Whistleblower Says CDC Knew in 2003 of Higher Autism Rate Among African-American Boys Receiving MMR Shot Earlier Than 36 Months
Listen to audio from the whistleblower HERE.
WATCHUNG, NJ--(Marketwired - August 18, 2014) - A top research scientist working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played a key role in helping Dr. Brian Hooker of the Focus Autism Foundation uncover data manipulation by the CDC that obscured a higher incidence of autism in African-American boys. The whistleblower came to the attention of Hooker, a PhD in biochemical engineering, after he had made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for original data on the DeStefano et al MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and autism study.
Dr. Hooker's study, published August 8 in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Translational Neurodegeneration, shows that African-American boys receiving their first MMR vaccine before 36 months of age are 3.4 times more likely to develop autism vs. after 36 months.
According to Dr. Hooker, the CDC whistleblower informant -- who wishes to remain anonymous -- guided him to evidence that a statistically significant relationship between the age the MMR vaccine was first given and autism incidence in African-American boys was hidden by CDC researchers. After data were gathered on 2,583 children living in Atlanta, Georgia who were born between 1986 and 1993, CDC researchers excluded children that did not have a valid State of Georgia birth certificate -- reducing the sample size being studied by 41%. Hooker explains that by introducing this arbitrary criteria into the analysis, the cohort size was sharply reduced, eliminating the statistical power of the findings and negating the strong MMR-autism link in African American boys.
Dr. Hooker has worked closely with the CDC whistleblower, and he viewed highly sensitive documents related to the study via Congressional request from U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The CDC documents from Congress and discussions that Hooker had with the whistleblower reveal widespread manipulation of scientific data and top-down pressure on CDC scientists to support fraudulent application of government policies on vaccine safety. Based on raw data used in the 2004 DeStefano et al study obtained under FOIA, Dr. Hooker found that the link between MMR vaccination and autism in African-American boys was obscured by the introduction of irrelevant and unnecessary birth certificate criteria -- ostensibly to reduce the size of the study.
The results of the original study first appeared in the journal Pediatrics which receives financial support from vaccine makers via advertising and direct donations, according to a CBS News report. The DeStefano et al study is widely used by the CDC and other public health organizations to dismiss any link between vaccines and autism -- a neurological disorder on the rise.
Dr. Hooker stated "The CDC knew about the relationship between the age of first MMR vaccine and autism incidence in African-American boys as early as 2003, but chose to cover it up." The whistleblower confirmed this.
When asked if there could be any scientific basis for excluding children born outside of Georgia, Hooker responded, "I know of none, and none has been provided by the authors of the DeStefano study." He added, "The exclusion is reminiscent of tactics historically used to deprive African-Americans of the vote by requiring valid birth certificates."
Dr. Hooker concluded further study is needed to determine why this specific effect (3.4-fold increase when MMR is administered prior to 36 months) is seen exclusively in African-American males, and determine whether delaying the first MMR vaccination should be advised for this population. A link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been conceded in cases compensated by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
The CDC whistleblower informant, who has worked for the government agency for over a decade, remarked to Dr. Hooker in phone calls: "We've missed ten years of research because the CDC is so paralyzed right now by anything related to autism. They're not doing what they should be doing because they're afraid to look for things that might be associated." The whistleblower alleges criminal wrongdoing of his supervisors, and he expressed deep regret about his role in helping the CDC hide data.
According to David Lewis, PhD, former senior-level microbiologist with the U.S. EPA's Office of Research & Development, skewing scientific data to support government policies is a major problem at federal agencies, including EPA, CDC, and USDA. Lewis, who was terminated by EPA for publishing papers in Nature that questioned the science the agency uses to support certain regulations, believes top-down pressure on federal scientists and researchers working on government-funded projects in academia is jeopardizing public health.
"Working for the government is no different than working for corporations. You either toe the line or find yourself looking for another way to make a living," Lewis says. "No one would be surprised if Merck published unreliable data supporting the safety of its products. Why would anyone be surprised that the CDC is publishing skewed data to conclude that the vaccines it recommends are safe? We need a better system, where scientists are free to be honest."
The Focus Autism Foundation is dedicated to providing information to the public that exposes the cause or causes of the autism epidemic and the rise of chronic illness -- focusing on the role of vaccinations. Learn more at www.Focusautism.org
Re Lawrence & Nicole: Yes - The Brian Hooker paper has been withdrawn ostensibly for 'public interest' reasons.
At the time of writing this paper is still available here as an open access pdf file:-
http://anh-europe.org/documents/brian-hooker-measles-mumps-rubella-vaccination-timing-and-autism-among-young-african-ameri
Posted by: Jenny Allan | August 29, 2014 at 04:55 PM
That's very unfortunate.
by the way those who have autism and live in Canada get get monetary help. Check this blog for Grants and Bonds available.
www.financialcoach.weebly.com/
Posted by: Jack | August 29, 2014 at 11:03 AM
The published study by Dr. Hooker has been removed due to serious concerns about it's validity...
http://www.translationalneurodegeneration.com/content/3/1/16/abstract
Posted by: Nicole | August 27, 2014 at 10:13 PM
Very interesting...
http://www.translationalneurodegeneration.com/content/3/1/16/abstract
What happened?
Posted by: Lawrence | August 27, 2014 at 11:48 AM
Have you at Age of Autism seen/responded to this on Snopes? http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cdcwhistleblower.asp
Posted by: Ptlmom | August 27, 2014 at 10:41 AM
What is really disgusting is that those organizations like the CDC are in fact out to protect the agressors, thru a game of revolving door corruption while thousands and thousands of children have their lives destroyed.
And worse, schools have been coerced to force vaccination for enrollment.
What a shame.And I'm sure that the culprits will never spend a day in prison, but will continue to enjoy their lives of luxury while our children suffer.
Posted by: marie | August 26, 2014 at 02:45 PM
Associate Professor Chris Preston of Adelaide University is well-known for posting around the internet to cause disruption. He is a member of Dr Ben Goldacre's BadScience Forum.
You can see him doing this kind of thing in the comments here on AoA for example:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/08/midweek-mashup-drinking-the-thimerosal.html#comments
He makes seemingly relevant comments which he knows are not, and does this repeatedly disrupting other fora.
Hooker's paper does not divide the whole cohort into 35 slices to do one test on the whole cohort so Preston's claim about that is not relevant. But Preston tries hard to make it seem so.
And the fact he does this in full knowledge the CDC scientist involved has confirmed the CDC knew the real figures and has seemingly been removed recently from his post for doing so Preston ignores entirely.
That seems to be because Preston does this kind of thing for fun - so does he care about children at all? His repeatedly used phrase when he does exactly the same thing elsewhere "always happy to help" indicates he is doing this for his own fun.
That is typical of one too many of Dr Ben Goldacre's BadScience Forum members.
Posted by: ChildHealthSafety | August 24, 2014 at 04:13 AM
340% increased risk for african american boys; 200% increased risk for caucasian boys -- who received the MMR prior to 36 months of age.
(Looks like we've found the trolls.)
Posted by: A Mom | August 23, 2014 at 09:59 AM
So, what Hooker is saying - quite blatantly:
1) The data used in the original study is 100% fine (otherwise, how could he come to any legitimate conclusion?)
2) That the original conclusion - that there is no increased risk of autism from the MMR - is 100% correct for every other group except African-American Boys.
And AoA doesn't have a problem with these conclusions?
If the data has been "manipulated" - how can Hooker come to the conclusions that he did?
Posted by: Lawrence | August 23, 2014 at 09:44 AM
Chris,
Holding up the fictitious alternate universe that you refuse to let go of must be exhausting.
Posted by: Linda1 | August 23, 2014 at 09:37 AM
Chris, I'll make it simple for you. If the whistle-blowers allegations are true, it calls into question the validity of the data being used.
Garbage in; garbage out.
Does that help?
Posted by: False Skeptics Make me Laugh | August 23, 2014 at 09:10 AM
A Mom, it doesn’t matter what the size of the effect is, if it is not a significant effect. The large apparent sizes of these two effects are due to small numbers of individuals creating a lot of noise in the data.
Linda1, I have been critiquing what Brian Hooker did. A supposed whistleblower in the CDC stating the CDC did something in their study does not affect the analysis of Brian Hooker’s paper. Brian Hooker’s paper does not show a significant correlation between MMR and autism once the multiple comparisons have been managed for.
However, if you want to ignore that and conclude that Brian Hooker is right, then his paper suggests the way to avoid an increased risk of autism is to supply the first MMR prior to 18 months of age.
Posted by: Chris Preston | August 23, 2014 at 06:25 AM
Hmmm...I'm wondering why not one of the vaccine fanatics is addressing the fact that a whistleblower...a well respected scientist within the CDC admitted to faking and manipulating the data. Pretty odd, yes?
Posted by: False Skeptics Make me Laugh | August 22, 2014 at 09:49 PM
@Jenny Allan:
This case is still active.
Posted by: Godfrey Wyl | August 22, 2014 at 09:36 PM
Chris Preston,
Please. You can't be serious. The senior scientist on the study has come forward and clearly said that the data was manipulated - on purpose - they knew they were doing it - they intended to hide the results. How long will you try to keep up this charade? Really.
And to persist in saying that anyone should protect their children from autism by giving them the MMR before 18 months when the study clearly showed that early administration greatly increased the incidence of autism. SHAME ON YOU.
Posted by: Linda1 | August 22, 2014 at 09:22 PM
I apologise for making an error in my previous post. There were in fact 35 comparisons, not 33.
Posted by: Chris Preston | August 22, 2014 at 08:27 PM
Chris Preston, while the percentage for african american boys was 340%, the percentage for caucasian boys was 200%. So says a friend - an analytical chemist with a PHD.
Posted by: A Mom | August 22, 2014 at 08:22 PM
I have now had the chance to read through Brian Hooker’s paper and I encourage you all to read it and think about what it claims.
Firstly a few comments about the methodology. This study took data set up for a case-control analysis and analysed them as a cohort study. The main issue with doing this is that some cohorts will get very small and increase the risk of having spurious results in either direction. Secondly, the study conducted 33 separate statistical tests without controlling for multiple comparisons. That is a p-value cut-off of 0.05 was used. This means that at least 2 differences would be expected purely by chance. The p value should have been reduced to 0.0016 to correct for the multiple comparisons.
OK on to what to draw from the conclusions. Well firstly, it would be nothing as a result of the statistical problems mentioned above, but leaving that aside for the moment there are three clear conclusions:
1. There is no correlation between MMR and autism for non-African-American children.
2. There was no correlation between the first MMR given prior to age 18 months and autism for African-American boys.
3. If you are African-American, you should give your children their first dose of MMR prior to 18 months to protect them from autism.
Posted by: Chris Preston | August 22, 2014 at 07:47 PM
I guess it's no surprise that only 1 major news source has posted anything regarding this story:
http://www.12newsnow.com/story/26316561/focus-autism-releases-findings-on-2003-cdc-autism-study-higher-autism-rate-among-african-american-boys-receiving-mmr-shot-earlier-than-36-months
Posted by: Jeff Stone | August 21, 2014 at 05:31 PM
Thank you, Nora, for pointing out the Next News Network coverage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEq2-snxO8g
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | August 21, 2014 at 10:37 AM
We may as well also note Cochrane's comments about the Taylor study:
“The study demonstrates the difficulties of drawing inferences in the absence of a non-exposed population or a clearly defined causal hypothesis”.
Presumably, they were talking about "a causal hypothesis" for the long term rise in autism (1979-92), which might have included increased uptake of pertussis and measles vaccines prior to 1988, retrospective MMR campaigns, intrduction of the accelerated DPT schedule in 1990, introduction of HiB in 1992 (just to mention vaccines).
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/10/umpteenth-vaccinesautism-study-from-defective-database-launched-amid-maximum-publicity.html
Cochrane was actually reviewing studies that would not ordinarily have met its inclusion criteria.
Posted by: John Stone | August 21, 2014 at 04:12 AM
John Fryer
It was the point that Bernardine Healy made to Sharyl Attkisson c.2008 that epidemiology would not be a reliable guide. I was also told this by former Chief Scientific Officer at the UK Department of Health, Peter Fletcher, who had discussed the issue of adverse reactions to DPT in the 1970s with Sir Richard Doll. The message from Doll was that epidemiology would likely not be able to pick up an effect and you had to monitor the individual cases on the ground. Healy told us that the epidemiology would likely fail, and we had to monitor subgroups (well here is a subgroup!!!)
But here is also the problem peeping from just below the surface of Cochrane 2005, that in their own terms the studies (including the present one) were inadequate - what might they have shown if they were adequate? Why is it that Cochrane could not find adequate studies? In the end, with autism, they came up with six studies which were glaringly deficient. This one (along with the Madsen/Thorsen paper and four others) were rated of moderate risk of bias, the Fombonne Chakrabarti paper was rated as of "high risk of bias". The inference is that the machine of public health could not produce adequate studies because the population effects were likely so gross that the only way you could disguise them was to do the studies badly. In case of the Madsen (Thorsen) study, an epidemiologist, Prof Suissa of McGill University, wrote to NEJM suggesting that on a rough calculation from the given data the autism rate should be 45% higher in the vaccinated group. NEJM did not publish, Cochrane identified the same problem without putting a figure on it. Cochrane identified the problem with the DeSefano paper too - they evidently did not trust the exclusions despite the paper's protestation that the excluded group were excluded for administrative reasons, and were homogenous with the included cases.
The bottom line, however, is that these were not mere technicalities. Epidemiology might be an inadequate tool for picking up hundreds, or even thousands of cases in a population, but the real problem was that the damage was so gross and widespread that even the epidemiology had to be faked.
Posted by: John Stone | August 21, 2014 at 03:03 AM
This video sums the story up pretty well
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2zzf4HwjWC0
Posted by: Nora | August 21, 2014 at 01:12 AM
Thank you John, Linda and Greg -- Greg I see - what you are saying - it could be all races but if you did not include the blacks with no birth certificate it could change the numbers. Not that they would know that -- they would just have to fiddle with it taking out this or putting in that and they found that taking out blacks with no birth certifcate for what ever reason did the trick.
Is that pretty much then what happened?
Posted by: Benedetta | August 20, 2014 at 06:05 PM
To Bob Moffitt, You are correct in every way ... and yet... I hope one day people can look at the autism holocaust and learn some lessons from it. There is one very thorny issue here- Must a person speak up against evil even when he knows that his speaking up will have no effect- except perhaps to sink his career and possibly his family? In the particular case of this whistle blower, he may have done the autistic cause more good by keeping silent, collecting information and now finding what seems to be a more effective time to come out. I fervently hope that there will be more whistle blowers waiting to come out of the shadows when they feel they can do some good.
Posted by: Cherry Sperlin Misra | August 20, 2014 at 04:16 PM
Those that claim vaccines are safe rely on research by CDC and researchers such as DeStefano to tell us that we have nothing to fear from vaccines.
Looking at any such body or research papers will make the severest critic of vaccines think once, twice, three times before engaging their mouths.
I often fall into this trap. Is there a link or do the De Stefanos and Boyles of the CDC always save lives and protect people?
But the DeStefano study clearly, in its published form, admits a link, hence the need to pay close attention to what the clever people say:
DeStefano will never say there is NO link between MMR and Autism because he knows there is.
What he says is there is no convincing/plausible/real link, because as in this paper, he glibly tells us the link is fictional and an ARTEFACT.
Dr Hooper shows the link is not an ARTEFACT but a reproducible link that can exclude the spurious excuses of DeStefano.
Its not all simple as MMR vaccines (or the single vaccines) have changed and evolved, are given at different times, to different groups of people etc etc etc.
There are no simple answers from one study or a thousand studies.
But we must realise and dont, that a negative study is just that; a NEGATIVE study.
You will note in all such studies the range of reliable results always straddles 1 or very very close.
What they prove is for every person that gets autism from MMR they can find up to 5 that got the same vaccine and DIDNT become unwell, autistic or die.
With current levels around 2 per cent they should be able to find 50 that dont suffer after vaccines.
But standard toxicology and work from DeStefano confirms:
The earlier you get the MMR the more likely to get autism other adverse effects.
The world is not risk free and people can and do die from measles, a vaccine PREVENTABLE illness and one or two have died in the UK in the past decade or so.
But there are an unexplained 52 million with life-long autism type disorders while measles for many is two weeks of hell, followed by life time protection.
Leaving the vaccine to 3 years would be a good goal to aim for but difficult to achieve now.
You pay your money and get your vaccine first at 3 years, then 1 year and a half and then 1 year and then the rates of autism seem to rise whoever the researchers are; good, bad or mediocre.
There are logical fallacies in all case compared to control studies that cover up harm for the most part.
The case studies and observations of parents are so powerful and accurate that they can only be discounted by accusations of anecdotal data, ridicule and worse, personal attacks.
And all this gets us further and further from identifying causes.
http://www.direct-ms.org/pdf/LeakyGutOther/Horvath.pdf
Horvath in 2002 looked at the other issue in this, of gut problems and table 1 alone is food for thought:
Links of autism to gut issues of up to INFINITY.
Granted there are signs in the reverse direction:
Note for example there is a four times greater risk for one parameter for the controls:
That of having absolutely no gut health issues!
Pity like others this issue has only recently come back into focus rather like Dr Hooper and the reconfirmation of DeStefano and the MMR to Autism link.
Ten years of wasted research money on the genetic hunt for autism causes and hardly a cent spent on the vaccine, gut links except to come up with 10, 20 or is it 100 NEGATIVE studies.
While more and more authority is calling on people to justify their claims, they seem to forget that claims of total safety or no links are just so much propaganda as well.
DeStefano and his results being one perfect example.
Fraud I dont think so
Causing harm to millions by such studies published, possibly not
But the dishonesty of
GOVERNMENTS
INDUSTRY
And
REGULATORS
Are collectively responsible for 52 million Autism Sufferers.
And my best guess is that they will be responsible for:
1 000 million sufferers before the toxic causes are finally phased out and the world never really knows why the late 20th century and 21st century suffered autism that rose and rose and rose and then mysteriously disappeared again.
Posted by: John Fryer | August 20, 2014 at 03:30 PM
And I was spot on regarding their responses to this revelation. Liz Ditz is saying that Dr. Hooker is lying about the whistleblower, where as others are dismissing it because Dr. Wakefield narrated the video.
Posted by: False Skeptics Make Me Laugh | August 20, 2014 at 01:40 PM
wud the fuq are you doing here?
FIRST OFF
LEARN to spell first.
Can I suggest WHAT is much better than WUD?
SECOND OFF
If you spend just 2 minutes on the problem of harm to 52 million children dont try to show how silly you are.
This autism cause has beaten EVERY intellectual brain for over 70 years on planet earth and wont be solved by two minute studies by illiterates.
THIRD OFF
It is a serious issue and before criticising Dr Hooker let us see some of your efforts on this topic.
Surely that would be more productive?
And we are happy to give you more than the 2 minutes you seem to think is necessary to come up with solutions.
FOURTH OFF
DeStefano actually agreed with Dr Hooker on the link of MMR to AUTISM but then you havent got the paper to hand you say.
It should only take 90 seconds if you put your thinking hat and web searching skills up to speed.
But it will take a bit longer to see through the EXCUSES for MMR in this research effort of DeStefanos.
And finally why dont you
FUQ OF!
Sorry for the misspelling of of.
And if you are not happy with your name, is that explaining your preoccupation with Birth Certificates?
Take it from me MMR does cause some children to descend into a life of HELL.
And any reasonable person would NEVER make fun of that by OBFUSCATION.
I could get you the reference (DeStefano) but I havnt 60 seconds to spare for you right now
SORRY!
Posted by: John Fryer | August 20, 2014 at 12:58 PM
Bob claims this mysterious person, if he exists, helped Dr Hooker show the link of MMR to autism.
In fact, the link (MMR associated with autism) was ADMITTED by DeStefano but then EXCUSED as an artifact with no proof of his explanation being any more than plucked out of his job-saving imagination.
What Dr Hooker has done is to remove the prop of an excuse, for what it is - An EXCUSE for MMR causing regressive autism (to over 50 million and GROWING).
How much of all autism is regressive?
One figure, propbably complete guesswork as well, proposes a figure of 10 per cent.
This being so, it means sadly that most cases do not involve MMR but have already happened in the womb or perhaps from earlier vaccines or other toxic insults?
It is difficult to imagine what an autism child must go through when harmed by X and then have X thrust upon him Y times and maybe Z times at one go.
The Royal Free looked at this through the 1990's in England.
Government, industry and regulators have obfuscated while 52 million have developed life-long (possibly) disorders to their brains, guts and everywhere else with research clearly sham and when accurate by simple denials and excuses.
Finding a link of A to B for autism, when the disorder is almost a phantom with many causes and many disputes over exactly who has got what, is in itself a MIRACLE.
DeStefano found the MIRACLE but was too humble to take credit.
Hooker has embarrassingly renewed the discovery of the link MMR to autism that DeStefano was too embarrassed to shout to everyone ten years ago.
Next comes:
DENIALS,
MORE DENIALS,
STILL MORE DENIALS.
And of course:
SIMPLE LIES
MMR does not cause autism!
We (CDC)would never admit that:
You can hear them (CDC) already
OR
Have we heard it already?
So! Who is looking out for those 52 million and counting?
Certainly NOT authority.
Not so much David versus Goliath.
As lots of Davids versus STONWALLING?
Or as my dad used to say:
What happens when an UNSTOPPABLE train hits an UNMOVABLE object.
We see with vaccines the UNMOVABLE object;
But everyone has not got those UNSTOPPABLE trains
Just those 52 million who have had their brains stopped by the unmovable vaccine schedules.
Time to bring down the facade of vaccines given at unsafe ages when the victims cannot refuse them.
I had my first at 5 or 6 years and would have been a bit unhappy if even it gave me a head ache or had ANY EFFECT other than NOTHING.
Today it seems 20 per cent adverse effects up to actual 90 per cent harm is accepted as the normal price to pay for a vaccine. (DTP given ONLY to the under 7 year olds at one time and the nonsense that the younger you are, the less you suffer from the toxic effects is pure reversal of fact and toxicology)
A good vaccine should not cause any adverse effects and certainly not
Sudden Death
Autism
Encephalitis (ANAPHYLAXIS)
etc etc etc.
Posted by: John Fryer | August 20, 2014 at 12:26 PM
My understanding, which I'm not sure is correct, is that the MMR at some point was moved up from 18 months (or possibly later) to as early as 12 months because they were seeing more cases of measles in infancy (and trying to prevent that by universally exposing infants to live attenuated measles I guess). Does anyone know a timeline for MMR scheduling? My daughters both got theirs before 13 months of age, but they were born after the time frame in the study under discussion here?
Is it true that when the measles vaccine was introduced there were expressions of concern about waning vaccine immunity in mothers leaving infants unprotected at an age when they were more vulnerable to adverse outcomes and possibly making things worse? I know the MMR doesn't get all the credit, but it seems like we are living that reality.
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | August 20, 2014 at 12:17 PM
I am also a little confused about whether they were studying only African American boys. The actually study did not specify this, but this article is reporting that African American boys showed a difference in autism based on when they were immunized with MMR. Also Bandetta, if it was all races of kids, a sample size that went from 2000 to 600 just by excluding African American boys without BC would indicate that, still, most of the kids in the sample were African Americans. Drastically reducing the sample size -- reducing the statistical power --would give the no-link result without it indicating that African American boys are more susceptible to MMR.
And John, what is your thinking by, "this is perhaps where the issue needs to be focused?" Reading the passage that you quoted, can you contemplate any legitimate reasons for what they did?
Posted by: Greg | August 20, 2014 at 11:24 AM
Sorry,
Forgot the link.
CDC page on measles:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/measles/
Posted by: Linda1 | August 20, 2014 at 10:57 AM
I thank the whistleblower. You did the right thing. Now others need to join you and also do the right thing.
Posted by: Denise Anderstrom Douglass | August 20, 2014 at 10:57 AM
Benedetta,
The CDC schedule says 12-15 mos. for the MMR.
Check out the CDC page for measles. Scroll down to the bottom. There is a long list of links to convince the public that the MMR is safe, including under the subtitle "Autism Theory". Links that, at least from my computer, go nowhere ("page not found", including the one about Drs. Wakefield and John Walker-Smith).
Posted by: Linda1 | August 20, 2014 at 10:33 AM
Benedetta
It was a retrospective study.
Routineley the MMR is given about 13-15 months.
Posted by: John Stone | August 20, 2014 at 10:14 AM
Oh, the MMR at 18 months - How could I have forgotten that one. That was for everyone, wasn't it.
Posted by: Benedetta | August 20, 2014 at 09:33 AM
Help me understand please.
Was the CDC testing the whole poplution of children - white and black - to see how they reacted to the MMR vaccine, or just doing this to black children?
If they were doing the whole population - then black children turned out to be more sensitive to it and reacted with higher numbers?
I need to get my two kids' old vaccine records and see when they got their MMR vaccines. I have one child born in 1981 and the other 1986 - but I believe at that time they did not receive their first MMR untill after they were three years old.
This was going on between 1986 to 93 -- 7 years and that is all -- they stopped it and now give kids the MMR after age three?????? Is that correct?
Posted by: Benedetta | August 20, 2014 at 09:26 AM
This is what is said in the original DeStefano study about the exclusions:
"However, we did not find any significant differences in demographic characteristics or cognitive level between case children who were included and those who were excluded from the study.
"Among case and control children whose records
we were able to match with Georgia birth certificate
files, we performed a subanalysis to evaluate possible
confounding by differences in birth and maternal
characteristics. For the most part, the results were not
greatly different from those in the total sample. The
differences that were noted were predominantly of
lower ORs in the birth certificate sample. These differences
seemed to be primarily a result of restricting
the analysis to children who were born in Georgia
and could be matched to a state birth certificate and
not to confounding by maternal or birth characteristics.
Thus, the differences between the 2 samples
could represent random fluctuation or a possible bias
related to being born outside Georgia."
This is perhaps where the issue needs to be focussed.
Posted by: John Stone | August 20, 2014 at 08:21 AM
A common criticism against conspiracy theories is that secrets shared by many do not remain secrets for long. With the Snowden-NSA affair and now this, however, we see how this thinking is not always true.
Posted by: Greg | August 20, 2014 at 06:20 AM
And Wud, answer Hooker's question:
Why just the African-American children?
Posted by: Louis Conte | August 19, 2014 at 10:34 PM
Thank you Dr. Hooker, Dr. Wakefield, and the anonymous whistleblower.
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | August 19, 2014 at 10:17 PM
Birth certificates do vary from state to state. I doubt if anyone associated with the CDC study would refer to information that doesn't actually appear on the Georgia birth certificate. None of them were born yesterday.
But I think it's also common to play with data until you get the results you want. Once you do, then you work up your rationale for doing it that way. Kind of a push-pull deal. Isn't that what's called a trick of the trade?
Posted by: Carol | August 19, 2014 at 10:07 PM
In my humble opinion Dr. Coleen Boyle perjured herself by citing a study that she knew was manipulated. I would ask that everyone e-mail their representatives - especially if they sit on the Committee on Oversight & Government Reform. Let's get the word out folks!
Posted by: Son In Recovery | August 19, 2014 at 09:08 PM
It is so hard to watch and CONTINUE to educate myself for my 14 year old, non-verbal grandson with Autism. My heart aches for this group of people whom our government has turned their backs on them. Facts are falling on deaf ears and fiction is believed. Thank you, Age of Austim, for your war on ignorance and yes, stupidity.
Posted by: Patty Angell | August 19, 2014 at 08:06 PM
The CDC is very much afraid that the people will learn the truth about Vaccines, in the very near future.
The Great Cover-up on Vaccines, will now be showing on theaters near your place. Its coming soon.
Posted by: tony villar | August 19, 2014 at 07:38 PM
Ah, so just personal attacks, no actual addressing of the data?
You people are both idiotic and utterly and completely predictable...
Posted by: False Skeptics Make me Laugh | August 19, 2014 at 07:25 PM
Wud;
I went up stairs and got my son's birth certificate.
Yeah, holding one birth certificaet in my damn hand right now.
It says File No.
Child's name
Child's date of birth
Mother's maiden name and mother's age
Father's name and father's age
Date filed by registrat
Sex
county of birth.
That is all it has.
How important are these piecies of paper???
Well I pay five dollars for it and it took about two weeks to come in to me - I have the original too, but i thought I needed more than one -just in case for his upcoming entry into a new school and possible application for driver's permit. ---- and at the same time applied for one myself -
We moved over several states away.
To the state of Michigan when we changed over our driver's liscenses required more than a mere birth certificate -- They required two more proofs of Idenity . They had a list and a birth certificate only counted as one of two more proofs.
Social securtiy card
a picture of yourself in an old high school or college annual.
Oh, and I could use my son't birth certificate that had my name on it too.
Pass port
When we moved back to Kentucky - the birth certificate was not acceptable at all --- nothing would do our little clerk except a social security card. Funny - but the counties that were closer to the state of Ohio was more resonable and wanted a pay stub from my husband's company.
So what is a birth certificate except to tell if a person exist.
Posted by: Benedetta | August 19, 2014 at 06:31 PM
Conte--Hooker's response to my initial comment is anything but "devastating". Have you even look to the damn birth certificate, Hooker? You are looking pretty stupid to any normal person on the outside world watching what you are saying here--I suggest you consider actually investigating information typically conveyed on a birth certificate before saying things showing you don't have a dam clue.
Posted by: wud de fuq | August 19, 2014 at 03:36 PM
Why is this story not on CNN or Fox News? Why isn't Anderson Cooper talking about this?
Posted by: Anne | August 19, 2014 at 02:01 PM
John:
Excellent point on the evaluation by the Cochrane Group.
The basis of the other side's argument has collapsed.
Their only option now is just to ignore this, if they can, then counter with personal attacks.
This is the same CDC that was did business with Thorsen. The same federal department tried to conceal the concession in Child Doe 77 and withheld the information about the settlements of previous cases of encephalopathy featuring autism.
The pattern is obvious.
Posted by: Louis Conte | August 19, 2014 at 12:53 PM
Send this to the NAACP.
Posted by: Linda1 | August 19, 2014 at 11:11 AM
Lou
And note that Cochrane seem to have identified the problem without being able to quantify how much it skewed the data:
“The conclusion, however, implied bias in the enrollment of cases which may not be representative of the rest of the autistic population of the city of Atlanta, USA where the study was set.”
Posted by: John Stone | August 19, 2014 at 10:40 AM
Brian Hooker's response to Wud is devastating. There is a clear pattern of data manipulation and we have seen this over and again.
The people caught up in this scandal claim to be "Vaccinologists". It's now clear that those involved in "Vaccinology" can no longer be trusted to police themselves.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services defended herself in Omnibus Autism Proceedings with Thorsen (a fugitive from justice) and DeStefano (now discredited by fraud).
And our Department of Justice defended this fraud.
It's time to demand a special prosecutor.
Posted by: Louis Conte | August 19, 2014 at 09:45 AM
The silence from the pseudo-skeptic community on this is deafening. My prediction is that they will try to dismiss the data because the video was narrated by Dr. Wakefield. Then, they will try to dismiss the data because the study was done by Dr. Hooker. They won't actually discuss the data or the whistle-blower.
Betting pool is up. $5 to buy in (it goes to a good cause).
Posted by: False Skeptics Make Me Laugh | August 19, 2014 at 09:33 AM
Is anyone sending this to our Congress and Senate representatives? I think it is time for a full investigation complete with very embarrassing hearings at a national level. How about filing criminal charges against any who are found guilty of being complicit in intentionally harming children by falsifying and hiding crucial data?
This is not okay. This is criminal.
Posted by: Not an MD | August 19, 2014 at 09:27 AM
To: Wud...
Despite your assertions and the assertions of Destefano, Birth Certificates do not contain the information on the covariates you cite: birth weight, maternal age, maternal education, parity, etc. If you had read my paper, you would see that I repeated the analyses of the CDC and obtained the same results that they obtained in both what was published originally and what was withheld. Also, the birth certificate restriction was NOT applied to other race categories outside of African Americans.
Posted by: Brian Hooker | August 19, 2014 at 08:37 AM
Hooker asserts:
When asked if there could be any scientific basis for excluding children born outside of Georgia, Hooker responded, "I know of none, and none has been provided by the authors of the DeStefano study." He added, "The exclusion is reminiscent of tactics historically used to deprive African-Americans of the vote by requiring valid birth certificates."
I don't have a copy of the 2004 DeStefano paper handy, but there is this PDF file (http://iom.edu/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/PublicHealth/ImmunizationSafety/DeStefanoslides.pdf) of a presentation bearing the same name as the 2004 paper given by Dr. DeStefano in 2004 to the Institute of Medicine National Academy of Sciences Immunization Safety Review Committee that I located. Slides 16 states:
GA State Birth Certificate Sample GA State Birth Certificate Sample
Matched cases and controls to GA State Matched cases and controls to GA State Birth Certificates to assess effects of Birth Certificates to assess effects of potential confounders potential confounders
- Maternal Age
- Maternal Education Maternal Education
-Child Birth Weight
-Multiplicity (Singleton versus other)
-Parity (1 Parity (1st born versus other)
That didn't seem all that hard (oh, say 2 minutes of searching) to find why there was a birth certificate requirement in order to further strengthen matching of cases/controls. I don't know if that was stated in the 2004 publication in Pediatrics, but I'm sure Hooker could have simply written Dr. DeStefano for an explanation if it wasn't.
Hooker is playing with numbers and relying on random chance associations. He's also dragging in the race card like you losers typically do.
Posted by: wud de fuq | August 19, 2014 at 07:22 AM
Here's a link to Dr. Wakefield's video on Hooker's report.
http://vimeo.com/user5503203/review/103711143/91f7d3d4d8
New stuff, very hot. Kennedy, move over!
Posted by: Dan Burns | August 19, 2014 at 07:21 AM
But, of course, it was not the only time. We only have to look at what Cochrane said about the six autism studies it looked at in its 2005 review of MMR safety including the DeStefano (and these were supposed to be the best):
“The study demonstrates the difficulties of drawing inferences in the absence of a non-exposed population or a clearly defined causal hypothesis”. (Re: Taylor 1999)
“The number and possible impact of biases in this study was so high that interpretation of the results is impossible”. (Re: Fombonne 2001)
“The retrospective person-time cohort study by Makela assessed the association between exposure to MMR and encephalitis (EN),aseptic meningitis (AM) and autism (AU) in a cohort of 535,544 Finnish children (95% of the surveillance cohort); the children were aged one to seven
years at the time of vaccination.The authors compared the incidence of outcomes in the first three months after vaccination with the incidence in the following months and years.They concluded that there was no evidence
of association. The study was weakened by the loss of 14% of the original birth cohort and the effects of the rather long time frame of follow up. What the impact of either of these factors was in terms of confounder is
open to debate, however the long follow up for autism was due to the lack of a properly constructed causal hypothesis …” (Re: Makela 2002)
"The follow up of diagnostic records ends one year (31 Dec 1999) after the last day of admission to the cohort. Because of the length of time from birth to diagnosis, it becomes increasingly unlikely that those born later in the cohort could have a diagnosis" (Re: Madsen 2002)
“The conclusion, however, implied bias in the enrollment of cases which may not be representative of the rest of the autistic population of the city of Atlanta, USA where the study was set.” (Re: DeStefano 2004)
“In the GPRD - based studies (Black 2003; Smeeth 2004) the precise nature of controlled unexposed to MMR and their generalisability was impossible to determine…The study (Smeeth 2004) appeared carefully conducted and well reported, however, GPRD-based MMR studies had no
unexposed (to MMR)representative controls. In this study the approximately 4% to 13% seemed to be unexposed controls regarded by the authors as representative. Such a small number may indicate some bias in the selection of controls.” (Re: Smeeth 2004)
In fact Cochrane judged 5 to be of moderate risk of bias and 1 (the study by Fombonne) to be of high risk of bias (I suppose you could use the phrase "known unknowns": they were not commenting either on institutional or commercial bias, but only bias in methodology. Note that the Madsen paper is the one set up through the CDC by Poul Thorsen. Fombonne (who was also a co-author of the Smeeth study) also gave flawed evidence at the Cedillo hearing:
http://www.vaccinationnews.com/double-standards-f-edward-yazbak-part-1-3-0
http://www.vaccinationnews.com/translation-court-F-edward-yazbak-part-3-3
http://www.vaccinationnews.com/tale-two-cities-flawed-epidemiology
Cochrane itself was at best misleading when it stated:
"Low risk of bias evidence did not support a causal association with Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis or autism."
since none of the six autism studies was judged to be of low risk of bias. Additionally, the CDC GI study (Davis 2001) which Cochrane favoured as of "low risk of bias" remains equally problematic since its data was placed beyond scrutiny.
Perhaps the deStefano study was the very worst - who knows? - but there is pattern which extends well beyond it.
Posted by: John Stone | August 19, 2014 at 07:12 AM
These revelations are the most recent of several damning 'whistleblower's' vaccine stories, involving former employees of manufacturers.
We are told Merck fraudulently falsified the long term efficacy of the Jeryl Lyn Mumps MMR vaccine component. This has meant young MMR vaccinated adults catching mumps when they are exposed to it at university or college. This can cause sterility in adults.
What has been done about this? Effectively NOTHING. There was something about court cases. Are these still pending? or abandoned? In the UK, 'teenagers' are being pressurised to get MMR boosters and so called 'catch up' MMR jabs, but how long will these provide protection?
More recently, the HPV vaccine safety research was attacked by a former manufacturer's employee. This went down in the press and media like a 'lead balloon', but how much longer can they continue to ignore the criminal allegations in India and Spain and the protests in France and several other countries, about the terrible damage being caused to lovely young girls by this vaccine.
Posted by: Jenny Allan | August 19, 2014 at 07:08 AM
"The whistleblower alleges criminal wrongdoing of his supervisors, and he expressed deep regret about his role in helping the CDC hide data."
It is too bad Edward Snowden didn't work for the CDC instead of NSA .. unfortunately .. we have this gentleman .. who .. over ten years .. apparently has witnessed criminal wrongdoing of his superiors .. and .. shamefully .. did absolutely nothing about it.
Consider .. we are not talking about witnessing a superior stealing office stationary or petty cash .. we are talking about superiors committing crimes that have potentially "stolen" the healthy lives of thousands of innocent children.
In my humble opinion .. there are none more guilty of evil than those who deliberately injure our most precious resource .. our children.
AS Edmund Burke once famously said .. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Posted by: BoB Moffitt | August 19, 2014 at 06:23 AM