Introductions Are in Order, and An Asinine Post on an Anti-Science Blog

by Gambolputty

Hello, everyone. Our dear friend MySocratesNote has stepped away from this lovely little blog and has passed the reins to moi. Some of you may have noticed my posting recently under this name, but I assure you that I have been posting online, countering the misinformation of those like Orac, Steve Novella, Stephen Barrett and others for quite some time (though under a different moniker). Now, I believe a little introduction is in order.

I have chosen to remain anonymous, and this is for a number of reasons. Firstly, I love my job, and I don’t feel comfortable revealing too much about where I work or what I do. Seeing what has happened to my friend here, I feel that it is best for me to maintain my anonymity. I will tell you that I am a teacher (among other things), and I will just leave it at that. For some time, I have been a silent contributor to this blog. So when MySocratesNote left it to me, he did so in the hopes that I would continue with his legacy and take the time to point out the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the false skeptic community.

So that is it, in a nutshell. Unlike some, I do not have the time or energy to post here daily (or in some cases hourly *cough* Kim Wombles *cough*). I will post infrequently, or when the mood suits me. But you can be assured that I will continue to try to post with the same amount snark as Craig did, but mixed in with my own humour and British witticisms.

Now, on to what I wanted to discuss.

Today, I glanced over at Mr Gorski’s (I refuse to give him the honorific) misinformation site and noticed that he is disturbed by an article written on Age of Autism. Then again, when is he not?

His latest excrement, “A Disturbing Post on an Anti-Vaccine Blog” is yet another tour-de-farce of logical fallacies and delusions of grandeur masquerading as a martyr complex.

The gist of this not so remarkable piece of fiction is that he his afraid; he’s concerned that Kent Heckenlively is promoting violence against some unnamed entity. He thinks that Kent has dropped off the deep end, and should be carefully monitored:

“Notice how Heckenlively refers to "Dark Forces." Not "dark forces," but "Dark Forces," capitalized, as though it's name or these Forces are so malevolent that they need to be capitalized, much as the Force in Star Wars was so important and powerful that it needed to be capitalized as a formal name. Worse, the imagery is downright paranoid. These Dark Forces, according to Heckenlively, are out to destroy the activists and "scientists" who have bought into the idea that vaccines cause autism, rather than the real situation, which is that they are trying to guard public health against the return of vaccine-preventable diseases that will occur if vaccination rates fall due to the sort of propaganda that AoA promotes.”

Notice how Gorski refuses to acknowledge that there have indeed been cases of corporate interests destroying the livelihood of those who threaten their profits. Tobacco did this for years. Pharmaceutical corporations have also been caught in the act of doing exactly what Mr Heckenlively said. “We need to find them and destroy them where they live.” What is so humourous about this is that Dave doesn’t seem to realise that this is commonplace in today’s corporate environment. He tries to paint Kent as a conspiracy monger and accuses him of paranoia and seeing shadows in dark places.

Oh, the irony.

“I have a hard time characterizing Kent's post as anything other than disturbing, if not downright scary. Think about it this way. When someone starts to view his opponents as "wicked people" deserving to be wiped out by God (or, as other translations of this particular psalm put it, to be "destroyed for their wickedness"), it's just a short hop to thinking that perhaps believers should take matters into their own hands and start smiting the evildoers themselves, thinking it doing the Lord's work. In any case, it's very clear that Heckenlively is, at the very least, praying to God to "deal with" those whom he considers to be "wicked people out there trying to keep our children from getting better." In the context of the psalm, "dealing with" these wicked people clearly means to destroy them.”

That seems pretty bleeding paranoid, doesn’t it? Notice how poor little Dave tries to milk as much drama from this as possible by saying that some translations of Psalm 94 call for the wicked to be destroyed, all in an obvious and transparent attempt to color Mr Heckenlively in the worst possible light. Only paranoid conspiracy theorists pray to God to destroy the wicked! Notice how he tries to twist the meaning of what Kent wrote and claim that Kent is praying for God to destroy the evil-doers. He says that “dealing with” these wicked people means that they must be destroyed. I’m quite certain that if Mr Heckenlively meant to use that particular translation of Psalm 94, he would have. No, it’s not clear that Kent is praying for them to be destroyed; he’s praying for them to be punished. But the half-witted twit has to make this more menacing, more ominous, by changing the meaning of the words to suit his own agenda.

Ah, poor Dave. So persecuted. Such a drama-queen.

“Heckenlively and I are clearly on different sides of the autism-vaccine issue. Even so, I have never wished ill upon him. Hell, I've never wished ill upon even J. B. Handley, even though he has frequently attacked me. Well, maybe just a little bit of ill, such as embarrassment for his ridiculous statements and his promotion of anti-vaccine quackery and that his efforts to harm public health fail. Certainly I have never wished that God Almighty destroy him or Heckenlively for his wickedness or publicly wished ill upon him. Yet here we have Kent Heckenlively praying to God publicly to destroy his enemies. Presumably, that would include me, plus a number of people who are my friends, acquaintances, and fellow travelers in promoting vaccination and refuting anti-vaccine pseudoscience.”

Smell that? No no, you don’t need to scratch your computer monitor as I am more than certain you can smell it from where you are sitting. That, my friends, is called Bullshit! He’s never wished ill on Kent or the people at Age of Autism? What about wishing that they would all go to jail for their beliefs? Or using one of his masturbatory fantasies that he describes as a “meme” to go after the anti-vaccine movement (chomping their brains)? Yes, I understand that it is his poor attempt at humour, but we all know that deep down in his cold, barren, childish and bent little mind that he fervently wishes for this to come true. Repeatedly, he twists Kent’s words to get as much drama as possible, all so that Orac can seem more saintly. Yes, Dave is such a martyr! Oh, what he goes through to distribute his moronic drivel to his drooling arse-lickers. I’m sure you can all hear him sighing with his burden. Also, it would appear as if Mr Gorski has a bit of a guilty conscience, yes? Orac’s paranoia is so deep seated that he thinks that Kent is actually calling out for violence to be done against him, that he should be destroyed for his wicked ways.

Then he closes with this shart:

“I don't know what is going on in Heckenlively's life right now that has brought him to this. The pain in his writing is palpable; he really does sound like a man on the edge, a man who is ready to break. I can only hope he finds a way to deal with whatever is going on in his life right now and return to a state of normalcy. We might be opponents when it comes to the issue of vaccines and autism, but, unlike Kent, I don't want God--or anyone else--to destroy anyone over this.”

Nor does he care. He’s too self absorbed in his own narcissism to care what happens to anyone outside of his myopia. Once more, he promotes the myth that Kent is praying for God to destroy him, all so he can make himself more saintly. I swear, reading this, you’d think that he was in line for a beatification.

Old News is New News, or a Tale of the Tail Wagging the Dog

I promise today that my article will be short. I’ve been swamped at work and working a ton of overtime, so I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to read up on things and comment in my usual sarcastic style.

Brian Deer has just released the 2nd part to his expose on Andrew Wakefield. In it, he discusses how Dr. Wakefield filed for a patent for a Transfer Factor that he (Deer) alleges could be used as an alternative vaccine, and that this is the basis for the 1998 Lancet article. Deer contends that Dr. Wakefield wanted to use his report to discredit faith in the combined MMR vaccine, splitting them up into separate vaccines, so that he could get his own TF on the market and make money off of the royalties.

Also, this just in: The Earth circles the sun; the Earth is not flat; water is wet.

In other words, ladies and gents…nothing new, nothing new to see here, move along.

When first I read the headline, I asked myself “Maybe this will convince me that what everyone is saying about Dr. Wakefield is true.”

Instead I came away decidedly underwhelmed and wondering why, suddenly, this is such a big deal, particularly when this same story has been repeated ad nauseum since Deer stuck his ratty little nose in the dumpster and started crying about the sky falling?

So, I started doing a little reading about this Transfer Factor. From what I can gather, this really started up in February of 1996 at the Royal Free hospital. In June of 1997, Dr. Wakefield filed a patent on behalf of the Royal Free (who was the patent holder)for a transfer factor that would treat the measles illness. What this tells me is that it was to alleviate already existing symptoms. He theorized that it could potentially act as a prophylactic (i.e. preventative measure), but when given leave to test the TF on one of the Lancet children, the treatment was ineffective. So, he stopped pursuing the TF as a viable treatment for Measles. This was before his Lancet study was released in 1998.

Ok, under normal circumstances, anyone reading this would think that this evidence is pretty damning. Until they read the details. The devil is always in the details.

You see, if Dr. Wakefield was going to use his TF as an alternative vaccine and instigated the MMR scare after his Lancet article, then why would he have stopped testing on the TF BEFORE the release of his Article in February 1998. If his TF was viable, he would have continued to test and market it. But it wasn’t. And he knew this before releasing his article.

Perspective time. If his only goal was to make money, and he was formulating an alternative vaccine, and he manufactured a report that said that MMR could cause bowel problems so maybe they should split up the vaccines, then why release the article and have a press conference after he knew that his TF didn’t work?
Again, I cannot say with absolute certainty that Dr. Wakefield is innocent or guilty. I cannot do so without reading all of the evidence. But seeing this calls some of the accusations being hurled at him into serious question.

People new to this discussion are probably thinking the same thing once they start reading the details. Why now? Why is this man being so doggedly attacked? No other medical scandal in history has gotten this type of publicity, not even the Vioxx scandal. So, what is different about this one? Are the medical establishment at pharmaceutical companies really this afraid of one man? And we already know that Brian Deer has a serious vendetta against Dr. Wakefield for some unknown reason. Can we trust that his information is objective and unbiased?

Please don’t take it that I am defending Dr. Wakefield. I’m not. All I am doing is commenting at the oddities in what I have read so far. I am forming MY OWN judgment on what I have read.

I encourage everyone reading this to read the reports. Read Deer’s story. Read Wakefield’s story. Read the GMC hearings. And MAKE A JUDGEMENT FOR YOURSELF! Do NOT let people tell you what you should believe. 

Update: I am currently reading the GMC hearings, and someting jumped out at me. Here it is:

"f. A proposal, dated 4 March 1998 and drafted by Mr 10, was submitted to the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in relation to the proposed company,


Admitted and found proved"

So, in simple language, this was submited after the Lancet article submitted on February 28, 1998. My earlier post was in error, and for that I apologize. I shall continue to read the hearings and give my final judgement when I'm done.

Additional update:
According to the patent, the TF was being applied for as an alternative to MMR in (wait for it)

IMMUNO-COMPROMISED PATIENTS!!! Also, it is to be used in those with IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) and Crohn's disease. (Page 1 of the patent at 30-35, and page 2 at 5-10)

"Unfortunately, as I have shown previously in the above mentioned patent application the use of theis vaccine has been shown to be instrumental in development of Crohn's disease and other forms of IBD over the ensuing 30 to 40 years and particularly has been instrumental in a substantial increase of Crohn's disease in children since vaccination was started in 1968.

The Physician is therefore confronted with a difficulty at the individual level in that whereas as a public health measure measles vaccination is called for, it can have unwanted effects in those subjects who are unable to immunological eliminate the virus so introduced.

This is particularly so when there is at present no cure for IBD; sufferers can expect relapses of their disease requiring potent immunosuppresant therapy or removal of the affected bowel and may be condemned to the use of a osteomomy bag.

What is needed therefore is a safer vaccine which does not give rise to these problems, and a treatment for those with existing IBD."

Emphasis mine.

Further reading of the patent clearly states that the TF could, in no way, compete with the MMR vaccine. It was simply a proposed alternative protective agent for Measles in those who through whatever reason were not able to get the MMR vaccine. Interesting that all of that information wasn't even touched upon by Brian Deer and his defenders.

So, again I ask; if the TF wasn't a viable protective agent, and it was mainly for treatment and as a potential protective agent in immuno-compromised individuals, then who could it compete with MMR?

AoA Goes too Far

This is my last post about this for a while, but I wanted to bring to your attention something that I noticed AoA did recently on their Facebook page.

So, I understand that they are angry about having their PSA attacked by the Pseudo-science false-skeptic nutjobs. I can see why they are pissed about AMC refusing to show the PSA because of this. I can even understand that the attacks against the PSA was unwarranted, especially considering that the PSA was encouraging vaccination, and informing the audience that safer, thimerosal free vaccine alternatives were available. No fear-mongering involved here, and no conspiracy theories implied despite what King Quack and his band if moronic minions would have us believe.

But, going after this Skeptchic person the way they did is going too far.

They posted a picture of this person holding her child and said that she was the one responsible for the campaign against the PSA. The comments are worse. Someone suggests breaking off a few thermometers in a few key orifices?

Really? Dubya Tee Eff!!!!

I've never met this girl. I've never talked to her or corresponded with her or anything. But, even if I did; even if I thought she was the most horrible piece of crap walking this earth, I would NEVER do something like that. I don't care how much you despise someone. You NEVER bring their children or family into the argument. That is a line you DO NOT CROSS! Ever!!

I really wish they would quit pulling this shit. All it does is muddy the waters and it gives King Idiot's doltish fuckwits reason to generalize and loop everyone who thinks that vaccines can cause brain injury into the same group.

Skepchik, while I don't really agree with what you have to say, please understand that I fully condemn and am officially appalled at what AoA has done to you.