Fwd: [S-A] [Health&Healing] CDC Vaccine Study Slammed as Cover-UP

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" Misty L. Trepke "

Sun, 21 Dec 2003 15:48:22 -0000

[s-A] [Health & Healing] CDC Vaccine Study Slammed as Cover-UP

 

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Misty L. Trepke

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CDC vaccines study slammed as cover-up

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36023

 

By Kelly Patricia O'Meara

 

© 2003 Insight/News World Communications Inc.

 

Canned tuna or canned poison? That was the teaser for a CBS 2 News

" HealthWatch " Report of Nov. 22 that focused on high levels of

mercury found in tuna and the possible health risks associated with

them.

 

CBS 2 News reporter Paul Moniz quoted a number of physicians, who

observed of the toxic substance that, " Once it gets into our bodies,

a substantial part of it will end up in our nervous system, in our

brains, and it's there that it causes a variety of symptoms. "

 

A pediatrician is quoted as saying, " We know that high levels of

mercury can impair the cognitive development as well as the growth

and development of a young child. "

 

What the report appears to be revealing is that while overweight

Americans may flee to fish to lose unwanted pounds, too much of that

tasty tuna could reduce the IQ more than the waistline.

 

What the critics of mercury in vaccines find provocative about this

report is the acknowledgement by physicians that the high levels of

mercury ingested from canned tuna can cause severe health risks. One

such critic, the mother of an autistic child, wonders " why everyone

gets up in arms over ingesting small amounts of mercury from fish or

from breaking a thermometer but finds it acceptable to inject an

even more toxic form of mercury directly into the bloodstream of

infants. "

 

" The evidence is overwhelming, " she contends, " that hundreds of

thousands of children were damaged by gross overexposure to mercury

through vaccines [containing thimerosal] and millions more were and

continue to be put at risk, yet network news has not addressed this

in any significant way. The public needs and deserves to know the

truth - not only about the biggest medical bungling in our history,

but also about the extraordinary efforts of both the pharmaceutical

industry and government agencies to cover it up. "

 

A pharmaceutical and government cover-up? It is a familiar enough

accusation, and this time the fuse was lit by yet another study from

the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, this

one titled Safety of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines: A Two-Phased

Study of Computerized Health Maintenance Organization Databases. The

report concluded that " no consistent significant associations were

found between TCVs [thimerosal-containing vaccines] and

neurodevelopment outcomes. "

 

Critics scoff at such a conclusion.

 

" Sure, " laughs one, " they say you can't eat tuna because the level

of mercury you ingest isn't good for you, but there's no health risk

associated with injecting high levels of mercury directly into a

newborn baby? "

 

The CDC study, released in the November 2003 issue of Pediatrics,

seemed to puzzle news media, with most who took note of it making at

least a mention of the fact that the lead author, Thomas

Verstraeten, was an employee of GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical

giant and vaccine manufacturer, when he submitted the study for

publication.

 

The first part of the two-phase study to determine whether there is

a connection between thimerosal-containing vaccines and

neurodevelopment disorders began in 1999 and involved the review of

data from Seattle's Group Health Cooperative and Northern California

Kaiser, both large health-maintenance organizations. The data used

in this first phase actually revealed a significant association

between TCVs administered to infants and later developmental

abnormalities such as speech and language delays and

neurodevelopment problems in general, such as tics and the

alleged hyperactivity symptoms of attention-deficit disorder and

attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

 

However, this conclusion was not included in the final draft; it was

only made public afterward when Verstraeten's notes were revealed in

another forum, according to specialists. The notes, not published

with the CDC study, showed that the " relative risk " for autism was

2.48 times higher for children who received 62.5 micrograms or more

of mercury from TCVs by 3 months of age.

 

The second phase of the study in June 2000, however, involved the

Harvard Pilgrim HMO in Massachusetts - an unlikely choice, critics

say. Among the problems with using Harvard Pilgrim's database was

that the HMO was in bankruptcy and had been taken over by the

commonwealth of Massachusetts.

 

The medical records not only were incomplete, but the data were

stored with a diagnostic coding system completely unlike that used

in the first phase of the study using data from the two West Coast

HMOs. Furthermore, the Harvard Pilgrim data, say the expert

analysts, had incomplete data on autism and did not even address the

issue.

 

Thus medical reviewers of the CDC study charge that it is rife with

data manipulation. Since it relied on incompatible diagnostic coding

to validate whether there were adverse effects from exposure to

TCVs, the effect was to sabotage the result. So, they say, it was

not surprising that the CDC study's analysis of the Harvard Pilgrim

data found no consistent association between vaccines containing

thimerosal and the mercury-related neurological disorders found

previously in the first phase based on the two West Coast HMOs.

 

One of the few physicians in Congress, Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla.,

immediately saw the problems associated with the CDC study and

notified CDC Director Julie Gerberding.

 

" I have serious reservations about the four-year evolution and

conclusions of this study, " Weldon wrote. " A review of these

documents leaves me very concerned that rather than seeking to

understand whether or not some children were exposed to harmful

levels of mercury in childhood vaccines in the 1990s, there may have

been a selective use of the data to make the associations in the

earliest study disappear. "

 

Weldon's letter to Gerberding goes on to observe that " the first

version of the study, produced in February 2000, found a significant

association between exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines and

autism and neurological developmental delays. A June 2000 version of

the study applied various data manipulations to reduce the autism

association to 1.69, and the authors went outside the VSD [Vaccine

Safety Datalink] database to secure data from a Massachusetts HMO

[Harvard Pilgrim] in order to counter the association found between

TCVs and speech delays. " Clear enough.

 

The Florida lawmaker, who is a staunch supporter of immunization,

tells Insight, " I don't know what's going on. It's a pretty lame

study to begin with. The way they've done it is they got some

findings and started adding more numbers to the denominator - it's

kind of a strange protocol they followed. Then there are all these

quotes from the researchers from other documents about how you can

add numbers and stratify things and get any outcome you want. Then

you consider that the lead author is working for a drug company,

didn't disclose this fact and also that it is one of the drug

companies being sued over this mercury issue. I'm just very

concerned that we're not going to get answers as long as there

are careers at stake. You know there are people at the CDC who have

been involved in the vaccine program who didn't recognize the amount

of mercury they were giving kids, and now they're in the process of

investigating themselves. Meanwhile a lot of these investigators bo

unce to and from the drug companies. I think it all is very, very

murky and very suspicious. "

 

Weldon summarizes: " The CDC produced an article by Dr. Verstraeten,

published on Nov. 3 in Pediatrics. Dr. Verstraeten is a former CDC

employee. Since 2001 he has worked for GlaxoSmithKline - a vaccine

manufacturer. While working for the CDC in 2000, the first version

of Dr. Verstraeten's unpublished study found an association between

higher thimerosal exposures and neurodevelopment disorders,

including autism. Between 2000 and 2003, Dr. Verstraeten and

coauthors manipulated and stratified the data so much that each of

these associations magically disappeared. I don't know if it was

deliberate, but that is nonetheless what happened. This study has

done nothing in my mind to put these concerns to rest, but only

serves to raise suspicions. "

 

This veteran member of Congress puts it plainly: " We're not going to

get answers to these questions until Congress or some outside group

starts poring through this information. But it's very coincidental

that they added the hepatitis vaccine, the HiB vaccine and the

chicken-pox vaccine - they added all these additional childhood

vaccines around the time when the autism rate started to skyrocket.

Then when you actually sit down and do the calculations, according

to the Environmental Protection Agency, they were giving these kids

very toxic levels of mercury. I mean as a 150- to 200-pound adult

the EPA says you're not supposed to take in more than one microgram

per day. They were taking little seven- and 10-pound babies and

pumping 50 and 75 micrograms of mercury into them in one shot.

That's like giving an adult 1,000 micrograms. And, on top

of that, the World Health Organization says mercury is 10 times more

toxic in children than it is in adults. It's horrifying. "

 

While Weldon and others cite huge and undeniable flaws, a spokesman

for the CDC, Von Roebuck, tells Insight that " the CDC stands by the

study. " As he explains it, " We pretty much looked into that

[manipulation of data] in the sense of how the information was

presented, and we do stand behind it.

 

The CDC knew that Dr. Verstraeten worked for GlaxoSmithKline, and

the one thing that we would want to happen differently is that would

have been known before, but the work that Dr. Verstraeten did was

for the CDC at the time the work was produced - the work that he did

for the study was done when he worked for the CDC. "

 

Mark Geier, M.D., Ph.D., is president of the Genetic Centers of

America. He and his son, David Geier, president of Medcon Inc., are

consultants on vaccine cases.

 

" What happened here is Dr. Verstraeten goes to the Institute of

Medicine [iOM] and says that he looked at it in one California HMO

and it was statistical and he saw the effect, " David Geier tells

Insight, " And then he did it in another California HMO and it was

statistical and he saw the effect. Then he went to Harvard Pilgrim

HMO and he didn't see the effect. The IOM said it's biologically

plausible, but the epidemiology is mixed and therefore we're not

sure. "

 

" In my opinion, " explains Mark Geier, " if they had seen clear

epidemiology they would have recommended the immediate removal of

thimerosal and hundreds of children would have been saved. But

Verstraeten went to the one state in the country where the

percentage of autism was the lowest. According to the U.S.

Department of Education the average increase in autism was 400

percent, and every state in the union had at least a 100

percent increase. But Harvard Pilgrim had just a 10 percent

increase. "

 

" We went to Atlanta, " he continues, " to the CDC, and looked at the

VSD data. There is thimerosal-containing DTaP [diphtheria, tetanus

and pertussis vaccine] and thimerosal-free DTaP, so we asked a

question: Among children that got a minimum of either three

consecutive thimerosal-containing DTaPs or three consecutive

thimerosal-free DTaPs, was there a difference in the number of

autism cases in the two groups? We found mega differences. More than

20 times higher. The rate of autism in the children that got more

than three doses of thimerosal-containing DTaP vaccines was much,

much higher. Almost all the children that have autism in that group

were the ones that got the thimerosal-containing DTaP vaccine. The

more thimerosal the greater the cases of autism. "

 

Mark Geier says, " Believe us, there is no scientific issue here.

This is fraud. The CDC and the FDA [Food and Drug Administration]

know what is happening. They just can't admit it because it is one

of the worst things ever to have happened to this United States. If

a terrorist had done this, we wouldn't attack them, we'd nuke them.

We're talking about one in eight children in the U.S. that currently

are in special education, and that number is going to change to

about one in five. What percentage of our young population can we

destroy before we realize how serious this is? "

 

Lyn Redwood, a registered nurse, mother of an autistic child and

president and cofounder of www.SafeMinds.org (Sensible Action for

Ending Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders), a nonprofit

organization dedicated to ending devastation caused by the needless

use of mercury in medicines, tells Insight that " there are so many

problems with the study, but over time you can see how all the

manipulations of the data slowly bring down the signals for

neurological disorders. I think they were trying to get lower

numbers. It must be very hard to admit that a program that

was designed to eradicate infectious disease has resulted in an

epidemic of a whole new kind of disease. But to think that we

weren't given a choice when the regulators and manufacturers knew

these products contained mercury is inconceivable. "

 

Redwood says with a sigh, " On a scale of one to 10, I give the CDC

study a big fat zero. I think it started out good, but when they saw

the early numbers it scared the hell out of them. I don't have any

faith in the CDC doing a decent study of this matter.. It's like

having the tobacco industry monitor cigarettes for safety. From a

parent's perspective and from a health-care professional's

perspective it's maddening that we can't get products that are safe,

and yet we're forced by law to use them. They need to just get the

thimerosal out. It's barbaric. "

 

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Kelly Patricia O'Meara is an investigative reporter for Insight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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