Did Andrew Wakefield Perpetrate an "Elaborate Fraud"?

[barracuda]

Why are we continuing to inject millions upon millions of people with thimerosal?

Maybe because of costs, and maybe because the fungal and bacterial infections incident to the injection of improperly preserved vaccines present a greater danger than the thimerosal, which hasn't really been demonstrated to be dangerous despite numerous studies.

The concentration of mercury in a thimerosal-laden shot of influenza vaccine is such that if you diluted the 0.5 ml dose with 2 quarts of water it would still qualify as toxic waste by EPA standards.

Can we examine this statement? I mean, by citing the relevant EPA standard in ppm and relating that to the influenza shot+two quarts of water thing? Because baloney like this is why I enter these arguments at all, if you really want to know. So let's do this...

An infant shot of "Thimerosal Preserved" vaccine such as Chiron's Fluvirin and Aventis' Fluzone is a dose of 0.25-mL containing 50 ppm of mercury. There are four doses in a milliliter so 50 ppm/4 = 12.5 ppm in one mL.

1 US quart = 0.946352946 liter, but let's just call it one-to-one for ease of understanding, even though the dilution is actual more. So our dilution with two quarts of water would now be:

12.5 / 2000 = 0.00625 ppm

The Food and Nutrition Board of Institute of Medicine of the National Academies recommends that foods contain no more than 2 parts per million of lead and no more than one ppm of mercury. So injesting fifty mercury laden fishsticks of the proper size can give you the same level of exposure to mercury as a thimerosal preserved flu shot.

The federal requirements for drinking water are far more stringent. They set 0.002 parts per million in drinking water as the maximum allowable amount.

As someone who deals with federal guidelines regarding inorganic contaminants in drinking water on a daily basis, I can assure you that 0.00625 ppm of mercury is by no stretch of the imagination considered "toxic waste". You could double or quadruple that amount, and it still wouldn't be. The Department of Health would require a municipality or small water system to solve this problem by further diluting the contaminated water with water of a lower level of mercury to meet the requirements. And the reason for the discrepancy between the maximum levels for food and water is that it is expected that municipal residents will be exposed to whatever contaminants are in their water for years or decades on end. If, however, you happen to be drinking from an unregulated private well (in California at least) the chances that you are exposed to inorganic contaminants on a regular basis are quite high. But even in the case of a municipal problem associated with such contamination, the DHS almost never shuts down the water supply while the dilution/mixing is being accomodated. You drink what you get til it's fixed. It's not considered toxic waste, or deadly, whatsoever.

However, I'd be interested to know just where you got that idea in the first place - did you make it up as a colorful but misguided piece of rhetoric? Or had you encountered this massively erroneous bit of wisdom somewhere in your travels?

Undead questioned my motivations upthread, and the reality is that I've never taken psychiatric medication, and neither has anyone in my family. I'm not really pro-pharma at all, just anti-tehstupid.

Whether [Wakefield] fudged the onset of symptom dates (which seems to be the heart of Deer's new "explosive" allegations, but please correct me if I'm wrong), hardly matters from a scientific POV. It would call into doubt Wakefield's integrity, of course, but it really would not change the conclusions of the study one iota.

It would if the onset of symptoms occurred before the individual came into contact with the vaccine, wouldn't it?

[stickdog99]

So, now it was the vaccinations rather than differences in natural immunity that wiped out the Native Americans? Damn! So vaccines can now go back in time to save our forefathers? Is there anything these modern wonders of medical health can't do?

You missed the point. Whether or not vaccines are safe may have more to do with the context ie time, place and recipient population, than anything else. In other words, vaccines are not monolithic, as in not_one_thing.... whereas the Mercury Militia do seem to be, no matter where you find them. Weird that.

I couldn't disagree more. What is weird to me personally is one cannot even broach the subject of vaccine safety without quickly being branded as an anti-science, anti-rational, anti-vax member of the marching mercury militia.

What I truly believe is that most vaccines and vaccine ingredients are pretty well tolerated by most people. Since the risks are small for most people, if the vaccine actually confers significant benefits, then these benefits surely exceed the risks for these people as well as for society as a whole.

On the other hand, there is at least a small percentage of people for whom vaccination can have devastating consequences. This is well-known in legal circles, which is why vaccines have long been designated "unavoidably unsafe" (a legal term) in order to limit the liability of vaccine manufacturers.

Instead of researching what can be done to mitigate the "unavoidably unsafe" nature of vaccines, all such research is vilified and all questioning of the safety and efficacy of any vaccine or vaccine ingredient is met with derisive personal attacks.

Here is one concrete example of what I am talking about. Aluminum hydroxide (alum) is used in dozens of vaccines because its irritating nature produces a strong immune response that significantly increases the antibody efficacy of most vaccines. But is it really a good idea to inject infants with a shitload of alum?

I know an undergraduate student who did a study that showed that the alum in antiperspirants can induce genetic damage in lymphatic tissue. Is this what we want to inject into our babies? Where are the animal toxicology studies that show which levels of injected alum are safe and which levels are problematic? I sincerely challenge anyone here to produce a single such study.

Where are the primate studies showing that the recommended schedule of infant vaccination is safe? I sincerely challenge anyone here to produce a single such study. After considering this, you have to ask yourself why these studies have never been done and are currently not being done (except, of course, by Wakefield and company before his career was crushed like a bug).

To understand why these studies have never been performed as well as why vaccine manufacturers insist on using thimerosal and alum in so many of their vaccines to this day, you need to put yourself in the shoes of a vaccine manufacturer. Thimerosal and alum have been used by dozens of vaccine manufacturers for scores of years. They are cheap, reasonably effective for their purpose and most importantly "presumed safe." If research on these ingredients supports their safety, it doesn't really help vaccine manufacturers as these products have been "generally recognized as safe" for use in vaccines since well before the FDA came into existence. However, if new research shows these ingredients are dangerous when injected, that opens vaccine manufacturers to huge liability claims. Furthermore, vaccine manufacturers will have to replace these ingredients with new ingredients that, not being "generally recognized as safe" historically, will be subject to laborious premarket approval processes. So research on the actual safety of these ingredients is basically all pain and no gain for vaccine manufacturers.

Here is what the FDA says about the safety of aluminum in vaccines:

Why is aluminum in some vaccines?

Aluminum adjuvant containing vaccines have a demonstrated safety profile of over six decades of use and have only uncommonly been associated with severe local reactions. Of note, the most common source of exposure to aluminum is from eating food or drinking water.

Hey, they have been used for 60 years, so what are you so worried about? Note the complete lack of toxicological information. Damn, you drink & eat other sources of aluminum everyday, so why should you be worried about injecting these chemicals into your infant's arm over and over and over? Huh? What's your problem?

How does FDA evaluate adjuvants for safety and efficacy?

When evaluating a vaccine for safety and efficacy, FDA considers adjuvants as a component of the vaccine; they are not licensed separately.

LOL. Vaccine manufacturers are even allowed to use injections of adjuvants as their "placebo control" in order to demonstrate vaccine safety and efficacy. That's right. Having been used for 60 years to induce a strong immune response, alum has now somehow graduated to "inert placebo" status.

Watch for Brian Deer's scathing expose' on this travesty of "science". It's coming soon to a hallucination near you!

Why is formaldehyde in some vaccines?

Formaldehyde has a long history of use in the manufacture of certain viral and bacterial vaccines. ... The average quantity of formaldehyde to which a young infant could be exposed to at one time through vaccines is very small and is considered to be safe. Although high concentrations of formaldehyde can damage DNA (the building block of genes) and cause cancerous changes in cells in the laboratory, formaldehyde is an essential component in human metabolism and is required for the synthesis of DNA and amino acids (the building blocks of protein). Therefore, all humans have detectable quantities of natural formaldehyde in their circulation. In addition, quantities of formaldehyde at least 600-fold greater than that contained in vaccines have been found to be safe in animals.

Note the final mention of formaldehyde toxicological level that was completely absent from the alum apologetic.

[stickdog99]

Can we examine this statement? I mean, by citing the relevant EPA standard in ppm and relating that to the influenza shot+two quarts of water thing? Because baloney like this is why I enter these arguments at all, if you really want to know. So let's do this...

An infant shot of "Thimerosal Preserved" vaccine such as Chiron's Fluvirin and Aventis' Fluzone is a dose of 0.25-mL containing 50 ppm of mercury. There are four doses in a milliliter so 50 ppm/4 = 12.5 ppm in one mL.

1 US quart = 0.946352946 liter, but let's just call it one-to-one for ease of understanding, even though the dilution is actual more. So our dilution with two quarts of water would now be:

12.5 / 2000 = 0.00625 ppm

The Food and Nutrition Board of Institute of Medicine of the National Academies recommends that foods contain no more than 2 parts per million of lead and no more than one ppm of mercury. So injesting fifty mercury laden fishsticks of the proper size can give you the same level of exposure to mercury as a thimerosal preserved flu shot.

The federal requirements for drinking water are far more stringent. They set 0.002 parts per million in drinking water as the maximum allowable amount.

As someone who deals with federal guidelines regarding inorganic contaminants in drinking water on a daily basis, I can assure you that 0.00625 ppm of mercury is by no stretch of the imagination considered "toxic waste". You could double or quadruple that amount, and it still wouldn't be. The Department of Health would require a municipality or small water system to solve this problem by further diluting the contaminated water with water of a lower level of mercury to meet the requirements. And the reason for the discrepancy between the maximum levels for food and water is that it is expected that municipal residents will be exposed to whatever contaminants are in their water for years or decades on end. If, however, you happen to be drinking from an unregulated private well (in California at least) the chances that you are exposed to inorganic contaminants on a regular basis are quite high. But even in the case of a municipal problem associated with such contamination, the DHS almost never shuts down the water supply while the dilution/mixing is being accomodated. You drink what you get til it's fixed. It's not considered toxic waste, or deadly, whatsoever.

However, I'd be interested to know just where you got that idea in the first place - did you make it up as a colorful but misguided piece of rhetoric? Or had you encountered this massively erroneous bit of wisdom somewhere in your travels?

Sorry, my numbers were slightly off as I was doing this from memory.

http://www.epa.gov/waste/hazard/tsd/mercury/regs.htm

If mercury levels in a waste exceed the Toxicity Characteristic Leach Test (TCLP) level of 0.2 mg/L for mercury, then the waste is identified as a hazardous waste based on the toxicity characteristic.

The mercury level of any CDC-approved multivial H1N1 vaccine is 49 mg/L. That's 245 times greater than the EPA's standard for toxic waste. Multidose flu vaccines are toxic waste.

Feel free to correct my misapprehensions as "this is why you enter these arguments at all."

[barracuda]

No thanks, I just wanted to clarify that your previous statement regarding the dilution of the vaccine as "toxic waste" was complete nonsense. I believe just about any medicine you might name when encountered by the EPA in a concentrated pool or pile of sufficient quantity for them to take note of would probably qualitfy as hazardous waste. So what? The EPA doesn't regulate medical dosages unless they're found in the wild. I wouldn't want a small child encountering a large puddle of Robitussen either, really, or mophine, or for that matter any number of naturally occurring heavy metals or inorganic chemicals in a concentrated form of which the EPA might require cleanup. But any bearing that has on the discussion at hand is weak to the point of negligibility.

[stickdog99]

No thanks, I just wanted to clarify that your previous statement regarding the dilution of the vaccine as "toxic waste" was complete nonsense. I believe just about any medicine you might name when encountered by the EPA in a concentrated pool or pile of sufficient quantity for them to take note of would probably qualitfy as hazardous waste. So what? The EPA doesn't regulate medical dosages unless they're found in the wild. I wouldn't want a small child encountering a large puddle of Robitussen either, really, or mophine, or for that matter any number of naturally occurring heavy metals or organic chemicals in a concentrated form of which the EPA might require cleanup. But any bearing that has on the discussion at hand is weak to the point of negligibility.

LOL. Sure. "Just about any medicine you might name" contains concentrations of mercury 200+ times greater than EPA's standard for toxic waste. LOL.

Thanks for playing!

[barracuda]

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL The EPA doesn't regulate medicine, LOL LOL LOL

[stickdog99]

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL The EPA doesn't regulate medicine, LOL LOL LOL

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, indeed.

Thanks for playing again. Your "argument" is unassailable!

[barracuda]

LOL

[stickdog99]

OK. I give up. What are you trying to prove?

I am trying to prove if you spilled, say, a pint of multivial influenza vaccine, it would qualify as toxic waste by EPA's mercury standards 240+ times over. Do you dispute this or can we stipulate it into the record without exceeding the EPA's standards for multiple LOLs?

[barracuda]

The link there is to a page which lists dozens of medicines, perhaps hundreds, depending upon how you parse it, which would qualify as hazardous waste given the condition of pints or quarts being encountered outside of their medicinal millieu.

Look, man, I don't wanna fight. I appreciate your point of view, when you're not LOL-ing at me. I have a small child, and I made damn sure she received all her vaccinations. Medicine and disease are risky things. Most medical treatment have a degree of risk or danger to the patient. Polio vaccine is known to cause paralysis in a quantifiable percentage of recipients. It would be wonderful if you didn't have to essentially submit to a lottery in which the unlucky prize is death or disability when trying to avoid disease. But that's not how it is. There are no guarantees. And so, in order for me to choose to avoid using a medicine which has been shown to have a great deal of effectiveness in some areas of treatment, I want statistics that I can deal with, or an expert opinion I can trust. The Wakefield studies don't give me that. And I don't trust that he wasn't working for the needed ends of the class-action suit anyway. I do, however, trust my child's pediatrician. She is a personal friend, and she's working within the confines of what she thinks is right. She would never knowingly steer me wrong. And she advised the full schedule of vaccines for my child, with no resulting ill effects as far as anyone can determine.

Maybe I just got lucky, and could have wound up with an autistic child. But I went into the thing fully aware of the proposed link between the two, and I did it anyway, because I trust my child's doctor. FWIW, I don't really think parents should be required to vaccinate their children as a prerequisite to enrolling them in school, but I understand why it's a concern.

I don't have anything against fully testing all drugs in as comprehensive a manner as possible. It should be done. But as far as I can tell from reading a shitload of this literature, on both sides of the issue - the link is inconclusive ay the moment, IMHO. And so, in the real world, I've acted as I did.

But anyways, apologies for being an asshole. It happens sometimes, I guess.

[stickdog99]

I don't think they actually stopped the study. I thought it had been completed but no one wanted to publish it.

If they have then it'll see the light of day unless they don't want it to.

If they needed to they could always upload to Cryptome, wikileaks or its many imitators. These days if you want to badly enough you can put any info into the public domain and use it.

Yes, serious science always progresses via Cryptome, wikileaks or its many imitators.

for pirate science

[Joe Hillshoist]

Yeah hurray for being a dick.

Yes, serious science always progresses via Cryptome, wikileaks or its many imitators.

Wikileaks published the climate gate emails despite JAs "belief" in global warming. I don't see why they or (especially) John Young wouldn't publish it.

You said they killed the research but afaik half of it was done by this time last year. And the rest of was scheduled to be finished by now. I still haven't seen a convincing rebuttal of the claim that Wakefield committed fraud. THat puts his current research under a cloud, but it should be examined on its merits.

If no one will publish it in any respected journals are you saying that it will disappear? No way. There are thousands of loud, internet savvy Wakefield supporters out there. I'd say he'll get more support and publicity if they refuse to publish him than if they don't. Then people can judge it for itself, and if he's done it right (or not), repeat it.

[Stephen Morgan]

He received $800,000+ up front from the UK legal aid fund to provide evidence in a speculative class action suit

Really? "$800,000+ up front"? Where is the evidence for this? I realize this dude is compromised, but no moreso than any Merck scientist doing a Merck funded study for Merck.

Even a top barrister in a particularly long and high-profile fraud case would only get about two million for a case he might have monopolising his time for a year, no expert witness would ever be paid a fraction of that amount and legal aid doesn't pay a single penny up front, it's all on invoice.

[barracuda]

Even a top barrister in a particularly long and high-profile fraud case would only get about two million for a case he might have monopolising his time for a year, no expert witness would ever be paid a fraction of that amount and legal aid doesn't pay a single penny up front, it's all on invoice.

I meant "up front" of the actual prosecution of the class action suit.

The engine of the international MMR scare was an English lawsuit, later acknowledged to be meritless, funded with taxpayer's money by the UK's Legal Services Commission (formerly the Legal Aid Board). From 1996, substantial sums were paid to Andrew Wakefield, his supporters and associates, hired by a lawyer, Richard Barr, to support the attack on the vaccine.

[Plutonia]

Maybe I just got lucky, and could have wound up with an autistic child.

Barracuda, there is no link between autism and vaccination. That you think there's a possible connection is the result of a highly effective campaign. Perhaps there are negative side-effects from vaccinations, seems plausible and personally, I'm not about to run out to get a flu shot. But. The link between autism and Vaccination is erroneous. There isn't even an epidemic.