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CDC coverup: Deadly Immunity

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Hi, all, this is in many places on the net, and thought it was worth passing on,

even though

it is kinda long. Bottom line: Don't give kids mercury laced vaccines.

kl_clayton

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/061605HA.shtml

Deadly Immunity

    By F. Kennedy Jr.

    Salon.com

    Thursday 16 June 2005

A Salon/Rolling Stone joint investigation.

When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism

in

thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data - and to prevent

parents

from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

(Image: Salon.com)     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 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 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 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 11-year-olds.

    The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in

Washington.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions

from the

pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from

liability in

4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five

separate

occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related

documents -

including the Simpsonwood transcripts - and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of

thimerosal,

from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as

the " Eli Lilly

Protection Act " into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000

to his

campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. Congress repealed

the

measure in 2003 - but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an

anti-

terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from

vaccine-related

brain disorders. " The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine

producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological

attack by

terrorists, " says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.

    Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up

the

dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a

three-year

investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism.

" Thimerosal

used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic, "

his House

Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. " This epidemic in all

probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at

the

switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known

neurotoxin. "

The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out

of

" institutional malfeasance for self protection " and " misplaced protectionism of

the

pharmaceutical industry. "

    The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide

the risks

of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional

arrogance, power and

greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and

environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I

frequently

met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids

had been

injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical. I doubted that autism could be

blamed on a

single source, and I certainly understood the government's need to reassure

parents that

vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on

it. I tended

to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who

criticized

his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to

conclusions

about autism and vaccinations. " Why should we scare people about immunization, "

Waxman pointed out at one hearing, " until we know the facts? "

    It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading

scientific

research and talking with many of the nation's preeminent authorities on mercury

that I

became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood

neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the

Thimerosal

Generation - those born between 1989 and 2003 - who received heavy doses of

mercury

from vaccines. " The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have

symptoms

of neurological or immune-system damage, " Patti White, a school nurse, told the

House

Government Reform Committee in 1999. " Vaccines are supposed to be making us

healthier; however, in 25 years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged,

sick kids.

Something very, very wrong is happening to our children. " More than 500,000 kids

currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new

cases

every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and

diagnosed

among 11 children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby

vaccines in

1931.

    Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by

thimerosal-tainted

vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis - a

theory that

seems questionable at best, given 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 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-, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's

safety " did

not check with ours. " Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based

vaccines

became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative

" unsatisfactory as a

serum intended for use on dogs. "

    In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to

mount.

During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the

preservative in

vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it " poison. " In 1967, a study

in Applied

Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines.

Four

years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was " toxic to tissue

cells " in

concentrations as low as one part per million - 100 times weaker than the

concentration in

a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as

" nontoxic "

and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, 10 babies at a

Toronto hospital

died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their

umbilical cords.

    In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained

thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines.

But

tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a

series of

mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24

hours of

birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B

and

diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

    The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year

that the

CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of

Merck's

vaccine programs, warned the company that 6-month-olds who were administered the

shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal

be

discontinued, " especially when used on infants and children, " noting that the

industry

knew of nontoxic alternatives. " The best way to go, " he added, " is to switch to

dispensing

the actual vaccines without adding preservatives. "

    For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money.

Thimerosal

enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain

multiple

doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily

contaminated by

multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as

smaller, single-

dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to

impoverished

regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this " cost consideration, " Merck

ignored

Hilleman's warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more

thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers

received only

three vaccinations - for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and

measles-mumps-rubella.

A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a

total of 22

immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

    As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children

exploded.

During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based

vaccines,

receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain

development.

Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one

bothered to

add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the

mandated

vaccines. " What took the FDA so long to do the calculations? " Patriarca,

director of

viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. " Why

didn't CDC and

the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the

childhood

immunization schedule? "

    But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received all their

vaccines, plus

boosters, by the age of 6 months were being injected with levels of ethylmercury

187

times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a

related

neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little

danger

because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -

including

one published in April by the National Institutes of Health - suggest that

ethylmercury is

actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than

methylmercury.

    Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional

vaccines

were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still

essential in

developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials

that don't

require a preservative. Dr. Offit, one of CDC's top vaccine advisors, told

me, " I think if

we really have an influenza pandemic - and certainly we will in the next 20

years, because

we always do - there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people

with

single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials. "

    But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of

those on the

CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the

industry.

Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major

vaccine

makers and shares a patent on a measles vaccine with Merck, which also

manufactures the

hepatitis B vaccine. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a

researcher

for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his

research on the

hepatitis B vaccine.

    Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such

conflicts of interest

are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC " routinely allows scientists with

blatant

conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make

recommendations on new vaccines, " even though they have " interests in the

products and

companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight. " The

House

Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisors who

approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine laced with thimerosal " had financial

ties to the

pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the

vaccine. "

    Offit, who shares a patent on the vaccine, acknowledged to me that he " would

make

money " if his vote to approve it eventually leads to a marketable product. But

he dismissed

my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC approval might

bias his

judgment. " It provides no conflict for me, " he insists. " I have simply been

informed by the

process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was

trying to

make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It's

offensive to

say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and

thus are

making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way

it works. "

    Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like

Offit, they view

themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud of their

" partnerships "

with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit,

besieged by

irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children's

health. They

are often resentful of questioning. " Science, " says Offit, " is best left to

scientists. "

    Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of

interest. In

his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, 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,

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. Kennedy Jr. is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense

Council, chief

prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper Alliance. He

is the co-

author of The Riverkeepers.

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