Autism epidemic - full story and link

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http://www.cancercoverup.com/newsletter/06-2005/default.asp

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"Cancer-CoverUp.com" <webmaster The CancerCoverUp.com Monthly Newsletter | JUNE 2005 |

Volume 4, Issue 6 Tue, 31 May 2005 22:00:16 -0700

...http://www.cancercoverup.com/newsletter/06-2005/default.asp .

The epidemic of so-called "autism spectrum disorders" among ourchildren has reached stunning proportions. Once a rare condition,autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders now

affect one in 167 children! Many parents of autistic children

suspect that the disorderis somehow linked to the early childhood vaccines that are routinelyadministered to children between the ages of six months and two years.Specifically they believe that Thimerosal, a preservative that wasused in all childhood vaccines until recently is the culprit. Theirsuspicions are not without scientific basis - Thimerosal is 49.6%mercury by weight, and mercury exposure has long been known to causeneurological damage.Indeed, by the time a child is just six months old, they will havereceived 187.5 micrograms of mercury through vaccination - an amount from 20 to 30 times the EPA allowable limit based on weight.Still, vaccine manufacturers and their supporters at the Centers forDisease Control and Prevention insist that no problem exists. Moreimportant, they point to a study released by the prestigious Instituteof Medicine in February of 2004 to prove their claim.So it would appear that the parent's suspicions are groundless - orare they?Florida Representative Dave Weldon thinks that they parents may beright, and worse, that the CDC and the Institute of Medicine arecooperating in a cover-up of the facts concerning this vital issue.Now, it is important to understand that Dave Weldon is not just someelected busybody looking to grab a headline. The five-term Congressmanfrom Florida's 15th District is a practicing physician who worked hisway through college at the State University of New York as arespiratory technician earning membership in the prestigious Phi BetaKappa scholastic honorary society to boot. Completing medical schoolunder an accelerated honors program, Weldon went on to serve in theU.S. Army and remained in the Reserves until 1992.In short, he has the knowledge to cut through the nonsense put out bythe CDC's spin machine and the integrity to seek the truth.He also makes a point of noting that he is not an opponent ofvaccination per se. Indeed, he has vaccinated thousands of individualsin his medical practice.He just wants to make sure that vaccines are safe, and that seems tobe where he and the CDC part company.Last June he made this point emphatically on the floor of the U.S.Congress stating: "For too long, those who run our national vaccination program haveviewed those who have adverse reactions, including those with severereactions, as the cost of doing business."But what provoked this harsh assessment.The story actually began almost four years earlier when the CDC, underpressure from Congress, initiated a study at the Institute of Medicine(IOM) to determine if there was a link between the vaccinepreservative Thimerosal and autism spectrum disorders.When the IOM issued its initial report in 2001, it appeared that theparent's worse suspicions had been confirmed. The report stated: "Exposure to Thimerosal-containing vaccines could be associatedwith neurodevelopmental disorders."As a result of this conclusion, the IOM recommended that children notbe given mercury-containing vaccines.And that was the end of the problem.Hardly - Big Pharma had too much to lose.The CDC had to find a way out, but it had a problem: the facts didn'tsupport the conclusion it wanted to reach. The answer, in their view,however, was simple. All they had to do was change the facts. Afterall, the public and the media lacked the specialized knowledge thatwould allow them to see through the sham.What they didn't count on was that there would be someone like DaveWeldon around, who did have the knowledge and could see through theirsmokescreen.But what exactly did they do?Congressman Weldon outlined their deception in his floor statement: "Unlike 2001, this time the IOM was directed by the CDC to onlyconsider the possible relationship between Thimerosal and autismrather than neurodevelopmental disorders as a whole. Anyone familiarwith the Verstraeten study, a study published poking at thimerosal andautism, knows exactly why the IOM scope was narrow, because the 2003Verstraeten study found associations between Thimerosal andneurodevelopmental disorders in some children with autism may havebeen misdiagnosed as having speech or language delay. By narrowing thescope, which largely went unnoticed by the media, the CDC has avoidedacknowledging that Thimerosal very well may have causedneurodevelopmental disorders in some children."In other words just narrow the scope and the problem disappears!Weldon was outraged.Speaking to his colleagues he charged: "In my ten years in the U.S. Congress, I have never seen a reportso badly miss the mark. I have heard some weak arguments here inWashington, D.C., and I can tell my colleagues that the arguments putforward in this IOM report are indeed very weak."He continued: "It appears to me, not only as a Member of Congress but also as aphysician, that some officials within the CDC's National ImmunizationProgram, the NIP, may be more interested in a public relationscampaign than getting to the truth about Thimerosal."Weldon was fighting mad, and he had good cause to be. The FloridaCongressman had been trying to get the CDC to do what was right formonths. He had been particularly adamant about the need to delay theFebruary 9, 2004 meeting at which the IOM planned to release its report.A month before the meeting he had written Dr. Julie Geberding of theIOM charging that a rush to release a report clearing mercury was: "being driven by a desire to shortcircuit important research anddraw premature conclusions."He further argued that: "Pressing forward with this meeting at this time I believe willfurther undermine the credibility of the Centers for Disease Controlon matters of vaccine safety and do damage to the reputation of theInstitute of Medicine. I believe that the proposed date of themeeting, which you have the ability to change, is in the best interestof no one who is seeking the truth about a possible associationbetween vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism."But his arguments fell on deaf ears. The IOM went ahead with itsrelease, and its claims that Thimerosal was vindicated. Weldon couldonly conclude that: "A public relations campaign rather than sound science seems to bethe modus operandi of the officials at the CDC's National ImmunizationProgram."What Weldon found particularly disturbing was the total reliance ofthe IOM on what are called epidemiological studies. Epidemiology isthe analysis of disease incidence within a population. While it hasits uses, it is also subject to limitations. One of those is theinability to identify subpopulations that might suffer from a geneticpredisposition to a particular condition. The reason why this is animportant consideration in examining the possible link between autismand related diseases and Thimerosal or mercury exposure is that theleading theory about the connection is that it is in fact genetic.Researchers believe that some children are born with a diminishedability to excrete heavy metals such as mercury, and therefore thetoxic substance can build up in their bodies.But it was not just the reliance on epidemiological studies thatconcerned Weldon. Of equal concern were the specific epidemiologicalstudies that the IOM used as a basis for its conclusions.The IOM drew upon five studies for its data. Only one of them,however, looked at children in the United States. Three looked atchildren in Denmark, with one of those also examining Swedishchildren, and a fourth looked at children in the United Kingdom. Thetrouble was that in the case of all five studies, researchers involvedwith them had serious conflicts of interest.But that's not all.All five also suffered from serious methodological flaws that calledinto question their validity.Perhaps the most widely criticized study was that of U.S. children,the so-called Verstraeten study.It had concluded that: "…the results of the study show no statistical association betweenThimerosal and harmful health outcomes in children, particular autismand attention deficit disorder."Published in the November 2003 edition of the journal Pediatrics, thestudy did not compare children who had received vaccines withThimerosal with those who had not been given mercury-containingvaccines. Rather, it used what is termed a "dose response gradient"approach. Under this method the theory was that those who got lessThimerosal later in life would have less autism than those who gotlarger doses earlier. The trouble is that such a study would notidentify populations that were genetically predisposed to mercurysensitivity.But that wasn't the only flaw.Rather than looking at the broad spectrum of neurodevelopmentaldisorders that could be caused by mercury, the study was specificallylimited to autism. But at the same time, many of the children includedin the study were too young to be diagnosed with autism. Moreover, thedata were manipulated in other ways that would minimize or entirelyeliminate the potential to identify an autism link.What the IOM press release also failed to mention was that the leadresearcher was employed by a pharmaceutical company - and worsefalsely identified him as a CDC employee.Ironically, five months after the press conference was held and thedamage done, the study's author essentially retracted his conclusions.He was quoted in the journal Pediatrics, the same one that hadpublished his original results as saying: "The bottom line is and always has been the same, an associationbetween Thimerosal and neurological outcomes could neither beconfirmed nor refuted and therefore more study is required."That hardly sounds like "case closed."But it wasn't just the best-known study that had methodologicalproblems or conflicts of interest. One of the worst examples was theso-called "Hviid" study from Denmark.Conducted in 2003, the study's principal author was Dr. Anders Hviidof the Danish Epidemiology Science Center. What the IOM failed to makeclear about Dr. Hviid was the enormous potential conflict of interesthe had.The Danish Epidemiology Science Center is housed in Staten SerumInstitute, the Danish government-owned pharmaceutical company, whoseprimary product is vaccines and vaccine components!SSI has about $120 million in annual revenue, and two of its biggestcustomers are the United States and the United Kingdom!But that's not all.Vaccines and vaccine components are the Institute's fastest growingbusiness segment accounting for fully 80% of its profits!So clearly, Hviid would not want to bite the hand that feeds him.Still, that might not have been his only concern.Finding a link between Thimerosal in vaccines and autism and relateddisorders would open a Pandora's Box of lawsuits against SSI, hisaffiliate.Yet, even if no potential conflict existed, the notion of comparingthe homogeneous Danish population with the heterogeneous U.S.population has been equated to comparing "apples and cows" by onenoted scientist.Another important flaw was in the relative levels of exposure. TheDanish children received approximately 75 micrograms of mercury in thefirst nine weeks of life and then another 50 micrograms at 10 months.By comparison, a child in the U.S. received 187.5 micrograms by sixmonths: 2 ½ times as much mercury as the Danish population.What makes the Hviid study even more suspect is its conclusion thatthe autism rate went up after 1992 when Thimerosal was removed fromthe vaccines.How could this be?Well, one answer is that once again (surprise, surprise) the data weremanipulated. In the case of the statistics that were examined for theperiod prior to 1992, outpatient diagnoses of autism were notincluded. This is important, because it could well be the majority ofsuch diagnoses. For the period after 1992, when the mercurypreservative was removed, however, outpatient diagnoses were included.Yet no attempt was made to adjust the figures to take into accountthis possibly confounding factor!The difference in the make-up of the populations, too, is a factorthat cannot be discounted. If, as researchers postulate, there is agenetic "trigger" that makes some children more susceptible to mercurytoxicity and this factor is the cause of the autism epidemic, it ispossible that Danish children are less likely to have this geneticdefect. Indeed, the fact that the incidence of autism is only one in10,000 in Denmark as compared to one in 167 in the United States ispowerful evidence that this might be the case.But the Hviid study was not the only one that suffered from these flaws.Another study IOM used was the so-called "Madsen" study. As with theHviid study, its principal researcher also had ties to SSI and it wasalso limited to Danish children. Also, as with the Hviid, study,outpatient cases were excluded from the period when Thimerosal wasused and included for the period after 1995, by which time Thimerosalhad been removed.The so-called "Sterh-Green" study added statistics on Swedish childrento the statistics on Danish children used by Madsen and Hviid, butsince Sweden also has a relatively homogenous population that isclosely related to the Danish population it suffers from the samesampling deficiencies. Also, as with the other two studies, theresearchers have conflicts due to ties to SSI.The fourth foreign study IOM used is even more questionable, but fordifferent reasons. This was the "Miller" study examining Britishchildren. The trouble is that Dr. Miller is a well-known activist whohas testified on behalf of vaccine manufacturers in lawsuits and whohas long debunked vaccine safety concerns. His conclusions would besuspect to say the least.So, what is the bottom line?Representative Weldon summarized on the floor of the Congress: "The IOM based its conclusions on five studies, only one of whichwas on U.S. children. Three examined a genetically homogenouspopulation of children in Denmark and at least one employee of SSI wasa co-author of three. The study that did look at U.S. children did notcompare children who had received mercury with those who did not. Fourof the studies are of children who received less than half the amountof mercury U.S. children do. None of the studies looked at prenatalmercury exposure. None of them were capable of identifying a subgroupthat might be genetically susceptible to mercury toxicity. Three ofthem failed to address how adding outpatient diagnoses afterThimerosal had been removed from vaccines might have skewed theirresults. Four of them studied populations with autism ratessignificantly lower than the United States." "Most important, all were statistical studies. There have beennumerous biological studies suggesting the Thimerosal is linked, thatmercury is linked to autism - specifically mercury studies that showafter chelation therapy, children with autism excrete a tremendousamount of mercury in their urine, whereas normal children do not."In short, the IOM under instruction from the CDC, the agency chargedwith ensuring vaccine safety did everything it could to hide the truthfrom the public. Worse, the press accepted their unfounded assertionsuncritically. Were it not for the efforts of one Congressman and manyoutraged parents, the truth would have remained hidden.But mercury is not the only vaccine-related scandal that the IOM triedto sweep under the carpet. The link between the explosive growth ofChron's disease in the U.S. and abroad may also have a vaccine link.But, as with Thimerosal, Big Pharma and its allies are determined tokeep the truth from the public.

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Next month learn how a British researcher who dared to tell the truth saw his career and reputation ruined.

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http://www.cancercoverup.com/newsletter/06-2005/default.asp

 

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