Not-a-doctor Wakefield still a threat to childrens’ health
The news just keeps getting worse for (not-a-doctor) Andrew Wakefield.
First he got struck off the medical register in the UK, then his favourite paper was retracted from the Lancet, then the anti-vaxers favourite paper got withdrawn (which they still cite BTW*), then he was quietly removed from his job at Thoughtful House. Following his move to Texas in 2010, the phrase going around the internets was he “lost his career and his country”. Not only that, he also lost all respect from the scientific community and the chance to ever publish in the mainstream scientific literature ever again.
If you reap what you sow, then it appears Wakefield’s chickens have come home to roost – and these are not small chickens either. Imagine Brian Deer in a chicken costume, sitting aloft Wakefield’s tower, watching every move with beady eyes (well that was what I imagined anyway). Brian Deer of course being the “UK investigative journalist who exposed Wakefield’s Lancet work for not just “bad science” but for deliberate fraud. Deer has been on Wakefield’s case for some seven years now and was the first guy to blow the whistle on the now infamous paper which kicked-off the worldwide vaccines-cause-autism scare.
I’ve been following this case for a long time, so I knew the background well, but even I was shocked when I read the three part series published by the BMJ last week.
Deer provides evidence that Wakefield fabricated the clinical data for the 12 kids to make it appear they had suffered neurological disorders soon after they received their MMR. Wakefield had a business plan to set-up a company making kits to detect ulcerative colitis which was projected to make 72.5 million pounds a year. Wakefield received almost $AUD700,000 (plus expenses) from lawyers assembling a class action suit against the manufacturers of the MMR. The same lawyers had paid 50,000 pounds to fund the Lancet study. Wakefield had a patent for a single measles vaccine, which was projected to make him a very wealthy man once he had discredited the triple version.
And none of this was revealed to the journal before he published the paper. This constitutes a huge conflict of interest.
Of course, the reaction from the anti-vaxers has been predictable. Even Wakefield himself referred to Deer as hit-man sent by “them”. On Anderson Cooper in the US, Wakefield claimed it was an effort by the medical community to quash valid research into the safety of vaccines.
Which is interesting. Really interesting.
Because what was so revealing to me – out of all the revelations in the papers from the BMJ – was the fact that Wakefield was offered the chance to reproduce the results from the Lancet paper.
From “How the vaccine crisis was meant to make money“
“…UCL volunteered to support his work. It offered him continuation on the staff, or a year’s paid absence, to test his MMR theories. He was promised help for a study of 150 children (to try to replicate his Lancet claims from just 12) and, in return for withdrawing from the January London conference, he would be given the intellectual property free.
“Good scientific practice,” the provost’s letter stressed, “now demands that you and others seek to confirm or refute robustly, reliably, and above all reproducibly, the possible causal relationships between MMR vaccination and autism/“autistic enterocolitis”/inflammatory bowel disease that you have postulated.”
Then this:
“At the time, Wakefield agreed. Then his employer waited. It prompted, waited longer, and prompted again. “Three months have elapsed,” Llewellyn-Smith wrote to him in March 2000, asking for “a progress report on the study proposed” and “not to make any public statements” in the meantime.
But the study did not happen. The 1998 Lancet research had been a sham. Trying to replicate it with greater numbers would have been hopeless.
So Wakefield’s claims of “trying to quash valid vaccine research” are lies. He was given the opportunity to reproduce his work – he never did. And it all becomes clear why. A complex lie based on 12 children when amplified in 150, just becomes a bigger lie.
But it didn’t stop Wakefield from spiralling further down the rabbit hole. I hoped he might have retreated into a corner somewhere, maybe to slap out some more fictional books with forwards by our favourite Mommy warrior, Jenny McCarthy. But given that the man has an ego the size of a buffet in Vegas, sadly, this has not happened.
Instead, yesterday it was revealed on Twitter by @sthmnookin and @doctorblogs that he’s back stomping the pavements trying to recruit patients for his next favourite woo autism therapy. This time, instead of parents recruited by a law firm, he’s targeting the Somalian population of Minnesota who reportedly have a higher than usual occurrence of autism.
On January 18th it was announced that the CDC, the NIH and Autism Speaks National would begin a study to investigate this anomoly among Somali-Americans in Minneapolis. The Minnesota Department of Health released a report in 2009 confirming higher rates of Somali-American kids participating in special education classes for children with autism in Minneapolis. But it’s still unclear whether these data are real or artificially inflated because Somali parents prefer to enroll their children in school-based programs, as opposed to seeking help from autism specialists in the medical community. You can read more about it here.
So Wakefield, given that he is incapable of understanding he is a danger to children, has jumped on the bandwagon, sticking his fraudulent nose where it doesn’t belong and addressing a group of parents at a local restaurant in an effort to recruit patients for his own study.
This screen cap was published on Twitter by @doctorblogs and retweeted by @sethmnookin
So essentially Wakefield wants to use the Somali kids as more guinea pigs – as he did in his Lancet study – with the unproven and potentially dangerous therapy of hyperbaric chamber treatment for autism. According to the newspaper clipping, many parents have already signed up. And why wouldn’t they. There is no cure for autism, we don’t even know yet what combination of factors cause it. So of course desperate and vulnerable parents are only willing to agree to participate, even if it potentially puts their kids’ health at risk and in the knowledge that Wakefield is a fraud.
How much more harm can Wakefield do? Sadly, it seems a lot.
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Click to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of the Lancet’s investigations.
*when a paper is withdrawn or retracted it can be for a number of reasons, including the work has been published elsewhere, something fundamentally wrong with the data has been detected or the data is deemed to be fraudulent. Only under exceptional circumstances will a paper be retracted or withdrawn. When it happens, it means you can no longer refer to it or “cite” it – it has essentially been scratched from the scientific record (even if it is cached on InfoWarriors).
Chiropractors making more ridiculous claims
Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of the trouble chiropractors have been getting into of late.
The backlash from the BCA decision to sue Simon Singh back in 2009 resulted in a huge Streisand Effect for the profession. Attempting to silence Singh with legal chill had many knock-on effects including one in every four chiropractors in the UK being investigated for making false claims in their advertising. To avoid prosecution, the McTimoney chiropractors emailed all their members and instructed them to take down their websites and “remove information leaflets that state you treat whiplash, colic or other childhood problems in your clinic..”.
Here in Australia we haven’t seen anything as hysterical as this, but our paranoid friends over at the AVN were clearly worried, issuing a warning in their Nov 2010 newsletter that sceptics were posing as clients and reporting chiros to the authorities.
To me, this seems like a silly way to go about reporting chiros – paying them. It’s much simpler to just take a look at their websites or promotional material. Just like the anti-vax handouts I was given by Nimrod “I’m not anti-vaccine, i just don’t recommend it” Weiner, whom I’ve blogged about previously.
Of course, none of this would be a problem if they simply operated within their code of conduct and stuck to cracking backs.
So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see this claim in a leaflet sent to me by a friend earlier today:
The text says; IQ – A study demonstrated an increase in visual perception, motivation, performance and 100% of the sample group showed an increase in IQ.
One hundred percent of the sample group showed an increase in IQ? Wow, what an extraordinary claim! You’ll note there is no reference provide for this “study”, but if you want one, why not contact them through their website. (The page above is taken from a newsletter from October 2007).
As @cactopos suggested on Twitter; “I guess you could argue that alternative medicine increases everyone else’s IQ thru a process of natural selection?”. Touche Cactopos.
Wakefield called a fraud, journo hangs up on Dorey and a class action filed against Power Balance.
Well, well. Another week has gone by here in the land down under and there is yet more good news to report. And plenty of it.
Where to start? Well how about with the darling of the anti-vaccine movement, Andrew Wakefield who took another mighty blow yesterday. The BMJ revealed they are to publish a series of articles by Brian Deer alleging that Wakefield was deliberately fraudulent in his 1998 research, which began a worldwide scare that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism.
An editorial in the British medical journal referred to “that paper” as it has become known, as an “elaborate fraud”. Worse still, the investigation concluded that Wakefield misrepresented or altered the medical histories of the 12 children to fit his hypothesis that MMR was associated with regressive autism. When Deer compared the reports in the paper with the medical records he found they did not match.
The editor-in-chief of BMJ said Wakefield’s work “was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud.”
And finally, the media seems to be losing their patience with the anti-vaxers (although recall they were completely complicit in spreading the fear about MMR safety, so they need to cop some of the flack here).
Anderson Cooper of 360 on CNN, interviewed Wakefield via Skype from the Vaccine Safety Conference, held in Jamaica from January 3-8 at the Tryall Club, Jamaica, West Indies. Wakefield refers to the conference in the interview as a “meeting of experts on vaccines from around the world who are extremely concerned about the safety of vaccines”. Looking at the speaker’s list I am skeptical that Barbara Loe Fisher & Russell Blaylock constitute “experts on vaccines” – certainly they constitute experts on vaccine conspiracy. Some of the other speakers had me confused, for example Beatrice Golomb (MD, PhD) is speaking on “Representation of drug benefits versus harm: the impact of conflict of interest”. (Read: Irony).
“Fears of global pandemics have been used by the World Health Organization and governments around the world to push for increasingly aggressive vaccination programs. While questions about vaccine safety continue to be raised, concerns have largely been downplayed by governments, regulatory agencies, and the pharmaceutical industry…The conference conclusions can be expected to have a profound impact on the development of health policies concerning vaccines and will serve to provide a science-based overview for the general public.”
Pre-amable for Vaccine Safety Conference.
Speaking of the media losing their patience with the antivaxers, a journalist in Australia today not only tossed away the book on false balance but tore it in half, set it on fire and stomped on it too.
In an interview about the Wakefield findings, Tracey Spicer of Radio 2UE constantly interrupted Meryl Dorey and eventually hung up on her declaring she would never be on the station again with her “dangerous, disgusting, disgraceful information”. It was one of the most refreshing interviews I’ve ever heard with Dorey, who is usually pandered to by the mainstream media in the interest of “balance”. Watch the video below for the full audio.
When the audio made it to Twitter, there was an explosion of interest and pretty soon “Tracey Spicer”, #stopAVN and Meryl Dorey were top trending topics in Australia. Very quickly the word spread globally and retweets from Simon Singh and Phil Plait appeared. Late last night, PZ Myers blogged the audio. The old adage all publicity is good publicity does not really apply to being ridiculed or pharyngulated on PZ Myers website.
Meryl has since responded with a blog post and an interview in the Northern Star entitled “Dorey backs fraud medico” where she explains why she “support(s) Andrew Wakefield 100%.…I applaud his integrity, ethics and desire to help children nobody else will.” (Which is odd because when she was asked if she still supported Wakefield as recent as July 2010, she had trouble answering that question).
From interview with the 2Murrays, 2UE, 130710. Full interview here.
.2Murrays: You’d know the name of a guy called Andrew Wakefield
MD: I do know Andrew Wakefield.
2murrays: Do you guys still support him?
MD: We support any research….
2murrays: No, no, no, no, no. Do you still support him?
MD: Do I support him? I don’t give him any money of that’s what you mean
2murrays: No but verbally, aw, you support him? (his ideas) Because he was stuck off the UK medical register.
MD: We know many cases where people have been struck off because they didn’t agree with the medical community…
Prof Booy from the NCIRS described her claims that there are dozens of peer reviewed studies showing a link between vaccines and autism as “laughable”. After what the BMJ revealed this week, on top of all the other evidence against Wakefield, those who continue to cling to him succeed only in making them selves irrelevant.
So finally, there was trouble in the Power Balance camp this week as the ACCC story eventually hit international headlines, when popular magazine Gizmodo tweeted “power balance admits their wristbands are a scam”.
PB have been laying pretty love since the ACCC findings came down on December 22, quietly removing the link to the Australian store from their website. But as the news spread and people start tweeting questions about whether this news was true, they went into a kind of damage control, just not a very good one. Picking up on “power balance admits their” they tweeted a series of comments completing the sentence. For example “power balance admits their international fans are awesome” and “power balance admits their products are worn by the top athletes in every sport across the globe” (neither of which provide any evidence that they work).
But then PB did something very strange. They tweeted
# The existing reports out there r fundamentally incorrect. We did not make claims that r product doesnt perform. We stand behind r products
# Power Balance works, we guarantee it.
Which simply opened the flood gates for satire as people began to suggest ideas as to why the magic hologram only didn’t work in Australia. Perhaps it didn’t like being upside down, some suggested. Maybe we’re just too smart for it.
But then overnight news came down that a class action suit has been filed in the US. According to TMZ, the class action lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in L.A., alleges consumers were duped into believing the hologram-embedded band was scientifically proven to enhance balance, flexibility and strength. Now on the back of the admission to ACCC that they had “no credible scientific evidence that supported the representations” the suit alleges unfair business practices and false advertising.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Power Balance have apparently sold around 3 million units since 2007. Will this be the end of a hugely successful marketing campaign? Only time will tell. Despite this, people are still tweeting asking where they can buy a PB bracelet. As the old saying goes “a fool and his money are soon parted.”
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@lizDitz is compiling a list of news articles reporting on Wakefield’s fraud.
You can find a pdf with 41 studies showing no link to vaccines and autism here
Power Balance Admits Their…..bad publicity has gone viral
Earlier today, the popular website Gizmodo tweeted a link to the story that Power Balance had admitted their products do not work and as a result were offering refunds in Australia.
This was retweeted by many people, including Adam Savage from Mythbusters who has almost 400,000 followers.
Pretty soon after, the phrase “Power Balance admits” was the second most popular topic trending worldwide – behind Macaulay Cullkin whose girlfriend apparently dumped him today (insert joke here about “home alone”. Other people have. Not my fault).
You can see that even as I kept refreshing the page, many more tweets were occurring. In this screen shot, there are 1,554 more tweets since I started searching just a few minutes earlier.
It took some time for Power Balance to respond, but respond they did, initially with this.
The link goes to the statement reproduced below:
Per the ruling from the ACCC, we are working to correct the marketing and advertising claims made by Power Balance in Australia. As we have always done, we are offering any dissatisfied customers a full refund through our 30-day no questions asked money back policy. To be clear, we are permitted to continue selling Power Balance in Australia. This is simply a matter of correcting prior marketing claims. From its inception, Power Balance has lived and thrived in the ultimate testing environment, the real world. Power Balance is committed to every athlete in the world from professional to recreational. We have heard from fitness professionals, athletes, coaches, personal trainers and everyday users who tell us they have experienced benefits from Power Balance for themselves, their clients and teams. While we continue to see, hear and learn about how people all around the world believe that our products have positively affected their lives, we will continue to invest both our time and resources in producing the best and most innovative products.
Which basically says that even though they admitted that “there is no scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct” people have told us our product is good n’stuff so, hey, whatever! What followed was a series of truly pathetic tweets, one can only guess, designed to distract people from the elephant on the tweet stream.
Which only set them up for satire from everyone following this sad affair.
Did someone say PWNED?
—— UPDATE:
The international media has picked up on this story overnight and there are now dozens of stories appearing all over the globe. Power Balance has gone into damage control on their Twitter feed, asserting that:
# The existing reports out there r fundamentally incorrect. We did not make claims that r product doesnt perform. We stand behind r products
about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck
# Power Balance works, we guarantee it.
about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck
They have since been hammered even more for directly contradicting the statement on their own website which says; “In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility. We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct in breach of s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.”
Power Balance bracelets are ‘no better than a rubber band’: A-list accessory maker forced to give refunds by advertising watchdog – The Daily Mail
PowerBalance Admits There’s No Proof It Works – The Consumerist
Power Balance says no science behind wristbands – Sports Illustrated
Power Balance: No science behind wristbands – CBS Sports
Maker admits no science behind popular bracelets – Chicago Tribune
Transparency of drug regulator under review
We’re on a bit of a roll here in Oz with crackdowns on alternative medicine, and there was even more news this week with the announcement of the removal of a number of complementary medicines from sale by the TGA.
In a spot check on about 400 products, 9 out of 10 were found to breach regulations. As a result a ”significant number” of products were removed from the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods or ARTG, which currently lists 10,250 complementary medicines, including vitamins, minerals and herbal preparations. The breaches, largely relating to false claims of curative powers on labels, means the products can no longer be legally sold. Which products have been removed and precisely why, was not revealed by the TGA.
The complementary medicine business is worth over 4 billion dollars a year in Australia, but evidence that they work is not required by the TGA before they are assigned an official looking number and appear on the shelf of your local pharmacy next to aspirin and cough medicine.
Instead, the TGA operates a “self assessment” online registration system and undertakes post market reviews where approximately 25% of products are randomly selected for a review of their labels, product specifications and summary of evidence. Although the TGA website states “… evidence must be held by sponsors which demonstrates the indications and claims are true, valid and not misleading” the latest review indicates this is clearly not the case for the majority of products. A second issue is that even when products are removed from the listing, manufacturers can simply go back on line and re-register the product under a different name effectively getting it listed again in 24 hrs.
There are two types of drugs and clinical devices controlled by the TGA, those which have been evaluated for safety, quality and efficacy are designated a number preceded by “AUST R”. An example is antibiotics or hay fever medication bought over the counter at the chemist or even low risk products such as cough medicines. According to the TGA website, “The degree of assessment and regulation they undergo is rigorous and detailed, with sponsors being required to provide comprehensive safety, quality and efficacy data.”
On the flipside, “AUST L” are called listed products and include complementary and supplementary medicines such as homeopathy, ear candles and detox kits, many of which have not gone through clinical testing or indeed have any scientific evidence that they work (in the case of ear candles there is evidence that they cause harm). Listed medicines are considered by the TGA to be of lower risk than registered medicines, thus they are not assessed for efficacy by the TGA but only for quality and safety.
Clearly the problem here is the TGA’s reliance on “self assessment” as a means for determining a product’s efficacy. But it gets worse when you scrutinise precisely what they define as evidence for these products.
There are two streams of “evidence” accepted by the TGA, one being scientific and the other “traditional use”. Traditional use refers to documentary evidence that a substance has been used over three or more generations for a specific health related or medicinal purpose. Traditional therapies include Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), traditional Ayurvedic medicine, traditional western herbal medicine, traditional homoeopathic medicine*, aromatherapy and other indigenous medicines.
Further, there are also increasing levels of evidence within this, the greater your evidence the more claims you are entitled to make. For example, three independent written histories of use in the classical or traditional medical literature are acceptable and/or availability through any country’s government public dispensaries. So this includes chiropractic in Australia and homeopathy in the UK.
Recently the TGA announced a comprehensive review of the way it communicates regulatory processes and decisions to the public in an effort to improve transparency. The aim of the overhaul is multifaceted but one aspect is to ensure that the Australian public is better informed about the benefits and risks of therapeutic goods, including all medicines and devices. In particular the TGA aims to inform consumers that they do not test AUST L drugs, and as such cannot guarantee that they work as claimed.
So the TGA will continue to accept AUST L products for listing under the clearly flawed self-assessment programme and as a method for improving transparency, inform consumers that their system doesn’t really work. It’s also worth noting that as a consumer you are free to make a complaint about a TGA listed products, and if they agree the product has breached regulations, the complaints resolution panel will issue retraction orders to the company. However if the company chooses to ignore the sanctions, the TGA will not enforce them. Between 30 and 50% of companies called out for making false claims do ignore the sanctions and the TGA has never made a prosecution for refusing to comply. Another issue concerning transparency for the general public is they results of an investigation by the TGA do not appear on their website for up to 6 months. So a consumer searching the web has little chance of knowing that the product is making false claims.
This black hole where TGA complaints disappear was covered by ABCs Lateline programme earlier this year with respect to a Homeopathy website which claimed they could cure cancer and AIDS with water. When the story broke the owner of the website not only continued to ignore the sanctions but jumped the shark by publishing a response to the story replete with dozens of spurious links as to why their claims were correct.
One would hope that the review currently up for public comment will address and correct some of these issues. As it stands the burden is on the consumer to determine whether a product works or not, as an official looking AUST L number is no guarantee that the product does what it claims. And according to the recent review, 9 out of ten product don’t. Asking a pharmacist – which is where many of them end up – whether the product works can also be hit as miss and myself and Richard Saunders have experienced when enquiring of pharmacists about homoeopathy and being told it was “herbal”.
If you are in Australia you can submit comment to the review by February 11th. The panel are asking for submissions from health professional and the general public on topics such as about instances where it could have been useful for you to have had access to better information about your medicine, supplement or device and how you would like to have access to this information whether through your pharmacist or on the internet.
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Comment from the Sydney Morning Herald here
More from the Sydney Morning Herald here
* One wonders what defines “traditional homoeopathic medicine”. Perhaps it’s homeopathy prior to the “water has a memory” theory – a fairly recent invention – to get around that pesky Avogadro’s number which dictates that after a certain level of dilution there are no molecules of the active ingredient remaining. Homeopaths get around this problem by saying that the water maintains a memory of the original substance. But conveniently the water does not remember all the other things it has seen such as faeces, parasites, viruses and other nasties.
Holy haleakala! Bad Universe coming to Australia!
Aussies who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing Phil Plait’s wonderful Discovery show Bad Universe, you’re in for a treat!
Bad Universe will be screening here in 2011 on Foxtel/Austar. I’ve just been advised that the first episode, Asteroid Apocalypse, will screen on Discovery Channel on Sunday January 16th at 7:30 pm. Alien Attack follows a week later (7:30 pm on 23 January 2011) then Death Stars on 30 January 2011 also at 7:30 pm (check local guides for details).
Don’t miss the first episode where Phil destroys Sydney with an asteroid. Don’t blame him, it was the producers idea. Sure Phil. Holy haleakala to you too.
Thank you to Mark Dawson for the tip off.
Cartoon by Richard Saunders
Power Balance admits to false/misleading claims
In a move that has been welcomed by skeptical groups all over the world, an Australian consumer watchdog group, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has instructed Power Balance to cease making misleading claims about their silicone bracelets.
The performance sports bracelets, which have gained considerable popularity via high profile athlete endorsements, have become an essential fashion accessory around the globe, making millions for the company. Their popularity has also sparked dozens of copy cat products, to such an extent that the company established a section on their website where consumers can report a fake.
The bracelets cost between $30 and $60 AUD and the pendants $90 and are claimed to increase strength, performance and flexibility. The “magic” is in the embedded hologram which is designed to “resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body”. But when asked to provide evidence for such claims, Power Balance admitted that “there is no credible scientific basis for the claims and therefore no reasonable grounds for making representations about the benefits of the product”. A toll free Power Balance refund line has been set up and refunds are bring offered to all consumers who felt they have been misled.
In a press release today, the ACCC announced that claims made by Power Balance had been found to breach section 52 of the Trade Practices Act and as such the following undertakings were to be made. Power Balance must:
• remove misleading claims from their website and packaging
• publish advertising informing consumers that they made claims that could not be substantiated
• offer refunds to all consumers who feel they may have been misled
In a further unprecedented move, the ACCC has also instructed the company to remove the words “performance technology” from the band itself, presumably meaning they will have to manufacture new stock.
And in a further shake up, the ACCC has indicated that retailers who continue to sell the bands in their current form also risk prosecution. This is certainly a blow for the company, as it effectively means they will have to withdraw all their current stock during a period when many manufacturing companies are winding down for the Christmas break.
In the press release, ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said, “Suppliers of these types of products must ensure that they are not claiming supposed benefits when there is no supportive scientific evidence,”
“Consumers should be wary of other similar products on the market that make unsubstantiated claims, when they may be no more beneficial than a rubber band.”
It appears Power Balance may have already begun to comply with the ruling as a visit to the “learn more” section of the Australian website turns up a “coming soon” (the US site still contains information such as “optimizing the body’s natural energy “and “the hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body.”)
The bands have been the subject of considerable media attention in 2010, not all of it flattering, however it apparently hasn’t made much of a dent in their sales. When Richard Saunders showed unequivocally that the bracelets didn’t work in a blind test on national television, the website crashed from increased traffic.
In October, Choice magazine awarded them a Shonky for the “stronger, bendier, balanceder, dumber” product of 2010. Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn described the product as “the only effect that the power balance band has is in emptying your wallet”. They were later named “a bare faced con” by Channel Nine’s A Current Affair.
The ACCC ruling might be the first move to make a dent in the enormous success of this expensive placebo in Australia. Unlike the HCCC and the TGA, the ACCC has a history of taking legal action against companies that continue to practice misleading and deceptive conduct. This includes the alternative health providers Advanced Allergy Elimination and NuEra.
Since Power Balance bands will likely be off the shelves of Australian stores for a while, why not get yourself a Placebo Band. They’re only two dollars, all profits go to charity, and they’re honest about what they do!
Want to know how the tricks tricks used by Power Balance and other similar products work? Watch the video on applied kinesiology below.
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A big hug to Richard Saunders who has worked tirelessly to expose the shonkiness that is Power Balance.
UPDATE: Power Balance have now published this corrective ad on their website.
UPDATE 02/01/10: There have been many copy-cat products produced as a result of the huge success of Power Balance. One such product is HotBand which Richard Saunders wrote about here .
Our mate Chris Higgins decided to take up the challenge to get a large chain of discount pharmacies to remove these from their shelves and today we can report he has had some success. Chris writes on his blog today that he was informed the bracelets have been “recalled” and are no longer sold by Chemist Warehouse. Win!
2010: The year in science, skepticism and woo.
What were your highlights for science and scepticism in 2010?
There were some big “wins” for critical thinking in 2010, but sadly alternative medicine and scams continued to abound, with the explosion in popularity of Power Balance bracelets a very good example of the continuing gullibility of the general public. On the plus side, the anti-vaccination movement continued to take hits, with Andrew Wakefield being struck off the UK medical register and the AVN losing their charity license and being called a threat to public health and safety by the HCCC.
And of course the year ended with a bang, with Australia’s largest sceptical convention ever to come to Australia, TAMOz, held in Sydney in November.
Below are just a few of the events I feel contributed to a very exciting and positive year in scepticism, plus some of the not so positive, as a reminder of why we need keep pushing the message of critical thinking. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and if you have one you think I have missed feel free to leave it in the comments.
January 30th: Ten23 – worldwide homeopathy overdose.
The brainchild of the Merseyside Skeptics Society, Ten23 was designed to inform the public that “homeopathy: there’s nothing in it”. It was a huge success, attracting extensive media coverage across the UK. The event was mirrored in Perth, Sydney and also very successfully in New Zealand where Christchurch’s Vicki Hyde received significant media attention for her role in organising events across the pond. Events for 2011 are already being organised and the campaign looks to be even bigger this time around.
The Ten23 protest in the UK was designed to demonstrate that there's nothing in homeopathy.
At the Ten23 protest in Sydney, some participants fell asleep almost 12 hrs after "overdosing" but woke up 8 hrs later.
In the UK the pharmacy Boots came under fire for admitting they sell homeopathic products, not because they work but because people want them.
February 22nd: UK Committee on Science and Technology Evidence Check says homeopathy doesn’t work.
Following the investigation, committee chairman Phil Willis MP said; “We were seeking to determine whether the Government’s policies on homeopathy are evidence based on current evidence. They are not.”
The report recommended that the National Health Service (the public purse in the UK) no longer fund homeopathy. The report also;
- Recommend no further clinical trials of homeopathy.
- Found evidence for homeopathy working was lacking.
- Explanations for why homeopathy works are “scientifically implausible.”
- Committee viewed homeopathy as placebo.
Despite these recommendations, on July 26th it was announced that homeopathy was to remain on the NHS.
March 10th: Libel case against Paul Offit and Amy Wallace dismissed.
Two days before Christmas in 2009, Barbara Loe Fisher from the US-based anti-vaccination group National Vaccine Information Council (NVIC), filed a $1 million claim that Dr. Paul Offit had libeled her in Wallace’s “Wired” article “An epidemic of Fear, One Man’s Battle Against the Anti-Vaccine Movement“.
The offending paragraph is reproduced below.
“Offit is quick-witted, funny, and — despite a generally mild-mannered mien — sometimes so assertive as to seem brash. “Scientists, bound only by reason, are society’s true anarchists,” he has written — and he clearly sees himself as one. “Kaflooey theories” make him crazy, especially if they catch on. Fisher, who has long been the media’s go-to interview for what some in the autism arena call “parents rights,” makes him particularly nuts, as in “You just want to scream.” The reason? “She lies,” he says flatly.”
Loe Fisher took exception to the statement “she lies”, and named her price of USD1million. Condé Nast, the publisher of Wired Magazine, was also named in the suit. Bloggers reflected on the propensity of the anti-medicine crowd to resort to legal action when they are unable to defend their positions with evidence. The suit was dismissed before it could be heard, and the court’s decision is detailed below:
“In this case, the article’s quotation of Defendant Offit’s comment that Plaintiff “lies” cannot reasonably be understood to suggest, as the Complaint alleges, that Plaintiff is “a person lacking honesty and integrity . . . [who should be] shunned or excluded by those who seek information and opinion upon which to rely.” Rather, the context of the remark – in a lengthy article describing an emotional and highly charged debate about an important public issue over which Defendant Offit and Plaintiff have diametrically opposed views – plainly signals to readers that plainly signals to readers that they should expect emphatic language on both sides and should accordingly understand that the magazine is merely reporting Defendant Offit’s personal opinion of Ms. Arthur’s [Barbara Loe Fisher’s] views.”
This is not the first time this has happened and likely won’t be the last. However, with the rise of the grass roots skeptical movement, it is becoming harder for anti-vaxers and others without evidence on their side, to hide behind “legal chill”.
March 12th: US Vaccine Court rules thiomerosal does not cause autism.
The claim that autism is linked to vaccinations, and in particular the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, took a further blow in March with the US Court of Federal Claims rejecting claims in three separate cases that the mercury-containing preservative, thimerosal, causes autism. Three cases selected from a pending class action of thousands, ruled on by three judges called ‘special masters’, were chosen as test cases as they were considered to be among the strongest proposed.
Special Master George L Hastings wrote in his judgement on one case that “This case … is not a close case. The overall weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners’ causation theories.”
Patricia Campbell-Smith, special master on another case, said that “The petitioners’ theory of vaccine-related causation is scientifically unsupportable.” Sadly this has not changed some parents perception that vaccines cause autism.
April 15th: The BCA drops its case against Simon Singh
The BCA brought a claim for libel against Simon Singh after an article he wrote describing the BCA as happily promoting bogus treatments. Justice Eady agreed with the BCA’s interpretation, that Singh had made a serious allegation of dishonesty. However, the Court of Appeal ruled Singh’s comments were expression of an “honest opinion”.
On April 15th, the BCA withdrew the case. In a statement they wrote: “The BCA takes seriously its duty and responsibilities to members and to chiropractic patients. The BCA have considered taking leave to take this matter to the Supreme Court and has been advised that there are strong grounds for appeal against the court of judgement appeal. However, while it was right to bring the claim at the outset, the BCA now feels that the time is right for the matter to draw to a close.” You can read a summary of events here.
Even though Singh effectively “won” the case, it still cost him thousands of pounds of his own money (and he will never recoup it all). Importantly, his case prompted changes to the UK libel laws which are currently ongoing.
April 23rd: FluVax® Junior suspended for under 5s after increased adverse reactions.
The seasonal flu vaccine was suspended for kids under five years of age after 55 children suffered convulsions following the vaccination, and almost 200 others suffered fevers and vomiting.
A task force convened by the CDC and headed by Nobel laureate Professor Peter Doherty did not find a conclusive cause for the convulsions but the “current working hypothesis” was that the strain of swine flu used in this year’s seasonal flu vaccine appeared to contain a higher than usual level of a protein called neuraminidase.
The problems were confined to CSL’s FluVax® Junior preparation and its use in under fives remains suspended. However two other brands of flu vaccine for children are safe and continue to be administered. An autopsy following the sudden death of a two-year-old Brisbane girl 12 hours after she received the flu jab, could not be linked to the vaccine.
May 24th: Andrew Wakefield struck off the UK medical register.
The Wakefield investigation was the longest in the history of the GMC, with the disciplinary panel sitting for a total of 148 days over a period of 2 and a half years at an estimated cost of one million pounds. The results of the investigation were revealed in a 143 page report on 28th January 2010, and found that Wakefield showed a “callous disregard” for childrens’ suffering and “abused his position of trust.”
Timeline: February 1998: The Lancet study published, suggesting MMR vaccine might be linked to a higher risk of bowel disorders. Wakefield suggests at a press conference that MMR may overload a child’s immune system, thus planting the seeds for MMR = autism.
January 2001: Dr Wakefield claims that the combined MMR vaccine has not undergone proper safety tests. Ostracised by the British medical community, Dr Wakefield and his family move to Texas.
February 2004: The Lancet announces a partial retraction of the 1998 paper, on grounds of “a fatal conflict of interest” — The Sunday Times has reported that Dr Wakefield received £55,000 from the Legal Aid Board for research to support legal action by parents who claimed that their children had been harmed by MMR. The UK GMC announces an investigation.
March 2005: Japanese scientists say they have evidence that the MMR vaccination is not linked to a rise in autism: cases increased after withdrawal of the MMR jab. Studies in Britain and elsewhere support this.
July 2007: The GMC hearing against Dr Wakefield and two of his colleagues begins. It is expected to last four months.
February 2010: The Lancet retracts the 1998 paper. Neurotoxicology retracts an article in press from Wakefield. He resigns from Thoughtful House.
May 2010: After the longest investigation in the history of the GMC, Wakefield is struck of after being found guilty of “multiple separate instances of serious professional misconduct”. He is found to have “abused his position of trust” and brought the medical profession into disrepute. “Callous Disregard” (with forward by Jenny McCarthy) published.
The last medline indexed peer reviewed paper you will find from Wakefield was published in 2006. A search for “Wakefield AJ” on PubMed brings up 112 hits. Wakefield was a prolific, extensively published and competent researcher. Sadly, he now tweets links to anti-vaccine groups and publishes in the woo/conspiracy fest journal, Medical Hypotheses. He will likely never publish in mainstream science journals again.
July 12th: HCCC report calling the AVN “misleading” released.
After a 12 month investigation the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) finally handed down their findings into the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN).
The commission concluded; the AVN provide misleading information about vaccination and must post disclaimers on their website clearly stating they are anti-vaccination.
The report found evidence that the AVN misleads readers by using reliable and peer reviewed literature but selectively quotes from it, often in contradiction to the conclusions or findings of the studies. The AVN also gives non-peer reviewed and anecdotal material the same authority as peer-reviewed literature. The findings were covered in an exclusive story by Steve Cannane on Lateline, where he famously caught Meryl Dorey out denying she had written something; “Did I say that? I don’t believe I did..”.
July 26th: Public Warning about the AVN released.
Following the refusal
by the AVN to place a disclaimer on their website, the HCCC issued a public warning about their misleading information.
This resulted in a surge in interest by the media and the Streisand Effect taking hold. The AVN were in the spotlight, but for all the wrong reasons. For the first time, we began to see them referred to as “anti-vaccine” by the mainstream media. Their arrogance in refusing to put the HCCC disclaimer on their website had well and truly backfired.
July 31st: Coroner finds cancer death due to “misinformation”.
Penelope Dingle died in 2005 from untreated bowel cancer aged 45, after being diagnosed in 2003. She first presented with bleeding from the bowel in 2001. Following a colonoscopy, she was advised by doctors to have surgery to remove the cancer. She declined conventional cancer treatment, instead deciding on following a regimen of alternative treatments including special diets, vitamins and homeopathy.
State Coroner Alastair Hope found that homeopath Francine Scrayen convinced the ailing woman she could cure her cancer. By the time Mrs Dingle agreed to emergency surgery for a complete bowel obstruction, she was in severe pain and her bowel was almost at the point of splitting open. She would have died within 24 hours if she had not had the emergency surgery.
According to evidence given at the inquest from friends of Mrs Dingle and from her diaries, she and her husband, Dr Dingle made a pact with homeopath Francine Scrayen to not take any conventional treatment including pain relief. Dr Dingle also planned to write a book about how to cure cancer with homeopathy and alternative treatments once his wife was cured. Another case for What’s the Harm in homeopathy?
August 2nd: The Australian Medical Association issues a warning about the AVN.
September 1st: The AVN in trouble for copyright breaches
An article from the Sydney Morning Herald describes:
“an anti-vaccination group is under fire for allegedly breaching copyright laws by selling newspaper and medical journal articles online without permission from the authors.
The packs, which were selling for up to $128, included home-made books filled with articles photocopied from journals around the world, information on drugs taken from MIMS, the medical guide used by doctors and nurses, and copies of brochures inserted in medication boxes by pharmaceutical companies.
Under the Copyright Act, articles can be copied for personal research or for use by students but cannot be disseminated widely or sold.”
In response, Meryl said she was “unaware she had breached copyright”. This is despite the fact that she is listed as the editor of her own publication Living Wisdom which has this permission to reproduce policy inside the magazine: “Whilst reproduction and dissemination of the information found in Living Wisdom is actively encouraged (unless otherwise stated), it is expressly forbidden for anyone to reproduce any of this information for the purpose of profit…”. Hypocrites much?
September 3-6th: “Hug me! I’m vaccinated” free vaccine clinic at Dragon*Con.
The brain child of Skepchick’s Elyse Anders, the clinic was set up in an empty shop front for the Labour Day weekend and offered free pertussis boosters and HIV testing to coincide with the world’s largest Sci-Fi convention in Atlanta, Georgia. In the midst of an epidemic of pertussis, in which 10 babies have already died in California, the clinic exhausted their supplies of vaccine by the end of the weekend.
Elyse wasn’t able to attend Dragon*Con since her baby had not yet received all of his shots for pertussis thus making the risk of him attending too great.
Elyse has recently been the subject of an Age of Autism smear campaign for her work in getting a SafeMinds ad pulled from cinemas during the US Thanksgiving Weekend. You can read about it here. The power of Twitter, the popularity of which has exploded in 2010, was effectively harnessed to mobilise the masses and get these ads stopped.
October 20th: The AVN loses their charity license.
Following a complaint submitted by Wendy Wilkinson, the OLGR audited the AVN and found breaches sufficient for the revocation of their charity license. These include a number of breaches of charity laws, including fundraising without an authority, unauthorised expenditure and failure to keep proper records of income and expenditure.
The revocation means the AVN is only able to solicit funds from current members not from members of the public, which has been a big blow for them financially. An appeal scheduled to be heard on December 10th was postponed.
The OLGR said it had also identified possible breaches of the Charitable Trust Act which will be referred to the NSW Department of Justice and the Attorney General. There are substantial penalties for these offences, including fines of up to $5,500 per offence or jail time. These investigations are ongoing. Ms Dorey continues to plead her innocence.
October 26th: Choice Magazine awards Power Balance a Shonky.
Power Balance, the $60 piece of rubber claimed to improve your strength and balance, was declared a bare faced con at the annual Choice Shonky Awards held in Sydney. The Choice website says; “with some reluctance, we highlight the inherent shonkiness of the Power Balance bracelet – reluctance, because when Australian Skeptics demonstrated on Today Tonight that it patently didn’t do anything, subsequent sales skyrocketed: apparently any publicity is good publicity after all. We CHOICE sceptics did our own testing under controlled laboratory conditions – after all, you can’t believe everything you see on TV – and verified the Skeptics’ findings. So, if a fool and his money are soon parted, there are apparently plenty of fools out there – and they’re all conveniently identified with a rubber band bracelet.”
November 28th: TAM Australia declared a stupendous success!
Photo credit: Gail Miller, Victorian Skeptics.
With over 620 delegates, 51 speakers, 2 and a half days of talks, panels and workshops the very first TAM Australia was declared a huge success by all involved. Speakers included Dr Rob Morrison, Dr Pamela Gay, Julian Morrow, Steve Cannane, SGU, Brian Dunning, Steve Novella, Simon Taylor, Eugenie Scott, George Hrab and many many more! This was the first TAM ever to be held in Australia but it certainly won’t be the last.
Did I miss something you think should be on this list? Leave a comment and let me know!
The Wakefield-in-the-room
Or: I’m not anti-vaccination, I just don’t recommend it.
Hello friends! long time no bloggy-blog etc. Apologies, but there was this small thing called #TAMOz. Dunno if you’ve heard of it, but it completely took up my life for the last six months so everything else had to take a back seat. I apologise, I hope you’ll forgive me, etc etc.
Let’s move on.
So now I’m back in investigative sceptic mode, I will tell you what I did on this fine Saturday afternoon. I attended a seminar from Pediatric Chiropractor, Nimrod Weiner, at Newtown Community Chiropractic entitled Vaccinations: Make an Informed Decision. Sounds like a loaded title doesn’t it? And it was, as you’re about to find out.
To set the scene, the audience consisted of about 20 people, mostly women (several pregnant) and assorted couples with very young babies (< 2 years old) gurgling in the background. Then there was me and my mate Frode (I don’t think he is pregnant).
Nimrod started by saying he was going to provide us with both sides of the story to vaccination. He acknowledged that vaccination is an emotive issue, but he asked that we do not let our emotions get in the way. He was happy for dissenting views to be aired and he would respect people for their views.
He also said (and I think I recall this correctly) that he had been called anti-vaccination after giving some of his lectures, but that he was no such thing. I settled a little lower in my seat when I heard this.
After detailing his qualifications (which include a masters in Chiro with units of peadiatric chiropractic) Nimrod emphasised he would stick to the science about vaccinations in an effort to arm parents with the ability to ask the right questions and weigh up the evidence from both sides. He said he approached the research from a logical and rational point of view and his aim was to “empower parents to make a good decision” (does this sound like someone else we know?).
He was also going to explain to us “how safe the diseases (we vaccinate against) are” and thereby allow us to make “an informed decision based on science”. So far this is sounding pretty anti-vaccine to me. I had so many flags up already it felt like a flag festival (or something) and we were only 5 minutes in.
After a brief explanation of what chiropractic is – chiros keep the nervous system healthy – stressors can “imprint on the nervous system” and cause decay, a healthy body heals itself – Nimrod attempted to explain the immune system to a room full of lay people. He used the rather unusual analogy of “Avatar” (the movie) and the reactions of the female versus male population of the fictional planet to invaders, to describe that Th1 cells are the warriors (they go in fighting without much thought, like the males in “Avatar”) and the Th2 cells maintain a memory and “learn” from the invaders (there were the female characters in “Avatar”).
I guess if you’ve seen Avatar this might work ( I haven’t) , but for me, it was a long-winded and not very effective approach. Further, I don’t think a lay audience needs to know the ins-and-outs of the immune system, especially since he hardly referred to Th1/Th2 later.
Finally we got on to vaccines, however the talk was still peppered with phrases such as “leave out emotions and propaganda”, “respect critical thinking and analysis” but immediately followed with “information about vaccines is laden with propaganda”. Nimrod continued to emphasise that his information is based on current research and science and further, he has spent more than 100 hours on “this topic alone”.
I reckon if you can count the number of hours you have spent on a topic, then you haven’t spent nearly enough. Also, it doesn’t matter if you’ve spent more than 100 hours, if you’ve read the wrong information from the likes of Mercola*, Mike Adams or the AVN, then you’re not going to glean anything based on research and science by the time you finish.
Nimrod then proposed, “no criticisms are allowed (from the audience) without an accompanying suggestion for improvement”. We’ll get to that later.
It was here that I began to tally the number of times he said, or referred to vaccines as “injected into the blood”. Granted, the first time he mentioned it, he did say “straight into the blood or a muscle….”.
But, I ticked off at least 6 mentions of INJECTED INTO THE BLOOD. Anti-vaxers love to do this – it sounds so SCARY and EBIL. He did follow this up with by saying that some vaccines can be inhaled but they are not as effective.
Which is interesting, because his whole explanation about the immune system being like “Avatar” was designed to illustrate that vaccines by-pass the “first line of defence” (being the skin and mucous membranes) therefore can never be as effective as natural infections. Yet vaccines that are inhaled are not very effective? Does not compute.
He also said that injecting a vaccine DIRECTLY INTO THE BLOOD means the immune system can’t respond as effectively. Which made me wonder, what happens when I cut myself and germs get in? Isn’t my immune system able to cope just as well in this instance, compared to when I breathe in a virus or bacteria?
So then we got the old antivax canards:
1) Non-one knows how long vaccines last
2) No guarantee of their effectiveness
3) Antibodies have no role in immunity
4) These diseases are designed to come into our bodies when we are kids
6) Vaccines have never been tested
Nimrod then went onto to talk about lots of pseudoscience, lack of ethics and negligence associated with vaccine manufacturers and government health bodies. Some of his points were quite valid, such as Big Pharma test the vaccines they make hence there is propensity to bias, some government advisors have links to Big Pharma suggesting a conflict of interest, and the TGA doesn’t independently test drugs.
But then he went and undid all his good work by saying something like:
No lot of vaccines have ever been recalled for increased adverse reactions, lots that may have caused harm in children, they have never been taken off the shelf. In the “whole history of the world” this has never happened.
Oh, except in WA with the recent fluvax reactions scare.
So he scares parents into thinking that vaccines batches that may be faulty and cause increased adverse reactions are ever recalled EXCEPT that time when they were.
He also claimed that parents are not told what to expect after a vaccination. I’m pretty sure everyone is told what to expect and even made to wait for at least 15 minutes in case of an immediate adverse event.
He then cited deaths from vaccine preventable diseases in the last decade (cited as sourced from Immunise Australia) and proposed reasons for the cause of death, since vaccine preventable illnesses are not so bad. Really.
He suggested that since vaccination status was unknown, these people may have had other illnesses, they may have been Aboriginal (a population which suffers a greater incidence of disease that the rest of the country), they may have lived in unsanitary conditions and perhaps they were in refugee camps. So in other words, any number of explanations – including they were somehow in squalid refugee camps – could explain their death from vaccine preventable disease. Cause it sure as hell wasn’t the disease.
As we moved onto vaccine ingredients, I felt as if I was reading the AVN’s page or something from Joseph Mercola as he listed all the SCARY CHEMICALS in vaccines.
There was no acknowledgment of the “poison is in the dose”, or that there are 2 types of mercury, the one in some vaccines being much less SCARY. All the usual suspects got a mention including ABORTED HUMAN FOETUS, thimerosal, aluminium, bacteria, formaldehyde, and anti-freeze.
We were also reminded that scientists say that vaccines are safe but what about ASBESTOS AND CIGARETTES AND THALIDIMIDE!!!!1!!eleventy11 – they said they were safe too.
As expected, the old “vaccines cause autism” show boat was rolled out several times. When myself and Frode politely pointed out that Nimrod should probably not be using Wakefield’s Lancet (since retracted) paper as evidence for such – if, as he claims he was basing his research on good science – he insisted that the science was still valid. According to him, Wakefield was only in trouble for 2 things in regards to that paper – he didn’t have ethics for the birthday party blood taking and he paid the parents – otherwise it was solid science. When Frode gently pointed out that you generally have to do more than that to get struck off the medical register, Nimrod said it was political.
During this discussion Nimrod also stated he had read The Lancet paper. I propose he didn’t read it properly, because in his summary he wrote it showed a link between MMR and autism. But The Lancet paper doesn’t address a connection between MMR and autism, this was suggested at a press conference after the paper was published.
When both Frode and I informed him that Wakefield was paid by lawyers to show a link between MMR and autism and had a patent pending on a single measles vaccine, he again claimed to not know anything about this. So he was quite happy to throw mud at Big Pharma for bias, pseudoscience and vested interests, but these same rules do not apply to Wakefield.
In fact, the Wakefield-in-the-room was addressed several times, once by a lady inquiring about the Swedish study (actual it’s Danish) of all children born in Denmark from January 1991 through December 1998 which provided strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism. Nimrod said he had not heard of that study either but he would like to see a copy.
There was more vaccines cause autism to come, with evidence in the form of a American Dental Association video showing a neurone dying in culture when incubated with mercury. The dose of mercury was not specified, how a cell in a dish is relevant to a child’s brain was not discussed, and fortunately for us the video stopped working half way through.
We were then told that vaccines are associated with shaken baby syndrome, SIDS, ADD, asthma, MS, suppress the immune system and “shift the balance for life”. We were told that polio has not been eradicated in many countries, but has simply been renamed (in an attempt to hide the ineffectiveness of the vaccine I presume) by Big Pharma, as flaccid aseptic meningitis or aseptic meningitis. We were also told that one in two people now have a chronic disease, herd immunity doesn’t work, and most childhood illnesses are self limiting, rarely dangerous and have few serious consequences (except the ones that kill you).
Nimrod ended by saying he treats babies as young as one day old and if your baby is sick get it to a pediatric chiropractor for treatment as soon as you can. Thanks, but I’ll go to a real doctor.
So after listening to this propaganda for two hrs and asking a few polite questions here and there, I decided to offer “criticism….with an accompanying suggestion for improvement”.
I asked Nimrod why he didn’t tell us from the very beginning that he was against vaccination. Recall that he told us at the beginning of the lecture that some people come away from his seminars thinking he is anti-vaccine, (he didn’t like me reminding him of this btw, and mumbled something about “not my words”). I suggested that he had not shown anything about the risk/benefit ratio of vaccination – that is, the risk of getting an adverse reaction to a vaccine is tiny compared to the risks associated with the disease. He said he was not anti-vax, but admitted that he would not choose to vaccinate, but it is the choice of the parents. My suggestion for improvement was therefore that he inform people from the very beginning that he is against vaccination.
I’m not anti-vaccination, I just don’t recommend it. Although we were told this was not an anti-vax seminar, this was the literature handed out at the end.
My second criticism was that nowhere in his seminar had he addressed the issue of the seriousness of childhood diseases and that as a pediatric chiropractor, it was irresponsible not to inform a room full of mums holding babies and pregnant women that there is currently an epidemic of pertussis and pertussis kills babies. I suggested to him that he had glossed over the seriousness of this disease (and others) and that whilst he spent a lot of time talking about vaccine reactions, he didn’t even mention that in babies under the age of two years, pertussis can be fatal at the worst, and at the best have complications such as broken ribs, hernias, vomiting after coughing episodes, pneumonia etc. My suggestion for improvement was that when there is an epidemic of a vaccine preventable disease in our community, he might remind parents that they should vaccinate their kids and get their own booster shot to protect theirs and other babies.
My final criticism was he said that vaccines don’t work because I can still get the disease even if I am vaccinated. My suggestion for improvement was that although a vaccine is not a force field, it can significantly reduce the severity of the disease. So kids who have had two or three shots for pertussis can still get the disease, but they have a reduced risk of getting complications and suffering long term effects.
It was at this point that a discussion ensued around the room in which one pregnant lady asked Nimrod if there was a cure for whooping cough. She looked over to me and I shook my head and Nimrod confirmed this. She then asked Nimrod which vaccines were important and which you could skip. As she listed them off, she said one thing that made me pause. She said something like, “Obviously I can’t skip the pertussis vaccine, that disease sounds really bad”.
So maybe we achieved something today.
Yet, sadly, she included chicken pox in her list of “not so bad childhood diseases”. It was on my tongue to remind her of the death of a seven year old from chicken pox recently, but by this stage I was tired and also losing my temper.
For a pediatric chiropractor I couldn’t be more disappointed in Nimrod Weiner. He’s a smart man who has studied extensively, but he sat in a room filled almost exclusively with pregnant women and parents with babies and scared them into not vaccinating. He told them never to get vaccinated if they are pregnant “no matter what they tell you”. He cited studies that have been struck from the literature because they were found to be fraudulent and he defended them when questioned. In the middle of a pertussis epidemic in which at least three babies have died, he told parents that childhood diseases are self limiting and not very harmful.
But worst of all, as we were gathering our stuff and about to leave, someone asked him a question about homeopathic vaccination. He said although he wasn’t a homeopath, he understood it worked like vaccines, in that it had contained small amount of the infectious material, but was safer because it didn’t have the toxic chemicals that vaccines have.
Ironic really, when he had just stood in front of us for two hours, spouting misinformation about vaccines and never once did he say he was not an immunologist or a medical doctor. He gave medical advice to pregnant women and parents for two hours and much of it was wrong.
I guess all we can hope is that Frode and I planted a seed in some people’s minds today. Also thanks to the lady who cited the Danish study (woo hoo!). As for us, We didnt give up on the Wakefield stuff. We didn’t let it go when Nimrod kept saying it was “good science”. He told us he updates his slides every time he gives a talk, to which I suggested next time you do that, remove the Wakefield one.
Who knows if he will. At least he was willing to listen to our criticisms. Unlike some, he didn’t have us ejected from the room as soon as we started to ask questions. But when someone who calls themselves a pediatric chiropractor and says homeopathic vaccination works and “That Lancet Paper” is valid, well it’s time to notify the relevant authorities.
Especially when kids’ lives are at risk.
* To his credit, Nimrod did end by saying he reads Mercola “with a grain of salt” and that his website does have some strange ideas about medicine, but if this is the case why mention him at all?
Hypocrites much?
I had reason to be flicking through the pages of Living Wisdom magazine tonight (the publication of the AVN) for a little light research.
Odd that this should happen really, since I often get accused of not reading what the anti-vaxers have to say. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In additional to the tripe on the Facebook pages, the forums, the mailing lists and comments on news articles, I have perused the information pack for conscientious objectors, flicked through Living Wisdom and looky over there >>> a copy of Callous Disregard by Andrew Wakefield.
It’s more than I suspect they do with respect to research. Although, Meryl Dorey says she reads papers about vaccination but apparently comes away with completely different conclusions to the authors, making the exercise rather futile.
Indeed, the recent HCCC investigation concluded that whilst the AVN may cite peer-reviewed research, they quote selectively from it, often in contradiction to the conclusions or findings of the studies themselves.
Ms Dorey explained this discrepancy with the following:
“It is true that oftentimes, our information will contradict the conclusions or summaries of the studies. This is because, as opposed to most doctors and government officials, we actually read the studies and frequently, the summary and conclusion does not agree with the raw data itself…..Many times, that disconnect can be explained by the financial links between the study’s researchers and the companies whose products are being studied. So, whilst the AVN does frequently draw different conclusions to those printed at the end of these articles, it is because our analysis of the data shows that the printed conclusions do not correspond with the raw data. This is not selective reporting – it is accurate reporting.”
Raw data. It doesn’t mean what you think it means Ms Dorey. And the financial links? Oh course, the old shill canard again. When you ‘aint got nothin’ else.. (and you don’t know how to read papers).
The AVN have been in oodles of trouble lately, the most recent being for multiple breaches of copyright associated with selling material on their website without permission. Which is funny, because one of the things I came across in the information in Living Wisdom was their permission to reproduce policy:
“Whilst reproduction and dissemination of the information found in Living Wisdom is actively encouraged (unless otherwise stated), it is expressly forbidden for anyone to reproduce any of this information for the purpose of profit…”
My emphasis.
Which directly contradicts the reason they were recently in strife – for selling other authors’ material on their website, without permission.
An article from the Sydney Morning Herald describes:
“an anti-vaccination group is under fire for allegedly breaching copyright laws by selling newspaper and medical journal articles online without permission from the authors.
The packs, which were selling for up to $128, included home-made books filled with articles photocopied from journals around the world, information on drugs taken from MIMS, the medical guide used by doctors and nurses, and copies of brochures inserted in medication boxes by pharmaceutical companies.
Under the Copyright Act, articles can be copied for personal research or for use by students but cannot be disseminated widely or sold.”
In response, Meryl said she was “unaware she had breached copyright”. This is despite the fact that she is listed as the editor of Living Wisdom and therefore probably wrote the policy. Even if she didn’t, one would think it is part of her job to understand copyright restrictions as the editor of a magazine for more than a decade.
But the duplicity of the AVN is something we have come to know well. This is a recent screen capture from their website.
So it appears Meryl knew about some of these copyright rules “a couple of years ago” at least.
One wonders if the authors contacted by the Sydney Morning Herald decided to take any action against the AVN given some might be owed a nice wad of booty. Based on the AVN’s permission to reproduce policy, they themselves would be joining a queue to recoup any lost funds. So what’s good for the goose is good for the gander right?
Oh wait, except when you’re a bunch of hypocrites.
