NOW IT'S CHURCHES VS. BIG PHARMA OVER AUTISM VACCINE

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NOW IT'S CHURCHES VS. BIG PHARMA OVER AUTISM VACCINE

 

Jul 26, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com

 

by staff reports

Just when the controversy over autism and its relationship to vaccines

seemed to have quieted down, the issue is heating up again. Washington

DC protests, new books, a dashing Kennedy involved in the cause

(environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) and the soft-spoken

mother of an autistic child, the Rev. Lisa Sykes, have combined to

give the issue a much higher profile. Meanwhile the most important man

in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist has continued his efforts to

immunize Big Pharma via legislation that will hold harmless those

involved in the creation of vaccines now linked to autism. Frist

attached a rider to legislation in 2003 and then did the same thing

earlier this year. He has also attempted to bottle-up the release of

government transcripts related to the issue.

 

Sykes is the daughter of two CIA employees with a degree from

Princeton Theological Seminary. According to a recent AP report, the

Richmond, Virginia-based Sykes, a pastor of Richmond's Christ United

Methodist Church, " has convinced the Virginia Conference of the United

Methodist church - the largest conference in United Methodism - to

pass a resolution calling for the removal of mercury from vaccines and

all medicines. It now heads to the Board of Global Ministries and the

Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church for

consideration. The same resolution passed Kerns' East Kansas

Conference of the Methodist Church 650-0 a few weeks ago. The Virginia

Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America has referred the

measure to a committee. … " In addition to having an impact on

legislation it is quite possible that the church resolutions could be

helpful to parents already in litigation - certainly from the

standpoint of moral authority.

 

While a full alphabet soup of government agencies continue to insist

there is no link between autism and vaccines containing a

mercury-based preservative thimerosal, grieving parents like Sykes -

who must tend to their children every day - have no intention of

letting up on potentially culpable institutions. For such parents, the

onset of autism among thousands of children throughout the US in the

1990s - only days after receiving thimerosal-laden vaccines - cannot

be explained without granting some responsibility to the vaccines and

vaccine-makers themselves. And even Big Pharma and the US healthcare

bureaucracy would seem to agree in deed if not in word since after a

secret conference in 2000 (Newsbriefs, " Vaccination … and the Nanny

State " – July 23), the industry decided that vaccines with thimerosal

would cease to be created or disseminated in the US. (Stocks were not

destroyed however, but were given away to third world countries

earlier in the decade – something else that stuns those who have

followed the controversy closely.)

 

Now, as lawsuits pile up, the industry's attempt at damage control

seem increasingly frantic. According to an article in GreenJournal by

Robert F. Kennedy, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has been almost

hyperactive on behalf of Big Pharma regarding this issue. He " slipped

a rider known as the `Eli Lilly Protection Act' into a homeland

security bill, but Congress repealed the measure in 2003. In early

2005, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that

would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related

brain disorders. [Frist has also] attempted to seal all of the

government's vaccine-related documents … and shield Eli Lilly, the

developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. `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 Amy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist. Unfortunately for

Frist, his statements on the matter tend to lack credibility because

of the amount of money donated to his campaign coffers by Big Pharma

and Eli Lilly - nearly $1 million. -CM