JB Handley my data from California are sure different from yours

JB Handley in his latest post on the age of autism website is claiming that he has documentation from the state of California showing a correlation between DTP vaccination rates between the early 1980s and 1990s and increasing prevalence of autism rates in the state of California.

He presents his data here: http://www.putchildrenfirst.org/media/4.6.pdf



Here is the data that I received from the state of California a couple of years ago when I asked about rates of DTP vaccination uptake: http://www.jonathans-stories.com/non-fiction/dtpcoverage.xls

This is supposed to be the same data from the same group of children who received four DTP shots before going to kindergarten.

You can see the huge differences in the numbers however. Handley's data suggests that in children born during the early to mid 1980s the vaccination rates were very low, lower than 50% or about 50% in some cases.

You can see in the data that I received from the state of California is quite different from JB Handley's showing these vaccination rates are at least 85% or higher in this same group of children. Perhaps there is an explanation for Handley's data being so different from mine, I don't know. Handley is suggesting that this data resulted in some sort of CDC cover-up because it would show a huge correlation between DTP vaccination rates and increases in autism.



Of course one problem with Handley's assessment is autism prevalence increases are not just restricted to California but autism prevalence increased all over the United States. Prior to 1991 the DTP vaccine was the only thimerosal containing vaccine used in the United States. Therefore Handley would have to come up with figures showing increases in uptake nation wide. Surveys taken by the CDC contradict this notion here: http://www.jonathans-stories.com/non-fiction/Simpson4SurveysAJPM2001.pdf

Of course it is my word against Handley's a stanford graduate millionaire businessman, and me a humble autism sufferer, unemployed blogger who never did amount to much due to his disability. Handley neglects to explain why, if his figures are real and in fact did come from the state of California why there would not have been a decrease in pertussis rates in children of this age. Since it would presumably be no more than 1/150 children who were sensitive to the vaccines the pertussis decrease would have to have been of a much greater magnitude than the autism increase. If there is any evidence of a decrease in pertussis Handley does not show it. In fact pertussis during those years has been on a slight upswing nationwide shown here: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/pertussis/dis-faqs.htm This link also shows how dramatically pertussis decreased when the vaccine was introduced in the 1940's. All of these things are completely inconsistent with Handley's data.

Could it be Handley and his follows have some sort of interest in this. Generation rescue, the organization Handley started has the quick fix simplistic solution of curing autism through chelation. At least in the past, they claimed that autism was just another name for mercury poisoning. I do not know if Handley's letter from Dale Lorings to Diane Simpson is real or not. Only that it is totally inconsistent with the data I received from the state of california, the lack of decrease in pertussis during this same period and the increases in autism prevalence throughout the u.s. in spite of slightly decreasing rates of uptake nationwide in the CDC survey that I linked to above.

I think Handley should give a better explaination of his statistics.