Confidential CDC report obtained...Press release today

[Guest guest]

PRESS RELEASE

An announcement was made today by the law firm of Waters & Kraus, the

firm that filed the first known lawsuit alleging that a mercury

preservative in children's vaccines caused neurological damage to an

infant ultimately diagnosed with autism. Waters & Kraus is leading a

consortium of ten firms in as many states that are actively

prosecuting cases of this nature (firms listed below). Andy Waters,

the lead attorney in the cases, announced that his firm is now in

possession of a previously unreleased confidential report authored by

Centers for Disease Control scientists which studied autism as a

potential neurological injury caused by mercury in children's

vaccines.

A different version of the report was made public and has been cited

by the recent Institute of Medicine study as inconclusive on the

issue of whether the mercury-based vaccine preservative known as

thimerosal has contributed to cause a nationwide epidemic of

regressive autism and other neurological disorders in small

children. The confidential version of the study, however, clearly

demonstrated that an exposure to more than 62.5 micrograms of mercury

within the first three months of life significantly increased a

child's risk of developing autism. Specifically, the study found a

2.48 times increased risk of autism - that is to say, children with

the exposure were more than twice as likely to develop autism as

children not exposed.

In the United States, courts of law have generally held that a

relative increased risk of 2.0 or higher is sufficient to

substantiate that a given exposure causes disease. As but one

example, in the case of Cook v. United States, 545 F.Supp. 306, at

308 (Northern District - California 1982) the Court stated that, " in

a vaccine case, a relative risk greater than 2.0 establishes that

there is a greater than 50% chance that the injury was caused by the

vaccine. "

Waters indicated that, in many of the cases his firm has evaluated,

including the case filed in a Texas state court on behalf of the

Counter family, the affected child received more than 62.5 micrograms

of mercury through pediatric vaccines in the first three months of

life.

The confidential report, which was obtained by the SAFEMINDS support

and advocacy group, states: " As for the exposure evaluated at 3

months of age, we found increasing risks of 'neurological

developmental disorders' with increasing cumulative exposure to

thimerosal ... within the group of 'developmental disorders'... for

the sub-group called 'specific delays,' and within this sub-group for

the specific disorder 'developmental speech disorder,' and

for 'autism,' 'stuttering' and 'attention deficit disorder.' "

The report also contained the graph depicted below which illustrated

the report's findings of a child's increasing risk of developing the

neurological symptoms of autism after receiving increasing amounts of

thimerosal.

Graph 3: Relative risk - 95 % CI of Autism after different

exposure levels of thimerosal at 3 months of age, NCK & GHC

(see www.vaccineinfo.net/autismHg.htm to view graph)

Waters pointed out that the confidential study's lead author,

Verstraeten, has since left the Centers for Disease Control and is now

employed by GlaxoKline, a manufacturer of thimerosal-containing

vaccines for many years that is a defendant in numerous suits pending

nationwide. " We have asked GlaxoKline to provide Mr.

Verstraeten's deposition in order to understand if conflict of

interest issues may have played a role in the CDC's decision to keep

this report confidential, and specifically, their failure to reveal

it to the Institute of Medicine. "

Waters called the report's contents and the fact that it was kept

from the public as " shocking, but unfortunately not surprising, given

the political influence of pharmaceutical companies and the

tremendous liability they face if they are forced to compensate

thousands of families for the costs of care that these children

require. " Waters added that " no amount of money can give

these children back the potential that they were born with, and no

amount of money will comfort the parents that watched helplessly as

their children literally just slipped away. " The purpose of the

lawsuits his firm is currently prosecuting, said Waters, is " to bring

to the surface the truth on this issue, a truth that government

agencies seem unwilling to admit, perhaps for fear that parents will

stop vaccinating their children, and to force the companies that

profited from this disastrous mistake to shoulder the responsibility

that so many families now bear on their own, often without even the

aid of health insurance benefits. "

Media inquiries should be directed to Miles at .

Client inquiries should be directed to Gibson at 800-226-

9880, or to the firms listed below.

Other firms working with Waters & Kraus to prosecute individual cases

involving thimerosal exposure are:

ANDERSON & KRIEGER, APLC

40925 County Center Drive, Suite 210

Temecula, California 92591

Telephone:

DOGAN & WILKINSON

726 Delmas Avenue

Pascagoula, Mississippi 39567

Telephone:

DORAN & MURPHY, LLP

1234 Delaware Avenue

Buffalo, New York 14209

Telephone:

EVERT & WEATHERSBY, L.L.C.

3405 Piedmont Road, Suite 225

Atlanta, Georgia 30305-1764

Telephone :

HENDRICKSON & LONG

214 Capital Street

P.O. Box 11070

ton, W. VA 25339

Telephone:

JONES, MARTIN, PARRIS, &

TESSENER LAW OFFICES, PLLC

410 Glenwood Ave., Suite 200

Raleigh, North Carolina 27603

Telephone:

LEACH, SCHWARZ & STRASSBERG

11 Bala Ave.

Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania 19004

Telephone:

MARTZELL & BICKFORD

338 Lafayette Street

New Orleans, Louisianna 70130

Telephone:

WISE & JULIAN, PC

3555 College Avenue

Alton, Illinois 62002

Telephone: