UPDATED::Busy week, as far as loons go,,, (Pt 1)

UPDATE:: Now that’s what I’m talking about! A state medical board appears poised to act

So why the GoFundMe page? Why is there ever a GoFundMe page for anything? Money. Someone named Erin Crawford created the page. Whether the page was created at Dr. Kalb’s request or not is unknown. What is known is that the page claims that Dr. Kalb needs money for legal bills. Now, it’s only been less than two months since then. It’s really unknown if he needs $50,000 for legal bills or not. The only way I could see him needing that much money is if the state is definitely going to try to strip him of his medical license. I checked the Tennessee State Board of Medical Examiners website, and there’s nothing mentioned about him there yet, but that’s not surprising, given how recently this whole kerfuffle reacted.

What I can say, though, is that this GoFundMe page suggests to me is that Dr. Kalb is worried. If it really is true that the Tennessee State Medical Board is preparing to go after Dr. Kalb, I have only one thing to say: Good. As I’ve said before, state medical boards tend to be reluctant to go after doctors who use unscientific treatments like “detoxification” and colon cleanses because it forces them to enforce a standard of care, because such cases are harder to prove, and because there is so much pushback. State medical boards are generally good at going after doctors who commit easily identified, clear-cut breaches in trust, such as substance abuse, defrauding insurance companies, or diddling patients. When it comes to making judgment calls about doctors practicing outside of the standard of care, they’re a lot more reluctant to do so. 

See also::  Medical boards threaten the careers of doctors that question Big Pharma propaganda 

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There are many, many examples of doctors going over to the dark side.

• Dr. David Brownstein
• Andrew Wakefield
• Dr. Tara Zandvliet
• Dr. Bob Sears
• Dr. Kelly Sutton
• "The Doctors" Star Rachael Ross MD says she feels like an ASS misunderstanding vaccines
• And last but not least, Bernard Rimland.  Although Rimland was instrumental in reversing the “refrigerator momma syndrome” as a cause of autism (bad parenting), he is instrumental in the belief that thimerosal caused autism and the idea of a “autism epidemic”.

Rimland published his book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, in 1964. Its foreword, by Leo Kanner, the man who first identified autism as a syndrome, gave the book credibility among professionals in the field. It was an about-turn for Kanner, the originator of the word "autism" and of the "refrigerator mother" theory; through his observations and research, Kanner had come to believe that autism had a neurological cause—the accepted view in the medical profession today. But at the time Rimland's book was published,and for many years afterwards, a common theory was that autism was caused by unloving 'refrigerator mothers', an unproven but widely accepted idea most famously propounded by University of Chicago professor Bruno Bettelheim, notably in his book The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self (1967), which claimed that the traumatized unloved child retreated into autism. As a professional research psychologist, Rimland was well positioned to launch the first major attack on Bettelheim's theory. Rimland's was the first authoritative voice to dispute Bettelheim's research and call into question his conclusions.

Parents from all over the United States, excited that for the first time a professional in the field did not accuse them of maltreating their autistic child, began to write to Rimland. He called a meeting in Teaneck, New Jersey, at the house of one of the families, and this small group of parents, including Ruth C. Sullivan (first president of the ASA), became the nucleus that founded the Autism Society of America.

Are just a few I am familiar with.

Ignoring the science they were supposed to learn to claim their titles, they embraced all sorts of woo medicine in the process.  With that said, one must bear in mind that doctors or general practitioners, are not research scientist.  They rely on the same material that we layman do although they are supposed to have the training to separate the "wheat from the chaff".  In my mind, it is a lack of critical thinking (not science), greed and power that allows one such as Dr. Daniel Kalb to boldly claim "We will no longer be administering Vaccines at,,,"

when just 2 years ago he stated in an interview for Colonics TV,

The way I view the role of vaccines is that vaccines don’t cause autism. That being said, toxins cause autism. Toxins interacting with the genetic potential cause immune dysfunction, which through epigenetics changes those genes, expresses those genes, and, boom, you get autism. Now, do vaccines fit in that picture? Well, sure, it’s one of the potential insults, right?

In the minds of some, he is bordering on malpractice.

One major thing that differentiated science-based medicine (SBM) from alternative medicine and quackery is that in SBM there is a generally accepted standard of care. This was even the case back in the days before the proliferation of evidence-based guidelines, in which professional societies and expert panels try their best to synthesize what is often an unwieldy mass of sometimes conflicting studies into guidelines on best care practices for different conditions. True, back then there was wider latitude because each physician was largely left to fend for himself in applying the medical literature to individual patients’ conditions, but even so there was still a standard of care that physicians practiced within. These days, with many more guidelines, there is less reason for variation in practice.

,,, but simply to emphasize that there is a standard of care based on science and evidence. If a physician goes outside the standard of care without a very good reason for doing so, it can even be malpractice.

Outbreak News Today had this to say,

Outbreak News Today reached out to Paul A. Offit, MD, Director of the Vaccine Education Center and a professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for a statement concerning the decision:

“By unnecessarily exposing children to preventable diseases, these physicians are choosing not to serve the children they have sworn to protect, Offit notes.

“It is remarkable to me that a state licensing board or professional society has not censured them for this.”

Although not calling for any type of censure, though calling into question the wisdom of such a decision.

The Tennessee Chapter of American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a statement regarding the anti-vaccine statement by a Franklin doctor.

"The continued spread of misinformation regarding vaccine safety is dangerous, not only to the children for whom vaccines have been refused, but also for the people around them who cannot receive them. Research needs to focus on understanding the true causes of autism, rather than continually needing to debunk the fraudulent work of discredited former physicians. The lives of children affected by autism hang in the balance while some groups put their trust in internet lore and pseudoscience. It's time to accept the science and make positive movement in autism research and treatment," said Michelle Fiscus, M.D., FAAP, TNAAP Immediate Past President.

As I sit pondering what direction to take this post, I wonder what possible motive could there be besides the "almighty buck" as he does have a "store"; one only needs to look at mercola.com for the inspiration.

In 15 years of treating ASD kids you would think Kalb (who does not accept insurance, “cash only” business, a claim by some) would have learned that vaccines do not cause autism ; there is no such monster as "vaccine injury".  The fact that he offers HBOT and other questionable services should offer a clue into what this man thinks.

It took one article, he is anti anything CDC based on what I call the Thompson debacle (which will be covered in a subsequent essay).  And yes it includes none other than Andrew Wakefield.  I'm going to guess that since it is being reported that he attended AutismOne that is what prompted his stupidity.

It is tough to know when AutismOne 2016 attendee, Dr. Daniel Kalb's, MD, MPH, FAAFB aha moment occurred. Perhaps the awakening even happened while Dr. Kalb sat through the lecture titled Dissecting Whistleblower Documents: A Story of Corruption,  in which Dr. Brian Hooker, Dr. Judy Mikovitz and Michael Hugo presented damning evidence and documents to a standing room only crowd — greeted to many rounds of applause during their hour and a half presentation. Or perhaps it was during the premiere and following Q&A session of the documentary film Vaxxed at the conference.  Regardless, there is one thing for certain, Dr. Kalb will never be the same family physician again. The proof of his transformation can be observed by reading the latest public release from his Cool Springs Tennessee family practice titled “No More Vaccines at Cool Springs Family Medicine”.

FYI:: The Thompson debacle is just that, a debacle. Hooker's re-analysis was wrong in that he did it as a cohort. Add to that he relied on Wakefield's retract 1998 study and the Grier's. Ya know, the jack wads that want to chemically castrate (Lupron) autistic children thinking it will help.  Hooker's re-anaylsis has been retracted because it was so bad.  See:: here, here, and here.

As one blog comment noted, Kalb’s argument boiled down to a bunch of PRATTs (Points Refuted A Thousand Times).

• Vaccines cause autism - no, they do not!!

• Vaccine injury - vaccine safety, Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), and National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP)

Safety of Vaccines Used for Routine Immunization of US Children: A Systematic Review

Concerns about vaccine safety have led some parents to decline recommended vaccination of their children, leading to the resurgence of diseases. Reassurance of vaccine safety remains critical for population health. This study systematically reviewed the literature on the safety of routine vaccines recommended for children in the United States.

For NVICP I refer you to this article as this information is way out of my league.  While I understand the how and why of the program, I do not have the know how to explain it.  Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, is the go to person in this instance.  See also:: for appealing NVICP decisions.

In 1986 Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which among other things created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). While a main impetus for the passage of the act was protecting manufacturers from liability – manufacturers were leaving the market because of lawsuits, many of them unjustified, and Congress was concerned about the vaccine supply – it was not the only goal and not the only value reflected in the act. In addition to protecting the vaccine supply, the program also addressed the shortcomings of the tort system in this area with a no-fault program designed to resolve vaccine injury claims “quickly, easily, with certainty and generosity.”

As to VAERS, in simplified terms these are the people to contact if you or your child has a bad reaction to a vaccine, no matter how small.  The adverse effects are then analyzed to see if they’re being reported more frequently than would be expected due to chance alone.  VAERS is subject to a lot of biases in design, the most major is it's designed to allow self-reports, and it will accept pretty much anything the reporter submits as an “adverse event.” 

The "two" main proponents of this tactic are the Geiers and Stephanie Seneff.  For a good critique of why this is bad science see here, here and here.

• Toxin gambit

• Chopra Effect/Epigenetics

• Big pharm/pHARMA shill

• Gardasil (HPV)/Herpes - Oh. Noz, peoples is having sex (I will be honest, I have to learn more about the issues concerning this topic.  I'm clueless.)

• John Walker smith verdict therefore Wakefield exonerated - NOT

• Vaccines didn’t save us - yea they did

Among 78.6 million children born during 1994–2013, routine childhood immunization was estimated to prevent 322 million illnesses (averaging 4.1 illnesses per child) and 21 million hospitalizations (0.27 per child) over the course of their lifetimes and avert 732,000 premature deaths from vaccine-preventable illnesses. Illnesses prevented ranged from 3,000 for tetanus to >70 million for measles. The highest estimated cumulative numbers of hospitalizations and deaths that will be prevented were 8.9 million hospitalizations for measles and 507,000 deaths for diphtheria. The routine childhood vaccines introduced during the VFC era (excluding influenza and hepatitis A) together will prevent about 1.4 million hospitalizations and 56,300 deaths.

Vaccination will potentially avert $402 billion in direct costs and $1.5 trillion in societal costs because of illnesses prevented in these birth cohorts. After accounting for $107 billion and $121 billion in direct and societal costs of routine childhood immunization, respectively, the net present values (net savings) of routine childhood immunization from the payers' and societal perspectives were $295 billion and $1.38 trillion, respectively.

Although writing about AVers for a bit over a year, I have been following the movement for much longer; I go back to the Jenny McCarthy days.  But it has become difficult to take anti-vax arguments seriously. It is a grand delusion of the AV crowd that they have “done their research”. Scientific Blatherings sum it up quite well: 

If you really believe the world is so devoid of compassion and human decency that scientists would go out of their way to intentionally harm the population; that probably says more about your cynical morals that anything else. I know you aren’t going to change your mind, because every high quality, peer reviewed study is “bought and paid for” and you will discard any piece of evidence unless it agrees with you. If you want my advice, go move away to your own colony and spend your days tickling each others’ confirmation bias until you realise that vaccination has a purpose and that it works. The sad thing is that your parents and grandparents likely had the good sense to vaccinate their own kids; but you won’t vaccinate your own. The chances are that your children are the ones that are going to suffer.

I recently had a conversation with a "mom" who did her research.  Funny that she did not understand why "vaxx vs unvaxx double blind RCT studies" where unethical, or that the Amish do vaccinate and get ASD.  Nor was she aware that Wakefield was not exonerated and the Hooker, Thompson paper was retracted.  Yet she "done did her research",,,in a fucking echo chamber!

When I pointed out these errors, with citation to credible sources, she stopped.   Not a peep from her in 2 days.

With that in mind, I am not going to look at Kalb’s standard AV or vaccine rejection trope more than what I have already done.  His views are too weildy, embracing every known bit of flawed science within the movement  What I want to do is take a look at what he offers - Integrative Medicine - to determine if this is a place, of SBM.

One of the questions that keeps recurring over the years is: Why? Why are patients drawn to unscientific medicine. Make no mistake, the whole point of “integrative medicine” is to integrate medicine that has not yet been validated by science (or has even been disproven by science) with real, science-based medicine, although advocates of “integrative medicine” are very good at convincing themselves that they are just as science-based in their practice as any of us. Not surprisingly, they become very unhappy with me when I argue otherwise.
,,,
It’s that role, that some doctors crave (and understandably so), that of the healer. Unfortunately, to attain such a role, all too many of them have embraced pseudoscience to the point of advocating “integrating” it into medicine. As I’ve pointed out before, throughout most of human history, that was the role of the physician/healer. It took many hundreds of years, which stretched into thousands of years, before it was fully accepted that medicine should be based on science. Arguably, it wasn’t until just over a century ago, with the advent of the Flexner Report, that medicine, in the U.S. at least, was placed on a firmly scientific basis. Indeed, what we now know as randomized controlled clinical trials did not see their debut, much less become the basis of determining which treatments worked and which did not, until the 1940s. Although physicians have been trying to base their craft on science for hundreds of years, it’s really only been in the last century or so that they’ve succeeded.

As mentioned Kalb is a licensed and board certified MD but he has embraced integrative medicine.  As Orac notes, this used to be called CAM - complementary and alternative medicine.  What I have found interesting in looking into this sCAM, it is no better than religion or cult  The “doctor” has become a spiritual leader, much of IM is based on faith and not science.  In essence a patient is having their “religious views” reinforced through a confession like atmosphere and the offering of “miracles” through indulgences.  Like Jim Humble before him, Kalb is seeking the power to control his minions.

SCAM is mind over matter, the placebo effect, and the defense of such uses the very same apologetic approaches and arguments atheists get from people who believe in God. And the very same indignant outrage over insensitivity and incivility. It’s a choice which should never be “attacked.”

While my initial focus in my Diane Benscoter post was a tich different, the observation still stands, cults provide:

"Easy ideas to complex questions [which] are very appealing when you are emotionally vulnerable. Circular logic takes over, and becomes impenetrable ... The most dangerous part is that [the cult mindset] creates Us & Them, Right & Wrong, Good & Evil. And it makes anything possible, anything rationalizable."

In relation to Kalb’s use of bio-med, his treatment of autism specifically, he is/was a part of DAN! And Kalb speaks DAN! dogma like a “true believer”.

Like before I do not want to get too heavy into this topic as it is an essay unto itself.  But, DAN! proponents ignore the one truth about autism - that no one yet knows its cause and position themselves as autism's truth-speakers.  They see the "flaw" of autism as an affront to their perfection.  In my mind this is the "Us v Them" group-think talked about by Benscoter. "My genetics are perfect, those others, their genetics are not."

Well, not so fast. The authors say further research is needed to determine whether a mother’s genes may also contribute to the increased risk associated with environmental exposure to pesticides. “It can be very scary for parents when they hear such high degree of association, but they should also keep in mind that this research is only showing some association and not cause,” William Sharp, director of the Marcus Autism Center and assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine, wrote in an email to CNN. Sharp, who was not involved in either study, simply warns that these studies are finding possible correlations, but they do not necessarily show the direct cause. Until more research is done, the outrage is premature.

So what is causing autism in these children? The real answer is: We just don’t know. Not yet, at least. “There is no known single cause for autism,” explains the Autism Society’s website. And while scientists around the world are working to find a link, each time a new finding suggests possible contributing factors, what tends to proceed is an immoderate response that forgets that age-old dictum: Correlation does not equal causation. And that’s important because in the past we have been wrong about autism, and sometimes with deadly consequences.

The problem with this approach, it promotes a dogmatic one-size-fits-all biomedical treatment for all autistic children, undermines public confidence in vaccines, and perpetuates big pHarma conspiracy theories. They support their claims not through evidence, but with testimonials and exceptions.  (If you examine the testimonials they all follow the same pattern - talk about brainwashing.)  While the standard AV tropes are the dogma, meet the tenets of the faith. (IM is the religious faith, DAN! is the denomination.)

Simply put, the "DAN! protocol" was centered (1995-2011 with MAPS -Medical Academy of Pediatric Special Needs- taking its place; Bernard Rimland was its founder) around the belief that autism is caused by a combination of lowered immune response, external toxins from vaccines and other sources, and problems caused by certain foods.   Practitioners believe in nutritional deficiencies, gut dysbiosis, microbial overgrowth - specifically yeast, toxins, and heavy metals to name a few.

Treatment they espouse include chelation, GFCF diets, HBOT, IVIG, mega supplements, probiotics.  Practitioners see an autism epidemic, that needs to be “cured.  It is the same mind-set exhibited by Kerri Rivera who is/was a DAN! practitioner.  In a not yet published piece, I wrote: ",,,this "purging" of autism through the various steps of the protocol (referring to MMS) is reminiscent of clearing in Scientology; reaching the state of "clear".  (For those unfamiliar, a "clear" in Scientology is considered optimal individuals, they are not "damaged" by their past.)"

As noted by one comment on this very subject,

Anti-vaccinationists have created a cult - replete with shamans and elders - that enumerates and codifies these articles of faith about vaccines:  there are related mythologies amongst natural health advocates who similarly fear pharmaceuticals, radiation, GMOs, toxins, progress AND obviously, doctors.

All would avoid any threat to their own - or their children’s - safety and purity. Their many so-called biomedical interventions, diets and other procedures are vain attempts to re-capture and restore their “lost” child’s original state prior to ‘contamination’ by the machinations of malevolent practitioners of modern magic - to get rid of the evil spell.

There are parallels in alt med ritual that are analogous attempts to re-capture ritual purity (see esp. veganism, acid/ alkaline, pesticide phobia etc.) or some Edenic condition and to ensure protection from a malign - although modern - environment and a new type of evil practitioner of the black arts.

If you believe something with all of your heart, it doesn’t make it true .. but it might cause you to twist yourself into all sorts of cognitive and emotional knots to hold on to your belief system.