Page 60 - Spring2013

All Thumbs Book Reviews

Stop Autism Now! dismissed from the hospital where he worked.
A Parent’s Guide to Preventing and Reversing He ultimately had to leave the UK, move to the
Autism Spectrum Disorders United States and start over. This is what hap-
By Dr. Bruce Fife pens when you cross the Big Pharma mafia—if
Piccadilly Books, Ltd. you’re lucky.
It looks like the pharmaceutical industry
We have heard from a number of sources that has good reason to be concerned about too much
there is an important connection between the gut negative vaccine publicity. I keep seeing stories
and the brain, and this book supports the validity like the one about a study in the New England
of that relationship. This book is also in general Journal of Medicine, which finds that 80 percent
agreement with diet protocols that can help solve of whooping cough patients received multiple (at
the problems of gut and brain disorders. least five) Tdap vaccinations. Italian courts have
Dr. Fife covers the importance of medium- ruled more than once that there is a link between
chain triglycerides in great detail. The best MMR vaccines and autism.
source of these fatty acids is coconut oil, which The Wakefield fiasco is not an isolated inci-
is a major theme of his book. dent of misconduct in the industry. Pharmaceuti-
His coverage of disease extends a bit beyond cal giant Merck was taken to court for concealing
autism and includes several case histories of evidence that Vioxx caused heart attacks. They
seizures that were successfully treated with a were condemned by their own emails. Company
ketogenic diet. While the original ketogenic diet emails identified doctors who questioned the
has been successful, that diet was restrictive and safety of Vioxx, and the emails described plans
hard to follow over the long run. Adding coconut to neutralize those doctors. One quote is, “We
oil makes it less restrictive and easier to follow. may need to seek them out and destroy them
The analysis and recommendations for where they live.”
dealing with autism and other disorders in the I first learned about the Vioxx scandal
spectrum are good, but what makes this book when a company-wide email was sent out at the
stand out is the coverage of what is really going defense contractor where I worked at the time. It
on in the scientific and medical world. Fife goes explained that when you delete something from
into detail in the case of Andrew Wakefield who, a Microsoft Word document, for example, it may
in 1998, published a peer-reviewed study sug- not be displayed in normal viewing mode any-
gesting a link between the MMR vaccine and more, but that information is still stored in the file
autism. While not implicating problems with all in case you change your mind and undelete the
vaccines, Wakefield's evidence was nevertheless information. That hidden information is called
Pharmaceutical damaging enough to the pharmaceutical industry metadata. Metadata from a document that Merck
to trigger a ferocious backlash. The industry then sent to the New England Journal of Medicine
giant Merck funded studies designed to refute Wakefield’s revealed that Merck knew Vioxx caused heart
was taken findings. Industry-funded studies are not sci- attacks and chose to put it on the market anyway.

to court for ence, nor is it science when the final conclusion I found it interesting that we heard about that in
is already predetermined, but apparently the a company-wide email in an unrelated industry.
concealing pharmaceutical industry has enough money I think that is a clue to the mindset of all big
evidence that to convince medical journals like The Lancet industry.
Vioxx caused otherwise. Another pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, tested
A tremendous smear campaign resulted in a new drug on children in Nigeria. They did so

heart attacks. the revocation of Wakefield’s license, and he was Continued on Page 62
60 Wise Traditions SPRING 2013 SPRING 2013 Wise Traditions