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Seth Mnookin

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The Autism Vaccine Controversy and the Need for Responsible Science Journalism

Posted: 01/ 5/2012 12:05 am

Earlier this week, The Panic Virus, my book on the controversy over vaccines and autism, was released in paperback. While there haven't been many scientific advances in this particular issue since the hardcover edition was published -- the evidence supporting vaccines' paramount place in public health efforts and the total lack of corroboration supporting a causal connection between vaccines and autism remain as strong today as they were a year ago -- there have been new developments in the story. Their coverage highlights an enduring passion of mine: The need for reliable, responsible science journalism.

  • Last January, Andrew Wakefield, the discredited British gastroenterologist whose 1998 paper sparked the first wave of fears that vaccines might be causally connected to autism, was further disgraced when the editors of the British Medical Journal declared his work "an elaborate fraud." (By that point, Wakefield had already forfeited his medical license for a litany of moral, ethical, and professional misdeeds -- including an incident where he paid children at his young son's birthday party to donate their blood for his experiments.) With little left to lose, Wakefield seemed to fully embrace the fringe: In June, he headlined a rally titled "The Masterplan: The Hidden Agenda for a Global Scientific Dictatorship" with a cohort of 9/11 Truthers, One World Government conspiracists, and anti-fluoridationists.
  • 2011 proved equally inglorious for Mark and David Geier, a father-son research team that is almost as lionized as Wakefield himself in anti-vaccine circles. For years, the Geiers have peddled a sham "cure" for autism that involves regular injections of Lupron, a powerful drug used to chemically castrate sex offenders. (In additional to being incredibly painful, the Geiers' "Lupron protocol" is very expensive: Treatment at one of their clinics can cost up to $70,000 or more a year.) In April, an investigation by the Maryland State Board of Physicians found the Geiers' treatment "endangers autistic children and exploits their parents by administering to the children a treatment protocol that has a known substantial risk of serious harm and which is neither consistent with evidence-based medicine nor generally accepted in the relevant scientific community." By the end of the year, Mark Geier's license to practice medicine had been suspended in California, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington State; his son, meanwhile, had been charged with practicing medicine without a license.

These revelations, were, for the most part, reported in a way that accurately emphasized the moral and scientific bankruptcy of anti-vaccine claims. Not surprisingly, none of this diminished Wakefield's or the Geiers' standing among true believers. (Several months after the BMJ report was published, an anti-vaccine leader was quoted The New York Times Magazine as saying, "To our community, Andrew Wakefield is Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one.")

What might be more surprising is the legacy of years of dispatches that created a false equivalency between verifiable facts and Wakefield's and the Geiers' outlandish allegations. These began almost the moment Wakefield held a press conference for his since retracted 1998 paper: Despite the fact that he was virtually alone in recommending the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine be dropped, the London dailies ran stories like "Ban Three-In-One Jab, Urge Doctors" and "Doctors Link Autism to MMR Vaccination." For more than a decade, credulous (or lazy) reporters who were either unwilling or unable to grasp the basic scientific principles at hand regularly regurgitated the most specious anti-vaccine talking points. One of the more cringe-inducing examples occurred in an infamous 2007 story by CBS News's Sharyl Attkisson, who wrote, "There is no definitive research proving a link between vaccines and autism or ADD, but there is also no definitive research ruling it out." That statement betrays a profoundly mistaken understanding of the theory of falsifiability, which states that in order for a hypothesis to be a legitimate subject of inquiry, it has to have a single, corresponding null hypothesis--that is, it needs to be disprovable. Saying that there is not definitive research ruling out a link between vaccines and autism is like saying there is not definitive research ruling out a link between watching CBS News and rectal cancer: It's technically true only because it's functionally meaningless.

Unfortunately, there is no restart button when it comes to public consciousness, and it will take quite a while to eradicate the effects of all of the fear and misinformation that were injected into the population. Don't take my word for this -- look at the data: One poll taken early last year found that only 52 percent of Americans knew vaccines did not cause autism. (Eighteen percent said they believed, despite the overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary, that vaccines could cause autism; 30 percent said they weren't sure.) In October, Pediatrics reported that more than 10 percent of parents refuse to give their children some vaccines or adhere to "alternative" vaccine schedules that are based on little more than guesswork.

The result has been a flourishing of vaccine-preventable diseases. A year after 10 infants died in California of pertussis (or whooping cough) infections, nationwide outbreaks continued to spread. While many of those were due to under-vaccinated adults who didn't realize they were due for a pertussis booster, there were countless more instances where the disease was spread among deliberately unvaccinated kids. (The best (or worst) example of this occurred at the Blue Mountain School, a small private school about 40 miles southwest of Roanoke, Virginia. It was shut down for a week after roughly half of its students were infected with pertussis; according to local health officials, most of the parents of the infected students had chosen not to have them vaccinated.)

Even more alarming were the measles outbreaks that cropped up in virtually every region of the country, from the Northeast to the Pacific Northwest and from the Gulf Coast to Southern California. Unlike whooping cough, measles infections were spread almost exclusively by unvaccinated children and adolescents. The largest outbreak was in Minnesota, where anti-vaccine activists had targeted a community of Somali immigrants that appeared to be experiencing higher-than-expected rates of autism. That outbreak began when a deliberately unvaccinated child returned from Africa infected with the disease; by the time it had run its course, more than a dozen children had been hospitalized. As of December 8, the U.S. had recorded 221 laboratory-confirmed cases of measles in 2011 -- about four times more than usual and the most in any year since 1996.

***

A few months ago, one of my students in MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing came to my office to discuss what was becoming an overwhelming anxiety: She was worried, she said, that she was embarking on her career at the precise moment when the opportunities for science writers were at an all-time low. I certainly understand her concern: The seemingly never-ending contraction going on in the media industry has resulted in a shedding of specialists in every journalistic medium. That does not, however, mean that the public's hunger for information about science, medicine, and technology is shrinking; indeed, as our continuing struggle against vaccine-preventable diseases demonstrates, the need for reliable, accurate information is arguably greater than ever.

Those realities have created an enormous amount of opportunity for budding science writers, blogging networks, and non-traditional newsgathering operations -- but with those opportunities come responsibility. The fact that a specific story is controversial (or that it is promoted by a particularly outspoken celebrity) does not mean it deserves the oxygen it needs to survive.

Make no mistake: The cost of misinformation is great indeed. In a nation of more than 300 million, a couple of hundred of measles infections might not seem like a lot, but we need only look across the Atlantic to see how these figures can explode in an incredibly short amount of time. In 2006 and 2007, France had an average of 40 measles cases per year. In 2011, the country recorded more than 15,000 cases, including more than 650 cases of severe measles pneumonia, 16 cases of encephalitis and six deaths. A recent WHO report said 90% of measles cases in Western Europe were in "adolescents and adults who had not been vaccinated or for whom vaccination history was not reported."* The greatest risk of all, of course, is to infants, who are both too young to receive the MMR vaccine -- the first dose isn't given until kids are 12 months old -- and are the ones most likely to suffer serious complications. We owe it to them, and to ourselves, to make sure we do a better job in the future.

*Correction, January 30, 2012: A previous version of this sentence incorrectly said the WHO's statement about unvaccinated adults and adolescents was made in reference to France; in fact, it was in reference to all of Western Europe. For the period under discussion, France had approximately 65 percent of all measles infections in Western Europe.

 
 
 

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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
PaganDancer
Photographer, artist, dancer, dreamer, astronomer.
07:28 PM on 01/30/2012
One European country, Norway if I recall correctly, upon hearing the false claims linking vaccines and autism stopped vaccinations. Prior to stopping, the autism rate was 1.5%. For 5 years, no vaccinations. Autism rate, 1.5%, but a lot of children and adults were contracting measles and the other nasties that the vaccines prevented. So, vaccinations were started up again. Once more for the hard of reading, autism rate, 1.5%.

I know families with autistic children what something, ANYTHING to blame, but putting other children and adults at risks over a false connection between autism and vaccinations is wrong. And the Anti-Science people, the kind that wrongly think diseases are good, or "Gods punishments" please come out of the dark ages.
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BSDebunker
Science is true even if you choose not to believe
02:08 AM on 01/25/2012
If you want to end the vaccine vs. autism debate once and for all, simply compare the autism rate in those children who receive vaccines to those who don't. I cannot vouch for the rest of the world, but I would venture to say that not every country vaccinates their children in the same way as we do here in the U.S.A. What are the autism rates in other countries as compared to their vaccination regimens? Has anyone even tried to gather statistics like this? If so, where are the numbers?

One thing I do know for sure, Autism has a cause that needs to be identified.
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BSDebunker
Science is true even if you choose not to believe
02:24 AM on 01/25/2012
It seems I've found a study on the subject. If you are interested, here is a link to a report on "Autism and Vaccines Around the World" from 2009:
http://www.rescuepost.com/files/gr-autism_and_vaccines_world_special_report1.pdf
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John Richard Smith
Social Justice Advocacy
08:13 PM on 01/20/2012
Some of the latest 'speculation' driven by research findings indicate that there are varying phenotypes of autism and how children arrive at the point of time of diagnosis may indeed take a multifactorial route.

One of the analogies used is that ASD may present in some ways as to cancer. That is there are differing environmental factors interplaying with a genetic susceptibility.

Thus simplistic equations offered and believed to be discounted by the sledge hammer of epidemiology / statistics are yet to be fully explored.

It is these problematic issues in definition and understanding of the various factors that are implicated in ASD that lead one to suspect that we do not have the current capability to agree on even the simple concepts ...
11:56 AM on 01/19/2012
I just wanted to say, Seth, that a responsible journalist will at least look carefully at both sides of any issue and will write a balanced report. You have not done that, despite your claim to practice "responsible science journalism." I have carefully researched the autism-vaccine issue myself, as a journalist, reading both sides, and have decided the vaccine-autism claims may indeed have merit. Why?

Nothing about vaccines and autism has been proven, other than 1. thimerosal doesn't seem to cause autism, and 2. the measles virus in the MMR vaccine doesn't seem to cause autism. From these two specific findings you and others are generalizing in a fallacious way to say that vaccines don't cause autism. I challenge you read well-reasoned books written by someone in the opposition, for example Bryan Jepson, MD, before claiming to practice responsible journalism.
Phyllis Wheeler
www.phylliswheeler.com/CuringAutismBlog
01:39 AM on 01/20/2012
"Nothing about vaccines and autism has been proven, other than 1. thimerosal doesn't seem to cause autism, and 2. the measles virus in the MMR vaccine doesn't seem to cause autism. From these two specific findings you and others are generalizi­ng in a fallacious way to say that vaccines don't cause autism."

So, let me get this straight: The two prongs that underlay the entire notion have, you admit, been disproved, but "balance" demands that "responsible journalism" somehow keep it afloat regardless?
10:58 AM on 01/20/2012
"The two prongs that underlay the entire notion have, you admit, been disproved." No, these are not the two prongs underlaying the entire notion. Let's lay them aside and consider the too-many, too-soon hypothesis (too many vaccines given at once to children who are too young). Vaccines are never tested in realistic conditions before releasing them to the public. How do we know that the immature immune system can withstand the onslaught of multiple viruses injected into the bloodstream? We don't.

Each vaccine is tested by itself in subjects who are not infants or tiny children. So when the vaccines are administered in my children, with a number of vaccines given at one time, and as early as the first day of life, these are not conditions which have been tested and proven. My children become test subjects. And there's no follow-up to see what the result might have been.

The autism epidemic started in about 1990. Scientists are coming to accept the idea that there are environmental triggers for autism. The question becomes, what changed in our environment at about that time that could be a causing factor? The number of vaccines expected for tiny children went up substantially beginning about then.

There could be other major changes that happened in about 1990 in the environment. I think we also ought to look at plastics additives.
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Nick Hatch
I'm So Meta Even This Acronym
04:21 AM on 01/20/2012
Wow, knowing you're a journalist and reading what you just wrote is further tarnishing the credibility of journalists...see Heywood's comment.
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sdtech
01:03 AM on 01/18/2012
Seth:

Re: your "enduring passion…the need for reliable, responsible science journalism"

Science has yet to determine the underlying mechanism of gravity. So “science” is not all so cut and dried as you infer in this article. We only know that we don’t know the underling cause.

But…look at “Thalidomide and the Power of the Drug Companies by Sjostrom and Nilsson (1972) where it states that "Every biologist knows that within a group of living organisms there is always an individual variation in the sensitivity towards, for example, a poison or a drug. Because of natural biological variation some individuals are affected more than others and some are perhaps not affected at all." p.162


So responsible scientific journalism, if it is responsible and scientific, requires inclusion of reports on sensitive subsets of children. Take Hanna Poling, for instance. See http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2008/03/julie-gerberding-admits-on-cnn-that.html
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Silken17
Just a hare in your soup
09:46 PM on 01/18/2012
" Science has yet to determine the underlying mechanism of gravity. So “science” is not all so cut and dried as you infer in this article."

Einstein published General Relativity in 1916. It explains exactly what gravity is. The same theory provides the foundation for the Big Bang as well.

Sometimes, if you are going to critique "science" you should start by learning a little.
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sdtech
10:42 PM on 01/19/2012
RE the comment “Einstein published General Relativity in 1916. It explains exactly what gravity is.”

It does not. It only explains the behavior.

We know that masses attract. Galileo measured its behavior. Newton described its behavior in terms of laws of physics. And Einstein explained its behavior in terms of curved space.

But no one knows the underlying mechanism that causes the attraction.
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Sharon Hanson
Skeptical of the *pseudo-skeptics*
11:04 PM on 01/17/2012
Continued

Unconscionable usurious ‘odious debt’ is the fundamental problem with the vaccine injury board. Nine out of ten children with vaccine injuries are unable to collect. This means that nine out of ten times the manufacturers of the vaccinations that injured walk away with impunity and leave the families in lifelong debt without ever receiving any cash. They are left caring for a child that requires 24/7 care and a debt that can never be paid. This is not a fair system we have. If vaccine injury cases were allowed to wend their way through the courts then it would be a different outcome for these families. If lawsuits were allowed many pharmaceutical companies would settle before the cases went to trial but more importantly they would pay extra attention to safety. That’s right vaccine safety – what a novel idea. For now, most parents carry the burden alone without the help of our government or the vaccine injury board and this is unconscionable usurious ‘odious debt’ on the parents, the child and our society caused by a jab. The only problem is the parents or society received no money but we have the debt. The pharmaceutical companies made a profit on the sale of millions of vaccinations and the parents and society are left with the debt. In Greece they can and should walk away from the debt but here in the US we have no easy out. And the contingent liability needs to get booked.
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KellyMBray
01:59 AM on 01/18/2012
They were not injured by the vaccine so they lost. The level of proof rquired is vaccine court is very low. They could not even prove that. Of the ones that were paid, many would not have succeeded in a regular court. Your assumptions as usual are incorrect. Justice has been done.
12:55 PM on 01/18/2012
"The level of proof rquired is vaccine court is very low."

And unsuccessful claimants are reimbursed their legal expenses so long as "the petition was brought in good faith and there was a reasonable basis for the claim" (which has created a cottage industry). And Table injuries succeed by default.
12:44 PM on 01/18/2012
"In Greece they can and should walk away from the debt but here in the US we have no easy out."

Ah, Sharon, we have a fiat currency. Greece no longer does. This is even weirder than your other assertions.
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Sharon Hanson
Skeptical of the *pseudo-skeptics*
11:04 PM on 01/17/2012
Unconscionable Usurious 'Odious Debt' Is The Fundamenrtal Problem

In accounting, a contingent liability and the related contingent loss are recorded with a journal entry only if the contingency is both probable and the amount can be estimated.

As I have posted in prior posts on this thread the costs of ASD are enormous and whether we can agree on the exact amount; it will be in the trillions.

Children abandoned by Greek parents as cuts also sees country running out of medicine

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085163/Children-dumped-streets-Greek-parents-afford-them.html#ixzz1jmJxSHfe

The parents of ASD children are in a tight spot with costly therapy, childcare and remedial education classes for their ASD children. What will happen after parents are bankrupted by an insensitive and unfair society that poisons their children and refuses to accept liability and financial responsibly for the care of their autistic child. The burden will be too great for many parents. How will they cope? They are strong and fiercely protective of their children but even when things were going well, economically these parents were not living the dream they envisioned before they became parents. Now with the banks illegally stealing the homes of millions of Americans and no end in sight to the fraudulent banking practices that thrust us into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression I wonder how a family will cope let alone a family with a child that has special needs. Continued.
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KellyMBray
02:03 AM on 01/18/2012
Vaccines do not cause autism. Pages of posts later you still have not shown any valid proof, none, zero, zilch. I have two children on the spectrum, I know what it is like. That being said I will NOT leave my rationality at the door and get suckered in by crackpot theories. Only real science will help my son and I insist on nothing less.
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Sharon Hanson
Skeptical of the *pseudo-skeptics*
09:26 AM on 01/18/2012
See above post by sdtech. Even Julie Gerberding, currently being paid by Merck as President of Vaccines, admits that vaccines cause autism. In sdtech's example I’ll add that Dr. Jon Poling was prepared to present evidence to the vaccine board but they quickly settled. His daughter had a pre-existing mitochondrial defect but toxins like you find in vaccinations are known to cause mitochondrial defects so this would be a logical path of research for the CDC.
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Heather XW
12:50 PM on 01/18/2012
I used to be you. And my son has autism. He also has damage to his brain's central auditory nervous system that extends from his brain stem to his frontal cerebral cortex. They cannot test for this injury until the age of six because it is a "functional" examination. He has 90% damage to his area of the brain and major connectivity malformations.

Thing is, this brain *injury* is very specific. It is caused due to an encephalopathy. My son had a 75 word vocabulary with sign language and was charted in his med records as being above mark for neuro-development. After being vaccinated with 9 vaccines he couldn't speak for 3 years - not wouldn't and he subsequently received an autism diagnosis. I don't think that vaccines are the trigger for all cases of autism but I certainly think that they are the trigger for my son's diagnosis.

Vaccines certainly cause encephalopathy. I could list a long list of studies that prove this but I'll just list one link a US government site for evidence.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Vaccine Injury Table
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccinetable.html

Encephalopathy certainly can place a child on the autistic spectrum. Again I can list a bunch of peer-review here but I'll stick to what the government says on this as well.

Continued
10:57 PM on 01/16/2012
Is freedom still worth fighting for? You bet it is! U.S. Rep Ron Paul MD opposes vaccine mandates and supports medical freedom. He is the only candidate who passes the litmus-test for elected office. He deserves our strong support. He CAN win, even as a 3rd party candidate, if need be. I believe that there are a lot of disenchanted democrats, independents, and undecideds in both parties, who would vote for him in the general election. I thought I heard that 40% of the electorate is independent.

Medical freedom, personal liberty, and autonomy over what goes into our bodies, are God-given rights, despite what pharma would wish.

http://www.canaryparty.org/

Ours is a well-reasoned, moderate position. We seek the right to refuse inoculations, abortifacients, cytotoxic chemotherapy/radiotherapy, genetically-modified food, fluoridated water, mercury-amalgam fillings, and the like. The State does not own our bodies!

In a world in which informed consent, the Precautionary Principle, the Declaration of Helinski, and the Nuremberg Code have been trashed by the pharma cartel, the public is rightfully beginning to push-back.

http://www.omsj.org/
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KellyMBray
01:44 AM on 01/17/2012
Don't forget Roswell, the fake Moon landings, and Obama's Kenyan birth certificate. Can you imagine Ron Paul's inauguration . The glare from thousands of tin foil hats would be blinding. After reading this I am more convinced than ever that Ron Paul would be the worst choice for president.
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Nick Hatch
I'm So Meta Even This Acronym
04:32 AM on 01/20/2012
Fanned for making me laugh. So well put :)
02:32 AM on 01/17/2012
"Is freedom still worth fighting for? You bet it is!"

I take it you're not going to elaborate on your posting of bibliographic entries that seemingly had no bearing on much of anything.
11:52 PM on 01/17/2012
Heywood-

The very recent literature citations from the 2012 issue of Lupus that I posted have all made it to PubMed. They are very relevant to the vaccine-autism controversy. I suggest that we all start to learn all that we can about "ASIA". I guarantee that there will be many more publications on this topic in the future. Here's the link to one of the articles:

“The spectrum of ASIA: 'Autoimmune (Auto-inflammatory) Syndrome induced by Adjuvants'.”
Agmon-Levin N, Hughes G, Shoenfeld Y.
Lupus. 2012;21(2):118-20.

http://lup.sagepub.com/content/21/2/118.long

“During the past year a new syndrome was introduced and termed ASIA, ‘Autoimmune (Auto-inflammatory) Syndrome induced by Adjuvants’.1 This syndrome assembles a spectrum of immune-mediated diseases triggered by an adjuvant stimulus.2 – 4”
11:56 PM on 01/17/2012
Wrong, Heywood! The articles I posted have a major bearing on this discussion:

“Giant cell arteritis and polymyalgia rheumatica after influenza vaccination: report of 10 cases and review of the literature.”
Soriano A, Verrecchia E, Marinaro A, Giovinale M, Fonnesu C, Landolfi R, Manna R.
Lupus. 2012;21(2):153-7.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22235046?dopt=Citation

“Giant cell arteritis (GCA) and polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) are inflammatory rheumatic diseases common in people over the age of 50 years. Herein, we report 10 cases of previously healthy subjects who developed GCA/PMR within 3 months of influenza vaccination (Inf-V). A Medline search uncovered additional 11 isolated cases of GCA/PMR occurring after Inf-V. We discuss the role of individual susceptibility, the potential function of immune adjuvants as triggers of autoimmunity post-vaccination, and the correlation of our observation with the 'ASIA' syndrome, i.e. autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants and including post-vaccination phenomena.”
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KellyMBray
03:28 PM on 01/16/2012
I thought I came across a "Birther" page by accident. Funny, after reading the anti vax comments I think I am.
This comment has been removed due to violations of our [Guidelines]
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Sharon Hanson
Skeptical of the *pseudo-skeptics*
11:23 PM on 01/15/2012
Continued

What does this mean for healthcare and the insurers in our country? They can’t kick you off their roles, they can’t deny you for pre-existing conditions and they can’t limit your lifetime benefits. Even if you are a staunch believer in the aggressive vaccination schedule and the genetic link to autism you still are going to pay through higher health insurance premiums and higher education costs. This has become our problem. Simply put, the health insurers will have to up the premiums to levels unsustainable and never heard of before and if they are bankrupted by these costs and it becomes a government sponsored program we are still on the hook for these costs. By not assigning blame to anyone we have assured that ordinary citizens will pay for these costs and that the middleclass and the poor will bear the brunt of these costs while the environmental causes go by and large unnamed.
Given that the costs are real what are your thoughts as to how we are going to pay for them?
07:05 AM on 01/16/2012
1. Your $1.1+ trillion error was a calculation mistake predicated on you not understanding your own reference

2. You also have an error from an unstated assumption. You are assuming that the retrospective data will reflect the currently diagnosed population.

Since (a) historically there has been a very strong bias towards diagnosising the more severe cases, (b) the more recent data clearly shows that the main driver of the increase in diagnosis is milder cases--often cases that are so mild there are no ASD medical interventions, your unstated assumption introduces a another massive error to your calculation.

You also failed to consider what the medical costs for 674,377 kids without autism would be.

Bottom line: your analysis is very shoddy.

W&N
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Sharon Hanson
Skeptical of the *pseudo-skeptics*
11:09 AM on 01/16/2012
1. I provided the study and links to my sources. Most people can go to those sources and draw their own conclusions. If they disagree with my calculation they can adjust their numbers accordingly.

2. The study attributed the medical costs of autism and stated that is was a conservative number because most children were only getting basic medical care; that number could increase, the study says as new therapies become available and mainstream. The only thing that is shoddy is your attacks.

If you are so adamant that the numbers are incorrect why don't you put forth your own number? Is it because no matter what way you look at the data it is going to cost our society in the trillions. I think anyone that has to take care of an autistic child or a child on the autism spectrum knows the cost and the numbers in the study confirms their hunches.
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Sharon Hanson
Skeptical of the *pseudo-skeptics*
11:22 PM on 01/15/2012
In prior posts I showed that “the lifetime per capita incremental societal cost of autism is $3.2 million. Lost productivity and adult care are the largest components of costs. The distribution of costs over the life span varies by cost category”. According to the 2010 US census bureau the population under 18 is 74,181,467 and the CDC says that 1 in 110 children have autism or are on the spectrum or .91%. To quantify 674,377 children are under 18 and on the autism disorders spectrum. This translates to a $2.2T cost for the next generation of autistic children and those on the spectrum. It includes lost productivity and opportunity costs as well as indirect and direct medical costs. My detractors will say no, you included this and that and you shouldn’t have. If you believe half of what they say and cut the $2.2T in half that is still a $1.1T hit to our economy.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/health/jan-june11/autismcosts_04-13.html

http://2010.census.gov/2010census/ See Age and Sex Composition

http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/161/4/343
11:31 PM on 01/15/2012
"My detractors will say no, you included this and that and you shouldn’t have. If you believe half of what they say and cut the $2.2T in half that is still a $1.1T hit to our economy."

Wrong again. As repeatedly pointed out to you, the cost figure that you're using from a study that you haven't read doesn't admit a 1/110 incidence extrapolation, *and* pooling everyone aged 0-18 makes no sense at all for comparison purposes, even when you're not screwing up the application of life expectancy figures on top of it.
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Sharon Hanson
Skeptical of the *pseudo-skeptics*
12:54 PM on 01/16/2012
"CDC’s most recent data show that between one in 80 and one in 240 ASD. This is a prevalence of about one percent of children." To quantify I took the population of children under 18 (2010 Census) and divided by110. That percent is .91% or 1% so the math works a couple of different ways.

I used the study's number of $3.2M lifetime cost. The table on PBS's website does a nice job of breaking down those numbers by ranges of ages so the $3.2M number is a compilation of different costs for different age groups spanning their lifetime to come up with the $3.2M. Your attacks have no merit and even if they did anyone can go to these links I have provided and do their own calculation. Links provided again for your convenience and other readers interested in doing their own calculation.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/health/jan-june11/autismcosts_04-13.html
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/features/counting-autism.html
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2006-releases/press04252006.html
http://2010.census.gov/2010census/#/panel-2
02:01 PM on 01/15/2012
IMO, this is iatrogenic death and disease. Don’t believe everything you hear or read in the mainstream media.
http://vactruth.com/2012/01/05/argentina-gsk-vaccine-trial/
http://vactruth.com/2012/01/14/dies-in-mothers-arms/
http://vactruth.com/2011/08/23/vaccine-ingredients-non-ionic-surfactants-tween-80-triton-x-100-nonoxynol-9/
HPV vaccine, pneumococcal vaccines, DPT vaccines, and Hep B vaccines, all contain aluminum! The aluminum containing vaccines have ALL been associated with sudden deaths. Just look at the VAERS database for confirmation. Most of the marketed flu innoculations contain nonionic surfactants as allegedly "inactive" excipients, according to the CDC. But they are far from inactive. We are being defrauded and endangered.

“Vaccine Excipient & Media Summary”

“This section begins with a summary of the excipients included in licensed vaccines in the United States, as of the revision date at the bottom of the page. Excipients are inactive ingredient­s of a drug product necessary for production of a finished pharmaceut­ical formulatio­n.”

http://www­.cdc.gov/v­accines/pu­bs/pinkboo­k/download­s/appendic­es/b/excip­ient-table­-1.pdf
http://www­.cdc.gov/v­accines/pu­bs/pinkboo­k/download­s/appendic­es/b/excip­ient-table­-2.pdf

This is FRAUD pure and simple. Neurotoxic metals, endocrine disruptors­, phase transfer catalysts, ionophores­, and non-human DNA are NOT inactive. It’s time that they were called-out on their lies!
03:19 PM on 01/15/2012
"Just look at the VAERS database for confirmati­on."

Now you're just flailing wildly.
photo
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Sharon Hanson
Skeptical of the *pseudo-skeptics*
03:41 PM on 01/15/2012
Hey Heywood, you didn't mention if you were working here on Huff Post on behalf of Pharma. As always you didn't answer the question, I think it is an important question so I'll ask again. Are you working for pharma in anyway or do you just enjoy using your social ineptness in an attempt to discredit others with your rants. It isn’t working by the way. A yes or no answer will do.
03:35 PM on 01/15/2012
An excellent point.

A number of the vaccines cause autism crowd are in court for healthcare fraud.

I suppose this is inevitable when you have a business that separates parents from their money--often to the tune of $10,000+ per month based on utter BS.

Sadly, there are a remarkable number of parents simply don't care enough about the facts to even read the facts of the trial in Argentina--much less try and follow the science.

Most parents are smart enough to ask for details...like exposure dose etc...

Good news: the courts clearly do care about the facts. The only question left is how many of the anti-vaccs will end up as convicted felons?

W&N
02:53 PM on 01/14/2012
Historically, the words “anaphylaxis” and “allergy” were created to describe vaccine injury. The terms “anaphylaxis” and “allergy” were created by Charles Richet in 1901 and Clemens von Pirquet in 1906, respectively. Prior to advent of vaccination, mass allergy such as serum sickness was unknown. Hence, serum sickness is a man-made malady, i.e., iatrogenic disease. Sudden death from snake bites, vaccines, and cocaine, in otherwise healthy people, are not really all that infrequent, and IMO, they are very likely to share a common underlying pathophysiology.

Is the aluminum, mercury, surfactants, and non-human DNA in vaccines acting as sensitizers for the Shwartzman reaction? I recommend that we all read Chapter 3 of the book titled "Thrombohemorrhagic Phenomena" by Hans Selye, before the last copies disappear. This book should be required reading for all medical school curricula.
03:53 PM on 01/14/2012
Wait, this "SmartVax" cut-and-paste job actually got deleted from AoA? I'm impressed. It's also been well addressed in the past:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/smartvax-versus-maxvax/
04:20 PM on 01/14/2012
Ah, it didn't get deleted, their comment paging is just unlabeled and I missed it. The surfactant remark below is also boilerplate.
10:26 PM on 01/14/2012
@ Heywood and @ lilady -

Here are my references! Where are yours? Do you two have some disclosures to make? Anyone who posts here, with ties to pharma, either direct or indirect, really should disclose those ties. Don't you agree?

Strupp W, Weidinger G, Scheller C, Ehret R, Ohnimus H, Girschick H, et al. Treatment of cells with detergent activates caspases and induces apoptotic cell death. The Journal of membrane biology. 2000;175:181-9.
Preté PSC, Gomes K, Malheiros SVP, Meirelles NC, de Paula E. Solubilization of human erythrocyte membranes by non-ionic surfactants of the polyoxyethylene alkyl ethers series. Biophysical Chemistry. 2002;97:45-54.
Prete PSC, Malheiros SVP, Meirelles, NC, dePaula, E. Quantitative assessment of human erythrocyte membrane solubilization by Triton X-100. Biophysical Chemistry. 2002;97:1-5.
Joshi M, Pathak S, Sharma S, Patravale V. Design and in vivo pharmacodynamic evaluation of nanostructured lipid carriers for parenteral delivery of artemether: Nanoject. International journal of pharmaceutics. 2008;364:119-26.
Gilman S, Koller M, Black RS, Jenkins L, Griffith SG, Fox NC, et al. Clinical effects of Abeta immunization (AN1792) in patients with AD in an interrupted trial. Neurology. 2005;64:1553-62.
Tan SY, Yamanuha J. Charles Robert Richet (1850-1935): discoverer of anaphylaxis. Singapore medical journal. 2010;51:184-5.
Vaughan W. Strange Malady. New York, NY, U.S.A.: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc; 1941.
Huber B. [100 years of allergy: Clemens von Pirquet - his idea of allergy and its immanent concept of disease]. Wiener klinische Wochenschrift. 2006;118:573-9.
10:36 PM on 01/14/2012
"Here are my references­! Where are yours? Do you two have some disclosure­s to make? Anyone who posts here, with ties to pharma, either direct or indirect, really should disclose those ties."

Wow, that's the promptest invocation of the pharma shill gambit I've seen yet. Would you care to respond to the takedown of the assertion "Historical­ly, the words 'anaphylax­is' and 'allergy' were created to describe vaccine injury" that was provided to you? I mean, given that it's a simple repetition of material found elsewhere, I figured fair was fair.

Anyway, why don't you "disclose" *your* "ties," whatever they may be? It's a demand that makes as much sense as yours.
12:21 AM on 01/15/2012
OK, so on to the Gish gallop. Before proceeding, allow me to point out that serum sickness is not an allergic reaction in normal parlance, contrary to the contention above referring to it as a "mass allergy" in immediate proximity to "anaphylaxis." You're really H2328? Wow. So, anyway...

Strupp et al. (2000): I can only see the abstract. It appears to be apropos of pretty much nothing, but as you no doubt have a copy, by all means fill in the blanks. In vitro, I presume? Quantities? Motivation? Thanks.

Preté et al. (2002a, 2002b): Ah, it's becoming clear. Are you asserting that the trace amount of surfactant left in a vaccine dose from manufacturing is going to cause massive hemolysis or something? (Meningoenc­ephalitis? You mean as in *herbicide poisoning*?) Don't you think this might, you know, have been noticed at some point?

Joshi et al. (2008): Apropos of nothing whatever, but I'm sure you have something planned for it. A little voice in my head says "death chips," but maybe that's the death chips talking.

Gilman et al. (2005): Alzheimer disease, meningoencephalitis, *and* immunization. This one's a keeper. Relevance appears to be adjacency of the words.

Tan & Yamanuha (2010): Yah, great. It still wasn't "coined to describe vaccine injury."

Vaughan (1941): Ditto.

Huber (2006): Can't you alphabetize these? Same as the previous two, this time in German!

Anything else?
02:37 PM on 01/14/2012
Hey Seth -

Help me understand! Why would anyone wish to inject or be injected with aluminum? Hep B vaccine, DPT vaccine, and Gardasil contain aluminum. See Table 1 of the recent paper by Kawahara, “Link between Aluminum and the Pathogenesis of Alzheimer's Disease: The Integration of the Aluminum and Amyloid Cascade Hypotheses.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056430/

See also Table 1 in the recent paper “Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?” by Lucija Tomljenovic and Christopher A. Shaw, 2011.

http://omsj.org/reports/tomljenovic%202011.pdf

Non-ionic surfactants, e.g. Triton 100 and Tween 80, found in many of today’s marketed vaccines, have shown the ability to induce apoptotic cell death, hemolysis, and meningoencephalitis. Aluminum hydroxide gels have been used as vaccine adjuvants for many years. There is a well-known relationship between hemolytic activity and adsorption capacity of aluminum hydroxide adjuvants.
04:52 PM on 01/15/2012
Hey Patrons,

Who would put mercury, aluminum, PCBs, DDT, dioxins, etc in to their kids bodies? All these chemicals are found in human breast milk....

Seriously, how many 1000s of times do these errors have to be pointed out?

W&N