A quick update on Nimrod Weiner from Newtown Community Chiropractic.
I get emails. And recently I was reminded of one I got back in June which somehow slipped from my consciousness. With all the negative attention Nimrod has been receiving of late the response from some authorities has been, “we can’t respond unless someone reports him.” Indeed, last month, chair of the Chiropractic Board of Australia urged people to make a formal complaint against Mr Weiner after Australian Doctor posted audio of his two-hour public lecture on the dangers of vaccination.
So I went back through my emails and found a complaint from Dr John Cunningham, forwarded to me and submitted to AHPRA (then passed onto the Chiropractic Council of NSW) on April 4th, 2011. Dr Cunningham received the following response on May 31st, 2011 (my emphasis).
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Really? So it’s okay for a registered health professional to disseminate false, misleading and dangerous information under the guises of “it’s my opinion”? But what if the evidence says the opposite, which in this case it most certainly does.
If you take a look at the references Weiner uses in the 4 pages of anti-vax rhetoric posted on his website (which was the subject of Cunningham’s complaint), and his 2-hr long lecture on “18 reasons to not vaccinate” (pdf of references here) you’ll find a grab-bag of some of the most prominent anti-vaxers. He cites all my favourite loons including the AVN and their previous publication “Informed Choice”, Not-a-doctor Andrew Wakefield, Viera “parsnip box” Scheibner, Joseph Mercola, Whale.to and Vaccine Information Service Australia or VISA (amongst others).
There’s a glass and a half of crazy right there.
Weiner also drags out the some of the old favourite canards of the antivaxers. See the following paragraph as an example of vaccines cause everything;
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“Other conditions linked to vaccination include pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), Asperger’s syndrome, eczema, encephalitis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, convulsions, seizures, anaphylaxis, thrombocytopenia, optic neuritis, ocular palsies, retinitis, deafness, otitis media, ulcerative colitis, bowel disease, Crohn’s disease, headaches, dizziness, hearing and vision problems, arthritis, arthralgia, learning disorders, chronic fatigue, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and more.”
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He doesn’t provide a reference for these claims.
And as usual, Weiner beats the dead horse of vaccines = autism
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“After years of denying a link between vaccination and autism, on November 9, 2007 the US government in Court of Federal Claims admitted that vaccines can cause autism.”
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The reference Weiner cites for this claim is David Kirby writing for the Huffington Post in 2008. Kirby is also the author of “Evidence of Harm” a book detailing the personal stories of parents of children who have autism who went onto establish the advocacy group SafeMinds. So there may be a conflict of interest in what Kirby has to say.
There also *may* have been some advances on our understanding of the evidence against a link between vaccines and autism – which have occurred since 2008, both in the courts and in the lab.
But despite the fact that Weiner claims to base his information on the latest science, he uses outdated references, claims Wakefield’s work is “sound” and uses scary language that has no basis in science.
There’s more…
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Robert Mendelsohn, MD writes: “My suspicion, which is shared by others in my profession, is that the nearly 10,000 SIDS deaths that occur in the U.S. each year are related to one or more of the vaccines that are routinely given to children.”
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My suspicion? So you don’t have any evidence for that then? The reference for this statement is simply Mendelsohn. Ibid:250 which makes no sense to me. In any case, Mendelsohn is well known for his “unusual ideas”.
For example, he has opposed water fluoridation, immunization, coronary bypass surgery, licensing of nutritionists, and screening examinations to detect breast cancer. He has a listing on Quackwatch and whale.to.
The spurious claims about vax go on for 4 pages and at last check they were still there. (I’m actually surprised it is still up given the criticism Weiner has been under of late. Perhaps his cognitive dissonance is so strong that he thinks he is right. Sadly, I suspect this is the case).
But whether Weiner thinks he is right and that vaccines are bad “in his opinion” is irrelevant when it comes to his role a health care professional, especially when dealing with kids. Remember he’s a pediatric chiropractor dealing with kids as young as one-day-old.
And science is not formed via opinion, it’s based on evidence and there is no evidence for just about everything he claims (even chiropractic subluxations actually).
The fact that the CCNSW thinks it’s okay says a lot about their responsible approach to chiros under their jurisdiction and patients.
This story was covered in Australian Doctor today and rest assured, we have not seen the last of the Weiner files. More to come very soon.
