Vaccines - RFK Jr. His crusade continues.

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RFK Jr.

His crusade continues.

By Bridges, Ph.D. / Photos by Milazzo

F. Kennedy Jr.'s watershed moment occurred in 2006 when he

visited the New York Times headquarters to discuss an editorial piece

he submitted on the link between vaccines and neurological disorders

in children. Ushered into a small room for what was set to be a

private meeting with an editor, he instead found the space crammed

with people, overflowing onto the arms of old leather chairs, with

expressions ranging from boredom to disdain.

" I expected a discussion with the editor of the Times, but when I

went in to meet, they had assembled a group of science editors that

were so hostile and antagonistic, it was like talking to a brick

wall, " Kennedy remembered. " They were absolutely determined that there

would be no public discussion in their paper about mercury and

neurological disorders. " His sentences were cut short by rapid

retorts, as if the room was laced with invisible mines. Despite

Kennedy's information, and the phonebook-sized stack of articles that

Dr. Boyd Haley had perched on his lap ready to share, the editors

quickly shut down any discussion of thimerosal's dangers; one person

near the door sighed and rolled his eyes. The meeting progressed for

30 minutes, Kennedy offering DNA, animal, genetic, epidemiological and

biology studies, and being met repeatedly with the statement, " The CDC

says the vaccines are safe. "

Case closed.

Kennedy doesn't sit still. When he isn't at his day job as a

clinical professor at the Pace University School of Law, he can be

found whirring around the globe to advocate for local people and the

environment (he regularly travels to Latin America where he has helped

indigenous tribes negotiate treaties to protect their homelands). He

was recently featured in Vanity Fair's " green issue " and was named as

one of Time magazine's " Heroes for the Planet " for his work closer to

home in restoring the Hudson River. Aside from these activities, he

devotes a large portion of his time to Waterkeeper Alliance, an

international advocacy organization dedicated to safeguarding

waterways from pollution. The non-profit just won a major suit against

the Bush administration for its rollback of President Clinton's

tougher standards for coal-burning plants. His work with Waterkeeper

is one visible aspect of his long-term advocacy against mercury and

its insidious effects on children.

When discussing Waterkeeper's recent court victory, Kennedy gets

riled up: " It was absurd to have the Bush White House loosening

mercury protections when even the EPA was acknowledging that one in

six women have dangerous mercury levels in their wombs. The

administration fought cleaner air standards when their own scientists

reported that 640,000 kids have been mercury-exposed in utero every

year and will have neurological effects. "

Despite his intense involvement in curbing environmental mercury,

Kennedy sidestepped the thimerosal-autism debate for years. In fact,

when approached by parents sharing their stories, he was sympathetic

but uninterested in jumping into the fray. That changed in 2004, after

he reviewed the thimerosal science tooth and claw, and read the CDC's

internal documents revealing their awareness of the danger it posed to

properly vaccinated children. First skeptical, then intrigued, he

became convinced that the mercury-based preservative was the

breadcrumb trail back to the autism epidemic.

In 2006, Kennedy wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine

called " Deadly Immunity. " The response to his piece was overwhelming:

following the publication, Kennedy received thousands of letters and

emails from all over the world. " The astounding thing was how alike

all of them were and that people from Mississippi to New Delhi shared

such identical experiences. Here is the typical scenario I heard: A

mother took her toddler to the doctor where he received a spate of

vaccines, became ill that night, often with a fever, sometimes with

seizures, then lost the language he had, developed stereotyped

behavior and regressed into a looking-glass world of debilitated

relationships and social isolation. Essentially, " Kennedy adds, " their

lives were plunged into unimaginable agony. " It seemed imperative to

Kennedy to keep getting the story out to prevent the catastrophe from

damaging other children.

However, nothing prepared him for the resistance and anger he

faced when discussing autism with politicians and the media. " The

unbelievable thing is how these children's stories are suppressed by

the medical community, big Pharma and the American press. There is a

total refusal to have the discussion and derision towards anyone who

tries. "

n networks proved equally squeamish about reporting on the

vaccine-autism link, something Kennedy attributes to the massive

influence wrought through the pharmaceutical industry's advertising

dollars. A case in point: When Kennedy's Rolling Stone piece hit the

newsstands, he granted an exclusive interview to NBC. " The network

called asking to do a major report on my piece. I talked to the

editors who said they were outraged over what I wrote and would tear

the whole issue open. Then, the day it was supposed to air, I got a

call saying, `higher-ups' had yanked the segment. I've never had this

happen before in my career. The producer was extremely apologetic, but

said it went well over his head. When word of the cancellation leaked

out, NBC was deluged by letters and emails about the killed report.

The sad thing is that I would have given it to another network, and

when I told them so, they hastily reconstructed the report. " When the

segment aired, however, it was unrecognizable to Kennedy as it was

weighed down by industry talking points and bracketed on either side

by pharmaceutical ads.

Undeterred, Kennedy continues to talk about the rise in autism

whenever he has the chance. He is often met by misinformation or

revolving-door theories that minimize or deny the problem. " We've gone

from `refrigerator mothers' causing autism to `hysterical mothers'

destroying the vaccine program. You wonder what the CDC thinks these

crazy women will pull off next. " Repeatedly, politicians and

government officials tell him there is no increase in autism; it is an

artifact of new measurement methodology. " This is patently

ridiculous, " he adds. " As Dr. Haley says, if new diagnostic techniques

are causing more autism, then where are all the 30-year-old autistics?

Why haven't the new techniques helped us find all those people with

the disorder born before 1989? "

According to Kennedy, the U.S. has a thimerosal problem because the

CDC is a " captured " agency, where grant money, industry-trained

executives, and other means have allowed pharmaceutical companies to

capture the agency that is supposed to be its watchdog. He believes

these conflicts of interest are pervasive and directly correlated to

the burgeoning number of environmental toxins in general.

" The United States has privatized the safety research and, by

extension, the regulation of toxins. Now the people doing the studies

of poisons in food are from Monsanto and drug safety is studied by

Pfizer. Expecting objectivity under these conditions is naïve at best. "

Most recently, Kennedy has been speaking out against the CDC's

claim that the thimerosal debate is dead since autism rates didn't

drop when mercury was removed from vaccines. " The CDC themselves

admitted that full strength thimerosal-laced infant vaccines were

being administered until at least 2003 to allow manufacturers to rid

themselves of old inventories. Since autism typically isn't diagnosed

until 44 months, even if all thimerosal was removed from vaccines in

2004, we shouldn't expect to see a statistical decline in the rates

until 2009 or 2010. However, this is irrelevant since it ignores the

fact that the flu vaccine contains 50 percent of the mercury that we

were giving to kids before the supposed ban on thimerosal and is

recommended for pregnant women and infants. The CDC's willingness to

continue injecting children with this neurotoxin is mystifying given

the Institute of Medicine's previous recommendation that it is prudent

to stop the practice. Why have they changed their view? One

supposition that shouldn't be ignored is that the CDC is frightened by

what would happen if we abruptly removed the toxin, leaving many

people in a horrible legal position. "

For more of this article please subscribe to Spectrum today.

--------------------------------------------------------

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

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

Vaccines - http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccine.htm Vaccine Dangers &

Childhood Disease & Homeopathy Email classes start April 18