Action For Autism

Dr Tayloe, apologies from (some of) the autism community

David T Tayloe is a pediatrician from Goldsboro, North Carolina (NC) and president elect of the American Acadamy of Pediatrics (AAP) He seemed a decent fellow when I watched him on on the recent Larry King Show about autism. This is what he had to say, taken from the transcript of the show (with numerous interruptions [...] from Jenny McCarthy edited out.)

On Vaccines

“Well, first of all, the childhood vaccine program is the most beneficial public health program in the history of mankind. [...]
And you must have immunization rates that approach 90 percent to keep diseases such as polio, measles, whooping cough and diphtheria from coming in here from countries. They’re one plane ride away and we’re that close to an epidemic.
So, for the American Academy of Pediatrics to want to change the immunization program, there would have to be medical evidence — indisputable medical evidence that we ought to change it. Now [...] we’ve changed it about six times just in the last 10 years. We changed the whooping cough vaccine, we changed the polio vaccine, we changed the rotavirus vaccine.

KING: Why are there so many? TAYLOE: Because we’ve been able to develop ways to vaccinate children to prevent pain and suffering. Just in my practice, I’ve watched three children die of each of the different kinds of bacterial meningitis that we immunize for today. And it’s tragic when that happens. I, in my practice, have not referred a child to the compensation program for a vaccine-related injury [...] and our practice has seen over [...] over a hundred thousand kids a year. [...] They’re recommended.

On drug company donations to the AAP 

TAYLOE: I would say it does not influence policy. We have very strict conflict of interest and ethical statements, and abide by the professionalism guidelines of the AMA and are very sensitive issues. Again, we’re not afraid of the truth about vaccines. We’re all for vaccine safety research, efficacy research, all of that.

On profit from vaccines

TAYLOE: I think vaccines are a very difficult way to make a profit in a pediatric practice, because the price of the newest vaccines are like 120 a dose, one dose. And the insurance companies don’t want to pay us much more than that very bare-bones amount for all the costs we have with the vaccines. Then the administration fees are less than what’s recommended by Medicare in most practices.So physicians, as a rule, are taking a loss on vaccines in their practices. But we feel so committed to the public health effort, that we’re going to do it. And just about half the children receive government funded vaccines, which are free vaccines that go to the states. There’s no profit at all there. You just give the vaccine and then charge a government controlled administration fee.So this is not a profit center for pediatrics. This is something that’s for public health that we all do. And it’s the right thing to do.

On listening to parents about autism

TAYLOE: At the American Council of Pediatrics we’re making some progress on that, because we had two policy statements in November, and a tool kit for our members. We’re getting 18 and 24 month screens. I like to screen between six and 12 months, carefully. [...]We are quite willing to work with anyone on this. We would like to be [...]

This all seems quite reasonable to me. Dr Tayloe is expressing the mainstream medical opinion on vaccines, which was why he was invited onto the show. But he is not just a mouthpiece for the AAP. Dr Tayloe heads a pediatric practise in Goldsboro NC and he is obviously motivated by a desire to care for children. I found the part were he talked about the children in his practise who died from diseases that can now be prevented with vaccines particularly moving.

However, not everybody shares my opinion. Those who cling to the notion that vaccines cause autism appear outraged by his comments. A lady who once claimed to bring “graciousness” to the debate about autism wrote on her blog:

Dr. Tayloe said that in his practice that has seen 100,000 patients that he has never referred one person to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. If he has never seen a serious vaccine injury, it is not because he has not come across one, it is because he has his head up his ass.Tayloe is just dangerous.

This man has GOT to be removed from the position that he has been elected to before he takes office. I would take Karp in a second over this guy. Karp was wrong, but he wasn’t crazy person saying insane things with a smile wrong.

Actually, Dr Tayloe’s words show us how rare vaccine injuries are. There are around 60 million children aged 14 and under in the USA and around 60,000 pediatricians. Out of all the millions of kids who have been vaccinated, there have been less than 10,000 petitions (8,224) to the US Court of Federal Claims under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program since its inception nearly twenty years ago in October 1988.  Though  I hesitate to contradict a gracious lady, it seems to me that, in the light of these figures, the likelihood of a pediatrician encountering a case of vaccine damage is low enough to encourage belief in Dr Tayloe’s statement.

Never mind. Our gracious lady suddenly adds an interpolation:

[UPDATE: OMG! Turns out the Vaccine Injury Compensation Court exists in part due to the 3.5 million dollar malpractice suit that Dr. David Tayloe lost in 1985 when a child he gave the DPT shot to magically got permanent brain injury!! That Asshole just got on TV and implied that he had never SEEN a vaccine injury in his practice!!! ]

Actually this was Dr Tayloe’s father, David T Tayloe Snr. Our David Tayloe, David T Tayloe Jnr. was still at medical school during the fateful immunization in 1974. The settlement was reduced to $1.1 million on appeal and the real culprit, if ‘culprit’ is an appropriate word in this case, was the practise nurse who failed to inform Dr Tayloe Snr. of a reported adverse reaction by the child to his initial DPT shot.

Incidentally, I wrote to the lawyer who prosecuted the case against Dr Tayloe Snr. and he told me that Dr Tayloe,  “seemed like a  nice guy who just made a mistake which was fatal to a baby.” Our gracious lady is less than gracious when she writes,

I got an email from someone Tayloe went to med school with that says this was his father. In thinking about where to adjust my judgmentalism meter, I think that I will retract my declaration that he is an asshole, and say that he is a dangerous, foolish man.

That is big of you, Ginger. Then you go on to say:

A jury told his own father that he was more than three million dollars worth of wrong for administering a shot that plunged a boy into brain damage, and he learned nothing from it, continuing to claim that ‘all vaccines are safe for every child’, and that there is no such thing as serious vaccine injury. (or maybe, but barely ever, as his statement last week was that there was not “any relationship between vaccines and permanent injury”, and this week he has downgraded his stance to “extremely rare”.) Even though it was not directly his, he should still know better because of his father’s legacy.]

Sins of the fathers? Even so, if that was my legacy I would be very much aware of the possibility of vaccine damage. And I am sure that Dr Tayloe Jnr is aware. But he must be equally aware of his profesional obligation to maintain the health of the nation by encouraging take up of the vaccine program. Considering his family history I can think of no man better equiped to lead the AAP in this task.

There are many people who presume to speak on behalf of the autism community. Very few of them speak for me. So, speaking entirely for myself, I just want to apologize to Dr Tayloe on behalf of all the people like me for the ill-deserved remarks that have come your way as a result of your appearance on the Larry King Show.

April 5th, 2008 Posted by Mike | Autism, vaccines | 7 comments