Vaccines Not to Blame for Autism, Court Rules

[edhopper]

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-parenting/2009/02/12/vaccines-not-to-blame-for-autism-court-rules.html

I guess Science really has returned to our society. :-}

[Birthmark]

1. Good job by the court.

[Th1onein]

2. Well, if the court says it, it must be true......

After all, they've got their very own lab, right there in the jury box, right? Geez.

I guess this: Deadly Immunity
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.Posted Jun 20, 2005 12:00 AM

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In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. "We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared that "perhaps this study should not have been done at all."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/7395411/deadly_immunity/

was all wrong, right?

[edhopper]

4. Yes,

it was all wrong, thanks for asking.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aiiTybT70ojc&refer=us
Panel Finds Vaccines With Mercury Didn’t Cause Autism
Families whose children developed autism after taking vaccine combinations that contained thimerosal aren’t entitled to compensation from a $2.5 billion government trust fund, a panel of court-appointed experts ruled.

http://blog.cleveland.com/health/2009/01/study_reinforces_that_mercuryb.html
Study reinforces that mercury-based preservative in vaccines doesn't hurt kids
A new study from Italy adds to a mountain of evidence that a mercury-based preservative once used in many vaccines doesn't hurt children.
“There is no evidence” that ethylmercury in the amounts found in thimerosal-containing vaccines “can damage infant immune systems, or otherwise contribute to autism in any way,”

[bobshin]

11. And who paid for those studies- and who conducted them?

The same industry members that would take a hit if true.

Philip Morris also proved that cigarettes don't cause cancer.

Try again.

[TZ]

12. So does RFK have a medical degree

Is Rolling Stone a Scientific journal. NIH, CDC, WHO and MANY MANY ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS have found NO link between vaccines and autism. Look at the funding for these studies they ARE NOT by Pharmaceuticals.
They are govt grants. BUt I forgot. Scientists that work for the government are all Bush shills. Scientists that work for Academia are being suppressed by Big Pharma. Scientists in the private industry are all corrupt. So only non-scientists know the TWOOF!
God you anti-vaxx loons sound EXACTLY like creationists/global warming deniers.

[edhopper]

15. No

The US Government through the CDC and the NIH. The same ones that said cigarettes CAUSE cancer.
You should try again.

[HelenWheels]

3. Since when do judges get to practice medicine without a license?

It's not their area of expertise and it makes me more sure that a corrupt judge is doing the dirty work of corrupt pharmaceutical companies.

[edhopper]

5. So these families with autistic children

are wrong to go to court to sue for damages since it's the justice system and not Doctors who will decide if they've been wronged.

[Orrex]

9. The transmission on my car failed; am I therefore entitled to sue the guy who runs the deli?

After all, I bought a pound of pastrami not fifteen minutes before the transmission fell out of my car. Therefore the pastrami/transmission link must be taken seriously.


You have succumbed to the classic (and classically debunked) fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, which is by the way the lynchpin of the entire argument for a causative Thimerosal/Autism link.

[Confusious]

22. Since when does a poster on a web site get ot practice science?

How about this ->

Sodium is a metal, reacts with water, you would die if you ate it.

Chlorine is a gas. If you inhaled it, you would burn your lungs, and die.

You need salt in your diet, which is the reaction of SODIUM and CHLORINE.

As the "mercury" in the preservative, it has other atoms making up the molecule, which makes it a completely different substance then pure mercury.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. To be precise, I believe the Court stated there wasn't enough evidence to prove

that mercury in vaccines definitively caused autism. That leaves the door open to future hearings where future scientific studies may show that in fact there is a link.

[Orrex]

8. Or they could more likely continue to show that there is none

[TZ]

13. There s been TONS of studies disproving this link already.

In fact most scientists are complaining about wasting money having to study the same issue again and again when its been covered so many times already.
Just go to CDC, NIH, WHO sites and search for vaccine safety data. You'll have WEEKS of data to pour through.

[Confusious]

21. Lets put the mercury in vaccines this way

Sodium is a metal, reacts with water, you would die if you ate it.

Chlorine is a gas. If you inhaled it, you would burn your lungs, and die.

You need salt in your diet, which is the reaction of SODIUM and CHLORINE.

As the "mercury" in the preservative, it has other atoms making up the molecule, which makes it a completely different substance then pure mercury.

[Orrex]

7. But anti-vaxers herald the Hannah Poling decision as proof positive

I call that a double standard: when the court finds--obliquely and in one specific case unsuitable for use as general precedent--anti-vaxers call it a done deal and claim that the Thimerosal/Austism link is proven, even if the court's decision said nothing of the kind.

But when another courtroom rules definitively that the link has not been demonstrated and is in fact contrary to a vast body of well-established science, then those same anti-vaxers cry cover-up.

That is, by the way, a non-falsifiable stance, and it's yet another reason why the Thimerosal/Autism link is not grounded in sound science.


Good thing Andrew Wakefield had a massive body of supporting evidence for his claims.
Oh, wait... He didn't?


Well how about that!

[HamdenRice]

20. You and the "other side" both misunderstand these opinions

First, it's important to keep in mind that the whole premise of the vaccine court is the acknowledgment that some vaccines cause adverse reactions in some patients, but that pursuant to a social cost benefit analysis, it is better to compensate those people through a no-fault system than through the rather unpredictable tort law system.

Second, and the court went to great lengths to emphasize this, each individual claim is evaluated on its own merit. In other words, each claim has little value for precedent in future cases.

The recent cases do no stand for the proposition, that "vaccines don't cause autism" or that there was "no link between vaccines and autism." They merely stand for the conclusion that in these cases, the specific theory presented by the plaintiffs -- that thimerosal weakened the immune system such that measles from the MMR vaccine caused both brain and gastrointestinal injury -- was not proven.

The Hannah Poling case also does not stand for the proposition that "vaccines cause autism." It's holding was that in her individual case, Hannah had a mitochondrial disorder and the vaccines aggravated that disorder, and therefore, without proof of full causation, she was entitled to compensation.

Taken together, the opinions so far are inconsistent with two widely held beliefs here on DU (and I should call them "belief systems" because of their totalizing, fact-impervious nature):

1. Vaccines cause autism.

2. Vaccines cannot possible ever be found to cause autism.

What the chairman of the CDC said of the Poling case, pretty much characterizes the belief system of both sides of the vaccine wars:

“That is a complete mischaracterization of the findings of the case and a complete mischaracterization of any of the science that we have at our disposal today.”

[bobshin]

10. Great day for bigpharma stocks! Dead proteins real life savers!

Nothing like the mix of bigpharma and capitalist court system patting each others' backs.

So what's the news? Any license-bearing scientist is going to cover their own with a vengeance- their future- and their kids' college expenses- depends on it.

Of course anyone foolish enough to allow anyone to inject them or their charges with some toxic worthless quackery is bound to pay the consequences. Trust and the medical industrial complex do not mix.

[TZ]

14. Wow.

Guess you want small pox and polio back eh? Nice post, Rick Warren! You know as much about science as he does!
And I am a scientist...please introduce me to one of these mythical "license bearing scientists" you are talking about.
Vaccines being toxic worthless quackery..Amazing you show how bad the educational system in this country.
BTW, most of the research on this comes from Academia. I guess Big Pharma owns every scientist in the country eh?
Another TWOOFER who reads google and gets his science from loons.

[Confusious]

23. I'm going to post this again, maybe one person will wake up

Sodium is a metal, reacts with water, you would die if you ate it.

Chlorine is a gas. If you inhaled it, you would burn your lungs, and die.

You need salt in your diet, which is the reaction of SODIUM and CHLORINE.

As the "mercury" in the preservative, it has other atoms making up the molecule, which makes it a completely different substance then pure mercury.

[HamdenRice]

24. And your aphorism is even more illogical woo woo than the woo woo you criticize

There are only two ways to interpret the point you are trying to make by analogy:

1. All compounds of poisonous elements are non-poisonous. Therefore, concern about mercury compounds is unfounded.

or

2. Some compounds of poisonous elements are non-poisonous. Therefore, concern about mercury compounds is unfounded.

The first statement is blatantly false. There are plenty of poisonous elements that when compounded create poisonous compounds. If the point is 1 then you are dangerously ill-informed about chemistry.

If the purpose is the second statement, then you are being dangerously illogical because there is no way to know from your analogy whether specific compounds of mercury are poisonous.

As it turns out, we know for a fact that elemental mercury, as well as many, many inorganic compounds of mercury, and organic compounds of mercury are all highly toxic. Therefore your aphorism is utterly meaningless.

From Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Mechanism

Elemental mercury

Quicksilver (liquid metallic mercury) is poorly absorbed by ingestion and skin contact. It is hazardous due to its potential to release mercury vapour...

Inorganic mercury compounds

Mercury occurs inorganically as salts such as mercury(II) chloride. Mercury salts primarily affect the gastro-intestinal tract and the kidneys, and can cause severe kidney damage; however, as they can not cross the blood-brain barrier easily, mercury salts inflict little neurological damage without continuous or heavy exposure...<17>

Organic mercury compounds

Compounds of mercury tend to be much more toxic than the element itself, and organic compounds of mercury are often extremely toxic and have been implicated in causing brain and liver damage. The most dangerous mercury compound, dimethylmercury, is so toxic that even a few microliters spilled on the skin, or even a latex glove, can cause death.<18><19>

<end quote>

Please stop spewing this utterly dangerous, ill-informed woo wooery. Three times in one thread is horrible, but even posting it once anywhere on DU is irresponsible lunacy.

[laconicsax]

16. I knew it!! Vaxeens cause teh autism!!!

Murkery and vaxeens so obviusly cause teh autism!!! Y wont pepul wake up 2 this?!?!

[HelenWheels]

17. I find your post insulting

to those of us with children who suffer from autism. Is your post supposed to mimic how autistic children speak and write?

[laconicsax]

18. No, it is not.

I apologize for any confusion.

It is a mimicry of the intellect of the rabid anti-vaxers crowd that chooses hysteria over reason and chooses to believe in a mass conspiracy between the pharmaceutical industry, health industry, the US government, the medical community, and the scientific establishment to deliberately poison children as a way to ignore decades of studies and evidence that vaccinations and exposure to thimerosal do not cause autism.

You may have noticed that most threads on autism research will have informed posters pointing out these studies and evidence and ignorant posters presenting rebuttals that essentially say, "mercury is toxic," "vaccines are dangerous," "you're a big pharma shill," "why don't people get it?" or a combination of the four. My post was intended to mock these posters

[Posteritatis]

19. Mercury is toxic! Why don't you get that vaccines are dangerous, you Big Pharma shill?!

*ducks and runs*

The conspiracy-theorizing over stuff like this is depressing. Unfortunately some folks shave with razors other than Occam's, to put it very generously. I just hope they're convinced (or shut up) before too many innocent people are sickened or killed because of them. ;P