Tag Archives: vaccination

Pediatric Chiropractic integrity faces new challenges

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Big Placebo, Chiropractic, Health by

Yesterday the BBC reported that the University of Wales is to cease validating “other degrees”.

Accrediting degrees from private colleges has no doubt been lucrative for the Uni of Wales. But it’s also proven to be a slur on expected standards. Early last November the BBC reported on the Uni. of Wales suspending accreditation of degrees from a controversial Malaysian business college. Overseas accreditation was always a risky venture and this debacle led to Leighton Andrews, Minister for Education in Wales to claim that Wales itself had been brought into disrepute. The university he said, had let down Higher Education. The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education ultimately requested that the Uni. of Wales review the entire caper.

The decision places doubt upon McTimoney Chiropractic College, having its degrees approved. This is nothing less than tremendous news for thinking Australians and anyone concerned about a discipline that runs “seminars” designed to lure paying customers into entrusting their child’s health to unproven guesswork. Such as, How to create the ‘It’s normal for children to be adjusted’ mindset with your clinic and your community, or How to have the majority of your patients as children. These are just a couple of the gigs run by RMIT graduate Glenn Maginness of the Mt. Eliza Family Chiropractic Clinic.

All this comes together if we consider that McTimoney College offer degrees in the McTimoney Chiropractic Method, named after the late John McTimoney. These guys are famous for ordering all members to remove their entire websites at the beginning of the Singh libel case because they were veritable cornucopias of bogus claims. McTimoney always knew they were in the business of scamming when it came to claims about children and feared justified complaints. They also hold claims to fame for having atrocious academic standards in “make believe degrees” as espoused by David Colquhoun.

One of the “special” degrees from McTimoney College happens to be in Pediatric Chiropractic. Indeed, to my knowledge the only degree worldwide in Pediatric Chiropractic comes from McTimoney, and is validated by The University of Wales. From this hub radiates the dangerous and unproven practices and claims from the RMIT pediatric clinic – subject to a highly supported request to close it down reported in the BMJ – the greed of people like Glenn Maginness, potentially lethal antivaccination misinformation from Warren Sipser and Nimrod Weiner and the overarching mystical philosophy of Simon Floreani’s Chiropractors’ Association of Australia.

One hopes this abuse of Higher Education will be challenged, given the lack of evidence for chiropractic in general and the total absence of evidence for pediatric hanky panky. You may have heard of the KiroKids franchise chain in Victoria. In which case you’ll be delighted to know that the “course leader” for the Masters Degree at McTimoney is none other than the brains behind the unconscionable KiroKids scam. Not-a-real-doctor Neil J Davies himself. He boasts:

The MSc degree course now offered to the chiropractic profession by McTimoney College of Chiropractic was designed and written by the Course Leader, Dr Neil J Davies in conjunction with a group of leading paediatricians and other medical specialists and chiropractic advisors.

The course was in development for a period of 4 years and in August 2003 it was duly validated by the University of Wales. The course has been so well accepted by the chiropractic profession that enrolment applications have been received from 14 different countries including the United Kingdom.

Davies waffles about Intelligent Neurological Chiropractic. He has not one research paper published. He does have a text book however, and has won the auspicious Fishslapper of the week prize. Given that UK criticism of chiropractic has been scathing of the “new breed” of outright cons if you will, it may be that validation of McTimoney chiropractic degree ceases. This will put a welcome abrupt halt to the growth of one of the most unfortunate exploitations of vulnerable parents ever witnessed. But it goes further than just scamming a gullible public. They not only cause harm to children’s musculo-skeletal integrity and inflict stroke and death through cervical manipulation. By peddling misinformation and indirectly sustaining falsehoods about conventional medicine their status as a one stop shop for quackery is firm.

Consider this from the abstract of Pediatric vaccination and vaccine-preventable disease acquisition: associations with care by complementary and alternative medicine providers:

Children who saw chiropractors were significantly less likely to receive each of three of the recommended vaccinations. Children aged 1-17 years were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with a vaccine-preventable disease if they received naturopathic care. Use of provider-based complementary/alternative medicine by other family members was not independently associated with early childhood vaccination status or disease acquisition.

Pediatric use of complementary/alternative medicine in Washington State was significantly associated with reduced adherence to recommended pediatric vaccination schedules and with acquisition of vaccine-preventable disease. Interventions enlisting the participation of complementary/alternative medicine providers in immunization awareness and promotional activities could improve adherence rates and assist in efforts to improve public health.

Still, we must remember whilst the claims of chiropractic are primarily nonsense, John Reggars, past president of the Chiropractors Registration Board of Victoria and present vice president of the Chiropractic and Osteopathic College of Australasia, is a voice of sanity. Reggars has been scathing toward tactics (presently backed and encouraged by the CAA), used to increase income for chiropractors and. His article Chiropractic at a crossroads or are we just going around in circles, [Archived copy] published in Chiropractic and Manual Therapies, May 2011, is a compelling read.

Reggars claims the “all-encompassing alternative system of healthcare is both misguided and irrational”. And;

“Chiropractic trade publications and so-called educational seminar promotion material often abound with advertisements of how practitioners can effectively sell the vertebral subluxation complex to an ignorant public,” Mr Reggars said.

“Phrases such as ‘double your income’, ‘attract new patients’ and ‘keep your patients longer in care’, are common enticements for chiropractors to attend technique and practice management seminars.” Mr Reggars, who stressed his support for the “mainstream majority” in the profession, also condemned the use of care contracts, where patients signed up to a fixed number of treatment sessions.

“Selling such concepts as lifetime chiropractic care, the use of contracts of care, the misuse of diagnostic equipment such as thermography and surface electromyography and the X-raying of every new patient, all contribute to our poor reputation, public distrust and official complaints.”

“For the true believer, the naive practitioner or undergraduate chiropractic student who accepts in good faith the propaganda and pseudoscience peddled by the VSC teachers, mentors and professional organisations, the result is the same, a sense of belonging and an unshakable and unwavering faith in their ideology.”

Integrity like that of Reggars reminds us that the option of subjecting students to proper education will always come up in this debate. Many will argue that a change at the institutional level will result in professionalism at the clinical level. Yet chiropractic has always had difficulty selling its song as much more than a jingle. It hasn’t just recently gone awry with brats the like of Floreani, Weiner and Davies, all of whom should be vigorously prosecuted for false claims and fraud under the appropriate health act and advertising codes. There have always been crooks and there probably always will be.

It’s not a discipline. It’s a belief system and it peddles subjective faith on so many levels. Many like Reggars have done an admirable job and we can remain thankful for the attempts of the Chiropractic Boards to address complaints. Yet today chiropractors are expected to provide for the new age worried well. In the eyes of so many real disciplines they are not health practitioners. They practice rituals. The superstitious “result” is achieved by so-called “patients” who think themselves into a state of wellnesss – whatever that is.

The very last demographic we need pushed into this anything-goes nonsense are impressionable children. Let’s hope the decision by the University of Wales has far reaching consequences.

Floreani, Golden and the myth of homeopathic immunisation

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Chiropractic, Denialism, Health, Scam, Science by

For a mob that officially professes “no position” on vaccination the Chiroprctors’ Association of Australia disseminate ample false, misleading and quite dangerous antivaccination hanky panky.

Take CAA NSW branch vice president, Nimrod Weiner. The Weiner from Newtown Community Chiropractic whose Nimroddery was pegged as a “rant on vaccines” by The Australian. Although he feverishly ran for cover after outraging real doctors, not-a-real-doctor Weiner’s “rant” bibliography can be found here. A hodge podge of dusty conspiracy twaddle and outright lies, much from the Australian Vaccination Network it alone refutes Weiner’s claim:

I’m good at knowing how to read a research aritcle, and knowing whether it’s viable or not. I’m also good at collecting a lot of research. This vaccine topic I update every single week. So what we’re looking at is new as of yesterday morning.

He didn’t write that, but announced this to attendees of his seminar Vaccinations: An informed choice, in what can quite justifiably be called a lie. There’s more on the entire debacle along with a Radio National segment here. At times we’ve met other crackpots from the CAA. Jason Parkes and Rob Hutchings, both of whom approach their profession like a religious fundamentalist approaches taking up arms. Warren Sipser who believes vaccines cause harm yet chiropractic “repairs DNA”. Genevieve Keating is another pleasant sounding predator who specialises in convincing parents chiropractic builds super human kids. They lean toward the weird beliefs of founder Daniel David Palmer and his views on “God given energy flows”.

Sipser was the subject of an article in The Australian headed The Chiro Kids which brought home just how ludicrous (and scurrilous) the new brand of Mystical Chiropractors really are. Thanks to Dr. Rachael Dunlop we can read the CAA’s Media Release warning CAA members of that article. It’s disturbing stuff given these quacks are subsidised by our government (Medicare foots the bill for five sessions per year) and health insurers. Written by CAA national president Simon Floreani, it is a straight out attempt at damage control, obfuscation and dodging questions.

Floreani himself has run antivaccination clinics and is a member of the Australian Vaccination Network. He describes Dorey’s little fraudulent scheme as a valuable resource for patients. Simon is married to Jennifer Floreani, famous for writing an article supposedly describing (Update – as noted below the bogus article has been removed but can be found here pp. 348-349) her newborn’s battle with pertussis, picked up from an older sibling. Given the outcome and treatment the article is almost certainly fraudulent, but if perchance the diagnosis is correct then at best it is reckless neglect and at worst simple child abuse.
She writes (bold hers):

This experience did indeed test our resolve and we were forced to draw on our support network of healthcare providers. We performed chiropractic checks on our baby daily and utilised a whooping cough homeopathic. I dosed myself with an array of vitamins to boost his immunity via breast milk and kept him hydrated with constant breastfeeding.

Whooping cough is often slow to develop and may respond well to conservative management, including chiropractic, osteopathy, homeopathy, herbs, acupuncture or acupressure. Within two days, the severity of our baby’s symptoms cleared and within a two week period, each of our boys had a complete resolution of their symptoms.

Fortunately for the Floreani’s this little tale is just that – a tale and a comical one too. Every type of “conservative management” is absolutely non efficacious. Babies with pertussis gag, choke and may have profound difficulty breathing making this nonsense of super fortified breast milk as a realistic option seem laughable. More so, there’s no evidence an increase of maternal vitamin intake when breastfeeding will do anything but produce expensive maternal urine. Even more farcical is the notion of “boosting immunity” with vitamins. Either way, if their baby did have pertussis there’d be no magic recovery after two days but admission to intensive care many days later as the insanity of their hokery pokery gradually sank in. Yet, that’s not really the point.

The dangerous, deluded and unconscionable message pushed on parents here is that using your breasts, vitamins and witch doctor spells, you can clear up a potentially fatal disease within two days. It’s outrageous and a bald faced lie that I cannot even begin to comprehend the motivation for. What’s infuriating is that chiropractors exploit the confirmation bias in parents and the Floreani’s are prime examples.

Parents who believe these nonsense manipulations cure everything report that yes treatment keeps children healthy. They also report inaccurately that lapses in treatment lead to poor health. Knowing this, chiropractors are famous for setting treatment frequencies, with some even insisting on treatment contracts. That the locus lies with parental bias has been shown splendidly in trials on colic.

As we know, chiropractors claim they can “successfully treat” colic or – in their lingo – Irritable Baby Syndrome. Trials show that if parents believed their baby received chiropractic care, whether they did or did not, they reported improvement. If they believed that no chiropractic care was applied – even when it was – they reported a worsening of colic. You can catch up with Simon Floreani admitting no proper trials exist here on Lateline back in July 2009.

He’s caught out claiming injuries from neck manipulation are one in 5.85 million cases when in fact they are gauged at 1.3-5 per 100,000 manipulations, by insurer Kaiser Permanente, who refuse to cover the practice. In short Floreani is claiming instance of vertebral injury is 60 – 300 times less than it is.

On August 21st this year, a video entitled “Homeopathy evidence and research” filmed by Simon Floreani and featuring homeopath and fraud Isaac Golden, appeared on YouTube. The video below looks initially at the rise of the Mystical Chiropractors and then picks through Golden’s claims of Cuban “homeopathic immunisation” and his own so-called PhD on “homeopathic immunisation”.

When used to defend against a complaint to the TGA about homeoprophylaxis, Golden’s PhD actually helped uphold the CRP decision of misleading claims by fellow crook, Fran Sheffield. This is because even Golden admits in his thesis text that his sample was flawed in size and there was no chance of contracting infection. In short he showed nothing.

Enjoy…

Polio – Unconditional Surrender (1956)

Posted in General, Health, Science by

From The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, Unconditional Surrender looks more closely at the steps involved in making the polio vaccine.

The makers of this movie seek to educate how important the vaccine manufacture protocol, thus safety and efficacy, is. Following production comes testing and retesting. And cute bunnies. Then off to The National Institutes for Health complex where the protocol is examined. Samples from every batch end up in the labs of the NIH, tested for sterility, tissue culture, incubation tests, monkey tests… all designed to ensure safety and efficacy. Many are repeats of those done during manufacture.

In that wonderful victorious lilt of 1950’s narration viewers were held in confidence by such turns of phrase as “man’s enemy becomes his servant”. Of course, the unstated purpose was also to maintain confidence following The Cutter Incident named after Cutter Laboratories – the first lab to unwittingly dispense live virus vaccines instead of killed. This resulted in infections, and still later it became plain not only Cutter lab’s were struggling with Salk’s protocol.

It resulted in a suspension of only one fortnight. A good deal of Paul Offit’s book The Cutter Incident can be found at Google Books.

Unconditional Surrender

 

The Polio Crusade

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Health, Human Rights, Science by

For an American citizen, Meryl Dorey, president of The Australian Vaccination Network pays scant attention to her homelands recent history.

The tragedies caused by polio were fierce and unrelenting. ‘‘It was an atmosphere of grief, terror, and helpless rage,’’ remembered a nurse who worked on the medical wards at a Pittsburgh hospital. ‘‘It was horrible. I remember a high school boy weeping because he was completely paralyzed and couldn’t move a hand to kill himself. I remember paralyzed women in iron lungs giving birth to normal babies.’’ [….]

Four of the boys got polio that summer. One day no one could find our head counselor, Bill Lilly. He took what happened to those boys pretty hard. The police were called and, after they searched all around the lake, they found that Bill had hung himself from a tree – hung himself. We were all huddled around the beach when the police came to tell us. I’ll never forget it.’’ [Source]

As is plain in the video below by 1950 33,000 polio cases in which 50% affected children under 10 were reported. Whilst it was uncommon to catch, remote to be injured by, and extremely rare to die from polio, Americans feared it almost as much as the atomic bomb. As one who claims vaccination had no impact on polio at all – personal hygiene, public sanitation, clean water and mama’s apple pie eliminated vaccine preventable diseases – this video holds a surprise for Meryl Dorey.

In the post war years clean water and public sanitation meant less prevalence of a milder, wild type of polio virus. Previously maternal antibodies and/or exposure to this wild type from very young ages had equipped the young with sufficient immunity. Polio is taken in orally and water or vapour are it’s most common mode of infection. In a more prosperous America exposure was occurring later in life, particularly during summer months. The virus itself was more virulent and within a few seasons was also striking adults severely.

In a nutshell, as described by eloquently by Dr. Paul Offit, as sanitation improved exposure occurred later and cases rose. And so pfft! goes another well worn antivaccination lie, recently peddled by Viera Scheibner on Sunrise TV.

Of course today, anti-vaxxers carry the burning Stupid as a beacon to light their way and tend to blame almost any outbreak on vaccination. Indeed only a day or so before the video below aired, Meryl Dorey refers to this viral polio outbreak in China as “vaccine associated polio”, blaming the vaccine. Even worse, she linked to the same article as here, which kinda informs the reader by paragraph two. Even worse… well no, actually so incredibly stupid it hurts to comprehend, Dorey thinks the file picture is an account of it’s own as to what’s happening. I shag you not. She writes;

What type of vaccine do they use in China – is it oral or injected? The picture looks like someone getting oral in which case, that is most likely where the outbreak is coming from

That’s our girl! “Australia’s leading expert on vaccines” looked at the picture.

A member of her Facebook page decided to point this out. The brave Emma Hill was banned, her comment deleted to make room for vaccine blaming and business briskly resumed. Meryl hates suppression of dissent or impinging on free speech as she often opines. She just has a unique way of showing it.

Pre Ban Hammer

Post Ban Hammer

As Emma notes the outbreak is caused by WPV1 spreading from Pakistan. But in defence of Meryl, we’re now getting into facts and that just won’t do. So, back to 1950’s America.

This doco looks at the impact of increasingly devastating outbreaks, infantile paralysis, the quest for a vaccine under Jonas Salk and the development of government quality control following the Cutter Incident. As documented well, also by Dr. Paul Offit poor quality control led to live virus vaccines being distributed and consequent infection in some cases.  Program centres around Wytheville in the US.

Enjoy…

Vaccination’s vexed link to bad journalism

Posted in Denialism, Health by

Since the obliteration of both Andrew Wakefield’s character and his fraudulent claims, the “vaccines cause autism” lobby has become a most fascinating creature.

On the one hand we have the devout. The fundamentalists waging an emotional jihad against academic reality. Time and again they try to resell Wakefield, sully those who exposed him, concoct some bizarre “confirmation revelation” by distorting other research or parade a wounded parent.

Some plot to sell the compensation myth using cases of children with autism who sustain a vaccine injury. Or children with complex developmental disorders and autistic-like symptoms that were exacerbated by vaccination. Well aware this is not “compensated because of autism”, their intent is to trick others into joining or rejoining their cause.

Others seek to mask their intent. The flawed August attempt by David Austin and Kerrie Shandley from Swinburne to exhume the mercury autism corpse, made it as far as The Age in Melbourne. Devotees to the mercury-in-vaccines cause and members of the Who’s Who of this junk science even these culprits had to publically admit to a meaningless sample, an unproven hypothesis. Yet still they crowed success.

Most recently independent multi-topic author Marj Lefroy joined the obfuscation approach in publishing Vaccination’s vexed link to autism – a “life and style” opinion piece. Posed as a thoughtful observation it soon gives way to a clearly predetermined agenda. All the sign posts are there. The screaming baby being jabbed in the arm file picture, the sheer ignorance of the topic of both vaccination and autism, the erroneous exaggerations, appeal to authority, the seemingly unanswered questions.

It winds up being a free kick for the “vaccines cause autism” lobby. As such it tries to get away with an appalling journalistic standard, void of corroborating research. For example the case of Hannah Poling is raised as some type of proof, yet later Lefroy brings up Dr. David Amaral – who I wrote about recently – as he’s cautiously postulating a maybe. Hannah Poling was destined to manifest the symptoms of mitochondrial enzymatic deficiency vaccines or not. Underlying causes precipitating autistic like symptoms, do not an autism diagnosis make. This is what Amarai is alluding to. Other references to soundly debunked crackpot claims in the US are most cringe-worthy.

Lefroy begins;

Vaccines and autism: why this curious case is not closed

The case is closed. There’s nothing curious about it. An abundance of research has shown no causal relationship between the two and health authorities have bent over backward accommodating the goal post shifting of the anti-vaccination lobby. It remains a threat to confidence in vaccines, thus public health due to articles like this. It is the lack of understanding around autism and the presence of conditions with autistic like symptoms that is a problem.

For many parents, childhood vaccinations are this century’s abortion debate – highly divisive and driving a wedge between friends and neighbours. In the red corner are those banging the ‘vaccinate at any cost’ drum, and in the blue corner a collection of concerned parents and carers who say they’re dealing with the damage done.

Immediately the choice to vaccinate is cast as a thoughtless ideology beholden to vaccines. “Vaccinate at any cost”? This predicates that understanding vaccination means accepting there is a large scale cost to be paid. In truth the only cost in town is that accompanying the decision to not vaccinate. The steadily rising death and permanent injury toll from vaccine preventable disease is forgotten. There are far more common accidents than vaccine injury.

Eg; In the USA 10 children die of gunshot wounds every day [Tanac R et al. “A Case of Gunshot Wound Presenting with Atypical Cardiorespiratory Findings”. Journal of Pediatric Sciences. 2011;3(2):e78]. Aussie kids drown, die on the roads, in accidents at home or become permanently disabled before vaccine injury comes close.

Those in the blue corner, “concerned parents and carers”, are cast as victims of Lefroy’s non-existent ideology. Worse, they are dealing “with the damage done” (from vaccination). This is a complete distortion of the reality.

Firstly, parents with a child who has a condition some blame on vaccination are by no means unanimous. Quite the opposite with parents of such children far more often in favour of vaccination and properly armed with the facts. Secondly most in this other corner adhere to a belief system void of reason, evidence and the vast weight of research. A belief that says far more about their own irrational and tribal rejection of conventional medicine. There’s no evidence the bulk are even parents, much less with a vested interest. They overlap with new age impossibilities and sheer crackpottery.

Claiming they’re “concerned parents and carers”, is a rubber stamp of Lefroy’s ignorance. Organised anti-vaccination lobbyists such as Meryl Dorey and Viera Scheibner in Australia double as scam artists and law breakers. In the main they have very little in reality to deal with – much less “the damage done”. So many are trying to profit from the myth that vaccines potentially cause such harm, that they actively promote it as a choice running scare tactic seminars of unconscionable content. They fall upon anti-vaccination nonsense perpetuated by the Marj Lefroy’s of this world, with glee.

For people in the pro-vaccination camp, the fact that there is even a debate to be had is vexing. “What’s wrong with these irresponsible parents?” they say. “So educated and yet so stupid! Don’t they know that MMR study was discredited? And how can you take a Playboy Bunny seriously?” But there are reasons why the case of the curious link between vaccinations and autism is not closed, and Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy are not necessarily two of them.

There’s that term Scheibner loves to use: “pro-vaccination”. As if there’s an action that follows an ideological conviction. When in fact the decision to vaccinate is a no brainer. The scale of risk one is exposed to, and exposes others too is difficult to appreciate. As I’ve hinted, those with a vested interest in alternative therapy, new age diagnosis or the sickening “treatments” offered up to parents who believe vaccines caused their child’s injury benefit every time the term is used.

But Lefroy goes one better and even puts words into the mouths of this heartless pro-vaccine-at-any-cost group. Once again the reality is quite the contrary. Health professionals are trained in vaccine myths and part of this training demands not exhibiting ones own position. There is no vexing debate, but a very real psycho-social phenomenon that at times is heart breaking but at it’s roots has the very confidence in mythology Marj Lefroy is exhibiting.

As I also pointed out above Wakefield (whose work and detraction I hope Lefroy has seen) has spawned a belief system buoyed by an army of devout followers. He travels the world persisting in the same falsehood, proclaiming he’s the victim of “a hitman” for Big Pharma. Claims have metamorphosed into everything from complex muti-faceted disorders to simple one line scare tactics about aluminium or formaldehyde. Jenny McCarthy had and has the backing of some of the most powerful media personalities in the world. Far better to calmly point out the absurdity of her claims to have “cured” her son’s autism, and that she has in retrospect edited her web site once claiming “and, boom – the soul’s gone from his eyes”, following vaccination.

If the voices of those concerned parents and carers aren’t enough, consider this: recently, in a case before the US Court of Federal Claims, the US government conceded vaccines had aggravated a young girl’s mitochondrial disorder to the point where she developed autism. As a result, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program awarded her family an upfront payment of $1.5 million, and an additional ongoing payment of $500,000 per year to cover her care as well as the family’s lost earnings, pain and suffering.

It has since emerged that dozens of other families have reached similar settlements, and the Centers for Disease Control in the US has announced new research into vaccine safety.

Not true. Hannah Poling was compensated for encephalopathy brought on by mitochondrial enzyme deficiency. Whilst not unusual for children with her disorder to develop autistic like symptoms in the first two years of life, her parents were adamant vaccination was the cause. They fought and won the legal case. What this says clinically is perhaps nothing new. Regrettably her parents made much of the finding calling it a “landmark” in vaccine autism compensation. Jon Poling a neurologist and wife Terry Poling a nurse and lawyer, worked hard to ensure this erroneous message got out.

Yet, again pointing to the compensation myth I opened with above, it is well known that around one in one million children develop encephalopathy following MMR. Quite rightly these children are compensated. It is certainly worth noting at least one in 5,000 measles cases develop the same condition. Thus, we can now see why it has not “emerged that dozens other families have reached similar settlements”. Lefroy’s referring to the scam involving Pace Law students in May this year (I recommend reading this) headed by perpetual touble maker and unscrupulous vaccine fear author Mary Holland.

Not only did Pace Law School administrators come out and distance themselves from the entire disgrace, rather than lending weight to vaccines causing autism, it really shows how run of the mill the Poling’s case is. As media spokesperson for the charade Danielle Orsino said at the time responding to queries for conclusive evidence, “it strongly suggests” a link. Not only did they have nothing, leading telephone interviews made up 3/4 of the sample. And weren’t ethically approved. The CDC officially denies any causal link between autism and vaccination. Period.

Consider this, too: while we still don’t know exactly what causes autism, the latest research – including the study released by Dr Amaral of the University of California last week – is coalescing around the view that it’s a combination of genetic, immune system and environmental factors. Earlier this year, Dr Amaral said that, “there is a small subset of children who may be particularly vulnerable to vaccines if the child had a precondition like a mitochondrial defect … vaccinations, for those children, may be the environmental factor that tipped them over the edge.”

So why hasn’t this come up in vaccination studies to date? Dr Martha Herbert, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, says, “the problem with the population studies is they aren’t necessarily designed to have the statistical power to find subgroups like that if the subgroups are small.”

That means we’re not studying the right kids. We don’t even know where to find them, because most of the time we don’t know they have those vulnerabilities until they’re aggravated. Herein lies the great mystery.

The great mystery? To whom for goodness sake? For someone who has been labelling parties and speaking for them, Marj Lefroy seems suddenly remarkably ill informed. “Mitochondrial defect” was the crux of the Hannah Poling case 3 1/2 years ago. Genetic predisposition brought on by environmental exposure in autism (never mind being separate entities) is well established. Research into autism and autoimmune dynamics has been thriving over the last decade.

Many predisposed children will in most if not all cases develop severe disability. Vaccination may temporally get the gong. As might any other medication or indeed any illness. Thankfully, science doesn’t work by gathering seemingly related material, dismissing what one doesn’t want and gushing about what one does want.

So where do I stand on this? I’m not a parent. I haven’t yet had to make the agonising decision about whether or not to vaccinate my child. But I do know this: I’m definitely pro-vaccines and understand all too well the benefits they bring, and I also know they’re toxic for some kids. Because I saw what happened in the case of one of my nephews, for whom vaccination was one of several environmental factors and assaults to his immune system that, along with genetic predisposition and an underlying vulnerability, stressed his body and his mind so much that he slipped into autism. It’s not a conclusion that his mother, a sober individual pushing 40 with an honours degree in science and a background in public health, wanted to reach, but in the end it was undeniable.

His two brothers were vaccinated too, and they were fine. He was not. And it sends a chill down my spine when people talk dismissively about the “acceptable risk” of vaccines in the context of a broader public good. If it were their child, the risk would not be acceptable. Particularly if something could be done to mitigate it without compromising the benefits – and clearly, there is.

Make what you will of this personal, emotive venture. Marj has gone all “pro-vaccine”, despite writing about it like ritual sacrifice to the gods of herd immunity. The giveaway is “agonising decision” to vaccinate. With “toxic for some” vaccines. This in itself is an intellectual absurdity of towering immorality. It sets a tone of potential doom for what is a simple, perfectly safe routine process. And why? Well through a masterpiece of special pleading we get to hear about the autistic nephew. It must be true. “Undeniable” no less – despite zero evidence to support this notion – because his mother has “an honours degree in science and a background in public health”.

Blame. The need to apportion blame. I’ve seen a lot of it in other areas of controversial public health. It’s powerful, it’s blind, it’s destructive and meaningless.

So Marj tries on her new found knowledge about vaccines, genetics and environmental factors, actually coming to a conclusion ahead of David Amaral of The Autism Phenome Project! Marj believes her nephew “slipped into autism” and has used recent knowledge to shape a rationale. Fascinating.

And don’t you go talking of acceptable risk like one in one million trivalent vaccines, vs one in at most 5,000 cases of a single disease for encephalitis. Measles will kill between one in 2,500 – 5,000 depending on age. The MMR vaccine will kill zero. SSPE will afflict one in 8,000 measles cases, the vaccine will render zero cases. Or calculate that feasibly, a person may live to be 8,000 years old sustaining the infant/childhood vaccine schedule every year and still have no serious reaction.

That “chill down my spine” should be reserved for the return of measles, polio, pertussis, varicella, rotavirus, rubella, diphtheria, meningococcal disease, tetanus….. Recent surveys using todays ASD diagnostic criteria indicate autism levels haven’t changed in 30 years – despsite the increase in vaccines.

We can change the ingredients (like we did when we removed mercury). We can change the way they’re administered (using drops instead of injections, so the virus can be broken down by the immune system’s natural defence mechanisms before it gets into the bloodstream, instead of being propelled straight into it at full strength). We can get better at identifying children with vulnerabilities and treating them accordingly. And we can persevere with research until we find out why this keeps happening.

Vaccines “…being propelled straight into it [the bloodstream] at full strength”. Of course this never happens. It’s very telling terminology and hints at where Lefroy’s loyalties lie. Injected intramuscularly there is no sudden insult. In fact, with adjuvants their role in part is to keep the antigen at the injection site longer so the immune response will be controlled and optimal. Also, to lessen the amount of antigen needed. Research will always continue and safer compounds when available will be introduced.

These are things we can and must do. The trouble is, in today’s polarised public square, the middle ground seems to have disappeared from beneath our feet. Conversations about vaccines typically descend into petty point-scoring and vilification, particularly on the troll-fertilising Internet. It discourages honest, respectful discussion. And to those who think giving oxygen to the debate will cause parents to stop vaccinating their kids, I say this: it’s happening anyway. It’s precisely the lack of information, the factual vacuum, that fuels anxiety and stifles life-saving progress.

I can’t find much fault with much of that paragraph. Only to stress the lack of oxygen has been suggested as a suitable means to keep thoroughly disreputable sources where they belong: away from influencing the public. The Australian Vaccination Network is typical. Once given ample oxygen to represent “debate” and “informed choice” they did untold damage. Only now do we know the current president is a charlatan, thief and fraud. Her reach has been pruned splendidly.

I may add however, it’s articles like this very piece by Marj that push parents away from vaccination. There’s not so much a factual vacuum as a hurricane of misinformation. The real trick parents must learn is to trust expertise, not expect to understand what they never can or conclude on what they simply do not understand.

Like any issue with a degree of complexity, there are more than two sides to this one. We must have the courage and maturity to listen to everyone, including the mothers and the fathers dealing with the unacceptable, potentially avoidable consequences. They’re the canaries in the coalmine, and the real reason why this case is not closed. It’s just that science, like the law, sometimes takes a while to catch up.

Sadly, at the last Lefroy is reverting to the past. Desperate to sound rational we hear of courage and maturity. Maturity Lefroy has forgone with respect to an autistic nephew. The work has been done Marj. The risk remains infinitesimal. Irrationality and bizarre belief is spreading, massaged and milked by fringe disciplines, alternative practices and die hard lobbyists. The canaries have been heard, the coalmine has been mapped. The case is indeed closed.

Marj Lefroy signed off as an author with a “special interest” in autism. I’d call it a conflict of interest. Many people, always ill informed, think they can blame a non-existent lag in science for something they simply cannot accept.

It’s such a pity that in this case innocent children will suffer as a result.