The PO'd Top 10: Numbers 1-3
We've been called angry, even rabid. Did I mention lunatic? According to some media, we are emotinally distraught, scientifically illiterate and looking to blame our children's misfortune on someone or something. Did I mention money-grubbing and lawsuit happy? I don't think we're any different than any parent whose child has been hurt by someone else, intentionally or unintentionally. We have a lot in common with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.
The evidence is in: something happened to our perfectly healthy children to make them regress. The medical tests show that in hundreds and hundreds of cases that something is mercury poisoning. Makes sense. You give someone toxic doses of mercury and it should come as no surprise when they develop the clinical signs of mercury poisoning. And that's what we did: We allowed our son to be injected with bolus doses of ethylmercury during a single "well visit" that exceeded EPA guidelines by 125 times. And then we did it again, and again, and again.
Yeah, we blame someone: ourselves. For holding down a screaming child while a known neurotoxin was injected into his tiny, healthy body. We will live with that guilt for a long, long time, probably until we are staring at the brown side of the green, green grass.
But that's not the only blame to be spread around. Here are the Top 10 Reasons Why Parents of Autistic Children Have Every Right to be Pissed:
1. No independent access to the VSD.
The CDC and the official health organizations that follow the CDC recommendations base their "no link to thimersosal" claim in large part on the single US epidemiological study. Published in Pediatrics in 2003, it is a CDC retrospective analysis of the VSD ("Vaccine Safety Datalink") database. Beginning in 1990, some HMOs were paid $30 million of taxpayer money to add their data to the VSD, which is maintained by the CDC.
That study by Verstaeten, DeStefano, et al. has never been replicated. To date, only a single pair of independent researchers, forced upon the CDC by a US House of Representatives Subcommittee, has been allowed access to the VSD. The team, Mark and David Geier, found that the original datasets used by CDC researchers had been destroyed in violation of federal law, and the team was unable to replicate or verify the CDC study. When independent verification is not possible, it is standard scientific practice for that study to be withdrawn from the peer-reviewed literature.
It hasn't.
Matter of fact, instead of describing the Verstaeten study accurately as a neutral or dispositive study (does not confirm nor deny an association), the CDC, AAP and others consistently claim that the study disproves a link. The primary author of the study, Thomas Verstaeten, now an employee of Big Pharma's Glaxo conglomerate in Europe and beyond the reach of Congressional subpeonas, has objected vociferiously. To no avail.
Based upon the limited data the CDC allowed the Geiers to access, a two to seven times higher risk for autism disorders was found among thimerosal-vaccinated children. After the research team published its findings, they were banned from ever using the VSD again.
The CDC's purported objection to opening up the VSD to independent researchers is "confidentiality." However, personal information has been removed from the data entries, just as it has in a similar database, the VAERS ("Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System"), that independent researchers can access. Even the IOM (Institute of Medicine) has called upon the CDC to change its access policy to the VSD and advised CDC officials to seek legal counsel in light of the destroyed data.
Insult-to-Injury Department: The participating HMOs are allowed to sell taxpayer-funded VSD data to drug companies.
2. No FDA safety studies of ethylmercury.
The FDA has on file a single human study of thimerosal on which it bases its claim that this 49.6% (by weight) ethylmercury preservative is not harmful when injected into children. In 1931 a study in the American Journal of Hygiene reported that Merthiolate has "a very low order of toxicity . . .for man." The data for this study came from the experimental use of thimerosal by doctors from Eli Lilly and Indianapolis City Hospital on 22 terminal meningitis patients during a severe outbreak in 1929-30. The patients died before exhibiting any adverse reactions to thimerosal and, therefore, the mercury preservative was pronounced "safe." The 1931 study was also quoted in Lilly brochures well into the 1980s.
To date, the FDA has not authorized a single safety study of thimerosal, a "grandfathered" drug component because it predates the creation of the FDA. Instead of encouraging and funding safety studies on ethylmercury (thimerosal is 49.6% ethlymercury by weight), the FDA uses the EPA recommendation for methylmercury. The current EPA regulatory standard for methylmercury exposure (0.1 mcg/kg/day) is based upon a study of 84 mercury poisoned children in Iraq, supported by studies of children in the Faroe Islands. The EPA took the lowest
level of exposure at which damage occurred through ingestion, then added a margin of safety based on scientific guesswork.
A smaller number of children, a different culture, a different type of mercury, and a vastly different method of exposure (ingestion vs. injection directly into the bloodstream). That's correct, the FDA "assumed" an equivalent toxicity (see "History in Vaccines" section of link). This is what passes for science at the FDA for our children, and we pay for it--in more ways than one.
Catch-22 department: Despite the fact that the FDA and CDC often cite the EPA's regulatory limit for methylmercury as a basis for their recommendations, when questions about the exposure of infants to ethylmercury beyond the EPA limit are raised, both groups quickly point out that the two forms of mercury are "different" and their toxicity should not be compared.
3. The FDA defers to drug companies.
When it comes to the protection of our children, the FDA tends to protect Big Pharm's bottom line more vigorously than our kids. Vaccines are the only biomedicals used on children NOT required by the FDA to have animal studies first to establish their safety and efficacy. A few more fun facts:
As of Dec 2000, 41 states had issued 2,242 fish advisories about mercury levels in fish that exceeded EPA limits. Yet the FDA has never issued a single warning about children receiving injected bolus doses of mercury that are 125 times greater than the EPA limit injected directly into their bloodstream, therefore bypassing the gut and 65% of the body's protection against toxins.
In July 1999, based upon the AAP and US PHS joint statement, the FDA took the bold step of "requesting" that thimerosal be removed from vaccines (voluntary compliance) as a "prudent" measure, citing that the thimerosal vaccines should still be considered safe. At the time, there were over 5000 studies covering a period of 50 years on the harmful effects of thimerosal in the PubMed database.
In late 2004, the biological mechanism by which ethylmercury in thimerosal induces neurodevelopment injury was established by researchers at Columbia University , and the genetic suspectibility of some children to mercury was establised by researchers at the University of Arkansas Medical College. Their findings were well publicized. Still no warning. Still no recall.
Since the 1980s the veterinarian community has discouraged vaccines containing thimerosal for animals because of the observed and documented neurological effects. Today, the FDA refuses to give our children the same level of protection that our country affords to dogs and cattle.
As of April this year, the FDA has issued 87 product recalls, including boxes of Jell-O when undeclared pistachios were found in a single box. Yet the FDA cannot bring itself to recall vaccines that contain mercury, a known neurotoxin and the second most toxic substance on this planet. The amount from a single thermometer can poison an entire lake.
Instead, the CDC and FDA have placed the flu shot on this year's childhood immunization schedule—either 12.5 or 25mg of thimerosal in most versions—well beyond the EPA safety limit for mercury exposure. Incredibly, the flu shot is being recommended for pregnant women, whose developing fetuses are at the greatest risk of poisoning of any of us. According to EPA guidelines, a child or pregnant mother receiving a flu shot containing 25 mg of thimerosal would
have to weigh 550 pounds not to exceed the established limit for daily exposure. And weight isn’t the only issue: a child’s developing system is at a immature, vulnerable state in utero.
In addition, independent tests of supposedly thimerosal-free vials of vaccines are still showing the presence of this preservative in higher-than-trace amounts. One drug company, Merck, admits to mislabelling vaccines as to their thimerosal content, causing enormous confusion and harm. Yet, the FDA refuses to address this blatant example of false and possible criminial mislabelling. Currently, an OTC diaper-rash treatment called Butt Balm contains thimerosal in violation of the law. Butt Balm was reported to the FDA several months ago. No action yet.
Do you get the feeling that Big Pharma's vaccines are more important than our children? That vaccines are more important than the iatrogenic epidemic of autism now raging in our country, and soon to be raging overseas as we ship thimerosal-tainted vaccines to China, Venezuela, Africa and elsewhere?
Coming Soon: Reasons 4-6 (Homeland Insecurity, Mercky Mess, Welcome to Simpsonwood)
