Autism News Beat

There is no credible evidence that mercury causes autism. It doesn’t matter if the mercury comes for vaccines, coal fired power plants, forest fires, or UFO tailpipe exhaust. What mercury can cause is mercury poisoning, which is nasty and horrible, but the symptoms are distinct from autism and not easily confused. Unless you’re an anti-vaccine activist who wants to pull a fast one on deadline-stressed reporters.

So if you’re a news editor or reporter in the Lone Star State, beware of a much publicized epidemiological study of coal-fired power plants and autism. Some parents of autistic children gathered in front of the Dallas federal court house last week to call attention to the study led by Raymond Palmer, PhD, associate professor of family and community medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Palmer reports that community autism prevalence is reduced by 1 percent to 2 percent with each 10 miles of distance from the pollution source. Unfortunately, Palmer’s study is yet one more example of a biased researcher cherry picking data to “prove” a hypothesis. An honest scientist looks for data to “test” the hypothesis.

This was Palmer’s second bite at the apple - his 2006 study on the same topic was widely criticized for failing to control for confounds such as urbanicity. His second attempt fell short, and you can read why here and here.

But junk science is to some people what bloated carrion is to a jackal, and fringe websites, and at least one law firm, are slavering over Palmer’s population study.

Epidemiological studies have not been kind to the anti-vaccine movement. Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, has been absent from scheduled childhood vaccines long enough that today’s 3-5 years old should be autism free, if a certain hypothesis was valid. Other epidemiological studies in Europe and elsewhere have failed to confirm a link between vaccines and autism.

But no matter. Vaccine hysteria pays fealty to science, but its true master is public relations. Websites such as AgeOfAutism.com regularly exhort its readers to bombard media outlets with spurious studies and unverifiable anecdotes, all aimed at getting journalists on their side. Sometimes it works. The latest call to action is aimed at four Texas media outlets who ran their own stories on reaction to the Palmer study: the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, WFAA-TV, KVTV, and KDAF.

An empty bucket, as you say in Texas, makes the most rattle, so grab your earplugs:

The media needs to hear from parents! If all these news sources receive emails from parents living everywhere in the U.S. and beyond telling them about the heavy metal levels in children with autism, pointing out the changes that occur after chelation and other bio-medical treatment, they may write more. We need to make it clear that something terrible is happening to our children but that there is hope. We can stop the exposure to toxins and we can recover these kids.

There is no credible evidence that children with autism have more heavy metals than their neurotypical peers. There are no peer reviewed studies that show chelation is an effective treatment for autism, and no good reason to suppose it would be.

By all means keep writing about autism. Tell the world about these children, their challenges, and the wonderful gifts they bring. And when reporting on the science, call a pediatric neurologist at the nearest medical college, or an immunologist, or the American Academy of Pediatrics. And when readers tell you they cured their kids with a special diet or a swim with the dolphins, show some skepticism. Purity of motive does not confer accuracy - dirt shows up on the cleanest cotton.

Something terrible happens to children with autism each time a credulous reporter repeats unverifiable and deliberately misleading stories about these kids. There is hope, but it has nothing to do with quack medical treatments and improbable conspiracy theories. Because when you get down to it, kids are kids, even ones with autism. And the best hope for any child with a disability is accommodation and acceptance.

Bazelon: “One of the reasons people cite for opting out is the fear of autism. Is there any evidence that is a legitimate concern?”

Spiesel: There are actually two concerns. One is thimerosal, and the other is measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. The MMR vaccine concerns were based on what turned out to be very bad research. And there’s a lot of evidence that neither the MMR vaccine, nor thimerosal, nor the number of vaccines a children receives at one time has any role to play in autism. In fact there are some good immunological reasons that most people don’t know about that bunching some vaccines together increases the response.”

You can watch the entire video here.

What motivates and sustains the anti-vaccine movement? Science rejects a link between vaccines and autism, and the persistence in illogical beliefs doesn’t advance the cause of austic people one iota.

Dr. Amy Tuteur, MD, says “vaccines rejectionism” is about how parents see themselves, and that it has little to do with children or vaccines. She recently shared her devastating critique of organized opposition to vaccines in the comments on a New York Times site, which I am publishing with Dr. Tuteur’s permission.

Vaccine rejectionism has been around for more than 200 years, almost as long as vaccines themselves. Over those two hundred years not one of the myriad claims of vaccine rejectionists have turned out to be true. Despite the fact that vaccine rejectionists have been 100% wrong in their understanding of vaccines, statistics, risks and claims of specific dangers, they still have a following. In large measure that is because the cultural claims of vaccine rejectionists resonate with prevailing cultural assumptions. Vaccine rejection is based on social constructs that have little if anything to do with objective reality or science.These constructs are explored in a fascinating article, ‘Trusting blindly can be the biggest risk of all’: organised resistance to childhood vaccination in the UK (Hobson-West, Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 29 No. 2 2007, pp. 198–215).

The fact that vaccine rejectionism is based on false premises is sidestepped by ignoring the scientific data and focusing instead on whether parents agree with health professionals. Agreement with doctors is constructed as a negative and refusal to trust is constructed as a positive cultural attribute:

… Non-vaccinators or those who question aspects of vaccination policy are ‘free thinkers’ who have escaped from the disempowerment that is seen to characterise vaccination…

… [vaccine rejectionists] construct trust in others as passive and the easy option. Rather than trust in experts, the alternative scenario is of a parent who becomes the expert themselves, through a difficult process of personal education and empowerment…”

The ultimate goal is to become “empowered”:

“… the moral imperative to become informed is part of a broader shift, evident in the new public health, for which some kind of empowerment, personal responsibility and participation are expressed in highly positive terms.”

Vaccine rejectionism is about the parents and how they would like to see themselves, not about vaccines and not about children. In the socially constructed world of vaccine rejectionists, risks can never be quantified and are always “unknown”. Parents are divided into those (inferior) people who are passive and blindly trust authority figures and (superior) rejectionists who are “educated” and “empowered” by taking “personal responsibility”.

This view depends on a deliberate re-definition of all the relevant terms, however, and that re-definition is unjustified and self aggrandizing. The risks of vaccines are not unknown. Believing that vaccines save millions of lives is not a matter of “trust”, it is reality. Questioning authority is not the same as being “educated”; indeed, it isn’t even related. Lacking even basic knowledge of immunology and rejecting medical facts is not a sign of education, independent thinking or taking personal responsibility. It is a sign of lack of education and understanding.

— Posted by Amy Tuteur, MD

There’s a reason the public holds attorneys in only slightly higher esteem than arms smugglers and crack whores, and his name is Clifford Shoemaker.

Where most people view autism as a developmental delay, Shoemaker sees boat payments. For 20 years, he’s been gaming vaccine court, and making the big bucks, according to an investigation by Kathleen Seidel at Neurodiversity.com:

Mr. Shoemaker was one of the first attorneys to specialize in prosecuting claims filed in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Since 1990, he has represented petitioners in 577 cases (282 closed and 295 pending). In many of these cases, Poling v. HHS included, Dr. Geier has served as an expert witness or litigation consultant.

Shoemaker, who is currently representing Rev. and Mr. Lisa Sykes in a vaccine-related action against Bayer, is apparently unhappy with Seidel’s sleuthing, so he subpoenaed her work product, financial records, and even inquired about her religious beliefs.

Reaction from the blogosphere has been swift. “So move over, Bloggers Choice Awards and ABA Top 100 Blawgs. The real badge of honor out here in the blogosphere isn’t some a contrived award - it’s a subpoena!” says Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch.

Surgeon/scientist Orac says Shoemaker’s subpoena ” is clearly nothing more than a fishing expedition designed to intimidate (Seidel) into silence.” Orac has also challenged junk science apologists David Kirby and Dan Olmsted to tell Shoemaker to back off:

Given that this subpoena is clearly an obvious attempt to silence Kathleen or, at the very least, punish her for her criticisms of Clifford Shoemaker and his activities, I am appealing to both of you to use your influence and position in the autism biomedical movement to protest this shameless action by Mr. Shoemaker. I am urging you to speak out against legal intimidation and thuggery and for the First Amendment right of the media, including bloggers, of freedom of speech.

So far only silence from Kirby and Olmsted. Olmsted is editor of AgeOfAutism.com, an online water cooler where dim-witted sociopaths and shrieking Chicken Little’s compare conspiracy theories and cheer on declining vaccination rates. Without First Amendment protections, these fools would have have been lined up and shot around the time thimerosal disappeared from scheduled childhood vaccines, or roughly six years ago.

In addition to raising awareness of the world’s most famous development disability, World Autism Awareness Day also exposes some of the more enduring misconceptions that reporters still hold about autism. While more and more major media outlets are presenting evidence-based approaches to this intriguing story, many smaller outlets have yet to pass their earliest developmental milestones.

It’s apparent that much coverage suffers from the rush to produce an autism story for no reason other than it’s World Autism Awareness Day. As I read some of these stories, I can almost hear an editor yell “Who can find me an autistic kid?” Barbara Grijalva, a news anchor at Tucson’s KOLD News 13, answers the call with stiff prose and loose attribution:

Autism is epidemic in our country. Ask a parent or a pediatrician, and you’ll find not much is being done about it.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says one in every 150 children is born with autism in the U.S.

There’s a spectrum of symptoms, including communication and behavior problems.

There’s no cure. No one knows what causes it. Parents mostly are left to fend for themselves.

Research has shown that early intervention with behavioral therapy and special education can improve a child’s life, but insurance won’t pay for treatments.

There is very little government money being directed at finding a cure for autism.

It’s a situation that stresses out families. Keri Barber is the mother of a young autistic son. She says, “You go to bed at night thinking about autism. You wake up thinking about autism, and you feel like you’re running full speed but in place.”

The divorce rate for parents of autistic children is estimated to be 85%.

Wednesday was the first “World Autism Day” (sic) to bring attention to, what the experts say, is an epidemic that is going largely unnoticed, and under funded.

If this story has a theme, it’s that a virtual avalanche of spinning, flapping kids is bearing down on our sleepy global village, and the only ones noticing are frazzled parents and our cryogenic news anchor. That there is no clear evidence of an epidemic totally escapes her. Instead of information we can use, we get drowsy stream of consciousness from someone who couldn’t care less.

From WLOX in Beloxi, Mississippi, reporter Don Culpepper brings us news of a WAAD miracle:

Like most mothers of autistic children Dawn Felton doubles as his doctor and therapist.”The avenues I would have to go through was the internet and then I would read about all of these programs that I had no money for,” said Dawn.

One thing she could afford to do was change Justin’s diet to eliminate wheat and dairy products.

But recently she found an organic detoxifying product that she says worked miracles.

“Recently I organically detoxified Justin. One week after that detoxification, Justin began reading books orally for the first time ever. He reads books in front of the entire library at Bel Aire Elementary School,” said Dawn.

I asked Culpepper if WLOX could confirm any of Felton’s claims.

“Unless I had access to Justin’s medical records how could I?” he responded by email. “Since we did a story on them five years earlier, I took her and her family’s word that Justin was improving. And I tried to limit exposing her claims of how and why the treatment worked for them. It was simply a story of hope to promote Autism Awareness Month.”

Ah yes, hope - the only bee that makes honey without flowers.*

Finally, from WRDW in Augusta, Georgia, we have the story of a medical mystery that pits science against D-list actress Jenny McCarthy. To be resolved: Do vaccines cause autism? Fortunately, Health Team 12 is on the case:

Whether vaccines cause or contribute to autism is a hotly debated topic in the medical community and for parents.The Morris family did some research, and they say they are holding out.

“”I would rather take the risk of my child developing measles and curing them, then her develop autism and live in this box the rest of her life,” says mom Mary Wingate. She and her fiance, Joseph Morris Junior, have decided to wait a little while longer before vaccinating their six month old daughter, Georgia Alison any further.

And what was the source of the Morris family’s research?

A late night with Georgia was the wake-up call mom didn’t even know she was looking for. She stumbled across a TV show with Jenny McCarthy as the guest.Something Jenny said — brought her here to a website she runs, www.generationrescue.com

“I was like wow she really is passionate about this and wants people to know more about this,” says Wingate.

McCarthey (sic) has an autistic child and like so many others, she believes vaccines caused her son’s disorder.

What would we do without Health Team 12?

_____________________________

* Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899), noted American orator and agnostic

I’ve always appreciated Kevin Drum’s political instincts and insight. He is pragmatic, eschews dogma, and brings an historic perspective to his musings on government, foreign affairs and politics. So it was depressing to read his Public Health Warning today at CBSNews.com:

Someone asked me a while back why I wasn’t Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s biggest fan, and this is why. His reckless demagoging about thimerosal and autism was and is actively dangerous. Ditto for John McCain’s ignorant burbling on the subject a few weeks ago. They should both be ashamed of themselves.In the end, this particular blend of of conspiracy theorizing and New Age ditziness probably won’t attract enough support to be too big a deal. But inchoate fear is a strong emotion, especially when threats to children are involved. The people who feed this fear are playing with fire.

No support? Not a big deal? We’re talking about the same people who buy miracle diet cures over the internet, and let Oprah tell them which books to read. People who believe there’s actually a method to picking the right cases on Deal or No Deal, or think that their annual IRS refund is a great way to save money.

I’m surprised Drum doesn’t see it. The anti-vaccine movement is the latest chapter in America’s distrust of authority that dates back to l’affaire Watergate and the Vietnam War. It’s not only the vaccines the parents hate - it’s the bureaucrats and medical professionals who recommend them. In a culture where the consumer is king, and voters are pampered and fluffed by obsequious politicians, the health care industry can seem stubbornly immune to the fickleness of the marketplace. Need a man’s razor with 18 blades? Here ya go. Carry-out chimichungas? No problemo! A fax machine for your jet ski? That can be arranged. Green vaccines? Uh, actually, no. It’s just not the same thing.

If the anti-vaccine movement gains enough traction to “be a big deal”, if it isn’t already, it will happen because good men like Kevin Drum did nothing.

“The people who feed this fear are playing with fire.”

David Kirby is not a science writer, and his technical grasp of the vaccines and autism story is shaky at best.

And yet I was not surprised to see his op-ed addressing this very important public health issue in the Journal Constitution. In the six months that I’ve been monitoring and critiquing press coverage of autism and vaccines, I’ve seen editors and reporters played by the David Kirbys of the world. Ordinarily skeptical reporters repeatedly fall for demonstrably false claims by agenda driven activists, such as Kirby, who cloak themselves in the respectability of science, but who base their arguments on flawed data published in fringe or non-peer-reviewed journals. They incite fear in the public, especially among those who are the most vulnerable: families of individuals with autism who are desperate for information. The media owe it to the families to make responsible decisions about what to publish.

Fortunately, things are improving.

• In 2008 The New York Time’s ombudsmen wrote in February that it’s time to “close the door” on the discredited hypothesis that vaccines cause autism.
• In 2008 The Philadelphia Enquirer wrote, in its editorial, that “New waves of science are debunking the sturdiest of suburban myths: that childhood vaccination is linked to autism in children. This myth has been stoked by the Internet, concerned parents’ groups, high-profile advocates like Joseph Kennedy II (sic), and pop media (the topic was in the first episode of ABC’s Eli Stone ).”
• The Wall Street Journal has published editorials and op-eds to argue, as Ari Brown, M.D. did in late 2007, that the United States should “put our energy into funding autism research and treatment, not demonizing our vaccination program.”
• In 2007, The Washington Post wrote: “Too little is known about the nature of autism to blame any factor, let alone the vaccines that are proven to prevent many deaths and illnesses every year,” and again in 2008, wrote “Given how little is known about autism — and the fact that no science has been able to connect it to vaccines — parents should continue to protect their children against known, preventable risks: the deadly diseases that vaccines keep at bay.”
• The Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s veteran science reporter Mark Roth knows that the science is settled, and does not reflexively seek out anti-vaccine zealots for “balance”.

No responsible media outlet would give equal time to holocaust deniers, racial supremacists, or 9/11 Truthers, no matter how many “studies” and “experts” are quoted. It’s time to show anti-vaccine zealots the door as well.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution is more than a newspaper - it’s an institution, and its leadership is sorely needed to push back against the voices of fear and ignorance. Won’t you join the New York Times and other progressive, evidence-based media outlets? Take a stand for public health, educate the public on the facts about vaccines, and tell David Kirby and others that their conspiracy theories and slander have no place in your proud paper.

Journal Constitution contact information:

Editorial Page Editor - Cynthia Tucker, phone 404-526-5432, cynthia@ajc.com
Sr. Editorial Coordinator - Chris Kraft, ckraft@ajc.com
Editor - Julia Wallace, 404-526-7679, jdwallace@ajc.com
Sr. Managing Editor/Vice President- James Mallory, 404-526-5325, jmallory@ajc.com

h/t: RG

As CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta is well positioned to educate a distracted public on important health matters. But on his blog, Gupta takes a pass on setting the record straight on vaccines and autism, and opts instead for the safer “he said she said” narrative that infests small market news reporting.

“First of all, it seems as if parents bring up concerns about vaccines, they are automatically portrayed as anti-vaccine. Why is that? Is it possible to completely believe in the power and benefits of vaccines, but still have legitimate and credible concerns?”

One would think Gupta could follow this paragraph by listing real concerns, or sharing the criteria scientists use to separate legitimate concerns from hysterical nonsense. Instead, he shows just how out of touch he is with this important story by inviting anti-vaccine zealots and others to comment, with predictable results:

I believe the very 1st vaccine sets up a child for immune problems. I chose not to vaccinate my baby after my other daughter had 8 seizures after her 4month old shots. I did not want to pick and choose which diseases I thought my baby would be at most risk for and vaccinate for only those. I felt that keeping her immune system in-tact from the beginning was the safest approach. At age 5 my “never-vaccinated baby” has never had a sick visit!

As a medical doctor with a very loud megaphone, Gupta should take his oath to “First, do no harm” doubly serious. Yet his comment section is laden with the types of misinformation and logical fallacies that journalists are supposed to sniff out and correct:

Chickenpox is basically a nuisance disease, and innoculation for it is justified more in terms of lost productivity for parents that mortality - Dadfourkids

As for the vaccines, after hours and hours of research, I get my daughter the vaccines that are for serious illness which are actually a threat to HER. - Ann

Our bodies were created with the perfect internal pharmacy with everything necessary to create and maintain perfect health. If monkey blood, sheep blood, formaldehyde and other foreign substances were necessary for health, then our creator would have made them a part of our biology. - Julian Vail

My beautiful bouncing baby boy had become a walking vegetable. If I new (sic) then, what I know now; I would not have him vaccinated. - Zurama Johnston

It is also misleading to say trace vaccines are safe by saying the mercury is “essentially out”. Vaccines with 3 to 10 times the concentration of liquid hazardous waste, with no proof of an established “safe dose” can in no way be left out of the conversation. - Tim Kasemodel

I want to give Gupta the benefit of the doubt here, and believe that he was inviting anti-vaccine activists to reveal their true nature. But he waffles a week later, in a blog entry called The Myths of Autism, when he says he hopes to address the myth that “thimerosal in vaccines is the main cause for autism”. Does Gupta think that thimerosal is a secondary cause? If so, what is his evidence? Does he also reject the hypothesis that television is a main cause of autism?

Gupta’s blog entries are mere throat clearing for ABC’s World Autism Awareness Day coverage on April 2. ABC is promoting a very special Larry King Live interview that day with noted Google PhD Jenny McCarthy and journalist manqué David Kirby, who will be misrepresenting, well, everything.

In the autism wars, truth is the first casualty. Why is that, Dr.Gupta?

Autism and vaccines registered a minor blip on the national news radar screen over the weekend after Sen. John McCain, the GOP’s presumptive nominee for the fall Presidential contest, said that autism might be caused by thimerosal. To those who know better McCain’s comment seems outdated, as if he had warned of a missile gap with the USSR.

Jack Tapper, ABC’s national correspondent, wrote about McCain’s disconnectedness from science:

At a town hall meeting Friday in Texas, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that “there’s strong evidence” that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in many childhood vaccines, is responsible for the increased diagnoses of autism in the U.S. – a position in stark contrast with the view of the medical establishment.

McCain was responding to a question from the mother of a boy with autism, who asked about a recent story that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program had issued a judgment in favor of an unnamed child whose family claimed regressive encephalopathy and symptoms of autism were caused by thimerosal.

“We’ve been waiting for years for kind of a responsible answer to this question, and are hoping that you can help us out there,” the woman said.

McCain said, per ABC News’ Bret Hovell, that “It’s indisputable that (autism) is on the rise amongst children, the question is what’s causing it. And we go back and forth and there’s strong evidence that indicates that it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines.”

McCain said there’s “divided scientific opinion” on the matter, with “many on the other side that are credible scientists that are saying that’s not the cause of it.”

McCain’s remark will be ignored by those 99 percent of voters who don’t have a dog in the autism hunt. But to the one-tenth of one-percent of voters - and it’s probably much less - who believe against all evidence that vaccines cause autism, Sen. Straight Talk’s comment sounds like angels singing on high, and it will produce votes.

But to the rest of us, those 99.9 percent of voters who either know better or don’t care, McCain’s words are reason for concern about the candidate himself. Do we really want a President who cannot analyze scientific evidence, or who won’t turn to experts for answers to technical questions? If McCain understands the issues better than he lets on, and was only pandering for votes, then he’s still showing an appalling lack of judgment by stirring up unwarranted fears about something as crucial to public health as the vaccine program.

It’s a matter of faith among most politicians that if you throw enough mud at your opponent that some is bound to stick, truth be damned. Agenda driven anti-vaccine activists have know this for years, so it’s important for journalists covering the autism news beat to recognize some of the more blatant and frequently used canards.

A letter to the editor in the Lawrence Journal-World last December contains all the half truths, insinuations, and flat-out confabulations one would expect from a movement that long ago jettisoned science in favor of guerrilla marketing.

To the editor:

Health of our children under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to decline. The United States is ranked 41st in infant mortality. Who are the 40 countries that have lower rates of infant death?

One in four children has asthma. One in six children has a neurobehavioral and/or developmental disability. Could it be that we inject infants, on their day of birth, with hepatitis B vaccines that still contain up to three micrograms of neurotoxic mercury as well as aluminum?

Where are the front page headlines when major autism researchers re-examine their research and say “oops” or when the Department of Justice conceded that thimerosal contributed to a child’s autism?

Dr. Catherine DeSoto and Dr. Robert T. Hitlan both have a Ph.D. in medicine and had the courage to admit in the Journal of Child Neurology, “We have reanalyzed the data set forth originally reported in 2004 and have found that the original P value was in error and that a significant relation does exist between the blood levels of mercury and diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder. Moreover, the hair sample analysis results offer some support for the idea that persons with autism may be less efficient and more variable at eliminating mercury from the blood.”

We are failing our children’s health. It is time to help stop poisoning kids.

Linda Weinmaster,
Lawrence

Sigh.

First, the hepatitis B vaccine does not contain “up to three micrograms” of mercury. From the CDC’s own website we learn:

All hepatitis B vaccines intended for use in infants and children are free of thimerosal as a preservative, and an adequate supply of these vaccines is available for all infant and childhood vaccinations. This vaccine should be administered to all newborn infants and is a major cornerstone in the prevention of a potentially fatal disease in children and adults.

A Google search for “hepatitis B vaccine” +thimerosal yields a bumper crop of quack medical sites, including Mercola.com which tells us Hep B contains up to 25 micrograms of mercury. This is nonsense. Anybody can spin a defamatory yarn, and some will continue to as long as newspapers publish them.

Moving on, Dr. Catherine DeSoto and Dr. Robert T. Hitlan are not “major autism researchers”, nor were they the authors of the original paper they criticized, as the letter writer wants us to believe. DeSoto and Hitlan do not each have a PhD in medicine because there is no such degree. They are PhD psychologists. Why does the writer feel it is necessary to make stuff up? Did she not research her letter first? Or is she relying on fabrications to cover up a lack of evidence for her claims? Falsely proclaiming the two psychologists as medical experts confers a level of respectability that these claims do not deserve. The DeSoto paper does not prove that mercury causes autism - you can read a detailed critique here.

Despite what anti-vaccine activists tell us, the Department of Justice did not “concede that thimerosal contributed to a child’s autism” because there is no sound evidence that mercury in any form causes autism. This slur was lifted from fringe anti-vaccine groups who deliberately misread the respondent’s notice in the ongoing Vaccine Court Hearings. The respondents told the special masters that vaccines caused a significant aggravation of an underlying condition in one of the petitioners’ test cases. Serious adverse reactions do happen from time to time, which is why the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund was created 20 years ago.

The oft-repeated claim that “one in six children has a neurobehavioral and/or developmental disability,” is a self-serving interpretation of normally distributed data on a bell curve. It’s akin to saying that half of all children are below average. Here’s a graphic explanation of the “one in six” canard.

One in six children are below the one standard deviation below, and one in six are one standard deviation above. (ht: bm)
Yes, the US infant mortality rate is far too high, but there is no evidence that vaccines are to blame. Infant mortality tends to be a proxy for extreme poverty, and few developed countries with lower infant mortality rates have poverty rates close to that of the US. The best way to combat infant morality is with more prenatal screening and counseling, low cost or free health care, and education. Scaring parents into foregoing vaccinations for their children does not prevent deaths.

We are failing our children’s health. It is time to help stop poisoning parents’ minds with phony conspiracies and fear mongering.

This article was originally posted here.