Comments on: Flu vax reactions; bad batch ruled out, the search for the cause continues.

By: » The AVN WA library lecture becomes a political bun fight where kids are the losers

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:06:51 +0000

[...] for this lapse in judgement and now has the dubious honour of putting the health of WA children at further risk. I hope she is pleased with her decision to host a “controversial” group that is the [...]

By: Nescio

Nescio — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:16:03 +0000

Oh please,
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Apologies for taking so long to come back with this – real life intruded.
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I have read through Blaylock’s article about the Simpsonwood CDC meeting in 2000. I started writing a long point by point refutation of his conclusions, but about half way through I wearied of it.
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Much of Blaylock’s article is horrified outrage at what he imagines happened at the meeting, which I think he has misinterpreted. To me it looks as if the meeting participants took a long hard look at the slightest possibility of mercury damaging children. The cumulative dose of mercury given to children in vaccines was exceeding some of the EPA guidelines, depending on the length of time you looked at. The dose of mercury was also uncomfortably close to doses in pregnant women that had been associated with neurodevelopmental delay in their babies (Faroes and New Zealand studies)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9392777
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9972579
A more recent study in the Seychelles Islands found no effects of mercury at these levels of exposure.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12767734
It is worth pointing out that these were chronic exposures to methyl mercury, while vaccination with a thimerosal-containing vaccine is an acute exposure to the less-toxic ethyl mercury.
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There are as number of areas where Blaylock seems to have misunderstood what was discussed at the meeting.
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“On page 16, Dr. Johnson, an immunologist and pediatrician at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine, notes that he would like to see the incorporation of wide margins of safety, that is 3 to 10-fold margins of safety to “account for data uncertainties.” What he means is that there are so many things we do not know about this toxin that we had better use very wide margins of safety. For most substances the FDA uses a 100-fold margin of safety.”
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This is simply incorrect. What Dr. Johnston (Blaylock consistently misspells his name which is a problem because there was also a Dr. Johnson at the meeting) actually describes on page 16 of the transcript are the EXISTING margins of safety in the guidelines for mercury exposure, not what “he would like to see” at all. To quote Dr. Johnston, “Specialists in environmental health have extrapolated from those types of studies to establish safe exposure levels … on chronic, daily exposure to [m]ethylmercury that incorporate wide margins. That is three to ten fold to account for data uncertainties.” The ellipsis (…) is where I have omitted “and this is an important emphasis I would like to make”, to make it clearer.
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These safe exposure levels for lifetime daily exposure, that incorporate 3 to 10 fold safety margins (actually I think they incorporate a 40 fold safety margin) are the same ones that Blaylock gets so excited about earlier because vaccination, acute exposure, at that time exceeded those safety levels for chronic exposure.
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“In fact, in this study they excluded premature babies and low birth weight babies from the main study, some of which had the highest mercury levels, because they would be hard to study and because they had the most developmental problems, possibly related to the mercury.”
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Not true. These babies were excluded because they were often not vaccinated at all, and yet had the highest levels of neurological and developmental disorders for reasons unconnected to vaccination, as is well understood. Page 32, “We know that premature children are not vaccinated in the same way as term babies. At the same time they are at higher risk for the outcomes.” Omitting these children was an attempt to exclude a very obvious confounding factor. Page 267 “When including all premature children, irrespective of their birth weight, we found a protective effect of thimerosal above the 25 µg level at 3 months, suggesting an avoidance of vaccination in the most severe group.”
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In other words, premature babies are less likely to be vaccinated than full term babies, and more likely to have problems, giving rise to a correlation between not being vaccinated and these problems. Recognised problems associated with prematurity include, “Delayed growth and development, mental or physical disability or delay”. These are the “greatest risks” that Dr. Johnston was referring to, not risks from mercury in the vaccine.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001562.htm
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Anyway, I think the best thing to do is to look at Blaylock’s conclusions. His words are in italics (I hope) as they are above.
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“This top secret meeting was held to discuss a study done by Dr. Thomas Verstraeten and his co-workers using Vaccine Safety Datalink data as a project collaboration between the CDC’s National Immunization Program (NIP) and four HMOs. The study examined the records of 110,000 children. Within the limits of the data, they did a very thorough study and found the following:”
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So far so good.
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“Exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines at one month was associated significantly with the misery and unhappiness disorder that was dose related. That is, the higher the child’s exposure to thimerosal the higher the incidence of the disorder. This disorder is characterized by a baby that cries uncontrollably and is fretful more so than that see in normal babies.”
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This is true, but out of the 110,000 children examined, only 81 had this disorder, and these were children who had been given only 12.5µg mercury – none of the children exposed to more mercury than this had this disorder. It is hard to come to any conclusions based on this. Blaylock has cherrypicked the positive highest correlations out of this study, ignoring the negative correlations.
Page 270 of transcript.
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“Found a nearly significant increased risk of ADD with 12.5ug exposure at one month.”
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Nearly significant? This sort of correlation could so easily be due to confounders – children whose parents take them to the doctor for their vaccinations may be more likely to be diagnosed with ADD, simply because of increased medical contact, for example. In fact the correlation is negative at 12.5 µg (rr=0.96), positive at >12.5 µg (rr=2.14 95% cl 0.99-4.62).
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“With exposure at 3 months, they found an increasing risk of neurodevelopmental disorders with increasing exposure to thimerosal. This was statistically significant. This included speech disorders.”
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Barely statistically significant, and again, confounders are very likely. It is also a little worrying that the baseline level of these disorders in those children who had received no vaccines is based on only 23 children. If there had been one or two more or fewer children in that group (maybe some children were missed, or included in that group by mistake), the relative risks would have changed hugely.
Page 272 of transcript.
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“It is important to remember that the control group was not children without thimerosal exposure, but rather those at 12.5ug exposure. This means that there is a significant likelihood that even more neurodevelopmental problems would have been seen had they used a real control population.”
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Well that’s clearly untrue in some of the analyses, as you can see on the charts of relative risk and confidence limits for exposure at 3 months, which clearly show a control group with zero exposure to thimerosal for each disorder – page 275. There could not possibly have been “more neurodevelopmental problems” anyway, though lower levels in the control group would lead to a higher relative risk in the thimerosal exposed groups, not more cases.
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“No one disagreed that these findings were significant and troubling.”
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Again, not true. I can’t do better than Sceptico in refuting this claim, these are quotes he found:
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“Part one, is there a causal association between ethylmercury and neurological effects noted in the Vaccine Study Datalink project? The answer is no. Why not? From a toxicologists (sic) viewpoint there is no dose response relationship” (Page 191)
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“To me the increasing mercury levels in your population at one month… is so small that it would suggest to me that you have a confounder here. That this is not due to mercury.” (page 213)
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“I gave it a value as 1. I think the strength of the associations are mostly weak and the weaker the associations, the more likely bias might explain some of this.” (Page 217)
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“This is not designed as a study to look at the effects of these vaccines on the different outcomes, but it is using data collected for other reasons, so it is not a carefully controlled prospective cohort study to study. We are using data that was collected for other purposes.” (Page 218)
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“Yet when the final study was published in the journal Pediatrics Dr. Verstraeten and co-workers reported no consistent associations were found between thimerosal-containing vaccine exposure and neurodevelopmental problems.”
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I think that’s a pretty fair assessment of the study as presented in 2000, but Verstraeten had carried out further analysis of the results before publishing his final report, which can be found here:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/112/5/1039
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“In addition, he list himself as an employee of the CDC, not disclosing the fact that at the time the article was accepted, he worked for GlaxoSmithKline, a vaccine manufacturing company.
So how did they do this bit of prestidigitation? They simply added another HMO to the data, the Harvard Pilgrimage. Congressman Dave Weldon noted in his letter to the CDC Director that this HMO had been in receivership by the state of Massachusetts because its records were in shambles. Yet, this study was able to make the embarrassing data from his previous study disappear. Attempts by Congressman Weldon to force the CDC to release the data to an independent researcher, Dr. Mark Geier, a researcher with impeccable credentials and widely published in peer-reviewed journals, have failed repeatedly.”
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The good old Big Pharma shill gambit. If Verstraeten was really so biased, why would he have reported any correlations between thimerosal and health problems in children at all?
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“It is obvious that a massive cover-up is in progress, as we have seen with so many other scandals – fluoride, food-based excitotoxins, pesticides, aluminum and now vaccines. I would caution those critical of the present vaccine policy not to put all their eggs in one basket, that is, with thimerosal as being the main culprit. There is no question that it plays a major role, but there are other factors that are also critical, including aluminum, fluoroaluminum complexes, and chronic immune activation of brain microglia.”
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Blaylock shows his true colors here I think. It isn’t obvious to me that any sort of cover-up is in progress.
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“In fact, excessive, chronic microglial activation can explain many of the effects of excessive vaccine exposure as I point out in two recently published articles.”
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I don’t know if Blaylock’s theories about chronic microglial activation have any merit. They only seem to have been published in alternative medicine journals. The point is that this meeting did not find any convincing evidence of a link between vaccine exposure and any problems at all.
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“In essence, too many vaccines are being given to children during the brain’s most rapid growth period. Known toxic metals are beings used in the vaccines that interfere with brain metabolism, antioxidant enzymes, damage DNA and DNA repair enzymes and trigger excitotoxicity. Removing the mercury will help but will not solve the problem because overactivation of the brain’s immune system will cause varying degrees of neurological damage to the highly-vulnerable developing brain.”
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The brain’s most rapid growth period is not necessarily the time when it is most sensitive to interference with its development. The evidence suggests that the developing brain is at its most sensitive before birth. This is discussed in the meeting, page 23 for example.
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I hope this explains why I think Blaylock is wrong in his assessments of the Simpsonwood meeting. Sorry it took such a long post to do so.

By: AndyD

AndyD — Thu, 13 May 2010 03:38:10 +0000

Obviously I’m not a research scientist but I’d think almost any result – positive, negative or neutral – can indicate a poorly designed study. What matters, I assume, is repeatability of results across several studies. When only one study shows a significant result, different to all other studies, that one study will likely be called into question and its methodology be investigated.
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Statistics, like chemistry, is another interesting area where “gut instinct” often brings the average person unstuck. For this reason, when one European lottery saw the very same numbers drawn two weeks in a row, people cried “foul” and an investigation was launched – but it really isn’t that remarkable that it happened.

By: oh please!

oh please! — Thu, 13 May 2010 00:31:20 +0000

Nescio thanks.
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The 2 bits that stand out for me (haven’t got the time now to scroll thru the paper to give you page no & speaker) :
1. One attendee discusses how his grandson(?) will be due for vaccination soon and he wants to make sure it doesn’t contain mercury. No one challenged him, it seemed that his opinion was that of the groups.
and
2. At some point towards the end they discuss a link between mercury and speech delay.
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And a question_ I read once where negative correlations can indicate a poorly designed study – is this correct?

By: Nescio

Nescio — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:28:13 +0000

Hi oh please!
I disagree. I think that Blaylock has used much the same ploy as Kennedy, I don’t think he gives an accurate picture of the discussions at that conference, and I don’t think the transcript shows that these people believed that mercury in vaccines was an issue. The participants were asked to rate the hypothesis that there is a link between mercury in vaccines and the neurological disorders discussed out of 6. All but one of them rated it as 1 or 2.
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Verstraeten’s study, which is at the heart of Blaylock’s claims, showed some weak correlations between number of vaccines given and some neurological disorders. These correlations were likely due to chance, to bias or to other confounding factors – some of the correlations were negative – more mercury, lower rates of disorders.
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Give me a couple of days and I will explain exactly where I think Blaylock has made several errors in his interpretations.

By: oh please!

oh please! — Wed, 12 May 2010 10:09:32 +0000

Nescio hi,
Yes I was referred to Kennedy’s article earlier on. Although I didn’t read all of it the first part clearly demonstrated that he was being less than honest in what he was presenting.

Blaylock has not, as far as I can tell used the same “out of context” ploy.
He actually builds an accurate picture of discussions surrounding his selected texts.
Of course the same event is experienced differently by different people. Maybe the same goes for reading.
If you can show me some specific errors in Blaylock’s interpretation then I’ll have another look.
I get that it was a meeting of professionals. They all came from various “arms” of the vaccine industry. I suspect that made the conversation a little more reserved and a bit harder for a reader to get the gist of it.
Like if a bunch of Bank CEO’s got together to talk about why their interest rates have increased over the reserve rate. The conversation would be different if the Federal Finance Minister was also there, and different again if the media was there.

In any case, my whole point was that collectively these people agreed to take no real action despite the fact that they believed that mercury in vaccines was an issue. It doesn’t help one to trust.

By: Nescio

Nescio — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:24:57 +0000

@oh please
I read a large chunk of the transcript you posted a link to, when it all started seeming very familiar. It has obviously been transcribed by someone with little familiarity with medical terminology, by the way, and parts of it are hard to interpret (‘HIV’ instead of ‘HIB’, ‘parental’ instead of ‘parenteral’, ‘miolionization’ instead of ‘myelinization’, and birth ‘rates’ when they mean birth ‘weights’).
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I quickly realized this was the very same meeting that R. F. Kennedy Jr claimed to prove that mercury in vaccines damages children and that this has been covered up, in an article some years ago in Rolling Stone magazine. I remember reading a takedown of RFK’s article, here: http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/06/robert_f_kenned.html I was shocked by his selective quote mining, and what appeared to be deliberate misunderstanding of what was discussed.
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I also looked at what Blaylock has written about it, here: http://www.whale.to/a/blaylock.html I quickly realized he had used the same tactics.
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I suggest you read Skeptico’s blog, which goes into detail about JFK Jr’s article. I think you will find it will put your mind at rest about the Simpsonwood meeting. To me it looks like a meeting of concerned professionals, looking at a potential problem with no preconceptions and examining the evidence with open minds before coming to the conclusion that there is no evidence that mercury in vaccines is a problem.

By: oh please!

oh please! — Thu, 06 May 2010 03:50:52 +0000

Andy, yes I get all that.
I had to scroll back to remember what we were talking about, lol
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OK – it was to support my point that there is a higher probability in the real world of an adverse reaction than in clinical trials.

By: AndyD

AndyD — Thu, 06 May 2010 03:29:56 +0000

@oh please… I understand that “flu-like symptoms” are listed as potential side effects from flu vaccines. I know that seems counter-intuitive (it bamboozled me for years) but I guess the point is that you are far less likely to suffer severe consequences, like death, from the vaccine than from the real thing.
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The symptoms we see from viral infection are the result of the immune system kicking in and doing its job (as I understand it in simple terms). Since vaccination also activates the immune system, it’s hardly surprising to see similar symptoms. The difference is that the vaccine is dead while the real virus isn’t and so the real thing can essentially fight back (multiply, etc) and lead to longer-lasting or more severe symptoms.
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Around 40,000 people a year die from flu in the US every year. I guess that means around 4000 must succumb in Australia. You father in-law isn’t one of them.

By: oh please!

oh please! — Wed, 05 May 2010 05:33:19 +0000

Thanks Maggie,
if someone can show me I’m wrong I’ll be happier than you think