Part 1 ... thimerosal's dangers ... vaccinations
- From: "georgia" <jwissmille@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 17 Jul 2005 13:53:58 -0700
"It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the
leading
scientific research and talking with many of the nation's pre-eminent
authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between
thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is
real...."
"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe,"
says
Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of
Kentucky.
"It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its
brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die..."
"In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final
report. Its
conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in
vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing
the
toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed
epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children
received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids..."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7395411
ROLLING STONE
Deadly Immunity
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a
mercury/autism scandal
By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials
gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in
Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center,
nestled
in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete
secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session --
only
private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level
officials
from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine
specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and
representatives
of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck,
Wyeth
and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC
officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly
"embargoed."
There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers
with
them when they left.
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to
discuss
a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety
of a
host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young
children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who
had
analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records
of
100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines --
thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in
autism
and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was
actually
stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at
Simpsonwood,
citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link
between
thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity
and
autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three
additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely
young
infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number
of
cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500
children
to one in 166 children.
Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of
life and
death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you
want,"
Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics,
told the
group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard
Johnston, an
immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose
grandson
had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even
more
alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I
do
not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we
know
better what is going on."
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the
vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at
Simpsonwood
spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging
data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of
Information
Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging
revelations
about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. "We
are in
a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr.
Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for
Children
in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff
attorneys
in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC,
expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we
have
been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible
hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines adviser at the World Health
Organization, declared flatly that the study "should not have been done
at
all" and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be
used
in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to
be
handled."
In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the
damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute
of
Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal,
ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It
withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for
immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data
had
been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of
Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over
to a
private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time
Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work
for
GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between
thimerosal
and autism.
Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of
injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off
their
mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA
gave
them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing
countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the
preservative in
some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well
as
tetanus boosters routinely given to eleven-year-olds.
The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in
Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received
$873,000 in
contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to
immunize
vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by
the
parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has
tried to
seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the
Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of
thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly
slipped a
rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security
bill,
the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies
of
his book on bioterrorism. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003
--
but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an
anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering
from
vaccine-related brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude
that
they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity
to
deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Andy Olsen, a
legislative
assistant to Frist.
Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover
up
the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana,
oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was
diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines
is
directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform
Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all
probability
may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the
switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a
known neurotoxin." The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to
act,
the committee added, out of "institutional malfeasance for self
protection"
and "misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."
The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to
hide
the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of
institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the
controversy
only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent
years
working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of
autistic
children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured
by
vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical.
I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I
certainly
understood the government's need to reassure parents that vaccinations
are
safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I
tended
to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from
California,
who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee
for
leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. "Why should we
scare
people about immunization," Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until
we
know the facts?"
It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the
leading
scientific research and talking with many of the nation's pre-eminent
authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between
thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is
real.
Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation --
those
born between 1989 and 2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury from
vaccines. "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have
symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a
school
nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines
are
supposed to be making us healthier; however, in twenty-five years of
nursing
I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very
wrong is
happening to our children."
More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians
diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown
until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children
born
in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in
1931.
Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by
thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a
result of
better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given
that
most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single
generation of
children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis,"
scoffs
Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity,
"then
where are all the twenty-year-old autistics?" Other researchers point
out
that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative "load" of mercury
than
ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest
that
thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It's
a
concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received
--
but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines
dwarf
other sources of exposure to our children.
What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading
detectives
have gone to ignore -- and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal.
From
the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive
has
been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and
bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent
neurotoxin.
Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in
the
brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with
vaccines -- and that the developing brains of infants are particularly
susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much
lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American
children
still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from
children's vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan,
Great
Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.
"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe,"
says
Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of
Kentucky.
"It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its
brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If
you
put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it
would be
shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."
.
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