Thank you to Beth Clay for allowing us to excerpt her blog. Her post provides a factual rebuttal to the press release reporting by the mainstream pharmedia which went into full court press of denial and disinformation following the Republican Presidential debate last week.
September 18, 2015
The Autism-Vaccine controversy has become and will remain a 2016 campaign issue. It is not going away, and as someone who led the Congressional investigation with Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) on the US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and has stayed engaged on the issue these last dozen years, I thought I should put a framework on the basic issues, which are often ill-framed by the media. The American Academy of Pediatrics has already issued their statement in which they write, “Claims that vaccines are linked to autism, or are unsafe when administered according to the recommended schedule, have been disproven by a robust body of medical literature. It is dangerous to public health to suggest otherwise.” A very young physician (and fellow South Carolinian) Chad Hays is making a name for himself by posting a Guide to Vaccines for Presidential Candidates which has been picked up by Newsweek and Washington Post. Sadly both of these fail to accurately represent the facts regarding the controversy.
- The Important Role of Vaccinations in Public Health is Not Being Questioned. History will continue to recognize the important role of vaccines in public health – only exceeded by the importance of clean water, sanitation, safe housing, and healthy food.
- Vaccines, Like Every Medication, Have a Risk/Benefit Ratio: Vaccines, individually and as a whole, can and do harm some. Public health officials will state that vaccine adverse reactions are ‘rare’ or ‘very rare’. The truth is, no one really knows how rare vaccine reactions are because, like with all medication adverse reactions, they are vastly under reported. (In part because pediatricians have not been educated to recognize vaccine reactions, and now some would say are indoctrinated to deny they can occur.) The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is on record stating that less than one percent of adverse reactions for drugs in general are reported directly to them. According to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), in the United States in children under age six years vaccinated since January 2000, there are reports of: 900 deaths with diphtheria vaccines (Most of these are vaccines for 3 or more diseases including pertussis, polio, and tetanus); more than 270 deaths with Hepatitis B; and 91 deaths with the measles vaccines (Most of which are for more than one disease including Rubella and Mumps). Since their introduction in 2007, there are reports of 60 deaths in those getting Merck’s HPV vaccines and more than 550 deaths in patients of all ages getting flu shots since 2000.
Preserving Personal Choice and Parental Rights is Vital: Vaccines hold a unique place in medicine – they are the only medications mandated by the states for school participation based on recommendations of the federal government. And since the Clinton Administration, families on federal assistance (all except housing) must show proof their children’s vaccines are up to date. This means, that the government has taken medical decision making out of the hands of parents. They have done this while cutting off civil tort remedies. All states offer medical exemptions, but religious exemptions are now under attack, and in California, they have been eliminated. So religious liberty is also being curtailed. I have previously written a what you need to know report about the measles outbreak.
Manufacturers and Providers Protected: Vaccines are further unique in that the federal government has indemnified both the manufacturers of vaccines and those that administer vaccines from civil law suits. (So Merck, Glaxo, Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis, etc. as well as the young Dr. Hays who is promoting vaccines is protected from being sued if one of the babies he injects is injured.)
Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP): Congress created the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in response to vaccine industry complaints about civil law suits. In doing so, everyone agreed that vaccines can and do injure some. Sadly, Congress has failed to do consistent oversight, address concerns of the public and the attorney’s and petitioners in the program, or even to address the vagueness in the law identified by the Supreme Court in Bruesewitz vs. Wyeth. Most are shocked that there is little to no discovery; at the highly litigious environment that has developed over the last decade; that there is no precedent set from case to case, and how challenging it is to search case outcomes. That said, according to the latest report, over 1100 cases have been compensated in the last 2.5 years.
Wakefield Did Not Start This Controversy and His Study Was Not Fraudulent: Fact is, parents raised the issue of autism-vaccine injury way back when Congress created the VICP. The original 1991 Institute of Medicine Report mentions this and states there was too little information to draw a conclusion. And the government ignored the recommendation to do research for a decade. The retraction of the Lancet paper, a case study which never professed to make a causal link between MMR and autism, was because of the firestorm created by the mere raising of a potential. Professor John Walker Smith, Dr. Wakefield’s supervisor was able to appeal the ruling and have his medical license restored. Dr. Wakefield’s insurance provider as yet has not agreed to fund an appeal. Most of what is published about Dr. Wakefield is in fact false.
Autism-Vaccine Injury Already Validated Through VICP: While government officials often deny it, the facts are clear, over 25 years the government has compensated at least 84 families for a child who suffered a serious vaccine adverse reaction, such as a seizure disorder or brain swelling who also had autism or autistic symptoms. The most famous of these is Hannah Poling, whose father is a Hopkins trained neurologist and mother a nurse with a law degree. Federal officials tried to discount the link, saying it was due to her ‘very rare mitochondrial disorder’; however, in the autism community, mitochondrial issues are far from rare. The 2011 peer-reviewed paper, Unanswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury published in the Pace Law Review, when looking at a portion of the compensated cases found 83 confirmed cases of autism in individuals with vaccine-induced brain damage.
5,000 Families Denied Justice in VICP: While at least 84 autism families received justice in the VICP, 5,000 did not. Thousands more did not file because of the outcomes of the badly executed Autism Omnibus Proceedings that denied these 5,000 have also been denied justice. It was not a ‘robust body of medical literature’ that denied these families justice, but rather the government’s too heavy reliance on a handful of CDC funded epidemiological studies that themselves are fraught with controversy. These include the studies managed by fugitive from justice, Poul Thorsen and the infamous Verstraeten Study which failed to report his initial findings – the purest analysis of zero exposure to full exposure of thimerosal in the first six months of life and an eleven fold increased risk of autism.
Read the full post at BethClay.com
Dr Ellis,
"don't shout "vaccine injury" and expect a doctor to be shocked, we know they sometimes occur, we just don't have a good way to tell in advance who it will happen to."
I don't know what doctors imagine vaccine injury to look like, perhaps, as I once did, a wheelchair-bound child with both physical and mental handicap - and there are few of those - but what might a child look like whose brain has been moderately or even minimally damaged? What if the only symptoms of vaccine-caused brain injury are the ones that parents and family notice, such as loss of skills and changes in behaviour and personality, and the doctor labels the child with autism? No one is counting these children with "autism-like symptoms" as "brain damaged" or "vaccine injured".
And that's where the problem lies, because a child with an autism label isn't going to be considered for vaccine-injury compensation, regardless of a history of adverse reactions and subsequent loss of skills, and the child won't be counted as a vaccine injury case solely because of the widely held belief that vaccines don't cause autism.
Because doctors believe that vaccines are necessary for public health, and that they are safe for the vast majority of children, they seldom if ever report adverse reactions, and they should. Under any other circumstances, medical symptoms such as fever, irritability, vomiting, prolonged crying, somnolence and seizures would be considered cause for concern, but, strangely, after vaccination, these symptoms become "signs of a robust immune system" and are considered "benign".
The only way to get a clear picture of how many people are vaccine-damaged is to force doctors to report all vaccine reactions to the authorities regardless of what they believe. Without proper data collection, statistics are meaningless, like the "one in a million" risk of vaccine injury we hear about, based presumably on the number of compensated cases. People should know that, in order to win their case, parents have to provide scientific medical evidence to prove that their child was vaccine injured. How exactly can non-medical people do that? Impossible.
The first step towards a solution would be to make reporting of reactions and the follow-up of these children mandatory, and long-term. We need to find out how many children who have reacted adversely to vaccines are actually suffering from post-encephalitic syndrome - a condition that vaccines are supposed to prevent - which behaviourally looks exactly like autism.
Another step would be to remove autism from the DSM because it is(conveniently)burying the vaccine-injured.
Posted by: ATSC | September 24, 2015 at 12:32 AM
One more comment for Dr. Ellis:
How dare you demand that people refrain from presenting problems unless they are handed to you with solutions?
What is the purpose of your license to practice medicine? What responsibility comes with that license, if not to identify and solve health care problems, especially those caused by your profession?
Posted by: Linda1 | September 22, 2015 at 08:03 AM
Trump needs to drop the A.THOM(pson) bomb .
He will get further opportunities .
The authorities(liars) must be terrified now .
How can they keep him off the screens and out of the media .
Go Nuclear Trump - DO IT !
William Thompson - Drop the bomb , DONALD. Drop IT.
Posted by: Sophie Scholl | September 22, 2015 at 03:57 AM
Measles deaths in US in 1960 averaged 450 a year, but that was out of FOUR MILLION cases. Everyone had measles then, I and everyone I knew, and we all recovered with permanent immunity and the ability to protect future infants. We need to get over our fear of all contagious diseases and learn how to cope with them. It's necessary for healthy development of the immune system to go through the natural childhood diseases.
Posted by: cia parker | September 21, 2015 at 09:37 PM
Wendy Lydall said that the two main causes of measles deaths were pneumonia and, much more rarely, encephalitis. She says that keeping the patient warm in bed throughout the entire illness (no baths or showers during fever, wrap up in a robe and slippers even to go to the bathroom), prevents pneumonia, and withholding all fever reducers prevents encephalitis. It's a very bad idea to reduce the fever which is engaging dozens of techniques honed over millions of years to save your life. The body knows how high to make the fever for the specific situation and how long to hold it there. Also measles depresses the immune system to an unusual degree, and it's wise to stay home away from other people's germs for three weeks after the day the measles rash appears, even though you will feel well long before then. Many people catch dangerous secondary infections in those weeks.
Posted by: cia parker | September 21, 2015 at 09:34 PM
Doodle,
They really already admitted in CA that vaccines cause injury: the amendment by which children already on an IEP are exempt from the mandate is an admission that these children have already been damaged, and in an unexpected show of humanity, need not submit to being further injured. If they really thought vaccines were harmless, there would be no reason to exempt the special ed kids, who are as capable of spreading disease as anyone else. Really amusing. So 1% of the kids had a personal vaccine exemption, and that was an excuse to call out the big guns. It's one in ten on an IEP in CA now. So potentially 10% of the students are exempt from getting vaccines. So this whole brouhaha is to hold the line at 10%, God forbid it should reach 11%? (And of course I wouldn't care if 90 or 100% of the students were unvaxed, we really don't need the vaxed and would be healthier without them.)
Posted by: cia parker | September 21, 2015 at 09:28 PM
Dr. Ellis,
You were probably alluding to the many children who die of measles in developing countries, but even there the parents have the right to full information and vitamin A. Many would rather take the risk of measles, even though it is greater than in well-nourished countries, to taking the chance of causing autism in their child. Several years ago AoA published an article by African father Abdulkadir Khalif, whose little son reacted to the MMR with autism. He said:
"But I tell you sir, that whether one child or 10 children die of measles or whether dozens more contract the disease and recover, I would rather have my child suffer for a few days and then recover than to have him mentally damaged for life and be a burden on society. I would rather have one child die in infancy and join the rest in the calculation of mortality rates than to have thousands disabled and dehumanized for life."
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/03/measles-minneapolis-and-somali-kids.html
It is paternalistic to decide for all families in the world that autism is preferable to death from measles. It is taking a chance either way, but there are many ways to ensure safe recovery from measles, but no way to improve your odds at emerging unscathed from a vaccine.
Posted by: cia parker | September 21, 2015 at 09:22 PM
Dr. Ellis,
The MMR does NOT have to be administered even if 1% reacts to it with autism. Measles is rarely dangerous: in 1960, there were only two deaths per 10,000 cases (less than one in 10,000 in children between three and ten). In the UK in the '80s it was one or two per 10,000. It is not the right of any authority to decree that one hundred children with autism is acceptable to prevent one death from measles. I say it's not acceptable, and we need to go back to 99% of children getting measles by the age of 18. It is the right of every parent to decide for him or herself. If they knew how vitamin A, lack of fever reducers, and adequate recuperation time greatly reduces the risk of complications in measles, I think nearly all of them would rather take the risk of measles than autism.
Posted by: cia parker | September 21, 2015 at 09:17 PM
Dr. Ellis,
Lots of solutions are proposed on this site.
When I was a kid everyone got the measles, mumps, chickenpox and most but not all got rubella. The mortality rate from measles was down to almost zero before the vaccine was developed. The mortality and complication rates for mumps and chickenpox were also very low. Wild infection with these diseases usually confers life long immunity, as opposed to unknown temporary vaccine immunity, which for many is no immunity if the vaccine doesn't work at all. Research has shown that wild mumps infection in childhood results in a significantly lower incidence of ovarian cancer in adulthood - lower than women who were vaccinated instead of having the infection. It is believed that the antibodies developed during wild infection protect against ovarian cancer. The immune response to the vaccine does not produce this type of antibody.
To inflict any percent of children to autism or ovarian cancer or any degree of harm to avoid these infections in childhood, when they are most mild, is irresponsible and reckless. A solution to the risk of congenital rubella would be to offer a single rubella vaccine to girls who have not contracted rubella by adolescence - or since rubella is a mild infection, to expose them to rubella to make sure that they have natural immunity before pregnancy - no injection necessary.
Here are just a few solutions to the vaccine problem:
- Senior CDC Immunization Safety Branch epidemiologist William Thompson came forward over a year ago, confessing that the CDC is corrupt - they hid data from their own studies showing that African American boys that received the MMR before age 36 months had an over 300% higher risk of autism; normal children of other races also had a signifantly higher risk of autism. Dr. Thompson also said that thimerosol causes tics and that he would never give a vaccine that contained thimerosol to his pregnant wife. He said the other scientists held a meeting back in the early 2000's and threw out the data showing the link. Thompson, knowing that what they were doing was illegal, secretly saved copies and a year ago turned those copies over to Florida Representative Posey. Posey has been literally begging his congressional colleagues to hold hearings to have Thompson, who has been granted whistleblower status, to testify and so Congress can examine the thousands of documents in Posey's possession and so that the CDC can be investigated. The CDC has asked to investigate itself and I understand that they were given permission.
So here's a solution - The Congress needs to investigate the CDC and have formal hearings because this isn't the only instance of the CDC being accused of massive corruption and it is the CDC who is responsible for protecting the nation's health. That is a big problem.
2 - NY Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and another Congressperson whose name escapes me at the moment, have been trying to get Congress to request a study that would compare the health of vaccinated vs totally unvaccinated individuals. This has never been done. There is no shortage of unvaccinated individuals, but Pharma is trying to get rid of the control group so that this study can never be done.
3 - Demilitarize vaccination in America. No other country in the free world forces vaccines on their citizens, and if you look at The National Vaccine Plan, you'll see that our government is in business with Pharma to make as many vaccines as possible. That is the plan. 271 reportedly in development. Are you prepared to take them all? Because they will try to force them. $34 billion last year, proposed $100 billion is the goal (not sure if that is sales or profit).
4 - Stop the religious fanatacism that has replaced science when it comes to the medical community and vaccination. Take a hard objective look at the research. Take a look at the journal, Vaccine, PMID 21093496 "Diptheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine administered simultaneously with measles vaccine is associated with increased morbidity and poor growth in girls. A randomised trial from Guinea-Bissau."
Did you see that? Increased morbidity and poor growth in girls. From the Conclusion: "This is the first randomised trial of the non-specific effects of DTP and supports that these effects may be sex-differential and of clinical and anthropometric importance. COMBINED VACCINATION WITH DTP-MV-OPV may be detrimental to girls."
Isn't that what we do to our children here? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I bet they're still doing that in Guinea-Bissau as well.
Which leads to another solution, which should really be listed separately, but I'm not done listing research so I'll say it here - Individual vaccines should again be made available so that physicians and their patients have a choice. If a physician or a parent wants a child to have a measles vaccine, then the individual vaccine should be an option. Same with diptheria, tetanus and pertussis. When I was young, if one wanted a tetanus shot, a tetanus shot was available. At some point, they stopped making it. This was decided by the manufacturers, which brings up another solution - put physicians back in charge of public health. Manufacturers should not be deciding what types of vaccines will be available. Which brings up still another solution - Because of a law passed in 1986, vaccine manufacturers and providers have since had zero liability for vaccines and suddenly vaccines are a very hot product and much of Pharma's energy is going into producing vaccines. Mandated products that are all profit with no liability are dangerous products. Currently, the injured or killed have to go before a Vaccine Court that does not follow the normal legal rules and it is a grueling process. Claims, $3 billion so far, are paid out of a fund paid by the consumer - $.75 of the cost of each vaccine goes to this fund. Pharma pays nothing. Restore liability to vaccines - like any other product. What do you think would happen to the quality of cars if car manufacturers suddenly were in a position where they could not be sued by consumers?
Now, if you can look at the following research and not realize that something is terribly wrong with the vaccine program and the mindset of these clinicians, then I don't know how to get through to you. Please see in JAMA Pediatrics, "Adverse Events After Routine Immunization of Extremely Low-Birth-Weight Infants" June 1, 2015. This study of over 13,000 babies still in NICU, vaccinated at 2 months of age and deemed to be stable prior to vaccination, found a significantly increased incidence of apnea and bradycardia, sepsis workups, and intubations in the immediate post vaccination period. 5 babies in the study died in the postimmunization period, defined as 3 days postimmunization (the day of immunization and the 2 following days).
From the study:
"Apnea and bradycardia are also commonly observed adverse events in the postimmunization period. The DTaP-containing vaccines have been of particular concern because the whole-cell pertussis vaccine has been cited as causing apnea and bradycardia in 7% of preterm infants, and more recently, apnea and bradycardia have been observed after immunization with the acellular pertussis vaccine component. Several studies have found an increased risk of events leading to new requirements for respiratory support, especially in ELBW infants with signifincant lung disease, a history of sepsis during hospitalization, and preimmunization apnea, although other studies have found no increased incidence in cardiorespiratory events after immunization among hospitalized infants in the NICU. These studies used much smaller cohorts than the current study. One randomized clinical trial examining adverse events after DTaP vaccination reported no difference in the incidence of adverse cardiorespiratory events after only one immunization. When cardiorespiratory events occur, they are more likely to occur in populations similar to this study group of ELBW infants and those with more severe illness at birth. Older infants with a diagnosis of chronic lung disease who were still hospitalized in the NICU at the time of immunization also had a higher incidence of adverse events. Regarding the use of combination vaccines, a 2007 study of the hexavalent DTaP, IPV, HiB and HepB vaccine found that apnea and/or bradycardia occurred in 11% of study infants, demonstrating slightly higher rates of adverse events compared with single-dose vaccines. More recently, a retrospective study in 2008 of 64 infants who received the combination DTaP, IPV, and HiB vaccine and the 7-valent pneumoccoccal conjugate vaccine found that 25% of study infants had clinically significant apnea and bradycardia. However, we do not have current information about the use of single-dose vs. combination vaccines in US NICUs."
Now, finding that babies would stop breathing and their hearts would slow down to abnormal rates and that some of them even died, over many studies, including their own, what did these authors conclude? That the practice continue with ventilators ready and more research is needed. This is insane. It is infanticide. Not only that, but finding that older babies also had apnea and bradycardia requiring mechanical ventilation, no one seems to ask the obvious - What happens when babies like this go home after their pediatrican visit where they get these same vaccines and have apnea and bradycardia in their crib? with no medical staff and no monitoring and no ventilator to save them?
So, solutions: The medical profession needs to be honest, and smart, and to realize that vaccination to them has become more of a rite of passage, a religious ritual rather than a scientifically and medically justified procedure. After all, are American preemies in imminent danger of contracting diptheria? polio? hepatitis B? Hib? even pertussis while in NICU with all the precautions and scrubbing done before handling them? Even if you say yes to, maybe Hib, if the procedure is going to stop them from breathing, the risk/benefit analysis does not pan out in favor of continuing to subject infants to this "routine" ritual.
FIRST, DO NO HARM.
Regarding your anesthesia dilemma of not knowing who will die upon administration, we test every infant born in this country for rare inborn errors of metabolism. I don't know the circumstances in which you use the anthesthetic drug that you mentioned, but if there is any way that patients can be tested ahead of time, it should be done, regardless of the economic cost. If there is a way, and it is not being done, that is negligence.
Posted by: Linda1 | September 21, 2015 at 08:49 PM
Thank you for a well reasoned article, Ms Clay.
Posted by: greyone | September 21, 2015 at 08:18 PM
Here's a solution, Dr. Ellis. Get rid of conjugate vaccines and go back to allowing people to choose to vaccinate for JUST measles, JUST rubella, JUST tetanus, and stop requiring vaccines for non-communicable diseases (like tetanus). Stop vaccinating for mostly dead diseases (like diptheria). Let people choose. And remove the inability of the consumer to sue the manufacturers and the doctors who continue to believe that one size fits all, who knowingly inject SICK children at well baby appointments (my veterinarian knows better than to vaccinate a sick animal). Slow down the schedule, and stop vaccinating BABIES who don't yet have immune systems anyway (in order to train the parents to bring them to the doctor). Test for the mthfr deletion for all patients. Test for mitochondrial dysfunction and look at family case histories before insisting on vaccinating every baby who comes into your practice. Let parents trust their gut instincts, and teach parents the very real risks, not just of the diseases, but of the vaccines they purport (with no proof) to prevent.
Posted by: Sue Morgan | September 21, 2015 at 08:09 PM
@Dr Ellis
There's a good book by another MD that you might like: Doctoring Data, by Dr Malcolm Kendrick.
One of the things he talks about is the importance of measuring the right endpoint. For vaccines, the goal is improved public health, not a reduction in incidence of a particular disease. For example, if a vaccine eliminates an infectious disease but causes massive autoimmune illness instead, that is obviously not a good tradeoff.
A recent example is that India has eradicated polio by vaccinating aggressively. They call this campaign a major success -- polio is eradicated! But the public health outcome is that cases of paralysis increased from 12,500/year to 50,000 per year. The campaign was a public health disaster.
For measles in third world countries, the measure of success should be a reduction in overall mortality rates, not the reduction in mortality from measles. In third-world countries, people die from infectious diseases caused by poor sanitation, lack of clean water, and poor nutrition. When they don't die from the measles, they will die from something else, and there is no good evidence that overall mortality rates are reduced by vaccination. If you provide clean water, though, mortality rates drop dramatically -- just as they did in the US back in the 1900's.
Another excellent book you might like is by another MD, Dr Suzanne Humphries, called Dissolving Illusions, which is about the history and science of vaccination.
In terms of the anesthetic you use, despite the known problems with specific alleles, I can understand using this for emergency surgery, but do not understand why you would do this for elective/deferrable procedures. If that particular genetic makeup can be discovered by 23andme, the cost is $100. And for sure I would like you to give me the option of getting tested before you use something with a known problem on me. I presume this problem is well-documented in your informed consent forms?
Finally, when you look at lives saved in the United States by the measles vaccine, total deaths per year when the vaccine was introduced were on the order of hundreds per year, and this number would have declined further with improvements in nutrition/sanitation and treatment (retinol and high-dose Vitamin C). So the hurdle for public mandates of the measles vaccine is very high, and if it is a factor in autism (which all vaccines are, please see http://vaccinepapers.org/review-of-jain-et-al-jama-2015-and-comments-on-mmr-autism/), then it is not at all clear that its use is justified.
Posted by: Tim Lundeen | September 21, 2015 at 06:27 PM
Dr. Ellis, with over 60,000 SEVERE adverse reactions reported to VAERS, I wonder that you still assume that any vulnerability to such reaction, genetic or otherwise, is rare.
If you read of 60,000 patients having a severe reaction to anesthesia, wouldn't you consider testing everyone who came through your door?
Posted by: Researcher | September 21, 2015 at 06:09 PM
Dr. Ellis:
There is no "spectacular amount of well-organized studies" which falsify a vaccine-autism link. In fact, the most prominent studies the CDC trots out in defense of their policy (such as Vaerstraten, or DeStefano) are either fatally flawed or fraudulent. There is an abundance of good science (more than 100 published studies) showing a plausible link. If you disagree, cite your body of work. WHO is just as enamored of junk science as is the CDC. Statistics from both of them are sometimes reliable, and sometimes unreliable. And a statistician can make a pig look like a princess, as the tobacco "scientists" taught us years ago. There can be no question that vaccines play a significant role in the epidemic of autism, and other autoimmune conditions. Other likely candidates: clearly glyphosate, acetaminophen,and antibiotics given repeatedly to young children are implicated. The added gluten in bread (to increase profit margin), a fairly recent phenomenon, may play a role. And clearly the synergistic effects of exposure to 80,000 industrial chemicals, as well as air pollutants play a role. Poor nutrient status likely contributes, as well. The truth is, the NIH (the major funder of autism research) has no interest in knowing anything about the etiology of autism. They are bureaucrats, and what bureaucrats do best is job security and staying as far from the winds of controversy as possible.
Posted by: Gary Ogden | September 21, 2015 at 05:41 PM
Vaccine injuries and deaths are NOT rare. Here is some math that Mary did based on the numbers of children who reacted in just one community-in one area, in one state in one day..https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#search/mary+aspinwall/14ff12bdc2909df8
Posted by: Shelley Tzorfas | September 21, 2015 at 05:22 PM
Dr. Ellis, unfortunately when you ask for an alternative to a drug, or vaccine, it probably doesn't occur to you that that may not be another drug. For a good remedy to measles deaths, for example, try the four preventives listed in my post prior to yours - and quoted from the article. It is already well known that most measles deaths occur from patients not being adequately cared for. And I speak as the daughter of a pharmacologist who hardly ever used medicines.
Posted by: Grace Green | September 21, 2015 at 04:52 PM
@dr Ellis the answer is listen to the parents . IF someone came in the clinic and said "my cousin died from this anesthetic" I assume you would believe them and respect their right not to use it.many of us have long family history of odd reaction to vaccines.
Posted by: Anita donnelly | September 21, 2015 at 04:50 PM
Regarding the WHO and measles mortality I note Hilary Butler's letter in BMJ Rapid Responses from November 2008. It is a long and interesting letter from which this is an extract:
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/response-peter-fleggs-use-data
"Last year, WHO (2) stated that measles mortality in Africa had slashed the death rate from measles by 91% since 2000. This 91% is an artifact figure, because before 2000, measles in Africa was "estimated", while after 2000, notifications were only accepted after being laboratory
proven. In 2000, WHO implemented a system of laboratories (3) specifically to diagnose measles, and provide the laboratory confirmed cases which are now the basis of WHO data.
"Look at pages 2, and 14. On page 14, 14,185 cases were reported in 2006, but after blood testing, 9,764 were "discarded". That's an immediate 69% drop in cases, because they are no longer relying on doctor's eyes.
"On page 2, of 14,185 cases, 3,257 were accepted, leaving a balance of 10,928 discarded measles cases which equals 77% which were NOT measles after being blood tested, but which would have been accepted on the pre-2000 measles. notification system. Comparing data from laboratory-confirmed blood tests after 2000, with pre-2000 guessing, and then claiming a 91% decline, is not a valid scientific comparison....
"(2) Measles deaths in Africa plunge by 91%
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2007/pr62/en/index.html
"(3) WHO, 2006 "Afro Measles Surveillance Feedback Bulletin" January 2006."
Posted by: John Stone | September 21, 2015 at 04:34 PM
The "15+ million people who would have died" appears to come from the WHO website: "During 2000-2013, with support from the Measles & Rubella Initiative (M&R Initiative), measles vaccination prevented an estimated 15.6 million [deaths]." WHO got it from the Measles and Rubella Initiative which is associated with the CDC. That doesn't necessarily mean the figure is inflated....
The anesthetic that on occasion works the "exact opposite of the way" it does in normal people, ie, it kills them? I'd love to know the name of it so that I can ask for a different one--or at least get tested for that mutation.
Posted by: Carol | September 21, 2015 at 03:58 PM
One solution is to not have vaccine mandates and maybe spend some money on researching susceptible subsets of the population. At this point, even admitting that vaccines could cause an injury would be a good start for CA.
Posted by: Doodle | September 21, 2015 at 03:05 PM
“Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Article 6— Consent Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.” Adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) General Conference, October 2005
For you, Dr ellis
Posted by: greyone | September 21, 2015 at 02:46 PM
Dr. Ellis the head of the NIMH quotes stats that should scare all the medical people and the United States on the rise of mental illness.
A head scientist tells us that they (the CDC) has changed the data on a study.
The 14 studies were done by one guy way over in Denmark that well they looked up a criminal to do the studies and now he is wanted by our government for money crimes.
I don't know what for you to do; certainly Dr Wakefield did not know what to do - but he knew what he should do.
Good luck on putting people to sleep with your stuff that has something to do with genetics but this Oh this --- .
It is not -- going to be a small subset of children -- that is not how it is going to turn out.
Not only is everyone effected in some small way -- it is Worse it is going to be accumulative -- each generation of us rats will just keep getting worse.
Posted by: Benedetta | September 21, 2015 at 02:40 PM
Dr Ellis
"Propose solutions"
The solution is give people a choice of vaccinating.
Posted by: greyone | September 21, 2015 at 02:26 PM
There is a legitimate point raised here. In medicine it's always important to be mindful of the potential for genetic differences to drastically alter the way a particular person responds to a drug or therapy. There's an anesthetic I use every day at my practice without incident that for people with a extremely rare mutation works the exact opposite of the way it does for normal people. The scientific debate over whether vaccines cause autism in most or even a significant fraction of children is over. A truly spectacular amount of well organized studies from dozens of institutions have shown that claim to be false. However, there exists the real possibility that for a subset of children with an as yet unknown mutation some component of vaccines may cause autism like syndromes.
The problem is that we still don't really know the biological sequence of events that gives rise to autism symptoms, and until we do, only a full genetic survey of all suspected vaccine-autism cases could even hope to identify any mutations. If there is no way to tell who might react poorly to a vaccine, then any public health decisions have to be made according to what will happen to MOST people. Even if the MMR gave autism to 1% of every child it was given to, if there was no good alternative it would still have to be administered to save the lives of the 15+ million people who would have died from measles if not for the vaccine.
I still use that anesthetic even though I know that it might kill anyone with that mutation. I do this because I can't screen everyone who comes through the door, and I don't know of any other good alternatives that won't cause even more problems. Give me an alternative to that drug and I'll gladly use it. Give me a way to check if a vaccine will cause autism and I'll use it. Give me better science or a better vaccine and I'll use it. But don't shout "vaccine injury" and expect a doctor to be shocked, we know they sometimes occur, we just don't have a good way to tell in advance who it will happen to. Don't just scream "problem!", propose solutions, because almost all doctors genuinely care for the well being of their patients and would jump at the chance to keep them from harm.
Posted by: Dr. Ellis | September 21, 2015 at 01:01 PM
Thanks so much for writing about this, Beth. The chorus of mainstream propaganda is awful, and I cling to all sensible words on the subject!
Posted by: Twyla | September 21, 2015 at 11:27 AM
"The important role of vaccines - only EXCEEDED by the importance of clean water, sanitation, safe housing and healthy food.." As someone who was refused state benefits because of a diagnosis of M.E. and whose children grew up having to drink water from a field of cows, in a house riddled with asbestos, and having to grow our own food because we couldn't afford to buy quality food, I wish doctors WOULD put these things before prescribing drugs. Bring it on!
Posted by: Grace Green | September 21, 2015 at 09:03 AM
900 died from just the DPT shot since 2000
5,000 with autism denied
Might all add up to everyone being effected in very negative ways other than death or autism --- being mildly bipolar and a becoming a drug addict and other mentally illnesses is the unseen part of the iceberg
They have not enough money in the world to compensate -- so I want jail time.
For lots of them.
It would be justice.
Posted by: Benedetta | September 21, 2015 at 08:50 AM