CDC whistleblower on MMR fraud reveals his identity

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natasa778 said:
The problem is that the research was not 'independent'.

Repeating this indefinitely does not make it come true.
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You are correct repeating something indefinitely does not make it come true which is why I take a grain of salt with most everything the anti-vax groups post on the internet over and over.
 
Countrygirl

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This new blog is written by Kelly Brogan MD.
http://kellybroganmd.com/article/cdc-youre-fired-autism-coverup-exposed/

Fraud.
A powerful accusation, sensational, provocative. When we think of fraud, what comes to mind? Images of avarice-driven men putting their greed before the best interest of a larger population. Does it feel different when it is a woman behind the mask? What about a woman charged with “Saving Lives. Protecting People.” as is the CDC’s claim? What if that larger population put at risk is our infants, babies, and children?

Today, I am calling all women, to hear this news, let it permeate deep down to the core of their primal instincts, and say, enough is enough.

As citizens of this capitalist nation, we cannot rely on corporate-sponsored news media for the truth. We must source it from trusted independent outlets, informed experts, and even going to the available science, ourselves. It is time to reclaim our health, and that of our families, once and for all. When we outsource our native wisdom, our belief in the fundamental strength of our minds and bodies, to corporations whose primary fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders, we are sacrificing ourselves, and our children. Women and children are the sheep being led off the ledge. I have written about a known4250% increase in fetal demise during the 2009/10 flu season, about evidence-based inefficacy and risks of the pertussis vaccine pushed on pregnant women, about Gardasil killing healthy girls across the globe, fear mongering about SIDS that is actually caused by a visit to the pediatrician, and of the corruption of an infant’s birthday by the Hepatitis B vaccine. In rejecting the paradigm of vaccination, it is important to grasp the nature of the political beast that is pushing vaccines into the arms (legs and buttocks) of every American.

Read the rest here.
 
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natasa778

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Kina said:
You are correct repeating something indefinitely does not make it come true which is why I take a grain of salt with most everything the anti-vax groups post on the internet over and over.
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I agree that every opinion out there needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Best of all is going straight to the source, when the source is available like in this case. All the data is out there now in the published, public domain. One can get easily informed and employ analysis and critical thinking without having to rely on anyone else's opinion or authority :)
 
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natasa778

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Congressman Posey steps in:

Congressman Bill Posey from Florida's 8th District says the CDC simply can't be trusted to honestly investigate vaccine safety, because the agency has an "incestuous relationship" with the vaccine industry.

Known as "Mr. Accountability," Rep. Posey told vaccine industry watchdog Dr. Brian Hooker, Ph.D., during a recent interview that the CDC has an extensive history of vaccine industry infiltration. From scam artist Dr. Poul Thorsen, the CDC researcher who was indicted for stealing grant money awarded by the agency for autism research, to Dr. Julie Gerberding, the current president of Merck's vaccine division who used to be a director at the CDC, this agency that is supposed to be looking out for the interests of the American people is nothing but a gatekeeper for vaccine industry interests.

Concerning Thorsen's role in supposedly vetting the safety of vaccines, Rep. Posey says this corrupt Danish researcher collaborated with the CDC on some 36 papers claiming that vaccines are safe, as opposed to just the one claimed by current CDC Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD), Dr. Coleen A. Boyle. This means that the entire repository of studies claimed by the CDC as evidence that vaccines do not cause autism was manipulated and distorted to protect the vaccine industry.

"If you read through the emails and learned about the meetings and the financial arrangement this crook had with the CDC, it will make you absolutely sick to your stomach," stated Posey ...

"As long as Thorsen was cooking the books to produce the results they wanted, they didn't care whether the studies were valid or how much money was being siphoned off the top... It's like the Security and Exchange Commission and Bernie Madoff. But it's worse because we're talking about someone who basically stole money that was supposed to be used to improve the health and safety of our most vulnerable in our society -- our young babies."
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Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/046613_CDC_vaccine_manufacturers_autism.html#ixzz3BXMOYoZp
 
Esther12

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There's an article about this on Science Based Medicine.

To be honest, I found it a bit boring, and to me, it seems like more info needs to come out for a proper analysis of the claims being made, but here it is:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org...ccines-cause-autism-in-african-american-boys/

Here's some of the middle section I thought was most interesting:

The central claim in the video is that earlier MMR vaccination is associated with an increased risk of autism in African-American boys and that the CDC has spent the last 13 years covering this linkage up. These charges are based the result of a “reanalysis” by Brian Hooker in Translational Neurodegeneration entitled “Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data.” The d which has been “reanalyzed” is from a study by DeStefano et al. in 2004 published in Pediatrics entitled Age at first measles-mumps-rubella vaccination in children with autism and school-matched control subjects: a population-based study in metropolitan Atlanta. That study was a case-control study in which age at first MMR vaccination was compared between autistic “cases” and neurotypical controls. Vaccination data were abstracted from immunization forms required for school entry, and records of children who were born in Georgia were linked to Georgia birth certificates for information on maternal and birth factors. Basically, no significant associations were found between the age cutoffs examined and the risk of autism. I note that, even in this “reanalysis” by Brian Hooker, there still isn’t any such correlation for children who are not African American boys.

The first thing that struck me is the sheer irony of this latest tack on the part of Wakefield and Hooker. To illustrate, let’s just, for a thought experiment, assume Hooker’s study comes to a valid conclusion (which is, given that it’s Hooker, highly unlikely, but stay with me for a moment). If that were the case, these results are no reassurance whatsoever to the vast majority of antivaccinationists supporting Wakefield. This study says nothing whatsoever about, for instance, Jenny McCarthy and her son’s autism, other than that there is no link between MMR and autism for children like him. Remember, the most vocal antivaccinationists jumping all over this are not African-American but instead tend to be UMC or even highly affluent Caucasians. There’s absolutely nothing in even Hooker’s ham-fisted “reanalysis” of this data to tell them that the MMR vaccine caused their children’s autism.

...

There are a couple of things you have to remember whenever looking at a study that is billed as a “reanalysis” of an existing data set that’s already been published. The first is that no one—I mean no one—”reanalyzes” such a dataset unless he has an ax to grind and disagrees with the results of the original analysis so strongly that he is willing to go through the trouble of getting institutional review board (IRB) approval, as Hooker did from Simpson University, going to the CDC to get this dataset, and then analyzing it. Think, for instance, the infamous “reanalysis” by homeopaths of the meta-analysis of Shang et al. that concluded that the effects of homeopathy are placebo effects. The reanalysis did not refute the original meta-analysis. The second thing you have to remember is that it’s pretty uncommon for such a “reanalysis” to refute the original analysis. Certainly, antivaccine “researchers” like Hooker try to do this all the time. Occasionally they get their results published in a bottom-feeding peer-reviewed journal (Translational Neurodegeneration doesn’t even appear to have an impact factor yet), as Hooker has. It means little.

So what about the paper itself? First, one has to go back to Destefano et al. 2004. Basically, this was a case-control study in which 624 case children were identified from multiple sources and matched to 1,824 control children on age, gender, and school. Porta’s Dictionary of Epidemiology defines the case-control study as: “an observational epidemiological study of persons with the disease (or another outcome variable) of interest and a suitable control group of persons without the disease (comparison group, reference group). The potential relationship of a suspected risk factor or an attribute to the disease is examined by comparing the diseased and nondiseased subjects with regard to how frequently the factor or attribute is present (or, if quantitative, the levels of the attribute) in each of the groups (diseased and nondiseased).” They then see if that risk factor is higher in the case population than it is in the control population. This is in comparison to cohort studies, in which researchers look at groups of people who vary in exposure to a given putative risk factor (for instance, vaccines), each controlled for every other potential risk factor that the authors can control for, and then determine if the condition for which that putative risk factor is suspected to be a risk factor for. A cohort study can be retrospective (looking at existing data) or prospective (the cohorts determined in advance and then followed over time), while case control studies are retrospective.

It’s also not uncommon for epidemiologists to choose more controls than cases in case-control studies. In any case, what Destefano et al. did was to perform a case control study of children in metropolitan Atlanta looking at age at first MMR vaccination (0-11 months; 12-17 months; 18-23 months; 24-29 months; 30-35 months; and 36+ months). They found no statistically significant correlations. They also looked at a subgroup of the groups, children for whom a Georgia birth certificate could be located, in order to test correlations for other traits:

We matched 355 (56%) case and 1020 (56%) control children to Georgia state birth certificate records, which allowed us to obtain additional information, such as each child’s birth weight and gestational age and the mother’s parity, age, race, and education.

There was no significant correlation noted in various groups based on race, maternal age, maternal education, and birth weight. It’s all pretty straightforward, at least a straightforward as an epidemiological study can be. The only hint of a whiff of anything in it helpful to antivaccinationists was this:

Vaccination before 36 months was more common among case children than control children, especially among children 3 to 5 years of age, likely reflecting immunization requirements for enrollment in early intervention programs.

In other words, it’s a result that is likely not due to an actual effect.

Fast forward to Brian Hooker’s study. The first thing I noticed reading it was that it contains a lot of the usual red flags of antivaccine papers. Hooker cites several Mark Geier papers as “evidence” of a correlation between vaccines and autism, to try to make it seem as though there is an actual scientific controversy. He even cites a Wakefield paper. Then there is the methods section. It’s really not very clear exactly what Hooker did with this dataset, other than muck around with it using SAS® software. He keeps referring to “cohorts,” which made me wonder right away whether he was not doing the same sort of analysis as Destefano. Instead of doing a case control study, it looks as though he did a cohort study:

The Pearson’s chi -squared test contained in the SAS® software was utilized for current statistical analyses, and a two-sided p-value <  0.05 was considered statistically significant. This is in contrast to the original Destefano et al. [14] (CDC) study, where a case–control study design was used, where 3 control children were matched to each case child, and analyzed using conditional logistic regression dichotomized for the three age cut-offs at 18, 24 and 36 months…In the present study, frequencies of cases were determined for first MMR ages of less than versus greater than 18 months, 24 months and 36 months in each separate analysis.

Yep, Hooker did a cohort study. He analyzed data collected for a case-control study as a cohort study. Basically, he looked at the risk of an autism diagnosis in the groups first exposed to MMR at different age ranges. Remember, case control = comparing risk factor frequency in people with a condition compared to controls; cohort = examining risk of condition in people with different exposures.

There’s an old saying in epidemiology (and in science in general) that says that if you torture data enough, eventually they will confess. With this in mind, it’s hard not to think of Brian Hooker as the Spanish Inquisition, only without the comfy chair. I find it very telling that Hooker couldn’t find (or didn’t bother to look for) a coauthor who is an actual epidemiologist or statistician. What training in epidemiology or statistics does Brian Hooker have that qualifies him to do a retrospective cohort study like this? None that I can see. My first rule of thumb doing anything that is more complicated than the rudimentary statistics that I use to analyze laboratory experiments (such as even a “simple” clinical trial) is to find a statistician. While it’s true that Hooker used to lead a high-throughput biology team, which likely required some statistical expertise, that’s a different sort of statistics and experimental design than epidemiology. Basically, if you’re going to do epidemiology, you should find an epidemiologist to collaborate with, and if you’re going to do something that requires some heavy statistical lifting you really need to get a statistician on board as well before you start the study.

So is Hooker’s result valid? Was there really a 3.4-fold increased risk for autism in African-American males who received MMR vaccination before the age of 36 months in this dataset? Who knows? Probably not, though. Hooker analyzed a dataset designed from its inception and collection to be analyzed by a case-control method using a cohort design. Then he did multiple subset analyses, which, of course, are prone to false positives. As we also say, if you slice and dice the evidence more and more finely, eventually you will find apparent correlations that might or might not be real. In this case, I doubt Hooker’s correlation is real. More importantly, even if his statistics were correctly done, his changing the design is highly suspect, particularly when coupled with claims being promulgated by our good buddy Jake Crosby, among others, that the CDC intentionally manipulated the study sample size in order to hide this correlation.

This is an accusation neither Hooker’s study nor anything any antivaccinationist has published thus far provides any tangible evidence for. Requiring the birth certificate was not an “arbitrary” criterion either. It allowed investigators to account for known confounders related to autism risk, such as birth weight, at least in this subset of the case and control groups. I also can’t help but think there is likely to be a confounder that is unaccounted for in this study, particularly given how there increase in risk is found in only one group. In fact, as Reuben at The Poxes Blog explains, there almost certainly was just such a confounder:

Next come the statistics. Hooker uses Pearson’s chi squared test to see if there is a significant association between MMR and autism in children at different ages. DeStefano et al used conditional logistic regression. For the non-biostatisticians out there, the technique that DeStefano et al used accounts for confounders and effect modifiers, different traits in their population that could skew the results. Hooker’s technique doesn’t really do that, unless you stratify results and use very, very large datasets. Hooker’s approach is more “conservative,” meaning that it will detect small effects and amplify them, and those effects can come from anything.
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In other words, Hooker used a method prone to false positives. Then:

The nail in the coffin for the Hooker paper is that autism is usually diagnosed by the time a child is three years old. There was no increased risk at 18 months, higher but not by a whole lot at 24, and then the three-fold increase at 36 months. Gee, was it the MMR vaccine, mister? No, the effect is being modified by age. It’s as if I asked you if your shoe size was bigger at 36 months because you drank milk vs because you were 36 months. It’s age. It’s the way that autism is diagnosed. You’re going to have more children diagnosed as autistic at 36 months than you will at 18 months or at 24 months. Using the chi square test doesn’t tease this out, Dr. Hooker! That’s more than likely why DeStefano et al used conditional logistic regression, to take age into account in the analysis.

So why did we not see this in the other ethnic groups or in girls? The answer here is simple, again. Hooker had a limited dataset to work with when he boiled it down to African-American baby boys. In this table, for example, he tells us that he had to modify the analysis to 31 months instead of 36 because he had less than 5 children in that group. It’s the same goddamned mistake that Andrew Jeremy Wakefield wanted to pass off as legitimate science. You cannot, and must not use small numbers to make big assertions…
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Quite right. I should have seen that right off the bat. Thanks, Reuben, for pointing it out.
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Finally, there’s no biologically plausible reason why one might expect to observe an effect in African-Americans but no other race and, more specifically than that, in African-American males. In the discussion, Hooker does a bunch of handwaving about lower vitamin D levels and the like in African American boys, but there really isn’t a biologically plausible mechanism to account for his observation, suggesting that it’s probably spurious. Finally, even if Destefano et al. is thrown out, it’s just one study. There are multiple other studies, many much larger than this one, that failed to find a correlation between MMR and autism. Even if Hooker succeeded in “knocking out” Destefano et al., it doesn’t invalidate all that other evidence.
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natasa778

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Esther12 said:
There's an article about this on Science Based Medicine.

To be honest, I found it a bit boring, and to me, it seems like more info needs to come out for a proper analysis of the claims being made, but here it is:
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hopefully coming out soon http://m.theepochtimes.com/n3/91225...dren-at-risk-of-autism-media-remains-silent/#

Meanwhile, the latest word from an individual in a position to know is that Dr. Thompson has “lawyered up,” and is seeking official whistleblower status, so that he can talk freely about what he knows.
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alex3619

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natasa778 said:
I agree that every opinion out there needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Best of all is going straight to the source, when the source is available like in this case. All the data is out there now in the published, public domain. One can get easily informed and employ analysis and critical thinking without having to rely on anyone else's opinion or authority :)
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Agreed, provided the published data is not itself fraudulent. That is why a fully independent inquiry with wide ranging scope is required, that has the power to compel testimony. All of the new evidence can be examined.

Even scientific findings of long standing should be considered tentative. Science is not dogma, it changes. Its evidence that is should be the driving force behind that, along with reason (including mathematical tools).

It is entirely possible to find correlations in data which do not actually show causation in reality - indeed going from correlation to causation is highly problematic, and fraught with risk of error or bias. One study is often not enough, particularly if there is fishing for association. Fish till you find something you like then stop? That is bad science. Which brings me back to independent review.

A whistleblower should have enough knowledge to point investigators at the problem. That should be pursued, and neither pro-vaccine nor anti-vaccine proponents should be on that committee.
 
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zzz

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natasa778 said:
Another leaked document, in which one of the authors of the original study advises the others on how best to try obfuscate and dillute their original findings ...
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If you read it, you see that it is a memo by the whistleblower (William Thompson), and he is simply providing all documents so that he will not be accused of hiding anything. At one point, he writes, "Therefore, I will be hiring my own personal attorney to make sure I am also providing all the appropriate documents for this study." His last sentence says, "My level of concern has also caused me to seriously consider removing myself as an author on the draft manuscript."

It is clear from a careful reading of this document that he is simply trying to comply with the law and act as ethically as possible.

@natasa778 - You might was to change the comment in your other thread so that it reflects what this document says.
 
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natasa778

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zzzz you got it wrong - your comment refers to the first leaked letter, that one by thompson where he considers legal protection.

The leaked doc I was referring to above just surfaced this morning. It is by another author of the study....

Both leaks are shown in my other post sorry can't embed here again
 
zzz

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natasa778 said:
zzzz you got it wrong - your comment refers to the first leaked letter, that one by thompson where he considers legal protection.
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Ah, you're right. The brain fog is thick this morning.

But the second letter doesn't match your comment either. These all seem to be very reasonable questions to ask about a technical presentation. She's basically asking for more data, which is generally a good thing, and I can't see anywhere that there's an intention to obfuscate. For example, point #5 starts out, "For me the big issue is the missed cases - and how this relates to exposure. Clearly there is gross underreporting..."

This sounds to me like an analyst trying to do her job properly.
 
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natasa778

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This sounds to me like an analyst trying to do her job properly.
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No she is actually suggesting to them to include cases that would NOT normally be diagnosed with autism, like 18mths old ones, in order to dilute the cohort (ie show lower incidence), and excluding those that are more vulnerable, like premature ones and lower socio-ecomic groups.

But the crucial thing to point out is the analysis she suggested were not mentioned at all in that or any of their studies - she didn't bring those suggestions up in order to analyse those different cohorts, as things like these were never ever published or discussed by CDC or any other scientist involved in vaccine research. This was actually what parents have been begging them to do for years - analyse all groups, compare them in the hope of figuring out more VULNERABLE ones. But this was never ever done. Or it was, but for completely different purpose it now transpires.
 
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natasa778

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Do not forget zzzz her comments in this email come AFTER the study was done, AFTER the original analysis was done and results presented.

This isn't her planning her study design in advance, this is post-crash crisis management
 
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natasa778

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Also note

number 6: "there seems to be a small number of cases (of autism) in the low - to no exposure (to vaccines) group"

Parents have been begging for a vaccinated vs non-vaccinated study to be done for years and years. It looks like it WAS done here, and they didn't like the results ...

IMO a scientists doing her job would shout out about such results and move mountains to confirm or refute these findings in bigger studies. Instead of that we get crickets.
 
Firestormm

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The paper recently published by Brian Hooker, Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data has been pulled. Currently the journal’s website has this in place of the article:

"This article has been removed from the public domain because of serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions. The journal and publisher believe that its continued availability may not be in the public interest. Definitive editorial action will be pending further investigation."
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http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/20...ncerns-about-the-validity-of-its-conclusions/

Never ceases to amaze me that there are members on this forum who claim to understand not only science but statistics and how they should and should not be used: yet they seem to have failed to crasp the basic errors made in the Hooker/Wakefield pronouncements.

Quite sad and doesn't say very much for the accumulated wisdom with regards to intrepretation of science in relation to ME. By that I mean - if you can't see the wood for the trees with all this shite from Hooker - how can you claim to do so for ME research?

The statistical flaws in Hooker's paper are worryingly basic. Though I dare say there will be claims of that this withdrawal of the paper is 'censoring' and 'scandalous' etc.

It might make some of you nauseous but you really should try and read some of the skeptic blogs written by those who do work with statistics and in science on a daily basis. Several links are in the above post.

This is the latest news on this disgraceful crusade and posted very recently this evening.
 
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