A revolution in thought

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If it is true that boys get more autism than girls, we should also see more cases of boys with autism in the Amish population, especially if there is inbreeding

For something with a genetic component to manifest, that genetic component must be present in the gene pool. That is why inbreeding can cause high incidence various traits. If a genetic trait is prevalent in a closed population, more members will exhibit it and pass it on. If the genetic trait is absent or rare, then no or few members will exhibit it. Look at the blue skinned family in Kentucky for a great example of this isolation in action.

The Fugate progeny had a genetic condition called methemoglobinemia, which was passed down through a recessive gene and blossomed through intermarriage.

What was said was if autism has a strong genetic component, and the Amish do not have whatever that genetic factor might be in their closed population, then there would be little to no autism. If they did happen to carry that hypothetical genetic factor, then they would have a much higher rate of autism...again due to lack of genetic diversity.

Closed population studies are great when looking for isolated genetic factors.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Because of this wrong way of judging my father's credibility, it may take another 100 years for this knowledge to be brought to light. But there's no doubt in my mind that it will, one day, be brought to light, probably when people realize that you cannot judge a person's skill by looking at his formal credentials only.

Nobody has said to look at credentials ONLY. Not one person.

[Vivisectus]

Tell me: if credentials are so unimportant, would you trust your butcher to perform brain surgery on you? I mean, how can you tell if he is not super-talented in brain surgery? And hey, just because he never went to medical school does not mean he cannot be a top-notch brain surgeon?

[Vivisectus]

If it is true that boys get more autism than girls, we should also see more cases of boys with autism in the Amish population, especially if there is inbreeding

Why "Especially if there is inbreeding?"

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

For something with a genetic component to manifest, that genetic component must be present in the gene pool. That is why inbreeding can cause high incidence various traits. If a genetic trait is prevalent in a closed population, more members will exhibit it and pass it on. If the genetic trait is absent or rare, then no or few members will exhibit it. Look at the blue skinned family in Kentucky for a great example of this isolation in action.

What was said was if autism has a strong genetic component, and the Amish do not have whatever that genetic factor might be in their closed population, then there would be little to no autism. If they did happen to carry that hypothetical genetic factor, they would have a much higher rate of autism...again due to lack of genetic diversity.

Closed population studies are great when looking for isolated genetic factors.

No Amish population has been proven to have a genetic defect whether they were closed population studies or not. Show me the proof LadyShea that genetic factors cause no autism in this population, or your theories are no more than a guess which no one here seems to pick up. Why is that? Never mind, we all know why.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Tell me: if credentials are so unimportant, would you trust your butcher to perform brain surgery on you? I mean, how can you tell if he is not super-talented in brain surgery? And hey, just because he never went to medical school does not mean he cannot be a top-notch brain surgeon?

If he wan't trained, of course not, but if he was trained, the damn credentials mean nothing. I want someone who is experienced (key word) regardless of the damn credentials which can be misleading.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If he wan't trained, of course not, but if he was trained, the damn credentials mean nothing. I want someone who is experienced (key word) regardless of the damn credentials which can be misleading.

...but that is what credentials are, you goose. Evidence of completed training, which in turn allows you to reasonably expect a certain level of competence.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No Amish population has been proven to have a genetic defect whether they were closed population studies or not. Show me the proof LadyShea that genetic factors cause no autism in this population, or your theories are no more than a guess which no one here seems to pick up. Why is that? Never mind, we all know why.

Who said anything about genetic defects? Who said anything about proof? This is all hypothetical! See the if, and, and then in my statement above? You aren't even reading anything are you? If autism has a genetic component, and an isolated population lacks those genetics, then autism wouldn't be prevalent in that isolated population.

Isolated populations with a high incidence of genes for red hair will have more redheads. An isolated population that lacks the genes for red hair will have no redheads. This is all that is being said...nothing about defects. Everyone but you knows exactly what I am talking about...so there is nothing to "pick up".

You are losing it. You need to go market the book or plan a wedding or something.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

...but that is what credentials are, you goose. Evidence of completed training, which in turn allows you to reasonably expect a certain level of competence.

Exactly! peacegirl, credentials are nothing more than evidence of training or experience. What is wrong with you?

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No Amish population has been proven to have a genetic defect whether they were closed population studies or not. Show me the proof LadyShea that genetic factors cause no autism in this population, or your theories are no more than a guess which no one here seems to pick up. Why is that? Never mind, we all know why.

Ah the Dunning-Kruger effect in action again

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

The author of that article provides a possible answer to his own question in his own article (see the parts that I have highlighted). If the hypothesis of a genetic disorder turns out to be correct (or even partially correct) that would help to explain the purported lower incidence of autism among the Amish. The Amish represent an isolated and highly inbred population. If there is a significant genetic component to autism then it could just be the case that this particular genetic component is, to a significant degree, absent from the Amish population. This certainly merits further study.

Bumping for demonstration. Please READ what is actually being written, peacegirl, and quit seeing what isn't there.

You do it almost every post! It's like everything is dogs pressing levers in your mind!

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Because of this wrong way of judging my father's credibility, it may take another 100 years for this knowledge to be brought to light. But there's no doubt in my mind that it will, one day, be brought to light, probably when people realize that you cannot judge a person's skill by looking at his formal credentials only.

People on this forum have not, in my opinion, judged Lessans on his credentials or his lack of credentials, but rather have judged his work and found it lacking. The mention of lack of credentials was a way of explaining the general poor quality of scholarship and the numerous errors in his reasoning. As usual, Peacegirl, you've got it backwards, or you are misrepresenting it on purpose.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

He brought it up to refute this woman's claim that mercury can get through the blood brain barrier.

That's incorrect as a simple matter of fact. The claim of the dumbass chiropractor who wrote that article on Mercola.com stated that "[t]he mercury in vaccines, however, is in the form of thimerosal, which is 50 times more toxic than plain old mercury." The support () for that statement consisted in part of the patently false claims that "[t]here's no blood-brain barrier in infants" and "[i]nfants don't produce bile."

Hence, the claim was not that "mercury can't get through the blood-brain barrier." Rather, the claim was that infants don't have a blood-brain barrier at all, a laughably false statement. The falsity of that statement -- as well as the falsity of claim that infants don't produce bile -- means that much of the "support" for the author's contention that the mercury in vaccines is "50 times more toxic than plain old mercury" is imaginary.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Why else would he have brought it up?

TLR can speak for himself, of course, but I suspect he brought it up to show that the author of that article was full of shit in contenting that infants don't have a blood-brain barrier and that infants don't produce bile. I'm p. sure it's just that simple.

Don't get me wrong here. I was more than happy to see the false claims at issue appearing in that article. It provides further confirmation -- though none was really needed -- that anything posted at Mercola.com is unreliable and can safely be dismissed out of hand.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

We're not on a game show;

Agreed. This whole anti-vax train wreck falls way below game show level on any reasonable actual worth scale.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

we're talking about the possibility of mercury in infants being the cause of neurological deficits.

Can we at least agree that anti-vaxers are shooting themselves in the foot by making patently, laughably and idiotically false claims like infants lack a blood-brain barrier and don't produce bile?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Tell me: if credentials are so unimportant, would you trust your butcher to perform brain surgery on you? I mean, how can you tell if he is not super-talented in brain surgery? And hey, just because he never went to medical school does not mean he cannot be a top-notch brain surgeon?

Actually, a little boy in India (I believe) loved medicine and learned the tricks of the trade. He did surgery on someone in an emergency. This person was forever grateful because he would have died had the boy not been there. Motto of story: You never know what knowledge a person has until you need him.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by thedoc

People on this forum have not, in my opinion, judged Lessans on his credentials or his lack of credentials, but rather have judged his work and found it lacking. The mention of lack of credentials was a way of explaining the general poor quality of scholarship and the numerous errors in his reasoning. As usual, Peacegirl, you've got it backwards, or you are misrepresenting it on purpose.

You keep talking about numerous errors? What errors are you referring to? And don't refer to his discovery on the eyes.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

You do it almost every post! It's like everything is dogs pressing levers in your mind!

Usually inbreeding causes a mutation that is not desired. It is something that goes awry due to inbreeding. So you are saying that only the Amish would be immune to autism malfunction? That doesn't sound right. But it certainly could be used to slow down any investigation in order to find out the truth.

[LadyShea]

All of the easily verifiable errors had to do with the eyes. Why can't that be mentioned?

[LadyShea]

Absent or present, you can spin it anyway you want. An entire population doesn't, under normal circumstances, have an absent gene that would cause this kind of mutation. Not all Amish live in the same area or have the same exact lineage.

Yep she's stark, raving mad.

What mutation? Nobody has said a goddamn thing about mutations.

The Amish are less genetically diverse than the general population due to purposeful isolation. That is not "normal circumstances", that's the whole point!

In humans, founder effects can arise from cultural isolation, and inevitably, endogamy. For example, the Amish populations in the United States exhibit founder effects. This is because they have grown from a very few founders, have not recruited newcomers, and tend to marry within the community. Though still rare, phenomena such as polydactyly (extra fingers and toes, a symptom of Ellis-van Creveld syndrome) are more common in Amish communities than in the American population at large.[17] Maple syrup urine disease (MSUD) affects approximately 1 out of 180,000 infants in the general population.[18] Due in part to the founder effect,[19] however, the disease has a much higher prevalence in children of Amish, Mennonite, and Jewish descent.[20][18][21] Similarly, there is a high frequency of fumarase deficiency among the 10,000 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a community which practices both endogamy and polygyny, where it is estimated 75 to 80 percent of the community are blood relatives of just two men—founders John Y. Barlow and Joseph Smith Jessop.[22] Founder effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The founder effect is a dramatic decrease in genetic diversity caused through the formation of a small colony of individuals which remains isolated. The founder effect contributes to genetic drift, which causes certain genetic traits to vanish or become more abundant. Several human populations provide interesting sources of study for geneticists interested in the founder effect, as do numerous animal populations.

In a classic example of the founder effect, a small group splits off from a larger population, much as the Amish did during the Reformation. When a small group remains endogamous, meaning that people marry within the community, it can create a situation in which genetic diversity is extremely limited, because no new members are welcomed into the community. The founder effect is common among isolated religious communities and island populations, both of whom tend to be cut off from the larger population. What is the Founder Effect?

In other cases, groups have isolated themselves deliberately, such as in the case of the Amish. These small populations often demonstrate increase in recessive characteristics, some of which are harmless, such as a tendency to have very light hair, and others of which can be fatal, such as Tay-Sachs disease among Ashkenazi Jews. http://www.life123.com/parenting/edu...ariation.shtml

[Cynthia of Syracuse]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Bumping for demonstration. Please READ what is actually being written, peacegirl, and quit seeing what isn't there.

You do it almost every post! It's like everything is dogs pressing levers in your mind!

Of course. Janis is incapable of anything beyond binary thinking. On/Off, Hot/Cold, Right/Wrong, With Me/Against Me. Her existence is a series of forced-choice events, as though she got stuck in (or regressed to) the pre-operational stage of intellectual development. Well, except for the getting less egocentric part.

What makes the problem intractable in her case is that she's had a lifetime to shore up her defenses. Can't create or follow a logical argument from premise to conclusion? Can't evaluate or integrate new data and adjust one's thinking accordingly? Can only address issues in terms of the self rather than abstractly? Then those skills must be unimportant, if not actually bad. Its like a first-grader who's having difficulties learning to read deciding firmly that "books are dumb." Understandable in a six-year-old, utterly pathetic in a sixty-year-old. Her emotional development seems to have stopped at the same level as her intellect. Thinking daddy is the bestest, bravest, smartest, handsomest man ever in the whole wide world is entirely appropriate when you're four. If you're still thinking that way at forty-plus, you've got issues.

The Lessans/Rafael saga in a nutshell:

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Usually inbreeding causes a mutation that is not desired. It is something that goes awry due to inbreeding. So you are saying that only the Amish would be immune to autism malfunction? That doesn't sound right. But it certainly could be used to slow down any investigation in order to find out the truth.

You haven't a clue what you are talking about.

Inbreeding can propagate/concentrate any genetic trait or disposition: neutral, beneficial, or detrimental. An isolated group may have a higher incidence of green eyes (neutral), a higher incidence of heritable diseases (detrimental), or a reduced incidence of cancer (beneficial) or combination (see the people of Ecuador who have a rare form of dwarfism as well as no cancer or diabetes)

Autism has not been shown to be due to a genetic malfunction. However, IF there is a genetic component, it might be that the Amish lack that genetic disposition or have a low incidence of it...offering another possible explanation for the alleged reduced autism rate amongst the Amish.

What are you finding so difficult to understand here?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Exactly! peacegirl, credentials are nothing more than evidence of training or experience. What is wrong with you?

That is true, but most people look at someone's formal credentials, like Ph.D, doctor, or some other title next to their name. You know that what I'm saying is true so why are you fighting me?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

All of the easily verifiable errors had to do with the eyes. Why can't that be mentioned?

Why? Because people have already made up their minds where this claim is concerned. They believe there are errors, and they will see what they want to see. There is no way I can open up anyone's mind to wait for more empirical proof. I will not go back to that conversation.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Yep she's stark, raving mad.

What mutation? Nobody has said a goddamn thing about mutations.

The Amish are less genetically diverse than the general population due to purposeful isolation. That is not "normal circumstances", that's the whole point!

This does not contradict what I said. Most heritable diseases are due to both parent's carrying a recessive trait that leads to the child having the disease. If it were true that the Amish don't carry this autistic gene, then that would imply the general population does carry the recessive gene of autism, which has not been proven.

[LadyShea]

Most heritable diseases are due to both parent's carrying a recessive trait that leads to the child having the disease. If it was true that the Amish don't carry this autistic gene, then that would imply the general population does carry the recessive gene of autism, which has not been proven.

Of course it hasn't been proven, nobody said it has. See all the uses of if and maybe and might? Nobody is making any positive claims here. Please read what is written.

And please note that not all things that have a genetic component can be traced to a single gene, and nobody has said there is an "autism gene". A genetic component has been posited and some evidence indicates that higher incidence of higher rates of autism in families, which may point to a genetic component.

"Those older studies used what's called an 'affected sib pair' design that looks for genetic markers in siblings with autism," says Constantino. "That approach has worked well for single-gene disorders, but autism is a complex disease that may involve many genes that each make very small contributions. When that's the case, it's harder to find genetic markers."

So Constantino's group, in collaboration with the other co-principal investigator, Daniel H. Geschwind, M.D., Ph.D., and neuropsychiatric and genetics researchers at UCLA, is using a different approach. They report their findings in the April issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

"Although we once believed you either had this condition or you didn't, we now know that there's a continuous distribution of autism symptoms from very mild to very severe," Constantino says. http://www.news-medical.net/news/2007/05/10/24991.aspx

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

That's incorrect as a simple matter of fact. The claim of the dumbass chiropractor who wrote that article on Mercola.com stated that "[t]he mercury in vaccines, however, is in the form of thimerosal, which is 50 times more toxic than plain old mercury." The support () for that statement consisted in part of the patently false claims that "[t]here's no blood-brain barrier in infants" and "[i]nfants don't produce bile."

Hence, the claim was not that "mercury can't get through the blood-brain barrier." Rather, the claim was that infants don't have a blood-brain barrier at all, a laughably false statement. The falsity of that statement -- as well as the falsity of claim that infants don't produce bile -- means that much of the "support" for the author's contention that the mercury in vaccines is "50 times more toxic than plain old mercury" is imaginary.

I don't think that is correct. Thimerosal is more dangerous due to the type of mercury it is.

Mercury — Thimersol & Neurodevelopment Outcomes

Affidavit Of Boyd E. Haley. Professor And Chair. Department Of Chemistry. University Of Kentucky
Thimerosal Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopment Outcomes
Forward
Thimerosal or merthiolate is a derivative of thiolsalicylate where ethyl mercury is attached though the sulfur. It is defined as a preservative or anti microbial in medical use. This anti microbial action is dependent on thimerosal breaking down releasing ethyl mercury that can penetrate cell membranes and bind to intracellular enzymes, inhibiting them, and causing cell death. Further, in certain biological environments the ethyl mercury can further break down releasing mercury cation (Hg2+). Hg2+ is also very reactive with enzymes and proteins inhibiting their biological functions and causing cell injury or death. Both ethyl mercury and Hg2+ are very neuro toxic compounds. However, ethyl mercury is more rapidly partitioned into the hydrophobic (fatty) tissues of the central nervous system and is a more potent neuro toxin than Hg2+ based on this “partitioning factor”. It is this partitioning factor that makes organic mercurials such as dimethyl mercury so neuro toxically lethal (this is the compound that caused the death of a Dartmouth University chemistry professor after she was exposed to a drop or two on her gloved hand). The concern with organic mercurials, such as thimerosal, is that such compounds can be perceived as “pro toxicants” just as certain pharmaceuticals can be classified as “pro drugs”. This means that the original compound, e.g. thimerosal, is less reactive giving the compound time to partition into certain areas of the body before it breaks down releasing the ethyl mercury and then further releasing Hg2+. However, while attaching ethyl mercury to thiolsalicylate makes the ethyl mercury less reactive it most likely allows increased partitioning into the central nervous system before the ethyl mercury is released and thereby, increases the neuro toxicity per unit ethyl mercury involved. Considerable caution must be taken when stating what is the “toxic level” of mercury and any mercury containing compound. Humans are not rats in a pristine cage where their environment can be controlled to ensure that other toxicities and infections are not occurring. The level of mercury that would cause toxicity in a healthy individual is much higher than what would be needed to cause a toxic effect in an individual that is ill or under oxidative stress. This is because additional stresses lower the amount of protective compounds that bind mercury and render it less harmful. If an individual is low on these protective compounds, then less mercury or thimerosal would be needed to cause a clinical effect. Below I will present my interpretation of our research and that from other laboratories that focus on the potential toxicity of injected thimerosal in the vaccine mixture.

Biochemical Toxicity Studies
In my laboratory we have recently done an evaluation of the potential in vitro toxicity of vaccines containing thimerosal as a “preservative” versus those vaccines not containing thimerosal. In these preliminary studies, vaccines with thimerosal added consistently demonstrated in vitro toxicity that was markedly greater than the non thimerosal or low thimerosal containing vaccines. We also compared the toxicity of the vaccine solutions with solutions of pure thimerosal and with solutions of mercury chloride. Mercury is a known neurotoxin and its mechanism of neurotoxicity has been studied...

Mercury -- Thimersol & Neurodevelopment Outcomes - Vaccine Ingredients - About Vaccines - Vaccination Risk Awareness Network

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Why else would he have brought it up?

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

TLR can speak for himself, of course, but I suspect he brought it up to show that the author of that article was full of shit in contenting that infants don't have a blood-brain barrier and that infants don't produce bile. I'm p. sure it's just that simple.

Don't get me wrong here. I was more than happy to see the false claims at issue appearing in that article. It provides further confirmation -- though none was really needed -- that anything posted at Mercola.com is unreliable and can safely be dismissed out of hand.

How can you say that Stephen? That's a crock.

Respected medical opinion-makers such as Dr. Snyderman and Dr. Offit mislead the public when they categorically state that there is “no link” between vaccines and autism. Their misguided conclusions are based on incomplete knowledge and misinterpretations, and likely to be influenced by personal and professional conflicts of interest; conflicts illustrated by their intimate and lucrative financial bonds with GlaxoSmithKline (Snyderman) and Merck (Offit), - two of the world’s leading vaccine manufacturers.

There is a host of reasons why the cavalier dismissal, by scientists and physicians, of any possible vaccine-autism association is premature, shortsighted, and wrong.

But first, some clarification about terminology. Frequently, a counter-claim to those made by the likes of Snyderman and Offit is that ‘epidemiological’ studies cannot be used to establish or refute, causality.

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of disease in the human population; the basic science and fundamental practice of public health (Nordness, 2006).

Epidemiological studies may be descriptive or analytical (see for example Hennekens and Buring, 1987), Descriptive epidemiology aims to describe the general characteristics of disease distribution in relation to person, place and time. Studies of this type provide information to health care providers and those responsible for resource allocation and may also be used to generate hypotheses about disease causality, but their design precludes them from being used to test hypotheses.

The studies cited in support of ‘no vaccine-autism association’ are not flawed because they are epidemiological, they are, almost invariably, flawed because their aims, design, analytic procedures or conclusions have been inappropriate, and in some instances, plain wrong.

Vaccines and Autism - What Do Epidemiological Studies Really Tell Us? - AGE OF AUTISM

Originally Posted by peacegirl

We're not on a game show;

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

Agreed. This whole anti-vax train wreck falls way below game show level on any reasonable actual worth scale.

No it does not.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

we're talking about the possibility of mercury in infants being the cause of neurological deficits.

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

Can we at least agree that anti-vaxers are shooting themselves in the foot by making patently, laughably and idiotically false claims like infants lack a blood-brain barrier and don't produce bile?

You are generalizing. This was one woman's error. How can you implicate an entire group of researchers the likes of neuro-scientists and Ph.Ds, pediatricians, as well as people whose children have been directly hurt by vaccines, just because you want to have the final word?