Marie McCormick’s IOM Remarks Leave A Bitter Taste

August 4, 2011

http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/08/marie-mccormicks-iom-remarks-leave-a-bitter-taste.html

By Jake Crosby

Why does Marie

McCormick – former chair of the panel that produced the botched IOM

report claiming vaccines do not cause autism – currently serve as

co-chair of the “Vaccine Safety Working Group” of the National Vaccine

Advisory Council? Her past remarks should disqualify her from serving on

any committees concerned with vaccine regulation as illustrated by the

following examples retrieved from the

leaked

transcripts of the January 12, 2001 closed session of the

Immunization Safety Review Committee of the National Academy of Sciences’

Institute of Medicine at the National Academies Building in Washington

DC.

Here is a comment she made in 2001, justifying a preconceived conclusion

about autism and vaccines:

“What I am trying to get at is, do we want to simply, on our gut,

say looking at the significance of the wild disease that you are

protecting, and the seriousness and potential association with the

vaccine -- because we are not ever going to come down that it [autism] is

a true side effect -- is that going to be sufficient for you to judge

public health impact?” (p. 95)

Here is another leaked comment of McCormick’s from the same meeting about

minimizing the public backlash while giving the IOM Report’s CDC sponsors

what they want:

“It is safety on a population basis but it is also safety for the

individual child. I am wondering, if we take this dual perspective, we

may address more of the parental concerns, perhaps developing a better

message if we think what comes down the stream as opposed to CDC, which

wants us to declare, well, these things are pretty safe on a population

basis. I offer that as one strategy as we take this dual

track.”(p. 33)

Those are unedited quotes of Dr. Marie McCormick from meetings of the

Immunization Safety Review Committee on vaccines and autism - the

committee that would eventually come to a formal “rejection of causation”

in 2004, which effectively quashed federal funding of vaccine-related

autism research. McCormick chaired that committee.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a conspiracy as “combin[ing]

secretly for a… reprehensible purpose.” The drug industry loves to accuse

others of invoking the C-word but this behavior of Dr. Marie McCormick

and others – behind closed doors of the private, chartered IOM no less –

is a conspiracy in the plainest sense of the word.

Needless to say, she should not sit on the National Vaccine Advisory

Council. Even though her comments were made a decade ago, she continues

to operate under the same principles as evidenced by her inaction on

NVAC.

On June 14th, I decided to call up a session of NVAC and

listen in to the public discussion among committee members. I was

disturbed at what I heard:

One NVAC member said there should not be an independent vaccine safety

committee because it would detract from what NVAC does! Another NVAC

member said people who should be responsible for vaccine safety are

“people like us – people who conduct clinical trials of vaccines” - for

drug companies in other words. A third member said NVAC is like the

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) – overall considered

successful at preventing plane crashes because someone on NTSB probably

worked for Boeing within the last five years. He provided no example of

this because he couldn't; none of the NTSB board members worked for

Boeing within the last five years.

The most telling comment, however, came from a member who denied the

public’s skepticism about the vaccine program – saying that the 5% of

people who do not get vaccinated are “misinformed.” And these committee

members – Marie McCormick among them – are left to decide if an

independent government body focused solely on vaccine safety should

exist.

Eventually, the floor was opened up to public comment – starkly different

from the NVAC discussion. Pro bono lawyer Jim Moody, present at the

meeting, was the first to give comments. He corrected the previous claim

noting that while 95% of the population gets some vaccines, over 90% have

at least some serious concerns about vaccine safety. He also cited the

PACE law study that found a large group of children who developed autism

resulting from adverse vaccine reactions were compensated by government

and the utter lack of a vaccinated versus unvaccinated study of

autism.

Next came Tarsell with a phone comment; her daughter was killed by

Gardasil. She said she could not understand why an independent vaccine

safety committee wasn’t needed in light of all the issues with vaccine

safety oversight.

None of the NVAC members commented on points made by Moody or

Tarsell.

Then came my turn to give comment. Given the time constraints of the

phone call, I gave edited versions of Dr. McCormick’s incriminating

quotes from 10 years ago:

“CDC…wants us to declare, well, these things are pretty safe on a

population basis.”

(p. 33)

“…we are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect

[of vaccines]”

(p. 97)

I inquired how Marie McCormick could possibly be expected to

serve on the committee in good faith given her past statements. As it

turned out, members of the public cannot even ask questions – only make

comments.

Immediately after I finished what I was saying, a committee member

tersely stated “No questions!”

The phone operator reiterated the rule, “Sir, no questions!” (I suppose

because questions would require answers.)

I then overheard the NVAC committee members’ reactions to my

question:

“We’ll put that down as ‘empirical.’”

“I think you mean ‘rhetorical.’”

“Could also be empirical.”

“Empirical/rhetorical…”

Then they all broke into laughter – making a joke out of my comment and

not addressing it. At that point, the committee took a break 15 minutes

earlier than scheduled and did not open the session back up to public

comment an hour later as was planned.

I wonder if

Seth Mnookin took down the

meeting minutes, because the NVAC June 2011 Certified Meeting

Minutes blatantly misrepresented what I said (p.9):

Jake Crosby commented that NVAC members lack independence or

objectivity and said an NVAC member had stated that NVAC will never

determine that autism is caused by a vaccine, and he questioned how such

a member could be considered objective.

In reality, the only member I expressed concern about in my call was

Marie McCormick, who was not even mentioned in the minutes. I did not

claim she said NVAC will never determine autism is caused by vaccines

either. I said, as corroborated by leaked IOM meeting minutes, that she

made the statement, “We will never come down that it [autism] is a true

side effect [of vaccines],” as IOM committee chairwoman in 2001 before

any evidence was submitted to her panel for review.

Furthermore, by claiming I said McCormick said this about NVAC, but not

about the IOM, the minutes covered up the fact that she came to a

preconceived conclusion about causality. There was also no mention in the

minutes of CDC involvement.

After the break, the NVAC members discussed recommendations to increase

flu vaccine production for flu season. The flu shots are still laced with

the mercury preservative, thimerosal. And these are the same folks

charged with the task of deciding whether or not to create a new

committee solely focused on vaccine safety?

Even if the 2000 Simpsonwood meeting transcripts, the email

correspondences among some of its participants and the earlier

Verstraeten data showing associations between mercury in vaccines and

neurological disorders including autism were never retrieved in FOIA

requests, those two quotes by Dr. McCormick are quite frankly enough to

implicate CDC and IOM in coming to preconceived conclusions. No evidence

was submitted to the IOM Committee in January 2001 when those quotes were

made. Similarly, the CDC’s pressuring of the IOM to come to a set of

desired conclusions completely contradicted the IOM’s stated purpose,

which is to independently review scientific data wholly separate from any

government agencies or pharmaceutical companies.

The IOM committee which McCormick chaired was rife with pharmaceutical

interests, as revealed in the meeting notes. Next to the name

ston - Board of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Liaison who

months earlier announced at Simpsonwood that he did not want his grandson

exposed to thimerosal – are the words “Kline Beecham.” Next to

panelist Vernice are the words “$5000 Merck” and next to fellow

panelist Gerald Medoff are the words “pharma company.” Another panelist,

, is listed next to “American Home Products,” which

would later change its name to Wyeth and be purchased by Pfizer. And

panelist Bayer coauthored a book published prior to the 2004 IOM

Report, funded in part by a Merck Foundation Fellowship.

NVAC is no freer of conflict. In addition to Marie McCormick, there is

Walter Orenstein, former director of the CDC’s National Immunization

Program, which commissioned the IOM to come to its “independent”

conclusions. Other unsuitable members include former CDC director

Mason – a trustee of “Evergreen International” – a group dedicated to

curing homosexuality. Amy Pisani, another member on NVAC, is executive

director of the Wyeth front group,

Every

Child By Two. Finally, Bruce Gellin – Deputy Assistant Secretary for

Health and also Director of the National Vaccine Program Office –

coauthored an article with millionaire vaccine industrialist

Offit claiming an infant can take up to 10,000 vaccines at

once.

And yet, the mainstream press still supports these people and quotes them

extensively, except when they draw preconceived conclusions behind closed

doors. A prime example is

The New York

Times

, which ran a 2005 article by ethically bankrupt reporter

Gardiner , who wrote:

" ’It's really terrifying, the scientific illiteracy that supports

these suspicions [that vaccines cause autism],’ said Dr. Marie McCormick,

chairwoman of an Institute of Medicine panel that examined the

controversy in February 2004.”

What is truly terrifying is Marie McCormick coming to conclusions

before any data was submitted to her IOM committee for review. Her

presence on NVAC as co-chair of the Vaccine Safety Working Group is a

recipe for disaster.

Jake Crosby has Asperger Syndrome and is a contributing editor to Age of

Autism. He is a 2011 graduate of Brandeis University with a BA in both

History and Health: Science, Society and Policy. In August, he will

attend The Washington University School of Public Health and

Health Services where he will study for an MPH in epidemiology.

Posted by Age of Autism at August 04, 2011 at 5:46 AM in

Jake Crosby,

Vaccine Safety |

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Comments (11)

Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian

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August 4, 2011