Anti-Vaxxers and the "Autism Epidemic"

The antivaccine movement resurrects the zombie that is the "autism epidemic"
from Respectful Insolence

If there's one thing that I've learned that I can always--and I do mean always--rely on from the antivaccine movement, it's that its members will always be all over any new study regarding vaccines and/or autism in an effort to preemptively put their pseudoscientific spin on the results. It's much the same way that they frequently storm into discussion threads after stories and posts about vaccines and autism like the proverbial flying monkeys, dropping their antivaccine poo hither and yon all over science-based discussions. If these commenters weren't there, I couldn't manage because dealing with the antivaccine trolls is so time-consuming. I can either lay down the near-daily dose of Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, that you all crave, or I can dive into comment threads and refute all the antivaccine nonsense being laid down by some of my more prominent trolls. I can't do both.

In any case, antivaxers are also known for not respecting embargoes. They infiltrate their way into mailing lists for journalists in which newsworthy new studies are released to the press before they actually see print and then flood their propaganda websites with their spin on the studies, either attacking the ones they don't like or trying to imprint their interpretation on ones on which they can, all before the skeptical blogosophere has a chance to post about them. Such is the price of being honorable and honoring embargoes. So it was yesterday, when vaccine-autism cranks jumped the embargo on a CDC study released yesterday that announced new autism prevalence numbers. This is nothing new; it's the antivaccine movement's modus operandi, which makes me wonder why the various journals don't shut off the flow. The study, of course, was announced in press conferences and a number of news stories. No doubt many of you have seen them. They focus on the key finding of the CDC study, which is that the prevalence of autism in the U.S. has risen to approximately 1 in 88.

…

Before I dig into the report a bit more and discuss the reaction of the antivaccine movement to it, let's first note one thing that you will not (and I did not) see in the various hysterical reactions to the study that I've seen thus far. You will not see any of the usual suspects emphasize mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be used in vaccines in the context of the report (although one does foolishly mention it, see below). The reason is obvious. If autism prevalence is still rising (or even if it's staying the same), it's yet another death blow to the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines causes autism. After all, thimerosal was removed from nearly all pediatric vaccines back in 2001. …

As always, it's worth to read in its entirety.

"No support for the hypothesis of differences in urinary mercury excretion in children with autism compared to other groups"

A Comparison of Urinary Mercury between Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Control Children

Barry Wright 1*, Helen Pearce 2, Victoria Allgar 3, Jeremy Miles 4, Clare Whitton 1, Irene Leon 5, Jenny Jardine 1, Nicola McCaffrey 1, Rob Smith 6, Ian Holbrook 6, John Lewis 5, David Goodall 7, Ben Alderson-Day 1

1 North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust, York, United Kingdom,
2 Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, Durham, United Kingdom,
3 Hull York Medical School, York, United Kingdom,
4 FNORD RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, United States of America,
5 Food and Environment Research Agency, Sand Hutton, United Kingdom,
6 York NHS Foundation Trust, York, United Kingdom,
7 Department Of Chemistry, York University, York, United Kingdom

Abstract

Background
Urinary mercury concentrations are used in research exploring mercury exposure. Some theorists have proposed that autism is caused by mercury toxicity. We set out to test whether mercury concentrations in the urine of children with autism were significantly increased or decreased compared to controls or siblings.

Methods
Blinded cohort analyses were carried out on the urine of 56 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compared to their siblings (n = 42) and a control sample of children without ASD in mainstream (n = 121) and special schools (n = 34).

Results
There were no statistically significant differences in creatinine levels, in uncorrected urinary mercury levels or in levels of mercury corrected for creatinine, whether or not the analysis is controlled for age, gender and amalgam fillings.

Conclusions
This study lends no support for the hypothesis of differences in urinary mercury excretion in children with autism compared to other groups. Some of the results, however, do suggest further research in the area may be warranted to replicate this in a larger group and with clear measurement of potential confounding factors.

Dr. Mikovits on Autism and Vaccines

"On that note, if I might speculate a little bit," she [Judy Mikovits] said, "This might even explain why vaccines would lead to autism in some children,..."

I dunno: seems to be a pretty clear admission that she thinks vaccines are "implicated" in autism, don't ya think?

Posted by: divalent | October 1, 2010 8:53 PM

Contrast with:

One of the most replicated physical features of autism is a larger brain with more neurons and a larger number of minicolumns.

The number of minicolumns is fixed during the first trimester in utero. Nothing months or years later can change that number.

I think she was trolling for funding. Telling the delusional anti-vax people what they want to hear so they will give her money.

Unfortunately that is the way that getting funding works. The honest and good scientist who knows his/her limits and doesn't lie has difficulty competing with the frauds who say "I will cure cancer/CFS/autism/stupidity/ugliness with this funding".

Posted by: daedalus2u | October 2, 2010 10:04 AM

Interesting phone survey by Generation Rescue

And what it means:

The bias factors in the unvaccinated group were 4.33 for boys and 15.17 for girls. That's quite surprising. To emphasize, unvaccinated girls participating in the survey were found to be diagnosed with ASD 15 times as often as in the general population of girls.

Either not vaccinating girls is a significant cause of ASD, or familial autism is more common in the families of autistic girls. (Any other explanations?) I'm inclined to believe the second explanation, though I haven't found much support for this in the literature. Tsai et al. (2005) comes close. Either way, this seems to be an interesting direction of future research.

Read it all.

"Head movements taint the results of MRI brain imaging studies, especially in people with autism."

Petersen and his colleagues first noticed the head motion problem a couple of years ago, when they were measuring functional connectivity in people aged 7 to 303. Because one of the team members, Nico Dosenbach, was unusually meticulous, Petersen says, the team only analyzed data from participants with very little head motion.

The researchers found that these children’s brain activity patterns look fairly similar to those of the adults — an unnerving result, as one of their previous studies had reported a dramatic change across development4.

Around the same time, Petersen’s colleague Abraham Snyder noticed that, because of the physics involved in magnetic resonance imaging, small movements can produce large spikes or dips in functional connectivity scans. Head motion, Petersen says he realized, had tainted his earlier study.

“Let me tell you, denial was big,” Petersen says. “We had every explanation in the world other than that it was an artifact. But it’s an artifact.”
…

“It really, really, really sucks. My favorite result of the last five years is an artifact,” says lead investigator Steve Petersen, professor of cognitive neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis.

It’s unclear how many published results head motion has skewed, and whether this changes the bottom-line conclusions. But many researchers are concerned.

“It’s going to impact some findings with regard to the robustness, but whether it completely wipes out the findings that are out there is another question,” says Damien Fair, assistant professor of behavioral neuroscience and psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University. “It is going to require folks to reanalyze their data, controlling for these new ways of examining motion.”

(via)

"Similarities in features of autism and asthma and a possible link to acetaminophen use"

Similarities in features of autism and asthma and a possible link to acetaminophen use

Autism and autism spectrum disorders are enigmatic conditions that have their origins in the interaction of genes and environmental factors. In this hypothesis, genes statistically associated with autism are emphasized to be important in inflammation and in innate immune pathways, including pathways for susceptibility to asthma. The role of acetaminophen (paracetamol) in an increased risk for asthma is described and a possible similar link to an increased risk for autism is suggested.
(Full PDF, via)

And compare with:

Although the research is still new, scientists believe that it is not too early for obstetricians to take the emerging findings into account. The most obvious step is to monitor pregnant women closely for infections—even those that seem mild—because what may be a minor inconvenience to the mother could be devastating to the unborn child. Women should be educated to be aware of when they might have contracted a viral infection and to tell their obstetrician, who may need to treat them more aggressively than is current practice. In animal studies, after pregnant females were exposed to virus genes, the damage to their unborn pups was prevented when the mothers were given nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen. That provides a rationale for using these drugs when a pregnant woman contracts an infection, says Hornig. Currently, obstetricians prescribe acetaminophen (Tylenol) for pain relief in pregnant women, but that compound does not have the anti-inflammatory effects needed to turn off the cytokine flood.

More woo from the WPI

This is old news, but needs to reposted.

As the battle is waged on the scientific front, it is with great joy that I am able to announce that we will begin to see patients at the WPI on August 1. It will close the circle necessary to be a true translational research center with synergy between disciplines. Dr. Chitra Bhakta is a Family Practitioner with a private practice in Orange County where she treats ME/CFS and autism.

So let's look at Chitra Bhakta.

Chitra Bhakta is a DAN! practitioner (more info on DAN!) and apparently a Chronic Lyme True believer (more info on 'Chronic Lyme').She is a wooer, not a family doctor.
Posted by: ERV | June 20, 2011 11:58 AM

We haven fallen in with cranks and cuckoos.

No link between CFS and Autism

Here’s the “logic” behind Mr. Heckinlively’s article: XMRV has been linked to autism (he ignores the more recent data against this idea). XMRV has been linked to chronic fatigue syndrome (once again, he ignores the data which goes against they hypothesis). Therefore, autism and chronic fatigue syndrome must share some sort of link. In this case, a small study has been published which claims that Rituximab helped a number of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome.

One of the many glaring problems in this train of logic is the fact that the researchers in this particular study looked for XMRV in their subjects. And didn’t find it. So, the link between this group of CFS patients and autism, tenuous as it was from the start, is basically absent.

Any research relying on "XMRV" is basicly null and void unless this research is done properly blinded – and when it is done properly blinded, XMRV looks like nothing but a (chance?*) lab contamination.

* XMRV plasmid is not a chance contamination, it has to be put there purposefully or through unbelievably giagantic utter stupidity.

Nature.com: "Fresh dispute about MMR 'fraud'"

Bjarnason says he doesn't believe they are sufficient to support claims in the Lancet paper of a new disease process. He also questions whether "non-specific" on the grading sheets refers to colitis, saying it could refer to any kind of gut changes. But he says that the forms don't clearly support charges that Wakefield deliberately misinterpreted the records. "The data are subjective. It's different to say it's deliberate falsification," he says.

I think Andrew Wakefield is a quack, but even he deserved a fair trial – with less foaming accusations and more scientific inquiry. Or did Bruno Bettelheim ever get the Wakefield treatment?