Posted on 04/25/2015 6:37:22 AM PDT by george76
A new study this week found no link between vaccines and autism. It instantly made headlines on TV news and popular media everywhere. Many billed it as the final word, “once again,” disproving the notion that vaccines could have anything to do with autism.
What you didn’t learn on the news was that the study was from a consulting firm that lists major vaccine makers among its clients: The Lewin Group.
That potential conflict of interest was not disclosed in the paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine; the study authors simply declare “The Lewin Group operates with editorial independence.”
(As an aside, according to OpenSecrets.org, The Lewin Group’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, is a key government partner in Obamacare. Its subsidiary QSSI was given the contract to build the federal government’s HealthCare.gov website. One of its top executives and his family are top Obama donors.)
Conflicts of interest alone do not invalidate a study. But they serve as important context in the relentless effort by pharmaceutical interests and their government partners to discredit the many scientists and studies that have found possible vaccine-autism links.
...
The supposedly best medical experts in the world who deny vaccines have anything to do with autism remain at an utter loss to explain this generation’s epidemic. To declare the science “settled” and the debate “over” is to defy the plain fact that many scientists worldwide are still sorting through it, and millions of people are still debating it.
The body of evidence on both sides is open to interpretation. People have every right to disbelieve the studies on one side. But it is disingenuous to pretend they do not exist.
(Excerpt) Read more at sharylattkisson.com ...
No, that's naive. Those values used to exist in abundance, now not so much.
John Boehner says the Clinton's are fine people, Mitch McConnel says Lynch is cool, they were elected on the promise they would stop the Obama agenda I can't believe you think they were honest in their campaigns.
>>Even Atkinson herself says: “To be clear: no study to date conclusively proves or disproves a causal link between vaccines and autism and—despite the misreporting—none has claimed to do so.” If all this is so, then where’s the beef?<<
I think you’re confusing her intent. It’s not to assert an autism/vaccine link, but to criticize the powers that be for denying the existence of evidence that suggests it. She’s criticizing both how the issue is handled politically and the reporting of it, not the science itself.
>>Talk to older teachers who have been teaching for thirty years. They will tell you. It’s an epidemic. SOMETHING in our environment is causing this.<<
I hope you took a look at Dr. Cannell’s paper that I linked to earlier in this thread.
Whether you did or not, here are two links I think you’ll find interesting regarding his experience with autism and vitamin D3:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/newsletter-another-autism-case-report/#
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/newsletter-more-autism-reports/#
I want to add that Dr. Cannell related later that about 25% of autistic kids respond significantly to vitamin D3 supplementation and about 25% show no improvement. The rest see some improvement in symptoms. That’s apparently his overall impression based on his case reports, not the result of a formal study.
Why have I never read this before? You have blown my mind and expanded my research. Thank you so much for posting this. It makes a lot of sense. A lot.
I have one son on the spectrum and another with other special needs.
Already we are a family who believes in high doses of vitamin D. And we don’t sunscreen unless the time in the sun is two or more hours. I have seen the magic of D all around us but never as seasonal treatment for autism. I am thrilled that this works at the preschool level. I hope that it keeps working all through life.
This is wonderful and I am sharing these links.
They don’t say their child has autism (because nobody would believe them); they use the catch-all “autism spectrum” because it is so vague. NOBODY (including their closest friends) believes them.
Well, I can’t speak of this particular family. Who knows? They may be doing a munchausen by proxy thing. But in general, neighbors, friends, and family would be kinder to believe the dx simply because sometimes you have to be in the house to see the effects of the dx.
If that is her purpose and intent she lends no credibility to herself by contemptuously referring to researchers whose results don’t support her view as “critics” and “propagandists”. Makes her look very much like propagandist herself. That was precisely my conclusion in dismissing the article as unworthy of serious consideration. Frankly, I was unable to conclude - as you have - that her purpose was anything but to further the campaign of the anti-vac crowd.
By all means, stop all vaccines. Let’s go back to the time when people contracted Diptheria, Tuberculosis, Polio etc. in our society.
My grandfather, born in 1881 in Dakota Territory was one of 7 siblings.
Three of then died in childhood, from diphtheria. Two in one week.
As a kid I remember people in leg braces, due to Polio.
>>...by contemptuously referring to researchers whose results don’t support her view as “critics” and “propagandists”<<
I’m not going to take the time to read her article again. If she indeed referred to researchers as critics and propagandists, then you have a point. But if she was instead referring to those who propagate the results of the researchers, i.e., by emphasizing the results of one batch of researchers and ignoring equally responsible research of another batch of researchers, then perhaps you should concede my point.
My recollection, and the impression I got when reading her, is that she was questioning the dissemination of the results and not the researchers’ work. I could be wrong.
You’re welcome.
I hope your children respond favorably if you try augmenting their vitamin D levels through a winter season. Incidentally, there’s a mail-in test in which you put a few drops of blood on a card and in a week or so you get back your vitamin D3 levels. It costs around $70 or so. I use it to ensure that I’m taking enough vit D3 to maintain a level around 50 ng/ml. For me, that takes about 5,000 IU daily, summer and winter, even though I’m outside a lot during summer.
If you read the linked material, you’ll have noticed that Dr. Cannell thinks levels as high as 80-100 ng/ml might be necessary to affect autistic behavior. In studies, lifeguards get to around 80 ng/ml during summer, so those aren’t dangerous levels.
Atkinson was careful to point out that she did not consider the matter settled conclusively (by the research) one way or the other. But her writing wasn’t as even handed as that concession would indicate it should have been.
Incidentally, my position is that immunization has proven to be such a worldwide good that it is difficult for me to imagine that we humans would abandon it even if it can be conclusively shown that some aspect of immunization causes what is now being called autism. I say it this way because I am convinced that the “epidemic” of autism that has people concerned is an epidemic of definition. I do not think it represents a real phenomenon.
If there is an argument to be made that immunizations could be made safer by making changes in the way we administer vaccination programs, or by developing better preservatives or adjuvants, I think there would be widespread approval of that. I can tell you for certain that pharma is always looking at ways to improve the safety and efficacy of their products and that includes vaccines.
Then, there was this time...
When I was in the doctor’s office for a pre-college physical, and he decided based on my records that I was due for tetanus and pertussis vaccinations. The nurse came in with the readied sharp and told me that “this is the tetanus shot”, and gave it to me in my arm (don’t remember which arm).
Then, another nurse came in with a readied sharp and told me “this is the tetanus shot”, and I immediately told her that I had already been given a tetanus shot by the other nurse. The ‘new’ nurse replied, “Oh, no—I’m pretty sure that was the pertussis vaccine; let me go double-check,” and left the room. I could hear her talking to the first nurse, but did not hear what they were saying to each other. The second nurse then reentered the room with her sharp and said, “She said that she gave you a pertussis vaccine; THIS is the tetanus vaccine,” and she gave it to me in my other arm. Well, I trusted that they knew who gave what vaccine—were being careful about it, so I put it out of my mind.
It wasn’t ten minutes out of the office before I started feeling fairly poorly, so when my mother and I got in the car I decided to let her drive instead, and she needed to go to the grocery store anyway. While I was following her around, I noticed that I was feeling increasingly more ill with every step. When I remarked this problem to her, she curtailed her shopping trip and we bought what we had in the cart and headed home.
By that early evening, I became extremely ill with fever, chills, body aches, and my jaw became very painful and stiff (it basically locked). I could not open my mouth.
While my mother tended to me (with my dad looking in periodically), she told me that a best friend from church had called her and told her that the Lord had revealed to her that someone in my mother’s family would become very ill very suddenly, but they would recover. I believe her dear friend also sent a card saying the very same thing, and mom put it on the nightstand next to me so I could see and read it.
I did recover, but yes it took me about a week to do so. When my mind had cleared enough from being so sick, and I had “put two and two together” and realized that I had received TWO tetanus vaccinations per the overwhelming evidence at hand, I contacted the doctor’s office and asked to speak to him. I was as usual passed over to the on-call nurse, who as you know screens the patient’s inquiries before putting them before the doctor. But I know for a fact that since my question was as to whether I was possibly given TWO tetanus vaccinations per the symptoms/illness I had suffered, it had set off a monumental scrambling among the two nurses for instructions and likely calls by the doctor to attorneys. They weren’t going to admit to ANYTHING, my friend...
In just one call (as most involve a call-back), I was told emphatically they did NOT give me two tetanus shots, but rather that I had apparently had a “strong immune reaction” to the tetanus vaccine. In all, they absolutely would not admit that they had screwed up big-time (and could have killed me!).
With that, I inquired as to whether an allergy specialist could test to see if I was allergic to the components of the tetanus vaccine. The doctor said he did not know, leaning more toward ‘didn’t know if it would confirm anything’.
SO...you have GOT to keep a hard bead on what is going on when you are being given vaccinations!
This year, the doctor retired and the nurses likely did the same—or maybe went elsewhere. The doctor there now is a young woman who my parents very much like.
Should I have sued?
Yes.
But as the start of first semester of my freshman year of college loomed large, I dedicated my energies toward that, and I had a fairly chunky course load to start with.
And so we potentially arrive at a middle ground.
I have two comments, both of which I hope you find reasonable:
First, Ms. Attkisson wasn’t trying to be “even handed” about whether vaccinations were harmful or not; she was, in fact, laying out the case that the rest of the new media was being anything but even handed. You are reading her as an “anti-vaxxer.” Try reading her again from the perspective that she’s reporting on deceptive nature of the reporting itself, and not on the value of vaccinating per se. In that regard, I think she made an important contribution, unless you think one side of an argument should be buried, of course.
Second, you say you are “convinced that the “epidemic” of autism that has people concerned is an epidemic of definition.” You’re no doubt correct that cases once diagnosed as another condition, or not diagnosed at all for that matter, are now classified within the autism spectrum. After all, the autism classification didn’t even exist in the 1950’s. But have you really done the work to determine that it’s only a process of definitions changing? Do you at least concede the possibility that something more might be going on?
If you’re a reasonable person, and you sound like one, you would have to allow for the possibility that the surge in cases isn’t all due to a change in definition. I suspect that your resistance to doing so is related to the vaccine issue, but I could be wrong. In any case, I think a better explanation is that the widespread avoidance of the sun advocated by the medical community, especially for the very young and for pregnant women, has caused a correspondingly widespread vitamin D3 deficiency across the population. That explanation, incidentally, subsumes the vaccination explanation, treating vaccines as possible, though infrequent, triggers to a pre-existing condition wherein the developing immune system has been compromised by a vitamin D3 deficiency.
The sun avoidance advice was first promulgated in the late 1980’s and corresponds closely with the “supposed” epidemic we’re discussing. A substantial portion of the autism observations can be explained by Dr. Cannell’s theory that a vitamin D3 deficiency is the culprit. For example, there a substantial communities of recent African immigrants living in northern climates today who have far higher observed rates of autism than both their neighboring communities and in their home countries where the condition was generally rare (though that, admittedly, could be due to poor diagnoses in their home countries.)
As for reaching middle ground, I am not against vaccines but I do think they are triggering autism in some cases. I do think autism rates are rising, and have been rising since the 1980’s, but that much, though hardly all, of the rise is due to new diagnostic criteria. I see Ms. Attkisson as one of the best reporters working today. You still might disagree on all three points, I suppose.
I remember that Alzheimers wasn't invented yet so old people simply were called senile.......
Or crazy.
I keep my own over 80. Never heard of the do it yourself blood test but they can be nearly free if the doc has a reason for insurance to test your blood. I don’t have insurance any more for the first time in my life thanks to obama. We use a faith based Health Share instead, Liberty.
Oh my gosh. And so many people put their Faith so blindly into other fallible humans. I’m so glad you recovered from that.
I have had several major medicine mess ups. But suing is pretty difficult and what are the damages? In your case, the ER bill and any meds. Suing isn’t as satisfying as people think, and there has to be serious negligence (which there was in your case) and enough damages to make it worth hiring an attorney, the truth is, once you have enough damages, you won’t care about money - it means you or your loved one has died or been permanently damaged.
And yeah, docs will lie to avoid being sued for malpractice.
Big Pharm wins with propaganda again. Shocker....NOT.
This story was updated Nov. 27, 2016 to add results of new survey of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children.
What you didn’t learn on the news was that the study was from a consulting firm that lists major vaccine makers among its clients: The Lewin Group.
That potential conflict of interest was not disclosed in the paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine; the study authors simply declare “The Lewin Group operates with editorial independence.”
(As an aside, according to OpenSecrets.org, The Lewin Group’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, is a key government partner in Obamacare. Its subsidiary QSSI was given the contract to build the federal government’s HealthCare.gov website. One of its top executives and his family are top Obama donors.)
Conflicts of interest alone do not invalidate a study. But they serve as important context in the relentless effort by pharmaceutical interests and their government partners to discredit the many scientists and studies that have found possible vaccine-autism links.
https://sharylattkisson.com/what-the-news-isnt-saying-about-vaccine-autism-studies/
Related to that, I have also read studies that say that the more male pregnancies a woman has had, the more likely the next male pregnancy will be a homosexual. Obviously there would then be an age correlation. But perhaps the age correlation is an artifact of the number of male pregnancies.
I’m not arguing that age is not a factor. I’m just presenting another possibility.
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