The Tucson-based group, founded in 1943, bills itself promisingly as “the only national organization consistently supporting the principles of the free market in medical practice”. It’s published material favorable to liability reform in its Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (formerly Medical Sentinel). Before citing to AAPS publications as one might cite to JAMA or The Lancet, however, it would be wise to read this and learn more about the group’s indulgence for anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridation and anti-gay crankery, as well as what one of its contributors regards as the superiority of “the creation religion of Jehovah” over the “religion of evolutionary humanism”. On the vaccine issue, at least, “the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons [has been] transformed into one of the primary media allies of litigators and plaintiffs seeking to review medical care after the fact, and find legal fault with physicians, vaccine developers and public health authorities who exercised accepted standards of care prevalent at the time they made their decisions.” (Kathleen Seidel, Mar. 12).
Posts Tagged ‘vaccines’
“There’s just no there there”
Mark Kleiman, on the alleged link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines (Mar. 6), commenting on the latest from Respectful Insolence (Mar. 6). Orac of Respectful Insolence also takes another whack (Mar. 2) at the emissions of the egregious Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the same controversy, as published (Mar. 1) in the Huffington Post. More: Feb. 21, etc.
P.S. And here’s Kathleen Seidel, who’s been covering the issue in depth at Neurodiversity Weblog (Mar. 1): “It’s time for RFK Jr. to come clean about the fact that he represents the interests of private litigants seeking compensation for supposed vaccine injury when in fact many of those litigants have no evidence that such injury occurred.. …Widespread suspicions are fueled by an aggressive public relations campaign engineered by wealthy PR maven and pioneering ‘mercury mom’ Sally Bernard, early litigant Lyn Redwood, their close associates, faux-journalists David Kirby and Dan Olmsted, and a core of personal injury lawyers who have cultivated this market for years. A lot of money has gone into convincing parents of autistic children that their kids were poisoned.”
A vaccine database, contaminated
The federal government has established something called a Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System to collect reports of possible side effects related to immunizations. Sounds like a useful tool for epidemiological study, right? Except that, it seems,
anyone can submit a report to it, and no one actually verifies the accuracy of the report. Indeed, James Laidler once tested the system by submitting a report that the influenza virus had turned him into The Incredible Hulk. The report was accepted and duly entered into the database.
A more serious problem with the self-submitted nature of the data is that it provides a way for vaccine scares to self-amplify: lawyers pressing compensation claims make a point of submitting their clients’ case histories to the VAERS, and before long — what do you know? — the database is showing a worrying rise in reported side effect incidents, which itself feeds the litigation. Now a study in Pediatrics traces the ways in which litigation-driven reporting has distorted the contents of the VAERS database, especially as regards the purported association of the preservative thimerosal with childhood autism. Respectful Insolence explains (Feb. 6 at old site, more recently blogging at ScienceBlogs)(via MedPundit) and also ties the story in to the disgraceful performance last year in Rolling Stone by celebrity demagogue Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Jun. 20 and Jun. 26, 2005). More: pediatrician Flea also weighs in (Feb. 22).
Proliferation of Taser Suits
Taser International has experienced tremendous growth over the last few years, but now is facing a growing number of lawsuits. Some of these suits narrowly focus on police departments for their use of the Taser, while others name Taser itself in defective product suits. A quick scan of the news over just the last few days reveals suits in Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, Canada, Florida, and Minnesota.
Taser claims that many of these suits have been dismissed. Taser faces some of the same problems faced by vaccine makers and even airbag makers – their product clearly saves lives vs. the alternative (i.e. getting shot with a real gun), but this “safer product” value proposition gets confused with “completely safe,” which leads to careless use and mistaken expectations.
“People Over Profits”: ATLA Astroturf lobbying over vaccines
The trial lawyers’ lobby has a new technique for pressing its opposition to proposals that would reduce or eliminate liability for drug companies to manufacture vaccines.
Run a Google or Yahoo search for “bird flu” or “avian flu” and a sponsored link will pop up, leading to ads by a group called People Over Profits — which is actually a unit of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. They bear such headlines as “Bird Flu and Viagra: What do they have in common?” and “President Bush and Bird Flu: What Bush is not telling you.” (The group also purchased the search term “Rafael Palmeiro,” not because he has anything to do with the issue but because the ballplayer gets Googled a lot in the steroids controversy.)
Now even Web searchers aren’t safe from lobbying! And since sponsors can monitor the traffic, says ATLA spokeswoman Chris Mather, “you can change your message during the day if it’s not working.”
(Howard Kurtz, “CIA Article Sidebar: A Story of Deja Vu”, Washington Post, Nov. 14). Of course, it’s more important for trial lawyers to have lawsuit opportunities than for manufacturers to be able to make vaccines. More: Apr. 11, Oct. 19, 2004, Dec. 24, 2003.
“Trial Lawyers Inc. — Health Care”
Last week the Manhattan Institute (with which I’m associated) released Trial Lawyers Inc. — Health Care, the third in its series of “annual reports” on the doings of the litigation industry. (The first two were a general nationwide report under the title of “Trial Lawyers Inc.“, and a report on trial lawyers’ doings in California). While I can’t take credit for the new report — Jim Copland, who heads the Institute’s Center for Legal Policy, is the one to thank — I can report that the new publication is chock full of valuable facts and statistics about the health care litigation scene, and is must reading for anyone who wants to follow the subject. Subdivision/chapters include:
Drugs and Medical Devices
Special Focus: Vaccines
Medical Malpractice
Special Focus: Hospitals
Health Maintenance Organizations
Government Relations/Public Relations
For our posts on these issues, see our “Bad Medicine” pages, first and second series, and (for pharmaceutical matters) our products liability page. The new TLI report, again, begins here in HMTL form, and can be downloaded in PDF form here.
New York Times and thimerosal
Creationists apparently have no monopoly on unscientific nonsense. There’s an excellent article in the New York Times on the thimerosal controversy (Jun. 20 and links therein), though it fails to follow the money from the plaintiffs’ bar behind the pseudoscience. (Gardiner Harris and Anahad O’Connor, “On Autism’s Cause, It’s Parents vs. Research”, NY Times, Jun. 25). Meanwhile, the Huffington Post spouts irresponsible conspiracy theories for why ABC refused to endorse Robert Kennedy Jr.’s attack on the vaccine industry. The excellent Skeptico blog follows up its earlier post on the subject. And you just knew Michael Fumento would weigh in, and he shows the real costs of the plaintiffs’ bar scaremongering:
The conspiracy-mongers have scared parents into not protecting their children. “Sadly, as exemptions proliferate, disease ‘hot spots’ are cropping up across the United States,” observed an article in the Winter 2004 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform. “Outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, mumps, rubella and diphtheria are reoccurring, costing hundreds of lives and hospitalizing thousands more.”
Remember that next time you hear the plaintiffs’ bar taking credit for safety innovations that have saved lives.
RFK Jr. vs. thimerosal
One of America’s least credible public figures, celebrity environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wades into the mercury in vaccines/autism controversy (Dec. 29, 2003, earlier posts) with a “special investigation” for Salon and Rolling Stone rehearsing the contentions of anti-thimerosal activists (“Deadly Immunity”, Jun. 16). Orac at Respectful Insolence, who’s covered the controversy extensively, hits back hard here, here and here. Reactions from Salon’s readers are here, and the online magazine has already been obliged to post several corrections of Kennedy’s errors, including the following remarkably embarrassing one:
The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms — an amount 40 percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA’s limit for daily exposure to methylmercury.
More: Skeptico (Jun. 20) challenges RFK Jr.’s account of a supposedly hush-hush meeting of vaccine scientists held outside Atlanta (via Adler, the Corner).
Vaccine autism theories
These seem to be popular among the opinionizers at the new Huffington Post, but medblogger Orac casts a deeply skeptical eye on them (Mar. 25)(via Grand Rounds). More on these theories and the very considerable litigation they have spawned: Dec. 29. 2003, earlier posts.
“Lawsuits, regulation make vaccines a tough business”
Another story repeating what Overlawyered readers know well. (Christopher Snowbeck, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Apr. 11)