Wakefield's "Vaxxed" Demands Less Safety

"This is not an anti-vaccine movie. We're just going to use ominous imagery to make people scared of vaccines."
- Del Bigtree, Vaxxed Producer [My paraphrase.]

This past weekend, Andrew Wakefield's factitious documentary Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe premiered in New York City at the Angelika Film Center, after being dropped from the TriBeCa Film Festival. A number of reporters and skeptics attended the film, live-tweeting the experience and writing up reviews of the movie afterward. You can read reviews at The Hollywood Reporter, STAT News, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Indiewire, and others. The central story of the film, such as it is, is William Thompson and the CDC. For background on the saga, please read this reference guide. (As an aside, even though the impetus behind the film is William Thompson, the CDC researcher does not appear anywhere in the film. Instead, the audience is left with only recorded phone calls between Thompson and Brian Hooker. The transcripts were released last year in a book, which was discussed here, here, and here.) The movie alleges that the CDC covered up evidence that vaccines cause autism. However, according to William Thompson's own documents, which Matt Carey has kindly made publicly available at his blog Left Brain Right Brain, there was no cover up.

I have yet to see the film, so I will leave you to read those other reviews. Instead, I wanted to focus on a list of "demands" at the end of the film, helpfully posted by a Wakefield supporter on Twitter. The four demands would do little to help children or people with autism and would instead run counter to what the anti-vaccine community wants.

Harpocrates Speaks is Closing

It's with a heavy heart that I announce that Harpocrates Speaks will be closing. It's been a great five years, overall. I met a lot of really great people through my blogging and online advocacy, but now it's time to hang up the keyboard. This isn't something I'm necessarily choosing to do, but something I must. You'll see why after the break.

MMR, the CDC and Brian Hooker: A Guide for Parents and the Media

The anti-vaccine community has been in a tizzy lately over a supposed "CDC whistleblower", Dr. William W. Thompson, who, according to them, revealed fraud at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To bolster their claim, they point to a new study from one of their own, Brian S. Hooker, that purports to show evidence of an increased risk of autism among African American boys who receive their first MMR vaccine late. However, the claims appear to be hollow and unfounded, and so they have chosen to rely on emotional arguments that may sound convincing to those who are not familiar with the issues and people involved. In a truly egregious fashion, they have erroneously and cynically compared this whole thing to the Tuskegee syphilis study, and equated the CDC with Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot, combined.

With that in mind, here is a brief FAQ for parents, news media and others to help them understand what the claims are and what the evidence actually says. The questions below have been raised or implied by anti-vaccine activists. Hopefully, this will prevent inaccurate reporting and help parents feel reassured about the MMR vaccine.

CDC Whistleblower William Thompson Breaks Silence

Things have certainly been progressing quickly in wooville, specifically in the anti-vaccine neighborhood. Earlier this month, anti-vaccine activist and petitioner in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, Brian S. Hooker, PhD, published a study in the journal Translational Neurodegeneration titled Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data. [Update (10/4/14): Hooker's study has been fully retracted by the journal.] Basically, Hooker took a dataset that was used by CDC researchers DeStefano et al. in their 2004 study looking at whether on-time, slightly late or late MMR vaccination was more common among autism cases than among controls. It was a case-control study that looked at both a large population, as well as a smaller population limited to those who had a Georgia birth certificate. After receiving word from a whistleblower that the DeStefano study found an association among African American males, but did not include that in the finished report, Hooker waded in to find the holy grail of government malfeasance and cover-up. Except, he did not use the same methods to examine the data that the CDC did. Using a dataset designed for a case-control study, he conducted a cohort study, applied statistics inappropriately and reached a spurious conclusion.

Although it made a splash among the conspiracy-minded, it didn't garner much attention right away. Science bloggers held off putting up any immediate posts, opting instead to examine the study to see if Hooker's methods were sound, particularly since his conclusion had no plausible biological basis. In the interim, the British doctor who engaged in research fraud and was stripped of his medical license, Andrew Jeremy Wakefield, put together a video in which he exploited the victims of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in a cynical attempt at using the race card to drum up outrage at the CDC. At the same time, he said the CDC was actually worse than Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Wakefield also included in his video carefully edited snippets of audio recordings that, presumably, are the whistleblower. He released two versions of that video, one with the whistleblower's name bleeped out and his voice distorted, and one where the audio is unobscured and his name, William Thompson, is plainly stated. Interestingly, anti-vaccine blogger Jake Crosby condemned Wakefield for outing Thompson without Thompson's permission, an allegation that Wakefield strongly denied.

Early this week, science bloggers began posting their analyses of Hooker's study, noting the flaws and questioning the validity of its conclusions. They also pointed out that not one anti-vaccine activist called out Andrew Wakefield for race-baiting, but instead praised and shared his video, the implication of which is that one of the original DeStefano authors was a race traitor.

On Tuesday evening, the Wakefield/Hooker sycophants threw a collective tantrum on Twitter, whining about how no one takes them seriously.

That brings us to the momentous events of Wednesday.

Anti-vaccine Activists Throw Twitter Tantrum

Unlike Kitty, the anti-
vaxxers don't learn.

Last night, in a stunning display of groupthink, a whole bunch (gaggle? swarm? what's the collective noun for a group of loons?) of anti-vaccine activists took to Twitter in a cynical ploy to draw attention to their latest torturing of science and statistics. I'm talking about the recently published paper by Brian Hooker that appears to have used an improper study design and the wrong statistical measures to reach a preconceived conclusion that MMR vaccine is associated with autism, except that it showed there was zero association with any children except for African American boys who were vaccinated off-schedule. They used the hashtag #CDCwhistleblower to do what really amounted to the social media equivalent of a temper tantrum, whining about how the mainstream media is not reporting on the study. It was really a sad display, as they simply all copied and pasted from the same list of talking points, not even adding their own interpretation. And when presented with links to analyses of Hooker's study, they didn't even bother reading. Instead, what we got were the shameless exploitation of victims of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, implications that one of the DeStefano authors was a race-traitor and whining that no one was taking them seriously, all while posting links to a video in which the CDC is compared to Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot. Oh, and accusing the mainstream media that they want to cover the story of being part of the cover-up. And they wonder why people think they're missing a few screws?

Just a short post to let y'all know about the shameful, sad display. Without any actual science on their side, they're left with smearing those they don't like and trying to game the system. I'll leave it at that, as it doesn't warrant a full-length post.

Andrew Wakefield Tortures History

I've written before about how the anti-vaccine movement regularly gets the science wrong (see, for example, here and here). Most often, it involves how they interpret (or, rather, misinterpret) studies that they think support their view that vaccines are the root of all evil, causing all manner of disorders. They regularly misrepresent and torture the scientific literature to fit their agenda. But occasionally, it involves actually attempting to do science themselves, the latest of which being a study [Edited to Add: this study has been fully retracted by the journal.] recently published by Vaccine Injury Compensation Program petitioner, Brian Hooker, PhD and funded by the anti-vaccine group Focus Autism. This study has been examined by an epidemiologist, another epidemiologist, and a cancer researcher. The players have also been examined by a dyslexia consultant and autism advocate (see also here). This study, in addition to being of questionable validity, has spawned quite the brouhaha among anti-vaccine activists. In short, Hooker took a dataset that was analyzed by a group of CDC investigators. Their finding was that age at first vaccination with MMR did not appear to [edited to clarify and correct] affect the risk of be associated with autism [ETA: cases (those with autism) were no more or less likely to have been vaccinated with MMR than controls before 18, 24 and 36 months; the study design could not establish causation, only correlation]. The results of their study were published as a case-control study. Hooker used the same dataset to create a cohort study and found that there was no increased risk of autism in any of the groups (i.e., MMR does not cause autism) except one: African American males, for which he puportedly found a 3.36-fold increased risk of autism when they were vaccinated between 24 and 31 months. Read the two posts by those epidemiologists for why his analysis is suspect.

I'm not going to go into the science behind the studies, because it relies very heavily on statistics, and I'm not a statistician or epidemiologist. As an aside, neither is Dr. Hooker. Instead, I want to focus on some statements made by one Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor who committed scientific fraud, resulting in the full retraction of his 1998 case series study on MMR and the stripping of his medical license. Wakefield boldly added himself to the list of not only torturing science, but now adds to his accomplishments torturing history and ethics (granted, we already knew he was ethically challenged). You see, in his videos (here and here) about the alleged "whistleblower", William Thompson,Wakefield compared the purported "cover-up" to the Tuskegee syphilis debacle. It's a false comparison used simply to inflame people and claim the race card.

B-lyme-y!

The last couple weekends in July and the first weekend of August, I helped out with a project down in Connecticut. It allowed me to tap into my woodworking interests and challenged me with techniques I hadn't done a great deal of before, like sculpting with a chisel and lashing several different ways. Because of time constraints, I made use of some power tools (saws, screwgun and sander), hand tools (axe, chisel, knives) and some more unusual tools (like a blowtorch). Most of the work used rough branches, rather than lumber, and some didn't involve wood at all.

The project was also a great excuse to get outside to enjoy nature, as it took me into the woods quite a bit. That was both good and bad, because, unlike the Disney (and quackery) version where nature is all happy and fluffy and nary a hair on your head will be harmed, I encountered the real nature. The more immediate problem was relatively minor: it was hot. Really, really hot. And humid. But I could live with that. I could even live with the little bit of contact dermatitis I got from either poison ivy or poison sumac that brushed my wrist against at some point without knowing it. Itchy and ugly, but luckily I'm not hypersensitive to it. What was more concerning was what I got, much like the dermatitis, without knowing it. I never noticed that I'd had a visitor that came for a bite to eat, then left without so much as a "how d'you do?". The only indication I had of the encounter came weeks later: a characteristic bulls-eye rash. I had lyme disease.

Didn't get a photo of my rash, but it looked like this.
Photo credit: James Gathany. Source: Public Health Image Library

Since there is a great deal of misconception about this disease among the public, and because more than a few people were gravely concerned when I told them, thinking that I would be in extremely poor health because of it, I figured it might be good to share my experience.

Experimental Logic

Every day, thousands of people in the United States take part in clinical trials. These studies look at all manner of things, from the effects of subtle variations in how a broken bone is plastered to psychological studies to studies evaluating new drugs or medical devices. Some studies simply look at healthy volunteers, trying to figure out the normal workings of the human body. Others want volunteers with specific conditions, hoping to understand the progression of a disease or working toward better treatments and outcomes for patients. Still others seek some blend of both healthy and patient subjects. They are conducted by curious, compassionate physicians with grants from the National Institutes of Health, by patient advocacy groups funded by donations and by both small and large pharmaceutical and biotech companies. There is a drive to learn more, to improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Sometimes the hoped for outcomes have very significant meaning, such as working toward a cure for a rare or severe disease. Sometimes they merely contribute to our own vanity, as with a new variation on Viagra or some manner of anti-aging drug. Suffice to say, there is a lot of research going on out there. And just one small area, one that I find very interesting, is research into vaccines: expanding our knowledge of how they work, how to make current vaccines even safer or more effective than they already are and developing new vaccines.

It was with great interest that I discovered I had a new follower on Twitter going by the moniker @EVaccines, or ExperimentalVaccines. This person bills their web site and Twitter account as providing "information on Current and Ongoing Clinical Trails (sic) on Vaccine Research and there (sic) side effects."

Cool! I thought. Here is someone who is providing information on current and ongoing trials on vaccines. This could be some very good, very useful, information! Would this be sort of an easier to navigate version of ClinicalTrials.gov tailored to vaccines? Perhaps there would be links to the various labs conducting vaccine research for those who are interested either in the study outcomes or specific projects under way, or for those who may actually be interested in volunteering to advance vaccine knowledge.

So, I clicked on the link for their web site.

Mary Tocco, Is She Mistaken or Misrepresenting?

Something that has been noted here and elsewhere over the years is that anti-vaccine activists generally play rather loose and free with facts. They have this tendency to misrepresent reality in a way that suggests support for their opinions, and sometimes they even downright fabricate "facts" that have no basis in the real world. Take the long-debunked claim that vaccines contain anti-freeze. (They don't.) Because their goal is to stir up fears about vaccines, they latch onto scary-sounding chemical names and equate them with all manner of ills. Where nuance is called for, they resort to hyperbole. Their goal is fear, not truth.

Mary Tocco is no exception. I came across an article she wrote August 2 entitled "Seasonal Flu Vaccines, Are They Safe or Necessary?". Other than the poor word choice (I think they are generally safe and necessary in order to protect the greatest portion of the population; are they really only safe or only necessary?), I'll give you one guess as to what she thinks. In true anti-vaccine activist form, she jumps straight into getting things wrong in the very first paragraph:

A Virus Poes an Anti-vaccine Band

This is too rich. As some of you may know, there is a group of viruses and bacteria on Twitter that are part of a group known as the #pathogenposse. One of those, @Rubeola, sent a tweet to a, for lack of a better term, rock band known as The Refusers. As Orac has pointed out over at Respectful Insolence, The Refusers are unapologetically anti-vaccine. They liken Big Pharma^TM and anyone who supports vaccines to Nazis. They equate vaccines with toxic sludge. They make absolutely no bones about it that they hate, hate, hate vaccines and believe them to be part of a grand conspiracy to maim and kill the populace.

So what did @Rubeola have to say to them and how did they answer?

That's right. The Refusers, a group adored by anti-vaccine groups like Age of Autism, appear to be quite proud that they are helping a dangerous virus spread.

Classy.

Autism One: Pick Up Your Police Escort at the Reception Desk

Time to take a trip back to some subject matter that was at the creation of this blog: censorship, autism and anti-vaccination sentiments. It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads here regularly that I take these issues rather seriously. Generally speaking, censorship seems to go hand in hand with the anti-vaccination folks within the autism community (and let it just be said that the autism community is very broad, with the anti-vaxers representing a rather small minority, thankfully). Silencing dissent is a favored tactic, as evidenced by the "editorializing" favored by such luminary and (mis-)informative sites as Age of Autism, among others. Where truth and reality rear their ugly heads, there will always be a moderator close at hand to protect their quailing, fragile readers, making such reason-based comments disappear down the memory hole before a single electron hits the screen of an AoA reader.

Should you decide to attend an event organized by those with anti-vaccination notions, be not afraid of having your tender sensibilities bruised, for there will be an ever-so-polite and helpful event organizer to call the police to haul out any suspicious-looking persons. Yes, though they may be mild-mannered and behaving themselves, who knows when they will utter uncomfortable truths? Best to remove them, without any justification, before any charlatans or quacks can be challenged, before any parents, trying their best to cope with a child with a disability about which, frankly, not a great deal is known, can have the scales removed from their eyes and their wallets protected from expensive and utterly useless treatments. Fear not, for brave folks like Teri Arranga will quickly summon hotel security and police to deal with anyone she thinks may pose a threat to your delicate sensibilities.

Bin Laden is Dead - Thoughts and Musings

This morning, the local news informed me that Osama bin Laden is dead. The first announcement came late last night, when the president told the world that, in a target operation, a small unit of U.S. Navy SEALs raided bin Laden's holdout in Pakistan. The leader of Al Qaeda was shot and killed, and his body, taken into custody by the U.S. military, was buried at sea.

When I heard the news, the first thought that occurred to me was, "Good." But my mind did not stop there.

Notes from Andrew Wakefield's talk at Brandeis

This is a guest post by John Santos, who was able to attend Andrew Wakefield's recent talk at Brandeis University. The talk was also covered by the Brandeis Hoot (with an additional editorial) and the Boston Globe.

On April 13, 2011, I attended a talk by Andrew Wakefield at Brandeis University. The talk was sponsored by a student organization Spectrum, which is concerned with autism. The student who hosted the talk was Jake Crosby, who blogs at Age of Autism. I estimate there were about 75-100 people present.

Wakefield spoke for about 2 hours, followed by about 15 minutes of Q&A. I took notes, though it was hard to keep up and there may be many gaps here. Despite that, I hope it will be useful, especially as preparation for anyone attending one of his lectures in the future.

The talk was recorded (I saw at least one person with a video camera), and Crosby said it would be available on the web, at the AoA site, I think.

The talk raised many questions in my mind, some of which I've had a chance to do some research on. I'm at least passably familiar with the vaccine controversy, but many of the references went by too fast for me to fully understand. I imagine to someone with no background at all, it would have completely snowed them. I agree with what Steven Novella has pointed out many time, if you are going to debate with a pseudoscientist, you really need to be on top of your game. I didn't feel capable of doing this, so I didn't ask any questions.

I am Bonnie Offit!!

Yes, It's true. I am, in reality, the wife of Dr. Paul Offit. JB Handley, one of the heads of Generation Rescue and Age of Autism, has put forth a challenge to blogger Sullivan, accusing him of actually being me in a post titled "Is Paul Offit's Wife Internet Troll/Autism Father 'Sullivan'?" In response, other bloggers, like Orac and Kev Leitch have tried to claim that they are me, but don't be fooled. I've finally decided to come clean, to keep Sullivan from unwarranted attacks.

How did this all start, though?

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