Anti-Vaccine Propaganda About What Causes Autism
International scientists have not found autism's cause...
Andy Wakefield is likely rolling around in a ditch somewhere.
Why?
An anti-vaccine influencer claims to have figured out what causes autism and it isn’t the MMR vaccine!
Anti-Vaccine Propaganda About What Causes Autism
So what are these big discoveries that JB Handley is touting?
“Dr. Chris Exley of Keele University in England and his colleagues published a paper that for the first time ever looked at the brain tissue of subjects with autism to determine the level of aluminum (note: they spell “aluminum” as “aluminium” in the United Kingdom) found within their brain tissue.”
International scientists have found autism's cause. What will Americans do?
One of them, the final piece of the puzzle for JB Handley, was simply another aluminum study by Chris Exley.
An aluminum study that was published in Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology in 2018.
A study that was roundly discredited for “its deep experimental flaws and data analysis.”
Does the latest paper from Exley show a link between ASD and aluminum?
Christopher Exley: Using bad science to demonize aluminum adjuvants in vaccines
And yes, the rest of the ‘discoveries’ are also about aluminum.
If you still haven’t caught on what this has to do with Wakefield and the MMR vaccine, please remember that the MMR vaccine is free of aluminum.
So what are JB Handley’s the other big discoveries?
That severe infections during pregnancy could trigger an immune system activation and increase the risk of having a baby with schizophrenia or autism - the work of Paul Patterson.
“Initial support for this notion came from research on the 1964 rubella pandemic, in which Stella Chase at the New York University Medical Center reported that the incidence of autistic features (lack of communication, stereotyped and asocial behaviors) was increased more than 200-fold in the offspring of infected mothers. Of course, due to the subsequent routine use of childhood rubella vaccination, dangerous rubella infections in pregnant women are now rare and not a cause of autism.”
Infectious Behavior: Brain-Immune Connections in Autism, Schizophrenia, and Depression
The same Paul Patterson who concluded in his 2011 book, Infectious Behavior: Brain-Immune Connections in Autism, Schizophrenia, and Depression, that there was a “lack of evidence thus far for a connection between autism and childhood vaccination.”
Not surprisingly, JB Handley leaves that quote out of his article…
He also doesn’t make the connection that if infections in pregnancy and early infancy really could trigger immune system activation and increase the risk of developing autism, then with no connection to vaccines, you would actually want to get vaccinated and protected and prevent those infections!
Next, Handley brings up the work of Christopher Shaw, the guy who “sounded a worldwide alarm about the dangers of aluminum adjuvant.”
In reality, what he and his associate Lucija Tomljenovic did was torture a lot of mice!
Handley also brings up the work of Romain Gherardi…
Of note, all of these folks received funding from the Dwoskin Family Foundation’s CMSRI (Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute).
Handley is also impressed by the discovery that scientists were able to use aluminum to induce Alzheimer’s in rats, which increased levels of IL-6 in their rat brains.
But as impressive as all of this research is… what really seems to have convinced Handley that vaccines cause autism is that researchers were finally able to make mice autistic by injecting them with IL-6 after they were born!Although he is still on rats and IL-6, in the next big discovery, Handley describes a study in which rats got BCG and HBV vaccines and then had underwent synaptic analysis. Surprisingly, he isn’t complaining that there was no saline control group! Instead, the mice in the control group got sterile phosphate buffered saline. While Handley thinks this study is extraordinary, with the lack of a saline control group, it can clearly be dismissed…
And lastly, Handley brings up Exley’s brains!
Is this a clear path to autism?
It is not…
Handley keeps going after introducing his five big discoveries.
He brings up a study letter about enlarged heads, Yehuda Shoenfeld, and the MMR vaccine.
“One obvious answer is that the MMR vaccine is the first live virus vaccine children receive (it’s typically given between age 12–18 months, most children have received 15–20 vaccines by then), and it’s a triple (measles, mumps, rubella) live virus.”
International scientists have found autism's cause. What will Americans do?
Of course, the MMR vaccine is not the first live virus vaccine that children receive.
Most get the rotavirus vaccine when they are two months old!
And there is new research on head size and autistic children…
Handley even admits that he is moving the goalposts…
“Of course critics will say this. First it was the MMR. Then it was mercury. Then it was “too many, too soon.” What’s different now is very important: overwhelming published, peer-reviewed science making a clear connection between immune activation events, aluminum adjuvant, and autism. That’s why this article is filled with study references, not conjecture.”
International scientists have found autism's cause. What will Americans do?
But what about all of the new research he is posting about?
In case you are wondering - most of the “overwhelming published, peer-reviewed science” that really matters is not done on mice. That can be the kind of study, if done well, that triggers further research, but that’s not what has happened here…
Handley is also doing a lot of cherry picking.
He leaves out all of the research on the genetic causes of autism and the support for the idea of diagnostic substitution, increased screening, and how special education laws in the 1960s and 1970s helped get autistic kids into school and ultimately diagnosed with autism.
And none of this is even new!
He seems to be simply reposting a lot of stuff from his book about autism…
References
Infectious Behavior: Brain-Immune Connections in Autism, Schizophrenia, and Depression by Paul H Patterson https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/2922/Infectious-BehaviorBrain-Immune-Connections-in
Shi L, Fatemi SH, Sidwell RW, Patterson PH. Maternal influenza infection causes marked behavioral and pharmacological changes in the offspring. J Neurosci. 2003 Jan 1;23(1):297-302. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.23-01-00297.2003. PMID: 12514227; PMCID: PMC6742135.