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

 

Deadly Immunity

 

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Thursday 16 June 2005

 

A Salon/Rolling Stone joint investigation.

 

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.

 

 

 

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

thatmost 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.

 

 

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Guest guest

Thanks Bob, wonderful article! Too bad they group all the fruit sugars in

the same category with this poison.

E

 

rawfood [rawfood ] On Behalf Of

Bob Avery

Tuesday, June 21, 2005 4:45 PM

rwavery

[Raw Food] Deadly Immunity

 

 

 

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

 

Deadly Immunity

 

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Thursday 16 June 2005

 

A Salon/Rolling Stone joint investigation.

 

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.

 

 

 

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

thatmost 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.

 

 

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