David Barton Features Anti-Vax Speaker at Legislators Conference

Yesteday, I wrote about David Barton’s pitch to Republican lawmakers to avoid low income, young, and uneducated people in voter registration efforts.  Today, I want to point out that Barton promoted anti-vaccine ideology to the assembled legislators by having Theresa Deisher as a featured speaker for the event.

Deisher has a PhD in microbiology from Stanford and was, at one time, a mainstream scientist. However, she converted to anti-vax ideology several years ago and has promoted the theory that vaccines cause autism via the introduction of fetal DNA. Her theories have been thoroughly examined and lack support.

One of the more recent empirical tests comes from friend of the blog Morten Frisch. Frisch and colleagues examined the population of children in Denmark and found no relationship between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism. Deisher asserts autism cases are related to use of this vaccine. Here is the summary:

Participants: 657,461 children born in Denmark from 1999 through 31 December 2010, with follow-up from 1 year of age and through 31 August 2013.

Results: During 5,025,754 person-years of follow-up, 6517 children were diagnosed with autism (incidence rate, 129.7 per 100 000 person-years). Comparing MMR-vaccinated with MMR-unvaccinated children yielded a fully adjusted autism hazard ratio of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.85 to 1.02). Similarly, no increased risk for autism after MMR vaccination was consistently observed in subgroups of children defined according to sibling history of autism, autism risk factors (based on a disease risk score) or other childhood vaccinations, or during specified time periods after vaccination.

David Barton’s Project Blitz has caught on with religious right lawmakers. I would really hate to see anti-vax ideology become a part of the religious right dogma. Putting Deisher in front of legislators as an expert is troubling even if she didn’t talk about vaccines.

This is getting more serious as time goes on. Misguided parents listening to anti-vax crusaders put their children at risk. See below:

Constituents of legislators who want to expand exceptions to vaccination should be prepared to ask their legislators where they are getting their information about vaccines.

David Barton Goes Full Anti-Vax

Yesterday on Wallbuilders Live, David Barton doubled down on his claim that parts of aborted fetuses are in vaccines. He made that claim last week and after I wrote to refute it, he devoted a whole show to the topic today.

His guest for the program was anti-vax biologist Theresa Deisher. Deisher has a PhD in microbiology from Stanford and at one time was a mainstream scientist. Several years ago, she converted to anti-vax ideology and has focused on the theory that vaccines cause autism via the introduction of fetal DNA into a vaccinated child.

The most shocking false claim that the Barton’s (father and son) make on the program is that body parts are taken from live babies for use in vaccines in use today. This of course would be illegal. Despite what Barton and Deisher say, there is no legal process where children who are alive can be dismembered in this manner. Of course, anyone would be opposed to that.

Federal law (Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002) protects infants who survive abortion. Any baby who survives an abortion must be treated as a live person. I don’t know that this law is always followed but it is the law. Deisher nor Barton offered any proof that babies are being killed in this manner.

Dr. Deisher’s work has been thoroughly debunked.

She predicts that where MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is widely used, autism will spike. However, this has been debunked, most recently in a large population scale study by our old friend Morten Frisch and colleagues in Denmark. Here are selected aspects of their paper:

Participants: 657,461 children born in Denmark from 1999 through 31 December 2010, with follow-up from 1 year of age and through 31 August 2013.

Results: During 5,025,754 person-years of follow-up, 6517 children were diagnosed with autism (incidence rate, 129.7 per 100 000 person-years). Comparing MMR-vaccinated with MMR-unvaccinated children yielded a fully adjusted autism hazard ratio of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.85 to 1.02). Similarly, no increased risk for autism after MMR vaccination was consistently observed in subgroups of children defined according to sibling history of autism, autism risk factors (based on a disease risk score) or other childhood vaccinations, or during specified time periods after vaccination.

Barton has moved into dangerous territory here. He is trying to scare people away from vaccines with these false claims and as a result may be partly responsible for people deciding not to immunize their children. I would not want that on my conscience. Even the Catholic Church advises members that they may use vaccines due to the greater good of preventing sickness and death.