New Published Study Verifies Andrew Wakefield’s Research on Autism!

[chocchild]

Has anybody come across this in the news? Maybe it's not newsworthy enough! healthimpactnews.com/2013/new-published-study-verifies-andrew-wakefields-research-on-autism-again/

Cross post beachcomber.

So you think that children with autism should be denied medical treatment for GI disease.

The evidence of any connection between bowel disease and autism is slim at best.

Could you just answer the question, Zideq? You think some children should be denied medical treatment?

So even if the connection between autism and bowel disease is slim you think that they should just go hang?

Must tell that to my cousin's family with the autistic son - any bowel problems and you're on your own. (Not that there is a great deal of support for children with SN, anyway.)

It doesn't matter if evidence of a connection between autism and bowel disease is 'slim'. (Although I would dispute this fact.)

Many children with autism also present with GI disease. Period.

There is no earthly reason to deny such children appropriate medical care.

It is a political stance not a medical, scientific or ethical one to wish to deny autistic children care for any GI disease they may have. It is to prove a point. It is to prove that Dr Wakefield is wrong. On everything. It is to ignore the medical needs of children in distress and suffering in order to quash Wakefield and anything and everything that he says. Right? Dr wakefield must be wrong. About everything. he cannot be right about anything. Therefore no child with autism can be admitted to have GI disease - because that would make Dr Wakefield right about something. And we can't have that. Oh, no siree. Because that opens up a slippery slope of the possibility of Dr Wakefield having got other things right too.

I'm not a religious person but I believe the above stance to be a sin. And I don't say that lightly.

In order to protect the reputation of a drug, children must be denied medical care. That is what we are looking at. That is the shameful truth of the matter. That is the consequence of the political witch-hunt against Dr Wakefield Professor Walker-Smith.

And least Zideq owns it. At least he has the honesty to come out and say it.

"Zideq are you saying that you do not believe the Lancet children to have GI disease and that they therefore should be denied medical treatment for GI distress?"

Chidren should be treated as appropriate by their symptoms

But if there is the slightest suspicion it was caused by a vaccination, they shouldn't? That seemed to be what you were trying to say earlier. I am glad to see that you are not completely callous.

Ah. I see Zideq has now gone to a 'have cake and eat it' position.

It makes most people uncomfortable to be faced with the political stance of denying children medical care.

Not uncomfortable enough that they will actually come out and say that they think that the Lancet children's condition merited the clinical investigation carried out by the Royal Free Team however. Because if they say that they have to disagree with the GMC. And that can't be said because that would imply that Dr Wakefield wasn't Wrong About Everything. And we can't have that.

So people try to hold and express two conflicting ideas in order to avoid holding the opinion that children should be denied medical care.

Idea A - Wakefield was guilty of gross misconduct. The GMC is right. Deer is right.

Idea B - the children at the Royal Free were ill and had a right to clinical investigation.

Idea B is not compatible with idea A. Indeed the two utterly contradict each other.

It is an exercise in double-think to hold the two opinions at the same time. It is an act of hypocrisy.

And the only other alternative is to deny that the children showed symptoms of GI disease and to therefore deny their right to medical care.

It must be very uncomfortable.

I see, BC, that you are still trying to show that Wakefield is less dishonest than is widely believed.

It is revealing that you find this pursuit so much more worthwhile than discussing the incontrovertible fact, that neither you nor he, have produced a shred of reproducible evidence that autism is linked to vaccines. The OP's paper doesn't change this. You are rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic.

JoTheHot - do you think children should be denied medical treatment, in order to trash the reputation of a doctor who raised a potential safety issue with a pharmaceutical drug, by his listening to and reporting on the testimonies given by parents and doctors of children's medical history and by his reporting on the clinical findings of said children's state of health?

You seem to be accusing Dr Wakefield of dishonesty - how about you specify what you find him to have been dishonest over?

(I have posted plenty of scientific papers and evidence over time on various threads on MN. Please feel free to do an advanced search of my posts. This particular discussion is more of a political element - it is about ethics and morals.)

And in answer to Zideq who asked about the justification of lumbar punctures in the children involved in the Royal Free care, you might be interested in this quote from the GMC transcripts which bruffin kindly provided us with;

The justification for lumbar puncture, decided long in advance of this matter, was for the exclusion principally of a mitochondrial cytopathy plus a range of other clinical tests. That was decided in discussion with Dr Thomson, Dr Harvey and the rest of the clinical team. This was a clinical matter and not something in which I had any involvement.

Which is jolly interesting.

Although of course what is also interesting is the highlighting of said lumbar punctures as being a clinical decision and therefore not something that Dr Wakefield was involved with. It seems that the decision to use such an examination was that of Professor Walker-Smith and other members of the clinical team. i.e. NOT Dr Wakefield.

There really are many interesting details are in the primary sources, aren't there!

No it doesn't

Autism has also been linked to not breastfeeding, ie. Bottle feeding. Why is so much focus being put on this Wakefield dude's 'research' & not on other potential causes for ASD?

You are quoting Wakefield, of course he said that

Why is so much focus being put on this Wakefield dude's 'research' & not on other potential causes for ASD?

Because he's been made a scapegoat for the government's MMR policy not being as effective as they would like.

If they stopped dragging his name up every time, they might a) spend more time trying to find out what causes autistic spectrum disorders and how best to treat them and b) reappraise their vaccine policy.

But no, the mantra is "MMR doesn't cause autism, Wakefield has been struck off, la la la we are not listening to anyone else....."

BC I think your belief in homeopathy as a functioning therapy beyond placebo is entirely relevant to this discussion. That you believe in something that isn't true, has never been true and continue to believe it to be true in the face of vast an overwhelming factual evidence is entirely to the point.

It gives us a pretty big clue about your behaviour on the topic of Wakefield.

What strikes me as odd is that it should be entirely possible to be pro vaccines and not especially anti-Wakefield. He fucked up a bit but the vast bulk of the shit that went down wasn't actually his fault per se. Personally I think he was a well meaning guy who stood up and said the wrong thing in front of the press and never got his feet back under him. He shouldn't have published research without the required ethical clearance and consent but it isn't the worst thing you can do.

It should also be possible to be anti-vax and anti-Wakfield but you never see that...there seems to be a cult of personality about him and his work that fixates the anti-vaxers...presumably because they need to focus on something other than the overwhelming data that supports mass vaccination as a miracle of the modern world.

I wonder if Wakefield actually really hates being the poster boy for anti-vaxers...

Thank you Beach.
This thread has moved on a lot but may I say how shocked I am that a number of posters believe that seriously ill children should be refused medical care because at the same time they have autistic or related disorders. I don't think I've read anything quite so callous, from people I assume are other mothers. It doesn't make sense either. Why? There's no clinical reason to refuse them treatment for a bowel disorder. It's like eugenics.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the judge's criticism of the way the GMC panel came to its conclusions. I believe he actually called for reform of the whole process. He certain describes the GMC's line of reasons as superficial and inadequate.

"I am that a number of posters believe that seriously ill children should be refused medical care because at the same time they have autistic or related disorders."

Who said that?

You did.

When?

"Children should be treated as appropriate by their symptoms"

So you withdraw your comments and claims about the unnecessary procedures?

Do you understand the question?

Zideq
You ask When?

Beachcomber asked:
Do you agree with Brian Deer? Do you agree that the Lancet children were not sick with GI disease? Do you think these children should have been denied medical care, as Brian Deer thinks?

You gave a one word answer 'yes'.
You didn't say "yes to the Brian Deer question and no to the rest".

After repeated questioning about did this mean you would deny sick children medical treatment and much wriggling from you, you finally managed to come out with:

"Children should be treated as appropriate by their symptoms"

So forgive us if we believe that you would deny children medical treatment, because that is what your posts implied.

We are really back at Beachcomber's post earlier, where you are trying to marry two completely contradictory lines.

If you believe (like normal people, let's be frank) that children should be treated according to their symptoms - then given the exoneration of Walker-Smith, you can't maintain that the procedures were unnecessary (indeed I believe somewhere it the judgement there's the detail about children seeing some improvement and benefit from therapies derived from their examination)

If you believe that these procedures were unnecessary then you do not believe that children should be treated according to their symptoms.

Zideq, do you understand this central contradiction in your posts? You can't maintain both positions. You have to drop one of them. As you've said twice now that you think children should be treated according to their symptoms, I think it's safe to assume that you would want to drop the other position, about procedures being unnecessary. And it obviously follows from that, that the exoneration of Professor Walker-Smith goes a very long way to undermining and indeed vindicating Andrew Wakefield.