The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was Des

Gathered together in one place, for easy access, an agglomeration of writings and images relevant to the Rapeutation phenomenon.

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Tue Dec 22, 2015 9:17 am

Lawsuit Against Merck’s MMR Vaccine Fraud to Continue
by Health Impact News
September 6, 2014

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Health Impact News Editor Comments

In a story late in 2014 that no mainstream media outlet reported, a Pennsylvania federal judge ruled in favor of whistleblowers who have accused Merck of lying about the efficacy of its mumps vaccine (currently only available in combo with MMR). We had to find this story posted on a couple of websites servicing attorneys.

This story did garner mainstream news coverage back in 2012, before Merck’s attorneys appealed and tried to get the case thrown out of court. Here is a report Forbes wrote on it back in 2012. Some quotes:

Anyone who falls on either side of the debate about vaccines’ alleged potential to cause harm is sure to have heard the big news this week — the unsealing of a whistleblower suit against Merck, filed back in 2010 by two former employees, accusing the drugmaker of overstating the effectiveness of its mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine.

The scientists claim Merck defrauded the U.S. government by causing it to purchase an estimated four million doses of mislabeled and misbranded MMR vaccine per year for at least a decade, and helped ignite two recent mumps outbreaks that the allegedly ineffective vaccine was intended to prevent in the first place.


“As the single largest purchaser of childhood vaccines (accounting for more than 50 percent of all vaccine purchasers), the United States is by far the largest financial victim of Merck’s fraud. But the ultimate victims here are the millions of children who every year are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing them with an adequate level of protection against mumps. And while this is a disease the CDC targeted to eradicate by now, the failure in Merck’s vaccine has allowed this disease to linger with significant outbreaks continuing to occur,” the suit alleges. (Source – emphasis added.)


The Wall Street Journal also covered the story back in 2012, but according to a report by Dr. Mercola, the Wall Street Journal’s “elite” network of CFOs from the world’s top corporations met 3 days later (including executives from Merck), and the story was removed from their website.

This week, U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones II ruled that the whistleblowers had sufficiently pled that Merck might have provided false statements to the government and that the direct purchasers had shown enough evidence to establish that these falsehoods could have helped the company gain a monopoly.

Most people in the U.S. do not even realize that U.S. law prevents anyone damaged by vaccines from suing the manufacturer. In 1986, Congress passed a law preventing legal liability to vaccine damages, because the drug companies manufacturing vaccines blackmailed them, by threatening to stop manufacturing vaccines without legal protection. There were so many lawsuits resulting from vaccine injuries and deaths prior to this time, that it was no longer profitable for them to continue marketing vaccines without legal protection. So instead of Congress requiring that drug companies manufacture safer vaccines, they complied with the drug companies’ requests and passed legislation protecting the drug companies. In 2011 this law was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Therefore, any lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company for allegedly producing faulty vaccines is huge news. This current lawsuit is brought by two whistleblowers, virologists who worked for Merck and are accusing Merck of lying about the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine. There is also a class action suit related, brought by Alabama-based Chatom Primary Care and two individual doctors from New York and New Jersey who allege Merck’s monopoly on the drug caused them to pay more for the drug.

More details from the whistleblower lawsuit claiming fraud:

Merck is the only manufacturer licensed by the FDA to sell the mumps vaccine in United States, and if it could not show that the vaccine was 95 percent effective, it risked losing its lucrative monopoly, according to the complaint.

That’s why Merck found it critically important to keep claiming such a high efficacy rate, the complaint states.

And, Chatom claims, that’s why Merck went to great lengths, including “manipulating its test procedures and falsifying the test results,” to prop up the bogus figure, though it knew that the attenuated virus from which it created the vaccine had been altered over the years during the manufacturing process, and that the quality of the vaccine had degraded as a result.

Starting in the late 1990s, Merck set out on its sham testing program with the objective of “report[ing] efficacy of 95 percent or higher regardless of the vaccine’s true efficacy,” the complaint states.

Chatom says Merck initially called its testing program Protocol 007.

Under Protocol 007, Merck did not test the vaccine’s ability to protect children against a “wild-type” mumps virus, which is “the type of real-life virus against which vaccines are generally tested,” the complaint states.

Instead, Chatom says, Merck tested children’s blood using its own attenuated strain of the virus.

“This was the same mumps strain with which the children were vaccinated,” the complaint states.

That “subverted” the purpose of the testing regime, “which was to measure the vaccine’s ability to provide protection against a disease-causing mumps virus that a child would actually face in real life. The end result of this deviation … was that Merck’s test overstated the vaccine’s effectiveness,” Chatom claims.

Merck also added animal antibodies to blood samples to achieve more favorable test results, though it knew that the human immune system would never produce such antibodies, and that the antibodies created a laboratory testing scenario that “did not in any way correspond to, correlate with, or represent real life … virus neutralization in vaccinated people,” according to the complaint.


Chatom claims that the falsification of test results occurred “with the knowledge, authority and approval of Merck’s senior management.” (Source.)


One can easily see why Merck has worked so hard the past two years to bury this story and try to get it thrown out of court. But now a federal judge has ruled the case will proceed.

It is certainly understandable why the mainstream media does not want to touch this story, given the fact that one of the lead authors on a CDC published study in 2004 has also become a whistleblower, stating that the CDC withheld data from the public linking the MMR vaccine to a higher rate of autism among some children, specifically African American boys. The fraud surrounding the MMR vaccine is becoming a story way too hot to handle, and to report it would be to admit the media has been wrong, and reporting the wrong data, for many years now.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield is the world-renowned gastrointestinal surgeon and researcher who first proved that there were problems with mumps vaccine given in conjunction with two other vaccines, measles and rubella. But a massive smear campaign was waged against him and his license to practice was revoked in the U.K. With no trial or jury, the mainstream media simply went along with the trumped up charges, and to this day hold him up as a scapegoat to supposedly prove that there are no serious problems with the MMR vaccine or any link to autism.

The mainstream media seems united in their belief that vaccines do not cause harm, and that the rise of childhood diseases is due to unvaccinated children, rather than faulty vaccines. Even with inside testimony such as is provided by these whistleblowers from within Merck and the CDC itself, the mainstream media does not appear ready yet to come out and admit they are wrong and report this contrary news. Their credibility on reporting anything true in regards to vaccines is very quickly eroding.


Sources:

Antitrust, FCA Claims On Merck Mumps Vaccine To Advance, By Dan Packel

Qui Tam, Class Action Cases Against Merck Proceed, by Gina Passarella

Memorandum issued by Judge explaining his ruling.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Tue Dec 22, 2015 9:31 am

Why Did the Wall Street Journal Bury the Merck Fraud Story?
by Dr. Mercola
July 23, 2012

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


It was big news when court documents were unsealed revealing a whistleblower lawsuit accusing drug giant Merck of fraud and lying about the true efficacy of its mumps vaccine. Just about every media, large and small, picked it up and the world was abuzz about the hundreds of millions of dollars the lawsuit claimed Merck had defrauded from the U.S. government.

The Wall Street Journal published the story in the form of a Dow Jones news release written by Jon Kamp on June 22, 2012, and links to the story began popping up on social media like Facebook.

Then, suddenly, the link to the story no longer worked, and if anyone clicked on the link in social media, it would show up "page not found." Apparently the story had been pulled, and when search engines and Internet archives wouldn't even show it, it looked as if it had never been published on the Journal's site at all. It was erased nearly clean -- except for a small stock-watcher's website, 4Traders.com, which did a good job of erasing it from its main site but didn't catch it in the cache.

The question is, why did the WSJ pull the story and try to erase as if it never existed when there were actual court documents for evidence?

Is it possible that an event that occurred on June 25 [1]—three days after the story broke—could have influenced the story being pulled? On that day, the Wall Street Journal's "elite" network of CFOs from the world's top corporations met at the WSJ [2]. Merck is on that executive council [3].

My team attempted to connect with the WSJ on this issue, but as of this time, we have not yet received an answer as to why this article was pulled. UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal replied to our inquiry on Tuesday July 24th at 3:12 PM CST. The story has since been restored on their site, and they are looking into how the story was temporarily dropped.

Merck Accused of Falsifying Efficacy Studies and Lying about Effectiveness of Mumps Vaccine


Merck has actually been slapped with two class-action lawsuits over their mumps vaccine (which is part of the trivalent measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine). The first, which was initially filed in 2010, was unsealed late last month.

Two former Merck virologists, Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, claim they witnessed first-hand the improper testing and falsification of data that was done to hide the fact that the vaccine has significantly declined in effectiveness [4].

By artificially inflating the efficacy, Merck was able to maintain its monopoly over the mumps vaccine market—and that is the main point of contention of the second class-action lawsuit, filed by Chatom Primary Care [5].


According to Courthouse News Service [6]:

"Merck has known for a decade that its mumps vaccine is "far less effective" than it tells the government, and it falsified test results and sold millions of doses of "questionable efficacy," flooding and monopolizing the market... Chatom says in its antitrust complaint that Merck falsely claims its mumps vaccine is 95 percent effective. That claim "deterred and excluded competing manufacturers," who would enter the risky and expensive vaccine market only if they believed they could craft a better product...

Merck is the only manufacturer licensed by the FDA to sell the mumps vaccine in United States, and if it could not show that the vaccine was 95 percent effective, it risked losing its lucrative monopoly...

That's why Merck found it critically important to keep claiming such a high efficacy rate, the complaint states. And, Chatom claims, that's why Merck went to great lengths, including "manipulating its test procedures and falsifying the test results," to prop up the bogus figure, though it knew that the attenuated virus from which it created the vaccine had been altered over the years during the manufacturing process, and that the quality of the vaccine had degraded as a result."


How Merck Faked and Manipulated Vaccine Trials to Achieve Desired Results

According to these two lawsuits, Merck began a sham testing program in the late 1990's to hide the declining efficacy of the vaccine. The objective of the fraudulent trials was to "report efficacy of 95 percent or higher regardless of the vaccine's true efficacy."

According to Krahling and Wlochowski's complaint, they were threatened with jail were they to alert the FDA to the fraud being committed. The sham testing program was initially referred to as "Protocol 007," the Chatom anti-trust claim states. Suzanne Humphries recently wrote an excellent summary for GreenMedInfo.com [7], explaining in layman's terms how the tests were manipulated [8].

Here's a brief extract. For more, please refer to the original source article:

"For the new testing method, the children's blood was tested for its ability to neutralize the virus using the vaccine strain virus, instead of the wild type strain that is much more infective, and the one that your children would most likely catch... But still it was not 95% effective. In order to make the blood pass the test, antibodies from rabbits was added. The addition of rabbit antibody increased the efficacy to 100%. But that was not the end, because the test has to be done on pre-vaccine blood and post-vaccine blood.

Just the addition of rabbit antibody made the pre-vaccine blood go from 10% positive to 80% positive and that was such an obvious sign of foul play that yet another manipulation had to be made.

The desired end result is to have very low pre-vaccine antibody and 95% or more post-vaccine efficacy as measured by antibody neutralization. So, yet one more change in procedure was made: The pre-vaccine tests were all redone... According to the Merck scientists, they did this by fabricating the "plaque" counts on the pre-vaccine blood samples, counting plaques that were not there. What this allowed was a mathematical dilution of the pre-vaccine positive blood counts.
"


This is a perfect example of how medical research can be manipulated to achieve desired results, and why it may be wise to question vaccine makers' study results. Clearly, there needs to be a truly independent review in the mix... As reported by the Courthouse News Service9:

"Chatom claims that the falsification of test results occurred" with the knowledge, authority and approval of Merck's senior management."


While I do not advocate indiscriminately abstaining from all vaccines, I strongly encourage you to exercise a major dose of due diligence as vaccines can cause serious reactions that can have devastating consequences. I believe in informed consent and the freedom to choose. There can be little doubt anymore that drug companies are in it for the profits, and virtually no price seems too high for them when it comes to protecting their profit-making.

When Words and Deeds Don't Match, which is Closer to the Truth?

Forbes quoted a Merck spokesman saying [10]:

"Nothing is more important to Merck than the safety and effectiveness of our vaccines and medicines and the people who use them.".


Really?

Then WHY did they heavily promote Vioxx and keep it on the market until it had killed more than 60,000 people? I warned my readers that this pain killer might be a real killer for some people, five years before Merck made its $30 billion recall! Five years they let it go, and they undoubtedly would have kept it on the market longer had the lethal dangers not become so shockingly obvious to other scientists.

After Vioxx came the HPV vaccine Gardasil—perhaps the most unnecessary vaccine ever created, and likely one of the most dangerous to boot. Merck claims their main concern is safety, yet ever since Gardasil's approval in 2006, reports of life-altering side effects and sudden deaths of otherwise healthy teenagers have stacked up into the thousands, and Merck has steadfastly refused to acknowledge or address these health risks.

Gardasil appears to have one of the highest risk to benefit ratios of any vaccine on the market, and India even halted Merck's post-licensing trials of the vaccine after four young participants died, yet Merck has the gall to claim that nothing is more important to them than safety. Give me a break... Actions speak louder than words, and Merck has a long paper trail of litigation highlighting the company's questionable ethics.

More Censored News: MMR Vaccine Caused Autism, Italian Court Rules

These two lawsuits couldn't come at a more precarious time for Merck, as the Italian Health Ministry recently conceded the MMR vaccine caused autism in a now nine-year old boy. As a result, a court in Rimini, Italy has awarded the family a 15-year annuity totaling 174,000 Euros (just under $220,000), plus reimbursement for court costs, ruling that the boy "has been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (prophylaxis trivalent MMR)."

According to The Daily Mail, a British paper [11]:

"Judge Lucio Ardigo, awarding compensation to the family... said it was 'conclusively established' that Valentino had suffered from an 'autistic disorder associated with medium cognitive delay' and his illness, as Dr Barboni stated, was linked to receiving the jab. Lawyer Mr Ventaloro explained yesterday: 'This is very significant for Britain which uses, and has used, an MMR vaccine with the same components as the one given to Valentino.

'It is wrong for governments and their health authorities to exert strong pressure on parents to take children for the MMR jab while ignoring that this vaccine can cause autism and linked conditions.'

Claudio Simion, a leading member of the lobby group Association for Freedom of Choice in Vaccination (Comilva), adds: 'The Rimini judgment is vitally important for children everywhere. The numbers with autism are growing. It is a terrible thing that the authorities turn a blind eye to the connection between the MMR vaccination and this illness.'"


This vaccine-news story was not picked up by a single US media outlet when it happened! Why? Could it be because the US government, which is brimming with paid-off industry shills, is hellbent on protecting the vaccination program? Not because it's a marvelous panacea that promotes optimal health and longevity and can be defended with raw facts and first-class science, but because it's a major profit center, both for the vaccine makers and for those whose pockets are lined with Big Pharma bribes.

U.S. Varicella Vaccination Program Also Found to be a Total Flop

In related news, a recent review of the varicella (chickenpox) vaccination program in the US concluded that the vaccine efficacy had declined well below 80 percent by 2002. Furthermore, the varicella vaccine has:

• Not proven to be cost-effective
Increased the incidence of shingles
• Failed to provide long-term protection from the disease it targets―chicken pox―and
Is less effective than the natural immunity that existed in the general population before the vaccine

The damning news was published in May in the journal Vaccine [12], and lends additional support to the idea that the vaccine program is based on financial interests, not health, as serious side effects are routinely ignored and ineffective and/or harmful products continue to be used.

The information was gathered from a review of chicken pox and shingles statistics in the years since the vaccine was introduced. The researchers point out that although statistics showed shingles rates increased after the vaccine, "CDC authorities still claimed" that no increase had occurred. The authors also state that the CDC not only ignored the natural boost in immunity to the community that occurred with wild chickenpox, as opposed to the vaccine, but also ignored the "rare serious events following varicella vaccination" as well as the increasing rates of shingles among adults:

"In the prelicensure era, 95% of adults experienced natural chickenpox (usually as children)—these cases were usually benign and resulted in long-term immunity. Varicella vaccination is less effective than the natural immunity that existed in prevaccine communities. Universal varicella vaccination has not proven to be cost-effective as increased herpes zoster [shingles] morbidity has disproportionately offset cost savings associated with reductions in varicella disease. Universal varicella vaccination has failed to provide long-term protection from VZV disease."


Get Informed Before You Vaccinate Yourself or Your Family

Stories such as these underscore the importance to take control of your own health, and that of your children. It's simply not wise to blindly depend on the information coming directly from the vaccine makers' PR departments, or from federal health officials and agencies that are mired in conflicts of interest with industry...

No matter what vaccination choices you make for yourself or your family, there is a basic human right to be fully informed about all risks of medical interventions and pharmaceutical products, like vaccines, and have the freedom to refuse if you conclude the benefits do not outweigh the risks for you or your child.

Unfortunately, the business partnership between government health agencies and vaccine manufacturers is too close and is getting out of hand. There is a lot of discrimination against Americans, who want to be free to exercise their human right to informed consent when it comes to making voluntary decisions about which vaccines they and their children use.

We cannot allow that to continue.

It's vitally important to know and exercise your legal rights and to understand your options when it comes to using vaccines and prescription drugs. For example, your doctor is legally obligated to provide you with the CDC Vaccine Information Statement (VIS) sheet and discuss the potential symptoms of side effects of the vaccination(s) you or your child receive BEFORE vaccination takes place. If someone giving a vaccine does not do this, it is a violation of federal law. Furthermore, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 also requires doctors and other vaccine providers to:

• Keep a permanent record of all vaccines given and the manufacturer's name and lot number
• Write down serious health problems, hospitalizations, injuries and deaths that occur after vaccination in the patient's permanent medical record
• File an official report of all serious health problems, hospitalizations, injuries and deaths following vaccination to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS)

If a vaccine provider fails to inform, record or report, it is a violation of federal law. It's important to get all the facts before making your decision about vaccination; and to understand that you have the legal right to opt out of using a vaccine that you do not want you or your child to receive. At present, all 50 states allow a medical exemption to vaccination (medical exemptions must be approved by an M.D. or D.O.); 48 states allow a religious exemption to vaccination; and 18 states allow a personal, philosophical or conscientious belief exemption to vaccination.

However, vaccine exemptions are under attack in a number of states, and it's in everyone's best interest to protect the right to make informed, voluntary vaccination decisions.

What You Can Do to Make a Difference

While it seems "old-fashioned," the only truly effective actions you can take to protect the right to informed consent to vaccination and expand your rights under the law to make voluntary vaccine choices, is to get personally involved with your state legislators and the leaders in your community.

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.

Mass vaccination policies are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level, and it is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights will have the greatest impact.

Signing up to be a user of NVIC's free online Advocacy Portal at http://www.NVICAdvocacy.org gives you access to practical, useful information to help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your own community. You will get real-time Action Alerts about what you can do if there are threats to vaccine exemptions in your state. With the click of a mouse or one touch on a Smartphone screen you will be put in touch with YOUR elected representatives so you can let them know how you feel and what you want them to do. Plus, when national vaccine issues come up, you will have all the information you need to make sure your voice is heard. So please, as your first step, sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal.

Right now, in California, the personal belief exemption is under attack by Pharma-funded medical trade organizations and public health officials trying to get a bill (AB 2109) passed that would require parents to get a medical doctor's signature to file an exemption for personal religious and conscientious beliefs. Watch NVIC's 90-second public service message and learn more about what you can do if you are a California resident.

Internet Resources

To learn more about vaccines, I encourage you to visit the following web pages on the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) website at http://www.NVIC.org:

• NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims: View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
• If You Vaccinate, Ask 8 Questions: Learn how to recognize vaccine reaction symptoms and prevent vaccine injuries.
• Vaccine Freedom Wall: View or post descriptions of harassment by doctors or state officials for making independent vaccine choices.
• Vaccine Ingredient Calculator (VIC): Find out just how much aluminum, mercury and other ingredients are in the vaccines your doctor is recommending for you or your child.
• Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) on MedAlerts. Search the government's VAERS database to find out what kinds of vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths have been reported by patients and heath care workers giving vaccines.

Find a Doctor Who will Listen to Your Concerns

Last but not least, if your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don't want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to punish those patients and parents, who become truly educated about health and vaccination and want to make vaccine choices instead of being forced to follow risky one-size-fits-all vaccine policies.

If you are treated with disrespect or are harassed in any way by a doctor (or government official), do not engage in an unproductive argument. You may want to contact an attorney, your elected state representatives or local media, if you or your child are threatened.


That said, there is hope.

At least 15 percent of young doctors recently polled admit that they're starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents. It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.

So take the time to locate and connect with a doctor who treats you with compassion and respect and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child, and isn't just competing for government incentives designed to increase vaccination rates at any cost.

References:

1 The Wall Street Journal CFO Network, 2012 Program

2 The Wall Street Journal CFO Network Annual Meeting

3 Newscorp.com, Wall Street Journal to Assemble Council of Leading Chief Financial Officers, April 18, 2011

4 Courthouse News Service June 27, 2012

5 See ref 4

6 See ref 4

7 Greenmedinfo.com, Scientists Sue Merck: Allege Fraud for MMR Vaccine, July 4, 2012

8 See ref 7

9 See ref 4

10 Forbes June 27, 2012

11 Daily Mail, MMR: A mother's victory. The vast majority of doctors say there is no link between the triple jab and autism, but could an Italian court case reignite this controversial debate?, June 16, 2012

12 Vaccine May 31, 2012 [Epub ahead of print]
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Tue Dec 22, 2015 9:42 am

Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data
by Brian S Hooker
Translational Neurodegeneration 20143:16
DOI: 10.1186/2047-9158-3-16
© Hooker; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014
Received: 17 April 2014
Accepted: 5 August 2014
Published: 27 August 2014

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Abstract

Background


A significant number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder suffer a loss of previously-acquired skills, suggesting neurodegeneration or a type of progressive encephalopathy with an etiological basis occurring after birth. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectof the age at which children got their first Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine on autism incidence. This is a reanalysis of the data set, obtained from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC), used for the Destefano et al. 2004 publication on the timing of the first MMR vaccine and autism diagnoses.

Methods


The author embarked on the present study to evaluate whether a relationship exists between child age when the first MMR vaccine was administered among cases diagnosed with autism and controls born between 1986 through 1993 among school children in metropolitan Atlanta. The Pearson’s chi-squared method was used to assess relative risks of receiving an autism diagnosis within the total cohort as well as among different race and gender categories.

Results

When comparing cases and controls receiving their first MMR vaccine before and after 36 months of age, there was a statistically significant increase in autism cases specifically among African American males who received the first MMR prior to 36 months of age. Relative risks for males in general and African American males were 1.69 (p=0.0138) and 3.36 (p=0.0019), respectively. Additionally, African American males showed an odds ratio of 1.73 (p=0.0200) for autism cases in children receiving their first MMR vaccine prior to 24 months of age versus 24 months of age and thereafter.

Conclusions

The present study provides new epidemiologic evidence showing that African American males receiving the MMR vaccine prior to 24 months of age or 36 months of age are more likely to receive an autism diagnosis.

Keywords

Autism Measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine

Background

Autism is defined by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities [1]. Autism incidence has risen dramatically over the past two decades [2] and it has recently been reported that one in sixty-eight children have this disorder [3]. In addition to these core deficits, autism has also been characterized by many other comorbid conditions including gastrointestinal issues, sleep issues, eating disorders and sensory processing issues [4].

It has been estimated that as many as 62% of children with autism experience a period of regression during early childhood, characterized by loss of previously acquired skills [5]. This period has been reported as ranging between 6 and 36 months of age with the typical age of regression between 18 and 24 months [6]. This period of regression occurs within the same time period that children in the United States typically receive their required vaccinations and thus there have been many studies regarding the incidence of autism and the receipt of specific vaccines. One of the primary concerns has been the timing of the administration of the first measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.

The relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism was first hypothesized by Wakefield et al. [7] in 1999 after the observation of a regressive phenotype of autism that appeared in general after the administration of the first MMR vaccine. Although several studies have affirmed such a relationship between the MMR vaccine and neurodevelopmental disorders including autism [8, 9], many other studies purport no statistical relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism incidence. The latter studies have been performed using cohorts from Denmark [10], Japan [11] and Poland [12], as well as the MMR vaccine and pervasive developmental disorder in Canada [13]. In addition, in 2004, Destefano et al. [14] published a paper describing a case–control study completed on children, in metropolitan Atlanta, who had been born between 1986 and 1993. Within this study, the age at the first MMR vaccine was assessed as a factor in the incidence of autism. Using conditional logistic regression, with first MMR age as the independent variable and autism incidence as the dependent variable, the study authors assessed relative risk for obtaining an autism diagnosis for those children receiving the first MMR vaccine before and after 18 months, 24 months and 36 months of age. Destefano et al. [14] found a statistically significant relative risk of 1.49 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.04 – 2.14) at the 36 month cut-off (i.e., in a comparison of children receiving the MMR before versus after 36 months). Rather than concluding that the first MMR vaccine could be playing a causal role in autism in these children, the study authors instead attributed the increased risk to greater numbers of autistic children receiving timely vaccinations in order to participate in State of Georgia special education services.

In this paper, we present the results of a cohort study using the same data from the Destefano et al. [14] analysis. The focus of the current study is differences in results in specific gender and race groups.

Methods

Cohort data


Cohort data were obtained directly as a “restricted access data set” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) via a Data Use Agreement. Data were deidentified by the CDC in accordance with Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prior to receipt by the study authors. Use of the CDC specifically for the study described herein was approved by the Simpson University Institutional Review Board, in accordance with U.S. Federal regulations.

Study population

As reported by Destefano et al. [14] (CDC) in the original publication, “Children with autism were identified by the CDC from the Metropolitan Atlanta Developmental Disabilities Surveillance Program (MADDSP), a multiple-source, population-based surveillance program that monitors the occurrence of selected developmental disabilities among children in the 5-county metropolitan Atlanta area”. And further, “Autism cases were identified via screening and abstraction of source files at schools, hospitals, clinics, and specialty providers”. Of the cases identified, vaccination records were located for 660 children. Control children were chosen from “regular” education programs and were within the same age group and schools of attendance or neighboring school as cases. Children missing a vaccination form or with incomplete vaccination forms (where the forms did not list at least 1 diphtheria-tetanus-pertusussis vaccine by 2 years of age or at least 1 MMR vaccine at any age) were excluded from the study. Children with religious or medical exemptions were not excluded from the study. The listed exclusions yielded a cohort size of 624 cases and 1824 controls.

Vaccination histories

Vaccination records were abstracted as described previously [14] from standardized state immunization forms that are required for all children who attend school and early intervention programs in Georgia.

Demographic data

Demographic data including birthdate, gender and race were obtained for both case and control children via birth certificates or registration forms kept as a part of each child’s permanent school record. Georgia state birth certificate information was used to further obtain each child’s birthweight. Although actual birthweight data were not released by the CDC, case and control children were lumped into birthweight categories: under 1500 grams, between 1500 and 2500 grams and over 2500 grams. All individuals less than 3 years of age at the time of testing (1996) were excluded from the analysis.

Statistical analyses

The Pearson’s chi -squared test contained in the SAS® software was utilized for current statistical analyses, and a two-sided p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. This is in contrast to the original Destefano et al. [14] (CDC) study, where a case–control study design was used, where 3 control children were matched to each case child, and analyzed using conditional logistic regression dichotomized for the three age cut-offs at 18, 24 and 36 months. Pearson’s chi-squared is, in general, a more conservative analysis and therefore chosen for the present study. However, our results were also confirmed using a conditional logistic regression design similar to the Destefano et al. [14] (CDC) study. In the present study, frequencies of cases were determined for first MMR ages of less than versus greater than 18 months, 24 months and 36 months in each separate analysis. When accounting for cases in the cohort that excluded low birth weight (<2500 g) African American children, it was necessary to report results at 31 months rather than 36 months in order to avoid reporting data from age categories or “cells” that possessed less than 5 individuals.

Results

Table 1 shows the relationship between MMR timing and autism incidence for the entire cohort. As can be observed, there is a statistically significant effect for the cohort at 36 months (RR = 1.49, 95% CI: 1.04-2.14, p = 0.0289). However, this result appears to be caused by a stronger relationship (RR = 1.69, 95% CI: 1.11-2.57, p = 0.0138) seen exclusively in boys. Girls did not show any relationship between autism and MMR timing at any age group studied.

Image
Table 1: Fisher’s exact analysis for the entire cohort
*Result is statistically significant based on p < 0.05.

When looking specifically at African American children (Table 2), the relationship between MMR timing and autism incidence became more profound (RR = 2.30, 95% CI: 1.25-4.22, p = 0.0060) at 36 months of age. Again, this result was exclusively found in boys who showed statistically significant effects at both 24 months (RR = 1.73, 95% CI: 1.09-2.77, p = 0.0200) and 36 months (RR = 3.36, 95% CI: 1.50-7.51, p = 0.0019) of age. This effect again was not seen in females.

http://rapeutation.com/inlieswestrust.9p_small.gif[img]
[/img]Table 2: Fisher’s exact analysis for African American children only
*Result is statistically significant based on p < 0.05.


Table 3 shows results for the entire cohort excluding African American children. As can be observed, there is no statistically significant effect for any of the subclasses in either gender or age cut-off for MMR uptake. This shows that the effect observed overall is due to the very strong “signal” seen exclusively in African American boys. In other words, the strong, statistically significant relationship between younger first MMR age and higher autism incidence in African American males may be skewing the results for larger, more general populations that include African American males (e.g., all boys and all African Americans) to show a “relationship” that is actually only in African American males.

Image
Table 3: Fisher’s exact analysis excluding African American children

Through investigating the cohort demographic data, it was found that there was a higher proportion of low birth weight African Americans compared to the entire cohort, specifically within the portion of the cohort that possessed a Georgia state birth certificate. The number of individuals with a birth weight under 2500 g for African Americans was 11.9% as compared to the total cohort at 8.66%. A final analysis was completed on African American children in the “birth certificate” cohort, excluding low birth weight individuals (Table 4). Results were obtained at 18 months, 24 months and 31 months, rather than 36 months, as there were insufficient cases (less than 5) at the 36 month mark to carry out the analysis. Even at 31 months, there were insufficient cases of African American females. Thus, these results are not included in the analysis. Even excluding low birth weigth individuals, a relationship was seen between first MMR age and autism incidence at 31 months for African American males (RR = 2.64, 95% CI: 1.08-6.46, p = 0.0280).

Image
Table 4: Fisher’s exact analysis for African American children excluding low birth weight
*31 month cut-off was used as 36-months yielded results for African American males with <5 individuals per cell in the analysis.

Discussion

The results show a strong relationship between child age at the administration of the first MMR and autism incidence exclusively for African American boys which could indicate a role of the vaccine in the etiology of autism within this population group. This particular analysis was not completed in the original Destefano et al. [14] (CDC) study. Although the previous study considered MMR timing and African Americans in general, no statistically significant effect was observed. This is in contrast to our result for African Americans in general, because the CDC study limited the total African American cohort to include only those individuals who possessed a valid State of Georgia birth certificate which decreased the statistical power of their analysis. Although a statistically significant relationship between first MMR age and autism incidence was seen in the general (all races) population within the earlier Destefano et al. [14] study, the coauthors interpreted this result as an artifact of “healthcare seeking behavior” citing that autistic children would receive their vaccines earlier in order to enroll in State of Georgia early intervention programs. However, it is highly unlikely that this type of behavior would be seen exclusively in African American males and thus, alternative hypotheses must be explored, including the possibility that the MMR vaccine may be causally linked to autism in African American males.

It should be noted that a recent publication has shown that the prevalence of autism in African Americans is nearly 25% higher than that of whites [15]. This value was obtained when CDC data were appropriately analyzed based on socioeconomic status. This could be due to issues regarding vitamin D status with African Americans as it has been estimated that vitamin D sufficiency among whites is between 30-60% but is only 5-10% among African Americans [16]. Patrick et al. [17] have very recently proposed a mechanism for the link between vitamin D status and autism via selective production of serotonin in the brain. Disruption of the serotonergic system is a very consistent observation with autism [18] as serotonin promotes prosocial behavior and proper assessment of emotional social cues [19].

Vitamin D has a multitude of other physiological functions in vivo. Vitamin D receptor has been found in many different tissues including the small intestine, colon, osteoblasts, activated T and B lymphocytes, islet cells and most organs in the body [20]. Vitamin D has also been implicated in many important physiological processing including modulation of activated T and B lymphocyte function [21, 22] and prevention of inflammatory bowel disease [23]. Lower vitamin D status African American females are more susceptible to lupus [24]. Also, Epstein-Barr Virus antibody titers are significantly higher in African American youth as compared to white youth [25] which may be a consequence of vitamin D insufficiency. Also, childhood adversity, which could be more prevalent in African American boys, can have lasting immune consequences [26].

Gallagher et al. [27] have reported previously regarding the Hepatitis B vaccine and autism in neonates, specifically within the 1997 to 2002 time period when this vaccine series still contained thimerosal. Regarding non-whites they specifically stated in the abstract, “Non-white boys bore greater risk” of receiving an autism diagnosis if they received the Hep B as neonates. The data reported in this paper show a statistically significant risk ratio of 5.53 (p = 0.019) for black boys as opposed to white boys who had a risk of 1.87 (p = 0.171) which was not statistically significant, when looking at autism in those infants that received their first Hep B vaccine during the first month of life.

A strength of the current study is that the MADDSP data were collected independently of the design used in the analysis. These data were collected as part of the diagnoses individuals received as part of their participation in special education program and as such, the healthcare providers in no way were thinking about the potential association between vaccine exposures and potential health outcomes. Also the current study controlled for a possible association between low birth weight individuals and autism as in the final analysis on the African American cohort, all children of birthweight less than 2500 grams were eliminated from the cohort. Although low birthweight (LBW) has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of autism [28], insufficient information existed within the study population to assess the effect of LBW on autism incidence or any interaction between LBW and MMR timing.

The weaknesses of the current study include the age groups selected for autism cases and controls within the original data set. The average age to receive an autism diagnosis has been reported (using the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink) as between 3.7 [29] and 4.2 years of age [30]. However, the CDC’s dataset included controls as young as 3 years of age who could have been “too young” to receive an autism diagnosis. Accordingly, there is a greater than 50% probability that some of the controls could have later received an autism diagnoses, thus skewing the analysis to the null (“no effect”) hypothesis. However, when the analysis was recompleted using controls that were six years of age or older, very similar results were obtained (data not shown). Also, information on the timing of other infant vaccines was not released by the CDC and thus it was impossible to control this factor in the current analysis. In addition, socioeconomic factors were not assessed in the current analysis. Thus, any differences in “healthcare seeking behavior” among individuals vaccinated ontime versus late could not be assessed.

Conclusions

The present study provides new evidence of a statistically significant relationship between the timing of the first MMR vaccine and autism incidence in African American males. Using a straight-forward, Pearson’s chi-squared analysis on the cohort used in the Destefano et al. [14] (CDC) study, timing of the first MMR vaccine before and after 24 months of age and 36 months of age showed relative risks for autism diagnoses of 1.73 and 3.36, respectively. Future studies should be completed to further evaluate the relationship of first MMR timing and neurodevelopmental maladies, including autism, especially in underserved populations.

Routine childhood vaccination is considered an important public health tool in reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases. However, consideration should be made in the current United States vaccination schedule for genetic subpopulations that may be associated with vaccine adverse events. Additional research is required to better understand the relationship between MMR exposure and autism in African American males.

Abbreviations

CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CI: Confidence Interval
Hep B: Hepatitis B vaccine
MADDSP: Metropolitan Atlanta Developmental Disabilities Surveillance Program
MMR: measles-mumps-rubella vaccine
RR: Relative Risk.

Declarations

Acknowledgements

Funding for this research was provided for by a grant from Focus Autism, Inc. Data for case and control children were provided in a de-identified form by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Competing interests

Dr. Hooker has been involved in vaccine/biologic litigation.

Authors’ contributions

BH was the main manuscript writer and computer programmer.

References

• Geier DA, Kern JK, Geier MR: A Comparison of the Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist (ATEC) and the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) for the Quantitative Evaluation of Autism. J Ment Health Res Intellect Disabil 2013, 6: 255-267. 10.1080/19315864.2012.681340PubMed CentralView ArticlePubMed
• Boyle CA, Boulet S, Schieve LA, Cohen RA, Blumberg SJ, Yeargin-Allsopp M, Visser S, Kogan MD: Trends in the prevalence of developmental disabilities in US children, 1997–2008. Pediatrics 2011, 127: 1034-1042. 10.1542/peds.2010-2989View ArticlePubMed
• Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network Surveillance Year Principal I: Prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among children aged 8 years - autism and developmental disabilities monitoring network, 11 sites, United States, 2010. Morb Mortal Wkly Rep Surveill Summ 2014, 63 Suppl 2: 1-21.
• Geier DA, Kern JK, Geier MR: A prospective cross-sectional cohort assessment of health, physical, and behavioral problems in autism spectrum disorders. Maedica 2012, 7: 193-200.PubMed CentralPubMed
• Kern JK, Geier DA, Sykes LK, Geier MR: Evidence of neurodegeneration in autism spectrum disorder. Transl Neurodegeneration 2013, 2: 17. 10.1186/2047-9158-2-17View Article
• Davidovitch M, Glick L, Holtzman G, Tirosh E, Safir MP: Developmental regression in autism: maternal perception. J Autism Dev Disord2000, 30: 113-119. 10.1023/A:1005403421141View ArticlePubMed
• Wakefield AJ, Montgomery SM: Autism, viral infection and measles-mumps-rubella vaccination. Isr Med Assoc J 1999, 1: 183-187.PubMed
• Geier DA, Geier MR: A comparative evaluation of the effects of MMR immunization and mercury doses from thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines on the population prevalence of autism. Med Sci Monit 2004, 10: PI33-39.PubMed
• Geier DA, Geier MR: Pediatric MMR Vaccination Safety. Int Pediatr 2003, 18: 108-113.
• Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, Schendel D, Wohlfahrt J, Thorsen P, Olsen J, Melbye M: A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. N Engl J Med 2002, 347: 1477-1482. 10.1056/NEJMoa021134View ArticlePubMed
• Uno Y, Uchiyama T, Kurosawa M, Aleksic B, Ozaki N: The combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines and the total number of vaccines are not associated with development of autism spectrum disorder: the first case–control study in Asia. Vaccine 2012, 30: 4292-4298. 10.1016/j.vaccine.2012.01.093View ArticlePubMed
• Mrozek-Budzyn D, Kieltyka A, Majewska R: Lack of association between measles-mumps-rubella vaccination and autism in children: a case–control study. Pediatr Infect Dis J 2010, 29: 397-400. 10.1097/INF.0b013e3181c40a8aView ArticlePubMed
• Fombonne E, Zakarian R, Bennett A, Meng L, McLean-Heywood D: Pervasive developmental disorders in Montreal, Quebec, Canada: prevalence and links with immunizations. Pediatrics 2006, 118: e139-150. 10.1542/peds.2005-2993View ArticlePubMed
• DeStefano F, Bhasin TK, Thompson WW, Yeargin-Allsopp M, Boyle C: Age at first measles-mumps-rubella vaccination in children with autism and school-matched control subjects: a population-based study in metropolitan atlanta. Pediatrics 2004, 113: 259-266. 10.1542/peds.113.2.259View ArticlePubMed
• Durkin MS, Maenner MJ, Meaney FJ, Levy SE, DiGuiseppi C, Nicholas JS, Kirby RS, Pinto-Martin JA, Schieve LA: Socioeconomic inequality in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder: evidence from a U.S. cross-sectional study. PLoS One 2010, 5: e11551. 10.1371/journal.pone.0011551PubMed CentralView ArticlePubMed
• Ginde AA, Liu MC, Camargo CA Jr: Demographic differences and trends of vitamin D insufficiency in the US population, 1988–2004.Arch Intern Med 2009, 169: 626-632. 10.1001/archinternmed.2008.604PubMed CentralView ArticlePubMed
• Patrick RP, Ames BN: Vitamin D hormone regulates serotonin synthesis. Part 1: relevance for autism. FASEB journal: official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology 2014, 28: 2398-2413. 10.1096/fj.13-246546View Article
• Zafeiriou DI, Ververi A, Vargiami E: The serotonergic system: its role in pathogenesis and early developmental treatment of autism.Curr Neuropharmacol 2009, 7: 150-157. 10.2174/157015909788848848PubMed CentralView ArticlePubMed
• Crockett MJ: The neurochemistry of fairness: clarifying the link between serotonin and prosocial behavior. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2009, 1167: 76-86. 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04506.xView ArticlePubMed
• Holick MF: Sunlight and vitamin D for bone health and prevention of autoimmune diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr 2004, 80: 1678S-1688S.PubMed
• Tsoukas CD, Provvedini DM, Manolagas SC: 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3: a novel immunoregulatory hormone. Science 1984, 224: 1438-1440. 10.1126/science.6427926View ArticlePubMed
• Bhalla AK, Amento EP, Clemens TL, Holick MF, Krane SM: Specific high-affinity receptors for 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells: presence in monocytes and induction in T lymphocytes following activation. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 1983, 57: 1308-1310. 10.1210/jcem-57-6-1308View ArticlePubMed
• Cantorna MT, Munsick C, Bemiss C, Mahon BD: 1,25-Dihydroxycholecalciferol prevents and ameliorates symptoms of experimental murine inflammatory bowel disease. J Nutr 2000, 130: 2648-2652.PubMed
• Hoffecker BM, Raffield LM, Kamen DL, Nowling TK: Systemic lupus erythematosus and vitamin D deficiency are associated with shorter telomere length among African Americans: a case–control study. PLoS One 2013, 8: e63725. 10.1371/journal.pone.0063725PubMed CentralView ArticlePubMed
• Ford JL, Stowe RP: Racial-ethnic differences in Epstein-Barr virus antibody titers among U.S. children and adolescents. Ann Epidemiol2013, 23: 275-280.View ArticlePubMed
• Fagundes CP, Glaser R, Hwang BS, Malarkey WB, Kiecolt-Glaser JK: Depressive symptoms enhance stress-induced inflammatory responses. Brain Behav Immun 2013, 31: 172-176.PubMed CentralView ArticlePubMed
• Gallagher CM, Goodman MS: Hepatitis B vaccination of male neonates and autism diagnosis, NHIS 1997–2002. J Toxic Environ Health A2010, 73: 1665-1677. 10.1080/15287394.2010.519317View Article
• Singh GK, Kenney MK, Ghandour RM, Kogan MD, Lu MC: Mental Health Outcomes in US Children and Adolescents Born Prematurely or with Low Birthweight. Depression Res Treat 2013, 2013: 570743.
• Verstraeten T, Davis RL, DeStefano F, Lieu TA, Rhodes PH, Black SB, Shinefield H, Chen RT: Vaccine Safety Datalink T: Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases. Pediatrics 2003, 112: 1039-1048.View ArticlePubMed
• Geier DA, Hooker BS, Kern JK, King PG, Sykes LK, Geier MR: A two-phase study evaluating the relationship between Thimerosal-containing vaccine administration and the risk for an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in the United States. Transl Neurodegeneration 2013, 2: 25. 10.1186/2047-9158-2-25View Article

Copyright

© Hooker; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://​creativecommons.​org/​licenses/​by/​4.​0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://​creativecommons.​org/​publicdomain/​zero/​1.​0/​) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Tue Dec 22, 2015 9:51 am

How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders?
by SHARYL ATTKISSON
CBS
July 25, 2008

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


For years some parents and scientists have raised concerns about vaccine safety, including a possible link to autism and ADD. Many independent experts have sided with government officials and other scientists who say there's no possible connection. But how "independent" are they? CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson shares here what she found.

They're some of the most trusted voices in the defense of vaccine safety: the American Academy of Pediatrics, Every Child By Two, and pediatrician Dr. Paul Offit.

But CBS News has found these three have something more in common -- strong financial ties to the industry whose products they promote and defend.

The vaccine industry gives millions to the Academy of Pediatrics for conferences, grants, medical education classes and even helped build their headquarters. The totals are kept secret, but public documents reveal bits and pieces.

• A $342,000 payment from Wyeth, maker of the pneumococcal vaccine -- which makes $2 billion a year in sales.
• A $433,000 contribution from Merck, the same year the academy endorsed Merck's HPV vaccine -- which made $1.5 billion a year in sales.
• Another top donor: Sanofi Aventis, maker of 17 vaccines and a new five-in-one combo shot just added to the childhood vaccine schedule last month.

Every Child By Two, a group that promotes early immunization for all children, admits the group takes money from the vaccine industry, too -- but wouldn't tell us how much.

A spokesman told CBS News: "There are simply no conflicts to be unearthed." But guess who's listed as the group's treasurers? Officials from Wyeth and a paid advisor to big pharmaceutical clients.

Then there's Paul Offit, perhaps the most widely-quoted defender of vaccine safety.

He's gone so far as to say babies can tolerate "10,000 vaccines at once."


This is how Offit described himself in a previous interview: "I'm the chief of infectious disease at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor of pediatrics at Penn's medical school," he said.

Offit was not willing to be interviewed on this subject but like others in this CBS News investigation, he has strong industry ties. In fact, he's a vaccine industry insider.

Offit holds in a $1.5 million dollar research chair at Children's Hospital, funded by Merck. He holds the patent on an anti-diarrhea vaccine he developed with Merck, Rotateq, which has prevented thousands of hospitalizations.

On March 22, 2010, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials, adhering to the precautionary principle, advised American doctors to suspend use of Rotarix 1 vaccine until the agency finds out why DNA from a swine virus (porcine circovirus 1 or PCV1) was found in the live rotavirus vaccine. The FDA said there is “no evidence at this time” that the vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline and given to babies at 2,4 and 6 months of age to prevent diarrhea poses any safety risk. 2

Independent Lab Using New Technology Found Contamination

The discovery that viral DNA is contaminating Rotarix vaccine was made by a team of scientists at an independent research lab in San Fransisco, California, where they used new technology to detect fragments of viral genetic material in vaccines using genetic sequencing. 3

More testing confirmed that many copies of DNA from the pig virus were present in all Rotarix vaccine lots released since the vaccine was licensed in 2008 because the pig virus DNA also contaminated the working cell bank and the original viral “seed” stock, from which Rotarix vaccine was first produced. 4

Two Other Live Virus Vaccines Contaminated


The surprising discovery reportedly was made after the independent lab used new technology to evaluate the purity of eight live virus vaccines for polio, rubella, measles, yellow fever, human herpes 3 (varicella or chicken pox), rotavirus (Rotarix and RotaTeq) and MMR. In addition to pig viral DNA found in Rotarix vaccine, low levels of DNA fragments from avian (bird) leukosis virus (a retrovirus) was found in measles vaccine and DNA fragments of a virus similar to simian (monkey) retrovirus was found in RotaTeq vaccine. 5

-- Vaccine Contamination: Pig Virus DNA Found in Rotarix, by Barbara Loe Fisher


And future royalties for the vaccine were just sold for $182 million cash. Dr. Offit's share of vaccine profits? Unknown.

There's nothing illegal about the financial relationships, but to critics, they pose a serious risk for conflicts of interest. As one member of Congress put it, money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of those who hold themselves out to be "independent."

The American Academy of Pediatrics, Every Child By Two and Dr. Offit would not agree to interviews, but all told us they're up front about the money they receive, and it doesn't sway their opinions.

Today's immunization schedule now calls for kids to get 55 doses of vaccines by age 6.

Ideally, it makes for a healthier society. But critics worry that industry ties could impact the advice given to the public about all those vaccines.

Copyright 2008 CBS. All rights reserved.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Wed Dec 23, 2015 1:28 am

Deadly Immunity
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
6/21/05

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to 52 attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug 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. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.

"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 flatly that the study "should not have been done at all" and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled."

In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.

Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to 11-year-olds.

The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. Congress repealed the measure in 2003 -- but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.

Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a 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."

The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical. I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the government's need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. "Why should we scare people about immunization," Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until we know the facts?"

It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading scientific research and talking with many of the nation's preeminent authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation -- those born between 1989 and 2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "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.

Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the 20-year-old autistics?" Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative "load" of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It's a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received -- but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.

What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore -- and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines -- and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's vaccines 20 years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.

"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. "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."

Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to 22 patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety "did not check with ours." Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative "unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs."

In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it "poison." In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, 10 babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.

In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, 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."

For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this "cost consideration," Merck ignored Hilleman's warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measlesmumps- rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. "What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?" Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. "Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?"

But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of 6 months were being injected with levels of ethylmercury 187 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of CDC's top vaccine advisors, told me, "I think if we really have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next 20 years, because we always do -- there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials."

For years some parents and scientists have raised concerns about vaccine safety, including a possible link to autism and ADD. Many independent experts have sided with government officials and other scientists who say there's no possible connection. But how "independent" are they? CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson shares here what she found.

They're some of the most trusted voices in the defense of vaccine safety: the American Academy of Pediatrics, Every Child By Two, and pediatrician Dr. Paul Offit.

But CBS News has found these three have something more in common -- strong financial ties to the industry whose products they promote and defend.

The vaccine industry gives millions to the Academy of Pediatrics for conferences, grants, medical education classes and even helped build their headquarters. The totals are kept secret, but public documents reveal bits and pieces.

• A $342,000 payment from Wyeth, maker of the pneumococcal vaccine -- which makes $2 billion a year in sales.
• A $433,000 contribution from Merck, the same year the academy endorsed Merck's HPV vaccine -- which made $1.5 billion a year in sales.
• Another top donor: Sanofi Aventis, maker of 17 vaccines and a new five-in-one combo shot just added to the childhood vaccine schedule last month.

Every Child By Two, a group that promotes early immunization for all children, admits the group takes money from the vaccine industry, too -- but wouldn't tell us how much.

A spokesman told CBS News: "There are simply no conflicts to be unearthed." But guess who's listed as the group's treasurers? Officials from Wyeth and a paid advisor to big pharmaceutical clients.

Then there's Paul Offit, perhaps the most widely-quoted defender of vaccine safety.

He's gone so far as to say babies can tolerate "10,000 vaccines at once."

This is how Offit described himself in a previous interview: "I'm the chief of infectious disease at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor of pediatrics at Penn's medical school," he said.

Offit was not willing to be interviewed on this subject but like others in this CBS News investigation, he has strong industry ties. In fact, he's a vaccine industry insider.

Offit holds in a $1.5 million dollar research chair at Children's Hospital, funded by Merck. He holds the patent on an anti-diarrhea vaccine he developed with Merck, Rotateq, which has prevented thousands of hospitalizations.

On March 22, 2010, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials, adhering to the precautionary principle, advised American doctors to suspend use of Rotarix 1 vaccine until the agency finds out why DNA from a swine virus (porcine circovirus 1 or PCV1) was found in the live rotavirus vaccine. The FDA said there is “no evidence at this time” that the vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline and given to babies at 2,4 and 6 months of age to prevent diarrhea poses any safety risk. 2

Independent Lab Using New Technology Found Contamination

The discovery that viral DNA is contaminating Rotarix vaccine was made by a team of scientists at an independent research lab in San Fransisco, California, where they used new technology to detect fragments of viral genetic material in vaccines using genetic sequencing. 3

More testing confirmed that many copies of DNA from the pig virus were present in all Rotarix vaccine lots released since the vaccine was licensed in 2008 because the pig virus DNA also contaminated the working cell bank and the original viral “seed” stock, from which Rotarix vaccine was first produced. 4

Two Other Live Virus Vaccines Contaminated

The surprising discovery reportedly was made after the independent lab used new technology to evaluate the purity of eight live virus vaccines for polio, rubella, measles, yellow fever, human herpes 3 (varicella or chicken pox), rotavirus (Rotarix and RotaTeq) and MMR. In addition to pig viral DNA found in Rotarix vaccine, low levels of DNA fragments from avian (bird) leukosis virus (a retrovirus) was found in measles vaccine and DNA fragments of a virus similar to simian (monkey) retrovirus was found in RotaTeq vaccine. 5

-- Vaccine Contamination: Pig Virus DNA Found in Rotarix, by Barbara Loe Fisher


And future royalties for the vaccine were just sold for $182 million cash. Dr. Offit's share of vaccine profits? Unknown.

There's nothing illegal about the financial relationships, but to critics, they pose a serious risk for conflicts of interest. As one member of Congress put it, money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of those who hold themselves out to be "independent."

The American Academy of Pediatrics, Every Child By Two and Dr. Offit would not agree to interviews, but all told us they're up front about the money they receive, and it doesn't sway their opinions.

-- How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders?, by Sharyl Attkisson


But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and shares a patent on a measles vaccine with Merck, which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.

Q. Walter, what does that tell you? Someone’s fanny ought to be sitting in a jail cell, I say. What do you suggest?

A. That the Chairman of the American of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Sam Katz, should be in jail with them. I say this based on the internal memorandums at Lederle, which indicate they obtained his support to block regulations that would have required Lederle to remove the simian herpes viruses from their vaccine after it was discovered in 1971 that 100% of the OPV carried African green monkey cytomegalovirus within the vaccine. I say this without regard to his giving me one of the highest accolades a vaccine injury attorney could receive when he shouted at me (after Congressman Burton’s hearing on the Hep B vaccine) – “You are a despicable attorney.”

Katz co-authored the FDA treatise on polio vaccines in 1980 that asserted the regulations did not prohibit release of oral polio vaccines containing simian retroviruses, which included Simian immunodeficiency viruses from rhesus monkeys, African green monkeys and chimpanzees that could be passed by the vaccine.

-- Exposing The FDA’s Vaccine Injury Cover-Up: An Interview With Walter Kyle, Esq., by Catherine J. Frompovich


Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. 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 laced with thimerosal "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."

Offit, who shares a patent on the vaccine, acknowledged to me that he "would make money" if his vote to approve it eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. "It provides no conflict for me," he insists. "I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It's offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way it works."

Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud of their "partnerships" with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children's health. They are often resentful of questioning. "Science," says Offit, "is best left to scientists."

Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted 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.

If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC "wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. "We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. "We've got a dragon by the tail here," said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee member. "The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we know what the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I think is the charge."

Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks.

In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling position for a scientific body -- recommended that no further research be conducted.

The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design" and failed to represent "all the available scientific and medical research." CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because "an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?"

Under pressure from Congress, parents and a few of its own panel members, the Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened a second panel to review the findings of the first. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency and urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.

So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a "very significant relationship" between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be-published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.

As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a "control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Penn., who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.

At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa Legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. "After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism," says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. "The fact that Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children's vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone." Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in 32 other states.

But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders "under review."

I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. "The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence," says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. "The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen." It's hard to calculate the damage to our country -- and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe that America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them sincere, even idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world's poorest populations.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper Alliance. He is the co-author of "The Riverkeepers."
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Sat Feb 27, 2016 4:19 am

Obama Grants Immunity to CDC Whistleblower on Measles Vaccine Link to Autism
by Health Impact News Editor
February 3, 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image

After six months and nearly one billion tweets on Twitter, it took a media frenzy over a small measles outbreak in California at the beginning of 2015 to draw the attention of some in the national media to finally start reporting on the significance of the CDC Whistleblower story from the summer of 2014.

Patrick Howley of The Daily Caller has reported that the Obama administration has granted whistleblower immunity to Dr. William Thompson, a senior epidemiologist at the CDC who co-authored and published research on the MMR vaccine for the CDC back in 2004. His decision to become a whistleblower and reveal data that was concealed by the CDC linking the MMR vaccine to autism among African American boys was revealed during the summer of 2014.

In his report, Howley links to a letter published on the Natural News website from the summer of 2014 sent by Dr. Thompson to then-CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding in February 2004, where he expressed his concerns to Dr. Gerberding about how the CDC was concealing data linking the measles MMR vaccine to autism. (Letter here.)

February 2nd, 2004

Dear Dr. Gerberding,

We've not met yet to discuss these matters, but I'm sure you're aware of the Institute of Medicine Meeting regarding vaccines and autism that will take place on February 9th. I will be presenting the summary of our results from the Metropolitan Atlanta Autism Case-Control Study and I will have to present several problematic results relating to statistical associations between the receipt of MMR vaccine and autism.

It's my understanding that you are aware of several news articles published over the past two weeks suggesting that Representative David Weldon is still waiting for a response from you regarding two letters he sent you regarding issues surrounding the integrity of your scientists in the National Immunization Program. I've repeatedly asked individuals in the NIP Office of the Directors Office why you haven't responded directly to the issues raised in those letters and I'm very disappointed with the answers I've received to date. In addition, I've repeatedly told individuals in the NIP OD over the last several years that they're doing a very poor job representing immunization safety issues and that we're losing the public relations war.

On Friday afternoon, January 30th, I presented the draft slides for IOM presentation to Dr. Steve Cochi and Dr. Melinda Wharton. The first thing I stated to both of them was my sincere concern regarding presenting this work to the Institute of Medicine if you had not replied to Representative Weldon's letters. I have attached the draft slides for your review. I have been told that you have suggested that the science speak for itself. In general I agree with that statement, but as you know, the science also needs advocates who can get the real scientific message out to the public.

In contrast to NIP's failure to be proactive in addressing immunization safety issues, you have done an amazingly effective job addressing the press on a wide range of controversial public health issues including SARS, Monkey Pox and Influenza. The CDC needs your leadership here because I may very well be presenting data before a hostile crowd of parents with autistic children who have been told not to trust the CDC. I believe it is your responsibility and duty to respond in writing to Representative Weldon's letters before the Institute of Medicine meeting and make those letters public. Otherwise, you give the appearance of agreeing with what he has been suggested in those correspondences and you're putting one of your own scientists in harms way. This is not the time for our leadership to act politically. It is a time for our leadership to stand by their scientists and do the right thing. Please assist me in this matter and respond to Representative Weldon's concerns in writing prior to my presentation on February 9th.

Sincerely,

William W. Thompson, PhD
Epidemiologist
Immunization Safety Branch


Howley points out that Gerberding is now an executive vice president at Merck, the pharmaceutical giant that is currently the sole manufacturer of the measles vaccine. Gerberding originally left the CDC to take the position of president of Merck’s vaccine division.

Dr. Brian Hooker Spent 10 Years Trying to Obtain CDC Documents on Measles Vaccine Study

Image
Dr. Coleen Boyle of the CDC testifies under oath before Congress in November 2012 that the body of evidence shows there is no connection between mercury in vaccines and autism. Dr. Boyle was a co-author with Dr. William Thompson on the 2004 study.

As we have previously reported, Dr. Brian Hooker spent 10 years fighting the CDC and submitting over 100 Freedom of Information Acts to obtain the raw data from studies the CDC conducted that allegedly proved there was no connection between the measles MMR vaccine and autism. It was almost exactly one year ago from now, in February of 2014, that Dr. Hooker was finally able to secure the raw data from the studies he was seeking, with the help of Congressman Bill Posey, which revealed that the CDC had data linking the measles MMR vaccine to autism for over 10 years.(Original story and press release here.)

At the time this was revealed, the mainstream media either ignored it, or vilified it as insignificant.


CDC Whistleblower Contacts Dr. Hooker

A few months later, Dr. Brian Hooker received a phone call from Dr. William Thompson of the CDC, one of the original authors of the 2004 study. A series of phone calls took place, and Dr. Hooker recorded some of them. Here is the now famous video that was released in the summer of 2014 that mainstream media basically ignored:



CDC Director of Immunization Safety Admits Bias and Withholding Data Linking Measles Vaccine to Autism

Image
Frank DeStefano, MD, MPH.

While most of the mainstream media was ignoring this story, independent journalist and former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson called Dr. Frank DeStefano, the CDC Director of Immunization Safety, who was a co-author with Dr. William Thompson in the 2004 CDC study on the MMR vaccine, and asked him some questions about the concealed data Dr. Thompson had revealed.

She recorded her phone call and posted it on her website here.

Transcript:

Dr. Frank DeStefano: I think what [Thompson’s] saying there was a larger, um, uh, odds ratio or association among the–the larger group and that there was not, uh, as strong an association among the birth certificate sample. And I mean, what I say to that, I think we discussed that, uh, as I recall, this was like, you know, over ten years ago, and, uh, I think at the time we had consensus among all co-authors that the birth certificate sample provided the more valid results because it could uh, it had more complete information on, uh, on race for one, and secondly, more importantly, it had information on important factors that, uh, had to be you know controlled for particularly in studies of autism, in particular, it would be things like birth weight, the mother’s age, the mother’s education. So I think for those reasons we were able to adjust for these factors and we thought, you know, we uh, our opinion was that that the results of the birth certificate sample provided the more reliable results. And I think, you know, as I recall, we all came to consensus and, uh, signed off on that, uh, in the paper.

Attkisson: Were you aware of any of his concerns of, you know, have you been aware before today of any of his concerns about this?

DeStefano: Uh, uh, yeah, I mean I’ve continued to see, uh, uh, see him for over the past ten years and we’ve interacted fairly frequently, and, uh, uh, no I wasn’t aware of this.

Attkisson: So whoever he raised his concerns to, he didn’t, he didn’t raise it to you or anybody you knew of?

DeStefano: No, I mean the last time I saw him was probably about two months ago, and he didn’t mention anything about this.

Attkisson: And at the time he didn’t seem concerned when you said there was a consensus?

DeStefano: No, yeah, I mean at the time he did these analyses he did, you know, he did point out that in one group, you know in that larger group the the the measures of association [between MMR vaccine and autism] were higher than in the, uh, birth certificate group and, you know, we discussed that and for the reasons I mentioned, uh, we came to consensus that the, uh, birth certificate uh results were more valid.

Attkisson: Um, I was looking at one of the birth certificates and it doesn’t have -– maybe you could find one that has birth weight, mother’s education, the one I’m looking at doesn’t have any of that on there.

DeStefano: Ah, I mean I don’t know what, which one you’re looking at, I mean we get to these data were, uh, you know, right from the birth, birth, uh, the Georgia birth certificate files that contained those data.

Attkisson: Ok. Does is it a valid way of you know, you guys, scientists decide things before papers are published, of course, you use your own judgment on things, but isn’t there a way, is there a valid way to look at it the way Thompson is, where he thinks, apparently, that the larger group without the birth certificates was reason for concern and something that should have been reported? To me, as just as a layperson, I would like to know that -– even if, even if it culled out when you, when you got the group down through the birth certificates, I would, I still think it would be pretty important to know…

DeStefano: No, I mean, I think, you know, the other, the other important consideration here is looking at what, what time period we’re talking about. We’re, you know, autism, as you probably are aware, is a condition that really probably has its start while the child is still in the womb. And, you now, it doesn’t, some of the behaviors and such don’t come apparent, become apparent until maybe the child is one, two, three years old. But, uh, uh what we know about autism that, uh, the, uh, characteristics or behavioral signs do become ava–, you know, apparent by 24 months of age, so. So we had different cut-offs, before 18 months of age, there was no difference in, in any group in terms of, uh, vaccination levels, between the cases and controls. At 24 months of age, when, uh, au—you know—behaviors of autism or some features of autism become apparent, there was no difference between the, uh, cases and controls in any group, it was at 36 months where there was a slight differen—and the difference was we’re talking about a difference between 93% versus 91%, not a, a big difference. But, so that’s at 36 months. And at 36 months, an exposure around that time period is just not biologically plausible to have a uh, uh, a causal association with autism. I mean autism would’ve already started by then. [I me?] I reiterate it probably starts in the womb, but even if you’re saying, you wanna call it starting by the time some behavioral features become apparent, it had started before 36 months. And then, you know, we, from, so I think from a biological argument, it’s implausible this was a causal association. And then I think we have, uh–pretty convince–

Attkisson: Let me just, let me just interrupt what, before I lose that thought. So you already made up your mind regardless of what the stats show that if it, certain things show that it didn’t make sense, you wouldn’t, you would try to find out a way to…

DeStefano: No, that’s not we said, I’m just saying, you know, you interpret, you interpret findings, also, you know, there’s the statistics, then you have to also interpret, bring in things like biological plausibility, how do you interpret these results? So I think we had pretty strong evidence that these results at 36 months were primarily a reflection of requirements to attend early intervention special education programs for the for the children with autism. And why do we say that? We say that because the effect was almost all seen in children 3-5 years of age and those were the ones that early education programs and 98%, you know, 98% of that of that age group was in special education programs for which vaccination was of a requirement.

Attkisson: Is there any possibility that it is biologically plausible and you just haven’t, you know, that that’s, the consensus is that it’s not, among you guys, but that it is and you’re overlooking that?

DeStefano: I’m, I’m not aware of any data would, that would s–, you know, that would say that, uh, you would have, um, onset of autism after 36 months.


Attkisson asked the CDC director why the excluded data linking the measles vaccine to autism in African American boys would not be important enough to investigate further, since it contained such a higher rate of autism. Dr. DeStefano’s reply was very typical of the bias that currently exists among CDC scientists when it comes to autism:

you know, autism, as you probably are aware, is a condition that really probably has its start while the child is still in the womb. And, you now, it doesn’t, some of the behaviors and such don’t come apparent, become apparent until maybe the child is one, two, three years old.


In other words, they believe autism is completely due to genetic factors, and not environmental factors. Of course, this theory of the genetic cause of autism lends itself to billions of dollars in drug research, even though it contradicts both scientific evidence, as well as the experience of many tens of thousands of parents who saw their completely normal child rapidly digress shortly after receiving vaccines. Even the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out damages to children with autism as a result of vaccines, including the measles MMR vaccine.

Obama Has Granted Whistleblower Immunity – What’s Next?

Now, many months later after all of this information was revealed, Patrick Howley of the Daily Caller has picked up the story, and revealed that Dr. Thompson actually obtained whistleblower status from the Obama administration “months ago.”

So what’s next?

Howley reports that Congressman Posey staffer Anna Schartner stated:

“We’re working with the Science Committee to get a hearing,” Anna said. “What we’re talking about is integrity within an agency. It’s rightfully under the purview of the Science Committee.”


In an interview with Dr. Gary Null on his national radio program last month (January 2015), Dr. Brian Hooker stated that Dr. Thompson is currently cooperating with members of a Congressional subcommittee. Also:

Thousands of American parents with vaccine damaged children, suffering from permanent neurological impairment and autism, await a trial that will finally bring to justice many of the nation’s top health officials. (Source.)


The Mainstream Media is Covering the Wrong Measles Story

Yesterday, we published an article about how the mainstream media was not covering the charges of fraud against Merck regarding the measles MMR vaccine in the current measles debate. (See: Why is the Mainstream Media Ignoring Measles Vaccine Fraud Cases?)

We mentioned not only the CDC whistleblower story, but also the federal lawsuit with allegations of fraud over the mumps portion of the MMR vaccine, in a case filed back in 2010 by two virologists who worked for Merck, and became whistleblowers.

Hours later, The Daily Caller published the report by Patrick Howley. This is a positive move in the right direction that we hope other media sources will follow.

The United States does not currently have a measles epidemic. We have an autism epidemic.

Image
The-Autism-Catastrophe

It is time to stop denying the vaccine link to autism, and work on a solution to the very obvious problems that exist in the vaccine industry. Autism is a much more serious problem than the small number of measles cases we are currently seeing. We cannot continue to deny this problem exists, if we expect to find real solutions.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Sat Feb 27, 2016 4:19 am

Obama Admin Grants Immunity To CDC Scientist That Fudged Vaccine Report…Whistleblower Plans To Testify Before Congress
by Patrick Howley
Political Reporter Daily Caller
2/3/15

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Thomas Frieden, director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks during a news conference in Freetown December 17, 2014. REUTERS/Baz

The Obama administration has granted whistleblower immunity to a federal government scientist that claimed he intentionally omitted information in a study that could have shown a race-based link between vaccines and childhood diseases including autism.

That scientist, still employed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is working closely with a congressman’s office to tell his story to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

No official study has ever linked childhood vaccinations to serious mental defects or to autism or related disorders. Currently, controversy engulfs presidential contenders Chris Christie, Rand Paul and also Hillary Clinton after their past statements suggesting a possible vaccine-to-illness link were publicized this week in the midst of a measles outbreak.

In 2004, Dr. William S. Thompson worked on a report for the CDC’s National Immunization Program. That report, which ran in the “Pediatrics” medical journal, came to the conclusion that there’s no link between vaccines and autism and that no racial group is more likely to be damaged by vaccines.

But Thompson said that he and other CDC scientists intentionally fudged the results, manipulating the pool of children they analyzed and limiting the proper number of African-American children from participating. The authors limited black children from showing up in the results by excluding babies without a state of Georgia birth certificate.

“It was a mutual decision among the five co-authors,” Dr. Brian Hooker told The Daily Caller.
An associate professor at California’s Simpson University, Hooker found out about the deception by secretly taping conversations that he had with Thompson last year. After beginning to talk to Thompson in 2013, he ended up getting Thompson’s information on audio record and disseminated the information in the vaccine-skeptic online community.

“I live close to the Oregon border. I taped the conversations in a hotel room,” Hooker said.

“I didn’t want people to run out and delay vaccination because of this, because it was only one piece of data. But it was the one piece of data that CDC chose to cover up,” Hooker said.

“I did record phone conversations without his prior knowledge. That’s not something I took lightly, and I went to the state of Oregon to do it,” said Hooker, the father of an autistic child. “I live fairly close to the Oregon border, so for most of the conversation I was taping him in a hotel. The stuff that was being revealed was really radioactive. I consulted with two different attorneys and decided to go ahead and record these phone calls.”

With Thompson’s lead, Hooker revised the data. “When I ran the effect for males only for African-Americans the likelihood was 3.36. Stronger effect in African-American males and it looked like the effect was exclusively in African-American males, not females.”
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Sat Feb 27, 2016 8:54 am

CDC Whistleblower Revealed
by Dr. Andrew Wakefield
© AutismMediaChannel 2014

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.








[CDC WHISTLEBLOWER CONFESSES TO VACCINE-AUTISM FRAUD]

an Autism Media Channel exclusive

[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] Oh my God, I cannot believe we did what we did. But we did. It's all there. It's all there.

[DECADE-LONG COVER UP PUT MILLIONS OF INFANTS AT RISK]

[Andy Wakefield] This is a real story of a real fraud.

["... THAT PAPER"]

[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] It's the lowest point in my career, that I went along with that paper.

[Andy Wakefield] A deliberate, high-level deception of the American people with disastrous consequences for its children's health.
In order to give context to the extraordinary story that you're about to hear, a little historical perspective is important.
Many of you will have heard of Tuskegee.
Dirt-poor sharecroppers in Lincoln County, Alabama.
Black men with syphilis.
In 1932, 339 men were told by the Public Health Service,
the forerunner of today's CDC,
that they had "bad blood."

[COLORED PEOPLE. DO YOU HAVE BAD BLOOD? FREE BLOOD TESTS. FREE TREATMENT. BY COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT AND GOVERNMENT DOCTORS. YOU MAY FEEL WELL AND STILL HAVE BAD BLOOD. COME AND BRING ALL YOUR FAMILY. FRIDAY.]

The motive of Public Health doctors ...
was to study the natural history of syphilis in the Black man.
"Natural history" in this case means "deliberately untreated."

[UNTREATED SYPHILIS IN THE MALE NEGRO. A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TREATED AND UNTREATD CASES. READ BEFORE THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, SECTION ON DERMATOLOGY AND SYPHILOLOGY, KANSAS CITY, MOS., MAY 11-15, 1930. R.A. VONDERLEHR, ASSISTANT SURGEON GENERAL. TALIAFERRO CLARK, MEDICAL DIRECTOR (RETIRED). O.C. WENGER, SURGEON, AND J.R. HELLER JR., ASSISTANT SURGEON, UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE. A DETERMINATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TREATMENT IN PREVENTING THE TRANSMISSION OF SYPHILIS IS ONE OF THE BASIC PROBLEMS IN THE CONTROL OF THIS DISEASE. SECOND IN IMPORTANT TO IT IS THE EFFECT WHICH TREATMENT ...]

These men were deliberately left untreated ...
even when something as effective as penicillin came along.
Worse still, those infected were actively prevented by Public Health doctors ...
from getting this life-saving drug.

[HUNDREDS OF BLACK MEN DISCOVERED MASSACRED IN SYPHILIS "EXPERIMENT"]

Men suffered and died;

[SYPHILIS]

women continued being infected;
and babies continued to be born ...
with congenital syphilis.
A shiny, new CDC that took over in the late 1960s ...
refused to stop the experiment.
Not until every last man had been opened up on their autopsy table.

[MEMORANDUM
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
DATE: NOV. 16, 1972
TO: Director
Center for Disease Control
THROUGH: Administrator, HS __ 11/22
FROM: Assistant Secretary for Health
SUBJECT: Termination of USPHS Study of Untreated Syphilis (the Tuskegee Study)

As recommended by the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Advisory Panel, I have decided that the "Tuskegee Study" as a study of untreated syphilis must be terminated. I will advise you of the necessary steps to be taken to assure that appropriate medical care be given to all remaining participants in the "Tuskegee Study" as a part of the close-out phase of the project.
Merlin K. DuVal, M.D.
TERMINATION MEMO]


The experiment was stopped, not because the CDC realized the barbaric nature of their enterprise, but because a whistleblower by the name of Peter Buxtun ...
leaked the story to a journalist at The Washington Star.
The story was published on July 25, 1972, hit the front page of the New York Times, then the experiment was stopped shortly thereafter.
Congressional hearings followed.
So unethical, so inhumane was this Public Health experiment,
that it led to a change in the CDC's code of medical ethics. EXCEPT it didn't.
Thirty years later, the CDC was to do something arguably far worse.

[AUTISM, VIRAL INFECTION AND MEASLES-MUMPS-RUBELLA VACCINATION
BY ANDREW J. WAKEFIELD FRCS AND SCOTT M. MONTGOMERY PH.D., DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE, ROYAL FREE AND UNIVERSITY COLLEGE MEDICAL SCHOOL, LONDON, UK.
THE KEY TO UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY: CHANGING THE PATTERNS OF CHILDHOOD INFECTION
AN ANSWER TO THIS ETIOLOGICAL PUZZLE LIES IN THE CHANGING PATTERN OF EXPOSURE TO INFECTIOUS DISEASE IN CHILDHOOD. PATTERNS OF EXPOSURE TO COMMON CHILDHOOD VIRAL INFECTIONS PLAY A LARGE PART IN DETERMINING BOTH THE SEVERITY OF THE ACUTE DISEASE AND THE RISK AND NATURE OF DELAYED CONSEQUENCES OF INFECTION. ACTING POSSIBLY THROUGH BYSTANDER MECHANISMS, CHILDHOOD EXPOSURE TO MICROBIAL ANTIGENS ALSO PLAYS A CRUCIAL ROLE IN EARLY IMMUNE PROGRAMMING AND, THUS, THE SUBSEQUENT HANDLING OF ENVIRONMENTAL ANTIGENS UNRELATED TO THE ORIGINAL INFECTION [12]. ONCE AGAIN THE PATTERN OF EXPOSURE MAY BE FUNDAMENTAL TO THE INTEGRITY OF THIS IMMUNE PROGRAMMING.
PATTERNS OF EXPOSURE TO COMMON CHILDHOOD INFECTIONS ...]


Over a decade ago, Dr. Scott Montgomery and I put forward a hypothesis for MMR vaccine and autism. The age that you receive the vaccine influences the risk. This makes sense, for some infections, like measles, the age of infection changes the outcome.
We shared this hypothesis with vaccine officials, members for the Centers for Disease Control, at meetings in Washington, D.C.,
and Cold Spring Harbor.
A group of senior vaccine safety people at the CDC studied it. It panned out.
We were right. At least partly.

[SAMPLE SELECTION FOR MMR/AUTISM STUDY]

By November 9, 2001, nearly 13 years ago,
senior CDC scientists knew that younger age of exposure to MMR ...
was associated with an increased risk of autism.
In 2004 they published.
But they hid the results.

[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] It's the lowest point in my career, that I went along with that paper.
And I went along with this, we didn't report significant findings.

[Andy Wakefield] MMR was declared safe.

[DR. COLEEN BOYLE TESTIFIED BEFORE THE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM]

[Dr. Coleen Boyle] The IOM has evaluated this issue back in 2004, and again most recently in 2011, and their conclusion, not just looking at the work that was done at CDC, but with the total body of evidence, was suggesting that vaccines and their components did NOT increase the risk of AUTISM.

[Andy Wakefield] What Dr. Coleen Boyle, the co-author of that blighted paper did NOT tell Congress, is that she and her colleagues had deliberately concealed the autism-vaccine link from the Institute of Medicine, and the public.
Ironically, they even received an award from the Secretary of Health and Human Services for this work.

[LANDMARK PUBLICATIONS: MADDSP. HHS SECRETARY'S AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED SERVICE: THE AUTISM PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSE TEAM. DESTAFANO F, KARAPURKAR T, THOMPSON WILLIAM, YEARGIN-ALLSOPP M, BOYLE C. AGE AT FIRST MEASLES-MUMPS-RUBELLA VACCINATION IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM AND SCHOOL-MATCHED CONTROLS PEDIATRICS 2004;113(2):259-266.]

So troubling was the fraud, that one of the CDC researchers broke ranks.
Eventually he made contact with Dr. Brian Hooker, father of a vaccine-injured child with autism, and a vaccine safety researcher.

[Brian Hooker, Ph.D.] Uh, I received a phone call out of the blue. It had a 404 area code, so I knew it was from the CDC.
And lo and behold, it was Bill Thompson. He had much to confess.

[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] I'm completely ashamed of what I did. I have great shame now. I was complicit, and uh, I went along with this.

[Brian Hooker, Ph.D.] Dr. Thompson had appointed me his priest. And when he appointed me his priest, then he started confessing. And we have had many, many phone exchanges. We've exchanged dozens of emails. And he has released quite compelling information regarding fraud and malfeasance in the CDC.

[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] We didn't report significant findings.

[Andy Wakefield] Thompson sent Hooker information that was never intended for public scrutiny.
From their own data sheets, dated 2001,
Dr. Hooker analyzed the CDCs results,
and he found the same risk of autism that the CDC scientists had themselves identified.

[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] It's all there! It's all there!

[Andy Wakefield] He confronted Thompson.

[Brian Hooker, Ph.D.] He has expressed significant remorse for lying, for burying data.

[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] I have great shame now when I meet families with kids with autism, because I have been part of the problem.

[Andy Wakefield] This week, August 10, 2014, Dr. Hooker published the real findings:
A 340% increased risk of autism ...
in boys receiving the MMR on time compared with those receiving it later.
Thirteen years,
and tens of thousands of children later.
As I've said, Dr. Montgomery and I were only partly right.
The risk of autism from early MMR vaccination was seen in Black children,
Black boys.
Those boys for some reason are at very high risk.
Consistent with the CDC's own findings,
the rate of autistic regression in Black children is reported to be twice that in white children.

[RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN DEVELOPMENTAL REGRESSION IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS. BY ADIAHA SPINKS-FRANKLIN, AMY SHUI, ROCHELLE SEXTON, JENNIFER B. SWANSON, ROBERT G. VOIGT. PEDIATRICS, TEXAS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL/BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, HOUSTON, TX; BIOSTATISTICS, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL, BOSTON, MA.
BACKGROUND: AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS (ASD) ARE COMMON NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS THAT OCCUR IN 1 IN 88 CHILDREN. IT HAS BEEN REPORTED THAT APPROXIMATELY ONE THIRD OF CHILDREN WITH ASD HAVE DEVELOPMENTAL REGRESSION. WHILE THERE ARE NO REPORTED GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RATES OF REGRESSION, IT IS UNKNOWN WHETHER THERE ARE RADICAL DISPARITIES IN RATES OF REGRESSION.
OBJECTIVE: TO DETERMINE THE RATE OF DEVELOPMENTAL REGRESSION, AND WHETHER RACIAL DISPARITIES EXIST IN THE RATE OF REGRESSION, AMONG PRESCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN IN THE AUTISM TREATMENT NETWORK (ATN) DATABASE.
DESIGN/METHODS: SUBJECTS INCLUDED ALL NON-HISPANIC BLACK, NON-HISPANIC WHITE, AND HISPANIC CHILDREN AGES 37-71 MONTHS IN THE ATN DATABASE WITH DATA FROM A PARENT FORM REPORTING WHETHER EACH CHILD EXPERIENCED DEVELOPMENTAL REGRESSION. THE RATE OF REPORTED DEVELOPMENTAL REGRESSION WAS DETERMINED, AND THE RATE OF REGRESSION BY RACE WAS EVALUATED. LOGISTIC REGRESSION ANALYSIS WAS ...]


[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] Oh my God, I cannot believe we did what we did.

[Andy Wakefield] Tuskegee revisited.
Scientist Dr. David Lewis, an international expert in whistle blowing and the detection of scientific fraud, reviewed the original CDC documents and the paper they published in 2004.

[Dr. David Lewis, Ph.D., Research Microbiologist] Probably this is the clearest case,
and the easiest case, in which to answer "Is it fraud, or is it an accident,
or it is just an artifact of the study?" What we're dealing with here, clearly is fraud.

[Brian Hooker, Ph.D.] He knows that he is culpable for damage. He knows that he's culpable for permanent damage of a large, significant portion of the population in the United States.

The Obama administration has granted whistleblower immunity to a federal government scientist that claimed he intentionally omitted information in a study that could have shown a race-based link between vaccines and childhood diseases including autism.

-- Obama Admin Grants Immunity To CDC Scientist That Fudged Vaccine Report … Whistleblower Plans To Testify Before Congress, by Patrick Howley


[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] The higher ups wanted to do certain things, and I went along with it.

[Andy Wakefield] Dr. Frank DeStefano, Dr. Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, and Dr. Coleen Boyle. They knew, they let it happen, and they could have stopped it.
Michigan lawyer Allison Folmar,
an award-winning advocate for children and parental rights, gave her reaction.

[Allison Folmar, Lawyer] Um, I feel, first and foremost as a human being, you know, betrayed.
When you lose your faith and trust in humanity, you know,
how do you repair that?
I mean, I don't even know what to say to be honest.

[Brian Hooker, Ph.D.] Thompson is very regretful about his involvement.

[Dr. William Thompson, Senior Epidemiologist at the CDC] It's the lowest point in my career that I went along with that paper.
And I'm not going to lie. Um, I basically have stopped lying.

[Andy Wakefield] You see, vile as the crimes of Stalin,
Pol Pot,
and Hitler were, these men were not hypocrites,
their motives ambiguous,
or their rhetoric [inaudible] with apparent caring and compassion.
These men were not entrusted with the welfare of their victims.
Their mottos did not include the words ...
"To Save Lives and Protect."
They were not running a mandatory program disguised as caring.
How many children?
How many went to the war in that decade of science?
How many presidents, Mr. Obama?

AUTISM MEDIA CHANNEL, copyright 2014
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Sun Feb 28, 2016 3:53 am

Letter to Julie L. Gerberding, M.D., Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
from Dave Weldon, M.D., House of Representatives
October 31, 2003

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


WASHINGTON OFFICE
2347 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC 20515
(202_225-3571

DISTRICT OFFICE:
BREVARD CO. GOVT. COMPLEX
2725 JUDGE FRAN JAMESON WAY
BUILDING C
MELBOURNE, FL 32940
(321) 632-1776
https://www.house.gov/weldon

Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

DAVE WELDON, M.D.
15TH DISTRICT, FLORIDA
COMMITTEE
APPROPRIATIONS
SUBCOMMITTEES
VA, HUD, INDEPENDENT AGENCIES
LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

October 31, 2003

Julie L. Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H.
Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Road, N .E.
Atlanta, GA 30333

Dr. Julie Gerberding,

I am writing to follow up on our conversation about the article (Verstraeten et. al.,) that will be published in the November 2003 issue of Pediatrics. I have reviewed the article and have serious reservations about the four-year evolution and conclusions of this study.

Much of what I observed transpired prior to your appointment a year ago as the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). I am very concerned about activities that have taken place in the National Immunization Program (NIP) in the development of this study, and I believe the issues raised need your personal attention.

I am a strong supporter of childhood vaccinations and know that they have saved us from considerable death and suffering. A key part of our vaccination program is to ensure that we do everything possible to ensure that these vaccines, which are mandatory, are as safe as possible. We must fully disclose adverse events. Anything less than this undermines public confidence.

I have read the upcoming Pediatrics study and several earlier versions of this study dating back to February 2000. I have read various e-mails from Dr. Verstraeten and coauthors. I have reviewed the transcripts of a discussion at Simpsonwood, GA between the author, various CDC employees, and vaccine industry representatives. I found a disturbing pattern which merits a thorough, open, timely, and independent review by researchers outside of the CDC, HHS, the vaccine industry, and others with a conflict of interest in vaccine related issues (including many in University settings who may have conflicts).

A review of these documents leaves me very concerned that rather than seeking to understand whether or not some children were exposed to harmful levels of mercury in childhood vaccines in the 1990s, there may have been a selective use of the data to make the associations in the earliest study disappear.
While most childhood vaccines now only have trace amounts of mercury from thimerosal containing vaccines (TCVs), it is critical that we know with certainty if children were injured in the 1990s.

Furthermore, the lead author of the article, Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, worked for the CDC until he left over two years ago to work in Belgium for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a vaccine manufacturer facing liability over TCVs. In violation of their own standards of conduct, Pediatrics failed to disclose that Dr. Verstraeten is employed by GSK and incorrectly identifies him as an employee of the CDC. This revelation undermines this study further.

The first version of the study, produced in February 2000, found a significant association between exposure to thimerosal containing vaccines (TCV s) and autism and neurological developmental delays (NODs).
When comparing children exposed to 62.5 pg of mercury by 3 months of age to those exposed to less than 37.5 pg, the study found a relative risk for autism of 2.48 for those with a higher exposure level. (While not significant in the 95% confidence interval for autism, this meets the legal standard of proof exceeding 2.0.) For NODs the study found a relative risk of 1.59 and a definite upward trend as exposure levels increased.

A June 2000 version of the study applied various data manipulations to reduce the autism association to 1.69 and the authors went outside of the VSD database to secure data from a Massachusetts HMO (Harvard Pilgrim, HP) in order to counter the association found between TCV s and speech delay. At the time that HP's data was brought in, HP was in receivership by the state of Mass., its computer records had been in shambles for years, it had multiple computer systems that could not communicate with one another (Journal of Law, Ethics and Medicine Sept. 22, 2000), and it used a health care coding system totally different from the one used across the VSD. There are questions relating to a significant underreporting of Autism in Mass. The HP dataset is only about 15% of the HMO dataset used in the February 2000 study. There may also be significant problems with the statistical power of the HP dataset.

In June of 2000 a meeting was held in Simpsonwood, GA, involving the authors of the study, representatives of the CDC, and the vaccine industry. I have reviewed a transcript of this meeting that was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Comments from Simpsonwood, NJ meeting include: (summary form, not direct quotes):

• We found a statistically significant relationship between exposures and outcomes. There is certainly an under ascertainment of adverse outcomes because some children are just simply not old enough to be diagnosed, the current incidence rates are much lower than we would expect to see (Verstraeten);

• We could exclude the lowest exposure children from our database. Also suggested was removing the children that got the highest exposure levels since they represented an unusually high percentage of the outcomes. (Rhodes)

• The significant association with language delay is quite large. (Verstraeten);

• This information should be kept confidential and considered embargoed;

• We can push and pull this data anyway we want to get the results we want;

• We can alter the exclusion criteria any we way we want, give reasonable justifications for doing so, and get any result we want;


• There was really no need to do this study. We could have predicted the outcomes;

• I will not give TCV s to my grandson until I find out what is going on here.

Another version of the study -- after further manipulation -- finds no association between TCV s and autism, and no consistency across HMOs between TCVs and NODs and speech delay.

The final version of the study concludes that "No consistent significant associations were found between TCVs and neurodevelopmental outcomes," and that the lack of consistency argues against an association. In reviewing the study there are data points where children with higher exposures to the neuortoxin mercury had fewer developmental disorders. This demonstrates to me how excessive manipulation of data can lead to absurd results. Such a conclusion is not unexpected from an author with a serious, though undisclosed, conflict of interest.

This study increases speculation of an association between TCVs and neurodevelopmental outcomes. I cannot say it was the author's intent to eliminate the earlier findings of an association. Nonetheless, the elimination of this association is exactly what happened and the manner in which this was achieved raises speculation. The dialogue at the Simpsonwood meeting clearly indicates how easily the authors could manipulate the data and have reasonable sounding justifications for many of their decisions.

The only way these issues are going to be resolved -- and I have only mentioned a few of them -- is by making this particular dataset and the entire VSD database open for independent analysis. One such independent researcher, Dr. Mark Geier, has already been approved by the CDC and the various IRBs to access this dataset. They have requested the CDC allow them to access this dataset and your staff indicated to my office that they would make this particular dataset available after the Pediatrics study is published.

Earlier this month the CDC had prepared three similar datasets for this researcher to review to allow him to reanalyze CDC study datasets. However when they accessed the datasets -- which the researchers paid the CDC to assemble -- the datasets were found to have no usable data in them. I request that you personally intervene with those in the CDC who are assembling this dataset to ensure that they provide the complete dataset, in a usable format, to these researchers within two weeks. The treatment that these well-published researchers have received from the CDC thus far has been abysmal and embarrassing. I would also be curious to know whether Dr. Verstraeten, an outside researcher for more than two years now, was required to go through the same process as Dr. Geier in order to continue accessing the VSD.

You have not been a part of creating this current situation, but you do have an opportunity to help resolve this issue and ensure that confidence and trustworthiness in the CDC and our national vaccination program is fully restored. I would ask that you work with me to ensure that a full, fair, and independent review is made of the VSD database to fully examine this matter. I would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to move this process forward.

Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to working with you on this urgent matter of great importance to our nation's most precious resource, our children.

Sincerely,

Dave Weldon, M.D.
Member of Congress
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Vaccine Autism Cover-up: How One Doctor’s Career was

Postby admin » Sun Feb 28, 2016 4:46 am

Missing the Mercury Menace?
by Neil Munro
National Journal
1/3/04

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Julie Gerberding: The CDC director faces a dispute over mercury in vaccines that is likely to heat up soon.

Parents of autistic children are vigorously challenging a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study concludes there is no consistent evidence that a mercury-based preservative in CDC-mandated vaccines has caused an increase in the number of children with autism.

A CDC official who helped write the study accepted the critics' charge that it contained many children too young to be diagnosed as autistic. "This is true," said scientist Frank DeStefano.

The CDC's manipulation of the study data, say the parents, hides the true autism rate and obscures the link between autism and vaccinations. The parents and some scientists argue that the large increase in autism rates over the past decade was likely caused by some children's genetic vulnerability to mercury in additional vaccines that the CDC mandated after 1990. The mercury is in a preservative called thimerosal.

After 1999, vaccine makers ended the use of mercury in routine childhood vaccinations, following a request from government officials -- although the officials never stated that the mercury was harmful. But the mercury dispute is likely to heat up soon because CDC Director Julie Gerberding and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson are weighing a proposal by a panel of vaccine experts to give children between the ages of 6 months and 23 months as many as five flu shots. Gerberding and Thompson can recommend that the flu shots be mercury-free, or they can allow many additional children to receive mercury-laden shots.

The CDC would not say whether Gerberding will urge that thimerosal be left out of the 2004 flu vaccines. According to Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., Gerberding has said she is considering whether to appoint an outside ombudsperson to investigate the possible link between autism and mercury. Weldon, a physician, wants the data used in the new study to be shared with outside researchers.

This seemingly arcane fight has enormous stakes. If the parents are right, then many infants overseas are endangered by vaccines that contain mercury. Moreover, American parents could follow the example of parents in the U.K., where the public distrust of the government's vaccination professionals has reduced vaccination rates and spurred harmful outbreaks of measles and other diseases. Several pharmaceutical companies could be forced to pay billions of dollars if parents' groups are victorious in anti-thimerosal lawsuits in which the CDC study and other reports are being used as ammunition. This fight has already reached Congress: In early 2003, Democratic senators defeated a Republican effort to win legal protections for the companies that made thimerosal-containing vaccines.

The CDC's report, published in the November issue of Pediatrics, summarized a three-year study of brain-related diseases in children. The study, titled "Safety of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines: A Two-Phased Study of Computerized Health Maintenance Organization Databases," began in 1999. It was conducted by a panel of four CDC vaccine experts and four employees of the two HMOs that provided data on more than 100,000 children. The study examined the incidence of a wide variety of medical problems and concluded that no consistent connection existed between the mercury-containing vaccines and the diagnoses neurological problems in children born between January 1992 and December 1998. Overall, "the risk [of autism] does not change ... from the lowest level of exposure [to thimerosal] to the highest level," DeStefano said.

But to reach this conclusion, CDC experts reduced by roughly 45 percent the number of children in the study who were age 4 or older, said Mark Blaxill, a member of Safe Minds, an Atlanta group that opposes the use of mercury in vaccines. Because autism is normally diagnosed only after age 4, the CDC's method greatly reduced the number of children in the study who could be found with autism, Blaxill said.

According to the report, the older children were excluded because their health records were incomplete. DeStefano declined to say why the CDC did not exclude a comparable proportion of the younger children, to balance out the age groups in the study. "We could follow up on it" by launching another study, he said.

The CDC's exclusion of the older children is akin to excluding many older people from a study on the hazards of smoking, said Mark Geier, a geneticist and a vaccine specialist for 25 years. Geier has investigated the mercury issue for Weldon and gives expert-witness testimony on behalf of parents and some companies in vaccine-related lawsuits.

Blaxill said the CDC's professionals also disguised the incidence of autism by treating early symptoms of autism as other illnesses. For example, many autistic children are initially classified before age 4 as having speech and language delays or "misery disorder." The inclusion of many children too young to be definitively diagnoses with autism would result in autistic children's being mislabeled with other ailments, such as those very speech or language delays, Blaxill said. "It is true," DeStefano said, that the study could have mislabeled young autistic children. But, he added, "this study just provided an initial evaluation." CDC officials are now preparing a follow-up study of 300 autistic children and 900 other children, for publication in 2006, he said.

The new study's database was divided by gender for some analyses, but the results were combined in tables for the final article in Pediatrics. Because as many as 90 percent of autistics are boys, these tables hide links between autistic boys and mercury amid a population of relatively healthy girls, Geier said. He says that such an approach is like using men's low rates of breast cancer to downplay the cancer's rate in women. A CDC statement said the analysis of boys and girls "mirrored the results" in the Pediatrics article.

CDC officials also divided the study into many small studies and then highlighted the differences in the sub-study results to dismiss a link between autism and mercury, Blaxill said. For example, he said, the data from the larger of the two HMOs showed a link between mercury and autism, but CDC professionals tried to discredit the link by citing differences in the second HMO's data set, which was only one-eighth as large as the first one's sample. The CDC should have either set aside the data from the smaller HMO, or combined all the HMO data, Blaxill said.

"If we had done that," DeStefano countered, "the results from [the larger] HMO-B would have overwhelmed [the smaller] HMO-A." Instead, the scientists tried to perform the same analysis on both HMO data sets, in hopes of discovering a matching trend, he said.

Image
Dave Weldon: A physician, he wants CDC data on mercury and autism to be shared with outside researchers.

Blaxill cited data prepared by the CDC authors in 2000 and released under a Freedom of Information Act request lodged by Safe Minds. The figures showed that the rate of "neurodevelopmental disorder" -- a catchall term that encompasses autism -- was six times as great among 14,739 children given more than 75 micrograms of mercury by the third month of life as it was among 4,510 children who were given no mercury.

With Weldon's backing, Geier won limited access to the CDC database used in the new study and then looked at those children who got diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis shots both with and without mercury. This analysis showed "more than a twentyfold increase in autism" among the children who got mercury in four of these shots, Geier said.

Statements in government e-mails, in conversations and in documents obtained under Safe Minds' FOIA request have intensified the parents' suspicion of DeStefano and the CDC. In a July 2000 meeting of the study's authors and advisers, Richard Johnston, a pediatrics professor at the University of Colorado, said, "I do not want [my] grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on." Johnson confirmed he said this, but would not comment on the CDC study, because he has joined a pending review of the controversy at the Institute of Medicine. The Institute is part of the private National Academy of Sciences.

The Chairman of the CDC study, Thomas Verstraeten, has come under critics' scrutiny because he left the CDC to tak ea job with vaccine maker Glaxo-SmithKline. Yet according to e-mails and transcripts obtained by Safe Minds, in 2000 Verstraeten urged fellow CDC officials to carefully consider a link between mercury and autism: "I do not wish to ... 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." Once Verstraeten had joined Glaxo-SmithKline, "his involvement in this study was limited to reviewing drafts of the manuscript," according to a CDC statement.

Since 1990, an increasing number of children have been diagnosed with the most acute form of autism. In the 1980s, this diagnosis was given annually to roughly 1 in 10,000 children. But since then, experts have reported a huge increase. In five counties surrounding Atlanta, the rate has grown to roughly 1 in 325 children, according to a CDC study. According to the Education Department, 65,396 autistic children were in federal school programs in 2000, up from 12,222 in 1993. The 2000 total included few children under age 6.

Few adult autistics can work. Lifetime health care, therapy, and support costs amount to more than $1 million. Parents initially bear the financial burden, but as the children become adults, the costs shift to the states or the federal government.

Some parents of autistic children say vaccinations gave their children more than 100 times the maximum intake of mercury recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency. One of those parents is Lyn Redwood, a founder of Safe Minds. She is a nurse and the mother of a 9-year-old autistic boy, Will. "I have 'before [vaccination]' pictures where he is smiling, gorgeous, and looking at the camera, and I have 'after' pictures .. and there's a shell of a child left," she said.

The author can be reached at nmunro@nationaljournal.com
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Next

Return to A Growing Corpus of Analytical Materials

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests