Dan Olmsted began writing his Age of Autism series more than two years ago, and in it he has brought to our attention some of the most fascinating and compelling aspects of the thimerosal/autism story. He has done much of the medical investigating that the CDC should have done, but didn't, and found that the links between autism and thimerosal go back to the first case of autism ever recorded.
If the CDC had any sense they would take their "transgender beauty pageant" budget and instead hire Dan to do their investigating for them. But then again if the CDC had any sense, none of us would be here now, would we.
One of the most significant things that I feel that Dan's work has done is show just how much the CDC et. al. does NOT want to properly investigate this. Dan's revelations, which repeatedly garnered, "Holy Crap!" reactions from autism parents, were met with a collective yawn from health officials. The fact that Julie Gerberding could make statements like, "CDC recognizes that parents want answers. We share their frustration at not having more answers about the causes and possible cure.", while failing to follow up on all that Dan has brought to the topic, is proof positive that CDC does not want to know what is going on in autism. If Julie wanted answers, Dan would not have not had to spend two plus years writing this series. The CDC would have taken his info and run with it and they would have found patient zero long before Dan did.
Dan Olmsted has proved Julie Gerberding a liar.
I am sad to see the series go, but thrilled that Dan is still on the trail. The Age of Autism series should be published in one volume and be required reading for everyone in the autism world. Evelyn Pringle was dead on when she called him, "Autism's Dick Tracy". Some smart publisher needs to give this guy a bucket of cash and send him back out. There is no telling what this hound can sniff out.
Thank you Dan for looking out for our kids.
Update:
More on Dan:
Wade at Injecting Sense
Kim Stagliano at Kim Stagliano
Lisa Blakemore-Brown at Thimerosal Thoughts
Showing posts with label Amish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amish. Show all posts
July 20, 2007
April 18, 2007
Julie Gerberding: Getting out the BIG shovel
I sit here trying to come up with a post on this that does not contain any offensive synonyms for animal leavings, but I am hard pressed to do it. When I signed onto this debate almost three years ago, we heard the same thing from the CDC yet they have done NOTHING to get us any closer to finding answers to the questions that parents have been screaming at them. It is completely absurd.
The statements Gerberding makes in this "hearing" are laughable.
GIVE US A VALID, REPLACEABLE, TRANSPARENT VACCINE/AUTISM STUDY!
YOU HAVE THE MONEY, YOU HAVE ALL THE DATA, DO IT!
STOP PRETENDING THAT DENMARK AND VERSTRAETEN ACTUALLY SUPPORT THE CLAIM THAT VACCINES ARE SAFE FOR OUR KIDS!
GIVE US THE AMISH STUDY THAT YOU WERE CHARGED WITH DOING IN 1982!
STUDY THE CHILDREN THAT ARE LOOSING THEIR AUTISM DIAGNOSIS AFTER DAN! TREATMENT!
DO IT ALREADY!!!!
IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DO IT THEN STOP TALKING ABOUT AUTISM!
AND PLEASE... PLEASE... STOP SAYING THAT YOU CARE WHAT IS GOING ON WITH OUR CHILDREN!
YOU LOOK RIDICULOUS!
UPDATE:
My good friend Wade responds to my post with a What What, and like me, far less civility than those who read his blog are used to.
UPDATE:
From John Gilmore of A-CHAMP:
The statements Gerberding makes in this "hearing" are laughable.
CDC chief: Autism not overlookedTHEN DO IT!!!!!!
By JEFF NESMITH
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/18/07
Washington — Autism is an "urgent" concern of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, told senators Tuesday.
Although the CDC has been criticized by some autism activists and members of Congress, Gerberding said the Atlanta-based agency is best equipped to do the surveillance and research needed to understand and respond to the disorder.
GIVE US A VALID, REPLACEABLE, TRANSPARENT VACCINE/AUTISM STUDY!
YOU HAVE THE MONEY, YOU HAVE ALL THE DATA, DO IT!
STOP PRETENDING THAT DENMARK AND VERSTRAETEN ACTUALLY SUPPORT THE CLAIM THAT VACCINES ARE SAFE FOR OUR KIDS!
GIVE US THE AMISH STUDY THAT YOU WERE CHARGED WITH DOING IN 1982!
STUDY THE CHILDREN THAT ARE LOOSING THEIR AUTISM DIAGNOSIS AFTER DAN! TREATMENT!
DO IT ALREADY!!!!
IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DO IT THEN STOP TALKING ABOUT AUTISM!
AND PLEASE... PLEASE... STOP SAYING THAT YOU CARE WHAT IS GOING ON WITH OUR CHILDREN!
YOU LOOK RIDICULOUS!
"The profound lifelong impact of autism spectrum disorders, tremendous costs to the affected individuals and their families, the lack of known causes or cures and concerns about the increased rates of diagnosis all make autism spectrum disorders one of our urgent realities," she told a Senate appropriations subcommittee.This statement is just a lie. No other way to say it. She is lying.
She said "CDC recognizes that parents want answers," adding, "We share their frustration at not having more answers about the causes and possible cure."
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), whose Appropriations subcommittee on the departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services held the hearing, said that "millions of families are grappling with the profound difficulties of understanding and coping with this disease."I am sure that our invitation was lost in the mail. Again.
"We've got to do something about this," Harkin said.
Testifying with Gerberding were the director of the National Institute of Mental Health and a generally supportive group representing families and advocacy organizations.
Not represented at the hearing were autism activist groups that have accused the CDC of concealing evidence of a link between childhood vaccinations and the disorder.
However, while the Senate committee hearing was under way, two members of the House announced that they will reintroduce legislation to end what they called "a conflict of interest whereby CDC is responsible for both vaccine promotion and vaccine safety."
Reps. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.), and Carolyn Maloney, (D-N.Y.,) said they will introduce the bill Thursday. Their bill last year that would remove the CDC's responsibility for vaccine safety did not pass.
UPDATE:
My good friend Wade responds to my post with a What What, and like me, far less civility than those who read his blog are used to.
UPDATE:
From John Gilmore of A-CHAMP:
If you were to deliberately design a plan to not find the cause of a disease, or even accurately count how many people are affected with a disorder, you couldn't have done better than the CDC management under Dr. Gerberding. She has not brought us an inch closer to finding the cause of autism or any treatments. She has destroyed confidence in the CDC and much of the federal public health apparatus.
It is time for her to go. And I think all autism organizations should give serious thought to calling for her resignation.
John Gilmore
December 22, 2005
Dan Olmsted - Autism's Dick Tracy
Dan Olmsted - Autism's Dick Tracy
by Evelyn Pringle
According to officials in the nation's regulatory agencies, the main obstacle to proving or disproving a link between the autism epidemic and the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, that was contained in childhood vaccines until a few years ago, and is still in flu vaccines, has been the inability to find a large enough group of people who have never been vaccinated to compare with people who have.
In fact, a few months ago, CDC officials claimed that such a study would be nearly impossible. On July 19, 2005, the CDC held a Media Briefing on the topic of vaccines and child health. On the issue of government research on autism, a reporter asked CDC Director, Dr Julie Gerberding: "are you putting any money into clinical studies rather than epidemiological studies, to verify or disprove the parents' claim about a particular channel, a particular mechanism by which a minority of genetically suspectable kids are supposed damaged?"
Gerberding replied: To do the study that you're suggesting, looking for an association between thimerosal and autism in a prospective sense is just about impossible to do right now because we don't have those vaccines in use in this country so we're not in a position where we can compare the children who have received them directly to the children who don't.
Dr Duane Alexander, of the National Institute of Health, agreed and said: It's really not possible ... in this country to do a prospective study now of thimerosal and vaccines in relationship to autism. Only a retrospective study which would be very difficult to do under the circumstances could be mounted with regard to the thimerosal question.
However, Dan Olmsted, investigative reporter for United Press International, and author of the Age of Autism series of reports, appears to have solved this problem when he came up with the idea of checking out the nation's Amish population where parents do not ordinarily vaccinate children.
First he looked to the Amish community in Pennsylvania and found a family doctor in Lancaster who had treated thousands of Amish patients over a quarter-century who said he has never seen an Amish person with autism, according to Age of Autism: A glimpse of the Amish on June 2, 2005.
Olmsted also interviewed Dick Warner, who has a water purification and natural health business and has been in Amish households all over the country. "I've been working with Amish people since 1980," Warner said.
"I have never seen an autistic Amish child -- not one," he told Olmsted. "I would know it. I have a strong medical background. I know what autistic people are like. I have friends who have autistic children," he added.
Olmsted did find one Amish woman in Lancaster County with an autistic child but as it turns out, the child was adopted from China and had been vaccinated. The woman knew of two other autistic children but here again, one of those had been vaccinated.
Next Olmsted visited a medical practice in Middleburg, Indiana, the heart of the Amish community, and asked whether the clinic treated Amish people with autism.
A staff member told Olmsted that she had never thought about it before, but in the five years that she had worked at the clinic she had never seen one autistic Amish.
On June 8, 2005, Olmsted reported on the autism rate in the Amish community around Middlefield, Ohio, which was 1 in 15,000, according to Dr Heng Wang, the medical director, at the DDC Clinic for Special Needs Children.
"So far," according to Age of Autism, "there is evidence of fewer than 10 Amish with autism; there should be several hundred if the disorder occurs among them at the same 166-1 prevalence as children born in the rest of the population."
In addition to the Amish, Olmsted recently discovered another large unvaccinated group. On December 7, 2005, Age of Autism reported that thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with Amish children, they have never been vaccinated and they don't have autism.
Homefirst has five offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors. "We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973.
Olmsted reports that the autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data. In treating a population of 30,000 to 35,000 children, this would logically mean that Homefirst should have seen at least 120 autistic children over the years but the clinic has seen none.
It looks like the problem is finally solved. Thanks to autism's Dick Tracy, the government now has thousands of unvaccinated people to compare to people who were vaccinated.
evelyn.pringle@sbcglobal.net
by Evelyn Pringle
According to officials in the nation's regulatory agencies, the main obstacle to proving or disproving a link between the autism epidemic and the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, that was contained in childhood vaccines until a few years ago, and is still in flu vaccines, has been the inability to find a large enough group of people who have never been vaccinated to compare with people who have.
In fact, a few months ago, CDC officials claimed that such a study would be nearly impossible. On July 19, 2005, the CDC held a Media Briefing on the topic of vaccines and child health. On the issue of government research on autism, a reporter asked CDC Director, Dr Julie Gerberding: "are you putting any money into clinical studies rather than epidemiological studies, to verify or disprove the parents' claim about a particular channel, a particular mechanism by which a minority of genetically suspectable kids are supposed damaged?"
Gerberding replied: To do the study that you're suggesting, looking for an association between thimerosal and autism in a prospective sense is just about impossible to do right now because we don't have those vaccines in use in this country so we're not in a position where we can compare the children who have received them directly to the children who don't.
Dr Duane Alexander, of the National Institute of Health, agreed and said: It's really not possible ... in this country to do a prospective study now of thimerosal and vaccines in relationship to autism. Only a retrospective study which would be very difficult to do under the circumstances could be mounted with regard to the thimerosal question.
However, Dan Olmsted, investigative reporter for United Press International, and author of the Age of Autism series of reports, appears to have solved this problem when he came up with the idea of checking out the nation's Amish population where parents do not ordinarily vaccinate children.
First he looked to the Amish community in Pennsylvania and found a family doctor in Lancaster who had treated thousands of Amish patients over a quarter-century who said he has never seen an Amish person with autism, according to Age of Autism: A glimpse of the Amish on June 2, 2005.
Olmsted also interviewed Dick Warner, who has a water purification and natural health business and has been in Amish households all over the country. "I've been working with Amish people since 1980," Warner said.
"I have never seen an autistic Amish child -- not one," he told Olmsted. "I would know it. I have a strong medical background. I know what autistic people are like. I have friends who have autistic children," he added.
Olmsted did find one Amish woman in Lancaster County with an autistic child but as it turns out, the child was adopted from China and had been vaccinated. The woman knew of two other autistic children but here again, one of those had been vaccinated.
Next Olmsted visited a medical practice in Middleburg, Indiana, the heart of the Amish community, and asked whether the clinic treated Amish people with autism.
A staff member told Olmsted that she had never thought about it before, but in the five years that she had worked at the clinic she had never seen one autistic Amish.
On June 8, 2005, Olmsted reported on the autism rate in the Amish community around Middlefield, Ohio, which was 1 in 15,000, according to Dr Heng Wang, the medical director, at the DDC Clinic for Special Needs Children.
"So far," according to Age of Autism, "there is evidence of fewer than 10 Amish with autism; there should be several hundred if the disorder occurs among them at the same 166-1 prevalence as children born in the rest of the population."
In addition to the Amish, Olmsted recently discovered another large unvaccinated group. On December 7, 2005, Age of Autism reported that thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with Amish children, they have never been vaccinated and they don't have autism.
Homefirst has five offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors. "We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973.
Olmsted reports that the autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data. In treating a population of 30,000 to 35,000 children, this would logically mean that Homefirst should have seen at least 120 autistic children over the years but the clinic has seen none.
It looks like the problem is finally solved. Thanks to autism's Dick Tracy, the government now has thousands of unvaccinated people to compare to people who were vaccinated.
evelyn.pringle@sbcglobal.net
December 7, 2005
The Age of Autism: 'A pretty big secret'
The Age of Autism: 'A pretty big secret'
By Dan Olmsted
UPI Senior Editor
It's a far piece from the horse-and-buggies of Lancaster County, Pa., to the cars and freeways of Cook County, Ill.
But thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don't have autism.
"We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated.
The few autistic children Homefirst sees were vaccinated before their families became patients, Eisenstein said. "I can think of two or three autistic children who we've delivered their mother's next baby, and we aren't really totally taking care of that child -- they have special care needs. But they bring the younger children to us. I don't have a single case that I can think of that wasn't vaccinated."
The autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the national rate of autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 166 -- 60 per 10,000.
"We do have enough of a sample," Eisenstein said. "The numbers are too large to not see it. We would absolutely know. We're all family doctors. If I have a child with autism come in, there's no communication. It's frightening. You can't touch them. It's not something that anyone would miss."
No one knows what causes autism, but federal health authorities say it isn't childhood immunizations. Some parents and a small minority of doctors and scientists, however, assert vaccines are responsible.
This column has been looking for autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children in an effort to shed light on the issue. We went to Chicago to meet with Eisenstein at the suggestion of a reader, and we also visited Homefirst's office in northwest suburban Rolling Meadows. Homefirst has four other offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors.
Eisenstein stresses his observations are not scientific. "The trouble is this is just anecdotal in a sense, because what if every autistic child goes somewhere else and (their family) never calls us or they moved out of state?"
In practice, that's unlikely to account for the pronounced absence of autism, says Eisenstein, who also has a bachelor's degree in statistics, a master's degree in public health and a law degree.
Homefirst follows state immunization mandates, but Illinois allows religious exemptions if parents object based either on tenets of their faith or specific personal religious views. Homefirst does not exclude or discourage such families. Eisenstein, in fact, is author of the book "Don't Vaccinate Before You Educate!" and is critical of the CDC's vaccination policy in the 1990s, when several new immunizations were added to the schedule, including Hepatitis B as early as the day of birth. Several of the vaccines -- HepB included -- contained a mercury-based preservative that has since been phased out of most childhood vaccines in the United States.
Medical practices with Homefirst's approach to immunizations are rare. "Because of that, we tend to attract families that have questions about that issue," said Dr. Paul Schattauer, who has been with Homefirst for 20 years and treats "at least" 100 children a week.
Schattauer seconded Eisenstein's observations. "All I know is in my practice I don't see autism. There is no striking 1-in-166," he said.
Earlier this year we reported the same phenomenon in the mostly unvaccinated Amish. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told us the Amish "have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States." Gerberding said, however, studies "could and should be done" in more representative unvaccinated groups -- if they could be found and their autism rate documented.
Chicago is America's prototypical "City of Big Shoulders," to quote Carl Sandburg, and Homefirst's mostly middle-class families seem fairly representative. A substantial number are conservative Christians who home-school their children. They are mostly white, but the Homefirst practice also includes black and Hispanic families and non-home-schooling Jews, Catholics and Muslims.
They tend to be better educated, follow healthier diets and breast-feed their children much longer than the norm -- half of Homefirst's mothers are still breast-feeding at two years. Also, because Homefirst relies less on prescription drugs including antibiotics as a first line of treatment, these children have less exposure to other medicines, not just vaccines.
Schattauer, interviewed at the Rolling Meadows office, said his caseload is too limited to draw conclusions about a possible link between vaccines and autism. "With these numbers you'd have a hard time proving or disproving anything," he said. "You can only get a feeling about it.
"In no way would I be an advocate to stand up and say we need to look at vaccines, because I don't have the science to say that," Schattauer said. "But I don't think the science is there to say that it's not."
Schattauer said Homefirst's patients also have significantly less childhood asthma and juvenile diabetes compared to national rates. An office manager who has been with Homefirst for 17 years said she is aware of only one case of severe asthma in an unvaccinated child.
"Sometimes you feel frustrated because you feel like you've got a pretty big secret," Schattauer said. He argues for more research on all those disorders, independent of political or business pressures.
The asthma rate among Homefirst patients is so low it was noticed by the Blue Cross group with which Homefirst is affiliated, according to Eisenstein.
"In the alternative-medicine network which Homefirst is part of, there are virtually no cases of childhood asthma, in contrast to the overall Blue Cross rate of childhood asthma which is approximately 10 percent," he said. "At first I thought it was because they (Homefirst's children) were breast-fed, but even among the breast-fed we've had asthma. We have virtually no asthma if you're breast-fed and not vaccinated."
Because the diagnosis of asthma is based on emergency-room visits and hospital admissions, Eisenstein said, Homefirst's low rate is hard to dispute. "It's quantifiable -- the definition is not reliant on the doctor's perception of asthma."
Several studies have found a risk of asthma from vaccination; others have not. Studies that include never-vaccinated children generally find little or no asthma in that group.
Earlier this year Florida pediatrician Dr. Jeff Bradstreet said there is virtually no autism in home-schooling families who decline to vaccinate for religious reasons -- lending credence to Eisenstein's observations.
"It's largely non-existent," said Bradstreet, who treats children with autism from around the country. "It's an extremely rare event."
Bradstreet has a son whose autism he attributes to a vaccine reaction at 15 months. His daughter has been home-schooled, he describes himself as a "Christian family physician," and he knows many of the leaders in the home-school movement.
"There was this whole subculture of folks who went into home-schooling so they would never have to vaccinate their kids," he said. "There's this whole cadre who were never vaccinated for religious reasons."
In that subset, he said, "unless they were massively exposed to mercury through lots of amalgams (mercury dental fillings in the mother) and/or big-time fish eating, I've not had a single case."
Federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups emphatically dismiss any link between autism and vaccines, including the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. Last year a panel of the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, said there is no evidence of such a link, and funding should henceforth go to "promising" research.
Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethyl mercury by weight, was phased out of most U.S. childhood immunizations beginning in 1999, but the CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant women and last year began recommending them for children 6 to 23 months old. Most of those shots contain thimerosal.
Thimerosal-preserved vaccines are currently being injected into millions of children in developing countries around the world. "My mandate ... is to make sure at the end of the day that 100,000,000 are immunized ... this year, next year and for many years to come ... and that will have to be with thimerosal-containing vaccines," said John Clements of the World Health Organization at a June 2000 meeting called by the CDC.
That meeting was held to review data that thimerosal might be linked with autism and other neurological problems. But in 2004 the Institute of Medicine panel said evidence against a link is so strong that health authorities, "whether in the United States or other countries, should not include autism as a potential risk" when formulating immunization policies.
But where is the simple, straightforward study of autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children? Based on our admittedly anecdotal and limited reporting among the Amish, the home-schooled and now Chicago's Homefirst, that may prove to be a significant omission.
--
This ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism welcomes comment. E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com
By Dan Olmsted
UPI Senior Editor
It's a far piece from the horse-and-buggies of Lancaster County, Pa., to the cars and freeways of Cook County, Ill.
But thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don't have autism.
"We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated.
The few autistic children Homefirst sees were vaccinated before their families became patients, Eisenstein said. "I can think of two or three autistic children who we've delivered their mother's next baby, and we aren't really totally taking care of that child -- they have special care needs. But they bring the younger children to us. I don't have a single case that I can think of that wasn't vaccinated."
The autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the national rate of autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 166 -- 60 per 10,000.
"We do have enough of a sample," Eisenstein said. "The numbers are too large to not see it. We would absolutely know. We're all family doctors. If I have a child with autism come in, there's no communication. It's frightening. You can't touch them. It's not something that anyone would miss."
No one knows what causes autism, but federal health authorities say it isn't childhood immunizations. Some parents and a small minority of doctors and scientists, however, assert vaccines are responsible.
This column has been looking for autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children in an effort to shed light on the issue. We went to Chicago to meet with Eisenstein at the suggestion of a reader, and we also visited Homefirst's office in northwest suburban Rolling Meadows. Homefirst has four other offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors.
Eisenstein stresses his observations are not scientific. "The trouble is this is just anecdotal in a sense, because what if every autistic child goes somewhere else and (their family) never calls us or they moved out of state?"
In practice, that's unlikely to account for the pronounced absence of autism, says Eisenstein, who also has a bachelor's degree in statistics, a master's degree in public health and a law degree.
Homefirst follows state immunization mandates, but Illinois allows religious exemptions if parents object based either on tenets of their faith or specific personal religious views. Homefirst does not exclude or discourage such families. Eisenstein, in fact, is author of the book "Don't Vaccinate Before You Educate!" and is critical of the CDC's vaccination policy in the 1990s, when several new immunizations were added to the schedule, including Hepatitis B as early as the day of birth. Several of the vaccines -- HepB included -- contained a mercury-based preservative that has since been phased out of most childhood vaccines in the United States.
Medical practices with Homefirst's approach to immunizations are rare. "Because of that, we tend to attract families that have questions about that issue," said Dr. Paul Schattauer, who has been with Homefirst for 20 years and treats "at least" 100 children a week.
Schattauer seconded Eisenstein's observations. "All I know is in my practice I don't see autism. There is no striking 1-in-166," he said.
Earlier this year we reported the same phenomenon in the mostly unvaccinated Amish. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told us the Amish "have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States." Gerberding said, however, studies "could and should be done" in more representative unvaccinated groups -- if they could be found and their autism rate documented.
Chicago is America's prototypical "City of Big Shoulders," to quote Carl Sandburg, and Homefirst's mostly middle-class families seem fairly representative. A substantial number are conservative Christians who home-school their children. They are mostly white, but the Homefirst practice also includes black and Hispanic families and non-home-schooling Jews, Catholics and Muslims.
They tend to be better educated, follow healthier diets and breast-feed their children much longer than the norm -- half of Homefirst's mothers are still breast-feeding at two years. Also, because Homefirst relies less on prescription drugs including antibiotics as a first line of treatment, these children have less exposure to other medicines, not just vaccines.
Schattauer, interviewed at the Rolling Meadows office, said his caseload is too limited to draw conclusions about a possible link between vaccines and autism. "With these numbers you'd have a hard time proving or disproving anything," he said. "You can only get a feeling about it.
"In no way would I be an advocate to stand up and say we need to look at vaccines, because I don't have the science to say that," Schattauer said. "But I don't think the science is there to say that it's not."
Schattauer said Homefirst's patients also have significantly less childhood asthma and juvenile diabetes compared to national rates. An office manager who has been with Homefirst for 17 years said she is aware of only one case of severe asthma in an unvaccinated child.
"Sometimes you feel frustrated because you feel like you've got a pretty big secret," Schattauer said. He argues for more research on all those disorders, independent of political or business pressures.
The asthma rate among Homefirst patients is so low it was noticed by the Blue Cross group with which Homefirst is affiliated, according to Eisenstein.
"In the alternative-medicine network which Homefirst is part of, there are virtually no cases of childhood asthma, in contrast to the overall Blue Cross rate of childhood asthma which is approximately 10 percent," he said. "At first I thought it was because they (Homefirst's children) were breast-fed, but even among the breast-fed we've had asthma. We have virtually no asthma if you're breast-fed and not vaccinated."
Because the diagnosis of asthma is based on emergency-room visits and hospital admissions, Eisenstein said, Homefirst's low rate is hard to dispute. "It's quantifiable -- the definition is not reliant on the doctor's perception of asthma."
Several studies have found a risk of asthma from vaccination; others have not. Studies that include never-vaccinated children generally find little or no asthma in that group.
Earlier this year Florida pediatrician Dr. Jeff Bradstreet said there is virtually no autism in home-schooling families who decline to vaccinate for religious reasons -- lending credence to Eisenstein's observations.
"It's largely non-existent," said Bradstreet, who treats children with autism from around the country. "It's an extremely rare event."
Bradstreet has a son whose autism he attributes to a vaccine reaction at 15 months. His daughter has been home-schooled, he describes himself as a "Christian family physician," and he knows many of the leaders in the home-school movement.
"There was this whole subculture of folks who went into home-schooling so they would never have to vaccinate their kids," he said. "There's this whole cadre who were never vaccinated for religious reasons."
In that subset, he said, "unless they were massively exposed to mercury through lots of amalgams (mercury dental fillings in the mother) and/or big-time fish eating, I've not had a single case."
Federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups emphatically dismiss any link between autism and vaccines, including the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. Last year a panel of the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, said there is no evidence of such a link, and funding should henceforth go to "promising" research.
Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethyl mercury by weight, was phased out of most U.S. childhood immunizations beginning in 1999, but the CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant women and last year began recommending them for children 6 to 23 months old. Most of those shots contain thimerosal.
Thimerosal-preserved vaccines are currently being injected into millions of children in developing countries around the world. "My mandate ... is to make sure at the end of the day that 100,000,000 are immunized ... this year, next year and for many years to come ... and that will have to be with thimerosal-containing vaccines," said John Clements of the World Health Organization at a June 2000 meeting called by the CDC.
That meeting was held to review data that thimerosal might be linked with autism and other neurological problems. But in 2004 the Institute of Medicine panel said evidence against a link is so strong that health authorities, "whether in the United States or other countries, should not include autism as a potential risk" when formulating immunization policies.
But where is the simple, straightforward study of autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children? Based on our admittedly anecdotal and limited reporting among the Amish, the home-schooled and now Chicago's Homefirst, that may prove to be a significant omission.
--
This ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism welcomes comment. E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com
November 1, 2005
The Age of Autism: The Amish Elephant
The Age of Autism: The Amish Elephant
By Dan Olmsted
UPI Senior Editor
Oct. 29, 2005 at 2:34PM
A specter is haunting the medical and journalism establishments of the United States: Where are the unvaccinated people with autism?
That is just about the only way to explain what now appears to be a collective resistance to considering that question. And like all unanswered questions, this raises another one: Why?
What is the problem with quickly and firmly establishing that the autism rate is about the same everywhere and for everybody in the United States, vaccinated or unvaccinated? Wouldn't that stop all the scientifically illiterate chatter by parents who believe vaccinations made their children autistic? Wouldn't it put to rest concerns that -- despite the removal of a mercury-containing preservative in most U.S. vaccines -- hundreds of millions of children in the developing world are possibly at risk if that preservative is in fact linked to autism?
Calling this issue The Amish Elephant reflects reporting earlier this year in Age of Autism that the largely unvaccinated Amish may have a relatively low rate of autism. That apparent dissimilarity is, in effect, a proverbial elephant in the living room -- studiously ignored by people who don't want to deal with it and don't believe they will have to.
Here are a few cases in point.
Earlier this month the National Consumers League conference in Washington held a session on communicating issues around vaccine safety. I was on the panel and talked about the Amish and autism. In the Q&A session that followed, the first question was for me.
"Is this a proper role for a journalist, or is this just a straw dog set up there with a preliminary answer? It not only showed up where you wrote it. It was all over the place. You did very, very well for UPI (at which point I said, 'Thank you -- please tell my bosses that!') but the question is, did you do very, very well for America?
"Is it appropriate for a journalist -- you weren't reporting, you were investigating. And I just wonder if you think it's an appropriate role for you to play."
My answer: "There's different roles for the press. That's certainly a reasonable question. That is investigative reporting. This idea is something that's already been discarded -- that there's any reason why you would want to look in an unvaccinated population.
"One of my favorite comments about journalism is that it's the wild card of American democracy. The First Amendment says we can do (in the sense of reporting about) whatever we want. So one of our privileges is to get an idea in our head and go look at it."
My questioner was not finished. "I wasn't questioning whether you have a First Amendment right to do it. I think this is more of a question of the ethics, of what value we are bringing to the debate."
My response: "That's probably not a good one for me to answer. Obviously I thought it was ethical."
At that point a fellow panelist, Dr. Louis Cooper, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a staunch vaccine defender, spoke up. "I would jump in and say I thought it was ethical and I think it was useful," said Cooper, a courtly and unfailingly courteous Manhattan pediatrician.
"As you've learned, it was annoying to many people. I wasn't annoyed by it because I thought you kept the process and the debate and the discussion going forward. And we have to do that for one another."
That did not end the discussion. A few minutes later a public-health professor from -- where else? Harvard -- did her own version of Jeopardy!, offering the correct "answer" in the form of a question.
"This question is for Dan. Did you mention the outbreak of polio that happened in the Amish community in the Netherlands that caused widespread problems there, and also the fact that there'd been some context with respect to history in our country in trying to reach out to the Amish to actually encourage them to try to benefit from some of the vaccine technology to the extent that we could?
"So there's been a long history in this country of the CDC trying to reach out to them to the extent that they could. Also with respect to polio, I think what's really amazing is it's such a great story, this is such an exciting time, in the sense that we are very close to global eradication. What that means is we've gone from 1988 when we had 350,000 estimated paralytic polio cases in the world every year to roughly a thousand. It's very exciting that in fact we don't have the terror or the hysteria and all of the fear that surrounded disease.
"I just want to remind everyone that one thing that's very important in the context of reporting these stories is making sure that people do remember and also realize with infectious disease is these things can come back, and until they are eradicated they can come back and devastate us just as much as they did before, except now there are a lot more people.
"There's some related news that people might find interesting. A headline in the Washington Post today, 'Polio outbreak occurs among Amish families.' So I thought people might be interested in that."
At that point the moderator, Dr. Roger Bernier of the Centers for Disease Control, said time was getting short -- why was I not surprised? -- and asked for the next "question."
One thing I've noticed is the more that people want to lecture instead of learn, the more they speak in breathless run-on sentences that are hard to stop, slow down or even diagram. They leave one with the unspoken idea that dialogue -- opening the door to new information -- is somehow dangerous.
These exchanges reminded me of the response I got from Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC director, when I asked her this summer, verbatim: "Has the government ever looked at the autism rate in an unvaccinated U.S. population, and if not, why not?"
Her answer, verbatim:
--
In this country, we have very high levels of vaccination as you probably know, and I think this year we have record immunization levels among all of our children, so to (select an unvaccinated group) that on a population basis would be representative to look at incidence in that population compared to the other population would be something that could be done.
But as we're learning, just trying to look at autism in a community the size of Atlanta, it's very, very difficult to get an effective numerator and denominator to get a reliable diagnosis.
I think those kind of studies could be done and should be done. You'd have to adjust for the strong genetic component that also distinguishes, for example, people in Amish communities who may elect not to be immunized (and) also have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States. So drawing some conclusions from them would be very difficult.
I think with reference to the timing of all of this, good science does take time, and it's part of one of the messages I feel like I've learned from the feedback that we've gotten from parents groups this summer (in) struggling with developing a more robust and a faster research agenda, is let's speed this up. Let's look for the early studies that could give us at least some hypotheses to test and evaluate and get information flowing through the research pipeline as quickly as we can.
So we are committed to doing that, and as I mentioned, in terms of just measuring the frequency of autism in the population some pretty big steps have been taken. We're careful not to jump ahead of our data, but we think we will be able to provide more accurate information in the next year or so than we've been able to do up to this point. And I know that is our responsibility.
We've also benefited from some increased investments in these areas that have allowed us to do this, and so we thank Congress and we thank the administration for supporting those investments, not just at CDC but also at NIH and FDA.
--
The latest response to my pesky persistence comes not from academia or government but from my own profession. Last week the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review published an article whose main thrust -- with which I concur -- was that a vigorous debate over a possible link between vaccines and autism was being thwarted by the self-induced timidity of the press.
Some reporters told the author, Daniel Schulman, that they have basically given up on the story because the criticism -- some of it from their own editors -- was so fierce, and the story was so complicated.
Schulman described Age of Autism's efforts to come at the issue "sideways," looking for possible clues to the cause of the disorder in the natural history of autism. And he mentioned our reporting on the Amish:
"Privately, two reporters told me that, while intriguing, Olmsted's reporting on the Amish is misguided, since it may simply reflect genetic differences among an isolated gene pool. ... Both reporters believed that Olmsted has made up his mind on the question and is reporting the facts that support his conclusions."
Ouch. Being slammed by one's peers is never enjoyable, although reporters need to have thick skins and realize they dish this kind of thing out every day. (And those anonymous sources really are annoying, especially when I am happy to be quoted by name about everything.)
What's interesting about the reporters' "private" remarks is the degree of presumed expertise they suggest -- that looking at the Amish is misguided "since it may simply reflect genetic differences among an isolated gene pool." Really? Where did these guys get their doctorate in genetics, Harvard?
This assertion -- that the Amish gene pool could explain everything, based on no data that I'm aware of -- is the kind of self-interested speculation masquerading as expertise that has beset the autism-vaccines discussion for far too long. The term I learned for it long ago is "convenient reasoning," and it does not always have to be conscious.
The Amish have all kinds of standard genetic mental and developmental disorders -- from bipolar to retardation -- and a lot more genetic issues to boot from this supposedly protective "isolated gene pool." The doctors who actually know something about the Amish have never suggested to me that genes have anything to do with a low rate of autism. They seem perplexed.
In upcoming columns, we'll put that question to the right people -- geneticists -- and tell you what we find. It's called reporting.
By Dan Olmsted
UPI Senior Editor
Oct. 29, 2005 at 2:34PM
A specter is haunting the medical and journalism establishments of the United States: Where are the unvaccinated people with autism?
That is just about the only way to explain what now appears to be a collective resistance to considering that question. And like all unanswered questions, this raises another one: Why?
What is the problem with quickly and firmly establishing that the autism rate is about the same everywhere and for everybody in the United States, vaccinated or unvaccinated? Wouldn't that stop all the scientifically illiterate chatter by parents who believe vaccinations made their children autistic? Wouldn't it put to rest concerns that -- despite the removal of a mercury-containing preservative in most U.S. vaccines -- hundreds of millions of children in the developing world are possibly at risk if that preservative is in fact linked to autism?
Calling this issue The Amish Elephant reflects reporting earlier this year in Age of Autism that the largely unvaccinated Amish may have a relatively low rate of autism. That apparent dissimilarity is, in effect, a proverbial elephant in the living room -- studiously ignored by people who don't want to deal with it and don't believe they will have to.
Here are a few cases in point.
Earlier this month the National Consumers League conference in Washington held a session on communicating issues around vaccine safety. I was on the panel and talked about the Amish and autism. In the Q&A session that followed, the first question was for me.
"Is this a proper role for a journalist, or is this just a straw dog set up there with a preliminary answer? It not only showed up where you wrote it. It was all over the place. You did very, very well for UPI (at which point I said, 'Thank you -- please tell my bosses that!') but the question is, did you do very, very well for America?
"Is it appropriate for a journalist -- you weren't reporting, you were investigating. And I just wonder if you think it's an appropriate role for you to play."
My answer: "There's different roles for the press. That's certainly a reasonable question. That is investigative reporting. This idea is something that's already been discarded -- that there's any reason why you would want to look in an unvaccinated population.
"One of my favorite comments about journalism is that it's the wild card of American democracy. The First Amendment says we can do (in the sense of reporting about) whatever we want. So one of our privileges is to get an idea in our head and go look at it."
My questioner was not finished. "I wasn't questioning whether you have a First Amendment right to do it. I think this is more of a question of the ethics, of what value we are bringing to the debate."
My response: "That's probably not a good one for me to answer. Obviously I thought it was ethical."
At that point a fellow panelist, Dr. Louis Cooper, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a staunch vaccine defender, spoke up. "I would jump in and say I thought it was ethical and I think it was useful," said Cooper, a courtly and unfailingly courteous Manhattan pediatrician.
"As you've learned, it was annoying to many people. I wasn't annoyed by it because I thought you kept the process and the debate and the discussion going forward. And we have to do that for one another."
That did not end the discussion. A few minutes later a public-health professor from -- where else? Harvard -- did her own version of Jeopardy!, offering the correct "answer" in the form of a question.
"This question is for Dan. Did you mention the outbreak of polio that happened in the Amish community in the Netherlands that caused widespread problems there, and also the fact that there'd been some context with respect to history in our country in trying to reach out to the Amish to actually encourage them to try to benefit from some of the vaccine technology to the extent that we could?
"So there's been a long history in this country of the CDC trying to reach out to them to the extent that they could. Also with respect to polio, I think what's really amazing is it's such a great story, this is such an exciting time, in the sense that we are very close to global eradication. What that means is we've gone from 1988 when we had 350,000 estimated paralytic polio cases in the world every year to roughly a thousand. It's very exciting that in fact we don't have the terror or the hysteria and all of the fear that surrounded disease.
"I just want to remind everyone that one thing that's very important in the context of reporting these stories is making sure that people do remember and also realize with infectious disease is these things can come back, and until they are eradicated they can come back and devastate us just as much as they did before, except now there are a lot more people.
"There's some related news that people might find interesting. A headline in the Washington Post today, 'Polio outbreak occurs among Amish families.' So I thought people might be interested in that."
At that point the moderator, Dr. Roger Bernier of the Centers for Disease Control, said time was getting short -- why was I not surprised? -- and asked for the next "question."
One thing I've noticed is the more that people want to lecture instead of learn, the more they speak in breathless run-on sentences that are hard to stop, slow down or even diagram. They leave one with the unspoken idea that dialogue -- opening the door to new information -- is somehow dangerous.
These exchanges reminded me of the response I got from Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC director, when I asked her this summer, verbatim: "Has the government ever looked at the autism rate in an unvaccinated U.S. population, and if not, why not?"
Her answer, verbatim:
--
In this country, we have very high levels of vaccination as you probably know, and I think this year we have record immunization levels among all of our children, so to (select an unvaccinated group) that on a population basis would be representative to look at incidence in that population compared to the other population would be something that could be done.
But as we're learning, just trying to look at autism in a community the size of Atlanta, it's very, very difficult to get an effective numerator and denominator to get a reliable diagnosis.
I think those kind of studies could be done and should be done. You'd have to adjust for the strong genetic component that also distinguishes, for example, people in Amish communities who may elect not to be immunized (and) also have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States. So drawing some conclusions from them would be very difficult.
I think with reference to the timing of all of this, good science does take time, and it's part of one of the messages I feel like I've learned from the feedback that we've gotten from parents groups this summer (in) struggling with developing a more robust and a faster research agenda, is let's speed this up. Let's look for the early studies that could give us at least some hypotheses to test and evaluate and get information flowing through the research pipeline as quickly as we can.
So we are committed to doing that, and as I mentioned, in terms of just measuring the frequency of autism in the population some pretty big steps have been taken. We're careful not to jump ahead of our data, but we think we will be able to provide more accurate information in the next year or so than we've been able to do up to this point. And I know that is our responsibility.
We've also benefited from some increased investments in these areas that have allowed us to do this, and so we thank Congress and we thank the administration for supporting those investments, not just at CDC but also at NIH and FDA.
--
The latest response to my pesky persistence comes not from academia or government but from my own profession. Last week the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review published an article whose main thrust -- with which I concur -- was that a vigorous debate over a possible link between vaccines and autism was being thwarted by the self-induced timidity of the press.
Some reporters told the author, Daniel Schulman, that they have basically given up on the story because the criticism -- some of it from their own editors -- was so fierce, and the story was so complicated.
Schulman described Age of Autism's efforts to come at the issue "sideways," looking for possible clues to the cause of the disorder in the natural history of autism. And he mentioned our reporting on the Amish:
"Privately, two reporters told me that, while intriguing, Olmsted's reporting on the Amish is misguided, since it may simply reflect genetic differences among an isolated gene pool. ... Both reporters believed that Olmsted has made up his mind on the question and is reporting the facts that support his conclusions."
Ouch. Being slammed by one's peers is never enjoyable, although reporters need to have thick skins and realize they dish this kind of thing out every day. (And those anonymous sources really are annoying, especially when I am happy to be quoted by name about everything.)
What's interesting about the reporters' "private" remarks is the degree of presumed expertise they suggest -- that looking at the Amish is misguided "since it may simply reflect genetic differences among an isolated gene pool." Really? Where did these guys get their doctorate in genetics, Harvard?
This assertion -- that the Amish gene pool could explain everything, based on no data that I'm aware of -- is the kind of self-interested speculation masquerading as expertise that has beset the autism-vaccines discussion for far too long. The term I learned for it long ago is "convenient reasoning," and it does not always have to be conscious.
The Amish have all kinds of standard genetic mental and developmental disorders -- from bipolar to retardation -- and a lot more genetic issues to boot from this supposedly protective "isolated gene pool." The doctors who actually know something about the Amish have never suggested to me that genes have anything to do with a low rate of autism. They seem perplexed.
In upcoming columns, we'll put that question to the right people -- geneticists -- and tell you what we find. It's called reporting.
August 7, 2005
Beginning at the Beginning
[Updated June 12, 2007]
The following is a summary of the history of thimerosal. It is not a complete list, as there is much more information out there and many more details to the information that I have included, but it hits the high points and gives a good frame of reference for where the discussion of the safety of this product and its relationship to autism and neurodevelopmental disorders should begin.
History of Thimerosal and Autism
Invented in the 1920’s by Eli Lilly, thimerosal is 49.6% ethlymercury by weight, a neurotoxin known to be more than a hundreds times more lethal to tissue than lead.
Eli Lilly’s safety testing of the product consists of a 1930 study of 22 patients dieing from mengiococcal meningitis in an Indiana hospital. Patients are injected with the solutions and followed until their death, which is within days. Because the patients die of meningitis, they are declared to show no adverse reaction to thimerosal and the product is declared safe for use. Thimerosal is subsequently introduced for use in vaccines and in over the counter remedies as a preservative to kill bacteria in the product.
When the FDA is created, Thimerosal is grandfathered in and is not subjected to any additional safety testing. The 1930 study remains the only safety testing done on the substance even after being in use for over 75 years.
Through FOIA requests and documents acquired as a part of discovery process in lawsuits against Lilly, it is clear that they have been warned about, and have been aware of the dangers of the product since at least 1947.
The use of thimerosal in teething powders for infants leads to a fatal out break of Acrodynia, or “Pink’s Disease”, a form of mercury poisoning. This illness has many symptoms in common with Autism. The link to mercury powders was found in the 1940's and by the 1950's Pink's disease was disappearing.
In 1963 Eli Lilly was forwarded an article that read in part: "There is another point of practical significance: does the parenteral injection of thimerosal - containing fluids cause disturbances in thimerosal-sensitive patients?" "It is known that persons that are contact sensitive to a drug may tolerate the same medications internally, but it seems advisable to use a preservative other than thimerosal for injections in thimerosal-sensitive people."
On August 17, 1967 the Medical/Science department requests that the claim "non-toxic" on thimerosal labels be deleted in next printing run. Two weeks later the label is changed to "non-irritating to body tissues," and the phrase non-toxic omitted.
In 1972 The British Medical Journal reports case of skin burns resulting from the chemical interaction of thimerosal and aluminum. "Mercury is known to act as a catalyst and to cause aluminum to oxidize rapidly, with the production of heat." The manufacturers who supply us with thimerosal have been informed." [Thimerosal is being used in vaccines which also contain aluminum].
In the 1970’s six newborns at one hospital die as a result of having a thimerosal containing antiseptic wiped on their wounds.
In 1982 the FDA reviews the use of thimerosal. Their statement reads in part: “At the cellular level, thimerosal has been found to be more toxic for human epithelial cells in vitro than mercuric chloride, mercuric nitrate, and merbromim (mercurichrom). "It was found to be 35.3 times more toxic for embryonic chick heart tissue than for staphylococcus areus." [a pathogen that the thimerosal is intended to kill]. A 1950 study showed that thimerosal was no better than water in protecting mice from potential fatal streptococcal infection." "The Panel concludes that thimerosal is not safe for over the counter topical use because of its potential for cell damage if applied to broken skin and its allergy potential. It is not effective as a topical antimicrobial because its bacteriastatic action can be reversed." Additional language added to some Lilly labels: "As with any drug, if you are pregnant or nursing a baby, seek the advice of a health professional before using this product." The FDA orders the withdrawal of over the counter, thimerosal containing products within a 6 month period. It does not order removal from vaccines, but recommends that the issue be studied and that the incidence of neurological problems in unvaccinated populations like the Amish be compared to the vaccinated population. [22 years later no such study has yet been done. On July 19, 2005 Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the CDC says that such a study would be difficult to undertake because of genetic confounders. This seems contrary to the scientific process because if indeed such a study is done and it is found that the Amish have a lower incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders, the next step would be to undertake genetic studies to see if their genes differ dramatically from the general population and if their differences can help us locate the genetic component of autism. In addition studies designed to see if the small number of vaccinated Amish differ in their risk for NDDs to the larger Amish population would offer information about increased risk from thimerosal.]
In the 1930’s the average child only received three vaccines in their young life. Many vaccines are added to the schedule over the years, with an increase in the 1980’s and with 3 vaccines added to the schedule in 1991 alone. The current vaccine schedule calls for 31 vaccines in the first 18 months of life, 48 with full flu vaccination by 72 months of life.
A Merck internal memo is obtained during discovery discloses that in 1991 a Merck researcher added up the amount of mercury that is in the new vaccine schedule and sounded an alarm at the company that children who are vaccinated according to it would receive amounts of mercury far and above that considered to be safe by the EPA. Merck takes no action in regard to the information.
During the 1990’s, autism rates begin to rise dramatically. Parents complain to the health authorities that they believe that their children’s developmental disorders are related to their vaccines.
In 1998, a researcher at the CDC does the same math that Merck did 7 years previously. She finds that children are getting as much as 125 times the EPA limit of mercury for their weight. The EPA limit is based on the ingestion of methlymercury in food by a healthy adult. Because 90% of ingested mercury is excreted in the digestive track and never enters the blood stream, so even the EPA limit may be drastically lacking considering that thimerosal is injected directly into the blood stream and is not subject to the bodies natural defenses against toxic poisoning.
In 1999, the CDC and the American Association of Pediatrics issue a joint statement saying that although they find no “evidence of harm” from the mercury exposure that children are getting in their vaccines, they are calling on vaccine manufacturers to remove it from vaccines on a voluntary basis as a precautionary measure because “some children may” get more than the EPA limit for mercury at their 6 month visits. Manufactures begin the process in 1999, but do not remove it from all vaccines.
No legal ban on thimerosal is issued.
No recall of the mercury laden vaccines is issued and companies continue to sell lots already manufactured. Some of these vaccines containing full doses of thimerosal have been found in doctors’ offices, by parents who request to read package inserts, with expiration dates as late as 2007.
No independent or government testing of vaccines is done to confirm that thimerosal has been removed. FDA denies parents request that they set up a system to verify manufacturers claims of low dose or thimerosal free vaccines.
No statement is issued to pediatricians to alert them to the symptoms of mercury poisoning.
No recommendation is made to pediatricians to screen children who suffered the onset neurological impairment after vaccination for mercury toxicity.
Vaccines with 25mcg of thimerosal are still shipped to developing countries Most flu shots still contain a full dose of thimerosal as of this writing in 2007. (The EPA estimates that a person must weigh 550 lbs. to safely tolerate this amount of mercury.)
In November of 1999, the CDC commissions one of its new employees, a Belgian named Thomas Verstraten, to study the Vaccine Safety Datalink to find the risk of autism and other NDDs in relation to thimerosal exposure. Verstraten’s first draft of the study finds a relative risk above 7 for children who receive the highest dose of thimerosal to develop autism. In simple terms, such children have a more than a 600% higher chance of developing autism than children who don’t receive any thimerosal. (A relative risk of 2 is sufficient proof in U.S. courts to find for vaccine injury) Verstraten and other scientists at the CDC spend 4 years trying to change the study so that the relationship between the preservative and NDD’s is significantly reduced or eliminated. The Center for Disease Control will later describe these changes to the study as “improvements”. When the study is published in 2003, it concludes that “no consistent significant associations are found between thimerosal containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes.” By this time Thomas Verstraten, who is listed as a CDC employee on the study, has been an employee of GlaxoSmithKlein (a defendant in thimerosal law suits) for more than 2 years.
In November of 2000, despite being born almost two months prematurely and despite the assurance of my pediatrician that thimerosal had been removed from vaccines, my son Webster is injected with a DTaP vaccine that was 74.5 times the EPA limit for mercury exposure for his weight, just two weeks past his due date. He will go on to develop verbal apraxia and sensory integration disorder.
In 2001 Bernard et. al. publish their hypothesis: Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning. It reads in part: “Exposure to mercury can cause immune, sensory, neurological, motor, and behavioral dysfunctions similar to traits defining or associated with autism, and the similarities extend to neuroanatomy, neurotransmitters, and biochemistry. Thimerosal, a preservative added to many vaccines, has become a major source of mercury in children who, within their first two years, may have received a quantity of mercury that exceeds safety guidelines. A review of medical literature and US government data suggests that: (i) many cases of idiopathic autism are induced by early mercury exposure from thimerosal; (ii) this type of autism represents an unrecognized mercurial syndrome; and (iii) genetic and non-genetic factors establish a predisposition whereby thimerosal’s adverse effects occur only in some children.”
In 2001 the Institute of Medicine is commissioned by the CDC to undertake a comprehensive review of all research into the thimerosal/autism connection. At their first meeting, Dr Stratton, head of the commission, when discussing what the process and product of the working group would be states that, “We said this before you got here, and I think we said this yesterday, the point of no return, the line we will not cross in public policy is to pull the vaccine, change the schedule. We could say it is time to revisit this, but we would never recommend that level. Even recommending research is recommendations for policy. We wouldn’t say compensate, we wouldn’t say pull the vaccine, we wouldn’t say stop the program”. When the transcript of the meeting is made public through a FOIA request, many interpret this to mean that no matter what they find, they will not publicly say that there is any link between the thimerosal and autism. Dr. Harvey Fineberg, head of the IOM, states that this is an incorrect interpretation of the comments, but will not offer any alternate interpretation of what else they could mean.
In 2001 Verstraten presents a version of his study to the IOM. He begins his presentation by telling the panel that as of 8 am that morning, he had become an employee of Glaxo Smith Klein. Despite the conflict of interest and the drastic changes made over the course of the study, the IOM will rely heavily on the study in making their determination. Dr. Verstraten returns to Belgium and except for a letter published in Pediatrics, little is heard from him again.
In March of 2002 my son Chandler, who was born one month early, is injected with Hepatitis B vaccine containing a “trace amount” of thimerosal (currently still on the schedule), despite the fact that he has no risk factors for Hepatitis B, and he is still two weeks from reaching his due date. Within days he develops fevers and uncontrollable crying that lasts for three months and bowel problems that persist for two years until he is placed on the GFCF diet. He will go on to be diagnosed with both Autism and mercury poisoning at age 2. I later discover that the “trace amount” of thimerosal is still just over the EPA limit of mercury for his weight.
In 2003 the Verstraten Study is published in Pediatrics with no mention of the conflict of interest of the lead researcher. Later a private contractor would testify before congress that he was ordered to destroy the original data sets used in the 1999 version of the study that found the dramatic link between thimerosal and autism in the interest of “patient confidentiality”. The entire Vaccine Safety Datalink is eventually moved to an offshore private company and can no longer be accessed by FOIA request.
In February of 2004, the IOM rushes to hold public hearings where researchers on both sides of the issues present their studies. The meeting is considered to be a “draw” between the two sides by many of those in attendance. A link is neither proved nor disproved, but new research in to the mechanism of how mercury can trigger autism and NDDs in a genetically vulnerable sub population is presented, along with case studies of successful treatment of autistic symptoms based on the new research.
In May of the same year, the IOM issues their final conclusion on the link between Thimerosal and NDDs. They state that, “the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. The committee further finds that potential biological mechanisms for vaccine-induced autism that have been generated to date are theoretical only.” They then go on to take the unusual step of recommending that research into a link between the two be abandoned and funds be spent on other lines of inquiry. The conclusion relies heavily on Verstraten and several other epidemiological studies that are considered to implement fatally flawed methods and to be riddled with conflict of interest by members of the autism community. Parent groups are enraged. The IOM panel disbands.
Later that year, Thomas Verstraten publishes a letter in Pediatrics in response to those who criticize his study and his conflict of interest. His letter does not address the substance of the charges made against the study and the changes that were made to it over it’s 4 year evolution, but instead says that continuing the debate the validity of the 1999 study would be a “waste of scientific energy and not to the benefit of the safety of US children or of all the children world wide that have the privilege of being vaccinated.” He goes on to say that any suggestion of impropriety on the part of himself, the CDC or GSK is an insult and accuses his critics of having “pitiable attitudes”.
In July of 2005, in the face of continuing criticism of the IOM findings, the head of the IOM, Dr. Harvey Fineberg, issues a letter stating that Dr. Stratton’s 2001 comments that they would not say “pull the vaccine” or “change the schedule” were taken out of context and did not suggest that the IOM decision was compromised. Dr. Fineberg has not, despite requests, offered an alternative interpretation of what her comments meant in context.
In March of 2005, Author David Kirby released his book, “Evidence of Harm - Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy” detailing the history of thimerosal in vaccines and its relationship to autism.
In April of 2005 the CDC posts a notice on their web site stating that they were in the process of reviewing “Evidence of Harm” and would be responding to the book.
In June of 2005 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. echoed the information found in the book and charged the CDC and Eli Lilly of malfeasance in covering up evidence of a causal effect between thimerosal and autism in an article published in Rolling Stone and Salon.com. It is entitled “Deadly Immunity: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal”.
July 19, 2005. The CDC holds a press conference to: “communicate the importance of infants and children receiving their recommended vaccinations on time, and reassure parents that vaccines are safe. The renewed attention to the potential causal link between thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, and autism will also be addressed during the press conference.” Vaccine safety groups are not informed of the press conference nor invited. The conference presents no new information and does not answer important questions raised in Evidence of Harm or Deadly Immunity about the conduct of the CDC the IOM or the reliability of the research that continues to be used to show no link between thimerosal and autism.
As of this writing June 26, 2007 the CDC has yet to issue its response to “Evidence of Harm” or to “Deadly Immunity”.
In June of 2007 the first vaccinated v. unvaccinated study is finally done... by parents. Generation Rescue funded a survey using the CDC's techniques for determining incidence of a disorder and found that vaccinated children are two and a half times more likely to have a neurodevelopmental disorder. CDC spokesman Curtis Allen said, "We look forward to learning more about the survey," . If the CDC responds to the survey this paper will be updated to reflect their response.
On June 25, 2007 Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the "Comprehensive Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of 2007" (H.R. 2832), legislation that would require the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct a comprehensive comparative study of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Her stated purpose is to resolve the controversy about the possible link between autism and mercury or other vaccine components.
The following is a summary of the history of thimerosal. It is not a complete list, as there is much more information out there and many more details to the information that I have included, but it hits the high points and gives a good frame of reference for where the discussion of the safety of this product and its relationship to autism and neurodevelopmental disorders should begin.
History of Thimerosal and Autism
No legal ban on thimerosal is issued.
No recall of the mercury laden vaccines is issued and companies continue to sell lots already manufactured. Some of these vaccines containing full doses of thimerosal have been found in doctors’ offices, by parents who request to read package inserts, with expiration dates as late as 2007.
No independent or government testing of vaccines is done to confirm that thimerosal has been removed. FDA denies parents request that they set up a system to verify manufacturers claims of low dose or thimerosal free vaccines.
No statement is issued to pediatricians to alert them to the symptoms of mercury poisoning.
No recommendation is made to pediatricians to screen children who suffered the onset neurological impairment after vaccination for mercury toxicity.
Vaccines with 25mcg of thimerosal are still shipped to developing countries Most flu shots still contain a full dose of thimerosal as of this writing in 2007. (The EPA estimates that a person must weigh 550 lbs. to safely tolerate this amount of mercury.)
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