he is really making me furious...
I wrote to CNN :
Is Dr. Gupta in the pockets of the vaccine makers? Does he own stock in vaccine company?
He stated many falshoods in his report with Paul Zahn this morning. He really should do some research before telling the american public things he is either knowlingly lying about or has no clue of....
The National Institute of Health has stated that is Biologicaly Plausible that thimerisol has a connection to Autism...there are MANY research papers stating that Thimerisol can cause neurological harm...
This is a quote from Dan Burton to his colleagues....
"FICTION: Scientists have concluded that there is no causal connection
between mercury-containing thimerosal and neurological disorders such as
autism.
FACT: In 2001, the respected Institute of Medicine concluded that a
connection between thimerosal and autism, while unproven, is "biologically
plausible." The IOM called for further research, stating, "the evidence is
inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between exposure to
thimerosal from vaccines and neurological developmental disorders of autism,
ADHD, and speech and language delays."
FACT: Researchers in the state of California concluded this year that there
is no statistical explanation for the nearly 300% increase in cases of
autism in that state. "It is astounding to see a threefold increase in
autism with no explanation," said Dr. Robert Byrd, an epidemiologist who led
the study. "There's a number of things that need to be answered. We need to
rethink the possible causes of autism."
FACT: An internal HHS document produced to the House Government Reform
Committee during its investigation into vaccine safety described what it
referred to as a "weak signal" in its data linking thimerosal to
neurological disorders:
"Preliminary screening of ICD-9 codes for possible neurologic and
renal conditions following exposures to vaccines containing thimerosal
before 3 months of age showed a statistical association for the overall
category of neurological developmental disorders and for two conditions
within the category, speech delay and attention deficit disorder."
FACT: If there were no concerns that scientific research would demonstrate
a connection between thimerosal and autism, Sections 1714-1717 would not
have been tacked onto the Homeland Security Act in the eleventh hour with no
debate.
FICTION: Sections 1714-1717 do not eliminate the rights of vaccine-injured
individuals to sue manufacturers of vaccines and their components.
Proponents of these provisions have stated that once individuals have gone
through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program they can still choose to
file a civil law suit.
FACT: For many families who believe their children were injured by
mercury-based thimerosal, these provisions do eliminate their right to file
suits. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has a narrow 3-year statute
of limitations. Because many families were unaware of the program, they
were unable to file a petition on time. Sections 1714-1717 take away their
only remaining legal recourse.
FICTION: Thimerosal has now been removed from all childhood vaccines and is
therefore no longer a concern.
FACT: While thimerosal has recently been removed from most pediatric
vaccines used in the United States, it is still used in the flu vaccine
given every year to millions of Americans, including children as young as
six months old.
FACT: The argument that thimerosal has been removed from most pediatric
vaccines is beside the point. Because the FDA was painfully slow to seek
the removal of thimerosal during the 1990's, millions of children across the
country were exposed to this mercury-based preservative at a time when
concerns about its health effects were emerging. The legal rights of these
children should not be curtailed.
Please vote to strip Sections 1714-1717 from the Homeland Security Act.
Fifteen years ago, only 1 in 10,000 children was autistic. Today that number
has skyrocketed to 1 in 250. Let's not be stampeded into cutting off the
legal rights of these children without hearings and a full public debate.
Sincerely,
Dan Burton
Chairman
House Committee on Government Reform"
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The Danish study was flawed, for one thing they have not had thimerisol for years, and they didnt give as many vaccines as we do:
Assessment of the
Denmark MMR-Autism Study
(11/6/02)
STUDY
"A Population Based Study of Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccination and Autism." New England Journal of Medicine, Vol 347, No 19; Nov 7, 2002:
1477-1483. Kreesten Meldgaard, M.D., Andders Hviid, M.Sc., Mogens Vestergaard, M.D., Diana Schendel, P.H.D., Jan Wohlfahrt, M.Sc., Poul Thorsen, M.D., JØrn Olsen, M.D., and Mads Melbye, M.D.
KEY MESSAGE
This study is well done, but due to its design, it cannot be considered the "definitive" study on autism and the MMR vaccine. Rather, biological research, not epidemiology, is needed to truly answer the question of a link between the MMR and regressive autism.
POSITIVES ABOUT THE STUDY
· The CDC and public health authorities are investing dollars and efforts into autism research. These efforts should be applauded, and expanded!
· The study reports a steep rise in autism rates from 1980s to 1990s (from <2.0 to >10.0 per 10,000). Increases are also being reported in other countries, again suggesting environmental influences at work, as the recent landmark MIND Institute epidemiology of California study did.
· The results appear to support a thimerosal role in the increases in autism being reported in the study in Denmark, and the fact that Danish autism prevalence is less than in the US and the UK, where the thimerosal vaccines are given in larger quantities and/or earlier in life. Further clarification is needed to elucidate this association; specifically, the prevalence by birth cohort and the Danish vaccine schedule and formulations for the time period are needed.
· The study authors acknowledge that previous attempts to refute the MMR-autism hypothesis were too poorly designed to reach definitive conclusions. (p.1477, 2nd paragraph on right)
· The study brings attention to a rich database of information (i.e., Danish registries) on which additional studies of autism can be based.
CAUTIONS ABOUT THE STUDY'S CONCLUSION ON BEING THE "DEFINITIVE" STATEMENT ON AUTISM-MMR
· A vaccine-induced autism subset may be present at a much lower prevalence in Denmark since the prevalence of autism is lower in Denmark compared with other countries (see prevalence comparison table at end of document). This may indicate a co-factor effect (e.g. thimerosal) that operates to a greater degree elsewhere.
o The lower prevalence in Denmark is not a function of variation in diagnosis, since the same diagnostic criteria developed by CDC was used in Brick, Atlanta, and Denmark.
o Means other environmental factors, rates of factors, or combination of factors may be at work in Denmark vs US or UK.
o It is possible that MMR increases the rate of autism only when acting in conjunction with another environmental factor, such as mercury. If that factor's prevalence is not controlled for among the study groups (vaccinated vs unvaccinated), it would obscure the role of MMR as a causative factor in the study.
o This is entirely biologically plausible since mercury impairs the antiviral immune response, and mercury-exposed fetus and infants are more susceptible to persistent viral infections.
· Only psychiatric records were accessed, not medical records, so there were no data on gastrointestinal symptoms and no taking of CSF or GI samples to detect presence or absence of measles virus. Cannot tell if measles persistence is impacting a subgroup of children, if any. Measles persistence may be increasing the severity of autism, even if it is not
causing an increase in the number of cases.
· There was no attempt to differentiate between regressive and early-onset forms of autism. Since the regressive form comprises a minority of cases - 10%-20% - the power to detect whether there was a difference in regressive autism prevalence between MMR vaccinated and non-vaccinated is lacking in this study.
o The assertion that a relative risk of autism of less than one rules out the possibility that there are important subgroups is false.
· Although overall well designed, there appear to be some methodological problems with the study, which need further elucidation from the investigators and raise questions about its conclusions of being the
"definitive" MMR-Autism study.
o The study covered 8 birth cohorts, but two of these, those born in 1997 and 1998, were only 1 or 2 years old when the data records were obtained at the end of 1999. These age groups are too young in most cases to be diagnosed with autism or to be immunized with the MMR. This might have been fine if the impact applied equally to both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. However, fully half (50.6%) of the unvaccinated
group fell into these two younger birth cohorts, vs. just a fourth (27.7%) of the vaccinated group. Therefore, in these 2 birth cohorts, true autism rates will be underestimated (since they have yet to be diagnosed) and unvaccinated status is over-represented.
o Children who were in fact vaccinated were assigned to the unvaccinated group if they were diagnosed with autism before they received the MMR. The reassigned cases comprise 10% of the unvaccinated autism cases (13 out of 130). This commingling blurs the distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated. It is not clear what effect this would have on the results.
o A number of the measures used to arrive at the conclusion that autism and autism disorders were not associated with MMR vaccination are irrelevant. Age of vaccination with MMR, time interval between receipt of MMR and diagnosis of autism, and year of MMR vaccination do not help ilucidate the hypothesized relationship between receipt of MMR and development of measles-related symptoms and regressive autism. The age of diagnosis is arbitrary and can vary for many reasons, among them differences in severity of illness, access to care, and clinician skill and preference. Thus these measures cannot be used to refute the presence of a temporal relationship between MMR and onset of symptoms of measles-related illness and regressive autism.
· As the authors point out on page 1481, they had no information on the presence or absence of a family history of autism, which could explain the study's negative findings only if families with a history of autism avoided MMR vaccination. It should be noted that in 1993, there was a widely reported news story in Denmark about a parent with autistic twins who asserted that their autism was caused by the MMR vaccine. It is entirely possible that parents with either (a) a family history of autism or (b) an infant or toddler with emerging symptoms of autism, would avoid vaccination at a higher rate than other parents. This would inflate the unvaccinated group with children of families predisposed to autism.
-----------
Dear Friends and Co-workers,
Although I would like to write to each of you individually, time does not permit me to do so. I wanted to let you know about an important story that is scheduled to air on tonight's NBC news and probably other national stations as well. The New England Journal of Medicine is releasing this evening a Danish study that examined the relationship between MMR vaccination and autism. It concludes that there is no relationship between MMR and autism. This is basically a good study (and I'm happy that people are taking the issue seriously and studying it), but it has a number of major problems that prevent it from drawing sound conclusions about the relationship between MMR and regressive autism which affects 10 to 20% of autistic children including my son, Sam.
Children with regressive autism are those who develop normally and then experience a number of complex, debilitating, and poorly understood medical problems and eventually, develop autistic behaviors. The study concludes that it "provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism." This conclusion is overdrawn and is probably inaccurate as it pertains to children with regressive autism.
Perhaps the most important problem in the study is that the investigators were unable to analyze separately the children with regressive autism from all other children with autism. The investigators also made a major error in they combined some vaccinated children with unvaccinated children and then compared them to other vaccinated children. This situation prevents them from drawing valid conclusions about the relationship between MMR and autism among vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
It is important to understand that there are two very different lines of research that are investigating the potential role of vaccination with the MMR and autism. One is at the epidemiological and population level and the other is at the cellular and molecular level in individual children. The investigators studying the issue at the individual level include the team headed by Dr. Andrew Wakefield as well as several other independent and well-established scientists. The latter line of research has never contended that vaccination with the MMR was a causal factor for ALL cases of autism, only those with the regressive form of the disease.
This is an important distinction and for some reason, is not understood by the American media. There have been a series of population-based studies that claim to have proved that MMR is not related to autism but in the end, none have proved their point. The database developed by the Danish team, however, has the potential to be used to investigate the relationship among the relevant subgroup of children with autism who appear to be vulnerable to the effects of vaccination with the MMR.
The potential for this team to better elucidate the relationship between MMR vaccination and regressive autism is heartily welcomed by me and others who are deeply invested in getting to the truth. Until that time, the extensive work that has identified vaccine-strain measles virus in the bowel, blood and spinal fluid of children with regressive autism stands as solid peer-reviewed science that has not been disproved by the Danish study or any others. I believe and hope that at some point these two very different lines of research will converge and produce consistent results. And then, once and for all, the bitter divisiveness that plagues this issue can be put aside and we can go forth with the important work that needs to be done to prevent this illness from occurring in the future and to successfully treat those who now suffer from a serious and progressive illness that affects far too many of the world's children.
I hope that you will help me to help others to understand the issue more clearly and to encourage the media to take a more critical view of the problem at hand and to advocate for the research funds that are desperately needed to solve this problem. There is much work to be done. Feel free to pass this note on to others.
Most sincerely,
Vicky Debold, PhD, RN
Assistant Professor
University of Michigan
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Dr. Gupta also stated that it was the vaccine makers decided to remove thimerisol, WRONG! and of course they cannot admit they have known what Thimersol does to the body and brain, the ramifications would be devestating to them and their money! ITs all about MONEY!
Dr. Gupta says that the cause of autism has been researched and there is no connection. He is wrong. THere are NO biological studies that prove that thimerisol or MMR do not cause autism. There are a few statistical studies that prove inconclusive....and these studies are flawed...perhaps there is a reason the CDC and vaccine makers picked Denmark (perhaps cause they knew Denmark had phased out thimerisol and Denmark NEVER had the same vaccine load as others before the age of 2 and Denmark waits longer to give their children vaccines)
I would think that CNN would have better information and get its facts straight...
Several well respected researchers have seen the link , they have BIOLOGICAL proof which cannot be disputed, rather than statistical data which can be manipulated...
Im dissappointed in CNN's investigative journalism...it missed the boat on this one.
