One of my Facebook friends messaged me a link the other day. It was to an article that had been popping up on his Facebook feed, originally published by Health Impact News (http://goo.gl/V3A5Mb).

The article is a report by John P. Thomas, building on the previous work of Andrew Moulden. Moulden failed his medical residency in Canada (http://goo.gl/BBKG5z), but used his doctorate in psychology to promote himself as a doctor.

Moulden believed that “Multiple factors can work together to trigger a single type of reaction in the body, which can then produce various sets of symptoms. Even though there were different sets of symptoms and different disease names given to each one, they were actually all part of a spectrum of diseases that he called Moulden Anoxia Spectrum Syndromes. Learning disabilities, autism, Alzheimer’s, irritable bowel disease, Crohn’s disease, colitis, food allergies, shaken baby syndrome, sudden infant death, idiopathic seizure disorders, Gulf War syndrome, Gardasil adverse reactions, schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, expressive aphasia, impaired speech skills, attention deficit disorders, silent ischemic strokes, blood clots, idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, Parkinson’s disease, and other modern neurodevelopmental disorders are closely related in many ways, and are part of a larger syndrome.” (http://goo.gl/kTNRMV)

Moulden Anoxia Spectrum Syndromes isn’t found in any medical textbook, and there is no evidence that Autism, Alzheimer’s, Gulf War Syndrome, food allergies and Shaken Baby Syndrome are at all causally related.

Besides, the term ‘anoxia’ is a medical term meaning ‘without oxygen’. Moulden is obviously suggesting that every one of those disparate conditions is fundamentally caused by a lack of oxygen to somewhere, and while his logic has many flaws, this is the fatal one. Food allergies are not related to lack of oxygen. Neither are reactions to the Gardasil vaccine. And we know that Autism is defined by structural and functional changes in the brain that occur in the womb, and can be detected as early as a month after birth [1]. Autism is primarily genetic – autistic brains have excess numbers of dysfunctional nerve cells that are unable to form the correct synaptic scaffolding, leaving a brain that’s large [2, 3], but out-of-sync. There is nothing about autism that’s related to low oxygen. ADHD is similarly genetic and neurodevelopmental in origin [4]. The only thing suffering from lack of oxygen is Moulden’s theories.

Thomas then tries to extend this already tenuous medical hypothesis by claiming that vaccines cause damage to capillaries in ‘watershed’ areas which, according to his definition (not the medical definition), are “very small areas of tissue (groups of cells) that are served by a single blood vessel called a capillary” (http://goo.gl/4IlUI7) He suggests that certain cranial nerves are vulnerable to these ‘watershed’ injuries, which then result in changes in the way the face moves.

The cause for these ‘watershed’ injuries? “The blood is being sludged up in multiple areas of the body, which is causing ischemia, damage to tissue, functional disorders, and disease. This is not genetic. It is acquired. The drop in the corner of the mouth is the result of low zeta potential and the MASS process. People with autism spectrum disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, ADHD, and those who are having adverse effects from vaccines such as hepatitis, flu, anthrax, Gardasil, DPT, MMR, etc. are having a generic response. The body is reacting to having foreign matter put into it.”

In other words, he’s suggesting that vaccinations essentially cause strokes.

From here, the article becomes a bamboozling cacophony of legitimate but irrelevant facts, diagrams, factoids, and recommendations. For example, Thomas explains the signs of damage to the third, fourth, sixth and seventh cranial nerves, and cites the damage by actual strokes as examples. Well, that’s fine, except that real strokes don’t involve damage to capillaries, but blockage of arteries, and have nothing to do with vaccination.

He also makes statements that are simply wrong, like “The seventh cranial nerve primarily controls the lower half of the face” (actually the seventh cranial nerve, also called the facial nerve, controls the muscles of the whole face – http://goo.gl/m9S7Gd). And, “When we see seventh cranial nerve damage, we can be sure that the damage is not isolated to the seventh cranial nerve – the damage is happening everywhere” (except in Bells Palsy … and some parotid tumours … and some strokes … and lots of other things).

He also makes the ridiculous claim that autism causes facial droop without explaining why, suggests that weakness of the muscles of the eyes controlled by the sixth cranial nerve is often the first sign of vaccine damage, and that ‘watershed’ damage to the brainstem from vaccination is the cause of SIDS.

Thomas then attempts to justify his conjecture by describing the case of a single baby boy whom he claims died from sudden infant death post vaccination – “His family and his physicians watched him slowly die while the respirator did his breathing for him. Basically they were watching his brain as he went through the stages of sudden infant death after vaccine exposure”. Except that death after nineteen days is not ‘sudden’, and the description of this child’s tragic death is nothing like SIDS. And his only reference to this case? Not an official forensic report, but a ‘report’ written by Andrew Moulden, which was simply an offensive and detestable attempt to leverage the heart-wrenching death of a fifteen month old boy to push his idealistic agenda (http://goo.gl/ysoCtQ).

I could go on. There are pages of material that simply defy rational thinking. He even goes on to question germ theory, and states that “Vaccines are one of the largest triggers of excessive non-specific immune hyperstimulation, which ultimately leads to blood sludging, clotting, and loss of negative zeta. The combined effect of all these factors produce illness, disability, and death.”

There is no credible medical evidence to back up any of Thomas’s claims, nor the claims of Moulden before him. Together, they openly defy centuries of scientific knowledge, modern science, and the observations of every parent whose children have been vaccinated.

Lets face it – if vaccines really caused mini-strokes, we wouldn’t need the dubious work of Moulden and his disciples to discover it. We would have all seen it.

There are a lot of very questionable theories that get promoted on the internet as valid science. Don’t fall for it. There’s no evidence for Moulden Anoxia Spectrum Syndromes, and the only connection between conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Shaken Baby Syndrome and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is not vaccination, but the pathetic attempt to try and connect them by pseudoscientists with an idealistic barrow to push.

References

[1]        Pierce K. Exploring the Causes of Autism – The Role of Genetics and The Environment (Keynote Symposium 11). Asia Pacific Autism Conference; 2013 10 August; Adelaide, Australia: APAC 2013; 2013.

[2]        Courchesne E, Carper R, Akshoomoff N. Evidence of brain overgrowth in the first year of life in autism. JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association 2003 Jul 16;290(3):337-44.

[3]        Shen MD, Nordahl CW, Young GS, et al. Early brain enlargement and elevated extra-axial fluid in infants who develop autism spectrum disorder. Brain : a journal of neurology 2013 Sep;136(Pt 9):2825-35.

[4]        Cortese S. The neurobiology and genetics of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): what every clinician should know. European journal of paediatric neurology : EJPN : official journal of the European Paediatric Neurology Society 2012 Sep;16(5):422-33.