Lisa Randall, Vaccine Safety Working Group , Voices 4 Vaccines, The Task Force for Child Survival, Pharma Dollars and The World Bank

Yes I know that is a long and confusing name for an article. But it is apt as this article will be long and confusing.

Yesterday I brought to you a piece about the composition of the CDC's Vaccine Safety Working group that is meeting for the first time tomorrow in DC. It read in part:

"The National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC), Vaccine Safety Working Group (VSWG) will meet for the first time on April 11, 2008 in Washington DC. The autism community's vaccine safety concerns are not represented within this panel.

The charter for NVAC calls for participation by representatives from "parent organizations concerned with immunization.""

Here is the information from the CDC's web site.

Well, one of the people invited to present information to the Working Group tomorrow in a segment entitled: "Interacting with the Public" is Lisa Randall, a long time advocate of vaccination; and a long time critic of vaccine/autism theory and biomedical intervention for autism. Lisa opposed removing mercury from vaccines.

Today there has been some questioning as to whether or not she really presenting as a member of the 'public'.

I am having a time following this, and people are still trying to work it all out, so please be patient with me and I try to bring this story to you and get more information.

Lisa Randall is a an attorney and "policy consultant" for Immunization Action Coalition, or Immunize.org, a group that is funded in part by the CDC and by pharmaceutical companies Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Wyeth, Sanofi Pasteur, Novartis, CSL iotherapies, MedImmune, and Baxter Healthcare Corp.

Dan Olmsted mentioned Immunize.org when they opposed removing mercury from vaccines.

So is she a representative of the 'public' or of pharmaceutical companies?

She is also appears to represent Voices 4 Vaccines, a new and mysterious organization that JB Handley wrote about today on the Age of Autism. Handley tried to get information on the group (there is not much on their web site) and found that the domain name was registered to The Task Force for Child Survival and Development, another vaccine group, not so much formed by the public as much as, "the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation to achieve the goal of universal child immunization by 1990."

So in order to see just what Voices 4 Vaccines was, who was running it and who was paying for it, Kelli Ann Davis made some calls today.

First she called Immunize.org and was told that Lisa Randall was not in and does not have an office there, but is a consultant. So then she called the Executive Director of the Taskforce for Child Survival, Mark Rosenberg, to whom Voices4Vaccines.org is registered and asked him the two important questions.

1. Who is on the board of directors of Voices 4 Vaccines?

2. Where do they get their funding?

Mr. Rosenberg would not tell Kelli, only referring her back to Lisa Randall.

Kelli remarked that she could not get a hold of Ms. Randall, and she was writing a piece that had to be ready tomorrow morning for the Vaccine Safety Working Group meeting, and needed the information today.

But again Mr. Rosenberg declined to answer the questions, referring her back to Ms. Randall.

5 times.

She asked 5 times, he refused to tell her 5 times.

So Kelli, and me too, would like to know. Who is Voices 4 Vaccines? Is this the 'public' that Lisa Randall is representing? And if it is, who are the members of the 'public'? Or is this another group funded by corporate interests like Immunize.org and the Taskforce for Child Survival?

When Ms. Randall offers information to the Working Group tomorrow, for them to work on, will it be as a member of the public or as someone who is financially benefiting from pharmaceutical companies?

And where is the transparency?

Peter Bell of Autism Speaks and Barbara Loe Fisher of NVIC will be speaking, but there is no secret about who they are, who they are affiliated with, what their agenda is and who finances their groups

If anyone has any light to shed on any of this, let me know.