A version was previously posted here
On March 29, 2012, Louise Kuo Habakus spoke at a local bookstore, presenting on the "findings" from the book she co-edited with Mary Holland. I went with Shannon Rosa and Jennifer Byde Myers. The presentation was scheduled for two hours; we left in disgust after 40 minutes.
Some of the highlights from Habakus's talk:
Did you know that Louise Kuo Habakus is an expert on data analysis from her years on Wall Street, and she knows you "can take data and make it say anything you want it to say" so "all corporate studies are suspect"?
That's a pretty slick little piece of poisoning the well. The dozens of studies with hundreds of thousands of subjects that have failed to find a connection between autism and vaccines are "all corporate studies".
Did you know that there are "a lot of credentialed professionals who question vaccine safety"?
Here Habakus is referring to the contributors to her book. There are a mort of attorneys; the health professions are represented by Sherri Tenpenny, Andrew Wakefield, Carol Stott, Judy Converse, Vera Hassner Sharav, Sonja Hintz, Twila Brase, and Gay Tate. I think we need a "Project Steve" for physicians and scientists who support and advance vaccination, immunology, and prevent infectious disease. Maybe we could call it Project Paul.
Did you know it is common for people who use non-allopathic methods to heal their children's vaccine injuries to be reported to Child Protective Services and have their children taken away?
This scare tactic has to do with the so-called "Arizona Five". The court recently heard the case and found that, contrary to parents' beliefs and actions, all 5 children are healthy and non-autistic. Having one's children removed by CPS for using alternative medicine is probably rare. I am sure we would hear about more stories if they existed, given how noisy vaccine-rejectionist are.
Did you know that "rotavirus is not deadly in the United States"?
Oh whoops. That is a big whopper. From the CDC pre-vaccine:
"In the first 5 years of life, four out of five children in the United States will develop rotavirus diarrhea; one in seven will require a clinic or emergency room visit; one in 78 will require hospitalization; and one in 200,000 will die from rotavirus diarrhea. The risk for rotavirus diarrhea and its outcomes do not appear to vary by geographic region within the United States."
Did you know that "50% of the children are chronically ill" and these illnesses are linked to the "bloated vaccine schedule"?
In this segment of the talk Habakus went over the dreaded 1-in-6 statistic and added in asthma, diabetes (type not specified), food allergies, and obesity. The very next slide showed the increase in vaccines given from 1983 to the present, and Habakus looked out at the audience and said something like, "do you think it's a coincindence?" Grr. Of course she didn't talk about the decrease in morbidity and mortality that the "bloated" vaccine schedule affords children -- and their families. Nor did she mention that since the number of antigens in vaccines given today is only about 4% of what I child would have received in the 1980s.
Source: Offit et al. (2002) Addressing Parents’ Concerns: Do Multiple Vaccines Overwhelm or Weaken the Infant’s Immune System? Pediatrics 2002;109;124-129 DOI: 10.1542/peds.109.1.124 & click to embiggen.
Did you know that the "Vaccine Court" rejected the claims of the 5,000 families claiming autism as vaccine injury and nobody bothered to study the children who were injured.
This non sequitur had me shaking my head. The Omnibus Cases were the best shot the "autism is vaccine injury" camp had to make their case, and they failed dismally. The only thing the 5,000 (or so) had in common was: recruited by vaccine injury lawyers and/or a belief that their child's autism was caused by vaccines. Why would those children be more appropriate to study than the children in this study or this study or this study?
Did you know there's still thimerosal in vaccines? Yes there is, because it is used in the manufacture of vaccines (to disinfect the disgusting vats of soupy growth media) and it is so neurotoxic that even 2 parts per billion can kill brain cells. Mercury is "so toxic that it shouldn't be used at all"?
What part of thimerosal doesn't cause autism is so hard to accept? What part of "the dose makes the poison" is so hard to understand?
Did you know that Tylenol is a potent hepatoxin? So if you give Tylenol to an infant after vaccination, the liver is all busy detoxifying the Tylenol so all the nasty toxins in the vaccines aren't filtered.
This is a gross paraphrase of what Habakus said. It was something about Tylenol (acetaminophen) "using up" all the liver's stores of glutathione, so that the "toxins" in vaccines are able to damage the brain and the body. There's Whale.to page on acetaminophen and glutathione, and a report on acetaminophen poisoning using glutatione as therapy. Acetaminophen, MMR, and autism study discussed here; note the study was published in 2008 and has not been repeated.
Did you know that Paul Offit is paid by the vaccine companies to spend all his time going around promoting vaccines?
A random, ad hominem attack on Paul Offit. It really does seem that to anti-vaccinationists, he is a myffic figure of dread
Did you know that studies proving that the HepB vaccine causes autistic-like changes in infant macaque brains was suppressed by the vaccine industry?
I had a hard time suppressing my double eyeball-roll on this one. There was the infamous Hewiston macaque study, Delayed acquisition of neonatal reflexes in newborn primates receiving a thimerosal-containing Hepatitis B vaccine: Influence of gestational age and birth weight, (Hewitson et al. 2009) which was withdrawn before publication. Before it was withdrawn, David Gorski MD eviscerated the paper on October 8, 2009. Life sciences professor Prometheus wrote on October 24, 2009 that it was a paper designed for litigation and "This study raises more red flags than a Kremlin May Day parade in the old Soviet Union. " The study, however, got a lot of play by the "autism is vaccine injury" camp. On February 11 2010 Orac returned to discussing the study, in "Show me the monkeys," but then notices the paper was withdrawn, as Prometheus discusses. In July 2012 Sullivan reported that Hewitson left her academic appointment.
The other two studies, Hepatitis B Vaccination Of Male Neonates And Autism Diagnosis, NHIS 1997–2002 (Gallagher & Goodman 2010 J Toxicol EnvironHealth A. 2010;73(24):1665-77) and Hepatitis B Triple Series Vaccine and Developmental Disability in US children aged 1-9 years (Gallagher & Goodman 2008 Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry Vol. 90, No. 5, September–October 2008, 997–1008) were even weaker than the Hewitson study, if that's possible. Sullivan dismisses both the 2008 study and the 2010 study dismissed . Orac discusses the other Hewitt macaque study, which was truly awful. In 2008, Kev detailed Hewitson's gross conflicts of interest.
Did you know that adjuvants are used in vaccines because they are cheaper than antigenic material? (This argument was made three times.)
Silly me. I thought adjuvants serve to:
- bring the antigen—the substance that stimulates the specific protective immune response—into contact with the immune system and influence the type of immunity produced, as well as the quality of the immune response (magnitude or duration);
- decrease the toxicity of certain antigens;
- and provide solubility to some vaccines components.
Did you know that "our immune systems didn't evolve to handle injected substances" so anything administered by injection harms the immune system?
What? I think this is some sort of chiropractic talking point, as well as being an article of faith among vaccine rejectionists. It's a false claim, of course.
Did you know that doctors aren't "taught what vaccine injury is, so they aren't in the mindset that vaccine injury can occur?" and "most doctors don't know about VAERS" so don't tell patients to use it.
Evidence-free reasoning at its best. VAERS has been covered in Pediatrics. Vincent Iannelli MD, the About.com source on pediatrics, has a page on how and why to report adverse vaccine reactions to VAERS.
Did you know that the number of doses of Tdap required proves that the vaccine doesn't work?
Science evolves. Anti-science doesn't.
Did you know that "health can't come through a needle"?
A direct quote from Sherri Tenpenny, anti-vaccination advocate.
Did you know that "there were diseases that went away without vaccines" and "the large drop in disease deaths was due to improved santitation and hygiene, not vaccines".
This one was the famous slide showing decreased MORTALITY (caution, goes to Whale.to) but somehow, the MORBIDITY figures, which only declined after vaccination aren't part of the presentation.
Did you know that vaccination can "only temporarily prevent you getting the disease".
Guess what? Natural infection with chickenpox doesn't provide 100% protection from a later case of the disease either. Neither does natural infection with whooping cough.
Did you know that "varicella infection [in early childhood] matures and primes the immune system"? (There was more about the relationship between shingles and the varicella vaccine but I didn't write it down.)
This sounds like pure anthroposophy. But it is a quote from the odious Viera Scheibner's Immunizations: The Medical Assault on the Immune System ... "there is no need to protect children from these childhood diseases. These diseases are there to prime and mature their immune system.” .
Did you know that as US vaccination "became more bloated, our rates of infant mortality also went up"?
Actually, this was interesting. LKH posted a table and one of the doulas present questioned her about infant mortality in third world countries; that the US would have a higher rate of mortality because we could try to sustain very-low-birthweight infants. LKH sidestepped and flashed the next slide. But the study purporting to "show" this (Miller, N., & Goldman, G. (2011). Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity? Human & Experimental Toxicology DOI: 10.1177/0960327111407644) has been taken apart by Respectful Insolence, ("The current study joins a long list of poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly analyzed studies that purport to show that vaccines cause autism, neurological diease, or even death. ")
Did you know that McDonald and Paul proved that the increase in vaccines are linked to the autism epidemic?
This one, too, had me rolling my eyes. Sullivan at LeftBrain/RightBrain had the best demolition of the methods ("The paper has made very little, if any, impact on the scientific community. But it has become part of the stable of poor quality papers used by those claiming that vaccines caused an autism epidemic.")
Did you know that the safety of aluminum in vaccines has never been studied?
At that point, we left.
That's all the bad news. The good news: Despite extensive publicity, the support of a large group of home-birth advocates, and 300 personal invitations, the audience numbered about 15 people, not including the three of us.
Other views on the book:
Part I: Review of book launch for Vaccine Epidemic
Part II: Review of book launch for Vaccine Epidemic
Part III: Review of book launch for Vaccine Epidemic
I'd forgotten about this from The Path Guy: Anti-Immunization Activists: A Pattern of Deception.
Good grief, Habakus has to be one slick shyster and/or dumb as a bag of hammers to make those statements with a straight face. I'm glad to hear you report the turnout was so paltry; she does not need to be disseminating that blatantly false information to anyone else. I commend you on your remarkable restraint and for staying even as long as you did.
Posted by: Science Mom | Wednesday, April 04, 2012 at 06:44 PM