Feckless IOM Does Agency's Bidding: Sound Familiar?

[Guest guest]

Feckless IOM Does Agency's Bidding: Sound Familiar?

http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/11/feckless-ion-do.html

November 17, 2008

By Dan Olmsted

A harsh new report is blasting the relationship

between a federal agency and the Institute of

Medicine -- saying costly reports the IOM

produced were worthless and failed to connect a

widespread but baffling epidemic with its true causes.

No, it's not about autism. This criticism relates

to the Veterans Administration and studies it

commissioned from the Institute of Medicine to

look into Gulf War Illness. The Congressionally

mandated independent review of Gulf War Studies,

in a report to be officially released Tuesday,

calls the VA-IOM effort a diversion from the search for the truth.

It says that Saddam Hussein didn't cause Gulf War

Syndrome -- we did. The most likely suspects, it

concludes, are a nerve gas antidote used

protectively (there was never an attack) and

widespread exposure to pesticides. And it says

multiple vaccinations given to the troops cannot be ruled out.

Too many vaccines … a potent and inadequately

tested medicine used to ward off an attack that

never came, one that may have mimicked the

effects of actual exposure … environmental toxins

causing new and catastrophic mental and physical

damage … a conflicted government agency using the IOM for its own purposes.

In other words, it sounds a lot like the

autism-vaccines report the IOM produced in 2004

for its client, the CDC -- which found no

relationship between the two -- and the belief by

many in the autism community that the science was

skewed to produce a predetermined result. It also

goes to the issue of whether scientific research

has become so politicized and corporatized,

especially in the past eight years, that a top to

bottom review is needed -- something

President-Elect Obama has said he will order.

Here is the heart of the matter, according to the new report:

" In 1998, with few conclusive answers to

continuing questions about Gulf War illness and

the federal response to this problem, Congress

directed VA to contract with the National Academy

of Sciences (NAS) to review available research in

order to assist the Secretary of Veterans Affairs

in making decisions about Gulf War-related

disability compensation. Public Laws … directed

that the review identify conditions that affect

Gulf War veterans at excess rates and assess the

scientific evidence concerning associations

between those conditions and a detailed list of Gulf War exposures.

In response, VA commissioned the Institute of

Medicine (IOM), within the National Academies, to

conduct a series of reviews using a methodology

previously established to evaluate diseases

affecting Vietnam veterans in relation to Agent

Orange. (Hyams/Brown). To date, the resulting

Gulf War and Health series has included nine

reports, including two updated reports, and

provided hundreds of conclusions. The Committee

was concerned to find that the IOM reviews were

not conducted in accordance with the laws that

mandated them. As a result, the Gulf War and

Health reports have provided little information

that is directly relevant to health conditions

that affect Gulf War veterans at excess rates, or

their association with Gulf War exposures.

The 1998 legislation specifically directed that

VA commission reviews that identify both

diagnosed and undiagnosed illnesses that affect

Gulf War veterans at excess rates and, based on a

comprehensive consideration of available

research, determine whether there is evidence

that those illnesses are associated with Gulf War

exposures or Gulf War service. However, the

health conditions considered in the IOM Gulf War

and Health reports have primarily included

multiple types of cancer and a number of other

diagnosed diseases­conditions for which there are

no indications that Gulf War veterans have been

affected at excess rates. In contrast, the IOM

reports have provided almost no information on

conditions that do occur at excess rates in Gulf

War veterans. That is, the Gulf War and Health

reports have not provided findings on possible

associations between Gulf War illness or ALS and

most Gulf War exposures. Nor do they provide

findings on conditions like migraines and

seizures, which preliminary information suggests

may affect Gulf War veterans at excess rates, in

relation to Gulf War exposures.

The legislation also directed that determinations

be based on scientific evidence provided by both

human and animal studies. Most studies that

evaluate biological effects of hazardous

exposures are done in animals, for ethical

reasons. In recent years, a large number of

animal studies have identified biological effects

of Gulf War exposures and combinations of

exposures that were previously unknown. Although

animal research was sometimes described in the

IOM reports, findings from animal studies were

not considered in drawing conclusions about the

evidence that Gulf War exposures were associated

with health outcomes. Unlike IOM's earlier Agent

Orange reports, the standards used to determine

levels of evidence for the Gulf War and Health

reports expressly limited IOM panelists to

consideration of results from human studies. The

omission of animal studies was especially

striking in IOM's updated report on sarin (nerve

gas for which the antidote was given to U.S.

troops), which had been requested by the

Secretary of Veterans Affairs in 2003

specifically because of new research in animals

that demonstrated adverse effects of low-level sarin exposure.

… The hundreds of findings provided in the IOM

reports are largely inconclusive, indicating that

there is insufficient evidence to determine if

the diseases considered are associated with the

exposures considered, based on the types of studies considered.

The specific information included in the Gulf War

and Health reports is also problematic, in that

it appears to reflect a process of reporting

selected results from subgroups of studies,

rather than integrating and analyzing results

from all available research. This is a pervasive problem. …

In short, IOM's Gulf War and Health series of

reports have been skewed and limited by a

restrictive approach to the scientific tasks

mandated by Congress, an approach directed by VA

in commissioning the reports. These limitations

are most notably reflected in the selective types

of information reviewed and the lack of in-depth

analysis of the research literature and

scientific questions associated with the health

of Gulf War veterans. There is a fundamental

disconnect between the Congressional directive to

VA and VA's charge to IOM for reviewing evidence

on Gulf War exposures and their association with

illnesses affecting Gulf War veterans. The

reports have particularly fallen short in

advancing understanding of associations between

Gulf War exposures and Gulf War illness, the most

prominent health issue affecting Gulf War veterans. "

This set-up, of course, will be familiar to Age

of Autism readers knowledgeable about the

CDC-mandated-and-manipulated IOM study of autism

and vaccines, which pulled every kind of punch --

from hurrying up the report to avoid looking at

new studies, to ignoring or denigrating studies

like the hair-mercury analysis and the violent

reaction to thimerosal in mice bred to have

autoimmune problems, to overweighting slipshod

epidemiological studies that even the IOM

acknowledged could fail to identify a susceptible subset of children.

Bottom line: The VA-IOM debacle is an analogous

case study to the IOM-CDC cover-up, with similar

consequences -- lack of understanding of what

really caused Gulf War Syndrome; lack of

understanding of what really caused the autism

epidemic. At a deeper level, the study suggests a

culture in which " science " is just another

political tool to silence criticism and prevent

the truth from emerging. In Fitzgerald's

memorable phrase in the Scooter Libby trial, the

IOM appears to have become a mechanism for " kicking sand in the umpire's face. "

This connection was not lost on Steve ,

one of America's leading veterans advocates, who

was instrumental in exposing the Bush

Administration's shabby treatment of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

" It's the three-card monte game they use to have

a pre-determined outcome, " told me. And

it's no mere game -- at stake are treatment and

compensation for, in this case, hundreds of

thousands of Gulf War vets whose lives have been

damaged by their decision to serve their country.

" How do we break the code of how corrupt it is to

manipulate science this way, not just for vets

but for autism and other issues? " asked ,

who has been informally working with the Obama

transition team on veterans' issues. He said

Obama " is not going to get the ground truth from

these people " in any of the areas where the science has been corrupted.

" What does he inherit? A politicized federal

government [science program] that is defunct and

corrupt. " The problem is most acute four or five

levels down from the top, where the actual

manipulation occurs, he said. Those are the people who need to come clean.

The Gulf War review panel basically called for a

mulligan on the shoddy VA/IOM collaboration --

recommending that the VA ask the IOM to redo all

its studies and that the VA office involved in

the previous studies, the Office of Public Health

and Environmental Hazards, be removed from all participation in the new effort.

Here's an idea, one that's been circulating in

the autism community for some time: Redo the IOM

studies on autism and vaccines and remove the

CDC, the U.S. Public Health Service and their

pharma-flacking cronies from all oversight and responsibility.

Maybe the debacle at the VA will encourage the

Obama Administration to take another look at the

autism-vaccine " science " produced by the CDC and

stamped " approved " by the IOM. A number of autism

advocates worked hard for years to get the Bush

administration to reconsider the Immunization

Safety Review findings on autism. They made

modest progress: the IOM sponsored a " Workshop on

Autism and the Environment " last year.

Age of Autism Editor-at-Large Mark Blaxill was a

member of the Planning Committee for that

workshop. " The workshop was a small step in a

better direction, " says Blaxill, " but even

getting that far was a huge struggle. And in no

way whatsoever did it undo the damage done by the

2004 report. We need to see some intellectual

courage from our scientific leadership. So far,

all we've seen is systemic cowardice and a

complete perversion of the scientific process. In

the meantime, families are suffering and no one is doing anything about it. "

A final note -- while the IOM may claim it was

just doing its job as mandated by the VA, that's

not good enough, not for an institution that is

part of the National Academies, which calls

itself " Advisers to the Nation on Science,

Engineering and Health. " IOM could just as

easily have read the Congressional mandate and

told the VA that its request was not in

accordance with the law -- in common parlance,

illegal. In fact, why didn't they stand up for

good science? Was the contract too enticing? Yet

the IOM says it advises " the nation. "

The nation is not the VA -- the nation is

veterans. The nation is not the CDC -- it's

families and individuals coping with an autism

epidemic. And the nation is certainly not the

federal government -- the nation is the people

who elected that government to protect and defend them; it's you and me.

And we, the people, keep getting royally screwed.

--

Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

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

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

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

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