Re: THE TRUTH BEHIND THE VACCINE COVER-UP

From: WCAP (sojmed_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 09/14/04 

Date: 14 Sep 2004 16:31:51 -0700

"HCN" <hcn@nospam.com> wrote in message news:<pbu1d.299206$8_6.276290@attbi_s04>...
> ... snip lots of scaremongering blather.

I think you missed the point.

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPTS FROM:

Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information

June 7-8, 2000

Simpsonwood Retreat Center

Norcross, Georgia

(Convened by the Center for Disease Control statistical correlation
between thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental
disorders):

(obtained by SAFEMINDS' Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request)

51 attendees:
Vaccine industry: Harry Guess, M.D., Merck, Chief of Epidemiology Jo
White, M.D., North American
Vacccine, Clinical Dev. & Research Barbara Howe,
M.D., Smith, Kline-Beecham, Clinical Research
Group Mike Blum, M.D., Wyeth, Safety and
Surveillance for Vaccine Development

Excerpts from:

Roger Bernier, Ph.D., CDC's associate director for science

Robert Brent, M.D., Thomas Jefferson University and Dupont Hospital
for Children, developmental biologist and pediatrician

Vito Caserta, M.D., Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Vaccine
Injury Compensation Program's chief medical officer

Bob Chen, M.D., CDC's chief of Vaccine Safety and Development,
National Immunization Program

Tom Clarkson, M.D., University of Rochester, New York, Mercury program

John Clements, World Health Organization (WHO) representing expanded
program on immunization

Bob Davis, M.D., University of Washington, associate professor of
pediatrics and epidemiology

Bill Egan, Ph.D., FDA's Center for Biologics, Evaluation & Research

David Johnson, M.D., Michigan state public health officer, Advisory
Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)

*** Johnston, M.D., University of Colorado School of Medicine and
National Jewish Center

for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine, immunologist and pediatrician

Loren Koller, D.V.M., Oregon State University College of Veterinary
Medicine, pathologist, immunotoxicologist

Martin Meyers, M.D., CDC's acting director, National Immunization
Program

Walter Orenstein, M.D. CDC's director, National Immunization Program

Isabelle Rapin, M.D., Albert Einstein College of Medicine, neurologist
for children

Tom Verstraeten, M.D., CDC's National Immunization Program presently
employeed by

Glaxo-Welcome, vaccine company

Bill Weil, M.D., retired pediatrician, representing American Academy
of Pediatrics' (AAP)

Committee on Environmental health

Dr. Orenstein, pgs. 1-2: "My name is Walter Orenstein. I'm Director
of the National Immunization Program at CDC and I want to thank all of
you for coming here and talking time out of your very busy schedules
to spend the next say and a half with us."

"Those who don't know, initial concerns were raised last summer that
mercury, as methylmercury in vaccines, might exceed safe levels. As a
result of these concerns, CDC undertook, in collaboration with
investigators in the Vaccine Safety Datalink, an effort to evaluate
whether there were any health risks from mercury in any of these
vaccines."

"Analysis to date raise some concerns of a possible dose-response
effect of increasing levels of methylmercury in vaccines and certain
neurologic diagnoses. Therefore, the purpose of this meeting is to
have a careful scientific review of the data."

"This is not a policy making meeting. Vaccine policy making will take
place after this consultation as part of the Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices, or ACIP deliberations. For those who don't
know, vaccine policy for CDC is really set through the recommendations
of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or the ACIP.
Thus, this is a scientific review to evaluate the quality of the
scientific data. Our goal is to assure our policies are abased on the
best available scientific information…"

"This is what is called an individual simultaneous consultation. What
that means is each consultant will be asked for their opinion publicly
on questions which Roger Bernier will bring up in a few moments…"

"Although it will be of interest to see if the individual consultants
tend to agree on particular issues, there is not the need to reach
complete consensus. Your individual opinions should be very useful to
the ACIP as it deliberates afterwards on policy options with regard to
mercury in vaccines."

Dr. Bernier, pg. 11: "The focus is going to be about Hepatitis B, DTP
and H. flu vaccine."

Dr. Johnston, pg. 14-15 & 19-20: "Thimerosal is in many vaccine
because it is a preservative and it lowers the rate of bacterial and
fungal contamination that may occur during the manufacturing process,
packaging and the use of vaccines in the field. It is particularly a
concern in multi-dose vials because of the issue of re-entry multiple
times in the vials, and it is also important in the manufacturing
process for a number of vaccine including inactivated influenza and
some of the earlier DPT vaccine, and is a constituent of all DPT
vaccines, but not all DTAP vaccines."

"There are three licensed preservative in the United States,
Thimerosal, ethyl and phenol. We won't talk about the other two
today, but I thought I should mention them. Thimerosal is the most
active and it has been utilized in vaccines since the 1930's."

"Thimerosal functions as an anti-microbial after it is cleaved into
ethylmercury and thiosalicylate, which is inactive. It is the
ethylmercury which is bacterial at acidic PH and fungistatic at
neutral and alkaline PH. It has no activity against spore forming
organisms."

 

"There is a very limited pharmacokinetic data concerning ethylmercury.
 There is very limited data on its blood levels. There is no data on
its excretion. It is recognized to both cross placenta and the
blood-brain barrier."

"The data on its toxicity, ethylmercury, is sparse. It is primarily
recognized as a cause of hypersensitivity. Acutely, it can cause
neurologic and renal toxicity, including death, from overdose…"

"Dr. Halsey made a very impassioned plea that we do carefully
controlled studies to in fact address the issues specifically, and
that such studies be conducted neurodevelopmentalists and
environmental scientists employing specific endpoints of their study…"

"Finally I would like to mention one more issue. As you know, the
National Vaccine Program Office has sponsored two conferences on
metals and vaccines. I have just recounted a summary of the mercury,
the Thimerosal I vaccines. We just recently had another meeting that
some of you were able to attend dealing with aluminum in vaccines. I
would like to just say one or two words about that before I conclude."

"We learned at that meeting a number of important things about
aluminum, and I think they also are important in our considerations
today. First aluminum salts, and there a number of different salts
that are utilized, reduce the amount of antigen and the number of
injections required for primary immunization."

"Aluminum salts are important I the formulating process of vaccines,
both in antigen stabilization and absorption of endotoxin."

"Aluminum salts have a very wide margin of safety. Aluminum and
mercury are often simultaneously administered to infants, both at the
same site and at different sites."

"However, we also learned that there is absolutely no data, including
animal data, about the potential for synergy, additivity or
antagonism, all of which can occur in binary metal mixtures that
relate and allow us to draw any conclusions from the simultaneous
exposure to these two salts in vaccines…"

Dr. Johnston, pg. 20: "Marty, the ethylmercury has been painted with
the methylmercury brush, and maybe we will discuss this later, but are
they metabolized equivalently, exactly equivalently, partially
differently?"

Dr. Myers, pg. 20: "I'm not sure that I'm confident to answer that.
Dr. Clarkson, if I recall, when asked that question specifically at
the mercury conference said that we should assume that their excretion
was similar, but that might well not be the cast that would the be the
worst case scenario.

Dr. Clarkson, pg. 21: "There is an issue that pharmacokinetics might
be different, too. Again, this is all animal work, but the animal
studies suggested, for example, a suckling animal does not eliminate
methylmercury until the end of the suckling period, and there is a
mechanism on the study for that. So there could be an age difference
in the excretion rates."

Dr. Rapin, pg 22: "I don't know if anyone has looked at the
literature of old Pinks disease which was present in the twenties or
thirties when mothers wore shield that contained mercury"

Dr. Weil, pg. 24: "One, up until this last discussion we have been
talking about chronic exposure. I think it's clear to me anyway that
we are talking about a problem that is probably more related to bolus
acute exposures, and we also need to know that the migration problems
and some of the other developmental problems in the central nervous
system go on for quite a period after birth. But from all of the
other studies of toxic substances, the earlier you work with the
central nervous system, the more likely you are to run into a
sensitive period for one of these effects, so that moving from one
month or one day of birth to six months of birth changes enormously
the potential for toxicity. There are just a host of
neurodevelopmental data that would suggest that we've got a serious
problem. The earlier we go, the more serious the problem."

"The second point I could make is that in relationship to aluminum,
being a nephrologist for a long time, the potential for aluminum and
central nervous system toxicity was established by dialysis data. To
think there isn't some possible problem here is unreal."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 31: "It is sort of interesting that when I first
came to the CDC as a NIS officer a year ago only, I didn't really know
what I wanted to do, but one of the things I knew I didn't want to do
was studies that had to do with toxicology or environmental health.
Because I thought it was too much confounding and it's very hard to
prove anything in those studies. Not it turns out that other people
also thought that this study was not the right thing to do, so what I
will present to you is the study that nobody thought we should do."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 40: "…we have found statistically significant
relationships between the exposure and outcomes for these different
exposures and outcomes. First, for two months of age, an unspecified
developmental delay, which has its own specific ICD9 code. Exposure
at three months of age, Tics. Exposure at six months of age, an
attention deficit disorder. Exposure at one, three and six months of
age, language and speech delays which are two separate ICD9 codes.
Exposures at one, three and six months of age, the entire category of
neurodevelopmental delays, which includes all of these plus a number
of other disorders."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 42: "But for one thing that is for sure, there
is certainly an underascertainment of all of these because some of the
children are just not old enough to be diagnosed. So the crude
incidence rates are probably much lower that what you would expect
because the cohort is still very young."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 44: " Now for speech delays, which is the
largest single disorder in this category of neurologic delays. The
results are a suggestion of a trend with a small dip. The overall
test for trend is highly statistically significant above one."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 45: "What this represents is the overall category
of developmental delays, of which I have excluded speech delays
because of the impression we had was some of the calculations were
driven by this speech group, which was making up about half of this
category. After excluding this speech group, the trend is also
apparent in this group and the test for trend is also significant for
this category excluding speech."

Dr. Weil, pg. 75: "I think that what you are saying is in term of
chronic exposure. I think that the alternative scenario is that this
repeated acute exposures, and like many repeated acute exposures, if
you consider a dose of 25 micrograms on one day, then you are above
threshold. At least we think you are, and then you do that over and
over to a series of neurons where the toxic effect may be the same set
of neurons or the same set of neurologic processes, it is conceivable
that the more mercury you get, the more effect you are going to get."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 76: "What I have done here, I am putting into
the model instead of mercury, a number of antigens that the children
received, and what do we get? Not surprisingly, we get very similar
estimates as what we got for Thimerosal because every vaccine put in
the equation has Thimerosal. So for speech and the other ones maybe
it's not so significant, but for the overall group it is also
significant….Here we have the same thing, but instead of number of
antigens, number of shots. Just the number of vaccinations given to a
child, which is also for nearly all of them significantly related."

Dr. Guess, pg. 77: "So this essentially is a 7% risk per antigen, an
antigen is like in DPT you've got three antigens."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 77: "Correct."

Dr. Egan, pg. 77: "Could you do this calculation for aluminum?"

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 77: "I did it for aluminum…Actually the results
were almost identical to ethylmercury because the amount of aluminum
goes along almost exactly with the mercury one."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 78-79: "Then the last slide I wanted to show,
there was a question of it there was any way from this data that we
could estimate what would happen in the future if there is
Thimerosal-free Hep B and Thimerosal-free haemophilus influenza
vaccine and only DTP has Thimerosal"

"The second column would be the same scenario but now at six months.
Assuming they have received two additional DPTs, so between three and
six months of age they have increased their ethylmercury amounts by 50
micrograms. If I do in this current cohort with all its limitations,
because there is also the Hep B that exists in the cohort*, I can't
really take it out. It is significant for this one disorder which is
language delay and is a combination of these two disorders, also
becomes significant."

* Dr. Verstraeten could not determine which children got Hep B at
birth in some cases so it was difficult to back the birth dose of Hep
B out of the data.

Dr. Davis, pg. 85: "Now in terms of a search for pre-disposing
factors, this is actually going to be important in what I will talk
about tomorrow, but I will mention it today and put a little seed in
your mind. Which is that serious and chronic otitis media, by history
being mentioned by the pediatrician or the specialist, was present 38%
of the time."

Dr. Bernier, pg. 113: "We have asked you to keep this information
confidential. We do have a plan for discussing these data at the
upcoming meeting of the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices
on June 21 and June 22. At that time CDC plans to make a public
release of this information, so I think it would serve all of our
interests best if we could continue to consider these data. The ACIP
work group will be considering also. If we could consider these data
in a certain protected environment. So we are asking people who have
a great job protecting this information up until now, to continue to
do that until the time of the ACIP meeting. So to basically consider
this embargoed information. That would help all of us to use the
machinery that we have in place for considering these data and for
arriving at policy recommendations."

Dr. Keller, pgs. 116 & 118: "…we know the developing neurologic
system is more sensitive than one that is fully developed…"

"The ratio of hair to blood generally is recognized to be around 250.
I have seen publications anywhere from 140 to 416, but 250 is
generally accepted."

"The other thing that has not been mentioned here today that has to be
considered is the half life of mercury in the blood, particularly the
organic mercuries. That ranges from 30 to 90 days. The average is
considered to be around 50 days, so one-half of the mercury will be
eliminated in 50 days from the body."

"Usually the hair values lag blood by about four weeks…"

"Daily intake we won't worry about."

Dr. Brent, pg. 130: "Dr. Jones brought up a suggestion when we were
talking in the coffee break. The collaborative perinatal project had
50,000 parents. They registered them right from the beginning of
pregnancy and then they followed them very closely. It was
subsidized. Probably all of these children had DTP. Was mercury in
the DTP in the fifties and sixties? Well, that is still on the
computer and available to you . One of the things I have been taught
about epidemiology is repetition. In other words, if you could get
another body of patients and demonstrate the same thing, it makes if
more convincing."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 131: "I would be the first person to try and
analyze that. I have been asking all over if there is another data
set I could look at and try to replicate it in a very oriented manner
without doing another analysis."

Dr. Brent, pg. 131: "Well, it's on the eleventh floor of the Archives
Building in Washington, D.C. and certainly any government employee
would have access to that data."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg.131: So what we want to avoid is multiple
comparisons just for the specific outcomes that we are interested in.
That's one and then at the same time at the U.K., there is another
data set of General Practitioners, where we have asked them if they
can replicate our findings there. So we are waiting for those
results."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 142: "But if I can have the next slide, here
instead of the proportional hazard model, we did a logistic regression
model. I didn't use person time here and it's a bit tough to define
exactly the control group. However, if I do it for all ages and not
looking at different years, and this is for speech, the outcome is
almost identical to the proportional hazard model, which suggests to
me that it is not a question of bringing the diagnosis forward, but it
is really the overall number that drives this estimate."

Dr. Rapin, pg. 143: "I would like to make a comment. We have been
focusing on all these acquired causes including mercury and
prematurity, and you had a list of confounding variables that should
be considered in future studies. What we know today about all of the
developmental disorders is that environmental factors are in fact
rather unimportant in the case of these deficits and the major cause
is genetic…I find it a little difficult knowing this and putting in
autism. The major cause is not environmental, it is genetic and that
we are focusing just on these environment events or adventitious
events when we haven't considered, and you told us that you don't have
data for example on siblings, your study does not lend itself to
considering the major variable."

Dr. Johnson, pg 144: "Well, I think the assumption is that those
genetic predispositions would be randomly distributed."

Dr. Rapin, pg.144: "But you don't know that."

Dr. Johnson, pg. 144: "No, that's an interesting assumption."

Dr. Rapin, pg. 144: "I understand that, but you don't know that."

Dr. Johnson, pg. 144: "just on principle, Dr. Rapin, it seems to me
that the more we learn about genetics or the more we learn about let's
say autism, the more we shift towards focusing on genetic causes, but
would you rule out the possibility, and let's move away from autism,
that some of these are genetic predisposition and then the second
hit?"

Dr. Rapin, pg. 144: "Not at all. I think that iti is in fact an
attractive hypothesis."

Dr. Johnson, pg. 145: "Right, thank you."

Dr. Chen, pg. 151: "One of the reasons that led me personally to not
be so quick to dismiss the findings was that on his own Tom
independently picked three different outcomes that he did not think
could be associated with mercury and three out of three had a
different pattern across different exposure levels as compared to the
ones that again on a priority basis we picked as biologically
plausible to be due to mercury exposure."

Dr. Brent, pg. 161: "Wasn't it true that if you looked at the
population that had 25 micrograms you had a certain risk and when you
got to 75 micrograms you had a higher risk."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 161: "Yes, absolutely, but these are all at the
same time. Measured at the same age at least."

Dr. Brent, pg. 161: I understand that, but they are different
exposures."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 161: "Yes."

Dr. Brent, pg. 161: "What is your explanation? What explanations
would you give for that?"

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 161: "Personally, I have three hypotheses. My
first hypothesis is it is parental bias. The children that are more
likely to be vaccinated are more likely to be picked and diagnosed.
Second hypothesis, I don't know. There is a bias that I have not
recognized, and nobody has yet told me about it. Third hypothesis.
It's true, it's Thimerosal. Those are my hypotheses."

Dr. Brent, pg. 161: "If it's true, which or what mechanisms would you
explain the finding with?"

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 162: "You are asking for biological
plausibility?"

Dr. Brent, pg. 162: "Well, yes."

Dr. Verstraeten, pg. 162: "When I saw this, and I went back through
the literature, I was actually stunned by what I saw because I thought
it is plausible. First of all there is the Faeroe study, which I
think people have dismissed too easily, and there is a new article in
the same Journal that was presented here, the Journal of Pediatrics,
where they have looked at PCB. They have looked at other contaminants
in seafood and they have adjusted for that, and still mercury comes
out. That is one point. Another point is that in many of the studies
with animals, it turned out that there is quite a different result
depending on the dose of mercury. Depending on the route of exposure
and depending on the age at which the animals, it turned out that
there is quite a different result depending on the dose of mercury.
Depending on the route of exposure and depending on the age at which
the animals were exposed. Now, I don't know how much you can
extrapolate that from animals to humans, but that tells me mercury at
one month of age is not the same as mercury at three months, at 12
months, prenatal mercury, later mercury. There is a whole range of
plausible outcomes from mercury. On top of that, I think that we
cannot so easily compare the U.S. population to Faeroe or Seychelles
populations. We have different mean levels of exposure. We are
comparing high to high I the Seychelles, high to high in the Faeroe
and low to low in the U.S., so I am not sure how easily you can
transpose one finding to another one. So basically to me that leaves
all the options open, and that means I can not exclude such a possible
effect."

Dr. Orenstein, pg. 184: "Well, the second issue is we don't know
causality. We don't know about causality, but is this something that
really warrants some urgent attention?"

Dr. Clover, pg. 187: "…no one around here is going to say that
mercury per say is not a concern."

Dr. Weil, pg. 187 & 188: "Although the data presents a number of
uncertainties, there is adequate consistency, biological plausibility,
a lack of relationship with phenomenon not expected to be related, and
a potential causal role that is as good as any other hypothesized
etiology of explanation of the noted associations. In addition, the
possibility that the associations could be causal has major
significance for public and professional acceptance of Thimerosal
containing vaccines. I think that is a critical issue. Finally, lack
of further study would be horrendous grist for the anti-vaccination
bill. That's why we need to go on, and urgently I would add.

Dr. Brent, pg. 188-191: "I am impressed with the fact that some
people here have information and believe that like the incidence of
learning difficulties, behavior disorders and attention deficit is
increasing in our population. I don't know whether it is or it isn't,
but that kind of information you just can't throw around and say it's
true or isn't true without data. And it is such an important area in
our society. I mean it is the thing that makes a human being
different from the other species, so it is such an important area of
research…"

"…(thimerosal) Causing learning disabilities and behavioral disorders.
 ADD is a tremendous problem in our society and I think it is one that
we should be very concerned about."

"Finally, the thing that concerns me the most, those who know me, I
have been a pin stick in the litigation community because of the
nonsense of our litigious society. This will be a resource to our
very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country when this information
becomes available. They don't want valid data. At least that is my
biased opinion. They want business and this could potentially be a
lot of business."

Dr. Koller, pg. 192: "…As you increase the vaccination, you increase
effects, but you don't know. You have modified live viruses. You
have different antigens. There is a lot of things in those
vaccinations other than mercury, and we don't know whether this is a
vaccination effect or a mercury effect. But I am almost sure it is
not a mercury effect. Positive as a matter of fact, and there are
several experts particularly that have reviewed this, the
methylmercury aspect who would agree with that due to dose response."

Dr. Johnson, pg. 193: "Are you really comfortable with the way the
neurologic function was tested in the Seychelles?"

Dr. Koller, pg. 193: "I have to admit that there were many other
tests that could have been conducted…We are talking about very
subjective, very sensitive assays and yes, there could have been
others done and there should be more done…"

Dr. Johnson, pg. 198: "This association leads me to favor a
recommendation that infants up to two years old not be immunized with
Thimerosal containing vaccines if suitable alternative preparations
are available. I do not believe the diagnoses justifies compensation
in the Vaccine Compensation Program at this point. I deal with
causality, it seems pretty clear to me that the data are not
sufficient one way or the other. My gut feeling? It worries me
enough. Forgive this personal comment, but I got called out a eight
o'clock for an emergency call and my daughter-in-law delivered a son
by C-section. Our first male in the line of the next generation, and
I do not want that grandson to get a Thimerosal containing vaccine
until we know better what is going on. It will probably take a long
time. In the meantime, and I know there are probably implications for
this internationally, but in the meantime I think I want that grandson
to only be given Thimerosal-free vaccines."

Dr. Weil, pg. 207: "The number of dose related relationships are
linear and statistically significant. You can play with this all you
want. They are linear. They are statistically significant. The
positive relationships are those that one might expect from the Faroe
Islands studies. They are also related to those data we do have on
experimental animal data and similar to the neurodevelopmental tox
data on other substances, so that I think you can't accept that this
is out of the ordinary. It isn't out of the ordinary."

Dr. Weil, pg. 208: "The rise in the frequency of neurobehavioral
disorders whether it is ascertainment or real, is not too bad. It is
much too graphic. We don't see that kind of genetic change in 30
years."

Dr. Brent, pg. 229: "The medical/legal findings in this study, causal
or not, are horrendous and therefore, it is important that the
suggested epidemiological, pharmokinetic, and animal studies be
performed. If an allegation was made that a child's neurobehavioral
findings were caused by Thimerosal containing vaccines, you could
readily find junk scientist who would support the claim with "a
reasonable degree of certainty". But you will not find a scientist
with any integrity who would say the reverse with the data that is
available. And that is true. So we are in a bad position from the
standpoint of defending any lawsuits if they were initiated and I am
concerned."

Dr. Meyers, pg. 231: "Can I go back to the core issue about the
research? My own concern, and a couple of you said it, there is an
association between vaccines and outcome that worries both parents and
pediatricians. We don't really know what that outcome is, but it is
one that worries us and there is an association with vaccines. We
keep jumping back to Thimerosal, but a number of us are concerned that
Thimerosal may be less likely than some of the potential associations
that have been made. Some of the potential associations are number of
injections, number of antigens, other additives. We mentioned
aluminum and I mentioned yesterday aluminum and mercury. Antipyretics
and analgesics are better utilized when vaccines are given. And then
every body mentioned all of the ones that we can't think about in this
quick time period that are a part of this association, and yet all of
the questions I hear we are asking have to do with Thimerosal. My
concern is we need to ask the questions about the other potential
associations, because we are going to the Thimerosal-free vaccine. I
f many of us don't think that this is a plausible association because
of the levels and so on, then we are missing looking for the
association that may be the important one."

Dr. Caserta, pg. 234: "One of the things I learned at the Aluminum
Conference in Puerto Rico that was tied into the metal lines in
biology and medicine that I never really understood before, is the
interactive effect of different metals when they are together in the
same organism. It is not the same as when they are alone, and I think
it would be foolish for us not to include aluminum as part of our
thinking with this."

Dr. Clements, pg 247- 249: "I am really concerned that we have taken
off like a boat going down one arm of the mangrove swamp at high
speed, when in fact there was not enough discussion really early on
about which was the boat should go at all. And I really want to risk
offending everyone in the room by saying that perhaps this study
should not have been done at all, because the outcome of it could
have, to some extent, been predicted, and we have all reached this
point now where we are left hanging, even though I hear the majority
of consultants say to the Board that they are not convinced there is a
causality direct link between Thimerosal and various neurological
outcomes."

" I know how we handle it from here is extremely problematic. The
ACIP is going to depend on comments from this group in order to move
forward into policy, and I have been advised that whatever I say
should not move into the policy area because that is not the point of
this meeting. But nonetheless, we know from many experiences in
history that the pure scientist has done research because of pure
science. But that pure science has resulted in splitting the atom or
some other process which is completely beyond the power of the
scientists who did the research to control it. And what we have here
is people who have, for every best reason in the world, pursued a
direction of research. But there is not the point at which the
research results have to be handled, and even if this committee
decides that there is no association and that information gets out,
the work that has been done and through the freedom of information
that will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the
control of this group. And I am very concerned about that as I
suspect it already too late to do anything regardless of any
professional body and what they say."

"My mandate as I sit here in this group is to make sure at the end of
the day the 100,000,000 are immunized with DTP, Hepatitis B and if
possible Hib, this year, next year and for many years to come, and
that will have to be with Thimerosal containing vaccines unless a
miracle occurs and an alternative is found quickly and is tried and
found to be safe."

"So I leave you with the challenge that I am very concerned that this
has gotten this far, and that having got this far, how you present in
a concerted voice the information to the ACIP in a way they will be
able to handle it and not get exposed to the traps which are out there
in public relations. My message would be that any other study, and I
like the study that has just been described here very much. I think
it makes a lot of sense, but it has to be thought through. What are
the potential outcomes and how will you handle it? How will it be
presented to a public and media that is hungry for selecting the
information they want to use for whatever means they in store for
them?"

"…but I wonder how on earth you are going to handle it from here."

Dr. Bernier, pg. 256: "…As difficult as science is, there are two
other equally tricky, complex challenges. The policy crafting has to
take into consideration some very diverse and complex issues. There
is another group that will deal with that, and then we have the
communication and how we handle this, which I think I am no expert at,
but seems equally daunting to me as the scientific and the policy
issue."

"I don't think we can set a rule here because some people have gotten
these documents. For example, some of the manufacturers were
privileged to receive this information. It has been important for
them to share it within the company with the experts there, so they
can review it. Some of you may have questions. You may have given a
copy, but I think if we will all just consider this embargoed
information, if I can use that term, and very highly protected
information, I think that was the best I can offer."

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