Dangling by a Thread in Washington: Insel Prevaricates Over the CDC Whistleblower
By John Stone
"I wish I knew more about that particular instance."
The excuses are wearing thin. Here is a transcript of the remarks of Thomas Insel, National Institute of Mental Health director, regarding the whistleblowing activities of Centers for Disease Control employee William Thompson at the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee meeting two days ago (view video here.):
“Again this is not for the IACC since that committee is not here in full. This is not a meeting to decide anything we are going to do in regard to policy and I wish I knew more about that particular instance. I don’t. I can tell you that the 2004 PEDIATRICS paper was one of about fourteen papers in the IOM [Institute of Medicine] review and there have been another multiple papers since then that have weighed in on this all of which the IOM have said in 2011 are consistent with not finding a relationship between vaccination and autism. What the IOM doesn’t say and what nobody has said in a way that I find intelligible (?) is that there could still be the rare cases in which that could occur and what we need to think about is how one would investigate that if that were the case.”
What, of course, Insel does is respond as a bureaucrat, not a scientist. He tells you the IOM have rubber stamped 14 epidemiological studies, therefore the matter is decided. Apart from anything else even if the studies were not corrupt (and they all have a very similar line of patronage to the DeStefano study) it would not be enough to say that vaccines only rarely cause autism. It is not only because correlation does not equal causation - as they keep on reminding us - but because you could have tens of thousands of cases and they might not register as statistically significant. However, if you look at the way in which these studies were botched together it is apparent that the effects were so gross that they could only disguise them by fraud. DeStefano 2004 is only exceptional in that it has been admitted by Thompson and not denied by DeStefano (the latter in two interviews with Sharyl Attkisson ), but actually it is just typical of what they were doing in all of them as Lyn Redwood told Insel at the meeting.
It could not be a more perfect example of how policy and the bureaucratic process defy hard reality. In this case Insel is waving around the fourteen year old stitch up (well documented) in which the CDC hires the IOM and IOM hires the CDC back, the package having already been agreed (the ultimate back-scratching operation). To quote from the transcript the IOM closed door meeting of January 2001 in preparation for the review:
Dr. McCormick: ...[CDC] wants us to declare, well, these things are pretty safe on a population basis.
Dr. Stratton: ...The point of no return, the line we will not cross in public policy is pull the vaccine, change the schedule. We could say it is time to revisit this, but we would never recommend that level. Even recommending research is recommendations for policy. We wouldn't say compensate, we wouldn't say pull the vaccine, we wouldn't say stop the program.
Dr. McCormick: ...we are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect...
It was a cold-blooded (and blatant) fraud from its inception but even today Insel presents it as the prime support for the policy. He is playing the idiot, although I doubt that that is what he is.
We have all sorts of different narratives going on but this is the simplest. In 2000-2001 the agencies all got their heads together, they knew already that they had screwed up big time over vaccines and brain injury – it was only a matter of how they were going to cover up, and they worked assiduously at it. After that they just had to string everyone along on the basis of authority till doomsday, and beyond (like all good frauds).
However, when Insel reverts to the IOM review he demonstrates his weakness.
John Stone is UK Editor for Age of Autism.
Actually at risk of annoying some readers here, I don't find that sort of evidence at all persuasive (rather than just suggestive). I would want to see some systematic analysis of the timing.
*****************
So... a parent feeds their child their first popsicle, and the child becomes violently ill shortly afterward.
If that parent then claimed that the Popsicle caused the illness, would you need a "systematic analysis of the timing" to believe that the parent knew what the hell they were talking about??
And if thousands of parents started telling the same story, would you assume they were all nuts, and tell them all just to keep feeding their kids Popsicles ???
Posted by: Barry | September 27, 2014 at 04:40 PM
Oh, guys -- come on -- by now -- after all these years Tom Insel - because he is brilliant does know and more than knows -- is up above his eye lashes - even deeper -- he not only knows but is involved in this messy affair. He not only knows - but has helped without one momemt of regret.
He is not a man like Dr. Wakefield for if he ever broke he knows were all the bodies (papers and proff) are buried and could take the police there --But he don't/won't because he has blood on his hands - Him and Coleen all buddied up on the IACC meeting like two Green River serial killers.
He is brilliant and he maybe good at parroting what the pharma wants -- but it takes a special kind of sicko - something really wrong down deep to keep it up for years and years.
He is in so deep, if it ever comes to light they would give him the chair -- or the needle -- life with out parole - only because the other two things would be too quick.
He is the 9th director of National Institute of Mental Health. Not just the head guy over top of a IACC thing that Congress gave money to set up to get to the bottom of this autism crises.
He knows everything. He is never going to break. But we will be able to see him in Hell -- hopefully looking over the great chasm from heaven with our whole and wonderful kids.
Posted by: Benedetta | September 26, 2014 at 11:00 AM
John: "No, it is about not playing by the rules."
Indeed, I don't dispute any of that, indeed could add a load more of the same to that heap of disgrace.
David: "You seem convinced amalgam fillings in mothers could be a chief trigger for [....]autism...
... most American mothers had many amalgam fillings back in the 1940's and 1950's, AND, [....]"
But you haven't studied any of my evidence yet and have been fooled by the FDA/CDC/ADA/WHO disinformation system. Non-gamma-2 amalgams, 20-50 times more mercury-toxic, were only invented in the 1960s and only introduced as the new thing from 1976 onwards. (Oh, but no one ever told you that! "Dental amalgam has been safely used for over a trillion centuries since God proved it was safe.....".)
"even as the dental field for the last several decades has been withdrawing use of amalgam fillings."
As I was well aware. I'd already replied to that notion in response to reviewer #1's point 3 in http://www.autismcauses.info/2008/01/peer-reviewers-of-pseudoneurotoxicology.html
To properly follow the discussion here you need to refer to such linked documents. I could alternatively make my comments 12,000 words long but I guess some might not thank me for it.
Posted by: Robin | September 26, 2014 at 09:26 AM
Just curious but wasn't Insel in a meeting promising a soon to be released (summer 2014) vaxx/unvaxx study? Whatever happened to that study, and in light of the Whistleblower scandal? Now there is a study that would probably reguire some 'shady' tactics to secure the 'right' results. Are they nervous about releasing such a study, just in case?
Posted by: Greg | September 26, 2014 at 08:45 AM
Robin
No, it is about not playing by the rules. They came up with a mass of inconvenient evidence - in fact they really knew what was afoot even before they began - and they cheated. The next thing is that they dealt with the victims and their families in an unjust and heartless way. And they did nothing to stop the program ploughing on with its collateral damage ad infinitum, and even expanding it. Unless one is going into very deep philosophical water about the nature of reality, that is what happened.
Posted by: John Stone | September 26, 2014 at 08:16 AM
Robin,
You seem convinced amalgam fillings in mothers could be a chief trigger for infants & toddlers that are afflicted in early childhood with the autism spectrum.
I hate to tell you but most American mothers had many amalgam fillings back in the 1940's and 1950's, AND, in the late 1940's and through most of the 1950's the U.S. was also awash with hundreds of millions of pounds every year of toxic pesticides/herbicides that permeated everyday food consumption, and indeed permeated breast milk.
Yet, toddlers becoming autistic 1940 - 1960 were basically non-existent, and only began autism's slow, but now soaring levels in exact timing with the exponential increase in vaccinations, even as the dental field for the last several decades has been withdrawing use of amalgam fillings.
Posted by: david m burd | September 26, 2014 at 08:10 AM
"It is no use basing it on what you happen to think."
But ultimately everything amounts to what you, I, they, whoever "happen to think", surely?
It's not really possible to set out here my own full views of what the evidence does and doesn't properly tell us. I have written much of it up but found that journals find cheap excuses to prevent publication as per http://www.autismcauses.info/2008/01/peer-reviewers-of-pseudoneurotoxicology.html and more.
But my unpublished evidence and analysis isn't going to just go away. But then again, you'll have to watch this space and wait a while before it emerges. My apologies for the delay.
Posted by: Robin | September 26, 2014 at 08:02 AM
Robin
It is no use basing it on what you happen to think. The whole operation is riddled with bad faith and Insel is a government official hiding behind data which has been manipulated to hide associations in multiple studies and an allegedly independent body which had determined that it was going to find nothing at the request of a government agency three years ahead of reporting, and commissioned studies back from that agency or through that agency.
Many will have seen violent effects and obvious mechanisms through vaccination (encephalopathies): there is nothing inherently implausible about this.
And part of the answer is that these were not slight effects but huge demographic effects which could only be hidden by crudely manipulating the data. Or you go the way of government science of saying it was right to manipulate the data because you don't think it was a true effect (but that of course involves deceit).
There is an obvious truth that if the studies had been conducted properly to the end they would have had to have pulled the program and compensated (to paraphrase Dr Stratton).
Posted by: John Stone | September 26, 2014 at 07:45 AM
I certainly don't think amalgam is the one cause of autism. I have all along considered autism to be very multicausal - many genes, many environmental. But I do reckon that amalgam mercury has been the main cause of the increase and is now the main factor in autism causation. Vaccination could well be a "last straw" precipitating a failure of the mercury detox processes.
It seems clear that Insel's muddled IACC statement doesn't give the vax>>aut hypotheses a complete "no" (such as Offit would have us believe is justified). Insel does reckon it as not being the main thing. Ironically I as extreme anti-establishment person have much the same opinion as Insel but I am not in any business of defending vaccination which I consider to be almost as theoretically and evidentially dubious as the rest of the pharma catalog.
As regards adverse event reports, my own experience of trying to raise my own amalgam poisoning, about the clearest case that could be possible, yet persistently fobbed off over ten years with the circular rationale that there is (supposedly) no evidence that amalgam is harmful so therefore there can be no evidence that it harmed me either.... Somehow I guess this hasn't been referred to the MHRA yet.
Posted by: Robin | September 26, 2014 at 07:06 AM
Robin
Well, you may annoy readers and you may to some extent be playing the same line as Insel because you have what might be a rival theory (amalgam only?), but I would guess it is a complimentary one and the vaccines often the last straw.
The point is that if we go back to Insel he is still ruminating on how you would investigate vaccine damage as a cause (or contributary cause) of autism. And the answer is that you treat vaccine adverse events like any other signficant/serious event: you would monitor and investigate rather than hanging the parents out to dry - but would the vaccine program survive for two seconds in its present form if that were to happen? I suspect we know the answer to that, and we also know what happened to Andy Wakefield just because he tried to act in good faith (unlike everyone else).
I am also aware of studies which measure up parental/patient recall with medical records, but of course they are records in which the adverse events are never recorded in the first place - and in which early reports from parents are stonily and systematically ignored.
Posted by: John Stone | September 26, 2014 at 06:17 AM
John S: "By now Insel must have encountered dozens or hundreds of parents who have told him personally how their child regressed after an adverse vaccine event."
Actually at risk of annoying some readers here, I don't find that sort of evidence at all persuasive (rather than just suggestive). I would want to see some systematic analysis of the timing. How many became autistic within the day, within the week, next week etc. And no less important an equal study of the possibility that autism causes vaccinations. If the onset of autism is equally distributed around the time of vaccination then that would argue against vaxx causation. Conversely a marked skew towards the vax preceding the autism would be undeniably strong evidence of the causation. I haven't heard of such a finding and I suspect if there had been one it would be very much publicised here. I urge someone to get on and do it.
Posted by: Robin | September 26, 2014 at 05:51 AM
Robin
Exactly so, and we are talking about the same thing and this is an equally horrifying instance.
Posted by: John Stone | September 26, 2014 at 05:44 AM
John Stone: "and the police said "Oh, we can't investigate that, it can't be a murder because statistically murders don't happen here""
Actually that's exactly the reaction I got from (a) the High Court, (b) NHS, (c) NHS pseudo complaints system.
High Court: The defendants (dept of "health") say no-one is ever harmed by dental mercury therefore I can't be either, and the defendants are the authoritative experts so there, case dismissed.
NHS: We can't remove your amalgams because no-one has ever been harmed by them (however much evidence you show in your own case).
Pseudo complaints-system: See above nhs who were obviously right first time. More at http://amalgamlegal.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/links-to-foi-requests-revealing-nhsdh.html
Posted by: Robin | September 26, 2014 at 05:39 AM
Robin
The excuses are paper thin - I highlight Insel not for personal reasons but because he has been sitting there since the beginning of the millenium delivering the official line, and preventing progress (and he is a government bureacrat who regularly appears in public spouting nonsense - more of it in Anne Dachel's article yesterday). And it is reasonable to point out that at this juncture it looks stupider than ever. We can talk DeStefano, we can talk Verstraeten, we can talk Thorsen (were only two his many paper included in the IOM review?). Myself, I researched extensively the Andrews paper, a British contribution to the IOM review:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/12/the-british-dimension-the-who-mercury-cover-up-and-the-cdc.html
What's happening is nonsense. By now Insel must have encountered dozens or hundreds of parents who have told him personally how their child regressed after an adverse vaccine event. Supposing you went to the police because someone had been murdered in your neighbourhood, and the police said "Oh, we can't investigate that, it can't be a murder because statistically murders don't happen here" it would make about the same level of sense (particularly bearing in mind that statistics were manipulated to show that the murders didn't happen in the first place). If people are "pissed off" as we say in the UK or "pissed" as the they say in the US it is not without reason.
Posted by: John Stone | September 26, 2014 at 04:57 AM
Godfrey, before I can answer could you first clarify which clusters you mean (i'm not always up to date with info), and ditto which paper (re road traffic there's been at least 3).
Benedetta wrote:
"Tom Insel.... He was born brilliant - finished high school and a BS degree at a very - very young age. He had to wait around until he reached a certain age to attend medical school"
I think I may see here a very common fallacy. The established system of education and selection strongly favours "brilliance" at mindless effortless parroting of "the facts" at the expense of a complete and utter lack of brilliance at having doubts about them and unlearning one's errors. Thus Dr Insel's "brilliance" could be reflecting a person who believes what his authoritative sources tells him and dismisses everything else.
As for whether he can just speak out like the SG did about tobacco - there are all too many cases of individuals who did speak out about things (Wakefield, Assange, Manning, Linus Pauling) and they commonly become subjected to character-assassination ops at the least. The problem is that one individual is powerless unless there is a critical mass who stand up to be counted (similar situation in Nazi Germany where not everyone supported the war but were not in a position to challenge).
Posted by: Robin | September 26, 2014 at 04:54 AM
We are living in very dangerous times. A time when people with autism are viewed as collateral damage. A time when no matter their degree of disability, those in positions of power will stop at nothing to diminish the need for truth and justice for people with autism. We are living in a time where the last minority who has yet to see any justice are those who are developmentally disabled. Those who don't have a voice. Those who can't speak for themselves, and rely on the alleged researchers, experts and professionals paid to represent their needs are so compromised that all sense of justice as been buried in the bureaucratic mafia that has declared war on those who are the most vulnerable among us.
Posted by: Lenore | September 26, 2014 at 04:46 AM
Robin, I will tempt moderational fate and ask whether you share the same opinion of the highlighting of clusters here at AoA as you do of the CHARGE study itself and the follow-ons to the paper in question.
Posted by: Godfrey Wyl | September 26, 2014 at 02:53 AM
Robin; I don't think it is has a long list of people - but a short list of people in high places.
Tom Insel. If you look at his bio.
He was born brilliant - finished high school and a BS degree at a very - very young age. He had to wait around until he reached a certain age to attend medical school and so while he waited he toured the world with his girl friend - later his wife.
And so he finally does get older and the prince came to power and look at what he has accomplished. Good Will Hunting -- the real story.
Every man makes a difference - some more than others. Tom Insel could of - should of been one of them. but instead he became just the Stall master.
If there are people lurking in the back ground -- that holds the power - remember it is the Tom Insels of the world that allows them to do so.
Besides we have had this marriage of government and corp before - along with farmers - in tobbaccooooo - All it took was a brave surgeon general to make a statement.
Posted by: Benedetta | September 26, 2014 at 01:39 AM
Maybe Insel can go work for the NFL when he's done with his current job.
Posted by: Carol | September 25, 2014 at 09:16 PM
Further to my preceding questions (below in this upside-down site)....
So far as I can make out, the research is largely at the mercy of the research funders. And those funders tend to be big entities with big money. And that big money tends to come from big profitable sources such as the profitable coroporate illness industry. We consequently see research efforts being wasted on such diversionary rubbish (from the MIND Inst) as the notion that traffic pollution is a significant factor in autism causation.
Dr Insel (or IACC) is presumably not in control of much of that research financing. And he can only go along with whatever defective outputs it produces - he can't say "I don't trust anything from the Statens Institute" or whatever.
And where does the following sort of outright pseudoscience "expertise" originate from (and as you can see, the FoI requests haven't even had the most basic answers let alone any followup): http://www.tinyurl.com/dentmerc
Posted by: Robin | September 25, 2014 at 08:42 PM
Rightly or wrongly, various people here and elsewhere are singling out Tom Insel as the arch-villain of autism pseudo-research. Is there any evidence they are right in focussing on him? Did he appoint himself? Or did some other persons or groups appoint him instead?
If he said tomorrow, "Right we are going to investigate and tell the truth about a and b and c", would that happen or would instead he get replaced fairly soon by someone else who resolves not to? Where does the real power lie? In President Obomber, or those who pull the Obomber's strings, or what?
How do we find out? Or has someone already done that finding out?
Posted by: Robin | September 25, 2014 at 07:55 PM
He is the ninth director of the NIMH - he has much - much - much more to answer to than autism.
He has the sharp increase of all mental illnesses to answer for. For God's sake!
Posted by: Benedetta | September 25, 2014 at 07:36 PM
Thank you, Lyn Redwood. You were brilliant.
It's getting near impossible to keep track of all the fraudulent research and cover-ups, not to mention the government buffoons in charge of useless committees. It seems that almost daily there is a new pharmaceutical and/or government crime that is revealed with regards to vaccines/medicines. So much awfulness to explain to someone who is new to all of this.
Posted by: Laura Hayes | September 25, 2014 at 06:55 PM
John! I agree! But I am also saying that Insel is hiding behind his own ignorance. If you leave the status quo intact you are not exposed to scrutiny. The majority of people in the health field do not get what is important here and they have not really thought through the issues. Most of the nay-sayers are satisfied about what they "know". What I am trying to get across is the fact that there should be a new paradigm. There is a huge chiasm between those know what the problem is and those who think they know what the problem is. The Olmsted/Blaxill book "The Age of Autism" tries to tell us something about the misunderstanding about how psychiatry did a detour and became extremely powerful in the process.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | September 25, 2014 at 06:39 PM
Wow, in his haste to run for cover behind the IOM, Dr. Insel has not been fully honest, i.e. he’s just lying, twice about what the IOM has actually found.
The IOM has NOT dismissed MMR-autism causation based upon CDC’s “fourteen studies.” The IOM 2012 report on vaccine adverse events specifically looked [http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Research/VaccineAdvEffectReview/Working-List-of-AEs-January-10.pdf] at whether MMR can cause “secondary autism.” “‘Secondary’ autism or autistic features arising from chronic encephalopathy, mitochondrial disorders and/or other underlying disorders will be considered by the Committee. For “Primary” autism, VICP has asked the IOM to consider the review of the medical literature post Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism (2004) report. In particular, VICP is interested in the Committee’s review on more recent theories of ‘neuroinflammation’ and ‘hyperarousal/overexcitation of the immune system via multiple simultaneous antigenic stimulation.’”
IOM actually considered 22 studies in examining evidence of causality between MMR and autism. [http://www.commed.vcu.edu/IntroPH/Communicable_Disease/2012/adverseffectsVaccines.pdf, page 145] IOM REJECTED 12 of these studies, i.e. they “were not considered in the weight of epidemiological evidence because they provided data from a passive surveillance system lacking an unvaccinated comparison population or an ecological comparison study lacking individual-level data.” IOM REJECTED five more of these studies, ironically including the now infamous DeStefano (2004), because they “had very serious methodological limitations that precluded their inclusion in this assessment.” Left with only five studies, they waffled, concluding that the available evidence “favors rejection” of a causal association. It will take a comprehensive, rigorous, and “beyond reproach” vaccinated vs. unvaccinated comparison to finally, and scientifically, resolve the causation issue. Oh, but Dr. Insel illegally blocked such a study at a January, 2009 IACC meeting. Given the collapse of CDC’s “studies” supposedly exonerating MMR, it is little wonder that CDC ordered IOM not to even look at the evolving mercury science. IOM’s rejection of CDC’s contrived “studies” exonerating mercury would have been considerably more harsh.
Second, Dr. Insel has obviously "forgotten" that IOM DID actually make a finding way back in 2004 that “rare” [another waffle word] autism cases could be caused by vaccines. The 2004 ISR report concluded in part: “A genetically susceptible subset of children who develop autism following vaccinations is offered as one theoretical explanation for the findings in epidemiological studies of no association between vaccination and autism. . . . Absent biomarkers, well-defined risk factors, or large effect sizes, the committee cannot rule out, based on the epidemiological evidence, the possibility that vaccines contribute to autism in some small subset or very unusual circumstances.” [http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10997, pp. 8, 11].
Dr. Insel has defied the express command of Congress to find the “cause (including possible environmental causes) . . . prevention . . . and treatment” for autism. The legislative history made absolutely clear that he was to research vaccines as cause. He has worked tireless to ignore this mandate and deny any role for vaccines and autism causation, most especially by blocking research on biological mechanism and on the rate of autism in unvaccinated children. Such deliberate ignorance leads to denial, and now to coverup – yet science will continue to reveal the truth; not whether vaccines cause autism, a settled question, but how much autism they have caused.
Posted by: Jim Moody | September 25, 2014 at 06:30 PM
Hi Birgit
I don't think there is any real technical issue here. You listen to parents, you take patient histories - you do it every time there is a vaccine reaction: you have active reporting instead of passive reporting. You examine the patients. You conduct appropriate tests.
What is sick is the constant parade of parents telling him what's wrong and he just goes on hiding behind the bogus epidemiology.
Again, it is just playing the fool.
Posted by: John Stone | September 25, 2014 at 04:15 PM
Tom Insel is the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Mental health leads back to psychiatry. The whole field of psychiatry is marred by its early history namely Sigmund Freud who, at the time, did not connect mercury poisoning to the symptoms his patients displayed. Maybe we have to look at the problem of autism more as a problem resulting from toxicity that as a mental health issue. Pathology has always been the step-child of medicine. But what we here are confronted with in Tom Insel is a person who has never had any education regarding toxic pathology. He would not likely know how to go about investigating autism and how it was caused.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | September 25, 2014 at 03:29 PM
Age of Autism has two stories featuring Insel out today.
The truth is no one in government wants anyone finding answers about autism. They're scared to death about the truth. The whole purpose of IACC was to create the illusion that officials actually care about what autism is doing to our kids. In reality they have endless experts speaking and lines of parents asking for answers, all the while Insel et al. sound concern but accomplish nothing.
Incredibly IACC actually has a mission statement. (2008)
http://iacc.hhs.gov/events/2008/slides_insel_031408.pdf
Values (Shared principles to guide our actions)
• Excellence – We will pursue basic and clinical
research of the highest quality to protect the safety
and advance the best interests of those affected by
ASD.
• Partnerships in Action – We will value crossdisciplinary
approaches, data sharing, teamwork,
and partnerships with clearly defined roles and
responsibilities.
• Accountability – We will develop SMART
(specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and
time-bound) research objectives aligned with
funding priorities and develop systems for
evaluation and course corrections.
Posted by: Anne McElroy Dachel | September 25, 2014 at 03:10 PM
Oh Insel, your whole look of feigned surprise is getting really tired. If you are really that useless and inept then just do all the parents and children a favor and get the hell out of the way. You are useful only in the sense of being a useful idiot.
Posted by: Insel give it up | September 25, 2014 at 01:57 PM
Reminds me of the Holy See at the height of the coverup: http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Letter-to-the-Editor/2014-02-02/article-3600479/The-Holy-See-has-a-history-of-enabling-child-sexual-abuse/1
"Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, who served for 10 years as the Vatican's top sexual abuse prosecutor, represented the Vatican during the UN committee hearings, and gave less than acceptable answers to some of the questions he faced.
Scicluna was asked six times why the Holy See has refused to provide data about abuse cases, and six times he responded that such data must come from the country where the crime took place. At the same time, Scicluna admitted that the Vatican doesn't require the reporting of sex abuse crimes to civil authorities."
Sometimes the impossible happens though. If the current pope is truly determined to enact a zero tolerance policy and prosecute offenders, maybe one day these slippery US regulators will be accountable.
Posted by: Amen | September 25, 2014 at 01:56 PM
"...what we need to think about is how one would investigate that if that were the case."
Sounds like an aim for years of bureaucratic musing and maybe even some exploratory research into how to research the "possibly" real, but "extremely" rare cases when vaccines "result in" autism? Or maybe I'm being optimistic with the idea of years.
Thank you to Ms. Redwood for something more concrete:
"...I think that this committee should ask the secretary--one of the things we are charged to do is to report things to the secretary that are concerning--I think this should be reported to the secretary and ask for special counsel to investigate these allegations, because they directly affect what we do here as a committee, so that would be my recommendation, John..."
Can Insel and the IACC generally coordinate a recommendation for research into allegations (and evidence I think) of fraud in the research?
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | September 25, 2014 at 01:06 PM
"I wish I knew more about that particular instance."
Liar. He knows exactly about that particular instance and more.
Posted by: Linda1 | September 25, 2014 at 12:14 PM
From some years ago, the words linger on:- "wilful ignorance".
Posted by: Another Cassandra | September 25, 2014 at 11:30 AM
I don't know, he sounds pretty inselligent to me.
Posted by: Patrick | September 25, 2014 at 11:21 AM
My Dad had a phrase: "Skillful Neglect"
Posted by: Zed | September 25, 2014 at 10:41 AM
Vicki Hill
There is nothing new on that front. I remember a clip of Insel talking in 2004 after the IOM and saying much the same: in fact even using the same phrase as Bernardine Healy was later to do about the possibility of sub-groups - which he later did nothing to investigate. Compared with that he is giving less away now. AND HE HAS WASTED TEN YEARS IN BETWEEN!!!
Saying he wishes he knew more about it is of course nothing more than a legal/bureaucratic feint. It is simply a way of not being drawn although it is his job to be up to speed. As a "public servant" he gives away as little as possible as late as possible.
But, of course, it all looks increasingly preposterous.
Posted by: John Stone | September 25, 2014 at 09:57 AM
..."What the IOM doesn’t say and what nobody has said in a way that I find intelligible (?) is that there could still be the rare cases in which that could occur and what we need to think about is how one would investigate that if that were the case.” WTF?!
Posted by: Anne J. | September 25, 2014 at 09:46 AM
Thank you Lynn! We need more of this on record - the explanation in clear terms the everyone understands about HOW THEY LIED!
Posted by: Adam Mortenson | September 25, 2014 at 09:45 AM
It truly is a bizarre situation when this man appears to not know:
who he is,
what he is,
why he is
where he is,
what the problem is,
if there is indeed a problem...
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity" Martin Luther King
Posted by: patricia | September 25, 2014 at 09:39 AM
Oh David Burd Creature Insel is even worse. We are thinking only autism and kids with gut issues and not talking.
Creature Insel is not just in charge of autism - he is in charge of the whole enchilada. He is the ninth director of the NIMH and that stands for the National Institue of Mental Health. On his TED talk he does some quoting of Stats.
1 out of 5 people have a mental illness, 1 ouBipolar of 20 is disabled because of a mental illness. Bipolar disorder is the sixth leading cause of disability in the world. Depression takes almost a decade off of someone's life because of sucide.
Oh,but he is humble though he admits how little he knows and since there are so many of those with mental health problems under his watch and that he should be fired; fired; fired.
No, I don't think he needs to be fired. He needs to serve prison time.
1 out of 4 college students -- has a mental illness -- this is horrible. Don't sound rare to me.
Posted by: Benedetta | September 25, 2014 at 09:36 AM
I listened live, and I interpreted this paragraph differently, John. This particular meeting was focused on co-morbidities. All too rarely is that topic discussed. Dr. Insel on several occasions steered the conversation back to the topic of the day, which was his role as Chair.
But he admitted that the IOM didn't rule out the possibility that, in very rare cases, there could be a link. That is about the same as DeStefano (sp?) said to Atkisson recently. And that is a huge opening through which neither of those gentlemen has stepped before. As Insel said, the question is, how to investigate...which is exactly what Age of Autism would like them to recommend!
While here it may feel that autism is everywhere, even at a rate of 1 in 68, that means that 98% of kids get vaccines and do not get autism. So yes, the impact, even if vaccines were 100% responsible, would be 'rare'. And most folks feel that there are multiple causes, sometimes working in tandem. So he actually said something we have been wanting him to say for a very long time. Now to keep nudging him in that direction.
Posted by: Vicki Hill | September 25, 2014 at 09:35 AM
"I wish I knew more about that particular instance."
Has the man not heard of Google?
Posted by: Greg | September 25, 2014 at 09:00 AM
The Autism History Books are being rewritten each day, and every Govt. individual involved from McCormick to Stratton to Yeargood-Alsap to Insel is making a daily choice.
Do I go down with this ship? YES or NO
Can I endure a hideously stained personal reputation for the rest of my life? YES or NO
Do I want my legacy to be one of destroying *some* children's health because I lied by omission? YES or NO
Do I want to spend my golden years in a jail cell? YES or NO
The way out of your personal misery and the path of personal destruction has been paved by #CDCwhistleBlower William Thompson.
Follow his lead, no more lies. The truth will set you free.
#HearThisWell
Posted by: Lies, History Books. Legacies & Jail - your life your choice | September 25, 2014 at 08:56 AM
He is playing the idiot, although I doubt that that is what he is.
************
Only an idiot would stay the course the way he has, seeming to believe that this is all just going to go away.
This is just starting. And it isn't going to end well for people like him.
Posted by: Barry | September 25, 2014 at 07:21 AM
Dr Insel .. regarding the whistleblowing activities of CDC employee Dr William Thompson:
"I wish I knew more about that particular instance."
Duh .. if he "wished" he knew more .. why not do what he is being paid to do .. pick up the damn phone and learn all he can about that "particular instance".
Posted by: BoB Moffitt | September 25, 2014 at 06:30 AM