[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13935-13938]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           MERCURY AND AUTISM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I have been down here a lot 
talking about autism over the years and my committee had many hearings 
on the issue of autism. My grandson became autistic after receiving 9 
shots in one day, 7 of which contained mercury, in a product called 
thimerosal. And he is doing better but it has been a very difficult 
time for me and my family.
  I strongly believe that there is a link between the mercury that is 
in the thimerosal in the vaccines and children developing neurological 
disorders such as autism. In fact, according to a recent study released 
by collaboration of U.S. medical researchers from Johns Hopkins 
University, Northeastern University in Boston, and the University of 
Nebraska and Tufts University that was published in the Vancouver Sun 
in February of last year and was officially released in the April 2004 
edition of the scientific journal Molecular Psychiatry, ``A recent 
review of vaccine-related adverse events in the U.S. found a 
significant correlation between shots containing thimerosal,'' i.e. 
mercury ``and autism.''
  The study further concluded that the use of thimerosal-containing 
shots could account for the rising rates of autism since the early 
1980s when more thimerosal-containing vaccinations were added to the 
government-mandated childhood vaccination schedule.
  Scientific evidence aside, we have seen an increase from 1 in 10,000 
children who are autistic to 1 in 166 since they started using 
thimerosal in many, many vaccines in the early eighties and children 
started getting more of these shots.
  I am not against vaccinations but I do believe, as many of my 
colleagues, including the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) believe, 
that mercury should be taken out of all childhood vaccines and in fact 
all vaccines.
  We need to ask ourselves one simple question: What is right? The 
answer I think is very clear. Get mercury out of all vaccinations.
  In reality the answer that is given by far too many officials in our 
government, health agencies and some Members of Congress, sorry, we 
cannot help you, and the need to protect the pharmaceutical industry is 
so great, we cannot do much about it.

                              {time}  1745

  Some in my party keep talking about changing the law to protect the 
drug companies against so-called frivolous lawsuits, and we have to do 
something to help these families who had their children damaged by the 
mercury vaccines. I am against class action lawsuits in general. I am 
for tort reform, but we have got to do something to help these 
families.
  We have tried to talk to the pharmaceutical industry about protecting 
them while at the same time changing the Vaccine Injury Compensation 
Fund in a way that will protect these families and help those who have 
been damaged, but so far we have gotten absolutely nowhere with them; 
and it is something I think we need to continue to work on.
  Just recently, there was an article that was published in a magazine 
I normally do not read. It is called Rolling Stone, but this article 
was brought to my attention, and I think everybody in this body ought 
to read that article. It was written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 
somebody who I normally do not read, but I have to tell my colleagues 
it is a very well-written article. It goes into great detail and 
scientific research studies on mercury-connected mental disorders 
caused by the thimerosal in the mercury in these vaccinations.
  I would submit to all my colleagues they really need to read this 
article. I am going to send a Dear Colleague out to all of my 
colleagues in the House and the Senate over the next couple of days. It 
is a fairly lengthy article, but it goes into how government officials 
met with pharmaceutical company officials and deliberately covered up 
the connection, deliberately covered up the connection between the 
thimerosal in vaccines and the problems that are being created, 
neurological problems that have been created in these children, 
including autism.
  All of my colleagues ought to read this and realize that we have had 
a collaboration between health officials in our government and the 
pharmaceutical industry to protect themselves from class action 
lawsuits at the expense of these young kids and families who have been 
damaged by neurological disorders, including autism.
  So I submit to my colleagues who may be in their offices or here 
tonight,

[[Page 13936]]

please read this article. It is extremely important. I do not want to 
hurt the pharmaceutical industry. I would like to protect them from 
class action lawsuits; but at the same time, we need to change that 
Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund to take care of these kids that have 
been damaged and help their families.

                            Deadly Immunity

                      (By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)

       June 16, 2005.--In June 2000, a group of top government 
     scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the 
     isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. 
     Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 
     the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, 
     nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, 
     to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public 
     announcement of the session--only private invitations to 52 
     attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and 
     the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist 
     from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and 
     representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, 
     including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. 
     All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials 
     repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly 
     ``embargoed.'' There would be no making photocopies of 
     documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
       The federal officials and industry representatives had 
     assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised 
     alarming questions about the safety of a host of common 
     childhood vaccines administered to infants and young 
     children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom 
     Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database 
     containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury 
     based preservative in the vaccines--thimerosal--appeared to 
     be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host 
     of other neurological disorders among children. ``I was 
     actually stunned by what I saw,'' Verstraeten told those 
     assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of 
     earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and 
     speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and 
     autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended 
     that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be 
     given to extremely young infants--in one case, within hours 
     of birth--the estimated number of cases of autism had 
     increased fifteen fold, from one in every 2,500 children to 
     one in 166 children.
       Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting 
     issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. 
     ``You can play with this all you want,'' Dr. Bill Weil, a 
     consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the 
     group. The results ``are statistically significant.'' Dr. 
     Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the 
     University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on 
     the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more 
     alarmed. ``My gut feeling?'' he said. ``Forgive this personal 
     comment--I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-
     containing vaccine until we know better what is going on.''
       But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public 
     and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and 
     executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days 
     discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to 
     transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, 
     many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging 
     revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine 
     industry's bottom line.
       ``We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending 
     any lawsuits,'' said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the 
     Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. ``This 
     will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in 
     this country.'' Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the 
     CDC, expressed relief that'' given the sensitivity of the 
     information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands 
     of, let's say, less responsible hands.'' Dr. John Clements, 
     vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared 
     flatly that the study ``should not have been done at all'' 
     and warned that the results ``will be taken by others and 
     will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The 
     research results have to be handled.''
       In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at 
     handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The 
     CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to 
     whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to 
     ``rule out'' the chemical's link to autism. It withheld 
     Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for 
     immediate publication, and told other scientists that his 
     original data had been ``lost'' and could not be replicated. 
     And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its 
     giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, 
     declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time 
     Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone 
     to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the 
     link between thimerosal and autism.
       Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal 
     out of injections given to American infants--but they 
     continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of 
     vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, 
     buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing 
     countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the 
     preservative in some American vaccines--including several 
     pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely 
     given to 11-year-olds.
       The drug companies are also getting help from powerful 
     lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, 
     who has received $873,000 in contributions from the 
     pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine 
     makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed 
     by the parents of injured children. On five separate 
     occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's 
     vaccine-related documents--including the Simpsonwood 
     transcripts--and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of 
     thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist 
     quietly slipped a rider known as the ``Eli Lilly Protection 
     Act'' into a homeland security bill, the company contributed 
     $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book 
     on bioterrorism. Congress repealed the measure in 2003--but 
     earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an 
     anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children 
     suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. ``The 
     lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine 
     producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with 
     a biological attack by terrorists,'' says Andy Olsen, a 
     legislative assistant to Frist.
       Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's 
     effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan 
     Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year 
     investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed 
     with autism. ``Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines 
     is directly related to the autism epidemic,'' his House 
     Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. 
     ``This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or 
     curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding 
     a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known 
     neurotoxin.'' The FDA and other public-health agencies failed 
     to act, the committee added, out of ``institutional 
     malfeasance for self protection'' and ``misplaced 
     protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.''
       The story of how government health agencies colluded with 
     Big Pharmacy to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public 
     is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power 
     and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. 
     As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years 
     working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met 
     mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced 
     that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I 
     was skeptical. I doubted that autism could be blamed on a 
     single source, and I certainly understood the government's 
     need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the 
     eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I 
     tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a 
     Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on 
     the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to 
     conclusions about autism and vaccinations. ``Why should we 
     scare people about immunization,'' Waxman pointed out at one 
     hearing, ``until we know the facts?''
       It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, 
     studying the leading scientific research and talking with 
     many of the nation's preeminent authorities on mercury that I 
     became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the 
     epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of 
     my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation--
     those born between 1989 and 2003--who received heavy doses of 
     mercury from vaccines. ``The elementary grades are 
     overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological 
     or immune-system damage,'' Patti White, a school nurse, told 
     the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. ``Vaccines are 
     supposed to be making us healthier; however, in 25 years of 
     nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. 
     Something very, very wrong is happening to our children.'' 
     More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and 
     pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. 
     The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified 
     and diagnosed among children born in the months after 
     thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.
       Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by 
     thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase 
     is a result of better diagnosis--a theory that seems 
     questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of 
     autism are clustered within a single generation of children. 
     ``If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis,'' 
     scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on 
     mercury toxicity, ``then where are all the 20-year-old 
     autistics?'' Other researchers point out that Americans are 
     exposed to a greater cumulative ``load'' of mercury than ever 
     before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and 
     suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a 
     much larger problem. It's a

[[Page 13937]]

     concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it 
     has received--but it overlooks the fact that the mercury 
     concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to 
     our children.
       What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the 
     leading detectives have gone to ignore--and cover up--the 
     evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the 
     scientific case against the mercury additive has been 
     overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi 
     and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a 
     potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that 
     mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and 
     other animals after they are injected with vaccines--and that 
     the developing brains of infants are particularly 
     susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults 
     exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than 
     those given to American children still suffered brain damage 
     years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's 
     vaccines 20 years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great 
     Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since 
     followed suit.
       ``You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal 
     is safe,'' says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at 
     the University of Kentucky. ``It's just too darn toxic. If 
     you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. 
     If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put 
     it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, 
     it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant 
     without causing damage.''
       Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first 
     developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product 
     could cause damage--and even death--in both animals and 
     humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by 
     administering it to 22 patients with terminal meningitis, all 
     of whom died within weeks of being injected--a fact Lilly 
     didn't bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal 
     safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, 
     Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about 
     thimerosal's safety ``did not check with ours.'' Half the 
     dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became 
     sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative 
     ``unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs.''
       In the decades that followed, the evidence against 
     thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, 
     when the Department of Defense used the preservative in 
     vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it 
     ``poison.'' In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found 
     that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. 
     Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that 
     thimerosal was ``toxic to tissue cells'' in concentrations as 
     low as one part per million--100 times weaker than the 
     concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company 
     continued to promote thimerosal as ``nontoxic'' and also 
     incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, 10 
     babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic 
     preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical 
     cords.
       In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter 
     products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency 
     considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, 
     that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected 
     with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be 
     vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-
     month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus 
     influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
       The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a 
     danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, 
     Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccine 
     programs, warned the company that 6-month-olds who were 
     administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to 
     mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, 
     ``especially when used on infants and children,'' noting that 
     the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. ``The best way to 
     go,'' he added, ``is to switch to dispensing the actual 
     vaccines without adding preservatives.''
       For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle 
     was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to 
     package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which 
     require additional protection because they are more easily 
     contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials 
     cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, 
     making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute 
     them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with 
     this ``cost consideration,'' Merck ignored Hilleman's 
     warnings, and government officials continued to push more and 
     more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, 
     American preschoolers received 11 vaccinations--for polio, 
     diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A 
     decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children 
     were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they 
     reached first grade.
       As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism 
     among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million 
     children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, 
     receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period 
     critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented 
     dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add 
     up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive 
     from the mandated vaccines. ``What took the FDA so long to do 
     the calculations?'' Peter Patriarca, director of viral 
     products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 
     1999. ``Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these 
     calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood 
     immunization schedule?''
       But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received 
     all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months 
     were being injected with a total of 187 micrograms of 
     ethylmercury--a level 40 percent greater than the EPA's limit 
     for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. 
     Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses 
     little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed 
     by the body, several studies--including one published in 
     April by the National Institutes of Health--suggest that 
     ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and 
     stays in the brain longer than methylmercury. Under the 
     expanded schedule of vaccinations, multiple shots were often 
     administered on a single day: At two months, when the infant 
     brain is still at a critical stage of development, children 
     routinely received three inoculations that delivered 99 times 
     the approved limit of mercury.
       Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist 
     that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect 
     infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential 
     in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford 
     the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. 
     Paul Offit, one of CDC's top vaccine advisors, told me, ``I 
     think if we really have an influenza pandemic--and certainly 
     we will in the next 20 years, because we always do--there's 
     no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people 
     with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials.''
       But while public-health officials may have been well-
     intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who 
     backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the 
     industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid 
     consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and shares a 
     patent on a measles vaccine with Merck, which also 
     manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. Dr. Neal Halsey, 
     another committee member, worked as a researcher for the 
     vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for 
     his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.
       Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on 
     vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton 
     says that the CDC ``routinely allows scientists with blatant 
     conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory 
     committees that make recommendations on new vaccines,'' even 
     though they have ``interests in the products and companies 
     for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased 
     oversight.'' The House Government Reform Committee discovered 
     that four of the eight CDC advisors who approved guidelines 
     for a rotavirus vaccine ``had financial ties to the 
     pharmaceutical companies that were developing different 
     versions of the vaccine.''
       Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, 
     acknowledged to me that he ``would make money'' if his vote 
     eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my 
     suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC 
     approval might bias his judgment. ``It provides no conflict 
     for me,'' he insists. ``I have simply been informed by the 
     process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, 
     my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best 
     benefited the children in this country. It's offensive to say 
     that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of 
     industry and thus are making decisions that they know are 
     unsafe for children. It's just not the way it works.''
       Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar 
     assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened 
     guardians of children's health, proud of their 
     ``partnerships'' with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the 
     seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational 
     activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering 
     children's health. They are often resentful of questioning. 
     ``Science,'' says Offit, ``is best left to scientists.''
       Still, some government officials were alarmed by the 
     apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC 
     administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted 
     federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the 
     danger posed by the added baby vaccines. ``I'm not sure there 
     will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the 
     FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep 
     at the switch re: thimerosal until now,'' Patriarca wrote. 
     The close ties between regulatory officials and the 
     pharmaceutical industry, he added, ``will also raise 
     questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive 
     recommendations for use'' of thimerosal in child vaccines.
       If federal regulators and government scientists failed to 
     grasp the potential risks of

[[Page 13938]]

     thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after 
     the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct 
     more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of 
     brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The 
     agency turned its database on childhood vaccines--which had 
     been developed largely at taxpayer expense--over to a private 
     agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it 
     could not be used for additional research. It also instructed 
     the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is 
     part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study 
     debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. 
     The CDC ``wants us to declare, well, that these things are 
     pretty safe,'' Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's 
     Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow 
     researchers when they first met in January 2001. ``We are not 
     ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect'' 
     of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the 
     meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, 
     predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was 
     ``inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation'' between 
     thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result ``Walt 
     wants''--a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the 
     National Immunization Program for the CDC.
       For those who had devoted their lives to promoting 
     vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to 
     undermine everything they had worked for. ``We've got a 
     dragon by the tail here,'' said Dr. Michael Kaback, another 
     committee member. ``The more negative that [our] presentation 
     is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, 
     immunization--and we know what the results of that will be. 
     We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of 
     the trap, I think is the charge.''
       Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their 
     primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts 
     about vaccines. ``Four current studies are taking place to 
     rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal,'' 
     Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for 
     vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, 
     assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. ``In 
     order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to 
     link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we 
     need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure 
     parents of safety.'' Douglas formerly served as president of 
     vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about 
     thimerosal's risks.
       In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its 
     final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between 
     autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the 
     large body of literature describing the toxicity of 
     thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed 
     epidemiological studies examining European countries, where 
     children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than 
     American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten 
     study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been 
     reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. 
     The new study included children too young to have been 
     diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs 
     of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and--in a 
     startling position for a scientific body--recommended that no 
     further research be conducted.
       The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no 
     one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida 
     who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked 
     the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of 
     studies that were ``fatally flawed'' by ``poor design'' and 
     failed to represent ``all the available scientific and 
     medical research.'' CDC officials are not interested in an 
     honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because ``an 
     association between vaccines and autism would force them to 
     admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of 
     children. Who would want to make that conclusion about 
     themselves?''
       Under pressure from Congress, parents and a few of its own 
     panel members, the Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened 
     a second panel to review the findings of the first. In 
     February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, 
     criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency and 
     urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the 
     public.
       So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain 
     access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of 
     America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain 
     the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when 
     members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the 
     data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate 
     a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological 
     damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative 
     dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 
     1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a ``very 
     significant relationship'' between autism and vaccines. 
     Another study of educational performance found that kids who 
     received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly 
     three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more 
     than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders 
     and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be-published study 
     shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent 
     elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.
       As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from 
     studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link 
     to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook 
     one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for 
     children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines--the 
     kind of population that scientists typically use as a 
     ``control'' in experiments--Olmsted scoured the Amish of 
     Lancaster County, Penn., who refuse to immunize their 
     infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted 
     calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the 
     Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high 
     levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three--
     including one child adopted from outside the Amish 
     community--had received their vaccines.
       At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-
     depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine 
     was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa Legislature was 
     carefully combing through all of the available scientific and 
     biological data. ``After three years of review, I became 
     convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a 
     link between mercury and the increased incidences in 
     autism,'' says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who 
     oversaw the investigation. ``The fact that Iowa's 700 percent 
     increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and 
     more vaccines were added to the children's vaccine schedules, 
     is solid evidence alone.'' Last year, Iowa became the first 
     state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. 
     Similar bans are now under consideration in 32 other states.
       But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow 
     manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-
     counter medications as well as steroids and injected 
     collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to 
     ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing 
     countries--some of which are now experiencing a sudden 
     explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was 
     virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by 
     U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that 
     there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although 
     reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also 
     appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other 
     developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced 
     vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist 
     thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility 
     that it is linked to neurological disorders ``under review.''
       I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that 
     this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the 
     evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly 
     allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire 
     generation of American children, their actions arguably 
     constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of 
     American medicine. ``The CDC is guilty of incompetence and 
     gross negligence,'' says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe 
     Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of 
     mercury in medicines. ``The damage caused by vaccine exposure 
     is massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, 
     bigger than anything you've ever seen.'' It's hard to 
     calculate the damage to our country--and to the international 
     efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases--if Third World 
     nations come to believe that America's most heralded foreign-
     aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's not 
     difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by 
     America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers--
     many of them sincere, even idealistic--who are participating 
     in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they 
     are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children 
     in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly 
     misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will 
     come back horribly to haunt our country and the world's 
     poorest populations.

                          ____________________