four and a half hours last night to watch every speech. I am, however, amused that I was correct that there was no way antivaxers could pack that many speakers into a mere four hours given their propensity to like listening to themselves speak so much that they just can’t stay within their scheduled time for their talks, as happened at RFK Jr.’s last appearance at the Harlem Vaccine Forum when all the speakers went over, leading to RFK Jr. having his microphone cut off by the venue only ten minutes into his speech. (Yes, it was gloriously hilarious.)

So lets look at some of what was said at the VIE Event. First, antivaxers really, really, really hate the National Childhood Vaccine Compensation Act of 1986, which created the Vaccine Court. Even though the Vaccine Court is quite liberal in its judgments, basically bending over backwards to compensate families, even when the medical condition for which compensation is being sought might not have been due to vaccines. Not only is the standard of evidence that of civil court (50% and a feather, as we sometimes call it), but more leeway is given when it comes to the use of scientific evidence and theories of causation, which has on occasion led to some scientifically dubious judgments, antivaxers lie about it and make it sound as though the Vaccine Court never compensates anyone. What they really mean is that the Vaccine Court doesn’t accept that vaccines cause autism because, well, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that they don’t. Lawyers hate it too, although I can’t figure out why. Unlike other courts, the Vaccine Court pays reasonable court costs for complainants, whether they win their case or lose it. Of course, I know why lawyers hate Vaccine Court. Even though they can get a lucrative steady paycheck representing families taking their case to the Vaccine Court, they’ll never get a massive contingency fee that’s a percentage of a huge headline-making payout.

So VIE started with a video about the Vaccine Court, full of the usual lies and distortions that I’ve debunked here more times than I can remember, complete with exploitative shots of autistic children, misinformation about vaccines causing autism, and propaganda for VAXXED, the antivaccine propaganda film produced by Del Bigtree and directed by Andrew Wakefield, as well as its sequel, VAXXED II: The People’s Truth. Then there was a gospel group, giving the whole thing a revival-like feel. One thing I did notice is that the camera angle was kept fairly tight. My guess is that that was to hide how small the crowd was. It looked to me to be no more than maybe 200-300 people there. There was also a very amateurish feel to the whole thing, as well. In the beginning they had a lot of trouble with microphone feedback, for instance.

These videos of @42believer, who showed up to protest the protest, found on Twitter, gives you an idea of the true size of the crowd attending the VIE Event:

It sure looks a lot less impressive from that angle than it does from the angle used by Bigtree for his FB live broadcast of the VIE protest.

After the gospel song, Hillary Simpson came out to begin the introductions. She went on about how there were doctors, scientists, lawyers, and parents of “vaccine-injured children” attending the VIE Event to educate them. Of course, her definition of “scientist” is rather questionable, because not a single person there was an actual scientist, although there were definitely doctors, albeit antivaccine doctors. In any event, Barbara Loe Fisher was the first speaker. She didn’t say much of anything that I hadn’t heard a million times before from her, although the way she said that for these “vaccine-injured children,” the “natural order of things” has been “forever changed” by unnatural, manmade chemical vaccines. Yes, it’s just a variant of the whole “vaccines stole my child” trope.

Next up was Del Bigtree. Watching him, I thought: Somebody get out the dart gun. Either that, or substitute decaf for his coffee. Let’s just say that Bigtree was even more…animated…than he usually is, and that’s saying a lot. Just watching him yell his message to the VIE crowd was tiring. The whole tenor of his talk can be boiled down to this quote, again found on Twitter, but you’ll see it if you decide to watch his talk, which begins around the 40:00 mark. Here’s the quote:

Bigtree started out expressing his displeasure with the press over vaccine issues. He seems to think he was truly brilliant with a story of being interviewed by a journalist, who challenged him by saying that there are thousands of studies not showing a vaccine-autism link. Bigtree asked him to name one or describe one and gloated that the journalist could not. This is actually a good lesson for you journalists out there. Antivaxers are very clever and expert at the Gish gallop, which involves burying those who question them in cherry picked studies, irrelevant studies, misinterpreted studies, and random bits of misinformation that can’t easily be countered unless you have a really deep knowledge of antivaccine propaganda techniques, and even then it’s not easy to do. In any event, Bigtree is very unhappy at being accused of being a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Of course, because he is a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect, he isn’t aware that he is, in fact, a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect. That’s what the Dunning-Kruger effect is! So he cited, yes, the “CDC whistleblower,” William Thompson, whose story, contrary to the antivaccine conspiracy theory, does not show that vaccines cause autism and the CDC covered it up. He cited Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, who’s become a useful idiot for the antivaccine movement. His rant was epic in its arrogance of ignorance, with Bigtree lecturing pediatricians to “learn to read,” to “learn to diagnose vaccine injuries,” to stop being “morons.” It really is an astonishing level of projection and lack of self-awareness, all yelled at maximal volume into the microphone.

He finished with the favorite antivaccine trope of all, the claim that unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated children. Of course, it’s not true. This is not the “sickest generation,” as Bigtree and RFK Jr. claim, and, if anything, vaccinated children are healthier than unvaccinated children. It’s an article of faith among antivaxers like Del Bigtree, though, that vaccinated children are unhealthy; so he called for a “vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study,” chanting, “Do the study! Do the study! Do the study! Or get out of my face!” My reaction?

Next up was James Lyons-Weiler at around 52:00. Oddly enough, he came out and yelled, “How are you doing today, Americaaaaaaaa?” (What is this, the WWE?) He then bragged about how he’s a scientist and bases conclusions on data. I couldn’t help but think again, “Get out the dart gun.” Lyons-Weiler seems to share Del Bigtree’s penchant for yelling, only without being as compelling. I couldn’t help but think as I listened to him that he really has left the path of science. He was once a legitimate science, but he laid down so much misinformation that it made me sad. Seriously, he invoked the hoariest antivaccine trope of all: If we don’t know what causes autism, the “epidemic” of chronic illness, and multiple sclerosis, it must mean that vaccines can cause it, all while regurgitating the CDC whistleblower conspiracy theory and antivaccine distortions of various studies that failed to find a link between vaccines and autism. He made the ludicrous claim that children born today will spend 70% of the days of their first seven years in “aluminum toxicity,” touting his own “scientific results” (which, not surprisingly, has never been published in the peer-reviewed medical literature as far as I know). He touted antivaccine pediatrician Dr. Paul Thomas’ work.

He wrapped up by claiming, “We’re doing that study,” namely a “vaccinated/unvaccinated” study. Of course, I’ve already written about how shoddy their methodology is. In defending this study, he made a jaw-droppingly dumb and unethical argument. Basically, he pointed out that the argument against a vaccinated/unvaccinated study is that it’s unethical because it would leave the unvaccinated children unprotected against diseases like measles, mumps, and chickenpox, which he dismissed as “mild childhood illnesses” when they’re not. Then he claimed that it is not contested that the safety of the full vaccine schedule is unknown, which is flagrantly false, and that there’s no evidence that vaccines are responsible for the decline in incidence of diseases vaccinated against above and beyond better sanitation. (I have one response: Hemophilus influenza, type b, the vaccine for which was introduced in the 1990s, and the massive decline in Hib incidence and death in the absence of any improved sanitation.) He then stated that vaccines cause autoimmune diseases, autism, and chronic disease. I see what he did there. He implied that, because vaccines cause all these problems and the diseases vaccinated against are mild, there is clinical equipoise (genuine uncertainty over which intervention is better) to a vaccinated/unvaccinated study. Of course, both of his premises are wrong. Also, it’s not unethical to do an epidemiological observational study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations.

By this point, I was already getting tired of the VIE Event, less than one hour into the whole thing, particularly when he claimed to have read 2,000 studies on autism. Su-ure he did. He also ranted about the “religion” of vaccinology and called on people to “carry the torch” of knowledge. In reality, he’s promoting carrying the “torch” of pseudoscience. He even snuck a comparison to Hitler in their, likening vaccine mandates to the requirement that German citizens purchase Mein Kampf. (Get it? The state forcing you to buy something?) He should learn some history. Actually, the Nazi regime didn’t force anyone to purchase Mein Kampf. Its popularity and high level of sales had more to do with Hitler’s rise to power and popularity than anything else. I suppose that if you really want to strain the analogy you could note that the Nazi government gave a copy to every newlywed couple and every soldier fighting at the front, but it wasn’t required and people actually appreciated it. No, there was no requirement that Germans purchase a copy of Mein Kampf. Sure, there was peer pressure, first because of Hitler’s popularity and then later because of the totalitarian regime, but there was no government mandate.

In any case, it was getting late at this point. I might write a second part, I might not. I will point out, however, that Dr. Bob Sears was clearly full antivax in his talk. He even cried at around the 1:23:00 as he discussed “vaccine injury,” after which he laid down a straw man so large that, were it set on fire, it could be seen from the moon, claiming that doctors deny that vaccine injury ever happens. No, Dr. Bob. We deny the “injuries” you and your ilk attribute to vaccines when the evidence does not support doing so. He even referred to “vaccine injury deniers,” which is a term only used unironically by antivaxers. If you have any doubt that Dr. Sears is antivax, watch this talk, as he blubbered through most of it, expressing regret for all the children he had “injured” by vaccinating and going on about how doctors deny vaccine injury as a defense mechanism because admitting that they had injured children is too painful. (Oh, and doctors don’t dare speak up because their careers will be ruined.)

Perhaps the most hilarious thing about the speakers that I did get the opportunity to watch thus far is that they all apparently think that they came to their views on vaccines through “critical thinking” and science. Del Bigtree said it, contrasting his True Science with that of the experts. James Lyons-Weiler said it, contrasting what he dismissively called “science-like activities” with his True Science. Dr. Bob Sears did it, claiming that he came to his views on vaccines through critical thinking and science. Science, you’re doing it wrong. Critical thinking? You’re doing the exact opposite! Don’t believe me? Check out this “greatest hits” compilation by The Real Truther, who sat through the whole thing in order to pick only the choicest bits taking up 2:42:

I particularly like the bit where Jim Meahan said that, had he known what he knows today, he would never have agreed to the “defilement” of his children by “some secret, sinister Satanic ritual to defile and destroy God’s perfect creation.” I kid you not. He really said that about vaccines! (But don’t call this rally “antivaccine,” even though one of the speakers likened vaccination to a sinister Satanic ritual!) Meanwhile, RFK Jr. revealed that all of his seven children have asthma and he can’t figure out why. (So obviously it must be vaccines.) He also declared that in a just society we’d be building statues of Andrew Wakefield, which would have been an excellent emetic if I had eaten anything within a few hours of viewing that clip.

In the end, this was yet another in a long line of antivaccine protests. It was longer than most, dragging on hour after hour after hour. (I hope there were enough Porta-Potties.) There weren’t, when you come right down to it, very many people. Above all, it was a marketing opportunity for VAXXED II.

In the end, this was yet another in a long line of antivaccine protests. It was longer than most, dragging on hour after hour after hour. (I hope there were enough Porta-Potties.) There weren’t, when you come right down to it, very many people. Above all, it was a marketing opportunity for VAXXED II.

Addendum: Here’s a great Twitter thread by @42believer, who protested the VIE Event, representing the pro-vaccine viewpoint. Just click on the first Tweet and follow down:

I’ll also include a few key Tweets excerpted from the thread:

It is rather interesting how these antivax parents bemoan “vaccine injury” and portray their children as victims and yet turn around and use “vaccine injury” (equated with autism, neurologic damage, and/or mental retardation in their minds) as a casual insult against those who accept vaccine science. I think that says it all about their attitude towards autistic people.

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]

235 replies on “Vaccine Injury Epidemic (VIE) Event: Antivaxers protest the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986”

Jacky, these people are largely pro vaccine who feel the recommended schedule is bloated and dangerous , the term “anti-vaxx” is misreprenting their argument.

Regarding Hib vaccine for neonates, it is extremely nonsensical to recommend medical interventions on the first day of life for a illness that neither parents have and is spread by blood transfusion. The vaccine is associated with neonatal death and neurological disease and is an affront to humanity, pick something else to defend.

When you reference a collection of vaxxed versus unvaxxed studies, they come with damning critiques from researchers like financial conflicts of interest, limited sample size and inflated hazard ratio use.

No, they’re antivaccine.

Don’t believe me. OK, riddle me this: If the VIE event speakers aren’t antivaccine, can you point to an example of any of them ever, since they started speaking out about vaccines, pointing to one—just one!—vaccine that they consider to be safe and effective enough so that every child without a true medical contraindication should receive it? Just one vaccine that even one of the speakers doesn’t consider to be a hideous toxic brew that will cause autism, autoimmune diseases, SIDS, etc.? Just one speaker? Just one vaccine? I can’t, but maybe I missed one.

No?

Also, Dr. Bob Sears bawling with guilt over the children he’s “harmed” by vaccinating them “indiscriminately” is one of the most antivaccine things I’ve ever seen. As for James Lyons-Weiler, holy hell. The dude’s almost as crazed as Del Bigtree and just as antivaccine. Seriously, he compared vaccine mandates to the requirement that Nazi citizens purchase a copy of Mein Kampf, which is ahistorical because the Nazi regime never required anyone to purchase the book. People did it because they liked Hitler and due to peer pressure.

Then there was the part where Jim Meahan likened the vaccination of his own children to their “defilement” by a “sinister Satanic ritual to defile and destroy God’s perfect creation.” Is that antivaccine enough for you?

No, Charlie. This event was antivaccine AF.

BTW, that whole “hazard ratio” thing is straight out of Crosby’s Labyrinth. The dude with that last name is spreading a comment he made to some online posting of a journal article where he apparently wants to show off his epidemiological skills (and, as per usual and in my opinion, fails miserably).

“Regarding Hib vaccine for neonates, it is extremely nonsensical to recommend medical interventions on the first day of life for a illness that neither parents have and is spread by blood transfusion. The vaccine is associated with neonatal death and neurological disease and is an affront to humanity, pick something else to defend.”

Since you don’t know the difference between Hib, a bacterial infection, and HBV, a viral one, the rest of your comment has been reduced to rubble…

From CDC, on how Hib (Haemophilus influenzae serotype b) is spread: “People spread H. influenzae, including Hib, to others through respiratory droplets. This happens when someone who has the bacteria in their nose or throat coughs or sneezes. People who are not sick but have the bacteria in their noses and throats can still spread the bacteria. That is how H. influenzae spreads most of the time.

The bacteria can also spread to people who have close or lengthy contact with a person with H. influenzae disease.”

Since when do we vaccinate against bacterial infection.. :s

What is with the ACIP recommending universal HepB dose at birth , then?? Dr?

Also influenza , an obvious crock of shit. What does whatever some poor goose from Asia was carrying, a year ago, have to do with me in North America? How can anyone maintain confidence in the CDC?

[dollars-to-dimes it’s laundry day for socks, but I’ll give it one go just in case…]

@Charlie: “Since when do we vaccinate against bacterial infection”

You tell us: when did you last get your DTaP? Clostridium Tetani is a bacteria too.

“What does whatever some poor goose from Asia was carrying, a year ago, have to do with me in North America?”

So were you born a right charlie, or did you have to practise?

Haemophilus Influenzae is a type of bacteria. Influenza is an illness caused in humans by a number of viruses (Influenzavirus A/B/C).

The overlapping names are merely an accident of history, as any fule on teh Googles would kno (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemophilus_influenzae). Now bug off and educate yourself and stop being such a douche.

What does whatever some poor goose from Asia was carrying, a year ago, have to do with me in North America?

Newflash: bugs travel around the world. Usually taking the plane with the humans they infected.
And before air travel, they happily played piggyback on whatever other mean of travel we used. As an example, that’s how we Europeans brought measles and a few other nasties to North America. You could ask the Natives, but they are dead.

Seriously, you bothered to learn to use a computer and come here, but you couldn’t be arsed to get some basics facts on infectious diseases?

Regarding Hib vaccine for neonates, it is extremely nonsensical to recommend medical interventions on the first day of life for a illness that neither parents have and is spread by blood transfusion.
Uh, Hib is a bacterial infection that (in the US) we first vaccinate for at 2 months.

Yeah, he emailed that comment to me; so I schooled him on Hib privately in email. He admitted that he confused HepB and Hib.

My bad, the date of introduction and purported effectiveness looked the same. I did not know there was a Hib vaccine.

Not knowing that there is an Hib vaccine and confusing Hib with HepB do not speak well for your level of knowledge regarding vaccines, I’m afraid.

Hib vaccine approved and added to the schedule in the late 80s. HepB was approved in early 80’s and added to the schedule in the mid 90s. The only thing the two have in common is the letter H. You claim the schedule is “bloated” yet aren’t even familiar with what’s included.Not the most convincing argument.

Terrier HepB was approved for use with expectant mothers who actually have HepB , only after liability was removed from manufacturers did the CDC say everyone should have it.

HepB vaccine was first licensed in 1981 or 82. VICP was set up in 1988. HepB was added to the childhood schedule in 1994. Weak correlation at best. None of which has anything to do with the fact that you don’t even know what diseases we routinely vaccinate against, yet claim the schedule is no good.

Yeah, he should at least go to the CDC website and peruse the…oh…you know…ACTUAL recommended vaccine schedule! The CDC is nice enough to present it in various forms (tables, graphs, images) to make it easy to understand and digest. There’s even a CDC app which lets you access the latest version of the vaccine schedule on your smartphone.

“Since when do we vaccinate against bacterial infection.. :s”

Sweet Jesus! You don’t know about vaccination against bacteria like Bordetella pertussis (whooping cough), Meningococcus (meningitis) or Corynebacterium diphtheriae (diphtheria)?

“What is with the ACIP recommending universal HepB dose at birth , then?? Dr?”

They have their reasons: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/vacc-specific/hepb.html

It’s science. I don’t expect you to understand it.

“Also influenza , an obvious crock of shit. What does whatever some poor goose from Asia was carrying, a year ago, have to do with me in North America? How can anyone maintain confidence in the CDC?”

Double Sweet Jesus! You think H. influenzae is what causes the flu?

I can’t even…

Very doubtful anyone understands why ACIP recommends it to parents who have no indication of the virus, when the vaccine is found to cause neurological conditions and rhumatoid arthritis? Basically any sort of injection for a neonate should raise concern, especially without indication that it is necessary.

Our flu(influenza) vaccine is based on avian bird flu taken from Asia? In the year it takes to bring to market we can fly back and fourth to and from Africa 100x , why bother with it in the first place?

Predictive analysis shows vaccines will make billions of dollars in profit for private corporay this year. You sure they are all worth defending??!?

You sure you trust your “predictive analysis” of “private corporay”? You’re not exactly batting a thousand… You’re not even at the Mendoza line.
I mean, that whole thing about the flu vaccine… What are you on? Seek help. Immediately. None of that is true.
We predict strains based on human strains seen around the world. It’s a global surveillance system. What’s with the firehosing?

IKR?

Charlie seems to think that ACIP just pulls its recommendations for the vaccine schedule out of its ass, rather than having multiple working groups taking deep dives year round into the scientific evidence around each vaccine and then presenting their findings three times a year to ACIP for ACIP to consider in making changes to the vaccine schedule based on the evolving evidence.?

“Predictive analysis shows …”

Where is it? I doubt you have any real reference for that at all, but if so — it would be interesting to see it and share it (for laughs, most likely) with my students.

Dean it was actually supposed to be a bit of humor regarding our methodology behind influenza vaccine production (predictive analysis). But if you must know “Global Vaccine Market Revenue to Reach $59.2 Billion by 2020” according to https://www.pharmaceuticalprocessingworld.com/global-vaccine-market-revenue-to-reach-59-2-billion-by-2020/.

Bear in mind each vaccine manufacturer has been criminally charged for negligence causing death in the past through withholding data on the adverse side effects of their products. As RFK Jr says it is hardly the case that they have “found Jesus” when it comes to vaccines.

Now here we are justifying innoculation against a disease neither parent has, for a child less than 12 hours old, which can only be spread by blood transfusion with infected blood or (reproductive?) bodily fluids? Not sure what the inside of an average person’s house looks like in the USA but it seems absolutely ridiculous that someone can even have this conversation.

“Now here we are justifying innoculation against a disease neither parent has, for a child less than 12 hours old, which can only be spread by blood transfusion with infected blood or (reproductive?) bodily fluids? ”

Wow, you are clueless. The tests for that virus are not as accurate as they should be. Actually they are about as accurate at you, and you have whiffed all your swings.

Also that virus can be spread by saliva, here read more about it: http://www.bgladd.com/1in3/

Chris where in that story is data on HepB antigen screening accuracy. Seriously, this is a medical intervention performed immidiately after coming out of the womb. Can we actually defend this without any indication of parents having hepb. Disturbing.

Just read the other few links I gave you. Now, if they are not sufficient then please present your own data. Just provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that the HepB vaccine at birth causes more harm than the disease.

What can happen is illustrated by that father’s story. Also, to help determine who is a reputable qualified researcher just make that a study is not written by any on this list of speakers: http://www.vaccinesafetyconference.com/speakers.html

“An increase in infectious diseases worldwide, including influenza, swine flu, hepatitis, tuberculosis, diphtheria, Ebola and meningococcal and pneumococcal diseases, is one of the main drivers of market growth.”

So Charlie, nothing nefarious, as you imply. Also not “predictive analysis” as you claimed.

Have any other misrepresentations up your sleeve? (Given your false assertions about vaccines and related recommendations I’m sure you do.)

‘Narad’ it is English?

Of the one million different viruses on Earth the CDC is selling supplemental vaccines that may protect against 30.

With this sale they will make over one billions dollars annually, make sense?

“Dean, the 2015 influenza vaccines were based on a model submitted by, get this, Dr. ‘Shaman’ and his team”

This Dr. Shaman? I’m not sure what your problem (other than the usual ignorant denial of science anti-vaccers demonstrate) might be.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jls106/

Charlie “get this, Dr. ‘Shaman’ and his team” – yeah, that’s racist. Why do you choose to say things like that?

Racist? The idea the “Dr.Shaman” is working to predict which of the million viruses in circulation will catch on as an epidemic is very funny.

Of the one million different viruses on Earth the CDC is selling supplemental vaccines that may protect against 30.

You aren’t exactly at risk of getting infected by the brinjal mosaic virus. Unless you are a potato.
Funny enough, most, if not all vaccines are for bacteria or viruses which could cause serious discomfort, up to death, to humans.

If you feel the CDC (or one of its equivalents outside the US) has overlooked an important one, feel free to bring it to their attention.

Now that you’ve learned the difference between HiB and Hepatitis B, perhaps you could take a moment to learn how long HepB can ‘live’ and remain infectious outside of the body.

I admit, it’s nice to see someone pull out ‘drug transfusion’ instead of just relying on ‘sex and needle sharing.’ Yes, all of those activities put one at enhanced risk. But the risk in the absence of those factors sure ain’t zero for a persistent virus like HepB, and the consequences for a young person are dire and lifelong.

Hib sounds reasonable. ACIP recommends expectant mothers be screened for HepB, why are we not doing that?

CDC predicts 30~ strains of virus will be the cause of an endemic one year in advance. Trying to establish heard immunity against those 30 is not only futile but says nothing of the remaining million viruses on our planet all with their own rates of mutation.

It makes much more sense that once companies like Pfizer and GSK became exempt from lawsuits for biologics in 1984 that corporations did what corporations do best and inflated the vaccine schedule 10x over.

“We do test mothers for HBV activity during pregnancy but no test is perfect and information transfer from the OB or lab to the newborn service can be lost or accidentally altered.”

Wow 13 pages and this was the rational. “No test is perfect” and no references.

This does not justify universal HepB innoculation in the slightest.

I meant the testing for hepb infection. Try reading the link.

Also, note the Mr. Arumugham is a computer engineer is not a qualified medical researchers. We are very familiar here on this blog as a clueless spammer of his silly ideas.

While neither of the other two authors are on that handy list, it shows it is not complete. Though a quick checks show that paper is not indexed by PubMed. Yazbak is not a reputable or qualified medical researcher, he is just a retired regular doctor with an agenda. An agenda that includes letting baby murderers get off free: https://ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/yurko1.htm

And the other author is a school teacher: https://ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/yurko1.htm

You still have not read all of the links I gave you. One is by a pediatrician, now pretend this is an Easter egg hunt and find it.

CDC predicts 30~ strains of virus will be the cause of an endemic one year in advance. Trying to establish heard immunity against those 30 is not only futile but says nothing of the remaining million viruses on our planet all with their own rates of mutation.

Could you rephrase that in English?

Chris those two ratbag links are the same, not understanding what Yazbak has to do with it. Mr. Arumugham being a computer engineer is not reason enough to support vaccines for neonates to receive Hepatitis B shots at birth. This conversation is insane.

It makes much more sense that once companies like Pfizer and GSK became exempt from lawsuits for biologics in 1984 that corporations did what corporations do best and inflated the vaccine schedule 10x over.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, that ever popular anti-vax boogeyman, was passed in 1986. What law are you referring to?

Charlie: if a person gets HepB as a child they are much, much, much more likely to have it develop into liver cancer and need a liver transplant.

The HepB vaccine prevents cancer. Why don’t you want to prevent cancer? Are you willing to donate part of your liver to a child or teen who needs a new one?

Terrie

“The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (the Vaccine Act); the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (the PREP Act); and Bruesewitz v. Wyeth LLC, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision interpreting the Vaccine Act, together afford vaccine manufacturers almost blanket liability protection from damages for vaccine harms.”

From http://law.emory.edu/elj/content/volume-67/issue-3/articles/liability-vaccine-injury-united-european-world.html

JustaTech the point here is people born to parents without indication of HepatitsB do not need a HepatitsB vaccine. That changes when expectant mothers are HepB positive while carrying, use IV drugs or have multiple sexual partners.
Dangers of the risks associated with injecting biologics on the first day of life far outweigh the the risk of contracting HepB.

Charlie, please prove that tests that show HepB in a mother is 100% effective, with no false negative results.

But do that after you have provided a PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that the American HepB vaccine causes more harm than the disease in the USA>

I find two instances of “hepatits” in a single comment to be genuinely impressive, but I’m too tired to speculate what of many options they may be.

Charlie, you stated they got immunity in 1984, and are now backing up this claim with a law passed in 1986, a law passed in 2005 and a court case from 2011. Forget vaccines. Do you understand how time works?

“Dean, the 2015 influenza vaccines were based on a model submitted by, get this, Dr. ‘Shaman’ and his team. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/news/predict-flu-challenge-winner.htm

Too funny..”

Jesus H. Christ… Firehosing at its best. You didn’t even bother to read what you just posted. That award was not for predicting “the 2015 influenza vaccines.” It was for predicting influenza activity, which is how many people are sick, where, and how badly. Flu activity has nothing to do with the strains selected for the vaccines. One thing comes after the other.

The last paragraph of that page reads: “CDC currently monitors flu activity each year using routine flu surveillance systems that do not utilize social media or predict flu activity. Routine surveillance systems combined with flu forecasting have the potential to predict flu activity in the United States. This may prove useful to public health officials for vaccination campaigns, communicating to the public, allocating resources, and implementing strategies to combat the spread of flu disease. The “Predict the Influenza Season Challenge” was the first step towards this goal, and CDC plans to build from it and continue to test and evaluate the most promising flu forecasting methods over multiple future flu seasons.”

That was the only mention of vaccination in the whole thing. Nothing about flu vaccines, but when to do the annual campaigns (e.g. posters and television commercials).

Seriously, Charlie, go get help. Just stop right now and go get help. Why are you lying so much? It’s not healthy.

The annual influenza vaccine is not based on predictive analysis? How are strains determined each year if it is always a different vaccine and takes time to manufacture and bring to market? Personal attacks are not necessary, just answer the questions

The annual flu vaccine is based on worldwide observation of predominant viruses circulating in the human population. In our discussions since this morning, you’ve stated that Haemophilus influenzae was hepatitis B. When we corrected you on that, you then stated that we don’t vaccinate against bacteria. When we corrected you on that, you thought Hib was influenza, the viral disease. When we corrected you on that, you stated that vaccines were chosen based on avian influenza. When we corrected you on that, you stated that Dr. Shaman’s team won an award for predicting the flu vaccines in 2015. When we corrected you on that, you pull out the victim card and ask not to be attacked personally.
It is not an attack to see someone so seemingly divorced from reality and worry about them, begging them to get help.
Get. Help. Stop posting lie after lie on here for us to correct you, and go get help.

Lie after lie? HepB is given at birth without indication and flu virus is chosen based on forecasting , who is lying?

You are, Charlie. I just listed above how you lied. Just because you don’t list your lies and then ask where you lied doesn’t mean you didn’t lie. You’re not going to gaslight any of the regulars here, and I hope that my enumeration above will show irregulars how you’ve managed to mangle every argument you have brought forth.
Moreover, you’ve used “predictive analysis” wrong several times. It doesn’t mean that someone analyzed something to predict something else. Can you get any more dense? I bet you can with your next reply…

“The annual influenza vaccine is not based on predictive analysis?”

I know it’s an amazing thought, but I don’t believe Charlie has any clue what even he means by “predictive analysis”.

If that’s not the case Charlie, enlighten us: what exactly does that mean to you? It’ll be interesting to see if you are as uninformed on statistics as you are on vaccines.

The work by ‘Dr. Shaman’ linked above has everything to do with determining which strains of virus to formulate the flu shot with, even if it did not how could anyone say that is not how seasonal influenza works?

Medical procedures performed without indication would get the license revoked from the person practicing them in any other field of medicine.

This is not some fabrication this is actually a corporation way overstepping their bounds in a country known to be susceptible to lobbying when it comes to regulation. Please consider that.

No, Charlie. No. The project was asking researchers to predict the level of influenza activity, not to predict which strains to include in the vaccine. Read the CDC link YOU posted. Stop lying.
What medical procedures without indication? My God, man! The fact that ACIP RECOMMENDS a vaccine makes it an indication. Why are you firehosing? Who hurt you so bad that your world view is so twisted?

René and Dean, influenza surveillance is performed to determine which strains of flu are worth including in vaccines under development. Here is a Dr.Shaman publication regarding how his work will be used in the manufacturing of flu vaccines : https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/5/395/2975616.

Here is a more accessible video that spells out the process in greater detail: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/health-and-medicine/infectious-diseases/influenza/v/making-flu-vaccine-each-year

Remember that in the time it takes to determine which strains to include, manufacture and bring the flu vaccine to market, there are people on vacation to and migrating from continents not included in WHO surveillance. Also remember that of the millions of different viral strains on the planet, there are many native to our own continent. Medicine is not immune to financial influence – talk to doctors and ask them what they think of the flu vaccine.

More firehosing. I’ll give you credit for being able to block out criticism and just keep plowing away at your goal.
Son, I was the influenza surveillance coordinator for the state of Maryland for seven years. I worked closely on these things. There are not millions of different flu viruses circulating in the human population at any given time. There is one H1 one H3, maybe an incidental H5 or H7, and one or two type Bs. Go home and reconsider your life.

Funny how the article from Shaman is from 2017, yet you posted previously that he won an award for doing in 2015 what you now tell us he did in 2017. How long did it take you to Google “Shaman” and “flu vaccine strain” and try to find something, anything, that retroactively confirmed your previous mistake… but didn’t really?
Next, a paper from Charlie on how time isn’t linear and so work from Shaman in 2017 was totally what he was given a prize for in 2015.

Shaman worked on forecasting flu activity depending on what flu virus was predominant. His team did not work on predicting flu strains to put into the vaccine, like Charlie wants to believe. The only relationship to vaccines in that work is that they took into consideration vaccine coverage to predict how many people would get sick. Guess what? More coverage meant a milder impact from the flu season, but Charlie won’t tell you that. 😉

Rene, he backed up his claim that manufacturers became immune from liability in 1984 with laws passed in 1986 and 2005, and a court case form 2011. So that he tried to justify an event from 2015 with something from 2017 seems to be par for the course.

Charlie we don’t even use Khan Academy videos to help students in math or statistics because of the low quality — I’m not going to waste my time with your link.

Your dishonesty has been one thing, but this:

“The work by ‘Dr. Shaman’ ”

is disgusting. What reason could you have for putting quotes around a man’s name?

Don’t bother answering — I’ve got a very good idea why you did it.

What does that even mean? “they are antivaccine”. That statement really is meaningless. How does “they are antivaccine” prove your argument in any fashion? Seems to me you think you can use it to stop any debate. So if I don’t like hamburgers, am I not able to critique a Big Mac? If I don’t like Starbucks, can I not compare Starbucks to a Dutch Brothers coffee? If I don’t care to fly, can I not evaluate my experience flying Southwest? Your argument is childish. Its like a silent fart that doesn’t even stink. Poof, there it goes, sure it meant something to you because you felt the air blow between the flabby checks in your trousers, to us it doesn’t exist.

Actual inventor of email is John Postel. He wrote first RFC (spec) for SMTP. More importantly, he made it Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Email is still around, because new features were added when needed.

I agree. She’s got some great vids on Twitter showing just how intolerant/rude AVers are to counter protesters. They even had the gall to tell her she’s “vaccine injured”. Going to an anti-vax event–unsettling as they are–is the best way to understand exactly how unhinged the anti-vax movement truly is.

Sears laughably stated: “I came into this fight because I was taught to be a critical thinker, to use the scientific method to evaluate all medical policies and to never, ever, ever bully a patient” . 1. Sears a critical thinker? Not even close. 2. Sears using scientific method? Sorry, but even less likely than a critical thinker. 3. All the rest of us pediatricians are vaccine bullies? No.No. No. Like all anti-vaxxers Sears thinks any effort by a physician to convince a parent to vaccinate is “bullying” (yet somehow their scare tactics to sway parents not to vaccinate are justifiable).

Also, Sears whines during his VIE chittering: “If they had just left our vaccine system well enough alone I wouldn’t need to be here today”. Oh, how noble of you “Dr. Bob” to grace VIE with your presence! Sears chooses to ignore (or forget) that he helped bring this upon himself and fellow anti-vaxxers via his best-selling anti-vaccine book first published in 2007 that helped drive down vaccination rates to now where there are all these outbreaks. Sears even warned about this in his book penning: “I also warn [parents] not to share their fears with their neighbors, because if too many people avoid the MMR, we’ll likely see the diseases increase significantly.” The changes in vaccine policy Sears so dislikes are happening to prevent further outbreaks, and that is the only reason they are happening. Truly, Sears no longer gives a damn about these diseases increasing significantly–but then again, he didn’t care about the pertussis and measles outbreaks in California brought about there this last decade due to declining vaccination rates either, and Sears didn’t shed a tear yesterday for the 14 infants that died from pertussis this last decade in California. Of course Sears doesn’t think pertussis is that serious an illness either.

Why does Sears still have a medical license? He is a danger to his patients and the public.

IKR? Dr. Bob bawling with guilt over his role in the “vaccine injury epidemic” before he saw the light and wrote his book was the most pathetically antivaccine thing I can recall seeing for many years.

“Why does Sears still have a medical license? He is a danger to his patients and the public.”

Trade bodies exist to protect the practitioners, not the patients. Absent a trail of bodies on primetime news/all their other members beating their door in with pitchforks, why would they do shit?

Well, sure. That’s why he also played the persecution card, going on about how you supposedly can’t speak out about vaccines without risking ruining your medical career.

If Andrew Wakefield has been struck off, how dare he use a “Dr.” in front of his name? #disgusted

Wakefield still has his medical degree. That gives him the right to call himself “Dr.,” no matter how much we might think that he shouldn’t be able to. It’s the same reason why retired doctors who’ve let their license lapse can still call themselves doctor. Having an active medical license is not the criteria for whether one can call oneself “doctor.”

Having an active medical license is not the criteria for whether one can call oneself “doctor.”

It was in Maine until a few years ago.

Someone posted a screenshot from the event on Twitter where he was “Dr Andrew Wakefield, Gastroenterologist,” which deserves at least one [sic].

Because he is a fraud and antivaxers like to use the title to impress pecple??

“Wakefield still has his medical degree.”

But it is not an M.D. I am too lazy to fact-check but since he was educated in the UK he probably has has a MB or ChB or something.

These seem to be directly equivalent to a US or Canadian M.D but, at least in the UK the title of Doctor in only appropriate officially while the person is licenced.

Overall calling him “doctor” in the US saves a lot of nitpicking and disputing it is probably not worth the hassle.

“[James Lyons-Weiler] claimed that it is not contested that the safety of the full vaccine schedule is unknown, which is flagrantly false”. If it’s flagrantly false, it should not be a problem for you to direct me to a study that’s examined the safety of the full vaccine schedule. Thanks.

Here are a couple:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057555/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=2260220
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24461583
https://vaxopedia.org/2019/07/03/immunization-advisory-groups/

There are several more.

Dr. Iannelli has discussed some of these studies so that I don’t have to.

https://vaxopedia.org/2019/07/08/are-there-any-long-term-studies-on-vaccine-safety/
https://vaxopedia.org/2017/08/20/are-vaccines-tested-together/
https://vaxopedia.org/2019/07/10/how-is-the-immunization-schedule-developed/

There’s also an active surveillance system, the Vaccine Safety Datalink. (Yes, VAERS is not the be-all and end-all of vaccine safety, contrary to what antivaxers claim.) See:

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/Supplement_1/S45
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/vsd/publications.html

I could go on and on and on, but you won’t listen anyway; so I’ll stop here.

I’m listening and clicking through to the links. Contrary to your claim, you didn’t link to any studies that examine the safety of the full vaccine schedule. The first link is to a German study, limited to non-immigrants (i.e. homogeneously German population) from 2011 and looks at infections and atopic diseases, not overall safety or health. The second is from 1990, has a total of 50 children in the study and only covers children up through age 5. BTW, the full schedule in 1990 was something I supported and vaccinated my child born in 1988 accordingly. While I have no problem with that study, it’s not supportive of your claim that the full schedule has been studied as a there are lot more vaccines and doses on the schedule now. The third link is a 2014 German study looking only at Asthma. The remaining links are not to studies at all. While data from the vaccine safety datalink could be used to provide that information, I haven’t seen them publish a study showing the safety of the full schedule. Given that the IOM published a report in 2013 that concurred with what Dr. Lyons-Weiler said and you didn’t give any studies that purported to study the full schedule, I’m thinking you are the one making the flagrantly false statement.

I could go on and on and on

Orac, if I may interject here, I think we can sum up Beth’s post as, ‘Yes Orac, by all means, please do go on!’

Actually KiGGS said this:
According to CAPI (parent questionnaire), at least one atopic disorder was diagnosed by a doctor in 6–10-year-olds in 30.1% (95% CI 12.9 to 55.8, n = 6) of unvaccinated subjects and 24.4% (95% CI 22.8 to 26.0, n = 992) of vaccinated subjects; in 11–17-year-olds, in 20.3% (95% CI 10.1 to 36.6, n = 8) in unvaccinated subjects and 29.9% (95% CI 28.4 to 31.5, n = 1560) in vaccinated subjects.
Actually this was all atopic disorders, not just asthma.
During second study, babies died because of measles. Of course, this could not be continued, when measles vaccine is available.
Third study is actually about asthma, though you did not mention it.
Now read other studies. More things than asthma (or atopic disorders) are covered, I promise.

Or you can sum up Beth: I will keep asking questions until I get the answers I want.

She is never satisfied.

@Chris, I keep asking until the question I asked has been answered. That hasn’t yet happened in this thread. If that makes me hard to satisfy, I don’t see that as a fault. If you believe that ORAC is correct and Dr. Lyons-Weiler is not, why don’t you provide a link to a study that addresses the safety of the complete schedule? Dr. Lyons-Weiler said there were none, so just one link to a recent study addressing that would falsify his statement.

@Chris “We really don’t care what you want or think” Congratulations on making my point. Very persuasive.
You really showed me that ORAC is correct and Dr. Lyons-Weiler is not.

@Beth KiGGS did address safety of whole vaccine schedule: it showed that it does not result with atopic disorders. In In addition, Orac’s Vaxopedia link had following:
Smith MJ, Woods CR.
Pediatrics. 2010 Jun;125(6):1134-41. doi: 10.1542/peds.2009-2489. Epub 2010 May 24.
On-time vaccine receipt in the first year does not adversely affect neuropsychological outcomes.
So full schedule do not affect neurophysiological outcomes either.
McCarthy NL, Sukumaran L, Newcomer S, Glanz J, Daley MF, McClure D, Klein NP, Irving S, Jackson ML, Lewin B, Weintraub E.
Vaccine. 2017 Dec 4;35(48 Pt B):6643-6648. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2017.10.034. Epub 2017 Oct 20.
Patterns of childhood immunization and all-cause mortality.
Full schedule was studied up to 48 months
Care to comment these ?

Thank you. That was the 2013 IOM study I referenced in my second post. This study backs up Dr. Dr. Lyons-Weiler said, which Dr. Gorski claimed was “flagrantly false”.

In chapter five “Review of Scientific Findings” under conclusions: “The committee’s review confirmed that research on immunization safety has mostly developed around studies examining potential associations between individual vaccines and single outcomes. Few studies have attempted more global assessments of entire sequence of immunizations or variations in the overall immunization schedule and categories of health outcomes, and none has squarely examined the issue of health outcomes and stakeholder concerns in quite the way that the committee was asked to do in its statement of task. None has compared entirely unimmunized populations with those fully immunized for the health outcomes of concern to stakeholders.” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK206940/)

To my knowledge, this gap in scientific understanding of the overall safety of the vaccine schedule has not yet been addressed with published studies despite the lack having been identified in this IOM report from six years ago. If you, or Dr. Gorski, or anyone else is interested in providing links to studies that provide that information, I’m listening and clicking on your links.

That not so lengthy statement said nothing about why HepB is ubiquitously recommended at birth.

I am aware of that paragraph, and I frankly find the use anti-vaccine activists make of it dishonest, though I am fairly sure you’re not being intentionally dishonest here, but it’s still a misleading use. For a start, the report clearly recommends against a whole schedule RCT:

“. The committee believes that if clearly defined, biologically plausible hypotheses emerge from observational studies—either studies based on current resources, such as VSD, or studies with newly recruited cohorts—then these could serve as the basis for further research by the use of studies with the RCT design. Before HHS initiates further research on the entire immunization schedule, a thorough review of the biological plausibility of the association of a particular outcome with an aspect of the schedule should be conducted.
Recommendation 6-2: The Department of Health and Human Services should refrain from initiating randomized controlled trials of the childhood immunization schedule that compare safety outcomes in fully vaccinated children with those in unvaccinated children or those vaccinated by use of an alternative schedule.” (Chapter 6)

In Chapter 7, after setting out the issues in chapter 5, the Committee reiterated that an RCT is not desirable, pointed out the lack of evidence on no safety and the existing strong monitoring systems, especially highlighting VSD.

Here is the Committee’s conclusion:
“The committee found no significant evidence to imply that the recommended immunization schedule is not safe. Furthermore, existing surveillance and response systems have identified adverse events known to be associated with vaccination. The federal immunization research infrastructure is strong. A key component is the VSD project, which with ongoing support will be able to feasibly address the committee’s identified key research questions. Although the committee concludes that protection of children from vaccine-preventable diseases is of higher importance than testing of alternative immunization schedules without epidemiological or biological evidence indicating a safety problem, VSD should continue to examine the health outcomes of people who choose alternative schedules.”

With this kind of conclusion, taking one paragraph about limits as the report justifying Lyons-Weiler is incorrect. It doesn’t. It says the opposite.

@dorit me

I said nothing about requiring a randomized control trial. I agree that would be unethical. That doesn’t mean that no studies can be done, it only means that if a difference in the health of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children were found in an observational study we couldn’t separate out co-founders from vaccines as the cause of the difference. But an observational study with sufficiently high power could establish that there was no difference.

I disagree that the report does not support what Dr. Lyons-Weiler claimed. When they say “no significant evidence to imply that the recommended immunization schedule is not safe”, they are accurately reporting that they found no evidence. Presumably, had they found studies that addressed the issue, they would have included them in their review. Instead, they reported that they found no studies of that nature.

Moi did not know this:
Anders Hviid, DrMedSci; Jørgen Vinsløv Hansen, PhD; Morten Frisch, DrMedSci; Mads Melbye, DrMedSci
Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort Study
Annals of Internal Medicine 16 APRIL 2019
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]).
You notice that no vaccinations increase autism risk. And this is a novax study
This one MOI should have known
Anders Hviid, M.Sc., Michael Stellfeld, M.D., Jan Wohlfahrt, M.Sc., and Mads Melbye, M.D., Ph.D.
Childhood Vaccination and Type 1 Diabetes
N Engl J Med 2004; 350:1398-1404
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa032665
Another novax study

Thanks for the link to the 42 Believer vid showing just how sparse the attendance actually was.
.
I jump-watched some of Dull Bigtwig’s 4 hour recording of this snooze-fest and from the carefully choreographed pans around the crowd determined that the crowd was only as deep as the photo/video scaffold not far from the stage. The large expanse of green grass visible behind the scaffold revealed a distinct lack of attendees past that point.
.
At that point I estimated the attendance at about the level of a high school football game… or less (My HS had 5000+ kids so our games were quite large.)
42 Believer’s video shows that estimate was probably not far off since it shows the “crowd” at the point the main headliners (Wakefraud & RFK, Jr.) speak.
For an event with all those months of promotion and all those speakers the attendance was pathetic.
.
The lying lies vomited by the various speakers was just the same old-same old debunked crackpottery aimed at the faithful.
At the end they panned to some of the crowd and a majority of the “warrior mommies” were holding signs stating their kids were “vaccine injured”, which just shows that this was a trade show for the anti-vax grifting leader and their acolytes.
.
Speaking about an es doctor who had his license revoked and his research retracted due to numerous ethical lapses and then found to have produced fraudulent data to back his money making scheme to the point he has been declared the biggest medical fraud of the century:
@ 3:22:10 – ‘Build statues to Andy Wakefraud’ – RFK, Jr.
Yeah, and RFK, Jr. is not anti-vaccine. Hell, in his faulty and biased legal-eagle mind he can’t even read the facts of Wakefraud’s case and realize this guy is dirty as sin.
I have absolutely zero respect for Junior.

Reality, are you saying you’re estimating around 5000 attended? If so, I say not bad! I remember the CDC Atlanta rallies when only a couple hundred would show.

Reality, I think you are missing an important relationship here; there are the hardcores who show up, and the much, much larger ‘disgruntled’ base who might not show up, but are nevertheless paying attention. This latter base is what you should be more concerned about. More hardcores showing up to rallies would also be indicative of swelling of the disgruntled ranks. We are talking — yikes! — Reality.

Reality, further to my earlier post, have you ever reflected on the relationship between every 100 additional ‘antivaxxers’ who shows up to rallies and the percentage increase in state’s vaccine exemptions, or a Republican voting against a bill aimed at tightening exemptions? Would be really interesting stats to explore!

“Reality, I think you are missing an important relationship here; there are the hardcores who show up, and the much, much larger ‘disgruntled’ base who might not show up, but are nevertheless paying attention.”

It is difficult to predict the behavior of loons (like you, Charlie, and the folks who attended the VILE event) since, by their very nature, actions aren’t based on rational thought and facts but on the things they imagine to be true.

If you are foolish enough to ignore the science, and the data, that is so overwhelmingly against the things you say expecting normal behavior in any way is suspect.

No I am not.
I’m saying that 400-500 may be more like it and that includes the coaches, the players, the players family and friends, etc.
Did you even look at the vids from 42Believer?
Do you see anything like 5000 people?
It looks like the contents of the bleachers of a high school football game… IOW, the cult has the national draw of a high school football game.
Not impressive considering the amount of time and money that went into producing this fiasco. Unless RFK, Jr makes up the shortfall, Crazymoms lost their shirt.
And Dull Bigtwig predicting that they would ‘fill the mall in a couple years’ is laughable delusion of the first order. They didn’t take up 5% of the mall… they wouldn’t count as high as the flotsam of ODed stoners at an anti Viet Nam War protest.
.
This thing was a joke and I love that 42Believer was there to laugh at them.

It is not a figment of imagination, the doctrine being supported here actually takes kids that left the womb an hour ago and vaccinates them against blood born illness their parents do not have. Within the first day of life. That is not okay.

@ Greg,

5,000 IS impressive, considering how marginalized parents of vaccine-injured children are.

I could no more attend an event than I can use the bathroom after 1540; when my vaccine-injured son arrives home from school.

The ‘ranks’ are growing exponentially by the day, because vaccine-injuries are occurring exponentially, by the day. There is no amount of shadow-banning that can stop vaccines from injuring & killing children (or adults).

@ everybody else.

The only thing that could do that; is to stop the vaccines from reaching the people.

We could also (MAYBE) produce vaccines that don’t injure & kill. But why bother if you don’t know that vaccines injure & kill.

When the mother of a vaccine-injured child suggests that a pro-vaxxer is also vaccine-injured; that is not a derogatory remark directed at our children. It is an observation of a disability.

It is an observation that I have made here myself; based on the astounding number of provaccine over the age of 40 who are suffering chronic auto-immune or the immune-mediated ASD & metal health conditions. It is literally remarkable. This is not normal, let alone desirable.

Asking ‘@42″ if she was a mother is a reasonable question. If you are not; you do not have the adequate perspective to bring to the table. I do not care how many letters you can title yourself with; until you have known your own child, you will not understand how I can know my own child.

There really ARE no studies that can prove vaccines are safe. There is only epidemiology that appears to deny that vaccines are not correlated with increased mortality, SIDS, ASD, etc …

In order for correlation to reach causation (or the lack thereof); you must have determined an etiology that supports (or denies) that correlation.

If you want to prove that vaccines are safe; you must present a different etiology along with the epidemiology. Until you can do that; your epidemiology proves nothing.

Epidemiology can not prove causation Show me an etiological confirmation for SIDS that is not immune-mediation. Show me the etiology of autism that is not immune-mediation.

If you can’t tell me what causes it; you can’t tell me what doesn’t cause it, no matter how much epidemiology you have. All’s you have, is correlating/lack of correlating epidemiology. So you have nothing to show me.

Since the only etiological evidence we have to date has confirmed immune-mediation as the etiology for SIDS, SUDEP, ASD, Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, etc …The scientific evidence is moving towards, not away from; that vaccines are NOT safe.

^ And of course, there were not 5000 people present; 42believer herself estimated 800–1000. You should really learn to read enough of the comments to avoid doing things such as using Gerg’s misrepresentations as a springboard.

Lyons-Weiler cited a lot of studies in his very badly written and argued book on vaccines and autism.

Not all of them were on autism – many were not – and many were misused, for example, an oral aluminum study with large amounts used to argue on vaccines.

At one point he provided a family tree and said that the fact that there are no (diagnosed – my addition) autism cases in older generations but there are in younger shows that autism isn’t genetic. Can anyone spot the issues? Non-scientist me saw some.

But I would give him the title scientist, because he had the credentials and work, even if he’s not practicing. I think his scientific background makes his actions worse, under a version of noblesse oblige: he should know better.

Thank you for going through that.

James Lyons-Weiler is a scientist, unfortunately. It’s just that, for whatever reason, he’s degenerated into a crackpot crank scientist. He’s like the proverbial drunk and the lightpost, no longer looking to science for illumination, but rather for support. It’s sad. I wonder what drove him to become such a crank? I’ve never seen him give a speech alone before. (I’ve seen him participate in one antivax panel.) Wow. He’s way over the top and very much antivaccine.

I tried to watch parts of the VI(L)E Event live at @ highwire talk but it was interrupted periodically so I only saw about half of what I intended ( thankfully)- a few observations:
— I looked up Shiva ( Wikipedia) which debunks his claims about inventing e-mail – he refers to how the Smithsonian includes his work- well, both that institution and WaPo later retracted his claim. However he did tell an inspiring tale about how he and his family overcame the injustice of the caste system through ” education, education, education”. Right, then you sign in with these cranks.
— I also thought that the camera angle looked manipulative and was glad to later see Ms 42believer’s other images that confirmed my suspicions. I liked her “Andy Wakefield” song.
— Although I missed Del and Sears, I was able to hear nearly all of AJW and RFK jr.- they both have plans: Andy is producing another film, due out in the spring and RFK jr keeps promising legal attacks.
— A few parents paraded their “damaged” children or spoke about their deaths “due to vaccines”: one was a Maine state senator
— The live feed featured how many people were watching and it varied from 60 to 82 over the nearly 2 hours I watched
— Blowing the ram’s horn was a nice touch but I doubt that it’ll make those walls/ buildings come tumbling down.

Scoffers at RI brag how anti-vax is a growing issue and that hordes of parents believe and oppose vaccines BUT consider this:
there was a great deal of buzz about this event months in advance, I saw references to it at other anti-vax gathering places. The outdoor part of the event was free to the public. Washington is a major metropolitan area that encompasses Maryland and Virginia suburbs as well and is within a few hours of the most densely populated East Coast cities ( NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore) and is easily accessible by train, bus or highway. Yet they only got a few hundred? I understand that there was an evening event where attendees could see their heroes over cocktails which wasn’t free. Let the worship begin!

Even w/ only a few hundred people, this was not a cheap event to hold. Legal challenges are not cheap either. Orac discussed the Ohio anti-vaxxers getting a lobbyist. There is more big $$$ funneling in from dark places that we still don’t know about. RFK jr might be rich enough to work for free, but the most of the rest of that verminous crowd of liars didn’t speak for free, especially money-grubbing Wakefield.

I am more and more convinced that RFK, Jr. is the source of a lot of the money fueling this death cult.
Considering the revelation yesterday that two individuals – RFK, Junior and Larry Crook are the source of over 50% of the anti-vaccine facebook ads it seems Junior is willing to spread his trust fund around… plus what was his cut in the Cali Roundup award? $1-2 million?
This guy needs public debunking, ridicule and shaming as a very dangerous delusional lunatic to the point that anyone with any sense will avoid public contact with him as they would avoid any discussions with a flat earther.
.
As an aside:
I have been trying to get Google to stop promoting BLF’s NVIC in their search results.
To see what I’m talking about just search the term – vaccine – using Google.
Note that a promotional box appears to the right of the results with a listing of “Vaccination organizations” of which the anti-vaccine NVIC is prominently listed.
I have for the past 1/2 year sent feedback to Google pointing out that BLF’s NVIC is not a “Vaccination organization” but, rather, an anti-vaccination organization… to no effect.
I usually point out that the NVIC has been the oldest anti-vaccine org. on the internet and promotes anti-vaccine conspiracies and fake news as well as exclusively trying to dissuade parents from vaccinating through the dishonest misuse of the VAERS data.
I’ve also pointed out that NVIC is nearly a subsidiary of Mercola dot com which they have de-emphasized and will no longer promote.
I also ask why they are promoting crackpot anti-vaccine websites and orgs.
.
There are two ways to report:
1) Right under the promo box there is a link for “Feedback”
2) At the very bottom of the results page there is a link to “Send feedback” which has a highlight tool like the windows snipping tool to highlight the problem and send the image along with your comment.
I’ve used both methods dozens of times, again – to no effect.
.
If anyone wants to join in filing complaints to Google about their NVIC promotion maybe they will stop doing it.
Have fun.

I saw it and added it to the post, for those who wanted a sampling of some of the other speakers. Jim Meahan’s bit about how the vaccination of his children was their “defilement” with a “sinister Satanic ritual to defile and destroy God’s perfect creation” was particularly amusing. I’ll give him credit. He topped the antivaxers likening vaccine mandates to Nazi medical experiments!

Thank you. I was highly amused by Bobby Junior’s remarks on his children. We are within a year of age, and had a different experience. Apparently Bobby Junior lived a rather sheltered life because I knew many kids asthma, diabetes, food issues (my sister was severely lactose intolerant starting with her very premature birth!) and other maladies (including autism, it was called childhood schizophrenia… my stepmother told me to be nice to this one kid in 8th grade, he pulled a knife on me, so I deferred, though there were others who had the symptoms but were not violent).

Also, several of Bobby Junior’s kids are doing quite well: https://www.thelist.com/53431/things-didnt-know-kennedy-grandchildren/ . If there is an issue with anyone, I will assume it is due to Bobby Junior. This includes what happened to his wives.

I knew quack Meehan was off the deep end when he started accusing pediatricians of child abuse and murder through vaccination, but now we know he’s just an out-and-out loon. You’d think the OK Medical Board would consider a competency hearing for such lunacy.

@ Reality:

I don’t use google so I tried with BIng:
surprisingly, the first 5 pages were quite SB, a few places advertised where to get vaccines ( stores, med drop in facilities) although a few of the video entries may have looked anti-vax friendly- I didn’t watch any to be sure
NO NVIC or any of the usual suspects as far as I could see.

@ Chris:

You’re doing a fabulous job responding to anti-vax commenters. It’s important that new readers see that their questions don’t go unanswered because they can then claim that they won.
Sceptics may have mixed feelings about what to do with scoffers/ trolls:
should we ignore them and not reward their activities which may lead to an increase of comments by them?
Or respond to them to “clear things up”? We can give new information, demonstrate how their minds work and note how they are never satisfied and importantly, NEVER learn. They can serve as negative examples- what NOT to do.

I’ve decided to not address them any more but instead, to talk directly to sceptics and lurkers, outlining my studies and way of interacting to spread SB information contra SIWOTI.
Since we can’t really directly test what works better, we can take different paths.
.

To clarify:

if scoffers are writing in order to get a response, answering them may in fact be rewarding to them and increase their activity BUT we can even use that as a way to spread SB information

Thank you. I am only doing it today because the claims are over a decade old and easy (I have not seen Yazbak used in ages). It is like someone just jumped on the vaxxed bus and is just getting the old tired memes without a clue what the real data should look like. Sometimes they need to be told that what they read elsewhere is not real science.

I mostly ignore the ones that will not be educated like Greg and Beth.

Yah, someone or another is the mashiach. I’m not absolutely certain that that site is the same Henry Morse, though. I have to run, but doesn’t it contain a list of Jews who invented different vaccines?

There are all kinds of messiahs but I meant the Jews-for-Jesus type: seems he went to a Bible College. So maybe?

So, they decided to hold their big event during the Impeachment Hearings?

Literally no one in DC cares about their little show.

Probably so they can claim the media was boycotting their “worthy” cause. Or just bad luck that the impeachment hearings collided with their timing.

Beth: “When they say “no significant evidence to imply that the recommended immunization schedule is not safe”, they are accurately reporting that they found no evidence.”

You should read the links Orac provided without the usual antivax filters. The evidence you purportedly seek is there. Accepting it requires a degree of intellectual honesty you have not demonstrated to this point.

Dangerous One, although I consider my antivaxx filters involves ‘sense’, ok, I’ll be game, let me remove them. I’ll read again some of the findings from those studies that Orac linked in response to Beth’s request for studies examining the full schedule for safety. In asterisks I’ll include the additional stuff that I am finding with my antivaxx filters removed.

Twenty five children who had undergone their full course of childhood immunization schedule were compared with 25 children who did not have any vaccinations for a period of five years. Parameters for comparison were measles, pertussis, poliomyelitis, tetanus and tuberculosis. Out of the 25 vaccinated children, only one child had mild measles at 2 1/2 years while 4 had suspected whooping cough at different points of the study period but not clinically diagnosed as pertussis. Among the unvaccinated group, 2 died of measles before the age of 3 years while 11 others went down with measles during an outbreak in 1986. An unvaccinated child also died of tetanus within the study period. In this paper we advocate the total integration of every community in the ongoing Expanded Programme for Immunization in Nigeria.

*This study did not look for any adverse outcomes from vaccination between the 25 children who had undergone the full immunization schedule and the 25 children who had not, yet if the vaccinated children were more protected against diseases. why should it not also be reasoned that they also did not suffer any adverse events from vaccination? We strongly encourage the reader to make this conclusion.*

WoW! Can’t believe I was missing that additional stuff with my antivaxx filters on. Let’s try another study…

<

blockquote>
Response at 20 years was 71.6%. Two hundred eighteen subjects met the primary outcome criteria within 16,257 person years observed. Asthma incidence was lower in participants who were vaccinated (measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine/tick-borne encephalitis vaccine/BCG vaccine

Also, even though there were only three vaccines studied for their relationship to asthma, the reader can safely conclude had we studied the full vaccination schedule, vaccination would’ve been found to be protective not just against asthma, but for other adverse afflictions including, autism, ADHD, SIDs, learning disabilities, and all other such conditions that antivaxxers routinely blame vaccines for causing

<./blockquote>

OMG! More stuff that I was missing! Dangerous One, I learned so much, thanks for the suggestion of removing my antivaxx filters. Hang on, let me also take the time to call-out Beth. Beth, do what I did and stop pestering the good folks at RI by reading the studies without your antivaxx filters!! Anyway Dangerous One, thanks again for the assistance.

Try this one:
“The rate ratio for type 1 diabetes among children who received at least one dose of vaccine, as compared with unvaccinated children, was 0.91 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.74 to 1.12) for Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine; 1.02 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.75 to 1.37) for diphtheria, tetanus, and inactivated poliovirus vaccine; 0.96 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.71 to 1.30) for diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis, and inactivated poliovirus vaccine; 1.06 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.80 to 1.40) for whole-cell pertussis vaccine; 1.14 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.90 to 1.45) for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine; and 1.08 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.74 to 1.57) for oral poliovirus vaccine. The development of type 1 diabetes in genetically predisposed children (defined as those who had siblings with type 1 diabetes) was not significantly associated with vaccination. Furthermore, there was no evidence of any clustering of cases two to four years after vaccination with any vaccine.”
Childhood Vaccination and Type 1 Diabetes
Anders Hviid, M.Sc., Michael Stellfeld, M.D., Jan Wohlfahrt, M.Sc., and Mads Melbye, M.D., Ph.D.
N Engl J Med 2004; 350:1398-1404
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa032665
Besides, you claim that all vaccines are unsafe. So dropping three should make things much better. Or if there are a cumulative effect, three vaccines should show it.

AS an aside:
Has Jenny McCarthy become less vocal about vaccines?
I know that she has ventures ( a satellite radio show, a television voice competition show, possibly a show/s with her husband/ husband’s family restaurant business. a line eponymous of bottled mixed drinks)- so is she being quiet to keep those projects going?

I’m very amused that this was being broadcast over Facebook Live as there were about 5-6 anti-vaxxers protesting at the Facebook HQ earlier this week about how they’re being “silenced”.

There’s a difference between being “silenced” and being asked to “shut up and go away”.

Can not post links critical of vaccines on Facebook, they appear to the person who posted them but when logging out and reviewing as a third party posts with links are fine, benign posts from the same person are still there. “View all comments is selected and everything.

Facebook has a (mild) rule against posts that can cause harm. Posting lies about vaccine dangers, or falsehoods about lack of studies, or the other blatantly false s**t your type of folks put out violates that rule.

Saw you mention lawyers contingency fees. That’s one of the drivers for the creation of the modern antivaccine movement in the 1980s, following the Dalkon Shield case in the 1970s lawyers realized you could make big bucks from medical class action suits.

The documentary ‘DPT: Vaccine Roulette’ was designed to scare people into a massive class action suit aimed at the vaccine industry (It’s how Barbara Loe Fisher got into the AntiVaccine field.), the Vaccine Court short circuited the process so the lawyers turned to Silicone Breast Implants and did manage to scare consumers into a massive class action suit which sent Dow Corning bankrupt in the 1990s. By the time the science caught up and showed the scare claims were nonsense it was too late.

Well, it is gratifying to see that this vile v.i.e. anti-vaccine trade show and personal promotion event is getting zero attention from the press.
I haven’t seen a single article about it except from the usual kooksites.
Good for the mainstream media for ignoring these delusional bastiches.
I’m also gratified to see Quaxxed II being soundly ignored so it may go the way of Wakefield’s “The Pathological Opportunist” which, for all anyone can tell, seems to have been just a rumour. (snicker)
Maybe if the anti-vax leaders are ignored enough the loons will start to throw menstrual blood on theater doors to gain attention…

Isn’t amusing that provaxxers obsession is not that their message gets heard, but that the other guys’ don’t. Despite your claim to contentment, I am sense jitters.

Hi, jitters.
I’d do something about that if I were you.
I hear that a large rose quartz suppository and a cup of Chlorox will cure those jitters right up.
hth

You have a typing error Greg: you put up “I am sense jitters” when it should be “I habitually lie and say vaccines aren’t safe.”

Hey there, Reality:

I also scanned for news reports the past few days/ today and only found references to anti-vax protests OF THE PAST, not this one ( using the date)
I could only find articles/ facebook by the usual suspects:
–AoA has an article today which I couldn’t read because of “long running script” – several fails
— of course, @ highwire talk ( Del Sequoia)
— TMR facebook had something which made me laugh ( although I knew about it previously( GUESS who is helping out the anti-vax cause? Celia Farber! of hiv/ aids denialism fame. She’s shilling a showing of VAXXED II in NYC, top secret of course.
Interestingly, there are a few hiv/aids denialis who have gone anti-vax – her, Ruggiero, Montagnier, a few others. Farber has a website, The Truth Barrier which is either the best or worst named site based on your point of view- ours/ hers.

Someone above mentioned about how many anti-vaxxers are active: I haven’t taken a survey but I have looked at many facebook pages, twitter accounts etc that provide numbers FOR YEARS, while there is a site with 100K + ( perhaps Cook’s? Orac has discussed it), TMR has 67K and the Vaccine Machine FB has about 50K. Most of the activists manage to gather a few thousands ( Rossi, Wright, TMs). Probably when the diehards sign up they persuade every family member as well including cats and dogs. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Reality and Denice, I have some bad news for you guys. This report is saying States vaxxed rates continue to decrease. What was I saying again about the relationship between every extra 100 antivaxxers who shows up at vaccine rally and percentage decrease in vaccine uptakes?

Perhaps worse, in reporting the news, these bozos inadvertently gave Vaxxed 2 a plug. Aarrgghh!! I say you guys get on them right away.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/16/vaccines-measles-mumps-polio-hepatitis-b

‘Narad’ it is English?

Of the one million different viruses on Earth the CDC is selling supplemental vaccines that may protect against 30.

With this sale they will make over one billions dollars annually, make sense?

First, I have had enough with your semiliterate ejaculations. Second, vaccines are one of the most cost-effective health interventions going. Finally, the CDC budget is established by Congress, not peddling vaccines in dark alleys. HTH. HAND. FOADIAF.

@ Chris:

I tried one of the links you provided; but it didn’t work:

archneur.jamanetwork.com/data/Journals/PEDS/8503/poa9078.pdf

Could you please give author, year/month, title.

Thanks

Works for me in Firefox. It asked you if you wish to save or open the file, when I say to open it pops up in the pdf reader. It used to have a more direct link, but here it is :
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1999 Dec;153(12):1279-82.
Neonatal deaths after hepatitis B vaccine: the vaccine adverse event reporting system, 1991-1998.

Here is the other link where you can download the pdf: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/348303

@ Chris

thanks. Got it online.

Yep, sleeping with infants is not a wise move.

I starting to use the pdf bit when that link did not work reliably. I am sorry for not checking for it earlier. My experience with older links is that they change, I try to check… but this time it blew back up on me.

That is an old enough paper that I check it, but I did check it again. Be sure to check the table on where many of the babies were found. This paper reads more like “co-sleeping with babies is bad.”

Yeah. 42believer found out that the way to make a lot of antivaxxers furious is to oppose child abuse. Apparently, they think that people have to be paid to be against child abuse.

Sadly, they don’t believe that all the dangerous and harmful quack treatments to which they subject their children are child abuse. So of course they get defensive when it’s pointed out to them that those treatments are child abuse. More’s the pity.

Here is an interesting question: How many people would it take to show up to a vaccine rally for us to start seeing some ‘serious’ contrition from vaccine pushers? We are talking — ‘Our bad! – the antivaxxers are right. We have knowingly poisoned generations of kids and desperately and ruthlessly tried to cover it up, and we are really really sorry!.’ I say definitely over 100,000, but the wait is just adding to the ‘apologizing’ that the vaccine pushers will eventually have to do.

40 per cent of Americans believe in Biblical creationism. That doesn’t make it true.
About 40 per cent of Americans still approve of Donald Trump. He remains a narcissistic asshole and probably a criminal.

The only interesting part of your “interesting question” is how dumb it is.

The number of people who do or do not show up at a rally has no effect on scientific evidence. One hundred thousand people could show up at an anti-vaxx rally and that still wouldn’t mean vaccines cause autism.

These videos of @42believer, who showed up to protest the protest, found on Twitter, gives you an idea of the true size of the crowd attending the VIE Event:

Actually Orac, perhaps the readers can more productively spend their time watching the videos and listening to some of the folks that were interviewed by ’42believer’. After ’42believer’ railed against the protesters, slamming them all as ableist abusers who subject their autistic kids to dangerous treatments such as chelation therapy, a middle-aged lady describing herself as a health practitioner politely and articulately objected. She explained that she too stands against such unproven therapy, and that it was wrong for ’42believer’ to brand the majority of protesters that way. She defended them saying like her they too were just there to share their stories of vaccine injuries. She pointedly went on to explain how she felt her daughter was injured. and that it was supported by five different doctors. She added what a consternation her situation has caused with over half her family being doctors, and even her husband working for the FDA. Sorry — but I couldn’t help feeling that ’42believer’ came across as such an idiot.

I found an interesting inconsistency in an anti-vaxxer’s twitter account:
this guy is very vocal about the dangers of vaccines and appears in films and events like VIE
YET his account of the past few days DOES NOT MENTION his speech or appearance in Washington at all!
I wonder why that is?
He has had tweets about his other recent protests and arrest .. but nada about VIE ; his bio there doesn’t mention his anti-vax activities- he is an environmentalist and lawyer.
It’s RFK jr! And he has 68K followers. I imagine to find his anti-vax tweets you need to go to his org/ not under his name
If anti-vax is such a winning notion and if it attracts loads of people, why so quiet?

Similarly, Jenny McCarthy is rather silent these days despite being on satellite radio, on television and married into a show biz family. Why no anti-vax?
You would think that both of them would want to bring in anti-vax parents ( millons of them!) to their other ventures.
OR maybe… just maybe, anti-vax might scare the more mainstream folks away

McCarthy has received some pushback due to her antivax activism:

https://badsciencewatch.ca/ottawa-regional-cancer-foundation-drop-jenny-mccarthy/

I wrote to the foundation, along with many other health professionals. McCarthy was quickly dropped, with another fitness personality substituted. Of course, her explanation for the cancellation was a “scheduling conflict”.

Riiiiight…

I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more incidents like this caused her to lower her profile.

Sure. With both of these celebrities there is more to their lives than their delusional beliefs about vaccines ( and I think that they really DO believe) BUT
they have more lucrative interests and connections

Kennedy married an actress, Cheryl Hines and McCarthy married a singer with a well-known family. She has a “career” ( of sorts) as a television/ radio personality/ writer that probably pays well. He has a legal career and is known as an environmentalist and scion of political “royalty”. He has been involved in lawsuits against pesticides lately. Spouses, business partners and advisors concerned with public image might have taken them aside and said, ” Anti-vaccine is box office poison“: it might scare away offers or affect the spouse’s opportunities. Jenny lost the gig you mention and had to dial back on her idee fixe when she appeared on The View ( which didn’t last anyway).

If anti-vax was so popular, wouldn’t people like them showcase their belief instead of covering it up?

Oh! This must be one of those fill-in-the-blank quizzes. Let’s see…

If anti-vax WERE so popular…they’d have teenage groupies.
If anti-vax WERE so popular…box office for their documentaries would be humongous.
If anti-vax WERE so popular…CT aficionados would take the opposing viewpoint.

That’s enough for a Sunday.

If anti-vax was so popular, wouldn’t people like them showcase their belief instead of covering it up?

Denice, if I may interject here, I would say where you and Reality are going wrong is you’re focusing too much on the tip of the iceberg. You’re looking at the hardcores who show up at rallies to gauge how popular antivaxxism is, yet, you’re missing the massive, covert support beneath the surface. Denice and Reality, do you really think that 1000 or so antivaxxers who show up at rallies are the ones holding back mandates from sweeping the entire US and world for that matter? Heck — why would Facebook and other social media sites cater to such a pitiful resistance, and not shut us up for good? Denice and Reality, the answer to these ‘oddities’ are actually straight forward. Never mind celebrities, politicians, and, public health officials not being keen on seeing others thrown in the fire, but how many of them want to risk some ‘coincidental’ hand-flapping and toe-walking (not dehumanizing stereotypes Science Mom, I have Goldman backing me up!) for their own?

Ah yes. The old “silent masses” argument. The belief that one’s viewpoints are not unpopular, just that most supporters aren’t particularly loud about it. It’s Horse Puckey. A few years ago, after an Act reducing exemptions came into law (SB276? SB277? I’m not certain) a petition was circulated to have it revoked/suspended.
The petition got only a fraction of the signatures needed.
If there really were a large number of supporters, the petition would have passed.

Very well Julian, for all the massive resources channeled into reminding the public that the Wakefield was a fraud, and the antivaxx resistance being so ‘hopeless’, how do you account for these two happenings?

https://www.thecentersquare.com/florida/senator-bill-seeking-to-end-religious-exemptions-for-vaccines-won/article_14e13ed6-ef56-11e9-b1e9-13cf20e2b2c1.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/16/vaccines-measles-mumps-polio-hepatitis-b

“Heck — why would Facebook and other social media sites cater to such a pitiful resistance, and not shut us up for good?”
Red herring. Do you know how many years I and others pushed for Facebook to close down a page called “Jewish Ritual Murder”? Do you have any idea how much blatant racism, misogyny, LGBT-hatred, and other points of view that should not get to have a platform in a civilized society, not to mention the US?
Wow, Gregger, I’m guessing that have your dental work done by a proctologist.

Those vast uncounted masses of people who populate Greg’s Antivax World are as real as the Millions of Health Freedom Fighters that exist in the fantasies of a certain fringe altie and antivax loon (who’s so far out of it, the AoA crowd finds him intolerable).

Millions, nay billions of antivaxers are going to drive a stake through the heart of immunization while marching to Health Freedom over the prostrate forms of the Pharma-Medical-Skeptics-One World conspiracists any day now, you betcha.

Another accomplishment RFK, Jr. can be proud of (h/t to Dr. Hotez tweet):
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/child-measles-deaths-mount-in-samoa-anti-vax-movement-being-blamed-outbreak-v1
“As child measles deaths mount in Samoa, anti-vax movement being blamed for outbreak”
.
“1 NEWS has learned of a high-level anti vax meeting organised in Samoa in June, shortly before the deadly measles outbreak.

A US Embassy staff member facilitated a meeting between vaccination critic Robert Kennedy Jnr, invited to Samoa for its independence celebrations, and Australian anti vax blogger Taylor Winterstein.

She’d been forced to cancel seminars in Samoa after being called a public health threat, but came anyway, publicising her meeting with the high-profile Kennedy as profoundly monumental for her movement.

“The anti vax has made it worse,” said Samoa director general of health Laeusa Take Naseri.”
.
“There have been eight suspected measles deaths but many more children are in critical condition.”
– Major measles outbreak.
– Multiple children dying.
– Anti-vax leader RFK, Jr. meets with an anti-vax organizer right before the outbreak.
– RFK, Jr. is completely silent about Samoa and his relation to the disaster just like Wakefraud and all the other leaders of this death cult have been when measles outbreaks follow their anti-vax campaigning (or they deny their activity had anything to do with the outbreak).
.
How much lower can Junior go?
.
I also note that RFK, Jr. – Mr. Environmentalist – seems to have no problem flying round trip to Samoa for his noxious activities.
He also flies around the USA quite often to promote his anti-vaccine death cult lunacy.
I think it is a safe bet that he is flying in a private jet and not coach on a common carrier.
His carbon footprint for just this Samoa trip probably exceeds mine for the entire year.
.
What a piece of trash this guy is…

Even more reason to stop the self-indulgent pseudo-intellectual masturbation about vaccines and autism, which you and Beth so perfectly demonstrate, and work on identifying the causes and improving treatment. Every dollar that is spent on researching the relationship between vaccines and autism is one dollar less spent on helping children on the spectrum and reducing their numbers in the future.

Yes Mike, Opus and Reality, we really should get to the bottom of this autism thing. Since my last post, nearly six hours ago, approximately 50 additional kids have been diagnosed with a neurological disorder that will render them with a 33% chance of being nonverbal, over 50% chance of being mentally or borderline, and a close to 90% chance of growing up unemployed, sitting at home and dependent on their aging folks to look after them. Such real tragedies and the clock just keeps ticking!

Questionable? Even coming from your ‘reputable’ agencies such as the CDC? Very well then Julian, please provide your source or sources contesting that a third of autistic kids are non-verbal, over half are mentally retarded or borderline retarded, and close to 90% grow up unemployed and residing with their folks?

Compared to their peers with other types of disabilities, young adults
with autism had the lowest rate of employment. While 58% of those
on the autism spectrum ever worked during their early 20s, over 90%
of young adults with emotional disturbance, speech impairment, or
learning disability ever worked, as well as 74% of young adults with
intellectual disability.

Squirrel, that was an absolute fabrication on your part. Here is the real quote taken from your article.

Compared to their peers with other types of disabilities, young adults
with autism had the lowest rate of employment. While 58% of those
on the autism spectrum ever worked during their early 20s, over 90%
of young adults with emotional disturbance, speech impairment, or
learning disability ever worked, as well as 74% of young adults with
intellectual disability.

;Squirrel, that is 58% of autistic adolescents EVER working at least once. It speaks nothing to their current employment which multiple sources have reported as ranging in the 90%. Nice try — actually no, lying is never acceptable.

It’s impossible for government statistics to show 90% of people with autism as unemployed, while also upholding Greg’s view of people with autism, since it’s defined as “Unemployed persons are those who did not have a job, were available for work, and were actively looking for a job in the 4 weeks”

And of course, before the current vaccination schedule was imposed, there were no autistic , neurologically impaired or mentally retarded individuals ever.

And yet this “increase” as you call it has been almost entirely confined to the higher ends of the spectrum – made up of those kids who were once just considered “weird” or anti-social / isolated. Now those same kinds of kids can be found in Engineering and IT Departments in every company across the country.

That oft repeated myth would be so laughable if it wasn’t so damn cruel…

Myth: People with high functioning Autistic Spectrum Disorders are able to get jobs and be self-supporting.
Fact: Ninety percent of these individuals are unemployed in adulthood[4], whereas, 36 percent of people with mental retardation have part-time or full-time jobs. It takes longer for people with Asperger’s Syndrome and high-functioning Autism or PDD-NOS to master job tasks, but supervisors often don’t allow additional time to spend with them. They tend to think the employee is being lazy, is too slow and not motivated to perform, rather than realizing that their difficulties are due to their disability. Job coaching programs can provide specialists who help in the initial training. When they are in their 40’s, half of the people with higher-functioning ASDs are still living with their parents.[5] Homelessness – in the U.S. studies have shown that 15 – 20 percent of the homeless have Autistic Spectrum Disorders, including “high functioning” individuals.

https://theneurotypical.com/myths-and-truths.html

Perhaps the highest profile autistic character is the fictional Dr Murphy from The Good Doctor. We are talking Dr Murphy not just being in the rare 10% of autistics who beat the odds and land a job, but landing a job as a surgeon that perhaps less than 1 in 10, 000 neurotypicals have the educational and professional accruements to attain. For families the world over struggling with real autism, you couldn’t have a bigger slap in their face.

Julian, I have repeatedly provided you with sources explaining that a third of autistic are nonverbal, over half are mentally retarded or borderline retarded, and 90% of autistic adults are unemployed and living at home. All you have done is scoffed at these sources. Again Julian, please provide your own sources contradicting these figures.

@Julian,

All the links on Greg’s reference seem to be dead ends. However, scrolling to the bottom shows Ref 4 is an article “Adult Issues and Perspectives” by Jean-Paul Bovee. He is the son of Dr Julie A Donnelly, who is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Missouri, trained in ABA, and works for Autism Support Services. Mother and son made a keynote address to the Autism Society of American national conference in 1996.

The neurodiversity referenced article was co-written with Dr Stephen M. Shore, who is a professor at Adelphi University and has written several books on autism, including one with Temple Grandin.

As a doctoral student in 2003, he co-wrote a short article for USA Today supporting the mercury theory of autism causation and blaming the increase in autism on the vaccine schedule.
Pubmed doesn’t list any research by him.

A more useful source of data on employment for ASD individuals is this report from Drexel University.

https://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/autismoutcomes/publications/LCO%20Fact%20Sheet%20Employment.ashx

Although nearly 42% of young ASD adults never worked for pay during their early 20’s, 93% were employed at least once after 6-8 years after leaving high school. Conversation ability and work experience during high school were key indicators of employment success.

All the links on Greg’s reference seem to be dead ends. However, scrolling to the bottom shows Ref 4 is an article “Adult Issues and Perspectives” by Jean-Paul Bovee.

Which just happens to be quite brief.

I have repeatedly provided you with sources explaining that a third of autistic are nonverbal, over half are mentally retarded or borderline retarded, and 90% of autistic adults are unemployed and living at home.

And every time I’ve dug into them, it quickly becomes clear that they are dubious.

Although nearly 42% of young ASD adults never worked for pay during their early 20’s, 93% were employed at least once after 6-8 years after leaving high school. Conversation ability and work experience during high school were key indicators of employment success.

Squirrel, that was a total fabrication. Here is the actual quote from your link….

Compared to their peers with other types of disabilities, young adults
with autism had the lowest rate of employment. While 58% of those
on the autism spectrum ever worked during their early 20s, over 90%
of young adults with emotional disturbance, speech impairment, or
learning disability ever worked, as well as 74% of young adults with
intellectual disability.

So that’s 58% of autistic adolescents EVER working at least once. The article speaks noting to their current unemployment which various sources have pegged at 90%. Nice try, squirrel.

So I decided to click through on your articles.
Link 1) No citation given for the numbers. Dubious.
Link 2) Autism Speaks. I have already notified you that I don’t trust Autism Speaks.
Link 3) “According to the 2012 Canadian Survey on Disability, the employment rate for autistic adults is 14.3 per cent”
Survey.
Not convincing.

Greg:
You quote “While 58% of those on the autism spectrum ever worked during their early 20s, ”
And then you say “So that’s 58% of autistic adolescents EVER working at least once.”

Which is incorrect. “during their early 20’s” is not the same as “EVER”.
Either you are deliberately mis-reading your quoted statement to make a point, or your reading comprehension is very poor. Honestly and literacy are both things you can work on and improve.

Jt indeed you are right; I read article again but does it really matter? Jt, here is how it plays out…

Johnny is that neurologically impaired autistic kid, with his injuries brought on by his postnatal vaccination bombardment.. Johnny, now in his 20s, falls within the 60% of similarly vaccine injured kids who have graduated high school The other 40% suffering more severe injuries will never graduate. .

Due to his disability, Johnny has difficulties finding a job. Still, he is affiliated with various community agencies involved with teaching him life skills and job coaching. Sarah is a social worker at one of those agencies, and after years of trying, she finally lands Johnny a paid incentive job tryout at a local thrift store. She shares the good news with Mrs Jones, Johnny’s mom, and she in turn tells Johnny. Johnny is excited and gives the job a try.

Things don’t go well. Johnny is constantly late, chatters endlessly with his coworkers, complains about the noisy workplace, and misses shifts due to his never ending stomach ailments. After a month, Johnny’s boss has had enough. He calls Sarah to tell her Johnny must go. Sarah shares the disappointing news with Mrs Jones, and Johnny is back to being unemployed and sitting at home.

When Mrs Jones goes to work she leaves Johnny lists of chores around the house. In between his chores, Johnny regularly ventures out in his community to attend his agency programs, do shopping, go to the gym — and as he bustles about, never failing to stop every pretty girl that he meets on the street to tell her what famous actress she reminds him of.

One evening after Mrs Jones comes home from work and after Johnny updates her on his day, the phone rings. It is Social Scientist-Frank on the phone about a survey on autistic employment. Social Scientist-Frank explains that he got Mrs Jones contact info from one of Johnny’s agencies Mrs Jones agrees to participate in the survey and she tells Social Scientist-Frank about Johnny’s chronic unemployment, his temporary gig at the thrift store, and more unemployment.

Social Scientist-Frank completes and publishes his survey. It reports that Johnny is not alone, with 90% of similar vaccine injured kids who have completed high school also being unemployed, and with also 90% landing a brief menial employment gig during their ongoing unemployment. The survey would go on to be picked up and serve as fodder in one of the never ending online vaccine debates.

Gregger, you have inadvertently given the game away. Just as soon as you come into conflict with reality you find your self in conflict.
If you really want to save the world, start advocating for breatharianism.
You win today’s tin of Shinola.

“Remember the show called 24? Indeed so much things can happen in a day.”

I remember that it was a fictional television drama. It had nothing to do with real life.

“It had nothing to do with real life.”

Therein lies the attraction for the anti-vaxxer.

Well, your latest source, a TV show, is fictional. Please do provide the statistics from your own country, Canada. We would love to see what those numbers say.

Charlie, My children and their children are vaccinated for one reason.

We want them to live.

and, surprise, success!

Greg,

Stop pushing dis-proven vaccine- autism links and then we, as a society, can stop spending time, effort, and money on it and fund more research for something meaningful, like, oh, helping kids, research to find the true causes, that kind of stuff.

@ Blues,

*My children and their children are vaccinated for one reason.

We want them to live.

and, surprise, success*

Ouch.

Would you swagger like that about surviving cancer, if you knew a family who had lost one to cancer might hear you?

“Would you swagger like that about surviving cancer, if you knew a family who had lost one to cancer might hear you?”

Most of our family members felled by cancer were heavy smokers. Including one cousin who had his jaw replaced in his early 40s. Is this an effort to defend Big Tobacco?

@ Narad,

ex·po·nen·tial·ly

adverb
1.with reference to an increase more and more rapidly.

Yes. I had no clue until just recently; how many injuries & deaths are occurring every day.

“Yes. I had no clue”

Change one word to reflect present rather than past tense, and we have a moment of unprecedented self-awareness.

@ Chris,

“Most of our family members felled by cancer were heavy smokers. Including one cousin who had his jaw replaced in his early 40s. Is this an effort to defend Big Tobacco?”

What is this new low? Insinuation that most cancer deaths are self-inflicted?

Or was that just an ironic subconscious acknowledgement that the epidemiology that found smoking to be safe for two decades prior to the Surgeon General’s report in 1964; used the same parameters as the epidemiology that finds vaccines to be safe today?

Actually, the 1964 report was the accumulation of over a decade of epidemiological studies. The Surgeon General had issued a statement of a casual relationship in 1957.Tobacco companies responded by trying to undermine the reliability of epidemiology as a field. Just… like…. you.

Francis JA, Shea AK, Samet JM. Challenging the epidemiologic evidence on passive smoking: tactics of tobacco industry expert witnesses. Tob Control . 2006;15(suppl 4):iv68–iv76.

@ Terrie,

Yes, the tobacco industry sought to undermine the epidemiology that showed a risk from smoking, by deeming it ‘junk science’ & literally rewriting the parameters for hazards, risk ratios, controls, etc …

Vaccine risk epidemiology is using Big Tobacco epidemiology; which was designed to mitigate risk.

Actually, you have it backwards. In the comparison between big tobacco and vaccines, it is antivaxers who most resemble big tobacco when it comes to science. They deny and misrepresent established science. No one thinks pharmaceutical companies are angels, but in this case they’re far closer to correct than antivaxers.

But, Orac, she has the perfect, 100% reliable measurement for science: Does it agree with her? Though, maybe not 100%, since half the studies she cites end up being selected off of keywords and not what they actually say.

@ Greg,
“For families the world over struggling with real autism, you couldn’t have a bigger slap in their face.”

Every time it comes on I point it out to Luke & say ‘Hey look; did you know that doctor is autistic?’

And usually he doesn’t even look up. Well, the other night his dad had to come upstairs to get him because he put his fist through my TV screen because the TV didn’t come on to Family Guy fast enough.

He had to go sit with his dad who just happened to be watching ‘The Good Doctor’.

24 year old son Josh with high-functioning ASD walks in the door, looks at the TV screen & asks; ‘Luke?’ I said ‘Yeah he’s downstairs with Mac watching the Good Doctor.’

Josh shakes his head & says; ‘Unrealistic’.

Initially, when these neurodiversity plugs started, I did not recognize them for what they are. After a few years it became painfully clear. We ‘autism moms’ have not done our own any favors by perpetuating the myth.

The author Ann Bauer wrote glowing articles about her autistic son for years:

For years I had been telling my son’s story, insisting that autism is beautiful, mysterious, perhaps even evolutionary necessary

Trudy Steuernagel, a faculty member in political science at Kent State, wrote an article titled ‘My Son’s Trail of Sparkles’ about her autistic 18-year-old son, Sky

But when Ann Dauber woke up to read the news that Trudy Steuernagel had just died after the week long coma she had been found in after being beaten by Sky; her own son was then 21 & ‘locked behind two steel doors’ after breaking her ribs, attacking his sister & choking his group home caregiver almost to death. And she wrote this:

“*It is warmer, finally. Outside my window ice is melting off skeletal trees. I sit in the pale morning light, drinking tepid coffee and reading about this woman whom I suspect I would have liked. A fellow academic and writer, Steuernagel, too, insisted on finding beauty in autism. Her legacy includes an editorial about Sky’s loving nature and relevance, how he led her through life along “a trail of sparkles.”

Mine, I decide, must be in part to break the silence about autism’s darker side. We cannot solve this problem by hiding it, the way handicapped children themselves used to be tucked away in cellars. In order to help the young men who endure this rage, someone has to be willing to tell the truth.

So here it is*”

So I will tell the truth. My son does not deserve to be locked in a cellar, neither literally nor symbolically; by my insistence on perpetuating the myth.

@ my fellow and sister minions:

I would like to make an observation:
I think that we are currently dealing with two distinct types of troll-
simple contrarians who oppose anything for any reason and those with more serious underlying motivating issues.

An outsider would note that although we are being blamed for the destruction of children’s minds DESPITE the fact that probably few of us have anything to do with vaccination ( their bete noire) even doctors who ( with one exception, Dr Chris) don’t deal with children or nurses who primarily teach. A physicist, an engineer or a psychologist have nothing to do with vaccines: they may merely support their use. Anti-vaxxers target parents who merely support vaccines as well ( see Kristen Bell- an actress who was harassed as she got her star in Hollywood recently).,

In short, those who have axes to grind will endlessly serenade us with tales of woe AS IF severe autism is our fault. They need someone to attack rather than accept the truth that ASDs are largely genetic and a form of development that is set up prior to birth having NOTHING to do with vaccines, They avoid research that shows early indicators of autism that I have presented for years. and research that shows no links to vaccines They deny that diagnostic substitution and de-institutionalisation have affected how the public perceives ASDs. They need to present themselves as heroic rebels who will save the children when in truth, their denialism and simplistic understanding of ASDs add to the stigma of autism. People with ASDs are to them are victims of an evil cabal not individuals with challenges that vary along a spectrum- from slight to great, They waste time and resources that could go towards researching better teaching methods or therapies for people on the spectrum or expand education for parents. They represent two forms of poor thinking that Orac has explored this week( Monday, today)

Admitting that autism isn’t caused by vaccines would take away their special status as truth tellers, star witnesses and heroic rescuers and instead lead them to become advocates for kids with disabilities and people with differences.
I am done with them. Some really require counselling; they only serve as negative examples for readers and practice sessions for sceptics. but go ahead, minions, at least I enjoy your content.

@ Denise,

LOL ‘fellow minions’? No chance of group-think there.

You are right; my post did not mention vaccines. It was about the dangers of how neurodiversity as a verb leads to the further discrimination of those with severe autism. And it is almost entirely motivated by the provax exploiting HF autistics.

So what IF your child regresses into autism? Look at how unique & sparkly we are! It’s a gift & if you say anything else to try to validate your child’s struggles; we will accuse you of hating them

Here here, Denice!
I, too, am tired of the name calling for just stating facts.
Some of our current trolls are clearly in need of a new hobby and maybe some self-reflection. Others could use professional support.

Look, I get that the randomness of the universe is really, really hard to take, and that it is so much easier to blame someone or something rather than just chance. But blaming things that aren’t the cause doesn’t fix anything, and wastes time and effort that could be spend ameliorating the impacts of chance. It is as true of cancer as it is of autism. Sure, there are risk factors. But mostly it’s chance.

It’s a great example of the dichotomous thinking Orac has been writing about as well. If we don’t acknowledge that autism is a fate worse than death, then we must think it’s a wonderful, perfect thing. And if we don’t support interventions to make autistic people “less autistic,” then we don’t think anything should be done for them and they should be allowed to run wild like feral children.

Thanks.
You should not forget that although you can never change how they think, you can enlighten other readers who aren’t speaking up as well as the regulars.
Old Style Psychology used to designate “conflict free” zones or issues where a person could function reasonably well BUT they may also have emotionally loaded subjects wherein they cannot be reasonable or learn.
An Australian researcher found that anti-vaxxers have particular qualities such as accepting conspiracies and needing to special or being outside whatever is commonly believed. Another showed that they value ‘freedom’ and ‘purity’ above all else so of course vaccine ;aws cut into their liberty and destroy purity.

It’s a great example of the dichotomous thinking Orac has been writing about as well. If we don’t acknowledge that autism is a fate worse than death, then we must think it’s a wonderful, perfect thing.

No Terrie, we are asking that you treat it for what it really is, a disorder or disability, not some kind of gift or virtue. Sure there are the rare exceptions with autistic individuals excelling — but, again, those are just rare exceptions!

And this all leads into my musing of why pro-vaxxers are obsessed with spinning autism as a virtue. Anti-vaxxers believe vaccines cause autism, so indeed they might be biased to show the negatives of autism. Yet, provaxxers believe vaccines do not cause autism, so why are they always so bent on pitching autism as something that is truly great? We are not talking about countering anti-vaxxers’ ‘ableitst’ attitudes of autistic individuals, but going overboard and misrepresenting or outward lying about the difficult circumstances that autistic individuals — mainly kids! — face. Consider Julian being provided with links after links reporting the dire challenges of autism, and all he does is scoff at them and without ever providing any sources of his own rebutting such information. So, I ask again, why are provaxxers obsessed with choosing fantasy over the realty where it comes to autism?

@ JustaTech,

blaming things that aren’t the cause doesn’t fix anything

In the case of autism. blaming what was the cause won’t fix anything either. What it COULD do, is to remove the resistance to understanding that autism as immune-mediated could be behaviorally & symptomatically mitigated by developments in neuroimmune-modulation.

This will likely be one of the only times you would ear an ex-vaxxer cry for help from Pharma but the fact is; they have discovered neuroimmune-modulation therapeutics that MAY offer some relief but it is cotroversial as it challenges ‘autism as single-genetic’.

Autism is multifactorial, immue-mediated. Neuroimmune-modulation could help your fellow autistic people who are suffering at the low-functioning side of the spectrum.

Why do you not stand in solidarity with them & instead stand with these … well. With these people here?

christine kincaid: Look, we’ve talked, extensively about your “immune-modulated” theory here and I have suggested several simple case studies that you could do with a doctor to look at that (do kids with autism suddenly get better after a bone marrow transplant?).
You didn’t like those.
Many, many people here have offered you help with support groups and classes and programs for you and your son.
You didn’t like that.
I get that you use this website comments section as some kind of outlet or hobby or something.

But it’s not like no one has looked into your ideas before. Those ideas just weren’t supported by the evidence. It’s not a conspiracy.

And I think you have gotten me mixed up with other commentors here. I am not on the spectrum. I don’t have to be part of a group to want good things for people in a group.

@ Terrie:

Right, They forget that autism is on A SPECTRUM- not two extremes. There’s a reason that people are graded on scales and designated ‘high or low functioning’ and low, average or above average intelligence.
Those silly psychologists with all their scores and levels! Why didn’t the developmental theorists have two levels: infant and adult? Therapists have ‘perfect’ and ‘total wreck’?

Personally, being a supporter of the social model of disability, I’m not a fan of low or high functioning as labels, and think it’s better to talk about support needs, because it better highlights that people don’t have a single level of functioning across the board, and that the goal is to maximize an individual’s quality of life.

Of course. Every ability falls on a scale and people vary despite labels. Like OR Dave, I think that we could use better language in general.

@ Denice,

They forget that autism is on A SPECTRUM

What?? Nothing could be further from the truth.

I felt very invalidated when ‘Asperger’s’ disappeared from the DSM. I identity as Asperger’s. I’m sure I am not the only one.

I also disagree with the ‘levels’ of ASD: I am level 1 but borderline level 2. My son is level 3. We are not a hurricane category & those levels sound like ‘what to do with us’ versus ‘what to do for us’.

Thanks for stereotyping me. I was Asperger’s before I was an ex-vaxxer.

@ JustaTech,

You are right; I had you mixed up with somebody else. I apologize. I haven’t gone back to look at those studies again (but I remember a bit from a few months ago) but no; I do not believe a bone-marrow transplant would mitigate autistic symptoms. Why?

I was referencing the therapeutics discussed in this Karger paper:

primary anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory actions, making use of: sulforaphane, celecoxib, lenalidomide, pentoxifylline, spironolactone, flavonoid luteolin, corticosteroids, oral immunoglobulin, intravenous immunoglobulin, cell therapy, dialyzable lymphocyte extracts, minocycline, and pioglitazone; and other ASD therapies already used or currently under study whose initial characteristics were neither anti-inflammatory nor immunomodulatory initially, but displayed a capacity for immunomodulation throughout the treatment: risperidone, vitamin D, omega-3, Ginkgo biloba, L-carnosine, N-acetylcysteine, and microbiome restoration
https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/492225

All mentioned still require extensive research but it’s awkward when autism isn’t ‘supposed to be’ immune-mediated.

As for my son; I HAVE taken many suggestions given here to heart & he is currently receiving ABA interventions & is being monitored closely by a whole team of professionals. He has already shown to respond positively to this & is showing marked improvement both at home & at school.

We are both also continuing to participate in the SPARK autism research & I am very grateful for the recommendations I received here.

It hasn’t, however, diminished my outrage at what is happening to our children & THAT is why I’m here. At some point; I will say the right thing the right way (for once) & it might pique the right person’s curiosity.

A bone marrow transplant completely replaces the cellular immune system. Therefore if an ongoing immune reaction is the cause of autistic symptoms, a bone marrow transplant should also resolve those symptoms.

Or you could look at patients (children and adults) who have had an organ transplant that requires life-long use of immune suppression drugs. Or even children who are on steroids to treat asthma. All of these would be case studies, since the immune-modulation is part of a treatment for another condition, but it would still be a good hypothesis generating study.

I’m glad you and your son (and hopefully your whole family) are getting help. I wish you the very best.

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