In mid-March, Prof Patrick Holford of Teesside University chose to greet the start of Wakefield’s GMC hearing with a magnificent torrent of canards about MMR and autism. He sent out an e-mail to his mailing list, titled ‘The Truth about Vaccine Damage’. However, Holford appears to have an unusual concept of ‘truth’. He manages to confuse correlation and causation, imply some kind of dark conspiracy, misrepresent legal information, and argue from false authority. Managing all this in a single e-mail is somewhat impressive. I’m going to go over a few of Holford’s canards here.
Kevin Leitch canard’s project summarises a number of the common canards around autism and vaccines. Towards the start of the e-mail, Holford confuses correlation and causation in a familiar way (see the above picture for a nice illustration of why this is a problem):
In one survey of 825 parents whose children had symptoms that would classify them as autistic, 55 reported clear signs of regression following the MMR vaccine. That’s 1 in 15 children. I personally have encountered many parents who reported their children rapidly regressed, developing symptoms in the autistic spectrum, following the MMR vaccine.
I suspect that readers of this blog are bright enough to spot a number of problems with this unaided. What Holford is effectively saying is that - following vaccinations given at about the age that signs of autism tend to become apparent - parents often start to see signs of autism in their children. This does not show causality, merely a rather unsurprising correlation.
Given the aforementioned quality of Holford’s science, though, it is perhaps unsurprising that he starts the e-mail with a focus on the evil conspiracy which is making our children autistic. For Holford:
Next week, the case against the doctors who first identified that the MMR or measles vaccines could trigger autism in a sub-set of children is about to resume at the General Medical Council. In my opinion, this is one of the most appalling attempts to cover up an important discovery
Or, as Kevin puts it, those deploying this canard often refer to “Gvmt/Pharma/Illuminati ploy to hide science which disagrees with them”. Holford has more along these lines, too:
this is an important finding - but one which both the Government and the medical profession have attempted to suppress, possibly because it flies in the face of an intended strategy to produce a single multiple vaccine containing several viral strains.
Yes. All hail our lizard masters. Clearly, the fact that good quality evidence - as opposed to Holford-esque muddling up of correlation and causation - does not show any MMR-autism link is neither here nor there.
Of course, you need to provide evidence for the conspiracy - and Holford takes a very novel approach to such evidence. Holford claims that “In Britain, all court cases on behalf of vaccine-damaged claimants have been stopped by disallowing legal aid.” Actually, all that happened is the taxpayer stopped funding the cases - common, when the evidence provided is poor - but I’m sure that some will believe that a vast government/pharma nonetheless played a significant role.
Naturally, a cosmopolitan nutritionist like Holford will also offer international misunderstandings of the evidence. Holford claims that:
in America last November, a judge in a Federal Vaccine Court awarded an out-of-court settlement of a life-time care compensation package, to a child in a test case for 4,900 children. It was agreed that this child had been damaged by vaccines and is now autistic. Pharmaceutical companies agree out of court settlements for only two reasons. First, they see that they are facing defeat on the science at trial; and second, faced with defeat, they prefer not to have a Judge make a legal ruling that will act as a precedent for future cases.
This out of court settlement - the first to acknowledge the link between vaccination and autism - is bound to have a considerable effect upon the way in which Wakefield’s work is now considered.
This is, simply, wrong. Holford is - I presume - referring to Hannah Poling’s case. This has been analysed in considerable detail on Left Brain Right Brain. The information on this case has not been formally made public but - while Hannah apparently has some symptoms of autism - this does not necessarily mean that she is autistic. As Kevin Leitch argues, a person can have a number of symptoms of autism without meeting the criteria for a diagnosis of autism: for example, many non-autistic people struggle to make eye contact or to recognise faces.
What was conceded here was not that vaccines caused autism - not even in Hannah, let alone in the wider population - but that there was a winnable case that vaccines may have amplified an underlying condition in Hannah. It is worth emphasising that - at least according to what information is in the public domain - the concession did not state that vaccines made Hannah autistic. Hannah has a rare mitochondrial disorder, which may have been aggravated or triggered by the vaccines she was given. This is unfortunate - and may raise serious concerns - but it certainly does not show that vaccines cause autism.
While Holford believes that this case was “the first to acknowledge the link between vaccination and autism”, one should also note that - not only did this concession not acknowledge any vaccine-autism link - there have been previous awards of compensation to children with autism or related conditions. As noted on neurodiversity.com
Published VICP decisions include at least nine instances in which compensation was awarded for the lifelong care of children and young adults who were diagnosed with autism or related conditions after they sustained documented, verifiable vaccine injuries.
So, Holford not only misinterprets what he does read - he also appears to have an inadequate understanding of the information which is available in the public domain.
One more canard to note - before rounding up - is that Holford draws on Wakefield’s (invalid) authority in order to shore up his shaky arguments. For Holford
The lead doctor in this case, Dr Andrew Wakefield, is a well-respected academic gastroenterologist.
If nothing else, I think that Holford has got the tense wrong in that statement. Wakefield is no longer an academic in any meaningful sense of the word and - after the Autism Omnibus revelations by Chadwick and Bustin - it is clear that his work does not deserve respect. The evidence presented to and the findings of the ongoing GMC hearing - where Wakefield, along with Walker-Smith and Murch face serious charges relating to their work - may make it even clearer why Wakefield is not deserving of respect (although the GMC does not regard its remit as extending to arbitrating between competing scientific theories generated in the course of medical research).
Wakefield now works at a US clinic selling ‘alternative’ medical treatments and tests - often ‘alternative’ in the sense of never having been shown to work, and potentially harmful - to autistic children and their family. Wakefield’s ‘research’ is no longer published in proper academic journals - although I am sure he is still in demand to write to prestigious publications like Rainbow Crystal Child Monthly. Wakefield is thus no longer an academic in any meaningful sense of the word, and no longer deserves to be respected.
To summarise, Holford appears to struggle with interpreting research and legal findings. He also has an unusual concept of what it means to be a ‘respected academic’.
I do wonder if Prof Patrick Holford of Teesside University believes that he is a respected academic himself.
33 responses so far ↓
robert estrada // April 9, 2008 at 3:44 pm
One minor thing. In incomplete and imperfect reading on this issue I do not remember seeing that this was a “test case” for vaccine caused autism. To partially quote Monty Python “something different” Like your blog. Wish your libel laws were not so tilted. Maybe though it is a fair trade for so many fundies/anti vaxers. wanna trade?
robert estrada // April 9, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Sorry.
Should have read …different”. I like…
No coffee yet.
draust // April 9, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Correct, Robert. The Poling case in the US that Patrick refers to was quite specifically NOT a “test case” for MMR-causes-autism suits. It is only anti-vax crusaders, sleazy anti-vaccine lawyers, and idiots like dear Patrick that keep saying - or better, spinning - that it was.
jonhw // April 9, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Thanks for the comments. Yes, this was not a test case. Given the rarity of mitochondrial disorder, it would not - in my opinion - have made sense to have used the Poling case as a test case re. allegations of vaccine-autism links.
Sadly, there came a point with that Holford e-mail where I just admitted defeat. It simply becomes too time consuming to point out every error…
Hm, not sure about a swap. We have a fair number of anti-vaxxers here, though the focus is more on MMR than thimerosal. Sadly, and predictably, we’re now seeing clusters of measles cases in the UK :(
gimpy // April 9, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Sadly, there came a point with that Holford e-mail where I just admitted defeat. It simply becomes too time consuming to point out every error…
I hear you. I’m posting something on Holford tomorrow and the ignorances and misunderstandings the fellow displays is quite extraordinary.
draust // April 9, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Yes, there are so many mistakes in Patrick’s stream of unconsciousness it is hard to know where to start.
One point he gets wrong is that, as it was a Federal court, the idea that it was “pharmaceutical companies agree[ing an] out of court settlement…” is factually incorrect… or perhaps deliberately misleading. The way it works, of course, is that the US Federal Govt mandates a vaccine injury compensation fund, which they MAKE the Vaccine Mfrs fund via a levy on vaccine sales. The Vaccine Mfrs therefore quite explicitly do NOT control the fund, in part so as to keep out the obvious potential conflict of interest.
One would think that even a person of limited intelligence could grasp this. But propaganda is not about grasping and communicating the reality - it is about frightening people and/or feeding off their prejudices.
One of the tragic ironies of the US anti-vax scene is that, because of the way the Federal Vaccine Injury board is set up (with the specific idea, to reiterate, of compensating those with genuinely vaccine-injured kids, and not placing barriers in the way of their obtaining timely and proper compensation), the lawyers acting for the parents get paid whether a case is ultimately deemed to have merit or not. Some lawyers have thus made a good living out of encouraging parent after parent to seek compensation over MMR. It was for writing about this nice little earner that Kathleen Seidel got harrassed with her recent nuisance subpoena from vaccine lawyer Cliff Shoemaker.
Of course, the legal aid system in the UK had, for a while, sort of the same effect, which is how Andrew Wakefield got paid that £ 400,000 pounds of legal aid cash (i.e. taxpayers’ money) for his expert witness work for the legal firms masterminding the UK anti-MMR vaccine case. Thankfully the legal system finally saw sense and called a halt to an obvious abuse.
Of course, if you are an AltMed True Believer and Conspiracy Fantasist then this decision to derail the gravy train was a “Conspiracy to Hide The Truth!” And this, it appears from his statement, is what Holford believes.
I wonder if any of the bioscience and health subject academics at the University of Teeside share his view?
PS One final factual error in Patrick’s screed - Andrew Wakefield is not, and was never, a “gastroenterologist” as a doctor would use the word. In medicine this word refers specifically to a G-I physician, and would usually be used of a consultant.
Wakefield was training as a GI surgeon (not physician) before he quit patient care to go into clinical academia and “research”. The UK medical register reveals that Saint Andy never achieved specialist registration for anything - i.e. he never completed specialist medical training to consultant-equivalent level in any surgical, or medical, specialty. In UK medicine he would therefore technically still be described as a “junior doctor”, while in the US he would effectively not have finished his residency.
dvnutrix // April 10, 2008 at 12:09 am
Spot on, Dr Aust. In addition, Andrew Wakefield had not studied paediatrics: it’s one of the reasons that he was working in conjunction with Profs Walker-Smith and Murch.
I’m assuming that, at some point, Brian Deer will be producing a book on L’Affaire Wakefield. It will be fascinating to see all of this laid out with a decent timeline.
draust // April 10, 2008 at 2:07 am
Yes… The media reports of the GMC hearings suggest Wakefield is now trying to deny responsibility by saying (I paraphrase): “Of course, Prof Walker Smith was the childrens’ treating paediatrician and he ordered all the lumbar punctures and colonoscopies .. solely on the basis of clinical need.”
And, to quote one report I read: “…research on the children was an adjunct to anything Prof Walker-Smith deemed necessary in the clinical sense.”
…and the Easter Bunny will be along shortly.
I find that version of events incredibly hard to buy in the light of Wakefield’s relentless positioning of himself front and centre in the whole affair. Of course, it has the convenient effect (from Wakefield’s point of view) of blaming the arguably unnecessary invasive investigations on Walker-Smith, who is retired and thus no longer practising. The person with the most to lose in the hearings is actually Simon Murch, who is now Professor of Child Health at Warwick. It is hard not to conclude that both Murch and Walker-Smith must wish Wakefield had never ever crossed their paths.
One doctor I know, on reading the latest reports, said “So Wakefield is a moral coward as well as a deluded egotist and a data massager “
koo // April 10, 2008 at 2:55 am
Vaccinations eh…..
Children herded like cattle into Maryland courthouse for forced vaccinations as armed police and attack dogs stand guard
Monday, November 19, 2007 by: Mike Adams |
Gunpoint Medicine: Why drug pushers must now rely on Gestapo tactics
Conventional (pharmaceutical) medicine is the only system of medicine in the world that is so unpopular with informed consumers that it must be administered at the barrel of a gun. There is no other system of medicine anywhere in the world that resorts to such tactics to recruit patients.
The health experts in New Jersey backing these vaccines claim there’s absolutely no evidence showing that the chemicals used in the vaccines — which include trace amounts of neurotoxic mercury — are in any way harmful or linked to autism. These are the same people, of course, who say that mass fluoridation of public water supplies with a toxic waste chemical misnamed “fluoride” is also perfectly safe. And mercury dental fillings are safe, too, if you can believe that. In fact, there’s hardly a chemical or heavy metal being used in public health today that isn’t safe enough to be injected into the bodies of children, if you believe these so-called health “experts.”
jonhw // April 10, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Koo- MMR has never contained thimerosal, or mercury in any form.
Even if some governments do impose vaccinations in problematic ways, how does this justify Holford’s inaccurate claims about MMR/Wakefield?
koo // April 10, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Just like we all thought asbestos was wonderful when it was first introduced it took time to reveal its deadly nature.
Relevance to Holford, this site is anti nutrition and alternative practice as a whole and pro chemical. Holford is just a point of attack for you so this is why I am taking this approach.
koo // April 10, 2008 at 1:20 pm
MMR ingredients:
sorbitol, neomycin, hydrolyzed gelatin
“If you have an autistic child you might consider that one of the components of the MMR is Neomycin. This is an antibacterial drug that is used to suppress gastrointestinal bacteria before surgery to avoid infection. It is also used in a variety of preparations, too numerous to mention here. This antibiotic interferes with the absorption of Vitamin B6 (2). An error in the uptake of Vitamin B6 can cause a rare form of epilepsy and children become mentally retarded (3). Vitamin B6 is the major vitamin for processing amino acids, which are the building blocks of all proteins and a few hormones. There are studies around which support the theory of treating autistic children with Vitamin B6.”—Carol A Teasdale
“Neomycin…decreases the number of oxygen-requiring germs and gram-positive anaerobic ones, leading to overgrowth of Candida albicans and staphlococcus aureus.”–Marc Lappe PhD. (When Antibiotics Fail)
Contraindications: pregnancy, myasthenia gravis (BNF)
“Neomycin is too toxic for parenteral administration and can only be used for infections of the skin or mucous membranes or to reduce the bacterial population of the colon proir to bowel surgery or in hepatitic failure.”–BNF 5 (1983)
Neomycin impairs absorption (and may also increase excretion) of a broad variety of nutrients including carbohydrates, fats, calcium, iron, magnesium, nitrogen, potassium, sodium, folic acid, and vitamins A, B12, D, and K. (Faloon WW, et al. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1966 Jun 14;132(2):879-887; Hardison WG, Rosenberg IH.J Lab Clin Med. 1969 Oct;74(4):564-573; Robinson C, Weigly E. 1984, 46-54; Roe DA. 1985, 157-158.) Orally administered neomycin may inactivate vitamin B6. Orally administered neomycin impairs absorption of both beta-carotene and vitamin A. (Tuckerman M, Turco S. 1983, 215-222; Robinson C, Weigly E. 1984, 46-54; Barrowman JA, et al. Clin Sci. 1972 Apr;42(4):17P; Favaro RM, et al. Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 1994;64(2):98-103.) Orally administered neomycin impairs vitamin B12 absorption and has been shown to decrease vitamin B12 levels. (Tuckerman M, Turco S. 1983, 215-222; Robinson C, Weigly E. 1984, 46-54; Cullen RW, Oace SM. J Nutr. 1989 Oct;119(10):1399-1403..) Neomycin, taken orally, impairs vitamin K absorption and has been shown to decrease vitamin K levels. Extended use of neomycin internally would also exert a detrimental effect upon the probiotic intestinal flora responsible for vitamin K synthesis. (Robinson C, Weigly E. 1984, 46-54; Olson JA. Am J Clin Nutr. 1987 Apr;45(4):687-692; Salet J, et al. Arch Fr Pediatr. 1968 Oct;25(8):961.) Neomycin impairs calcium absorption when taken orally. (Roe DA. 1985, 157-158.) Neomycin impairs magnesium absorption as a result of maldigestion when taken orally. (Roe DA. 1985, 157-158.) Neomycin causes fat malabsorption when taken internally, especially due to mucosal damage in the small intestine. Diarrhea is a common consequence. Further, over an extended period this effect could also result in decreased absorption of fat soluble nutrients such as vitamins A, D, E and K. (Hardison WG, Rosenberg IH. J Lab Clin Med. 1969 Oct;74(4):564-573; Roe DA. 1985, 157-158; Ratnaike RN, Jones TE. Drugs Aging 1998 Sep;13(3):245-253.) Neomycin impairs lactose absorption when taken orally. (Roe DA. 1985, 157-158.) Neomycin impairs sucrose absorption when taken orally. (Roe DA. 1985, 157-158.) During the course of eliminating disease-causing bacteria, antibiotics taken internally will also usually destroy normally-occurring beneficial bacterial flora that form an integral part of the healthy intestinal ecology and assist digestive and immune functions. Diarrhea and yeast infections, including vaginal yeast, are common side-effects of the disruption of intestinal ecology and the creation of an environment more susceptible to proliferation of pathogenic levels of opportunistic yeast. (Matteuzzi D, et al. Ann Microbiol (Paris). 1983 May-Jun;134A(3):339-349; Linzenmeier G, et al. Zentralbl Bakteriol . 1979 Apr;243(2-3):326-335.) http://home.caregroup.org/clinical/altmed/interactions/Drugs/Neomycin.htm
Side effect reduction/prevention Bifidobacterium longum*Lactobacillus acidophilus*Lactobacillus casei*Saccharomyces boulardii*Saccharomyces cerevisiae http://www.gnc.com/health_notes/Drug/Neomycin.htm
“Antibiotics can alter the nature of organisms in the gut that are normally essential for life. Gastrointestinal immunity is then affected and a vicious cycle can commence. Antihistamines, sometimes used in cough mixtures and as anti-allergy medications, can result in respiratory disorders including respiratory arrest.”–Dr Kalokerinos MD (Medical Pioneer of the 20th century p180)
“Neurotoxicity (including ototoxicity) and nephrotoxicity following the oral use of neomycin sulphate have been reported, even when used in recommended doses. “……. “An oral neomycin dose of 12 grams per day produces a malabsorption syndrome for a variety of substances including fat, nitrogen, cholesterol, carotene, glucose, xylose, lactose, sodium, calcium, cyanocobalamin and iron. Orally administered neomycin increases faecal bile acid excretion and reduces intestinal lactase activity”…..”Oral neomycin inhibits the gastrointestinal absorption of penicillin V, oral vitamin B-12, “…”If treatment of a patient less than eighteen years of age is necessary, neomycin should be used with caution”—http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/search.htm
Vaccine contraindications:
“People should not get MMR who have had a life-threatening allergic reaction to gelatin, the antibiotic neomycin, or a previous dose of MMR”
draust // April 10, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Koo, you are a troll and a loony.
Just in case you have enough functioning brain cells to comprehend some actual facts, here are a few.
A famous and rather valuable pharmacological maxim is “the dose makes the poison”.
The miniscule amounts of neomycin (25 MICROgrammes in a 0.5 mL vaccine dose) just might be enough to cause an allergic reaction IF you are allergic to neomycin. - hence the contra-indication advice. However, it is orders of magnitude (tens to hundreds or even thousands of times) below the amount of neomycin needed to do anything else detectable in the body. Fact.
In case you don’t believe me, some more facts: the doses of aminoglycoside antibiotics or AGAs (of which neomycin is one) used to treat people with nasty infections - and I’m specifically thinking of small children - are of the order of 6-8 MILLIgrammes per kilogram body weight per day. So a 2 yr old kid weighing, say, about 12 kg and being treated with an AGA would get about 72-96 MILLIgrammes each day for 5-7 days. This daily dose is about three to four THOUSAND times the amount of AGA in the vaccine dose, and something like 15-20,000 times the total dose.
(The chance of AGA ear and kidney toxicity depends on both the dose given and the duration of treatment).
Neomycin was taken out of use as an intravenous antibiotic because it was more toxic (specifically to your kidneys and ears) than the currently used AGAs, and unacceptably so. But it was NOT 3000 times more toxic. Not even remotely close. Neomycin remains in wide use, by the way, in antibiotic ointments for skin infections and burns. In the US neomycin antibiotic ointments like Neosporin are routinely sold over-the-counter.
So this is just the same old knee-jerk scaremongering, based on something that you don’t understand, and served with a whopping side-order of stuff cut’n’ pasted, with no context, interpretation, or indication of relevance. Ho hum.
If you truly think that GPs and paediatricians would blithely inject kids with a vaccine that would be even remotely likely to give them “neomycin toxicity”, or that the vaccine Mfrs would ever make such a product in the first place, then you are quite clearly a “Mercury Troll” and have taken leave of reality.
dvnutrix // April 11, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Dr Aust, I’ve just read the BBC account of Wakefield sticking Walker-Smith in Room 101. I can quite understand your friend’s reaction.
Wulfstan // April 11, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Koo - as a matter of interest, how many of these would you tick: What is an altie?
To an onlooker, it looks like you would subscribe to a lot of them, even a majority.
Wulfstan // April 11, 2008 at 3:40 pm
It’s Walker-Smith’s fault. He never told me I couldn’t take blood at a birthday party or shoot arrows at apples on top of children’s heads. It’s all his fault.
He also never told me that I should have told him about the money from Barr that he didn’t know I was getting.
Walker -Smith has no one to blame but himself. If he had been psychic, none of this would have happened.
Dr Aust // April 11, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Yes. Remarkably, after all those years of “Won’t somebody please think about the children“, Saint Andy now tells us he knew nothing about the ethical and procedural rules regarding working on kids. He was just a bit naive and careless. It was all someone else’s fault .
Wakefield truly is a class act. And I mean that with every last bit of scorn you can possibly infer.
And what my medical friends think of him is completely unprintable in a family newspaper. Or even here.
koo // April 12, 2008 at 1:11 am
draust
Clearly you are from the Bill O’Reilly school of reasoning or have taken lessons from the Catholic school of sedition.
The man who uses his whole mind would accept that there are a significant number of people who are deeply concerned with the vaccination issue, otherwise there would be no controversy…..
In a democracy it is assumed that peoples views are respected and represented, if there is cause for concern over these vaccinations then what is wrong with someone putting forward an alternative. Its often referred to as choice.
Isn’t science about discovery and open mindedness……
In the United States and here, there is a huge amount of money put aside just in case compensation is required as a result of harm done due to these vaccinations, therefore, it is legally recognized that harm can and has been done.
You may not think it is important that there is a chance a child could succumb to a lifetime sentence of autism if they happen to react to the dubious ingredients of these vaccinations maybe the chances are slim, but it is still there.
In the States it has come to the point where doctors will refuse to see children unless they go through the rigid vaccination procedure and parents have become so concerned that certain States are forcing these vaccinations upon them at gunpoint please refer to earlier blog. Why is this happening if there is nothing wrong with the procedure???????
Modern medicine is blinkered by profit, your orthodox trials that you stick to like glue are also flawed and blinkered by profit, there is something rotten in the State of Denmark.
The practice of Medicine has turned on its head in the States and the first priority is not to help people. There seems to be an obsession with getting people hooked on pharmaceutical drugs and making them pay through the nose for them, turning them into slaves for their medicine which they probably wouldn’t need if their sister companies didn’t produce such dreadful food that make people ill in the first place.
The drug companies want everyone over the age of fifty on statins.
All post natal mothers on Ritalin (the mothers Act) laying in waiting to be passed in the States)
All teenage girls in UK vaccinated against cervical cancer even though the death rate for cervical cancer last year was negligible. In comparison to other things that cause death - pharmaceuticals is one glaring example.
All babies vaccinated with a ridiculous amount of vaccinations before the age of six months a lovely cocktail of fluorides, heavy metals and antibiotics. Substances that are seen in the real worlds as poisons but somehow are not recognized as such when it comes to injecting people when they are at their most vulnerable.
and on and on
Whats going on here? humans managed quite well for millions of years before Monsanto came along.
The truth is these drug companies have become so powerful that they have become the legislators, the company chairman are sitting in the House of Lords, they are in Congress. It is they who are represented not the people.
‘Saint Andy’ as you refer to him is someone that has put himself on the firing line in order to represent those people who have concerns. Undoubtedly he was forced into unconventional methods as the orthodox medical framework would not allow him to perform the tests legitimately, why would they? its not in their best interests to do so.
What are Saint Andy’s motivations - a drive for the truth perhaps? you can not argue that it is profit or ego as his career is in tatters.
What kind of sedition is it that does not allow someone of a scientific, medical background to follow up and question something that he sees as a potential risk to human health?
What kind of sedition is it that does not allow proper investigation into that potential risk. This is not science, this is politics.
and what is all this name calling all about? are you all fifteen? its not exactly a distinguished, professional approach. I confess I was a gnome in the Brownies but never a troll :o)
There is a certain lack of decency towards your fellow man going on here and lack of dignity within yourselves its a shame. You words are bitter, rude, pathological.
You mentioned scaremongering, a trite and aged argument, but isn’t it scaremongering that coherces parents into allowing vaccinations..
koo // April 12, 2008 at 1:38 am
Wulfstan
Your altie thing is pure propaganda, do you really turn your back on all that knowledge?
In Germany 40% of a doctors degree is in herbal medicine 40%! Where here 40% of a doctors degree is in pharmaceutical propaganda and how to treat your patients like robots. Germany’s treatment record far excels that of Britain’s across the board.
Unfortuately this will all be streamlined when the Lisbon Treaty and Codex come to fruition.
If I were you I would start to question what I was doing. Did you happen to catch the Radio 4 program ‘wheres the femur’ discussing the appalling lack of knowledge amongst graduate doctors in the UK.
Dr Aust // April 14, 2008 at 3:36 pm
koo
The existence of a cult of MMR-mercury-autism does not prove there is a link. You are just saying “no smoke without fire”, which is not a scientific argument.
There certainly are a significant number of parents of autistic kids who have been relentlessly and tragically mislead by people like Wakefield, the Geiers in the US, and a few other incompetent scientists and bogus quack remedy doctors, not to mention the disastrously inaccurate reporting of the whole farrago since Day 1. There is now a whole industry grown up that keeps the whole thing going. It is a true modern tragedy, reminiscent to me of incidences of apparent “mass possession” (mass delusion) in the middle ages, and of things like Scientology or the Rajneesh Cult more recently. But none of that makes any of the science involved believable or valid. It is neither.
LeeT // April 14, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I was interested to read the transcript of Wakefield’s testimony to the Irish parliament. Was he deliberately trying to cover up where his funding was coming from or did he not feel it was important?
http://briandeer.com/wakefield/wakefield-oleary.htm
koo // April 15, 2008 at 2:25 am
Science is a big old dusty curtain that you, faust, dominatrix and wolfenstein etc hide furtively behind.
Has science proved beyond a doubt that MMR vaccinations do not cause autism?
No?
‘In the United States and here, there is a huge amount of money put aside just in case compensation is required as a result of harm done due to these vaccinations, therefore, it is legally recognized that harm can and has been done’
koo // April 15, 2008 at 2:44 am
As ever you do not address the issues put forward but rely upon cliche and labelling.
Is there really no space in orthodox medicine for questioning their approach??
Must everyone who questions it get lumped in with the trolls..
Its not as if a mistake has never been made in the field of orthodoxy….
Dr Aust // April 15, 2008 at 10:31 am
Has science proved beyond a doubt that MMR vaccinations do not cause autism?
Yes. Over and over again.
And in particular, in numerous large studies since the MMR autism scare, conducted specifically to address even the slight suspicion raised by Wakefield’s work before it was exposed for the tissue of nonsense it is.
To recap:
All of Wakefield’s, and the very few bits of similar work: utterly discredited. So effectively there is NO evidence on his “side” of the “argument”. None. Nada.
Studies demonstrating MMR safety, lack of link w autism prevalence, etc. Loads and loads.
Conclusion from the science: MMR vaccine is safe and does not cause autism.
Of course, Alt.Conspiracy loons cannot accept this as it conflicts with their warped worldview.
dvnutrix // April 15, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Dr Aust - Giveen’s guide isn’t what I had in mind but I’m having a brain fade as to the people who do the neat illustrations and descriptions of each variety of the troll class.
draust // April 15, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Thanks, DVN. I can’t decide if “Contrarian Troll” or “Agenda Troll” is more appropriate.
I should know better than to rise to the bait, really. As someone posted on the Guardian CiF thread about the Expelled ID movie:
“…an anonymous internet poster once wrote:
‘Never argue with an idiot. The best outcome you can hope for is that you won an argument with an idiot”
dvnutrix // April 15, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Never come across that before - must put it somewhere to reproduce/honour with an homage :-)
LeeT // April 15, 2008 at 8:11 pm
“Has science proved beyond a doubt that MMR vaccinations do not cause autism?”
Anyone who has studied basic philosophy will know that you can never prove a negative.
Knowledge advances by means of proof. If you say, “Oh well you can’t prove that’s not true” you might well as say “I am open to believing anything.”
koo // April 16, 2008 at 2:01 am
Well then LeeT you can not say with absolute certainty that it does not can you. I don’t really need to be here, you are making a mockery of yourselves.
Is your best defence insults still ??????
Dr Angst - Wakefields work discredited by who a vested interest by any chance
I don’t care if you humiliate me I am anonymous… ;0)
Faust - I think agenda troll is more appropriate
LeeT - Or you are open to believing nothing except for what the orthodox tells you.
Orthodoxy said there was no such thing as Gulf War syndrome, it didn’t take too long in the face of mounting evidence before they had to admit it to be true.
Think about it………………………………..
Wake up you guys somethings are more important then a pay packet.
koo // April 16, 2008 at 2:31 am
I bet you all think aspartame is really good for you too………
Teel // April 16, 2008 at 6:54 am
Koo
Have you read the book unexplained illness explained, a really good book concerning gulf war syndrome and the nitric oxide/peroxinitrire cycle a really interesting take on things. Another theory similar would be the cytokine sickness syndrome, which is also a inflammatory cycle.
() // July 1, 2008 at 9:40 am
There’s no real proof that the vaccination caused autism. Am i right?
Patrick Holford and His Recommendations for Vaccines: As Canard-Stuffed As We Feared « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science // July 14, 2008 at 5:56 pm
[...] it may look as if Holford is not entirely forthcoming about the actual significance of the Poling case although HolfordWatch has previously discussed the flaws in Holford’s thinking on this [...]
Leave a Comment