I Speak of Dreams

Kate Tietje Gets A Prize

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…"

My friend Karen Ernst analyzed Ms.Tietje's response at her blog The Vaccine Blog, in the post Anti-Vaxxers Defeated by Twelve-Year-Old Whiz Kid

One of Karen's commenters remarked:

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.

Paper #1 Tietje titled it “Aluminum adjuvants in vaccines likely causally linked to autism” = Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism? Tomljenovic L, Shaw CA. J Inorg Biochem. 2011 Nov;105(11):1489-99. doi: 10.1016/j.jinorgbio.2011.08.008. Epub 2011 Aug 23. which was eviscerated here, both by the author Orac Knows and by the commenters: And global warming is caused by the decrease in the number of pirates or: Why an inorganic chemistry journal should not publish a vaccine epidemiology paper. This is one instance where you really should read the comments.

Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12. 

Paper #2 Tietje titled it "Injected aluminum causes central nervous system toxicity" = Aluminum in the central nervous system (CNS): toxicity in humans and animals, vaccine adjuvants, and autoimmunity. Shaw CA, Tomljenovic L. Immunol Res. 2013 Jul;56(2-3):304-16. doi: 10.1007/s12026-013-8403-1. This paper has been widely criticized, but I will cite just one, the epic post 124 papers that DO NOT prove vaccines cause autism (by a trauma surgeon)

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. 

Paper #4 Tietje titled it "Positive association between vaccines and autism" = A positive association found between autism prevalence and childhood vaccination uptake across the U.S. population. Delong G. J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2011;74(14):903-16. doi: 10.1080/15287394.2011.573736. A number of people have deconstructed the fatal weaknesses of this paper. I summarize here, as well as link to previous scrutiny. Critiques of DeLong 2011: Fatal flaws.

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. 

Papers 6, 7, 8, and 10  are by Geier père et fils plus an assortment of other authors, such as Paul King and Lisa Sykes who run the anti-vaccine organization CoMed. Geier the father is a delicensed physician; Geier the son has a batchelor's degree and has been sanctioned for practicing medicine without a licence.  You can read criticisms of their scientific escapades, for example: Plagiarism Complaint   Why the latest Geier & Geier paper is not evidence that mercury in vaccines causes autism; Dr. Mark Geier Severely Criticized; Looking back at two decades of Geier Is Mark Geier finished as an expert witness in the vaccine court? and  Chemical castration of autistic children leads to the downfall of Dr. Mark Geier. 

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): 

In 2010, Hurley, Tadrous and Miller published Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism: A Review of Recent Epidemiologic Studies.  Remember, as Fallacy Man has shown, systematic reviews are the strongest form of evidence.  Multiple lines of evidence show that thimerosal in vaccines is not causal in autism. 

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. 

Paper #7 Tietje titled it "Mercury is has a causal link with the development of ASDs" = Blood mercury levels in autism spectrum disorder: Is there a threshold level? Geier DA, Audhya T, Kern JK, Geier MR. Acta Neurobiol Exp (Wars). 2010;70(2):177-86. More Fairy Tale Science. 

Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12. 

Paper #8 Tietje titled it "Mercury causes ASDs (even more evidence)" = Evidence of parallels between mercury intoxication and the brain pathology in autism. Kern JK, Geier DA, Audhya T, King PG, Sykes LK, Geier MR. Acta Neurobiol Exp (Wars). 2012;72(2):113-53. See the previous commentary. 

Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12. 

Paper #9 Tietje titled it "Original research “proving” no link between mercury and ASD was in error; a strong link exists" = Blood levels of mercury are related to diagnosis of autism: a reanalysis of an important data set. Desoto MC, Hitlan RT. J Child Neurol. 2007 Nov;22(11):1308-11. "We can conclude absolutely nothing about the association of ethylmercury in vaccines to autism from these data." Critiques of the Desoto and Hitlan paper, summarized. 

Clear evidence that vaccines cause autism? No. Score: 0/12. 

Paper #10 Tietje titled it "Susceptibility to mercury toxicity linked to ASDs" = A prospective study of mercury toxicity biomarkers in autistic spectrum disorders. Geier DA, Geier MR. J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2007 Oct;70(20):1723-30. The biomarkers mentioned were porphyrins. The idea that elevated porphyrins could be a biomarker for autism arose from a paper by Nataf et al published in 2006 that has been widely debunked. This paper also advocates for chelating autistic children, a useless and abusive medical medical intervention.  See for example Porphyrins and Autism, Porphyrins, autism and enviromental militia, Autism Omnibus – Liz Mumper.. you get the drift. 

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. 

Paper #12 Tietje titled it "IBD and autism linked (again, replicated)" = Brain effects of chronic IBD in areas abnormal in autism and treatment by single neuropeptides secretin and oxytocin. Welch MG, Welch-Horan TB, Anwar M, Anwar N, Ludwig RJ, Ruggiero DA. J Mol Neurosci. 2005;25(3):259-74. This is a rat study. As Fallacy Man so lucidly explains in his post The Hierarchy of Evidence:

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

.

Dear Justin Kanew, I Get Your Fear, But It Is Misplaced: Part I

There's a young podcaster, Justin Kanew, of Get It Got It Good.  I admired his interview with Steve Silberman. 

Recently he kicked off a series of interviews with the following statement:

Let me say right up front that my wife and I have a 2-month old daughter, and that my #1 goal here is to learn as much as possible about how to care for her health, because if anything happened to her I honestly don't know what I would do.

Until recently - like most people - I assumed vaccines were 100% safe, and I thought anyone who thought otherwise was dangerous and selfish, putting everyone else at risk. I thought this because I was told this, by many people, many times.

"The science is in."

"Vaccines are 100% safe."

Lather, rinse, repeat.

You see the problem right away, I think. No one should have been telling Kanew that vaccines are 100% safe. Nothing in life is 100% safe. Vaccination is a medical procedure; all medical procedures have inherent risk. Here's what we know about the vaccines given to children: they are very safe, and orders of magnitude safer than the diseases they prevent.  I get it that young parents are fearful -- I remember my daughter being that young, and how I'd hover over her: Is she still breathing? Is everything OK? 

Unfortunately, Kanew found some skilled propagandists to fan his fears to the blazing point, namely the producers of the film Vaxxed. Kanew wrote,

Right after my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, we heard about the documentary "Vaxxed", and how it had been yanked from the Tribeca Film Festival. We didn't pay it much attention until we saw the Today Show interview with the usually quiet Robert Deniro who said he regretted pulling it, and seemed sure there was more to the story than people wanted to believe.

What Kanew didn't read was responses to De Niro's interview, for example:

1. April 13, 2016 Manny Alvarez MD at Fox News Dr. Manny: I'm talkin' to you, De Niro -- autism is not caused by vaccines

   When it comes to health, false promises and misinformed theories lead to inefficient therapies and dead end research. At the end of the day, it leads to anger and the misperception that somebody “caused” whatever medical hardship you’re facing to happen to you, and that is not a good starting point when it comes to autism. After 25 years of watching the rates of autism increase, we are faced with two challenges in this field. One: we must do more for these young adults entering the real world. We need more education, more job opportunities, better government support and full integration into society. Two: we must support genuine autism research. We must find out where autism originates, which could possibly begin in the womb.

   Creating an environment of suspicion only delays what we must accomplish today. De Niro, I need you and your celebrity pals to concentrate on today. I know that you chose a different career path than I, and that it takes many years of scientific training to understand cellular biology, but that is not an excuse to give any form of validity to Wakefield’s quack claims. Rather than acting as a mouthpiece for conspiracy theorists and the like, it’s time for you to use your celebrity power for good and help me, a father like you, get the answers we want.

2. April 13, 2016, Russell Saunders MD at The Daily Beast Robert De Niro Sticks Up for Anti-Vaxx Documentary

   I would happily sit down with De Niro, pause Vaxxed at any moment of his choosing, and rebut every single point he cares to mention.... And there is a perfectly good, accurate movie about vaccines for people who want to watch one.

   But it is lamentable that once again a celebrity has cast in his lot with people willing to ignore, deny, or even misrepresent medical science. De Niro’s comments not only shake his credibility as an arbiter of quality documentary films, they have the potential to make our country less safe from disease.

3. April 13, 2016 Rupal Pinto, MD, FAAP at Doc2mom The story they don’t want you to hear

   There’s nothing like a new celebrity wagging his finger at the medical establishment to make a doctor-mom want to vomit. A lot. The most recent iteration: Dr. (okay, not a doctor) Robert DeNiro stating that physicians and researchers have not been paying sufficient attention to the conversation about whether vaccines are related to autism (Antique Spoiler alert: they’re not.) Doctors deal with this issue every day – thanks to the work of charlatans like Andrew Wakefield – and millions of dollars have been spent trying to see if there is a relationship. No relationship has been found. Mr. DeNiro says that “nobody wants to talk about it.” Not true. We talk about it often with patients and we all do our reading and our homework and I have personally read that horrific Wakefield study enough times to know that it’s plainly a bad study, and warrants no documentary, no expose, and certainly no recognition at an internationally renowned film festival.

There are more responses at Is De Niro's Demand for "The Truth" about Safe Vaccines and Autism Justified?

So you see, Justin Kanew, thoughtful people have been thinking about these issues for quite some time. Maybe you should interview them. I imagine Russell Saunders (which is a nom de blogue) would make quite a good interview.

Next:The film Vaxxed convinced Mr. Kanew that there was a cover-up at the CDC. There's no coverup. It's a manufactroversy ginned up by Hooker and Wakefield. I explain why.

Updated to add: This masterful synopsis of the film. Click to enlarge. 

The Book Vaccine Whistleblower: The Core of the Movie Vaxxed Examined

The movie Vaxxed has been widely reviewed. There is nothing new in the movie that had not been extensively analyzed, starting in 2014. Many of the people who think the film is important seem unaware that the substantive content of the movie had been published in book form in 2015.  

This book, Vaccine Whistleblower, was reviewed in 2015 by a number of knowlegable people: ScienceMom; David Gorski MD PhD; epidemiologist René Najera MPH; and law professor Dorit Reiss.

Here are their reviews.

1. Monday August 24, 2015: Catherina at Just the Vax: "Vaccine Whistleblower": A Review of the Preface and Foreword

   This book is so bad that it's good, so good in the sense that it contains such demonstrably false information and a re-hash of previously debunked claims that I have chosen to review it in parts, the first being the Preface (Boyd Haley) and Foreword (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.)),

2. Monday August 24, 2015 David Gorski MD at Science-Based Medicine Vaccine Whistleblower: An antivaccine “exposé” full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

   The funny thing is, nothing in Vaccine Whistleblower actually demonstrates [wrongdoing at the CDC]. All we have are the words of a very angry man, William Thompson, who clearly has been nursing a grudge against his former colleagues since at least 2003 and is willing to make accusations without significant evidence at them. All we have from this very angry man are a highly select number of transcripts, only four out of over 30, in which this bitter man makes his accusations. It’s all very one-sided, and unfortunately the CDC, probably because Thompson has lawyered up with one of the best whistleblower attorneys in the country, is being painfully vague and discreet in its response:

   CDC is aware that employee Dr. William Thompson has raised concerns regarding an article he co-authored that was published in 2004 in Pediatrics. Consistent with CDC’s existing policies and procedures, the agency, through its Office of the Associate Director for Science (ADS), and in coordination with the HHS Office of Research Integrity, is reviewing these concerns. The agency will provide further information once the review is completed.

   The bottom line is that this book is nothing more than propaganda, and deceptive propaganda at that. The sad thing is that a formerly reputable scientist, William Thompson, provided the grist for the propaganda because he apparently has an ax to grind against his former co-investigators.

3. Monday August 24, 2015 René Najera at Science-Based Medicine Vaccine Whistleblower: BS Hooker and William Thompson try to talk about epidemiology

   Let’s start by reviewing BS Hooker’s credentials. He is a bioengineer and chemical engineer, not an epidemiologist, despite what the author of the book wants you to believe:

   With the publication of Kevin Barry’s Vaccine Whistleblower: Exposing Autism Research Fraud at the CDC, any claims of credibility for the CDC’s science has collapsed. Barry built his book upon four legally taped conversations between CDC senior vaccine safety scientist Dr. William Thompson and Simpson College professor and epidemiologist, Dr. Brian Hooker.

   Later in the book, in the transcript of one of the conversations between BS Hooker and Thompson, BS gets a list of things he needs to do to earn an “honorary” degree in epidemiology. Among those things was to look at some of the earlier studies that Thompson had coauthored. And BS did. He would go on to write a flawed paper that I critiqued here and ended up being retracted, as I told you about here. That paper alone should tell you everything you need to know about BS Hooker’s epidemiological understanding, but the transcripts given to us by his camp in the form of the book really reveal his ignorance.

4. Monday August 24, 2015 Dorit Reiss at Science-Based Medicine Review of Vaccine Whistleblower: A Legal Perspective

   This post addresses some legal issues raised in the Vaccine Whistleblower book. The first part explains whistleblower protections and how Dr. Thompson’s allegations fit into them. The second part addresses Dr. Thompson’s suggestion of an independent research agency. The third part explains why the book’s claim that school mandates violate international human rights is incorrect.

Backstory #1: At the blog Harpocrates Speaks, ToddW has kept an updated guide for parents and media over the story: MMR, the CDC and Brian Hooker: A Guide for Parents and the Media

Backstory #2: January 4, 2016, Matt Carey at LeftBrain/RightBrain Autism:  The William Thompson Documents. There’s no whistle to blow. "Congressman Posey released the documents to a journalist recently and, given that they are now in the public domain, Dorit Reiss and I requested that they be made available to us as well. Mr. Posey’s office graciously granted our request and I have spent some time going through them." 

Here is what you need to remember:

Also, consider this: before Thompson, Wakefield and Hooker didn’t talk about the issues of racial/ethnic minorities. For the most part, the entire “autism is caused by vaccines” community have ignored minority communities. Why? Because [the racial/ethnic minority autism figures] are a clear example that the vaccine hypothesis is a failure. Prevalence estimates for racial/ethnic minority groups have been typically much lower than for Caucasians (Hispanics are diagnosed at a rate of 1/3 that of Caucasians in California. And this has been consistent for over 10 years.) This presents a huge problem for the likes of Hooker and Wakefield. If vaccines are a major cause of autism, why do minority groups have such low prevalences? If they were honest about their own beliefs, they would be calling for a study into the “protective” effect for minorities. But they don’t. More importantly, if they were real autism advocates they would be calling for better diagnosis, better awareness, better services for these under served communities. Instead they have just ignored these minority communities. That is, until they could use them as part of their campaign against vaccines.

Don't forget that last point. In the last two decades "vaccines cause autism" community has demonstrated no (0, null, zero) in engaging with the needs of non-white, low-SES families affected by autism

Who Is Polly Tommey?

The movie Vaxxed, produced and directed by Andrew Wakefield, also features a British woman, Polly Tommey, who appears in several scenes in the movie and is listed as one of the seven producers.  She has also been appearing with Del Bigtree and Andrew Wakefield at Q&A sessions following screenings of the movie. Ms. Tommey is well-known in UK autism circles, but not so well in the US.  

A bit of backstory: in the UK, the dominant autism organization is the National Autistic Society (NAS), which began as a group of parents meeting in a private home in 1962. By 1965, the organization had opened a school for autistic children; by 1972 the organization held a national conference on autism, and by 1997, NAS had organized and funded a national helpline (you can see a timeline of NAS achievements here). it is worthwhile to note that NAS has several autistic  board members. The focus of NAS has been to improve the quality of life for autistic people across the life-span, and has run several remarkable autism acceptance campaigns (see the 2008  I Exist for example). 

In 1997, Jonathan and Polly Tommey's second son, William ("Billy") was born. According to a 2009 interview with The Evening Standard, Billy developed normally for the first 13 months of life, and began suffering health woes thereafter.  Mr. Tommey, who was a fitness instructor, began to research dietary and other interventions.  One of the treatments popular at the time in the US was intravenous secretin, a hormone. (See John Wills Lloyd's assessment from 1998, and updated in 2014).  As recounted in their book Autism: A Practical Guide to Improving Your Child's Quality of Life, the Tommeys arranged to obtain supplies of secretin from the US and have it administered under medical supervision six times between November 1998 and September 1999.  Somehow, the Tommeys were put in touch with Trevor McDonald, a prominent television figure in the UK, and "Billy's Story" was broadcast on ITV on April 29, 1999. 

The Tommeys said that subsequent to the airing of the Trevor McDonald program, they received "thousands" of messages from parents of autistic children who were in desperate need of help. The Tommeys started a newsletter, The Autism File, which eventually became a glossy magazine. In 2007, the Tommeys established a charity, The Autism Trust. 

Ms. Tommey was back in the UK national news in 2009, with a billboard campaign directed at then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Both Michael Fitzpatrick and Mike Stanton urged Prime Minister Brown to ignore Tommey's campaign. 

Fitzpatrick:

...in the interests of children and families affected by autism, I hope that you will refuse support for her key activities – upholding discredited links between vaccines and autism and recommending unproven and untested fringe treatments.

Stanton

The greatest danger is not that Ms Tommey and the Autism Trust are going to persuade the government to follow their lead. But by muddying the waters with their campaign they may give the government an excuse to back pedal on existing commitments while they consult with this self appointed autism constituency. The best way forward is to get behind the NAS campaign and keep up the pressure for the provisions of the autism bill to become law.

Notably, the Autism Trust was not one of the backers of the landmark 2009 Autism Bill sponsored by The National Autistic Society

In 2010, Tommey started another billboard campaign:

Guardian reporter Amelia Gentleman called it: Attention-grabbing antics for autism

Tommey is controversial in other ways, too. Her desire for residential centres for people with autism is not universally supported, with many other charities advocating that care should be brought into the wider community. Her magazine's focus on nutritional remedies has raised questions: her husband, a nutritionist, runs the Autism Clinic, a private practice offering treatment through dietary modifications.

Much of the content of The Autism File consisted of articles in support of Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield was forced out of his position at Thoughtful House in 2010, after the General Medical Council struck him off the UK medical register.  Tommey continued vocal in her  support of wakefield 

In January 2013, The Texas Observer published a long article , Autism Inc.: The Discredited Science, Shady Treatments and Rising Profits Behind Alternative Autism Treatments

The founder of Autism File is a woman named Polly Tommey, who is also the mother of an autistic child. In 2010, according to an Observer review of records kept by the Texas Secretary of State, Andrew Wakefield registered a company called The Autism File Global in Texas, listing Tommey as a fellow manager. In June 2011, an amendment was filed changing the company’s name to the Autism Media Channel. Today, its website contains general autism tips, diet and nutritional information, and various embedded videos, many of which feature Tommey. Wakefield remains a director of the company.

On April 6, 2013, The Guardian published Alex Hannaford's  article, Andrew Wakefield: autism inc, which among other things details the many interrelationships, professional and personal, between the Wakefield family and the Tommey family.  Mike Stanton gave his opinion of why the Tommeys might have left England. 

According to Mike Stanton, British author of Learning To Live With High Functioning Autism and the father of a son with Asperger's syndrome, the Tommeys are now "linked to these people in America who think diseases are better than vaccines – that diseases will give you immunity and vaccines will kill you. [Tommey] knows Wakefield is a busted flush over here. That's why they've gone over there."

The Tommeys moved from England to the Austin area of Texas in October 2012. In March, 2015, Cassie McKee at Four Points News interviewed Polly Tommey. Local landowners Berta Bradley, and her daughter, Lisa Eckhart, donated 40 acres of land to the Autism Trust USA to build a residential facility for adult autistics. In the year since, little progress has been made on building the facility. 

In 2013, Wakefield and Tommey were working on an autism reality TV show.  As part of that effort, they became involved with the family of Alex Spourdalakis, the autistic young man later brutally murdered by his mother and godmother, in June, 2013.

Tommey and her Autism Media Channel worked with Dorothy Spourdalakis - recording the public pleas for help.

"He needs something simple, in the country, where he can run around, get the treatment that he needs so he can get better," said Dorothy Spourdalakis, Alex's mother, in the YouTube video.

"She was crying and so was the godmother. They were both in a terrible state - that's why we did that plea in the hospital for help," said Tommey.

In January 2015, Wakefield released a direct-to-DVD film, Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis, which was reviewed by autism parent and advocate Matt Carey. Tommey is listed as the producer.

Alex deserved better in life. He deserved medical care, be it psychiatric, standard medical or both, to bring him back to the happy person he was before his crisis. But Alex also deserves better in death. He deserves that his life and death not be used as a tool to promote Andrew Wakefield’s poorly supported one-size-fits-all approach to autism. He deserves to be the story, not have his story framed as “who killed Alex Spourdalakis”.

Alex deserves better.

In the summer of 2014, Wakefield's associate Brian Hooker released a paper that was withdrawn from publication in a matter of weeks.  In the meantime, Wakefield and Tommey released videos hyping the story.  In the fall of 2014, an early trailer for what was then called "Feast of Consequences" was released and Matt Carey reviewed it.  (Here is an account of a presentation Wakefield gave under the "Feast of Consequences" title.)

If Mr. Wakefield weren’t doing so much damage to my community, his videos would be laughably bad.  I’m not laughing.

Evidently Wakefield and Tommey spent much of 2015 developing the film that was released as "Vaxxed".  

Here is Tommey's self-written biography from the Vaxxed website:

PRODUCER Polly Tommey is the mother of Billy, a 20-year old boy with autism, a book author, founding Editor-in-Chief of the world’s preeminent autism magazine The Autism File, and Autism Media Channel’s TV host and award-winning documentary film producer (“Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis”).

An outspoken autism advocate and founder of the not-for-profit Autism Trust in the UK and US, Polly has appeared in print and television media around the globe, gone head-to-head with top political leaders, and never compromised.

She has received multiple nominations and awards from, among others, The Women of The Year Foundation, Red magazine, and the British Society of Magazine Editors. She is also a Producer on “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe.”

 

On May 13, Orac at Respectful Insolence examined Polly Tommey's claim that she is not anti-vaccine.

 

Image source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1164799/Mothers-unite-World-Autism-Day--8216-If-want-heard-noticed-8217.html

Updated to add: This masterful synopsis of the film. Click to enlarge. 

I Want To Thank My Autistic Friends

For reasons, I spend a lot of time with Mr. Idaho, an 11 year old boy who is neurodivergent in various dimensions -- but not autistic.  

One of Mr. Idaho's baseline attributes is that he has a short but powerful body that he can not always control as well as he would like.  Or even think of controlling.  But he needs to move, and bump into things, and thrash about. 

Another is that his baseline, his normal, speaking voice is Drill Sergeant. Really.  I was calling on a neighbor two houses down the other day and could clearly hear him... from inside my house. Just talking about what he was hoping was available for snack. 

To be honest, a lot of Mr. Idaho's ways chap my hide. I find being addressed by a Drill Sergeant  aversive -- I don't like being blared at. I could say he is  a bull in a china shop. And so on.

In the olden days, before I had autistic friends, I might have had the idea that I could shame or discipline Mr. Idaho out of ... being who he was by nature. 

But then I met for example, Julia Bascom, who let me peek into her world with the The Obsessive Joy Of Autism.  And many have spoken of the cost of passing for neurotypical. Cynthia Kim's article Acceptance As A Well Being Practice is particularly insightful.

So I shifted my point of view.  My goal has become to find time and space to allow and encourage Mr. Idaho to be his natural self, his loud, exuberant, boisterous self....in ways where he doesn't run into limits or inadvertent bad outcomes.

I would not have gotten to this place of seeking settings for Mr. Idaho to be himself without the wisdom and guidance of my autistic friends. Thank you. And Mr. Idaho thanks you. He is a happier, more confident, more joyous boy. 

Edited to add: if you have favorite essays about the cost of passing, or how acceptance has changed your life, or similar topics, please put links in the comments. 

 

 

124 Research Papers Supporting the Vaccine/Autism Link...or Not. No, They Don't.

The  list of papers  pictured to the left -- an ever growing number -- has been circulating for some time. Back in the summer of 2013, a group of people addressed the papers in the list (then numbering 86) and showed how the papers did not support the claim. You can read that series beginning here: Those Lists of Papers Claiming That Vaccines Cause Autism: They Don't Show What They Claim.

But the woman compiling the papers, Ginger Taylor, likes to reshuffle the list and add papers -- seemingly at random. 

Taylor is a loud voice in the "vaccines do too cause autism" movement, and has been since 2004.  She has been known to make much of her "scientific background" as a marriage and family therapist but she actually was a paid political operative.  Nonetheless, this list keeps being cited, mostly by the scientifically naive, as "proof" that vaccines can be causal in autism, and latterly, that the CDC is covering something up.  

I had been meaning to reconvene the paper study team since last summer, but the project just did not gel.

Thankfully, two other people took up the baton. The first at The Logic of Science is by a pseudonymous scientist who has good reasons for using a pseudonym. The second is by a trauma surgeon who has been writing Stories from the Trauma Bay since 2011. He likewise has good professional reasons for blogging under a pseudonym.  (See this post from the Pseudonymity Laboratory for reasons to trust anonymous bloggers.)

The first is Fallacy Man, who blogs at the excellent blog The Logic of Science. The blog's mission: 

1. Teach critical thinking.
2. Explain how science works and why it is reliable.
3. Use critical thinking to defend science against the numerous logically flawed attacks that are hurled at it.

In the blog post Vaccines and autism: A thorough review of the evidence Fallacy Man  evaluated two lists of "vaccines don't cause autism" papers and three lists of papers intended to show that vaccines can cause autism:

Vaccines don't cause autism lists:

1. 107 Studies That Show No Link Between Vaccines And Autism Catherina Just the Vax March 11 2014
2. Vaccines And Autism – Science Says They Are Unrelated The Original Skeptical Raptor March 24 2016

Vaccines do cause autism lists: 

1. 22 Medical Studies That Show Vaccines Can Cause Autism Arjun Walia Activist Post September 12, 2013
2. 124 Research papers supporting Vaccine/Autism Causation Ginger Taylor, MS Scribd April 28, 2014
3. 30 Solid Scientific Studies That Prove Vaccines Cause Autism Sean Adl-Tabatabai Your News Wire December 9, 2015

Fallacy Man's  goal of the exercise of going through these papers ( enumeration & paragraph breaks added for ease of reading; )

I have three key target audiences here.

First, to any parents who are concerned about vaccines and are truly and sincerely looking for good information rather than just trying to find evidence to support their preconceptions, I hope that this post will be a helpful tool for you and will dispel much of the nonsense on the internet. There are so many frightening stories and claims out there that I fully understand why you would be concerned. So I have done my best to thoroughly cover all of the evidence, and I hope that you will carefully consider it.Second, for those who have already reviewed the evidence, but are tired of explaining it over and over again in debates, I hope that this post will provide a resource that will save you some time.

Third, for those who are not particularly interested in the autism/vaccine debate, I hope that this post will provide a nice worked example of how to critically analyze a large body of literature. There are, sadly, a lot of bad scientific publications out there, and it is important that you know how to sift through them and separate the high quality studies from the statistical noise.

Finally, to those who are already convinced that vaccines cause autism, although you are not my target audience, I do hope that you will read this, but I have one simple request to make of you. If you choose to continue reading, then I want you to seriously consider the possibility that you might be wrong and actually examine the evidence presented here. If you aren’t willing to do that, then there is really no point in you continuing to read.

After a long and detailed discussion of the papers presented in both sets of lists, Fallacy Man concludes:

It should now be clear to you that the evidence really is overwhelmingly supportive of vaccines. Even though anti-vaccers claim to have lengthy lists of papers supporting their position, most of those papers are irrelevant, used weak designs, and had small sample sizes. In contrast, the literature supporting vaccine safety consists of multiple exceptionally large and powerful studies. So there really is no good scientific evidence to suggest that vaccines cause autism.

If you want to use either set of lists, you owe it to yourself to at least glance over the Logic of Science post; it is exceptionally thorough and detailed. (Aside: please see Fallacy Man's explanation of the hierarchy of evidence)

In the second post, 124 papers that DO NOT prove vaccines cause autism, the author wrote:

However none of them goes over each of the 124 papers individually. Moreover I've been feeling increasingly uneasy lately about using other folks' blog posts to shoot down this "proof". To that end I've decided to do my own...

I've now read every . . . single . . . one of these 124 papers and will address any and all concerns I found relevant. Despite the fact that many of Ginger's links were broken, the titles here are all clickable and go to the original abstract (or the full paper for some of them).

And so Doc Bastard goes through the papers, in order, step by step. His tone is less academic than Fallacy Man's, but the analysis is equally serious.For example,

69) Pediatric Vaccines Influence Primate Behavior, and Amygdala Growth and Opioid Ligand Binding
If I was laughing at #68, I was rolling on the floor after reading this one.  This was a pilot study which showed (in its preliminary data) that macaques given childhood vaccines showed some neurodevelopmental deficits.  The followup 5-year comprehensive study, which was funded by Safeminds (another rabidly antivax group) was published in 2015, showed no differences in macaques given the full infant vaccine schedule with and without thimerosal versus controls who were given saline injections.  I'll repeat for those antivaxxers too slow to understand: the full infant vaccine schedule was given, the monkeys were followed for 5 years, and there was no evidence of any neurobehavioural differences.  Feel free to use that reference (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25690930) with any antivaxxer that tries to claim "BUT THE VACCINE SCHEDULE HASN'T BEEN TESTED!"  Safeminds was, as expected, not happy that their money went to fund a study that refuted their own pre-determined conclusion.

Doc Bastard concludes his review with

AND THAT IS IT. As I was going through every single paper in this list, it became increasingly clear that Ginger simply went to Pubmed, typed in her search terms (thimerosal, mercury, oxidative stress, autism, heavy metals), and copied the links without bothering to read or understand what the hell she was reading. Of the 124 papers presented, exactly -0- of them proves any link between vaccines and autism, and a few even disprove any link. I sincerely doubt that any antivaxxer who sprays this list around the Twitterverse (or anywhere else) has read any of these papers, let alone all of them. Having now read every single one, I feel . . . well, I feel exactly the same.

There are no reputable studies that indicate vaccines can cause autism. And while we are at it, Wakefield's research has not been replicated. Except in the sense that it has, courtesy of epidemiologist Reuben Gaines.

PS: A medical student tackled Ginger Taylor's assertions about vaccine causation back in 2009 at Heal Spiel. It is still worth a read. 

 Updated May 4 2016: Iida Ruishalme, a Finnish cell biologist living in Switzerland, writes the blog Thoughtscapism (again, highly recommended). Her post, The great myth of vaccines and autism, addresses a few of the papers in Taylor's list,

 
Taylor Image Source http://www.ageofautism.com/2015/04/maine-national-town-hall-debate-on-vaccines.html (April 2015)

Tom Leonard and The Daily Mail on Wakefield, Vaxxed, and Autism: Inaccurate and Deeply Offensive

Tom Leonard is The Daily Mail's US Correspondent. According to LinkedIn, Leonard is based in Brooklyn. Leonard has a little problem with factual reporting, at least related to Wakefield, vaccines, and autism, as his April 22 2016 article on Wakefield and De Niro showed.  Let's start with the offensive.

Either way, both sides in this vicious battle hopefully realise the most important thing is never to lose sight of the main goal — finding a cure for this soul-destroying condition.

Soul-destroying? My contempt for Leonard knows no depths. Finding a cure? How about finding ways so that autistics are accepted and supported as the over-arching goals.

Back to the article.

Furious with the British medical establishment, Wakefield moved to the U.S. He founded the Thoughtful House Center for Children to further his work on autism and set up a non-profit organisation to commission studies into the condition.

Well, not quite. By all accounts,in 2001 "Dr Wakefield resigned from his £50,000 a year NHS post" while The Daily Mail and other UK papers launched a Wakefield support campaign. At some point in 2001, Wakefield moved to Florida to work with Jeff Bradstreet's Christian medical organization, The Good News Doctor Medical Foundation (which seems to have gone out of business), and or Bradstreet and Jerry Kartzinel at International Child Development Resource Center. Remember that Wakefield was unlicensed to practice medicine outside the UK. Then in March 2004, Ten co-authors on the 1998 Wakefield Lancet paper issue a retraction and editor of the Lancet says, with hindsight, they shouldn't have published the paper.

During the same 2004 time period, a group of wealthy parents who believed in the vaccines-cause-autism myth set up Thoughtful House in Austin, Texas and hired Wakefield, at a reported $250,000 per year salary. From say 2004 to 2010, Wakefield was employed by Thoughtful House at quite the generous salary. In late January 2010, the UK's General Medical Council found Wakefield to be a dishonest, irresponsible doctor. After the guilty verdict, Wakefield either resigned, or was forced to leave, Thoughtful House in February 2010.  Then in late May, 2010, Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register.  What did Wakefield do between 2010 and 2015?  Well, there was the Strategic Autism Initiative, which again was lucrative for Wakefield but did not produce much in the way of research results, and seemed to have petered out in 2013.  Since then, he's been involved with the Autism Media Channel. 

Leonard writes of Wakefield's "work on autism".  First, whatever qualified Andrew Jeremy Wakefield to "work on autism"?  He trained as a gastroenterologist, not a psychiatrist or neurologist or pediatrician, the medical specialities that most often provide useful services for autistic children.   What has Wakefield ever done to improve autistic lives?  Many feel his work has actually harmed the autistic communities.   But back to the article.  

The movie contains a bombshell revelation: the existence of a 1994 study (pre-dating Wakefield's findings in The Lancet) by the U.S. government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that buried the suggestion the MMR jab was associated with a 340 per cent increased risk of autism in African-American boys

Uh no, just no. The film Vaxxed is all about DeStefano 2004 and Brian Hooker's botched reanalysis.  I have no idea what Leonard is on about with the "1994". Hooker's retracted study is old news from 2014. 

Here is another howler:

With the commercial value of holding the licence to make a government-prescribed single vaccine worth as much as $30 billion a year in the U.S., Vaxxed suggests that rich pharmaceutical companies could hardly have had a stronger vested interest in promoting their vaccines.

Leonard is making stuff up, or Wakefield is. In 2014 the entire world market for all vaccines, including animal vaccines was $30 billion. But back to the article. 

As for Wakefield, he tells me he hasn't 'earned a cent for three and a half years' as he and his wife, Carmel, a classical music radio DJ, survive off the proceeds of selling their home in Kew, South-West London. He now calls himself a professional filmmaker.

Oh sure.  Wakefield raised $400,000 for a 90-minute film that recycles a lot of old footage. I wonder how much Wakefield is being subsidized by say Barry Segal or Claire Dwoskin. I wonder what his fee was for the ConspiraSea cruise?

Not surprisingly, many parents of autistic children believe Wakefield, although discredited by his peers, raised worrying issues.

It would be more accurate to say that maybe <0.01% of autistics and maybe 10% of the parents of autistic children buy into the "vaccines cause autism" myth.

Tom Leonard should be ashamed of his shoddy journalism. 

------
Mike Stanton contributed to the analysis in this article.  

An index of the reviews for Vaxxed can be found here.  Also see An index of articles discussing Is De Niro's Demand for "The Truth" about Safe Vaccines and Autism Justified?

In advocating for vaccines, I refuse to stigmatize autistic people.

In advocating for vaccines, I refuse to stigmatize autistic people.

Autism is a natural variation in being human.

Vaccines don't cause autism.There's no "debate" over vaccines and autism.

On the one hand, there's the overwhelming weight of the scientific evidence: vaccines are not causal in autism. On the other hand, there are people who passionately believe that vaccines cause autism.

The "vaccines cause autism" belief, while heartfelt, is erroneous and harmful.

This mistaken belief causes harm to autistic people in many ways. One example is that the focus on vaccine causation has diverted time, money, and social resources away from meeting the real needs of autistic people. Another is that the vaccine myth has lead parents to subject their children to harmful and useless "cures" such as bleach enemas, long courses of unneeded medications, and/or restrictive diets.

 Feel free to share. No need to credit me; many people's wisdom went into these words, this image. 

Click to show image full size.

Is De Niro's Demand for "The Truth" about Safe Vaccines and Autism Justified?

Before I begin: Autism is a natural variation in being human. Vaccines don't cause autism. In advocating for vaccines, I refuse to stigmatize autistic people. There's no "debate". On the one hand, there's the overwhelming weight of the scientific evidence: vaccines are not causal in autism. On the other hand, there are people who passionately believe that vaccines cause autism. These beliefs, while heartfelt, are mistaken. This erroneous belief that vaccines cause autism causes harm to autistic people in several ways. One is that the focus on vaccine causation has diverted attention away from the real needs of autistic people. Another is that the vaccine myth has lead parents to subject their children to harmful and useless "cures" such as bleach enemas, long courses of unneeded medications, and/or restrictive diets. 

 

This is a sad state of affairs. The false notions that vaccines are unsafe and may be causal in autism are back in the news. 

What happened: a film stigmatizing and exploiting autistic people and blaming autism on vaccines, Vaxxed, was slated to appear at the Tribeca Film Festival, at the behest of Robert De Niro's wife, Grace Hightower. After many people objected, Vaxxed was withdrawn and opened at a New York theater.  The withdrawal brouhaha attracted a lot of media attention. 

 On Wednesday, April 13, Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal appeared on The Today Show to celebrate the 15th opening of the Tribeca Film Festival. The conversation turned to the Vaxxed ruckus, and De Niro said, 

"I, as a parent of a child who has autism, am concerned, and I want to know the truth," he said. "I'm not anti-vaccine. I want safe vaccines. Some people can't get a certain type of shot and they can die from it — even penicillin. … If you're scientists, let's see, let's hear. Everybody doesn't seem to want to hear much about it. It's shut down, and you guys [the media] are the ones that should be investigating it."

Articles Explaining That Vaccines Are Safe, and The Role of Vaccines in Autism Has Already Been Investigated, Intensively

1. April 13, 2016 Manny Alvarez MD at Fox News Dr. Manny: I'm talkin' to you, De Niro -- autism is not caused by vaccines

   When it comes to health, false promises and misinformed theories lead to inefficient therapies and dead end research. At the end of the day, it leads to anger and the misperception that somebody “caused” whatever medical hardship you’re facing to happen to you, and that is not a good starting point when it comes to autism. After 25 years of watching the rates of autism increase, we are faced with two challenges in this field. One: we must do more for these young adults entering the real world. We need more education, more job opportunities, better government support and full integration into society. Two: we must support genuine autism research. We must find out where autism originates, which could possibly begin in the womb.

   Creating an environment of suspicion only delays what we must accomplish today. De Niro, I need you and your celebrity pals to concentrate on today. I know that you chose a different career path than I, and that it takes many years of scientific training to understand cellular biology, but that is not an excuse to give any form of validity to Wakefield’s quack claims. Rather than acting as a mouthpiece for conspiracy theorists and the like, it’s time for you to use your celebrity power for good and help me, a father like you, get the answers we want.

2. April 13, 2016, Russell Saunders MD at The Daily Beast Robert De Niro Sticks Up for Anti-Vaxx Documentary

   I would happily sit down with De Niro, pause Vaxxed at any moment of his choosing, and rebut every single point he cares to mention.... And there is a perfectly good, accurate movie about vaccines for people who want to watch one.

   But it is lamentable that once again a celebrity has cast in his lot with people willing to ignore, deny, or even misrepresent medical science. De Niro’s comments not only shake his credibility as an arbiter of quality documentary films, they have the potential to make our country less safe from disease.

3. April 13, 2016 Rupal Pinto, MD, FAAP at Doc2mom The story they don’t want you to hear

   There’s nothing like a new celebrity wagging his finger at the medical establishment to make a doctor-mom want to vomit. A lot. The most recent iteration: Dr. (okay, not a doctor) Robert DeNiro stating that physicians and researchers have not been paying sufficient attention to the conversation about whether vaccines are related to autism (Antique Spoiler alert: they’re not.) Doctors deal with this issue every day – thanks to the work of charlatans like Andrew Wakefield – and millions of dollars have been spent trying to see if there is a relationship. No relationship has been found. Mr. DeNiro says that “nobody wants to talk about it.” Not true. We talk about it often with patients and we all do our reading and our homework and I have personally read that horrific Wakefield study enough times to know that it’s plainly a bad study, and warrants no documentary, no expose, and certainly no recognition at an internationally renowned film festival. Interesting that DeNiro pulled “Vaxxed” because filmmakers were backing out.

4. April 13, 2016 Eric Boodman at Stat News Robert De Niro Defends Discredited Idea Linking Vaccines to Autism

   That echoes a strong theme in the “Vaxxed” documentary, which holds that the CDC has covered up vital data and committed fraud. It’s based on concerns that a CDC scientist, William Thompson, raised about a study that he and several colleagues published in the journal Pediatrics in 2004. But as the conspiracy theory grew, Thompson came forward with a public statement. He said he wanted to make “absolutely clear” that he believes vaccines save lives and that he would never advise a parent not to vaccinate.

5. April 13, 2016 Simon Delott at Fishwrapper Robert De Niro Continues to Disappoint

   No, De Niro, this isn't some sort of conspiracy. There are basically two reasons that people didn't want the film shown.

   The first is that it's not just a falsehood -- it can actually do harm. Some people -- a small minority, but some of them anyway -- will believe it. They'll latch onto it because the bogus cause-and-effect story "sounds right" to them. Maybe they like conspiracy theories. Maybe they're just afraid of needles. Children get sick when we lose herd immunity thanks to people opting out of vaccines.

   Secondly showing something like this lends credibility to the idea. Which is, as we said, harmful. Those jerks would get to slap "screened at the Tribeca Film Festival" stickers on every copy of their movie. They can sell their movie and put it online for people to watch, but showing it at Tribeca is giving them a platform that they do not deserve.

6. April 13, 2016 Anna Merlan at Jezebel Robert De Niro Promotes All Kinds of Anti-Vaccination Nonsense in Wild Today Interview

   The hosts gently asked De Niro if he knew there’s a broad scientific consensus that vaccines don’t cause autism.

   “I believe it’s much more complicated,” he answered.

7. April 13, 2016 Hilary Lewis at The Hollywood Reporter Robert De Niro Talks Autism and Vaccines: "I Want to Know the Truth"

   Rosenthal, who claimed the fest has "equally controversial" movies still in its lineup, also seemed to feel that Vaxxed had been given more than enough attention.

   "Clearly the festival has about a hundred other movies that are in the festival," she said. "This was only going to be screened once. They've certainly had their voice and their time."

8. April 13, 2016 Maria Puente at USA Today Robert De Niro says he believes in link between vaccines and autism

   But numerous studies by doctors and medical researchers have not found any such link. Moreover, Vaxxed and its creator have been discredited: It was directed by Andrew Wakefield, the "father" of the anti-vaccine movement, who first linked vaccinations and autism in a 1988 report that later had to be retracted. Also, his medical license was revoked.

   De Niro's return to the vaccines-cause-autism conflict threatened to upstage his latest honor. GLAAD's annual excellence award goes to media professionals "who have made a significant difference in promoting equality and acceptance" of LGBT people.

9. April 13, 2016 Rachel Paula Abrahamson at US Magazine Robert De Niro: My Wife Saw a Change in Our Autistic Son After He Was Vaccinated

   Discredited doctor Andrew Wakefield directed the film. In 1998 he published a paper in medical journal The Lancet suggesting a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and childhood developmental delays, but no other researchers have ever been able to replicate his findings. Wakefield’s paper — based on just 12 subjects— was rescinded by the journal in 2010, and he was barred from practicing medicine in the U.K. after the General Medical Council charged him with dishonesty and abusing developmentally challenged children.

10. April 14, 2016 Byron Whyte MD at The Scientific Parent What Is Thimerosal and Why Is It In My Kid’s Vaccines?

    In spite of the overwhelming, worldwide, scientific evidence that vaccinations are safe and effective, claims of “toxins” and “poisonings” continue on the internet and at family gatherings. I won’t link to them here, but trust me. My job, as I see it, is to continue to fight the good fight against vaccine misinformation. The more people understand what we are giving their children, the more vaccine uptake and suffering prevented.

11. April 14, 2016 Phil Plait at Slate Robert De Niro Defends Anti-Vax Nonsense

    And that’s the irony here. The interviewer asks him if he wanted to air the film “to start a conversation,” and De Niro says, “To shut (the conversation) down, there’s no reason to. If you’re a scientist, let’s see. Let’s hear. Everybody doesn’t seem to want to hear much about it. It’s shut down. And [to the interviewer] you guys are the ones who should be doing the investigating.”

    But the investigating has been done. Over and again. And every time, when the studies are done properly, the results are the same: Autism isn’t linked to vaccines. Again, this shows De Niro hasn’t done his due diligence here.

12. April 14, 2016 Orac Knows at Respectful Insolence Raging Bullsh*t: Robert De Niro is the latest celebrity antivaccinationist to spew pseudoscientific nonsense to the world

    You know, despite apologetics for De Niro that I’ve read, I’m sorry, I know antivaccine. De Niro is antivaccine. Either that, or he’s doing a very good imitation of being antivaccine. Hell, I could play antivaccine Bingo! with this interview. It hits all the major antivaccine talking points, complete with the “I’m not ‘anti-vaccine’; I’m pro-safe vaccine.” De Niro states it word for word! He’s also wrong. This is a question that’s been asked and answered many times. Vaccines are not associated with autism. Scientists have already looked at this on multiple occasions.

13. April 14 2016 Andrew Gregory at The Mirror (UK) Why Robert De Niro is wrong about a link between autism and MMR vaccinations

    Health experts stressed there is “no credible evidence” of any link between the MMR vaccine and autism after Hollywood superstar Robert De Niro claimed a connection.

14. April 14 2016 Skeptical Raptor at Skeptical Raptor Anti-vaccine Robert De Niro morphs into Jenny McCarthy

    We all want safe vaccines. But guess what De Niro – we already do. Unless, you’re a fan of the Nirvana fallacy, where if something isn’t perfect, it must be junk. No vaccines aren’t perfect, but they are probably safer than any medical procedure out there.

    Let’s take a closer look at his nonsense.

    Trace Amounts? Bad movie that pushes bad science and several outright lies.

    CDC whistleblower? Oh come on, that’s been utterly debunked

    Vaccines and autism? How many times do I have to say this. Vaccines have nothing to do with autism. They aren’t linked. There’s no correlation. And there’s no causation. Robert De Niro can say it a billion times, and it’s not going to be true.

    And vaccine safety once again? Wait, I’ve heard this before. The claim that “we just want safe vaccines.” Who said it? Ah, I remember. That daft actress, Jenny McCarthy, who continually claims that she’s not anti-vaccine, just wants safe vaccines.

    ....But the anti-vaccine Robert De Niro has no viable claim to authority, expertise, or knowledge on vaccines and autism. He should just shut up.

15. April 14, 2016 Tanvier Pearl at The Stir Robert DeNiro Wants 'Safe Vaccines' & There's Nothing Wrong With That>/a>

    While I don't agree with everything Robert DeNiro says about vaccinations, I do think he has a point in wanting the movie to be seen. Why can't we have a heart-to-heart conversation in the parenting world about vaccines, the pharmaceutical companies, and those moms and dads who strongly feel there's more to the debate than meets the eye -- or CDC report?

    At the very least, I think such a discussion would (hopefully) empower folks on opposing sides to agree to disagree in a more cordial way -- instead of damning someone for something you don't agree with. In my opinion, vaccinations do and have saved lives, but that doesn't mean I'm not open to hearing more about the reasons why other parents choose not to vaccinate their kids.

16. April 15, 2016 Julianna LeMieux at American Council on Science and Health Dear Robert De Niro...

    If you have watched “Vaxxed” (produced by Andrew Wakefield, co-written by Andrew Wakefield, and starring Andrew Wakefield) you gave Andrew Wakefield 90 minutes of your time to make his point. And, although he is a complete failure as a physician, a scientist and an ethical person, he is a mastermind at making his own corrupt actions sound convincing.

    I am asking you today, then, to give the scientific community 90 minutes. What we won’t bring are anecdotal, and emotional, stories from parents or heart tugging videos of children with developmental challenges (both made even more convincing when embellished with the right music and the right lighting).

    What we will bring to the table are peer reviewed scientific articles full of robust data that are clear, and were collected using the scientific method. If you give us the chance, we’ll teach you why cutting this film from your festival is a decision that you can feel proud of and why you have the full support of the scientific, medical and public health communities behind you.

17. April 15, 2016 Orac Knows at Respectful Insolence Raging Bullsh*t, part 2: J. B. Handley enters the fray to defend Robert De Niro’s antivaccine stylings

    And personally, I remain dumbfounded at Handley’s apparently belief that he knows what he’s doing when analyzing science. Contrary to Handley’s claims, childhood vaccination schedules are evidence-based. Contrary to his claims elsewhere, the relationship between thimerosal in vaccines and autism has been studied—many times!—and no relationship to autism has been found; it is a failed hypothesis. There is no correlation between the antigen load from vaccines and the risk of autism, and there is no correlation between autism and the on-time receipt of vaccines compared to dosing vaccines later. In other words, a key antivaccine talking point, “too many too soon” is not valid. There are even monkey studies (once touted by Handley) showing no correlation between vaccines and autistic-like symptoms.

18. April 15, 2016, Maggie Fox at Today De Niro says 'find the truth' on vaccines: But scientists already did

    But scientists have debunked, often multiple times, every assertion that De Niro makes. They've been made and knocked down many times in the past 20 years as a small but highly vocal group of vaccine critics raise them.

19. April 16 2016 Catherine Bennet at The Guardian Movie stars have their uses: medical science isn’t one of them

    Although purportedly a factual work, Vaxxed, to judge by numerous early reviews, transports viewers to a world where none of the above [Wakefield's disgrace] ever happened. In this parallel world, it is the immunisers, not the former gastroenterologist, who go in for cover-ups. So comprehensively is contradictory evidence ignored here that Wakefield permits himself the liberty of rehashing some of his earlier – utterly discredited – claims, which seemed good reason to many of us, in 1998, to worry about the MMR jab.

    The Lancet piece warned of “developmental regression”. This time, he throws in the prediction that, if MMR usage continues, half of all America’s boys will be on the autistic spectrum by 2032. To be fully apocalyptic, his message requires autism itself to be portrayed – deploying footage of distressed-looking children – as an invariably frightful diagnosis. It is as if Wakefield wants parents to panic anew with the same, injurious consequences for the understanding of autism.

Articles Agreeing with Mr. De Nero: Vaccines are Unsafe and Cause Autism

1. April 13, 2016 JB Handley at Medium What’s with DeNiro’s Tribeca co-founder, Jane Rosenthal?

   Jane Rosenthal is closely aligned with a view of autism that many of us strongly disagree with, and it goes something like this:

   • Autism is genetic, and it’s a condition of the brain
   • Pharmaceutical drugs will be developed that can keep autism in check, and we already have some promising drugs to fight autism
   • Or something like that. Basically, autism is the next great profit center for pharmaceutical drugs and genetic engineering.

2. April 13, 2016 Matt Agorist at The Free Thought Project De Niro Finally Speaks About ‘Vaxxed’ — ‘People Should See it, There’s a Link to Autism’

   While we have everyone from attorneys to biologists, to political scientists who write for the Free Thought Project, none of us are doctors, so we do not make recommendations about what you and your family should do in regards to vaccination. That being said, when we see critical information about vaccines being kept from the public, we will expose it every single time.

3. April 13, 2016 Tami Canal at March Against Monsanto Robert De Niro Defends Controversial Autism Film: ‘Let’s Find Out The Truth’

   The mainstream media has shown zero journalistic integrity as far as investigating the facts that comprise the film VAXXED. Why isn’t it headlines news that CDC senior scientist-turned-whistleblower Dr. William Thompson handed over evidence to Congressman Bill Posey proving that he, Dr. Frank DeStephano, Dr. Coleen Boyle, and Dr. Julie Gerberding were a part of a team that literally threw away the futures of hundreds of thousands children? These respected scientists decided that the pharmaceutical industry’s profit margin was more important than the lives of innocent children, so they callously destroyed the damaging evidence in a trash can.

4. April 14, 2016, Mike Adams at Natural News, Robert De Niro denounces medical totalitarians: 'Let the people see VAXXED' and decide for themselves what the evidence shows

   Nearly all pharma-controlled media outlets also insist that any link between vaccines and autism has been "disproven." See this Daily Mail article by Hannah Parry, which parrots the typical propaganda. In reality, the link has been known by the CDC for well over a decade, but it has been deliberately hidden. If hiding scientific truth is to be accepted as "disproving" something, then the entire field of science deserves no credibility at all.

5. April 14, 2016 JB Handley at Medium Who should parents trust, Robert DeNiro or Dr. Ari Brown? (Because one of them has to be lying)

   AAP Spokespeople , and many other interested parties shamelessly lie about the studies that have (and haven’t been done) regarding vaccines and autism.

6. April 14, 2016 Anne Dachel at Age of Autism Autism 'Today' Freaks Itself Out, Goes Running Back to Pharma

   What Robert De Niro said on the TODAY Show on Wednesday was addressed by NBC on Thursday's show, and what was done was a huge attempt at damage control using industry-backed sources. The network had to dispel the idea that De Niro put forth, that vaccines can cause autism.

   In typical mainstream media style, NBC cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a doctor from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Ari Brown, in support of the safety of vaccines and in opposition to the possibility of any link to autism. (The vast web of pharmaceutical industry ties to the AAP were, of course, not included.)

7. April 14, 2016 Dan Olmstead at Age of Autism De Niro Drops Da Bomb

   I don't know what impact Robert De Niro's interview on the Today show Wednesday will have on those who don't believe vaccines cause autism, but I do know the effect it has already had on those who do. The word is "galvanic." This was a call-up-your-friends moment, and we don't get those too often.

   It's been, as they say, a long cold lonely winter, and I'm not speaking meteorologically. The condescending and ridiculous premises of books like Neurotribes and In a Different Key; the refusal of those I call the "greasy nothing-burgers" in Congress to confront the William Thompson revelations; the long slog of the Merck mumps whistleblowers; the removal of Vaxxed from the Tribeca Film Festival; the triumph of SB-277 forcing vaccine mandates on California schoolkids; all of it is very wearing. And I say that without having an affected child.

8. April 16, 2016 Lori Alton at NaturalHealth365 Robert De Niro wants to know the truth about vaccines and autism"

   In an obvious attempt to refute public perception that she and De Niro had given into pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, Rosenthal insisted it was filmmakers (not sponsors or donors) who threatened to boycott the festival – unless the film was pulled from the lineup. De Niro jumped in, stating, “I find that amazing, and we are going to talk about that.” He later added that at the time, he did not even want to ask where the resistance was coming from, “But now I will ask.”

   When Rosenthal further attempted to move the interview away from the topic of vaccine dangers by pointing out that the festival had included a film on the life of a family with an autistic child, De Niro became visibly agitated, interrupting her and pointing out that the documentary she was referring to was beautiful, but did nothing to further the debate over vaccine dangers.

9. April 16, 2016 Paul Thomas at Health Impact News Pediatrician Dr. Paul Thomas Agrees with Robert De Niro: “Let’s Find Out The Truth” About Vaccines

   It is tempting to point fingers, blame vaccines, and be outraged by the way the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have actively closed the door on what, given the rising numbers of children with autism, should never have been a closed issue. It is becoming increasingly clear that the science on the possible link between vaccines and autism has not been done accurately or responsibly, as this senior scientist at the CDC admits. That’s what the movie Vaxxed is about—how the government deliberately and knowingly destroyed data showing a connection between the timing of the MMR vaccine and autism risk in African-American boys. Once we start asking the right questions and stop throwing out the data that does not conform to our pre-existing ideas, we can start getting real answers.

10. April 16, 2016 Gary Barnes at TruthKings De Niro’s Secret Anti-Vaccination Meeting Revealed

    It would be difficult to summarize De Niro as anything but a supporter of anti-vaccination premises at this juncture. As speculation has grown and De Niro himself denies any “anti-vaccine” sentiment and claims to push only for “safe vaccines,” he is likely learning that to the masses, there is no line of separation. Even the slightest admission that vaccines could cause any negative effects incites the masses to revile your name and creates a stream of social backlash.

11. April 16 2016 Levi Quackenboss at Levi Quackenboss The Unintended Consequences of #VAXXED Getting Axed

    So, thanks CDC and all of your multiple masks that you hide behind. Thanks, Jane Rosenthal for being such an uptight control freak. Thanks Mayor Turner for all of the Texas media coverage. If MMR rates plummet and the media starts blaming Dr. Wakefield’s movie I hope you think of Barbara Streisand and all of the unintended consequences of your attempts to tell the American public what they can and cannot see.

As usual, I will keep silently updating this list as new posts appear

Previously Here

1. April 2, 2016, Vaxxed the Movie: Livetweets and commentary by vaccine advocates, skeptics
2. April 2, 2016 Running List of Reviews of Andrew Wakefield's film, Vaxxed.
3. April 16, 2016 What Andrew Wakefield Thinks About Autistic People: A Blight.

Photograph taken sometime between April 3 and April 9, 2016.

Image Source: Eric Gladen's Facebook, April 13, 2016

left to right, John Raatz, Jim Carrey, Grace Hightower, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Robert De Niro, and Eric Gladen )

John Raatz is the Founder and Principal of the pioneering “transformational” marketing & PR firm, The Visioneering Group, and is also the Executive Director at the Maharishi University of Management's David Lynch MFA in Film

Jim Carrey is an actor best known for his role as Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber and Dumb and Dumber To.

Grace Hightower has been married to Robert DeNiro since 1997

Robert F. Kennedy jr. is an attorney who has a second career as an anti-vaccine activist.

Robert De Niro is a renowned actor and the co-founder of the Tribeca Film festival

Eric Gladen is the director of the anti-vaccine film, Trace Amounts (Review Of Trace Amounts – Bad Science And Conspiracies, SciBabe Goes to the Trace Amounts Premiere

Updated to add: This masterful synopsis of the film. Click to enlarge. 

Jon Rappoport Fails to Investigate: Peter Fletcher Is Not A New CDC Whistleblower but Paid to Spread Fear of MMR in 1990s.

Found on Twitter (note: all images enlarge if clicked)

Text:  Dr.Peter Fletcher, former Chief Scientific Officer @ Dept. of Health: "It is proven that the jab causes #autism" #MMR #vaccines #SB277 NEW! Another #CDCwhistleblower. (link)

Becky Johnson was prompted to tweet this thanks to Jon Rappoport's article: 

The text reads in part:

Boom: another vaccine whistleblower steps out of the shadows  (link)

by Jon Rappoport April 7 2016

MMR vaccine dangerous

Vaccine Empire wobbles on its foundations

 The new film Vaxxed (trailer) highlights one whistleblower, researcher William Thompson, who publicly admitted he and his CDC colleagues lied, cheated, and committed gross fraud in exonerating the MMR vaccine and pretending it had no connection to autism.

Now we have another: Dr. Peter Fletcher. The Daily Mail has the story (3/29/16): “Former [British] science chief: ‘MMR fears coming true’”.

 Johnson and Rappoport are referring to this article by Sue Corrigan in the Daily Mail (link) 

Johnson and Rappoport have been taken in by the Daily Mail's  perverse habit of not date-stamping articles and scrubbing comments. A casual reader may not realize that the article is 10 years old.  The article was actually published on  published February 4,  2006. Rappoport, however, bills himself as a "free-lance investigative reporter".  One would expect better...but it is Rappoport, after all.

If Rappoport had investigated, he would have found Kev Leitch's post from February 9 2006, Peter Fletcher, Melanie Phillips and the Daily Mail – A Cracked Facade

Kev's article reads in part:

The Daily Mail published another MMR piece earlier this week. As usual it had the predicted results in that it stirred up the usual frenzy of illogic and fallacy.

Why do I say that?

In order to explain we need to fast-forward a couple of days to where Melanie Phillips, Andrew Wakefield’s staunchest media supporter in the UK, published her own follow up to the Mail story. I urge you to go read both pieces now before you read the rest of this.

OK, done? Good.

So lets talk about what was said. Basically, the gist of both articles is now the medical community in the UK _have_ to take the MMR link seriously because Dr Peter Fletcher, ex-Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of Health has said a few things about it.

On the face of it thats pretty impressive – this isn’t some no-nothing from nowhere – this is an *ex CSO*. But once you get past the fact of who he _is_ and start to isolate what he’s actually _saying_ then, to borrow a phrase, the facade starts to crack.

First is the fact that this sort of argument – based on his good standing in the past – is a sort of reverse Argumentum Ad Hominem in that it is argued that it is equally or of more importance regarding who Dr Gordon _is_ as oppose to what he _says_. This is, of course, a fallacious position from which to start.

So what does he (and the original article) actually say?

[Dr Fletcher]…..said if it is proven that the jab causes autism, _”the refusal by governments to evaluate the risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history”_.

Well, d’uh. How is that news? Its obviously true and equally obvious entirely irrelevant to establishing a case for believing MMR has a role in causing autism. Its a tactical appeal to emotion – nothing more.

He added that after agreeing to be an expert witness on drug-safety trials for parents’ lawyers, he had received and studied thousands of documents relating to the case which he believed the public had a right to see. He said he has seen a “steady accumulation of evidence” from scientists worldwide that the measles, mumps and rubella jab is causing brain damage in certain children.

This is at the heart of the two articles. Dr Fletcher however simply invokes the spirit of these ‘thousands of documents’ and doesn’t discuss them or what they contain at all. It may well be that he’s hampered by the legal constraints of the case(s) in question but thats really besides the point. What we need to know is – what can Dr Fletcher _add_ to the debate? Both the epidemiology and the hard science have refuted the MMR link on more than one occasion. If Dr Fletcher has peer reviewed journal based evidence that contradicts or invalidates the science done so far then he should state it. At the moment he is simply repeating a fallacy of intuition, magical thinking and an argument to the future. None of these lend any scientific credence to making a case that supports the idea that the MMR jab caused or contributed to anyones autism. If there’s evidence lets get it peer reviewed and published in a respected journal – anything else is simply hearsay.

But wait, there is more. If Rappoport had investigated even further he would have found Michael Fitzpatrick's Spiked article from January 12, 2007, 
The anti-MMR gravy train derailed. Revealed: How more than £15million of legal aid funding was spent by lawyers trying and failing to prove that the MMR vaccination causes autism.

You should read the whole article, but here is the gist:

Five years ago, supporters of Dr Andrew Wakefield’s claim of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism used to argue that ‘the evidence was stacking up’ in support of this theory. In fact, the only evidence that was stacking up was evidence against the link: more recently a series of robust epidemiological studies showing no reason to suspect that MMR caused autism has been supplemented by rigorous virological investigations failing to demonstrate any link (1, 2). Meanwhile, another stack of evidence has emerged, revealing how legal aid funding bankrolled the campaign against MMR.

The LSC provides a detailed account of how a further £4.2million was claimed in ‘fees and expenses’ by more than 60 experts retained by the lawyers in the quest to justify their claim for damages against the vaccine manufacturers by proving a link between MMR and autism.

But that is not all. Fletcher took money.

Dr Peter Fletcher (£40,000) was head of the committee on safety of medicines in the 1970s and emerged from retirement to endorse Dr Wakefield’s critique of MMR safety in 2001. He is regularly quoted by anti-MMR journalists, but refuses to speak to anybody critical of the Wakefield campaign.

Fletcher was paid about $71,000 (in 1992 pounds-to-dollar conversion).That's about $128,000 in 2016 dollars.

Some whistleblower.

Published Previously Here

• Wednesday, September 02, 2009 Index to Michael Fitzpatrick's 2002-2009 autism & MMR articles at Spiked!
• Wednesday January 26, 2011 The Daily Mail (UK) continuing sorry contribution to fear, uncertainty, doubt, and vaccine fears
• Wednesday April 13, 2012 Another Patsy of The Daily Mail's Sorry Continuing Contribution to Vaccine, Autism Fear