records in the Vaccine Safety Datalink, J Neurol Sci (2008), doi:10.1016/j.jns.2008.04.002
I am not one to flutter about (HA!) having the life sucked out of me by the Internets
okay Yes I am, but I really started to read this study and I thought KRAP..maybe that damn thimerosal is the culprit (knowing full well that Jake had no thimerosal in his vaccines...) It's published by the Journal of Neurological Sciences it really seems legit, but it kept saying funny things (a direct quote follows):
"For example, 37% of autism cases in the study were diagnosedI am pretty sure if you re-read that a few times it seems like they ADDED autism diagnosis where there were none. They added them because in other years there were more? Because it seemed like there should have been more? Isn't that not exactly examining the data? Isn't that actually making up the data? I went poking around the Internet and discovered that I was not the only person to think it was a leetle bit off.. a much better explanation of all of the faults can be found over at Epi Wonk . Thank you Epi Wonk for being so smrt
after 5 years old with about 50% diagnosed after
4.5 years old. This is a conservative estimate since it includes
the 2 years (1995–1996) that had shorter follow-up times.
Examination of the distribution of age of diagnosis by birth
year for autism revealed that only about 15% of cases were
diagnosed after 5 years of age in the 1995 birth cohortwhile the
1996 cohort had no cases diagnosed after 5 years of age and
only 3.5% of cases diagnosed between 4.5 and 5 years of age.
Based on the average age at diagnosis for all cohorts, the 1995
count of autism cases was increased by 45 cases with the assumption
that all of these would have been added in the 5 year+
age group (bringing this percentage close to the overall average
of 37%diagnosed after 5 years of age). The same was done for
1996, but the number of cases was augmented by 80 because it
was assumed that these would be diagnosed in the 4.5 to 5 and
5+ groups essentially bringing the percentage diagnosed after
age 4.5 close to the overall average of 50% diagnosed after
4.5 years of age. The newaugmented frequency counts of cases
in 1995 and 1996 birth cohorts were then used as the new case
counts in the analysis."
(If you rad through responses to her post you'll also find some of the best crazy comments by John Best who is a very angry man who I will not bother to link to.)
Anywhoo I know this has been out for about a month but as usual I am slow to respond. BTW it also seems like half of the references in the "study" reference one Geier or another. Isn't that a little bit suspect as well?
okay all done...
Lucy dislocated her elbow today threatening to throw off our entire "escape from Deadwood" plan... I thought she cracked her wrist the way she was holding it. I was holding her hand when she decided she did not want to go get her special needs brother from the short bus (we need to drive down the hill to pick him up) She dropped to the floor and twisted at the same time. I heard a horrible sound. What I heard was her little bone slipping out from between her other two little bones. Yechh. She cried. I cried. I made an appointment to go to the urgent care where the doc promptly shoved her little elbow back together (making me feel a little like an idget since my dad and I had JUST talked about this happening to me 6 hours prior). It is called nursemaid's elbow. I called it milkmaid elbow in a Tweet earlier but I have now figured it out.
So she is fine now and Jake is sleeping soundly, and it is only 85 degrees outside at 12:20am and I only need to pack Lucy and Jake by tomorrow am. No big whoop.
I think I shall go to bed.
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