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David Whitlock
needham, MA
Doing research on global warming mitigation
and neurodevelopment as mediated through nitric oxide physiology (see my blog). One thing it can help is to stop the cycle of violence.
Recent Activity
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David commented on the petition |Is this move by Verizon a response to bank debit fees?
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David signed the petition |
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David commented on the article |I think this is one reason there will never be a prenatal test for autism. The genetics is simply too complex and there are many factors that do not involve genetics (monozygous twins can be discordant for ASDs).
All tests are going to have a false positive rate and a false negative rate. You can decrease the false negative rate but only by increasing the false positive rate. You can make the false negative rate go to zero if you make the false positive rate 100%.
In the example with Downs here, if the false negative rate is 1%, and the cost to the provider of that test is $14 million per false negative, they need to either charge 1/100 of the cost of that false negative for every test, or $140,000 per test. The alternative is to increase the number of false positives such that what ever they do charge per test is enough to cover the false negatives. If they charge $1k per test, then they need 14,000 tests to pay for a single false negative. If the false negative rate is 1 out of 100, then they need false positives that are 13,900 out of 14,000 to get enough tests (14,000) to pay for a single false negative ($14 million). -
David commented on the article |Bernadine Healey is not writing as a doctor or scientist but as a craven politician pandering to the anti-vax contingent.
The anti-vax zealots have been saying "one day it will be proven" for years. Every year more and more evidence lines up against the idea that vaccines cause autism. Did you read the autism omnibus court decisions? The Special Masters said it wasn't even a close call. The "evidence" the plaintiffs presented was of shockingly poor quality and they even said that the plaintiffs had been badly represented by lawyers who trotted out such unqualified "experts".
Détente is a curious term to use. It was originally used to signify reduced hostility, an attempt to bring the parties back from the brink of a civilization ending war. The Soviets wanted arms reductions so they could reduce spending on an arms race the leaders knew they could not win no matter their rhetoric. The West wanted the Soviets to respect the basic human rights of its citizens as outlined in the UN Universal declaration of human rights.
I suspect that what the anti-vaxers want is a reduction in the rhetoric put in the main stream media. When MSM goes to check the facts on vaccinations and autism, they come across the same facts that the pro-vaccine camp is using to show that vaccines are an important and positive health intervention and that there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism. These are not the "facts" that the anti-vaxers are using. Fair minded people agree with the statement by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts." The anti-vaxers want to end the "war" fought with facts that the leaders know they can not win no matter their rhetoric.
I see this as similar to the Soviets wanting no discussions of human rights. The Soviets wanted their own "facts", their own definitions of "human rights", straight out of Orwell's 1984. The Soviets wanted no "interference" with their internal affairs, such as how they dealt with dissidents. Anti-vaxers want no "interference" with how they treat their children, even if that means subjecting them to experimental treatments that have never been tested and have no plausible therapeutic mechanism. Even if that means deliberately subjecting children to diseases that are vaccine preventable. Fair minded people call that child abuse. If what the anti-vaxers do were more widely known, I think that fair minded people would be able to see them for what they are. Preventing that transparency is the goal of Bernadine Healey's détente. A goal I reject.
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David commented on the article |This is a great relief, that rational thought and science has prevailed over emotion and greed.
The decisions have been posted.
http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/node/5026
let us hope that this stops (or at least reduces) the waste of time, resources and energy spent chasing the mirage of vaccines causing autism so that those resources can be used more effectively. -
David signed the petition | -
David signed the petition | -
David commented on the article |When the issue of prenatal testing for ASDs comes up, I wish people would ask what level of false-positives would be acceptable. In other words, how many "normal" fetuses would a person be willing to abort to ensure not having an ASD child?
All tests have some level of false positives and false negatives. There is no biologically based test for autism. The only tests are behavioral based. Right now, the only way to tell if someone has an ASD is for them to grow to an age where it can be diagnosed by behaviors.
If any prenatal test is available in the US, it will (very likely) be highly skewed to prevent any false negatives (that is the number of false positives will be high) because a false negative will present significant financial liability for the company doing the testing. A false negative will (very likely) mean a lawsuit for wrongful birth and compensation for a lifetime of care. If we look at it from a purely financial account (the way any insurance company will look at it), a false negative has a cost that must be covered by all of the positive tests (true or false) plus all of the true negatives. The surest and easiest way to decrease the number of false negatives and increase the number of positives (true or false) plus true negatives is to call some negative results positive. -
David signed the petition |
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Organizations
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The Autistic Self Advocacy Network0 Actions 0 Recruits
