I believe...

Dan Olmsted is the editor of Age of Autism. I'd have thought that to get the title "Editor" of anything, you'd need to have at least a modicum of sense. But when has that ever mattered at Age of Idiocy?

Olmsted writes a piece which he pompously titles "Weekly Wrap", in which he moans about sensible people not agreeing with his loopy ideas, and mentions mercury more often than a hagiographic post on a Queen forum.

This week, he's praising Joan Campbell. You may remember Campbell - she put a website together called "followingvaccinations.com", which is basically a list of unsupported and unverified anecdotes from anti-vaxers making claims that their children are ill because of vaccines.

Olmsted quotes one of these - it starts like this:
I believe my son's issues stem from the two flu vaccines I was strongly advised to take during pregnancy.

"I believe." That's it.

Well, people believe a lot of shit, and, at Age of Autism, belief is the only thing they've got. I'll leave you with this:

Anne Dachel admits it's all about "blame"

For those of you who may be unaware of her activities, Anne Dachel is Age of Autism's "Media Editor". This high-falutin' (as I believe they say in America) title is just a cover for the more accurate, but more long winded "drone with a Google News update for 'Autism' who then goes and spams every story with cut and paste nonsense about vaccines, whether it's relevant or not. And then runs away."

It'd be a bastard to get on a business card I suppose.

Still. Every couple of days, Anne Dachel puts a post up on Age of Autism, with links to her latest drive-by spammings, sometimes with a mindblowingly stupid comment about the stories she doesn't agree with; ie, every story that doesn't implicate vaccines as the cause of autism.

In today's update though, she's given a bit away about her attitude to autism - interestingly just a couple of days after Orac has written an interesting piece inspired by Dachel; Sometimes antivaccinationists reveal more than they intend about why they blame vaccines for autism. Give it a read - it's quite enlightening.

As I say, in today's media update, Dachel pretty much signs her agreement to what Orac's written.

The stories about using the placenta and blood to detect autism reinforce the claim that children are born with autism. In the end, it’s always going to [be] blamed on the parents.

There you have it. It's all about blame. Her whole anti-vax schtick is about shifting "blame" from herself to vaccines.

Anne - there's no "blame" attached to parents of children on the autistic spectrum! None at all! Stop looking for something to shift your perceived guilt onto - there's no guilt, no blame - and look after your beautiful children.

Andrew Wakefield moves goalposts and looks like a twat. Again.

That smarmy, rubber faced goon Andrew Wakefield is at it again, moving goalposts quickly enough to stop a Christiano Ronaldo freekick from going in. This time he's released a YouTube video (because, as we all know, heavily rehearsed and edited videos are the way scientific debate is conducted - and in this example, Wakefield still comes across as less sincere than a Tory politician apologising for being caught shagging his secretary) banging on about the dangers of anaphylaxis from measles containing vaccines.

Hold on - I thought Wakefield's schtick (since shown to be utter rubbish, and much of it simply made up for money) was that vaccine strain measles virus found in the gut somehow magically caused autism. I don't remember him publishing anything on anaphylaxis in the Lancet...

Yes, Wakefield's just showing his true colours - that of anti-vaccine wingnut (remember, whatever the problem, it's the vaccines, it's always the vaccines) - in order to leech a few tears (and hopefully dollars) from his credulous flunkies.

Still, let's run with it in order to show what a twat he is.

Wakefield cites a single 1992 study of (I think, without watching his shiny faced lying again) 15,000 vaccinations showing a possible anaphylaxis rate of 1 in 500. A quick search has failed to find this study, but it did turn up this:

"Risk of anaphylaxis after vaccination of children and adolescents"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14523172
This study appears to be somewhat larger; in fact they state:

"We identified 5 cases of potentially vaccine-associated anaphylaxis after administration of 7 644 049 vaccine doses, for a risk of 0.65 cases/million doses (95% confidence interval: 0.21-1.53). None of the episodes resulted in death."

So, a larger study found an anaphylaxis rate of 1 in approx 1.3 million. Hmm…

Anyway, let's carry on…

Wakefield claims his favoured study found a rate of 1 in 500 of specifically measles containing vaccines. He doesn't say MMR.

He than goes on to discuss a mass revaccination initiative in 1994, instigated by Professor David Salisbury (Director of Immunisation at the Department of Health) of 8 million children in the UK. The initial programme was carried out in schools, which Wakefield claims is inherently unsafe, as, using his seemingly rectally sourced figure of 1 in 500 for anaphylaxis it would put around 15,000 children at risk of death (to avoid a predicted 50 deaths should a major measles epidemic strike the UK).

Now, given that Wakefield doesn't produce a figure for actual anaphylaxis events during this program (so I'm guessing there weren't any), schools are pretty well geared up for awareness and treatment of anaphylaxis, and that vaccines administered at school aren't given by the cleaner or the dinner lady, they're given by a medical professional - usually a nurse, Wakefield's challenge to Prof. Salisbury (why were the "risks" of anaphylaxis not taken into account, why was no provision made for anaphylaxis?) looks somewhat hollow. (Wakefield even has the gall to refer to their "forthcoming debate" - as if Professor David Salisbury is in the business of debating struck-off doctors, liars and fraudsters. Fuck off, Fraudytrousers.)

Anyway, this all comes to Wakefield's final point, where he refers to the measles outbreak in Wales (which, let's not forget, is all his fucking fault in the first place) and urges Professor Salisbury to make the option of the single measles jab available on the grounds that it'll be safer - less risk of anaphylaxis.

He appears to have forgotten that, according to his own bullshit, anaphylaxis is associated with measles containing vaccines. All of them. So how is offering a single jab a better option?

You mendacious, money grubbing, disingenuous, goalpost moving bag of shit, Wakefield.

Callous Disregard Countdown - April 2013

For the first time, it seems that you can now get Andrew "Mr Fraudytrousers" Wakefield's stapled together bits of absorbent paper, "Callous Disregard" cheaper in paperback than you can in hardback.

Amazon.com currently have the hardback (new) at $5.39 (£3.53), and a "used" (urgh) copy of the paperback for $2.74 (£1.80 - about the price of a half in most London pubs).

And all this during the week he's issued a bleating "It's not my fault! 'snot fair! Blub blub!" video insisting that despite what everyone not completely hard of thinking realises, he's not responsible for the South Wales measles outbreak (765 confirmed cases, with 77 hospitalised). Presumably a big boy did it and ran away.

You bag of shit, Wakefield.