Wakefield Vaccination Flap: Running interference for Merck?

by **catbirdsteed** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:01 am

clarification, The following link and comment are from the the comments at the British Medical Journal, and it is the site with the numerous pediatricians referring to verifiable research and successful treatment protocols. The other site is good too, but the BMJ is very high profile and some of its MD posters and contributors are very concerned about what is happening, and some of those are certain that Wakefield's study will be seen as accurate.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7477/1293#89485

F. Edward Yazbak,
Pediatrician, Director
TL Autism Research, Falmouth, Massachusetts 02540 USA

Send response to journal:
Re: A Black Spot ...on a Good Journal

Abi Berger, the physician, is obviously welcome to become informed and educated on medical matters on Television. As a citizen of a free society, she also has every right to become a TV critic and award Four Stars to a show she has so judged [Dispatches. MMR: What They Didn't Tell You –BMJ, November 27].

Unfortunately, when she signed her piece as Associate Editor of the BMJ, she compromised a respectable and good Journal.

Dr. Berger’s commentary has already been carefully criticized by readers and parents alike. I kept hoping that she or the Editor would apologize for its contents but I note with concern that her only “retraction” was not even that.

The problem with the Berger piece is that it concludes that accusations of a TV investigative reporter concerning a researcher are the Gospel Truth. By doing so, the Associate Editor and indirectly the Journal she represents also intimate that the research itself is non-valid.

This is obviously not true and is certainly not supported by the available scientific evidence.

The fact is that sooner or later, Andrew Wakefield will be exonerated, his theory will be accepted and a vaccine-autism connection will be proven. As the New Year comes around, Wakefield’s research is being duplicated in prestigious centers in the United States. In addition, viral culture results are expected soon from the National Institutes of Health laboratories.

I am a pediatrician trained in infectious diseases and I have witnessed first hand what regressive autism is all about. I have also researched its incidence and its autoimmune causes. I have no doubt that the Wakefield hypothesis will stand.

My oldest grandson was totally normal from birth until he had his first well-documented regression after his initial MMR vaccination. He improved for a while and then had a second and more severe regression at age 4 after his MMR booster. This sequence of events known as Challenge- Dechallenge-Rechallenge (CDR) was documented by private physicians, close relatives in the medical profession and photographs. U.S. Courts and a special committee of the Institute of Medicine have acknowledged that CDR proves causation.

In addition, my grandson has typical findings of Wakefield Autistic Enterocolitis, and the specific urinary polypeptides pattern described by Shattock. Although he was never exposed to measles, he has documented evidence of measles virus genomic RNA in his gut wall in addition to elevated serum titers of measles virus antibodies.

There are now hundreds of other children with similar histories and findings, not just twelve anymore. The genetically predisposed children in this subgroup seem to lack the ability to detoxify the mercury in the vaccines they received in the first year of life and have usually succumbed after receiving the combination of the three live viruses in the MMR, often simultaneously administered with several other vaccines.

I have always been and remain pro-judicious vaccination.

I have read all the epidemiological studies denying an MMR-autism connection and found substantial errors in every one of them.

I believe that a vaccine-autism connection exists and I am scientifically- not emotionally- convinced that MMR vaccination can trigger an autistic regression in certain children.

To date, I have not seen a single unbiased reliable clinical study to convince me otherwise.

To prove me wrong, Dr. Berger or any one else only need to show me:

ONE normal child who has evidence of both MMR antibody and Myelin Basic Protein auto-antibodies in his serum or his CSF

Or

ONE child who regressed after MMR vaccination and who does not have one of the following: The gut findings described by Wakefield, a suggestive pattern of urinary polypeptides, elevated serum measles virus antibody, MMR antibody or Myelin Basic Protein auto-antibodies

The prevalence of autistic disorders in the United States is now 1 in 166, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

As the New Year dawns and resolutions are made, I sincerely hope that people of good will are able to join together and support solid unbiased clinical studies aimed at unraveling the mystery of regressive autism.

Whatever its causes, this epidemic must be stopped.

The distinguished Editorial Board of the BMJ should lead the way and support such research.

Competing interests: Personal conflict outlined

The other link to childhealthsafety is good too, definitely more specifically focused on the vac issue.

http://users.navi.net/~rsc/rife1.htm

If i was making a list like tal's I would have included Royal Rife. He devised a prismatic microscope that could observe a LIVE VIRUS in real time, a feat which out current crop of electron microscopes are not now capable of. Rife identified numerous specific virus' including one for cancer. Along with that he had a large database of specific light frequencies correlating with cells and viral pathogens. Well worth looking into. For all the fuzzy energetic medicines we have today, we had Rife as a consummate scientist codifying light medicine all those decades ago. Similarly, I am a fan of Alton Harp, another true scientist/pioneer.

by **compared2what?** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:57 am

catbirdsteed, why are you so invested in Brian Deer's being discredited?

Unless he's just fabricating quotes and forging documents under the names of living people who haven't, for some reason, objected to it, his reporting on Wakefield/MMR is as responsible, well-supported and well-documented as any piece of enterprise journalism I've ever read.

In answer to your earlier question regarding Deer being a complainant in the GMC proceedings against Wakefield -- as far as I'm aware, the only evidence for this being the case is that he's been accused of it by Wakefield supporters. And evidently since at least 2005, because that the date on this letterr from the firm retained by the GMC saying (a) that he isn't; and (b) that they've sent Wakefield's attorneys a letter of clarification on the point.

The letter from the GMC attorneys is a PDF link, so in case that's an issue for anyone, here's the relevant portion:

So: Yes, he is cooperating with the inquiry. And his expose is what led to the inquiry. But I don't see what's odd about that. If I were the GMC, I'd regard the material he reported as something that I needed to see for myself. And if I were Brian Deer, I'd give them any non-confidential records I had and continue on my professional way. Because that would be the civic and appropriate thing to do.

Basically, Deer reall,y really doesn't appear to me to be spewing talking points. He looks like he's dedicating himself to doing good old-fashioned shoe-leather investigative reporting. And then some -- for example, on his website he disproves or persuasively rebuts most of the talking points in the post quoted above in the course of this convenient summary of the story so far

by **catbirdsteed** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 5:36 am

Well, c2w? I am really interested in seeing the extensively verifiable and ongoing first person observations of the thousands of parents and caregivers, and even perhaps hundreds of pediatric doctor- acknowledged. These observations suggest quite bluntly that the fevers fits and seizures happened to their children or patients within a day to 2 weeks after the MMR. Again, verifiable, some of these children never fully recover,..blah, blah , blah.

I did sub-entitle the thread "running interference for merck. That is what I think Deer is caught up in, in spite of his apparant radical or populist slant and otherwise consistent pharmaceutical muckraking . I don't want to to see Wakefield exonerated or Deer crucified. I want to see children being helped through the rigors of iatrogentric, environmental, or inherited illness. I see Wakefield doing real world good in the effort to inform and empower families of autistic children. I see Deer serving the interests of Merck in this instance- whether he knows it or not, whether he likes it or not, or intends it or not- and supporting the call to shut down any more rational understanding of the endocrine and immune system consequences of the MMR shot in toddlers.

I chose the thread title as a good lead line and journalist prop, and because the legal and media battles are significant, but I really don't give a $#!* about in the end. I'm sure you have read from my posts that I do more in this area besides read snippets of web pages and draw out these quixotic threads. I am less interested in affecting public policy than I am in fostering community and family health.
It's the children and the families that I am concerned with and working with. I have a thread going in the Forum about what * I think * we can do on a digestive and metabolic level to help with the physiological symptoms of autism. Do you have any ideas or experience in this area? Do you have any curiosities in this area? Any opinions? Any social, intellectual or spiritual takes on disabilities? I imagine you do, I'm think you have at least referred to such in this thread. More directly to the point of this thread, Do you have an opinion on the MMR vaccine? I could infer what it might be, but I have not yet bothered to do so. If you expressed it already, I missed it.

Your posts are often well researched, enchantingly glib, and compassionately phrased. And I really like them. I don't want to personally concern myself as to why you want to see Wakefield discredited. You have said why. Shouldn't it be (even slightly?) obvious by now where I am coming from? Please continue to post items to the contrary regarding my assertion, but do you need to keep asking why I am doing what I am doing?

At any rate, your reference truly is a good one and speaks directly to my inquiry as to Deers alleged conflict of interest. If I have the energy and focus I can come up with many more references to counter Deer's allegations. But as I said before, "blah blah blah"
But I did not say DEER was "spewing talking points" I said the the media's talking points were primarily Deer inspired. There is also this other good bit of "hard journalism" related to all this, supporting Deer and discrediting Wakefield, and it is The Lancet's retraction. I don't have a direct link to it yet but here is a reference to such :

http://www.kids-care.com/Vaccines/mmr-a ... action.htm

Financial conflict of interest

In a Feb. 23 online statement, the Lancet editors leveled charges against Wakefield, the most serious of which is that he did not tell his collaborators about funding he received from the Legal Aid Board, a British legal fund representing parents of children suing the vaccine’s maker over alleged injuries.

Based on an investigation by the British newspaper The Sunday Times into the events surrounding the publication of the 1998 article, Lancet editors claim Wakefield received £55,000 to perform “virological investigations as part of a study funded by the Legal Aid Board.”

The funded research was not directly related to the case review, but “since there was a substantial overlap of children in both the Legal Aid Board funded pilot project and the Lancet paper, this was a financial conflict of interest that should have been declared to the editors and his [Wakefield’s] co-authors and was not,” Lancet editors said.

Wakefield did not return requests for an interview, but in a published response to the Lancet editors, he called the funded research “a hypothesis-testing laboratory study to examine for the presence or absence of measles virus in autistic children when compared with appropriate controls,” to elucidate the causative factors in the children’s intestinal findings.

Wakefield admitted receiving the Legal Aid funding but said it did not influence his review. Furthermore, Wakefield said the list of 10 patients reviewed for the unpublished virological investigation was given to him by Richard Barr, a lawyer with ties to the Legal Aid Board.

Barr reportedly listed patients who had been referred to the Royal Free College for treatment, but who also had contacted the legal board regarding pending MMR litigation. According to Wakefield, any overlap between the 12 children in the case series and the 10 cases reviewed for causality occurred without his knowledge, as he was unaware of the legal status of the children reviewed in the 1998 Lancet study.

So there you are, Thanks for the fun thread!

by **compared2what?** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 1:08 pm

catbirdsteed wrote:Well, c2w? I am really interested in seeing the extensively verifiable and ongoing first person observations of the thousands of parents and caregivers, and even perhaps hundreds of pediatric doctor- acknowledged. These observations suggest quite bluntly that the fevers fits and seizures happened to their children or patients within a day to 2 weeks after the MMR. Again, verifiable, some of these children never fully recover,..blah, blah , blah.

I share that interest. Wakefield's study obstructs rather than advances it. Incidentally, his research (for which he was being paid by an undisclosed non-medical third-party with a significant extant financial interest in the results demonstrating a link between bowel disease, measles vaccine and autism) did include performing invasive medical procedures for which there was no clinical necessity on young human research subjects, one or two of whom sustained significant injuries as a result of it. Chapter and verse to follow in the evening.

I did sub-entitle the thread "running interference for merck. That is what I think Deer is caught up in, in spite of his apparant radical or populist slant and otherwise consistent pharmaceutical muckraking.

Given that there is absolutely no evidence at all that he is, why do you think that, exactly?

I don't want to to see Wakefield exonerated or Deer crucified. I want to see children being helped through the rigors of iatrogentric, environmental, or inherited illness. I see Wakefield doing real world good in the effort to inform and empower families of autistic children. I see Deer serving the interests of Merck in this instance- whether he knows it or not, whether he likes it or not, or intends it or not- and supporting the call to shut down any more rational understanding of the endocrine and immune system consequences of the MMR shot in toddlers.

What real-world good work have you seen Wakefield do along these lines? And what indications have you seen that Deer is serving the interests of Merck in any way other than that in the course of revealing that the deceptive and dishonest actions and conclusions of Andrew Wakefield constituted a threat both to the public health in general and to the children whom they concerned in particular, he couldn't avoid revealing that the study the bogus nature of which he was exposing had been paid for by Merck's legal adversaries?

As I've said before, the real-world bad acts of others as reported by Brian Deer are not Brian Deer's responsibility, but rather that of the bad actors.

I chose the thread title as a good lead line and journalist prop, and because the legal and media battles are significant, but I really don't give a $#!* about in the end. I'm sure you have read from my posts that I do more in this area besides read snippets of web pages and draw out these quixotic threads. I am less interested in affecting public policy than I am in fostering community and family health.
It's the children and the families that I am concerned with and working with. I have a thread going in the Forum about what * I think * we can do on a digestive and metabolic level to help with the physiological symptoms of autism. Do you have any ideas or experience in this area? Do you have any curiosities in this area? Any opinions? Any social, intellectual or spiritual takes on disabilities? I imagine you do, I'm think you have at least referred to such in this thread.

I have no first-hand experience in the area of anything that bears directly on the posited relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. I'm agnostic on the subject of their being such a relationship, and strongly inclined to believe that environmental and other toxins are a key contributing factor to just about every childhood developmental disorder in existence. Not to mention un-disordered childhood development. I have a strong and longstanding interest in the scandalous inadequacies and abuses of what passes for mental health treatment in American culture and society. And that's primarily a social concern, although in practice it's inevitably also an intellectual one, I guess. Spiritual? Do I have a spiritual take on disabilities? I'm not sure I understand the question. My spiritual life doesn't extend beyond my personal sphere and is not a factor in my assessment of what constitutes the social abuse and exploitation of vulnerable populations.

I have the opinion, as expressed in this post and on this thread, that Wakefield's work has been demonstrably proven to be bogus. I base that opinion on the extensive evidence that it is bogus. None of that evidence has yet been proven to be erroneous, flawed or dubious. Nor has the substance of any of that evidence yet been directly contested by Wakefield or by anybody else on its merits. Although it has been dismissed on the grounds that Deer is Big Pharma's bitch, wittingly or unwittingly, and while that may indeed be the case, it is -- at this point -- purely a speculative one.

More directly to the point of this thread, Do you have an opinion on the MMR vaccine? I could infer what it might be, but I have not yet bothered to do so. If you expressed it already, I missed it.

Agnostic. See above.

Your posts are often well researched, enchantingly glib, and compassionately phrased. And I really like them. I don't want to personally concern myself as to why you want to see Wakefield discredited. You have said why. Shouldn't it be (even slightly?) obvious by now where I am coming from? Please continue to post items to the contrary regarding my assertion, but do you need to keep asking why I am doing what I am doing?

Well, no. I don't need to. I don't understand why you are. But I can live with that.

Nor do I want to see Wakefield discredited, per se. It's more like: He has been discredited, and I see it. Insofar as in a general sense, I want to acknowledge the truth to the best of my ability to ascertain it, however personally unwelcome that truth might be, I suppose that you could say that I saw it because I wanted to see it. And that wouldn't really be inaccurate. It would just be willfully misleading.

At any rate, your reference truly is a good one and speaks directly to my inquiry as to Deers alleged conflict of interest. If I have the energy and focus I can come up with many more references to counter Deer's allegations. But as I said before, "blah blah blah"
But I did not say DEER was "spewing talking points" I said the the media's talking points were primarily Deer inspired. There is also this other good bit of "hard journalism" related to all this, supporting Deer and discrediting Wakefield, and it is The Lancet's retraction. I don't have a direct link to it yet but here is a reference to such :

http://www.kids-care.com/Vaccines/mmr-a ... action.htm

Financial conflict of interest

In a Feb. 23 online statement, the Lancet editors leveled charges against Wakefield, the most serious of which is that he did not tell his collaborators about funding he received from the Legal Aid Board, a British legal fund representing parents of children suing the vaccine’s maker over alleged injuries.

Based on an investigation by the British newspaper The Sunday Times into the events surrounding the publication of the 1998 article, Lancet editors claim Wakefield received £55,000 to perform “virological investigations as part of a study funded by the Legal Aid Board.”

The funded research was not directly related to the case review, but “since there was a substantial overlap of children in both the Legal Aid Board funded pilot project and the Lancet paper, this was a financial conflict of interest that should have been declared to the editors and his [Wakefield’s] co-authors and was not,” Lancet editors said.

Wakefield did not return requests for an interview, but in a published response to the Lancet editors, he called the funded research “a hypothesis-testing laboratory study to examine for the presence or absence of measles virus in autistic children when compared with appropriate controls,” to elucidate the causative factors in the children’s intestinal findings.

Wakefield admitted receiving the Legal Aid funding but said it did not influence his review. Furthermore, Wakefield said the list of 10 patients reviewed for the unpublished virological investigation was given to him by Richard Barr, a lawyer with ties to the Legal Aid Board.

Barr reportedly listed patients who had been referred to the Royal Free College for treatment, but who also had contacted the legal board regarding pending MMR litigation. According to Wakefield, any overlap between the 12 children in the case series and the 10 cases reviewed for causality occurred without his knowledge, as he was unaware of the legal status of the children reviewed in the 1998 Lancet study.

So there you are, Thanks for the fun thread!

You're welcome. Wakefield actually received almost $800,000 in Legal Aid funding, not $55,000. But that wasn't publicly known at the time of the Lancet's retraction, and evidently neither Wakefield nor Barr felt obligated to let them know about it.

It was also later established that the funded research was directly related to the case review. There were, in fact, one and the same thing.

Thank you for the compliment to my research skills. But I haven't been doing anything I'd characterize as "research" for these posts. I've been doing what I'd characterize as "reading."

Although I do see some leads to two different lines of possible future research in connection with this case. But I haven't had time to pursue either of them, and have no idea if they'll pan out. But they probably won't. Just going by the odds.

I'll try to provide more linkage later today. But anyone who wants to start checking any of this out themselves can try the summary at Deer's website to which I linked earlier. He has a lot of documentation posted there.

Oh! That reminds me. I was wrong about the defamation thing.

Wakefield did file a defamation claim against Deer, the Times, and Channel Four back when the first part of the expose came out. He tried to avoid taking any further action on the case after filing it, and if it had just been against Deer, he probably could have gotten away with that. It's a relatively common method of silencing critics who can't afford to mount a lengthy and labor-intensive legal defense, even in the United States, where there's a stronger tradition of anti-SLAPP rulings than there is in Europe. In this particular instance, however, Channel Four had the resources to pick up the gauntlet, which they did.

Will put pertinent excerpt of above-linked summary in separate post, as this one has now become almost infinite.

by **compared2what?** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 1:12 pm

Here you go. Extensive links in original.

by **compared2what?** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:31 am

catbirdsteed wrote:So there you are, Thanks for the fun thread!

cbs, when I posted this morning, I pretty much overlooked the sugarcoated hostility because in such a serious context, it's of very little importance to me whether someone wants to call me glib, or imagine that I'm concealing my notional but strongly held opinion wrt the MMR vaccine's relationship to autism, or question what experience makes me think I'm qualified me to speak to the subject, and so forth. So I just addressed the substance of what you wrote, without taking enough notice of the style to perceive that the "Thanks for the fun thread!" quoted above might be your way of letting me know that you were hanging up on me in the middle of the discussion.

I very much hope that isn't the case. For many reasons, one of which is having now done a little of what I would call research, I'm disturbed enough to want most earnestly to request that you direct me to the many references discrediting Deer that you mention. Because they sure wouldn't be "blah blah blah" to me.

Thanks,

c2w

by **catbirdsteed** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 4:54 am

Oddly enough, c2w? I am serious in my compliments and not pushing a passive aggressive an homonym line, but I was being flippant. I said I like your posts and mean it, although this thread has been challenging. And I see that a few other folks besides us are still reading it. My last post was a nod to the argument against Wakefield and the first reference here will -sort of - be also,

http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=1849

A pro Deer editorial, and this post has numerous comments, some decent citing and points on both sides and a lot of sniping. Mr Deer himself is a frequent poster on this page! And as recently as yesterday. So, well worth looking at, Pro, Anti, or Agnostic.

On a few occasions I have referred to and linked to some of this other research and treatment protocol in support of Wakefield's ideas and postulations. That alone does not vouch for his data, but the first that comes to mind is from Mary Megson MD, currently practicing in Richmond VA.

http://www.whale.to/a/megson5.html

By Mary Megson, MD

I have practiced pediatrics for twenty-two years, the last fifteen years seeing only children with developmental disabilities, which include learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and autism.

In 1978, I learned as a resident at Boston Floating Hospital that the incidence of autism was one in 10,000 children. Over the last ten years I have watched the incidence of autism skyrocket to 1/300-1/600 children.

Over the last nine months, I have treated over 1,200 children in my office. Ninety percent of these children are autistic and from the Richmond area alone. Yet the State Department of Education reports that there are only 1,522 autistic students in the entire state of Virginia.

MHMR (Mental Health Mental Retardation) agencies have created local infant intervention programs, and they have had a hard time keeping up with the numbers of delayed infants and toddlers. I have served as advisor to the City of Richmond and the surrounding counties as they have established entire programs for autistic children that fill multiple classes in several schools in each district.

The segment of children with “regressive autism,” the form where children develop normally for a period of time then lose skills and sink into autism, most commonly at 18-24 months of age, is increasing at a phenomenal rate. I am seeing several children in the same family affected, including in the last week four cases of “autistic regression” developing in four-year-old children after their MMR and DPT vaccination. In the past, this was unheard of.

In the vast majority of these cases, one parent reports night blindness or other rarer disorders which are caused by a genetic defect in a G protein, where they join cell membrane receptors, which are activated by retinoids, neurotransmitters, hormones, secretin and other protein messengers. G proteins are cellular proteins that upgrade or downgrade signals in sensory organs that regulate touch, taste, smell, hearing and vision. They are found all over the body, in high concentration in the gut and the brain. They turn on or off multiple metabolic pathways including those for glucose, lipid and protein metabolism as well as cell growth and survival.

Close to the age of “autistic regression,” we add pertussis toxin, which completely disrupts G alpha signals. The opposite G proteins are turned on without inhibition leading to the following:

1. Glycogen breakdown or gluconeogenesis. Many of these children have elevated blood sugars. There is a 68 percent incidence of diabetes in parents and grandparents of these children.
2. Lipid breakdown which increases blood fats that lead to hyperlipidemia. One-third of families has either a parent or grandparent who died from myocardial infarction at less than 55 years of age and was diagnosed with hyperlipidemia.
3. Cell growth differentiation and survival which leads to uncontrolled cell growth. There are 62 cases of malignancies associated with ras-oncogene [a cancer gene] in 60 families of these autistic children.

The measles antibody cross reacts with intermediate filaments which are the glue that hold cells together in the gut wall. The loss of cell-to-cell connection interrupts aproptosis or the ability of neighboring cells to kill off abnormal cells. The MMR vaccine at 15 months precedes the DPT at 18 months, which turns on uncontrolled cell growth differentiation and survival.

Most families report cancer in the parents or grandparents, the most common being colon cancer. The genetic defect, found in 30-50 percent of adult cancers, is a cancer gene (ras-oncogene). It is the same defect as that for congenital stationary night blindness.

G-protein defects cause severe loss of rod function in most autistic children. They lose night vision, and light-to-dark shading on objects in the daylight. They sink into a “magic eye puzzle,” seeing only color and shape in all of their visual field, except for a “box” in the middle, the only place where they get the impression of the three dimensional nature of objects.

Only when they look at television or a computer do they predictably hear the right language for what they see. They try to make sense of the world around them by lining up toys, sorting by color. They have to “see” objects by adding boxes together, thus “thinking in pictures.” Their avoidance of eye contact is an attempt to get light to land off center in the retina where they have some rod function.

Suddenly mother’s touch feels like sand-paper on their skin. Common sounds become like nails scraped on a blackboard. We think they cannot abstract, but we are sinking these children into an abstract painting at 18 months of age and they are left trying to figure out if the language they are hearing is connected to what they are looking at.

The defect for congenital stationary night blindness on the short arm of the X chromosome affects cell membrane calcium channels which, if not functioning, block NMDA/glutamate receptors in the hippocampus where pathways connect the left and right brain with the frontal lobe.

Margaret Bauman has described a lack of cell growth and differentiation in the hippocampus seen on autopsy in autistic children. The frontal lobe is the seat of attention, inhibition of impulse, social judgment and all executive function.

When stimulated, these NMDA receptors through G proteins stimulate nuclear vitamin A receptors discovered by Ron Evans and his colleagues in December, 1998. When blocked, in the animal model, mice are unable to learn and remember changes in their environment. They act as if they have significant visual perceptual problems and have spatial learning deficits.

Of concern is the fact that the hepatitis B virus protein sequence was originally isolated in the gene for a similar retinoid receptor (RAR beta), which is the critical receptor important for brain plasticity and retinoid signaling in the hippocampus. After the mercury is removed, I understand we will restart hepatitis B vaccine at day one of life. Studies need to be done to determine if this plays an additive role in the marked increase in autism.

I am using natural lipid soluble concentrated cis form of vitamin A in cod liver oil to bypass blocked G protein pathways and turn on these central retinoid receptors. In a few days, most of these children regain eye contact and some say their “box” of clear vision grows. After two months on vitamin-A treatment some of these children, when given a single dose of bethanechol [a drug related to acetlycholene, a substance that transmits nerve impulses] to stimulate pathways in the parasympathetic system in the gut, focus, laugh, concentrate, show a sense of humor and talk after 30 minutes, as if reconnected.

Dr Megson does have some presentation points on her resume...

http://www.feingold.org/megson.html

House Government Reform Committee
on Autism and Vaccines
Representative Dan Burton, Chairman
April 6, 2000

Mary N. Megson, MD

Mr. Chairman, Honorable Dan Burton and members of the committee; My name is Mary Norfleet Megson. I am a board-certified pediatrician, Fellowship trained in Child Development, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Medical College of Virginia. I have practiced pediatrics for twenty-two years, the last fifteen years seeing only children with Developmental Disabilities, which include learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and autism.

In 1978, I learned as a resident at Boston Floating Hospital that the incidence of autism was one in 10,000 children. Over the last ten years I have watched the incidence of autism skyrocket to 1/300-1/600 children. Over the last nine months, I have treated over 1,200 children in my office. Ninety percent of these children are autistic and from the Richmond area alone. The State Department of Education reports that there are only 1522 autistic students in the state of Virginia.

MHMR agencies have created local infant intervention programs, and have had a hard time keeping up with the numbers of delayed infants and toddlers. I have served as advisor to the City of Richmond and the surrounding counties as they have established entire programs for autistic children that fill multiple classes in several schools in each district. The segment of children with "regressive autism," the form where children develop normally for a period of time then lose skills and sink into autism most commonly at 18-24 months of age, is increasing at a phenomenal rate. I am seeing multiple children in the same family affected, including in the last week four cases of "autistic regression" developing in four-year-old children after their MMR and DPT vaccination. In the past, this was unheard of.

In the vast majority of these cases, one parent reports night blindness or other rarer disorders which are caused by a genetic defect in a G protein, where they join cell membrane receptors, which are activated by retinoids, neurotransmitters, hormones, secretin and other protein messengers. G proteins are cellular proteins that upgrade or downgrade signals in sensory organs that regulate touch, taste, smell, hearing and vision. They are found all over the body, in high concentration in the gut and the brain: and turn on or off multiple metabolic pathways including those for glucose, lipid, protein metabolism and cell growth and survival. Close to the age of "autistic regression," we add pertussis toxin, which completely disrupts G Alpha signals. The opposite G proteins are on without inhibition leading to:

1. Glycogen breakdown or gluconeogenesis. Many of these children have elevated blood sugars. There is sixty-eight percent incidence of diabetes in parents and grandparents of these children.

2. Lipid breakdown which increases blood fats that lead to hyperlipidemia. One-third of families has either a parent or grandparent who died from myocardial infarction at less than 55 years of age and was diagnosed with hyperlipidemia.

3. Cell growth differentiation and survival which leads to uncontrolled cell growth. There are 62 cases of malignancies associated with ras-oncogene in 60 families of these autistic children. The measles antibody cross reacts with intermediate filaments which are the glue that hold cells together in the gut wall. The loss of cell to cell connection interrupts apoptosis or the ability of neighboring cells to kill off abnormal cells. The MMR vaccine at 15 months precedes the DPT at 18 months, which turns on uncontrolled cell growth differentiation and survival.

I have some other items in mind, and this came together fairly fast. I have not looked for any criticism's of Dr Megson. If she ever becomes well enough known, I'm sure she will have her detractors, regardless of how successful at treatment she is in the real world. c2w?, part of my frustration in this process has been that is was taking too much of my time, and another gripe- that perhaps came out to you as questioning your qualifications- is based on my having revealed a fair amount of my personhood- vocationally, emotionally- regarding my views on this issue. I figured I would ask the same of you. I am not demanding this, but I was willing to prod a bit...

Not everyone needs to spend time with severely autistic kids. I simply happen to be good at it, and it is fairly easy work to get. Not everyone who is a parent of an autistic child would agree with Wakefield, but there seem to be hundreds who do. As far as the "fun thread" comment, well it has been provocative and challenging to my process, and not at all in a bad way, and I didn't think I needed to return, but I was excited to post the leftbrainrightbrain when I got in tonight. Lo, there was your invitation for more discussion!

by **catbirdsteed** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:51 pm

c2w? one more quasi-personal note: the glib comment, especially the enchantingly word choice was inspired in large part by a couple of hours spent with the 'bird girl art' thread in the lounge. Truly a fascinating thread of wonderful images, and your attempts to keep various posters on topic are hilarious and so off the cuff that glib- and not in a pejorative sense- seemed apt word.

having now done a little of what I would call research, I'm disturbed enough to want most earnestly to request that you direct me to the many references discrediting Deer

I'm sorry, but I will continue to post info that is in support of Wakefield's findings. I don't have that kind of patience and perceptions to go after Deer. Muckraking muckrakers is not my forte. The main issue to me is that numerous parents and pediatricians had been suspicious of the GI issues for years before Wakefield was hired to prove that. Deer has the power of numerous serious heavy hitters on his side in this battle, but if I can identify work in that vein (of specific criticism), I will do my best to remember to save it for forewarding. Much of what I could find quickly would prob . be too anecdotal to be of any use to you. Again, I did not start this thread to prove Wakefield right or even to prove Deer wrong, but to look into the timing and manipulation of the story for political ends. I think the ruling of the "special masters" in the US court late last week generally verified that for me. How did that look to you, c2w?

More (sort of) to the point here is another doctor identifying a different internal response from the one Dr. Megson identifies in the previous post. From my understanding the debilitated Vit A pathway and the IGF 1 suppression would not have to be mutually exclusive in victims of excessive or too-early-in-infancy innocs.

http://www.defeatautismyesterday.com/HGH.htm

Dr. Karen Porte is a Chicago native. She attended college at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she graduated with a B.S. in Biology at the age of 19. She went on to attend Medical School at Loyola-Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, Illinois. There, she earned a Doctor of Medicine degree after which she performed an Internship and Residency in Internal Medicine, also at Loyola. Finally, Dr. Porte went on for a Fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism. At present, she is in private practice in Joplin, Missouri, where she has cultivated an interest in issues related to pituitary dysfunction. Anecdotally, Dr. Porte has noticed a connection between autism and its’ spectrum of disorders, with brain/hormonal abnormalities including growth hormone deficiency. She is here to present her promising information to us.
-edit-
It is a question as old as life itself, the conundrum of nature versus nurture. Within the last forty years, the identified incidence of neurodevelopment disorders in the spectrum ranging from autism, with its’ myriad of presentations, to OCD, BDD, and ADHD have skyrocketed. Arguably, given the major advancements in perinatal care and the emergence of Neonatology, such may have impacted the latter. Yet, the developments cited in no way explain the fact that the defined disorders have risen in frequency from an estimated 1:10,000 in the mid 1940’s, to 1:2,500 in the mid 1980’s, to the current incidence of 1:150 by today’s standards. Curiously, the aforementioned developmental variants have demonstrated an abnormal gender predisposition with a reported male to female incidence approximating 4:1 in most reputable studies. These same investigations have demonstrated that the quoted escalation of incidence cannot be explained merely by changes in the diagnostic criteria, population migration or other readily identifiable factors.
-edit-

Ragusa was among the first to describe a potential connection between growth hormone deficiency and autism in 1991. Other investigators have anecdotally reported that autistic children often manifest low IGF-1 levels, and may further respond to the supplemental utilization of thyroid replacement or cortisone. Within my personal experience, it has been my observation that children with Autism, Asperger’s, OCD and ADHD appear to manifest a unifying abnormality, that of pituitary dysfunction, including growth hormone deficiency. Theoretically, the latter concept has merit noting that under the very best or circumstances, the human brain and nervous system are only rudimentarily developed even within a full term pregnancy.
It has been my privilege to study a series of 7 children with a spectrum of autistic features as defined by classic DSM-IV criteria (5 with Autism and 2 with Aspberger’s) Although none of the children involved manifested the expected findings of short stature and delayed bone growth, each one of them was documented to have severe hypo-secretory levels of growth hormone with corresponding low IGF-1 levels following the controlled infusion of a provocative stimulus in the form of Arginine. In six of the index cases, the seventh who has not yet begun therapy, all have demonstrated a dramatic and favorable response to the exogenous administration of growth hormone (Nutropin AQ â Genentech), and in most cases, thyroid supplementation as well. The majority of the children specified began to manifest demonstrable improvement following two to four months of hormone replacement therapy. Most gratifying of all, has been the noticeable advancement in communication skills, socialization and academic performance.
It is critical importance to understand that the Endocrine system is the universal link which permits one organ to communicate with another, thereby uniting the human body into an integrated whole. Although standard practice has tended to define physiology from the viewpoint of single organ analysis, one cannot escape the inevitable conclusion that neurotransmitters and their hormonal regulation are the slender threads which interwoven define the fabric of life itself. As such, should any of the threads, the individual organs, become disrupted or dysfunctional, the overall effect must be global in its presentation. One must appreciate that the exact same neurotransmitters which govern the complexities of our thoughts, insights, emotions and powers of reasoning, are the very same chemicals which modulate the entire Endocrine system.

by **catbirdsteed** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 3:54 pm

http://www.whale.to/vaccine/walker999.html

Investigating for Whom ?
Deer’s article and much of his television programme focused on one of Dr Wakefield’s research papers which looked at twelve children who appeared to have been adversely affected by measles virus introduced into their system through vaccination. Dr Wakefield had been writing about the role of measles virus in Crohn’s disease since the late 1980s. The review of 12 cases published in the Lancet,7 suggested a link between MMR vaccination, gastrointestinal problems and the onset of autism in some children.8 In a press briefing that accompanied the publication of the paper, Dr Wakefield had suggested that working on the precautionary principle, it might be better to revert to the single vaccines until research and clinical work at the Royal Free Hospital established proof or rebuttal of the link.

7 Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, Linnell J, Casson DM, Malik M, Berelowitz M, Dhillon AP, Thompson MA, Harvey P, Valentine A, Davies SE, Walker-Smith JA. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. The Lancet 1998; 351: 637-641.
8 This paper was one of eighty odd papers published by Wakefield between 1991 and 1998. The publications cover different aspects of Wakefield’s research as it moved from Crohn’s disease specifically to inflammatory bowel disease. A number of these papers mention the part played by measles virus.

Deer’s article presented the case against Wakefield in sensational terms, as if Wakefield was a quack or a charlatan and as if, he, Deer, had just discovered, astoundingly, that Wakefield’s research was biased, unethical and untrustworthy. ‘The scandal arises from the journal's publication in February 1998 of a scientific report on the ‘findings’ in the cases of 12 autistic children, apparently admitted routinely to the Royal Free hospital in North London in 1996-97’ [authors italics].

In fact, Deer was stepping late into one of the biggest controversies in contemporary medical science. He was presenting very serious allegations against a paper which had been published over five years previously by The Lancet and which had already faced a barrage of criticism from the vaccine producers and policy makers and their supporters. This assault on Wakefield’s integrity was stepped up in 2001 when the Medicines Control Agency (now the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency - MRHA) got together with the Department of Health (DoH), the Royal College of General Practitioners, (RCGP) the British Medical Association (BMA), the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) to publish an unprecedented rebuttal of a later Wakefield paper which suggested that prior to licensing the safety of MMR had not been sufficiently tested.9 For nine years prior to Deer’s article, Wakefield has been victim to a deepening web of intrigue, irrational opposition and dirty tricks.

The nub of Deer’s article suggested that Wakefield stood ‘discredited for misleading his medical colleagues and The Lancet, the professional journal that published his findings’, having failed to ‘…disclose he was being funded through solicitors seeking evidence to use against vaccine manufacturers.’10 In a more temperate academic climate, this charge, were it proven without doubt, something which the newspaper article did not do, might have led to an inquiry into conflict of interest, non disclosure of funding and possible bias. As most medical research funding today comes from industry - particularly the pharmaceutical industry - and the arguments and informal rubrics now introduced by some journals over disclosure are relatively novel, it is unlikely that had this charge been manufactured in 1998 definitely proven, they would have had little effect upon the research findings themselves.11

9 Andrew J. Wakefield and Scott M. Montgomery. Measles, Mumps, Rubella vaccine: Through a glass darkly. Adverse Drug React. Toxicol. Rev. 2000, 19(3) 1-19. Oxford University Press.
10 The solicitor Richard Barr has been putting together claims on behalf of parents of damaged children since 1992. The cases have faced opposition at every turn from the Lord Chancellor Department and in the year 2000, with the cases not far from a hearing, legal aid was stopped.
11 The pharmaceutical companies have argued for many years along with other industrial producers, that funding sources do not affect research outcome.

Almost immediately on publication of the Sunday Times article, however, The Lancet claimed that The Sunday Times evidence meant that the finding linking MMR and autism was ‘…entirely flawed’ and should never have been published.12 John Reid, the Secretary for Health, who had clearly played a part in the article’s make up, called, in the article, ‘…for an inquiry by the General Medical Council (GMC) ‘as a matter of urgency.’13 Interestingly the inquiry that Reid wanted was into Dr Wakefield’s fittingness to practice medicine and not into his research findings.

With the support of others, Deer lodged a complaint against Dr Wakefield with the GMC within days of the article appearing. Within six months, evidently needed to prepare the case and draw up the documents, the GMC had opened a case and Wakefield awaited an arraignment before the GMC Preliminary Proceedings Committee. The charges against Wakefield and, as it turned out, two other doctors, Professor Murch and Professor Walker-Smith, stemmed almost entirely from Deer’s article.14

In the event, it was to take the GMC almost four years to bring Dr Wakefield before a panel and then the hearing was to last for an incredible one and a half years. Throughout this long drawn out trial, and in effect from the first time that Dr Wakefield warned the government about a major public health crisis involving hundreds of adversely affected children, over a 15 year period the government pursued its vaccine policy without publicly announced change, hindrance or any hint of self criticism.

12 Sir Crispin Davis, Chief Executive of Reed Elsevier plc, publishers of the Lancet, and one of Europe’s largest publishing company… was appointed as a non-executive director to the board of GlaxoSmithKline – vaccine manufacturers and defendants in the MMR litigation - in July of last year. [Comment by John Stone in his enlightening correspondence with the BMJ. 30 September 2004] He was knighted in 2004 for his services to the Information Industry. Two other Board members of Elsevier are also Board members of companies in the Akzo Nobel group which owns Organon one of the manufacturers of HRT. Another Board member is also on the board of Smith and Nephew a large US health care corporation.
13 Although Reid got his ‘urgent’ complaint to the GMC, he must have been joking about the urgency with which it was pursued, or perhaps the Scots have different temporal notions to the English.
14 The opportunity has been taken, in preparation for the GMC PPC hearing, to introduce further issues, principally suggesting that Wakefield had various procedures carried out on children for the purposes of pursuing research rather than treatment.

-edit-

From Golden Boy to just ‘boy’
Prior to his first findings, published in a number of research papers that measles virus found in the gut of some children after the triple vaccination MMR, might be the cause of inflammatory bowel disorders and possibly connected to a regressive autism spectrum disorder, Dr Wakefield had been a much lauded medical researcher.

Most of his work at the Royal Free Hospital (RFH) Medical School in North London between 1986 and 1994 had moved forward the understanding of the cause and treatment of Crohn’s disease. He had been royally funded by the biggest pharmaceutical companies and was one of the principle fund earners at the Medical School.

As early as 1992, Dr Wakefield had written to the Department of Health asking for a meeting with David Salisbury, principle medical officer for communicable diseases and immunisation, when he became concerned that measles might be implicated in Crohn’s disease. In 1996, Wakefield wrote again to the then Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth Calman, asking for a meeting to discuss the possibility that the measles component of MMR was playing a part in the development of bowel disease similar to Crohn’s disease. When Wakefield finally did get a meeting in 1997 with Tessa Jowell, then the new Secretary of Health, Calman gave him twenty minutes to make his case for more government funded research and a temporary halt to use of the triple vaccine.

Following the publication of the 1995 paper about the original MMR trials and his first attempts to get a meeting with the then Secretary of State for Health, Wakefield’s career began to unravel. Within a year, all funding for his research from pharmaceutical companies had dried up and in 1998, following the publication of the Lancet paper, having declined a non research based position, the RFH Medical School refused to re-new his contract.

All the major institutions of pharmaceutical medicine and supporters of the Government’s MMR policy - including the NHS, BMJ, BMA, and the ABPI - began making noises which called into question Wakefield’s work, his ethics, his intelligence and his honesty. In the early years of 2000, Wakefield felt forced to leave England to work in North America where it appeared that the monopoly grip of socialised medicine was not strangling independent research into public health.

The Description of a Battlefield
Battles between industries, industrial science and renegade scientists have become relatively common over the last two decades. It seems to be a singular feature of these conflicts that they easily spin out of the academic arena, where the rules of scientific debate used to hold sway, into the domain of the tabloids where a manufactured essence is regurgitated in lurid sound bites.

Despite the fact that opposition to Dr Andrew Wakefield has consistently argued proof of the complete safety of the triple vaccination, no scientific evidence exists for this assertion, nor, logically, could it.15 In reality, the conflict has been shaped by the forces opposed to Wakefield in almost completely personal terms. He has been depicted as a dishonest anti-vaccine quack, opposed with head-banging partiality to vaccinations and therefore a threat to both parents and the public health. When the charges were eventually framed by the GMC and laid before him, a number of them contained the accusation that he was ‘dishonest’.

As is usual with character assassinations conducted by industrial interests, none of the above could be further from the truth. Until 1995, Andrew Wakefield was considered one of the most orthodox of clinical research workers. His medical education was conservative, his early work in the field of immunology and transplantation was classical and he had never voiced even the slightest support for alternative medicine or anti-vivisection.16 Even with the publication of The Lancet paper, he did not voice any anti-vaccine views. Wakefield’s dissident status was undoubtedly forced upon him and even then his response has been that of a concerned doctor and not a political subversive. He has only ever raised serious scientific questions about the original trials for MMR and the safety of the present measles virus as it is included in the combined MMR vaccination.

by **catbirdsteed** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:07 pm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02086.html

Maker of Vioxx Is Accused of Deception

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 16, 2008; Page A01

Two teams of researchers with access to thousands of documents gathered

for lawsuits over the painkiller Vioxx allege that Merck waged a campaign of deception to promote its drug, moving slowly to warn of possible hazards while at the same time dressing up in-house studies as the work of independent academic researchers.

The reports in today's Journal of the American Medical Association in effect accuse one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical makers of various forms of scientific fraud.

One study alleges that Merck gave the Food and Drug Administration an incomplete accounting of deaths in a clinical trial of Vioxx in people with mild dementia. Federal regulators eventually received the data, which added to growing evidence that Vioxx increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Simultaneously, Merck was using what the JAMA authors call "guest authorship and ghostwriting" to make it appear that research done by its employees or contractors was the work of scientists at medical schools and universities. That presumably gave the findings more credibility when they were published, in medical journals, boosting Vioxx's profile in the crowded painkiller market.
ad_icon

Vioxx, whose generic name is rofecoxib, went on the market in 1999. It became a "blockbuster," with $2.3 billion in sales in 2003, but Merck voluntarily withdrew it in September 2004 after several studies showed that it increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Since then, Merck has been named in 26,500 lawsuits by people who say the drug harmed them. Last fall, the company created a $4.85 billion fund to settle the claims while not admitting that Vioxx caused heart attacks, strokes or deaths.

The two JAMA papers -- which were based on access to company documents made public through the lawsuits -- say they provide a look at widespread practices in the pharmaceutical industry. This view was endorsed in an editorial signed by Catherine D. DeAngelis, the journal's editor, who wrote: "But make no mistake -- the manipulation of study results, authors, editors, and reviewers is not the sole purview of one company."

Although the two studies question the integrity of dozens of physicians and scientists, the JAMA authors did not seek responses from them. Several of those people yesterday called the conclusions incorrect, incomplete or unfair.

A spokesman for Merck's legal team dismissed the JAMA authors as "people in the pay of trial lawyers."

It is things such as this that do serve to remind that it matters little if Deer or Wakefield are smelling of shit. Merck is patently responsible for thousands (50k is the typical count) of deaths from Vioxx. And, they lied about the testing procedures for the opportunity to do so. Do you trust them on the vac MMR?

c2w? posted:

And what indications have you seen that Deer is serving the interests of Merck in any way

Timing, timing, timing. Especially in regards to the three special "vaccine court" cases heard and defeated this week, only days after the Wakefield incident - Deers accusations, that is- was dragged back out into the headlines. Wakefield's research was out for few years before the Deer article- nothing suspicous there- and the Deer article was written years ago. So, why now for the big blitz on this Deer report? Deer just happened to be in the US last week while this was all unfolding. Could be a coincidence. Could be he is, politically, in the role of a gatekeeper.

Another recent commentary about one of the major players in the MMR scandal:

February 16, 2009
Voting Himself Rich: CDC Vaccine Adviser Made $29 Million Or More After Using Role to Create Market

Thirty pieces of silver By Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill

Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) took home a fortune of at least $29 million as part of a $182 million sale by CHOP of its worldwide royalty interest in the Merck Rotateq vaccine to Royalty Pharma in April of last year, according to an investigation by Age of Autism. Based on an analysis of current CHOP administrative policies, the amount of income distributed to Offit could be as high as $46 million.

There is nothing improper about receiving compensation for a patented innovation; but the extraordinary valuation placed on CHOP’s patents raises concerns over Offit’s use of his former position on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to help create the market for rotavirus vaccine -- to effectively vote himself rich.

Offit has steadfastly refused to say how much he made from the vaccine. Based on the income distribution guidelines set forth in CHOP’s current administrative policy manual (HERE) entitled “Patent and Intellectual Property Policy,” Offit’s share of this transaction -- the “inventor’s share of net income” -- would have earned him a personal distribution of 30%. In a Moody’s report dated June 2008, CHOP reported net proceeds from the Rotateq transaction of $153 million, a deal basis that would put the value of Offit’s 30% share at $45.9 million.

Although the royalty transaction amounts and current CHOP inventor shares are publicly known, several factors complicate a precise calculation of Offit’s income. Royalty Pharma paid $182 million for the Rotateq royalty stream, but CHOP reported proceeds of only $153 million. Since most universities calculate income based on net royalties, the lower number might more closely reflect the basis for calculating Offit’s income. If CHOP applied an inventor share of 30% to a transaction value of $153 million they would have then been required to distribute $45.9 million to Offit.

CHOP’s 30% policy for inventor share is consistent with the current practices of other children’s hospitals. But depending on what standard was in effect when the patents were filed and how it was applied to Offit’s proceeds, the amount could be lower. For example, the $29 million difference between the payment made by Royalty Pharma and the proceeds received by CHOP comprises 15.9% of the Royalty Pharma payment (15% is the lowest inventor share percentage we uncovered in our investigation) and could reflect the distribution to Offit,

So although it is clear that Offit’s personal share of CHOP’s royalty transaction was large, the exact amount could range from as little as $29 million to as much as $55 million. Age of Autism chose to feature the smaller amounts in this report.

by **catbirdsteed** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 1:56 am

Some more specific allegations of collusion regarding Brian Deer and The Sunday Times with certain persons involved with MMR development. I'm not yet clear if Merck made all the MMR jabs for the UK, or until what time. It looks like GSK was in the process of developing one for some markets.

http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/

Efforts to Deny Compensation to MMR Vaccine Child Victims

Legal Aid funded claims by children started as early as 1991 and well before Dr Andrew Wakefield warned the British public about the vaccine. His efforts were met with the full force of the British establishment to discredit him and proceedings before the General Medical Council resumed only yesterday, which have been going on for three years.

The main false accusation levelled in February 2004 was that Wakefield made his disclosures in a medical paper published in The Lancet medical journal because he wanted to make money being an expert witness in Court. But few people know the following [and there is naturally full documentation on this].

The Chief Executive of the owners of “The Lancet”, Crispin Davis, had a few months earlier been brought onto the Board of Directors of MMR litigation Defendants’ parent company GlaxoSmithKline in the prior July [2003].

Brian Deer, a freelance journalist was commissioned by The Sunday Times two months later in September 2003 to write the stories attacking Wakefield.

This was about two weeks before the Legal Services Commission final decision was due on withdrawal of Legal Aid from the MMR children’s UK litigation and which did withdraw legal aid.

The person who commissioned Deer was Paul Nuki, Sunday Times’ sometime Head of Newsroom investigations and “Focus” editor. Paul Nuki is son of Professor George Nuki. Professor George Nuki in 1987 sat on the Committee on Safety of Medicines when the CSM was considering Glaxo company Smith Kline & French Laboratories’ Pluserix MMR vaccine for safety approval. The CSM approved Pluserix MMR but it caused very high levels of adverse reactions and was withdrawn by the manufacturers on very little notice in late 1992 leaving the Department of Health in an embarrassing position.

Large numbers of British children were injured and legal aid claims had already started from as early as 1990, six years before Wakefield became involved and contrary to The Sunday Times’ false claims that this was all a scam set up by Wakefield and solicitor Richard Barr.

Sitting on the CSM with Professor George Nuki was Professor Sir Roy Meadow and Professor Sir David Hull. Professor Sir Roy Meadow is now notorious for his evidence falsely condemning mothers around the world for killing their children. This includes the Sally Clark case where vaccines are directly implicated in the cause of death, as revealed by Neville Hodgkinson in The Spectator, (What killed Sally Clark’s child? | The Spectator 16 May 2007 ) but which were specifically discounted by Professor Meadow in his evidence, despite sitting on the joint CSM/JCVI vaccine safety sub-committee with Professor David Salisbury and others to approve the MMR vaccine.

It was Professor Sir David Hull in 1998 who, as chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, started the attacks on Wakefield’s work. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advises the Department of Health on vaccination issues and the childhood vaccination programme. As Chairman of the JCVI, Professor Sir David Hull could have taken action to deal with the issues over the MMR and protect British children. Despite his attacks on Wakefield’s work, alleging unethical research on children for no clinical benefit, two years later in 2000, it was Professor Sir David Hull who rewrote the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health ethical guidelines to permit research on children where there was no clinical benefit (albeit in The Royal Free’s case all the investigations were clinically justified).

The Sunday Times’ freelancer was assisted in his efforts with free advice and assistance from the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry funded and controlled company Medico Legal Investigations Limited. Medico Legal Investigations Limited speciality was in getting medical doctors on charges before the General Medical Council. So we know that before a single word was published by The Sunday Times, it was already being planned with the involvement of interested parties that Wakefield and colleagues were to be taken before the GMC.

Another free of charge helper to Sunday Times’ journalist Deer was Glaxo Wellcome funded Fellow and active British Medical Association member, Dr Evan Harris MP. Harris has advised and assisted Deer up to the present, including attending the Wakefield GMC hearings with Deer.

by **compared2what?** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 2:53 am

First of all, thank you for your kind words, and my apologies for not hearing the kindness in them.

I only asked for the discrediting info on Deer because you said you could provide it, and because I myself can't locate any ethical missteps on his part, nor any verifiable errors in his reporting. And that's a very rare experience for me. Supporting info on Wakefield is equally welcome, and I appreciate your having made the effort. So thank you for that also.

The Vioxx case has always appeared to me to be a pretty clear-cut case of vile-pharmaceutical-business-as-usual. May they all reap what they have sown, I say. With feeling. And no, I don't trust Merck or any other pharmaceutical company. Or, for that matter, practically any incorporated entity at all that I haven't personally researched, not excluding public charities, private foundations, and grassroots advocacy alliances. (Although I don't automatically suspect them all, either, I'm not that gloomy.) However, the Vioxx case has no direct bearing on whether Wakefield did or did completely falsify the data in the Lancet study and/or get paid a lot of money for doing it. Also, I'm going to have to table Offitt-related tangents for the moment, unless thay have any direct bearing on Wakefield, because I...um...Well, to be candid, I don't know Thing One about Offit, and I don't have enough spare time to add researching another opaque and byzantine networks of power and capital to it while I'm still in the middle of Wakefield and Wakefieldians. Would it be okay if we did Offit on another thread?

Would it also be okay if I annotate the blatant errors of fact in the Walker link tomorrow? Possibly tomorrow evening? It's the end of a long day, and soon it will be the beginning of another. But after that it will be tomorrow evening! Plus, I've also been looking at a bunch of as-yet unmentioned players, can't yet tell whether they're going to turn out to be interesting or dead ends, and want to reserve judgment in part until I can. If I ever can.

There are blatant errors of fact in the Walker excerpt, though. One of which I've already mentioned: Deer did not complain to the GMC about Wakefield to the GMC, nor is there any evidence that he initiated whatever contact he has had with the GMC. Nor did he do anything malicious to Wakefield when he gave the GMC documentation that they mightn't have needed to get from Deer if Wakefield weren't declining to cooperate with the investigation, owing to his unwillingness to tolerate its outrageous and unreasonable requests for stuff like records related to his research.

In short: Deer is not a complainant in those proceedings. He doesn't have the legal standing to be one. And he's not one. Anyone who's following either the proceedings or the actions of Brian Deer closely has no excuse for not knowing that. Because Deer has been very forthright about making the information available, along with the documentation that attests to its veracity and bona fides, as linked to earlier in the thread.

I'm very tired and probably didn't make it clear how much I genuinely do appreciate your willingness to continue amiably to discuss issues to which you're so strongly committed. But I do genuinely appreciate it. And also greatly respect it.

by **compared2what?** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 3:26 am

catbirdsteed wrote:Some more specific allegations of collusion regarding Brian Deer and The Sunday Times with certain persons involved with MMR development. I'm not yet clear if Merck made all the MMR jabs for the UK, or until what time. It looks like GSK was in the process of developing one for some markets.

http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/

Efforts to Deny Compensation to MMR Vaccine Child Victims

Legal Aid funded claims by children started as early as 1991 and well before Dr Andrew Wakefield warned the British public about the vaccine. His efforts were met with the full force of the British establishment to discredit him and proceedings before the General Medical Council resumed only yesterday, which have been going on for three years.

The main false accusation levelled in February 2004 was that Wakefield made his disclosures in a medical paper published in The Lancet medical journal because he wanted to make money being an expert witness in Court. But few people know the following [and there is naturally full documentation on this].

The Chief Executive of the owners of “The Lancet”, Crispin Davis, had a few months earlier been brought onto the Board of Directors of MMR litigation Defendants’ parent company GlaxoSmithKline in the prior July [2003].

Brian Deer, a freelance journalist was commissioned by The Sunday Times two months later in September 2003 to write the stories attacking Wakefield.

This was about two weeks before the Legal Services Commission final decision was due on withdrawal of Legal Aid from the MMR children’s UK litigation and which did withdraw legal aid.

The person who commissioned Deer was Paul Nuki, Sunday Times’ sometime Head of Newsroom investigations and “Focus” editor. Paul Nuki is son of Professor George Nuki. Professor George Nuki in 1987 sat on the Committee on Safety of Medicines when the CSM was considering Glaxo company Smith Kline & French Laboratories’ Pluserix MMR vaccine for safety approval. The CSM approved Pluserix MMR but it caused very high levels of adverse reactions and was withdrawn by the manufacturers on very little notice in late 1992 leaving the Department of Health in an embarrassing position.

Large numbers of British children were injured and legal aid claims had already started from as early as 1990, six years before Wakefield became involved and contrary to The Sunday Times’ false claims that this was all a scam set up by Wakefield and solicitor Richard Barr.

Sitting on the CSM with Professor George Nuki was Professor Sir Roy Meadow and Professor Sir David Hull. Professor Sir Roy Meadow is now notorious for his evidence falsely condemning mothers around the world for killing their children. This includes the Sally Clark case where vaccines are directly implicated in the cause of death, as revealed by Neville Hodgkinson in The Spectator, (What killed Sally Clark’s child? | The Spectator 16 May 2007 ) but which were specifically discounted by Professor Meadow in his evidence, despite sitting on the joint CSM/JCVI vaccine safety sub-committee with Professor David Salisbury and others to approve the MMR vaccine.

It was Professor Sir David Hull in 1998 who, as chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, started the attacks on Wakefield’s work. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advises the Department of Health on vaccination issues and the childhood vaccination programme. As Chairman of the JCVI, Professor Sir David Hull could have taken action to deal with the issues over the MMR and protect British children. Despite his attacks on Wakefield’s work, alleging unethical research on children for no clinical benefit, two years later in 2000, it was Professor Sir David Hull who rewrote the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health ethical guidelines to permit research on children where there was no clinical benefit (albeit in The Royal Free’s case all the investigations were clinically justified).

The Sunday Times’ freelancer was assisted in his efforts with free advice and assistance from the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry funded and controlled company Medico Legal Investigations Limited. Medico Legal Investigations Limited speciality was in getting medical doctors on charges before the General Medical Council. So we know that before a single word was published by The Sunday Times, it was already being planned with the involvement of interested parties that Wakefield and colleagues were to be taken before the GMC.

Another free of charge helper to Sunday Times’ journalist Deer was Glaxo Wellcome funded Fellow and active British Medical Association member, Dr Evan Harris MP. Harris has advised and assisted Deer up to the present, including attending the Wakefield GMC hearings with Deer.

The problem with attributing (or even connecting) the withdrawal of the Legal Services Commission funding to Deer's reporting is that the funds were withdrawn in September 2003. And Deer's first article wasn't published until February 2004. So to believe that the court was influenced by an assignment having been made two weeks before its ruling on the matter would entail believing not only that the court had some reason to be aware of the day-to-day in-house article-commissioning activities of the Times , but also that it had somehow obtained detailed mystical foreknowledge of reporting and writing that had not yet been done.

I'm sure you see my point.

I must go to sleep now, but will look into the other elements of the above charges anon.

by **catbirdsteed** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 5:02 am

So to believe that the court was influenced by an assignment having been made two weeks before its ruling on the matter would entail believing not only that the court had some reason to be aware of the day-to-day in-house article-commissioning activities of the Times , but also that it had somehow obtained detailed mystical foreknowledge of reporting and writing that had not yet been done.

I'm sure you see my point.

Well no, not really. That is a difficult sentence. But why would the court need both, Why not just the first- "the court had some reason to be aware of the day-to-day in-house article-commissioning activities of the Times" Why would the mystical foreknowledge be an issue, and why mention it here? To make it sound impossible for some courts and some newspapers to be in collusion on any of a variety of issues for political or economic gain? How unlikely is that? IMHO, not very!

From the Walker piece

The Chief Executive of the owners of “The Lancet”, Crispin Davis, had a few months earlier been brought onto the Board of Directors of MMR litigation Defendants’ parent company GlaxoSmithKline in the prior July [2003].

Brian Deer, a freelance journalist was commissioned by The Sunday Times two months later in September 2003 to write the stories attacking Wakefield.

This was about two weeks before the Legal Services Commission final decision was due on withdrawal of Legal Aid from the MMR children’s UK litigation and which did withdraw legal aid.

This is a bit like what happened last week, with Deers story resurfacing- and greatly here in the US- and the triple reject special masters single judge vaccine court, here also. And one of our dear subjects here, Mr Deer, here also. Of course, Dr Wakefield and his staff has been here for years, apparently still puncturing colons and extracting spinal fluid from hapless disabled children, all the while raking in huge fees (sarcasm: mine, but it looks as though the fees are typically quite high). Honestly, someone finding his website would not be turned away by shrill rhetoric or gaudy anything. In fact it is quite demure and well thought out, not my style, but not deterred by it. [url]thoghtfulhouse.org[/url] Similarly with Deers site. nonetheless...

Science is a bejeweled, brightly lit dead end leading us away from the human spirit and the connections and trust with the workings of the intuitions, both acquired and innate. To follow the lead of science, to put science before family, before community and before the sanctity of the individual is folly. To consistently ignore or reject evidence before you and then blindly act on impulse- no matter how clear- will also lead to ruin.

by **alwyn** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 4:12 pm

HI. Sorry, didn't see a seperate thread on Offit, so I'm sticking this one on here. Please feel free to move it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090218/hl_ ... es_offit_2

Vaccine book brings out hidden support:
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox, Health And Science Editor – Wed Feb 18, 2:41 am ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When the letters and e-mails started to pour in, Dr. Paul Offit braced himself.

The pediatrician and vaccine inventor is a prominent defender of childhood vaccines, tackling those who have argued that immunizations can cause autism.

His book, "Autism's False Prophets," takes on British researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield, whose now-debunked 1998 study in the prestigious Lancet medical journal linked the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism. It also criticizes organized groups that advise parents to avoid vaccinating their children for fear the vaccines may cause autism.

The issue is at the center of a vociferous and often vicious debate, despite the preponderance of scientific opinion in favor of vaccination.

Offit has endured hate-filled letters, death threats and even a phone call that menaced his children. However, his book was greeted with an outpouring of support from parents of children with autism who had previously remained silent.

"It's actually been exactly the opposite of what I would have guessed," Offit said in an interview.

One mother of an 8-year-old autistic boy wrote: "It really angers me when I hear others vilify you."

Another example: "I am a very unpopular mother at my children's school as I do advocate that children need to get their shots," writes the mother of a 10-year-old boy with autism.

"I would rather deal with autism (even though some days I go bananas) than bury a child to a disease that could have been prevented."

DESPERATE PARENTS

Autism is a brain disorder characterized by problems with social interaction, repetitive behavior and other symptoms.

People with a mild version called Asperger's syndrome usually function relatively well in society, although they have problems relating to others. People with the most extreme symptoms may be unable to speak and may also suffer severe mental illness and retardation.

Surveys by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that one in every 150 children falls into the so-called autism spectrum. No one knows what causes autism, there is no good treatment and parents are understandably often despondent.

Last week a special U.S. federal vaccine court ruled against three families who claimed vaccines caused autism in their children. Offit hopes the ruling, on top of dozens of scientific reports, may reassure parents whose fears about vaccines have caused a plunge in vaccination rates in developed countries.

As a result, childhood illnesses like measles are making a comeback. More than 1,300 measles cases were reported in England and Wales in 2008, and 197,000 people died globally from measles in 2007.

In January, an unvaccinated 7-year-old in the U.S. state of Minnesota died of meningitis caused by Haemophilus influenzae, an infection prevented by a routine childhood vaccine.

These numbers frustrate public health officials, who cite study after study showing no link between vaccination and autism.

Some vaccine doubters believe that doctors and federal health agencies such as the CDC have colluded with vaccine makers to cover up vaccine dangers.

Many have accused Offit of harming children. One caller even threatened Offit's own children.

"The guy said, 'We all want what is best for our children, and you want what is best for your children, Will and Emily, who go to the Kenwood school.' And then he hung up. That scared me," Offit said.

Offit has in particular been doubted because he helped invent the Rotateq vaccine now marketed by Merck and Co to prevent rotavirus.

SHOCKING DEATH

"We were never paid by Merck. Our funding always came from NIH (the U.S. National Institutes of Health)," he said.

His determination to invent a vaccine began in 1979 when, as doctor in training at the University of Pittsburgh, he helped a team struggling to save a 9-month-old baby with severe diarrhea and vomiting from rotavirus.

"I have never seen a child so dehydrated," Offit said. "We tried to get an IV line into her. She never moved," he said.

"We all just stood there in shock that someone had died of viral diarrhea. The mother was outside. Then you have to open the door and tell her to come in and see her dead girl, this previously healthy, 9-month-old girl."

Offit and other experts say that parents today rarely see their children die of diseases that a few decades ago routinely carried off young children, and thus sometimes cannot appreciate the value of vaccines.

They note that every few years the rationale against vaccination changes. First opponents said the measles vaccine somehow caused the mysterious condition; then they argued that it was the mercury-based preservative in some vaccines, and later put forward the idea that some children are somehow predisposed to be hyper-sensitive to vaccines.

Some fear vaccines somehow damage or weaken the immune system. Yet in the vaccines against 14 different diseases now given to U.S. children, there are fewer immunological agents than in two shots given in 1980, Offit said.

"You have living on the surface of your body trillions of bacteria. You are hammered when you are born, and you can handle it. Vaccines are nothing. Vaccines are a drop in the ocean," he said.

This is the same Offit who invented the Rotavirus vaccine. The one which had many deaths as a reaction to the vaccine. Here's one article:

http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/sto ... ily36.html

Study: GSK vaccine may increase risk of convulsion, death
Triangle Business Journal - by Adam Linker

GlaxoSmithKline's rotavirus vaccine, called Rotarix, is associated with an increased risk of convulsions and pneumonia-related deaths in children taking it, according to a review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Rotovirus is the most common cause of severe diarrhea and dehydration among infants and young children.

The study, which enrolled about 63,000 children, found a statistically significant increase in convulsions and deaths related to pneumonia compared with a placebo, the review says.

and:

http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArt ... 36Benefits and risks of rotavirus vaccine

Tetravalent rhesus rotavirus vaccine was licensed for use in infants in the United States (US) in 1998 and its use was suspended in 1999 because of evidence of an association with intussusception (1). An editorial in the BMJ last week contrasted the benefits and risks of the vaccine in North America and in the developing world (2) and argued that further randomised controlled trials of this rotavirus vaccine in developing countries could be justified.

The clustering of cases of intussusception in the weeks after immunisation with tetravalent rhesus rotavirus vaccine in the US represented an additional risk of 1 in 10 000 for this complication (1) in a country where 20 deaths from rotavirus diarrhoea occur each year (2). Charles Weijer’s editorial points out that there is too little evidence to say whether other rotavirus vaccines are more or less likely to be associated with intussusception (2). He argues that the case fatality of intussusception in developing countries might be as high as 25% and suggests that between 2000 and 3000 deaths might result each year if tetravalent rhesus rotavirus vaccine were to be used widely, compared with between 600 000 and 800 000 deaths a year from rotavirus diarrhoea (80% preventable by use of the vaccine) (2). Waiting three to five years for evidence about the next rotavirus vaccine to accrue rather than making use of the existing vaccine could result in 1.4 to 3.2 million preventable deaths (2).

Weijer argues that ‘if one is culpable for vaccine related deaths, then one is also culpable for deaths caused by withholding the vaccine.’ He recognises that the risk of death or serious disability must be lower for vaccines given to healthy children than for treatments given to children who are already ill, but argues that the benefits and risks must be assessed in the light of local circumstances (2).

Sounds as if Offit stands to lose quote a bit in either reputation or resources if vaccine liability suits are allowed to move forward.

Most naturopaths and homeopaths abhor vaccines. There may be a reason for this. Certainly (regarding Offits citing the HIB vaccine) giving a child a vaccine on DAY ONE of life is fricking nuts. IMHO.

Wakefield Vaccination Flap: Running interference for Merck?

Who is online