tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34736695998150761502024-03-18T21:07:21.455-07:00Autism Causes .infoUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-45165997787224055912016-01-23T06:14:00.000-08:002016-01-23T06:46:25.555-08:00"Identifying the lost generation of adults with autism..." (Simon Baron-Cohen and Meng-Chuan Lai)<span style="font-size: large;">My email to Editor of Lancet Psychiatry:</span><br />
<div style="font: 10pt arial;">
<b>To:</b> niall.boyce@lancet
<br />
<div>
<b>Sent:</b> Saturday, January 23, 2016 1:50 PM</div>
<div>
<b>Subject:</b> Article needs retracting: "Identifying the lost generation
of adults with autism..."</div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Dear Niall Boyce,</span></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Re "Identifying the lost generation of adults
with autism....." by Meng-Chuan Lai and Simon Baron-Cohen.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366%2815%2900277-1/abstract">http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366%2815%2900277-1/abstract</a></span></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">This article is very seriously misleading and
needs to be retracted. </span>It starts with an assertion of a highly dubious
massively important controversial “fact” with no citation whatsoever in support.
The opening sentence (of both abstract and text) asserts to us that as of
2014-15, 1% of 10-year-olds are autistic, and 1% of 30-year-olds are autistic,
1% of 50-year-olds are autistic, and so on, for “all ages”. And the title of the
paper reinforces that untruth with its fictional notion that there is (by
implication "therefore") a “lost generation” of older autistics who have mostly
remained unrecognised as autistic and thus “lost”. The un-explicated implication
being that there has not been any increase of autism but instead only an
increase of awareness or diagnosis. And this paper sets out from its beginning
by grossly misleading the reader into assuming that that is known to be a fact,
indeed established to such an extent it doesn’t even need any citation in
support.</div>
<div>
<br />
And that title and first sentence
are not incidental to the paper but are its central premises.</div>
<div>
I sent emails to the authors, querying the justification for that first
sentence. I got no reply from SBC, not even after I posted the letter attached
herewith to him by Signed-For delivery (KP597377771GB at <a href="http://www.royalmail.com/">www.royalmail.com</a>, received 12th Jan
2016).[I will append that letter to end of this blogpost.]</div>
<div>
Dr Lai sent a series of replies. The full correspondence is too lengthy to
include here in full, but here are the main elements.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">His first reply was as follows (and note
furthermore the absurd sentence I have bolded, which effectively concedes my
objection anyway).</span></div>
<div>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="margin-right: 0px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0mm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Dear Robin, <span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms";"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Thank you for your message. For clarification, when we
write “Autism spectrum conditions (panel 1) comprise a set of neurodevelopmental
syndromes with a population prevalence of 1% across all ages.” we are NOT
referring the term “ages” to different chronological years (i.e., 1970s, 80s,
90s, etc.) but are referring it to the ages of the individuals; that is, we are
referring to epidemiological evidences that recent cross-sectional studies in
children, in teenagers and in adults all tend to show a prevalence around 1%
(depending on studies but can range from around ~0.5% to ~2%). <b>We,
therefore, have no intention to argue in the paper whether the prevalence of
autism is constant or not across different chronological years.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Hope this clarifies the question/mis-understanding.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Regards,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Meng-Chuan</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">In reply I pointed out that
this entailed an obvious absurd fallacy. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="margin-right: 0px;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">"..... Your phrase “all ages” includes obviously those who
are 40 or 60 years old. And even older. As of 2015, a person who is age 40 was
necessarily born in 1975 or earlier, and a person of age 60 was necessarily born
in 1955 or earlier. That is, such ages of persons are impossible to disentangle
from the huge change of apparent incidence (per birth-year cohorts) which is the
basis of the notion of the autism increase. I fail to see any way you can
separate ages (of “all ages”) from specific years of birth. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> In response to my request for any evidence to support that
claim of your first sentence, you didn't send any, but instead included a
sentence contradicting it. And that notion of “1% across all ages” is
fundamental to the point of your entire article, namely the notion of a “lost
generation” of older autistics."</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">In further correspondence, Dr
Lai resolutely held to his bizarre notion that persons' ages (as of 2014-5)
could be separated from their dates of birth of after or before 1975 or
earlier. And meanwhile no reply at all has been forthcoming from Dr
Baron-Cohen. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The notion that there has been
no real increase of autism has been rejected by many people well-qualified to do
so, not least people with many years direct experience of the field such as
Bernard Rimland (founder of ARI), Prof. Sally Rogers of MIND, and Lisa
Blakemore-Brown. And the careful analysis by Hertz-Picciotto and Delwiche
concluded that the increase must be very real indeed: </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19234401">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19234401</a> discussed
at:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><a href="http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/autism-and-environment">http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/autism-and-environment</a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">And yet this Lancet "review"
opens its abstract and main text with a sentence which fails to even mention the
existence of that H&D 2009 paper (or anything else of the many voices
challenging their major assertion). Why no such mention</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">? Failing to cite major counter-evidence is the hallmark
of charlatanism rather than of anything worthy to be published in a Lancet
journal. Why no reply from SBC, and only infantile nonsense from the other
author? How about because there is no sensible, honest defence for this
outrageously deceiving article. Its continuing presence unchallenged in your
journal threatens to bring your journal into disrepute too. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sloppy, dishonest work in high places such as this "review"
undermine not only the credibility of your journal but of the medical research
community more generally. It needs to be cut out promptly rather than allowed
to remain festering. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Sincerely,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Robin P Clarke</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">(PS. The authors might wish
to attempt a defence on the grounds that Brugha et al. "prove their thesis
right". </span>But (apart from the other objections above) Brugha et al. is
fundamentally unsound. They described in considerable detail their procedures
for establishing <u>reliability</u> of the assessments. But not a single word
about establishing of the (infinitely more important) <u>validity</u> of the
assessments, that is establishing that the measures at age x were equivalent to
the measures at age y. And that is because it is logically impossible to do
that validity verification (except maybe over several decades). It's a bit like
if I put a steel ruler in a hot fire and declared that I can see that its own
scale shows it to be still exactly 12 inches long, so “therefore” the heating
hasn't changed its length. Furthermore the Brugha study has been damningly
criticised for other defects as in the following quotations. </div>
<blockquote class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin-right: 0px;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><a href="https://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/autism-figures-existing-studies-shows-shocking-real-increase-since-1988/">https://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/autism-figures-existing-studies-shows-shocking-real-increase-since-1988/</a>
</span>"[The latter is not a particularly inspiring piece of work. Brugha did
not find a single adult with childhood autism, nor did he refer to Baird or
Baron Cohen but baldly claimed for comparison a childhood figure of 1 in 100,
and he changed the standard diagnostic criteria to catch adults who would not
normally have a diagnosis. Of the 14,000 potential participants there was a 50%
drop out rate with 7000 responding to the original telephone survey. The survey
looked for adults with one of four mental illnesses. The only autistic
condition was Asperger syndrome but Brugha et al now claim to be able to give a
global figure for all autistic conditions which is of course impossible. Whilst
having research ethics approval the study was not carried out according to
accepted ethical standards. Informed consent was not obtained. Participants
were misled as to the purpose of the survey. They were not told they were being
assessed to ascertain if they were mentally ill. A financial inducement to take
part of a shopping voucher was offered – aside from ethical issues that would
tend to encourage those of lower incomes to participate and invalidate the
study. Mentally ill people are more likely to be of lower income if their
ability to earn a living is impaired.]"</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">And much more at </span><a href="https://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/uksurveyautismlink/">https://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/uksurveyautismlink/</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">And SBC was asked in 2009
where are all the "lost generation" 40-60 year-old non-verbal autistics wearing
diapers and banging their heads on walls and spinning around - but as is his
custom he has not had the decency to reply. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">And the NHS is now in full
criminal deceit mode, with non-autistic non-disabled older people being falsely
given autistic diagnosis on the faintest excuse, whereas mothers of severely
disabled toddlers despair of getting any honest diagnosis - just to pretend the
increase has not happened, just as this deceiving "review" paper does too.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For these reasons Brugha's (and any similar studies)
amounts to no evidence whatsoever for countering the real evidence of
Hertz-Picciotto and others. </div>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</span><br />
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<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Letter signed for on 12th Jan (though not by SBC himself):</span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">9<sup>th</sup>
January 2016</span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Dear
Dr Baron-Cohen, </span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I am
writing here in respect of your article </span>"Identifying the lost
generation of adults with autism spectrum" in Lancet Psychiatry 2015.</div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I am
concerned that I have not yet heard from you about this article.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope you are not unwell.</span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I
will send herewith a copy of my correspondence with your co-author Meng-Chuan
Lai.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His replies get even more absurd
and indefensible than the original article (indeed raising doubt about his
sanity).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This matter of the huge tragedy
of the manyfold increase of autism (and the outrageous claptrap such as Brugha
being used to pretend it hasn’t happened) is very serious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Publishing of sloppy, wantonly misleading
writing about it is completely unacceptable and unethical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is all the more unacceptable that you
yourself put your name to such a grossly misleading and unworthy document,
given that you are widely trusted as “the leading expert” on autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And further that this is the very opening of
a “review” being published in the Lancet no less, thus likely to be
“authoritatively” parrotted by future generations of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>students as supposed established knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I
included two of your email addresses in my correspondence with Meng-Chuan </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">(sb205@cam
and editorial@molecularaut)</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">but have not heard any comment from yourself on the matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do not know whether you are aware or not
of these issues (though as co-author you should have been aware of the opening
sentences of your own article anyway).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Accordingly I am now sending this letter by signed delivery requesting
that you clarify your position on this very important matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you agree with myself and others that the
article is unacceptably misleading and must be retracted?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I
look forward to hearing from you as soon as practical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have one of my email addresses at the
top here, and another is rpclarke@autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Sincerely, Robin P Clarke</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-6264572762615717182016-01-17T08:40:00.001-08:002016-01-17T08:45:39.414-08:00"Identifiying the lost generation of adults with autism" (Baron-Cohen & Lai) is outrageously misleading.This post relates to this paper here: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26544750" target="_blank">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26544750 </a><br />
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<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
This review by Dr Meng-Chuan Lai
and Dr Simon Baron-Cohen (SBC) should be retracted for being outrageously misleading. It starts with an assertion of a highly dubious
massively important controversial “fact” with no citation whatsoever in
support. </div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
The opening sentence (of both
abstract and text) asserts to us that as of 2014-15, 1% of 10-year-olds are
autistic, and 1% of 30-year-olds are autistic, 1% of 50-year-olds are autistic,
and so on, for “all ages”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the
title of the paper reinforces that untruth with the notion that there is
therefore a “lost generation” of older autistics who have mostly remained
unrecognised as autistic and thus “lost”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The un-explicated implication being that there has not been any increase
of autism but instead only an increase of awareness or diagnosis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this paper sets out from its beginning
by grossly misleading the reader into assuming that that is known to be a fact,
indeed established to such an extent it doesn’t even need any citation in
support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
And that title and first sentence
are not incidental to the paper but are its central premises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
I sent emails to the authors,
querying the justification for that first sentence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got no reply from SBC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
Dr Lai sent a series of
replies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The full correspondence is too
lengthy to include here in full, but here are some main excerpts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0mm;">
Dear Robin, <span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thank you for your message. For clarification, when we write
“Autism spectrum conditions (panel 1) comprise a set of neurodevelopmental
syndromes with a population prevalence of 1% across all ages.” we are NOT
referring the term “ages” to different chronological years (i.e., 1970s, 80s,
90s, etc.) but are referring it to the ages of the individuals; that is, we are
referring to epidemiological evidences that recent cross-sectional studies in
children, in teenagers and in adults all tend to show a prevalence around 1%
(depending on studies but can range from around ~0.5% to ~2%). We, therefore,
have no intention to argue in the paper whether the prevalence of autism is
constant or not across different chronological years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hope this clarifies the question/mis-understanding.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Regards,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meng-Chuan</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0mm;">
Dear Meng-Chuan, <span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately it appears
to me to be completely bonkers. Your phrase “all ages” includes obviously
those who are 40 or 60 years old. And even older. As of 2015, a
person who is age 40 was necessarily born in 1975 or earlier, and a person of
age 60 was necessarily born in 1955 or earlier. That is, such ages of
persons are impossible to disentangle from the huge change of apparent
incidence (per birth-year cohorts) which is the basis of the notion of the
autism increase. I fail to see any way you can separate ages (of “all
ages”) from specific years of birth. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In response to my request for any evidence to support
that claim of your first sentence, you didn't send any, but instead included a
sentence contradicting it. And that notion of “1% across all ages” is
fundamental to the point of your entire article, namely the notion of a “lost
generation” of older autistics. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(If I may do a bit of your homework for you here,
perhaps the cited Brugha et al. could be supposed to constitute supporting
evidence on the matter. But Brugha et al. is fundamentally unsound.
They went to great lengths for establishing <u>reliability</u> of the
assessments. But no establishing of the (infinitely more important) <u>validity</u>
of the assessments, that is establishing that the measures at age x were
equivalent to the measures at age y. And that is because it is
logically impossible to do that validity verification (except maybe over many
years). It's a bit like if I put a steel ruler in a hot fire and declared
that I can see that its own scale shows it to be still exactly 12 inches
long, so “therefore” the heating hasn't changed its length. For this
reason Brugha's (and any similar studies) amounts to no evidence whatsoever for
countering the evidence of Hertz-Picciotto and others.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[....] (I am aware of many recent <i>younger</i>
autistics being under-recognised [....].) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But your present article is simply unacceptable
(seriously misleading) and has to be retracted. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sincerely, Robin P Clarke</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0mm;">
Dear Robin, <span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thank you for the opportunity for further clarification. If
I understand your points correctly, the main critique is based on your
perception: "<i>that notion of "1% across all ages" is
fundamental to the point of your entire article, namely the notion of a
"lost generation" of older autistics</i>".</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am sorry if this is how you perceive our arguments.
However, this is not what we have in mind when we wrote it. You are right that
the paper mainly discusses under-recognized autism in adults - indeed the sole
focus of the review, and from a clinical perspective. We are asked by the
journal to provide general epidemiological background (based on published
studies), and this is where the ~1% number comes from - and we provided the
number in adults, referencing the Brugha paper which is one of the few
published study focusing on adults. We DO NOT mean to argue "there
is a constant 1% prevalence over the years so there is a lost generation".
We simply refer to the current epidemiological findings that adult prevalence
at the time being is also around 1%, and many of them have not been diagnosed
in the past. I agree it is difficult to get the ground truth (due to
issues with validity of diagnosis, changes of diagnostic concepts [that we have
discussed in the review], and not knowing whether there is true incidence
change); the prevalence number cited here is simply giving a general picture to
the readers, from available published epidemiological data. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is possible that there is increased incidence over the
years, but this does not contradict the possibility of people being
under-recognized as a child. We focus on the latter and have no intention to
discuss (either support or refute) the former.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hope this helps clarify where this review comes from.</div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
Regards,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meng-Chuan</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still not having heard anything from SBC himself, on 9<sup>th</sup>
January I posted a letter to him by Signed-For-Delivery (KP597377771GB at
royalmail.com) as follows.</div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt; text-indent: 0mm;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Dear Dr Baron-Cohen, </span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I am writing here in
respect of your article </span>"Identifying the lost generation of adults
with autism spectrum" in Lancet Psychiatry 2015.</div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I am concerned that I
have not yet heard from you about this article.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope you are not unwell.</span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I will send herewith
a copy of my correspondence with your co-author Meng-Chuan Lai.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His replies get even more absurd and
indefensible than the original article (indeed raising doubt about his sanity).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This matter of the huge tragedy of the
manyfold increase of autism is very serious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Publishing of sloppy, wantonly misleading writing about it is completely
unacceptable and unethical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is all
the more unacceptable that you yourself put your name to such a grossly
misleading and unworthy document, given that you are widely trusted as “the
leading expert” on autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And further
that this is the very opening of a “review” being published in the Lancet no
less, thus likely to be “authoritatively” parrotted by future generations of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>students as supposed established knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I included two of
your email addresses in my correspondence with Meng-Chuan </span>(sb205@cam and
editorial@molecular)<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">but have not
heard any comment from yourself on the matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I do not know whether you are aware or not of these issues (though as
co-author you should have been aware of the opening sentences of your own
article anyway).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Accordingly I am now
sending this letter by signed delivery requesting that you clarify your
position on this very important matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Do you agree with myself and others that the article is unacceptably
misleading and must be retracted?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or
what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I look forward to
hearing from you as soon as practical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You have one of my email addresses at the top here, and another is
rpclarke@autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan lines-together; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Sincerely, Robin P
Clarke</span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have still not received any reply to this letter, by
email, post or any other means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why
not?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ann Dachel posted an “open letter” to Dr Baron-Cohen on the
AgeofAutism website (Dachel, 2009).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
letter ended as follows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.7pt; text-indent: 0mm;">
<b>“</b>I have
only two questions for you:<br />
1. [....]<br />
2. [....] I'd like you to show us the 30, 50, and 70 year old
adults who display the same symptoms of classic autism that we see in
children, the non-verbal adults in diapers, banging holes in walls and spinning
in circles. [...]<b>”</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The reply from SBC went on quite a bit, but did not give the
slightest answer to those questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Again, why not?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And this hugely misleading from SBC comes in a context of
his twice blocking my own evidence about the increase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I sent to his Molecular Autism journal
my epidemics paper, he replied with an assertion that “The advice we have
received is that the methodology would not get through critical peer review
from our journal”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet this is a
pseudo-reason, because it is the editors themselves (i.e. himself) who choose
the peer reviewers and thereafter decide whether or not the peer reviewers have
shown the paper to be inadequate or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And a second occurrence of blocking by SBC occurred when I
sent to his journal my paper about road traffic pollution as a supposed cause
of autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He refused to publish it
unless I cut out all mention of my alternative explanation (in terms of reduced
ventilation of the mercury vapour emitting from non-gamma-2 dental amalgams).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-34400970271633536012014-05-03T15:48:00.000-07:002014-05-03T15:48:29.170-07:00The purpose of this website is to provide material supplementary to the update review (not yet published) of the 1993-published autism theory paper (linked in header above). All the posts here serve that purpose in one way or another, but some are more worthwhile or necessary than others. So here is a brief guide to the contents here.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/search/label/vaccines">Click here to read discussion of whether there is a relationship of vaccines to autism</a>.<br />
<br />
"Skeptical" people will generate plenty of supposedly clever reasons for rejecting the whole basis of the antiinnatia theory. That's despite the fact that any such "skeptics" must therefore be instead gullibly taking seriously one of a handful of utterly absurd alternative theories as explained in the update paper.<br />
<br />
An answer to one of these "skeptical" notions is this one about <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/07/why-mercury-supposedly-could-not-get-to.html">being supposedly impossible for mercury to get to the DNA</a>. And this one about <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/12/fallacy-about-acrodynia-pink-disease.html">supposedly the history of Pink Disease (acrodynia) proving that mercury doesn't cause autism</a>. But <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/10/why-you-are-brain-dead-sheep-or-not.html">perhaps you're a sheep?</a><br />
<br />
Autism research is now becoming seriously distorted by official charlatanism similar to that <a href="http://www.bit.ly/foihg">of which the proof is shown here</a>. And that distortion directly affronts the truths to which this theory relates. One of the leading sources of extreme misinformation is the book by <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/10/autisms-false-prophets-autisms-false.html">Paul Offit</a>, which is being distributed free to parents of victims via the American Academy of Pediatrics.<br />
<br />
The myths: <br />
<ol>
<li> that there has been no autism increase,</li>
<li> that mercury is not associated with autism, and</li>
<li> that removal by chelation cannot help,</li>
</ol>
are all addressed in the articles linked above and therefrom (and more fully in conjunction with the update review paper).<br />
<br />
Turning to less militarised corners of the autism research field, I'll first point out that theories are often <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/10/important-concepts-about-theories.html">not in conflict even when they superficially may appear to be</a>.<br />
<br />
And there is <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/10/there-is-only-one-autisticasd-syndrome.html">only one autistic/ASD/etc syndrome</a>, not several or many "autisms".<br />
<br />
You can find the link to the spectacularly-predicted <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/search/label/purgatorius">Purgatorius video here</a>, along with some further evidence relating to my explanation of the hand-flapping.<br />
<br />
Some other peoples' excellent graphs of the increase in the US <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhtquQLS96DNQjSheiLPoEZ-9HEMl3kF1J0nz8VW5hPuMsrfIzJcY3vLmqdrHIHEhgg2rOK7TnlHclDBl0EOMCfJbxOrDbl6FUxo9cE7-Rczogl94SsaKbucwA0nnOHMrjj3VseqjJfs/s1600/IDEAcurvesThoughtful.php.png">can be found here</a>, particularly the ones with multiple differently-coloured curves. They basically confirm my interpretation of the California DDS data as essentially a simple exponential-shaped increase.<br />
<br />
Here is a link to my comment on <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/eletters/peds.2010-2371v1#51019">close-spaced pregnancy findings of </a><span style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/eletters/peds.2010-2371v1#51019">Keely Cheslack-Postava, Kayuet Liu, and Peter S. Bearman</a>.</span><br />
<br />
I've added yet another amazing new prediction, that the Flynn Effect (rising IQs increase) <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/10/iq-increase-flynn-effect-predicted-to.html">affects non-human animals as well</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2010136a.html">Mitochondrial dysfunctions</a> could be caused by antiinnatia (both within and without the brain), or they could be a non-antiinnatia "side effect" of mercury toxication. They could be part of some processes whereby antiinnatia affects neuronal function. So the reports about mitochondria appear to give neither support nor challenge to antiinatia theory.<br />
<br />
Data on a "photoninthedarkness" blog leads me now to thinking that the increase has involved some diagnostic substitution, but not in the way that is assumed by pro-vaxxers. More later, but I reckon when there was a rapid real increase of autism c. 1985-1995, much of it was incorrectly diagnosed as non-autistic retardation. Thereafter the diagnoses substituted to the correct autism diagnoses. This leads me to suspect that the autism increase actually stopped increasing about ten years ago and since then it's just been an artifact of substitution.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">“We’re finding that the immune system seems to function at a lower level in autism,” says Hertz-Picciotto.</span> Which could be because the dental mercury that caused the autism increase is well-known to also impair immune functioning.<br />
<br />
July 2011: Powerful yet further evidence of mercury involvement in autism - <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15287394.2011.590097?journalCode=uteh20">6-fold increased autism in children whose grandparents survived Pink Disease</a>.<br />
<br />
(I'll continue work on this intro menu in due course, so be sure to check back later.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-77297909367658005662013-11-02T15:46:00.000-07:002014-05-03T15:47:52.221-07:00"Peer reviewers" of PseudoNeurotoxicology<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b>Reviewer reports from
Neurotoxicology journal, with author’s replies</b><br />
Ref.: Ms. No. NEUTOX-D-13-00253<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Robin P Clarke<br />
<b>Autism, adult disability, and 'workshy': Major epidemics being caused
by non-gamma-2 dental amalgams<br />
</b><br />
<b><u>Reviewer #1:</u> </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>1. The Abstract is misleading
as to what information this manuscript provides, stating that, "This is
the first-ever study of health consequences of non-gamma‑2." This is not a
"study," as usually defined, as no measurements of non‑gamma-2 were
made, nor were any health consequences assessed except population-level
statistics about prevalence of disability.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Three baseless pseudo-points in
one sentence there – I will chop it up for my replies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>>no measurements of
non-gamma-2 were made, </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
As my review stated, indeed,
no-one has ever bothered to keep records of the usage or prevalence of
non-gamma-2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even my own dental
hospital records never recorded the different amalgam types (and I am aware
that I started off with the earlier crumbling “conventional” types and later
had the extremely durable non-gamma-2’s).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
That lack of data is not a fault
of this work but rather a scandalous offence by those authorities who didn’t
bother to even keep records.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, a
confident inference can still be made that the overall amount of non-gamma-2 in
people’s mouths would have progressively increased as more and more of their
teeth were fitted with the new materials.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This review thus provides the absolute best quantitative information
currently (and almost certainly ever) available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>>nor were any health
consequences assessed except population-level statistics about prevalence of
disability.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Again, that lack of data is not
a fault of this work but rather a scandalous offence by those authorities who
didn’t bother to even seek reports on possible adverse events from amalgam, but
instead implemented the cover-up measures documented in the paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which means those population-level
statistics are about as good as it can get.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It does not follow that they are worthless, else quite a number of other
“not-really-studies” in very prestigious journals would also have to be
dismissed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>>This is not a "study", as usually defined,
as no measurements of non-gamma-2 were made, nor were any health consequences
assessed except population-level statistics about prevalence of disability.</b></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Really?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that case there are numerous other papers
which were “not really a study”, despite being published in the most
prestigious journals and highly promoted as indeed being important “studies”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their authors likewise didn’t do any
measurements or diagnoses but instead presented existing data as I have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These include for instance:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 5.65pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-indent: -5.65pt;">
<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Courier New";">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b>JAMA</b>. 2003 Oct 1;290(13):1763-6. Association
between thimerosal-containing vaccine and autism. Hviid A, Stellfeld M,
Wohlfahrt J, Melbye M.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 5.65pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-pagination: lines-together; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-indent: -5.65pt;">
<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Courier New";">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b>Pediatrics</b>. 2003 Nov;112(5):1039-48. Safety of
thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased <b>study</b> of computerized
health maintenance organization databases. Verstraeten T, Davis RL, DeStefano
F, Lieu TA, Rhodes PH, Black SB, Shinefield H, Chen RT; Vaccine Safety Datalink
Team.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 5.65pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-indent: -5.65pt;">
<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Courier New";">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b>N Engl J Med</b>. 2002 Nov 7;347(19):1477-82. A
population-based <b>study </b>of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and
autism. Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, Schendel D, Wohlfahrt J, Thorsen P,
Olsen J, Melbye M.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 5.65pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-indent: -5.65pt;">
<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Courier New";">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b>Pediatrics</b>. 2003 Sep;112(3 Pt
1):604-6.Thimerosal and the occurrence of autism: negative ecological evidence
from Danish population-based data. Madsen KM, Lauritsen MB, Pedersen CB,
Thorsen P, Plesner AM, Andersen PH, Mortensen PB.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 5.65pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-indent: -5.65pt;">
<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Courier New";">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b>J Child Psychol Psychiatry</b>. 2005 Jun;46(6):572-9.
No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population <b>study.</b>
Honda H, Shimizu Y, Rutter M.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 5.65pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-indent: -5.65pt;">
<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Courier New";">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b>Pediatrics</b>. 2004 Sep;114(3):584-91. Thimerosal
exposure in infants and developmental disorders: a retrospective cohort <b>study</b>
in the United kingdom does not support a causal association. Andrews N, Miller
E, Grant A, Stowe J, Osborne V, Taylor B.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 5.65pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-indent: -5.65pt;">
<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Courier New";">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b>Pediatrics</b>. 2006 Jul;118(1):e139-50. Pervasive
developmental disorders in Montreal, Quebec, Canada: prevalence and links with
immunizations. Fombonne E, Zakarian R, Bennett A, Meng L, McLean-Heywood D.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
No-one has ever proposed that
any of those were not really studies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And that’s just a few I’ve come up with this minute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A more reasonable consideration of the
matter is as follows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Journals categorise
papers as either “reviews”, or “studies”, or something else such as
commentaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that categorisation
is rather crude, like categorising people as either “black” or “white”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In reality there is a fudging between two
notional ideal types, namely “proper reviews”, of which the input data consists
entirely of pre-existing published studies (of for instance whether walking
causes autism), and “proper studies”, in which the investigators do some
measuring either in a laboratory or out in the wider world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those seven famous papers listed above fit
into neither of those ideal categories, just like this present one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But so what.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There has never before been ANY scientific paper about the health
consequences of non-gamma-2 amalgams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And no-one has ever compiled any measurements into a published
study.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It follows that it cannot be
either of those ideal types, but it does not follow that it cannot be an
excellent scientific paper any more than those seven above are not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In reality it is properly described as both
the first ever study of the known data, and as the first ever review of the
evidence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<b>2. P.4: Evidence needs to be provided for the
statement that “...Hal Huggings and other dentists were struck off the register
of practitioners.” for issuing warnings about the amount of mercury released
from non-gamma-2 amalgams.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Firstly, that point is far from
a key foundation for any conclusions of this review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I doubt whether it warrants taking up additional space on
documentation merely on the basis that some people might wish to not believe
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Secondly here are some evidential
details of the matter which I have quickly dragged from the web:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Hal Huggins de-licenced for
challenging amalgam:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<a href="http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/huggins.html">http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/huggins.html</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/9608142846/huggins-vows-fight-after-license-revocation">http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/9608142846/huggins-vows-fight-after-license-revocation</a>
</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">“Judges
Block Dental Board Gagging Dentists Who Discuss Risks of Mercury Fillings” <a href="http://www.cdchealth.com/judgeblocks.html">http://www.cdchealth.com/judgeblocks.html</a>
</span></div>
<pre><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“CALIFORNIA'S COMPLIANCE WITH DENTAL AMALGAM DISCLOSURE POLICIES” “the American Dental Association has a gag rule--yes, a gag rule telling dentists not to give warnings about the toxic effects mercury might have”</span></pre>
<pre><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-108hhrg93640/html/CHRG-108hhrg93640.htm">http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-108hhrg93640/html/CHRG-108hhrg93640.htm</a> </span></pre>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Details of several more dentists
struck off, and it only takes a handful to scare all the rest into never
telling their victims that “silver” fillings are actually mainly mercury:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<a href="http://www.mercurypoisoned.com/dentists_disciplined/dentists_gagged.html">http://www.mercurypoisoned.com/dentists_disciplined/dentists_gagged.html</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>3. P.5: The statement that, "Consequently, declining
rates of amalgam installation would conceal an increase of prevalence of the
amalgams in patients' mouths" is a non-sequitur. If fewer amalgams
are being placed, how could their prevalence increase? It might mean that this
trend would conceal an ongoing release of mercury vapor in the mouths of
individuals with such amalgams, but not the number of individuals with them.</b><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Dear Reader, please go to your
kitchen sink, put the plug in firmly and water-tight, and then turn on the tap
to flow fairly fast, till an inch or two of water accumulates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then turn the tap down so there’s only a
little more coming out per second.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
now you can see that the water level in the sink stops rising but instead
quickly goes down, as it must because the rate of additional input of the water
has decreased, so obviously the total amount in the sink must decrease
correspondingly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or at least that is
presumably what happens in the kitchen of someone with enough scientific
expertise to judge such things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
For the educationally-deprived
among us I’ll go through that paragraph again, with tutorial hints added:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Dear Reader, please go to your
kitchen sink [analogous to patients’ mouths], put the plug in firmly and
water-tight [analogous to the fact that non-gamma-2s stay in those mouths for
whole lifetimes], and then turn on the tap [analogous to dentists installing
non-gamma-2s] to flow fairly fast, till an inch or two of water
accumulates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then turn the tap down so
there’s only a little more coming out per second [analogous to “declining rates
of amalgam installation”].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now you
can see that the water level [analogous to the prevalence of the amalgams in
the mouths] in the sink stops rising [contrary to silly me’s expectations] but
instead quickly goes DOWN [well, highly-qualified expert Reviewer #1 apparently
thinks so, so there], as it must because the rate of additional input of the
water has decreased, so [“]obviously[”] the total amount in the sink must
decrease correspondingly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or at least
that is presumably what happens in the kitchen of someone with enough
scientific expertise to judge such things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
I did emphasise in my review
that the whole point of non-gamma-2 was that they are <u>far more</u> durable
(indeed can easily last a whole lifetime).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Just like that water which doesn’t suddenly start to rush out of the
sink just because you turned the tap down. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3" style="page-break-after: avoid;">
<b>4. P.5: The author states
that information is not available on "usage or total prevalence of
non-gamma-2 in people's mouths." Given this, any statements made about the
health consequences must remain purely conjecture.</b></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; page-break-after: avoid; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Firstly Reviewer #1 here
misrepresents what I wrote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did not
state that “information is not available…”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My words were:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="stand-first-alone" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0mm;">
<span style="font-family: "New Century Schlbk"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I
have been unable to obtain any </span><b><u><span style="font-family: "New Century Schlbk"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">numerical data</span></u></b><span style="font-family: "New Century Schlbk"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> on usage or total prevalence of
non-gamma-2 in people’s mouths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The DH
have told me they have no such records.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And NHS dental records have not recorded the types of amalgam used.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is unlikely that any better information
is available in other countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we
can very reasonably assume that the overall prevalence of non-gamma-2 will have
gradually, progressively increased in the decades following its introduction.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And you can see there that I had
already pre-answered this half-baked objection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is in the nature of reality that the prevalence of something <i>must</i>
inevitably increase for some period after its introduction as the new standard
product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it is common knowledge
that people usually have their further tooth fillings put in in dribs and drabs
over the years so their prevalence will correspondingly increase over a period
of years rather than of minutes or millenia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Which is very much in line with those increase curves of autism, adult
disability, and later age of onset, which also occur over years following the
change to non-gamma-2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>5. P.6: The author states that he or she did not
"cherry-pick.. selected data to prove any point," yet that is done in
the last paragraph on this page, when reviews supporting the hypothesis that
mercury is etiologically involved in autism are cited, but reviews that
conclude that it is not are not cited.</b><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
But again, Reviewer #1’s
assertions are multiply untrue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Firstly, reviews are not data.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Secondly, <i>in that very section supposedly at fault here</i>, <i>I did
indeed explicitly cite the entire (supposed) counter-data</i>, namely the three
studies which have been claimed to disprove the mercury-autism link, namely Ip
et al, Soden et al, and Hertz-Picciotto et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So that instance asserted by Reviewer #1 shows the exact opposite of what
Reviewer #1 asserts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And thirdly, my statement
about not cherry-picking was only in my section headed “My epidemiological
investigations”, and specifically a comment about my own presentation of data
of the time-trends of autism, adult disability, and amalgams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What great contrary data have I omitted
there?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In reality there has been not
the slighest cherry-picking and this is merely yet more nonsense from this
so-called peer reviewer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>6. P.7: The fact that mercury excretion is increased
following administration of DMSA in individuals with autism does not prove
much, as the action of DMSA is nonspecific. Excretion of other metals (lead,
antimony) is also increased.</b><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Yet more cheap muddle from
Reviewer #1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The finding in Bradstreet
et al was not “The fact that mercury excretion is increased following
administration of DMSA in individuals with autism”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather it was the finding of a major difference between
autistics and non-autistics, with the autistics outputting three times as much
mercury as the non-autistics (with fluke probability of 1 in 5000). <u>AS
ALREADY CLEARLY STATED RIGHT THERE</u>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Did this faceless reviewer cheat to get their PhD too?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">
</span>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>7. P.7: The conclusions of the Holmes et al. (2003) study
are weak, not because of whatever biases the investigators might or might not
have but because the findings are not credible. In this study, the mean mercury
level in the hair of controls was 3.63 ppm, which is much higher than would be
expected in a representative sample of infants. By comparison,
measurements of mercury in children's hair in an NHANES survey conducted about
the same time (1999-2000) (McDowell et al., Environ Health Perspect
2004;112(11):1165-1171) reported a mean of 0.12 ppm (and 0.16 among
fish-consuming children). This suggests that the controls included in the
Holmes et al. study were biased with regard to their mercury status and that an
8-fold reduction reported in the hair mercury level of "autistic
cases" is likely an artifact. </b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Here Reviewer #1 shows a bit
less incompetence, and stumbles only in terms of a rather more subtle
fallacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We could call it “the fallacy
of the assumed all other things being equal”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A good other example of it is found in various comments about the
Hallmayer et al 2011 twin study finding of autism being mainly
environmental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Commenters on Hallmayer
et al have concluded that it shows that the earlier twin studies were
“wrong”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But well, they “must be wrong”
mustn’t they?, because Hallmayer et al is a big powerful new study and so it
must trump those little old ones into the wastebin of “wrong” results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
The
fallacy here is the unfounded assumption that all other things are equal
(constant).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In respect of those twin
studies, please have a look at my still-unchallenged paper “A theory of
general impairment of gene-expression manifesting as autism”, which appeared in
print in 1993 and is still essential reading for anyone who wants to have a
clue about the subject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therein I
specified the conditions under which autism would change from a mainly genetic
condition to mainly environmental: <i>“</i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">If a rare perinatal
adversity were to become somewhat more common, then obviously, autism of the
environmental category would become more prevalent.”</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>And now with the huge impact of
non-gamma-2 in parents’ and carers’ mouths, exactly such a condition has indeed
occurred, and so hardly surprisingly the causation of autism has indeed CHANGED
from mainly genetic to mainly environmental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is no real conflict between Hallmayer and the earlier twin
studies, merely differences of the underlying and unexamined variables.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Likewise, in respect of mercury and autism
we know that there is a lot we do not know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You can see in my own review section there how the various studies of
autistic hair give divergent results and that there is nevertheless good reason
to find them all valid and true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Likewise, to dismiss the Holmes et al result as “not credible” just
because of those non-standard levels entails an unwarranted gross presumption
that there are no important unknowns going on between the different
studies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so the finding of Holmes
et al should not be dismissed unless there is a more substantial basis for
doing so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And on the contrary, later
studies have supported their ‘perverse’ data of lower hair mercury levels in
autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This Reviewer #1 is here categorising
the careful work of Holmes et al as {either grossly incompetent or grossly
fraudulent}, on a basis of no real evidence but merely because he/she does not
find their results in accordance with the required
commercially/professionally-convenient dogma.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>> I don't think it is appropriate to state that a
pattern of findings provides any evidence as to whether an investigator was
"acting competently and honestly."</b><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Whereas I do think it
appropriate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that is because
fraudsters or incompetents are extremely unlikely to come out with a whopping
strong result that is: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
(1) markedly contrary to what
they would have expected; </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
(2) markedly contrary to what
they would have found convenient to report; and </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
(3) only subsequently supported
by the collection of results of later <u>other</u>-people’s studies of autistic
hair mercury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And in the context that many
have presumed to shallowly discredit Holmes et al as either incompetent or
fraudulent (<u>as Reviewer #1 here does him/herself</u>), that consideration is
outstandingly eminently appropriate to be stated.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>8. P.7: The author multiplies
the P-values from 6 studies to calculate the probability that the findings are
due to chance. This is a meaningless calculation. First, the studies included
reached different conclusions about the hair mercury levels of children with
and without autism (although the author argues that age needs to be taken into
account). Second, given that all P-values are less than 1, multiplying them
necessarily results in a smaller and smaller number the more studies one
includes. If each of the 6 studies yielded a P-value of 0.5 (indicating
no statistically significant relationship), then using the author's method, the
combined P-value would be 0.0156, which would suggest that, in aggregate, the
studies provide significant evidence of an association. Third, even if the
author's method was valid, it would be necessary to include in the calculation
all of the studies ever conducted of a particular hypothesis, not just those
selected because they purport to show an association (just as it is necessary,
in a meta-analysis, to include all available evidence).<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</b></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
Again I shall
have to chop the above into shorter bits for reply, as follows.</div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<b>>The
author multiplies the P-values from 6 studies to calculate the probability that
the findings are due to chance. This is a meaningless calculation. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
(It is absolutely standard
probability maths to multiply together probabilities to get the compound
probability of them all happening merely by fluke, as any betting shop can
confirm, but we must continue here with Reviewer #1’s further exposition on
this point…...)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>>Firstly, the studies
included reached different conclusions about the hair mercury levels of
children with and without autism (although the author argues that age needs to
be taken into account). </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
This misrepresents the
situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t “argue” that age
needs to be taken into account, rather I <i>observe</i> that age needs to be
taken into account, in that the earlier ages always give lower mercury in
autistics, while the later ages always give higher mercury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus none of those studies are in any
conflict with the reasonable hypothesis mentioned by Majewska et al that the
adrenarche plays a role in the hair mercury levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is therefore not any real conflict between these studies
but rather voices declaring in common that mercury is involved in autism in
some way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(And Reviewer #1 is here
again employing that fallacy of the presumed all other things being equal – age
in this case.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so there is no valid
ground there for not multiplying together those probabilities.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>>Secondly, given that all
P-values are less than 1, multiplying them necessarily results in a smaller and
smaller number the more studies one includes. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
That is of course true. [Note
for non-expert readers: smaller P-values indicate the results are less likely
to be mere flukes and so are more “significant”.]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>>If each of the 6 studies
yielded a P-value of 0.5 (indicating no statistically significant
relationship), then using the author's method, the combined P-value would be
0.0156, which would suggest that, in aggregate, the studies provide significant
evidence of an association. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And that is also indeed
true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But so what.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is indeed the reality that several bits
of weak evidence can add up to strong evidence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed that is the whole point of making a (for instance
clinical) study large enough to give a significant result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any such study can be conceived of as being
a combining together of lots of smaller sub-studies, any one of which could
give non-significant results, but when all put together would enable a highly
significant result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that high
significance is not some specious false result, rather it is the entirely sound
statistical inference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s what
I’ve done there, <b><u>except that my p values were all highly significant
already</u></b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the fact that the
evidence there is of diverse types adds all the more to its methodological
robustness, as it is not wholly founded on any one premise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>>Thirdly, even if the
author's method were valid, it would be necessary to include in the calculation
all of the studies ever conducted of a particular hypothesis, not just those
selected because they purport to show an association (just as it is necessary,
in a meta-analysis, to include all available evidence).<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Again, not so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Firstly, there IS no contrary evidence on
the mercury-autism question such as could make any meaningful reduction of my
combined calculation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve pointed out that
even the three supposedly counter results were actually pro in reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Secondly, I made the point that that is the
probability only from those few studies combined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It logically follows that if there were more studies, and
continuing on the same 100% positive connection trend, then that would simply make
my big fluke number even bigger (smaller).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So there is still no sound objection to my probability calculation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>9. P.8: The argument about the evidentiary value of never
having seen the Queen is a little ridiculous and, in my view, has things
completely backwards. It is by means of the falsification of hypotheses that
science advances. A single negative result is enough to call into
question a positive result that has repeatedly been observed and might be the
result of bias (all it takes is the observation of one black swan to refute the
statement that, "all swans are white"), but no number of positive
observations is sufficient to demonstrate the universality of a statement.</b><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Again I will need to chop this
up for my replies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>>9. P.8: The argument about the evidentiary value of
never having seen the Queen is a little ridiculous and, in my view, has things
completely backwards. </b></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">As we’ll see in the next
few lines…(?)</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">.</span></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3" style="mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid;">
<b>>It is by means of the falsification of hypotheses that science
advances. </b></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3" style="mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3" style="mso-pagination: lines-together;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Partly so, but also there cannot be any advance at
all if hypotheses are prevented from being properly raised in the first place.
And Reviewer #1 is doing a great job of preventing some very important
hypotheses being raised, via these unflattering would-be-critiques right here.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>>A single negative result is enough to call into
question a positive result that has repeatedly been observed and might be the
result of bias (all it takes is the observation of one black swan to refute the
statement that, "all swans are white"), but no number of positive
observations is sufficient to demonstrate the universality of a statement.</b></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Reviewer #1 here uses
some extremely incompetent language to confuse the matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Namely the notion of a “negative
result”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example an investigation
of whether or not the Queen actually exists could come up with two very
different types of results, both of which Reviewer #1 would have us class as
“negative results”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the one hand,
there could be a failure to see the Queen on peeping over the palace wall; on
the other hand there could be a finding of the absence of the Queen anywhere in
the UK following an insanely.detailed mega-search from South to North and
back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The difference between a
“negative” failure to find something and a (positive) finding that that
something is actually absent, is complete and absolute, and not to be confused
by conflating into a false notion of “negative results”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>>A single negative result is enough to call into
question a positive result that has repeatedly been observed and might be the
result of bias </b></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">I shall here now correct
Reviewer #1’s grossly incompetent language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">“A single FINDING OF
POSITIVELY CONTRARY evidence is enough to call into question THE UNIVERSALITY
OF [an earlier] result that has repeatedly been observed and might be the
result of bias.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">“A billion mere
FAILURE-TO-FIND results CAN BE STILL NOT enough to call into question [an
earlier] result that has repeatedly been observed and might be the result of
bias.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">When I used the words
”negative results” it was self-evident from the context that I could only mean
the latter, more common meaning of the term, and not the “positively contrary”
meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Reviewer #1 still managed
to muddle it as ever.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>>a little ridiculous and, in my view, has things
completely backwards. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Indeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>10. P.8: The discussion of
the validity of the three studies sometimes described as refuting an
autism-mercury link requires fleshing out. It is necessary to tell the
reader the arithmetic error Ip et al. made and to demonstrate the extent to
which it altered the study conclusions. The reader is told that DeSoto and
Hitlan (2010) concluded that Soden's study "actually proved the
opposite," but no information is provided that would enable the reader to
evaluate this statement. The conclusions of Hertz-Piccioto et al. are
misstated. The second-to-last sentence of this paper actually states,
"This report did not address the role of prenatal or early-life Hg
exposure in the etiology of autism." The major finding was that
total Hg in blood was not elevated or reduced in preschool children with
autism/ASD compared with unaffected controls and resembled those of a
nationally representative sample. The reason for the authors'
qualification is that only concurrent measures of blood Hg were available,
meaning that they could draw no conclusions from their data about the role of
prenatal or early-life mercury exposure. To say that the authors
concluded that their data, ".constituted no evidence whatsoever against
causation of autism by mercury" is simply wrong. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Again, I need to chop this up
for my replies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>>10. P.8: The discussion of the validity of the three
studies sometimes described as refuting an autism-mercury link requires
fleshing out. </b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
….because…..</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>>It is necessary to tell the reader the arithmetic
error Ip et al. made and to demonstrate the extent to which it altered the
study conclusions. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Really?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cited the conclusion of DeSoto and Hitlan
(2010) that the study actually proved the opposite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Ip et al was retracted due to their major but elementary
error.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this question this reviewer
should either <u>explain why D&H were wrong</u> or else shut up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s what they said:</div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
“The author of record has publicly acknowledged that
these numbers and the statistical calculation were in error in an erratum (Ip
et al. 2007) and the journal editor notes the reason given was a series of
typographical errors (Brumback 2007). Furthermore, a careful and correct
analysis of the full data set results in a statistically significant difference
(Brumback 2007, DeSoto and Hitlan 2007, DeSoto 2008) with autistic children
having higher mean levels of mercury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As can be seen by comparing the erratum to the original article, the
standard deviations were wrong for both groups, the stated statistical
significance in 2004 was not even close: their original stated level of
statistical probability was off by almost 10 fold.” </div>
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>>The reader is told that DeSoto and Hitlan (2010)
concluded that Soden's study "actually proved the opposite," but no
information is provided that would enable the reader to evaluate this
statement. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Not so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I provided the citation of D&H along
with the citation of the original Soden, which is all the information that is
needed for that evaluation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Reviewer
#1 reckons there is something wrong with D&H’s conclusions then he/she
should state what it is, or else shut up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Here’s what D&H said:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">“In
the end, the statistical test conducted by Soden and coworkers is meaningless
and distracting from the essentials of what was done. The authors measured
metal levels, then (based on the lab definition of toxicity) all values were
defined as zero, then – they tested this actual zero statistically and found
that one could not rule out zero. “</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">“But
let readers be clear about this central point: if one is willing to consider
the actual numbers reported and test those numbers, the results are clear - a
larger proportion of autistics had heavy metals excreted as the result of
chelation.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
It is not the business of
authors of papers to have to recite the details of all the prior papers they
cite in support; if they did there would be even more that everyone had to
read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any half-proper peer reviewer
would check out the background references themselves (where required), and
indeed in this case ought to be an expert familiar with these important key
papers (on <b><i><u>Neurotoxicology</u></i></b> of autism) already anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What a timewasting pseudo-expert charlatan.</div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
><b>The conclusions of
Hertz-Piccioto et al. are misstated. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Not so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are not in the slightest mis-stated in
my own report.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
>The second-to-last sentence of [their] paper actually
states, "This report did not address the role of prenatal or early-life Hg
exposure in the etiology of autism." </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Indeed that is the case. But so
what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is exactly my point about
it. [Note to non-expert readers:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hg”
means mercury and “etiology” means causation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You may wish to guess whether they used that unnecessarily abstruse
language there for the same reason that they hid that absolutely crucial sentence
right at the end, second last, of their paper which supposedly <i>did indeed </i>dis-evidence
a mercury-autism connection.]</div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
>The major finding was that total Hg in blood was not
elevated or reduced in preschool children with autism/ASD compared with unaffected
controls and resembled those of a nationally representative sample. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Indeed that is the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But so what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never said otherwise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
>The reason for the authors' qualification is that
only concurrent measures of blood Hg were available, meaning that they could
draw no conclusions from their data about the role of prenatal or early-life
mercury exposure. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Indeed that is the case. But so
what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is exactly my point about
it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span></b>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>>To say that the authors
concluded that their data, ".constituted no evidence whatsoever against
causation of autism by mercury" is simply wrong. <br />
</b><br />
No it isn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their words quoted above
indicate PRECISELY that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Reviewer #1
appears to be having some peculiar difficulty with either language or logic I
will try to parse this for them as follows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>( I apologise that I have to assume the reader is an idiot here.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
We begin with their paper’s
second-last sentence that: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report did not
address the role of prenatal or early-life Hg exposure in the etiology of
autism."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
That means effectively the same
as:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report <i>was not
capable of providing any information about</i> the role of prenatal or
early-life Hg exposure in the etiology of autism."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Which means that it is also the
case that:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report <i>did not
provide</i> any information about the role of prenatal or early-life Hg
exposure in the etiology of autism."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And hence:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report did not
provide any <i>evidence</i> about the role of prenatal or early-life Hg
exposure in the etiology of autism."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And hence:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report did not provide
any evidence about the role of prenatal or early-life Hg exposure in the <i>causation</i>
of autism."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And hence:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report did not
provide any evidence about the role of prenatal or early-life <i>mercury</i>
exposure in the causation of autism."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And hence:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report did not
provide any evidence about <i>the causation of autism by prenatal or early-life
mercury exposure</i>."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And hence:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report did not
provide any evidence <i>against</i> the causation of autism by prenatal or
early-life mercury exposure."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And hence:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report <i>constituted
no</i> evidence against the causation of autism by prenatal or early-life
mercury exposure."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And hence on merely removing a
redundant word:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
"This report constituted no
evidence against <i>[<s>the</s>]</i> causation of autism by prenatal or
early-life mercury."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
….which would be identical to my
own statement except that there is that extra bit about “prenatal or
early-life”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
So I was wrong there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I overlooked that autism could still be <u>not</u>
caused by exposure to mercury later in life, after that person has already
become autistic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we’d best not
publish my non-gamma-2 rubbish after all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And whatever it takes to become
a reviewer for <i>Neurotoxicology</i>, it’s all too clear I don’t have it
myself.</div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
</div>
<b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span></u></b>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-pagination: none;">
<b><u>Reviewer
#2:</u></b><u> </u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>Dental amalgams are a
continual source of controversy. The current review attempts to survey the
adverse health consequences of the amalgam formulation known as non-gamma-2. It
asserts that these restorations "are currently by far the main cause
of chronic disability in the UK, US, and other such countries, with about 10%
of the UK working-age population disabled thereby." It also claims that
its introduction led to a 10-fold increase in the incidence of autism. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Indeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no faults are there providing basis for
non-publication so far.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>As a contribution to this specialized journal, the
manuscript lacks any clear connection. It offers no neuro-mechanistic
foundation for such a correlation, especially for autism, which is a product
of disordered early development. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Not so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In respect of autism, my
review(/study/rant/) ties in the newer mercury factual data with the prior
unchallenged theory and the related fact of how the mercury binds with DNA to
reduce gene-expression and hence [as my 1993 had predicted] cause autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And meanwhile in respect of adult mercury
poisoning there is quite a developed understanding of how the symptoms are
caused.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The details of that causality
are in the cited literature or secondarily-cited.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>It doesn't attempt to demonstrate any kind of
dose-response relationship. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
No data is available that would
enable that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it doesn’t follow that
there is no other useful evidence presented.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>Its definition of autism lacks specificity. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
It doesn’t need to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It just uses the definitions that are used
as standard by others. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is common practice.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>In addition, the claim that this amalgam formulation
accounts for 10% of chronic disability requires advanced statistical modeling
of exposure-consequence relationships in which other kinds of exposures are
concurrently evaluated. </b></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Firstly, I did not claim that it
accounts for 10% of chronic disability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I reckoned from the data that it now actually accounts for MOST chronic
disability (something like 70-90%).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That 10% figure was my estimate that wholly 10% of the UK workforce has
been disabled by non-gamma-2 (4 million victims out of a 40 million
workforce).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
That 10% is not a “claim” but
rather was expressly only a rough estimate, from looking at figure 5.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can see that it shows an increase of
about 2 million accepted claimants, easily all attributable to
non-gamma-2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you can see that it
peculiarly levels off about year 2000 as would be expected from the stated
political agenda of “claimant count now controlled”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you can see that otherwise it would most likely have
continued upward to something like 4 million – hence 10% of the working-age
population.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And no fancy statistical
modelling is required to understand what these graphs are showing us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course they are not absolute proof, but
neither are they any lack of evidence, else we’d have to retract an amazing lot
of highly-acclaimed “studies” from the most prestigious journals.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>In the absence of these kinds of information, it is
difficult to see how this manuscript is compatible with the aims and audience
of this journal. Perhaps the author should consider another kind of journal and
audience.</b><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Or perhaps instead the so-called
<i>Neurotoxicology</i> journal should consider changing those aims and
audience, or perhaps change its name to reflect its “specialised” nature, for
instance to <i>Specialised Neurotoxicology</i>, <i>Pedantic Neurotoxicology</i>,
or best of all to <i>Die Zeitschrift der Lysenkoischen
MeisterNeuroToxikologisten von Nurnberg</i> (<i>The Journal of the Lysenkoist
MasterNeurotoxicologists of Nuremburg</i>).<br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br />
<b><u>Reviewer #3:</u> This is an opinion piece on the possible role of mercury
exposure in the causation of autism. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Not so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not “an opinion piece”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like all scientific papers it does include
proposed conclusions which are necessarily of an opinion nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for the most part it consists of
presentation of data and reasoning thereon, which is entirely in line with any
normal scientific paper and not “an opinion piece”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>The author makes a very impassioned case for non-gamma-2
amalgam fillings being the major cause for the rise in incidence of autism
using ecological data from UK, US and few other countries. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Not so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not at all “very impassioned” but
rather “very filled with as much useful factual evidence as can be found”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>No primary research has been undertaken by the author to
test this hypothesis.</b><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
So what.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exactly the same could be said about all
those seven highly-rated studies listed on the first page here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Has anyone ever called for their retraction
yet?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>My main concern with this work is that it is not an
objective assessment of the evidence available at present. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
….because / for instance…..</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>Key statements that form the basis for the author's
argument are unsupported by high-quality evidence. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
…such as….</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span></b>
<br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>For example, the exposure of children to mercury from
their parents' amalgam restorations needs to be confirmed before the author can
make such a far-reaching conclusion.</b> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Indeed, no one has bothered to
do any measurement studies of this question to date.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that is not the fault of this author or this review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather it highlights the urgent need to make
a start by publishing this first study of the subject, which can be then
followed up by testing studies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I
did already explain why we can be confident that there is enhanced
exposure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is because there is very
low background atmospheric mercury vapor, and it is known to constantly emit
from parents’ and carers’ amalgams, and they commonly spend much time together
with babies in enclosed spaces, even talking at them through their amalgam-filled
mouths, and so it logically follows that many babies are going to breathe in an
increased amount of mercury vapor at least on average.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Studies have also shown prenatal
transmission.]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>Randomized clinical trials of dental amalgam (Bellinger
et al 2006; DeRouen et al. 2006) showed no significant neurodevelopmental
deficits in the children receiving amalgam restorations compared to non-mercury
fillings. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Those two studies have already
been solidly debunked as evidence, as I pointed out via my first page citation
of Muttter 2010 (and others).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not least
they started too old to relate to causation of autism, and they stopped too
young to relate to causation of adult disability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact (as in my earlier journal replies) if I myself had been
in those studies I would have been recorded as evidence of <i>harmlessness</i>,
because my life only became chronically ruined (by the amalgam scam) AFTER the
age at which those propaganda studies stopped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And an editorial in the very same issue of the journal stated that those
two studies did not constitute evidence of amalgam safety. Why didn’t Reviewer
#3 mention that counter-point in their “unbiased” commentary here?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<b>In fact, Maserejian et al. 2012 have reported that
compared to amalgam restorations, children receiving composite (non-mercury)
fillings showed impaired psychosocial function. There are several other such
instances in the manuscript where important data have been ignored.</b><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Maserejian et al had not been
published when I first sent this review to a journal in July 2012, else I might
have mentioned it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But exactly the same
methodological problems arise as with the two others cited above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I myself was doing fantastically well at school
before the effects of the amalgam scam imposed themselves so devastatingly on
my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And perhaps bisphenol-A might
well have injurious effects but that is a separate matter out of the range of
my own documents.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<b>In my opinion, this
manuscript does not add unbiased scientific knowledge to the topic of mercury
and autism, and I cannot support it being published.<br />
</b><br />
But rather it is this Reviewer who is biased, and has raised only bogus reasons
for suppressing the publication of this outstandingly important cautionary
information.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span></b>
<br />
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
IN CONCLUSION:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
These three reviewers have failed
to raise even a single sound reason for preventing the publication of this very
important information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they have
meanwhile deployed a whole load of shallow pseudo-objections, which raises
considerable questions about both their supposedly expert competence and their
honesty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
And that comes in the context of
ten previous journals likewise raising only specious excuses for refusing
publication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
Further reply from PseudoNeurotoxicology<span style="font-weight: normal;"> (23<sup>rd</sup> October 2013).</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“…. Thank you for
your email. I forwarded it to the editor of the journal. After
review it was concluded that your manuscript was handled appropriately and the
original decision stands…..”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Notably there was an
absence of any rebuttal of any of my rejoinders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-44609207415085652042011-01-01T11:43:00.000-08:002015-10-08T11:45:36.729-07:00two graphs....Just two of my graphs.to refer others to.....<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-56944740852367519292010-10-29T03:19:00.000-07:002011-02-21T17:17:49.604-08:00Some important silly myths about autism(....besides the tragic delusion that the increase was caused mainly by vaccines in some way or other....)<br /><br />At many websites, in innumerable leaflets, in the "introduction" paragraphs that adorn almost all journal papers, and even in the book "Autism: The Facts" by Simon Baron-Cohen, the reader is liable to get misled by some of the statements. This is partly because some of these authors think it useful to provide a dumbed-down idiots' guide explanation for people who are supposedly too busy to spend a little more time learning a proper understanding.<br /><br />Firstly, the myth that the human race can be divided into those who "have" autism and those who do not "have" autism. Or as they alternatively put it, those who are "on the spectrum" and those who are not. Or those who are autistic and those who are neurotypical. In reality there is no such distinction, it is merely the human races' obsession with sorting people into categories operating here. It is no more sensible to say that someone is "on the autistic spectrum" than it is to say that a person who is 6 ft 1 inch tall is therefore "on the biggism spectrum", or "has biggism". Rather we are all on this "spectrum" together to greater or lesser extent.<br /><br />Secondly the myth that Aspergers is distinct from autism. This distinction arose merely because Kanner and Asperger simultaneously came up with these ideas in separate countries. Sixty years of research has since failed to establish any clear distinction but instead a huge amount of commonality.<br /><a href="http://www.tonyattwood.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69:is-there-a-difference-between-aspergers-syndrome-and-high-functioning-autism&catid=44:resource-papers&Itemid=180">(Review of Asperger's/Autism relationship by Tony Attwood</a>.)<br /><br />Thirdly the myth that autism is properly described in terms of a "triad of impairments". On the contrary a whole collection of characteristics of the autistic syndrome was long ago listed in the table of Wing 1976, which you can also find in my 1993 paper linked at the top here. When researchers can't explain some fact, they tend to prefer to just forget about it, and so this pseudic simplification took on a conveniently flattering life of its own.<br /><br />Fourthly, if a person prefers to be alone, prefers reading a book to going to a party, and is lost for words on meeting a person they want to speak to, this does not mean they are even slightly autistic or Aspergeric. Rather they may be just be very introverted. And introversion is entirely different from and unrelated to autism etc.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-55980675136527134892010-10-29T02:25:00.000-07:002011-09-25T02:47:55.774-07:00Why you are a brain-dead sheep (or not?)Some people have expressed a very (and very nastily) contemptuous attitude towards the antiinnatia theory and its author. Their confident contempt is based on the notion that after so many years, the textbooks have never even mentioned this theory, and nor do any of the "leading experts" (in the context that Bernard Rimland can be ignored as a candidate for "leading expert" status not least due to being helpfully dead now). It follows, these people "reason", that therefore the theory has failed, is a proven dud. And they assert that it follows that they do not have to themselves point to any fault of reasoning or evidence damning the theory, because there is "obviously" "no case to answer" anyway.<br /><br />Those who say this are in effect saying exactly the same as "Hello, I am a mindless herd-following sheep. I've noticed that none of the rest of the herd is heading your way, so I fail to see any reason why I should either. Baahh!"<br /><br />Indeed, why think for yourself when you can <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2009/12/history-of-suppression-of-scientific.html">just let others do your thinking for you instead</a>?<br /><br />"~Independent-minded~"? -- <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2009/12/history-of-suppression-of-scientific.html">Baahh!</a><br /><br />(See also description in <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/anna_karenina/3/">Anna Karenina chapter 3</a>.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-66152056916815083202010-10-29T01:23:00.000-07:002011-02-26T14:35:48.448-08:00The evidence of the corruption of autism researchThe evidence has now grown to the point where any reasonable person can conclude that autism research (in the US, UK, and their commercial allies) is being severely distorted by corrupt motives. The corrupt agenda is (1) to hide the fact that the true cause of the increase was dental amalgam mercury, and (2) to hide the fact that removal of the mercury by chelation is the most effective treatment (indeed cure), so that the victims can be forced instead onto patented quack pseudo-treatments that Big Pharma hopes to roll out at immense profit in due course.<br /><br />There's a popular myth that corruption in science consists mainly of people falsifying their data, like hitting the delete key and substituting some false numbers to fit the required conclusions. But from studying many papers over the years, I have concluded that such outright fabrication is actually rather rare, at least in a field such as autism research.<br /><br />Instead the corruption works in ways that are more subtle, but also more solidly demonstrable. Instances of these more subtle distortions can individually be pretended to be mere misunderstandings or mistakes. Thus any particular case cannot alone constitute proof of corruption. It is only when a pattern of such "mistakes" begins to show up that the conclusion of a trend of corruption becomes clear. That's what is happening now.<br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:donotoptimizeforbrowser/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> <p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">The techniques of this subtle corruption include:<br />-selecting methods which are well-known to be incorrect;<br />-making agenda-convenient errors in one's calculations;<br />-avoiding and even preventing proper studies being carried out which would provide the honest answers;<br />-misrepresenting the literature by pretending into non-existence the truthful evidence while prominently trumpeting the worthless studies as supposedly sound evidence; and<br />-deploying false arguments (including attacking of "straw man" positions).<br /></p><p>The great thing about these techniques is that only people with sufficient knowledge and understanding can see through what is going on, and they are usually the same people who are career-compromised by being stuck in the corrupted institutional setting. This corruption thereby sucks in and corrupts honest people too.<br /></p><p>One way to produce misleading false negative results is to select tests which are well-known not to work.<span style=""> </span>It has long been known that blood and urine levels are useless as tests of chronic mercury poisoning.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:donotoptimizeforbrowser/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> </p><p class="MsoHeader" style="margin-right: -2.85pt;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;">In this connection I draw to your attention this quotation from 1964:</span></p> <p class="pjff13" style="margin: 6pt 0cm 6pt 36pt;"><span class="nw"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" >“Those investigators who have studied the subject are in almost unanimous agreement that there</span></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" > </span><span class="nw"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" >is a poor correlation between the urinary excretion</span></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" > </span><span class="nw"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" >of mercury and the occurrence of demonstrable evidence of poisoning.”<br /></span></span><span class="nw"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:11.5pt;" ><span style=""> </span>‑‑</span></span><em><span style=";font-family:";font-size:11.5pt;" >Goldwater </span></em><span style=";font-family:";font-size:11.5pt;" >LJ, <em><span style="font-style: normal;">Ladd</span></em> AC, <em><span style="font-style: normal;">Jacobs</span></em> MG: Absorption and excretion of mercury in man. <i>Arch Environ Health 9</i>, 735-741 ( 1964) </span><span class="nw"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:11.5pt;" ></span></span></p> <p class="pjff13" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span class="nw"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:11.5pt;" >and also this joint statement of the National Institute of Dental Health and the American Dental Association in 1984:</span></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:11.5pt;" ><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 6pt 0cm 6pt 36pt;"><span class="nw"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" >“The distribution of mercury into the body tissues is highly variable and there appears to be little</span></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" > </span><span class="nw"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" >correlation between levels in urine, blood or hair</span></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" > </span><span class="nw"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12.5pt;" >and toxic effects.”<br /></span></span><span class="nw"><span style="color: rgb(35, 31, 32);font-size:11.5pt;" ><span style=""> </span>—</span></span><span class="ff12"><span style="color: rgb(35, 31, 32); letter-spacing: 0.1pt;font-size:11.5pt;" >NIDH/ADA Workshop on Bio</span></span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;">compatibility of Metals, <i>Journal of the American Dental Association 109</i>, September 1984. </span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;"></span></p> <p>Even my general practitioner was able to tell me this in 2006.<span style=""> </span>It is the reason why Holmes used hair mercury and Bradstreet used chelation challenge instead of just measuring blood or urine.<span style=""> </span>Hertz-Picciotto et al. (2010) used this well-known-useless blood mercury measure and found no difference between autistics and controls.<span style=""> </span>Meanwhile DeSoto and Hitlan (2010) have shown that the other two studies that supposedly show no mercury-autism connection, Ip et al. (2004) and Soden et al. (2007), were flawed to the extent that they actually show the opposite.<span style=""> </span>Those three very misleading studies have since been cited by certain senior<span style="font-size:100%;"> experts as t</span>he supposed proof that there is no involvement of mercury in autism.</p><p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:donotoptimizeforbrowser/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> </p><span style=";font-family:";font-size:11.5pt;" ><i></i></span><span class="nw"><span style="color: rgb(35, 31, 32);font-size:11.5pt;" ><span style=""></span></span></span>Rush et al. (2009) purported to show that chelation causes more harm than good, but in reality their procedure was utterly unrelated to any real-world chelation therapy. It purports an ignorance of even the most basic principle of chelation therapy (namely <span style="font-style: italic;">removing the toxin from the body</span>) and substitutes a straw-man fallacious in-situ “detoxification” concept of its own. It is just as impossible to carry out a test of chelation <span style="font-style: italic;">in vitro</span> (or in this case "<span style="font-style: italic;">in tissue</span>") as it is impossible to venture out on a test drive of a car engine which is standing isolated from the car body on a mechanic's bench. When a dentist drills your tooth it instantly creates more pain than was there already. But we don't validly infer from that that dental treatment is counterproductive; because the treatment has to be evaluated as a whole.<br /><p>The latest of these misleading studies, being widely paraded in triumph, is:<br /></p>Cao Y, Chen A, Jones RL, Radcliffe J, Dietrich KN, Caldwell KL, et al. 2010. Efficacy of Succimer Chelation of Mercury at Background Exposures in Toddlers: A Randomized Trial. J Pediatr. Epub ahead of print. DOI:10.1016/j.jpeds.2010.08.036.<br /><br />The NIH would have you believe that this shows<br />"<a href="http://www.nih.gov/news/health/oct2010/niehs-22.htm">Succimer found ineffective for removing mercury</a>"<br />(In other words chelation supposedly can't help autistics, in defiance of all the huge "merely anecdotal claims" that it does.)<br />In reality, these investigators selected a useless procedure that any half-competent person would know would produce the wrong result. I explained in a previous post that there are many ways of using or misusing a chelator, some of which are sure to make matters worse rather than better. Here's a well-founded comment I found about this trash: "This trial had severe flaws in the dosing protocol - very large doses of DMSA (400mg+) were given to children once a day continuously for nearly a month along with some minerals (including iron and copper which Andy does not recommend) but without specific antioxidant support. I really feel sorry for the kids participating in this study. Unfortunately there will be some people who glance at the headline and wrongly conclude that DMSA is not a useful chelator."<br />http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Autism-Mercury/message/288097<br /><br />Meanwhile, several years on, no official trials have been carried out to test whether chelation does not work. The one trial that started was halted by the US medical authorities.<br /><br />Oh, but hang on, the website of Pretend-to-Research-Autism mentions that the NIMH is running "three major trials of the chelator N-acetyl-cysteine". But NAC is definitely <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">not</span> a chelator. It certainly doesn't equate to the genuine protocols that huge numbers of parents have been having such success with (thus producing the "spontaneous" recoveries their doctors are now starting to report). Those same "Research Autism" charlatans place a maximum danger warning against chelation despite failing to cite <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/10/what-evidence-there-is-of-effectiveness.html">a single shred of evidence of that supposed danger</a>.<br /><br />You can also see elsewhere here the abundance of consistently false arguments deployed in the supposedly-wonderful books by <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/search/label/autism%27s%20false%20prophets">Paul Offit</a> and <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2009/12/shallow-critiques-of-holmes-and.html">Michael Fitzpatrick</a>.<br /><br />There's also last year's report from the UK NHS, wheeled out <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/02/flawed-study-of-adult-autism-in-uk.html">to pretend that there's been no increase anyway</a> (the same NHS that resorts to so many <a href="http://robinpclarke.blogspot.com/2010/10/extensive-evidence-of-lack-of.html">untruths to prevent me getting treatment for the disability it caused</a>).<br /><br />So you can see here what looks to me like all the distortions I listed above being deployed in the service of a crime against the victims of this catastrophe which was caused by experts in the first place.<br /><br />If the average person or even average graduate applied to become a researcher at any of these institutes they'd be laughed out the door. And likewise if they tried to get a publisher for one of those books. The people who are involved in making these "mistakes" have passed through numerous years of university education, have very advanced qualifications, not infrequently have been awarded superlative honours for their supposedly great contributions to science. And yet is it these supposedly great intellectual superiors who are producing and endorsing this trash-"science" in the service of an ongoing abuse of victims.<br /><br />But I see no reason to believe that <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> those involved are consciously engaged in deceit (under duress or not). Many people are compromised by tendencies to suppress from consciousness any disturbing doubts, questions and facts. They eagerly "learn" "authoritative" information unquestioningly. They unconsciously avoid the inconvenient ideas and choose the personally convenient ones instead. They "sincerely" believe their falsehoods. And yet, still, there is no honour in their conduct here. Self-serving false beliefs are no more worthy for being "sincerely" believed, any more than a tiger's conduct can be classed as acceptable on the grounds that it has no sense of anything wrong with killing people.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-51424722501706411252010-10-28T12:47:00.000-07:002010-11-15T10:46:16.712-08:00Profs and PhDs supposedly not making senseHere is a comment <a href="http://iacc.hhs.gov/public-comment/2010/rfi_comments/q4/index.shtml">from K. MacDonald to the IACC</a>: <p><strong></strong></p><blockquote><p>"The IACC seems to have extremely few committee members who understand the biomedical treatments that parents are having so much success with. Why are there no Defeat Autism Now (DAN) doctors on this committee?! This makes no sense not to involve the most successful practitioners," [....]<br /></p><p>"As a parent who went the "mainstream route" for seven years before turning to the more alternative approach of the DAN doctors, I can say there is no comparison. I got absolutely NOWHERE with the mainstream approach, yet had almost miraculous results with the DAN approach. As a healthcare professional myself, I have to wonder what has happened to our medical integrity? Why are we not only avoiding researching treatments that seem to be helping many, but actively attacking those brave doctors who are truly trying to help? It makes no sense!"</p><p></p></blockquote><p>No, K. Macdonald, <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/10/what-evidence-there-is-of-effectiveness.html">it makes perfect sense</a>.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-11688548273635822082010-10-20T01:03:00.001-07:002010-11-15T10:46:47.251-08:00Hypocrisy of the prevention of use of OSR#1The long-experienced mercury expert Boyd Haley has developed the chelator OSR#1 with the intention of providing a superior treament for autism. Yet the FDA has forced him to stop supplying it and thereby prevented parents from obtaining it.<br /><br />Some are arguing that it is only right and fair that OSR#1 should have to undergo the same testing process as any drug coming from big pharma corps. Let's for the sake of argument suppose that this supposed scientific equivalence between OSR#1 and pharma drugs is valid.<br /><br />Here's a rather more fitting comparison. My update review proves that the medical agent which absolutely certainly caused the autism increase was the non-gamma-2 dental amalgams that were introduced mainly from the 1970s onwards. Those non-gamma-2 were not tested for toxicity at the time, and they have still not been subjected to toxicity tests. There have been no studies of whether they cause autism. There have been no randomised controlled trials (other than two very limited and flawed ones confined to mid-childhood ages, equally incapable of detecting autism causation as of detecting chronic adult poisoning).<br /><br />So if the treatment that is so desperately needed for the medically-caused autism is to be banned from use by the victim parents and children....<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">....why is not the highly-toxic dental amalgam likewise being immediately withdrawn from use until safety has been proven by proper trials?<br /></span><br />~~~~~~<br />P.S.: The following is a commentary from Prof Haley:<br /><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);font-family:'Calibri','sans-serif';font-size:11pt;" >"OSR#1 was removed from the market by the FDA as they claimed it was not a dietary product even though its structure consists of a benzoate (found in apples and cranberries) and cysteamine (a metabolite made from cysteine and in the pathway to make taurine, also found on the terminal end of Coenzyme-A). Our lawyers said we would likely win if we contested the FDA claim, but that it would take a year and cost a huge amount of money. Then the FDA would have another claim against OSR, in that physicians and patients were making claims on blog sites (we never made any medical claim on our website) that OSR caused a rapid and significant improvement in their various medical conditions. The FDA has a mantra that dietary products cannot have a positive medical effect---and if they do they are considered by the FDA as drugs. Our lawyer said we would not win regarding this issue."<br /><a href="http://www.safeminds.org/news/news6.html">(See also misleading scare-publicity issued by the FDA this month</a>.)<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-86453322004994497392010-10-19T11:08:00.000-07:002011-03-29T17:28:36.497-07:00Fallacy of a "changepoint" in the autism increaseThis is my comment on the 2010 paper by Michael E McDonald and John P Paul. "Timing of increased autistic disorder cumulative incidence" Environ. Sci. Technol. 44, 2112-2118.<br /><br />The authors reckon that they can usefully analyse the autism increase curve by making an approximation of it in terms of two straight lines. They then point out that the junction of the two lines, the "changepoint", at which they suggest the autism increase began, is about 1988-9.<br /><br />In reality, just about any curve of roughly exponential increase form can have a couple of straight lines imposed on it such as to passably plausibly account for the entire data set. Especially if you set the time axis long enough so the increase will look like an abrupt event rather than a gradual one.<br /><br />Nice correlations can be found for each line with its corresponding part of the data, and impressively high significance levels pointed out. It does not however follow that the increase is usefully understood in terms of such pairs of lines.<br /><br />The paper of McDonald and Paul features remarkably small graphs of the increase, which tend to give the impression that there was no increase before their "changepoint". And they use a whopping 50-year timespan. It would be better to have larger (taller) graphs around the critical period so we can examine the end of the "level" section more closely.<br /><br />I will put here this superb graph of the US IDEA data that others have kindly prepared. (Right-click it to open an enlargement in a separate window.)<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhtquQLS96DNQjSheiLPoEZ-9HEMl3kF1J0nz8VW5hPuMsrfIzJcY3vLmqdrHIHEhgg2rOK7TnlHclDBl0EOMCfJbxOrDbl6FUxo9cE7-Rczogl94SsaKbucwA0nnOHMrjj3VseqjJfs/s1600/IDEAcurvesThoughtful.php.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 215px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhtquQLS96DNQjSheiLPoEZ-9HEMl3kF1J0nz8VW5hPuMsrfIzJcY3vLmqdrHIHEhgg2rOK7TnlHclDBl0EOMCfJbxOrDbl6FUxo9cE7-Rczogl94SsaKbucwA0nnOHMrjj3VseqjJfs/s400/IDEAcurvesThoughtful.php.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5541344891470614130" border="0" /></a>(Graph provided by Thoughtful House Center for Children,<br />Graphing IDEA Professional 2010, Thoughtful House, Austin, TX,<br />Accessed at <a href="http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/disabilities/">http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/disabilities/</a> on November 19, 2010.)<br /><br />It should be quite obvious from this graph that there was not some abrupt changepoint around 1988, and not around any other year either.<br /><br />One can also see that the increase was already beginning by 1980. This is nicely in line with the update review of the antiinnatia theory in which I state that the cause of the increase was the introduction of non-gamma-2 dental amalgams in the 1970s. (Among other evidence, the world's most famous dentist, Hal Huggins, said they became the new "state of the art" in 1975-6.)<br /><br />Furthermore there is a conspicuous de-steepening of the gradient at 1992-3. I expect that this was due to some minor improvement of the amalgam usage protocol, such as avoiding for pregnant women, a slightly less toxic formulation, or improved suction systems.<br /><br />I would not have commented on this "changepoint" paper except that it has been cited by Andrew Wakefield and some Age of Autism people as supposedly showing that the start of increase coincided with some changes in vaccination usage. No it didn't.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-5446446658343925362010-10-10T02:00:00.001-07:002010-12-11T13:22:22.694-08:00What evidence there is of effectiveness of chelation for autism, and what evidence that there is no mercury-autism connection anyway.It is impossible to exist as a human with IQ above 50 or so without forming theories; for instance the theory that one should go to sleep at night, or that there's something called chocolate which tastes nice.<br /><br />Those superiors who beam down their contempt for conspiracy theorising may be unduly believing in the opposite which we might call "integrity theorising". And the older I get the less and less evidence I see for any truth of such integrity theories!<br /><br />Conspiracy theorising is limited in the contribution it can make towards resolving medical questions, but I think it can help. Here are two relevant “conspiracy theories” that are supported by so much evidence that I can’t even begin to present it here.<br />(1) Those who cause a great harm are inclined to go to great lengths to deflect blame from themselves. The medical establishment is well-aware that some of the sources of mercury exposure are from themselves, not least dental amalgam. So it has great hostility to any suggestion of mercury involvement in autism.<br />(2) One of the most profitable industries in history is Big Pharma. They have for numerous decades engaged in dirty tricks propaganda designed to suppress competition from alternatives to their own patented products. A million dollars spent on propaganda is peanuts to them. And just think how much more you could achieve if you had just one of those millions of dollars to deploy.<br /><br />There has been a lot of misrepresentation of chelation therapy, not least because it is a whole new approach to treatment, not properly fitting into the categories of either nutrients or conventional drugs. Just as you would not lump together all pharma-drugs or all nutrients as if they were just one treatment, so you should not lump together all chelation treatments. Huge numbers have been killed by prescribed drugs, but we do not seriously argue that therefore all drugs should be banned.<br /><br />There’s also been a lot of misrepresentation of chelation because even many of those who promote it are incompetent, having little understanding of what is involved.<br /><br />In my experience the unequalled mercury chelation expert is Andrew Hall Cutler who worked out how to cure himself of “amalgam illness” as he calls it. There’s no substitute for reading his slightly pricey book titled “Amalgam Illness”. But you can get to the key part of it by finding it on Amazon.com (not co.uk), and clicking the “Look inside”, then searching for the word “avid” which will take you to page 201. Page 199 onwards explains the essence of competent chelation, and of why incompetent chelation can be rather harmful. It’s simply the difference between brute ignorance and knowledge of the simple principles, not some amazing rocket-science expertise or great skill.<br /><br />The purpose of chelation is, as per the diagrams on pages 200-201, to remove the toxin from the body. EDTA is not good for mercury detox; AHC explicitly condemned its use in this 1999 book. For adult amalgam illness he recommends <span style="font-style: italic;">only</span> a specific protocol of (optional) DMSA for lowering the general body levels, followed <span style="font-style: italic;">only later</span> by the (necessary) use of ALA which enables transport out from the brain (but also into it which is why the outside-of-brain levels must be lowered first). ALA is a nutrient, an amino acid, so not really comparable to a synthetic drug -- except that in mercurised persons it has that great potential negative (as I experienced myself before I understood I was mercury poisoned; I certainly didn’t take a second tablet of it).<br /><br />Elsewhere in his book AHC explains how to counteract the tendency of chelators to remove required elements alongside the toxic ones. Again this isn’t exactly rocket science, unless of course your job depends on not understanding it.<br /><br />Thus you can see now why inappropriate chelation can certainly be harmful, just as you can easily kill yourself with some commonly available pills from the pharmacy. And the sensationalist propaganda anecdotes by Offit and Fitzpatrick of one death caused by an incompetent’s use of EDTA casts not the slightest light on the question of safety of competent chelation protocols.<br /><br />AHC’s recommendation for chelation of autistics is roughly the same (DMSA–)ALA protocol as for adult amalgam illness, except with shorter intervals. He’s been critical of the protocols recommended by ARI/DAN people, but I don’t know the exact details (as therapy is not something I reckon to have comprehensive expertise about).<br /><br />Hopefully the above has adequately explained the proper and improper uses of the widely differing protocols applied to the various chelators.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">~~~~~~~~<br /></div><br />Meanwhile, the medical corporo-establishment is hostile to the idea of mercury involvement in autism, for those two reasons of denying blame for causing it and opposing a non-pharma treatment for it.<br /><br />You probably already know that it began with the thimerosal hypothesis, itself soon after Wakefield’s MMR hypothesis. These vaccine hypotheses were rightly debunked (at least as major autism factors), but once the debunkers got started they got carried away into falsely debunking everything else to do with autism-mercury -- in the context of those two prejudicing motives.<br /><br />That included seeking to debunk chelation for autism. Both Offit’s and Fitzpatrick’s books deploy a number of fallacious critiques of chelation, accompanying their lurid highlighting of the irrelevant EDTA-related death anecdote. That latter is as logical as condemning the use of anti-depressants (“drugs”) on the basis of an anecdote of one death resulting from a pain-killer (“drugs”) overdose.<br /><br />Meanwhile, what about the evidence of effectiveness?<br /><br />Years ago the ARI instigated a whole load of carefully-designed studies which established the value of vitamin B6 in ameliorating autism in about half of cases. And then all that peer-reviewed, double-blinded, multi-replicated research was utterly ignored and pretended away anyway by the medical establishment.<br /><br />Thereafter Rimland and Co understandably decided to let the “proper” scientific publishing process go to hell and the ARI concentrated on doing its own publishing via internet and conferences.<br /><br />Non-establishment science faces increasingly severe obstacles to reaching the official recognition of a PubMed number. Researchers find funding unavailable; they fear having their careers trashed; and many journal editors and referees then deploy their own unsound hostilities. And then even if it does manage to get published it just gets ignored by the sheep and sheepdogs of the establishment anyway, like those B6 studies and my own theory paper.<br /><br />The CDC, NIMH, MRC etc have not exactly been racing against one another to set up chelation trials with the millions at their command. It appears that eventually SafeMinds etc managed to pester them into setting up a trial, but it, oh, --so regettably!-- <span style="font-style: italic;">"had to be"</span> halted due to supposedly some safety concerns. It couldn’t of course really even possibly be just because they were in danger of getting the “wrong” result and proving that chelation cures autism.<br /><br />Meanwhile, in the real world, yes there are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=426tIOS3Jdk&feature=related">all those many videos of recovered children</a>, which a lot of "experts" seem incapable of even mentioning, including for instance Simon Baron-Cohen, and "Research Autism" which pretends to be a charity trying to help autistics. And the plural of anecdote eventually does become scientific evidence despite all the efforts of sham scientists. Scientific American recently suggested that 75% of parents are now using the treatments decried as life-threatening quackery.<br /><br />It is very analogous to the case of adult amalgam illness (which ironically is caused by the same amalgams that caused the autism increase). Many thousands of cases of spectacular “miraculous” recovery from serious intractable illness are on record; plus there’s my own stupendous case and the official lies and evasions to prevent me getting treatment; the internet is getting more and more flooded with such stark testimonies. Amalgam’s even been banned now in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. And yet parts of the med establishment and their slimey assistants such as Ben Goldacre insist on just churning out yet more lies and <a href="http://robinpclarke.blogspot.com/2010/10/extensive-evidence-of-lack-of.html">patently pseudo-science reports such as the SCENIHR one</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Evidence that the real quackery is coming from the medical establishment: </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">their defence of mercury is demonstrably a pile of rubbish.</span><br /><br />Senior names in the research bureaucracy such as Linda Birnbaum assert that an autism-mercury connection has been found to be lacking. The putative evidence of this lack of involvement of mercury rests on three studies, namely Ip et al, Soden, and Hertz-Picciotto et al. 2010. But the first two have been shown to be flawed beyond repair, and indeed evidencing the opposite, by <a href="http://www.ane.pl/showarticle.php?art=7021">DeSoto and Hitlan 2010</a>. And the remaining study has meanwhile been shown by myself to be <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/07/hertz-picciotto-et-al-2010-re-blood.html">worthless rubbish malfounded on a most elementary error</a>.<br /><br />Oh, and now we have this further would-be contribution: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19027035">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19027035</a>, which purports an ignorance of even the most basic principle of chelation therapy (namely removing the toxin from the body) and substitutes a straw-man fallacious in-situ “detoxification” concept of its own. It is just as impossible to carry out a test of chelation <span style="font-style: italic;">in vitro</span> (or in this case "<span style="font-style: italic;">in tissue</span>") as it is impossible to venture out on a test drive of a car engine which is standing isolated from the car body on a mechanic's bench. When a dentist drills your tooth it instantly creates more pain than was there already. But we don't validly infer from that that dental treatment is counterproductive; because the treatment has to be evaluated as a whole.<br /><br />That’s four out of four piles of rubbish constantly cited by the very-well-qualified professional defenders of mercury.<br /><br />On the one hand there is that fourfold pile of rubbish supposedly showing no involvement of mercury. On the other hand the evidence that mercury <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> involved in autism is now so substantial as to be far beyond reasonable doubt (as reviewed in my update review forthcoming).<br /><br />Wouldn't it be wonderful if researchers in capitalist countries were paid to find out the truth rather than to cover it up and oppress victims?<br /><a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/search/label/chelation%20denialism">More pages relevant to chelation denialism are linked here</a>.<br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:78%;">(This post has been written in response to <a href="http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2010/01/autism-insights-another-journal-for-questionable-autism-research/#comment-102169">a question asked on the lbrb blog</a> - search for the second comment by "daedalus".)<br />Two more studies apparently showing a mercury connection (though I've not read them as I concentrate my reading on things that <span style="font-style: italic;">don't</span> agree with my current conclusions): <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content%7Edb=all%7Econtent=a916457948">http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a916457948</a> and <a href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/730552">http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/730552</a><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-25229551417272141052010-10-08T17:57:00.000-07:002010-10-11T02:24:46.033-07:00Drivel-barrageing, an abuse of open debate opportunitiesI am here introducing the name drivel-barrageing for a phenomenon that did not exist before the internet enabled the introduction of open debate forums such as this here.<br /><br />Others have already noticed this form of abuse but I forget what if any term they used to label it, and anyway I'm now here calling it drivel-barrageing.<br /><br />An example of a somewhat similar phenomenon was the harassing "by right" of climate scientists by large numbers of time-wasting "freedom of information" requests.<br /><br />Drivel-barragers superficially appear to be engaging in civil, reasonable, discussion. But in reality it is not reasonable discussion. They publish a barrage of sloppy questions or other challenges against their victim. They do not bother to spend the time to properly research and critically consider whether their challenges have any substance to them. Instead they put the heavy burden on the victim to answer all their sloppy confusions, to correct all their errors, as if the victim had some professional teaching obligations to them.<br /><br />There is consequently a grossly unreasonable imbalance in the resulting "debate". The barrager has an easy time generating his drivel, whereas the victim has to labour at sorting out the critical thinking, the provision of evidence the barrager couldn't be bothered to find out for himself, and so on.<br /><br />The drivel barrager assumes that a principle of reasonable debate is that their victim has some obligation to respond to every piece of their drivel. If the victim does not it will supposedly constitute proof that the driveller is right and the victim is wrong. But in the real world, people do have other things they have to get on with, such as survival chores and working on proper thoughtful projects and studying of their own. The driveller prevents this proper activity and disrespects the time and contribution of the victim.<br /><br />I myself am very unusual in that I seek out debate with those of contrasting views. I have consequently become all too familiar with this sort of abuse, first noticing it on the (now defunct) Monbiot discussion list back in 2004. Frequently a whole load of drivellers gang up against the one victim (me).<br /><br />A recent outbreak of drivel-barrageing can be seen from "daedalus" on <a href="http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2010/01/autism-insights-another-journal-for-questionable-autism-research/">the page linked here</a>. It's rather normal for a drivel-barrager to be anonymous as there. You can see how he just cannot get the point of his unreasonableness and just goes on pigheadedly. He expresses concern that he cannot post comments to my autism site. I don't know why, as I can post comments easily enough myself. But actually his comments would not be welcome anyway. That's not because they would be wrong, or because I would disagree with them, but because they would be the unworthy drivel of an unrepentant, incorrigible, drivel-barrageing abuser of this opportunity for open debate.<br /><br />People do not have a right to expect all their questions to be answered and re-answered <span style="font-style: italic;">ad nauseam</span>. Respect may not have to be earned in the first instance, but that respect can rightly be withdrawn if a victim finds himself the subject of such drivel-barrageing abuse.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-24225508553987839452010-10-06T05:31:00.000-07:002011-01-11T03:43:22.980-08:00Autism's false prophets, Offit's false arguments, selective omissions, and chelation denialismThe book "Autism's false prophets" by Paul Offit is not just yet another book about autism. Huge quantities of this exceptionally evil concoction are being handed out free through the American Academy of Pediatrics to any parents who express the wrong sorts of doubts.<br /><br />It contains relatively little scientific argument, consisting instead mainly of ad-hominem muck-raking and "you can trust us" assertions of the supposedly superior authority of big wealthy institutions. But even where it strays into actual science it contains major errors.<br /><br />Before examining those errors you should be aware that Offit's book uses a very peculiar system of citing which gives no citation indications on the text pages, but only in a back section. This peculiar system (which I've never seen in any other document) is ideal for when you wish to deceive readers about what is genuinely evidence-based and what is mere false assertion -- as in the following examples.<br /><br />One of the errors is Offit's notion that mercury removal could not possibly enable recovery from mercury-induced injury. Offit's reasoning is that "Once a brain cell is damaged by a heavy metal like mercury, it is permanently damaged" (page 145). And so removing the mercury cannot reverse the "damage". And "therefore" chelation for autism cannot work and must be mere quackery.<br /><br />Firstly, let us for the moment take as accepted Offit's false notion that "damage" of neurons must be involved in autism. Immediately after this critique of the science he presents his scare-anecdote about an <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/10/what-evidence-there-is-of-effectiveness.html">utterly irrelevant</a> case of incompetent misuse of EDTA: "And then the unthinkable happened....." (Arrgghh!!!). Curiously he gives <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">twelve</span> citations for that <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/10/what-evidence-there-is-of-effectiveness.html">ONE utterly irrelevant scare-drivel anecdote</a>, and yet in respect of his key assertion about damaged cells, there is <span style="font-weight: bold;">no</span> citation of evidence <span style="font-weight: bold;">whatsoever</span>. But of course that's not really a problem as it is the Infallible True Prophet Offit who is proclaiming it, in whom the reader has been given total faith by this stage; and it's a fair bet that the twelve drivel citations were padded in there to hide the non-existent evidence about "damage", for that's how such propaganda trickery always works (see e.g. the UK COT's deliberately deceitful statement against vitamin B6).<br /><br />All manner of body cells have extensive systems in place for repairing themselves. They're doing it all the time. So on quite what basis does Offit assert that neurons "damaged" by mercury cannot be "repaired"? And why does he cite no evidence for this key, highly-heretical assertion?<br /><br />But anyway, Offit errs more fundamentally, by making that false assumption that mercury neurotoxicity works <span style="font-style: italic;">only</span> by "damaging" neurons, with no other neurotoxic processes involved. You will see in my 1993 paper there is not the slightest hint of it involving neurons being "damaged", nor indeed any "damage" being involved in autism causation at all. Rather autism is <span style="font-style: italic;">difference</span>, not disorder <span style="font-style: italic;">(-- as the book's very own dedicatee "real heroes" Kathleen Seidel and Camille Clark would very much agree!).</span> I can only guess that logical consistency is as alien to Dr Offit as is evidence-basing of his key assertions.<br /><br />In reality mercury has potential to affect neurons via its pro-oxidant effect, and via its interference with all the enzyme pathways that involve zinc (in other words just about all of them). And last but not least, as <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/09/abstract-of-update-review-of.html">my update review</a> explains, mercury binds to DNA and thereby reduces gene-expression, which the antiinnatia theory had already indicated would cause autism.<br /><br />The mechanism by which mercury causes autism therefore does not involve any damaging of neurons. So lowering the mercury levels, such that the DNA has less of it binding and inhibiting the gene-expression required for normal development, would indeed enable recovery, providing it is done before the brain has become too fixed by maturation. Offit's reasoning is therefore doubly incorrect.<br /><br />[Temporary note: I am busy at the moment but will come back to add <span style="font-style: italic;">yet more</span> false arguments his book presents against chelation. His case consists <span style="font-style: italic;">entirely</span> of falsehoods, unbecoming of such a highly-qualified researcher.]<br /><br />You can also see that on page 115 (refs page 269) Offit cites the Nelson and Bauman paper but fails to give the citation of the Bernard et al which it attempted to debunk, nor any mention of the authors' later resounding rejoinder. I leave you to form your own judgement about this selective mentioning of only one side by such a highly-qualified multi-millionaire. Especially given the seriousness of the subject, potentially trying to deprive tragic victims of a valuable therapy, <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> Dr Offit's heavy financial interest in the question of the safety of vaccines.<br /><br />Offit deploys that misinformation there in a second false argument in terms of autism and mercury poisoning being "two disorders". And yet an elementary knowledge of mercury toxicity tells us that there is far from "one disorder" that constitutes "mercury poisoning". I can only guess this heroic multi-millionaire was too busy struggling to make ends meet to find the time to properly study what he was publishing about.<br /><br />A third false argument of Offit is his comparison of autism epidemiology with other epidemiology (on pages 110-111). He states that epidemiology of effects of certain vaccines was able to show up even the causation of some very rare hazards (intussusception, thrombocytopenia, and Guillain-Barré syndrome) resulting from them, and "therefore" the epidemiological studies of autism would have this same power to utterly rule out even very slight involvement of vaccines. Personally I think the autism data is too unclear to resolve whether or not there is rare harm caused by vaccines anyway, but that's beside the point.<br /><br />What <span style="font-style: italic;"><u>is</u></span> the point here is that the epidemiology of autism is affected by two starkly obvious major complications which did not affect the epidemiology examples cited by Offit. Firstly, autism is <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> far from being something that can be clearly "yes/no" identified as can the above-named three conditions. Secondly, the autism epidemiology data has huge variance, far from all of it explained, but reasonably suspected to be caused by some changes of awareness and of diagnosis, and not least by other environmental factors such as dental mercury (as my update review will make clear).<br /><br />That is, the autism data has a huge level of "noise" in it preventing hearing of the exquisite signal that Offit claims could be clearly not heard. Or in another analogy, the autism data is a very crude unfocussable lens through which to search for the tiny pinpoint he claims ought to be visible if vaccines even rarely caused autism. So again, we see a crudely incorrect argument from this highly-qualified, highly-awarded author who has made millions from touting his medical products.<br /><br />(Whether Offit's legal-liability-exempt profitmaking products are a quackery scam is besides the point, but in view of all the above <span style="font-style: italic;">one does have to wonder</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">-- and indeed it does turn out that the rotavirus that he's earned millions from has been judged unneeded by 27 of 29 nations, and was only accepted in the US thanks to himself voting it in.</span>)<br />And Offit's<em> "rotavirus vaccine may be linked to a small increase in a life-threatening type of bowel obstruction, U.S. health officials said on Wednesday.</em>....<em> ." </em><br /><br />In 2009, the American Academy of Pediatrics presented the “President’s Certificate for Outstanding Service” award to Dr Paul Offit.<br /><br />See also my important further article<br /><h2><span><a href="http://autismheroes.blogspot.com/2011/01/paul-offit.html">Paul Offit betrays his serious aversion to honesty"</a></span></h2><br />More about Dr Offit <a href="http://www.countercurrents.org/pringle041110.htm">here</a>. And <a href="http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/09/rotavirus-the-vaccine-nobody-wants.html">here</a> and <a href="http://www.pauloffit.com/">here</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-28411515581685253352010-10-04T02:04:00.000-07:002011-02-26T13:56:57.933-08:00Important concepts about theoriesFar too much timewasting philoso-waffle has been written about theories, but I think that nevertheless there are a few points that are important to make clear. This article here is a work-in-progress. For now I'll just discuss a first aspect.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The illusion of conflicting of theories.</span><br /><br />Consider the answer to the question "How did you manage to get from town A to town B in only 30 minutes?". One answer might be "I bought a bus ticket". Another answer could be "Oil was pumped up from the ground, taken to a refinery, the resulting diesel was then transported to a depot, and then pumped into the tank of a vehicle, ......" and so on.<br /><br />Those two explanations of the journey look very different and yet they can both be true simultaneously. Likewise there are quite a number of ideas currently around concerning autism causation, some of which are even called theories of autism. And just because they look very different from the antiinnatia theory, it does not follow that they are all in conflict with the antiinnatia theory, any more than the bus ticket theory is in conflict with the oil fuel theory.<br /><br />For instance my presentations of the antiinnatia theory had already incorporated the concept of theory of mind even before anyone else had published anything about that concept. From my perspective it was just some more of the innatons that get suppressed (or impaired) by antiinnatia.<br /><br />Another instance is that some people are linking the male-female imbalance of autism cases to characteristics of testosterone (such as its potentiating the effect of mercury). My 1993 paper gave an explanation of why there was this imbalance, but in terms of natural selection. Again there is no necessary conflict here, any more than there is between the bus ticket and oil-production theories of my journey. Of the two, my natural selection explanation is the overarching one, as it additionally explains why testosterone would be the molecule it is (with that effect), or why testosterone was selected to be the masculinising hormone. The explanation in terms of chemical details meanwhile could have potential usefulness for diagnosis or intervention.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-65960524340052461812010-10-03T17:05:00.000-07:002011-02-10T10:04:51.244-08:00There is only one autistic/ASD syndrome!There are many thousands of autistics, and each one is unique.<br /><br />But I resolutely reject the notion suggested by some, that there are "many autisms", for the following reasons.<br /><br />The world has been aware of the autistic syndrome/Asperger syndrome for nearing 70 years now. Many people have spent much time trying to delineate separate subdivisions within that syndrome. The result has been a resounding lack of finding any such subdivisions. Even attempts to show any certain distinction between "Aspergers" and "high-functioning autism" have drawn a blank [as per Tony Attwood's review linked at end here]. <br /><br />Meanwhile there are certainly great variations in how autism manifests. And there is much reason to believe that the etiological (causal) factors can be quite different in different cases.<br /><br />Years ago when I was first writing down the antiinnatia theory of autism I wrote a paragraph which explained about this. But because the paper (as published in 1993) was already rather long, I cut that paragraph out before publication. I'll now reinstate it here, in concept at least (as I don't remember the original wording).<br /><br />Autism(/ASD etc) is like a tree. Just as a tree has many roots, so autism has many causes. Just as a tree has many branches, so autism has many characteristics and signs (notwithstanding the dumbing-down to a "triad of impairments"). But also, just as a tree has only one trunk, so autism/ASD/Aspergers/etc has only one central causal, definitional mechanism/concept, namely antiinnatia.<br /><br />We can elaborate this metaphor of a tree by thinking of it as grounded in some rather peculiar soil. At the northwest corner there is a lot of (say) uranium in the soil, whereas at the southeast corner there is none at all. In consequence of this the leaves of one corner of the tree contain a lot of uranium while at the opposite corner there is little or none. But all are part of the same tree.<br /><br />But....!<br />Notwithstanding the above, it would be wise for autism research to recognise various distinctions, such as male/female, and late/early onset. And another distinction I would suggest to be particularly important.<br /><br />The evidence concerning this is is more fully elaborated in my update review, but I will briefly outline it here. According to my update of the theory, the autism increase has been caused by mercury (from non-gamma-2 amalgams); whereas the pre-increase autism had generally minimal involvement of mercury. (But it couldn't be zero as no-one has ever lived in a zero-mercury environment.)<br /><br />It follows that within contemporary autism/ASD/Aspergers/etc we are looking at two substantially different things. On the one hand the minority (10-20%?) who would have been autistic/etc even if the increase had not taken place. These would be the "true" autism/etc, so to speak. On the other hand, those cases caused by mercury intake. These latter are very likely to have a variety of mercury-specific symptoms accompanying their antiinnatia-caused symptoms.<br /><br />It follows that any research that just lumps together both these groups is liable to learn little about either. Indicators towards distinguishing between the two are likely to include: age of onset, number of maternal amalgams, level of indoor mercury vapor, results of porphyrin tests or hair mercury tests. Meanwhile, mercury levels in blood or urine are most unlikely to be worthwhile distinguishers.<br /><br />It may be possible to discern the two categories in bimodal distributions and or scattergrams, getting beyond overly simple averaging of the whole autistic category.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.tonyattwood.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69:is-there-a-difference-between-aspergers-syndrome-and-high-functioning-autism&catid=44:resource-papers&Itemid=180">Review of Asperger's/Autism relationship by Tony Attwood</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-63955446055270282812010-10-03T17:01:00.001-07:002011-02-13T14:02:24.392-08:00IQ increase (Flynn effect) predicted affects animals tooMy update review explains the Flynn effect IQ increase and its reversal as caused by the parallel increase of atmospheric mercury vapor over a century followed by the parallel reduction in recent decades. There is no reason why this causality should not apply equally to non-human animals, and so the theory makes a new prediction that the Flynn effect affects non-humans. This would be manifested in intelligently innovative behaviours and a certain amount of deviation from hitherto traditional innately-directed behaviours (a sort of "animal autism").<br /><br />While I have not made any search for confirmation or disconfirmation, I have passively come to notice some support for this concept.<br /><br />Firstly, a monkey inventing a new way of opening coconuts:<br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8936000/8936523.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8936000/8936523.stm</a><br /><br />Secondly a species of monkey which was well-established to be vegetarian suddenly starting to eat eggs:<br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8270000/8270801.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8270000/8270801.stm</a><br /><br />Plus you can hear this hilarious innovation in gibbon singing....<br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8150000/8150604.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8150000/8150604.stm</a><span class="fullpost"><span class="fullpost"><br /></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-16759088733981507832010-10-03T15:45:00.000-07:002010-11-16T05:33:15.567-08:00The politics of autism research<p style="text-align: left;"> "...gene is mythical part of living structure which in reactionary theories like Mendelism-Veysmanism-Morganism determines heredity. Soviet scientists under leadership of Academician Lysenko proved scientifically that genes don't exist in the nature." <a href="http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/lysenkoism.shtml"><i><br />From Soviet Encyclopedia circa 1950</i></a><br /></p>Huge numbers of words, including several books, have been written about allegedly unworthy deeds and motives of various people and groups involved in autism research. Depending on which side you prefer to believe, those involved in Defeat Autism Now, SafeMinds, Age of Autism, etc, are either evil profiteering quackery-merchants or else great heroes standing up to an evil profiteering medical establishment.<br /><br />In my view, such conspiracy theorising does little to resolve any of the scientific questions. In my experience as a theorist, researchers almost never actually falsify their raw data (though in respect of commercially-criticial trials of therapies it may be less rare). I wouldn't have been able to so easily formulate coherent theories time and time again if that data were not founded in reality.<br /><br />But I do think that anyone coming to look at autism research, and the forthcoming (non-/)reaction to my update review, would be well advised to be aware of some of the potential political factors that could be intruding to distort the science from its unbiased path. So I will just put these few thoughts here on the subject.<br /><br />Some elements of the political context could be that:<br /><ol><li>Some people wish(ed) to blame vaccine manufacturers, or other medical institutions, for causing the autism of their children (and associated alleged increase). (the "heretics")<br /></li><li>Some of those accused by the above wish(ed) to prove that there was no such causation, and or increase. (the "establishment")<br /></li><li>Some professional researchers might conceivably wish to spin out the progress of science into false trails, so as to prolong their own professional research careers rather than resolve questions as promptly as possible. And some may fear losing their jobs if they raise the 'wrong' questions or publish the 'wrong' results. (the "careerists")<br /></li><li>Some others may wish to falsely declare a crisis, and or falsely proclaim treatments, in order to profit from gullible customers. (the "quacks")</li><li>Yet others (the "establishment" again) may wish to falsely discredit valuable treatments as supposed quack remedies, because they undermine their own plans to market licenced pharmaceuticals for the same condition.<br /></li></ol> Malign motives can be attributed to all sides. And false claims can be shown on all sides, naturally enough given the human talent for making mistakes. And so little or nothing of the science is proven by any of the associated slime-throwing.<br /><br />I'll just put below here my own impressions of how the science has been distorted in recent years, by way of enabling some anticipation of how my own update review will be misrepresented in due course. Please note that none of this is my certified testimony as to the truth of anything; please verify for yourself if you wish to take a firm view of any of it.<br /><br />Firstly (see disclaimer above), autism had a most unhelpful tendency to become noticeable at just about the same age as some vaccinations are injected. And some of the heretics were noticing an increase in prevalence which aligned with increased vaccinations. Their reasonable suspicion was reinforced by the lack of any other obvious causal change, because the dental profession continues to assert that they're still using those same old amalgams tried and tested over 150 years, and so approximately no-one has noticed the huge unannounced changeover to non-gamma-2 amalgams.<br /><br />The heretics of necessity tended to be rather amateurish, undertrained, underqualified and underfunded people. They naturally made plenty of mistakes, especially in the early years.<br /><br />The establishment could have responded to the MMR and thimerosal theories with some sound science. Instead, some absolutely stupendously abysmal papers were published, such as Madsen in respect of Denmark. Such rubbish could be excused if it were coming from the amateur heretics, but coming from supposed leading expert scientists and published in supposedly top-rating journals any notion of good faith bungling was much harder to find credible.<br /><br />The result of these abysmal publications (and the associated persecution of Andrew Wakefield) was a huge increase of distrust of the establishment. In reality there was soon enough sufficient sound science to radically marginalise the vaccine theories anyway. But now that the establishment has gained an image of untrustworthiness, that sound science is very much harder for the heretics and the general public to believe. Everything can now be rationalised away as lies and propaganda.<br /><br />Associated claims from the establishment have been that the increase was not real, and that autism was almost entirely of genetic causation. Again the establishment used abysmal papers to justify its denialism. Again they unnecessarily undermined their own credibility.<br /><br />It appears that those claims of no increase and no environmental cause thereof are now floundering in the face of a reality that is simply too big to be pretended away (though the NHS as recently as 2009 has published <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/02/flawed-study-of-adult-autism-in-uk.html">yet more rubbish</a> in defence of that flat earth).<br /><br />Which brings us to the present stage of this parade of denialisms. This is exemplified by a number of the highest-ranking research professionals touting blood levels of mercury as a supposedly useful means of showing that mercury has not been involved in autism. Any even slightly competent researcher should be well aware that using blood (or urine) measures of mercury is a great way to get the false negative that they want so as to put everyone off the trail to the real cause of the increase. Even my common-or-garden mere general practitioner (family doctor) was able to tell me back in 2004 that blood mercury is a useless test for chronic mercury poisoning. So how come these spectacularly-qualified supposedly leading expert researchers don't know even this most basic fact of what they are publishing about?<br />Reference for blood mercury: Mutter, Naumann, Guethlin. Comments on the Article "The toxicology of mercury and its chemical compounds". <span style="font-style: italic;">Crit Rev Toxicol</span> 2007 37:537-549.<br /><br />Meanwhile the other two papers (by Ip, and Soden) which are deployed as supposedly showing no mercury involvement have also been exposed as severely flawed, in this <a href="http://www.ane.pl/showarticle.php?art=7021">review by DeSoto and Hitlan</a>.<br />(http://www.ane.pl/showarticle.php?art=7021)<br />So the case against mercury involvement rests on three papers all of which are fit only for the trashcan. Need I say more?<br /><br />We can now look forward to hearing this same pseudo-expertise rolled out again as "professional" "expert" testimony to also "disprove" my update review on the pseudic grounds of a supposed lack of difference of mercury in autism.<br /><br />One may hypothesise that there are malign motives at work, of (1) wishing to deflect blame from the medical establishment's endorsement of dental amalgam, and or (2) wishing to avoid identifying the real environmental cause so that these same researchers can enjoy decades of prestige and income at our expense on a wild-goose chase among any number of other non-causes of autism. One may also hypothesise (3) that some researchers are in an embarassing position, because they fear having their careers destroyed and ending up on the dole if they ask the 'wrong' questions or publish the 'wrong' answers.<br /><br />Those are only unproven hypotheses. It is nevertheless difficult for me to suppress suspicion that <a href="http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/lysenkoism.shtml">the malign spirit of Lysenkoism</a> is very much alive and distorting the world of professional autism research in the western world. On the other hand again, I would be wary of attributing evil to <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> the people involved. My observations of other "controversies" indicate that the most stupendous obtuseness can be achieved even by highly intelligent people having no possible selfish motive for their denialism (and this for reasons that were explained in my unpublished theory of neuroticism; btw, the low-neurotic can be even more denialic than the high).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-338862677889240992010-09-24T02:00:00.000-07:002014-05-08T08:31:04.052-07:00Do vaccines cause autism?<!--[if !mso]>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Vaccines as alleged cause of autism or of the autism
increase.</span></b></div>
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There exist two widely
contrasting views, both expressed with absolute confidence, on whether vaccines
have contributed to causing any autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
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On the one hand, many personnel
of what is sometimes called the medical establishment absolutely dismiss all
possibility of causation of autism by vaccines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Autism’s False
Prophets” (Offit, 2008) has been a prominent player in this viewpoint. </div>
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There are many serious problems
with that book, but of relevance to the present question is Dr Offit's statement on
page 111 that “even if thimerosal in vaccines accounted for only 1 percent of
autism—one in 15,000 children—epidemiological studies would have found
it.”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His basis for that conclusion
comes from his preceding sentence stating that “Problems caused by vaccines as
rare as one in 100,000 have been readily detected by epidemiological
studies”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He in turn reckons to have
justified that statement with three examples of vaccine adverse effects, namely
causation of the rare problems of intussusception, thrombocytopenia, and
Guillaine-Barré syndrome, all of which were identified from epidemiological
studies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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But that reasoning is
unsound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those rare consequences were
discernable only because they were (i) definitively diagnosable conditions, and
(ii) rare conditions whose occurrence would be readily distinguishable from the
background level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By contrast, autism
is not only hard to diagnose and impossible to clearly enumerate, but also
sufficiently common and widely varying in prevalence of diagnosis that any
causation less than a few percent would be impossible to discern among the
statistical “noise” variation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
consequently my opinion that there does not exist sufficiently clear data to
justify the extreme position advanced by Offit in those sentences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Meanwhile many thousands of
non-professionals are equally absolutely convinced of a concept of
“vaccine-damaged children” (by which they mean autistic children), combined
with the notion that vaccines have caused a huge increase of autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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One part of what persuades them
is the “direct experience” of thousands of parents of so-called
“vaccine-damaged” autistic children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
are told that we should respect the testimony of those who have seen the direct
experience for themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as there
are thousands of them, “therefore” it must be a major cause.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But their direct experience is only that
their own one or more children became autistic after a vaccine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their direct experience does not extend to
what happened to all the many other autistic children before they became
autistic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this comes in the context
that just about all the children were being vaccinated anyway (and at that
age), so logically just about all those who became autistic would be <i>expected
</i>to have been vaccinated at that age anyway, even if no vaccine-autism
causation ever occurred.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3473669599815076150" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>These “vaccine-blamers” also err
in assuming that the clear evidence of a mercury-autism causal link constitutes
clear evidence of a thimerosal-autism causation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They err here because they incorrectly dismiss any involvement of
mercury from dental amalgam instead (which can easily account for the entire
autism increase data).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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A third, most
important, factor underlying the vaccine-blamers’ convictions has been the
confusing gradual growth of information about the subject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most notable in this is this graph in Figure
A1 which was presented to the world by Mark Blaxill (2001).</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3473669599815076150" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj26OemnMEA5gRRfXG3TvpooZKu5NkVfRlydCUQ-6exCfdrgfwJuTGnb7YQuNPVMAPQhpsv9g7Ycf5RLRifjyI0eovQ_-QOgJAMBQRCm02u9q14KMDUnsSuE8EhMlwAnFWlP9dxRNnphZQ/s1600/BlaxiillVaccines+and+Autism.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj26OemnMEA5gRRfXG3TvpooZKu5NkVfRlydCUQ-6exCfdrgfwJuTGnb7YQuNPVMAPQhpsv9g7Ycf5RLRifjyI0eovQ_-QOgJAMBQRCm02u9q14KMDUnsSuE8EhMlwAnFWlP9dxRNnphZQ/s1600/BlaxiillVaccines+and+Autism.bmp" height="228" width="400" /></a></div>
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Figure A1:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blaxill’s 2001 alignment of autism and
vaccines</div>
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Looking at that graph in 2001
one might reasonably have seen it as reasonable grounds to suspect causation of
the autism increase by vaccine mercury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A more sophisticated reader might have appreciated that the fall at the
end of the autism series was only an artifact of delayed diagnosis, and also
appreciated that seven selected years are too few for very firm conclusions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet it is still rather suggestive,
especially in the context of the Bernard et al. (2001) review which had
suggested the plausibility of causation by mercury, and with the lack of any
obvious other sharply increasing mercury sources impacting on infants.</div>
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However, we can now substitute
more up-to-date and fuller autism data into Blaxill’s 2001 graph, as follows
(and autism has continued to increase even to recent years).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9lR0HmsT8yaCcDeJlq7M7rGuzPRxaGNzcm2qVXjFM1TKbNlJwtrrEsvPjHGPX-ZQXNuqWth5Eys3FzV1tcfVY5Aa3FYhD1SyVy2GDiN9NZdCXluERqDtKdApRe_I3f6qoQnmcT8Dfkr8/s1600/Blaxill_California2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9lR0HmsT8yaCcDeJlq7M7rGuzPRxaGNzcm2qVXjFM1TKbNlJwtrrEsvPjHGPX-ZQXNuqWth5Eys3FzV1tcfVY5Aa3FYhD1SyVy2GDiN9NZdCXluERqDtKdApRe_I3f6qoQnmcT8Dfkr8/s1600/Blaxill_California2.jpg" height="286" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Figure A2: Blaxill’s vaccine
mercury data placed alongside updated and more extensive autism data</div>
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This fuller data should make it
obvious that the increase cannot remotely be accounted for in terms of vaccine
mercury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The increase has continued
surging further upwards for more than 17 years since the vaccine mercury started
to decline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it can be seen that the
increase was of a form of a progressive exponential, accelerating through the
whole of the 1980s and not just during the period focused on by Blaxill’s
chart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The curve can be completely
understood in terms of increasing numbers of the non-gamma-2 amalgams
introduced from the mid-1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
vaccine mercury data just happened to run parallel with the autism data for
four or five years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it appears not
to have made any discernable impact on that already-existing exponential
increase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From looking at this data it
is difficult to conclude that anything more than a handful of percent of the
autism increase can have been due to vaccine mercury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And data from other countries is even less supportive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Safeminds (2011) have tried to argue that
the data from Denmark in reality shows a decrease following discontinuation of
Thimerosal, but that is predicated on an assumption that the
inpatient/outpatient ratio did not change over some years when autism was
apparently rapidly increasing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it
is highly probable that a rapid increase of autism would cause the inpatient
ratio to rapidly fall as well, as inpatient resources would fail to keep up
with the unexpected demand.)</div>
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A further unsound argument for
blaming vaccines was presented by McDonald and Paul (2010).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The authors reckoned that they could
usefully analyse the autism increase curve by making an approximation of it in
terms of two straight lines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They then
pointed out that the junction of the two lines, the "changepoint", at
which they suggest the autism increase began, was about 1988-9 (i.e. just at
the start of Blaxill’s vaccine mercury data).<br />
<br />
But in reality, just about any curve of roughly exponential increase form can
have a couple of straight lines imposed on it such as to passably plausibly
account for the entire data set.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Especially if you set the time axis long enough so the increase will
look like an abrupt event rather than a gradual one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nice correlations can be found for each line with its corresponding
part of the data, and impressively high significance levels pointed out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it does not follow that the increase is
usefully understood in terms of such pairs of lines.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3473669599815076150" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>McDonald and Paul featured remarkably small graphs of the increase, which tend to
give the impression that there was no increase before their
"changepoint". And they use a whopping 50-year timespan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be better to have larger (taller)
graphs around the critical period so we can examine the end of the
"level" section more closely.</div>
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It should be quite obvious from
Figure A2 here (and Figures 3, 4 and 6 in the main text) that there was not
some abrupt changepoint around 1988-9, and not around any other year
either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is entirely an artifact of
their flawed methodology which imposes a “changepoint” on the data whether
appropriately or not.</div>
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In 2011, Safeminds published a
rebuttal review of the evidence that was alleged to prove vaccines do not cause
autism (Safeminds, 2011).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
important to understand that lack of proof of absence does not constitute proof
of presence, and so that rebuttal review does not constitute any sort of proof
that vaccines actually do cause any autism.</div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
Another popular fallacy is that
court judgments constitute evidence or even proof of causation of autism by
vaccines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Court judgments are not
scientific evidence, but merely non-scientists’ opinions of probability based
on the scientific evidence presented as related to the particular cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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</div>
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There have
also been suggestions that the data discussed at the Simpsonwood conference, later
radically reformulated into the paper of Verstraeten et al., constitutes
glaring proof of vaccine-caused autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But there were severe methodological deficiencies even in the earlier
“generations” of that study.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
discussed in the Safeminds (2011) review, there was a very large
under-ascertainment and high likelihood of biased selection of cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if the findings of 7-fold or even 2-fold
relative risk were sound, then one would expect to see that clearly reflected
in the Figure A2 herewith, but on the contrary I can’t even see a 1.1-fold
bulge there. </div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: lines-together;">
Some vax-blamers also sometimes cite this study: Hepatitis B triple series vaccine and developmental disability in US
children aged 1-9 years. Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry,
September 2008, Carolyn Gallagher and Melody Goodman. Part of the problem with the vaccine-autism theorists is that they keep jumping between theories. At first it was the triple MMR to blame, then it became mercury-containing vaccines, then a combination of both, and then again maybe it was Hib or Hep-B. In reality there's scant real evidence that any of these have caused the increase (which was well underway long before 1989 and the increase just carried on rather than changed in some way at that point).. </div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
In conclusion, neither of the
strongly asserted positions are justified by the evidence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no good evidence that vaccine
mercury <u>never </u>causes autism, and yet neither is there any good,
publicly-visible clear proof that it <u>has</u> caused any autism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it certainly did not cause the autism
increase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that increase is
meanwhile easily and fully accountable for in terms of the changeover to
non-gamma-2 dental amalgams from 1976. </div>
<h1>
References</h1>
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Blaxill M: <span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.0pt;">Rising incidence of autism: association with
Thimerosal. In: Institute of Medicine. Thimerosal-containing vaccines and
neurodevelopmental disorders. Washington DC: National Academy Press;
2001:49–50.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: -14.2pt;">
Bernard S, Enayati A, Redwood L, Roger H, Binstock T: Autism: a novel
form of mercury poisoning. <i>Med Hypoth</i> 2001, 56:462-471.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: -14.2pt;">
McDonald ME, Paul JP: Timing of increased autistic disorder cumulative
incidence. <i>Environ Sci Technol</i> 2010, 44:2112-2118</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: -14.2pt;">
Offit PA: Autism’s false prophets. Columbia University Press; 2008. </div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
Safeminds: Vaccines and autism – what do
epidemiological studies really tell us? 2011.</div>
<br />
PS.<br />
<br />
I hold a uniquely "privileged" position of lack of bias in relation to this dispute. I have no personal connection whatsoever with autism, with no family or friends affected by autism. As a thus consistently independently-based researcher there is no pressure on me to go along with any particular institutional position. My only connection with autism is that many years ago I discovered and later published the uniquely unchallenged, comprehensive, theory of autism, long before there was any talk of an increase let alone the slightest linking of it with vaccines or even mercury. Furthermore, autism is just one of my numerous great theories, so I am not here gripped by all-eggs-in-one-basket ego syndrome either.
<br />
<br />
From this background, I and the antiinnatia theory really don't give a hoot as to whether or not any vaccine causes autism. We will just follow the facts wherever they lead us.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-4372152186621482202010-09-20T23:45:00.000-07:002010-12-29T04:10:59.442-08:00Fallacy about acrodynia (pink disease)On the leftbrainrightbrain blog, "daedalus" asked:<br /><p><span class="caps"></span></p><blockquote><p><span class="caps">RPC</span>, why don’t you read up on what was called Pink Disease. It was a serious disease of children in the first half of the 20th century. It was a leading cause of death, with about 23% of child deaths attributed to it. Eventually it was realized that it was actually mercury poisoning from teething powders. Many of the teething powders that were produced and sold had a grain of mercurous chloride in them. Yes, a grain. If you don’t have the conversion factor handy, that is 65,000 micrograms per dose. Yes, 65,000 micrograms of mercurous chloride per dose, and many children were given multiple doses. Many tens of millions of doses were sold, with a single company reporting sale of 30,000,000 doses in one year.</p> <p>Many tens of millions of children received many thousands of times more mercury from teething powders than ever received from vaccines. Mercury from teething powders gave many children pink disease and killed over a thousand. Where is the autism from the first half of the 20th century when children were given so much mercury that over a thousand were killed by it?</p></blockquote><p></p>To which I reply:<br /><br />Pink disease has zilch to do with my explanation of any autism causation, or the data I will be citing in relation to mercury. The key causal variable posited in my update review is constant inhalation of elemental mercury vapor. It matters little how many tons of mercurous chloride were applied to infants, as Hg2Cl2 is a very different chemical from mercury vapor. The former is a substantially stable solid, whereas the latter is a highly reactive gas. Indeed it’s well-known that chlorine (gas) strongly counteracts the toxicity of mercury gas, rendering it far less toxic to the workers in chlor-alkali plants. It does so by reacting with the mercury to produce mercury-chlorine salts such as the same Hg2Cl2 that was involved in Pink disease.<br /><br />Indeed "daedalus" above states that:<br /><blockquote>Many tens of millions of doses were sold, with a single company reporting sale of 30,000,000 doses in one year.<br /></blockquote>and yet only: <blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>over a thousand were killed by it</blockquote>which indicates a death rate of something like only one in a million, not exactly the most deadly formula in history.<br /><br />Furthermore, the mercurous chloride was put in the babies' mouths. It's well-known that even elemental mercury has little or no toxic effect, is neglibly absorbed, when swallowed. And furtherfurthermore, those teething powers were of course not applied except at teething age (apologies for dazzling you with this rocket science here!), whereas the causality described in my update review requires <span style="font-style: italic;">continuous sustained </span>intake.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-70054655054296196172010-09-20T01:55:00.000-07:002011-02-23T05:42:45.239-08:00Hertz-Picciotto et al 2010 very misleading about mercuryContrary to widely-promoted assertions, the Hertz-Picciotto et al 2010 study does not in the slightest constitute evidence that mercury has not been involved in causation of autism.<br /><br />They found no association of mercury blood levels with autism. Which is not surprising as the autism would be caused not by mercury in blood but by mercury in brain cells. It's been known for decades that blood levels of mercury are near-useless as an indicator of body burden of mercury and chronic mercury poisoning. <span class="nw"><span style="color: rgb(35, 31, 32);" lang="EN-US"><br /><br />“The distribution of mercury into the body tissues is highly variable and there appears to be little</span></span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span class="nw"><span style="color: rgb(35, 31, 32);" lang="EN-US">correlation between levels in urine, blood or hair</span></span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span class="nw"><span style="color: rgb(35, 31, 32);" lang="EN-US">and toxic effects.” —NIDH/ADA Workshop on Biocompatibility of Metals, Journal of the American Dental Association 109 (September 1984).<br /><br /></span></span> Further references for the uselessness of blood mercury levels can be found in the critique by Joachim Mutter of the fraudulent SCENIHR report, and in Mutter, Naumann, Guethlin. Comments on the Article "The toxicology of mercury and its chemical compounds". <span style="font-style: italic;">Crit Rev Toxicol</span> 2007 37:537-549.<br /><br />Even my mere common-or-garden general practitioner ("family doctor") was able to tell me years ago that a blood test of mercury would be worthless for diagnosing chronic mercury poisoning.<br /><br />A great way to get the wrong answers is to ask the wrong questions. A far more right question to have asked would have been whether there is an association between number of mothers' amalgams (i.e. a cause) and autistic behaviors (i.e. the key effect of interest). Some such studies have already been done and found significantly positive results. They are far easier to carry out than this one requiring going round sucking blood from children rather than just counting their mothers' fillings.<br /><br />Another right question would be the association of lack of outdoor air with autism, and again significantly positive results have been found by Waldman & Adilov.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-71743307472133149922010-09-19T03:32:00.000-07:002010-12-20T14:55:10.536-08:00More advanced understanding of antiinnatia; this post is not for beginners here!Don't start your reading here, first study the 1993 paper and <a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/">the home page here</a>.<br /><br />It is mainly about concepts. Sound science cannot be founded on concepts alone, but science gets in a muddle if the concepts are not properly clarified. So this can be important.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The nature of the autistic syndrome.</span><br /><br />An expression "the autistic spectrum" has become popularised. This is regrettable because it promotes a fallacy that autism variation is all or mostly on one dimension from mild to severe. A more reasonable concept is that autism, Aspergers, and related things such as dyslexia, are all part of the <span style="font-style: italic;">autistic syndrome</span>, that is tendency to clustering together of certain characteristics. This clustering is many-dimensional, with the number of dimensions being equal(ish?) to the number of characteristics whose expression can be affected by antiinnatia. In practice, as generally found with factor analysis, there would be a smaller number of main/most important dimensions (such as predisposition to allocating attention to the behaviors of others), some mediumly important ones, and a lot of less important ones.<br /><br />The inclusion of such things as dyslexia (or what might otherwise be called language disabilities) is warranted by the finding of these being found associated in twin studies, <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> their symptoms falling within the same theoretical framework of suppression of innatons.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The nature of antiinnatia factors</span><br /><br />The 1993 paper indicated that both environmental and genetic factors would be antiinnatia factors. We might add that perhaps epigenetic, genomic imprinting or mitochondrial factors could also have antiinnatia effect.<br /><br />In any case, there is no reason to suppose a yes/no distinction between variables that are antiinnatia factors and those that are not. Instead, like autism itself it is a matter of degree with no clear cutoff.<br /><br />And one would expect some antiinnatia factors to be "purer" (more non-specific) than others. This can arguably be seen in the social class differential graphs of my 1993 paper (graphs of table 1 added in author's reprint). The "pure" would be due to the purer antiinnatia, while the "complicated"/"organic" would be due to the less pure causing what we might call side-effects. (I discussed this variable purity of antiinnatia factors already in the 1993 paper itself.)<br /><br />The numerous antiinnatia genes in combination would act as a relatively pure, general antiinatia factor, even though any one of those genes taken in isolation might have some idiosyncratic side-effects.<br /><br />One would expect some grossly injurious process such as an untimely bash on the head, or a severe infective brain inflammation of viral encephalitis would have substantial side effects.<br /><br />I would reckon that mercury, while a relatively pure antiinnatia factor, would be less pure than the 'portfolio' of antiinnatia genes, due to its interference with thiol-dependend enzymes, and its tendency to generate oxidative stress.<br /><br />One can then go on to reasonably expect that there would be some other factors which have more or less of antiinnatia factor effect. And obviously any gene specifically related to language function is going to tend to be a factor in suppression of at least language function, and hence favour outcomes with a bit of resemblance to autism even though arguably not properly considered a true antiinnatia factor.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-5296219595189948932010-09-19T03:18:00.001-07:002012-02-08T11:32:24.956-08:00Abstract of the draft of the update review of the antiinnatia theoryWhile I cannot post here the actual full paper (as that can breach the pre-publication policies of some journals), I think it will be ok to put here just the abstract (summary), as currently drafted. It's important to understand that this abstract has space only to merely <span style="font-style: italic;">assert</span> the conclusions therein stated, but the full paper presents the evidence and reasoning through which those conclusions are reached.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The causes of autism: A theory now further supported by four predictions; </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">why dental amalgams caused increased autism; </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">and why mercury pollution caused the Flynn effect IQ increase</span><br /><br />The gene-expression theory of autism and IQ (antiinnatia theory) is further supported via others’ findings relating to four predictions:<br />1. Correlation of body symmetry with IQ.<br />2. In autism, rationality less reduced by innate predispositions.<br />3. Autism being caused by molecules which erratically, dose-dependently bind to DNA and thereby reduce gene-expression (e.g. mercury).<br />4. Shared causality of raised IQ (the Flynn effect) and autism.<br />The hitherto-puzzling Flynn effect is explained in terms of varying atmospheric mercury. The Flynn effect has reversed because mercury pollution has reversed. Mercury pollution is probably causing harm additional to that currently recognised. Fetal testosterone is only a minor antiinnatia factor. Autism partially coincides with “extreme-male-brain”. The concept of “developmental instability” is unsound.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Summary of the amalgam case:</span><br />· Autistic behaviours are shown to have increased about tenfold in Western capitalist countries.<br />· Mercury was definitely involved.<br />· Mercury vapor from amalgams is the main source of mercury in the body.<br />· No other tenable sources of the mercury are available.<br />· Non-gamma-2 amalgams emit 30-50 times more mercury vapor, which is highly absorbed by lungs and infant brain.<br />· Exponential increase started promptly after the introduction of non-gamma-2 amalgams.<br />· A marked change of ratio of age of onset coincided closely with the increase. Yet the ratio remained low in Poland, where data did not show any increase either.<br />· Number of maternal amalgams is a risk factor for autism in the US, but maybe not in Poland.<br />· The antiinnatia theory had unknowingly pre-explained how mercury would cause autism.<br />· Accords with the antiinnatia theory causality of maintained suppression rather than knockout blow.<br />· The late onset is explained as due to accumulation when infants regularly inhale the vapor.<br />· The new ventilation prediction has already been supported by correlation of rainfall/snowfall with autism.<br /><br />I cannot put this update paper<a href="http://www.autismcauses.info/2010/09/abstract-of-update-review-of.html"></a> on a website in advance of it being accepted by a journal. But in the interim I can send you a draft copy by email if you email a request for it to rpclarke{att]autismcauses{dott]info .Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-7799193559159207192010-09-16T01:57:00.000-07:002010-10-31T14:49:23.788-07:00Abnormalities of the "resting network" and of language lateralisationIn my most recent draft of the update review of the theory, I wrote:<br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:donotoptimizeforbrowser/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> <p class="MsoBodyTextIndent"></p><blockquote>Pisula (2010) lists numerous areas of the brain which are known to be normally (and by implication innately) associated with specified psychological functions, and which function abnormally in autism.<span style=""> </span>She notes that these findings cannot be adequately accounted for in terms of “theory of mind” or “executive dysfunction” or “lack of central coherence”.<span style=""> </span>But they all rather obviously fall very clearly within the concept of innatons being affected by excessive antiinnatia.<span style=""> </span>So Pisula’s review can be re-read in retrospect as even further testimony to the empirical soundness of the antiinnatia theory...."</blockquote><p></p> I'd now add to that list two more instances of a similar kind.<br /><br />Firstly the "resting network", which in neurotypicals activates while not concentrating on a task, and becomes inactive when task-engaged. Whereas in autistics it tends to just have a similar level of activity in both circumstances. Ref: <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/103/21/8275.full">Failing to deactivate: Resting functional abnormalities in autism. Daniel P. Kennedy, Elizabeth Redcay and Eric Courchesne</a><br /><br />Secondly, here is Dr Courchesne speaking before the ASF's 2010 meeting:<br />“We discovered that autistic infants and toddlers displayed a pronounced abnormality of language activation and cortical development.” “At each age studied from infancy to young childhood, most autistic subjects had greater activation on the incorrect side, namely, the right temporal cortex, compared to the left side and this incorrect activation pattern did not change or “normalize” even by 3 or 4 years of age. The abnormal pattern was strong in a substantial percentage of autistic infants and toddlers....".Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3473669599815076150.post-21186933302251161522010-09-15T03:50:00.000-07:002010-09-29T16:27:21.609-07:00Head size, simplex/multiplex autism, and IQA number of reports have been published indicating that head size in the first year of life has been found to be several percent greater in autistics, such as <a href="http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/30/12/4419">this latest one</a>.<br /><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=too-much-too-young">Media report linked here.</a><br /><br />This is important and substantially competent research by this team. But there's some room for improvement.<br /><br />Like most researchers they presume that autism is a "disorder" for which they are trying to find out what has "gone wrong". And so even when something good is found it has to be labelled as "overgrowth" of the brain.<br /><br />And yet a remarkably similar progression of "overgrowth" has been found to be characteristic of high-IQ children<a href="http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/118/4/1486"> (Gale, O'Callaghan, Bredow, Martyn 2010)</a>. And the 1982 published 1993 antiinnatia theory explained that whatever in low doses causes high IQ in higher doses causes autism.<br /><br />You can see <a href="http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=9432&debug=1">a very good presentation to the IACC</a> about this "overgrowth", by the founder of this line of evidence, Eric Courchesne (between minutes 130-162 plus discussion to 174). He explains that it involves substantially higher numbers of neurons particularly in prefrontal. And that it is characteristic of "simplex" autism rather than of "multiplex" autism (defined as autism cases occurring more than once in a family). And furthermore, the advance over normal growth comes to level off after the first couple of years and indeed may be followed by a decline to below normal.<br /><br />I've not looked into this research in great depth, but would provisionally suggest the following as reasonable explanations of these findings.<br /><br />Multiplex autism could usually be due to a family sharing an indoor mercury vapor pollution problem from (mainly maternal) dental amalgams. EC notes that multiplex is much more common, which is in line with my conclusion that dental mercury- induced autism now accounts for 80% or more of all autism.<br /><br />So it would be the simplex autism that is more a matter of too many antiinnatia genes, that is genes for high IQ, and which would also be genes favouring large heads and more neurons, which is in line with these observations. (The larger heads and more neurons would not <span style="font-style: italic;">cause</span> the higher IQ but would be <span style="font-style: italic;">correlated</span> with it.)<br /><br />The subsequent decline would be readily explained by two processes. Firstly anyone with even fleeting acquaintance with autism can see that it soon leads to the autistic experiencing a substantially understimulating environment compared to neurotypicals. Such an understimulating environment can reasonably be expected to lead to the brain waning away somewhat. And meanwhile, for those autism cases caused by mercury, the mercury would continue to accumulate due to the defective detoxification, and the brain would consequently lose neurons due to that neurotoxin accumulation.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2