From the bottom of the ocean
To the mountains on the moon
Won’t you please come to Chicago
No one else can take your place
-Graham Nash, “Chicago”
* * *
The first autistic Miss America contestant is a cheerful 19-year-old with heart-breaking beauty and a refreshing message. She celebrates her autism, telling reporters and talk show hosts that “Being on the spectrum is not a death sentence, but a life adventure, and one that I realize has been given to me for a reason,” and “It’s amazing how people don’t accept other people just because they’re different. Being different is not something to look down on, but to be embraced. People need to understand.”
She once told Jeff Probst “There is nothing wrong with being autistic,” and “My autism doesn’t define who I am, I define my autism.”
So why has Alexis Wineman accepted Jenny McCarthy’s invitation to join a “celebrity panel” at a notorious anti-vaccine conference, breaking gluten-free bread with people who compare autism to a death sentence, and something to be despised? One possible answer can be found in her interview published on Disability Scoop last October:
‘Socializing with my classmates, even when I wanted to, was awkward to say the least. I wouldn’t get their jokes half the time. I took everything so literally,’ she told the site.
Here’s what Alexis posted on her Facebook page in January, after receiving a phone call from McCarthy:
Could it be that Alexis is following mean girl McCarthy into the lavatory for a humiliating makeover? Does she literally believe that autistic children can be “rescued” with bleach enemas, chelation, and chemical castration, all of which are “treatments” promoted by other invited speakers the AutismOne conference?
Wineman grew up in Cut Bank, Montana, one square mile of treeless plain and 2,800 hopeful souls. After second grade, Alexis’s twin sister, Amanda skipped ahead into fourth, but not Alexis. “That’s enough to make anyone feel dumb. But I got called “retarded” a lot. I really hate that word,” Alexis told Glamour Magazine. Her behavior deteriorated.
“The meltdowns lasted hours and became more frequent,” says her mother, Kim Butterworth. “We’d have to grab and hold her; she’d be as stiff as a board. It was scary. And she started melting down at school. I’d get the call: ‘We’re having a problem.’”
At age 11 she was diagnosed with PDD-NOS, after the family consulted their pastor and a therapist. “I felt so alone growing up, and I still do at times,” she told a conference on autism at the Montana State University Billings last fall. “Nobody understood what I was going through. I separated myself from my classmates and spent most of my time alone. I stayed quiet to hide my speech problems. Due to these overwhelming and daily struggles, I looked at myself as a punching bag for others, and a burden to my family.”
Her turnaround came in high school, where Alexis ran cross country, joined the drama club, and became a cheerleader. At 18, she entered the Miss Montana contest and won.
Alexis Wineman
Alexis wears her celebrity well. “We cannot cure what is not a sickness,” Miss Montana said in the video shown at the pageant. “But we can begin to understand autism, and help those with the condition to unlock the potential that lies within all of us.”
McCarthy and her business partners disagree. The AutismOne conference is a veritable trade show of unproven and questionable autism “cures”, where the hiss of hyperbaric oxygen chambers lures the credulous, and Mr. Andrew Wakefield tells starry-eyed mothers that “recovery is possible.”
So why did McCarthy reach out to Alexis? Could the invitation be part of McCarthy’s 12-step anger recovery program? The nursing school drop out and ex-MTV host is desperate to shed her anti-vaccine past, which means dissing the “angry mob” she once bragged about. She told the AP in January that she hasn’t publicly commented on vaccines in four years (it was more like two years, but oh well). Her 2011 AutismOne keynote address barely mentioned vaccines. In her 2012 speech, she was introduced by a plaintiff’s attorney who told parents “the claim that mercury doesn’t cause autism is a lie,” but McCarthy herself stayed away from the V word. Meanwhile, when she speaks of Generation Rescue (“my foundation!”), she stresses assistance to parents.
All of which raises (not begs) a serious question: Is the anti-vaccine movement growing up? Can the acceptance-and-accommodation virus find willing hosts in McCarthy’s mob? Can Alexis Wineman from Cut Bank, Montana, attract enough autism parents, and generate enough buzz, to turn Generation Rescue into a responsible and respected advocacy group?
Does McCarthy need Miss Montana?
Or is McCarthy’s invitation as cynical as inviting Al Sharpton to a Sons of the Confederacy conference? Not that Sharpton would accept.
Dr. Bob Sears is best known for his 2007 work, The Vaccine Book, ostensibly written “to give parents a balanced look at pros and cons of vaccination so that they can make an educated decision.” In reality, the book has only added to the unnecessary fear, uncertainty and doubt about vaccines that have driven thousands of parents to leave their children vulnerable to preventable diseases. And while America’s medical establishment has caught on to Sears, he still enjoys a following. His book has sold about 50,000 copies, and Sear’s Facebook page lists over 6,000 followers.
Last week Sears told his FB followers that we can only truly know that vaccines are safer than the diseases they protect us from if the CDC studies health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Sears no doubt includes autism in those “health outcomes”, since he has advised parents to avoid vaccinating their autistic children until they are “recovered” from the disorder. Anti-vaccine activists have been agitating for such a study for years, most recently at the shameful Congressional anti-vaccine hearing last November 29. Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue even attempted such a survey by telephone in 2007. It found that autism was more common among unvaccinated children than vaccinated.
Epidemiologists tell us such a study, done well, would be unethical, since it would mean leaving many thousands of children vulnerable to disease, just to prove what medical science already knows – that vaccines don’t cause autism. Sears says there are enough totally unvaccinated children around to conduct such a study, and on Facebook he cited a paper that supposedly shows that 5-10 percent of American children have never been vaccinated.
The IOM and the CDC continue to hide behind the claim that to do a comparative study of unvaccinated versus vaccinated children would be unethical. But as long as they neglect to do this research, many parents will continue to decline vaccines over the concern about lack of safety research.
The IOM states that one challenge of an unvaccinated study is that there is an inadequate number of study subjects, as less than 1% of children are completely unvaccinated. I don’t agree with this statistic. It’s more like 5%, and could even be 10%. One brand new international study revealed that 10% of households surveyed had children who were completely unvaccinated. 10%!!! And it was the more educated and wealthier families that were more likely to be unvaccinated. The IOM’s claim that there aren’t enough unvaccinated children to study simply isn’t true. With over 4 million babies being born in the U.S. every year, they would have their pick of about 400,000 unvaccinated children to study each year.
Sears links to a meta-analysis of vaccine surveys published last summer in the journal Tropical Medicine and International Health. Xavier Bosch-Capblanch from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and his team reviewed 241 nationally representative household vaccination surveys in 96 low and medium income countries. The percentage of unvaccinated children (ages 12-59 months) was 9.9% across all surveys, but ranged from zero percent (Albania,Peru, and Uzbekistan) to 28.5% (Ethiopia). Sears’s claim that ten percent of American children are completely unvaccinated puts the country on par with Namibia (9.2% in 2007), Haiti (10.3% in 2006), and Yemen (10.9% in 2006). It also means that scores of developing countries, including Vietnam (1%) Tajikistan (.9%), and Sierra Leone (1.9%), should think twice before issuing visas for American children.
Anti-vaccine activist “Dr. Bob” Sears reaches out to his fans
If Sears was truly serious about helping parents make an educated decision, he could have cited Allison Kennedy, a CDC epidemiologist, who surveyed parents to examine intentions, behaviors and concerns about vaccines. In Confidence about vaccines in the United States: Understanding Patient Perceptions (2011), her team found about two percent of US children aged six or younger were totally unvaccinated. Those numbers are in line with Smith et.al. (2004), which reported a minuscule .3% unvaccinated of children 19-35 months old. The CDC’s 2010 National Immunization Survey found that 1 percent of toddlers were completely unvaccinated.
Despite Sears’s best efforts, the percent of fully vaccinated children has increased over the past decade. That’s discouraging news for Sears and others who have doubled down on a vaxed v. unvaxed study. But overall rates should not mask the real harm of anti-vaccine propaganda – encouraging community clusters of vaccine rejectionism that have led to unnecessary suffering. One such cluster incubated a measles outbreak in San Diego in 2008. The index patient was a boy who had just returned from a trip to Switzerland. By the time the virus was contained, four others came down with a disease that can lead to pneumonia, encephalitis, and even death. His family’s pediatrician? Dr. Bob Sears.
What kind of doctor, you might ask, would encourage parents to withhold an important vaccine? The kind who aligns himself with the worst elements of the antivaccine movement. The kind who misrepresents published science so as to fuel the anti-vaccine movement’s push for an unethical study. The kind to fabricate his own, untested vaccine schedule, then package it in The Vaccine Book.
In a series of articles released today, the American Academy of Pediatrics outlines its opposition to a proposed UN treaty which, if approved, would ban the preservative thimerosal from vaccines worldwide. The ban is also opposed by the World Health Organization and the US Public Health Service. It is estimated that multidose vaccines with thimerosal as a preservative are used in 120 countries to immunize approximately 84 million children, saving about 1.4 million lives each year.
The AAP’s opposition reverses the professional organization’s call in 1999 for the removal of thimerosal from the US pediatric vaccine schedule. That action is frequently cited by anti-vaccine groups as evidence that health officials know that vaccines cause autism and other neurological conditions. But Dr. Louis Z. Cooper and Dr. Samuel L. Katz, co-authors of one of today’s articles, directly take on that concern:
Had the AAP (and, we suspect, the USPHS) known what research has revealed in the intervening 14 years, it is inconceivable to us that these organizations would have made the joint statement of July 7, 1999. The World Health Organization recommendation to delete the ban on thimerosal must be heeded or it will cause tremendous damage to current programs to protect all children from death and disability caused by vaccine-preventable diseases.
The 1999 domestic ban surfaced during a Nov. 29 congressional hearing on autism, where representatives of both parties repeated long-debunked anti-vaccine talking points. Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) asked the CDC’s Dr. Colleen Boyle why thimerosal was taken out of childhood vaccines if there were no concerns about its safety. Boyle wisely agreed to get back to him with an answer. An anti-vaccine hearing is no place for reasoned discussion.
In another article, researchers Katherine King, PhD, MSc; Megan Paterson, and Shane K. Green, PhD; reaffirm that “there is no credible scientific evidence that the use of thimerosal in vaccines presents any risk to human health.” They continue:
Extensive pharmacologic and epidemiological research has shown early, theoretical concerns about links to autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders to be false. Indeed, the exculpatory strength of the data now available on thimerosal is well evidenced by recent statements from the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety, US Institute of Medicine, and American Academy of Pediatrics, all of which have concluded that thimerosal exposure through vaccination is not harmful to human health.
The AAP’s latest action is a shot across the bow of anti-vaccine groups. The UN’s proposed thimerosal ban has been championed by Mark Geier, the disgraced Maryland geneticist best known for chemically castrating disabled children. Two years ago, he told a group of African delegates gathered for a session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Japan that thimerosal “is favored by the pharmaceutical industry because it is cheap and enables the industry to keep making vaccines in old and dirty factories.”
Geier is a regular at Jenny McCarthy’s annual anti-vaccine conference, where he receives standing ovations from anti-vaccine parents. Ten states have either revoked his medical license over the last two years, or allowed it to expire, for Geier’s ethical lapses which included lying about his qualifications, and risking children’s health with unproven medical treatments.
3:23 pm CT – The public witnesses are seated. They are:
Mr. Bob Wright, Co-Founder, Autism Speaks
Mr. Scott Badesch, President, Autism Society
Mr. Mark Blaxill, Board Member of SafeMinds, an anti-vaccine advocacy group
Mr. Bradley McGarry, Coordinator of the Asperger Initiative at Mercyhurst, Mercyhurst University
Mr. Michael John Carley, Executive Director, Global & Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership
Mr. Ari Ne’eman, President, Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Bob Wright is up first. The former president of NBC Universal is schooled on how to use a microphone.
Wright is playing to the peanut gallery now, slamming Boyle and Guttmacher for their testimony.
“The CDC spends almost no money for autism – only $20 million or $30 million.”
3:32 – Scott Badesch of the Autism Society.
“The services for autism are currently difficult to navigate.” Then he blasts the IACC for not including government officials.
“The need for adult services is extensive. The greatest cliff occurs when somebody with autism turns 21, and there’s no one there to help them.”
Mark Blaxill’s turn. “I wrote a book on autism. It argues that autism is a new condition.” Before 1930, he says, the rate of autism in the US and the world was “effectively zero.”
He’s showing PowerPoint slides. “It’s obvious when somebody is autistic.” This is nonsense.
“It’s absurd to waste money on genetic research in this crisis. There is no such thing as a genetic epidemic.” The “autism gene hunt.”
The CDC has given us securities fraud to avoid accountability for an epidemic.
3:43 – Bradley McGarry. “This is just the beginning of the wave that has been characterized as an epidemic.”
3:48 - Michael John Carley. “Research is based on the future, and not on where the greatest need lies, which is the present.” Adults on the spectrum are starved for housing, jobs, and other opportunities. Yeah!
“We are not amidst a health crisis. We are amidst a services crisis.” This guy rocks.
“Evidence-based conviction, not hope.” He’s appalled that we are still talking about vaccines.
3:55 – Ari Ne’eman. “In God We Trust, everybody else bring data.”
Ne’eman doesn’t buy into the epidemic talk. He asks for a prevalence study looking at adults with autism in the US, similar to the one in the UK which found 1 percent.
Dan Burton again. “I want you to get a copy of this whole hearing, and disseminate it and try to get as many people as possible to take a look at it.”
He says the NVICP isn’t getting money to people who need it. Does he want to raid the fund?
He calls people with autism a burden.
4:05 – Rep. Cummings. “I listened to you Mr. Blaxill, and you feel there’s been a great deal of game playing.”
More epidemic talk. Ne’eman responds. “It stands in contravention to a good deal of science.”
He adds “The perception that autism is a recent new thing is damaging” because it excludes the needs of adults.
“What kind of services are you talking about?” asks Cummings.
Carley: ABA, enforcement of IDEA, housing for adults, job training. “This is not a population short on brain cells.”
Carley addresses the myth of the epidemic. Now Blaxill wants to respond.
“The 1:88 number – the CDC doesn’t break out the categories. We don’t know if Asperger’s is part of the increase.”
DSM-IV, he says, was supposed to be a “corrective narrowing” of the expansion.
The “great unmentionable – vaccines.” An inflection point in 1990 – vaccines explain it.
“Statistical trickery” by the CDC.
Issa asks Bob Wright some questions. “There is such a wide divergence in the science. The IACC seems to be missing the mark. What is your view of what needs to be done?”
Wright: We need a nationwide strategic plan. That includes safety research on vaccines. Somebody has to coordinate all this activity. The CDC and NIH don’t do services.
“What we deal with is a lot of ignorance.” Wright was talking about doctors, not the people who applauded Mark Blaxill.
Rep. Kelly is grilling Blaxill about his criticism of genetic research. “Who else believes what you do? Why haven’t we heard of this before?”
Blaxill blames the IACC and NIH. “They are not accountable in any way. The were only trying to maintain the status quo.”
Rep. Cummings is quoting Sam Cooke – “I was born by the river….Change is going to come.”
The committee seems to have calmed down now. The talk has turned to adults with autism and services.
Spoke too soon. Blaxill is back on the “inflection point.” The beginning of the epidemic. A tsunami of desperate families. The inflection point was in 1990. So those kids are 22 NOW!! OH NOES!
Now Blaxill has been asked to comment on the Brick Township study. Scientists are being punished for being politically incorrect. The NIH enforces the orthodoxy. So does the press.
Applause.
A boy with autism wanders in front of the witness stand. I predict a strained metaphor from Mark Blaxill.
4:44 – Issa wraps up. A list of things we have learned today. “There is nothing we heard today that is off limits for this committee to explore.”
You can watch the House Committee on Government Operations and Reform online HERE.
12:59 pm CT – Joe Biden is shopping for children’s books at Costco. Welcome to C-Span 3.
1:00 – OK, here we go. Chairman Darrel Issa reminds us that the mission of the committee is to make sure tax money isn’t wasted. The topic today, he tells us, transcends partisan politics.
“If the numbers grow from 1:88, then we will in fact have an epidemic.”
” The committee will be acting as a conduit of information for the rest of congress.
Issa thanks Brian Hooker of Focus Autism for bringing autism to the committee’s attention. Hooker is a regular contributor to AgeOfAutism, Whale. to, NaturalNews and other anti-vaccine websites.
1:10 – Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), promised retiring Dan Burton that his work will be carried on.
1:13 – Burton: “Contrary to how the media have portrayed me, I am not anti-vaccine.” OK, then.
He’s on a roll now. “It wasn’t so bad when a child gets one or two or three vaccines… Mercury accumulates in the brain until it has to be chelated.” This guy is totally unrepentant for the problems he’s caused.
It doesn’t sound like Burton is aware that thimerosal has been absent from childhood vaccines for ten years.
“(Children with vaccine induced autism) will live for another 67 years, and they will be burden on society, and on their parents.”
Burton is so crazy, that the SAFE MINDS guy will come off as calm and rational.
1:20 – Rep.Danny Davis (D-Chicago) thanks Burton for using his position as chairman to bring attention to autism.
1:22 – Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) – He recalls the language snuck into a Homeland Security bill ten years ago that would have shielded drug companies from liability for poisoning people with thimerosal. “This is a new beginning, and I salute the chair for making it, but it goes well beyond thimerosal and includes coal.”
1:26 – Issa introduces Dr. Alan Guttmacher from the NIH, and Dr. Colleen Boyle from the CDC.
The two witnesses are sworn in. A-CHAMP was hand-wringing in its latest press release that the witnesses would be allowed to lie.
Gittmacher is reading an uninspiring statement about the IACC, what it does, etc. He’s justifying the money Congress pours into the IACC, then launches into a long laundry list of studies and programs that Congress has funded.
Colleen Boyle, CDC epidemiologist is next. Her current autism budget is $21 million, and she’s going to tell us how the money is spent.
She names all 12 states of the ADDM network. Fun!
Darrell Issa asks a couple questions. “Is autism in history pre-date all vaccines?”
“Definitely” says Colleen Boyle. Guttmacher talks about Kanner in 1943.
Issa asks if autism has more than one cause. “like cancer.” Yes, says Guttmacher.
“Is it fair to say we can rule nothing out in absolute terms as far as being a contributor? Including things we haven’t yet looked at?”
Guttmacher some factors have been looked at so carefully that we can rule them out (hint: vaccines).
“Are we waiting too long to have children?” asks Issa, noting that medical science has accommodated parents who want to have children later in life.
Rep. Commings notes the “looks of frustration” on the visitors seated at the back of the room. “What can we do to help the folks behind you?” he asks the two government scientists.
Guttmacher reassures the congressman that he shares the frustration of the parents, some of whom can be seen rolling their eyes and laughing in the same camera shot as the government scientists.
Cummings asks about the make up of the IACC.
Burton is going to show a two-minute video. “I know there are manu causes of autism, but the one I’m talking about is vaccines.”
The video slams mercury amalgam, and draws on discredited University of Calgary research.
“This is worse than an epidemic! It’s an absolute disaster! How can anyone watch this video and not be alarmed!”
The peanut gallery applauds when Dan Burton finishes. Then explodes in anger when Colleen Boyle notes that thimerosal is no longer used in schedule pediatric vaccines.
1:58 – Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-Wash. DC) – Asks if there are undiagnosed young adults with autism, and what do we do for them. Norton is a long-time advocate for persons with Down Syndrome.
Is that Katie Wright in Colleen Boyle’s camera frame? She’s very, uh, expressive.
Rep. Paul Gosar, (R-AZ), asks if the CDC looks at diet as a possible cause of autism. He reminds us that he is a dentist.
“We should be listening to the families,” he says, motioning toward the peanut gallery. He’s a GF-CF proponent. “You name a disease, you will find a dietary aspect.”
The small-government Republican wants government to tell parents how to eat. He says he has spent hours walking through a grocery store, looking for gluten free food. He shares an anecdote about an autistic child who was recovered after he was taken off gluten and milk. The peanut gallery swoons.
2:11 - Rep. Kucinich. He’s been researching the association between mercury and autism. He’s gunning for big coal. I sure am glad vaccines don’t contain coal!
Now he’s quoting the Palmer study that supposedly found an association between coal-fired power plant emissions and autism. Kucinich wants more research into mercury from coal and autism.
2:16 – Freshman Congressman Patrick Meehan (R-PA) - says he doesn’t know a subject that has caused do much frustration among his constituents. He cites the latest prevalence numbers. “Has anything accelerated to this degree in your experience?” he asks Boyle.
“As we’ve seen this acceleration in the diagnoses, can you tell us why this isn’t a public health crisis?” Now he’s channeling those frustrated constituents. “Who’s in charge of this?” he asks while stabbing his fingers in the air.
Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass) – He asks Boyle why thimerosal was removed from most vaccines.
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) – “How do people in impoverished areas get access to services?” Yes!
Rep. Davis asks about prevalence rates of black, white, and Hispanic children. “Are there socioeconomic barriers that prevent parents and physicians from recognizing ASDs in persons of color?” Guttmacher: “There are issues of access here.”
Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) asks if children from Africa have more autism since being vaccinated. He is a big fan of Dave Weldon, an anti-vaccine congressman who retired a few years ago.
Posey asks if the CDC has ever conducted a vaccinated v. unvaccinated population. “You’ve wasted two minutes of my time,” he says to Boyle.
Now he’s asking about Poul Thorsen. “Have you gone back to validate his studies? I mean, he’s an enormous scumbag, one of the most wanted people on earth?”
Now he’s quoting the SAFE MINDS “study” that correlates mortality rate with vaccination schedules.
“Multiple bomb blasts of multiple vaccinations in a short period of time.”
2:46 – Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) – He wears an autism bracelet.
What would the CDC and NIH do with an extra $2 billion or $4 billion?
Guttmacher praises private efforts. “We need to keep that partnership.”
Need more research into environmental and genetic factors. The go together, he says. And more money for intervention.
Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) – Takes credit for funding and establishing the IACC.
“The 1:88 figure – horrible number, terrible number!” He’s been in congress for 32 years, and has considerable experience with Africa, and says he has never seen a spike in autism in Africa. He asks about gut flora and its contribution to autism. Why is the NJ prevalence so high, but other states much lower?
Consistency is not this guy’s strong suit. On one hand he says autism is an epidemic. On the other, he acknowledges that the harder you look for autism, the more you find.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) – “Autism is becoming a growing epidemic in the US, and I want to complement Congressman Burton.”
She wants to know why autism has grown from 1:10,000 to 1:88. The prevalence for autism has never been 1:10,000, but Maloney is on a roll.
Interesting fact: Carolyn Maloney has proposed on several occasions that the CDC research why the Amish don’t get autism. The bill never made it out of committee.
“I’m for vaccinations, they prevent diseases, but why so many when the verbal evidence from so many parents is that they cause problems?”
Verbal evidence = unconfirmed anecdotes.
Peanut gallery applauds.
Rep. Vern Buchanan, (R-FL) – Do we get 40 vaccines these days? Why is it twice what France is, three times what Finland is? The SAFE MINDS lobbying initiative must be awesome!
Buchanan says the care cost for autism is $2.3 million per person.
Now Rep. Cummings is picking up where Buchanan left off. “There’s something wrong with this picture. When the rate goes from 1:10,000 to 1:88.” Now he’s questioning the vaccine schedule. The peanut gallery applauds.
The camera pans the audience, and we see a crying mother.
A Utah congressman wants to know why his state has the highest administrative prevalence in the US. Except he didn’t use the words “administrative prevalence.” And it’s been a year since the CDC numbers came out, and the Utah congressman has apparently never investigated how the ADDM works.
“I’m not a statistician, but I just see big numbers.”
But he plays one on C-SPAN.
Burton is back. “Why did the CDC take out the thimerosal?” What, Burton knows most vaccines don’t use thimerosal? Guttmacher and Boyle wisely say they will look into it.
C-SPAN 3 will broadcast today’s autism hearing live at 2 pm ET. You can watch the House Committee on Government Operations and Reform online HERE.
Here is the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee list of witnesses. Each will have five minutes to present.
Coleen Boyle, Ph.D., Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Mr. Bob Wright, Co-Founder, Autism Speaks
Mr. Scott Badesch, President, Autism Society
Mr. Mark Blaxill, Board Member of SafeMinds, an anti-vaccine advocacy group
Mr. Bradley McGarry, Coordinator of the Asperger Initiative at Mercyhurst, Mercyhurst University
Mr. Michael John Carley, Executive Director, Global & Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership
Mr. Ari Ne’eman, President, Autistic Self Advocacy Network
There are so many things wrong with this hearing. First and foremost is the assumption by Rep. Dan Burton and others that autism is an epidemic. The title of the hearing, 1 in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of Autism, assumes something for which there is no evidence. In epidemiology, the word “rates” refers to disease incidence, or an increase in the actual number of cases. This is not the same as the number of diagnoses, or prevalence. But Burton cluelessly conflates the two words, using them interchangeably to spread fear about a people like his grandchild.
So we have a congressional hearing predicated on a unproven notion, and a government scientist has five minutes to school a room full of politicians in the math-intensive science of epidemiology. But that doesn’t stop another committee member, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Penn), from calling the hearing “an opportunity to raise awareness about autism.”
“Autism is something that affects a lot of families,” Kelly recently told the Erie Times-News. “This is a chance to educate ourselves about ASD and then educate our colleagues.”
Inviting Mark Blaxill of SAFE MINDS to educate Congress is like giving a creationist a seat at a science education hearing. Blaxill, who is not a scientist or a doctor, formed his conclusions about vaccines and autism some 13 years ago, and has been looking for evidence to support his beliefs ever since. That is the opposite of how science works. In 2000, he co-wrote a pseudo-scientific paper titled “Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning.” To my knowledge, he has never admitted that his novel hypothesis has failed in every way. But he doesn’t have to, as long as grandstanding politicians such as Rep. Burton confer the title of “expert” on him.
Burton can’t even makes himself sound knowledgeable. He recently told a Roll Call reporter “If you get one shot and it has mercury in it, you get maybe a little bit of mercury in there that may not affect you neurologically. But it stays there, at least a part of it does. So when you have a number of shots, there’s an accumulation of it, and that’s when I think it can be real damaging.”
There are entire books filled with things Burton doesn’t understand about vaccines. For instance: thimerosal, once used as a vaccine preservative, has been absent from the pediatric schedule for ten years. A thimerosal molecule contains a single mercury atom. It is water soluble, and clears the body in about ten days. There is no evidence it accumulates in the brain. Elemental mercury, on the other hand, is found in everything we eat and drink, and our bodies have evolved (a controversial idea for Burton, I am sure) to deal with minute amounts of mercury and other potentially toxic substances. And then there’s this: the symptoms of mercury poisoning are not the same as symptoms of autism.
Rep. Burton has no doubt been told these things over and over, but as any true believer, he just doesn’t care. He formed his conclusion shortly after his grandson was born, and has been looking for confirming evidence ever since.
This man was re-elected to his house seat 14 times. Think about it.
This is how the Chicago Sun-Times quells criticism of the paper’s decision to feature Jenny McCarthy as a family advice columnist.
Dear xxx
I would like to reach out as part of the communications team for the Chicago Sun-Times and Splash publications, to share with you the Sun-Times’ statement regarding concerns specifically about the focus of Jenny McCarthy’s column:
“Jenny McCarthy has signed on to share her special brand of humor with fans through her Splash column and daily blog. As our readers know, Jenny’s contributions are lifestyle focused and light-hearted. The vision for the column is not medical advice, therefore medical topics, like vaccination, are not within the scope of the column and will not be addressed.”
Sincerely,
Kayla Weems
This is our response:
Kayla Weems
Assistant, Public Relations
Wrapports / Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago, IL
Dear Ms. Weems,
Could Jenny McCarthy’s light-hearted personality make it less likely that the Sun-Times would publish something critical about her, such as how she has persuaded parents to leave their children vulnerable to preventable diseases? Or that her annual AutismOne conference promotes bleach enemas as a treatment for autism? Are you concerned that your newspaper’s de facto endorsement of Jenny McCarthy’s infectious brand of humor may confer legitimacy on vaccine rejectionism and unproven autism treatments? Are you aware that McCarthy’s organization excludes and even expels those who report critically about her autism conference, including newspaper reporters?
You may think your readership doesn’t know McCarthy’s back story, or care. But that will change. Your ill-considered decision to embrace McCarthy’s special brand of humor does not sit well with thousands of medical professionals, parents, academics, child health advocates, bloggers, and others who think McCarthy has much to answer for. Their simmering disappointment is very real. Is the Sun-Times willing to risk alienating so many people, in all walks of life, from coast to coast, just to attract readers who will soon learn of Jenny McCarthy’s special brand of child abuse?
Please reconsider your relationship with home-town girl Jenny McCarthy. Severing ties would be more than just a smart business decision, even if that’s your only concern.
Sincerely,
Ken Reibel
AutismNewsBeat.com
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EveryChildByTwo is asking parents and others to send their own message to the Sun-Times editor-in-chief James Kirk, expressing concern about his paper’s cozy relationship with McCarthy. Here is a sample message:
Dear Mr. Kirk,
It has recently come to my attention that you have hired actress Jenny McCarthy to write a daily blog on parenting, dating and family advice. Jenny McCarthy’s claims that her son became autistic after being vaccinated have resulted in a major decline in the public’s confidence in vaccines. These claims were highly publicized, despite having no scientific merit and were countered by the worldwide scientific community. Families have chosen not to vaccinate their children because of the “advice” provided by Ms. McCarthy, and children have died as a consequence. Our country faces the largest outbreaks of whooping cough in decades and recent outbreaks of measles have een traced back to families who did not vaccinate their children.
[insert personal anecdote here]
I ask you to seriously reconsider your decision to provide a forum for Jenny McCarthy’s unsound beliefs. There are certainly better qualified candidates for this important position.
From the UK's Sun, we learn that "PLAYBOY babe Jenny McCarthy has revealed she was once so high on drugs she tried to have sex with a TREE."
And from the Chicago Sun-Times we learn that McCarthy's Google PhD is good enough to land a gig as that paper's parent advice columnist. Talk about going out on a limb.
We have learned that Rep. Dan Burton (R-Pompous) has been given the go-ahead to hold hearings on vaccines and autism before the House Oversight Committee. Congressional attention, even from someone as unhinged as Burton, gives anti-vaccine groups the vapors. One group, SAFEMINDS, sent out a press release in August claiming “Congressman Darrell Issa, Chair of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, has promised a hearing on the problems with the Vaccine Court and at the CDC regarding autism/vaccine research,” and urged fellow travelers to contact their representatives. Now Issa has told Burton he can have his hearing.
This is Burton’s last term representing a district that encompasses central Indiana. He was first elected in 1982. Whether Burton seizes the brass ring and schedules a hearing is yet to be seen.
Rep. Dan Burton, R-Indiana
When we last heard from Burton, he was overseeing six separate congressional hearings on vaccines an autism, between 2000 and 2003. A star-studded line up of anti-vaccine quacks and misfits answered the call, including Andrew Wakefield, Boyd Haley, and Jeff Bradstreet. Die-hard political junkies remember Burton from 1994 when he invited reporters to his backyard to watch him shoot a pumpkin. Why, you might ask, was the honorable Congressman from Indiana shooting a pumpkin? Why, to prove that Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster! Burton publicly referred to Bill Clinton a “scumbag”, even though Burton himself had fathered a child out of wedlock in 1983.
In 1995, during congressional hearings on the US War on Drugs, Burton suggested that the US “should place an aircraft carrier off the coast of Bolivia and crop dust the coca fields.” This plan proved to be unworkable primarily because (1) Bolivia is landlocked and thus has no coast (Burton was chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee at the time); 2) the Andes mountain range is in the way; and 3) F-18s are not crop dusters. When Bolivians heard Burton’s suggestion, they dragged their feet on US drug eradication efforts, which means Burton actually hurt the very cause he was trying to help.
Sound familiar? Burton, who has a grandson with autism, was also trying to help when he gave Congressional imprimatur to the unproven and implausible vaccine-autism connection. Anti-vaccine groups have been drawing on Burton’s hearing ever since for inspiration, and citing quotes such as:
“Whether it was the MMR shot or the mercury that was in these other vaccines, or a combination of the two, I do not know. But I do know that hundreds of thousands of children in this country and around the world are suffering because of autism, and many of them are suffering from autism shortly after having received one or more of these vaccines”
One academic, studying how anti-vaccine myths resonate, also noticed Rep. Burton. In Vying for credibility in the US Congress: legitimating symbols in the debate over immunization and autism, medical anthropologist Maya Ponte wrote:
In Burton’s rhetoric, the eyes play an important role as the purveyors of truth. He often makes evidentiary statements that turn on the use of this sensory organ: “I saw it with my own eyes, so something happened” (US House of Representatives 2001), or “My only grandson became autistic right before my eyes” (US House of Representatives 2002a). To Burton, seeing, in a simple and straightforward sense, is believing. He ties the evidentiary legitimacy of sight to his religious tradition: “I do not like to quote scripture very often, but there is none so blind as those that will not see” (US House of Representatives 2002b)
Burton’s hearing would be more than just his second bite at the mercury-laced apple. The timing is important to those with an anti-vaccine agenda. It’s been over a year since Fox News was trumpeting a new “study” that supposedly shows the US government has been quietly paying off victims of vaccine-induced autism. Soon after, the authors held court at a Congressional briefing attending by nine staffers, and credulous media followed along: a Boston Fox News affiliate called the coffee klatsch a “congressional hearing”, and Fox and Friends called the paper “an important study.” So the folks who want to leave our children vulnerable to preventable diseases, while dehumanizing persons with autism, think they have momentum on their side.
The anti-vaccine movement has little to cheer about these days. Its hero. Mr. Andrew Wakefield, is holding press conferences in gun club shelters, and sharing the stage with 9/11 Truthers. Jenny McCarthy has gone silent on vaccines, and can only write for the Chicago Sun Times on the condition that she avoids dishing medical advice. Dan Burton, once the poster child for right-wing zealotry and 20th century Know Nothingness, will be in fine company.
Just in time for World Autism Awareness Day, but too late for April Fools Day, Donald Trump tells us what he knows about vaccines and autism.
Speaking by telephone from his underground hair bunker, Donald Trump told the Fox and Friends couch potatoes this morning:
“I have a theory, and it’s a theory that some people believe in and that’s the vaccinations…When you take a little baby that weighs like 12 pounds into a doctor’s office, and they pump them with many, many simultaneous vaccinations, and I’m all for vaccinations, but when you add all these vaccinations together, and then two months later the baby is so different, and I’ve known cases. I knew a case, a two year old child, went for the vaccination the child was fine, a month later the parent was up in arms, didn’t know what was going on because the baby had just lost it.”
But most physicians say vaccines don’t cause autism, said Fox Friend number two. What say you, Donald?
“It’s very controversial to even say, but I couldn’t care less,” said the man who says Barack Obama is a Kenya national. “It happened to somebody that worked for me recently. They had this beautiful child, not a problem in the world, and all of a sudden they go in, they get this monster shot. Did you ever see the size of it? It’s like they’re pumping in, you know, it’s terrible, the amount, and they pump it into this little body, and then all of a sudden the child is different a month later.”
Trump prefaced his remarks by reminding America that he is great friends with Bob and Suzanne Wright, the couple who founded Autism Speaks in 2005. When the Donald held a fundraiser for Autism Speaks in December, 2007, he told a reporter that vaccines cause autism.
“When I was growing up, autism wasn’t really a factor,” he said. “And now all of a sudden, it’s an epidemic. Everybody has their theory, and my theory is the shots. They’re getting these massive injections at one time. I think it’s the vaccinations.”
