Autistic children are like chimps and dogs, don’t you know?

If you need any more proof of the kind of stupidity being thrown around by anti-vaccine loons, look no further than this video:

(Someone stored the whole video on Google Drive since these things tend to disappear.)

In the video, Del Bigtree is sitting at a table with some anti-vaccine luminaries talking about autistic children. Suddenly, he begins talking about autistics as dogs, chimps, and other animals. While he acknowledges that “it sounds wrong,” he keeps on going. And the others on the table just laugh and go along with it.

Del Bigtree is the producer behind Andrew Jeremy Wakefield’s high school A/V club project, by the way. He’s the guy trying to sell us the idea that autism is a catastrophe. He seems to now want to sell the idea that autistics are like dogs and chimps in their mental capacity or in their ability to communicate.

Jerk. I hope the money is worth it, Del.

The Kid lets his true colors show

We haven’t talked a lot about The Kid lately. This was partly because he’s not worth the time and partly because he hasn’t had a whole hell of a lot of interesting things to say. But something caught our attention the other day, something that may very well earn The Kid a nomination for this year’s Douchebag of The Year award. In a blog post titled “Neurodiversity Is Social Justice Cancer,” The Kid shows us his true colors. He managed to be racist, elitist, and ableist at the same time.

Before we move into the meat of what The Kid wrote, let’s look at the term “Social Justice Warrior.” From Wikipedia:

“‘Social justice warrior’ (commonly abbreviated SJW) is a pejorative term for an individual promoting socially progressive views; including feminism, civil rights, multiculturalism, political correctness, and identity politics. The accusation of being an SJW carries implications of pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction, and being engaged in disingenuous social justice arguments or activism to raise personal reputation.”

In other words, a Social Justice Warrior (SJW) is a hypocrite. It’s someone who goes on and on about a subject but is not really wanting to act on it. Kind of like The Kid, who writes and writes about being wronged by being vaccinated and, in his world, developing autism from those vaccines. And yet, he hasn’t put together any kind of significant (or coherent) evidence for a vaccine-autism link. Now, in desperately trying to tie together SJW and neurodiversity proponents, The Kid reveals some interesting aspects about his personality. He begins:

“Today’s political and academic climate is tainted by a new wave of “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs) – far-left activists who shirk facts for emotion and who bully people they disagree with. Their weapon of choice? Political correctness.

There are third-wave feminists who exaggerate sexual assault statistics, who fabricate claims that men have higher wages than women and who advocate the killing of all white men. There is the Black Lives Matter movement which has proven itself to be a form of social justice cancer similar to feminism – advocating racially segregated dormitories and the murder of police officers (two of whom were actually murdered in New York City by a BLM supporter). But there is yet another incarnation of so-called “social justice” that has proven itself quite destructive despite catering to a smaller community: Neurodiversity.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, sexual assaults don’t happen as often as they do because of feminists. Feminists also exaggerate that there is a wage gap between genders. And the Black Lives Matter folks? Why they are racists and cop-killers. And thrown into the bunch are the growing number of scientists and autism advocates who are discovering and supporting the idea of neurodiversity. Everyone’s a liar or a hypocrite on these things, it seems.

To support his assertions about feminists and Black Lives Matter, The Kid links to some racist, elitists, and misogynistic blog posts and web sites, naturally. (He is yet to support any of his assertions with something that disagrees with his world view. Or, if he has, I’ve missed it.) Then he goes hard after Ari Ne’eman and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network:

“Recently, people in Ari Ne’eman’s group protested a screening of the documentary film Vaxxed despite never having seen it and had the nerve to argue that people hosting the venue did not have a right to film them protesting. They further dismissed the film’s director on the basis that he has no medical license, yet members of ASAN can join and consider themselves “autistic” even if they have no real diagnosis – merely if they “self-identify” as such.

While ASAN and neurodiversity claim in principle that having autism as as inevitable as being black, in practice being “autistic” to them is essentially a choice. Not only does ASAN hardly represent the autism community, some of them do not represent it at all. Moreover, many neurodiversity “autistic” self-advocates appear to be disproportionately women – especially strange considering that there are far more men and boys diagnosed with autism than there are women and girls. These folks – Ari Ne’eman included – also identify as feminists. It is hardly surprising then that neurodiversity is intimately linked with other contemporary social justice cancers that are using political correctness to advance their destructive goals.”

This is not the first time that The Kid has lost his marbles over Mr. Ne’eman. A few years ago, he went after Mr. Ne’eman on a blog post on Age of Autism because President Obama appointed Mr. Ne’eman to the National Council on Disability:

“Well President Obama, this “fine individual,” Ari Ne’eman, who you are nominating to a position on a disability council, was quoted as indicating that autism is not a disability. In an essay he wrote about autism, Ari concludes by saying, “Difference is not disability.” Furthermore, he told Newsweek that autism is not a medical mystery that needs solving, he said on Good Morning America last year that being anti-cure is not anti-progress, speaking above a superimposed caption that read, “There’s nothing wrong with us! Autistic and proud!”

Ari has called the vaccine-autism link “pseudoscience,” an assertion with no basis in science other than phony reports put out by phony scientists with drug ties to protect their employers from litigation. He has also descended further into espousing belief in outright epidemic denialism, citing an earlier diagnosis of his with ADHD as misguided proof that the tremendous growth in autism, is merely due to “better diagnosing. This does not explain an increase from 3 in 10,000 with autism spectrum disorders twenty years ago to 100 in 10,000 with autism spectrum disorders today.

Not only does he impose his views onto others based on his limited experience, but even on no experience. Ari Ne’eman has made comments about employment, speaking before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, despite having no work experience of his own whatsoever. (This was confirmed in an email from him to Jonathan Mitchell.) Ari stated that social pleasantry should be eliminated from the workplace. As a person with an autism spectrum disorder who has job experience and suffered as a result of having a very abusive boss, I take great objection to what he said, given his non-existent work experience.

Is this the kind of person we want serving in the new presidential administration? Do we want him on a council on disability policy when he does not even see autism as a disability, at least not in the classic sense of the word?”

See, for The Kid and so many others in the anti-vaccine cult, the fact that people like Ari Ne’eman and others want autistics to be accepted is some sort of an unforgivable sin. I guess that, in their view, if society accepts a person with autism as a person, then they lose any kind of ability to call autism a “tragedy” (or worse). They can’t say that their children are “lost” or “dead” due to autism. And they’ll probably have to come to terms with the fact that autism cannot be cured… And preventing it is akin to wanting to prevent someone from existing because of the way they were created/conceived/born.

But the clincher for us on why The Kid is an elitist racist misogynist is his closing paragraph on his “neurodiversity is cancer” post:

“It is shameful to think that politicians are catering to these groups. Fortunately, one presidential candidate – presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump – does not give in to such nonsense. Autism Investigated wants an honest president who speaks his mind, who slams Crooked Hillary Clinton and her shameless abuse of the woman card, who rebukes Black Lives Matter by emphasizing that all lives matter and who acknowledges that autism is an epidemic caused by vaccination instead of taking autism policy advice from the likes of Ari Ne’eman. If elected, Donald Trump will be that president who will acknowledge these harmful social justice movements – whether they be feminists, Black Lives Matter or neurodiversity – for what they are:

Cancer.”

Yes, to The Kid, people who want gender equality, civil rights protections, and acknowledgement of autistics as people and not broken things, to him all these people are cancer. To him, Donald Trump is a savior. Think about that for a second, because this is the same kid who is working on a doctoral degree in epidemiology at the University of Texas (where his uncle is on the board of regents). If the fact that someone like The Kid is getting a PhD in epidemiology doesn’t give you pause, I don’t know what will.

God help us all.

Sincerely,

The Poxes

(See what we did there?)

 

There’s nothing normal about anti-vaccine cyberbullies

You probably would not be surprised if I told you that the debate about vaccines and their association with a myriad of things (backed up only by loony, religious-like beliefs without any science) can get a little bit rough. I’ve told you about our Douchebag Emerti-ass Dr. Bob Sears and his crazy band of Facebook followers. Or weirdo John Stone from Age of Autism who for a while was intent on finding out who I really was (maybe going as far as to call a certain health department in a certain capital city of a certain country and whining about me not being an epidemiologist). I’ve told you about Joe Gooding and his band of “Passive Agressive Ravens” who take work published in other media and don’t link to it but just copy it verbatim onto their site, changing the headline to blame vaccines for whatever the issue is. (More on them in a minute.)

Listen, there is no shortage of evil people out there who just want to watch the world burn. They have theirs, so you shouldn’t have yours. They’ve been protected by herd immunity and their own vaccinations, so children the world over should not be vaccinated anymore. They are living fat and happy in the United States, so children in Somalia should get measles because it’s their fault they don’t have proper sanitation (or some bullshit like that). Most recently, they’ve taken to social media to find the profiles of people who are trying to promote the best public health intervention we have, and they are attacking those people relentlessly.

Joe Gooding and his child-like friends, for example, have started to post personal information and photographs on social media of people they dislike:

“Since early last summer, when Renee began advocating publicly for childhood vaccination, a dedicated clique of Twitter trolls has hounded her every tweet. They’ve filmed nasty videos, defamed her to colleagues — even posted photos that suggest they’ve followed her on the street. But Renee was particularly irked when some of her stalkers began posting photos of her, and her toddler, that they’d lifted from her private Facebook account. She filed several several harassment reports to Twitter, but the photos weren’t taken down.”

Because nothing settles vaccine safety science like these vile tactics.

Not to be outdone, Joe and his men-baby friends quickly posted a screed about free speech and whatnot, natch. Because free speech allows you and I, apparently, to lie about people and make them feel unsafe. It allows you, according to these kids, to relentlessly attack and smear at all costs.

Losers.

What’s funny is that I and others have been accused of bullying and making fun of “autism parents” by simply stating to them, time and time again, that vaccines do not cause autism and that autism is not something you cure. When we tell them that they are doing a disservice to their children by calling those children “lost” or “missing” or “gone,” these “autism parents” say that we’re being abusive. Have they taken a good look at what they’re doing? How do they think the children will feel when being talked about like that?

Of course, no one does abuse of autistics quite like Andrew Wakefield has. His latest high-school AV club-quality “documentary” is full of the usual lies, including the lie that there is a “CDC Whistleblower” who is going to make the whole vaccine program fall. The program won’t fall. The “whistleblower” is not whistling anything. There is nothing in any of the documents he’s provided. As usual, Andrew Wakefield has made a mountain out of a mole hill.

To make matters worse, when a group of autistic advocates went to protest Andrew Wakefield and his anti-autism documentary, the protestors were abused relentlessly. So proud of their abuse of these autistic people were wakefield and friends that they posted a video of it on Facebook. (Be warned, it contains some pretty abusive people being horrible to autistics who have a hard enough time as it is to communicate without being harassed.)

Here’s the video: https://www.periscope.tv/w/1RDxlOANgqmJL

On the Facebook page, people are absolutely happy that these autism advocates were harassed so much:

But this shouldn’t surprise you if you’ve been reading this blog, or Orac’s, or Todd W’s, or Liz Ditz’s, or Skeptical Raptor, etc. This is what anti-vaccine cultists do. They can’t fight the science with any kind of evidence, so they resort to name-calling, conspiracy theories, and libelous claims about anyone who debunks them. It can get so bad that they try to bully and dox a 12-year-old child.

So why pay attention to them? Why continue to point out to you the stupidity with which they handle being opposed? Because it’s fun? No. The reason we (here at The Poxes, and I don’t claim to speak for anyone else) keep covering them is because their actions need to be brought out of the echo chamber they inhabit on social media and blogs, and we need to explain to bystanders that this is not normal behavior. It is simply not normal to say that an autistic child is broken, or stupid, or missing, or dead. It is not normal to say that a mother killing her autistic child is preferable to the mother caring for the child. And it is not normal to so vigorously oppose vaccination without a shred of evidence that is causes injuries in the numbers and intensity that they propose.

There’s nothing normal in being afraid of autism being “normalized.” As if that’s a bad thing.

Just(in) asking questions

This is probably the last post I’ll write about Justin Kanew. The first post is here, and the second is here. In the first post, I explained to you how Mr. Kanew was slowly descending into anti-vaccine world. In the second, the conversion was nearly complete. So complete, in fact, that Andrew Wakefield was given a wide and full-of-praise interview by Mr. Kanew. To hide the fact that Wakefield was the main part of the show, Mr. Kanew made it seem like he was interviewing Brian Deer. But Brian Deer get the minority of air time.

It was an anti-vaccine show, is what I’m saying.

What does Brian Deer think of Mr. Kanew?

I haven't come across a crook like Kanew for a couple of years now. Profoundly sly and dishonest timwaster.

— Brian Deer (@deerbrian) May 28, 2016

Wow.

Anyway, if there was any doubt that Justin’s conversion is complete, he decided to write yet another blog post on the notorious, anti-Semitic, vile anti-vaccine blog: Age of Autism. In it, he states that he can take the criticism he’s receiving:

“I should also say that in the 2 days since the first interview posted, I’ve found myself the target of ire from both sides. Anti-vaxxers are angry that my wife and I still plan to try to find a safe way to vaccinate our baby girl, while pro-vaxxers are angry that by doing these interviews I’m giving a platform to the makers of Vaxxed and like-minded anti-vaxxers.

It’s been heated, but it’s ok. I can take it. I’m a big boy. I knew this was a contentious comment, and I expected to hear a lot of what i’m hearing. It didn’t at all seem to be a reason not to talk about it, and if I’m being honest I sort of hoped to help facilitate a calmer conversation about it in however small a way, naive as that may have been.”

The “big boy” has been such a “big boy” about it that he has blocked multiple people who have attempted to reason with him. They have told him about the “vaccine court,” but he refuses to listen. They have told him that it’s not just the government and “big pharma” that does research on vaccine safety, but he refuses to listen. Plenty has been shared with him on why Ginger Taylor’s list of papers proving a link between vaccines and autism is just plain wrong. (Frankly, I doubt even The Ginge has read it.)

Justin Kanew is not a big boy. He’s a tool for the anti-vaccine forces now. He will regurgitate whatever they tell him, and he will pass it on to his friends in Hollywood. They will regurgitate it again. Wakefield et al will hit him up for cash, and he will oblige. And so it will go. Because he’s not “just asking questions”. He’s listening now only for the wrong and misguided answers.

Which is it, Mr. Handley?

For the uninitiated, JB Handley may not be a familiar name. It certainly wasn’t for me up until about seven years ago. Mr. Handley is one of many people behind “Age of Autism” and “Generation Rescue.” Both anti-vaccine groups who seek to link vaccines to an innumerable number of conditions. They also seek to link vaccines to autism.

Mr. Handley’s story of how he became such an ardent anti-vaccine activist varies depending on who you ask. Heck, it varies depending on what he feels like writing about it. For example, in the Generation Rescue page I linked above, the story is this:

“When Lisa and JB Handley’s son was diagnosed with autism in 2004, they simply did not believe it would be [child]’s lifelong destiny.  They committed themselves to healing their son.

Lisa and JB pursued all of the theories and avenues they could find, educating themselves as fully as possible as they reached the most likely conclusion:  the combination of antibiotics and vaccines administered to [child] in his first 18 months of life had overwhelmed his system and triggered his body into a state of being that we currently call autism.”

Note the key component of the story: It was “the combination of antibiotics and vaccines” given to their child “in his first 18 months of life.”

In February, 2015, JB Handley penned an article titled “An Angry Father’s Guide To The Measles Vaccine” where he wrote:

“Be informed. Please. I wish I had, 10 years ago, and my life and my family’s life would be much different today.”

Okay, so 2004 and 2005 are close. Maybe it was 10 years ago (2005) and not eleven (2004). I’m splitting hairs. But then there’s this:

“Man, did I get played by the CDC. It was the winter of 2003. You couldn’t turn on the T.V. without reading about another child dying from the flu: it’s a particularly bad strain, children are at high risk, flu shot supply is strained, get your child vaccinated while you still can!

And, we were listening closely. For my oldest son, turning 4 and healthy, we weren’t too worried. But for my younger son, our baby [child], at 15 months old, we were very concerned. He was sick all the time. This could be a real problem for him. They are talking about death here, and [child] seems to qualify as high risk.”

So now it’s 2003, and the child is 15 months old. Okay, it jives with the narrative. Then this:

“The first shot was in December. Our Christmas videos that year show a very normal [child] — excited about Santa’s arrival and closely tied to his older brother. The booster was in January.

By March, [child] was gone.”

Gone where? Ah, yes, gone nowhere. JB Handley seems to be the kind of person who sees children with special needs as “gone” or “missing” or “dead.” None of which is true. Those children are still alive and there, and many reach milestones which allow them to look back on their parent’s statements about them, something that saddens me as a child should never be referred that way by someone who loves them. But I digress.

Note that this article is about the measles vaccine. JB Handley, an angry father by his own description, wants to warn us about the measles vaccine, but here he is plainly telling us that is was the influenza vaccine in the winter of 2003-2004 that made his child be “gone.”

JB Handley spends the rest of the article using misinformation and intellectual dishonesty to tell us how vaccines don’t work, how they’re dangerous, blah, blah, blah. Typical anti-vaccine stuff. But note that his son was “sick all the time” and that this is why he and his wife opted to have the child vaccinated.

Now read this from an interview he gave in 2005:

“A Lafayette couple, certain that chelation therapy has helped their autistic son, stepped squarely into the controversy surrounding the causes of autism and its treatment Tuesday as they joined 150 other parents in launching an international support group that will aggressively promote the treatment.

[Child] was a happy, healthy baby who reached all his developmental milestones until he turned 18 months, his parents said. Then, he started spinning in circles and standing on his toes and no longer responded to his name. They were eventually told he was autistic — one of an increasing number of children over the last decade to be diagnosed with the disorder, which severely impairs a child’s ability to interact with others.”

So which is it? Was he sick all the time at age 15 months and that’s why he was vaccinated against influenza, or was he happy and healthy until 18 months? Remember, this is 2005, a little over a year has gone by. Recall bias may be at play, but it’s only a little over a year. (The child is said to be three years old at the time of the interview.)

By the way, the article is horrible. It claims that JB Handley’s child “returned” from autism in 2005. (Remember that part.)

In 2010, JB Handley wrote this in a post for AoA:

“More commonly, I hear from parents about a chronic slide into autism with a progression of health issues accompanying the slide. This was certainly true for my son. The eczema and bad bowels came immediately after the 2 month visit and his twelve month vaccine appointment (MMR, Varicella, Hep B, and Hib in his case) was what really seemed to push him over the edge, but it was a full year before we got a formal diagnosis. From 2 months forward, it was just a slow motion loss of everything.”

So now it’s a story that the child was sick starting at two months and got worse from there. But he was healthy and happy until 18 months according to JB Handley in 2005. This doesn’t make sense!

The thing that bothers me most about this is that many of the people at Age of Autism make a big deal when anyone writes about their children, but then they use their own parenting experiences and anecdotes as definitive proof that vaccines cause autism. For Kim Stagliano, one of the editors of AoA, even her unvaccinated daughter has autism because of vaccines: Because of the vaccines that Ms. Stagliano received before her daughter was born.

I would very much like it if children did not become entangled in this whole mess because those children will one day reach a place in their lives where their names will be associated with some pretty “interesting” conspiracy theories. (Nothing stays hidden on the web.) Many, too many, of those children will read that they were “lost” or “dead” because they were born autistic, even if their parents swear up and down that vaccines caused their autism. And many, too many, children will be the target of unproven, unscientific, sometimes unethical treatments for something that cannot be “cured.”

I truly wish JB Handley and others stuck to the evidence and left their children out of it. But, as you can see, their desire to use anecdotes only helps to show the inconsistency and lack of reliability to eye witness accounts and the necessity for objective, science-based evidence of what is really going on.

Perhaps not the best anti-vaccine argument you should use

In a Facebook discussion about vaccines, “Kitti St. John” decided that she was going to display her bigoted views of autistics. While trying to convince people that vaccines are bad, she linked vaccines to autism and then compared an autistic child to “an agro chimpanzee.” She then goes on a rant about diets and nature and how vaccines have torn us all apart or something. She even believes that people, healthy people, “do not catch contagious disease.”

Kitti is just one of thousands of anti-vaccine activists who take their misinformed views of vaccines a step too far and demonize autistics of every age. It’s not just the comparison of children with learning disabilities to animals like Kitti just did. It’s also the whitewashing of murders of autistic children. Calling a mother and a caregiver who brutally killed Alex Spourdalakis the victims rather than the murderers that they confessed to be is just one more step in the anti-vaccine playbook of people like Andrew Jeremy Wakefield, people without a shred of evidence that vaccines cause autism but yet want to paint autism as a horrible “disease” that is preventable, avoidable, or curable.

Autism is not preventable, avoidable, nor curable. In fact, one of the biggest signs of quackery is someone who wants to sell you an autism cure or an autism preventative. That’s when you know you’re dealing with loonies, with fraudsters.

I’d like to ask the Andrew Wakefields of the world what they’re doing to ensure that autistic children and adults get all the help they can to live a long and fruitful life. Because, whatever Wakefield did to “help” Alex Spourdalakis failed phenomenally and no one should trust him in any way with their autistic child, ever.

If you want to argue that vaccines are part of some big plot, go ahead. If you want to say that they cause more harm than good, go ahead. All your points are easily refutable. What you shouldn’t do is denigrate autistics to the point that you endanger them and, by extension, endanger all of us. Because failing to protect the weakest among us is a sign that we’re on a downward spiral as a society. We’re circling the drain, so to speak.

A blood test for prenatal autism? What could possibly go wrong?

(UPDATE 1-20-15: The reporter from the San Diego Union-Tribune has contacted us to point out that, “contrary to the original article, the reporter has corrected the story to reflect that the test is not being promoted for use during pregnancy” as was previously attributed to the CEO of the company, Ms. D’Alvise. See his comment below or click here.)

Back in 2013, the UC Davis MIND institute put out some research into maternal antibodies and their association with autism:

“UC Davis MIND Institute researchers have identified the specific antibodies that target fetal brain proteins in the blood of a subset of women whose children are diagnosed with autism. The finding is the first to pinpoint a specific risk factor for a significant subset of autism cases, as well as a biomarker for drug development and early diagnosis. The researchers have named autism related to these antibodies “Maternal Autoantibody-Related,” or MAR autism.

The study found that the mothers of children with autism were more than 21 times as likely to have the specific MAR antibodies in their systems that reacted with fetal brain proteins, or antigens, than were the mothers of children who did not have autism. In fact, specific combinations of MAR antibodies were not found in the blood of mothers whose children were typically developing.”

From that research — or some variation of it — comes word of a new blood test that expectant mothers can take to find out if they’re at an increased risk of having an autistic child:

“A blood test for one of the most common forms of autism is due to be launched in the third quarter of 2015, San Diego’s Pediatric Bioscience said Wednesday.

The test identifies maternal antibodies that interfere with prenatal brain development, the company says. These antibodies are implicated in a form of autism spectrum disorder representing 23 percent of all cases. The test can help with early diagnosis or steer potential mothers toward alternatives such as surrogate pregnancy.

The antibody test delivers a false positive response just 1.3 percent of the time, making it highly predictive, said Jan D’Alvise, president and chief executive of privately held Pediatric Bioscience. D’Alvise spoke at the Biotech Showcase conference in San Francisco, an annual meeting of biotech investors and companies held concurrently with the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference.”

If I were an unethical son of a bitch, I would invest heavily in this company because that test is going to sell like hotcakes at Pamela’s on a cold Pittsburgh morning.

I say unethical because the research looking into the maternal autoantibodies and autism didn’t come up with any causal association between the antibodies and the children’s autism. It’s an interesting theory that boils down to, “We found these antibodies in a lot of the women who had autistic children. Not all of them, but a lot of them. These antibodies seem to target the unborn fetus’ brain, so it stands to reason that they may cause some sort of damage that leads to autism.” It’s not their words, but it’s something that I’m hearing in my mind as I read their paper. It’s something I’m sure a reasonable person might interpret as a test that can predict autism. I feel it would be unethical for me to profit off of something so seemingly unnecessary.

This is troubling to me because autism is so often referred to as a “disease” or as “brain damage” by many people claiming to know more about autism than they do. It is also troubling because the research doesn’t seem to show any prediction for how “severe” or socially impairing the autism will be. The mother with the positive test has a higher-than-expected chance of having an autistic child, but the test will in no way predict the degree to which the child will be able to be part of society. There is the very real possibility that mothers (and fathers, but it’s the mother’s decision) will want to terminate the pregnancy out of fear of having a “brain damaged” child.

(I can feel my blood pressure rising at the thought of ignorant fools calling autistics “brain damaged.”)

The test only really tells a person that they have these antibodies. It doesn’t say whether or not the antibodies cause the autism. That’s why the researchers call them autism related antibodies, not autism causing antibodies. I don’t think from the research that they can make that claim. A similar argument could be made that autism is genetic, and that those genes are present in the mother and causing those autoantibodies to be produced by the mother. The genes are then passed on to the child and the child develops autism. In short, there is way too much that we don’t know about autism.

One thing we do know is that vaccines don’t cause autism, of course.

Here’s the weirdest part of it all: From Pediatric Bioscience, the makers of the test, we learn the recommended reasons for having the test done:

“The MAR antibody test should be ordered on three types of “at risk” women : 1) Women of child-bearing age who have already had a child with autism, 2) Mothers of young children in need of a diagnosis for their child’s perceived developmental delay, and 3) Women over the age of 30 who are at least 2 times more likely to give birth to an autistic child. Specifically, women in this group who are considering In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) to become pregnant may want to consider taking the test before they proceed with the procedure. The MAR test is not intended for pregnant women or women who think that they may be pregnant.”

Read that last sentence and marvel at the contradiction from what Jan D’Alvise, president of the company marketing the test, said to the San Diego Union-Tribune:

“If a pregnant women gets a positive diagnosis, preparations can begin before birth to get the child into therapy if needed, D’Alvise said. Or a baby showing delays in development can be diagnosed faster if the mother tests positive.”

Which is it? Either the test is not to be done on pregnant women or it is. It is very possible that Ms. D’Alvise didn’t know that their website states that the test is not intended for pregnant women or that the website is outdated and their test is now to be used on pregnant women who think their unborn child may be autistic. Either way, the message is fuzzy on whether or not this test will be able to tell with 100% certainty that the unborn child (or any future children) will be autistic.

(UPDATE 1-20-15: The reporter from the San Diego Union-Tribune has contacted us to point out that, “contrary to the original article, the reporter has corrected the story to reflect that the test is not being promoted for use during pregnancy” as was previously attributed to the CEO of the company, Ms. D’Alvise. See his comment below or click here.)

The test is said to cost $1,000. No word on whether or not health insurance will pay for it, or what additional steps should be taken for a positive test. There is also no word on what the FDA has to say about this test. We’ll be on the lookout for their opinion. In the meantime, there’s a little something we need to talk about next time.

Look to your father, young man

Yesterday, I told you about Jacob Lawrence Crosby’s apparent love for calling Dr. Paul A. Offit a “vaccine industrialist.” Were I a betting man (if I am a man or a muppet), I’d place a bet that the kid thinks that this post and that last post constitutes harassment or even “cyberstalking.” It’s not. We are just playing the same game that the kid plays when it comes to attacking the credibility and integrity of people he doesn’t personally like. It’s a game about degrees of separation.

For example, in this blog post, people are “talking heads” to the vaccine industry because of their degrees of separation from people associated with vaccine development and/or marketing. In Crosby’s Labyrinth, Seth Mnookin is a vaccine industry talking head because Mr. Mnookin knows and is related to some people that, again, in Crosby’s Labyrinth, are all about giving kids autism or something. See, Mr. Mnookin’s uncle, Robert, is a chair at Harvard Law. The mother-in-law of Alison Singer, co-founder of the Autism Science Foundation (a foundation not obsessed with vaccines and focused more on the realities of autism science, thus an anathema to the kid), is a professor there.

That’s right. You’re not seeing things. Because the mother-in-law of the founder of ASF is a professor at the school where his uncle chairs a department, Seth Mnookin is a vaccine industry “talking head.” Here’s what Larry The Kid wrote:

“While aggressively promoting his book, Seth Mnookin also claimed to have become involved purely as an objective journalist. This was later disproved – his uncle Robert Mnookin Chairs Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation, where the mother-in-law of Alison Singer is also a professor. Singer runs and founded the “Autism Science Foundation” – a front group of the vaccine industry dedicated to stifling research into the vaccine autism link. Singer has also made false reassurances of Mnookin’s objectivity.”

Note that Larry The Kid never tells us how Ms. Singer’s “reassurances of Mnookin’s objectivity” are false.

In the same blog post, Jake Tapper, a CNN anchor, is in cahoots with Big Pharma because:

“…Tapper appears to have quite a rapport with Seth Mnookin, at least on Twitter. CNN led the media lynching of Dr. Wakefield in January 2011 and Fred Hassan, former president of PhRMA, sits on the board of directors for Time Warner – the company that owns CNN. Tapper gave Seth Mnookin airtime as an expert while mentioning on Twitter the fact that his book won an award from the National Association of Science Writers – a pharma-linked union of “journalists.” Tapper’s father, Dr. Theodore Tapper, is a South Philadelphia pediatrician. After a virus that causes fatal wasting disease in piglets was discovered to have contaminated millionaire vaccine industrialist Paul Offit‘s rotavirus vaccine, Dr. Tapper dismissed concerns about this as “much ado about nothing.” Like father, like son.”

Be careful with whom you associate on Twitter, otherwise you’re a pharma shill. Also, take note that Larry The Kid Crosby never tells us how the NASW is linked to pharma. He just writes it as a fact. (What are falsehoods that are written? Oh, yes, libel.)

And so it goes with Jacob “Larry The Kid” Crosby. He tried to get an oncologist fired because the school for which the oncologist works gets money from a pharmaceutical company. Not the oncologist himself in some bank account in the Cayman Islands, no. The school. If we go by that measure, then Jacob Lawrence Crosby has a lot of explaining to do to his devoted follower. (Or followers. It’s hard to tell because most of the commenters on his blog read exactly the same.)

You see, the University of Texas system, where Larry The Kid is attempting to get a PhD in epidemiology…

Hold on. Hold on. Let’s take a pause to laugh that off and then continue…

…The University of Texas system is getting money from “Big Pharma” in the form of grants for research. Now, the kid might be paying his tuition out of pocket since his family is said to be well-off. So he might be clean of getting any money from big pharma, but does that stop him from being taught by professors and faculty that are getting some of their salary from these grants? Does his self-righteousness and indignation about “big pharma” or the “vaccine industry” end when it benefits him?

I’m not even going to mention that Alex Cranberg, a regent in the UT system, is Jake Crosby’s uncle from his mother’s side, or that Mr. Cranberg is a bit of a “lightning rod”:

“Suspicion has surrounded Mr. Cranberg from Day 1. First, there was the speed with which he became a regent — one of the most prestigious appointments a governor can bestow upon a Texan. Mr. Cranberg received the nod just two weeks after registering to vote in the state following a move from Colorado for personal reasons. “Frankly, I’ve got a lot going on and would not have moved specifically for this job,” he said.

Then there were his associations. Mr. Cranberg is a longtime friend of Jeff Sandefer, the Austin energy investor who wrote a controversial set of seven proposals for changing higher education and has promoted them with Mr. Perry’s aid. “I don’t expect anybody to tell me what to do and have me do it,” Mr. Cranberg said.

Of all the regents, Mr. Cranberg was the one closest to Rick O’Donnell, a fellow former Coloradoan and an associate of Mr. Sandefer who had publicly questioned the value of academic research. The U.T. System’s hiring of Mr. O’Donnell as a special adviser to the board was one of the sparks that lit the statewide controversy. (Mr. O’Donnell’s employment was terminated after 49 days, during which he was “unfairly attacked,” Mr. Cranberg said.)

At the height of the debate, Mr. Cranberg was widely considered by critics in the Legislature and the academic community to be the ringleader of a bloc of regents who were influenced by Mr. Sandefer and others aiming to, among other things, stage an attack on academic research and coordinate an ouster of U.T.’s president, William Powers Jr. Most recently, after a request for extensive data on all the faculty members in the system, Mr. Cranberg was accused by the same groups of trying to micromanage the universities.”

For me to say that Jacob Lawrence Crosby is in any way “tainted” by his kinship with Mr. Cranberg would be disingenous. We have zero proof whatsoever that Mr. Cranberg’s position allowed a science denialist and anti-vaccine activist like Jake Crosby to enter the PhD program in Texas. None.

So let’s talk, instead, about Larry The Kid’s father, Mr. Giff Crosby. The elder Crosby has an interesting work profile. Per Liz Ditz:

“Jake Crosby’s father, Giff Crosby, appears to have spent his entire career in the advertising industry.  According to his LinkedIn profile, Giff Crosby today works for Dentsu America. Previously he was a copywriter for such products as Miracle-Gro (2008).

In 1999, Giff Crosby was employed by DDB (formerly Doyle Dane Bernbach), where he was an Executive Creative Director (ECD) slated to work on such firms as Compaq, Lockheed Martin, and The Bank of New York and new business. That same year, DDB picked up the vaccine maker Merck as a client.

The industry giant Monsanto brought RoundUP, a highly-toxic, carcinogenic weedkiller,to market. Doyle Dane Bernbach, which employed Mr. Crosby, provided advertising services to Monsanto.”

Note that Giff worked on the advertising for RoundUP. In fact, he seems proud of his work, so much so that he shows a television commercial for the stuff on a video hosting site:

Yes, of course, it could be some other Giff Crosby who posted that and other advertising videos. Jake, if your dad didn’t post those videos, or didn’t work on advertising RoundUP, please have him drop us a line.

Why does it matter what Croby, the father, did? It matters because Jacob Lawrence Crosby’s old masters make a big deal about glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUP:

“In recent weeks, we’ve learned some very disturbing truths about glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, which is generously doused on genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready crops.

GE crops are typically far more contaminated with glyphosate than conventional crops, courtesy of the fact that they’re engineered to withstand extremely high levels of Roundup without perishing along with the weed.

A new peer-reviewed report authored by Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant, and a long time contributor to the Mercola.com Vital Votes Forum, and Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), reveals how glyphosate wrecks human health.

…

Indeed, according to Dr. Seneff, glyphosate is possibly “the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies,” including but not limited to…”

Hint, the first chronic disease and condition on the list starts with the letter , A, and then a u.”

Autism? Is it autism? It’s autism, isn’t it? Yes, yes it is:

“Just before Christmas, a bunch of articles started making the rounds in the usual places citing a senior MIT scientist as proclaiming mind-numbingly ridiculous things like, Half of All Children Will Be Autistic by 2025, Warns Senior Research Scientist at MIT and, just the other day, MIT scientist links autism to Monsanto’s Roundup and predicts HALF of U.S. children will be autistic by 2025.”

Orac then tears apart Seneff’s assertions:

“As I’ve pointed out time and time again, if you look at two different variables that have shown an increase with time, you can almost always make it look as though there’s a correlation. Only occasionally does that correlation equal causation. It was that claim that the “autism epidemic” began (i.e., autism prevalence started increasing dramatically) beginning in the early to mid-1990s and that that correlated with an expansion of the vaccines in the vaccine schedule or, in the US, that it correlated with the addition of mercury-containing vaccines to the vaccine schedule. From these observations, it was claimed, that it had to be the vaccines, or the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal used at the time in some childhood vaccines, that was causing autism. Lots and lots of epidemiology since then has confirmed that there is no detectable link, epidemiology that I’ve written about time and time again, but that hasn’t stopped the antivaccine movement. What the increase in autism prevalence corresponds to is really the expansion of diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders that occurred in the early 1990s as well as increased screening for the condition, which, as I’ve pointed out, will always increase the prevalence of any condition.”

But what if, just what if, glyphosate did cause autism? If that were the case, we’d have three competing theories of how autism is “caused” or is “induced”.  Theory #1 is that the MMR vaccine causes children’s guts to “leak” and cause brain damage somehow. It’s Andrew Jeremy Wakefield’s theory, and it has been going strong since 1998. It has been so strong that Jacob Lawrence has supported Wakefield pretty strongly (until recently), even having Andrew Jeremy go to Brandeis University and chat ever-so-poshly about the fraudulent paper that failed to associate the MMR vaccine with autism.

Ah, the memories of when Jake’s love for Andy seemed so pure, so strong. I bet Jake would have asked how high to jump if Andy had requested of Jake to jump to conclusions.

Theory #2 is that the vaccine additive thimerosal causes autism by some weird mechanism that chemical castrators say has something to do with testosterone. Larry The Kid is a big proponent of this theory as well. See, he has stated that vaccines made him “toxic”, so he fights against thimerosal with all his might, kind of. (You’re not toxic, Jake. If thimerosal did anything to you, it would have intoxicated you. To say that you are toxic is to say that you are bad for people. Aside from your anti-vaccine activism, you’re not a danger to anyone.)

Theory #3, which is making the rounds in “cure autism” or “autism is caused” circles, is that glyphosate in herbicides like RoundUP cause autism because there is a correlation between the use of the chemical and the number of diagnoses of autism. Mind you, there is no evidence of how this could be the case biologically, but things like facts and such don’t matter none to those people.

Knowing these three theories, if your father had made a living at some point selling glyphosate, which theories would you ardently support? Theory #1? Theory #2? Theory #3? Surely, you wouldn’t support theory #3, would you? You’d be selling out your dad. You’d probably ardently support other theories than #3 to take the heat off your dad’s former source of income.

No, there is no evidence at all that this is what Jacob Lawrence Crosby is doing by pushing on his handful of readers the ideas that vaccines and nothing but vaccines cause autism. Nothing in the public record shows that he is deflecting criticism of glyphosate and aiming it toward other causes in order to protect his dad. But, if you apply the lines of effed up logic that exist in the tangled-up universe that is Crosby’s Labyrinth, this all ain’t out of the real of possibilities.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Jake Crosby told us how he feels about the glyphosate theory so adored by his former friends at Age of Autism that they wrote about it here, here, here, and here? Wouldn’t you sleep better at night if he somehow reassured us that all of his “work” against vaccines is not in service of Monsanto? Of course you would.

Proof that Jacob Lawrence Crosby doesn’t know what “industrialist” means

I got bored the other night, so I decided to tally up all the names that The Kid has used for Dr. Paul A. Offit. Two of our blog readers are playing a game to see how many inaccuracies The Kid shoots off on his blog. I’d like to play, but I thought we should start with this instead. So here are the many different ways in which The Kid refers to the pediatrician he stalks goes out of his way to ask questions of. You’ll be surprised at the variety of names he calls Dr. Offit, maybe.

In the blog post “The Vaccine Industry’s Many Talking Heads“, the kid goes on a flight of fancy where almost anyone talking about the benefits of vaccines (you know, the benefits proven by science?) is a “talking head” for the vaccine industry. He calls Dr. Offit:

• A vaccine industry “talking head”
• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”, twice

In the blog post “How Dan Olmsted and David Kirby Helped Kill A Landmark Autism Lawsuit“, the kid rebels against his former handlers and manages to spout off against Dr. Offit by calling him:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”

In the blog post “No More Federal Research Fraud – OPPOSE HR1757!“, the kid wants his three or four readers to oppose legislation aimed at an unethical “vaccinated vs. unvaccinated” study not because the study would be unethical and have serious methodological flaws (the kid doesn’t seem to know much about epidemiological methodology, bless his heart), but because the study is supported by people he sees as his enemies. How Dr. Offit figures into it is a little confusing, but the kid manages to call him, yes, you guessed it:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”

In the blog post “Take Action: Warn Congress about vax propaganda film Invisible Threat“, the kid wants his three or four readers to warn Congress about a movie full of facts about vaccines. (What is it with him and the truth?) In it, he refers to Dr. Offit as:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”
• A “millionaire vaccine developer and industry spokesman”, for a change

In the blog post “Kennedy’s Ghostwriter Defended Thimerosal“, the chemical preservative found in minuscule concentrations in vaccines (you get more mercury from a can of tuna) which somehow turned the kid “toxic,” the kid refers to Dr. Offit as:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”

In the blog post “CDC Cover-up’s Ivan Oransky Conceals BMC Violation“, where the kid just rambles on about conspiracies at CDC and other places, he calls Dr. Offit:

• A “millionaire vaccine industrialist”

Industrialist? I don’t think Jacob Lawrence Crosby knows what “industrialist” means. As Ren pointed out in his detailed analysis of the enemies he has made:

“For the record, several of the statements [made by the kid] about Dr. Paul Offit are plainly false. He was not reprimanded by Congress. He is not a “vaccine industrialist” if we use the common definition for industrialist. Yes, Dr. Offit helped develop a vaccine, and, yes, he was more than likely paid a ton of money for it. (I wish that is the case because developing a vaccine that has saved millions of lives should have some kind of reward.) Yet Dr. Offit has since given the patent rights away and is not getting paid for the vaccine anymore. But this is how the world of an antivaxxer operates, by quickly throwing in misinformation in between the truths.”

According to Wikipedia, an industrialist “is a businessperson of great influence, importance, or standing in a particular enterprise or field of business.” Dr. Offit is indeed very influential, important, and has great standing in the field of vaccines, but I doubt he has all that power in the business of vaccines. After all, he recused himself from voting on whether or not the vaccine he co-developed was to be added to the childhood immunization schedule. He also voted against a study to test whether younger and younger children benefit from the anthrax vaccine. (Do you know how much money could have been made by having everyone vaccinated against anthrax?)

And here’s what Dr. Offit did with the revenue from the vaccine he co-developed:

“Just for the record: I no longer financially benefit from the sales of RotaTeq. My financial interests in that vaccine have been sold out by either The Wistar Institute, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, or me. I will, however, continue to stand up for the science of vaccines because unfounded fears about vaccines have hurt children. That is why I do what I do and why I have always done it. And I will continue to closely follow the distribution of rotavirus vaccines because these vaccines have the potential to save as many as 2,000 children a day, which is why I joined the research team at Children’s Hospital.”

He stated this in 2011. But here we are in 2015 and the kid appears to be obsessed with calling Dr. Offit something he clearly isn’t. I mean, six blog posts calling him the same thing? And that’s not the only unsubstantiated claim the kid has made about people he doesn’t like. For all the complaining about being libeled and whatnot, the Jacob Lawrence Crosby does seem to make a lot of unsubstantiated and sometimes less-than-truthful claims about others.

Now, if the kid wants someone or something to blame for his autism, he should look at his own father, if you are to believe the latest lie about autism being touted out there. But I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

All the fail you can fit into an infographic

Friends on social media pointed me to this infographic the other day. It states that it wants to “set the record straight” on vaccines and autism, and it uses all of the tricks that we know anti-vaccine cult members use to try and deceive those who are uninitiated. So let’s take it one panel at a time and dissect this thing for all the fail that it is.

The answer from the paper was not “yes.” The answer from the paper, as I’ve told you before, is that there was no association between the MMR vaccine and the syndrome (chronic enterocolitis). It was Andrew Jeremy Wakefield who stated that it was his gut feeling that this association existed, and that chronic enterocolitis led to autism. Now, that whole thing about Walker-Smith being absolved and so should Wakefield, well, it’s not that simple. When two people commit a crime in tandem, finding that one was duped by the other into committing the crime doesn’t absolve the duper, only the dupee. And, of course, Wakefield was never “charged” with research fraud because it’s not a chargeable offense. His peers and independent investigators found that his research was a fraud, which is different than charging him.

Now, notice how the authors of this infographic try to explain to us what the study was all about. They call pathology reports “statistical data.” What the hell is that? They’re trying to say that the data was somehow valid, but it wasn’t. It was taken from children who underwent invasive procedures to get pathology samples. There is also the issue of a control group. Of course it was needed. A control group is always needed to ascertain associations and causation. If I take nine people off the street and note that they all wear size 9 shoes, can I say that all people on the planet wear size 9 shoes? No, I’d go to another city and take a bigger sample of people from there and measure their shoe size. But that would have been too much work for Andrew Jeremy, I guess.

Let’s go on to the next panel, because this one did a piss-poor job of defending the Wakefield fraud.

A “rush”, huh? There was no such rush. If anything, Andrew Jeremy Wakefield’s study was rushed. Other studies looking at vaccines and autism — the serious and credible ones — take months to design and months to conduct. They’ve looked at rates of autism in vaccinated and unvaccinated. It’s the same rate. They’ve looked at rates of vaccination in autistics and neurotypical kids. It’s the same rate. They’ve looked at how many vaccines and at what age autistics get their vaccines. It’s the same number and at the same age as neurotypical kids. Everything has been explored, but, because the cult of anti-vaccine activists need a demon to fear, they keep clamoring for more and more “research.” When the findings of said research doesn’t pan out, it’s not because there is no association between autism and vaccines. It’s because, in their mind, there is a big, huge conspiracy directed by a guy with horns and hoofed feet.

Also, as was explained in the now deleted comments of the infographic, epidemiological studies can be both about associations and about causation. (Correlation is not something you get from a study. You get that from simply plotting data on graph paper.) If Andrew Jeremy Wakefield’s study was so ground-breaking, why did his published paper not talk about causality? They never made sure to say that the kids were free of enterocolitis before they had autism. They just said, “Hey, these autistic kids have enterocolitis.” Period.

You have to give it to the anti-vaccine fanatics. They really do think that CDC is the end-all, be-all of things epidemiological. It’s not. It’s a big institution, yes, but not all research is conducted there. In fact, most research on vaccines and vaccine safety is done by universities and the manufacturers themselves. But these people think that a group of sadists sit around and find ways to create a product that will harm the most people for the lowest price. Those cases mentioned in this panel are laughable examples of “rampant fraud.” First, the CDC whistleblower clearly doesn’t seem to understand biostatistics. Tom Verstraeten? He himself explained why the data were analyzed the way they were. Hint: It was to get at the truth and not be confused by confounders. The Merck lawsuit? Let the Skeptical Raptor explain it better than I ever could:

“The heart of this is that there is no evidence that vaccine effectiveness is, in fact, lower than described. In fact, there’s evidence against that.

• The number of mumps cases is still very low. Before the vaccine, the United States had over 150,000 cases a year. The outbreaks reported now are in the single thousands – the 2006 outbreak had 6500 cases total, and the 2009-2010 about 3500. With respect to the 2014 mumps outbreak, the CDC stated that “from January 1 to August 15, 2014, 965 people in the United States have been reported to have mumps.”

• There is more than a little evidence suggesting that the problem – if any – with the mumps vaccine is waning immunity, rather than ineffectiveness when given. This evidence includes most of the outbreaks in question occurred on college campuses, i.e. long after immunization and not among school children, which supports waning immunity, rather than initial low effectiveness, as the problem.

• Other evidence supports the claim of waning immunity as the likely culprit rather than lack of effectiveness.

• Also, the major textbook, Vaccines, states that “such estimates may also be indicative of waning of immunity, which is not a factor in controlled clinical trials with a relatively short follow-up period.” (See Page 435.)”

Somehow, because the vaccine is less effective in the real world than in the lab, it must all be a conspiracy.

Paul Thorsen? So he stole money and was an author on a paper. So what? There have been plenty of papers written that confirm those paper’s findings. Bringing his actions up is just a way to trick people away from things that bother anti-vaccine activists.

One of the things that make me laugh about the anti-vaccine crowd is that they think that they’re “free thinkers” just because they go against facts. Going against facts doesn’t make you a “free thinker” or even smarter than anyone else. It just makes you that weird uncle who believes in UFOs, especially when there is plenty of evidence against your claims. What is even more laughable is that whoever created this infographic wants to come off as intelligent when it comes to science and math by writing “…and these U.S. parents statistically have collegial educations”. Statistically what? Significant? Are you trying to write “statistically significant” as in “there is a statistically significant proportion of non-vaccinating parents who are college educated”? So what? Being college educated doesn’t save you from being gullible to anti-vaccine fabricated pseudofacts.

Also, 1.8% may opt out completely from vaccination, but there are plenty of pockets were more than enough opt out of vaccination to bring us below the “not presumed but factual” herd immunity threshold. (Anti-vaccine people with fears of persecution like to deny that herd immunity exists much like Tea Party Conservatives like to deny that CO2 causes global warming.) And those “1000s of credible studies”? Well, search PubMed and you get a few hundred:

Totally not thousands

But that’s what anti-vaccine, irrational people do. They inflate the numbers… Or, as you will see, they deflate them as well.

Notice how in both instances the “fully vaccinated” in outbreaks were in the minority. If you look up a couple of panels, the same people claim that anti-vaccine people are in the minority. Which is it? Proportionally, more anti-vaccine people — or unvaccinated people for whatever reason — will be part of an outbreak. They will represent more than their share of cases. Why? Because they’re not protected.

And that measles graph that supposedly shows that measles was gone before the vaccine? It only shows that deaths from measles were in decline. We got good at keeping people alive over the years. A better, more honest graph is this one:

Cases of measles dropped precipitously when the vaccine was given. When a second dose was recommended in the 70s, the cases dropped to almost nil in the United States. But you won’t see that graph (published all over credible science websites) from anti-vaccine paranoids because it blows their argument out of the water. I mean, what, is it a happy coincidence that the vaccine went to market and cases dropped to nothing? Furthermore, we once thought that measles was done here in the US, but those pockets of unvaccinated people are bringing it back in a roaring fashion.

Pertussis is also one of those things that lack of complete vaccine coverage has brought back. And, no, there are no findings that state that “the unvaccinated are not to blame” or that “pertussis vaccines do not control whooping cough”. This is all cherry-picking findings in studies. Just because there are some outbreaks with vaccinated people in them doesn’t mean that the vaccine is worthless. That’s the Nirvana Fallacy that a lot of these anti-vaccine types live in. They want all vaccinated to be disease-free (any disease) or the vaccines are not to be trusted.

The truth is simple. If you are fully vaccinated, you are less likely to get vaccine-preventable diseases, and, if you do get them, you are less likely to be part of an outbreak. Those two panels up there actually said that, in so many words. Note how in both panels the “fully vaccinated” are in the minority when it comes to cases and cases in outbreaks.

Again, almost immediately, the creator of this infographic fails. Chemicals are only toxic at certain concentrations. At the concentrations found in vaccines, they are not toxic. Hell, some of them are downright inert. But these people want you to believe that you are bring injected with Satan’s own semen, it seems. “Live viral agents!” Jesus Christ! The LIVE VIRUS VACCINE is going to have “LIVE VIRAL AGENTS” because that’s how the vaccine works. And those “live viruses” are attenuated to the point that they cannot cause disease.

Then, the recommendation for the flu vaccine is for people 6 months and older, including pregnant women. It’s not just “6 months old & those who are pregnant.” It’s everyone. Thimerosal at the concentrations found in vaccines is safe. And that claim that the injection is not the same as daily contact is a truism. Daily contact with one of these things can kill, whereas vaccines won’t. Shedding? It only happens with certain attenuated virus vaccines, not with killed virus vaccines like injectable influenza, the tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis vaccine, and others. And, again, the live viruses have been attenuated to not cause disease. (Also, the MMR vaccine so feared by Andrew Jeremy Wakefield, though he was working on his own measles vaccine, never had thimerosal in it.) This panel is nothing but lies and fearmongering, plain and simple.

Is there something that vaccines don’t cause? Nope, apparently not. Never mind that there is no evidence of most of these things (or that they think that “sequela” is a bad thing). Likely, these people took the package inserts, which must post everything that participants experienced after getting the vaccine in the clinical trials, and ran with it. I also can’t help but notice a couple of things that have not been proven but are talking points by people who sell “natural” supplements to treat these things.

So made this infographic?

Ah, yes, Ms. Heather White. She shows up once in a while in anti-vaccine gatherings and blogs to talk about her knowledge of science, which always ends up giving me a chuckle. Ms. White more than likely has no formal training in science, which explains all her misconceptions about vaccines and autism (and thinking that “sequela” is a disease)… And her misunderstanding of numbers.

Ms. White, there are not “thousands” of studies linking autism to vaccines, especially not in a causal way. There are maybe a handful of those, and most are by cranks who’ve chemically castrated autistics and spread far and wide by people who see autism as an excuse to kill a child. And there are not “hundreds of thousands” of children with vaccine injuries. There just aren’t. Just like there are no monsters under your bed.