Dachel Wake Up: Columbia Autism Scientists in Butt Ugly Lawsuit
Note: You can read the legal filing here. Hornig v. Lipkin
May 20, 2017, New York Post: Columbia professor says boss made her inspect his butt
A Columbia University scientist claims her boss — and former lover — repeatedly dropped his drawers and demanded she diagnose a lesion on his butt.
Associate Professor Mady Hornig says her boss at the university’s Mailman School of Public Health also demanded co-credit for her work; kicked her under the table at meetings to keep her from speaking; presented her work as his own, and kept her from getting tenure, Hornig claims in a Manhattan federal court lawsuit.
In 2014, Professor Walter Ian Lipkin, head of the Center for Infection & Immunity, called Hornig into his office and “demanded that she look at lesions on his buttocks,” Hornig alleges. He did so again a year later, Hornig charges.
Lipkin is familiar to us at Age of Autism. I wrote about his Wall Street Journal piece, Anti-Vaccination Lunacy Won’t Stop, where he denounced 'Vaxxed' and said Robert De Niro did the right thing pulling it from Tribeca. https://www.wsj.com/articles/anti-vaccination-lunacy-wont-stop-1459721652
"The filmmakers claim they have not stated that autism is caused by the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, known as MMR. However, that is the inescapable message of 'Vaxxed.' And it is certainly the stance of Andrew Wakefield, the discredited British researcher who is the movie’s director and co-writer.
"I’ve known Mr. Wakefield since the late 1990s, when his (later retracted) paper suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism appeared in the Lancet medical journal. He studied British children with developmental disorders and reported that they began to show signs of autism within weeks after receiving the vaccine."
Dan Olmsted also wrote about him in 2016.
Not only is Lipkin involved in the vaccine controversy, but so is Dr. Hornig. Way back in 2004, I first heard of her in the CBS story from Sharyl Attkisson, Vaccine Links To Autism?
But now, a landmark study by Dr. Mady Hornig, from the Mailman School Of Public Health, Columbia University, is adding to the mercury worries.
Hornig injected a strain of mice with genetic tissues similar to those found in children with mercury-laden vaccines equivalent to what kids got in the 1990's. The mice developed profound brain problems.
So what types of behavior did Hornig see in the mice, and how does that compare with what we call autism? Dr. Hornig answers, "All sorts of strange behaviors that were repetitive in nature, where animals would just keep repeating the same behavior in a very stereotyped fashion."
It wasn't just repetition -- the mice withdrew from their surroundings like autistic children. They resisted change and developed brain abnormalities affecting emotion and thinking, also like autistic children.
While Hornig has never supported the link between the MMR and autism, thirteen years ago she found that thimerosal caused brain damage in mice. Too bad Lipkin was more interested in other things.
Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.
Dear Sirs,
I am an Italian citizen very worried because our Health Minister is on her way to approve a new law to make 12 vaccinations compulsory.
I am part of many groups where we fight this law but I would like to be able to discuss with pro-vax people: where can I find the studies you base your theories about the risks of vaccinations on?
Many thks & regards
Gilda Manzo
Posted by: Gilda Manzo | May 27, 2017 at 01:33 PM
Grace
I hope I clarified with my last post that in fact I was arguing that I don't distinguish between "encephalopathy" and "autism", that it is a false distinction.
Actually, you intuited correctly and your opinion matches mine: the PTB don't want to discuss/acknowledge autism as encephalopathy, and in many individuals they are one and the same.
Encephalopathy is diagnosed based on some biological markers while autism is based on behavioural markers (not biology) - of course autism has biological causes and as stated many, likely most, and maybe all cases of autism are precipitated by a reaction to vaccines.
Posted by: Harvard MD | May 26, 2017 at 10:51 AM
Thank you Cia and John - so few people around me will engage in discussing this topic - especially medical colleagues. I read AoA daily, as well as the comments.
I agree with you both, as well as with Bill. I'm convinced vaccines cause inflammation/toxicity /autoimmunity/ oxidative stress overload in many people, young and old, resulting/contributing in a range of conditions, including autism/ASD.
Bill asked , "If I have said anything factually in error here, please correct me.... "
My contribution to this post was to comment on Bill's statement:
"So, technically, it *might* *be* correct to say that "vaccines don't cause autism".
In my opinion it is a flawed distinction to state vaccine cause encephalopathy and NOT autism. This is because autism is a behavioural based diagnosis, not based on biological findings, and likely has many underlying biological causes. I'd argue that vaccines cause both and in fact often encephalopathy and autism are one and the same, as Bill stated, so they are not distinct entities.
Anyway, no fundamental disagreement, we all agree on the different biological mechanisms of vaccine brain injury, this is so much more important than semantics or definitions of the injury, but unfortunately the lay- and medical- communities are often stuck at that level.
Posted by: Harvard MD | May 26, 2017 at 10:40 AM
Harvard MD, it's interesting to me that you draw a distinction between autism and encephalopathy, as I received a diagnosis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (the correct name for chronic fatigue syndrome) in 1998, and discovered through my own reading that I had had "autism" most of my life, in 2004, following a flurry of public information, (some here will join the dots regarding THAT year). I believe the PTB don't want to recognize the connection between autism and ME because those who get ME are adults, verbal, and capable of saying, "It's not psychological!"
Hans Litten. Kent Heckenlively has written an article on this topic, posted on Tim Bolen's Blog.
Posted by: Grace Green | May 26, 2017 at 08:33 AM
Harvard MD
What I see with the HHS HRSA statement is a weasel formula, which escapes the direct relation between between vaccines (which cause inflammation and encephalopathies) and autism, autistic symptoms, epilepsy etc. However, an encephalopathy would just be an event and not subject to compensation unless there was long term damage, so it is not ultimately clear what distinction is being made. Also one can say that compenstion does not happen very often, but one cannot say that such events do not happen very often - they are not routinely monitored or investigated, and everyone is encouraged to take them in their stride. That said, even the VAERS database, which almost no one knows about has managed to accumulate nearly 600,000 events since 1990. It might be 1%. What needs to happen is the routine monitoring of adverse event up to say at least a year afterwards.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/07/best-of-aofa-naked-cdc-truth-about-mmr.html
Otherwise you have no direct means of assessing the industrial fall-out of the program.
Posted by: John Stone | May 26, 2017 at 03:17 AM
Harvard MD,
How do vaccines cause autism? That's easy. As Bill observed, mercury in vaccines can do it. Mercury toxicity can cause delayed, abnormal, or absent speech. It can cause loss of the ability to make eye contact, loss of the ability to converse and socialize. It can cause hand and arm flapping and perseverations. It can cause chronic diarrhea or constipation; in short, all the symptoms of autism. Most people excrete vaccine mercury in a relatively short time; others don't, possibly from deficient detoxification systems, deficient glutathione or other detoxifiers. These people, unable to excrete it, store it in the bones, brain, and body organs. A high fever or environmental heat can later pull it out and mobilize it, at which time it produces the symptoms of autism, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or other neurological diseases.
But in addition, the immune system always reacts to vaccines with inflammation: if it didn't, no antibodies would be created. The vaccine is DESIGNED to irritate the immune system and provoke an inflammatory response. Killed virus vaccines usually include aluminum as an adjuvant, because it will irritate the immune system into continuing to produce antibodies for a long time. When it no longer does, it's time to get a booster.
Many people for genetic reasons have immune systems which tend to react very strongly to vaccines. Probably the people with the most finely tuned, responsive immune systems. Unfortunately, in this case, the immune system, attempting to protect the person it's in, mounts too strong an inflammatory response, it involves the brain, the swelling impairs blood circulation in the brain, and, in a way similar to a stroke, severe damage is done to certain areas of the brain, especially the language and social centers. The damage is stroke-like in nature, because the vaccine reaction essentially caused a stroke. We call the results autism, ADHD, or seizure disorders.
Posted by: cia parker | May 25, 2017 at 07:48 PM
Just want to clarify my previous post - When I wrote that most physicians would not venture a diagnosis of encephalopathy because not part of medical curriculum/lexicon, I meant as related to cases of diagnosed autism.
Of course, in medical school we learn about infectious encephalitis or metabolic encephalopathy (ex., renal failure or liver failure), but in my training at top tier institutions (as per my handle) no mention of encephalopathy as a cause of autism (only genetic syndromes such as Fragile X, Rett's, Down's, and of course the elusive so-called genetic cause for most cases of 'idiopathic' autism).
John Stone - thanks for links, read with interest!
Posted by: Harvard MD | May 25, 2017 at 06:30 PM
Hi John Stone
I was indeed aware of such statements, although not the exact wording or source, as I'm relatively new to examining this issue. My reading of that text is that it somehow differentiates encephalopathy from autism & autism behaviours - it supposes a child with a medical diagnosis of encephalopathy is somehow different from others " with autism". (I'll check your links - haven't done so yet, thanks!)
Being in the medical field, few physicians would test or venture into diagnosing encephalopathy - the more power to those that do, but most don't, as not part of the medical curriculum/lexicon. I wonder how many children with ASD could also be diagnosed with encephalopathy by physicians who are open and informed - is it 10%, 25%, >50%? Again, question is from what causes encephalopathy: autoimmune syndrome or toxins or mitochondrial vulnerability - all the above?
When I was involved in clinical drug research (left in 2015), the dogma was autism is genetic and thus a drug or gene or new tech therapy would help or solve autism. Scientists and physicians never questioned toxins, autoimmunity, and when I brought up the gut (not because I'm especially insightful but I'm not closed minded and heard of this emerging link back in 2009), it was laughed at as "food for thought" - pun intended!
Thanks for your reply!
Posted by: Harvard MD | May 25, 2017 at 06:08 PM
Hi Harvard MD,
You may or not have come across this statement by HHS HRSA (US Government) officials handed on different occasions to journalists Sharyl Attkisson and David Kirby:
"The government has never compensated, nor has it ever been ordered to compensate, any case based on a determination that autism was actually caused by vaccines. We have compensated cases in which children exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures."
http://web.archive.org/web/20101106061707/http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20016356-10391695.html">http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20016356-10391695.html">http://web.archive.org/web/20101106061707/http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20016356-10391695.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-david-kirby/vaccine-court-autism-deba_b_169673.html
But there is still a lot on autism and the gut even from those who prefer to tip-toe round Andrew Wakefield.
Posted by: John Stone | May 25, 2017 at 05:18 PM
Response to Bill:
I mostly agree with you statement, and as a psychiatrist I am particularly interested in the notion of encephalopathy as an explanation for autism which is essentially diagnosed solely on observed behaviours. The diagnosis of autism is a clinical picture of varying degrees of difficulties with social communication and repetitive/stereotyped behaviours and restricted range of interests (apologies if this is all old news). Nothing is really known about the biology of autism, whether shared biology across cases or heterogeneous causes due to different aetiologies.
So the problem lies with the definition, which is a catch-all regardless of biological pathways, so I do think it is correct to say vaccines cause autism...the question is how. Perhaps, given how inflammatory it is to link vaccines to autism (no pun intended), it could be a tactical strategy to speak about vaccines and encephalopathy - but in the end it is just semantics.
Posted by: Harvard MD | May 25, 2017 at 04:22 PM
I miss the Mady Hornig of 2004. Anne, maybe if you contact her she would like to recant?
Posted by: Anna Quandt | May 24, 2017 at 12:10 AM
Would have been so funny if Horning told Lipkin his lesion is vaccine injury. :)
Posted by: annie | May 23, 2017 at 01:42 PM
Both mercury in Thimerosol, and the vaccines themselves, *CAN* cause a form of encephalopathy, which in turn can result in autism. That's what I believe, based on my reading of ALL available literature. So, technically, it *might* *be* correct to say that "vaccines don't cause autism". But they *DO* *CAUSE* the encephalopathy which leads to autism in SOME kids....
The "immune system response" which vaccines are SUPPOSED to trigger CAN include an auto-immune response of encephalopathy. If I have said anything factually in error here, please correct me....
Posted by: Bill | May 23, 2017 at 09:27 AM
Kent Heckenlivey will love this article (given one of his chapters in Innoculated was devoted to dealing with these two jokers) .
Posted by: Hans Litten | May 23, 2017 at 06:08 AM