MERCURY AND AUTISM

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Congressional record Proceedings and debates of the 109th congress first session volume 151 part 10

MERCURY AND AUTISM
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Indiana (Mr. BURTON) is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker,
I have been down here a lot talking
about autism over the years and my
committee had many hearings on the
issue of autism. My grandson became
autistic after receiving 9 shots in one
day, 7 of which contained mercury, in a
product called thimerosal. And he is
doing better but it has been a very difficult
time for me and my family.
I strongly believe that there is a link
between the mercury that is in the thimerosal
in the vaccines and children
developing neurological disorders such
as autism. In fact, according to a recent
study released by collaboration of
U.S. medical researchers from Johns
Hopkins University, Northeastern University
in Boston, and the University
of Nebraska and Tufts University that
was published in the Vancouver Sun in
February of last year and was officially
released in the April 2004 edition of the
scientific journal Molecular Psychiatry,
‘‘A recent review of vaccine-related
adverse events in the U.S. found
a significant correlation between shots
containing thimerosal,’’ i.e. mercury
‘‘and autism.’’
The study further concluded that the
use of thimerosal-containing shots
could account for the rising rates of
autism since the early 1980s when more
thimerosal-containing vaccinations
were added to the government-mandated
childhood vaccination schedule.
Scientific evidence aside, we have
seen an increase from 1 in 10,000 children
who are autistic to 1 in 166 since
they started using thimerosal in many,
many vaccines in the early eighties
and children started getting more of
these shots.
I am not against vaccinations but I
do believe, as many of my colleagues,
including the gentleman from Florida
(Mr. WELDON) believe, that mercury
should be taken out of all childhood
vaccines and in fact all vaccines.
We need to ask ourselves one simple
question: What is right? The answer I
think is very clear. Get mercury out of
all vaccinations.
In reality the answer that is given by
far too many officials in our government,
health agencies and some Members
of Congress, sorry, we cannot help
you, and the need to protect the pharmaceutical
industry is so great, we
cannot do much about it.
b 1745
Some in my party keep talking about
changing the law to protect the drug
companies against so-called frivolous
lawsuits, and we have to do something
to help these families who had their
children damaged by the mercury vaccines.
I am against class action lawsuits
in general. I am for tort reform,
but we have got to do something to
help these families.
We have tried to talk to the pharmaceutical
industry about protecting
them while at the same time changing
the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund
in a way that will protect these families
and help those who have been damaged,
but so far we have gotten absolutely
nowhere with them; and it is
something I think we need to continue
to work on.
Just recently, there was an article
that was published in a magazine I normally
do not read. It is called Rolling
Stone, but this article was brought to
my attention, and I think everybody in
this body ought to read that article. It
was written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,
somebody who I normally do not read,
but I have to tell my colleagues it is a
very well-written article. It goes into
great detail and scientific research
studies on mercury-connected mental
disorders caused by the thimerosal in
the mercury in these vaccinations.
I would submit to all my colleagues
they really need to read this article. I
am going to send a Dear Colleague out
to all of my colleagues in the House
and the Senate over the next couple of
days. It is a fairly lengthy article, but
it goes into how government officials
met with pharmaceutical company officials
and deliberately covered up the
connection, deliberately covered up the
connection between the thimerosal in
vaccines and the problems that are
being created, neurological problems
that have been created in these children,
including autism.
All of my colleagues ought to read
this and realize that we have had a collaboration
between health officials in
our government and the pharmaceutical
industry to protect themselves
from class action lawsuits at the expense
of these young kids and families
who have been damaged by neurological
disorders, including autism.
So I submit to my colleagues who
may be in their offices or here tonight,
please read this article. It is extremely
important. I do not want to hurt the
pharmaceutical industry. I would like
to protect them from class action lawsuits;
but at the same time, we need to
change that Vaccine Injury Compensation
Fund to take care of these kids
that have been damaged and help their
families.

DEADLY IMMUNITY
(By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)
JUNE 16, 2005.—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 fifteen fold,
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-yearolds.
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 Pharmacy 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
children born in the months after thimerosal
was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.
Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism
is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations.
They argue that the increase is a
result of better diagnosis—a theory that
seems questionable at best, given that most
of the new cases of autism are clustered
within a single generation of children. ‘‘If
the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis,’’
scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the
world’s authorities on mercury toxicity,
‘‘then where are all the 20-year-old
autistics?’’ Other researchers point out that
Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative
‘‘load’’ of mercury than ever before,
from contaminated fish to dental fillings,
and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may
be only part of a much larger problem. It’s a
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June 23, 2005 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE 13937
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 overthe-
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 mercurylaced
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
11 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 six months were being
injected with a total of 187 micrograms of
ethylmercury—a level 40 percent 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. Under the expanded schedule
of vaccinations, multiple shots were
often administered on a single day: At two
months, when the infant brain is still at a
critical stage of development, children routinely
received three inoculations that delivered
99 times the approved limit of mercury.
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
‘‘had financial ties to the pharmaceutical
companies that were developing different
versions of the vaccine.’’
Offit, who shares a patent on one of the
vaccines, acknowledged to me that he
‘‘would make money’’ if his vote 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 antivaccine
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

13938 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE June 23, 2005

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, thendirector
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.
f
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https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRECB-2005-pt10/content-detail.html
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRECB-2005-pt10/pdf/CRECB-2005-pt10.pdf