Questions for Mr. Kirby · 2006-12-20 11:45

In the year and a half since publication of David Kirby’s book, Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, Mr. Kirby has championed the perspective of those who attribute children’s autism to vaccine injury, and their advocates and allies in litigation. He has publicly excoriated vaccine developers, policymakers and health care professionals for the manner in which they have promoted vaccination guidelines and affirmed the safety of FDA-approved vaccines. He has granted countless interviews to print, television and radio journalists, and has given numerous public presentations throughout the United States and Canada. He has participated in live online chats, and has marketed tele-classes and seminars based on Evidence of Harm. He has sold the film rights to his book to Participant Productions, where a screenplay is now in development. He has published a dozen essays on the Huffington Post weblog, four of these in the past six weeks.

Mr. Kirby has repeatedly described his constituency with general terms such as “parents of autistic children” and “the autism parents,” implying that “autism families” as a whole share litigants’ attributions regarding autism causation and vaccine safety, and their legal and legislative agenda. Consistent with the position of those who argue that the United States is in the midst of an iatrogenic, vaccine-induced “autism epidemic,” he has also repeatedly denied the existence of adults on the autistic spectrum, notwithstanding the efforts of autistic adults to communicate with him.

On May 29, 2005, I sent Mr. Kirby a lengthy letter, in which I urged him to recognize that many “autism parents” and autistic people themselves do not attribute autism to vaccine injury, and to consider the deleterious impact of the aggressive media and advocacy campaign for which he serves as a de facto spokesman. In a June 2005 interview on the G. Gordon Liddy Radio Show, he acknowledged receiving my letter and declared his intention to respond to it. Later that month, Mr. Kirby challenged critics to “bring it on,” and engage in public debate with him about the thimerosal-autism causation hypothesis and about his book.

Eighteen months have passed since I originally wrote to Mr. Kirby. Today, I sent him a brief follow-up letter, with a cc to Jeff Skoll of Participant Productions.

20 December 2006
Dear Mr. Kirby,
You may recall the letter I sent you on May 29 last year, in which I expressed my concerns about the negative repercussions of the campaign to equate autism with iatrogenic poisoning, and to cultivate popular sympathy for vaccine-injury plaintiffs, who seek to hold public health officials, pharmaceutical companies and health care professionals at fault for their children’s autism. In case you have forgotten its contents, I have copied the text below.
The concerns I expressed over eighteen months ago have not abated. In particular, your recent essays on Huffington Post have reinforced my doubts regarding your characterization of your work as “not partisan in nature,” “unbiased journalism” rather than public relations. Although you have repeatedly criticized scientists involved in vaccine development and policymaking for their supposed conflicts of interest, I am unaware of any instance in which you have publicly disclosed your own potential sources of bias. I recall that you once acknowledged receiving a “small stipend” during the preparation of your book; I believe that this was during a radio interview. Are you willing to disclose the source and amount of that stipend, as well as the sources of any monetary or in-kind compensation you have received in connection with your book, either before, during or after its publication — including compensation from individuals or organizations with a professional, financial or emotional interest in the outcome of vaccine-injury litigation? Also, in light of your previous career as an AIDS activist, are you willing to disclose whether you have ever entertained the notion that AIDS was introduced into the U.S. gay population via the Hepatitis B vaccine?
I eagerly await your response to this letter, as well as to my original one.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Seidel
neurodiversity.com | honoring the variety of human wiring
http://www.neurodiversity.com

Comments


  1. Nice letter. But once again, I seriously doubt he’ll respond.

    I’ve read what Kirby has written and I’ve seen his grasp of the facts (about prevalence, diagnoses and so on) and it’s clear he would not be able to hold his own in a blog discussion about autism. That’s why he never shows up to debate in any of our blogs, and doesn’t even answer criticism posted to his own blog.

    — Joseph    2006-12-20 14:36    #

  2. I agree with Joseph. Kirby is a hack journalist in hock to the mercury hucksters. What the heck. His future is strictly Hicksville.

    — mike stanton    2006-12-21 18:59    #

  3. I suspect they won’t answer. Kirby must know he’s lying about so many things around the Hg/mercury hype, what can he say? If he’s on a vendetta against the CDC because he thinks they are responsible for the AIDS epidemic (as a number of fringe AIDS activists think), he won’t admit it.

    I don’t know if participant productions has a real social conscience, or it’s just a fake social conscience. If they are interested in helping autistics they’ll drop Mr. Kirby like he’s a lump of toxic waste.

    — Ms Clark    2006-12-23 21:06    #

  4. Mr. Kirby apparently has finally found an opponent he considers worthy of debating — Arthur Allen, a fellow journalist and frequent defender of vaccination programs. I don’t think Mr. Kirby wants to debate anyone who knows anything about autism. His interest in autism is simply as a hook into a more general controversy about vaccines. He will never answer your letter, Kathleen, because the answers may put him in the anti-vax camp. If he had integrity, he would just admit where he stands.

    — Anne    2006-12-26 16:30    #

  5. Yes, clearly in hock to the filthy-rich anti-mercury hucksters.

    — Alan    2006-12-27 10:45    #