Image description: Bearded pale-skinned male, wearing a blue shirt, looking into the camera. Text: Del Bigtree Emmy award-winning medical journalist and producer of the documentary Vaxxed: From Coverup to Catastrophe. I find disturbing the number of doctors I'm hearing from who tell me that they know that vaccines are linked to autism but that coming forward with the truth will destroy their careers.
They literally say, "I don't want to get Wakefielded"
Claim: Physicians who express the belief that vaccines cause autism all have their careers destroyed.
Disambiguation
Larry Palevsky MD is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (FAAP). He is on record as asserting that vaccines can cause autism. He is still a FAAP and evidently his practice is thriving
Robert Sears MD, FAAP is on record as advising parents who fear autism to delay vaccines. He has published several best-selling books and Sears Family Pediatrics seems to be thriving.
The late Mayer Eisenstein, MD was very vocal about his belief that vaccines can cause autism. His practice, Homefirst Medical Service, was evidently quite robust at the time of his death and may still be continuing to provide care in Illinois. He published a book Don't Vaccinate Before You Educate.
David Brownstein MD has written that vaccines are "toxic" and cause all matter of ills.
This is just a convenience sample of US physicians who have publicly proclaimed that vaccines may be causal in autism and who still have thriving practices. The idea that "Physicians who express the belief that vaccines cause autism all have their careers destroyed" is false.
Secondly, I am wondering.... if there are a number of doctors who believe the vaccines cause autism myth, isn't it unethical of said doctors to stay silent on this claim? Updated after speaking to some physicians: Physicians have an ethical obligation to speak out against a procedure that in their professional opinion could be harmful.
Claim: Andrew Jeremy Wakefield's career was destroyed because he revealed that vaccines cause autism.
Disambiguation What is an Emmy? It's the awards given to television shows, analogous to the Oscars for film. The thing is, there are so many more television enterprises than films that there are multiple awards.
The show on which Bigtree worked as a producer, The Doctors, was nominated for the The Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Informative in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2016. It won in 2010, while Bigtree was listed as one of the producers. Yes, he shared an Emmy with four executive producers, two supervising producers, and 22 other producers.
Claim: Del Bigtree is a medical journalist. In television-land, "producer" means writer. In the US, the phrase more commonly used is "health care journalist". There's a society, The Association of Health Care Journalists,
an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing public understanding of health care issues. Its mission is to improve the quality, accuracy and visibility of health care reporting, writing and editing. AHCJ is classified as a 501(c)(6), a nonprofit professional trade association.
First Place: China Health Series; PBS NewsHourk: This series looked at tobacco usage and obesity in China. In China 350 million people, including a significant number of medical professionals, light up on a regular basis.
Second Place: This Emotional Life; PBS: This series unfolds across three two-hour episodes and explores the human desire and struggle for happiness and the ways we can ultimately attain it.
Third Place: A Crisis in Caring: California's School Nursing Shortage; Kelly Peterson, KVIE Public Television: If your child becomes sick or injured at school, legally there might be no one who can help them. In one Northern California school district, there is only one nurse for 14,800 students, 20 times more than the recommended national standard.
In the same time span, Mr. Bigtree' producer credits for such Doctors episodes as
I wanted to find out more about this strange book that has been forced on a million people in the prison system, this book that uses terms and ideas from Scientology and tells people that their immoral personalities are responsible for their substance use, their incarceration and their unhappiness.
But for an organization that purports to seek to help as many people as possible, Correctional Counseling keeps its materials mighty close to its chest.
The similarities between Scientology and the Moral Reconation Therapy:
I wondered what Goldman Sachs had to do with this heavily-Scientology-influenced company.
The much-heralded “social impact bond” (SIB) uses money from private funders to pay for public policy programs.
The very first SIB private funder was Goldman Sachs, which contributed $7.2 million to launch the Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience (ABLE) in Rikers Island for kids aged 16 to 18.
Goldman Sachs and the team it employed chose MRT as the treatment model.
Beller went on to write:
So in a sense, MRT was the perfect choice for a Goldman Sachs-government partnership program: Its underlying logic props up the structural status quo, which ultimately benefits the very bankers funding it. Interestingly, one of the early studies “proving” MRT worked was paid for by a Koch brother (conducted by the Koch Crime Institute).
Beller closes by asking
Instead of shooting money into pseudo-rehabilitative, pseudo-Scientology “treatments,” couldn’t we put it toward more helpful things? Like bail reform: 79 percent of people in Rikers have not been convicted of anything; they’re only there because they can’t afford bail. Or a cause for which Abe Bergman, whose son underwent MRT, is now a public lobbyist: supportive housing for people with mental illness.
I can think of some other ones too, like remediating prisoners' literacy rates.
Inmates have a 16 percent chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as opposed to 70 percent for those who receive no help. This equates, according to the study, to taxpayer costs of $25,000 per year per inmate and nearly double that amount for juvenile offenders (California & New York spend over $200,000 per year on juveniles in their juvenile justice systems).
The article was published at The Influence, with which I was unfamiliar.
The Influence is a journalistic publication covering the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs and potentially addictive behaviors. We explore the nature of addiction and the various responses to it, as well as political, scientific and cultural aspects of our field. We aim neither to promote nor to demonize drugs, and we approach our subject open-mindedly, with respect for different lifestyles.
It turns out that my main harasser and her fellow harassers are creating fake profiles using my and other activists’ names, and using those profiles to report posts that mention names even in conversations between friends.
So, Facebook has created a system in which no one may ever refer to anyone by a name under any circumstances, ever, even in conversations between friends.
So, yes, Ms. Murray, through her own copious statements, regularly reveals herself to be anti-Semitic as hell, and a Holocaust denier, to boot. I’d love to see her come here and spew her bigoted pseudohistory. I guarantee you that, as is the case with antivaccine loons, she can’t repeat a claim that I haven’t heard and analyzed many times before. In any case, I feel the need for a shower after that, so much so that I’ll just leave you this link if you want to see more of her blatant anti-Semitism, other than this last example I’m posting here:
OK, so from my perspective (and that of most people who do not share her bigoted views), Ms. Murray is a despicable, contemptible woman. That isn’t the reason I posted this, although posting this did give me an excuse to emphasize just how nasty she is, something I failed to do last time. (I don’t know what I was thinking then.) Far more important, however, is that she is now explaining how she targets pro-science advocates. A series of comments from her from a super-secret closed Facebook group have found their way into the “wrong” hands (i.e., ours)
I used to write a lot about underage alcohol alcohol deaths. Many of them could have been prevented if people had known how to respond to a person who lost consciousness while intoxicated.
Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson knew something was dreadfully wrong. After accosting Turner, Arndt leaned over to make sure the unconscious victim was still alive. “She lay perfectly still,” he said.
If the person is not responsive or if they’re showing any scary symptoms (like unconsciousness, slow breathing, or seizures—anything that worries you),
Call for help (911 or the rescue squad).
Stay with them until help arrives. Put them into a recovery position, and if you can, find somebody who knows how to do CPR—just in case.
Tell emergency responders what happened—how many drinks they had, what kind, and their symptoms or injuries.
Your Honor, if it is all right, for the majority of this statement I would like to address the defendant directly.
You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.
On January 17th, 2015, it was a quiet Saturday night at home. My dad made some dinner and I sat at the table with my younger sister who was visiting for the weekend. I was working full time and it was approaching my bed time. I planned to stay at home by myself, watch some TV and read, while she went to a party with her friends. Then, I decided it was my only night with her, I had nothing better to do, so why not, there’s a dumb party ten minutes from my house, I would go, dance like a fool, and embarrass my younger sister. On the way there, I joked that undergrad guys would have braces. My sister teased me for wearing a beige cardigan to a frat party like a librarian. I called myself “big mama”, because I knew I’d be the oldest one there. I made silly faces, let my guard down, and drank liquor too fast not factoring in that my tolerance had significantly lowered since college.
Yesterday I told you about the flaws in Katie Tietje's article disparaging the work of Marco Arturo, a young science communicator. Karen Ernst's article on the same subject, Anti-Vaxxers Defeated by Twelve-Year-Old Whiz Kid, also covered the disdainful remarks of a person using the nom de blogue of Levi Quackenboss. It turns out that the Quackenboss blog is probably written by a Colorado woman named Robyn Ross, who has used a number of alternative identities as listed on the award.
So Ross, or Quackenboss, has written three articles on the Marco Arturo matter:
June 4 2016 To every sucker who thinks a 12-year old is lecturing on immunology. In this post the claim is made that Marco Arturo is a mouthpiece for his parents, because he doesn't sound like a 12 year old and because Mexican kids are not capable of being as sharp as Marco Arturo appears to be.
June 5 2016 Is Marco Arturo the prodigy a hoax? In this post, Ross, or Quackenboss doxxes Marco Arturo's stepfather and implies that he is a plant from Walgreen's. Or something.
Before today's Ross/Quackenboss post was posted, the epidemiologist René Najera wrote a post about the anti-vaccine movement's "irrational, xenophobic, and bigoted reaction" to Marco Arturo, The Fear a 12-Year-Old Mexican Can Raise.
Finally, the undertones of racism. “Quackenboss” claims that kids in Mexico can’t possibly be as bright as Marco. And, if they are, they are being coached as part of some multi-national conspiracy. They claim that Mexico is pretty much a slum where children can’t be bothered with science and technology. As I sit around at my ancestral home in Chihuahua,* I see that this is not true. Yes, Mexico has a lot of challenges, and children here deserve better, but there are many of us who are lucky enough to have parents who instill in us a sense of wonder about nature and then foment that wonder with books and tools and great people/mentors to lead us on our way to discover more and more.
So Marco Arturo's 2 minute video has had at this writing 7.2 million views. And a shout-out from Ashton Kutcher. And Andy Wakefield's $400,000 hoaxumentary Vaxxed has had .... Well, Box Office Mojo stopped reporting a month ago, with about 19,000 tickets sold. Let's be generous and say the sales continued at the same rate, so maybe 38,000 tickets have been sold. That's got to sting.
Oh, and I'd forgotten I'd written about Robyn before.
Updated to add: my friends at RtAVM have made an image:
(image description: Four adults on the right looking at camera (Del Bigtree, Polly Tommey, Andrew Wakefield); movie has had maybe 50,000 views to date; young white boy holding piece of paper reading MIC on the right; his video has had >7 million views)
Doxing has real consequences, and an adult shouldn’t have to deal with those consequences, but a child really, really should not have to. The doxing of Marco Arturo is despicable and has to stop now.
All this because a child made a satirical video. Grow up, anti-vaxxers. If you disagree with him, discuss your disagreement. Don’t disparage and harass a child.
On May 24 2016, a young Mexican science enthusiast posted a 2 minute video to his Facebook page. (Today, June 4, it has been viewed 7 million times.) Kate Tietje, who writes the advertising vehicle Modern Alternative Health, took umbrage, and posted "Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism? How Clever…"
The one thing about her post you didn’t mention is how [Katie Tietje] linked to a handful of papers on pubmed claiming that is “proof” of her side. I’d love to see someone go through and explain about each of those papers.
Ask and you shall receive.
Tietje explained how she collected the papers she listed:
Anyway. You get the point. There is clear evidence. And these are just the studies I was able to pull up in about 15 minutes’ time. Imagine if I spent hours? It would be more than that kid spent — and far more than “reading a forwarded email.” (Sounds more like his ‘research’ honestly.)
In 15 minutes of research,Tietje would hardly have had time to read each of the abstracts, let alone evaluate each paper on its merits. Let's see what the convenience sample contained.
Papers 1 and 2 are by the research team of Lujia Tomljenovic and Christopher A. Shaw. The World Health Organization's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety reviewed two of Shaw & Tomljenovic's papers at their June, 2012 meeting:
The GACVS reviewed 2 published papers alleging that aluminium in vaccines is associated with autism spectrum disorders and the evidence generated from quantitative risk assessment by a US FDA pharmacokinetic model of aluminium-containing vaccines.
GACVS considers that these 2 studies are seriously flawed. The core argument made in these studies is based on ecological comparisons of aluminium content in vaccines and rates of autism spectrum disorders in several countries. In general, ecological studies cannot be used to assert a causal association because they do not link exposure to outcome in individuals, and only make correlations of exposure and outcomes on population averages. Therefore their value is primarily for hypothesis generation. However, there are additional concerns with those studies that limit any potential value for hypothesis generation. These include: incorrect assumptions about known associations of aluminium with neurological disease, uncertainty of the accuracy of the autism spectrum disorder prevalence rates in different countries, and accuracy of vaccination schedules and resulting calculations of aluminium doses in different countries.
119) Aluminum in the central nervous system (CNS): toxicity in humans and animals, vaccine adjuvants, and autoimmunity It’s our friends Tomljenovic and Shaw again, and it’s yet another not-a-scientific-paper, but hypotheses and conjecture. This is the time when I should point out that this study was funded by the Dwoskin Family Foundation, which was founded by Claire Dwoskin. Mrs. Dwoskin is a board member of the horribly misnamed National Vaccine Information Center, a public charity anti-vaccination advocacy group. Shaw and Tomljenovic have been speakers at conferences with such other speakers as antivax neurosurgeone Russell Blaylock, MD, NVIC founder Barbara Loe Fisher, and Andrew Wakefield. As I’m not terribly fond of ad hominems, I’ll stop there.”
Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12.
Paper #3 Tietje titled it "Mercury, lead, and aluminum levels linked to autism" = Assessment of Hair Aluminum, Lead, and Mercury in a Sample of Autistic Egyptian Children: Environmental Risk Factors of Heavy Metals in Autism. Mohamed Fel B, Zaky EA, El-Sayed AB, Elhossieny RM, Zahra SS, Salah Eldin W, Youssef WY, Khaled RA, Youssef AM. Behav Neurol. 2015;2015:545674. doi: 10.1155/2015/545674. Epub 2015 Oct 5. 1. It’s hair analysis which is notoriously unreliable and may be a red flag pseudoscientific grifting. "Mercury, lead, and aluminum levels were positively correlated with maternal fish consumptions, living nearby gasoline stations, and the usage of aluminum pans, respectively."
Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12.
Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12.
Paper #5 Tietje titled it "Mercury and aluminum together are neurotoxic" = Exposure to Mercury and Aluminum in Early Life: Developmental Vulnerability as a Modifying Factor in Neurologic and Immunologic Effects José G. Dórea Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2015 Feb; 12(2): 1295–1313. Published online 2015 Jan 23. doi: 10.3390/ijerph120201295 This is a long speculative paper asserting that the two elements in the paper can be harmful. Most of the citations for mercury's harms are various papers by the Geiers. Also cited unironically: Shaw (see above) and Seneff.
Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12.
The Geiers are practicing Fairy Tale Science. In this case, what the Geiers are doing is continuing to collect "evidence" that exposure to minute quantities of ethyl mercury (in the form of thimerosal) can cause autism. To put it another way, they are asserting that autism is a novel form of mercury poisoning.
"Tooth Fairy science" is an expression coined by Harriet Hall, M.D., (aka the SkepDoc) to refer to doing research on a phenomenon before establishing that the phenomenon exists. Tooth Fairy science is part of a larger domain that might be called Fairy Tale science: research that aims to confirm a farfetched story believed by millions of scientifically innocent minds. Fairy Tale science uses research data to explain things that haven't been proven to have actually happened. Fairy Tale scientists mistakenly think that if they have collected data that is consistent with their hypothesis, then they have collected data that confirms their hypothesis. Tooth Fairy science seeks explanations for things before establishing that those things actually exist.
It was a reasonable concern in 1999 that something about thimerosal exposure might contribute to autism. Since that time, numerous studies have been done evaluating that hypothesis. In 2006, Offit and Gerber published a review of the evidence to that date: Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses, summarizing the studies in Table 2 (below):
But back to analyzing the papers that Tietje is promoting:
Paper #6 Tietje titled it "Mercury exposure can cause autism" = A comprehensive review of mercury provoked autism. Geier DA, King PG, Sykes LK, Geier MR. Indian J Med Res. 2008 Oct;128(4):383-411. This paper is founded on the argument that symptoms of mercury intoxication are similar to autism. They aren't. In 2003, Nelson and Bauman published Thimerosal and Autism? Their table 2, comparing and contrasting the symptoms of autism to mercury intoxication, has been helpfully summarized in this infographic:
Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12.
Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12.
Paper #11 Tietje titled it "Inflammatory bowel disease linked to ASDs (which is what Wakefield’s original research showed, too…it’s been replicated!!)" = Prevalence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Among Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Doshi-Velez F, Avillach P, Palmer N, Bousvaros A, Ge Y, Fox K, Steinberg G, Spettell C, Juster I, Kohane I. Inflamm Bowel Dis. 2015 Oct;21(10):2281-8. doi: 10.1097/MIB.0000000000000502. First of all: Wakefield claimed the following chain: vaccine-strain measles virus entered the intestines; the virus particles caused a unique kind of lesion, allowing the intestines to become leaky; these microleaks allowed particular proteins to enter the blood, and these proteins traveled to the brain, thus causing autism. What Doshi-Velez et al. found is that autistic individuals had a higher rate of inflammatory bowel disease, or to put it another way, that IBD is a co-morbid condition with autism. Doshi-Velez et al. do not argue that vaccination caused the increase in IBD in autistic people.
Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12.
Finally, I want to stress that the problem with animal studies is not a statistical one, rather it is a problem of applicability. You can (and should) do animal studies by using a randomized controlled design. This will give you extraordinary statistical power, but, the result that you get may not actually be applicable to humans. In other words, you may have very convincingly demonstrated how X behaves in mice, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will behave the same way in humans.
Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12.
So Tietje threw up a double handful of papers and failed with all of them. Is this a surprise? No, but she does win a new award:
In case you haven't viewed Marco Arturo's video, here it is
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