Welcome Necromancers - find the Wakefield threads here

I was wondering why we had a necromancer on an old thread linking directly to Andy Wakefield's site, that one callously disregarding anything but Wakefield's (business) interests. I discovered the potential explanation on page 25 of the Guardian magazine:

In his book Callous Disregard, Wakefield claims his findings of autistic enterocolitis have been "independently confirmed in five different countries". He cites five studies, two of which were authored by his friend, collaborator and Autism Team star Arthur Krigsman. One of those studies appeared in Autism Insights, a medical journal on whose board Krigsman sat in 2010. Two other studies were by Italian doctor Federico Balzola. According to the justthevax blog, the first of these was a case report of a single adult autistic patient with an inflamed bowel, and the second a "meeting abstract" that "never saw the light of day as a peer-reviewed study". The last one, a study by Dr Lenny Gonzalez, while not reporting finding a distinct "autistic enterocolitis", concludes that "autistic children have a high incidence of gastrointestinal disease". (my bold)

Ok, I admit, I am vain, and that section did generate a squee. The whole article is worth reading though, very well researched by Alex Hannaford, who is not shy to call Wakefield's operation what it is "Autism Inc.", a money generating machine. Hannaford tried to proffer Wakefield's (and Polly Tommey's) comments, but they only sent their lawyers' roboresponse (Wakefield did not fabricate data, there is such a thing as autistic enterocolitis, yada yada). Instead, he interviewed (among others) the lovely Autismum Martine O'Callaghan, founder of the cwtch-network, whose autistic son Cledwyn is just as lush as Michael Fitzpatrick's son James, and Ari Ne'eman, founder of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. Not surprisingly, they emphasise the need to improve quality of life of autistic children and adults, by appropriate services (for example schools). Excellent article - read it.

Now for those who'd like to insist that really, Wakefield's works have been independently verified, please read my previous two blog posts:

"Independent" the Wakefield way (really something for the fail blog)

and

Still no independent confirmation of Wakefield's claims 

and feel free to add research you think we may have missed to discuss. Can I ask though that instead of just dropping a link into the comments, or basic copypasta from the usual anti-vaccine conspiracy sites, you leave one article at a time, with a proper, i.e. retrievable, citation and a blurb in your own words (much as we did in those blog posts) stating what was done in those papers and how this supports the "vaccines lead to gut damage leads to autism" notion? Cheers.

Thank you, parent A - David Geier fined for practicing Medicine without a license

The world is full of people willing to take advantage of the desperation of parents of "sick" children. One prime example of this are the team of father (Dr. Mark) and son (David) Geier, who are peddling their own "autism treatment". In short, their hypothesis is that testosterone in the body interacts with mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines, retaining this in the body, which somehow causes autism. Sounds crazy? Not crazy enough apparently to discourage parents from choosing to visit Dr Geier's clinic and getting their children treated with a strong drug, Lupron (also used for chemical castration) to "get rid" of the testosterone and subsequently making the mercury accessible to "chelation". You can read Kathleen Seidel's excellent summaries of the Geiers' undertakings, their misrepresentation of the science, and their financial interests here. Essentially, the weird testosterone-mercury hypothesis became a money printing machine. Children would come to the clinic, scores of blood tests would be ordered from "special labs" that would come back with the "right" diagnosis for billing purposes. "Precocious puberty" would be diagnosed and Lupron prescribed (which would then be billed to insurance companies). Apparently, David Geier, who holds a BA in Biology, was seeing patients and advising parents in his father's clinic.

Many people have been thinking for years that father and son Geier should be in prison for their abuse of autistic children, their exploitation of the parents seeking their help and their health insurance companies. Complaints were made to the various State Medical Boards where Mark Geier held licenses and, one after the other, very slowly, those were removed - Todd W is keeping tab.

Now, finally, David Geier has been convicted of "Practicing medicine without a license" by the Maryland State Board of Physicians and ordered to pay US$ 10.000 (being let off very lightly IMHO). Read the whole ruling if you have the time. The audacity is amazing (the spelling mistakes in the "diagnosis" written up by David Geier are priceless, but he charged parent A "only" $150 for it). Thanks are due to "parent A", who remained vigilant and filed a complaint when she saw the inconsistencies in the treatment of her son and the billing documents.

Also covered by LBRB and Neurologica

Lessons From the MMR Scare

That was the title of Fiona Godlee's webcast from the National Institutes of Health, Fogarty International Center, Tuesday, 6 September 2011.  Dr. Godlee is the editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and published the three part series by Brian Deer exposing the fraudulent research of Dr. Andrew Wakefield.  Her talk can be viewed in its entirety here.

She reviewed the key points of Mr. Deer's protracted investigation of Dr. Wakefield's MMR research and the painstaking measures the BMJ took to review and validate Mr. Deer's reports.  She raised concerns of fraud in science and what medical/scientific journals could do to prevent such an occurrence from happening again.  She also discusses the role of the media and their contribution to the legitimising of Dr. Wakefield's, now retracted, Lancet report.  Dr. Godlee also makes an intriguing proposition for improving public health communications by entreating investigative journalists to work with epidemiologists.  We have already seen the success of solid science reporting by the likes of Brian Deer and Seth Mnookin so it is a feasible proposition.

Dr. Godlee provides an honest and thorough analysis of fraud in science/medicine and public health communications deficits along with some criterion to prevent fraudulent scientific reporting.  All in all, an informative talk and interesting points made during the question and answer session.  Jake Crosby from the Age of Autism made an embarrassing showing by introducing himself as "Jacob Crosby from the George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services", not disclosing himself as a student and implying he represented the school as faculty or staff.  Not to mention, I doubt the George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services sent Mr. Crosby as their representative, but rather, he attended as Age of Autism's lackey.  Mr. Crosby also missed the point of a "question and answer" session and launched into a churlish diatribe of fraud allegations against Brian Deer which can be viewed at the 54:04 mark on the webcast.