It’s always amusing to see two pseudosciences combined into one greater pseudoscience – it’s like chocolate and peanut butter. It’s not uncommon because those who would embrace one pseudoscience are likely to follow the same flawed logic and process to accept others. My colleague David Gorski has termed this effect “crank magnetism.”

Take, for example, Gian Paolo Vanoli. He has been making international headlines recently because of his claim that vaccines cause homosexuality, which he insists is a disease. The story appears to have been first picked up in English by the Huffington Post – all other reports of this story I have found cite this article as their source.

Because of the date of this article (4/1) I wanted to make sure I had another source, but the only other sources are in Italian. The story does seem to check out – here is one article: Gian Paolo Vanoli: Cricket on the urine that has been around the world. 

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Another study, published recently in PLoS One, fails to show a correlation between mercury and autism. This was a study of mercury excretion in the urine, comparing subjects with autism to their siblings as well as controls without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), both in mainstream and special schools. They found no significant difference among the groups, even controlling for kidney function (creatinine clearance), age, gender, and amalgam fillings.

To put this study into context – there are those who claim that mercury toxicity is what causes ASD, and in fact ASD is simply misdiagnosed mercury toxicity. There is no question that mercury is indeed a neurotoxin, but toxicity is all about dose, so the question is are children being exposed to mercury in high enough dose to cause toxicity. Further, it is difficult to extrapolate from preclinical studies (in test tubes and petri dishes) to living organisms. We need to further know what happens to the toxin in the body, and how the body handles it.

With regard to the forms of mercury found in some vaccines (although much less than in previous years) and tuna fish, the body seems to rid itself of the mercury sufficiently quickly to prevent build up to toxic levels. Of course, this remains a hot topic because of the persistent claims by the anti-vaccine movement that vaccine cause ASD, and some who cling to the discredited notion that it is mercury in vaccines that is the culprit. There are also the so-called “mercury militia” who blame environmental mercury (from vaccine and elsewhere) on all human illness, not just autism.

As further background, it’s helpful to note the chain of argument that has occurred with respect to the role of mercury in autism. Studies have consistently found no correlation between mercury exposure and the risk of ASD. Proponents of the mercury hypothesis have therefore argued that there is a subpopulation of vulnerable children who metabolize and excrete mercury differently than the general population, and it is within this subpopulation that mercury causes ASD.

Logically this may be true, but the argument is little more than special pleading, although a common one. Scientists are familiar with the usual list of special pleading arguments made to dismiss negative evidence. These include: that the dose studied was too low, the treatment duration was too short, the placebo or comparison treatment was also effective, or the looked-for effect only exists in a subpopulation. Each one of these arguments is logically consistent – if true they would explain the negative results without meaning that the phenomenon is not true. They may even be true in specific cases. What makes them special pleading is when they are invoked ad hoc to explain negative evidence without good justification.

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(Cross-posted at Science-Based Medicine.)

Labels are a cognitive double-edged sword. We need to categorize the world in order to mentally capture it – labels help us organize our mental maps of the overwhelming complexity of things and to communicate with each other. But labels can also be mental prisons, when they substitute for a thorough, nuanced, or individualized assessment – when categorization becomes pigeon-holing.

We use many labels in our writings here, out of necessity, and we try to be consistent and thoughtful in how we define the labels that we use, recognizing that any sufficiently complex category will be necessarily fuzzy around the edges. We have certainly used a great deal of electrons discussing what exactly is science-based medicine, and that the label of so-called alternative medicine is really a false category, used mainly for marketing and lobbying (hence the caveat of “so-called”).

We get accused of using some labels for propaganda purposes, particularly “antivaccinationist” (often shortened to “antivaxer”). Also “denier” or “denialist”, as in germ-theory denier. Even though we often apply labels to ourselves, no one likes having an unflattering label applied to them, and so we have frequent push-back against our use of the above terms.

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In a recent article in The Canadian, journalist Anthony Gucciardi trots out long discredited anti-vaccine canards in the guise of actual journalism. The piece is poorly researched and resourced, blatantly biased, and amounts to little more than irresponsible fear-mongering about the flu vaccine.

Gucciardi writes:

Each dose of flu vaccine contains around 25 micrograms of thimerosal, over 250 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit of exposure.

Mercury, a neurotoxin, is especially damaging to undeveloped brains. Considering that 25 micrograms of mercury is considered unsafe by the EPA for any human under 550 pounds, the devastating health effects of mercury on a developing fetus are truly concerning.

Everything Gucciardi wrote is either outright factually wrong, or incomplete in a way that makes it highly misleading.

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The intellectual dishonesty, or such blinkered stupidity that it is indistinguishable from this, of the anti-vaccine crowd is always a spectacle. J.B. Handley is a prime example. He has made himself into an intellectual bully, and internet thug for the Age of Autism.

In a recent piece for this wretched hive of anti-vaccine propaganda, Handley write:

“It’s been asked and answered, vaccines don’t cause autism.”

This lie, it really drives me nuts. More, and I can say this and mean it, anyone who repeats this lie is immediately my enemy. I mean that, I really do, because there are just too many kids in the mix and this is just too important and if you are either intellectually too lazy or too dishonest to understand the science around vaccines and autism, then, well, you are my enemy. Sorry, it’s a hard knock life.

That captures his “Goodfellas” approach quite nicely. If you disagree with him – you are his enemy, the gloves are off, and anything is justified. To add irony to his thuggery, Handley himself is just too intellectually lazy, or (in my opinion) scientifically illiterate to “understand the science around vaccines and autism.” Yet he presumes to lecture those who have dedicated their lives to studying science, and in fact is willing to make them his enemy because they have the audacity to point out that his understanding of science is hopelessly flawed.

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The US Supreme Court is about to hear a case involving an alleged vaccine injury. This one does not involve thimerosal, MMR, or autism – it involves neurological injury allegedly from an older version of the DTP vaccine. However, this case would have implications for the many autism-related claims being made.

The case is not about the facts of the claim – whether or not the DTP actually caused any injury in this case, that of Hannah Bruesewitz, but rather about the vaccine court and the ability of parents to bring suits against vaccine manufacturers.

In 1986 the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act created a special court, the vaccine court, the purpose of which was to provide an alternate method for determining who deserves compensation for a possible vaccine injury. The vaccine court functioned to protect both citizens and vaccine manufacturers. It provides an expedited route to compensation, with a generously low threshold for evidence. For certain listed injuries, compensation is automatic.

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We can add one more study to the pile of evidence showing no association between exposure to thimerosal (a mercury-based vaccine preservative) and autism. The article: Prenatal and Infant Exposure to Thimerosal From Vaccines and Immunoglobulins and Risk of Autism, is published in the latest issue of Pediatrics, and shows no association between prenatal and infant exposure to thimerosal and three forms of autism – autism, autism spectrum disorder, and regressive autism.

No one study can ever be definitive, but now we have a large body of evidence from multiple studies showing a lack of association between thimerosal and autism. This won’t stop the dedicated anti-vaccinationists and mercury militia from continuing their anti-vaccine propaganda, but hopefully it will further reassure those who actually care about the science.

Background

This has been a long and complex story, so let me review some of the background. Diagnosis rates of ASD have been climbing for the last 20 years, prompting some to search for an environmental cause. The existing anti-vaccine community, not surprisingly, blamed vaccines. This was given a tremendous boost by the now-discredited study by Andrew Wakefield concerning MMR (which never contained thimerosal) and autism. When the evidence was going against MMR as a cause, attention turned to thimerosal in some vaccines. This notion was popularized by journalist David Kirby in his book, Evidence of Harm.

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This is a quick update on the Autism Omnibus hearings – representative cases heard before a special court to decide if there is any credible evidence to conclude that autism may be a vaccine injury. After hearing exhaustive testimony by all sides, the special masters determined that the evidence does not support a link between autism and vaccines.

One of the cases heard was the Cedillo case, which was used as the test case for the theory that the MMR vaccine plus exposure to thimerosal can trigger brain damage that looks clinically like autism. In February of 2009 the court rejected the claim that Michelle Cedillo’s autism was caused by vaccines. No only was the theory of causation without scientific backing, evidence was presented to show that Michelle Cedillo demonstrated early symptoms of autism prior to ever receiving the MMR vaccine.

In fact the Cedillo case is representative of a fact that scientific research is increasingly demonstrating – that subtle signs of autism are present prior to parents noticing that there is a problem and long before formal diagnosis. The consensus of evidence is that signs of autism appear between 6-12 months of age, and maybe earlier in some cases. Meanwhile, the first MMR vaccine is given at 12 months. Since causes must precede effects, this fact alone is fatal to the MMR-autism hypothesis.

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One of my goals in writing for this blog is to educate the general public about how to evaluate a scientific study, specifically medical studies. New studies are being reported in the press all the time, and the analysis provided by your average journalist leaves much to be desired. Generally, they fail to put the study into context, often get the bottom line incorrect, and then some headline writer puts a sensationalistic bow on top.

In addition to mediocre science journalism we also face dedicated ideological groups who go out of their way to spin, distort, and mutilate the scientific literature all in one direction. The anti-vaccine community is a shining example of this – they can dismiss any study whose conclusions they do not like, while promoting any horrible worthless study as long as it casts suspicion on vaccines.

Yesterday on Age of Autism (the propaganda blog for Generation Rescue) Mark Blaxill gave us another example of this, presenting a terrible pilot study as if we could draw any conclusions from it. The study is yet another publication apparently squeezed out of the same data set that Laura Hewitson has been milking for several years now - a study involving macaque infants and vaccinations. In this study Hewitson claims a significant difference in brain maturation between vaccinated and unvaccinated macaque infants, by MRI and PET analysis. Blaxill presents the study without noting any of its crippling limitations, and the commenters predictably gush.

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The anti-vaccine movement is nothing if not savvy about marketing their nonsense – at least in the last decade. One of their successful slogans has been “too many, too soon” – implying that children are receiving too many vaccines while they are still too young to deal with them. The result, anti-vaccinationists argue, is potential neurological toxicity or “overwhelming” the immune system.

The slogan also serves double duty, allowing anti-vaccinationists to argue that they are not “anti-vaccine” just “pro-safe vaccine.” This is just more marketing savvy, however – a deliberate deception, as many of the people who make this claim also state that they would never vaccinate. (Orac has pointed this out many times in great insolent detail.)

But there are some parents who have bought into this notion and have reduced and/or delayed the number of vaccines their children receive in the hopes that they can strike a better balance of risk vs benefit than the experts have struck. And there are fringe doctors, like Dr. Jay Gordon, who promotes his own evidence-free alternate vaccine schedule, playing into the “too many, too soon” meme.

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