Marc Joseph Does My Job For Me

After hearing Charlie Gibson repeat the "No proof of a link" lie, adding an emphatic, "NONE" for good measure, I sat down to pound out another rebuttal suggesting he go read the 1000 pages of expert testimony from scientists during the trial last week. Fortunately Mr. Joseph did it for me:

The Un-Truth About Autism

Thank you Marc. Now I can go put my kids to bed.

Welcome Thi-Curious

I have lots and lots of new visitors today because of the Vaccine Omnibus Hearings and apparently the Wall Street Journal is linking here, so to those of you who have come to learn about Thimerosal and it's relationship to autism, I would like to bring your attention to a few posts that will be of interest to you.

1. A brief history of thimerosal that I wrote two years ago to educate some Senators.

2. A discussion of the fatal flaws in the two studies that are used most often to prove that thimerosal in vaccines has no relationship to Autism.

3. A good primer on what is going on in the hearing this week.

4. Your source for daily updates on the hearing.

5. Information for those of you who would like to listen in on the hearings for yourself via teleconference.

6. A picture of my beautiful 5 year old son Chandler who regressed into autism following his 18 month vaccinations.



Thank you for visiting and let me know if I can be of assistance.

Kirby on HuffPo: See You In (Vaccine) Court

See You In (Vaccine) Court
by David Kirby
The Huffington Post
Posted June 7, 2007 | 07:05 PM (EST)


On Monday, one of the most important legal proceedings in American medical history will get underway at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. There, a special panel of three judges will begin hearing evidence to support -- and refute -- the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines and/or the live-virus measles-mumps-rubella shot caused autism or autism-like symptoms in some American children.

Monday will mark the first time ever that evidence of autistic harm from childhood vaccines is examined and cross-examined in a court of law. This is far from a slam dunk case for either side, and the stakes - professional, financial, emotional - could not be more intense.

These three judges from the federal "Vaccine Court," as it is called, are about to dip into the raging, contradictory waters of the vaccine-autism contretemps, knowing they must emerge on the other side, each with their own acutely anticipated decision about causation. Ultimately, they must deliver judgment on some 4,800 claims that have been languishing in the system for years.

I do not envy them their task.

Technically, at least, this is not a trial at all; it is an "Autism Omnibus Proceeding" in a no-fault, supposedly non-adversarial adjudication. The judges are not judges, but "Special Masters;" plaintiff families and their lawyers are called "petitioners," and the defendant, called the "respondent," is not some drug giant, but the Department of Health and Human Services, represented by well-funded attorneys at the US Justice Department.

Any claims awarded in Vaccine Court are paid from a 75-cents-per-vaccine tax footed by consumers, leaving vaccine makers free from liability.

But if even one case of causation is determined, then private lawsuits in civil courts - where the drug makers themselves are on trial - would soon flood the dockets. (Ironically, if families lose in Vaccine Court, they are free to sue in civil court. Having autistic kids appear before sympathetic juries is Big Pharma's big nightmare, and it's why a secret rider was attached to the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to bar thimerosal cases from civil court and force them into Vaccine Court).

Over the next three weeks, evidence on both sides of the first "test case" will be picked apart to its bare bones, with one gaping exception. Petitioners were just denied access to the government's vast vaccine safety database of HMO patients, which was used by CDC officials to conduct a four-year study that ultimately found no link between thimerosal and autism. Earlier versions of the study, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, however, clearly showed increased risks for many neurodevelopmental disorders, depending on the dose of thimerosal administered.

No wonder a special panel convened by the NIH recently issued a harsh critique of the CDC's data collection and management, saying the study contained "several serious problems... weaknesses and limitations" that "reduce its usefulness" in proving or disproving causation.

And so, numbers culled from the government's massive database will be submitted as Exhibit A for the defense, though the other side will be forever barred from seeing the actual raw data, in order to replicate what the CDC researchers found. (Exact replication is impossible because original datasets, culled at taxpayer expense, somehow "went missing" and are no longer available for re-analysis - a possible felony violation of the federal Data Quality Act).

On the other hand, the burden of proof for plaintiffs is lower in Vaccine Court than other federal courts, which could even things out a little.

Nearly all of the government's evidence will be "epidemiological" in nature - based on large population studies of computerized data. These include the CDC study, plus similar research done in Sweden, Denmark and the UK which found that, if anything, thimerosal had a "neuro-protective" effect on children by apparently reducing their risk of autism.

Petitioning attorneys will counter that Federal Court rules regard epidemiology alone as being "insufficient" to disprove causation, and will surely use the NIH panel's critique of the government's own database as a roadmap toward defanging the CDC's conclusions. To begin with, the CDC found an autism rate of just 11-per-10,000 children at the largest participating HMO, where the actual rate is currently 73-per-10,000. Why so many excluded children, they will likely ask, and how did this affect the rate of outcomes?

As for Denmark, petitioning lawyers will argue that autism case numbers increased after 1992, when thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines, mostly because the Danish government happened to switch from counting inpatient-diagnosed cases only - about 13% of the total - to counting all inpatient AND outpatient cases nationwide. By 1999 the total number had "gone up" to about 200 children a year, in a nation of 6.2 million people - well below the current US rate of 1-in-150 kids, and not exactly a raging epidemic.

The lawyers might also point out that incidence and prevalence rates of autism actually declined in Denmark during 2000, and again (we now know, only through FOIA) in 2001. And they could cite a media quote from Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, professor of public health at UC-Davis School of Medicine and chair of the NIH panel that critiqued the CDC study. Flawed as the CDC analysis was, she called it "an improvement on other studies, including the two in Denmark, both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs."

For their side of the argument, family lawyers will present thousands of pages of published "biological" science, as opposed to epidemiology. They will examine data from animal models, test tube studies, and examinations of children with autism; they will try to present a plausible biological mechanism by which mercury (and to a lesser extent, MMR) could cause autistic-like symptoms -- at the molecular, cellular, and clinical level.

Among this evidence is research suggesting that:

1) Many children with autism, probably due to genetics, are deficient in certain sulfur-based proteins that defend against heavy metal accumulation in humans. The proteins, which include glutathione, are called "thiols," and sometimes "mercaptans," from the Latin mercurium captans, or literally "mercury capturers."

2) Many children with autism show signs of heavy metal accumulation, including elevated levels of proteins called "prophyrins" a bio-marker of lead and mercury toxicity. They also present with low levels of mercury in baby haircuts, (versus control children) suggesting a heavy metal "efflux disorder" that prevents the proper metabolism and excretion of heavy metals.

3) Exposure to extremely low doses (micromolars) of thimerosal, previously thought to be safe, shut down 25% of brain stem cells, in one lab study.

4) In another, low-level exposures of a few minutes duration killed many of the immune system's "dendritic" cells, disrupted production of immune-system messenger chemicals called "cytokines," and caused inflammation.

5) Meanwhile, many children with autism show signs of immune deficiency AND hyperactivity, as well as cytokine imbalances and inflammation, (they also show signs of chronic autoimmunity, where the immune system attacks the body and brain).

6) Organic ethylmercury from thimerosal crosses the blood-brain barrier in primates, where it quickly converts to inorganic mercury, which can remain trapped in the brain for decades.

7) Inorganic mercury trapped in primate brains caused neuro-inflammation (ie, rapid brain growth) by activating "glial" cells in the brain.

8) Autopsies on autistic human brains found chronic inflammation, apparently linked to the brain's immune system and produced by activation of its "glial" cells.

9) Another autopsy study also showed ongoing neuro-inflammation, possibly from heavy metal exposure, and signs of autoimmunity. (Other studies have found rapid brain growth in infants with autism.)

10) Thimerosal can disrupt a chemical process called "methylation," critical for gene expression, neural function, memory and attention, and the production of sulfur-based "thiol" proteins like glutathione.

Plaintiff lawyers will also show data from a study of birthday videos proving that many kids with autism were meeting or exceeding developmental milestones at age one, only to have tumbled into a wordless, autistic world by age two. They will also show home videos of plaintiff children, before and after their own regression, and in many cases, of the same children a few years after experimental treatments - including chelation (for heavy metal removal) and methyl B-12 (for repair of methylation) - that seem to have vastly improved their condition.

At this point, government lawyers will surely try to discredit these biological studies, one-by-one. They could succeed, though it will be tough, given the data's provenance. Lead authors come from institutions such as Harvard, Northeastern, Columbia, UC Davis, Johns Hopkins, and the Universities of Washington, Arkansas, Kentucky and Rochester, and their papers were published in peer-reviewed journals such as Molecular Psychiatry, and the NIH's Environmental Health Perspectives.

The defense also has a few biological studies to support its side, including one showing no difference in the mercury levels of blood and hair of typical vs. autistic kids. But the mean age in this study was four years old, and mercury does not linger around in blood or hair for that long.

Another study showed the thimerosal containing drug Rho-Gam (given to pregnant women, and not a vaccine) did not increase the risk of autism in children, though this study was funded by Johnson & Johnson, the product's manufacturer and a potential thimerosal litigation defendant.

Likewise, the plaintiffs might offer some epidemiology, including one study from the University of Texas showing increased rates of autism in school districts near mercury-emitting coal power plants, and another, funded by the CDC itself, where children with autism in the SF Bay Area were 50% more likely to be born in the region's most mercury-polluted tracts, suggesting "a potential association between autism and estimated metal concentrations."

Finally, expect to hear hours of testimony about California. Mercury was phased out of childhood vaccines (except the flu shot) a few years ago, the argument goes, so there should have been a drop in autism rates by now, especially in California, which keeps the most reliable autism statistics. It's a very powerful contention, but it may be too early to make any final conclusions.

Among the youngest children, 3-to-5-year-olds, the number of cases was still increasing after the first quarter of 2007. These kids were born and vaccinated between 2002 and 2004, after thimerosal was removed from vaccines, right?

It's true, most companies started making preservative-free vaccine in 2001, but they also continued making product with thimerosal, as a backup during the transition period. Little, if any of those mercury-containing vaccines were ever recalled: They remained on the market, until they were finally used up or expired, in 2003.

Government lawyers will likely point to a 2002 survey of vaccine providers, conducted by the CDC, showing that just 2% of the pediatric shots contained thimerosal. But this was a survey of providers under CDC contract only, and CDC had a record of buying mercury-free vaccines for its clients (ie, state, county and other public health clinics) even before 1999, when the federal government called for the removal of thimerosal from the pediatric schedule "as soon as possible."

It's not clear how many of the CDC contract providers surveyed were in California, where the vast majority of children receive care in private practices and large HMOs. Moreover, the CDC survey was merely a "convenience sample," which are so inaccurate in representing the general population they are virtually never used in published data. In fact, the US DOJ itself defines them as "rarely useful in evaluation and usually hazardous."

Meanwhile, the state has quietly been tracking the number of autism cases by birth year, as well as age group, meaning we can look at the very youngest children entering the system. In the first quarter of 2003, there were 170 children with autism in the state system born in 2000 (or, roughly, three-year-olds). In the first quarter of 2004, the number of three-year-olds increased 8.2% to 184. In 2005 the same number went up 13%, to 208, and in 2006 it jumped nearly 27% to 264. But this year, among kids born in 2004, it was 251, a 5% drop.

This could be attributable to some quarterly reporting glitch, and the caseload could easily be made up in the next quarter (that data will be out in mid-July). But if the deficit continues, the 2004 birth cohort could finish out as the first in which case numbers actually fell. (A similar trend might be emerging at Northern California Kaiser, a major HMO).

Of course, it would take tremendous resources to get to the bottom of this, lawyers might argue. One would need full medical records on each of those 251 kids born in 2004. Did any receive thimerosal still left in California vaccines (or prenatally via Rho-Gam)? How many were exposed to mercury in flu shots during pregnancy and as infants? And in a population that is now one-quarter foreign born, how many children immigrated from countries where immunization with thimerosal is now routine? (Vaccination coverage in Mexico is now 92%).

Is immigration helping keep the California numbers up? We don't have that data. But we do know that, since 2003, the rate of increase among white and black children was 48.6% and 51.6%, respectively. Among Asian children, however, it was 79%, and among Hispanics, 84.2%. Probably something worth looking into (as well as the effect of aggressive early intervention campaigns, which have consistently brought down the average age of diagnosis and would likely drive up the number of three year olds in the system).

But again, this is epidemiology coming out of California, and the Special Masters are looking at specific children with specific claims before their court. Officials from the state have been warning all of us (and that includes me) not to read too much into these numbers.

At the International Meeting For Autism Research last month, California health officials presented their data along with this caveat: "Limitations of the database and lack of individual exposure data prevent conclusions, based on these data, about thimerosal as a cause or modifier of autism in a specific subgroup or child."

It is entirely possible that thimerosal itself did not cause the autism epidemic, but that is not what is on trial here. Even so, for the sake of argument, let's say that a "specific subgroup" of people with autism, maybe 1%, was affected by mercury in their vaccines. With an estimated 1.5 million Americans with autism, that would mean 15,000 people severely impacted by thimerosal.

But, if causation can be shown in even 1% of cases, this would provide tremendous hope for the other 99%. Yes, some cases may be purely genetic in nature. But for everyone else, if we can show how thimerosal caused "autism," we might be able to do the same for, say, pesticides, PCBs, flame retardants, jet fuel, environmental mercury in air, water and fish, or any combination thereof.

It's a tough call and, like I said, I don't envy these Special Masters, though I do thank them for opening the proceedings to the public.

And I will see you in Vaccine Court.

----------------

David Kirby is author of the book "Evidence of Harm." Many of the studies cited here can be found on his Powerpoint slides at www.evidenceofharm.com

Simpsonwood Remembered

From the National Autism Association and Mom's Against Mercury:

The Simpsonwood Remembered Rally is getting close!

Join us on June 8th, at the CDC in Atlanta Georgia, in remembrance of the anniversary of the infamous CDC meetings at Simpsonwood and to celebrate and support the United Methodist Women's Division.

Also join us for a poolside meet and greet at the Emory Inn on Thursday June 7th at 7pm (straight through the front doors and outside to the courtyard). T-shirts and magnetic car ribbons will be sold there. T-shirts are $15.00 and the magnetic car ribbons $7.50. We will be raffling off some T-shirts and ribbons at 8pm. Both T-shirts and ribbons are of limited quantity.

Just a reminder that we will be meeting the morning of June 8th at 6:15am in the Emory Inn parking lot (1641 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA).

Thank you all for your continued support and hope to see you there!

For more rally information: http://www.momsagainstmercury.org/rally-simpsonwood.htm

For more information about the infamous Simpsonwood meetings held June 7-8, 2000 please go to:
www.PutChildrenFirst.org and www.NoMercury.org

Johnson & Johnson Clears Their Own Product of Autism Link

(as you read keep in mind Big Tobacco's claims of "no link to lung cancer")

I am sure that if you have viewed a news source this week you have seen that mercury in vaccines has once again been cleared of any link to autism. Articles also state, "Shows over, nothing to see here, move along now... the grown ups need to talk."

This study was done in 2005. So why the big release two years later? Some have suggested that it is because the Vaccine Omnibus Hearings that will actually look at the link and make a decision as to the veracity of vaccine safety claimes will start next month.

Billions and Billions of dollars will be lost by corporations if a link is established.

So here is the story behind the story by an actual chemist who understands mercury, and the initial response from SafeMinds, who will be releasing a full review of the study later.

The mercury, Autism Debacle: Another Week, Another Questionable Study
Michael Wagnitz
May 18, 2007

Another week, another study in which a Doctor tells us mercury in vaccines is safe. Only this time, vaccines were not even part of the study. The headline from the University of Missouri states, "Study Finds No Link Between Autism and Thimerosal in Vaccines". The study looked at injection during pregnancy with Rh immune globulin (Rhig) and its link to autism. Up until 2001 some of these injections contained thimerosal (50% mercury). This is not a vaccine just like a shot of penicillin is not a vaccine. This story was picked up by 72 news agencies. Not one news story mentioned that the study was funded by Johnson and Johnson, the largest manufacturer of Rhig products. Johnson and Johnson just happens to be a defendant in several lawsuits involving the use of thimerosal in their Rhig products. Does anyone really think they would fund a study which says thmerosal in Rhig products causes autism?

What's more amazing is this is old news. The lead author of the study presented her findings in a poster session in 2005 at a genetics conference. This story was all over the news wires back then. Originally, it was stated that the study contained 47 mothers with more than one child with autism. The published study lists only 16 such cases. Where did the other 31 cases go? Did they just disappear because they did not support her conclusion? Is this proper scientific ethics? This "data adjusting" is becoming quite common by mainstream autism researchers.

In her paper she states that the "vast majority of studies indicate no association between thimerosal containing vaccines and autism". The papers she cites are either conflicted epidemiological studies or literature reviews which regurgitate these same studies. One paper cited, Nelson and Bauman 2003, was a paper solicited by Pediatrics to say that thimerosal does not cause autism. This paper was received and published on the same day. Did this paper even go through the peer review process? This paper is infamous for stating that ethyl mercury does not enter the brain. This statement has been disproven by volumes of published research. She cites the 2004 Institute of Medicine (IOM) position paper which ignored all the clinical evidence which differed with their pre-determined conclusion. This expert IOM committee, which looked at thimerosal's role in causing harm, did not include one single toxicologist. Every member had ties to the vaccine industry.

As a major player in the autism is a psychiatric condition caused by some unknown gene, the author knows that billions of dollars in research money is out there to be had. What will become of these "mercury apologists" if these kids ever receive proper treatment for what is causing their illness? Their multi-million dollars of funding will dry up. Their arrogant, controlling power trips will be over. They will become irrelevant.

About the Author: Michael Wagnitz has over 20 years experience evaluating materials for toxic metals. He currently works as a chemist in the toxicology section of a public health lab evaluating biological samples for lead and mercury.

Here is SafeMinds response to the study:

University of Missouri Study on Link Between Autism and Mercury a Discredit to Sound Science
SafeMinds
May 16, 2007
(714) 625-5663

Undisclosed industry funding, unsubstantiated conclusions on vaccines, and study sample alteration undermine credibility on controversial topic.

(Cambridge, MA) A recent press release from the University of Missouri announced the results of a study on autism and Rh immune globulin (RhIg) injections, some of which contained a mercury preservative called thimerosal. SafeMinds reviewed information about this study and found several troublesome aspects, including undisclosed industry funding, unsubstantiated conclusions on vaccines and mercury, and deviation from acceptable scientific practice.

The study was funded by Johnson & Johnson, the largest manufacturer of RhIg products and the defendant in several lawsuits alleging a link between autism and mercury in RhIg. In an earlier 2005 poster presentation, the study authors acknowledged that the research was “supported by Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research,” but the University of Missouri press release omits mention of this conflict of interest.

The press release headline falsely claims that the “Study Finds No Link Between Autism and Thimerosal in Vaccines.” The study is about Rh immune globulin, and immune globulins are not vaccines. “The headline deceives the public,” noted Mark Blaxill, director of SafeMinds. “It says an autism-mercury in vaccines link has been disproved when the research did not do so.” In fact, the study failed to differentiate between mothers who received RhIg brands with mercury and those receiving the brand without mercury, rendering assessment of mercury’s role in autism from RhIg indeterminate.

Changes to the research sample were made in the middle of the study. The 2005 sample contained 47 mothers with more than one child with autism, while the final 2007 study only had 16 mothers with more than one child with autism. The elimination of 31 ‘multiplex’ families means that the original sample was altered, and not just added to, after initial results were obtained in contradiction of standard research practice meant to prevent manipulation of findings.

“An earlier analysis by SafeMinds of the poster presentation revealed numerous flaws in methods, analysis and interpretation,” stated Mr. Blaxill. “We are concerned many of these flaws have not been corrected and quite possibly have been amplified in the published paper. While the poster results demonstrated an increased risk of autism in thimerosal-exposed children, the written interpretation of the data claimed the opposite.”

Once SafeMinds has the opportunity to review the full paper, a full assessment will be completed. SafeMinds calls for unbiased studies on the potential link between autism and mercury exposures. More information on this study is available at www.safeminds.org.

See also:

Rh Immune Globulin in Pregnancy: Relationship to Autism Development

Overview [PDF File, 42K]

Study Abstract [PDF File, 20K]

Household Mercury Bombs

Penny wise, pound foolish.

The CFL Mercury Nightmare
by Steven Milloy
Financial Post

Published: Saturday, April 28, 2007

How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labor -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favor of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter's bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

he DEP sent a specialist to Bridges' house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state's "safe" level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a "low-ball" estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began "gathering finances" to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn't cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

Given that the replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs in the average U.S. household is touted as saving as much as US$180 annually in energy costs -- and assuming that Bridges doesn't break any more CFLs -- it will take her more than 11 years to recoup the cleanup costs in the form of energy savings.

The potentially hazardous CFL is being pushed by companies such as Wal-Mart, which wants to sell 100 million CFLs at five times the cost of incandescent bulbs during 2007, and, surprisingly, environmentalists.

It's quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about five billion light bulb sockets in North American households, we're looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges'
bedroom.

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched
mercury thermometer echange programs.

As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a "highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children" and as "one of the most poisonous forms of pollution."

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury-thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the United States, under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

And let's not forget about the regulatory nightmare in the U.S. known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups.

We'll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into
bankruptcy.

As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine "safety" standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to "safely" contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal.

Not only are CFLs much more expensive than incandescent bulbs and emit light that many regard as inferior to incandescent bulbs, they pose a nightmare if they break and require special disposal procedures. Yet governments (egged on by environmentalists and the Wal-Marts of the world) are imposing on us such higher costs, denial of lighting choice, disposal hassles and breakage risks in the name
of saving a few dollars every year on the electric bill?

- Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk-science expert and advocate of free enterprise, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Fombonne's Folly

Eric Fombonne has released a study that he does not seem qualified to do that tells us nothing about the important question that he is supposedly addressing: Do autistic children have higher mercury levels than typical children.

I believe that this was completely disingenuous on his part. He HAS to know that mercury does not stay in the blood stream and that taking blood mercury levels only shows recent exposure. No one in the autism community uses blood mercury levels to determine how much mercury might be in a child's body and his brain.

But that does not stop it from getting a headline on Yahoo News.

But enough of my take on things. Let's hear from an actual chemist:

The Mercury, Autism Debacle: How Stupid Do They Think We Are?
Michael Wagnitz
May 7, 2007

Last weekend the Sixth International Meeting for Autism Research took place in Seattle. The meeting claimed to draw the top 900 autism researchers and scientists from around the world. One of the key participants was Dr. Eric Fombonne of Montreal Children's Hospital at McGill University. Dr. Fombonne, a psychiatrist, presented his research on mercury. His work involved testing the blood and hair of 147 children. Roughly half of his subjects were diagnosed with autism and half were considered neurologically typical controls. He found no difference in mercury levels in the patients hair or blood.

The first question one might ask is why a psychiatrist is considered qualified to do toxicological work. Most parents are concerned about the mercury exposure that their children received as newborns and infants from mandatory vaccines. The vaccine schedule in Canada, where Dr. Fombonnes study was done, and the United States were quite different in the 1990's. Dr. Fombonne,s patients were not tested after vaccination. If he had talked to any reputable toxicologist, they would have told him that the ethylmercury from vaccines clears the blood in about seven days. Ethylmercury, a short-chain alkyl mercury compound, is rapidly distributed to the brain, kidneys and other tissue. The hair tested would need to be from a first haircut to show this mercury exposure. Even if this was the case, research has shown that autistic kids do not excrete mercury efficiently. The hair would not contain any measurable amounts of mercury. It's to bad that McGill University does not have any toxicologists who could have explained to Dr. Fombonne that his work was a waste of time and money.

If one was really interested in determining the body burden of mercury they would perform the urinary porphyrin profile analysis (UPPA). Porphyrins are precursors to heme, the oxygen carrying component of blood. Mercury inhibits the conversion of specific porphyrins to heme. This test is backed by decades of published research. Recently it was shown in two published, peer-reviewed studies, that mercury inhibited porphyrins were significantly higher in autistic patients when compared to age matched controls (1)(2). The other way to test for mercury in the body is by using a provoking agent and measuring mercury in the urine.


The organizers of this meeting did not reveal that when Dr. Fombonne isn't conducting epidemiological studies or doing heavy metal analysis, he is appearing on behalf of vaccine manufacturers defending the safety of mercury. Dr. Fombonne refers to the amount of mercury in vaccines as "trace". Again, if he were a toxicologist or chemist, he would realize that the concentration of mercury in a multi-dose vaccine vial is 250 times higher than what the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies as hazardous waste.

References:

(1) Nataf R, Lam A, Lathe R, Skorupka, C. 2006. Porphyrinurea in Childhood Autistic Disorders: Implications for Environmental Toxicity. Toxicol. Appl. Pramacol. 214(2):99-108

(2) Geier M, Geier D, 2006. A prospective assessment of porphyrins in autistic disorders: a potential marker for heavy metal exposure. Neurotox Res. Aug;10(1):57-64

About the Author: Michael Wagnitz has over 20 years experience evaluating materials for toxic metals. He currently works as a chemist in the toxicology section of a public health lab evaluating biological samples for lead and mercury.

Fombonne's Folly

Dr. Stoller on His Autism Journey and the CDC

Stoller was a pediatrician that saw only two cases of autism in his first decade and a half of practice, and came to the realization with the problems with the CDC and vaccines around the same time as I did in 2004 when he was testifying before the Senate on another medical matter. He highlights the ridiculous position of the CDC:

If we were talking about children going blind read how obscene this would sound:

“The number of children diagnosed with blindness is rapidly increasing. According to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one in every 150 U.S. children is blind. These numbers are startling and this disability is affecting more and more families. Twenty years ago blindness was a very rare case. Today blindness is becoming a frightening statistic in every community. April is Blindness Awareness Month and I encourage everyone to take this opportunity to learn more about this disability…”

It would be absurd to relate this information about blindness without giving any explanation about what was causing it. Everyone would be demanding answers, and I dare say there would be protests in the streets to say the least...

...No other disease in history has been subjected to the spin that has been put on autism....

...It seems the scientific world isn't concerned that more children will be diagnosed with autism this year than with AIDS, diabetes and pediatric cancer combined.

It is a long article. Read the whole thing.

Throwing children into oncoming traffic: The truth about Autism
By: Kenneth Stoller, MD, FAAP with Anne McElroy Dachel
Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

I have been a practicing pediatrician for over 20 years. I saw my first child with autism in the early 90’s – before that I had never seen an autistic child, and I never saw an autistic child in all my years at school. The boy was 4 years old and you could see the frustration in his face as he wanted to speak but nothing intelligible would come from his mouth except shrieks of anguish.

As I studied his tortured face, it was as if there was an old time telephone switchboard operator inside his head trying to plug in the correct phone cables but not being able to complete the call. This family had known me from an old practice I worked at in another city, but they had traveled to see me because they trusted me and were looking for answers that no one seemed to have for them, but I too had no answers and I could see the mom was greatly disappointed. After the family left my office I poured over a few dusty textbooks and wondered if I had just seen a very rare disorder, a disorder that affected one child in 10,000 children…autism.

I had been involved in pediatrics for a decade by the time I saw this boy and it wasn’t as if I had no experience working with rare disorders. I had been able to identify a boy with Fragile-X syndrome and his mom ending up starting the Fragile-X support group at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles.

I had noticed there was a strange upswing in children with attention disorders and impulsivity problems. I wasn’t a neurologist, but had studied with one of the finest at UCLA. While I was still a pediatric resident I spent time in his office where he helped me study the parade of unusual maladies that was starting to afflict children. I considered myself a closet neurologist, because that was what I had really wanted to specialize in – not pediatrics, but during my neurology rotation in medical school I learned some discouraging news. The attending neurologist, whom I greatly admired, had taken me on rounds for the first time and I watched him brilliantly explain to the family of a stroke patient how he had figured out where in the brain the blood clot had lodged. Then he stood up and walked out of the room and I asked him what therapy he was going to prescribe for the patient so he could recover from his stroke, “therapy?” he said, “there is no therapy.”

Well, I scratched neurology off my list…diagnosis was only meaningful if you could offer a treatment and it seemed neurology had few treatments to offer.

My second patient with autism came to me in the mid 1990’s, but to my relief the purpose of the visit was only to treat worms. I dutifully prescribed the medicine for pinworms and went on to my next patient. Later that afternoon I received a call from the autistic boy’s mom who wanted to know what was that medicine I had given her son for pinworms….her boy was starting to make eye contact, show affection and communicate with his family. She said it was amazing! I told her I didn’t really didn’t know what was in the pinworm pill but immediately prescribed enough pills for her son to take everyday for a month (normally you only take one or two pills to treat pinworms).

I called up the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the pinworm pill and spoke to one of their technical staff. They told me the pill worked by blocking the transport of molecules of a certain size from crossing cell membranes, so in the case of the hapless pinworms they were unable to absorb the sugars they feed upon in the lower intestines of their victims.

What did that have to do with this boy’s newly found improved behavior? Either one of two things were going on: 1) the drug was either blocking a molecule that shouldn’t be passing across the gut to the blood and then the brain and that molecule was having a drug-like affect on the brain, or; 2) the drug was blocking a molecule that normally crossed from the gut into the blood but in certain children these molecules had a strange drug-like affect.

I made several calls across the country to find a researcher who might be interested in this serendipitous finding which could be an important clue into this disease, because no where had I found anything saying that the guts of these children were involved in their disease. Unfortunately, no one I talked to was interested.

Testifying to Congress...

In May 2004, I had been invited to testify in front of the Government Reform Committee to discuss new developments in treating children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. I had been invited because of the work I was doing with hyperbaric oxygen in treating brain injured children, including fetal alcohol syndrome. Hyperbaric oxygen is where oxygen is given under pressure in chambers that are used to treat scuba divers who get the bends. I and several other physicians had found that hyperbaric oxygen was returning functionality to the brains of affected children.

Sitting next to me was a physician who told the story of his son who had become autistic after receiving vaccine and how he discovered his son was retaining toxic heavy metals, specifically mercury. Over the course of a year this physician had given his son a chemical to pull out the mercury and his son began speaking again and in fact jumped on his dad’s lap and addressed the Committee members having been restored to be a healthy boy without any signs of his autism.

In the 1990’s I had known there was a problem with many of the vaccines because they contained the preservative Thimerosal (50% mercury) and I had discouraged many parents from getting vaccine containing Thimerosal – there is no safe level of mercury, and it didn’t make sense to inject the most toxic non-radioactive element on the planet into children, but I never made the connection between autism and mercury. I knew what Thimerosal was because while I was in college my brother had a very bad reaction to the Thimerosal that used to be used in contact lens solution.

I was taken aback that something so obvious had not registered with me, but I didn’t realize that I and my physician colleagues had been subjected to a disinformation campaign to make us think there was no connection between mercury and autism. It has been known for sometime that mercury was causing autism, but someone was running interference. The question was who was running interference?

In February 2007, the watchdog agency on America's health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), made the official announcement that a breath-taking one in 150 kids is autistic in the U.S. If you go to the CDC website on autism (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism) you’d see lots of pictures of smiling happy children with autism and we’d be told that autism spectrum disorders are “a group of developmental disabilities defined by significant impairments in social interaction and communication and the presence of unusual behaviors and interests.”

You won’t be told that for many parents autism is a nightmare from which they never wake up. “Significant impairments” can mean that a child is violent and self-abusive, non-verbal, and physically sick. You won’t be told that this is a medical disease where most autistic children have significant inflammation in both gut and brain including colitis, super-infections and severe food allergies.

Even though autism affects one in 90 boys (four boys affected for every girl) in the U.S., the CDC can’t seem to tell us exactly why. The CDC states, “We still don’t know a lot about the causes of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). Scientists think that both genes and the environment play a role, and there might be many causes that lead to ASDs.”

The site also doesn’t mention that only one in 10,000 children in the 1970s, and one in 2,500 in the 1980s were autistic.

The CDC site also doesn’t tell us about a secret meeting that was held in June of 2000 where over 50 individuals from the CDC, WHO, NIH, American Academy of Pediatrics, and many representatives from pharmaceutical interests discussed data from the CDC Vaccine Data Sets showing that the increase in mercury exposure from the stepped-up vaccine schedule in the 1990’s caused an 11 fold increase in neurobehavioral disorders (www.autismhelpforyou.com/Simpsonwood_And_Puerto%20%20Rico.htm). What you will see on the CDC website is “Several studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and autism. The weight of the evidence indicates that vaccines are not associated with autism.”

Evidence? Someone at the CDC was ‘cooking the books’ and what they told the public was not what they knew to be the case. You see, the CDC was put in the untenable position of helping to develop vaccines, mandate the vaccines, promote the vaccines, pay for their administration and be responsible for their safety – Ye olde fox watching the hen house scenario with the inevitable untoward result. There will always be a problem with vaccine safety until this responsibility is moved out of the CDC. Today, the CDC and its vaccine public-relation front group’s answer to any criticism is that the motivations of those that are critical of any part of the vaccine program are because they really want to destroy the vaccine program.

The truth is that the CDC has been very effective in laying the foundation to destroy the vaccine program all by themselves and their double speak is analogous to someone saying you can’t be against war and support the troops at the same time, you’re either for us or against us, etc. It is actually illegal for a federal agency to propagandize the American public, but that is exactly what the vaccine division of the CDC does. It has used the tactic of generating fear and it has earned billions of dollars for this agency.

Once the public loses trust in public health programs it can take many years to regain that trust. I am reminded of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments that are still a cause of distrust of public health programs amongst Black Americans.

Losing the Public Trust...

The cover-up at the CDC surrounding the mercury preservative found in so many vaccines (up until about 2003) has had very serious far-reaching implications. The children whose lives were forever changed by being injected with Thimerosal preservative were giving us a global ‘heads-up.’ They were showing us that the background level of mercury pollution has increased to the point that it is beginning to take its toll on the human species, but the CDC turned its head away from this crisis because it conflicted with what they were promoting in the vaccine program.

As I said before, mercury is the deadliest non-radioactive element on Earth, and 1000s of tons are spewed into the environment every year. With each coal-fire power plant that comes on line we are one step closer to exterminating human life on this planet. However, mercury is politically protected because of its connection with the fossil-fuel industry, dentistry (amalgam dental filings), and vaccine.

Thimerosal is still in the flu vaccine for children above the age of 3 and they are receiving as much as half of the dose of mercury that the child in the ‘90’s received. Thimerosal was not removed from vaccine in 1999. That was when the promise was made, but promises weren’t kept. Thimerosal is also in the meningitis vaccine.

Lower IQ levels linked to mercury exposure in the womb cost the USA $8.7 billion a year in lost-earnings potential according to a study done by the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and the Environment (http://fusion.mssm.edu/media/content.cfm?storynum=252). If it were publicly acknowledged that mercury pollution was the trigger for the autism epidemic this number would be in the trillions of dollars. One in six children is born to mothers with dangerous levels of mercury in their blood – perhaps the same one in six that the CDC admits have a neurobehavioral disorder.

Our regulatory agencies, such as the FDA and the EPA, have been taken over by the very industries they were mandated to regulate and the revolving door between industry and top-level appointees at these regulatory agencies has eliminated many of the normal safeguards we have relied on for our protection.

There is no disputing the numbers. Last month the Tonawanda News in New York reported “cases of autism in the state jumped from fewer than 2,000 in 1992 to 9,500 in 2003.” Even worse was the number of affected children in New York schools in 2005-2006 according to the Dept. of Education. New York’s autism total had increased to 12,257.

Maybe what we really need to be made aware of is what the eventual cost of autism will be to the U.S. The Autism Society of America tells us that autism is growing by 10-17% a year. They also say that it currently costs $90 billion a year and it's projected to increase to $200-400 billion annually in ten more years. A Harvard study out last year put the cost of lifetime support conservatively at $3.2 million per individual.

April was Autism Awareness month, but why are we only asking for awareness and not for answers? This is a glaring omission when we’re talking about so many affected children. Awareness, treatment, and identification are critical but so is preventing autism.

If we were talking about children going blind read how obscene this would sound:

“The number of children diagnosed with blindness is rapidly increasing. According to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one in every 150 U.S. children is blind. These numbers are startling and this disability is affecting more and more families. Twenty years ago blindness was a very rare case. Today blindness is becoming a frightening statistic in every community. April is Blindness Awareness Month and I encourage everyone to take this opportunity to learn more about this disability…”

It would be absurd to relate this information about blindness without giving any explanation about what was causing it. Everyone would be demanding answers, and I dare say there would be protests in the streets to say the least.

The CDC and Autism...

CDC director Julie Gerberding announced the new autism rate of one in every 150 children with a flourish. She said that while there were more kids being diagnosed with autism, it doesn't mean the autism was necessarily on the rise. No one in the press seemed concerned that the CDC has been counting kids with autism for years and still can't tell us if there are actually more of them. After all, it’s just "better diagnosing by doctors" and "better statistics by the Centers for Disease Control." And now we learn that the Autism Genome Project (AGP) recently uncovered evidence shows that autism is caused by "genetic flaws.”

Common sense would tell us that pushing children onto a busy street, observing that some of them were injured, and then looking for a genetic reason why some of them were hit defies credulity.

No other disease in history has been subjected to the spin that has been put on autism.

Dr. Ezra Susser, chairman of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York indicated that he believed the new genetic findings would help scientists to understand how "the environment might lead to autism by causing genetic changes."

Susser said, "It shows us that we need to think about many environmental factors that might influence autism."

The new genetic findings on autism got a lot of coverage from major news outlets and reports made it look like we're on the cutting edge of a major autism breakthrough. But let’s do a reality check here, genes don't just spontaneously and randomly mutate all by themselves. There has to be an environmental agent affecting these genes.

Some will have you believe that autism is some medical mystery that's always been around but we just haven't been able to get a handle on. So, show me the 30 year olds with autism, the 40 year olds with autism, and the 50 year olds with autism. Guess what? They aren’t there for the most part. The explosion in the number of children with autism is real but most of the scientific community has ignored this. Let’s face it they have been encouraged to ignore it, and anyone getting close to the truth finds that they get their NIH research grants pulled.

That’s right…science is being manipulated so that a big lie can stay alive and those culpable can remain unaccountable.

It seems the scientific world isn't concerned that more children will be diagnosed with autism this year than with AIDS, diabetes and pediatric cancer combined. News stories about autistic kids are now beginning to reveal the duplicity of CDC officials. These reports clearly show that this isn't something we have all the time in the world to theorize and ponder about.

All the experts searching diligently for those elusive genetic mutations seem blissfully unaware of the impact of autism on our schools and the impending disaster, as these autistic children become autistic adults. Anyone looking at the graphs and charts based on Department of Education statistics showing the soaring autism numbers has got to be worried. The dramatic increase in children in our schools disabled with autism is a scary preview of the impact they will have on the Social Security System in the next five to ten years.

Michael Ganz's Harvard study last year conservatively put the lifetime care cost for one autistic individual at $3.2 million dollars.

Robert Krakow from Lifespire gives us estimates that put the lifespan cost at $10.125 million per autistic individual. This figure is based on an annual rate for each person of $225,000 with a life expectancy of 66 years. It doesn't include the cost for the period up to age 21.

One of the many questions we need to ask ourselves is if the very integrity of the biosphere on this planet is in jeopardy unless there is an immediate curtailment of manmade mercury pollution. Coal miners don’t look at a dead canary and blow it off or say they have just “gotten better at diagnosing dead canaries,” or “that dead canary just had a genetic defect so pay no heed.” Yet that is exactly analogous to the situation we find ourselves. We continue to pollute the planet and ourselves (there is no separation), yet the very governmental agency that would normally be taking the lead in sounding this 5 alarm alert has been compromised and remains less than silent. Mercury pollution should be considered a global crime against humanity, against mammalian life on this planet and there should be zero tolerance.

If you want to know why more isn’t being done for autistic children, why there has been a strange cover-up of the facts, then simply follow the mercury and those that benefit from its use.

Kenneth Stoller, MD, FAAP is medical director of the Hyperbaric Medical Center of New Mexico (www.hbotnm.com) and the Hyperbaric Oxygen Clinic of Sacramento (www.hbot.info). He is President of the International Hyperbaric Medical Association. He can be reached at: info@hbotnm.com

Anne McElroy Dachel of Chippewa Falls, WI is a member of A-CHAMP (Advocates for Children's Health Affected by Mercury Poisoning) and the National Autism Association (NAA). She can be reached at: amdachel@msn.com.

The Age of Autism: Ground Zero

The Age of Autism: Ground Zero
By DAN OLMSTED

This column has long made the controversial case that autism had a beginning, a "big bang" if you will. That moment was 1930 -- no U.S. cases before then fully match the classic description of the disorder. Now let's take the next logical step: Not only did autism have a big bang, it also had a ground zero -- a place where many of the first cases concentrated before the disorder exploded nationwide. Ground zero was the nation's capital, in particular the Maryland suburbs where cutting-edge government research in the 1930s and 1940s exposed families to the chemical that first triggered the baffling disorder.

The foundation of this argument was laid out in the most recent Age of Autism column, "Mercury link to Case 2." Case 2 was known only as Frederick W., but we identified him as the son of a prominent plant pathologist named Frederick L. Wellman. At the time "Frederick W." was born, we showed, the senior Wellman was doing advanced work at the U.S. Agriculture Department's Beltsville research center in suburban Maryland, just outside the nation ' s capital. Wellman was experimenting with plant fungi and ways to kill them, and his extensive archive makes clear one compound he studied was ethyl mercury fungicide -- the exact kind also used in the controversial vaccine preservative thimerosal, which many parents blame for the recent rise in reported cases (mainstream experts say it has been ruled out as a cause).

Ethyl mercury in both vaccines and fungicides was pioneered and patented in the 1920s through the work of Morris S. Kharasch. When Kharasch filed the first relevant patents, he was a chemistry professor at the University of Maryland in College Park, which actually adjoins the Beltsville research center.

More links to Washington are evident in other early cases described in 1943 by Johns Hopkins University child psychiatrist Leo Kanner, who first diagnosed the disorder in Frederick W. and 10 other children born in the 1930s. Reading between the lines of his landmark 1943 paper, the very first autistic child seen at Hopkins (in 1935) was "Alfred L.," whose father was a lawyer and chemist at the U.S. Patent Office. Also a clear connection to newly patented chemicals, the federal government and the nation ' s capital. A child later profiled by Kanner was named Gary T. "Gary originally lived in Philadelphia," Kanner wrote in 1951. "The family then moved to Greenbelt, to Chicago, and back to Greenbelt." Take a look at Greenbelt, Md.: It also abuts the Beltsville agricultural center in the Washington suburbs.

Recently, a mutual friend in Washington introduced me to a 58-year-old man with Asperger's disorder, the milder version of autism. We got together for lunch, and when I asked where in the Washington area he lived, I was both startled and somehow not surprised: Riverdale, Md. That's another Washington suburb that clusters with the College Park-Beltsville-Greenbelt dots I was already plotting. What's more, he was born there in 1948 in the same house he lives in now.

I asked what his father did. He told me he was an engineer. That fits a stereotype of Asperger's affecting kids of scientists and engineers -- the so-called "geek syndrome," nerdy brainiacs hooking up to somehow spawn a generation of kids with "autism lite." I asked him what kind of engineer his father was. The answer: a mechanical engineer who tested guns for the Navy at the time he was born. And where was that? At what is now the Naval Surface Warfare Center in White Oak, Md. -- just a hop and a skip across I-95 from the Beltsville agriculture center.

I already had come across his father's line of work. In a 1972 paper, Kanner talked about a child named "Walter P.," born in June 1944. His father, too, was "an ordnance engineer for the federal government." Kanner didn't say where Walter P. was from, but the similarity makes me wonder. Mercury fulminate was widely used as a detonator for explosives and armaments. Could those two fathers, like Frederick W., be linked to cutting-edge research involving mercury? (My Riverdale acquaintance said his father sometimes brought containers of mercury home from the weapons center for the kids to play with.)

And is that kind of research a reason Leo Kanner, at Johns Hopkins in nearby Baltimore, started seeing cases of this "markedly and uniquely" different disorder in the 1930s and 1940s? Just last week I got an e-mail from the mother of a child with autism who lives on the other side of the country; her son was born nowhere near what I'm calling ground zero. But as I outlined this idea to her, she had a shock of recognition:

"I lived on a farm in Burtonsville, Md., while young and it is near Beltsville. The farm was surrounded by forest and abutted the Patuxent River." Of course, not all the early cases cluster this way. But of the two other original "Kanner kids" from his 1943 paper that I ' ve been able to identify along with Frederick W., one grew up in a town called Forest, Miss., a center of timber farming and planting; the other was the son of a forestry professor at North Carolina State University. Ethyl mercury fungicides were used to treat seeds, saplings and lumber in the 1930s, and in both places (as well as in Beltsville) the newly launched Civilian Conservation Corps was hard at work planting trees, cutting timber and building things with it. To sum up: The first cases of autism seem to radiate outward from a central point -- as big bangs tend to do. As those exposures expanded, so did autism.

This suggests a new and deeply disturbing truth about the Age of Autism: our fate is not in our genes, Dear Brutus, but in the chemicals that increasingly pollute our world and our children.

CDC To Have Open Meeting On Thimerosal

Go.

Seriously. Go to the meeting.

From NAA:

CONTROVERSIAL VACCINE PRESERVATIVE TO BE DISCUSSED AT UPCOMING CDC MEETING, SAYS NATIONAL AUTISM ASSOCIATION

Parents and Advocacy Groups request flu shots recommended for pregnant women, infants and children be mercury-free

Nixa, MO – The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will meet in two weeks at the CDC in Atlanta. Thimerosal, a controversial mercury-based vaccine preservative still used in flu shots, is scheduled to be discussed on the morning of February 21st.

While thimerosal has been phased out of some vaccines, it is still present in flu shots recommended for pregnant women, infants and young children. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines indicate that the 25 micrograms of mercury contained in flu shots is unsafe for anyone weighing less than 550 pounds.

Earlier this week, the CDC released a report citing 1 in 150 children are now diagnosed with autism—up from 1 in 166 just two years prior. Many parents and scientists believe the increased use of mercury-containing vaccines starting in the late 1980’s has led to the rise in cases.

“Children and fetuses are still being exposed unnecessarily to this neurotoxin,” says father Christian McIlwain of Cary, North Carolina. “With the recently added recommendations that influenza vaccines be given to women during any stage of pregnancy and children from age six months and up, the amount of early-age thimerosal exposure through recommended vaccines has increased drastically in the last two years—it’s simply time for the committee to advise that only thimerosal-free vaccines be used for pregnant women and young children.”

Despite multiple requests by the research group SafeMinds and the National Autism Association, this is the first time ACIP has put thimerosal on the agenda in several years. Advocacy groups were told by the CDC that thimerosal would be discussed at the October 2006 ACIP meeting, but it was never officially assigned.

ACIP consists of 15 experts in fields associated with immunization that have been selected by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide advice on immunizations. It develops written recommendations for the routine administration of vaccines to the pediatric and adult populations, and is the only entity in the federal government that makes such recommendations.

Parents are urged to attend the ACIP meeting, or send letters to the committee via e-mail to naa@nationalautism.org

Parents can also register to attend the meeting by visiting www.cdc.gov/nip/acip/dates.htm.

To learn more about autism, visit www.nationalautism.org.

Pringle on Ayoub on Thimerosal

David Ayoub MD - Thimerosal Definite Cause Of Autism
By Evelyn Pringle

To what degree of scientific certainty can we prove that current
epidemic of autism was caused by the mercury-based preservative,
thimerosal, in childhood vaccines?

In response to this question, David Ayoub, MD, told Independent
Media TV, ''I can state that the certainty of the science
supporting mercury as a major cause of autism is probably more
overpowering than the science behind any other disease process that
I studied dating back to medical school.''

"I think a disease that effects more individuals than AIDS or
cancer, in previously normal infants and children," he states, "has
created a sense of urgency amongst researchers."

According to Ayoub, "A growing number of experimental,
epidemiological and biochemical research, has unequivocally shown
that mercury is directly linked to the development of autism
spectrum disorders and is significantly toxic to the
gastrointestinal, immunological, metabolic and neurobiological
systems in children."

"The science of causality is known and understood down to the
manner in which mercury impairs the neural pathways of attention,"
he adds, "I really don't see the need for more research to prove
causality." He believes the focus should be "directed towards
methods to remove mercury from the body and repairing those
biochemical systems that are injured by mercury."

Ayoub is the Director of the Prairie Collaborative for
Immunization, an organization that is self-funded, which aids
organizations, journalists, and legislators obtain accurate
information to assist their work. He is also the author of the
report, "Pregnancy and the Myth of Influenza Vaccination-Is it
safe, is it effective, is it necessary? What the CDC documents
reveal."

Vaccines With Thimerosal

When asked what vaccines still contain the mercury-based,
thimerosal, Ayoub said, "The major culprit today is the influenza
vaccine." About 80% of flu vaccines contain as much as 25
micrograms of mercury per dose. Since the EPA has set a limit of
0.1 mcg/kg (1 kg =2.2 lbs), Ayoub warns, everyone who receives the
vaccine will be overdosed.

He explained that in 1999, "the Public Health Service (including
the CDC and FDA), the American Academy of Pediatrics, and vaccine
manufacturers agreed that thimerosal levels in vaccines should be
reduced or eliminated."

However, he adds, "Contradicting its own policy, the CDC then
increased mercury exposure to the fetus and infant by allowing the
inoculation of pregnant women and young infants with the
mercury-containing influenza vaccine."

On May 28, 2004, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice of
the CDC released its annual report with recommendations for the
prevention of influenza. The report included pregnant women amongst
those who should receive the flu vaccine, even though the report
noted only a minimal benefit from the vaccine in pregnant women:

"Researchers estimate that an average of 1-2 hospitalizations can
be prevented for every 1,000 pregnant women vaccinated" (1, page 10)

In fact, for the 2003-04 flu season, the CDC reported "only 3 to
14% of those who got vaccinated were protected against the flu." It
seems overly aggressive, Ayoub maintains, for the CDC to recommend
that all pregnant women be vaccinated when, in fact, scientific
data to date shows only marginal benefits and the only documented
benefit seems to be fewer hospitalizations, not fewer morbidities
or mortalities.

The benefit of influenza vaccination during pregnancy becomes even
more questionable when considering the resulting risks to unborn
infants. According to the ACIP, the safety of influenza vaccination
is established by the following research:

One study of influenza vaccination of 2,000 pregnant women
demonstrated no adverse fetal effects associated with influenza
vaccine."

However, according to Ayoub, "In the April 12, 2002 MMWR, this same
statement was followed by the caveat "additional data are needed to
confirm the safety of vaccination during pregnancy." The comment
was then dropped from the CDC's 2004 version of the report, but no
new safety data was cited.

This solitary reference cited to establish influenza vaccine safety
was co-authored by researchers at Boston University in 1973, but
Ayoub advises that, "Upon closer inspection ... the study appears
to have very little to do with influenza vaccine safety, but rather
that of polio vaccination safety during pregnancy."

It is inexplicable, Ayoub says, that the ACIP would cite a paper in
support of its conclusion of influenza vaccine safety while the
Institute of Medicine rejected the same paper on the basis of the
flawed analysis of polio vaccine safety.

Few doctors realize that most flu vaccines contain 25 micrograms of
mercury per dose. Both the EPA and FDA's allowable daily exposure
limits are 0.1 microgram per kg, meaning that recipients of a flu
vaccine must weigh at least 550 pounds to meet federal exposure
guidelines.

Therefore, by injecting the mother, the fetus would receive a dose
of mercury that exceeds the federal limits by several hundred-fold.
Furthermore, Ayoub adds, all federal guidelines are based upon
studies of exposure tolerances in adults, not a fetus.

He questions why the CDC is so certain that ethylmercury can be
safely injected into children or pregnant women, when the FDA and
EPA have stated that ingestion of methylmercury can have harmful
effects on the fetus, with warnings such as:

"some fish and shellfish contain higher levels of mercury that may
harm an unborn baby or young child's developing nervous system. . .
. Therefore, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are advising women who may
become pregnant, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young
children to avoid some types of fish and eat fish and shellfish
that are lower in mercury. . . While it is true that the primary
danger from methylmercury in fish is to the developing nervous
system of the unborn child, it is prudent for nursing mothers and
young children not to eat these fish as well."

More recent studies have detailed the life-long damage of mercury
to the brains of unborn children. For instance, on Feb 28, 2005,
the Associated Press reported, "Lower IQ levels linked to mercury
exposure in the womb costs the United States $8.7 billion a year in
lost earnings potential, according to a study released Monday by
researchers at a New York hospital."

The Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and the Environment
combined a number of previous studies to determine hundreds of
thousands of babies are born every year with lower IQ associated
with mercury exposure, according to AP.

Lead researcher and pediatician, Leonard Trasande, reports that
annually, between 316,588 and 637,233 infants are born with
umbilical cord blood mecury levels linked to IQ loss.

As an example, Trasande said each year, about 4% of babies are with
blood mercury levels between 7.13 and 15 micrograms per liter. That
level of mercury causes an IQ loss of 1.6 points, the researchers
concluded.

A 1.6 point drop in IQ could cost a person more than $31,000
over a lifetime, the study calculated, due to missed educational
opportunities or jobs.

Manufacturers of the flu vaccine themselves, include package
inserts that admit adequate studies have not been conducted on this
vaccine. For example, the Fluzone insert stated:

"Animal reproduction studies have not been conducted with Influenza
Virus Vaccine. It is not known whether Influenza Virus Vaccine can
cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman or can
affect reproduction capacity."

Considering the rapid growth of autism, and other related
neurodevelopmental disorders, and the number of reports documenting
the causal relationship to mercury-based preservatives, Ayoub
advises, "influenza vaccines should not be administered to pregnant
women, and perhaps other high-risk groups, especially young
children."

Why Would FDA & CDC Approve Mercury-Based Vaccines?

Ayoub believes that the CDC and FDA embrace marginal research and
unsupported policies because of conflicts of interests. It may come
as a surprise to most physicians, he explains, "that the CDC has a
built-in conflict of interest with regards to its dual role in
vaccine policy." One limb of the CDC that oversees vaccine safety
has a budget of approximately $30 million, while the limb that
promotes vaccine usage (ACIP and NIP) has a $1 billion budget, he
says.

The CDC and FDA policy decisions are made through physician
advisory panels whose members often have financial relationships
with the very same pharmaceutical companies that they are supposed
to regulate.

For example, during a congressional hearing on potential conflicts
of interests at the FDA, it was revealed that 60% of the advisory
members who voted to approve the poisonous rotavirus vaccine had
financial ties to the drug companies manufacturing the vaccine. The
committee also found that 50% of the CDC members were tied to the
rotavirus makers.

However, according to Ayoub, the CDC and FDA do not have exclusive
rights in coddling the industry. An investigation of doctors
involved in co-authoring forty-four different Clinical Practice
Guidelines for drug companies found:

85% of guideline authors have some sort of relationships with drug
companies, and they are often not disclosed

38% of respondents said they had served as employees or consultants
for drug companies; 58% received research money

59% had links with drug companies whose medications were considered
in the particular guidelines they authored, almost all cases
predating the guideline creation process

These numbers may be even greater, as only 52% of authors responded

"Most clinicians would be surprised by these revelations which
challenge the blanket trust of a healthcare governance with
uncomfortably close ties to the pharmaceutical industry," Ayoub
says.

Available Treatment For Autism

When asked what treatments are available for autism, Ayoub said
"The buzz these days is chelation," but there is no short answer to
this. Suffice it to say, there are 2 ways to get mercury out of the
body - one is pull it out directly by chelation agents."

The 2 top chelation people in the world are Gary Gordon, MD, and
Rashid Buttar, MD, he adds.

Chelation agents such as DMPS and DTPA, are given orally, by IV,
and recently with transdermal as a cream. According to Ayoub, the
agents essentially bind free blood or loosely bound heavy metal
agents, and eliminate them through stool and urine. They lower the
total body burden and allow for natural redistribution from brain
to blood for further removal. Ayoub claims side effects are
uncommon, and the process is far safer than a vaccine.

The other method of removing mercury from the body is through a
variety of biomedical therapies, all dietary or supplemental, "most
of which act to jumps start the bodies own internal mercury
detoxification pathways," Ayoub explains, but "the science here is
very sophisticated," he added.

However, unfortunately, "many parents read about a diet or
supplement, try one or two therapies on their own and fail," he
says, and that "treatment is very dependent upon the experience of
the health care provider, critically so," he advises.

Why The Constant Denial?

Ayoub was asked why government agencies and the pharmaceutical
industry, are working so hard to keep the truth about the
mercury-autism link hidden. He says it is a long story, but the
main reason is because if they admitted guilt, it would mean the
government agencies, drug companies and medical organizations,
"have taken part in the largest iatrogenic epidemic known to man."

The fallout over admission of causality would be unprecedented,
Ayoub adds. The lost confidence in American medicine would likely
cause people to turn to alternative methods of medicine, and a rise
in deeper investigation might reveal the truth about other
suppressions related to cancer therapy, hypertension Rx, or
Atherosclerosis.

Ayoub told Independent Media, "This is really the tip of the
iceberg and I see a waterfall effect."

A-CHAMP needs You

From A-CHAMP:

A-CHAMP needs YOU!!!

Passion and Drive alone will not get the work done!

A-CHAMP is a national, non-partisan political action committee formed by parents in support of children with neurodevelopmental and communication disorders. We are dedicated to advancing public policy issues affecting our children, protecting their human and civil rights, educating the public and media, supporting candidates sharing our goals in state and federal elections, and holding accountable those in government who do not act in the best interest of our children.

In our short history, we have successfully:

• Initiated and coordinated state legislative efforts aimed at banning thimerosal from vaccines, achieving success in California, Delaware, Iowa, Missouri, New York and Washington

• Took the lead and forged a collaboration with 50 organizations leading to the passage of an autism insurance reform law that stops discrimination against treatment for autism spectrum disorder. Effective 1/1/07

• Contributed significant background documentation to the Columbia Journalism Review that resulted in an impressive critique of the NY Times and other media coverage regarding the thimerosal/autism controversy.

• Provided information for Robert Kennedy, Jr., contributing to his article “Deadly Immunity” which appeared in Rolling Stone and Salon.com. and Huffington Post op-eds.

• Coordinated The Power of Parents Rally in Washington, DC, October, 2005, gaining support from over 70 other organizations.

• Coordinated The Mercury Generation March and Lobbying Day in Washington, DC in coordination with the DAN! Conference in April, 2006

...and much more.


NOW for us to take on the tough issues for the years to come, we need your help. Our plan includes:

• Acceptance of the biomedical treatments our children need
• Insurance reform to pay for those treatments (state and federal)
• Legislation aimed at respite services and supportive home care
• Environmental research that focuses on vaccines
• Safer mercury-free vaccines and drugs
• Obtaining access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink
• Access to justice and reform of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

How can you help? We need donations to keep working for the children. Whether the donation is for $5 or $5,000, any donation is appreciated.

We have established a donations page on our website through Pay Pal, available at http://www.a-champ.org/donate.html .
If you would prefer to send a check to help continue the work of A-CHAMP, please make check payable to "A-CHAMP" mail it to:
A-CHAMP
c/o R. Krakow
2001 Marcus Avenue
Suite N125
Lake Success
New York 11042.

Your donations are appreciated will make a difference no matter how much or how little you contribute.
Sincerely,

A-CHAMP


A-Champ is a 501 (c)4 Political Action Organization, all donations are not tax deductible.
http://www.a-champ.org/donate.html

On behalf of all of kids thank you!

Exporting Mercury

U.S. Agency Considers Selling Toxic Stockpile
By Michael Hawthorne
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
November 27, 2006

While the Bush administration promotes efforts to scrub mercury from the
environment, one federal agency is considering selling a huge stockpile of
the toxic metal on the world market.

The Department of Energy acknowledged last week that it is mulling whether
to unload more than 1,300 tons of mercury it collected over the years for
processing materials used to make hydrogen bombs.

Agency officials started discussing a potential sale after U.S. Sen. Barack
Obama (D-Ill.) introduced legislation last summer that would prohibit
American exports of the silvery metal. That bill has a better chance of
passing now that Democrats control Congress.

The need for mercury in military and industrial processes has evaporated
with the development of less harmful alternatives. But the federal
government still holds reserves that account for three-quarters of the
national supply.

If the mercury is sold overseas, scientists and environmental groups are
concerned that it will drift back to the U.S. through air pollution.

"They know it's a global pollutant that can harm people, especially pregnant
women and children," said Linda Greer, director of the environment and
health program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "If they flood the
market, how do we persuade the rest of the world to work on solving this
problem?"

An Energy Department spokeswoman declined to provide details about the
agency's potential mercury sale, other than to confirm that the option is
under consideration. The agency's stockpile is five times larger than all of
the mercury exported by U.S. businesses in 2004, the last year for which
figures are available.

`Health and ecological risks'

By contrast, the Defense Department decided two years ago to keep its
4,400-ton stockpile off the market. The agency said it opted to store the
mercury to avoid "human health and ecological risks."

Once used widely in batteries, electrical switches and chlorine
manufacturing, mercury now is considered one of the world's most toxic
substances.

Mercury pollution that falls into lakes and rivers is converted into a
dangerous organic form that moves up the food chain from fish to people. The
federal government estimated last year that 410,000 babies are born each
year at risk for mercury poisoning in the U.S. because of high levels in
their mother's bodies.

The largest manmade source of mercury pollution is emissions from coal-fired
power plants, which are responsible for about half of the 3,000 tons of
mercury churned into the atmosphere each year, according to the United
Nations Environment Program.

Bush administration officials have been promoting rules that would curb
emissions from power plants. They also have been encouraging efforts to
recycle mercury-filled switches and other devices.

Gold mining in developing countries is the second largest source of mercury
emissions, releasing about 1,000 tons a year. The UN says most of the
mercury sold on the world market ends up in small-scale mining operations
with little or no equipment to prevent the metal from being released into
the air.

Price is on the rise

The price of mercury has increased along with gold prices during the last
five years. Sellers can fetch more than $700 for a 76-pound flask of
mercury, up from $150 six years ago, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The European Union is considering a ban on mercury exports, which supporters
argue would shrink global supplies and drive up the cost enough to encourage
alternatives.

"These alternatives will not be adopted by developing countries, however, as
long as mercury remains readily available in worldwide commerce," Obama
wrote this month in a letter urging Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to block
the agency from selling its stockpile.

A deluge of mercury already is expected on the world market. Two American
chemical plants that use large amounts of mercury to make chlorine are
shutting down, and Obama is pushing another bill that would require six
other chlorine plants to close or switch to mercury-free technology by 2012.

Those plants turn salt, or sodium chloride, into chlorine gas and caustic
soda by pumping a briny solution through electrified vats of mercury. The
industry had more than 2,600 tons of mercury on hand at the end of 2005,
according to the Chlorine Institute, a trade group.

Industry representatives have said they are willing to give up the mercury
if the federal government agrees to take it.

So far federal officials have only agreed to study the issue.

"At this point, we don't support an export ban," said Maria Doa, director of
the National Program Chemicals Division at the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. "We want to address the issue of all this excess mercury, but we
need to do it in cooperation with the various stakeholders."

Critics say the Defense Department's decision to set aside its surplus
mercury shows it can be done elsewhere. The 7,500 tons currently held by
government and industry could be stored in a climate-controlled warehouse
the size of a Wal-Mart, Greer said.

`The government is paralyzed'

"For some reason, the government is paralyzed on this," said Michael Bender,
director of the Mercury Policy Project, an advocacy group. "But given what
we know about the toxicity of mercury, keeping it off the world market
should be a no-brainer."

----------

mhawthorne@tribune.com
Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune

Kirby on HuffPo: The Other Secret Bush Court?

The Other Secret Bush Court?
David Kirby
The Huffington Post

Next year, a "Special Master" in an obscure Federal court known only to a few Americans will preside over a highly sensitive judicial matter of urgent national importance. The Bush Administration wants to hold the hearings in a sealed courtroom, off limits to the press and public, with stiff "sanctions" for any outsider who attempts to gain unauthorized access to the secretive proceedings within.

Terror trials in faraway Gitmo? Good guess. But these are vaccine trials on New York Avenue, in downtown Washington, at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

You may not know it, but there is an official federal "vaccine court," where some 4,750 autism-related cases have been pending for years. Claimants believe the mercury-based vaccine preservative, thimerosal, and/or the MMR vaccine, contributed to their children's autism, and they are seeking compensation from a special vaccine injury fund administered by the federal government.

The long-awaited autism vaccine trial will commence on June 11 in the courtroom of Special Master George Hastings. The plaintiffs and their attorneys have asked for complete transparency in every aspect of the tribunal, including public disclosure of all evidence and unhindered media access to the hearings. The few autism families whose medical records will be scrutinized as legal examples are waiving their right to privacy and confidentiality, so that their stories may finally be told in an open court of law.

But the DOJ (technically, the "defense") has other plans. On November 3rd, the Department wrote to Hastings saying it "would oppose public access to the courtroom and public broadcast of the trial," because such an arrangement. "would pose security and privacy concerns" for those in attendance.

Exactly whose privacy are they trying to protect? It can't be the parents, because they don't want privacy. The only party fretting about privacy is the DOJ itself, and presumably, the vaccine makers. (As for "security" concerns, isn't that why we have court officers?).

The government may call this privacy, but I call it secrecy. In fact, there has been a long and unseemly history of secrecy when it comes to federal data on thimerosal and autism.

And let's face it: People don't hide something unless they have something to hide.

Back in 2002, Health and Human Services lawyers quietly slipped into vaccine court to file a protection order to permanently seal all thimerosal-related documents. They proposed sanctions for any lawyer who shared the secret government information with autism families, the public or the press. All thimerosal data would be banned from use in future civil cases, and any materials already given to plaintiffs would be rounded up by federal agents and destroyed. The motion was withdrawn after appropriate public outcry.

Many of those federal documents pertained to an off-limits database called the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), which tracks the medical records of hundreds of thousands of American children. Lawyers for the families have tried to gain access to the VSD for years, including a 2004 "Motion to Compel" that went nowhere.

In 2005, the Institute of Medicine issued a report slamming the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which manages the VSD, for a "lack of transparency" in handling the data. Even more alarming, CDC officials testified that the original datasets they examined had "not been archived in a standard fashion," meaning they were either lost, or destroyed. Take your pick.

If the disappearance of these datasets was intentional, that would be a clear violation of the federal Data Quality Act. No wonder the IOM urged vaccine officials to "seek legal advice" on the status of the missing records.

But those missing datasets could well have been a bonanza to attorneys for the autism parents. Now they are gone.

And, without access to any of the raw data to which government lawyers are privy, the families' cases are woefully, and unconstitutionally, disadvantaged. In what other American court of law are defendants allowed access to evidence that is kept secret from plaintiffs?

Meanwhile, family lawyers have received 216,000 pages of discovery materials, sourced from federal agencies and private companies alike. They might well paint an incriminating portrait of thimerosal's role in autism, and that may be why individuals face a $250,000 penalty for any paper that is leaked.

But some documents have already been leaked, including one published in the Los Angeles Times showing that Merck officials knew of the cumulative and alarmingly high levels of mercury in vaccines way back in 1991, but said nothing about it to anyone.

Are there other incriminating memos from Merck (or Lilly or Glaxo, etc.)? My sources indicate that there are, but we may never get to see them. And now, by barring public access to the trial, we may never get to hear them, either.

If the DOJ has its way, only claimants and their attorneys will be allowed to sit in the courtroom, or receive password-enabled access to a live audio webcast of the trial. The media will be barred, and so will everyone else. And though there will be an official written transcript, such documents are sometimes redacted, or even sealed, after the trial.

As a journalist, I will be subject to "sanctions" if I sit in on a webcast without authorization from the court. In fact, unauthorized access to the proceedings, according to the DOJ proposal, might lead to "termination of the webcast and closing of the courtroom."

What remains unclear is whether journalists will be prosecuted for interviewing families who have access to the webcast, or who attend the trial in person. But if I get arrested for hanging around outside the court with my pen and notepad, don't blame me for trying.

Curiously, a final reason cited for barring reporters and others from vaccine court is that "opening the courtroom to the general public would make it more difficult for claimants themselves to attend." I know plenty of parents who would gladly give up their seat for, say, Wolf Blitzer or Brian Williams, but the DOJ apparently hasn't asked them.

I think it's safe to say that the Bush Administration does not want this trial publicized. That seems curious to me. The entire thimerosal question will likely be left up to just one man: Special Master Hastings. Whether he decides for the parents, or for the DOJ, his ruling will forever be considered within a vacuum, subject to intense criticism from either side, unless he agrees that all thimerosal evidence should at long last be made public.

I hope he rules that his courtroom is not Guantanamo. These parents, and the public at large, deserve no less.

----------

PS: My last post predicted that most autism parents would be voting Democratic this November, without giving proper credit to two members of the House GOP. Dan Burton (R-IN) and Dave Weldon (R-FL) are among the most open minded members when it comes to the mercury-autism hypothesis, and I apologize for the omission.

Meanwhile, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has been hostile, at best, to the theory. I congratulate Rep. Waxman on his ascendancy to the House Government Reform Committee Chairmanship, and respectfully ask him to read "Evidence of Harm," and, if possible and when he has time, to offer a response on the Huffington Post.