Autism and specifically its most controversial potential cause has continued to garner much attention in the past month on an international level.
Earlier this week a local college professor was notified of a probe into misappropriation of funds targeted for autism research, The Drexel University adjunct professor, Paul Thorssen, was involved in two studies (2002 & 2003) citing strong evidence that there is no link between thimerasol in the MMR vaccine and the subsequent development of autism. Facing a serious probe into his financial dealings and the validity of any of his research or offerings to the autism research, Thorssen resigned from Drexel on Tuesday.
Time magazine recently reported on questions of ethics and study reliability in the work of world-renowned Autism doc, Andrew Wakefield. His work is what Thorssen, in effect, worked to debunk. Wakefield was applauded since 1998 after releasing his study that supposedly gave strong evidence of the link between thimerosal in MMR vaccines and autism. For parents struggling to understand how to help their children, Wakefield's study gave an answer to where to start.
However, The General Medical Council in Great Britain discredited Wakefield's study and deemed his research practices as unethical. Though the medical licensing board in his country considers revoking his license, he continues to head up an autism research center in Austin, Texas.
Now, a federal court is claiming to have the answer by issuing a ruling in a California legal case. The federal court judge ruled in three cases that thimerasol did not cause the autism in children. Though a court cannot offer the evidence based answers real science can, the court is in essence saying that other families with lawsuits pending will not be find a easy access to judge.
Paul Offit of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia remarked quite succinctly that the vaccine-autism theory, "already had its day in science court and failed." Perhaps, now with the obvious lack of consistent verifiable evidence, a window will open in the community to search for the truth and not convenience. Autism is a very complex challenge to not only the children who will live with it, but for the families who love these children and the clinicians who hope to help.
Jean Ruttenberg, Executive Director of the Philadelphia based The Center for Autism said in a recent interview that there are still many questions to answer even if one study has been questioned. The "scientific community still has alot to offer" in investigating autism causes and issues.
Comments
Jury is still out? No it isn't. Study after study has shown that vaccines have absolutely nothing to do with autism. My niece has autism and wasting time, money, and resources on something we know does not cause autism is a real problem that affects real people.
Amazing how many things you got wrong in one short article. First, the two studies where Thorssen was a listed author, dealt with a population as a whole, and the mythical vaccine-autism link, not just MMR. Wakefield's study was falwed in its entirety. He was made aware that the key lab finding was flawed since the lab he set up was contaminated and returned false positives. He ignored this. Furthermore, Wakefield was fired by Thoughtless House, in Austin. Additionally, there were THREE at there was no way that thimerosal could cause what the petitioners (parents) were claiming. IObviously, you have not kept up to date, nor have you bothered to read the decisions. You should be fired for spreading misinformation.
cases ruled on by Special Masters that found th
WRT to Thorssen: In both of the "Danish papers" in question Dr. Thorsen was a "sandwich" author. Why is this important? The pattern followed in biology and medicine is that the first ("lead") author is the person who did the bulk of the work, the last ("anchor") author is the person who "owns" the lab or is the senior author and the rest (the "sandwich" authors) either did some work (e.g. lab techs, assistants, undergraduates, con't graduate students working on a secondary project, etc.) provided some special service or expertise (e.g. statistical analysis, specialised analytical testing, special techniques, etc.) or needed to be acknowledged by more than mentioning their name under "acknowledgements".
Some labs have are very "stingy" about who they add as authors, others will list as authors anyone who touched the project in any way. Generally, if any or all of the "sandwich" authors contributed as much as the lead author (or anchor author), there will
be mention of that somewhere in the paper, usually right below the author list. It also needs to be emphasised that Dr. Thorsen's "offense" may (and probably is) no more than not giving Aarhus University their "cut" of his grant money. Universities traditionally get a portion of all grant money that comes to researchers from outside the university, either as a separate payment from the granting agency or as a "tithe" usually more like 50%) from the grant. This is called "overhead". I suspect that the $2 million is money that Aarhus University thinks they should have gotten as "overhead" while Dr. Thorsen was working elsewhere. The other likely possibility is that Aarhus University feels grants Dr. Thorsen received while on their faculty should have been spent in their facilities, rather than paying for salaries and supplies somewhere else. At any rate, the least likely possibility is that Dr. Thorsen actually embezzled any money, since he had no direct access to the money. con't
I suspect that the $2 million is money that Aarhus University thinks they should have gotten as "overhead" while Dr. Thorsen was working elsewhere. The other likely possibility is that Aarhus University feels grants Dr. Thorsen received while on their faculty should have been spent in their facilities, rather than paying for salaries and supplies somewhere else. At any rate, the least likely possibility is that Dr. Thorsen actually embezzled any money, since he had no direct access to the money. Grants don't arrive as boxes of cash - they are paid to the university or research center which then has their financial department disburse the funds as purchase orders (which are scrutinised by the financial department to ensure that they conform to the terms of the grant) or as salaries (which are scrutinised by both the financial and personnel departments).
This is a tempest in a teapot raised by those people who had "hitched their wagons" to Andy Wakefield's star and are distressed by how far and fast that star has fallen. They hope to regain some "sparkle" by tarnishing the research that has refuted their claims. Unfortunately, even if all the research touched by Dr. Thorsen were to magically disappear, there would still be more than enough to refute the claim that vaccines - with or without thimerosal - cause autism.
FreeSpeaker & Staks,
Thank you for sharing your opinions, insights, and impressions. As you noted Freespeaker, this is a very short article about an issue that is gargantuan in conflict, question, research, and need. As I am limited in how much space I have to share information and awareness, I made sure to include informative, reliable links that would also link out to additional resources for any interested parties.
Coincidentally, in my master's studies I looked closely at the autism research on thimerasol over the years and personally conclude the same Staks. I hope that money will be funneled into the most reliable and impactful channels so that the individuals and families dealing with autism can get some answers and some help. But again, the purpose of the article is to continue to keep the debate and discussion in the media. There are many parents that passionately argue that thimerasol in their child's MMR vaccine caused the autism. We need to encourage more dialogue.
No Mary, this is not my "Opinion," it is a FACT that vaccines have nothing to do with autism. Nothing as in zero, zip, zilch. You are perpetuating lies and misinformation here. If you really cared about people who suffer from autism, then you would at least give the website of an organization that is more interested in finding a scientific cure than in Jenny McCarthy's book sales. I encourage you to look up Alison Singer's group The Autism Science Foundation.
The FACT is that people like Jenny McCarthy and YOU are perpetuating the lie that the "jury is still out" on a link between Vaccines and Autism when the FACT is that the science and literally the Jury have decided strongly against such a link. This shame of vaccines causing autism has caused Autism Speaks to spend much of their money on chasing down a known dead end in order to appease ignorant parents. That money could have been spent working on the real problem. You should be ashamed of yourself Mary.
Thank you Mary for sounding reasonable in this, unlike the goons who've trolled the comments section here.
The General Medical Council based its findings on a allegations of one conflicted "journalist," none of which hold any water. The council was chaired by a stockholder in GlaxoSmithKline, the company that makes MMR in Britain. The only reason why his case came about in the first place was after Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, lied that he had no idea of Wakefield's involvement with lawyers of parents who have vaccine-injured children, when in fact he was aware a year before publication. He probably lied out of fear of getting in trouble with his boss, who was appointed to the board of directors of GSK only months before.
Vaccine court stinks, the HHS gets sued, the HHS defends itself, and the HHS decides its own guilt, and compensation is payed by taxpayers all to protect drug companies. If one sues under the label of "autism" as personal injury, loss is guaran
Meanwhile, vaccine court will quietly compensate families with children that developed autism from their vaccines who sue under other terms of "vaccine-injury" like "encephalopathy," "ADEM" and the all-too popular "autistic symptoms." Such cases include those of Hannah Poling and Bailey Banks.
So its not a matter of whether vaccines cause autism, they do, but in just how many children they cause autism in.
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