I believe...

Dan Olmsted is the editor of Age of Autism. I'd have thought that to get the title "Editor" of anything, you'd need to have at least a modicum of sense. But when has that ever mattered at Age of Idiocy?

Olmsted writes a piece which he pompously titles "Weekly Wrap", in which he moans about sensible people not agreeing with his loopy ideas, and mentions mercury more often than a hagiographic post on a Queen forum.

This week, he's praising Joan Campbell. You may remember Campbell - she put a website together called "followingvaccinations.com", which is basically a list of unsupported and unverified anecdotes from anti-vaxers making claims that their children are ill because of vaccines.

Olmsted quotes one of these - it starts like this:
I believe my son's issues stem from the two flu vaccines I was strongly advised to take during pregnancy.

"I believe." That's it.

Well, people believe a lot of shit, and, at Age of Autism, belief is the only thing they've got. I'll leave you with this:

Anne Dachel admits it's all about "blame"

For those of you who may be unaware of her activities, Anne Dachel is Age of Autism's "Media Editor". This high-falutin' (as I believe they say in America) title is just a cover for the more accurate, but more long winded "drone with a Google News update for 'Autism' who then goes and spams every story with cut and paste nonsense about vaccines, whether it's relevant or not. And then runs away."

It'd be a bastard to get on a business card I suppose.

Still. Every couple of days, Anne Dachel puts a post up on Age of Autism, with links to her latest drive-by spammings, sometimes with a mindblowingly stupid comment about the stories she doesn't agree with; ie, every story that doesn't implicate vaccines as the cause of autism.

In today's update though, she's given a bit away about her attitude to autism - interestingly just a couple of days after Orac has written an interesting piece inspired by Dachel; Sometimes antivaccinationists reveal more than they intend about why they blame vaccines for autism. Give it a read - it's quite enlightening.

As I say, in today's media update, Dachel pretty much signs her agreement to what Orac's written.

The stories about using the placenta and blood to detect autism reinforce the claim that children are born with autism. In the end, it’s always going to [be] blamed on the parents.

There you have it. It's all about blame. Her whole anti-vax schtick is about shifting "blame" from herself to vaccines.

Anne - there's no "blame" attached to parents of children on the autistic spectrum! None at all! Stop looking for something to shift your perceived guilt onto - there's no guilt, no blame - and look after your beautiful children.

Andrew Wakefield moves goalposts and looks like a twat. Again.

That smarmy, rubber faced goon Andrew Wakefield is at it again, moving goalposts quickly enough to stop a Christiano Ronaldo freekick from going in. This time he's released a YouTube video (because, as we all know, heavily rehearsed and edited videos are the way scientific debate is conducted - and in this example, Wakefield still comes across as less sincere than a Tory politician apologising for being caught shagging his secretary) banging on about the dangers of anaphylaxis from measles containing vaccines.

Hold on - I thought Wakefield's schtick (since shown to be utter rubbish, and much of it simply made up for money) was that vaccine strain measles virus found in the gut somehow magically caused autism. I don't remember him publishing anything on anaphylaxis in the Lancet...

Yes, Wakefield's just showing his true colours - that of anti-vaccine wingnut (remember, whatever the problem, it's the vaccines, it's always the vaccines) - in order to leech a few tears (and hopefully dollars) from his credulous flunkies.

Still, let's run with it in order to show what a twat he is.

Wakefield cites a single 1992 study of (I think, without watching his shiny faced lying again) 15,000 vaccinations showing a possible anaphylaxis rate of 1 in 500. A quick search has failed to find this study, but it did turn up this:

"Risk of anaphylaxis after vaccination of children and adolescents"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14523172
This study appears to be somewhat larger; in fact they state:

"We identified 5 cases of potentially vaccine-associated anaphylaxis after administration of 7 644 049 vaccine doses, for a risk of 0.65 cases/million doses (95% confidence interval: 0.21-1.53). None of the episodes resulted in death."

So, a larger study found an anaphylaxis rate of 1 in approx 1.3 million. Hmm…

Anyway, let's carry on…

Wakefield claims his favoured study found a rate of 1 in 500 of specifically measles containing vaccines. He doesn't say MMR.

He than goes on to discuss a mass revaccination initiative in 1994, instigated by Professor David Salisbury (Director of Immunisation at the Department of Health) of 8 million children in the UK. The initial programme was carried out in schools, which Wakefield claims is inherently unsafe, as, using his seemingly rectally sourced figure of 1 in 500 for anaphylaxis it would put around 15,000 children at risk of death (to avoid a predicted 50 deaths should a major measles epidemic strike the UK).

Now, given that Wakefield doesn't produce a figure for actual anaphylaxis events during this program (so I'm guessing there weren't any), schools are pretty well geared up for awareness and treatment of anaphylaxis, and that vaccines administered at school aren't given by the cleaner or the dinner lady, they're given by a medical professional - usually a nurse, Wakefield's challenge to Prof. Salisbury (why were the "risks" of anaphylaxis not taken into account, why was no provision made for anaphylaxis?) looks somewhat hollow. (Wakefield even has the gall to refer to their "forthcoming debate" - as if Professor David Salisbury is in the business of debating struck-off doctors, liars and fraudsters. Fuck off, Fraudytrousers.)

Anyway, this all comes to Wakefield's final point, where he refers to the measles outbreak in Wales (which, let's not forget, is all his fucking fault in the first place) and urges Professor Salisbury to make the option of the single measles jab available on the grounds that it'll be safer - less risk of anaphylaxis.

He appears to have forgotten that, according to his own bullshit, anaphylaxis is associated with measles containing vaccines. All of them. So how is offering a single jab a better option?

You mendacious, money grubbing, disingenuous, goalpost moving bag of shit, Wakefield.

Callous Disregard Countdown - April 2013

For the first time, it seems that you can now get Andrew "Mr Fraudytrousers" Wakefield's stapled together bits of absorbent paper, "Callous Disregard" cheaper in paperback than you can in hardback.

Amazon.com currently have the hardback (new) at $5.39 (£3.53), and a "used" (urgh) copy of the paperback for $2.74 (£1.80 - about the price of a half in most London pubs).

And all this during the week he's issued a bleating "It's not my fault! 'snot fair! Blub blub!" video insisting that despite what everyone not completely hard of thinking realises, he's not responsible for the South Wales measles outbreak (765 confirmed cases, with 77 hospitalised). Presumably a big boy did it and ran away.

You bag of shit, Wakefield.

Look, twats. This is all your fucking fault.

Measles: 64 new cases in south west Wales outbreak - BBC News

"Health officials say 64 new measles cases have been reported in the Swansea area in the last week, taking the outbreak to 316 with 42 hospitalised."

Look, Andrew Wakefield, John "Cock" Stone, Jackie Fletcher, JB Handley, Anne Dachel, Meryl Dorey, that stupid woman behind "What Doctors Don't Tell You" and the rest of you shouty anti-vaccine TWATS. THIS IS ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT. A few choice quotes…

"We cannot emphasise enough that measles is an illness that can kill, or leave people with permanent complications including severe brain damage," said Dr Marion Lyons, director of health protection for Public Health Wales.

These can include ear infections, vomiting and diarrhoea, pneumonia, meningitis and serious eye disorders.

It says it is only a matter of time before a child is left with serious and permanent complications or even dies.

I hope you're fucking ashamed of yourselves, you BASTARDS.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Wakefield Groupies

A few things have struck me recently about Andrew Wakefield's infamous withdrawn Lancet piece, the small case study that kicked off the whole "MMR causes Autism" furore and conspiracy-mongering.

(A note to wingnuts: I'm well aware that you think other things cause autism - mercury, aluminium, formaldehyde and whatever else you (often wrongly) think is in vaccines, but I'm referring specifically to MMR here.)

In the comments of a piece at Age of Autism, John Stone (who, as we will remember is a cock) has been banging on for some reason, trying to get other comments to refer to Wakefield's work as a "paper" or "report", rather than a "study". I'm not sure why - unless he feels that the word "study" implies "work done for the purposes of research" as opposed to "report" which implies simply "writing up what has been observed during normal clinical practice". Of course, that was the whole point of John Walker-Smith's appeal - that he believed he was doing clinical work, treating ill children, and he wasn't involved in actual research. Is John Stone preparing the ground for the same argument to be used by (or on behalf of) Wakefield at some point in the future?

After all, one of the themes you'll find from wingnut anti-vaccine green-inkers is that since Walker-Smith was exonerated, that clearly exonerates Wakefield, and so the Lancet study (I'll stick to "study") should be re-instated blah blah blah.

Given that Walker-Smith stated, through his solicitor, that there was now no credible evidence to support the MMR/autism hypothesis, and that anti-vaxers the world over have been lauding him as an honourable man, a world-renowned paediatrician and the man who gave Wakefield's work the academic rigour it craved, surely they should be holding their hands up in a "Mea culpa" style (I'm sure that's not quite the right Latin, but you know what I mean), saying "OK, we got it wrong. John Walker-Smith, expert, honourable man and world-renowned paediatrician says so, and he's right."

Or maybe they won't believe their honourable expert and world-renowned paediatrician. He's got this major conclusion wrong. Well, in that case, he's clearly not the expert you thought he was, is he? And so he doesn't really add any respectability to Wakefield's work, does he?

But neither of those are likely. The conspiracy minded among them, led by John "Cock" Stone will bleat "But Professor Walker-Smith had to say that - he'd never have been exonerated otherwise." But of course, if that's the case, that Walker-Smith had to grovel and say the study was wrong all along in order to be vindicated, then frankly, the rest of his evidence and testimony can't have been up to much in the first place, and he knew he was conducting research. Which means the whole study was totally unethical after all.

So, wingnuts; which is it?

Dan Olmsted - a man with no sense of irony

Dan Olmsted has posted this at Age of Autism:

One of the guilty pleasures of covering the autism story lo these many years is to witness the spectacle of arrogant, ignorant "experts" weighing in on the issue -- supposedly on the side of science, or, as they often think of it, Science -- and making absolute blithering fools of themselves.

Rather splendidly, he's inadvertently posted this on a page that includes a couple of lists of arrogant, ignorant "experts" who frequently make absolute blithering fools of themselves.

They're at the top, in the menu bar. One list is Dan Olmsted, Mark Blaxill, Kim Stagliano. The other can be seen by simply moving your mouse over the "contributors" link in the menu. Bingo.

JB Handley plumbs new depths of vile.

Age of Autism's JB Handley has just managed to write one of the most offensive things I think I've ever seen.

On his online chip-wrapper, Age of Autism, an anti-vaccine rag that pretends it's about supporting those with, and living with autistic spectrum disorders, he writes:

None of us give a flying F%$# about the prevalence of autism in South Korea

You jingoistic, unfeeling, hate-filled - and I'd say at the very least bordering on racist - CUNT, Handley.

More on Jimmy Savile and Andrew Wakefield - the real similarities

That repugnant anti-vax loon John Stone has had another go at linking the vile activities of Jimmy Savile to vaccination, but he's got it completely arse-about-face.

He's read my piece from a few days ago in which I ridiculed him for trying to link Savile to religious exemption - I still have no idea what the fuck he thought he was saying - and after accusing me of being Brian Deer again (*sigh*) - he tries another angle, although, as ever with Stone, it's barely more coherent.

His new angle is to suggest that if "he remained protected and possibly assisted for more than 50 years by the great and the powerful", that shows that those same great and powerful have obviously covered up his imagined MMR scandal. He goes on to mention a couple of other cover-ups to show that these imaginary "great and powerful" are quite capable of covering things up. At least, I think that's what he's banging on about. But he's wrong, that's not where the similarities lie.

First of all, in the case of Savile, people did raise concerns, and had them dismissed out of hand, with no investigation.

Andrew Wakefield raised concerns about the MMR vaccine, and these were dismissed, but only after millions of pounds and thousands of hours were spent on trying to replicate his results, investigating aspects of his work in case there was something in his (always rather unlikely) hypothesis came to nothing. All those resources have produced not a shred of evidence that MMR causes autism.

"So they're not similar at all Becky!" I hear you cry. "Hold on there", I reply. "There are similarities - just not in the way Stone thinks."

First of all, during his lifetime, Savile was lauded for the work he did for children. His fund raising for Stoke Mandeville hospital was frequently in the papers and on TV. His most famous TV programme, "Jim'll Fix It" made the wildest dreams of children come true, often thanks to celebrities supporting him; "my very good friends The. Red. Arrows. Very busy people", Iron Maiden, various Doctor Whos, Muhammed Ali.

Andrew Wakefield is always keen to be seen as a brave, maverick doctor who's only doing his work for the benefit of the children - and has been supported over the years by well known faces (some of since whom have retracted their support) - Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy, Ian Hislop and Private Eye, The Daily Mail and Spectator's Mad Melanie Phillips among them.

It turned out Jimmy Savile was actually attacking children and patients.

It turned out that Andrew Wakefield had attacked children by ordering non-clinically indicated colonoscopies and lumbar punctures, and had taken blood from children at parties, later laughing about how they cried and fainted.

When suspicions were voiced about Savile (all the way through his career, starting with his club DJ days in Leeds) and his activities, he responded with threats of violence.

Wakefield's supporters have threatened a reporter from the New York Times; "Be nice to him, or we will hurt you."

When violence wasn't an option, Savile would resort to legal threats. In the 1980s he threatened the comedian Jerry Sadowitz with legal action unless he withdrew a live album on which Sadowitz accused Savile of being a paedophile.

Wakefield is famously keen to fling around his legal muscle. He's taken out various cases against investigative reporter Brian Deer (and lost), Channel 4, and is currently engaged in a laughable suit from his bolt-hole in Texas.

Savile was finally exposed by investigative reporting, showing that his sham "good works" for charity and children were purely to benefit himself by ultimately allowing him access to his victims at hospitals and in television studios.

Wakefield was finally exposed by investigative reporting showing that his sham "good work" for children and the wider autistic community was only done to benefit himself by ultimately allowing him access to vast piles of cash, from legal aid and parents terrified into parting with cash by his lies.

So, it seems John Stone has a point. There are many similarities between Andrew Wakefield and Jimmy Savile - just not perhaps in ways he might have considered.

Please note, I am not in any way suggesting that Andrew Wakefield is a paedophile.

Z'Tejas in the dark about Wakefield event

Interestingly, the management at Z'Tejas - where Wakefield's fundraiser is being held - hadn't been informed of the nature of the event. I've had a very polite note from their Director of Marketing, saying that Z'Tejas is not sponsoring the event, is not making any financial contributions, and was unaware of the nature of the event. (Thank you Z'Tejas for such a prompt and courteous reply.)

I wonder why Wakefield's groupies don't see fit to explain the nature of an event when booking it..?