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The Fallacy of Thimerosal Removal & Autism Increase



 
 
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Old March 14th 10, 02:59 AM posted to misc.health.alternative,misc.kids.health,sci.med
john[_5_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 822
Default The Fallacy of Thimerosal Removal & Autism Increase

http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/03/t...children-.html

The Fallacy of Thimerosal Removal & Autism Increase: A Failure of Science, A
Bigger Failure to Children Worldwide
By Jake Crosby

3 Year Olds, A Reliable Age For The Final Cohort?
Mercury in Retrograde?
Continuing Increases?
The role of changing methods in California
Erasing the trail on the California autism data
The Media and the CDC's Disinformation Campaign

In Canada, Eric Fombonne, a psychiatrist with ties to Sanofi-Pasteur, who
is not even an epidemiologist, conducted his own combined thimerosal-MMR
study on a school district in Montreal, and it was a total failure. His
claim that autism rates went up after thimerosal was removed rested entirely
on the Kindergarten cohort, for which enrolment was optional, so only about
half the kids out of the total enrolled. However, all the children with
autism enrolled because the school provides many services to autistic
children. In fact, the school district Fombonne studied has an autism center
for excellence, and even draws children with autism from other districts.
Had enrollment been mandatory, the estimated prevalence would have dropped
by one-half, indicating a decrease rather than an increase. According to
biochemist Dr. Paul G. King, this is what is called "negative enrollment
bias." Furthermore, there was also thimerosal exposure during the years
where exposure was labeled "nil."

His MMR data were no more reliable. Instead of using local MMR immunization
rates to compare to autism rates, he used immunization data from Quebec
City, 145 miles away. Even though the Cochrane Collaboration had this to say
about his previous MMR study from 2001, "The number and possible impact of
biases was so high that interpretation of the results was difficult," and
even though the collaboration included a person who also acted as a legal
consultant to MMR manufacturers, such discrediting apparently has not
stopped Fombonne from doing more completely flawed, post-marketing research.

But back to thimerosal, because just two years ago, Robert Schechter and
Judith Grether of the California Department of Public Health accessed the
records of the California Database for Evaluation and Research (CDER) of the
California Department of Developmental Services in children ages 3-5. The
purpose was to see if autism rates had declined after the supposed removal
of thimerosal from vaccines. According to Schecter and Grether's analysis,
they hadn't. Using their interpretation, the two researchers determined that
thimerosal must not be a primary cause of autism, in a study published in
the Archives of General Psychiatry entitled "Continuing Increases in Autism
Reported to California's Developmental Services System: Mercury in
Retrograde." However, their own errors, it now appears, contradicted their
conclusions.

3 Year Olds, A Reliable Age For The Final Cohort?

The very last cohort the study looks at are 3 years olds, which already is
not a sufficient age group to base any conclusions from, as they would be
hopelessly premature. This is especially relevant to point out because
Schechter and Grether suggest that the first full thimerosal-free year was
2003, yet this was the final birth year fully studied, and children born
during this year would have been diagnosed the earliest for reasons that
will be explained later. Moreover, the claim that children received no more
exposure to thimerosal after 2002 is not true either. Expiration dates on
many of the vaccines that contained thimerosal were well after 2003.
Furthermore, unpublished statistics show that there were sharp increases in
thimerosal exposure from flu shots given to infants and pregnant women,
while other sources of mercury exposure further confound the study's
conclusions.

Even if the premise for this study had been correct, that thimerosal was
removed in 2002, it is still inherently flawed by the fact that its
conclusions that thimerosal and autism are unrelated are based on one birth
year of very young children (three year olds born in 2003), which is only
the beginning of when autism cases start getting filed into the DDS CDER
archives. Drawing any conclusions from this age group alone would be a false
hope.

Perhaps recognizing this problem, the authors then proceed to combine cases
designated as three years of age with those ages four and five, but this
only adds to the problem, creating a simple ascertainment bias that would
make the designated 3 year old age group, by virtue of having less time to
enter the system, smaller than the group labeled as four years old, which
would in turn be smaller than the age group labeled as 5 years of age. This
is especially important because older kids would have been more likely to
receive greater quantities of thimerosal than younger kids. Yet they are all
combined into one whole age group from which to draw conclusions based on
prevalence.

Mercury in Retrograde?

This relates primarily to the less quantifiable problems in relation to
autism rates, which were issues with elemental mercury exposure from amalgam
fillings, methylmercury exposure from coal-burning facilities, the remaining
childhood vaccines preserved with thimerosal that were not taken off the
shelves, and for that matter thimerosal exposure from the flu shot while
exposure from other vaccines was being reduced.

Complicating this further is the fact that there seems to be no consensus on
when the first year routinely recommended vaccines truly contained no
thimerosal preservative. Schechter and Grether said the preservative was all
gone from vaccines in the middle of 2002, citing the IOM Report. However,
all the IOM said was that the ACIP gave an "expressed preference" that all
thimerosal be removed by 2002, hardly reflective of actual thimerosal
content in vaccines. The FDA said the last lots preserved in thimerosal
expired at the beginning of 2003, but the Council of State Governments said
it was early 2004, while parents have found vaccines on the shelves of
doctor's offices with expiration dates that surpass all these years. So no
one really knows.

On top of all this, the parallel increase in uptake of flu shots, like those
during pregnancy, may contribute to earlier onset autism, due to earlier
exposure, and therefore contribute to the disorder being diagnosed earlier.
Unfortunately, there is no available immunization data for prenatal flu
shots.

What is available, however, is the immunization data for the rate of
postnatal flu shots among children ages 6-23 months of age, as reflected
among clients enrolled in the Northern California Kaiser HMO, which jumped
from 5% during the 2001-2002 influenza season, to 45%, in the following
season. By winter of 2004-2005, 57% of 6-23 month olds were getting flu
shots, practically all of which were preserved with thimerosal. Data for
pregnant women are not available, but they were also a target group for flu
vaccines in the same period.

Continuing Increases?

That is the final and main problem I found with this paper, which has been
used to support the untrue claim that autism rates have continued to go up.
First, the claim that prevalence of autism was counted in 3-5 year old
children is misleading. Schecter and Grether's estimates of age rely on
subtracting the year of birth of the child from the year the child is
currently enrolled as an active client, but that does not mean the child
really is that age For example, I was born in 1988, so by Schechter and
Grether's counts I would be 22, but I'm actually 21. So many children are
getting counted as older than they really were. Many children labeled as
four years old are actually three and many children labeled as five years
old are actually four, and roughly half the five year olds are not included
but actually classified in with children six or older. Children in the
studied age group could be as old as five, but that's not the same as
including the entire five year old age group.

So the Schecter and Grether study only fully accounts for 3 and 4 year olds;
the only other study I can recall which looks at children that young is the
infamous Verstraeten study. This is key, especially since during the years
it looked at the rates after thimerosal "removal" (which is also dubious),
the California Department of Developmental Services' regional centers made
changes that may artificially skew autism clients, especially those in the
youngest age groups, towards an upward trend.

According to a CDDS report "Controlling Regional Center Costs:"

"Responding to this concern (increasing autism rates), the Legislature
enacted a requirement for the Department to develop evaluation and
diagnostic procedures for the diagnosis of ASD and to develop a training
program for regional center clinical staff in the utilization of the
diagnostic procedures. These procedures were published in 2002."
See HERE.

So, now the youngest possible autism age groups in the CDER archives of the
CDDS, 3 and 4 year olds, the only ones Schechter and Grether fully account
for, are heavily biased. Not only would developing procedures for diagnosis
skew autism figures towards the youngest children, but also since they are
done at reporting centers, children may now enter the DDS system as soon as
they are diagnosed. This will mean the proportion of younger children to
older children with autism will shoot way up, and that is exactly what we
see in the Jaunuary 2009 Hertz-Picciotto study published in Epidemiology,
where starting in 2002, new cases of autism in the CDDS of children ages 0-4
go up linearly but the rate for children ages 5-9 starts to flatline. It
also means that, amidst all this, the increasing proportion of total numbers
of new cases, assuming the autism rate were to continue to remain the same,
must also balance out with the total number of cases leaving the system as
well as the decreasing proportion of older children entering the system. So
changes in the youngest clients would still be reflected indirectly in total
new autism cases, as they are all part of the same system. As a result,
looking solely at autism rates in the youngest children does not give the
full picture.

What does, however, are the results obtained by Dr. Mark Geier, a fellow of
the American College of Epidemiology, and his son David Geier, when they
analyzed both the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System of autism-related
adverse events and the California Department of Developmental Services data
of total new autism cases and found a decrease in both, according to a study
entitled "Early Downward Trends in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Following
Removal of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines," published in the Journal of
American Physicians and Surgeons.

Not only that, the CDDS graph of autism (page 12) from this study provides
further evidence for early diagnosis bias in the Schechter and Grether
paper. An increase in the proportion of younger children who enter the
system, namely three, four and some five year olds who are the youngest
clients enrolled in the CDDS CDER database, while it may positively affect
the reporting system overall, would still mean that there would have to be a
corresponding decrease of older children with autism being enrolled to the
system; that would be offset by an acceleration of younger cases if rates
were to remain stagnant, and as a result cause a stagnation in the number of
new cases. New autism cases would also have to offset the increasing numbers
of older cases reported from previous quarters leaving the system, if they
do, then the autism rate has not gone down.

However, this is not the case based on the fact that the increase in
prevalence among 3-5 year olds from 1995 to 2007 in Schechter and Grether is
a straight line maintained at a constant rate, not an accelerating curve as
would be expected with younger children entering the system, likely due to
thimerosal removal. Further evidence for this can be seen from Figure 3 of
Geier et al., showing the scatter plot of total new autism cases entered to
the CDDS, which shows a downwards trend beginning in early 2002.
See HERE.

To be fair, however, the Geiers' study drew some criticism. Critics claimed
the decrease was the result of state law that went into effect in mid 2003.
However, the change in trend noted by the Geiers began in early 2002.

The role of changing methods in California

Those who use the California DDS data to exonerate thimerosal's role in
autism will point to changes in the state law in 2003 that raised demands of
those being served by CDDS, saying that clients must show "substantial
disability" in three or more areas of life because the state was facing a
budget crisis, and that therefore, the California database was if anything,
taking fewer cases than it would have.

This, however, is unlikely to have made an impact on cases of full-blown
autism admitted to the system, the only autism spectrum disorder for which
this new law applied. Rick Rollins, autism parent and cofounder of the UC
Davis MIND Institute, says "children with full syndrome autism generally
fail in at least 3 and as many as 6 of the areas of 'major life activities'
as defined above, therefore one would expect that autism would be the least
impacted of all the categories by the new, additional requirements for
eligibility."

Furthermore, if one were to believe these changes have a significant impact
on the reporting of full-blown autism at all, one would expect a
disproportionately lower growth in full-blown autism as compared with
Aspergers and PDD-NOS, since the "substantial disability" criteria only
applies to classic autism between the years of 2002 and 2007. However,
growth for autism compared with other ASDs for which "substantial
disability" criteria does not apply increased at approximately the same
rate during this period. (page 27): See HERE.

Then there are the changes that took place in the CDDS in 2002 that
culminated in the emergence of early diagnosis and evaluation policies for
ASDs that had not previously existed, that would positively skew the numbers
of autism spectrum disorders enrolled in the database, especially in the
youngest children. This is far more likely to bias the database in a
positive direction than requiring extra proof of "substantial disability" in
cases with classic autism, which is already a substantial disability.

While I have previously speculated that increased exposure to thimerosal
from flu shots plays a role, the results are likely to be primarily due to
drastic administrative changes as stated before in reference to the 2007
Report "Controlling Regional Center Costs." The budget crisis that had been
going on during this time period, if anything, caused the Department to
divert more funds to early diagnosis and intervention programs for autism,
given that autism has increased at a much higher rate than the other
disabilities the system keeps track of. This change to the CDDS database
came as a result of a state law passed the year before in 2001, the most
widely cited year for alleged thimerosal removal.


Even slight fluctuations in the average age of diagnosis alone can have a
major impact on autism rates in young ages. In Denmark, for example, in a
study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
entitled "Autism Prevalence Trends Over Time in Denmark: Changes in
Prevalence and Age at Diagnosis," a drop in the average age of autism
diagnosis from 5.1 to 4.7 was attributable to a 37% autism increase in 3
year olds while the drop in the average age of ASD diagnosis from 5.9 to 5.3
as attributable to a growth of 66% in 3 year olds. Even modest shifts in the
average age of diagnosis can have a huge impact on autism in the youngest
age groups. So the change in age of diagnosis definitely would have impacted
the studied age groups of 3, 4 and some 5 year olds. (19047542[PMID]) See
HERE.

However, it should be noted that one of the study's authors, Poul Thorsen,
had a hand in one of the previous studies from Denmark "exempting"
thimerosal, and another equally flawed study attempting to do the same with
the MMR vaccine. He is currently under criminal investigation, facing
possible charges of fraud and forgery.

Erasing the trail on the California autism data

Just as egregious was when the CDDS changed its reporting mechanisms in 2008
in a big way, which would include many more cases, one week before the
Schecter and Grether study was published. This meant that the database from
there on out would be unusable to track the autism rates to determine if
there would be a decline any time soon. This had a profound impact on the
monitoring of autism cohort systems in California, ultimately leading up to
their closure for autism surveillance, This occurred one week before the
publication of this premature and totally biased study looking at the autism
rates in the CDDS. Such a sequence of events raises considerable doubt about
the integrity of the research.

This was not unlike when the CDC blocked off all access to the Vaccine
Safety Datalink Project after December 2000, after which, presumably, the
thimerosal-phase out began. A fact worth noting is that these results are
also consistent with the words of an anonymous CDC monitor who was quoted in
"Evidence of Harm" by David Kirby as saying that the autism rate in the
Vaccine Safety Datalink was going down during thimerosal reduction.

Even before this study, however, the California Department of Health has
proven it is not credible, especially its immunization branch. The CDC funds
it, and when this study in California was being done, Robert Davis was head
of the Immunization Safety Office; he also helped Epidemic Intelligence
Surveillance officer Thomas Verstraeten eliminate the relative risks with
each draft of his study.

Robert Schechter, the lead author, is merely the successor of Loring Dales
who did the glaringly flawed study from 2001 that tried to clear the MMR
vaccine in a similar fashion. This study was later criticized for not having
sufficient power to detect an association if one were to exist, according to
a later study in 2002 by Madsen et al. which also attempted to exonerate the
MMR, but omitted many children who received the MMR vaccine and developed
autism because they were too young to be diagnosed. The 2001 California
study also included Natalie Smith, then head of immunization in California,
in its list of coauthors, as well as an attendee to the illegal Simpsonwood
Meeting in June 2000 where officials discussed bringing down statistical
connections between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders while hiding
data from the public.

The second author of the California thimerosal study, Judith Grether, prior
to joining the California Department of Public Health was an epidemiologist
for the March of Dimes, a charity founded on the premise of developing an
effective polio vaccine. She coauthored a paper in 2002 with Lisa Croen of
the Health Management Organization, Kaiser Permanente, to argue against a
real rise in autism. Croen and Grether later retracted their findings after
having their errors were pointed out to them by a research team led by Mark
Blaxill, along with fellow autism father and professor of neurosurgery Dr.
David Baskin of the Baylor College of Medicine and McGill epidemiologist
Professor Walter Spitzer.

Ultimately, affiliations and prior discrediting on autism research makes it
not surprising that the coauthors, Schechter and Grether, ignored a major
artificial bias that would turn a decrease, especially in the youngest
cases, post-reduction of thimerosal into an increase, not unlike the Denmark
studies, the Swedish data, or Eric Fombonne's "study." The public's
knowledge of the thimerosal-autism link has been greatly skewed ever since.

The Media and the CDC's Disinformation Campaign

Purveyors of spreading this misinformation include Eric Fombonne, who wrote
a complementary article to this study entitled "Thimerosal Disappears But
Autism Remains."

Another familiar misinformant is Arthur Allen, author of "Vaccine: The
Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver," having written on his
blog, "The most convincing evidence comes from California, where the number
of 3-to-5 year old children diagnosed with autism has doubled over the last
five years, although children now being diagnosed with autism received
little or no thimerosal-containing vaccines."

In The Los Angeles Times, Michael Fumento, a freelance writer noted for his
strong industry connections, just wrote in a February 5, 2010 piece,
"Anti-vaccinationists initially claimed California autism cases dropped.
False. The 'data do not show any recent decrease in autism in California'
despite the discontinuation of thimerosal use, the state's Department of
Developmental Services found in 2008."

Meanwhile, Gardiner Harris writes in The New York Times, "Because of
concerns over the preservative, vaccine makers in 2001 largely eliminated
thimerosal from routinely administered childhood vaccines.
But this change has had no apparent impact on childhood autism rates."

USA Today also repeats this inaccuracy, claiming "autism rates continued to
rise after thimerosl was removed from virtually all child vaccines in 2001,"
even linking to Schechter and Grether's completely flawed study.

This myth has even trickled down to academia and is currently being taught
in universities. According to my own textbook, "Human Genetics" by Ricki
Lewis, "Scientific evidence does not support a link to the mercury compound
once used in vaccines-autism has increased since that ingredient has been
removed."

Even worse, the California Department of Public Health study is widely cited
to claim that thimerosal is safe, and therefore fine to leave at
preservative levels in seasonal flu shots routinely recommended for pregnant
woman and children, despite the fact that the thimerosal exceeds EPA safety
limits.

In fact, last January the CDC launched a press release to encourage pregnant
women and children to get the multi-dose H1N1 vaccine that also contains the
preservative. The last section is titled, "Research Shows No Link Between
Thimerosal and Autism." The last sentence of this reads, "In fact, sadly,
autism rates have actually gone up since thimerosal was taken out of
childhood vaccines in 2001, providing further evidence that
thimerosal-containing vaccines are not related to autism."

What is truly sad is that this big hungry lie continues to be repeated in
order to justify the population-wide poisoning of countless infants and
fetuses.
--

Jake Crosby is a college student at Brandeis University who is
double-majoring in History and Health: Science, Society and Social Policy,
and a contributing editor to Age of Autism.


  #2  
Old March 14th 10, 09:29 PM posted to misc.health.alternative,misc.kids.health,sci.med
Jason[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6
Default The Fallacy of Thimerosal Removal & Autism Increase

In article , "john"
wrote:


http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/03/t...children-.html

The Fallacy of Thimerosal Removal & Autism Increase: A Failure of Science, A
Bigger Failure to Children Worldwide
By Jake Crosby

3 Year Olds, A Reliable Age For The Final Cohort?
Mercury in Retrograde?
Continuing Increases?
The role of changing methods in California
Erasing the trail on the California autism data
The Media and the CDC's Disinformation Campaign

In Canada, Eric Fombonne, a psychiatrist with ties to Sanofi-Pasteur, who
is not even an epidemiologist, conducted his own combined thimerosal-MMR
study on a school district in Montreal, and it was a total failure. His
claim that autism rates went up after thimerosal was removed rested entirely
on the Kindergarten cohort, for which enrolment was optional, so only about
half the kids out of the total enrolled. However, all the children with
autism enrolled because the school provides many services to autistic
children. In fact, the school district Fombonne studied has an autism center
for excellence, and even draws children with autism from other districts.
Had enrollment been mandatory, the estimated prevalence would have dropped
by one-half, indicating a decrease rather than an increase. According to
biochemist Dr. Paul G. King, this is what is called "negative enrollment
bias." Furthermore, there was also thimerosal exposure during the years
where exposure was labeled "nil."

His MMR data were no more reliable. Instead of using local MMR immunization
rates to compare to autism rates, he used immunization data from Quebec
City, 145 miles away. Even though the Cochrane Collaboration had this to say
about his previous MMR study from 2001, "The number and possible impact of
biases was so high that interpretation of the results was difficult," and
even though the collaboration included a person who also acted as a legal
consultant to MMR manufacturers, such discrediting apparently has not
stopped Fombonne from doing more completely flawed, post-marketing research.

But back to thimerosal, because just two years ago, Robert Schechter and
Judith Grether of the California Department of Public Health accessed the
records of the California Database for Evaluation and Research (CDER) of the
California Department of Developmental Services in children ages 3-5. The
purpose was to see if autism rates had declined after the supposed removal
of thimerosal from vaccines. According to Schecter and Grether's analysis,
they hadn't. Using their interpretation, the two researchers determined that
thimerosal must not be a primary cause of autism, in a study published in
the Archives of General Psychiatry entitled "Continuing Increases in Autism
Reported to California's Developmental Services System: Mercury in
Retrograde." However, their own errors, it now appears, contradicted their
conclusions.

3 Year Olds, A Reliable Age For The Final Cohort?

The very last cohort the study looks at are 3 years olds, which already is
not a sufficient age group to base any conclusions from, as they would be
hopelessly premature. This is especially relevant to point out because
Schechter and Grether suggest that the first full thimerosal-free year was
2003, yet this was the final birth year fully studied, and children born
during this year would have been diagnosed the earliest for reasons that
will be explained later. Moreover, the claim that children received no more
exposure to thimerosal after 2002 is not true either. Expiration dates on
many of the vaccines that contained thimerosal were well after 2003.
Furthermore, unpublished statistics show that there were sharp increases in
thimerosal exposure from flu shots given to infants and pregnant women,
while other sources of mercury exposure further confound the study's
conclusions.

Even if the premise for this study had been correct, that thimerosal was
removed in 2002, it is still inherently flawed by the fact that its
conclusions that thimerosal and autism are unrelated are based on one birth
year of very young children (three year olds born in 2003), which is only
the beginning of when autism cases start getting filed into the DDS CDER
archives. Drawing any conclusions from this age group alone would be a false
hope.

Perhaps recognizing this problem, the authors then proceed to combine cases
designated as three years of age with those ages four and five, but this
only adds to the problem, creating a simple ascertainment bias that would
make the designated 3 year old age group, by virtue of having less time to
enter the system, smaller than the group labeled as four years old, which
would in turn be smaller than the age group labeled as 5 years of age. This
is especially important because older kids would have been more likely to
receive greater quantities of thimerosal than younger kids. Yet they are all
combined into one whole age group from which to draw conclusions based on
prevalence.

Mercury in Retrograde?

This relates primarily to the less quantifiable problems in relation to
autism rates, which were issues with elemental mercury exposure from amalgam
fillings, methylmercury exposure from coal-burning facilities, the remaining
childhood vaccines preserved with thimerosal that were not taken off the
shelves, and for that matter thimerosal exposure from the flu shot while
exposure from other vaccines was being reduced.

Complicating this further is the fact that there seems to be no consensus on
when the first year routinely recommended vaccines truly contained no
thimerosal preservative. Schechter and Grether said the preservative was all
gone from vaccines in the middle of 2002, citing the IOM Report. However,
all the IOM said was that the ACIP gave an "expressed preference" that all
thimerosal be removed by 2002, hardly reflective of actual thimerosal
content in vaccines. The FDA said the last lots preserved in thimerosal
expired at the beginning of 2003, but the Council of State Governments said
it was early 2004, while parents have found vaccines on the shelves of
doctor's offices with expiration dates that surpass all these years. So no
one really knows.

On top of all this, the parallel increase in uptake of flu shots, like those
during pregnancy, may contribute to earlier onset autism, due to earlier
exposure, and therefore contribute to the disorder being diagnosed earlier.
Unfortunately, there is no available immunization data for prenatal flu
shots.

What is available, however, is the immunization data for the rate of
postnatal flu shots among children ages 6-23 months of age, as reflected
among clients enrolled in the Northern California Kaiser HMO, which jumped
from 5% during the 2001-2002 influenza season, to 45%, in the following
season. By winter of 2004-2005, 57% of 6-23 month olds were getting flu
shots, practically all of which were preserved with thimerosal. Data for
pregnant women are not available, but they were also a target group for flu
vaccines in the same period.

Continuing Increases?

That is the final and main problem I found with this paper, which has been
used to support the untrue claim that autism rates have continued to go up.
First, the claim that prevalence of autism was counted in 3-5 year old
children is misleading. Schecter and Grether's estimates of age rely on
subtracting the year of birth of the child from the year the child is
currently enrolled as an active client, but that does not mean the child
really is that age For example, I was born in 1988, so by Schechter and
Grether's counts I would be 22, but I'm actually 21. So many children are
getting counted as older than they really were. Many children labeled as
four years old are actually three and many children labeled as five years
old are actually four, and roughly half the five year olds are not included
but actually classified in with children six or older. Children in the
studied age group could be as old as five, but that's not the same as
including the entire five year old age group.

So the Schecter and Grether study only fully accounts for 3 and 4 year olds;
the only other study I can recall which looks at children that young is the
infamous Verstraeten study. This is key, especially since during the years
it looked at the rates after thimerosal "removal" (which is also dubious),
the California Department of Developmental Services' regional centers made
changes that may artificially skew autism clients, especially those in the
youngest age groups, towards an upward trend.

According to a CDDS report "Controlling Regional Center Costs:"

"Responding to this concern (increasing autism rates), the Legislature
enacted a requirement for the Department to develop evaluation and
diagnostic procedures for the diagnosis of ASD and to develop a training
program for regional center clinical staff in the utilization of the
diagnostic procedures. These procedures were published in 2002."
See HERE.

So, now the youngest possible autism age groups in the CDER archives of the
CDDS, 3 and 4 year olds, the only ones Schechter and Grether fully account
for, are heavily biased. Not only would developing procedures for diagnosis
skew autism figures towards the youngest children, but also since they are
done at reporting centers, children may now enter the DDS system as soon as
they are diagnosed. This will mean the proportion of younger children to
older children with autism will shoot way up, and that is exactly what we
see in the Jaunuary 2009 Hertz-Picciotto study published in Epidemiology,
where starting in 2002, new cases of autism in the CDDS of children ages 0-4
go up linearly but the rate for children ages 5-9 starts to flatline. It
also means that, amidst all this, the increasing proportion of total numbers
of new cases, assuming the autism rate were to continue to remain the same,
must also balance out with the total number of cases leaving the system as
well as the decreasing proportion of older children entering the system. So
changes in the youngest clients would still be reflected indirectly in total
new autism cases, as they are all part of the same system. As a result,
looking solely at autism rates in the youngest children does not give the
full picture.

What does, however, are the results obtained by Dr. Mark Geier, a fellow of
the American College of Epidemiology, and his son David Geier, when they
analyzed both the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System of autism-related
adverse events and the California Department of Developmental Services data
of total new autism cases and found a decrease in both, according to a study
entitled "Early Downward Trends in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Following
Removal of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines," published in the Journal of
American Physicians and Surgeons.

Not only that, the CDDS graph of autism (page 12) from this study provides
further evidence for early diagnosis bias in the Schechter and Grether
paper. An increase in the proportion of younger children who enter the
system, namely three, four and some five year olds who are the youngest
clients enrolled in the CDDS CDER database, while it may positively affect
the reporting system overall, would still mean that there would have to be a
corresponding decrease of older children with autism being enrolled to the
system; that would be offset by an acceleration of younger cases if rates
were to remain stagnant, and as a result cause a stagnation in the number of
new cases. New autism cases would also have to offset the increasing numbers
of older cases reported from previous quarters leaving the system, if they
do, then the autism rate has not gone down.

However, this is not the case based on the fact that the increase in
prevalence among 3-5 year olds from 1995 to 2007 in Schechter and Grether is
a straight line maintained at a constant rate, not an accelerating curve as
would be expected with younger children entering the system, likely due to
thimerosal removal. Further evidence for this can be seen from Figure 3 of
Geier et al., showing the scatter plot of total new autism cases entered to
the CDDS, which shows a downwards trend beginning in early 2002.
See HERE.

To be fair, however, the Geiers' study drew some criticism. Critics claimed
the decrease was the result of state law that went into effect in mid 2003.
However, the change in trend noted by the Geiers began in early 2002.

The role of changing methods in California

Those who use the California DDS data to exonerate thimerosal's role in
autism will point to changes in the state law in 2003 that raised demands of
those being served by CDDS, saying that clients must show "substantial
disability" in three or more areas of life because the state was facing a
budget crisis, and that therefore, the California database was if anything,
taking fewer cases than it would have.

This, however, is unlikely to have made an impact on cases of full-blown
autism admitted to the system, the only autism spectrum disorder for which
this new law applied. Rick Rollins, autism parent and cofounder of the UC
Davis MIND Institute, says "children with full syndrome autism generally
fail in at least 3 and as many as 6 of the areas of 'major life activities'
as defined above, therefore one would expect that autism would be the least
impacted of all the categories by the new, additional requirements for
eligibility."

Furthermore, if one were to believe these changes have a significant impact
on the reporting of full-blown autism at all, one would expect a
disproportionately lower growth in full-blown autism as compared with
Aspergers and PDD-NOS, since the "substantial disability" criteria only
applies to classic autism between the years of 2002 and 2007. However,
growth for autism compared with other ASDs for which "substantial
disability" criteria does not apply increased at approximately the same
rate during this period. (page 27): See HERE.

Then there are the changes that took place in the CDDS in 2002 that
culminated in the emergence of early diagnosis and evaluation policies for
ASDs that had not previously existed, that would positively skew the numbers
of autism spectrum disorders enrolled in the database, especially in the
youngest children. This is far more likely to bias the database in a
positive direction than requiring extra proof of "substantial disability" in
cases with classic autism, which is already a substantial disability.

While I have previously speculated that increased exposure to thimerosal
from flu shots plays a role, the results are likely to be primarily due to
drastic administrative changes as stated before in reference to the 2007
Report "Controlling Regional Center Costs." The budget crisis that had been
going on during this time period, if anything, caused the Department to
divert more funds to early diagnosis and intervention programs for autism,
given that autism has increased at a much higher rate than the other
disabilities the system keeps track of. This change to the CDDS database
came as a result of a state law passed the year before in 2001, the most
widely cited year for alleged thimerosal removal.


Even slight fluctuations in the average age of diagnosis alone can have a
major impact on autism rates in young ages. In Denmark, for example, in a
study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
entitled "Autism Prevalence Trends Over Time in Denmark: Changes in
Prevalence and Age at Diagnosis," a drop in the average age of autism
diagnosis from 5.1 to 4.7 was attributable to a 37% autism increase in 3
year olds while the drop in the average age of ASD diagnosis from 5.9 to 5.3
as attributable to a growth of 66% in 3 year olds. Even modest shifts in the
average age of diagnosis can have a huge impact on autism in the youngest
age groups. So the change in age of diagnosis definitely would have impacted
the studied age groups of 3, 4 and some 5 year olds. (19047542[PMID]) See
HERE.

However, it should be noted that one of the study's authors, Poul Thorsen,
had a hand in one of the previous studies from Denmark "exempting"
thimerosal, and another equally flawed study attempting to do the same with
the MMR vaccine. He is currently under criminal investigation, facing
possible charges of fraud and forgery.

Erasing the trail on the California autism data

Just as egregious was when the CDDS changed its reporting mechanisms in 2008
in a big way, which would include many more cases, one week before the
Schecter and Grether study was published. This meant that the database from
there on out would be unusable to track the autism rates to determine if
there would be a decline any time soon. This had a profound impact on the
monitoring of autism cohort systems in California, ultimately leading up to
their closure for autism surveillance, This occurred one week before the
publication of this premature and totally biased study looking at the autism
rates in the CDDS. Such a sequence of events raises considerable doubt about
the integrity of the research.

This was not unlike when the CDC blocked off all access to the Vaccine
Safety Datalink Project after December 2000, after which, presumably, the
thimerosal-phase out began. A fact worth noting is that these results are
also consistent with the words of an anonymous CDC monitor who was quoted in
"Evidence of Harm" by David Kirby as saying that the autism rate in the
Vaccine Safety Datalink was going down during thimerosal reduction.

Even before this study, however, the California Department of Health has
proven it is not credible, especially its immunization branch. The CDC funds
it, and when this study in California was being done, Robert Davis was head
of the Immunization Safety Office; he also helped Epidemic Intelligence
Surveillance officer Thomas Verstraeten eliminate the relative risks with
each draft of his study.

Robert Schechter, the lead author, is merely the successor of Loring Dales
who did the glaringly flawed study from 2001 that tried to clear the MMR
vaccine in a similar fashion. This study was later criticized for not having
sufficient power to detect an association if one were to exist, according to
a later study in 2002 by Madsen et al. which also attempted to exonerate the
MMR, but omitted many children who received the MMR vaccine and developed
autism because they were too young to be diagnosed. The 2001 California
study also included Natalie Smith, then head of immunization in California,
in its list of coauthors, as well as an attendee to the illegal Simpsonwood
Meeting in June 2000 where officials discussed bringing down statistical
connections between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders while hiding
data from the public.

The second author of the California thimerosal study, Judith Grether, prior
to joining the California Department of Public Health was an epidemiologist
for the March of Dimes, a charity founded on the premise of developing an
effective polio vaccine. She coauthored a paper in 2002 with Lisa Croen of
the Health Management Organization, Kaiser Permanente, to argue against a
real rise in autism. Croen and Grether later retracted their findings after
having their errors were pointed out to them by a research team led by Mark
Blaxill, along with fellow autism father and professor of neurosurgery Dr.
David Baskin of the Baylor College of Medicine and McGill epidemiologist
Professor Walter Spitzer.

Ultimately, affiliations and prior discrediting on autism research makes it
not surprising that the coauthors, Schechter and Grether, ignored a major
artificial bias that would turn a decrease, especially in the youngest
cases, post-reduction of thimerosal into an increase, not unlike the Denmark
studies, the Swedish data, or Eric Fombonne's "study." The public's
knowledge of the thimerosal-autism link has been greatly skewed ever since.

The Media and the CDC's Disinformation Campaign

Purveyors of spreading this misinformation include Eric Fombonne, who wrote
a complementary article to this study entitled "Thimerosal Disappears But
Autism Remains."

Another familiar misinformant is Arthur Allen, author of "Vaccine: The
Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver," having written on his
blog, "The most convincing evidence comes from California, where the number
of 3-to-5 year old children diagnosed with autism has doubled over the last
five years, although children now being diagnosed with autism received
little or no thimerosal-containing vaccines."

In The Los Angeles Times, Michael Fumento, a freelance writer noted for his
strong industry connections, just wrote in a February 5, 2010 piece,
"Anti-vaccinationists initially claimed California autism cases dropped.
False. The 'data do not show any recent decrease in autism in California'
despite the discontinuation of thimerosal use, the state's Department of
Developmental Services found in 2008."

Meanwhile, Gardiner Harris writes in The New York Times, "Because of
concerns over the preservative, vaccine makers in 2001 largely eliminated
thimerosal from routinely administered childhood vaccines.
But this change has had no apparent impact on childhood autism rates."

USA Today also repeats this inaccuracy, claiming "autism rates continued to
rise after thimerosl was removed from virtually all child vaccines in 2001,"
even linking to Schechter and Grether's completely flawed study.

This myth has even trickled down to academia and is currently being taught
in universities. According to my own textbook, "Human Genetics" by Ricki
Lewis, "Scientific evidence does not support a link to the mercury compound
once used in vaccines-autism has increased since that ingredient has been
removed."

Even worse, the California Department of Public Health study is widely cited
to claim that thimerosal is safe, and therefore fine to leave at
preservative levels in seasonal flu shots routinely recommended for pregnant
woman and children, despite the fact that the thimerosal exceeds EPA safety
limits.

In fact, last January the CDC launched a press release to encourage pregnant
women and children to get the multi-dose H1N1 vaccine that also contains the
preservative. The last section is titled, "Research Shows No Link Between
Thimerosal and Autism." The last sentence of this reads, "In fact, sadly,
autism rates have actually gone up since thimerosal was taken out of
childhood vaccines in 2001, providing further evidence that
thimerosal-containing vaccines are not related to autism."

What is truly sad is that this big hungry lie continues to be repeated in
order to justify the population-wide poisoning of countless infants and
fetuses.
--

Jake Crosby is a college student at Brandeis University who is
double-majoring in History and Health: Science, Society and Social Policy,
and a contributing editor to Age of Autism.


Please stop confusing people with the facts.

In other words, keep up the great work.


  #3  
Old March 14th 10, 11:55 PM posted to misc.health.alternative,misc.kids.health,sci.med
john[_5_]
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Posts: 822
Default The Fallacy of Thimerosal Removal & Autism Increase


"Jason" wrote in message

Please stop confusing people with the facts.

In other words, keep up the great work.



cheers, the end is nigh for these b*******


 




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