Autism Media Channel

CDC whistleblower – zombie anti-vaccine trope still lives

Today is Valentine’s Day, 2016. For many of you, it’s all about roses and chocolates. But for a bunch of us, it’s all about The Walking Dead and zombies. And in honor of the return of The Walking Dead, let’s talk about zombie anti-vaccine tropes that never die – the infamous CDC whistleblower oh my.

If you haven’t noticed, any time I can tie something I’m writing to zombies or The Walking Dead, I’m happy. So bear with me.

The antivaccination cult, lacking any real evidence for their unscientific beliefs, tend to grab on tightly to the flimsiest of stories. They love to scream “GOTCHA” to anything that shows up on the internet that puts vaccines in a bad light. A few years ago, they were jumping for joy regarding some comments from Dr. Diane Harper, who was promoted by the antivaccination crowd as the “lead researcher” for Gardasil. Except, the story was a lot different than they claimed.

Or promoting an “Italian court” that decided that MMR caused autism, relying upon the discredited and retracted study by one of the greatest scientific criminal frauds of the past 100 years, Mr. Andy Wakefield, who alleged a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Or trying to push the story of a French businessman, who claimed to have intimate knowledge of Merck’s data about Gardasil–all of it negative. Except he never worked in Merck’s R&D department and was made redundant when his company was acquired by Merck.

So what now? What zombie trope has come alive again?
Read More »CDC whistleblower – zombie anti-vaccine trope still lives

Vaxxed distributor threatened Fiona O’Leary – they’re afraid of facts

by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss
2016-07-25
3 Comments
Andrew Wakefield, Autism, Del Bigtree, Law, Vaccines

On 19 July 2016, autism self-advocate Fiona O’Leary, an Irish mother of five children, two of them autistic – a powerful and long-time fighter against alternative treatments of autism and the myth that vaccines cause autism – posted a video to her Facebook page. In the 15-minute self-interview, Ms. O’Leary called out certain statements made by a team of the creators of the anti-vaccine “documentary” Vaxxed as they travel the United States, holding question and answers session with viewers. In response, the Vaxxed distributor threatened her.

What prompted Ms. O’Leary to speak out is that the Vaxxed team are forming groups to bring the film to Ireland and the UK. On July 19, Ms. O’Leary started a petition calling on the Texas Attorney General to act against the movie and the statements by its team. and published her Facebook video to YouTube.

On July 21, 2016 Phillippe Diaz, CEO of Cinema Libre, the company distributing Vaxxed worldwide, sent Ms. O’Leary a letter claiming that her statements were defamatory. Also, the Vaxxed distributor threatened her with a defamation lawsuit if she didn’t stop talking about Vaxxed and its team. The team includes disgraced former scientist turned film director Andrew Wakefield, producer Del Bigtree, and their associate Polly Tommey. There is no indication a lawyer saw the letter beforehand, though an attorney is copied.

On July 22, 2016, the Australian science blogger Reasonable Hank published six of the videos from the Vaxxed team, validating Mrs. O’Leary’s claim that the Vaxxed team has indeed made the reprehensible statements. Diaz’s letter is therefore clearly an attempt to intimidate Ms. O’Leary.

She interpreted the letter as a clear attempt to intimidate, as she explains in a second video.

This post will touch on some of the legal issues.Read More »Vaxxed distributor threatened Fiona O’Leary – they’re afraid of facts

The fictional CDC coverup of vaccines and autism – movie time

The zombie anti-vaccine trope of the CDC coverup of vaccines and autism – tied to a so-called CDC “whistleblower” – has risen again from the dead. I thought it was time to bring back my zombie-killing snarky, sarcastic, and humorous debunking of that trope. Let’s have some fun.

I and about 20-30 other pro-science bloggers wrote articles about a strange story, pushed by all of the usual suspects in the anti-vaccine universe (starting with Natural News, Green Med Info, and the Age of Lying about Autism). Despite new information, press releases, claims and counter claims, nothing has changed in the facts about vaccines and autism as a result of this somewhat entertaining story that included fictional claims with real people.

What are the facts? Vaccines do not cause autism according to boatloads of evidence.

Nevertheless, this story is provocative, laughable at some level, and filled with rather disreputable characters – it gives all us bloggers, who focus on the real scientific evidence behind the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, a great subject for writing.

As I surmised when I first wrote this article over a year ago, this zombie trope has risen again!

Since much of this story has strong fictional elements, I think we should examine this story as if it were a synopsis for a screenplay behind a proposed new superhero movie. You know, The CDC vs. the Evil Cult of Antivaccination.

Hey, I ought to copyright that, just in case someone does turn in into a movie. Because this synopsis has all of the important parts of a movie–unsavory characters, a fool, the superhero government agency dedicated to saving lives, and the geeky nerds who think science trumps lies. No cool spacecraft or benevolent aliens unfortunately. I’ll work on that.

OK, let’s get with the story.Read More »The fictional CDC coverup of vaccines and autism – movie time

Great CDC Coverup–suppressing evidence that MMR vaccines cause autism?

This article has been updated and the comments have been closed here. Please comment at the revised article.

Oh no, here we go again. The antivaccination cult, lacking any real evidence, grabs onto the flimsiest of stories, disregarding the foul and corrupt individuals promoting the story–using it all to scream “GOTCHA” to anyone involved with vaccines. Last year, it was laughably jumping on some comments of Dr. Diane Harper, who was promoted by the antivaccination crowd as the “lead researcher” for Gardasil, that appeared to say that Gardasil was useless.

Or promoting an “Italian court” that decided that MMR caused autism, relying upon the discredited and retracted study by one of the greatest scientific criminals of the past 100 years, Mr. Andy Wakefield, who fraudulently alleged a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Or furthering the story of a French businessman, who claimed to have intimate knowledge of Merck’s data about Gardasil–all of it negative. Except he never worked in Merck’s R&D department, and was made redundant when his company was acquired by Merck.

The Church of Antivaccines, whose god, Mr. Andy Wakefield, should be held criminally responsible for deaths of children who never got the MMR vaccine, are so bereft of any real evidence to support their beliefs, they will either invent, misrepresent, or manipulate any story that even tenuously supports their dogma that vaccines are dangerous.Read More »Great CDC Coverup–suppressing evidence that MMR vaccines cause autism?

Vaccine deniers think the murder of Alex Spourdalakis is acceptable

I do not want to be that guy that invents a conspiracy, because I am not that guy. But as the tin-foil hat crowd are known to proclaim, “just connect the dots.” Well, I will reluctantly follow their advice and connect the dots. And it’s going to be hard to not feel nauseous as we do follow those mysterious dots regarding the murder of Alex Spourdalakis.

Sharyl Attkisson, a 15 year veteran news reporter for CBS, has been a shill for the antivaccine groups who think that vaccines cause autism (for which there isn’t one femtogram of evidence). She has penned a report that linked vaccines to autism because of DNA transfer from the vaccines to human cells, exhibiting all of the disreputable “false balance” type of reporting that seems to be commonplace in scientific journalism (and she is not even close to being scientific).

In that article, she claimed that human DNA in vaccines may incorporate themselves into human genes, express themselves, causing autism. This was based on research published by Helen Ratajczak in a low impact factor journal (63rd out of 85 journals in the field). Wow.

Dr. Ratajczak and her best buddy, Attkisson, seem to have no clue how hard it is to incorporate foreign DNA into the human genome. And they seemed to believe, with no evidence whatsoever, that the same exact DNA sequence exists is in all vaccines, and it somehow all incorporates that DNA sequence over and over through all of human cells. If it were this easy, gene therapy would be the hottest disease-fighting tool on the planet, because just get some healthy DNA, inject it into someone who has Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis, voila, we’re done. Doctors and Big Pharma could sit in their big chairs, light up cigars, and celebrate how easy it is. Apparently, some other researchers thought this was bad science.