QUOTE(Rictas @ Oct 7 2009, 07:53 PM)
Discrediting the messenger does not discredit the message. I don't care who said it. I just want to know if it's true... seems important enough to warrant some study. If you don't agree with the facts then tell us why the information is false with proper science not opinion nor circumstance. The best liars mix truth with lies, it's up to us to sift out the truth. I couldn't care less about his agenda. I care more about the information... and I couldn't care less about what you think of him but rather what proof you can present that the information is wrong.
Credibility of the messenger might not count for everything but it definitely counts for something. If your messenger is a fraud and opportunist it should immediately cause you to take any information given with a grain of salt. If it doesn't I feel extremely sorry for you getting strung along like that. Most of this scaremongering is being perpetuated by internet conspiracy mills and frustrated parents who want someone to blame. They usually just can't accept the fact that problems sometimes happen with an extremely complex organism like a human being. Their could be genetic flaws that later cause developmental flaws. Or even poor diet and lack of proper nutrition in the early childhood years. My cousins would be a prime example. They have a type 2 diabetic child at 11 years of age. They like to blame the environment and bad genetics but it's obvious for anyone to see that's it's the 20 pounds of refined sugar he eats a day along with his 2 double cheese burgers and fries. Two hundred pounds is not an acceptable weight for a 11 year old child.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09228/991232-114.stmQUOTE
Autism group softens stance on vaccines
Sunday, August 16, 2009
By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The autism wars aren't over -- but they may have entered a new phase.
Autism Speaks, the nation's largest autism advocacy group, recently made its clearest public statement yet that minimizes the link between vaccines and autism.
In a prepared interview posted on the Autism Speaks Web site, the group's chief science officer, Dr. Geri Dawson, says that scientific studies have found no link between thimerosal, a mercury preservative used in certain vaccines, and autism. Nor have they found a connection between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism.
"So ... given what the scientific literature tells us today," she says, "there is no evidence that thimerosal or the MMR vaccine cause autism" and "evidence does not support the theory that vaccines are causing an autism epidemic."
Dr. Dawson's statement still allows for the possibility that reactions to vaccinations might cause autism in a small subset of children, but it seems to go further than ever before in ruling out vaccines as a major trigger for the neurodevelopmental disorder.
The Autism Speaks pronouncement comes at a time when some parents have stopped inoculating their children or are spreading out their shots, to the consternation of public health officials, who fear the resurgence of such childhood diseases as measles and whooping cough.
Much of the parents' resistance to immunization has been driven by fear that vaccines can cause autism, a disorder that affects an estimated 1 out of 150 children. Autism is characterized by poor social and communication skills, repetitive behaviors, fixation on certain interests and, in some cases, retardation.
A spokeswoman for Autism Speaks said Dr. Dawson did not want to be interviewed about her latest statement, and contended it is not a new position for the organization.
But several scientists and others who have been involved in the autism debate said her views, which were posted July 30, are a clear departure from past statements, and probably reflect the ongoing tug-of-war over the vaccine issue.
Dr. Neal Halsey, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said the new position is "two steps in the right direction. This is a substantial change and improvement in Autism Speaks in acknowledging that vaccines do not cause autism, and that the evidence is overwhelming that neither the MMR vaccine nor thimerosal in vaccines causes autism."
Still, Dr. Halsey said he wishes Dr. Dawson would have emphasized that thimerosal no longer is used with vaccines given to children under 6 months of age, because "unfortunately, parents still fear they might be causing their children some harm by getting their kids vaccinated."
Thimerosal, an organic mercury compound, was used for decades as a preservative in multidose vials of some vaccines to keep them from being contaminated when needles were repeatedly inserted into them. It has now been removed from all childhood vaccines except some versions of the flu vaccine.
The MMR vaccine scare came primarily from a study done in the United Kingdom about a decade ago that suggested the measles portion of the vaccine caused intestinal inflammation that led to autism. Later studies failed to confirm those findings.
While federal agencies have pushed manufacturers to remove thimerosal from as many vaccines as possible, many scientists say it never posed a threat to children's health.
A 2007 study of more than 1,000 children between the ages of 7 and 10 who had been exposed to varying amounts of thimerosal during vaccinations and other treatments found no link between the preservative and any cognitive or language problems, for instance.None of the studies, however, have swayed one group of parents and activists who believe that vaccines are a major cause of autism, particularly in children who appeared to be developing normally before they got their vaccinations.
One of those activists is Katie Wright, who has an autistic child and is the daughter of Robert and Suzanne Wright, the founders of Autism Speaks. Although she is not a part of Autism Speaks, Ms. Wright said in a 2007 interview that her parents support her view that environmental toxins of some sort trigger autism.
She said her father, the former CEO of NBC Universal, "believes there is a place for genetic research, but he realizes the dire need to finance the environmental research because that is what affects our children now."
Because of pressure from people like Ms. Wright and groups that believe vaccines are dangerous, officials at Autism Speaks are pulled in two directions, said Kristina Chew, the parent of an autistic son and a blogger on autism issues who does not believe vaccines cause the disorder.
"On the one hand," said Dr. Chew, a classics professor in New Jersey, "they do want to promote science. On the other hand, they want to be an organization for families and parents, and I think they're caught there, because what some of the parents see is their children getting vaccines and then becoming autistic overnight."
Many other families of autistic children "feel the vaccine issue is overblown," she said, "but they are afraid to articulate that in public because the response from the other side can be very hateful and extreme."
While anti-vaccine groups continue to lobby Autism Speaks, the organization may also have been influenced from the opposite direction by the recent resignations of two key people.
Dr. Eric London, a New York psychiatrist whose National Alliance for Autism Research merged with Autism Speaks three years ago, resigned from Autism Speaks' scientific affairs committee this year, saying that the group's argument "that there might be 'biologically plausible' vaccine involvement [in autism] is misleading and disingenuous."
In an interview last week, he said he thinks Dr. Dawson crafted her new position statement because "the organization was getting a fair amount of pushback from myself and other people and even the press, and this wasn't happening a year or two ago, and so I think they're trying to position themselves as not being too unreasonable."
On the other hand, he said, "if they're going to continue to link to the anti-vaccine people [on the Autism Speaks Web site], it's all just spin. They're certainly not delivering a consistent message."
Another top official who resigned is Alison Tepper Singer, who was executive vice president of Autism Speaks and is a member of the federal government's Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which sets goals for federal research on autism.
"When you keep saying more research needs to be done on vaccines it sends the wrong message," said Ms. Tepper Singer. "We have a really good amount of data on vaccines and autism. At some point you have to say we're done and we're going to use our scarce resources elsewhere."
She and Dr. London's wife, Karen London, recently established the Autism Science Foundation, a charity that has pledged it will not support any research on vaccines and autism.
The biggest fear some experts have is that the controversy is already endangering the health of youngsters and adults whose parents are refusing to vaccinate their children.
The immunity children acquire from their mothers starts to wear off at about 6 weeks of age, said Dr. Nancy Minshew, director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Excellence in Autism Research.
That's one reason the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine is given at a young age, she said, because "those illnesses can kill babies."
The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, given at about 1 year of age, is equally important, Dr. Minshew said, and not just for the children themselves.
If pregnant women and their fetuses are exposed to rubella, also known as German measles, it can cause deafness, heart and liver problems, retardation and even autism in the children after they are born. If children get mumps and spread it to a man who doesn't have immunity, it can cause sterility.
For all these reasons, it's important for parents to follow the recommended vaccination schedule, she said.
"There used to be entire classrooms of kids who had become deaf from measles," Dr. Minshew said. "I have male relatives who never could have kids because of mumps. People today don't see the results" of those infections, and that may make them blase about the importance of vaccinations.
"When it comes to immunization, who are you going to listen to? I'm going to listen to the researchers who are the best of the best, and what they say is that immunizations do not cause autism, but they do save lives," she said.
Read more:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09228/99123...m#ixzz0TJGuwiIRHarvey Karp
America's most read pediatrician, assistant professor of pediatrics, UCLA.
Posted: June 23, 2009 08:36 AM
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Cracking The Autism Riddle: Common Sense About Vaccines And Autism
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-karp/...l_b_219160.htmlQUOTE
All sorts of arguments are thrown around to persuade parents that shots threaten their children with autism. I'd like to discuss 4 of the commonly repeated concerns, 3 flawed...and 1 that I think has merit.
1) Too many shots can overwhelm a child and cause autism. No!
Babies get more vaccines today than 30 years ago, but if you think that means more things are injected into their young bodies...you'd be wrong! That's because immunizations today are much more purified than those of the past.
For example, in 1980, the DPT shot (Diphtheria/Pertussis/Tetanus) was made from a soup of blendarized bacteria (over 1000 different illness particles - antigens - all mixed together). And, the polio vaccine had live virus that actually protected children by triggering a minute case of...polio! Today, our modern DPT vaccine is highly purified, containing only 3-5 bacterial antigens and the polio shot has absolutely no live virus.
Actually, the current trend to give kids more shots is a win-win for them. They win because they're protected from many more illnesses and because they have fewer antigens put into their bodies.
But, some still worry, "Can too many shots overwhelm a baby's immature immune system?" That idea is pretty close to a baby urban legend.
The immune system is a superb multitasking, fighting machine. Every day, babies are bombarded by thousands of threats: irritating pollen; colonic microbes; bacterial invaders from the skin, eyes, nose, mouth; viral swarms; offending dietary proteins; damaged cells; even tiny, little cancers. The immune system's magnificent ability to protect against many, mild attacks at one time is exactly why most babies tolerate several shots at once with no reaction whatsoever. (In fact, a new theory suggests that allergies and asthma may be on the rise in part because we have made the world so clean it doesn't exercise a baby's immune system enough!)
2) Shots hurt the brains of extra-sensitive children. No!
Each of us has special sensitivities. Some have peanut allergies...some get lots of strep throat....and a very, very few get serious reactions to vaccines. I wish we had a test to detect which infants are susceptible to severe measles or big vaccine reactions, but no such test exists.
The good news, however, is that shot risks are tiny compared to the risks of full-blown illness. For example, influenza and chicken pox hammer the immune system 100-1000 times harder than the impact of the flu or pox vaccines. While most kids breeze through the chicken pox shot, even a mild case of real pox can weaken a child's immunity for weeks to months and lead to ear infections, pneumonia and, rarely, toxic shock syndrome. (And, it can often land an adult in the hospital!)
There is one special case of possible vaccine susceptibility that made headlines last year and became a major new focus for those who claim vaccines cause autism. A 19-month-old child developed autism after getting 5 shots. But - and this is a huge "but" - unlike most autistic kids, this one child also has a rare medical problem - Mitochondrial Disease (MD).
Recently, vaccine avoiders have floated the theory that perhaps many healthy looking kids have hidden MD. They suggest that it may be the combination of vaccines plus hidden MD that is triggering autism in so many seemingly normal children.
But, the research suggests that this is unlikely to affect more than a handful of kids. Here's why:
MD is rare (1 in 5-10,000 children). A Portuguese study found ~93% of autistic children had no evidence of MD (and even that 7% figure has yet to be confirmed). In a recent study, scientists from Harvard and Johns Hopkins could find only 25 children with both MD and autism. And, these kids had serious problems rarely seen in most cases of autism (like, delayed walking, acid reflux, liver disorder, severe fatigue, etc).
Fourteen of these kids seemed to be developing normally then suddenly deteriorated into autism during toddlerhood. But only 1/14 (7%) got worse right after shots. (Had 2 or 3 or 5 kids gotten worse after the shots, one could make the argument that children with MD are at increased risk for getting autism after vaccinations. However, as I mentioned in part 1 of this blog, 7% is very close to the number of cases one would expect to be diagnosed right after shots...just by chance.)
Another dramatic finding of this study argues against a link between MD and the national rise in autism incidence: classic autism spectrum disorder affects many more boys than girls (3-9 times more boys!)...but children with Mitochondrial Disease + autism are evenly split between the genders.
While it remains to be proven that children with MD are more vulnerable to shots, there is no doubt that they are super-vulnerable to illness. In other words, MD kids who skip shots can get very sick, very fast it they catch a vaccine preventable disease like influenza or pneumonia.
3) Doctors push risky shots on children to make more money. Please!
This accusation is as appalling as it is ridiculous. Pediatricians labor through 23 years of education; wake at all hours to help worried parents; and desert our own families on weekends and holidays to rush to the hospital to care for sick babies.
In fact, a greedy doctor wanting more money would actually discourage parents from giving their children shots...not encourage it! Why? Because doctors make more money caring for sick kids - needing repeat office visits - than caring for the well.
In truth, the only reason doctors cajole, beg and pressure parents to immunize their children is because we want to protect them - and other children - from the pain and suffering of preventable infections.
I agree that there are too many ties between doctors and big pharmaceutical companies. This must be stopped because it creates the appearance of conflict of interest and the real potential of collusion. However, the record of organized medicine is reassuring. Over the past 30 years, doctors have rejected many vaccines when concerns arose that they were not effective enough or caused unacceptable side effects.
4) Shots can be delayed. MAYBE...but only those risking your child's health.
This is one of the most critical issues facing parents: Are shots a personal choice or a civic duty?
As a pediatrician, I recommend all vaccines, but I suggest parents think of shots as falling into 2 different groups: 1) those given primarily to protect your child, 2) those protecting your child and your neighbors' children.
The first group of shots stops infections like, influenza, rotavirus, hepatitis A, chicken pox and hepatitis B. They help your child but don't give great protection to the community. That is either because the illnesses are very common (spread quickly through your neighborhood even if your child gets the shot) or hard to spread (difficult for your child to give it to others). (Note: Older kids, teens and adults are at risk for hepatitis B. It has caused thousands of cases of liver failure and cancer and so all citizens should eventually get this vaccine.)
The second group of shots stops infections that threaten your child and your community (your neighbor's baby, the elderly, chronic disease sufferers, etc.). These shots include, whooping cough, meningitis (Hib), pneumococcus (Prevnar) and measles. They miraculously halt diseases that are so contagious just one cough, one airplane flight or one germy doorknob can spread them like wildfire through your town.
I believe giving the first group of shots is a parent's personal choice because the suffering you risk is mostly limited to your child and family. Skipping the flu shot, for example, may cause your child to be one of the 36,000 Americans who die from influenza this year, but it probably won't stop a flu outbreak (although it may help to reduce it).
However, giving the second group of shots is an important civic responsibility., because delaying them creates a serious public health risk. By immunizing at least 95% of children with these shots we create "herd immunity" that can totally halt the spread of deadly epidemics in our communities. Herd immunity stymies the spread of disease the way that frequent rain keeps lightening strikes from starting raging forest fires.
Some doctors may fairly argue which vaccines should go into which groups, but the important point is that the shot schedule has some flexibility...it is not written in stone. In fact doctors have repeatedly tweaked this schedule to make it safer and more effective (for example, over the past 30 years, the measles vaccine was pushed from 9 months to 12 months...and now is recommended to be given as late as 15 months of age). However, the second group of vaccines is crucial if we are to protect children in our communities who are too young to get their own shots. Parents who skip these shots may not mean to harm others, but their action significantly increases the risk of avoidable suffering and death to innocent children.
For over 10 years, a huge amount of passion and debate about the cause of autism has focused on vaccines. But recently a totally new suspect has surfaced that warrants investigation as a potential autism trigger. In the last installment of this 3-part blog, I'll discuss the worrisome compounds known as...endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)
Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-karp/...l_b_219160.htmlDiscover
QUOTE
Why Does the Vaccine/Autism Controversy Live On?
Research has soundly disproved the alleged connection, yet fears about vaccines continue to be a major risk to public health.
by Chris Mooney
Vaccines do not cause autism. That was the ruling in each of three critical test cases handed down on February 12 by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C. After a decade of speculation, argument, and analysis often filled with vitriol on both sides, the court specifically denied any link between the combination of the MMR vaccine and vaccines with thimerosal (a mercury-based preservative) and the spectrum of disorders associated with autism. But these rulings, though seemingly definitive, have done little to quell the angry debate, which has severe implications for American public health.
The idea that there is something wrong with our vaccines that they have poisoned a generation of kids, driving an epidemic of autism continues to be everywhere: on cable news, in celebrity magazines, on blogs, and in health news stories. It has had a particularly strong life on the Internet, including the heavily trafficked Huffington Post, and in pop culture, where it is supported by actors including Charlie Sheen and Jim Carrey, former Playboy playmate Jenny McCarthy, and numerous others. Despite repeated rejection by the scientific community, it has spawned a movement, led to thousands of legal claims, and even triggered occasional harassment and threats against scientists whose research appears to discredit it.
You can see where the emotion and sentiment come from. Autism can be a terrible condition, devastating to families. It can leave parents not only aggrieved but desperate to find any cure, any salvation. Medical services and behavioral therapy for severely autistic children can cost more than $100,000 a year, and these children often exhibit extremely difficult behavior. Moreover, the incidence of autism is apparently rising rapidly. Today one in every 150 children has been diagnosed on the autism spectrum; 20 years ago that statistic was one in 10,000. Put yourself in the shoes of these parents, says journalist David Kirby, whose best-selling 2005 book, Evidence of Harm, dramatized the vaccine-autism movement. They have perfectly normal kids who are walking and happy and everything and then they regress. The irony is that vaccine skepticism not the vaccines themselves is now looking like the true public-health threat.
The decade long vaccine-autism saga began in 1998, when British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues published evidence in The Lancet suggesting they had tracked down a shocking cause of autism. Examining the digestive tracts of 12 children with behavioral disorders, nine of them autistic, the researchers found intestinal inflammation, which they pinned on the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. Wakefield had a specific theory of how the MMR shot could trigger autism: The upset intestines, he conjectured, let toxins loose in the bloodstream, which then traveled to the brain. The vaccine was, in this view, effectively a poison. In a dramatic press conference, Wakefield announced the findings and sparked an instant media frenzy. For the British public, a retreat from the use of the MMR vaccine and a rise in the incidence of measles began.
In the United States, meanwhile, fears would soon arise concerning another means by which vaccines might induce autism. Many vaccines at the time contained thimerosal, a preservative introduced in the 1930s to make vaccines safer by preventing bacterial contamination. But thimerosal is 50 percent mercury by weight, and mercury is known to be a potent neurotoxin, at least in large doses. In 1999 new federal safety guidelines for mercury in fish stirred concerns about vaccines as well.
The U.S. government responded by ordering that thimerosal be removed from all vaccines administered to children under age 6, or reduced to trace amounts. (Some inactivated influenza vaccines were exempted.) The step was described as a precautionary measure. There was no proof of harm, government researchers said, just reason to worry that there might be. Meanwhile, scientists launched numerous studies to determine whether thimerosal had actually caused an autism epidemic, while some parents and their lawyers started pointing fingers and developing legal cases.
Within weeks of this year federal court decisions which examined and vindicated both the MMR vaccine and thimerosal. Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a column in The Huffington Post in which he continued to press his case that the government has peddled unsafe vaccines to an unsuspecting public. It is a cause he has championed since 2005, when he published Deadly Immunity in Rolling Stone and Salon magazines. The article was a no-holds-barred denunciation of the U.S. public-health establishment, purporting to tell the story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power, and greed. Half a decade after the original thimerosal concerns were first raised, Kennedy claimed to have found the smoking gun: the transcript of a secret 2000 meeting of government, pharmaceutical, and independent researchers with expertise in vaccines. Kennedys conclusion: The generational catastrophe was real; our kids had been poisoned. If true, it would be perhaps the greatest biomedical catastrophe in modern history.
QUOTE
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Mercury and Vaccines (Thimerosal)
Photo of bottle
Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines and other products since the 1930s. There is no convincing scientific evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site. However, in July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure.
Since 2001, with the exception of some influenza (flu) vaccines, thimerosal is not used as a preservative in routinely recommended childhood vaccines.
For more information, please see Infant and Environmental Exposures to Thimerosal and Neuropsychological Outcomes at Ages 7 to 10 Years.
CDC Statement on Autism and Thimerosal
As the country's leading public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is committed to protecting the health of all Americans€š‚including infants, children, and adolescents. CDC shares with parents and many others great concern about the number of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We are committed to understanding what causes autism, how it can be prevented, and how it can be recognized and treated as early as possible.
Photo of group of kids
Recent estimates from CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring network found that about 1 in 150 children have an ASD. This estimate is higher than estimates from the early 1990s. Some people believe increased exposure to thimerosal (from the addition of important new vaccines recommended for children) explains the higher prevalence in recent years. However, evidence from several studies examining trends in vaccine use and changes in autism frequency does not support such an association. Furthermore, a scientific review* by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that "the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism." CDC supports the IOM conclusion.
CDC recognizes that autism is an urgent health concern and supports comprehensive research as our best hope for understanding the causes of autism and other developmental disorders. Through collaborations with partners in government, research centers, and the public, CDC is focusing on three areas€š‚
1. Understanding the frequency and trends of autism spectrum disorders.
2. Advancing research in the search for causes and effective treatments.
3. Improving early detection and diagnosis so affected children are treated as soon as possible.
Related Links
* Thimerosal in Vaccines
* CDC's Autism Information Center
* Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry ToxFAQ on Mercury (April 1999)
* Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recommendations regarding the use of vaccines that contain thimerosal as a preservative. MMWR 1999:48(43);996€š‚“998.
* Food and Drug Administration/Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research - Thimerosal
* Studies on Mercury and Vaccines*
Related Research
McMahon AW, Iskander JK, Haber P, Braun MM, Ball R. Inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV) in children <2 years of age: Examination of selected adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) after thimerosal-free or thimerosal-containing vaccine. Vaccine 2008;26(3):427€š‚“429.
*Links to non-Federal organizations found at this site are provided solely as a service to our users. These links do not constitute an endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at these links.
Page last modified: February 8, 2008
Content source: Immunization Safety Office
Is this enough information for you? Or do I need to dig up more from qualified professionals and sources?
when did he take them, did any of them involve classroom attendance, and (d) were any of them related to his degrees? I also wonder when he enrolled in The Union Institute. In response to these questions, Slater replied that Null will not provide further information about his transcripts, coursework, or other details related to his degrees and that he regarded my request as intrusive and an invasion of his privacy [13]. Why do you suppose he said that?
I learned to make peace with it yrs ago. Maybe someday if there is definite proof something is wrong, I may get involved in changing it. Just saying that I wish the government would look longer and harder into things like theses. Many yrs ago they thought tobacco, alcohol, sweets and human flesh wouldn't kill ya, now look 
Just hate seeing any chances taken when it comes to kids.