RFK Jr. on mercury/autism

[Guest guest]

F. Kennedy Jr. has written an article published today in

Rolling Stone on the mercury/autism controversy. An url and the

text are below. He will be appearing on ABC World News tonight and

Good Morning America tomorrow, presumably to discuss the same topic.

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http://tinyurl.com/bhsjp

Deadly Immunity: F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government

cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal

By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health

officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood

conference center in Norcross, 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

GlaxoKline, 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. ston, 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. 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. 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 GlaxoKline 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 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-, 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? " 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. 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,

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.

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 ,

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. " 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.

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, , 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.