Fwd: Mercury/Autism Link Concealed by FDA, CDC According to Released Government Documents

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" When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism

in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to

prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic. "

-- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in Common Dreams News Service, 6/18/05

 

August 25, 2005

 

Dear friends,

 

Has mercury in vaccines played a part in the rapid rise of autism? The below

article by Senior Attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., discusses government

documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which clearly

show that government agencies like the FDA and CDC (Centers for Disease Control)

have consciously concealed solid evidence of a link between mercury in vaccines

and the rise in autism. Just reading the few sections highlighted in bold below

will show you how profit and greed may have created much unnecessary suffering

in our children.

 

Vaccines in the US are regulated by the FDA, the same body that fired

whistleblowers who exposed critical dangers of genetically engineered food and

hired a former biotech lawyer as a chief monitor and regulator of biotech

industries. You can help on this topic which is so critical to the health of our

children by forwarding this information to your friends and colleagues. For more

reliable, verifiable information on health cover-ups, see

http://www.wanttoknow.info/healthinformation Together, we can and will build a

brighter future for ourselves, and for our future generations.

 

With best wishes,

Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info Team

 

Note: Short summaries of related media articles with links to originals are

given at the end of this article, including one with possible autism treatment.

 

 

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0616-31.htm

 

Deadly Immunity

When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism

in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to

prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

 

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, Ga.

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 52 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 advisor 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 11-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. Congress repealed

the measure 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 preeminent 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 25 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 11 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 20-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 20 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. "

 

Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew

from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in both

animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it

to 22 patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being

injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study declaring

thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer,

Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety " did not

check with ours. " Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines

became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative

" unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs. "

 

In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to

mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the

preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it " poison. " In

1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when

added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that

thimerosal was " toxic to tissue cells " in concentrations as low as one part per

million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even

so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as " nontoxic " and also

incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, 10 babies at a Toronto

hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their

umbilical cords.

 

In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained

thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines.

But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected

with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for

hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized

for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

 

The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year

that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers

of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that 6-month-olds who were

administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He

recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, " especially when used on infants

and children, " noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. " The best

way to go, " he added, " is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without

adding preservatives. "

 

For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal

enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain

multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily

contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to

produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international

agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced

with this " cost consideration, " Merck ignored Hilleman's warnings, and

government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines

for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received only three

vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and

measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations,

children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached

first grade.

 

As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded.

During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based

vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for

brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears

that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children

would receive from the mandated vaccines. " What took the FDA so long to do the

calculations? " Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked

in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. " Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do

these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization

schedule? "

 

But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received all their vaccines,

plus boosters, by the age of 6 months were being injected with levels of

ethylmercury 187 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to

methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that

ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed

by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National

Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to

developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

 

Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional

vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is

still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford

the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of

CDC's top vaccine advisors, told me, " I think if we really have an influenza

pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next 20 years, because we always do --

there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people with

single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials. "

 

But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those

on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties

to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid consultant for

most of the major vaccine makers and shares a patent on a measles vaccine with

Merck, which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. Dr. Neal Halsey, another

committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received

honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.

 

Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts

of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC " routinely allows

scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory

committees that make recommendations on new vaccines, " even though they have

" interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be

providing unbiased oversight. " The House Government Reform Committee discovered

that four of the eight CDC advisors who approved guidelines for a rotavirus

vaccine laced with thimerosal " had financial ties to the pharmaceutical

companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine. "

 

Offit, who shares a patent on the vaccine, acknowledged to me that he " would

make money " if his vote to approve it eventually leads to a marketable product.

But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC

approval might bias his judgment. " It provides no conflict for me, " he insists.

" I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat

around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best

benefited the children in this country. It's offensive to say that physicians

and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making

decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way it

works. "

 

Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit,

they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud of

their " partnerships " with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of

personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns

are endangering children's health. They are often resentful of questioning.

" Science, " says Offit, " is best left to scientists. "

 

Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of

interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA

blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed

by the added baby vaccines. " I'm not sure there will be an easy way out of the

potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have

been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now, " Patriarca wrote. The close

ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added,

" will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive

recommendations for use " of thimerosal in child vaccines.

 

If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential

risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the

secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the

link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over

science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been

developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's

Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional

research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization

that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking

the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC " wants us to declare,

well, that these things are pretty safe, " Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the

IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when

they first met in January 2001. " We are not ever going to come

down that [autism] is a true side effect " of thimerosal exposure. According to

transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton,

predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was " inadequate to

accept or reject a causal relation " between thimerosal and autism. That, she

added, was the result " Walt wants " -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein,

director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

 

For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations

about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. " We've

got a dragon by the tail here, " said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee

member. " The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people

are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we know what the results of that

will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I

think is the charge. "

 

Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in

studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. " Four current studies

are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal, "

Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at

the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in

May 2001. " In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the

[measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and

publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety. " Douglas formerly

served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about

thimerosal's risks.

 

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. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten

study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the

link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to

have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the

disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling position for a

scientific body -- recommended that no further research be conducted.

 

The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David

Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government

Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a

handful of studies that were " fatally flawed " by " poor design " and failed to

represent " all the available scientific and medical research. " CDC officials are

not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because " an

association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their

policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that

conclusion about themselves? "

 

Under pressure from Congress, parents and a few of its own panel members, the

Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened a second panel to review the findings

of the first. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists,

criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency and urged the CDC to

make its vaccine database available to the public.

 

So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier,

president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year

battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when

members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have

completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal

and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative

dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born

between 1990 and 1996, found a " very significant relationship " between autism

and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who

received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as

likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer

from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be-published study

shows that autism rates are in decline following the

recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.

 

As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines,

others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan

Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching

for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of

population that scientists typically use as a " control " in experiments --

Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Penn., who refuse to immunize

their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there

should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been

exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three --

including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received

their vaccines.

 

At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of

thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the

Iowa Legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific

and biological data. " After three years of review, I became convinced there was

sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased

incidences in autism, " says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw

the investigation. " The fact that Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism began in

the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children's

vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone. " Last year, Iowa became the first

state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now

under consideration in 32 other states.

 

But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to

include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids

and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship

vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are

now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease

was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug

manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8

million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic

disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other

developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World

Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to

keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders " under review. "

 

I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis

that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health

authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire

generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the

biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. " The CDC is guilty of

incompetence and gross negligence, " says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe

Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in

medicines. " The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than

asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen. " It's hard

to calculate the damage to our country -- and to the international efforts to

eradicate epidemic diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe that

America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's

not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by

America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them

sincere, even idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science

on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting

children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided.

Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our

country and the world's poorest populations.

 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense

Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper

Alliance. He is the co-author of " The Riverkeepers. "

 

 

Note: Below are excerpts from and links to other revealing articles on this

topic:

 

Merck's infant vaccine stirs new controversy

Los Angeles Times/Newsday, March 8, 2005

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/health/ny-usglan084168623mar08,0,3713664.story

http://www.mercuryexposure.org/index.php?article_id=344

 

Merck & Co. continued to supply infant vaccine containing a mercury preservative

for two years after declaring that it had eliminated the chemical. Thimerosal,

which is nearly 50 percent ethyl mercury, has largely been eliminated from most

routine childhood vaccines, although it is present in most flu shots. More than

4,200 parents have filed claims in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation

Program, alleging that their children suffered autism or other neurological

disorders from mercury in their shots.

 

Possible Mercury, Autism Connection Found in Study

Los Angeles Times, March 17, 2005

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-autism17mar17,1,1770760.story?coll=la\

-news-science

http://www.yourlawyer.com/practice/panews.htm?parea=Toxic%20Substances & & story_id\

=9495

 

Studying individual school districts in Texas, the epidemiologists found that

those districts with the highest levels of mercury in the environment also had

the highest rates of special education students and autism diagnoses. There was

a strong, direct relationship between mercury and autism levels. The incidence

of autism has grown dramatically over the last two decades, from about one in

every 2,000 children to as high as one in every 166. The purported link between

autism and mercury has been a subject of intense debate. In the past it has

centered primarily on the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which was

once widely used in vaccines. Many parents have argued that thimerosal causes

autism because their children seemed to develop the neurological disorder

shortly after they received childhood vaccinations.

 

The Age of Autism: The Amish anomaly

April 18-19, 2005, Washington Times

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050321-115921-9566r.htm - Part 1

http://washingtontimes.com/UPI-breaking/20050417-052541-5549r.htm - Part 2

 

Where are the autistic Amish? Here in Lancaster County, heart of Pennsylvania

Dutch country, there should be well over 100 with some form of the disorder. I

have come here to find them, but so far my mission has failed, and the very few

I have identified raise some very interesting questions about some widely held

views on autism. The Amish have a religious exemption from vaccination. So far,

there is evidence of only three, all of them children, the oldest age 9 or 10.

Julia is one of them. She...is adopted from China. She had most of her vaccines

given to her in the United States before we got her. [Of the other one

definitely had a vaccine, and the other's vaccine status is unknown.] The

mainstream scientific consensus says autism is a complex genetic disorder, one

that has been around for millennia at roughly the same prevalence. That

prevalence is now considered to be 1 in every 166 children born in the United

States.

 

Debate over vaccines, autism won't die

June 26, 2005, MSNBC

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8336821 - Page 1

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8336821/page/2 - Page 2

 

The afternoon after Kelly Kerns’ 2-month-old daughter Kaylee got several

vaccines was “living hell,” with the child screaming and arching her back, her

mother said. 'I kept telling myself everybody gets vaccinated — this is OK,' she

said. When Kaylee was 18 months old, her white-blonde hair began falling out and

she stopped talking. Meanwhile, Kerns had twin boys — Andrew and Daniel. When

they were 15 months old, they received three vaccines. A week later, they

stopped talking. All three children have since been diagnosed as autistic. Flu

vaccine sold in multidose vials still contains the preservative, and the

government urges flu shots for pregnant women and young children even though not

enough thimerosal-free ones are available, critics say. Finding answers is tough

because autism, a little-understood developmental disorder, often is diagnosed

at the very ages when children get vaccines. The stories are remarkably similar:

A seemingly normal child gets a shot and days, weeks or

months later, withdraws from the world, stops speaking, becomes upset at random

stimulation such as a doorbell, and adopts compulsive behaviors like

head-banging.

 

A child's return from autism

May 25, 2005, San Francisco Chronicle

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/25/BAGU0CU2K71.DTL

 

A Lafayette couple, certain that chelation therapy has helped their autistic

son, stepped squarely into the controversy surrounding the causes of autism and

its treatment Tuesday as they joined 150 other parents in launching an

international support group that will aggressively promote the treatment. The

Handleys are now among a small minority of parents -- who, believing that the

autism was caused by the mercury in thimerosal, a preservative that was

routinely used in vaccines until recently -- are treating their children with

chelation therapy, a lotion or pill that strips the body of heavy metals. It has

been used for decades to detoxify people contaminated in industrial accidents,

but no studies have proved whether it is an effective treatment for autism. For

Jamie's parents, the proof they need is in front of them: Jamie, now 3 years old

and several months into treatment, is plump and playing baseball. His smile has

returned. The Handleys said the new support group, Generation

Rescue, and its Web site, www.generationrescue.com, will offer information on

chelation therapy and connect parents with those who can help.

 

 

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