Heretics' almanac: Arthur Allen insults parents

Arthur Allen insults parents

Slate has some excellent writers (Bazelon, Lithwick, Saletan, Kipnis, among others) and a few that really deserve a lesser platform for their views. Hitchens is one, Arthur Allen another.

Most recently, Allen published a polemic under the title Medical Examiner trying to get rid of the "myth" that vaccination contributes to, triggers, or causes "autism." The article is a mix of factoids, ad hominem attacks, and logical fallacies that falls neatly in with his other rants Slate inexplicably wanted to cover.

I will say this: I'm not sure whether there is such a link. Any honest person would concede there simply isn't enough information to draw a firm conclusion either way. But if anything convinces me that the theory has merit, it's the lousy case people like Allen put up against it.

Here are some of the essential points:

...witnesses showed that in all known cases of actual mercury poisoning (none of which caused autism), the dose was hundreds or thousands of times higher than what kids got during the 1990s.

First of all, "mercury poisoning" is a misleading term. Mercury exists in a number of compounds. All of these are toxic, but to varying degrees. It took a miniscule amount of dimethylmercury to kill Karen Wetterhahn, and that surely was a case of mercury poisoning. Conversely, people used to ingest mercury in relatively large quantities to cure syphilis in pre-antibiotic days and got sick but survived.

Neither does Allen distinguish between mercury that's ingested, inhaled, or injected; between acute and long-term reactions, etc. And of course the fact that ethylmercury, the organic mercury compound that thimerosal metabolizes into, has never been tested. Nor for that matter the crucial fact that we are talking about the neurological, gastrointestinal, and immunological effects on newborn infants and pre-toddlers of the compound effect of injecting thimerosal and antigens.

Then he writes:

Powerful population studies showed no link to either MMR or thimerosal-containing shots.

To be precise, these studies fail to prove causality. I don't think you'd have to get far into a basic class in epidemiology to learn that epidemic causality is very difficult to prove (or for that matter, disprove) unless there is a viral or bacterial agent.

But in this case, there are additional confounding factors. For one thing, there is no definitive clinical test of autism. Autism presents itself in a variety of ways (some kids are hyperlexic, some are nonverbal; some demonstrate extraordinary motor skills, others have poor motor planning; some are excessively attached to their caregiver; others treat them like furniture; some demonstrate OCD tendencies, others appear to be oblivious; etc.) But however it presents itself, the symptoms are severe and not easily mistaken for personality quirks.

One extensive population study conducted by the CDC (which, of course, Allen cynically dismisses as a quest for funding) finds that when applying the best available objective criteria, 1 in 140 children in a certain age cohort can be classified as autistic, and the CDC finds this to be a matter of serious concern.

It's worth noting that this increased "discovery" of autism coincides with an increased reported incidence of many other pediatric conditions, including Tourette's, ADHD, OCD, etc., into which previously undiagnosed kids may find themselves. So while there is a chance that some children who were previously diagnosed as "retarded" or "odd" now are diagnosed autistic, there are plenty of other "fashionable" diagnoses that might capture previously vague disorders.

Allen either doesn't address or else he dismisses all this. His explanation is that all this broo-hahah is a result of emotionally overwrought parents, evil and incompetent scientists, and some people out to make a buck. Parents are blinded to facts by their eagerness to find solutions; they "aren't truly able" to figure out the truth.

Allen explains that all these people have fallen prey to "confirmation bias" - a human tendency to emphasize all evidence that supports a previously held belief and discount all evidence against it. People who believe there is a causal link do so because it's a convenient belief, since they're "... middle-class parents struggling to care for and educate their unruly and unresponsive kids."

Allen's article - dubiously classified under the "Medical Examiner" category in Slate - reads like a poorly constructed polemic. Those who disagree with him are full of shit. Those parents who buy the thimerosal proposition are lost; those who object to it are rational. Those who have a financial interest in proving the link have suspect motivations; those who have a financial interest in disproving it are above such suspicions.

Setting aside such cheap rhetorical tricks (unworthy of Slate), Allen's biggest offense is against parents.

Where is there evidence - even anecdotal - that parents who advocate on behalf of their kids are likely to delude themselves? On what basis does Allen conclude that such parents are incapable of making rational decisions about how they spend their scarce resources?

The answer, of course, is that none exists. While there are parents who make bad choices for their children, the overwhelming evidence that engaged parents rarely delude themselves about anything, and that their efforts on their children's behalf improves outcomes. In the vast majority of cases, parents make better decisions than anyone else, even when they go counter to the opinions of doctors. Which is why good doctors consistently defer to parents.

Allen would do much better to choose another premise, namely that parents will choose the path that is most likely to yield a positive outcome for their child; even if the likelihood is small. To put it another way: you can be certain that a) parents won't give up on their kids; and that b) they know better than anyone when there is hope. You don't see parents of kids with CP running off to China for stem cell injections, but parents of autistic kids have. Parents are looking for cures for their kids because they know that their kids are curable.

The shortcoming therefore doesn't lie with the parents, or the kids (as if the point even needed to be made); but with entirely understandable limitations in medical science coupled with a superiority complex among some self-proclaimed scientists in the field. (In fact, it's been my observation that the more incompetent a so-called specialist is, the more dismissive he/she is of parents' efforts outside of mainstream medicine to help their kids. Talk about confirmation bias).

Posted by Leif Knutsen on July 05, 2007 at 06:17 AM | Permalink

Tags: Arthur Allen, Autism, thimerosal

Comments

I had an e-mail back and forth encounter with Arthur on this very subject. He informed me that he feels it’s his obligation to “out” the snake oil salesman and save the face of vaccines. I let him know how insulting he is being to the parents, of whom I am one of, as inadequate in forming their own opinions/conclusions and doing their own research. I decided to stop the back and forth because it was futile. Although some of his words became labeled with sweet tones for my predicament, they were sarcastic and disrespectful. I am not a claimant on any legal suit, I have no financial stake, I fight to remove mercury from all vaccines and wherever else it may lie because I watched my child descend into the complex world of Autism due to his vaccines. These children are quite sick physically (loaded with heavy metal toxicity, pathogens, viruses) not just children with “quirks”. The physical illness partners the decline into Autism. The parents of my community are more than competent, intelligent and experienced to choose the paths that best suit their children. It’s much more of a Lorenzo’s Oil pursuit than a “sue happy” clan wishing to make anyone pay. These are serious issues our children are facing. We are a community of parents with unbridled passion fighting for our children and yours…Thank you for pointing out the obvious inadequacies of Allen’s unfounded writings.

Posted by: chapnalli | July 05, 2007 at 11:29 AM

Allen tells us that we parents "have fallen prey to "confirmation bias" - a human tendency to emphasize all evidence that supports a previously held belief and discount all evidence against it."

If that were true, I would have found evidence to support my previously held belief that the FDA or CDC would never allow a known neurotoxin to be injected into my babies unless it was clinically tested and proven safe. The fact is all the evidence I could find showed me that the FDA, CDC and the medical establishement is concerned more for their own ego and bottom line than for our children.

That goes for the Doctors as well. They are fooled into accepting that trace amounts of mercury still being given to kids today are "equal to mercury free" - well, isn't that nice.... If we were talking about lead or PCB's would they still be defending it as a vaccine ingredient?

Tim Kasemodel
Wayzata, MN

Posted by: Tim Kasemodel | July 05, 2007 at 01:12 PM

Cheap rhetorical tricks can also be found in writing by David Kirby, in the Huffington Post, and by Dan Olmsten, in his "Age of Autism" series with UPI.

http://www.autismvox.com/epitasis-and-aposiopesis-in-dan-olmsted/

http://www.autismvox.com/david-kirby-on-there-is-no-autism-epidemic-and-autism-vox-on-his-rhetoric/

Autism Vox

Posted by: Kristina Chew | July 05, 2007 at 01:30 PM

Apologies; I meant to type "Olmsted."

Autism Vox

Posted by: Kristina Chew | July 05, 2007 at 01:32 PM

While I feel that vaccines components are culprit in childhood disorders that are increasing, I would love for the government to end the Kirby and Allen debates but doing ONE THING. Just open the Vaccine Safety Database that is currently cut-off from the public but is paid by public funds. We would not have to have a congresswoman from California try to get a bill pass, to look at vaccinated and unvaccinated children (even though I think that would be valuable).

Posted by: Anne Lace | July 05, 2007 at 03:16 PM

1 ppb mercury = Damages body's ability to excrete Hg (Parran et al., Toxicol Sci 2005).

2 ppb mercury = US EPA limit for drinkable water.

20 ppb mercury = Developing snail neurons damaged & killed by inorganic mercury (Leong et al. NeuroReport. 2001); and both human skin & notocord tissues damaged (Morton et al., JAMA 1948)

20 ppb mercury = Dendritic cells damaged, calcium channels interrupted (UC-Davis MIND Institute, 2006).

200 ppb mercury = Mercury level in liquid EPA labels "hazardous waste."

600 ppb mercury = Some "trace" level infant vaccines.

1,000 ppb mercury = Hepatitis B vaccine given at birth.

4,000 ppb mercury = 0.25-mL injections of Thimerosal-containing vaccines (FDA CBER's definition of "trace").

50,000 ppb mercury = "Preservative" level mercury in flu, meningococcal and Tetanus vaccines to kids 7 and older.

Posted by: nhokkanen | July 05, 2007 at 03:59 PM

Judge Bazelon was for decades the senior judge on the US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, and a close associate of Justice William Brennan's; the pair had met in 1956. Justice William O. Douglas and President Johnson would be their sometime companions on trips to baseball games.

Bazelon served with Warren Burger on the same DC Court of Appeals for over a decade, and the two grew to be not just professional rivals, but personal enemies as well.

The Washington Post would note in 1981 that during the Warren Court era, lawyers who wanted a Bazelon opinion upheld would do well to mention the judge's name as many times as possible in their briefs... "One mention of this name was worth 100 pages of legal research."

Bazelon became a primary source of Justice Brennan's law clerks

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