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What a week it's been! (6/2/2010)

We all knew that the UK General Medical Council was about to hand down its findings on Dr Andrew Wakefield, but we didn't expect the events that followed. The GMC result was as predicted, that is, Wakefield was found to have acted unethically, but we didn't think that this would provide the excuse that The Lancet needed to retract Wakefield's 1998 paper, the one that started the rot in the first place. Then, just as we were all aTwitter about the retraction the Australian Vaccination Network announced that it is circling the plughole. Now read on.

Wakefield's woes (6/2/2010)

After too many years and too many children dying unnecessarily from measles, the UK General Medical Council has finally released it's findings into the conduct of Dr Andrew Wakefield in relation to supposed research published in The Lancet in 1998. Publication of this paper, which seemed to indicate a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism, was a direct cause of a drop in the rate of MMR vaccination in the UK (leading to deaths) and provided an effective propaganda weapon for people opposed to vaccines. The reason I say too many years is that as far back as 2002 I knew that the research was suspect, and by 2004 it was obvious that Wakefield not only had conflicts of interest (he was attempting to patent a replacement for the MMR vaccine and he was being paid by lawyers acting on behalf of the parents of some of the experimental subjects who wanted to sue vaccine manufacturers), but that the research was so seriously flawed that it positively reeked of either incompetence or dishonesty. You can see what I wrote in 2004 here, and if I knew these things from 20,000 kilometres away then they couldn't have been a secret. In fact it was comprehensively reported in the UK media by journalist Brian Deer and others.

The reaction of the anti-vaccination liar community to the 2004 information about Wakefield was completely predictable. He was elevated to hero status immediately, and ad hominem attacks were launched on Brian Deer and anyone else who dared to commit the blasphemy of saying that Wakefield was not being honest about his intentions. As I said in 2004, when I heard him speak at a conference promoted by the National Vaccine Information Center I was left in no doubt about his attitude to vaccination. You don't get invited by the NVIC if you have even the slightest suspicion that vaccines might be worthwhile.

The controversy over the Lancet paper could not be ignored by the relevant authorities, specially after ten of the original thirteen authors of the paper asked to have their names withdrawn. (Thirteen authors for 12 subjects seems rather unbalanced.) The UK General Medical Council eventually got around to investigating the matter and they released their first report on January 28. You can read the full findings here. Unfortunately there isn't a summary of the things they found that Dr Wakefield had done wrong, but they did have this to say:

Having made the above findings of fact, the Panel went on to consider whether those facts found proved or admitted, were insufficient to amount to a finding of serious professional misconduct. The Panel concluded that these findings, which include those of dishonesty and misleading conduct, would not be insufficient to support a finding of serious professional misconduct.

In the next session, commencing 7 April 2010, the Panel, under Rule 28, will hear evidence to be adduced and submissions from prosecution counsel then Dr Wakefield’s own counsel as to whether the facts as found proved do amount to serious professional misconduct, and if so, what sanction, if any, should be imposed on his registration.

I was taught at an early age to avoid double negatives so I would have finished the first paragraph by saying "would be sufficient to support a finding of serious professional misconduct", but at least the meaning is there. It is almost inevitable that Wakefield will have his medical registration cancelled, but don't think that the date "7 April 2010" means that it will happen soon. If the enquiry proceeds at the same glacial pace as the original panel investigation then Wakefield might have his licence yanked sometime in 2013. This is of no concern to him anyway, as he no longer practises medicine in the UK but has instead found a very lucrative career in the US selling quackery and bad medical advice.

The Lancet should have withdrawn the paper in 2004 when the problems became obvious, but unfortunately they stuck with tradition (only a small handful of scientific papers are ever retracted). Following the GMC announcement, however, they could proceed while still retaining a bit of dignity, so on February 2 they announced that the paper had been retracted. This means that it was effectively never published, so it cannot be cited in other published research. Too late, but not too little

And what has been the reaction of the anti-vaccination liars to all this? Well, it has been outrage and has resulted in an outpouring of lies and conspiracy theories the like of which hasn't been seen for years. It is a witch hunt, of course, and Wakefield has been promoted from hero to minor deity. There have been attacks on the publishers of The Lancet and the members of the GMC panel, Big Pharma has been identified as the funding source behind it all, as has Rupert Murdoch (?). Rumours of copious research confirming Wakefield have appeared, although locating the actual published papers in reputable journals has proved elusive. The best response I have seen, though, was someone who pointed out that The Lancet was named after a piece of medical equipment which had caused millions of deaths by transferring germs between patients. I should mention that the person who told me that is on record as denying that germs cause disease, but when people are foaming at the mouth then sometimes what comes out is not well thought out. There was the obligatory web site set up so that people could sign a petition supporting soon-to-be-ex-Dr Wakefield. I found the two signatures below, and they sum up perfectly my feelings about Wakefield and his work.

Not flush with cash, AVN is flushed (6/2/2010)

All the hard work might have finally paid off. You can see the wonderful news here, where Meryl Dorey announced that she was resigning as President of the Australian Vaccination Network at the end of February. If nobody can be found to take on the job the AVN will fold, die and disappear. In order to help out, I have applied for the job.

Dear Ms Dorey,

I am sorry to hear that you are resigning as President of AVN. I have enjoyed our communication over the last decade and I will miss you, as will all the other supporters and members of AVN.

I would like to formally apply for the position of President of the Australian Vaccination Network. I have extensive knowledge of the arguments used to oppose vaccinations, I am well known in the anti-vaccination movement, and I have written widely on the matter. I have had experience on the boards of several non-profit organisations and have held the position of President of Australian Skeptics Inc.

I feel that I have a lot to offer to AVN and look forward to helping the organisation to get its message to all the people who need to hear it.

As time is short and I will need to make arrangements with my current clients and adjust my TAFE teaching load in order to take on the AVN duties, an early response would be appreciated. As you are in Bangalow and I am in Wentworth Falls it would probably be more efficient if interviews were to be conducted by telephone or Skype.

Thank you.
Peter Bowditch.

For some reason, however, the story seems to change from day to day. Sometimes Ms Dorey is leaving because she wants to spend more time with her family, and sometimes the AVN is folding because it has run out of money, and sometimes it is the horrible "septics" who have been disrupting its activities and wasting its time. (The reason is never that the AVN has been getting so much bad publicity over the last year that it is time to fold the tents and run away.) There is a fire sale going on and donations are being sought, so perhaps there will still be an AVN next month, and there might even be a Meryl Dorey at the helm. This sort of "we're about to close" appeal has gone out before, so I won't be breaking out the Moët until I hear the really good news - that the death is true.

If the AVN finally goes into the cesspit where it belongs there are some people who need a special mention for their part in its decline. Daniel Raffaele set up the Facebook group "Stop the Australian Vaccination Network" which provided a meeting place and information exchange, Christine Bayne, Peter Tierney and Rachael Dunlop monitored the AVN's rantings and brought them to a wider audience so that more people could see the idiocy of their agenda. Ken McLeod took the time to file a complaint with the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission. A special thanks must go to my anonymous friend who frequents a large number of anti-vaccination liar mailing lists and forums and passes on information from places where I am not allowed to go. There were others who helped as well - you know who you are.

The highest level of thanks and respect, though, goes to Toni and David McCaffrey. The death of their daughter Dana from whooping cough and their willingness to take this tragedy to the media and demand change was the catalyst which turned the media away from being unwitting mouthpieces for Meryl Dorey and her child-endangering behaviour and caused them to start questioning what she had to say. Two years ago, any story in the media about vaccination seemed to require an unchallenged comment from Meryl Dorey. Now, if she is asked at all there is usually someone talking sense brought along as well. Even if the AVN survives they will no longer be seen as the sole authority on vaccine safety, but will be recognised for what they are. In fact Meryl Dorey even provided the description herself- "rabid idiotic fringe dwellers".

Who's a clever little web site, then? (6/2/2010)

What could I add to what the National Library of Australia had to say?

Millenium Project
Millenium Project was selected for preservation by the National Library of Australia. This title is scheduled to be re-archived regularly. The publisher's site may provide more current information.

You can see the notice here.

Anti-vaccination conversation continues (6/2/2010)

The public conversation between me and anti-vaccination campaigner Bronwyn Hancock in my local paper, the Blue Mountains Gazette, keeps rolling on. Ms Hancock has responded to the letter I mentioned in January.

Erroneous claims

More embarrassingly than Richard Neville, Peter Bowditch (BMG 6 1 10) failed to even find the right study to which I had referred (BMG 23 11 09) by Mitchell et al on SIDS and vaccination, and erroneously referring to an obviously irrelevant study.

The significance also oddly escaped him of the CDC In 1958, a few years after the vaccine’s introduction, no longer counting as polio “cases of nonparalytic poliomyelitis (aseptic meningitis due to poliovirus)” (J Infect Dis 1982), reclassifying nonparalytic (i.e. almost al1) cases as “aseptic meningitis”. The CDC manual reveals significant narrowing of the definition of paralytic polio also.

Orthodox medical research documenting vaccine damage has saved many innocent carers from convictions of factitious “shaken baby'' syndrome and also indicate that the little baby that Peter refers to, was very likely the victim of hepatitis B vaccination at birth and the lack of transplacentally-transmitted immunity (in babies born to mothers vaccinated as children), the latter making young babies susceptible to whooping cough.

That and the effect of the antibiotics administered caused the 1996-1997 deaths inappropriately blamed on whooping cough. Furthermore, those young infants contracted it from their fully vaccinated siblings and/or mothers themselves suffering pertussis at the crucial time (MJA 1998).

Bronwyn Hancock, BSc
Vaccination Information Service

Here is my reply:

Bronwyn Hancock's response to my letter (BMG 27/1/09) raises some interesting points. I will address the paragraphs in order.

In her first paragraph Ms Hancock suggests that I should be embarrassed by locating the wrong scientific paper. I am not embarrassed and I simply point out that this is a common error when the paper is not cited correctly. In any case, Richard Neville in his letter (BMG 6/1/09) quoted the correct paper which, far from supporting Ms Hancock's claim that it showed a relationship between vaccination and SIDS, actually said "Immunisation does not increase the risk of SIDS and may even lower the risk".

In her second paragraph she again claims that the name of polio was changed to hide the fact that the vaccine was ineffective. The facts are that in 1958 the definition of "paralytic polio" was clarified so that statistics of the disease only included cases where paralysis persisted beyond 60 days. There was no reclassification of polio as aseptic meningitis - that is a different disease altogether. The clarification meant that infections which cause paralysis lasting for less than 60 days (which include both poliomyelitis and aseptic meningitis) would not be counted as "paralytic poliomyelitis". Note the word "paralytic". The journal article that Ms Hancock cites states this quite clearly, so she either misunderstands it or misrepresents it. By the way, the paper reports a 99.98% reduction in cases of poliomyelitis following the introduction of the vaccine, so so much for the vaccine being ineffective.

The third paragraph is yet another attack on Dana McCaffery and her parents in order to denigrate vaccination. Dana did not die as a result of a HepB injection, she died of whooping cough, contracted because she was exposed to the infection by living in an area with very low vaccination rates. The low vaccination rate is a direct result of the actions of anti-vaccination campaigners like Ms Hancock, some of whom also attempted to exploit Dana's death for propaganda purposes. By her use of the word "factitious" Ms Hancock again presents the idea that babies cannot be harmed by shaking, an idea which highlights the irresponsibility of the anti-vaccine movement. There is no "orthodox medical research" supporting either this absurdity or the possibility that Dana McCaffery was harmed by a vaccine.

The fourth paragraph makes no sense, and again contains an almost meaningless citation of medical literature. I can only assume (but I might be wrong) that she is referring to "Infant pertussis deaths in New South Wales 1996-1997", Williams et al, Med J Aust. 1998 Mar 16;168(6):281-3. If she is using that paper to support her claim that "the effect of the antibiotics administered caused the 1996-1997 deaths inappropriately blamed on whooping cough" she must have missed where the authors said "This excessive infant mortality from a preventable disease demonstrates the need for better pertussis immunity in the community and for erythromycin treatment of all suspected cases and family contacts, especially infants". Or put another way, another paper supporting vaccination is being cited as though it said something different. As Ms Hancock has a science degree I am surprised at her apparent inability to both correctly cite the literature and to comprehend the content of the papers she cites.

Where will you be on March 7? (6/2/2010)

Another one nibbles at the dust (6/2/2010)

It hasn't quite bitten the dust yet, but there is always hope. You know that old riddle: "What have you got when a multi-level marketing company goes broke? A good start". Here is a letter sent to Arbonne International's "Independent Consultants":

Important Information From Arbonne
01/31/2010 09:43 PM
legalnotice@arbonne.com

January 29, 2010

Dear Arbonne Independent Consultant,

You are a valued member of the Arbonne family, and we want to make you aware of an important action we have taken to strengthen Arbonne financially and ensure that our company is well-positioned for the future.

On January 27, 2010, Arbonne, along with our parent company, Natural Products Group, LLC, and related entities, filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to implement a "pre-packaged" debt restructuring plan. This plan will reduce our outstanding debt obligations by more than 80%, which will lower significantly the amount of cash we spend on principal and interest payments. We can use this cash to invest in building our business.

You can fully expect Arbonne to maintain normal business operations throughout the restructuring process, with no disruptions to our relationships with our Independent Consultants, employees, or suppliers. Likewise, you and your fellow Independent Consultants can be confident that your compensation from commissions and overrides is secure.

Our practices in the field remain the same. We will continue to provide you with innovative programs and incentives as well as state-of-the-art product technology, the very latest training methods and the most advanced support tools available today.

As numerous companies have demonstrated during this difficult economic cycle, using this type of legal process can be an effective way of achieving a fast and efficient debt restructuring with minimal disruption to the business. In fact, because we have already received the approvals needed from the Company's lenders for this plan, we expect to complete this process within 45 to 60 days.

As part of this process, the Company has prepared a legal document known as a Notice of Commencement. The distribution of this Notice to a wide range of parties is customary. We are required to send it to anyone who may have a claim in the Company's reorganization proceedings. This Notice includes important information about the restructuring, including key dates and deadlines. To view this Notice and related information, please go to www.NPGInfo.com/Notice. If you are unable to access these materials on the Internet, please call (877) 788-2814, toll free in the U.S. and Canada, for further assistance.

Additional information about the reorganization is available in "The Company" section of www.arbonne.com. Videos and written materials are available for registered Independent Consultants and Preferred Clients within the "Internet Consultants" section of www.arbonne.com. We will continue to update this information as we move through this process.

Sincerely,

Kay Napier CEO,
Arbonne International, LLC

Customer relations (6/2/2010)

You know how it is when you ring some company and get put on interminable hold, listening to the same Kenny G music over and over (but played by someone with less skill on the sax than Kenny, and with the high notes specially sharpened to allow for the dynamic range of your mobile phone speaker)? You know how every few minutes some recorded voice butts in to say "Your call is important to us" and you think "But not important enough to have enough staff to answer the phone"? It looks like real estate intelligence company RPData has extended this principle to online contact. Perhaps they employ deaf people in the call centre, too.

Writing (6/2/2010)

The latest article for Yahoo!7 News went up this week. It's about the power of coincidence and you can read it here and even join in the commenting fun.

Speaking of the Yahoo!7 News blog, it attracted the attention of our old friend GAL. Its contributions were gutless, anonymous and full of lies, but that is why we affectionately call it the Gutless Anonymous Liar. You can see its Wildean wit here.

More homeopathic nonsense (6/2/2010)

In December I mentioned that I had forced myself to sit through a presentation by a homeopath who was opposed to vaccinations. Could that be because she wants parents to buy stuff from her rather than go to a real doctor? You can go here to see a brochure promoting homeopathic immunisation, as if there really is such a thing. It's one thing to sell useless water and sugar pill "cures" to the worried well, but when you start pretending that your snake oil can prevent children catching disabling and deadly diseases you have crossed the line from fraud to become a risk to public health. Like cholera, which is also caused by the consumption of fecal matter.

Suicide Attempt Coming (23/1/2010)

Next Saturday, January 30, I will be joining a group of people who will attempt self-harm by the consumption of large doses of homeopathic "medicines". It is part of the 10:23 campaign to demonstrate to the public the fraud and uselessness of homeopathy, or, as the slogan says: "Homeopathy: There's nothing in it".

The 10:23 campaign started in the UK, but I will be doing it in Sydney. If you want to join in the fun we will be meeting outside the Queen Victoria Building on the corner of York and Druitt Streets (near the statue of Queen Victoria) at 11am. More details can be found on the event's Facebook page.

Taking large doses of homeopathy to demonstrate its ineffectiveness is nothing new, and I have been doing it for years as part of my stage presentations about quackery. A few years back a homeopath challenged me to test the effects of magic sugar pills (in this case those tiny balls of sugar you find on the top of birthday cakes). Here is the result.

The name 10:23 was chosen to remind people of Avogadro's Number, which is 10 raised to the power of 23. In layman's terms related to homeopathy this means that any homeopathic preparation with a "potency" of more than 12C or 24X is almost certain to contain no molecules of active ingredient. Put another way, your 20C homeopathic preparation that you are taking on the advice of someone who supposedly knows what they are talking about has nothing in it except water (or maybe alcohol) or lactose (if it is a tablet). Put in yet another way, homeopathy is not just medical fraud, it is financial fraud as well. You are having your money stolen.

Someone suggested to me that "Homeopathy: There's nothing in it" is a bit weak as a slogan. Here is a proposed alternative.

Healthranger's in the garbage (23/1/2010)

Hysteria has broken out in altworld over the treatment of Mike Adams, the "Healthranger" from the NaturalNews cesspit. Adams was doing quite well in the Shorty Awards when suddenly he lost the lead to someone who actually talks sense about medicine. For those who don't know Adams, he is possibly the most vile and unprincipled promoter of quackery and lies around at present. He has absolutely no regard for the truth and simply makes things up if he thinks that there is the remotest chance that someone might believe him. Unfortunately such brain-dead people exist, which is why he can get away with saying that mammograms cause cancer (and are deliberately designed to do so). A wonderful example of the sort of idiocy he can invent and still remain credible in quackland is his assertion that doctors use the Caduceus symbol as a conscious affirmation of their commitment to evil, death and the abuse of women. I am not making this up. He is of course an anti-vaccination liar of the most virulent kind and also spreads the usual lies about cancer, which is why he has no hesitation in producing cartoons like the one below. By the way, Mike, if you think I'm violating your copyright by publishing these cartoons here then feel free to print one on heavy parchment paper, roll it up tightly and violate yourself with it. If you get my meaning.

But back to the Shorty Awards. When Mike saw that he was no longer the most respected health information purveyor in the world he decided that action had to be taken. The action he took was to encourage large scale cheating. The Shorty Awards are for work on Twitter, so someone who is not a Twitter user has no information on which to vote. Suddenly a large number of people signed up to Twitter and immediately registered a vote for Adams. The Shorty people didn't like this, and as the number of sock puppets and invalid votes was so high they disqualified Adams. He is very unhappy about this and is torn between announcing that he didn't care about the competition anyway, that the competition is being run by Big Pharma, that he is going to sue the Shorty people, and telling all his loyal, cheating followers to vote for some other quack (who will then almost certainly be disqualified as well).

A lot of my friends are gloating about Adams being disqualified, but it could be a Pyrrhic victory. He was being well beaten even with his cheating, but now he can claim that he has been unfairly treated and the SCAM world will ridicule the competition and say it means nothing. I would have preferred to see him humiliated in the voting rather than be given an excuse to make up more lies about the ubiquitous influence of Big Pharma and its supposed employees.

Having said all that, I am still looking for votes. I have neither the hope nor the desire to push my friend Dr Rachie out of a well-earned first place, but I would love to come in the first five. I have the wonders of Adams and Mercola thrown at me several times a week and I would really like to have something to throw back. If you are already registered with Twitter please go to http://shortyawards.com/RatbagsDotCom and cast a vote in the Health category. If you are not registered, don't sign up to Twitter just to vote because the votes won't be counted and I don't want to end up in the bin like Mike Adams.

Haiti (23/1/2010)

I didn't want to be the only person in the world not expressing an opinion about the earthquake in Haiti, so I wrote about it for Yahoo!7 News.

The human tragedy following the earthquake in Haiti is almost unimaginable for those who aren’t there and have never experienced a disaster like this. People around the world have been quick to offer money and other forms of aid, and it has been the top news story for most of the last week. (An exception was when a major Australian media outlet pushed it out of the top news spot on their web site to tell us the extremely vital news that a moronic lout famous for nothing beyond his moronic loutishness was to become a film star, but tabloid journalism can be like that.)

Events like this can have benefits, however. The obvious one was alluded to above, the way that disasters make us all forget our other problems and differences for a while and work together to help total strangers who are worse off than we are. Other benefits are that they get us thinking about mortality and fate, and they give us an opportunity to be outraged and amused at the antics of idiots.

You can read the rest here.

Ghosts (23/1/2010)

Tabloid television loves ghosts. It's much easier to do a haunted house story than one about a dodgy car dealer (who might sue) or a fraudulent medical healer (because skeptics might get involved) or someone with a magic fuel extender (because the people who lost money on the last one might get angry). Ghosts are easy, because you can always call in an expert from both sides and nobody will be able to explain the phenomenon in the limited time available. A good ghost story can even be a way of promoting someone's ghost tours, but that would be very naughty so no television program would ever knowingly do it.

Here is a story which appeared on my television recently.

It certainly seems mysterious and unexplainable, doesn't it? I have some advice for the photography experts - look at the image metadata before you do anything else. It saves time. And I have some words for photographer Adam as well - say "Hello" to Megan for me, and next time you try a trick like this don't use a picture of one of your Facebook friends, and especially not one who you appear with in a photograph yourself./p>

Not to be outdone, I can take pictures of ghosts as well. I have no idea why the ghost was screaming, but maybe it's the shade of someone who was tortured (perhaps by being forced to watch reruns of television current affairs shows.)

See more Freethunk here

Some light relief (23/1/2010)

You know all those healthy organic foods in the vegetarian shop that don't contain chemicals? It seems that breakfast food manufacturers are getting the idea.

See more of XKCD here

And I absolutely do not get into discussions about abortion, circumcision or climate change.