Age of Autism Awards 2008 Person of the Year: Dr. Bernadine Healy

By Dan Olmsted

It was the shot -- or, rather, the words about the shots -- heard 'round the world. In a U.S. News column in April and then a brave interview on CBS in May, one person yanked the vaccine-autism debate back into the mainstream of medicine where it has always belonged.

For that, and more, it is a pleasure to name Bernadine Healy Age of Autism's Person of the Year.

This was not a hard decision. Just listen:

 "I think public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the [vaccine-autism] hypothesis as 'irrational,' without sufficient studies of causation... without studying the population that got sick," Dr. Healy told CBS's Sharyl Attkisson. "I have not seen major studies that focus on 300 kids who got autistic symptoms within a period of a few weeks of the vaccines."

 Holy moley.

David Kirby put it this way: "As someone who has come under, shall we say, 'sniper fire' for refusing to concede that there is no link between vaccines and autism, I now have a semi tongue-in-cheek response to my once and future critics: 'Go tell it to Dr. Healy.'"

Go tell it to Dr. Healy, Paul Offit. Go tell it to Dr. Healy, Dr. Tayloe. Go tell it to Dr. Healy, all you condescending public health officials who cite your eight or nine or however many studies that "prove" vaccines don't cause autism.

But be prepared to argue with someone your own size -- in fact, someone much more imposing in terms of credentials and credibility. Member of the Institute of Medicine. Former head of the Red Cross. And, most importantly, former head of the National Institutes of Health.

We're so used to hearing the folks at the CDC opine on their studies that show vaccines are safe (actually, they don't) that we've come to think the CDC is responsible for figuring out what's causing autism (actually, they're not).

The nation's premier medical entity is the one Bernadine Healy headed. They are the ones who spend the money to do the research to find the answers to what cause particular diseases. And then they figure out how to treat and, ultimately, cure them.

The NIH went wobbly on us this year. Dr. Tom Insel, who occasionally shows flashes of recognition that autism is an epidemic, and thus an environmental disorder that could be triggered by vaccines, turned around and made the IACC -- charged with figuring out how to spend the billion dollars Congress appropriated -- into a toothless agent of the status quo.

In contrast, Dr. Healy stood up and spoke out for thousands of parents -- you know, the ones whose first-hand observations are supposedly just anecdotal evidence, the weakest kind of scientific data.

Well then, says Dr. Healy, why don't we go study them like actual  scientists instead of shills for the vaccine-development complex? Take 300 children whose parents believe they developed autism soon after vaccination and study the heck out of them.

 "We do have the opportunity to understand whether or not there are susceptible children -- perhaps medically, perhaps they have a metabolic issue, mitochondrial disorder, medical issue -- that makes them more susceptible to vaccines, plural, or to one particular vaccine, or to a component of vaccines, like mercury."

Oh, and you have to love her comment on mercury in that U.S. News article:
 "Pediatricians were concerned enough about mercury, which is known to cause neurological damage in developing infant and fetal brains, that they mobilized to have thimerosal removed from childhood vaccines by 2002. Their concern was not autism but the lunacy of injecting mercury into little kids through mandated vaccines that together exceeded mercury safety guidelines designed for adults."

Lunacy! And mercury is in the flu shot pregnant women and infants get, and in vaccines distributed around the world for the sole reason that the lunatics who run the show in the United States say it's A-OK.

There's another kind of shot Bernadine Healy has given all of us, one that won't wear off or cause adverse events: She gave us a shot of Adrenalin just when we needed it most.
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

Comments

[Benedetta]

What else is she - Pete???

What did she get out of declaring that vaccines were causing harm????

Did she become the head of a pharm corp for that???

Did important people with loads of money and power, put her on their shoulders and rush her throught the streets claiming her queen????

Or did they try to assissanate her character by such the likes as you???

[Pete Wight]

Healy is a corporate shill.. She was the reason James Watson (DNA Discoverer) left the human genome project.. She was a driving force behind putting patents on certain genes and sequences..

Shame on her and shame on the author of this article for not doing his research..

[jill r]

thank you dr. healy! you have made me feel a little less crazy. on a day to day basis people would like to say we are all crazy for thinking these thoughts about the beloved vaccines. but you have stood up and said we have every right to feel this way. thank you

[Jeanne]

Thank you Dr. Healy! Your bravery to speak the truth is greatly appreciated by us all. Congratulations, you deserve it!

[For mayhempix]

"Considering all the worry and talk of paid shills for "Big Pharma" has anyone here taken the time to find out that Healy was a paid shill for Big Tobacco?"

mayhempix, do you think its possible she "gets" it *because* of her past connection to Big Tobacco? Do you see the similarity between cigarettes and vaccines and the damage both cause to the health of a susceptible segment of the population? Maybe vaccines should come with a warning - injecting vaccines can be hazardous to your health!!

[Stagmom]

Mayhempix, we posted your comment last night. It's there in plain sight. We removed the link. We do not have to allow links to every site on the Internet. As usual, your sort has to come in with fists held high to challenge us.

Kim

[mayhempix]

You did not post my comment and link about Healy's connection to Big Tobacco. If you are so confident in your positions, why must you censure facts?

If you do not post this comment, you have no credibility.

[MinorityView]

Ben Kliber said: ""Has anyone ever gone back to the time when mmr was not given to children at one time what was the % of autism then and now?"

Yes. Similar studies have been performed in the UK and Japan."

Thanks Ben. Please provide citations so we can follow up on these studies.

[Twyla]

Mayhempix - What's your point? Is Big Tobacco paying her to speak out on the vaccine-autism connection? Hmmm, doesn't seem likely!

For some info on Dr. Healy's bio, go to www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_145.html and to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadine_Healy

Yes she did serve on an advisory board of a group later shown to be funded by Phillip Morris, but her career is full of many positive accomplishments -- starting with her graduation summa cum laude from Vassar College with a major in chemistry and a minor in philosophy, then graduation cum laude from Harvard Medical School in 1970 as one of only ten women out of 120 students in her class.

Per the NIH bio, "While she was at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Healy undertook a number of initiatives. She established an award program to keep talented scientists working within the grant system during funding lapses, oversaw the development of a major intramural genetics laboratory and an Institute for Nursing Research, and launched the $625 million Women's Health Initiative (a long-term health study involving 150,000 women). In the interest of better understanding the different ways disease and treatment affect men and women, she also established a policy whereby the National Institutes of Health would fund only those clinical trials that included both men and women when the condition being studied affected both genders.

"As president of the American Heart Association from 1998 to 1999, she initiated pioneering research into women's heart disease and demonstrated that medical progress depends on the public and medical community's perception that there is a problem to be solved. Healy set out to convince both the lay and medical sectors that heart disease is also a woman's disease, 'not a man's disease in disguise.'" Sounds to me like an extremely bright woman with a mind of her own.

Yes, she is a Republican. But there are both Republicans and Democrats on both sides of autism and vaccine issues.

Mayhempix, what ulterior "motives" are you attributing to Dr. Healy? What role could "party politics" possibly have in her decision to speak out regarding vaccine concerns? I think you are just throwing mud -- irrelevant mud.

[mayhempix]

Considering all the worry and talk of paid shills for "Big Pharma" has anyone here taken the time to find out that Healy was a paid shill for Big Tobacco? Surely the fact that tobacco is one of the world's biggest preventable killers should give one pause as to Healy's motives. A lifelong Republican, she consistently sided with party politics against science. Hero? Think again.