calvin, i’m not sure i can be bothered with another thread being hijacked with people feeling the need to explain to you about your misunderstandings in such painstaking detail.

youre very welcome indeed in the forums but its nice to have slightly more interesting and focused discussions on these entries. you’ve had a good run taking one over.

is that okay with you?

badscience.net/forum and people can choose if they want to engage with it/you.

But now I’ve proved that you fundamentally misunderstood the Honda paper I think we’d better call this thread a day.

Bye.

So essentially you are claiming that subsequent to the withdrawal of MMR rates of autism actually increased. In this study consistent diagnostic criteria were adhered to, so therefore, your claim that there was a notable rise in the number of cases of autism after the withdrawal of MMR essentially capsizes your previous rubric that evolving diagnostics is responsible for the apparent rise in cases of autism.

If a consistent diagnostic analysis shows that withdrawal of the MMR presages a rise in case of autism, Dr Honda has proved that MMR helps to prevent autism. Is this acclaim that the good doctor would care to standby?

MMR vaccination stopped in 1993, so cohorts born in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996 didn’t receive MMR, and vaccination rates declined from 70% in 1988, and each cohort was followed up for 7 years to see if they developed autism in that time.

If you look at the figure I put up above you can see that they report the cumulative rates of autism over 7 years by year of birth – so none of your complaints about it taking time for cessation of MMR to have an effect make any sense – children born in each year were followed up for seven years.

The rate of autism went up and MMR vaccination rate went down. And your only objection to the paper shows you don’t understand it.

What difference does that make? This simply extends the time allowed for diagnosis. This” extra time” is granted equally to the pre-MMR patients and the post MMR patients. The effects of five years of MMR extended seven years into the future was being compared to the effects of three years of single jabs extended seven years into the future, that would seem to weaken the credibility of the study, not strengthen it.

autistic disorder – 37 months
PDD-NOS – 45 months
Asperger’s disorder – 86 months

Theoretically a definitive diagnosis of any ASD ought to be possible prior to 36 months because the symptoms needed for diagnosis are supposed to be evident by that time.

What is the source of your figures for age of diagnosis?

pyjamasinbananas.blogspot.com/2007/07/changing-diagnosis-of-autism.html

showing a rather striking temporal relationship between mental retardation diagnoses and autism prevalence.

I’m interested calvin, how you reconcile your claim that increasing autism incidence is progressive and continuous (not something you have presented evidence for) with your explanation that it is due to MMR since, as the Chakrabarti & Fombonne study above suggests, the MMR rate peaked in the years it as introduced, and then slightly declined, not something that the autism figures have reproduced, while you’d predict a plateau – the very thing you are claiming that the changing diagnostic practice argument claims (but it doesn’t as I’ve shown) and is thus undermined by.

Of course, changing criteria are not the only explanations, there are also arguments that awareness has increased and age of diagnosis has decreased.

By your argument there was no autism before the 1940s because autism hadn’t been invented yet.

Studies of birth cohorts in France using the same criteria for autism have not found increased prevalence:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=9394941&ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

And studies of the diagnostic criteria have shown differences between the different instruments:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17513984&ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=8906453&ordinalpos=22&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17450055&ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

“Autism has been quite clearly understood for decades, improved diagnostics would make little impact except in the diagnosis of mild to borderline cases.”

You appear to have very little familiarity with psychiatric nosology. Autism is not just something binary that people either have or do not have, with some special test to confirm or refute it – it is diagnosed using criteria which are agreed by a committee of doctors, and are thus somehat arbitrary, and which can change with time as the diagnostic criteria are altered and refined.

“There has been a rise in Autism, there is a temporal association with MMR, your refutation of a correlation is based on unsubstantiated hypothesis about diagnostics. You have a very weak case, which is why you concentrate on attacking Wakefield’s hypothesis.”

Christ all fucking mighty, have you not heard of the many studies into MMR and autism showing that there is not a temporal relationship between MMR and autism in Sweden, the US, or Japan, and that the rise in the UK precedes the introduction of MMR?

This is what I mean, you base your view on no evidence combined with a refusal to seek out any evidence that refutes it!

I believe that the commenter was claiming to be a doctor, in which case I do think that he has a duty to reveal the data that has led him to support his present position.

The argument that the increase in autism is due to improved diagnostics is not supported by proper research. Can you show me a substantial study of historical case histories of mental patients who can now be reasonably considered to have been misdiagnosed autistics? No such study has ever been undertaken.

Autism has been quite clearly understood for decades, improved diagnostics would make little impact except in the diagnosis of mild to borderline cases.

“despite the extensive evidence that there has been no rise of autism associated with the use of MMR”

There has been a rise in Autism, there is a temporal association with MMR, your refutation of a correlation is based on unsubstantiated hypothesis about diagnostics. You have a very weak case, which is why you concentrate on attacking Wakefield’s hypothesis.

You seem to think that the rise in autism spectrum disorder rates, which we have good reasons to think are due at least in part to changing diagnostic criteria, somehow support Wakefield’s foundationless claim that MMR causes autism, despite the extensive evidence that there has been no rise of autism associated with the use of MMR. The basis for your position is just unfounded speculation combined with ignorance – you rave about how correlations don’t prove causation in regards to diagnosis, yet seem to ignore that there isn’t even a correlation between MMR and autism rates.

Yes it is actually!

“you come here claiming that because you don’t know of any evidence for X or Y”

Correct, yes.

“theory you’ve just pulled out of your arse”

Dr Andrew Wakefield is now my arse, that’s an interesting assertion; do you have any primary data to back that up?

“you’re full of shit”

Hmmm……let’s see, that’s denial of responsibility, assertion of the obvious, a nonsense allegation capped off with ad hom, is that the methodology of “good science” RS?

Why would you assume that a desire to prevent the introduction of disease via uncontrolled immigration makes me against immigration? Neither am I anti-vax, I am opposed to the principle that orthodox medicine is above public scrutiny; the Guardian is funded by a charity, the Scott Trust, I regard it as having the same credibility as the Watchtower.

It was to avoid overloading the child’s immune system actually. You’re showing your true colours in that post; the state should not tolerate a refusal to comply with state imposed medical initiatives, but the public should not be allowed to have any input into the modalities of these initiatives? Sounds a lot like fascism to me.

The goal of the demand for three “single jabs” instead of MMR was to miss out the measles one. I agree that public funding or even public tolerance of that is quite wrong. If your child isn’t vaccinated, he or she may catch measles and die; but also, he or she may infect several other children, even those who got the shot, and they may die. So it’s a heavier burden on other families than on your own.

I’m told that home videos have been used to show that child development unfortunately was already not proceeding normally before MMR vaccination when parents claimed otherwise, but I don’t have details to hand. That the diseases prevented by MMR cause deaths, paralysis, sensory and mental handicap, is not disputed.

Please tell us all about the cases you are apparently claiming exist, in which parents are blaming the Teletubbies for autism, or alternatively you could just deal with the actual cases we all know about of parents reporting a catastrophic reversal of development in children who were previously developing perfectly normally until the MMR vaccine was administered? Your fantasy, your choice.