REPEAT Refutation of RFK JR Rolling Stone/Mercury Article

[Guest guest]

Here is a refutation of

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/16/thimerosal/index.html. Might

want to go there and give your feedback.

http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/saloncom-flushes-its-credibility-down.

html

Respectful Insolence (a.k.a. " Orac Knows " )

" A statement of fact cannot be insolent. "

Miscellaneous ramblings of a surgeon/scientist on medicine and

pseudomedicine, science and pseudoscience, history and pseudohistory,

politics (and anything else that interests him).

Friday, June 17, 2005

Salon.com flushes its credibility down the toilet

Damn.

I had been tempted to try to let this cup pass, but I couldn't, not after

Skeptico, PZ, and several others e-mailed me about this article, seemingly

expecting a response. I thought about just chilling out last night,

enjoying Game 4 of the NBA Finals, and letting a response wait until next

week, but the more I thought about it, the harder it was to wait. Thank

heaven for laptops and wireless networking.

Believe it or not, I've been a fairly regular Salon.com reader for at least

the three years. Despite its leftward tilt, I've generally enjoyed the

writing and features. I've even linked to Salon.com articles and features

on occasion. Now I'm going to have to reconsider my opinion of the site.

Why? Salon.com has just plopped down on the web the biggest, steamingest,

drippiest turd I've ever seen it publish, an article so mindnumbingly

one-sided and uncritical that in my eyes it utterly destroys nearly all

credibility Salon.com has had as a source of reliable news and comment.

Honestly, the editors of Salon.com should hang their heads in shame for

publishing this paranoid piece of fear-mongering and trumpeting it as

" investigative reporting. "

The article to which I refer is, of course, Deadly Immunity (which was a

" coinvestigation " by Salon.com and Rolling Stone--a magazine whose attempts

at investigative journalism I haven't taken seriously in years). It's a

one-sided account by F. Kennedy, Jr. of the supposed link between

thimerosal in vaccines and autism that is being promoted by antivaccine

activists as an indictment of the government and pharmaceutical companies.

For example, the Schaefer Autism Report e-mail list reports that ABC News

has cancelled appearances by RFK Jr. on 20/20 and Good Morning America this

week. The e-mail invokes the usual conspiracy-mongering, saying, " Our

opinion is that they are more concerned about protecting their huge

advertising revenues from the pharmaceutical industry than reporting news

that could protect pregnant women, infants and children from mercury

tainted vaccines. " Personally, I suspect it was because ABC News probably

figured out that the article was a biased and shoddily researched piece of

crap, but then that's just my opinion and hope. Certainly, the newsletter

does nothing to dispel my suspicion that this was nothing more than a

propaganda piece:

Lujene , co-founder of NoMercury and A-CHAMP (Advocates for

Children's Health Affected by Mercury Poisoning), worked extensively with

Mr. Kennedy and his office over the past several weeks in preparing the

article for publication. The print copy will contain a sidebar from Ms.

, providing perspective from her experience as the mother of a

thimerosal-injured child and advocate for removing mercury from vaccines.

So the preparation of the article was heavily influenced by an

antivaccination activist. Gee, why am I not surprised to learn this? Why

didn't Salon.com just let Lujene write the article? The result would

have been the same. In any case, there's so much misinformation, paranoid

conspiracy-theory raving, and one-sided stuff in this article that it's

hard to know where to start. Fortunately, I've dealt with this topic a few

times before recently. Here are just a few of the major problems with the

article:

Quote mining. The article begins by making dire insinuations about a

conference that was held at the CDC, known as the Simpsonwood Conference,

after the conference center where it was held in 2000. It is not an

auspicious start, as RFK Jr. does what mercury-autism activists do best:

quote-mining. This meeting was a preliminary meeting about the Vaccine

Safety Datalink (VSD). The entire transcript (warning: big file) of the

meeting is over 260 pages long (although there is a version with selected

excerpts), and RFK Jr. has carefully chosen a couple of quotes that, when

taken out of context, sound like a coverup. I haven't had time to read the

whole transcript (and I can assure you that what I have read of it is

incredibly dry and dull), but what I see is a lot of discussion about the

consistency and accuracy of the early data collection, sources of potential

bias in the studies, and debate about what it means. The quote about how

the data have to be " handled " is described by RFK Jr. thusly:

Dr. Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization,

declared flatly that the study " should not have been done at all " and

warned that the results " will be taken by others and will be used in ways

beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled. "

Here is what Dr. Clements actually said in context (warning, link to a big

file):

I am really concerned that we have taken off like a boat going down one

arm of the mangrove swamp at high speed, when in fact there was not enough

discussion really early on about which way the boat should go at all. And I

really want to risk offending everyone in the room by saying that perhaps

this study should not have been done at all, because the outcome of it

could have, to some extent, been predicted, and we have all reached this

point now where we are left hanging, even though I hear the majority of

consultants say to the Board that they are not convinced there is a

causality direct link between Thimerosal and various neurological outcomes.

I know how we handle it from here is extremely problematic. The ACIP is

going to depend on comments from this group in order to move forward into

policy, and I have been advised that whatever I say should not move into

the policy area because that is not the point of this meeting. But

nonetheless, we know from many experiences in history that the pure

scientist has done research because of pure science. But that pure science

has resulted in splitting the atom or some other process which is

completely beyond the power of the scientists who did the research to

control it. And what we have here is people who have, for every best reason

in the world, pursued a direction of research. But there is now the point

at which the research reults have to be handled, and even if this committee

decides that there is no association and that information gets out, the

work that has been done and through the freedom of information that will be

taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group.

And I am very concerned about that as I suspect it is already too late to

do anything regardless of any professional body and what they say. (p. 247)

It sure sounds a whole lot less conspiratorial in context, doesn't it? Dr.

Clements was just expressing a quite reasonable fear that lawyers will use

very preliminary and unconfirmed studies for their own ends, which is what

they do indeed routinely do. Such a concern was not at all unreasonable and

is still not unreasonable. In fact, RFK Jr.'s highly selective quoting of

Dr. Clements' words is a perfect example of what Dr. Clements was clearly

afraid of!

Confusing correlation and causation. The article repeats the usual canard

about how autism was unknown before the 1940's, which, coincidentally was

when thimerosal-containing vaccines were first used. The article even goes

so far as to claim:

The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and

diagnosed among 11 children born in the months after thimerosal was first

added to baby vaccines in 1931.

No, the reason the disease was " unknown " until 1943 was because it was not

described as a specific condition by Dr. Leo Kanner until 1943, after which

Dr. Hans Asperger described a similar condition that now bears his name in

1944. Before that, although Dr. Eugen Bleuler had coined the term " autism "

in 1911, no specific diagnostic criteria existed for the disease. Even for

decades after 1943 autism was not infrequently confused with mental

retardation or schizophrenia, and over the last two decades the diagnostic

criteria for autism and autism spectum disorders have been widened. In any

case, if thimerosal in vaccines were the cause of autism, we would expect

autism rates in Denmark and Canada to have plummeted recently, because

Denmark eliminated thimerosal from its vaccines by 1995 and Canada removed

them around the same time. No such decrease in autism rates has occurred in

either country, even though there has been more than enough time for such a

decrease to make itself apparent if there were truly a link between mercury

exposure and autism. I would ask the mercury-autism activists: If this

particular correlation does mean causation, if mercury in thimerosal is

indeed a major cause or contributor to autism, why is it, then, that autism

rates have not started to fall dramatically in Denmark and Canada by now?

That there has been no such decrease is very strong epidemiological

evidence that there is no link.

RFK then goes on to list a bunch of studies supposedly showing how toxic

thimerosal is, berry-picked and without descriptions of the actual doses of

thimerosal used. However, the most idiotic statement is here:

In 1930, the company [Eli Lilly] tested thimerosal by administering it

to 22 patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of

being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study

declaring thimerosal safe.

The patients had " terminal meningitis " in 1930 and died after injection

with thimerosal? Imagine that. Given that penicillin had not been

discovered yet, I would have been surprised if any of them lived.

Double standards in looking at " conflicts of interest. " RFK Jr. goes on and

on about alleged conflicts of interest by vaccine researchers who accept

funding from pharmaceutical companies, going so far as to imply that the

Institute of Medicine reports of 2001 and 2004 that stated that there is no

link between mercury and autism were basically done at the behest of the

pharmaceutical companies, never mind the comprehensive review of the

literature in 2004 that also failed to find a link. It's the usual

conspiracy-mongering insinuations we hear from antivaccination activists

and other types of cranks. However, in marked contrast, RFK Jr. approvingly

cites the research of Dr. Mark Geier and his son , both of whom are

activists for the mercury-autism crowd, never once mentioning that Dr.

Geier is a professional expert witness for vaccine plantiffs, who has been

involved in over 100 legal cases brought against vaccine manufacturers and

the government on behalf of parents and whose testimony has been disallowed

in some for not being sufficiently qualified. Dr. Geier's son runs a

company called MedCon, a medical–legal consulting firm that helps vaccine

injury claimants to obtain money from both the National Vaccine Injury

Compensation Program and through civil litigation.

Hmmm. Sounds to me as though the Geiers have a definite financial conflict

of interest when it comes to vaccine studies, and they have published

several studies that are widely cited by antivaccination activists as

" proof " of a mercury-autism link. None of their studies has ever failed to

show such a link. I wonder why RFK didn't see fit to mention that, given

his great concern over conflicts of interest in vaccine research. He also

didn't mention that the Geiers have used shoddy study methodology and also

engaged in data collection irregularities, drawing a rebuke from the CDC

and suspension of Dr. Geier's IRB approval from Kaiser-Permanente. Overall,

RFK Jr. seems pretty selective in his outrage over conflicts of interest

and shoddy research, doesn't he?

The " hidden hordes " fallacy. RFK Jr. cites Professor Boyd Haley, Chairman

of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky, who is an

activist and Chair of the Advisory Committee for Toxic Teeth, an

anti-amalgam group and whose fallacious reasoning with regards to mercury

and autism has been pointed out by Bowditch. This is the same Boyd

Haley who got into trouble last year for labeling autism as " Mad Child

Disease, " leading to a demand for him to apologize, which he has refused to

do. Haley is quoted as saying " If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor

diagnosis, then where are all the 20-year-old autistics? " I'll borrow

Dawson's response to that fallacy, which she was kind enough to

have posted in the comments of my blog while responding to Kirby's

recent book on vaccines and autism:

Mr Kirby deploys the " hidden hordes " to express his disbelief in the

possibility that there is no autism epidemic. Were numbers of autistics

steady over the years, he argues, America would be clogged with aging

hopeless autistics gruesomely burdening society. Mr Kirby cannot find us

(I'm one of his " hidden hordes " ) how and where he expects (doomed and

confined to institutions), so he denies we exist.

Szatmari et al (1989) suggests that Mr Kirby should look for his hordes

in university records. In a follow-up of autistics diagnosed as children

before 1970, 7 of 16 had university degrees (one was an MBA).

This is in essence a variant of the argument that there is an autism

" epidemic " favored by so many advocates favoring a link between autism and

mercury. Like many antivaccination activists, RFK also misuses the word

" epidemic " by referring to an " autism epidemic, " a concept that the Autism

Diva debunks rather nicely. Leitch agrees that there is no autism

epidemic and points it out here and here, concluding:

Just to reiterate – there is no autism epidemic. Diagnostic criteria

have widened and reporting methods have vastly improved. There may well be

an increase in actual case percentage but epidemic? Hardly.

I could go on, but I'm getting tired and I've already failed utterly in my

attempt to keep this brief. Besides, I've covered nearly all the fallacies,

double standards, and selective data mining like that seen in the Salon.com

article before here, here, here, here, and here. I also point out that, due

to activist pressure, the U.S. has already removed thimerosal from nearly

all childhood vaccines, with the last vaccines expiring two years ago.

Consequently, the main purpose of trying to " prove " this probably

nonexistent " link " now is to provide trial lawyers with " evidence " to use

in lawsuits. The next 5 years will tell the tale as the children who have

received no thimerosal-containing vaccines reach the age at which autism is

commonly diagnosed. I'll admit it if I'm wrong and autism rates plummet,

but don't expect an apology from the activists when (as is much more

likely, given the examples of Denmark and Canada) the rates don't.

The bottom line is that this article is indeed a humongous runny, stinking

turd. Salon.com and Rolling Stone have let their readers down, contributed

to the hysteria over a probably nonexistent link between mercury and

autism, and utterly trashed their own credibility in the process. They've

handed the antivaccination activists a significant propaganda victory and

an article that they will be citing for years to come, frightening parents

who wonder if vaccines are safe and wrongly adding to the guilt that

parents of autistic children already feel by making them wonder if they

were responsible for their child's condition.

ADDENDUM #1: Argh! It's been pointed out to me that Tom Tomorrow, one of my

favorite lefty cartoonists, has drunk the thimerosal-autism Kool Aid as

well (the June 16 entry on his blog, if the link doesn't work correctly).

Well, my opinion of him has just fallen several notches. It just goes to

show, with Dan Burton, Salon.com, and Tom Tomorrow all falling on the same

side of the fence in this issue, that mercury-autism pseudoscience is the

pseudoscience that all sides of the political spectrum seem to like to fall

for, although my perception is that it is more favored on the left.

ADDENDUM #2: Bummer. It looks like ABC News will show the interviews with

RFK Jr. about this story after all.

ADDENDUM #3: Autism Diva has weighed in and posted the entire A-CHAMP

Action Alert that I had quoted. (This piece was more than long enough

already, which was why I didn't post the whole thing myself.) Soapgun has

also pointed out that Don Imus is on board the mercury-autism bandwagon big

time. Ali at blendor has also castigated Salon.com, beating me to it.

posted by Orac at 7:51 AM >

GO TO WEBSITE and view the comments and add your own

--------------------------------------------------------

Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm