By Kelly
Patricia O'Meara
� 2003 Insight/News World
Communications Inc.
Canned tuna or canned poison? That was the teaser for a CBS 2 News
"HealthWatch" Report of Nov. 22 that focused on high levels of mercury
found in tuna and the possible health risks associated with them.
CBS 2 News reporter Paul Moniz quoted a number of physicians, who
observed of the toxic substance that, "Once it gets into our bodies, a
substantial part of it will end up in our nervous system, in our brains,
and it's there that it causes a variety of symptoms."
A pediatrician is quoted as saying, "We know that high levels of
mercury can impair the cognitive development as well as the growth and
development of a young child."
What the report appears to be revealing is that while overweight
Americans may flee to fish to lose unwanted pounds, too much of that tasty
tuna could reduce the IQ more than the waistline.
What the critics of mercury in vaccines find provocative about this
report is the acknowledgement by physicians that the high levels of
mercury ingested from canned tuna can cause severe health risks. One such
critic, the mother of an autistic child, wonders "why everyone gets up in
arms over ingesting small amounts of mercury from fish or from breaking a
thermometer but finds it acceptable to inject an even more toxic form of
mercury directly into the bloodstream of infants."
"The evidence is overwhelming," she contends, "that hundreds of
thousands of children were damaged by gross overexposure to mercury
through vaccines [containing thimerosal] and millions more were and
continue to be put at risk, yet network news has not addressed this in any
significant way. The public needs and deserves to know the truth � not
only about the biggest medical bungling in our history, but also about the
extraordinary efforts of both the pharmaceutical industry and government
agencies to cover it up."
A pharmaceutical and government cover-up? It is a familiar enough
accusation, and this time the fuse was lit by yet another study from the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, this one
titled Safety of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines: A Two-Phased Study of
Computerized Health Maintenance Organization Databases. The report
concluded that "no consistent significant associations were found between
TCVs [thimerosal-containing vaccines] and neurodevelopment outcomes."
Critics scoff at such a conclusion.
"Sure," laughs one, "they say you can't eat tuna because the level of
mercury you ingest isn't good for you, but there's no health risk
associated with injecting high levels of mercury directly into a newborn
baby?"
The CDC study, released in the November 2003 issue of Pediatrics,
seemed to puzzle news media, with most who took note of it making at least
a mention of the fact that the lead author, Thomas Verstraeten, was an
employee of GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical giant and vaccine
manufacturer, when he submitted the study for publication.
The first part of the two-phase study to determine whether there is a
connection between thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopment
disorders began in 1999 and involved the review of data from Seattle's
Group Health Cooperative and Northern California Kaiser, both large
health-maintenance organizations. The data used in this first phase
actually revealed a significant association between TCVs administered to
infants and later developmental abnormalities such as speech and language
delays and neurodevelopment problems in general, such as tics and the
alleged hyperactivity symptoms of attention-deficit disorder and
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
However, this conclusion was not included in the final draft; it was
only made public afterward when Verstraeten's notes were revealed in
another forum, according to specialists. The notes, not published with the
CDC study, showed that the "relative risk" for autism was 2.48 times
higher for children who received 62.5 micrograms or more of mercury from
TCVs by 3 months of age.
The second phase of the study in June 2000, however, involved the
Harvard Pilgrim HMO in Massachusetts � an unlikely choice, critics say.
Among the problems with using Harvard Pilgrim's database was that the HMO
was in bankruptcy and had been taken over by the commonwealth of
Massachusetts.
The medical records not only were incomplete, but the data were stored
with a diagnostic coding system completely unlike that used in the first
phase of the study using data from the two West Coast HMOs. Furthermore,
the Harvard Pilgrim data, say the expert analysts, had incomplete data on
autism and did not even address the issue.
Thus medical reviewers of the CDC study charge that it is rife with
data manipulation. Since it relied on incompatible diagnostic coding to
validate whether there were adverse effects from exposure to TCVs, the
effect was to sabotage the result. So, they say, it was not surprising
that the CDC study's analysis of the Harvard Pilgrim data found no
consistent association between vaccines containing thimerosal and the
mercury-related neurological disorders found previously in the first phase
based on the two West Coast HMOs.
One of the few physicians in Congress, Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla.,
immediately saw the problems associated with the CDC study and notified
CDC Director Julie Gerberding.
"I have serious reservations about the four-year evolution and
conclusions of this study," Weldon wrote. "A review of these documents
leaves me very concerned that rather than seeking to understand whether or
not some children were exposed to harmful levels of mercury in childhood
vaccines in the 1990s, there may have been a selective use of the data to
make the associations in the earliest study disappear."
Weldon's letter to Gerberding goes on to observe that "the first
version of the study, produced in February 2000, found a significant
association between exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism
and neurological developmental delays. A June 2000 version of the study
applied various data manipulations to reduce the autism association to
1.69, and the authors went outside the VSD [Vaccine Safety Datalink]
database to secure data from a Massachusetts HMO [Harvard Pilgrim] in
order to counter the association found between TCVs and speech delays."
Clear enough.
The Florida lawmaker, who is a staunch supporter of immunization, tells
Insight, "I don't know what's going on. It's a pretty lame study to begin
with. The way they've done it is they got some findings and started adding
more numbers to the denominator � it's kind of a strange protocol they
followed. Then there are all these quotes from the researchers from other
documents about how you can add numbers and stratify things and get any
outcome you want. Then you consider that the lead author is working for a
drug company, didn't disclose this fact and also that it is one of the
drug companies being sued over this mercury issue. I'm just very concerned
that we're not going to get answers as long as there are careers at stake.
You know there are people at the CDC who have been involved in the vaccine
program who didn't recognize the amount of mercury they were giving kids,
and now they're in the process of investigating themselves. Meanwhile a
lot of these investigators bounce to and from the drug companies. I think
it all is very, very murky and very suspicious."
Weldon summarizes: "The CDC produced an article by Dr. Verstraeten,
published on Nov. 3 in Pediatrics. Dr. Verstraeten is a former CDC
employee. Since 2001 he has worked for GlaxoSmithKline � a vaccine
manufacturer. While working for the CDC in 2000, the first version of Dr.
Verstraeten's unpublished study found an association between higher
thimerosal exposures and neurodevelopment disorders, including autism.
Between 2000 and 2003, Dr. Verstraeten and coauthors manipulated and
stratified the data so much that each of these associations magically
disappeared. I don't know if it was deliberate, but that is nonetheless
what happened. This study has done nothing in my mind to put these
concerns to rest, but only serves to raise suspicions."
This veteran member of Congress puts it plainly: "We're not going to
get answers to these questions until Congress or some outside group starts
poring through this information. But it's very coincidental that they
added the hepatitis vaccine, the HiB vaccine and the chicken-pox vaccine �
they added all these additional childhood vaccines around the time when
the autism rate started to skyrocket. Then when you actually sit down and
do the calculations, according to the Environmental Protection Agency,
they were giving these kids very toxic levels of mercury. I mean as a 150-
to 200-pound adult the EPA says you're not supposed to take in more than
one microgram per day. They were taking little seven- and 10-pound babies
and pumping 50 and 75 micrograms of mercury into them in one shot. That's
like giving an adult 1,000 micrograms. And, on top of that, the World
Health Organization says mercury is 10 times more toxic in children than
it is in adults. It's horrifying."
While Weldon and others cite huge and undeniable flaws, a spokesman for
the CDC, Von Roebuck, tells Insight that "the CDC stands by the study." As
he explains it, "We pretty much looked into that [manipulation of data] in
the sense of how the information was presented, and we do stand behind it.
The CDC knew that Dr. Verstraeten worked for GlaxoSmithKline, and the
one thing that we would want to happen differently is that would have been
known before, but the work that Dr. Verstraeten did was for the CDC at the
time the work was produced � the work that he did for the study was done
when he worked for the CDC."
Mark Geier, M.D., Ph.D., is president of the Genetic Centers of
America. He and his son, David Geier, president of Medcon Inc., are
consultants on vaccine cases.
"What happened here is Dr. Verstraeten goes to the Institute of
Medicine [IOM] and says that he looked at it in one California HMO and it
was statistical and he saw the effect," David Geier tells Insight, "And
then he did it in another California HMO and it was statistical and he saw
the effect. Then he went to Harvard Pilgrim HMO and he didn't see the
effect. The IOM said it's biologically plausible, but the epidemiology is
mixed and therefore we're not sure."
"In my opinion," explains Mark Geier, "if they had seen clear
epidemiology they would have recommended the immediate removal of
thimerosal and hundreds of children would have been saved. But Verstraeten
went to the one state in the country where the percentage of autism was
the lowest. According to the U.S. Department of Education the average
increase in autism was 400 percent, and every state in the union had at
least a 100 percent increase. But Harvard Pilgrim had just a 10 percent
increase."
"We went to Atlanta," he continues, "to the CDC, and looked at the VSD
data. There is thimerosal-containing DTaP [diphtheria, tetanus and
pertussis vaccine] and thimerosal-free DTaP, so we asked a question: Among
children that got a minimum of either three consecutive
thimerosal-containing DTaPs or three consecutive thimerosal-free DTaPs,
was there a difference in the number of autism cases in the two groups? We
found mega differences. More than 20 times higher. The rate of autism in
the children that got more than three doses of thimerosal-containing DTaP
vaccines was much, much higher. Almost all the children that have autism
in that group were the ones that got the thimerosal-containing DTaP
vaccine. The more thimerosal the greater the cases of autism."
Mark Geier says, "Believe us, there is no scientific issue here. This
is fraud. The CDC and the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] know what is
happening. They just can't admit it because it is one of the worst things
ever to have happened to this United States. If a terrorist had done this,
we wouldn't attack them, we'd nuke them. We're talking about one in eight
children in the U.S. that currently are in special education, and that
number is going to change to about one in five. What percentage of our
young population can we destroy before we realize how serious this is?"
Lyn Redwood, a registered nurse, mother of an autistic child and
president and cofounder of www.SafeMinds.org (Sensible Action for Ending
Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders), a nonprofit organization
dedicated to ending devastation caused by the needless use of mercury in
medicines, tells Insight that "there are so many problems with the study,
but over time you can see how all the manipulations of the data slowly
bring down the signals for neurological disorders. I think they were
trying to get lower numbers. It must be very hard to admit that a program
that was designed to eradicate infectious disease has resulted in an
epidemic of a whole new kind of disease. But to think that we weren't
given a choice when the regulators and manufacturers knew these products
contained mercury is inconceivable."
Redwood says with a sigh, "On a scale of one to 10, I give the CDC
study a big fat zero. I think it started out good, but when they saw the
early numbers it scared the hell out of them. I don't have any faith in
the CDC doing a decent study of this matter. It's like having the tobacco
industry monitor cigarettes for safety. From a parent's perspective and
from a health-care professional's perspective it's maddening that we can't
get products that are safe, and yet we're forced by law to use them. They
need to just get the thimerosal out. It's barbaric."
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Kelly Patricia O'Meara is
an investigative reporter for Insight.
