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.
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
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’
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….
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.
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.
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”
Never come across that before – must put it somewhere to reproduce/honour with an homage :-)
“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.”
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.
I bet you all think aspartame is really good for you too………
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.
There’s no real proof that the vaccination caused autism. Am i right?
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Off-topic.
I happened upon this website and observed the chart. I did not bother to read the rest of the article for two reasons: I have children and housework to look after, and if the chart is any indication of the stupidity of the rest of the article, it is a waste of time. My daughter became allergic to her milk based formula less than two days after her four month shots. Her second day of rice cereal, she threw it all up. After a year and a half of her throwing up, an allergy test revealed she was allergic to peanuts, nuts, milk, eggs, which we knew, and chicken, beef, rice, etc. After her four month shots, her system was never the same again. Read Jenny McCarthy’s Warrior Mothers. Read Parents Magazine February 2000 issue, “How We Cured Our Son’s Autism” by Karyn Seroussi, read Dr. Sherri Tenpenny’s research, before you put out such ridiculous charts! In 1983, 10 shots given before age 6, now 36 shots recommended before age 6. And people wonder why in 1983, they had never heard of autism or severe peanut allergies?
It is plain that you didn’t read the article.
We are familiar with the authors that you recommend so should not be surprised that you did not read the piece: your reading recommendations are without merit.
Sorry to revisit an old topic, but I read this – “In 1983, 10 shots given before age 6, now 36 shots recommended before age 6.” – and thought of a couple of interesting webpages I’d read recently.
The WHO page on ‘immune overload’ links to abstracts of some very interesting papers. According to both Offit et al and Miller et al, vaccinated children in fact have fewer infections than unvaccinated children – while Hilton, Petticrew and Hunt point out that we don’t actually know “how British parents conceptualise the notion of ‘immune-overload’ or how they relate this concept to their own children”.
“And people wonder why in 1983, they had never heard of autism or severe peanut allergies?”
There is an excellent blog post on ScienceBasedMedicine here that looks at a paper studying adults who were diagnosed in 1980 with a developmental language disorder. Dorothy Bishop asked “if these people were subjected to current diagnostic criteria for autism, how many of them would be diagnosed today as having autism?” She found that 25% of them would.
Incidentally, this paper from 1976 refers to detection of peanut and nut allergies [they were looking at the usefulness of the radioallergosorbent test in highly allergic patients in whom skin testing poses a risk of anaphylaxis].
Tangentially relevant to jdc325′s comment, there’s a recent cohort study from Denmark , the findings of which suggest:
“…These results are compatible not with an increased risk of asthma following MMR vaccination but rather with the hypothesis that MMR vaccination is associated with a reduced risk of asthma-like disease in young children. ”
With regard to the “1983″ claim, I recall earlier this year reading a media article by Robert Wood (head of paediatric allergy, Johns Hopkins), about safety of other legumes in peanut allergy. I’ll google the exact reference when I have time later but I seem to remember him saying that there were recommendations in the 1970s and 80s for peanut allergic people to avoid related legumes but work at Johns Hopkins showed this was not necessary. So looks like people were afflicted by this before 1983.
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