Monday, January 14, 2008

Unfounded opinion

A Maryland Circuit court judge has found that Professor Boyd Haley, PhD, and four other self-described autism experts are not qualified to testify in a vaccine-related lawsuit. The decision followed ten days of court testimony.

The judge wrote that Haley and the others are not qualified by "knowledge, skill, experience, training or education" to link vaccines to autism.

One the other hand, after reviewing the science of autism for six months, KOMU did find Prof. Haley qualified by "knowledge, skill, experience, training or education" to link vaccines to autism.

What did KOMU find about Prof. Haley that the circuit court judge missed? Some viewers would like to know.
MADISON, N.J., Jan. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Wyeth announced today that The Honorable Stuart R. Berger of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City in Baltimore, Maryland, has granted Wyeth's motion to preclude plaintiffs' expert witnesses in an alleged vaccine injury case from testifying that exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines can cause autism. The court's decision, in the case of Blackwell, et al. v. Sigma Aldrich, Inc., et al., followed a 10-day evidentiary hearing held last August.

Judge Berger found that "thimerosal in vaccines does not cause or contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism," noting that "it is generally accepted in the relevant scientific community that autism is genetic in origin except in rare instances of prenatal exposures to certain substances at defined periods during pregnancy."

Judge Berger held that plaintiffs had failed to show that the methodologies underlying their expert witnesses' opinions are generally accepted as reliable in the scientific community. He also held that plaintiffs' expert witnesses were not qualified "by knowledge, skill, experience, training or education" or that they could not set forth a sufficient factual basis to support the causation opinions that plaintiffs wished to present to the jury.

"We believe that the court's decision is in complete accord with the overwhelming scientific evidence that there is no link between vaccines and autism. The court correctly applied Maryland law to bar unfounded opinion testimony on scientific issues," says Daniel J. Thomasch, lead trial counsel for Wyeth in this litigation, who is a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is quite revealing that an expert in the toxicology of mercury is considered irrelevant in considering the toxicology of mercury.

Instead endlessly massaged epidemiology (which is the basis for the consensus options) is considered more important.

Note the admission that fetal exposure to "certain substances" is a cause of autism.

Also note that while it is definitively stated that the etiology of the whole broad range of neurodevelopmental disorders referred to as autism is genetic, the genes cannot be identified even after decades of genetic analysis of autistics.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Geier's testimony was also disallowed.

Unknown said...

Dr. Geier's testimony was also disallowed.

In other news, dog bites man.

Anonymous said...

The coverup is getting more obvious everyday.

Anonymous said...

To bad the evidence wasn't as obvious.

Anonymous said...

If there was evidence, then there would be no need for conspiracy theories.

Anonymous said...

Evidence based medicine would require a titer check to justify a booster. Millions of useless, potentially auto-immune provocative boosters are give out of pure convenience rather than on evidence of need everyday.

The people of this nation deserve better science in understaning the rates of neurobehavioral disfunction being induced by unneccessary boosters. The CDC and frankly no one else in medicine can debate the fact that a huge majority of boosters are given without need.

We can cover all these diseases and do it with less vaccines (which are in short supply I might add) of we just titer check and calculate decay rates to anticipate booster need individually.

EFFIIIMD

Anonymous said...

What does that have to do with "mercury induced autism"? Isn't that what KOMU's series is about?

If you're truly concerned about public health and herd immunity, then you need to take a stronger stand against needless scaremongering that puts people off from having their children vaccinated in the first place. Titer Meter® spam doesn't count.

Anonymous said...

Stick to marketing ANB. Is this the CJ "communications" company that is really feeling libeled on this blog?>>
http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_hycckh

KOMU's piece is on the whole spectrum of autism, including treatment, impact on society and families; fear mongering is really what has prevented many coercible MDs from both inside and outside of pediatrics to not open their mouths about the concerns of what's happening to our children. Political and economic info-assassins who are muzzling debate in science on this issue end up making the bridging of the gap via my approaches to this problem quite difficult, but in the end, time is on the side of booster reductions showing decreased neurobehavorial problems, so please tell everyone at the CDC to increase the adjuvant schedule so I can make the science stick sooner and with as smaller population.

A mature approach to medical decision making and vaccination is posted all over this blog and unfortunately the people trying to hide these weak effects of vaccination on behavior and development have dug their own grave on ignoring good scientists and physicians who are going to pull the billion dollar cloak off of this issue with very simple ideas such as protocol comparisons in conjunction with the last stand of a democracy-a free press and the FOIA.


Clearly some smart people have major concerns and major conflicts of interest as reflected in this document:
http://www.safeminds.org/legislation/foia/Simpsonwood_Transcript.pdf
I gave Grand Rounds yesterday in Bismarck and asked a crowd of colleagues including some brilliant pediatrics colleagues if they had ever seen this document-not a one had.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO STAY OUT OF STATE GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF MEDICINE. EACH STATE SHOULD START THEIR OWN VAX SCHEDULE AND THE CULTURE OF COERCIVE INSTRUCTION FROM THE FEDS WILL FALL APART LIKE THE HOUSE OF CARDS IT IS.

The federal government cannot be trusted and this whole debate is going to bring back a lot of states rights activists in medicine and elsewhere for that matter. Too many players in DC are screwing up this country, its kids, our environment and our medical culture.


You really look conflicted here in your inability to debate me, are you sure you don't own pharmaceutical stocks, Merck, GSK, Lily, etc?


FEW AMERICAN JOURNALISTS HAVE THE GUTS OF THESE GUYS BECAUSE THE ATTACK DOGS LIKE YOU DIS-INFO THE SITUATION.

As for Thimerosal's role in this autism epidemic, it is CLEARLY a potentiator of neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities (just look at all the basic science, and realize that there is no ethical way to prove it in humans). A PRUDENT PHYSICIAN WHO HAS SEEN ALL THAT I HAVE SEEN ON THIS CRAP WOULD NEVER ADVOCATE ITS USE OR DEFEND ITS FORMER USE OR BE JOYOUS AT THE RISING AUTISM RATES IN CALIFORNIA WITH A LITTLE LESS IN THE POPULACE OR KEEP THEIR MOUTH SHUT ABOUT IT ESPECIALLY WHEN NAYSAYERS WHO ARE NOT MDs KEEP ENTICING ME TO THE DEBATE. Again, heavy metal gadolinum chelates have been blackboxed after much less injury and only a few years of concern rather than DECADES-another irony since there is no FEDERAL CZAR OF IMAGING, but there are federal czars of vaccination that have their careers on the line to protect this lie.

Cultural problem is that 99% of MDs don't do their homework, they rely on pharma to do it for them. In children who have higher than normal half-lives of heavy metals due to genetic polymorphism in many that would not be as problematic without the additive pollution of many industries including coal, oil, agriculture, electronics, metal smelting, etc. The CDC has failed our nation in this epidemic, such as the dastardly handling of the Brick Township, New Jersey Cluster. But maybe thats because the federal government and the anti-science administration we currently have is ripping apart the EPA and muzzling anyone that would come after their huge campaign financiers in industry. So vaccines are not entirely to blame but they are the most real form of directed micro-pollution at the hand of those who are doing harm first for a great good, may be you should get after the coal industry for the mercury issue here as vehemently as you are debating the need to protect multiple mercury exposures for our children.

The career of BOYD HALEY is a PROFILE IN COURAGE waiting to be written. I am sure JFK's daughter would be quite interested in his side of this story.


Now back to my Rolling Stones . . . TIIIIMMEE IS ONNN MMMYYYY SSSIDE.

Titer checks don't need titer meter (thanks for the registered TM), they just need a culture change in pediatrics which will be driven by American consumerism and parental concerns over the problems with unneeded overvacciantion and boostering that is done on pure convenience, not individually based evidence of need.

AS FOR NEEDLESS SCAREMONGERING, IT IS COMING FROM MOTHERS WHO SAW THERE KIDS SUFFER AT THE HANDS OF VACCINES. It is perfectly understandable human behavior especially in the instances where there is clear temporal relationship to the neuorlogical injury that is the denied institutionally. This is creating a great fish bowl for suing pediatricians who failed to get MRI's after patients concerns were dismissed.

EFFIIIMD
PS: Thanks again ANB for helping me articulate these things, you keep helping drive the debate towards productive goals for society such as I advocate here. How is it a "bone-fide" researcher can't figure out a safer way to vaccinate individuals than the geniuses at the CDC?

Anonymous said...

Yes, I'm happy to help you articulate better. I'm encouraged by the way you combine ALL CAPS with run on sentences, but I'm afraid I can't take credit for those.

Is a "temporal relationship" the same as a "coincidence"?

Anonymous said...

Are you still sending journalists to KOMU from your "unbiased" scientifically based "resource" site? Do you wish you hadn't now?

Is it a coincidence that you are a marketer rather than a scientist or physician?

Anonymous said...

What incredibly inane questions. Are you drunk?

Anonymous said...

Are you 13? Do you have the guts to type your name for once?