AOA on the AAP
By Anne Dachel
The President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. David Tayloe, wrote on the vaccine controversy in his "Letter from the President" column in the May issue of Pediatrics, the official journal of the AAP. (Read the letter HERE.) The title of the letter was "Academy devoting resources to four major vaccine issues."
Tayloe began with a little pep talk for pediatricians on vaccine safety and efficacy. It was another rendition of the classic AAP theme song, "Vaccines are safe, vaccines save lives," and it included talking points that doctors can pass on to parents worried about possible side effects from vaccinations.
Among the items covered in the piece were "vaccine financing issues," and the promotion of vaccines. Tayloe announced that "the Academy also has been busy on the advocacy front." The 2008 Annual Leadership Forum had been most concerned that the AAP Board of Directors "address the public perception of vaccine safety" because it seemed that "pediatricians were spending significant time well beyond that needed to review the Vaccine Information Statements explaining vaccine issues to parents concerned about inaccurate but emotional media reports of presumed vaccine-related illness."
To help those doctors plagued by questioning parents, the AAP has "established the Immunization Alliance, a group of organizations that are strong supporters of vaccines. Every Child By Two, a member of the alliance, recruited Amanda Peet, a concerned mother and actress, to help combat the anti-vaccine media campaign."
Doctors were reminded that a recent vaccine court ruling went against parents who claimed vaccines had caused their child's autism. Furthermore, on the legal front, doctors were told that the AAP is writing an amicus brief for the U.S. Supreme Court against a Georgia ruling that parents don't have go through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). "The VICP must remain the first contact for all alleged vaccine-related injuries before plaintiffs are allowed to pursue legal action in civil court. Rolling the clock back to the early 1980s when many vaccine manufacturers exited the market secondary to massive vaccine-related injury lawsuits would significantly undermine our already fragile childhood immunization program."
Tayloe ended his missive to doctors with this less-than-reassuring comment: "Immunizations continue to be the hottest issue for our members, and the Academy will continue to do its best to assure the timely immunization of all children in a medical home."
This "we're doing everything we can" message is a little out of touch with what's happening in the real world and I'm sure the AAP membership knows it. Think back to the public statements made by Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the National Institutes of Health.
On CBS News, May 12, 2008 HERE, Healy stated: "This is the time when we do have the opportunity to understand whether or not there are susceptible children, perhaps genetically, perhaps they have a metabolic issue, mitochondrial disorder, immunological issue that makes them more susceptible to vaccines plural, or to one particular vaccine, or to a component of vaccine like mercury. We have to now ...take another look at that hypothesis, not deny it."
And on Larry King Live April 3, 2009, Healy said that families have "legitimate concerns," something Tayloe never admitted in his letter to doctors.
She chastised health officials for the "embarrassing recognition that we know so little [about autism)]...about what causes it." Healy said a lot of things that Tayloe failed to tell doctors in his feeble attempt to shore up the rapidly eroding confidence in the vaccine program.
"We have neglected this disease far too long in the face of this growing epidemic."
"We have got to focus on it and we have got to listen to families."
Healy talked about environmental triggers adding, "Vaccines MIGHT BE ONE OF THOSE COMPONENTS."
"The CDC has not gone and analyzed those 5,000 children [with autism claims in Vaccine Court]. These are children that have passed a certain screen, children who have had significant health problems right after they have been vaccinated, usually multiple times, and we haven't connected."
"So I think part of what's missing here, we have got to stop all this battling and we've got to honor each other's perspective and we've got to do a lot of research. ... I think there is an inexcusable issue. And that's the lack of research that's been done here. And I really don't believe that this is a closed case from a research point of view. And I think you can talk to the NIH, you can look at what has been discussed in recent panels about what we don't know, and then you will say, let's carry on with research.
"And now there's moneys to do it, there's a means to do it. Let's get on it and let's shake hands and do it together."
There was nothing remotely close to Healy sentiments regarding the vaccine controversy in Tayloe's letter. He told doctors instead to dig in their heels, admit nothing, deny, deny deny.
In the face of more and more public discussion of the link between vaccines and autism, Tayloe and the AAP offer doctors very little to back the claim that vaccines aren't the cause of autism. All parents have to do is talk to other parents. They see all the kids everywhere now called autistic, the students in schools with special needs that didn't exist 20 years ago. News stories from across the U.S. raising the issues of vaccine safety and the autism epidemic are out every single day:
April 22 FL: Vaccine bill has passions flaring Sarasota Herald-Tribune HERE "The proposed law would ban the ingredient thimerosal, a mercury-derived preservative some people believe causes autism, from vaccines given to pregnant women and children 4 and under. It would also allow parents to delay giving children vaccines until they enter school."
MO: Keeping your child toxin-free News-Leader.com HERE. "Then within days, Theresa Johnson's toddler changed. He lost weight and nearly all the normal skills he had demonstrated before. He became nervous and obsessive -- lining up toys, spinning, twirling his hair, refusing to look anyone in the eye, throwing tantrums.
"What had happened? 'We stupidly got him a flu shot,' his mother says."
CA: Parents Urged to Choose Immunizations San Fernando Valley Sun HERE
'Vaccines are tested extensively before they are licensed. Safety continues to be monitored postlicensure, and there is no scientific evidence that vaccines are linked to autism.'
NJ: Van Drew Meets with Parents Concerned about Vaccinations May 4 Cape May County Herald HERE "Many parents are concerned that immunizations cause or contribute to childhood chronic diseases like autism, diabetes, asthma, ADHD, and arthritis."
May 2 CA: Focus on autism HERE The Santa Clarita Valley Signal "One out of 75 students at Saugus Union School District, which has an enrollment of about 11,000 students, is diagnosed with autism."
If you go on Google News and look for autism stories, you find a multitude every hour. Most are about mundane things, although some include the controversy over vaccines and autism. Regardless of the message, this disorder has become a major health issue involving our children. Occasionally, I read the strange comment, "If you don't already know someone with an autistic child, you soon will." There's a lot of acceptance in that casual statement. Autism is now seen as an inevitable part of the childhood landscape--no questions asked.
We've gotten so used to hearing the worn-out phrase, "Autism affects one in every 150 children, according to studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." In actual fact, those numbers are so out-of-date, they serve no purpose. They're based on studies of eight year olds done back in 2000 and 2002. More recent are the numbers released in March from Cambridge University in Britain.
One child in 60 'suffers from a form of autism' | Mail Online HERE. We were told that one in every 60 British children, one in every 38 boys has autism. Still, there was no alarm that went off in the UK over the announcement. No government official bothered to address the stunning statistics. It seems that no matter what the numbers are on autism, no one is worried.
Here in the US, new autism figures just came out from the California Department of Developmental Services in a report entitled, Autistic Spectrum Disorders HERE. The thirty-one page summary includes detailed statistics on how autism affected the lost generation of children in California from 1987 to 2007. The numbers over those 20 years represent the real pandemic in America.
Based on 2007 numbers, the DDS reported, "Currently there are more than 38,000 people in California receiving services for ASD, growth that has averaged 13.4 percent annually since 2002. Based on current projections, regional centers and developmental centers will be serving more than 50,000 people with ASD by September 2009. If the trend continues, DDS may serve as many as 70,000 people with ASD by June 2012."
Comment after comment described a nearly hopeless scene that will only get worse.
"The biggest population boom is concentrated in young people. Over the last 20 years, the median age of people receiving services for autism with DDS has dropped from 19 to 10.75 years old. As of June 2007, more than one-third of all cases involved someone aged 9 or younger and 82 percent were 19 or younger."
"Autism increased over 1,100 percent over two decades while the total number of individuals in the DDS system increased 136 percent. People with autism now outnumber people with cerebral palsy in the DDS system, and most likely will soon surpass epilepsy."
"Net growth in the years between 2003 and 2007 parallels that in the years between 1987 and 2003, in that the largest increases in net growth are occurring in the 0-4, 5-9, 10-14, and 15-19 age groups."
"The majority of people with ASD are children aged 3 to 13, with a 5:1 preponderance of boys to girls."
While the CA autism report said nothing about causation, it's the biggest factor in this. The numbers are real. The report made no reference to better diagnosing or to an expanded spectrum as the reason for the explosion in autism There has to be an explanation. Why is autism overtaking our children? The thousands of parents who witnessed the loss of learned skills following routine vaccinations will not be silent.
Tayloe was right about one thing: the vaccine controversy is "the hottest issue for our members," and I'm convinced it's only going to get worse. With the leadership he's shown to doctors, I doubt if they'll convince anyone of safety. I do have a suggestion for Tayloe's next "Letter from the President" page. He might turn his attention to the California numbers and give pediatricians an explanation of what's happening in that state and the rest of the country because I'm sure parents will be asking.
--
Anne Dachel is Media Editor of Age of Autism.
bensmyson I use to lay awake at night an think about getting a sign and standing in front of my son's peditician's office. I thought on it a lot, I made myself sick thinking about it. I did not know that someone can make themselves sick with anger and rage. I also thought about putting it our town's local paper - the letter to the editor. I never did- but I told every one I knew. I told my church,I told my friends, I told my school kids. This went on from 1987 on into 2000. Iam not going to beat myself up about not doing it though. Because those that have not been hurt was not concerned about it- could not happen to them "sorry," my friends would say "I guess you are the unlucky one out of 11,000". No one believed it was at that time maybe closer to 1 out of 300. You know that my son's peditrician said even after it happened that it was not true because he had seen someone on the local news saying a vaccine had hurt her son and they showed the boy and he was a Down's Syndrome child. Poor kid had already had one strike againest him, now he had two (the vaccine) and then the peditrician made three with his stupid comment.
Posted by: Benedetta Stilwell | May 11, 2009 at 12:00 AM
I think it's obvious by now that the truth about autism - that it's a combination of both genetic & environmental factors, and among those environmental factors are vaccines - isn't going to come from the medical establishment/health authorities. They're too wedded to their wondrous medical modality of vaccination to risk acknowledging its implication in the matter, and thus that the benefits of various vaccines don't necessarily, after all, 'far outweigh' their risks. Their whole reputation is at stake, let alone their ultimate legal liability. So the only answer to this standoff is for the autism community to concentrate on politically forcing into being an independent congressional commission to hear all the evidence, pro and con, and widely publicize the findings.
The Burton hearings were a step in this direction. But it needs to be constituted in a more stringent legal way, with testimony given under oath. And let the chips fall where they may. For nothing is more important now than truth. Not anyone's reputation, or the medical profession's in general, or who might be sued for past dereliction of duty.
The Church hearings brought the skeletons of the CIA's doings out into the open. It's time for a similar housecleaning of the medical-pharmaceutical-government complex. If there are any honest congresspersons left. If not, then the autism community needs to fight this thing like the various state attorneys general did bringing the truth about cigarettes out into the open. It's time, that is, for hardball.
Posted by: Stan | May 09, 2009 at 06:18 PM
Regarding:
"Rolling the clock back to the early 1980s when many vaccine manufacturers exited the market secondary to massive vaccine-related injury lawsuits would significantly undermine our already fragile childhood immunization program."
"massive vaccine-related injury lawsuits"... hmmm...
If vaccines are so "safe" WHY were there so many vaccine injury lawsuits to begin with??!!
How many vaccine injury claims were rejected by the Vaccine Court that would have otherwise been admitted into the legal system???
How many of the 5,000 cases that are left still waiting will also be rejected by unfair rulings by this Kangaroo Court???
How much more blatant deception and corruption will prevail over the vaccine injured today and tomorrow???
SICKENING AND DISGUSTING ISN'T IT???!!!
Posted by: Autism Grandma | May 08, 2009 at 11:21 PM
Vaccination adherents appear to follow these particular "commandments" (in order of priority):
1. Thou shalt do no harm to the vaccine program, or through inaction allow the vaccine program to come to harm.
2. Thou shalt do no harm to the "herd", or through inaction allow the "herd" to come to harm, except where this conflicts with the first "commandment".
3. Thou shalt do no harm to the individual patient, or through inaction allow the individual patient to come to harm, except where this conflicts with the first or second "commandments".
(inspired by Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics)
Posted by: Carolyn M | May 08, 2009 at 10:57 PM
I think that some parents are hurting there children out of fear & that we don't know until more research is done what the true cause of Autism is & that we should support those who have it & be willing to learn from these ppl & put them down because these misinformed crusades: remember freedom of speech! There is no cure for Autism just certain symptoms associated with it! & also you have to think of certain environmental factors like lead in houses, living near industrial areas, whats in the diet, etc & also every child is different & that the cost on the system is more to make these vax injured payments than helping those who have Autism & need support structure & rights they are looking for, how about your cell phones & the wi fi waves it emits? Other countries in the world have benefited from Vaccines, hence the WHO stats:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/01/24/an-unvaccinated-child-has-died-from-a-preventable-disease/
http://www.apologia.com/vaccines/tragedies.html
http://www.epmonthly.com/whitecoat/2009/01/death-by-unvaccination/
http://www.who.int/immunization_monitoring/data/en/
http://www.apologia.com/vaccines/vac_lies.html
http://www.apologia.com/vaccines/vac_autism.html
thanks your friend & Autism leader who has Asperger's Zoey :)
Posted by: Zoey | May 08, 2009 at 05:53 PM
Not all pediatricians are buying the AAP's bunk. It will only be a matter of time before the uprising. Local docs who SEE what the vaccines are doing, see the poor heath trends among their patients, and see how kids can recover from autism are growing by the numbers.
It won't be long before they jump ship...cause it's going down.
Posted by: pediatriciansknow | May 08, 2009 at 02:17 PM
So the AAP sees "four major vaccine issues":
- Safety: no concerns there as our vaccine safety system is already excellent, according to the AAP;
- Financing: gotta make sure the doctors are getting paid enough for vaccines;
- Propaganda, oops I mean Advocacy: "to address the public perception of vaccine safety" and to combat those pesky "emotional media reports of presumed vaccine-related illness";
- Legal: writing "an amicus brief for the U.S. Supreme Court concerning a vaccine-related injury lawsuit in Georgia".
One question: why are the reports of vaccine-injury only "presumed"? Oh, now I remember -- because (per Dr. Bernardine Healy) nobody is studying them.
This is truly sickening.
Posted by: Twyla | May 08, 2009 at 12:18 PM
My wife wondered aloud why people don't line up outside pediatricians' offices holding placards the way they do at abortion clinics.
It made me think, maybe it will make you think as well.
Pictures are worth a thousand words, take a look, http://i40.tinypic.com/t9v9xc.jpg
Feel free to spread it about.
Posted by: bensmyson | May 08, 2009 at 10:13 AM
Tayloe's next letter to the members should be his resignation !!
This level of corruption and decadence is not acceptable. The AAP should be dismantled as the AMA and the FDA. Or at least radically reformed. But the question is who will replace these dishonest doctors in bed with the evil eugenicist Pharma Cartel ? Our world is under great threat and we do not have time to wait for Tayloe's change of mind... Autism is being generated continually by these rotten deniers.
We have to expose these criminals for what they are: liars, hypocrites and evil agents of the globalists who want to generate diseases and reduce world population through vaccinations! The Swine Flu Hype with the forced vaccinaton that will follow is the smoking gun that helps us foresee their plans... Tayloe is just confirming he is a dirty bigmouth to keep the cover-up burning.
Posted by: Sick_of_this | May 08, 2009 at 09:10 AM
Anne, great job! :-)
Will we see a day when the likes of Tayloe, the AAP, the CDC, the FDA, and most every mainstream doctor, accepts that this issue is not going to go away? That it cannot be swept under the carpet? That it can no longer be denied? What is the magic number? It's not 1 in 150, it's not 1 in 60... what will it take?
Posted by: Jeanne | May 08, 2009 at 09:04 AM
Rather than pointing to a few cases that lacked the proper medical documentation of an observed reaction as indicative of vaccine safety, Dr Tayloe should be urging his membership to exhaust all tests and scans to RULE OUT mito damage, ADEM, Gullaine-Barre, thrombocytopenia, serum sickness, allergic reactions or allergy triggering and other conditions EVERY time a parent reports ANY kind of a vaccine reaction. He should also be insistant that every member of the AAP report EVERY reaction, from a spot of redness at the injection site and beyond to VAERS.
Failure of parents to receive compensation for their child's injuries is not a measure of safety - it's a measure of medical incompetence by ignoring the events after the fact and the failure of Dr Tayloe's profession to diagnose a patient complaint.
Once again, the AAP and Dr Tayloe make it very, very clear to the public - they are not about medicine as a healing art. They are about medicine as an industry, with all of it's fiscal components regardless of the harm done to those they are supposed to be treating.
The dismissal of patients from practices because parents are being cautious to the funding of pharma propaganda is not the role of science, it is not the expectation of the service consumers. Dr Tayloe - thank you for being so transparent in your disregard for human life and health. It makes it only that much easier for the public to see you and your membership as a threat rather than a salvation. How do you sleep at night? Did you really want to be a liar when you grew up?
Posted by: GrammaKnows | May 08, 2009 at 06:41 AM