Respectful Insolence

The "American Rally for Personal [Antivaccine] Rights" metastasizes

Tue, 25 May 2010 15:00:00 -0500

It figures.

I've written a couple of times about a rally to be held tomorrow in Grant Park that would be hilarious were it not an indication of the threat to public health that the anti-vaccine movement represents. Actually, it is to some extent hilarious, mainly due to the anti-vaccine Poe-worthy "music" that will be the featured entertainment.

It was bad enough that the fair city of Chicago would be blighted with this nonsense--and Andrew Wakefield, too--but now the "American Rally for Personal Rights" (a.k.a. the Autism One anti-vaccine rally featuring disgraced and unethical British physician Andy Wakefield) is now metastasizing. There are now "satellite rallies" in Edison, NJ, New York City, and the Seattle Area.

I'll just repeat again. Although the issue of how much power the state should have to compel vaccination is a legitimate political and social question, as I've pointed out before for Jenny McCarthy's "Green Our Vaccines" rally and this rally, it's really far more about being anti-vaccine than pro-freedom. The "health freedom" movement, of which the "no forced vaccination" movement is but a subset, is in reality far more about freedom for quacks to ply their quackery without any pesky interference from the government and for alt-med believers to use whatever quack nostroms or down whatever supplements they like, safety be damned.

Sadly, this week is likely to continue to be a very busy week on the anti-vaccine front.

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No difference between "too many too soon" and "too few too late" when it comes to vaccines

Tue, 25 May 2010 03:00:00 -0500

Regular readers know that I have a tendency every so often to whine about when writing about the antics of the anti-vaccine movement seems to engulf this blog. Yes, it's true. Every so often I get really, really tired of the bad science, pseudoscience, magical thinking, misinformation, and even outright lies that emanate from various anti-vaccine websites and blogs. This week, I promised myself I would try not to do it. There are times when duty calls, and this is one of those times. For better or for worse, as hard as I still find it to believe, somehow I've become one of the top bloggers defending vaccines, and there are times when I have to stop whining and just embrace this role. Given the one-two-three triple whammy of the start of the anti-vaccine autism quackfest Autism One, Andrew Wakefield having had his license to practice medicine in the U.K. yanked, and the hilariously insane anti-vaccine rally to take place in Grant Park in Chicago tomorrow, it's time just to go with the flow and do what needs to be done.

Today this is something I'm more than happy to do, at least today.

If there's one thing about the anti-vaccine movement that I've learned over the last several years, it's that it's nothing if not, for lack of a better word, nearly infinitely pliable. To put it more simply, anti-vaccine activists are experts at throwing out as much stuff as they can and seeing if anything sticks, adjusting their stories, and moving the goalposts every time each of their successive demands for more evidence are met by scientists. Although there has always been an anti-vaccine movement, its most recent incarnation is built primarily around the idea that vaccines cause autism somehow. First it was Andrew Wakefield presenting dubious, trial lawyer-funded "research" purporting to show that the MMR vaccine causes "autistic enterocolitis" and even autism itself. Then, not long after that, the U.S. version of this manufactrovery showed up in the form of the concept that mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be in vaccines cause autism, promoted initially by David Kirby and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Fortunately, more than a decade's worth of research consisting of large epidemiological studies has utterly failed to find even a whiff of a hint of a link between either the MMR vaccine or thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. Unfortunately, the anti-vaccine movement simply moved the goalposts to the "toxins" gambit, in which it is claimed that vaccines are laced with "toxins" such as formaldehyde, antifreeze, and tissue from aborted fetuses. Never mind that there are no parts from aborted fetuses or antifreeze in vaccines, and scary-sounding chemicals like formaldehyde are present in concentrations far too low to be a problem. Even so, "Green our Vaccines" sure sounds like a slogan that means something, even though it doesn't.

The latest gambit, and arguably one of the most successful because it's the most vague and difficult to falsify, is the "Too Many Too Soon" slogan. Under this idea, anti-vaccine propagandists claim that infants are getting too many vaccines too soon (hence the slogan) and that all those nasty vaccines being given to such young infants is somehow messing up their immune system, attacking their brains, and giving them autism. This is a tough one to combat because the only definitive way to refute it would involve studying unvaccinated versus vaccinated children (which, not surprisingly, is the latest demand of the anti-vaccine movement). Doing such a study in a rigorous prospective randomized fashion would be completely unethical because it would leave the control group unprotected, while retrospective studies would be prone to a lot of confounders, given that there are likely to be other factors besides vaccination status that make populations who aren't vaccinated different from those who are.

That's why a study hot off the presses yesterday (well, hot off the web, as it were, given that it's an E-pub ahead of print) is so well timed. Released right as Autism One starts and Andrew Wakefield tanks, what better time for a study to look right at the very question that anti-vaccinationists seem to want answered? The title of the article is even an arrow aimed right at the heart of the "too many too soon" mantra, namely On-time Vaccine Receipt in the First Year Does Not Adversely Affect Neuropsychological Outcomes.

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Channeling P.Z.: Crash this poll on vaccines and autism

Mon, 24 May 2010 14:30:36 -0500

In the wake of Matt Lauer's interview with Andrew Wakefield, there's a new poll up at the TODAYMoms website:

Do you think vaccines are related to autism?
Andrew Wakefield, who touched off an international controversy by claiming a possible link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism, has lost his medical license, but says he will continue to fight to prove his case. Do you think vaccines are related to autism?

Yes. So many more cases, so many more vaccinations - it can't just be coincidence.

No. There is no scientific evidence the two things are related.

I'm not sure. There needs to be more research.

Unfortunately, as of right now, the "yes" votes are at 50%.

You know what to do. This poll needs a readjustment.

ADDENDUM: P.Z. has sent his minions into the fray. The feeble attempts of the anti-vaccine movement to move the poll numbers cannot stand now.

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Andrew Wakefield: Struck off!

Mon, 24 May 2010 12:00:00 -0500

It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a Long Time Gone.
And it appears to be a long,
appears to be a long,
appears to be a long
time, yes, a long, long, long ,long time before the dawn.

- from "Long Time Gone" by Crosby, Stills & Nash

Oh, happy day!

It's finally happened, more than six years after investigative reporter Brian Deer first reported Wakefield's massive conflicts of interest and dubious activities related to his "research" suggesting a link between the measles strain in the MMR vaccine and inflammation of the gut in autistic children, nearly three years after the start of the British General Medical Council's hearings into anti-vaccine hero Andrew Wakefield's fitness to practice, nearly a year and a half after solid evidence that Andrew Wakefield had committed research fraud for this "study," and less than four months after the GMC ruled that Andrew Wakefield had acted with "callous disregard for the distress and pain the children [who were his research subjects] might suffer." This morning in the U.K. the GMC ruled that, because of his unethical and dishonest behavior in conducting his research, Andrew Wakefield should be "struck off" the medical register, meaning that he will no longer be licensed to practice medicine in the U.K.:

The doctor who first suggested a link between MMR vaccinations and autism is to be struck off the medical register.
The General Medical Council found Dr Andrew Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct over the way he carried out his controversial research.
It follows a GMC ruling earlier this year that he had acted unethically.

Dr Wakefield, who is now based in the US, has consistently claimed the allegations are unfair. He now says he will appeal against the verdict.
His 1998 Lancet study caused vaccination rates to plummet, resulting in a rise in measles - but the findings were later discredited.

The GMC ruled in January Dr Wakefield had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in conducting his research, but under its procedures the sanctions are made at a later date.

All anyone who supports science-based medicine can say is: It's about time!

Unfortunately, none of this prevents Wakefield from, as Sullivan put it so well, turning public disgrace into publicity. For example, there was this interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's The Today Show this morning:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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"Interesting times," thanks to a confluence of anti-vaccine pseudoscience

Mon, 24 May 2010 03:00:00 -0500

An old Chinese combined proverb and curse is said to be, "May you live in interesting times." Certainly, with respect to vaccines, the last few years have been "interesting times." Unfortunately, this week times are about to get a lot more "interesting" as the Autism One quackfest descends upon Chicago beginning today. Featuring prominently in this quackfest will be an anti-vaccine rally in Grant Park on Wednesday featuring some really bad, anti-vaccine fundamentalist Poe-worthy "music" and a keynote speech by Andrew Wakefield himself. If you want evidence that Andrew Wakefield is being disingenuous at best and lying through his teeth at worst when he claims he's not "anti-vaccine," look no further than his having agreed to give the keynote speech at this rally. One can only hope that the anti-vaccine movement posts YouTube videos of his speech so that I can apply a needed dose of not-so-Respectful Insolence to it.

Interesting times, indeed.

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A response is needed: Matt Lauer to interview Andrew Wakefield Monday morning

Sun, 23 May 2010 09:30:00 -0500

Andrew Wakefield's back, and he's sure trying to come back big.

I knew when I last wrote about his utter humiliation and disrepute that he wouldn't stay away for long. In fact, he stayed away longer than I thought--a whole three months. Unfortunately, though, he appears to be on a full media blitz to try to rehabilitate his image in the wake of his having been found to have committed research misconduct, leading to The Lancet retracting his article that started the anti=vaccine MMR scare back in 1998, which further led to NeuroToxicology withdrawing his execrably bad "monkey business" study before it actually saw print. All of this was too much even for the board of directors at his autism quackery clinic, Thoughtful House, who, spearheaded by Jane Johnson, who is ironically enough, an heiress to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune and also on the board of directors of Thoughtful House, appears basically to have fired Wakefield.

Tomorrow appears to mark the beginning of Wakefield's "coming out." I've already written how Wakefield will be the keynote speaker at Autism One and its associated anti-vaccine rally this Wednesday in Grant Park. Somehow, though, he's managed to score an interview with Matt Lauer again on NBC's The Today Show, no doubt because Lauer was a pushover in a "tell both sides" NBC special on Andrew Wakefield last summer, not to mention because the the General Medical Council GMC) will meet tomorrow and at that meeting Wakefield will likely be "struck off" (that delightful British expression for being "struck off" the list of licensed medical doctors in the U.K.). In fact, given the time difference between the U.K. and New York, it's quite possible that Wakefield may be struck off by the time Lauer interviews him.

Not surprisingly, already the anti-vaccine forces are rallying to show support for Wakefield. They'll be there with Age of Autism T-shirts and, no doubt, anti-vaccine signs, signs supporting Wakefield, signs castigating the GMC, and handing out fliers that say things like this:

Let this notice serve as warning to all entities behind the orchestrated efforts of the witch hunt against Dr. Andrew Wakefield & his two colleagues, Dr. Walker & Dr. Smith, as well as the well being of our children. You had better think twice before trying to pull off another kangaroo court this coming Monday. You don't dare to take these good doctors licenses away because you don't want to meet our wrath you have been fueling. "We The People" are many & we will be watching. We will save our children by bringing them out of harms way, no matter what more you do to cover up the truth. We will be holding accountable every person we find who works to hold our children in harms way. You can all take that to your bank.

They even refer to a "rally" that will start at 8 AM. Yours truly is also mentioned:

I wonder if it would piss off the Orac's trolls if we gave Wakefield an honorary Knighthood?

Actually, it wouldn't piss me off. I would laugh heartily at such antics.

I don't live in New York, but I wonder if it's possible to mount some sort of skeptical response. The anti-vaccine propaganda should be countered somehow, but I don't know if it will be possible on such short notice.

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A homeopath unplugged from reality

Fri, 21 May 2010 08:00:00 -0500

Yesterday's post made me sad. It always makes me sad to contemplate a 14 year old boy facing the loss of his father to an aggressive form of leukemia, as Danny Hauser is. The kid just can't catch a break. First he himself develops Hodgkin's lymphoma. Because he happens to live in a family that has taken up a faux "Native American" religion that claims its "natural healing" is better than chemotherapy, he resists undergoing treatment, and his family supports him. After a judge orders him to undergo chemotherapy, Danny and his mom then take off on the lam from the law, heading for Mexico and the sanctuary of quackery that exists in Tijuana. Fortunately, they aren't on the run for long, and Danny's mom brings her him back and turns herself in. Ultimately, the family agrees to see to it that Daniel undergoes chemotherapy, which he does and as a result is alive and well today.

Then his father contracts a rare and aggressive form of leukemia that is likely to kill him within a year.

See why I'm sad? Fortunately for me, there's Dana Ullman. No matter how sad I am contemplating a boy losing is father, good ol' Dana's there to unintentionally cause a big, silly grin on my face. Unintentionally, you ask? Yes, unintentionally, because Dana is always pretty much dead serious about promoting the outrageous quackery that is homeopathy, and his doing what he does best is what brought a smile back to my face--although again, completely unintentionally. I'm referring to Dana's latest bit of propaganda for homeopathy published in--where else?--that repository of quackery, anti-vaccine propaganda, pseudoscience, and New Age woo, The Huffington Post (a.k.a. HuffPo). It's a little gem our "expert in homeopathic medicine" calls Unplugging From Your Medicine Cabinet: Respecting the Body's Intelligence.

Thanks, Dana! I needed that!

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Another Hauser goes for "natural" medicine against a deadly disease

Thu, 20 May 2010 10:00:00 -0500

Around this time last year, the major topic of this blog was the case of a young teen named Daniel Hauser. In fact, right around this time last year, this particular case was approaching its climax. Hauser, as you may recall, was the 13-year-old Minnesota boy diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma who refused chemotherapy. His stated reason was his religion, namely Nemenhah, a fake American Indian religion that his parents joined 18 years ago. However, I had my doubts that religion was the main reason why Hauser was refusing chemotherapy and his mother was supporting his decision to pursue "natural" therapy. Whatever the reason, the result was a court case that made the national news and got even bigger when Daniel and his mother went on the lam from the law. At the time I presumed they were heading for the Mexican border to go to the Tijuana quack clinics. Ultimately, they turned themselves in; Daniel underwent curative chemotherapy for his cancer; and he is currently doing well. There is very little reason to expect that he won't continue to do well.

The wonders of modern scientific medicine! Another young life saved!

Unfortunately, Daniel has some pretty crappy luck. First, he was diagnosed last year with Hodgkin's lymphoma. No matter how you slice it, that's a horrible break for a young kid. Now, today, I've learned that his father has been diagnosed with cancer:

Last year, Colleen Hauser was convinced that an all-natural treatment could cure her son's cancer. A judge disagreed and ordered Daniel Hauser to have chemotherapy.
Now it's her husband's turn.

Once again Colleen and Anthony Hauser are vowing to beat cancer without conventional medicine.

Here's what Anthony Hauser is facing:

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The story of anti-vaccine icon Andrew Wakefield in pictures

Thu, 20 May 2010 00:01:00 -0500

I've blogged a lot about anti-vaccine hero Andrew Wakefield over the years. The story has become long and convoluted, and to tell it takes a lot of verbiage, even by Orac standards. However, I've found a good resource that tells the tale of Andrew Wakefield and his misdeeds in a highly accessible form:

The question at the very end of the story is about as appropriate as it gets. Unfortunately, the answer to the question is: Yes.

Speaking of Wakefield, it looks as though he's starting to resurface. Apparently The Statesman will publish an interview with him tomorrow. Keep an eye out. I'm sure the anti-vaccine loons will descend on the comments.

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Oh no! My cell phone's going to kill me! (The revenge)

Wed, 19 May 2010 10:00:00 -0500

Here we go again.

I've written a few times before about the controversy over whether cell phones (a.k.a. mobile phones in most of the rest of the world) cause brain cancer, concluding on more than one occasion that the evidence does not support a link. For example, there has not been a large increase in brain cancer or other cancers claimed to be due to cell phone radiation in the 15 to 20 years since the use of cell phones took off back in the 1990s, nor has any study shown a convincing correlation between cell phone use and brain cancer.

Of course, one would not expect a priori, based on what is known about basic science, that cell phone radiation would cause cancer. After all, the development of cancer in general ultimately requires mutations in critical genes regulating cell growth and development. For an outside treatment to cause such mutations, as far as we know, requires the ability to cause DNA damage through the breaking of chemical bonds. Ionizing radiation can do this, as can certain cehmicals and chemotherapeutic agents. Indeed, that's how these agents work against cancer because cancer cells tend to be more sensitive to DNA damaging agents than normal cells due to defective DNA repair mechanisms. Thus, it is highly implausible based on basic science that cell phone radiation could cause cancer. It's not homeopathy level-implausible, but it's pretty implausible. Nor is it impossible, as has been claimed, because there may be biological mechanisms behind cancer that we do not yet understand, and it's almost always physicists with little knowledge of epigenetics and other mechanisms of cancer development who make such dogmatic claims. Still, such physicists are not too far off; if cell phones could cause cancer, it would have to be through a previously unknown physiological or genetic mechanism. Absent compelling evidence of a link between cell phones and cancer, then, it is not unreasonable to rely on the basic science and consider the possibility of such a link to be remote.

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The Refusers: Proving Orac's corollary to Poe's Law

Wed, 19 May 2010 00:00:12 -0500

Over the last week or so, I've been a bit--shall we say?--dismissive of claims by anti-vaccinationists when they insist that, really, truly, honestly, they aren't "anti-vaccine," usually with a wounded, indignant, self-righteous tone. Either that, or they make like the Black Knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail by demanding the surrender of the public health community, even as limb after limb of their claims have been lopped off by the sword of science, all the while not even realizing how risible it is to demand respect for their views after they have been totally discredited scientifically and continue to suffer the death of a thousand knives with each new well-designed study that comes out and fails to find a link between vaccines and autism. Yet, they demand that we beleie them when they piously assert that they aren't anti-vaccine.

As I pointed out last week, next week there will be the big Kahuna of yearly quackfests of the anti-vaccine movement, namely AutismOne in Chicago. As part of that quackfest, there will be an anti-vaccine rally in Grant Park on Wednesday, May 26. Truly, it is the confluence between the anti-vaccine movement and the Tea Party anti-government movement in the form of the "health freedom" movement.

And now this "American Rally for Personal Rights" has its own soundtrack:

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Evangelos Michelakis on dichloroacetate (DCA) and glioblastoma

Tue, 18 May 2010 15:00:00 -0500

As a followup to my rather "epic post" on dichloroacetate, I thought I'd just post a brief follow up. A reader sent me this video of Evangelos Michelakis, the investigator who has been testing DCA in the clinic and who did the study testing DCA against gliblastoma, describing his results:

It's always interesting to hear research results "straigh from the horse's mouth, so to speak."

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Destroying the vaccine program in order to save it

Tue, 18 May 2010 03:00:00 -0500

Last week, I did three posts about the anti-vaccine movement. (What? Only three? Well, last week was slower than usual on the anti-vaccine craziness front. It happens.) Two of them were variations on a theme, namely how the anti-vaccine movement vehemently, desperately does not want to be seen as "anti-vaccine, even though that's what many of them are. First, I pointed out how the "health freedom" movement is teaming up with the anti-vaccine movement next week in Chicago to hold an anti-vaccine rally in Grant Park as part of its annual autism quackfest known as AutismOne. My second post asked a simple question: Why, if Age of Autism is about doing better for autistic kids rather than being anti-vaccine, do the the bloggers there spend so much time and verbiage ranting about Gardasil, which, even if the vaccine-autism connection were true, couldn't possibly cause autism because it's given a decade after the typical first onset of autistic symptoms?

My answer is that it's always, first and foremost, about the vaccines, not autism.

Every so often, though, the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism provides me with an insight to how the anti-vaccine movement thinks. This time around, Julie Obradovic serves that purpose with a post entitled How to Actually Save the Vaccine Program. My first impression was that, it's very, very nice of die hard enemies of the vaccine program to give public health officials advice on how to "save it." In essence, the post is a list of what Ms. Obradovic thinks public health officials should do before the the anti-vaccine movement will listen to them. In doing so, she demonstrates perfectly exactly why it's virtually impossible to reason with die-hard anti-vaccine loons. She also demonstrates the utter sense of entitlement that so many of them have, a sense that the world must cater to her. First, she assails the "strategy" used by public health officials:

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Goodbye, revere! Hello The Pump Handle (with some revere)

Mon, 17 May 2010 15:00:00 -0500

Yesterday was a sad day indeed, as a blogger that I've been following almost since I myself started blogging has decided to close up shop:

It's been a long time coming but the time has come. Effect Measure is closing up shop, after 5 and a half years, 3 million visits and 5.1 million page views of some 3500. You commented on them some 37,000 times. It's been a grand ride but to all things there is a season. It's time to simplify my life and while my family has had me all along, at times science got short shrift. Now my time is getting short and I want to turn my attention to my research, the other polar star of my life. "Revere" will continue to post occasionally on Effect Measure's successor site, The Pump Handle (TPH), which will hold down the public health anchor position after EM is gone. We'll provide more details later this week when we officially hand off this spot to our friends and colleagues at TPH. Our archive will be folded into theirs, with details to follow when they are firmed up.

revere and I haven't always seen eye to eye on some health issues (for instance, cell phones and cancer, although our differences tended to be more ones of emphasis rather than any fundamental disagreements), but he's always had my respect, and Effect Measure has been a blog that I routinely check out at least every other day. It's good to hear that he will still be contributing occasionally to Effect Measure's successor blog, The Pump Handle. I've learned a lot about epidemiology and public health from the reveres, and I hope that continues at The Pump Handle. Actually, The Pump Handle is not a new blog at all; it's simply been recruited by our benevolent Seed Overlords.

As one leaves The Collective, another joins.

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Dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer: Déjà vu all over again

Mon, 17 May 2010 03:00:00 -0500

Late last week, a crank I hadn't heard from in a while showed up in my comments. I'm referring to DaveScot, who normally was known for promoting anti-evolution rhetoric in the service of the pseudoscience known as "intelligent design" creationism. This is what he said:

Hi Orac,
terrasig suggested you do a followup article on dichloroacetate (DCA) given the paper just published on the phase 1 trial in Edmonton.

Three years have passed and countless cancer patients were denied this drug. Now at the end of its first phase one trial we know exactly what we did from the reports of people self-medicating in 2007 before the FDA forced it off the market - it shows great promise.

Explain to me again how these controlled trials are oh-so-much better than the ad hoc trial of self-organized self-medicants? Lay that old woo stick on me again, buddy.

How can I refuse such a heartfelt request for a loving application the clue by four (a.k.a. the cluestick). Apparently DaveScot forgot the last time I laid it on him. Oddly enough, it was not over evolution or creationism, and the loving application occurred over three years ago. Specifically, it was about a topic that I hvaen't written about for about a year and a half now, mainly because there wasn't any real news to write about, namely (as I've put it) the "cancer cure that big pharma doesn't want you to know about," dichloroacetate (DCA for short).

Actually, DaveScot wasn't the first this week. Over the last several days, I've received a trickle of e-mails about DCA. These generally fell into two categories. One category was simply asking me to update the story; the other category was of the type demonstrated by DaveScott, gloating that I was wrong when I threw cold water on the ridiculous level of hype over this drug on the basis of a single paper reporting that DCA showed significant efficacy against various cancers in cell culture and rodent models of cancer.

I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on DaveScot. After all, when the DCA saga began in January 2007, I started noticing a bunch of posts by various bloggers as well as news stories that all had similar titles, such as Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers, Objectively pro-cancer, Gotta pay, When promising cures are ignored, and, my personal favorite, Potential cheap, safe cure for cancer: Will Big Pharma Allow It?

Note that there were two assumptions about the study three years ago. First, these bloggers and pundits assumed that the cell culture and animal work were definitive evidence that DCA might be a "cure" for cancer. Second, the assumption was that, because the drug was out of patent and very cheap to make, neither the government nor pharmaceutical companies would be interested in funding it, thus condemning thousands, maybe millions, of people to die of cancer unnecessarily. Unfortunately, the New Scientist article and articles in the Edmonton Sun featured headlines to that effect and quotes by the investigator Evangelos Michelakis lamenting how he had had difficulties finding funding to do the next step, clinical trials in cancer. As a result of these sensationalistic stories, unscrupulous "businessmen" sought to bring DCA to the masses. A frenzy of sorts was unleashed, with desperate cancer patients scrambling to find DCA. If you're interested in the details, scroll to the end of this post for a list of the numerous blog posts that I did on the topic as the story was evolving. That's the past, and all the "Insolence" and science are there for you if you want to read it. I'm concerned with today (well, last week), when apparently DCA bubbled to the surface in news reports such as this, which were apparently what "inspired" DaveScot's and some e-mails challenging me. For example:

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