Deadly Immunity: Rolling Stone Magazine Report
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
http://tinyurl.com/dg6bm

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health
officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference
center in Norcross, Georgia. 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 fifty-two 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 adviser 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.

[report continues after below announcement.]

___________________________________________________

ABC News Kills Big Mercury Story - Says It's Too Hot, But May Reconsider
Political Parent group responds

An A-CHAMP Announcement

The online version of Rolling Stone's "Deadly Immunity", by Robert F.
Kennedy, JR., is already sparking a national debate on the use of
thimerosal, a mercury containing preservative, in vaccines.
Mr. Kennedy's scheduled appearances on ABC World News Tonight, 20/20
and his Thursday, June 16th appearance on Good Morning America regarding his
report, have been cancelled by ABC. Officials at ABC stated their decision
to cancel Mr. Kennedy's appearance on their network is because it is "too
politically controversial."
However, this debate should be ratcheted up as the print version hits
the newsstands starting today. This will coincide with the unprecedented,
simultaneous release of the article on Salon.com.
Rolling Stone, released in a few markets on June 15, should be widely
available by this weekend.
With regards to ABC News canceling the story, our opinion is that they
are more concerned about protecting their huge advertising revenues from the
pharmaceutical industry than reporting news that could protect pregnant
women, infants and children from mercury tainted vaccines. SHAME ON ABC!
Lujene Clark, co-founder of NoMercury and A-CHAMP (Advocates for
Children's Health Affected by Mercury Poisoning), worked extensively with
Mr. Kennedy and his office over the past several weeks in preparing the
article for publication. The print copy will contain a sidebar from Ms.
Clark, providing perspective from her experience as the mother of a
thimerosal-injured child and advocate for removing mercury from vaccines.
A-CHAMP encourages parents to obtain copies of Rolling Stone as soon
as they are available to distribute to legislators and members of the
medical community. Please spread the word to family and friends of Mr.
Kennedy's courageous article appearing simultaneously in Rolling Stone and
on Salon.com.
Do not wait for mainstream media to spread the word!
Join us in asking our elected officials to remove this known
neurotoxin from vaccines and to address the neurodevelopmental damage done
to 1 in 6 American children.
Please take a moment to send a message to your elected officials and
the media: Go here to let your voice be heard!
http://capwiz.com/a-champ/issues/alert/?alertid=7725681&type=ML
__________________________________________________________

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 eleven-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. The measure was repealed by Congress 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
pre-eminent 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 twenty-five 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 eleven 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 twenty-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 twenty 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 twenty-two 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, ten 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 twenty-four hours of birth, and
two-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
six-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
twenty-two 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 six 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 advisers, told me, "I
think if we really have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we will in
the next twenty 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 advisers 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,
Pennsylvania, 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
thirty-two 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.
* * *

Effort Underway To Reduce Mercury Expose To Fetuses

http://cbs2chicago.com/health/local_story_164173058.html

(CBS 2) There is an effort to reduce the risks of mercury exposure to
babies still in the womb. Pediatricians say mercury poisoning can lead to
intellectual impairment in children. According to the EPA and CDC one in six
pregnant women has levels high enough to damage their unborn babies.
The federal government enacted new regulations that would reduce
mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by up to 75%, but state
representatives and the Environmental Law and Policy Center say that's not
enough.
"70% of the mercury pollution in our state comes from our coal-fired
plants," Rep. Karen May (D-Illinois) said.
"The standards we're looking at in Illinois -- similar to other states
-- would lead to a 90% or more reduction in mercury," Howard Learner of the
Environmental Law and Policy Center.
Among the proposals is one to use new technologies to clean the air.
States have until October 2006 to comply with the federal guidelines or to
adopt their own standards.

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Dr. Janossy's comments:

While much of the debate is centered on the link between thimerosal and Autism; dental amalgam fillings and dementia; or how to reduce the growing mercury levels in our environment; the most promising healing methods are still often ignored. The removal of mercury from the body with chelation products, such as PCA-Rx or Detoxamin, can often result in dramatic improvements. I believe that this is the most exciting news in this terrible cover-up, our ability to turn around patients, neglected by the professionals, interest groups and our politicians.

Read about how mercury is linked to Alzheimer's by clicking HERE.

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A Thimerosal Resource Guide
Salon Magazine's syllabus of source documents, related articles and links to
advocacy organizations.

Compiled by Brendan DeMelle and Page Rockwell
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/16/thimerosal_links/

. Transcripts
http://www.safeminds.org/legislation/foia/Simpsonwood_Transcript.pdf (full
file is 11.8 MB) and a shorter transcript
http://www.nomercury.org/science/documents/simpsonwood%20overview.pdf
excerpt from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's conference on
thimerosal at the Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga.
. E-mails from within the CDC that include discussion of thimerosal
studies.
http://www.nomercury.org/science/documents/FOIA_emails_11-03.pdf
. Letter from former CDC epidemiologist Thomas Verstraeten to the
journal Pediatrics regarding the CDC's studies of a possible correlation
between thimerosal and neurological disorders.
www.nomercury.org/science/documents/verstraeten_letter_peds_2004.pdf
. Transcripts of congressional committee hearings on thimerosal.
http://www.nomercury.org/politics.htm
. Memo from major vaccine manufacturer Merck regarding thimerosal's
use in vaccines.
http://nomercury.org/science/documents/LATimes-Merck_Memo_2-8-05.pdf
. Statement from the World Health Organization regarding the use of
thimerosal-containing vaccines.
www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/statement200308/en/index.html
. Recommendation by the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety
Review Committee, dated October 1, 2001, that "full consideration be given
by appropriate professional societies and government agencies to removing
thimerosal from vaccines administered to infants, children, or pregnant
women in the United States." http://www.iom.edu/report.asp?id=4717
. Report by the Institute of Medicine, dated May 17, 2004, rejecting
a causal link between thimerosal and autism.
http://www.iom.edu/report.asp?id=20155
. Analyses of vaccine safety data by Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier.
http://www.nomercury.org/geier.htm

Related articles
. "The Age of Autism" (series), by Dan Olmsted (United Press
International, January-June 2005)
http://www.nomercury.org/in_the_news.htm
. "Autism in a Needle?" by Annette Fuentes (In These Times, Nov. 11,
2003) http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=434_0_1_0_C%20=
. "Autism, Vaccine Link Considered," by Mark Benjamin (United Press
International, May 2003)
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030505-123913-6672r
. "Evidence of Harm," by David Kirby (St. Martin's Press, April
2005)
http://www.evidenceofharm.com/
. "Missing the Mercury Menace," by Neil Munro (National Journal, Jan.
3, 2004)
www.nomercury.org/science/documents/Missing_the_Mercury_Menace.pdf
. "The Rise Against Mercury," by Sarah Bridges (SEED, Spring 2004)
http://www.nomercury.org/science/documents/Seed.pdf
. "Toxic Tipping Point," by Andrea Rock (Mother Jones, March/April
2004) "Upping the Autism Ante," by Neil Munro (National Journal, Jan. 3,
2004) http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/03/02_354.html
. "The Vaccine Conflict," by Mark Benjamin (Washington Free Press,
July 2003)
. "V accines May Fuel Autism Epidemic," by Kelly Patricia O'Meara
(Insight on the News, June 9, 2003) http://tinyurl.com/d3lkb

Advocacy organization

. NoMercury.org was founded by the parents of a child diagnosed with
Asperger's syndrome after repeated exposure to thimerosal. Its aim is to
educate policymakers, physicians and the public about the dangers associated
with the use of thimerosal in childhood vaccines. http://nomercury.org/
The site features peer-reviewed articles and government documents on
clinical and toxicological evidence and the political and financial aspects
of public health policymaking.

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[Thanks to redhead60707.]