Subject: [PROVE] Press release re internal CDC report on thimerosal and autism
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, Thomas
Verstraeten, has since left the Centers for Disease Control and is now
employed by GlaxoSmithKline, a manufacturer of thimerosal-containing
vaccines for many years that is a defendant in numerous suits pending
nationwide. "We have asked GlaxoSmithKline 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 Melissa Miles at 214-357-6244.
Client inquiries should be directed to Victoria 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: 909-296-5090
DOGAN & WILKINSON
726 Delmas Avenue
Pascagoula, Mississippi 39567
Telephone: 228-762-2272
DORAN & MURPHY, LLP
1234 Delaware Avenue
Buffalo, New York 14209
Telephone: 716-884-2000
EVERT & WEATHERSBY, L.L.C.
3405 Piedmont Road, Suite 225
Atlanta, Georgia 30305-1764
Telephone : 404-233-8718
HENDRICKSON & LONG
214 Capital Street
P.O. Box 11070
Charleston, W. VA 25339
Telephone: 304-346-5500
JONES, MARTIN, PARRIS, &
TESSENER LAW OFFICES, PLLC
410 Glenwood Ave., Suite 200
Raleigh, North Carolina 27603
Telephone: 919-821-0005
LEACH, SCHWARZ & STRASSBERG
11 Bala Ave.
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania 19004
Telephone: 610-668-7964
MARTZELL & BICKFORD
338 Lafayette Street
New Orleans, Louisianna 70130
Telephone: 504-581-9065
WISE & JULIAN, PC
3555 College Avenue
Alton, Illinois 62002
Telephone: 618-462-2600
Dawn Richardson
PROVE(Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education)
prove@vaccineinfo.net (email)
http://vaccineinfo.net/ (web site)
STATEMENT SAFEMINDS FOR ACIP MEETING
SAFE MINDs has actively pursued an aggressive advocacy and legal approach
to the elimination of mercury from all biologics administered to children
and pregnant mothers for the past thirteen months. Part of this strategy
has been to repeatedly request from the CDC and FDA all documents analyzed
and generated as part of the evaluation process of these agencies into the
safety of thimerosal.
We are hear (HERE) today to read into the public records findings from
documents provided by the CDC and to formally notify ACIP members present
of the following:
1. As early as December 1999 senior CDC personnel knew of a signal
from the VSD database relating to neurodevelopmental disorders and the
administration of thimerosal containing vaccines.
2. In January of 2000 this signal was again reconfirmed by Thomas
Verstraeten to senior officers of CDC.
3. In February of 2000 Phase I of the CDC VSD analysis of thimerosal
was prepared by Thomas Verstraeten and circulated to CDC officials
including Frank DeStefano. In the Phase I analysis Dr. Verstraeten
reported a relative risk of autism and thimerosal exposures greater than
62.5 mcgs at three months of age equal to 2.48.
4. In June of 2000 Dr. Verstraeten reported a relative risk of autism
and thimerosal exposures greater than 62.5 mcgs at three months of age
equal to 1.69.
5. There are major discrepancies between the datasets analyzed by Dr.
Verstraeten in February 2000 compared to June 2000. An additional 34,334
children were added to the database. The majority of these children were
added by altering the inclusion criteria especially the category
"continuously enrolled for one year". In addition, additional children
were added to the population by updating the HMO data cycle from 6 to 7.
These additional children would not have had an autism diagnosis since
they were born in 1997 and were just turning two at the time the analysis
was performed.
6. SAFE MINDS is calling for a Congressional and United States
Attorney investigation into the generation and alteration of these reports
including but not limited to subsequent oral testimony by Roger Bernier of
CDC reporting an "inconclusive relationship" between the administration of
thimerosal containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders.
7. SAFEMINDS has obtained an email from former CDC employee Thomas
Verstraeten to Dr. Phillip Grandjean dated July 14, 2000 in which Dr.
Verstraeten states: "I know that much of this is very hypothetical and
personally I would rather not drag the Faroe and Seychelles studies into
this entire thimerosal debate, as I think they are as comparable to our
issue as apples and pears at the best. Unfortunately, I have witnessed
how may experts, looking at this thimerosal issue, do not seem bothered to
compare apples to pears and insist that if nothing is happening in these
studies then nothing should be feared of thimerosal. I do not wish to be
the advocate of the anti-vaccine lobby and sound like being convinced that
thimerosal is or was harmful, but at least I feel we should use sound
scientific argumentation and not let our standards be dictated by our
desire to disprove an unpleasant theory."
8. SAFEMINDS has obtained a transcript from a CDC sponsored
consultant meeting at the Simpsonwood Retreat Center in early June of 2000
at which the following comments were made: "This association leads me to
favor a recommendation that infants up to two years old not be immunized
with Thimerosal containing vaccines if suitable alternative preparations
are available. 'Forgive this personal comment, but I got called out a
eight o'clock for an emergency phone call and my daughter-in-law delivered
a son by C-Section. Our first male in the line of the next generation,
and I do not want that grandson to get a thimerosal containing vaccine
until we know better what is going on
'."
{SAFEMINDs believes that everyone's child and not just the grandchild of
Simpsonwood attendees should have had this option in June of 2000
especially since the vaccine manufacturers had assured CDC personnel that
every child in America could be vaccinated with a thimerosal free product.
SAFE MINDs is calling on ACIP to vote immediately to state a preference
for thimerosal free vaccines for pediatric use and to support a recall
petition to the Commissioner of the FDA to remove all pediatric vaccines
on the shelves containing thimerosal immediately. In addition, we are
asking for ACIP's support in a petition to the FDA to direct all
manufacturers of biologics used by pregnant women and children including
but not limited to Rhogam, influenza vaccine, infant nose and ear drops to
remove thimerosal from their products and when feasible from a supply
standpoint to recall all product containing thimerosal from the market
SAFEMINDs reminds those individuals present representing governmental
agencies that due to their irresponsible conduct public trust has not only
eroded but has been broken. Parents will no longer blindly trust the
health of their children into the hands of individuals who are indifferent
to their fate and make calculations based upon an undefined "greater good"
hypothesis. This will be judged as one of the greatest public health
tragedies of our nation. It may be too late for those children who have
already suffered irreversible harm from thimerosal containing vaccines but
the individuals here today can take steps to perhaps save even one child
and that child's family from the nightmare diagnosis of a developmental
disability.
Evidence of a Science Bending Group
Within the CDC?
Commentary by Teresa Binstock
As summarized by Rosie Waterhouse's news item, a
transcript of the CDC's secret meeting about thimerosal effects indicates
that a small group within the CDC acknowledges major flaws within its
initial study of the autism epidemic's link to vaccinal ethylmercury.
Despite this awareness, this small but influential
group within the CDC (i.e. the group that enacted the fatally flawed "study")
has touted and continues to use the study's "conclusions" --
e.g. on the webpages of the American Academy of Pediatrics (spring, 2000)
and at the recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) hearing (July 16, 2001).
What the CDC's secret meeting transcript conveys is
that the study's data about autism were insufficient.
As a result, conclusions about rates of autism in the pediatric cohort
from several HMOs in the study are fictional. Yet invalid findings do
not stop this CDC group from continuing to disseminate misleading conclusions.
Importantly, as indicated by reporters' rhetoric in
recent Boston Globe and Lancet articles about the IOM hearing, a tradition
of respect for the CDC enables the phony
conclusions to be presented as if valid.
Paragraphs that follow are an attempt to set forth
a summary of what this "rogue group" within the CDC has achieved
and continues to achieve. The seriously flawed CDC "study" --
initially distributed as RL Davis et al, spring 2000 -- had at least three
major flaws:
- The HMO data had major under-reporting of autism;
- Data analysis by Davis et al did not include susceptible
subgroups likely to be more affected by injected ethylmercury;
- Davis et al relied upon the EPA's "safe"
limit for methylmercury, which had been derived in relation to gradually
ingested mercury and which, therefore, minimized the fact that during
the 1990s human infants and toddlers had been injected with bolus doses
of ethylmercury, which persisted in their bodies during a post-vaccinal,
extended pulse of cytokines, which alter permeability of intestinal
tissue and of the blood-brain barrier.
These several factors -- and others identified by
analysts, e.g., Thomas Kurt, MD -- indicate that the rate of autism "documented"
by Davis et al was an extreme under-representation
of the actual rates of autism among children within the HMOs whose data
Davis et al utilized.
Despite these flaws the CDC's rogue team has continued
to distribute and utilize the flawed data and the misleading conclusions
derived.
The CDC's rogue team has stated and continues
to state that an association with autism was not found. Note:
this statement is inaccurate and is quite different from what the CDC
ought be stating, namely, that the study design was inadequate for evaluating
a link between thimerosal (TMS; 49.6% ethylmercury by weight) and the
increased incidence of autism.
Yet despite the flawed study, the CDC's team continues
to tout the study's "conclusions" as
if valid, which they are not!
At the IOM hearing (7.16.01), the CDC presented summaries
of its "Phase 1 and Phase 2" studies (i.e. several versions
of what had been called RL Davis et al, spring of 2000) as if the Phase
1 and Phase 2 studies had had valid methodologies and had thereby derived
valid conclusions about autism and thimerosal.
In fact, during the hearing, the CDC appeared content
to convey the impression that conclusions from the Phase 1 and Phase 2
studies were legitimate. At the IOM hearing, the impression conveyed by
the U Washington presenter was that there was no need to study what had
already been found to be non-existent.
In my opinion, this requires a severe leap of faith.
Even Alice in Wonderland might pause incredulously.
The CDC acknowledges (off the record and in secret meetings) that the
Phase 1 and Phase 2 Davis et al studies were seriously flawed in regard
to autism, yet the CDC is happy to proceed with a Phase 3 study that omits
autism -- because, so we were told, there was no finding of an autism/thimerosal
study in the Phase 1 and Phase 2 studies.
In other words, despite the fact that the CDC's Davis
et al methodology was fatally flawed in regard to autism and thimerosal,
the CDC's rogue team and their U of Washington allies seem quite willing
to continue diverting attention away from the substantial likelihood that
physician-injected ethylmercury
has been an etiologic factor in many cases of autism
and related disorders.
If ADHD, Tourette's, PDD, and PDD/NOS are added, then
the number of children adversely affected by physician-injected thimerosal
is potentially huge. At the IOM hearing, presenter Mark Blaxill summarized
epidemiological similarities between autism's increase and the increased
use of vaccines containing TMs
He also expressed dismay that the CDC group most responsible
for developing and encouraging TMs-injections into neonates (via the HepB
vaccine) is the group that also has been conducting and superintending
studies intended to evaluate the relationship between autism and injected-ethylmercury.
Given the 1990s history of injecting thimerosal and
the recent history of CDC-led "studies" about thimerosal, the
CDC's conflict of interest
is clear.
The actions by the CDC's rogue team appear to be
masking and diverting attention away from thimerosal's adverse effects
in hundreds of thousands of children.
Excerpts from the CDC's secret meeting -- obtain via
the Freedom of Information act -- were presented to IOM by representatives
of SafeMinds. As an official submission
to the hearing, the SafeMinds letter
to IOM is to be posted on the IOM website -- as will other materials that
implicate thimerosal injections as having damaged many of America's children
(and those in other countries too).
Having the CDC team that developed and encouraged
early infant injections with TMs also be running studies about TMs is
akin to having Al Capone investigate the liquor business in 1930s Chicago.
That the CDC's conflict of interest is having a real
effect is seen in five factors:
- The CDC continues to trumpet the Phase 1 and Phase
2 conclusions as if valid, which they are not;
- The CDC continues to utilize the EPA's so-called
"safe" limit for ingested organic mercury despite the fact
that vaccinal ethylmercury was injected;
- The CDC continues to perform data analysis while
ignoring the fact that some children are more susceptible to adverse
sequelae from bolus exposures to toxic metals;
- The CDC is allowing a major "Phase 3"
study to proceed without autism as a focus;
- The CDC's rogue team uses its organization's prestige
as a lever whereby the flawed conclusions autism/thimerosal conclusions
of Davis et al are presented as if acceptable and useful -- e.g. in
allowing Phase 3 to omit autism.
At the IOM hearing, an autism-parent suggested that
the HMO data utilized by the CDC ought be analyzed by professionals selected
by trusted autism organizations. Not surprisingly, the CDC's Dr. Chen
-- apparently a leading actor in the development and use of the HepB for
neonates and infants -- took the microphone and offered reasons why
independent analysis ought not occur.
After the meeting, Beth Clay -- assistant to Congressman
Dan Burton -- commented that the CDC seems quite ready to allow new "outsiders"
to view the HMO data so long as the CDC selects who those outside experts
are. In my opinion, outside analysis of the CDC's primary data for Davis
et al ought occur; and the analysts ought be persons not within and not
hand-picked by the CDC.
Furthermore, the CDC's conflict of interest already
has a track record of diverting attention away from the link between injected
ethylmercury and autism. A solution is needed to the CDC's conflict of
interest. By continuing to misuse Davis et al conclusions -- the CDC's
rogue team continues to shape public
opinion and near-future research regarding the link between
thimerosal and autism.
Families for Early Autism
Treatment (FEAT)