How soon will Wakefield be wanking for coins again?

Just a quick one here, but I thought you'd all like to hear that the Texas court has told Andrew Wakefield to stick his defamation suit up his arse. Couldn't have happened to a more unpleasant man. It seems he's had costs awarded against him too, so with any luck that big house in Austin will be up for sale again. Either that or he'll be reduced to getting Ed "Loser" Arranga and the rest of his arse lickers (maybe they'll find the remains of his lawsuit up there) to assist him in a new "Wanking for coins" operation.

Predictably, John Stone (who as we know, is a cock) has started banging on in the pages of the internet's equivalent of tomorrow's chip wrapper, Age of Autism, implying that it's all a big stitch up by Big Pharma.

Just leave it, Stone, you twat. If Wakefield was so convinced he had a case, he'd have sued in the UK. He clearly wasn't convinced, and knows he can't get away with bringing a suit and trying to delay it infinitely while his acolytes pour more cash into his bank account. Not again - he's tried that a couple of times and lost.

Wakefield - just fuck off for good please, and take that cock John Stone with you.

That Colossal Tool Clifford Miller...

..., the author of the ill-named ChildHealthSafety blog, has tried to link to this blog, but has managed to fuck up the hyperlink.

Maybe he'll fix it, and so people will come here from his blog.

If so, I'd just like to point out that Clifford Miller is a complete tool. He runs the "ChildHealthSafety" blog, a shittily written piece of garbage which lies and misrepresents data to help Clifford "Tool" Miller claim that vaccines are dangerous.

He's one of John "Cock" Stone's mates (a prime example of "judge a man by the company he keeps"), and as such, really hates Dr Ben Goldacre, as can be seen by his latest spittle-flecked rant. Like anyone gives anything more than a tiny fraction of half a fuck what Miller thinks.

On his blog, he removes sensibly worded criticism and comment, and replaces it with his own shite.

He's done legal work for Mr FraudyTrousers.

He's a fucking danger to children. If people buy into his anti-vaccine bollocks and stop vaccinating, measles and other diseases will come roaring back.

He presumably got into this anti-vaccine nonsense hoping to make a shitload of cash - he's a solicitor, and clearly not a very good one, jusging by the incoherence of his writing - by suing drug companies. And now he can't back out without looking like more of a tool than he already does.

But I'm no expert on Clifford "Tool" Miller. For the real expert view, have a read of jdc325's blog, "Stuff and Nonsense".

Thanks for the traffic Clifford (if you fix your hyperlink), you colossal tool.

Callous Disregard price countdown - March 2014

Apologies for being away for so long - you know how it is, busy busy busy…

Still, thought I'd better pop back to let you all know that you can get Andrew Wakefield's firelighter in hardback from Amazon.com for less than $2. Yes, finally, you can pick up a copy for $1.98. That's £1.19 in real money. Less than the price of a copy of The Guardian. On a weekday. Not even the Saturday one.

Dr Mark Struthers (Cybertiger)

This news has come to my attention.

THE body of a man found in woodland near Clophill yesterday is believed to be that of a former Flitwick GP.

Mark Struthers, 56, from Flitton, was last seen at his home address by his wife on Thursday (August 15) at around 12pm. When she returned at 1.45pm that day he had disappeared.

Jake Crosby makes me laugh more than strictly neccessary

OK - today I found out the funniest thing I've come across in years.

Jake Crosby - purveyor of conspiracy theories to the loonocracy and bizarre conflict of interest claims to the hard of thinking, science-celebrity stalker and all round poster boy for the mercury militia - has been awarded a Masters in Epidemiology.

Here he tells the world all about it.

What has the world come to? (I'd be fascinated to see his thesis / dissertation. Is that sort of thing in the public domain? Must check.)

Fat is a vaccine issue. Apparently.

Nancy Hokkanen has posted a load of drivel which completely misrepresents the concept of risk. I'd pull it to bits, but frankly it's too long and I can't be bothered to read it. I feel I may die of boredom if I try.

However, in the comments, John "Cock" Stone shows up, and makes the claim that "54% of US children have a chronic disease… And all we know is it was not the vaccines - or do we?" - with an actual link to where he's getting that scary claim from.

The link is here.

What it actually says in the abstract is this:

An estimated 43% of US children (32 million) currently have at least 1 of 20 chronic health conditions assessed, increasing to 54.1% when overweight, obesity, or being at risk for developmental delays are included

So it seems that John Stone thinks vaccines have fucking pies in them. What a twat.

Fundraiser, Schmundraiser. Or something.

Poor Andrew "Mr Fraudytrousers" Wakefield. So impoverished he has to go begging with the likes of Ed Arranga and that gullible cow behind academicintegrityfund.com/.

Yeah, right. Like fuck he does.

He's apparently got his house in Austin, Texas up for sale.

For $1,450,000.

One million, four hundred and fifty fucking thousand dollars.

As an example of what $1,450,000 buys you in Austin, take a look here. (Yes, it's one of these - no, I'm not going to say which one.)

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.