AYOUB:  And this is what several studies have shown.

OFFIT:  And the most sensitive way to answer that question is with an epidemiological study,

AYOUB:  Absolutely not, epidemiology takes a far distant seat to a study that cracks open the skull. This is totally unsupportable.

OFFIT:  not with an animal model study, not with a cell study of cells in the laboratory.

HALEY:  It is well known in toxicology that epidemiological data proves nothing.  It is just a measure of the correlation of possible risk.  Only animal or human studies showing a toxic biological effect can prove that a material is having a toxic effect.  Offit likes the epidemiological studies because they can be manipulated, like the tobacco studies showing no effect of smoking on cancer rates, to give the answer wanted.  Again, the epidemiological studies Offit refers to have been shown to be poorly done and highly managed studies to get results favorable to the pro-thimerosal supporting group.

HOOKER:  The Denmark study has shown to be fraudulent as the authors chose to withhold data showing that autism rates actually decreased in 1999-2001 in all age groups categorized, after the phase-out of thimerosal starting in 1992.  The same study was of such poor quality that it was rejected outright by the Journal of the American Medical Association and Lancet, prior to its publication in the journal Pediatrics in Sept. 2003.

All 6 epidemiology studies are tied to the CDC, which has a vested interest in promoting high vaccination rates in the U.S.  Interestingly, the vast majority of the studies not tied to the CDC show the polar opposite: that there is a biologically plausible linkage between thimerosal exposure and autism AND that populations of children that received higher levels of thimerosal have higher incidence of autism compared to those populations that received lower amounts or no thimerosal.

OFFIT:  If you want to know whether or not something is harmful in children, test it in children.  And that’s been done redundantly.

HALEY:  Again, we are number 41 on the infant mortality list and we have the infants with the highest vaccination rate in the world.  We also have 1 in 6 children with neurological disorders.

TENPENNY:  So, if we want to know if a pesticide is harmful, test it on children? Other toxic substances too? No! If we want to know if something is harmful to children, compare it to unexposed children. Do a study of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. See who is more healthy.

MILNER:  So you’re saying elemental mercury in the brain is not a problem.

OFFIT:  I don’t know.

HUMPHRIES:  That might be the first honest thing he’s said. 

HALEY:  I just can’t believe he says this and he is an MD?

AYOUB:  Then he is no expert.

TENPENNY:  Beyond no ‘expert’ he is really showing how little he knows OR what a coward he is. Does he ever read? Does he look at the EPA website or other areas of the CDC? Unbelievable.

MILNER:  That you know of.

OFFIT:  I don’t know.  I mean, it’s an interesting finding. 

TENPENNY:  WHAT!!??!!

MILNER:  Wouldn’t you be able to say, okay, let’s look at this.  Is there a population in Chicago that went through this health care system that did not get autism and did not get vaccines?  Can we determine that that would be true or false?

OFFIT:  I think what you would have to do, if you were going to look, for example, at an unvaccinated population in Chicago, a home schooled population in Chicago, and try and compare them then to the surrounding community where say vaccine rates are where they should be, is you would have to prospectively do that study, which is to say you would—because you would have to control for the fact that the healthcare seeking behavior is different. 

TENPENNY:  There are MANY unvaccinated kids…either because their parents elect to not vaccinate them or because they do not have the money to vaccinate. Each child is about $1100 of vaccinations. There are many thousands of unvaccinated kids out there that can be easily “studied.”   It is not about parenting; it is about lack of or presence of vaccines.

HUMPHRIES:  I’ve already addressed this. This is a classic Offit smoke screen.

OFFIT:  I mean, for example, one who chooses not to get a vaccine may be different in the way that they choose to evaluate their children if there’s a question about a neurological problem or a psychological problem.

HUMPHRIES:  It is interesting to me that when testing for a cholesterol drug this is not an issue. Why all the purity in the vax, unvax study in an industry who uses another vaccine, or a shot of aluminum as a placebo????

OFFIT:  So you’d have to control for that by doing that prospectively.  Which is to say you’d have to go into that community.  This has frankly been done in the Amish community and now one knows that in the Amish community the rates of autism probably are exactly identical to that in the surrounding community.

HALEY:  Where was this study published?  If this is true it is a major find and I would like to read this research.  It could change my mind. 

OFFIT:  In fact, there are clinics for children who are Amish that have autism.

HALEY:  The Amish do have clinics to take care of any neurologically afflicted child, but I would question the number of autistic ones found in these clinics. 

OFFIT:  So if that original hypothesis was wrong, but you can go into Chicago and do the same kind of analysis and see.

MILNER:  What was the study that looked at the Amish children?

OFFIT:  It was—it’s not a study. I think what happened was there was a reporter who used to work for United Press International who doesn’t work for them any more who brought up that and said, you know, the Amish children don’t have autism where in fact there are clinics for autism with Amish children in them.  So that was just wrong.

HALEY:  Anyone who read this UPI report knows the reporter, Dan Olmsted could only find 3 autistics and the 2 he could interview the parents had them vaccinated.  He should have found hundreds based on the population. 

HUMPHRIES:  Right that was it.  LOL. 

OFFIT:  I mean, you could do that study but it would not be an ethical study.  First of all, it’s not ethical not to give vaccines to children because children can die of vaccine-preventable diseases.  And when you do that, who’s responsible for that? 

HUMPHRIES:  Funny that. Because when studies are used with actual placebos they often find something really bad about the vaccine. Cowling 2012 for instance showed 5 times higher non-flu viral infections in vaccinated than non-vaxed. And some of those viruses were nasty ones like coxsackie and ECHO virus. 

And in the Hutterite flu vaccine study they used a HepA vaccine as the placebo.  Yeah because we had to save those other half of children from hepA a nonlethal infection. Makes absolutely no sense.

HALEY:  Again, Offit uses an ethical argument to not look at children whose parents refuse for religious reasons to not vaccinate them???  Looking for autistics among these children does nothing to increase their risk of becoming infected with a disease. 

AYOUB:  JUST ASSESS THOSE KIDS WHO DID NOT GET VACCINATED. LOOK AT 5 -10 year olds and look at 1) how many serious childhood illnesses did they get and 2) are they autistic…how hard is that? 

OFFIT:  But to me the real question is why, I mean, why is it that when parents ask the question, you know, my child was fine.  Then they got a vaccine.  Then they weren’t fine.  That’s a scientific question.  I mean, did this vaccine cause that?  Is a scientific question.  And although science really is arguably only one way of looking at things, when it comes to scientific questions, it’s the only way of looking at things.  And the public health and academic responds by trying to address those parents’ concerns, to answer the question.

What upsets me is that once those answers are there, it’s somehow doesn’t seem to be enough.

HUMPHRIES:  The answers are not there. Every one of the CDC’s supposed autism studies has real problems. And the arrogance of Offit to want to deny all exemptions and say that the educated parents are spoiling the herd immunity is ludicrous.

HALEY:  This is because the answers given were ridiculous and the biochemical studies were totally neglected by people who seem not to understand science at the biochemical level. 

TENPENNY:  Agreed.

HALEY:  The Freedom of Information Act provided information that showed the CDC-funded scientists were well aware of the fact that thimerosal was causal for autism and considered covering this up.

OFFIT:  I don’t understand why that is.  I mean, maybe it’s because we see science as just one opinion in a sea of opinions, which is sad because I think then that’s really an anti-science story.  Because science is all we have when we’re trying to answer these questions.

HALEY:  I have read nothing stated by Offit that would include him in the world of scientist.  He is a narrowly focused, vaccine manufacture capable person, but he knows essentially nothing about toxicological research or chemistry.  His take on ethics suffers dramatically and his plea to trust me I am a doctor is rather weak and self-serving.

BLAYLOCK:  First, he is clearly in the pocket of the pharmaceutical vaccine makers and the congressional oversight committee in 2000 found that even though the board members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices were receiving pharmaceutical compensation as high a $100,000 a year they did not have to recuse themselves from voting on whether to include their own vaccines on the schedule.