FDA confirms Tripedia vaccine may cause autism!

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Wiki Vaccine

Article titled: NOW IT’S OFFICIAL: FDA ANNOUNCED THAT VACCINES ARE CAUSING AUTISM!

Quote:

These adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting. Because these events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequencies or to establish a causal relationship to components of Tripedia vaccine.
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Acellular Pertussis Vaccine Concentrates (For Further Manufacturing Use) are produced by The Research Foundation for Microbial Diseases of Osaka University (BIKEN), Osaka, Japan, under United States (US) license, and are combined with diphtheria and tetanus toxoids manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur Inc. Tripedia vaccine is filled, labeled, packaged, and released by Sanofi Pasteur Inc.

Sanofi data sheet: Diphtheria and Tetanus DTaP Toxoids and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine Adsorbed
Tripedia (2005)

Prosocialites vs neurotics

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In my previous articles I wrote about a theory postulating that our human ancestors broke away from a "herd of apes" collectivistic lifestyle.  Escaping out of a jungle "paradise" where no work was necessary for acquiring food but social interplay and obedience to herd hierarchy and the group authority was paramount for survival  [Sapolsky 1 and 2 ], meant a change over from the collectivistic towards an individualistic nomadic lifestyle.  The lifestyle where one's survival depended more on the individual foraging, hunting and toolmaking skills, as well as one's ability to construct shelters and make warm clothing.    Human development meant shift from social herd animal to industrious self-reliant individual.  It does not mean shift from social life to a complete absence of social life but it does mean interacting with smaller and more mobile groups that is characterized by less rigidity, less formal hierarchy and exhibits flexible social interactions.

The following recent study has illustrated this surprisingly well:

Study Of Indigenous Peoples Shows Big Five Personality Traits May Not Be Universal

According to a report summarizing years of research, the Big Five – which include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,   and   neuroticism – may be a culturally driven model that only really holds true for people in developed, western countries.

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In his paper, UCSB anthropology professor Michael Gurven details how he and his team were unable to apply the Big Five model to the indigenous hunter-gatherer Tsimane people. Instead, they report, the personalities of the Tsimane appear to be characterized by a “Big Two” pair of traits – prosociality  and  industriousness. And while they report that these Big Two appear to combine certain elements of the Big Five that are used to describe Americans and Europeans, these two core personality traits seem to be a reflection of features that are specific to highly social, subsistence-based societies.

(Note: color highlights are mine)

The fact is, modern academic social science has blown up the pro-social (collectivistic) trait into multiple sub-categories, such as "openess", "consentiousness", "extrovertion" and "agreeableness".  Unsurprizingly, given who they are, the social scientists have shoved the entire multiverse of individualistic traits and skills into just one bin called "neuroticism"!  Why didn't they just call them "nerds" instead?

This study tells us that the social scientists and probably a majority of the society (4 out of 5 perhaps?) has devolved a "stuck in the past" mindset that considers collectivistic prosocial traits of more relevance than the "industriousnes" - pardon "neuroticism".   This is in stark contrast to the stone age people like the Tsimane tribe, whose "industrious" members are described with relevant word, while their pro-social members are bunched into one category rather than splitting them into different party-going monkey categories.

Stan (Heretic) aka Nerd

Do statins or low fat diets cause osteoporosis?

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New study: "Association Between Myocardial Infarction and Fractures: An Emerging Phenomenon."

Most interesting is this, quote:

...substantial temporal variations were noted (
1979 to 1989: hazard ratio, 0.81 ...
1990 to 1999: hazard ratio, 1.47 ...
2000 to 2006: hazard ratio, 1.73 ...
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Trends were similar regardless of age, sex or fracture site. Conversely, the overall hazard ratio for death in MI cases versus controls did not change materially...

The only obvious factor that was different in the first decade (blue - less osteoporosis following a MI event) as opposed to the second and third decade of the study (red - more osteoporosis!) is the common usage of statin drugs! Perhaps a popularity of the low fat high carbohydrate diets in treating MI patients (the so-called AHA diet) may be another factor distinguishing the red from the blue decades.

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Update 16-July-2011

Another recent study found on Dr.McDougall forum, linking bone underdevelopment with malnutrition, in this case a lack of dairy products:

Thin Bones Seen In Boys with Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder

Quotes:

The boys in the study who were on a casein-free [READ DAIRY-FREE (added by H.)] diet had the thinnest bones. In fact, the 9 boys who were on a casein-free diet had bones that were 20 percent thinner than normal for children their age. Boys who were not on a casein-free diet showed a 10 percent decrease in bone thickness when compared to boys with normal bone development.

The study authors wrote that bone development of children on casein-free diets should be monitored very carefully. They noted that studies of casein-free diets had not proven the diets to be effective in treating the symptoms of autism or ASD.

As a side note from my own experience. It reminds me that a nurse examining children at my school in the Eastern Europe, 1960-ties (I was around 12) told us that many, about a half had unusually thin but long bones in their hands and different elbow joints, as compared with the medical reference books that she used. Those children had normal food intake, were rather well fed. I always wondered what was causing the difference and that the same factor affecting bone development may have also affected the risk of autism! What was that factor? We didn't eat breakfast cereals nor drank pop. We ate a high carb medium fat diet not much different from that of the 1930-ties or before. Definitely more sugar - sugar became very cheap in the 1960-ties, and margarine became the new "health" "food" of the day plus vegetable oils became a popular cooking fat substitute in the 1970-ties. Sugar was very expensive before WWII in Poland due to special sugar tax, then became completely unavailable during German occupation 1939-1945 and then became cheap afterwards. What else other than sugar could have done the damage?

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Does autism mean being more human?

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I was threatening to write on this topic under my November post "Lack of social skills made us human". See also, or I should say - especially Emily Deans, M.D. comment!.
Here we go.

It is about people with Aspergers' or mild Autism working in business environment (software consultancy), intermingling with the "normal" office employees and the ensuing culture clash.

An interview with Thorkil Sonne on CBC Radio 1 (Canadian) a couple of months ago, has sparked my interest in this as around the same time I started researching some issue involving anthropology and society. The following article from The Independent titled "Better, faster... and no office politics: the company with the autistic specialists" is fairly close to what was told on Sonne's radio interview. Let me quote:

I know lots of companies with noisy, chaotic, open-plan offices, where the work is like fire-fighting most of the time, and people from Specialisterne wouldn’t be able to work there. That said, the environment they need is the kind of environment we should all be working in anyway.”

Remarkably, about 70 per cent of Specialisterne’s employees are stationed in client premises. I asked Sonne how easy it is for them to fit in with other working environments. “We create virtual Specialisterne environments in our clients’ offices. Everyone who will be in contact with our consultants is briefed about the conditions they require. They have to be nice to our people, avoid stressing them. In Denmark, we use a lot of irony and sarcasm, but people with autism can’t decode that. We make sure that the clients know how important it is to be direct, to outline tasks precisely and to stick to routines, particularly if any queries arise.”

“That’s how you avoid an ‘I only fly with Qantas’ freak-out?” I blurt. “Yes,” says Sonne. “We’ve never had a ‘freak-out’. In fact, saying what you mean, meaning what you say, being nice, avoiding stress are all good things in general for companies to take on board. Many have said to us that having one of our consultants has softened the atmosphere.”

It must actually be a relief to work with colleagues for whom office politics, backbiting and bitchiness are anathema. “Yes, they are a happy and loyal group, no one ever talks badly about anyone else. It’s nice to work with people who are honest, without filters. In fact I am working on a new management technique based on our experience with working conditions that are more open and direct.”
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You do have to have the right environment for people with Asperger’s to function – there needs to be an acceptance that I am special, that I might not work regular hours, that I might have down periods – but if you have that in place, we can do any job.”

Most Specialisterne employees tend to work 20- to 25-hour weeks, but Jacobsen has brought his hours up to 35. “You really blossom here. I see it with so many Aspergerians who join the company and get proper training. I have a lot of friends at the company now, and we socialise and go out together in town. We know we all have that twist.”
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Of course, some experts have identified autistic traits in people such as Mozart, Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein. If they were alive today, perhaps they would be recognised as having Asperger’s, and look at what they achieved. Unfortunately, there is such an emphasis on being a team player and social skills in the workplace that there is still this resistance.
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Comments? We should draw our own conclusions, but I could not help noticing that the attributes of the corporate culture that the Specialisterne Aspergers' people found unbearable are the same that _I_ find unbearable! They are the same attributes and habits that most of my fellow engineers find unbearable!

More articles, links and comments on the subject of corporate culture, "baby boomers'" etc., can be found under "anthropology" search term .
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Argument that MMR vaccines may be harmful ...

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... has been recently strengthened by the suspiciously poor quality of the debunking against it!  An ongoing controversy about the possible link between measles, mumps and rubella vaccines and autism, has been brought recently to a peak by the disbarrment of Dr. Andrew Wakefield by Britain's General Medical Council announced on Monday.    Nowhere in the criticism of his paper, his detractors have openly argued against the merit, logic and science of the actual research.  I could not find any statement that would said something like "the paper is wrong because this or that".  Instead, Dr. Wakefield's character is being criticized and the conclulsions condemning his study have been reached by the committee, based apparently on some of his procedural and administrative "transgressions".     What exactly are Dr. Wakefield's "crimes"?

- ordered research on nine children without his hospital's ethics committee approval. Three of them had invasive procedures they did not need, the statement said. [took blood samples?]

 - failed to disclose that the research was being done to test a theory that there was a link between the vaccine and "a new syndrome."

- mislead readers about how children were chosen for the study,...

- ordered investigations on five children while he was at London's Royal Free Hospital, although he was not a pediatrician and his terms of employment said he should have no involvement in the clinical management of patients,...

- accepted 50,000 pounds (currently $72,000) to act as an expert witness in an MMR court case, misled authorities about the payment, and misused half of it, the GMC found.

 - had blood samples taken from children at a birthday party - which the panel found "an inappropriate social setting" - without ethics committee approval, paid the children 5 pounds each, and later joked about it in a public presentation, the GMC said.

- Subsequent research has been unable to duplicate Wakefield's findings.

- "Since Wakefield's study came out, some 20 other studies [I am impressed! S.B.] have come out, and each one of these studies, done by different researchers, in different populations and in different countries, has denied the associations between vaccines and autism," he said. "Scientifically, this story is over."

----------- update (24/05/2010) ------

An interview with Dr. Wakefield can be heard on BBC - 1h47m to 1h57m into this programme .
and here is a short video interview.   Thanks Lee.


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It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Jiddu Krishnamurti