Commenters School Dr. Vince Iannelli on PBS Newshour Autism Program
Managing Editor's Note: Dr. Vince Iannelli is an about.com blogger for pediatrics who is trying to deflect the powerful segment in a new PBS program about autism that featured Alison MacNeil, her family and vaccine injured son Nick - who has severe GI problems. Parents are schooling the good doctor in the comments. Perhaps he will be comforted by his AAP "mention Autism's False Prophets and get a free lollipop" prize. Ginger Taylor is shooting fish in a barrel. With her eyes closed and her hands tied behind her back. Head over to About.com PEDS to read more and comment yourself. Play nice, I think he has a headache. Here's a bit of his post.
...The fact that Nick's mother thinks that the MMR vaccine was the cause of his autism shouldn't be a surprise to many people, even if they have read Autism's False Prophets and know that the Wakefield report that started much of the talk about a link between MMR and autism was falsified. They don't talk about that in the show, but do mention that 'public health authorities say there is no scientifically valid evidence that vaccines cause autism.'
Part of the show went towards Nick's gastrointestinal problems. Although he had diarrhea and was crying inconsolably, those symptoms were dismissed by his developmental pediatrician as simply being a part of they symptoms of autism. That changed when they went to see Dr. Timothy Buie, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Because this followed the comments about vaccines, some people are associating Dr. Buie's treatment with Wakefield's falsified results, but it is important to note that in an article in Pediatrics, 'Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Gastrointestinal Disorders in Individuals With ASDs: A Consensus Report,' Dr. Buie was part of a group of doctors that said that 'there are inadequate data to establish a causal role for intestinal inflammation, increased intestinal permeability, immunologic abnormalities, or food allergies in ASDs.'
Hi Laurel.
That would be surreal, especially since Dr. Iannelli has not learned much since your son's diagnosis. I wonder if he said that Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease was often seen after MMR or that he couldn't hear your concerns because the AAP had chosen him to be on their Communications Team and WOWIE he was now completely entranced with Public Health and your child was not his concern.- yikes
Incidentally, Megan also broke out in a full body rash about the same time as your son after MMR. Our ped put her on an antibiotic! If I could make a time machine......
Posted by: Teresa Conrick | April 20, 2011 at 09:44 PM
It is completely surreal to read this article because Dr. Ianelli was my son with autism's pediatrician. My son had a high fever and a rash 8 days after this MMR+ vaccine (and slowly over the next few months lost the 3 words he had and stopped imitating, etc.). Dr. Ianelli diagnosed him with hand, foot and mouth disease - never mentioning it as a potential vaccine reaction - I didn't connect it either until later when I was putting together a timeline for homeopathy clears and saw that it was 8 days after. So many people don't realize that vaccine reactions can be delayed...
Posted by: Laurel | April 20, 2011 at 09:04 PM
Funny how the biggest problem surfacing with the first segment is people might confuse gastrointestinal disorders mentioned here as anything to do with Dr. Wakefield's work. I thought, wow, it's ok for other people to talk about it, but not Dr. Wakefield.
Posted by: Cynthia Cournoyer | April 20, 2011 at 04:12 PM
Deborah J. Boyd
I have a sister in law that lives in Forrest Miss. Her children are now grown. Four boys. Four boys:
Two boys are for sure PDD-NOS;
One has aniexty/depression/Hyperactive/attention deficeit problems that are probably worse than having PDD-NOS -
And one that seems normal but just a little odd, he is a worrier for one thing. Perhaps some depression there.
Miss already has a high rate of autism from my understanding. My understanding comes from listening to an IACC meeting with Senator Tom Harkin (I think I am remembering that right). But anyway in this meeting there was a lady from Miss that was telling just how many kids in her Miss's school district was already affected. I believe she said 1 out of 58 - (I am not sure I remember the correct number) but it was rather high. THis was all before the Gulf spill, however.
In The book "Age of Autism" it talks about how a certain type of new mercury was in Miss, to stop rot of wood used for lumber.
But the real increase with the whooping cough vaccine starting in the 70's.
So it could be environmental factors (but not petroleum) set Miss up for more reactions to the whooping cough vaccine.
As for my son, daughter and husband - well we are in Kentucky and for them it was the whooping cough vaccine that the medical people put right into thier bodies.
Now you might not can control the environment like it should be, but you sure can control what is taken up in a needle and injected into the body. That is a easy one!
All of this
Posted by: Benedetta | April 20, 2011 at 12:10 PM
Here are my comments to Dr. Ianelli on his statement the he does not speak for the AAP.
1st comment:
Dr I
“Being on the AAP Council on Communications and Media doesn’t mean that I speak for the American Academy of Pediatrics.”
THAT”S EXACTLY WHAT IT MEANS! I can speak from professional experience as a marketing/communications generalist. If you don’t tow the talking points and if you don’t stay on message for the AAP you would be kicked off that Council so fast your head will spin.
Being on the AAP Council on Communications and Media is the very reason you hold the “Pediatrics” topic on About.com.
If it weren’t you it would be some other Pediatrician who happily serves the AAP’s goals and interest serving as the “spokesperson” on about.com
2nd comment
I’ll go a step further… serving on the AAP Council on Communications and Media means that you participate in driving communications and media strategy, defining talking points, disseminating those talking points out to member Pediatricians and to the public through About.com..
Posted by: Pamela | April 19, 2011 at 03:04 PM
Here's one of my many comments today on Dr. Iannelli's post. I think this comment, from him, speaks volumes.
Dr I
“Being on the AAP Council on Communications and Media doesn’t mean that I speak for the American Academy of Pediatrics.”
THAT”S EXACTLY WHAT IT MEANS! I can speak from professional experience as a marketing/communications generalist. If you don’t tow the talking points and if you don’t stay on message for the AAP you will be kicked off that Council so fast your head will spin.
Being on the AAP Council on Communications and Media is the very reason you hold the “Pediatrics” topic on About.com.
If it weren’t you it would be some other Pediatrician who happily serves the AAP’s goals and interest serving as the “spokesperson” on about.com
Posted by: Pamela | April 19, 2011 at 01:30 PM
Thanks, for Jen. I didn't see that at all. Maybe it came later or I skimmed too much. Interesting.
Posted by: Jen | April 19, 2011 at 09:59 AM
Jen,
Dr. Iannelli said he has reported reactions to VAERS. And made a point to say parents can do it themselves ( there is that great help parents get from peds-do it yourself). He mentioned the most serious of a baby girl who started with seizures 2 weeks after her 2 month vaccines and was eventually diagnosed with viral encephalitis. Would like to know what happened to that little girl or is happening to that little girl now...autism? Or what kinds of lasting problems?
Posted by: For Jen | April 19, 2011 at 09:23 AM
What an amazing series of comments on Dr. Ianelli's blog. Surely they've got to have an effect on someone.
Posted by: Twyla | April 19, 2011 at 03:11 AM
From Dr. Mendelsohn, in "Confessions of a Medical Heretic":
"Medical students are further softened up by being maliciously fatigued. The way to weaken a person’s will in order to mold him to suit your purposes is to make him work hard, especially at night, and never give him a chance to recover. You teach the rat to race. The result is a person too weak to resist the most debilitating instrument medical school uses on its students: fear."
"If I had to characterize doctors, I would say their major psychological attribute is fear. They have a drive to achieve security-plus that’s never satisfied because of all the fear that’s drummed into them in medical school: fear of failure, fear of missing a diagnosis, fear of malpractice, fear of remarks by their peers, fear that they’ll have to find honest work. There was a movie some time ago that opened with a marathon dance contest. After a certain length of time all the contestants were eliminated except one. Everybody had to fail except the winner. That’s what medical school has become. Since everybody can’t win, everybody suffers from a loss of self-esteem. Everybody comes out of medical school feeling bad."
"Doctors are given one reward for swallowing the fear pill so willingly and for sacrificing the healing instincts and human emotions that might help their practice: arrogance. To hide their fear, they’re taught to adopt the authoritarian attitude and demeanor of their professors."
Posted by: Bayareamom | April 19, 2011 at 12:18 AM
Australia
Big Pharma must be definitely heading into "damage control" after this PBS program.
Evan Dr Vince Iannelli must be feeling a little overwhelmed by all the comments left on his blog About.com Peds that do not support his views.
Keep up the good work AoA!
Posted by: AussieMum | April 18, 2011 at 11:47 PM
May I ask -- why is it parents keep going to Pediatricians? Boycott them! There are plenty of qualified competent and caring physicians out there, who can treat your children. Homeopaths, Osteopaths, Family Physicians, Doctors of Oriental Medicine, etc., can all be great choices!
Our own mainstream pediatrician told us about a wonderful homeopathic pediatrician, years ago. We started taking our son to see Dr. Neustaedter when he was just about 2 years old. He is now 17 years old and is extremely healthy; we've never looked back; we use him ourselves, too.
Pediatricians ARE the problem - totally agree with Dad2one, here. I'm convinced, and this is just my humble opinion, that if enough families simply boycotted pediatricians altogether, perhaps then they'd listen up.
New parents get bombarded with the 'your baby needs to see a pediatrician' nonsense, from the moment of conception. It's a religion - your baby won't survive unless you have a pediatrician. But that's just not true!
Reminds me of what Dr. Robert Mendelsohn used to say; if you want your child to stay healthy, KEEP THEM AWAY FROM PEDIATRICIANS.
Posted by: Bayareamom | April 18, 2011 at 10:37 PM
And PBS said, "Defund us, will you?" And so the games began.
Yes, I know, completely imaginary, I'm sure. But fun to think about anyway.
Posted by: Jenny | April 18, 2011 at 10:34 PM
I am convinced there is a strong link with environmental pollution and autism and I think the strongest possibility is oil/petroleum. I further think that there may be a genetic component that allows some individuals to be more inclined to be affected by the environmental pollutions. We have now had a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Let us see if we do not have a marked increase in autism in the gulf states over the next 10 years.
Posted by: Deborah J. Boyd | April 18, 2011 at 09:51 PM
A very well done segment on PBS tonight. Thank you to the MacNeil family.
DR. Timothy Buie was excellent also in showing that these children have medical issues that need to be treated.
I am not sure what GI treatments were provided to little Nick, but it would have been nice if Dr. Buie stated he followed the lead of work done by Dr. Wakefield...
Posted by: cmo | April 18, 2011 at 09:46 PM
Dr. Vince Iannelli states "Dr. Buie was part of a group of doctors that said that 'there are inadequate data to establish a causal role for intestinal inflammation, increased intestinal permeability, immunologic abnormalities, or food allergies in ASDs.'" Although Dr. Buie is in fact a part of that group, it is improper to imply that Dr. Buie holds that exact belief without asking him. I did not hear him state one way or another.
The paper that Dr.Iannelli confidently refers to is "Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Gastrointestinal Disorders in Individuals with ASD's: A Consensus Report" from Pediatrics.
If the doctor had read the "methods" section he would see that it did not require unanimous agreement to rate the power of each study. It is ludicrous for anyone to assume that they know exactly how Dr.Buie had rated the studies that implicated the role of vaccines in the digestive disorders of autistic children. He may in fact have completely disagreed with other authors on the role of vaccines, or not have commented on studies linking to vaccines at all, we do not know. My opinion is clarified in the middle of page 52: "Committee members were encouraged to review but NOT NECESSARILLY GRADE all articles."
Another keeper quote from that study is on page 53 under the paragraph "Consensus Statements".
"Because of the absence, in general, of high quality research data, Evidence based recommendations are not possible at this time.......It is acknowledged that, in many areas, evidence is confined to case reports, observational or descriptive studies"
Sounds to me like they are talking about the work our friend Dr. Wakefield presented 13 years ago.
The important thing here is while Dr Buie is helping our children, Dr Dr.Iannelli is more concerned that we parents may have a voice about what we know caused our children's pain.
Posted by: Tim Kasemodel | April 18, 2011 at 09:30 PM
Many Peds ARE part of the problem. This is another example.
We did EXACTLY what the Ped told us - go ahead and give multiple shots when he was sick and on antibiotics - even when we asked if it was safe to do so. Our son passed out and didn't wake till the next morning. He then showed signs of what we now know are called absence seizures in addition to the fever.
That doctor never filed a VAERS report even when asked.
The nurses that were formerly on her staff said our son was not the only one.
Posted by: Dad2one | April 18, 2011 at 08:58 PM
They did school Dr. ianelli, big time. I liked it when one of them asked him how many vaccine reactions he's ever reported. He never did answer. Good one! Thank God PBS is doing something other than a pharma-front piece this time. If I were a ped I would be truly embarrassed.
Posted by: Jen | April 18, 2011 at 08:19 PM