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News- Page 5
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Mercury : Vaccine findings confirm fears
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Posted by sylvia on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 (19:34:27)
The Examiner 10/02/2005
By Marisa Lagos
Parents of children with autism said this week's revelation that at least one pharmaceutical company knew of the high levels of mercury in vaccinations years before disclosing it further supports their suspicions that the poison causes neurodevelopmental disorders.
Many parents have long been suspicious of the effects of vaccines containing thimerosal, a compound used to guard against contamination and which is almost 50 percent ethyl mercury. Until recently, the neurotoxin was used in many pediatric vaccines; public health officials first acknowledged the high levels of mercury in those shots in 1999.
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times uncovered a 1991 memo from a Merck & Co. vaccinologist -- written to the president of the company's vaccine division -- warning that infants who get their shots on time could receive up to 87 times the recommended daily amount of mercury from fish.
Parents such as Kim Garrison of San Francisco and Jennifer Hoffiz of Danville link that heightened amount of mercury to the problems their children have had, although many doctors say no reputable studies reinforce their claim.
Hoffiz has two children, now 8 and 5. Her daughter, Sabrina, is learning-impaired and her son, Steven, has severe autism. She believes both suffer from mercury poisoning.
"My kids are a perfect example of the least amount of damage mercury can cause to the greatest," said Hoffiz, who runs the Sensory Center in Pleasanton, a program meant to help patients dealing with autism, other neurological disorders and brain injuries through "brain exercises."
Garrison's 12-year-old son, Tod, was diagnosed when he was three. She says no one in their family was autistic, and he was developing normally until he received a combination MMR shot -- for measles, mumps and rubella -- when he was a little over 1 year old.
"I think there is very strongly compelling evidence that my son was poisoned," Garrison said. "If somebody can argue the other way, I would be more than happy to believe them. ... I get angry sometimes that I did what the doctors told me, because I didn't want him to get ill, but I think I could have poisoned my son."
That thinking is common in parents whose children are autistic, according to Bryna Siegel, the director of the Pervasive Developmental Disorders Clinic at UC San Francisco. Siegel, who has acted as an expert witness for pharmaceutical companies being sued by parents, sees no correlation between the vaccinations and autism, pointing toward numerous studies that have found just that.
"You have to balance emotion and science," said Siegel, adding that studies before the vaccines showed autistic children developing normally, then losing skills -- such as language -- at the onset, much like Tod did. "I really worry about people going without vaccines for their kids -- people forget how deadly the diseases are you're preventing."
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Mercury : Precluding lawsuits against vaccine makers
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Posted by sylvia on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 (14:46:13)
US Newswire 09/02/2005
By Stephanie Morris
Once again, Senators Gregg (R-NH) and Frist (R-TN) have introduced legislation to shield the pharmaceutical industry from responsibility for exposing American children to harmful levels of mercury from thimerosal, a mercury containing preservative widely used in infant vaccines. The bill, S. 3, "Protecting America in the War on Terror Act of 2005" introduced on January 24th includes language that protects vaccine producers from product liability under the guise of shielding the nation from biological terrorism and increasing the death benefit paid to US soldiers.
SafeMinds, an advocacy group committed to raising awareness about causal links between the mercury and neurodevelopmental disorders like ADD/ADHD and autism, strongly opposes this effort. As this bill is at the top of the legislative docket it has the full support of Senator Frist.
This legislation marks the fourth occasion the Senator has attempted to insulate the vaccine industry from product liability by legally blocking civil claims for injuries caused by the mercury based vaccine ingredient. Three prior attempts to provide similar unprecedented protections for pharmaceutical companies have failed due to opposition by parents of mercury-injured children.
"This is possibly the most egregious bill introduced yet as it inappropriately ties the provision to legislation designed to compensate the families of US Soldiers killed in action and overrides state laws where legislators have had full and open discussions about the issue...something the authors of S. 3 have failed to undertake." stated Lyn Redwood, president of SafeMinds. "Not since the previous late night addition of similar language in the Homeland Security Bill in 2002 have we seen such blatant disregard for civil justice."
An article in the LA Times on Feb. 8, 2005 reveals evidence that the harmful effects of thimerosal were known to vaccine makers as early as 1991 but neither the pharmaceutical industry nor the government have taken appropriate steps to prohibit mercury-based preservatives.
The article, titled '91 Memo Warned of Mercury in Shots, states that: "A memo from Merck & Co. shows that, nearly a decade before the first public disclosure, senior executives were concerned that infants were getting an elevated dose of mercury in vaccinations containing a widely used sterilizing agent...6-month-old children who received their shots on time would get a mercury does up to 87 times higher than the guidelines for the maximum daily consumption of mercury from fish."
This provision in the legislation, which has no relation to the war on terror, smacks of payback. The pharmaceutical industry is consistently one the top of the donors to the campaigns of Senators Gregg and Frist. Internal documents reviewed as a result of discovery in current litigation filed against Eli Lilly reveal that the pharmaceutical giant was aware of concerns resulting from thimerosal exposure since the early 1940's and was advised by its Medical Science Department in 1967 that the claim "Non-toxic" be removed from its thimerosal labels. Lilly's own materials safety data sheet acknowledges that exposure in children may cause mild to severe mental retardation and that mercury poisoning may occur.
S. 3 contains provisions that will:
Preclude lawsuits against vaccine makers
Override state legislation that protects its citizen from dangerous vaccine components
Eliminate a state legislature's power to warn its citizens of the dangers of vaccine additives (such as thimerosal), making recent legislation banning the use of the mercury containing vaccines in California and Iowa void.
Allow the Department of Justice to design more restrictions on access to the Vaccine Compensation Fund and to prevent public access to information on vaccine safety
Provide unprecedented tax breaks and patent protection to large pharmaceutical corporations
More information about neurodevelopmental disorders, autism and mercury exposure may be found at www.safeminds.org or by calling Stephanie Morris at 202-628-7772
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Mercury : Bush Administration Knew - Childhood Vaccines Cause Autism
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Posted by sylvia on Thursday, March 03, 2005 (18:56:33)
Independant-media.tv 31/01/2005
By Evelyn Pringle
Vaccines are the only drugs that American children are mandated to receive. Although it may be true that vaccines are mandated by state governments, the decision to mandate a vaccine is based on the recommendations of Federal advisory committees.
In the interest of public safety, Congress has a duty to ensure that advisory committee members involved in vaccine policymaking are not improperly influenced by conflicts of interest.
In recent years, public trust in the Federal policymaking related to vaccines causing Autism, has been broken by the practice of ignoring obvious conflicts of interest.
At this point, immediate action by Congress is necessary to restore public confidence in the safety of childhood vaccinations.
Is There A Link Between Childhood Vaccines And Autism?
Is there a connection? I'll let readers judge for themselves.
Mercury is a toxic metal that can cause immune, sensory, neurological, motor, and behavioral dysfunctions similar to traits defining or associated with autism.
Thimerosal is an organic mercury compound. It is metabolized to ethylmercury and thiosalicylate and has been used since the 1930s as a preservative in many vaccines and pharmaceutical products to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination.
On Feb 9, 2004, the National Autism Association issued a press release that reported on one of the larger studies under review based on the Center for Disease Control's own Vaccine Safety Datalink. The released reported that under independent investigation, CDC's data concludes children are 27-times more likely to develop autism after exposure to three thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs), than those who receive thimerosal-free versions.
Think about it, twenty-seven times more likely to develop autism. Then consider this, our government had this data for years, but deliberately kept it hidden. This conduct was not due to negligence or laziness, it was a deliberate cover-up. All those involved should be criminally charge, prosecuted and punished.
The children who were affected by this cover-up will require care and support for their entire life. These children’s lives have been destroyed. The costs to their parents, will reportedly exceed $2 million dollars per child. Justice will not be served until these mercury poisoned kids and their parents get everything necessary to make the most of their lives.
The criminals involved better get out there checkbooks, now!
What Did They Know & When Did They Know It?
Thimerosal is composed of nearly 50% mercury, which is a known to be especially harmful to fetuses, infants and children. It has been linked to a range of symptoms jointly known as Autism Spectrum Disorders. At one end of the spectrum is severe autism, in which children are socially withdrawn, do not speak and exhibit bizarre, repetitive, and sometimes aggressive behavior. At the other end, are Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Thimerosal was regularly added to childhood vaccines as a perservative, and became a major source of mercury in infants and toddlers. According to the American Academy of Pediatricians, within the first 2 years of life, fully vaccinated children received mercury levels that exceeded long-established safety limits by the FDA and other agencies.
However, the focus did not zero in on Thimerosal until 1997, when Congress passed the FDA Modernization Act, which required the FDA to investigate all drugs that contained mercury to determine their adverse effects on humans.
Within one year, the FDA called for the removal of all over-the-counter products that contained Thimerosal. However, the preservative was still included in more than 50 vaccines, until the Public Health Service (which includes the FDA, CDC and NIH), and the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement in July 1999 “urging†vaccine manufacturers to reduce or remove Thimerosal because of “theoretical potential for neurotoxicity.â€
So we know by the action taken by the FDA in1999, that our government definitely knew about the dangers related to the preservative. But we also know this because the staff for Rep Dan Burton (R-Ill) obtained an incriminating FDA internal e-mail written on June 29, 1999, by former FDA scientist Peter Patriarca, that offered a “pros and cons†assessment of the Thimerosal statement about to be issued at that time, and listed the questions and issues that would be raised upon its release:
(1) FDA being ‘asleep at the switch’ for decades, by allowing a potentially hazardous compound to remain in many childhood vaccines, and not forcing manufacturers to exclude it from new products.
(2) various advisory bodies aggressive recommendations for use.
(3) the dose of ethyl mercury was not generated by ‘rocket science’: conversion of the % of thimerosal to actual ug [micrograms] of mercury involves 9th grade algebra.
(4) What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?
(5) Why didn’t CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations while rapidly expanding the childhood immunization schedule?
So the experts in the FDA and CDC definitely knew about the dangers. However, an article published on Inthesetime.com on Nov 11, 2003, raised an interesting question: "If the CDC and FDA seemed to acknowledge the risks of thimerosal four years ago and the need to get mercury out of medical products, today the official stance is to circle the wagons against mounting public and scientific criticism about its handling of the thimerosal issue."
I have the answer. The turn of events can easily be explained by the fact that there had been a changing of the guard under Bush since 1999. Keep in mind that the stakes were high for the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, a long time friend of the Bush gang, but also the company that invented Thimerosal.
And sure enough, evidence that Bush came through surfaced when the pharmaceutical industry was granted protection (albeit short-lived) from lawsuits from parents of children who developed autism after being vaccinated, by a provision sneakily tucked into the Homeland Security Act, at the very last minute, by Republicans who no doubt were acting under Bush's direction.
Well their little stunt didn't work because the provision was soon repealed. While the effort to repeal it was under way, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told Wolf Blitzer on CNN, "What we have in the dead of night, a provision put in to help a pharmaceutical company or series of companies that help the parents and their rights for protecting their children right off at the knees."
During the original final debates on the Homeland Security Bill, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN), had argued forcefully for granting liability protection to makers of mercury based vaccine preservatives and said such measures were needed to boost an industry essential for public health. He is the only physician in the Senate and one of his party's leaders on medical issues, the Tennessean reported on Jan 11, 2003.
But critics of the provision didn't see it that way and accused "Republicans of tilting the legal system in favor of drug companies at the expense of autistic children," noted the Tennessean, "Hundreds of parents have alleged in lawsuits that the vaccine preservative thimerosal caused autism in their children. Eli Lilly & Co., the preservative's chief maker, and other defendants in the suits deny the charge," it said.
Frist's name came up more than others because he headed the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republicans' political fund-raising arm. Critics were quick to note the large amount of money that Eli Lilly had donated to Republicans. In fact, the pharmaceutical and health products industry was the largest corporate contributor to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, while it was headed by Frist.
And not surprisingly, Eli Lilly was one of the most generous contributors in the 2002 elections, giving about $1.4 million to federal candidates and parties, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, and three-quarters went to Republicans.
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Mercury : Eating lots of fish tied to high mercury levels
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Posted by sylvia on Monday, October 25, 2004 (00:45:18)
San Francisco Chronicle 21/10/2004
By Jane Kay
A study sponsored by an environmental group has produced new evidence linking high fish consumption to potentially unsafe levels of mercury.
Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Asheville tested hair samples from 1,449 people nationwide who volunteered to participate in the study after hearing about it through Greenpeace USA and other groups.
About 1 in 5 had mercury levels exceeding Environmental Protection Agency safety guidelines. Almost half of the volunteers who had consumed large amounts of fish exceeded the EPA guideline.
The study wasn't designed to estimate what percentage of the U.S. population may exceed the mercury guidelines, the authors said.
The study is one of the first to examine the relationship between mercury levels and the consumption of three categories of fish: canned tuna, locally caught fish, and fresh or frozen fish sold in stores and restaurants.
Richard Maas, a co-author and professor of environmental science at the University of North Carolina, noted that among those consuming the most fish, mercury levels were several times greater than the safety guidelines.
Among the findings:
-- About 50 percent of the participants who ate seven or more 6-ounce servings a month of fish purchased in restaurants or stores exceeded the safety guideline of 1 part per million.
-- Almost 33 percent of those who ate four or more servings a month of canned tuna had mercury exceeding the guideline. The study questionnaire didn't differentiate between different types of tuna. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that canned albacore has three times the mercury as chunk light.
-- Almost 36 percent of the people who ate three or more 6-ounce servings a month of locally caught fish exceeded the guideline.
Coal-fired power plant emissions and natural rock formations release mercury into the environment. The largest single source of exposure in the United States comes from fish in the diet.
Health officials agree that fish offers health benefits, and the FDA recommends 12 ounces a week of fish, while warning that women of child-bearing age and children should avoid swordfish, shark, king mackerel and tilefish. Mercury, which is toxic to the human nervous system, is linked to learning and behavioral problems in children. In adults, mercury can cause tremors, memory loss and other health problems.
The study was advertised at Greenpeace events and in an e-mail campaign. Interested parties sent $25 for a kit, then sent their hair and a questionnaire to the scientists.
"I would expect there to be some bias in our survey because the participants were self-selected,'' said Steven Patch, statistics professor at the University of North Carolina, a study co-author.
Patch said he believes the study may overrepresent people who eat a lot of fish, and may underrepresent those consuming locally caught fish.
The study also examined correlations between mercury levels in the hair samples and other sources of exposure, including dental amalgams, flu shots in which mercury is used as a preservative, workplace exposure or hair dyes.
"The effects -- if any -- were much lower than the effects from fish consumption of store-bought fish, canned tuna or locally caught fish,'' Patch said.
Data gathered in 1999-2000 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based on a national nutrition survey showed that 12 percent of women of childbearing age had mercury levels above the safety guidelines.
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Mercury : A family's crusade
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Posted by sylvia on Sunday, October 24, 2004 (21:34:53)
Joplin Globe 24/10/2004
By Susan Redden
CARTHAGE - It started with him fidgeting, then continually lining up toys and other objects.
At times, he had emotional outbursts far beyond what would be normal for the circumstances. He developed allergies, eczema and asthma.
Then, after a flu shot late in 2002, all of those problems accelerated.
"It all hit warp speed, just like in 'Star Wars,'" said Lujene Clark. "Everything just became so dramatic, including his behavior."
Alan Clark, a 30-year emergency room physician, and Lujene Clark, a former nurse, didn't recognize the symptoms in their 8-year-old son, Devon.
They were shocked when the formerly active, bright-eyed child was diagnosed with a form of autism, and when they learned what they believe is the cause.
Now the Carthage couple are on what can only be described as a crusade - to Washington, D.C., and to Jefferson City, Des Moines, Sacramento and other state capitals - to ensure that vaccines are administered without thimerosal, a preservative that contains mercury. Until a government recommendation in 1999, most childhood vaccinations contained thimerosal.
Though voluntarily taken out of childhood immunizations, the preservative remains in much of the flu vaccine currently being administered to children as well as adults.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which sets vaccine requirements for the United States, rejects any link between the preservative and autism or other disorders such as attention deficit disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and Asperger syndrome.
Devon was diagnosed with AD/HD in 2001, when he was in the first grade. A year later, after a flu shot, his condition worsened.
"He would ask the meaning of things he had known for ages," Lujene Clark said. "At first, I thought he was playing with us. Then, he couldn't seem to understand simple instructions, like to sit down and put on a seat belt.
"He started having sensory issues. If we would go into a Wal-Mart or a large store with a lot of lights and sounds, he would just go into emotional meltdown. And he went from eating anything set in from of him to only eating a few things, because certain tastes and textures bothered him. We were watching him deteriorate, and we didn't know why."
Devon also suddenly developed allergies and asthma, his mother said.
"Thimerosal attacks the immune system," she said. "We took him to an allergist. Out of 53 antigens, he reacted to 51."
Her voice chokes and tears well as Clark describes how her only child had changed.
"He'd always had the brightest, sparkliest eyes," she said. "But then after he got his flu shot, they were flat and lifeless - what I call the 'Stepford look.' He wouldn't look you in the face or make eye contact. It was like there was nobody home."
'You need to show me'
Devon had attended kindergarten and first grade at Mark Twain Elementary School. When his condition deteriorated, the Clarks moved him to St. Ann's Catholic School, in hopes the smaller class sizes would help. They did for a while, Alan Clark said, but at year's end, and after the flu shot, school officials said Devon would have to be evaluated by a psychologist before the start of the next school year.
The diagnosis of Asperger syndrome was made by a neuropsychologist in September 2003. The syndrome often is described as high-functioning autism, a condition that interferes with the development of the brain in areas of communication, thought processing and social contact.
For Lujene Clark, the diagnosis triggered the first of many overnight Internet research sessions. She said she was unfamiliar with the syndrome and shocked to learn it was linked to autism.
"It shocked me, because Devon had met or exceeded all his developmental milestones," she said. "The symptoms fit, and the diagnosis fit, but it was inconsistent with a child that had talked early and walked on his first birthday."
In her research, she found a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in which hair samples from babies' first haircuts were being sought from children suffering from autism and related conditions, including AD/HD.
"We knew something had to have happened to move him further down the autism spectrum," Lujene Clark said. "It dawned on me that if they were checking hair samples, it had to be either pharmaceutical drugs or metals. I knew Devon hadn't had that kind of drugs, and I knew it couldn't be metals in our water because I know Carthage has good water. I would see the tests when I was on the council."
Clark, who was accustomed to research after four years on the Carthage City Council, said she then typed into the Google search site "heavy metal toxicity and autism" and found page after page of references that linked heavy metals to developmental problems. At first, she said, she thought lead was the culprit.
"I kept reading and realized they were talking about mercury, but I knew there was no way we would let Devon be exposed to that - we don't even keep a mercury thermometer in our house," she said. "Then I realized he had been exposed to it, and we held him down while it was injected into him."
She said her husband disputed her discovery after she woke him up at 3 a.m. to tell him what she had found.
"He said there was no way mercury could be in his vaccines, because everyone knows it's toxic," she said. "When I pulled up the references, he was just as horrified as I."
She said they both, at first, set out to prove there could be no connection between Devon's condition and the childhood vaccines and a flu inoculation he was given because of his asthma.
"The EPA (federal Environmental Protection Agency) tells you not to eat too much tuna because of the mercury," Lujene Clark said. "What we found out is that Devon's flu shot was the equivalent of 10 cans of tuna."
"We went on almost a 24-7 analysis, trying to figure it out," said Alan Clark.
"I kept doing the research, and then in November we went to a conference in Dallas where there were leading researchers who had written papers confirming the link," Lujene Clark said. "I asked to see their raw data because I know numbers can be manipulated. I said, 'I'm from Missouri and you need to show me,' and they did."
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