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The reason this belongs in politics is because it suggests bias on the part of CDC. Studies like this need to be independent of politics, so we are armed with the truth and can protect children from the real dangers.
Before the usual pro-govt defenders comment, please read the article attached prior to impeaching it.
For their analysis, Laura Hewitson and her colleagues at UP conducted the type of proper safety research on typical childhood vaccination schedules that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should have conducted -- but never has -- for such regimens. And what this brave team discovered was groundbreaking, as it completely deconstructs the mainstream myth that vaccines are safe and pose no risk of autism.
Presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) in London, England, the findings revealed that young macaque monkeys given the typical CDC-recommended vaccination schedule from the 1990s, and in appropriate doses for the monkeys' sizes and ages, tended to develop autism symptoms. Their unvaccinated counterparts, on the other hand, developed no such symptoms, which points to a strong connection between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders.
The results of that pilot study were published as a Research Paper in Acta Neurobiological Experimentals in 2010 and titled “Influence of pediatric vaccines on amydgala growth and opioid ligand binding in rhesus macaque infants: A pilot study.” [1] Even though there was alleged controversy revolving around Hewitson’s monkey studies, e.g., charges of conflicts of interest since she filed a claim with the vaccine court on behalf of her child, [2] the information generated needs to be revisited and duplicate studies need to be undertaken. Why haven’t they? Is there too much influence from vaccine makers not to do them? Parents need to make demands on the U.S. Congress to require such safety studies on monkeys be duplicated immediately, plus suspend all mandates on vaccinations until the study results are in. Did Dr Hewitson become another professional persona non-grata because she may have been on the right track?
One of the issues I feel Congress has been remiss about is that it has not demanded safety studies and interaction of multiple vaccines studies BEFORE being placed into the marketplace. According to common and accepted knowledge, no such safety research or studies have been done on the current childhood vaccination regimen, except until the Hewitson ‘monkey business’ that was funded by independent, private money, for which everyone, I think, should be eternally grateful. However, the study had to be shot down since it was not favorable to vaccine makers. Why isn’t someone else duplicating the monkey studies? Are they afraid of becoming another victim of science? Why, when isn’t that what medical science should be all about: investigating problems and theories, publishing results, and interacting with other sciences, NOT excommunication as if they were breaking some religious dogma. Or, do they, in some vested interests minds? Monkeys Get Autism-like Reactions to MMR & Other Vaccines In University of Pittsburgh Vaccine Study | Vactruth.com
The results of that pilot study were published as a Research Paper in Acta Neurobiological Experimentals in 2010 and titled “Influence of pediatric vaccines on amydgala growth and opioid ligand binding in rhesus macaque infants: A pilot study.”
Also oddly enough, Hewiston appears to have a background in primate research and has presented multiple times at the meeting of the American Society of Primatologists, an observation that makes me wonder how she got roped into these studies. Apparently she has an autistic son, and that may be coloring her decisions. Unfortunately, Dr. Hewitson wouldn’t be the first researcher whose personal brush with autism led her down the path of questionable science. It appears that such may be the case with her.
Indeed, having learned that she has an autistic son, I really, truly wanted to give Dr. Hewitson the benefit of the doubt as I read these abstracts, assuming that perhaps her love of her son was affecting her scientific judgment and that she might not know what she was getting into when she collaborated with Andrew Wakefield. Sadly, I then discovered what seems to be a very serious and apparently undisclosed conflict of interest, as a commenter has informed me. Not only is Dr. Hewitson married to Dan Hollenbeck, a regular contributor to the Age of Autism website (which would not in and of itself be a major conflict of interest), but she and her husband are listed as litigants in the Autism Omnibus proceedings (see #437):
437. Laura Hewiston and Dan Hollenbeck on behalf of Joshua Hollenbeck, Dallas, Texas, Court of Federal Claims Number 03-1166V
INSAR requires authors to disclose their sources of contributed support (commercial, public, or private foundation grants, and off-label use of drugs, if any). INSAR also requires authors to signify whether there may be a real or perceived conflict of interest. Any potential for financial gain that may be derived from reported work may constitute a potential conflict of interest.
Note that the instructions say “any” potential financial gain and “…real or perceived conflict of interest”! I’d say that being a plaintiff in a massive legal action being heard before the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program that alleges that vaccine injury, specifically some combination of mercury and other factors (I’m never quite clear which) caused autism in the litigants’ children qualifies as a rather major conflict of interest, wouldn’t you? This conflict of interest is not listed on the AoA posting of the abstracts, which means either that AoA left it out when republishing the abstracts or Dr. Hewitson did not report them to INSAR when submitting or finalizing the abstracts. The first possibility would not surprise me, as AoA is a font of misinformation in service of antivaccination ideology; the second possibility saddens me, because, if true, it would indicate that an apparently once talented researcher has taken a major step down the road to academic and professional ruin. I really hate to see that.
But it goes beyond even that. Kev has also figured out that not only is Dr. Hewitson married to Dan Hollenbeck, but that Dan Hollenbeck works for Dr. Wakefield at Thoughtful House as Director of Information Technology and that his website FightingAutism.org is also part of Thoughtful House. Kev sums things up quite well:
So, here we are with three poster presentations from a woman who has an autistic son, affiliated with DAN!, is married to the Thoughtful House IT guy (who also happens to be on the Board of Directors of SafeMinds) and these afore-mentioned poster presentations are also co-authored by Andrew Wakefield. I wonder just how impartial this science can be?
It’s hard not to answer: Not very.
I highlighted Dr. Wakefield, because we all remember who he is. He's the guy whose 1998 Lancet study linking vaccines to autism was retracted as fraudulent just two years ago.
I highlighted Dr. Wakefield, because we all remember who he is. He's the guy whose 1998 Lancet study linking vaccines to autism was retracted as fraudulent just two years ago.
As soon as I saw that quack Wakefield's name as one of the researchers, I knew the research was bogus.
OP, you are aware that Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine in Britain due to fraud in his autism "research" there, don't you? You know he was planning to develop his own MMR vaccine and had to discredit the current vaccine, do you not?
People, Claudehopper has recently posted a thread about a motion to remove Obama from office; citing the official press of Iran as his only source.
I may be misremembering but I think he was behind the thread that stated Obama was recruited by the Weathermen, an organization that disbanded when Obama was 13. In which he spent considerable time defending the assertion.
Here he has posted a vaccine study from Vactruth.com.
I'm pretty sure he thinks "consider the source" means making sure it is a source that panders to his preconceived ideas.
Last edited by Grim Reader; 05-14-2012 at 12:23 PM..
People, Claudehopper has recently posted a thread about a motion to remove Obama from office; citing the official press of Iran as his only source.
I may be misremembering but I think he was behind the thread that stated Obama was recruited by the Weathermen, an organization that disbanded when Obama was 13. I which he spent considerable time defending the assertion.
Here he has posted a vaccine study from Vactruth.com.
I'm pretty sure he thinks "consider the source" means making sure it is a surce that panders to his preconceived ideas.
Given the objections seem to be "conflict of interest", I don't see this being any different in that regard than drug company studies. Also brings to light the govt's relationship with private (drug)companies through stock ownership, lobbying, revolving doors etc.... Conflict of interest seem to be everywhere, but some people seem to only object to certain kinds.
Given the objections seem to be "conflict of interest", I don't see this being any different in that regard than drug company studies. Also brings to light the govt's relationship with private (drug)companies through stock ownership, lobbying etc.... Conflict of interest seem to be everywhere, but some people seem to only object to certain kinds.
The conflict of interest merely helps explain why a previously competent scientist left her area of expertise to "publish" a study that turned out to be so completely incompetent.
Quote:
(T)here are 13 monkeys in the “vaccine” group and only three in the control group. The authors do not explain or justify why there are such unequal numbers of subjects in the two groups or why they didn’t simply assign eight monkeys to each group. Doing so would have required the same number of animals. Similarly, there is no mention of how the monkeys were assigned to one group or the other (randomization, anyone?), whether the experimenters were blinded to experimental group and which shots were vaccine or placebo, whether the monkeys were weight- and age-matched, or any of a number of other controls that careful researchers routinely do when setting up animal experiments. Considering these factors, right off the bat from the small numbers (particularly with only three monkeys in the control group), I can fairly safely conclude that the study almost certainly doesn’t have the statistical power necessary to find convincing evidence of an effect of vaccination on any of the parameters measured. Let’s put it this way. I do experiments with mouse tumor models, and if I put such a large mismatch in terms of the number of controls relative to the experimental group, I would be highly unlikely to get any results I could have any confidence in.
...
One thing that leaps right out at me immediately is the question of why on earth specimens from only slightly more than half of the vaccinated monkeys and only two out of the three unvaccinated monkeys were evaluated. What happened to the other specimens? No explanation is given for why specimens from all the monkeys weren’t studied. This alone makes me suspicious of the results. Why were samples from six vaccinated monkeys and one unvaccinated monkey not used?
...
Overall, judging from the abstracts so helpfully provided by AoA, I am, alas, underwhelmed. These three studies appear to be nothing more than Hornig v.2.0, except this time with monkeys. I suppose it’s possible, albeit unlikely, that the science in the actual study will turn out to be better than what is represented in the abstracts. For that, we will have to wait for the actual papers to be published–if they ever are published, which is by no means certain, given what I can glean of the quality (or, more correctly, the lack thereof) of the science presented in these abstracts.
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