Government cover-up and the truth and lies about Thimerosal (mercury Preservative in vaccines) and its link with autism. Once again power and greed wins the majority vote in Washington and the medical industry
In the year 2000, the private Simpsonwood CDC conference was held by a group of top government scientists and health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dug and Food Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. The CDC officials reminded the 52 participants that the scientific data were “embargoed” which means there would be no photocopies of documents or any papers left behind.
According to a document written by the activist and attorney specializing in environmental law, Robert Kennedy Jr, the government officials and vaccine industry representative had gathered to talk about the disturbing results of a new study that raised serious concerns and questions about the use of mercury in vaccines used for infants and young children.
The study was done by Tom Verstraeten, an epidemiologist in CDC and in the meeting he said that he was stunned by what he saw. And what he saw was CDC’s massive database that contained hundreds of thousands of medical records of children with neurological disorders and a significant link between an increase in rate of neurological problems in kids and a mercury based preservative in the vaccines called “thimerosal”. Verstraeten also mentioned that the earlier studies have also linked thimerosal with attention-deficit disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity and autism.
In fact, the data showed that since FDA and CDC recommended three additional vaccines that contained thimerosal within hours of birth for young infant, the number of autism had increased by fifteenfold from one in every 2,500 children to one in 88 children.
Among the scientists and medical community members was Dr. Bill Weil, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado and a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics who his grandson was born the day before the meeting. “Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on." Dr. Bill Weil said.
However, Dr. Bill Weil’s suggestion wasn’t taken seriously and the next few hours of the meeting was spent on how to cover up the damaging data instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and take actions to get rid of thimerosal in vaccines.
"We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert 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. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared that "perhaps this study should not have been done at all." He added that "the research results have to be handled," warning that the study "will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group."
To cover up the damage, CDC paid the institute of Medicine to perform a new study “ordering” the researchers to "rule out" the link of mercury and autism.
That’s how Verstraeten's findings that were ready for immediate publication were put on hold and he had to tell his colleagues that he had lost all the original data and they could not be replicated. Verstraeten later on ended up working for the vaccine company GlaxoSmithKline and he made sure to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.
The vaccine industry who had already been working to remove thimerosal from vaccines and injections given to American infants continued to sell their mercury based supplies of vaccines. In fact, CDC and FDA made sure to help the vaccine industry to export their mercury-based vaccines to developing countries and allowed drug companies to continue the use of mercury-based preservative in several flu shots that are routinely given to 11 year olds in schools.
Bribing the elected officials
As we are all familiar with the way that the Congress works in Washington, the Senate Majority leader received $873,000 visible contributions from giant Pharma and since then they have been working to protect the vaccine industry from any liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by parents of kids injured by vaccines.
Even the conservatives were amazed by the government effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. In fact, Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, found out about the 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."
In fact, Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999 that "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage." "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.
Although some skeptics argue that the rise in autism is a result of better diagnosis than before, Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity says that “If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis, then where are all the 20-year-old autistics?”
Other researchers however point out that Americans are more exposed to additional amount of mercury in dental fillings, air pollution or fish compared to before and thimerosal in vaccines can be only part of a much larger problem.
In the meantime, many countries including Russia, Denmark, Austria, Japan, France, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have banned the use of thimerosal as a preservative in vaccines.
Dr Haley, the head of chemistry department at the University of Kentucky says "You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe, 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."
The History of Thimerosal:
The internal documents shows that even the producer of thimerosal, Eli Lilly, knew that the mercury based preservative could cause damage and even death in both humans and animals. In fact, back in 1930 the company tested thimerosal on 22 patients with terminal meningitis and all of them died within weeks after being injected but she didn’t bother to report this and her discovery was considered safe by her company.
However 5 years later, another vaccine company called Pittman-Moore warned Lily about her claims on thimerosal safety after in a study they discovered that half of dogs injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became really sick. Even in the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used thimerosal in vaccines, Lily had to label them as “poison”.
Another study in 1967 discovered that thimerosal in injected vaccine killed mice. Four years later, even Lily’s studies sited that thimerosal was toxic to human cells even in a very low concentration like 100 times less concentration that what’s used in vaccines.
However, Lily’s company still used thimerosal as “nontoxic” and in 1977, 10 babies died in a hospital in Toronto after an antiseptic preservative with thimerosal was applied into their umbilical cords.
In 1982, FDA proposed a ban on over counter products that contained thimerosal and in 1991 FDA considered banning it from animal vaccines, but at the same year, CDC recommended a series of mercury based vaccines for infants and new born like hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth and haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis for 2 month old infants.
CDC approved the series of new vaccines when both CDC and drug industry knew that additional vaccines can pose a serious danger to health of infants and newborn who don’t have a proper immune system. 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."
However Merck and other drug companies had a problem with removing thimerosal because it would cost them more money. Consumed by fear of “cost and productivity” the giant drug company, Merck ignored Dr. Maurice Hilleman’s warnings about over-vaccinating infants and kids with thimerosal-based vaccines and today our kids receive 49 doses of vaccines before they reach the age six years old. http://www.seattleorganicrestaurants.com/vegan-whole-food/low-immune-system-brain-neurological-injuries-vaccines.php
In fact, infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months are being injected with a total of 187 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 40 percent greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury doesn’t pose a serious threat since it breaks down quickly and is removed by the body. However, several studies including the one by the National Institutes of Health, suggest that “ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury”.
All these years the numbers of vaccines that contain neurotoxin have increased, so do the rate of autism. However, the governmental officials who push for more vaccines insist that additional vaccines are necessary for boosting the immune system of infants and children, especially in developing countries that claim they cannot afford the single-dose vials that don’t have mercury.
Severe conflict of interests is a defining problem in modern science:
Some of these government officials might be well-intentioned but many of those who were on the advisory committee of CDC had close ties to vaccine industry. Most of these scientists including Dr. Sam Katz and Dr. Neal Halsey were researchers who worked for the vaccine industry and actually helped to develop those vaccines.
In fact, the scientists who advised CDC on increasing the number of mercury based vaccines are the ones who are or have been working for the vaccine industry. According to the document written by Robert Kennedy Jr, 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 "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."
However, there were some government officials who were alarmed by the conflicts of interest and Paul Patriarca of the FDA, in his email to CDC administrators in 1999 blamed 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.
A New Study by Harvard shows the link between mercury and autism:
All these years, the federal regulators and government failed to remove thimerosal from vaccines, even after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. Instead of conducting more research and immediate ban on all vaccines with mercury preservatives, they decided to cover up the link between mercury in vaccines and autism, ADD and ADHD.
The CDC also took advice of the scientists who have been working for the vaccine industry and were making money from selling them.
Recently, a new study by Harvard came out that showed more evidence between mercury and autism. Two other studies had already shown that the closer you live to a coal-fired plant (mercury), the more are the chances of autism.
In this study, researchers discovered that women who lived close to the polluted section with high level of diesel particulates or mercury in the air were twice more likely to have a child with autism than those who lived in cleanest sections.
According to Huffington Post, the leading author of the study, Dr Andrea Roberts said that “Women who were exposed to the highest levels of diesel or mercury in the air were twice as likely to have a child with autism than women who lived in the cleanest parts of the sample". "All of the chemicals studied are known neurotoxins," Roberts said. "They are also known to pass from mother to baby while a woman is pregnant. It's very plausible that the 'stuff' the mother is taking in through the air is affecting her baby's brain development."
Sources:
http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/articles/2005_june_16.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16338635
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/autism-air-pollution-study_n_3443518.html
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