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ehnyah
09-07-2005, 10:36 AM
In order to enroll in day care or attend public
schools in this country, children are forced to
participate in a mandatory vaccine program. According
to a report by the General Accounting Office released
in 1999, over the 1990s, an estimated 12 million
vaccinations were given each year and more than 40
million children were vaccinated.

Since the 1930s, mercury-based Thimerosal has been
added to vaccines as a preservative to boost drug
company profits by allowing vaccine makers to package
in bulk instead of individual doses.

According to newly discovered research, which was
supported by a grant from the American Medical
Association, government agencies have known for 60
years ago that Thimerosal was neither safe or
effective, and that it should have been removed as a
preservative in pharmaceutical products.

In 1948, Dr Morton of the Department of Bacteriology,
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Dr
North of the Philadelphia General Hospital, and Mr
Engley of Camp Detrick, published the results of their
study in the Journal of the American Medical
Association evaluating the use of mercurials in
medicine.

The article, "The Bacteriostatic and Bactericidal
Action of Some Mercurial Compounds on Hemolytic
Streptococci: In Vivo and In Vitro Studies" explained
that "Mercurial compounds have been employed as
disinfectants since the beginning of bacteriology."

"Indeed, for a long period mercurial compounds, such
as bichloride of mercury, headed the list of chemical
which were thought to be effective in the killing of
microorganisms," it said.

However, the authors basically state that Thimerosal
as a preservative is useless, "It is not highly
germicidal and especially does not possess high
germicidal value in the presence of serum and other
protein mediums. The loss of antibacterial activity
of mercurials in the presence of serum proves their
incompatibility with serum."

In addition, the researchers warned of the toxicity of
Thimerosal. "The comparative in vitro studies of
mercurochrome, metaphen and merthiolate [Thimerosal]
on embryonic (developing) tissue cells and bacterial
cells by Salle and Lazarus [Proceedings of the Society
of Experimental Biology & Medicine, February 1935]
cannot be ignored," they said.

These investigators found Thimerosal was 262 times
more toxic for embryonic tissue cells than for
Staphylococcus aureus.

More than 10 years before the results of the above
study were published, Nye [Journal of the American
Medical Association, January 1937] and Welch [from the
Food and Drug Administration, Journal of Immunology
1939] also found the same mercurial compound more
toxic. "Not only is there a direct toxic action of the
mercurial compounds on the cellular and humoral
components of the animal body, but there is also the
possibility of sensitization," they said.

In addition, Mr Engley subsequently published an
article in the Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences in 1950, titled, "Evaluation of Mercurials as
Antiseptics" in which he declared, "...mercurials are
ineffective in vivo and may be more toxic for tissue
cells than bacterial cells, as shown in mice
(Nungester and Kempf, 1942) (Sarber, 1942) (Spaulding
and Bondi, 1947) tissue culture (Salle and Catlin,
1947) and embryonic eggs (Witlin, 1942) (Green and
Kirkeland, 1944), and with leucocytes (Welch and
Hunter, 1940)."

Due to the FDA ignoring the scientific findings and
warnings of its own researchers, Thimerosal remained
in vaccines for the second half of the century and has
now been linked to an epidemic in autism, attention
deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, and a wide range of other neurological
problems.

The epidemic began as the number of vaccines added to
the immunization schedule rose dramatically. American
children born in 1948 were only required to show proof
of a smallpox vaccination to enter school. By 1991 the
number of mandated vaccines had increased from 9 to 21
and children born in 1998 were required by most states
to receive 33 or 34 doses of nine or ten different
vaccines to enter school.

Beginning in about 1987, as each new vaccine was added
to the schedule, no one apparently thought to keep
track of the cumulative amount of Thimerosal that
would be injected into children with each new shot. As
a direct result of the increased mercury, cases of
autism began doubling every four years.

People who are still sitting on the fence over whether
to believe that Thimerosal is the cause of the
epidemic need only consider the staggering statistics.
On February 15, 2005, the GAO, released a Report
titled, "Special Education Children With Autism," that
revealed the number of children ages 6 through 21
diagnosed with autism receiving special education
services has increased more than 500% over the past 10
years.

State by state the numbers reveal enormity of this
tragic situation. In Oregon, between 1989 and 1999,
the number of school age kids with autism increased
from 250 to 2,877 cases, according to the state's
Department of Education statistics.

The Pennsylvania public school system is feeling the
pressure. Statewide, over a10 year period, the number
of children enrolled in special education classes for
autism disorders has increased from 634 to 5,145 in
2002-03, the most recent year for which state
statistics are available.

Federal Department of Education numbers reveal that
Ohio only had 22 reported cases of autism in 1992 and
by 2002, the number of cases had increased to 3,057.
In Illinois, over the same decade, there was an
increase from five cases to 3,802. In the same time
frame, every state in the nation had an increase of at
least 500 percent.

In addition, consider these odds. Fifteen years ago,
autism affected only one in 10,000 children. Today,
according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and
the CDC in January of 2004, the incidence of autism is
one in every 166 kids.

Since 1999-2000, the number of Bucks County
Pennsylvania autistic children receiving special
education services has jumped at a rate of more than
22% every year, according to the US Department of
Education.

Unlike normal kids, children with autism do not
instinctively learn from observing other children
around them. They must be taught even the simplest
skills such as making eye contact, following
directions, waiting their turn, or how to hold a
conversation. In addition, behaviors, skills, and
abilities vary from one child to the next and about
50% of autistic kids have few or no language skills.
They often suffer from other problems that impair the
learning process as well, such as hearing loss or
epilepsy.

Therefore educating these children costs much more
than is usually allotted for special education kids.
For example, in Bucks Country, PA, for tuition,
transportation, evaluations, and other services, the
cost can reach $60,000 per child compared to $7,000
that the average special education student receives,
according to David Mandell, co-chairman of the
Pennsylvania Autism Task Force, in the September 12,
2004 Bucks County Courier

The question of why some children develop autism and
others do not, appears to be the luck of the draw.
For various reasons still not completely understood,
the bodies of some kids are incapable of ridding
themselves of mercury. In fact, an August 2003
International Journal of Toxicology study revealed
that healthy normal children excreted eight times more
mercury through their hair than did autistic children.

The suspicion that Thimerosal was causing the epidemic
arose in 1997, when the FDA Modernization Act was
passed which required the FDA to investigate the
adverse effects of all products containing mercury.
Within a year, the FDA ordered Thimerosal removed from
over-the-counter products, which surely indicates that
officials knew that far back that it was dangerous.

Once the amount of Thimerosal in vaccines was finally
measured in 1999, the FDA discovered that children
were receiving more than 100 times the EPA’s safe
limit for mercury by 18 months of age and yet
officials allowed the preservative to remain in
vaccines. To this very day flu vaccines given to
pregnant women and 6 month old babies contain a full
dose of Thimerosal.

There can be no denying that the FDA and CDC have long
known of the damage caused by Thimerosal. A June 29,
1999, email from FDA scientist, Peter Patriarca to the
head of the CDC office on vaccine safety, warned that
the FDA would be criticized for 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."

Patriarca also pointed out the fact that calculating
the cumulative dose of mercury in vaccines was not
"rocket science" and involved only ninth-grade math.
He then cited the questions that could be asked of the
agencies: "What took the FDA so long to do the
calculations? Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies
do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the
childhood immunization schedule?"

A secret report from a meeting attended by officials
from the FDA and CDC in 2000, obtained with a FOIA
request, even contained a graph which specifically
illustrated the findings of a child's increasing risk
of developing symptoms of autism upon receiving the
increased amounts of Thimerosal.

In a transcript of that secret meeting, Pediatrician
Bill Weil, acknowledged the epidemic, "There are just
a host of neurodevelopmental data that would suggest
that we've got a serious problem.… The number of kids
getting help in special education is growing
nationally and state by state at a rate we have not
seen before."

However, notwithstanding this clear recognition of
injury to kids, and although individual states have
passed laws banning Thimerosal, the FDA has never
required drug makers to eliminate the preservative
from any vaccines.

In 2000, the independent father and son research team
of David and Mark Geier, conducted a study using the
same CDC data used by the government in 1999, to
compare children who received vaccines with Thimerosal
to kids who received vaccines without it. In the
relevant time frame, they knew that fully vaccinated
kids received four shots by the age of 18 months, and
so they devised a computer program to separate the
children who received no Thimerosal from those who
received four doses.

The results were astounding. The children who received
no Thimerosal had no autism, which caused the Geiers
to question their own findings and rerun the program
several more times. Each time it came back the same,
kids receiving Thimerosal were over ten times more
likely to have autism than the kids who received no
mercury.

Three years later, on May 21, 2003, the Mercury in
Medicine Report was published by the Subcommittee on
Human Rights and Wellness of the Committee on
Government Reform. Based on an investigation spanning
several years, the report rendered a specific finding
that linked the preservative to autism. Included in
the report was the following conclusion:

"Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is
directly related to the autism epidemic. 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 and the sharper eyes of infant exposure to
this known neurotoxin. The public health agencies'
failure to act is indicative of institutional
malfeasance for self protection and misplaced
protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."

The Reform Report concluded that, "Because the FDA
chose not to recall Thimerosal-containing vaccines in
1999, in addition to all of those already injured,
8,000 children a day continued to be placed at risk
for overdose for at least an additional two years."

Over 2 years have passed since that report was issued,
and FDA and CDC officials are still allowing vaccine
makers to use Thimerosal in the manufacturing process
of vaccines and to add a full doses of the product to
flu vaccines which are injected into pregnant women,
children, and the elderly.

In addition, officials still allow drug companies to
ship mercury-laced vaccines for use on kids all over
the world. As a result, autism rates are exploding in
other countries. In China for instance, autism was
unheard of five years ago. Since Chinese children
began receiving vaccines with Thimerosal, well over
one and a half million cases of autism have been
reported. Autism is also on the rise in Argentina,
India and Nigeria, according to Robert F Kennedy, Jr,
in a June 20, 2005 interview on MSNBC.

[continued]

ehnyah
09-07-2005, 10:38 AM
Drug companies deserve to be sued. Proof has surfaced
that shows they have been knowingly injecting this
poison into children for many years. A 1991 company
memo which surfaced last fall in a lawsuit involving
vaccine maker, Merck, proves beyond any doubt, that
the company knew infants were being injected with
unsafe amounts of Thimerosal in 1991.

A copy of the memo was obtained by attorneys for Vera
Easter, a Texas woman who blames drug makers for
injuring her 7-year-old son, who is autistic and
mentally retarded. The lawsuit was filed in the
Eastern District of Texas against vaccine makers
Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis Pasteur, Wyeth; as
well as Thimerosal inventor Eli Lilly.

The 7 page memo describes how a 6-month-old baby who
received shots on schedule would receive doses of
mercury many times higher than established safety
guidelines and specifically states: "If eight doses of
Thimerosal-containing vaccine was given in the first
six months of life (3 DTP, 2 HIB, and 3 Hepatitis B)
the 200 micrograms of mercury given, say to an average
size of 12 pounds, would be about 87 times the Swedish
daily allowance of 2.3 micrograms for a baby of that
size."

The memo even warned that “the best way to go is to
switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without
adding preservatives.” However, it went on to point
out the potential loss of profits and said that while
eliminating preservatives was the best solution, there
was “a cost consideration the head of Health Services
has to consider. Several large ampoules or bottles are
more expensive than a smaller number of larger
packages.”

Authored by Merck's then senior Vice-President,
Maurice Hilleman, the memo was sent to Dr Gordon
Douglas, head of the company's vaccine division. A
disclosure of this information in 1991 could have
prevented millions of children from being injured.

Even after drug makers began claiming they had removed
Thimerosal from vaccines, they left all previously
manufactured vaccines on the market which was clearly
deceptive to parents who believed they were injecting
Thimerosal-free vaccines into their babies. In
September 1999, Merck declared in a press release:
"Now, Merck's infant vaccine line is free of all
preservatives."

However, On March 8, 2005, the LA Times reported,
"Merck & Co continued to supply infant vaccine
containing a mercury preservative for two years after
declaring that it had eliminated the chemical."

As it turns out, the company continued to distribute
vaccines containing Thimerosal until October 2001,
according to a June, 2003 FDA letter sent to Rep David
Weldon (R-Fla), a doctor, in response to his inquiry.
Weldon called what Merck did "misleading."

"You had people literally into 2002 getting shots with
mercury, having been told it was all taken out in
1999," he told the Times.

To this day, vaccines with full doses of Thimerosal
are still out there. Last time I checked, I found
products with expiration dates as late as September
2005.

The oft asked question is why would regulatory
agencies allow Thimerosal to remain in vaccines? As
usual, their initial motive was to protect the profits
of the pharmaceutical industry that would be lost if
the preservative was removed and packaging was limited
to single dose vials, because many of the same
researchers, advisory board members, and officials who
were involved in the vaccine approval process were
also benefiting financially from drug company money.

An investigation by United Press International, found
that members of the CDC's Vaccine Advisory Committee,
received financial benefits from sharing a vaccine
patent; owning stock in a vaccine company; payments
for research; payments to monitor manufacturer vaccine
tests; and funding to academic departments.

What kind of money are we talking about here? Picture
this. The annual global market for vaccines is
expected to rise to $10 billion by 2006, according to
UPI.

However by this late date, the effort to hide the
truth about Thimerosal by the FDA and CDC, is fueled
by fear over the amount of money the industry, and
quite possibly the government agencies it conspired
with to conceal the harm, are going to end up paying
out in law suits for injuring millions of children.

With that in mind, officials make sure the media
steadily repeats the mantra of a May 2004 Institute of
Medicine report that claims there is no link between
Thimerosal and autism. However, since that report was
released, Steven Goodman, MD, MHS, Ph.D, an associate
professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and
member of the IOM panel, has backed off from the
report's certainty and said:

"It was clear from the report that we were not giving
thimerosal a clean bill of health. Mercury is
definitely a neurotoxin. ... We only said that the
evidence favored that there was not a connection
between autism and thimerosal exposure," according to
the Naples Sun Times on April 27, 2005.

Researcher, Mark Geier, is a doctor with a PhD in
genetics and a court-certified expert on vaccines. He
has determined through numerous studies that
Thimerosal is to blame and has this to say, "the
current epidemic of autism may well be the greatest
iatrogenic epidemic in history. The damage already
done to our society is already in the trillions of
dollars. The damage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and
that of the AIDS epidemic pale when compared to the
current epidemic of autism."

Parents of injured children and tax payers are already
paying an enormous price for this man-made epidemic.
According to a June 19, 2002 Written Supplement to
Oral Testimony at the Hearing of the Government Reform
Committee, by James Bradstreet, MD, FAAFP, Clinical
Director, The International Child Development Resource
Center, "the cost of education, medical care, and
therapies for behavioral and physical symptoms is
staggering. Many of our families report having paid
$50,000 per year to care for their child."

"Custodial care for autism can exceed $100,000/year,"
Bradstreet said, "The public education system is
literally swamped with children." Schools lack the
therapists and specially trained educators to deal
with the epidemic.

Back in 2002, according to Bradstreet, the Resource
Center estimated the minimal cost to care for the
420,000 existing children with autism to be
$1,260,000,000,000 (based on $3 million/lifetime). So
a little over a $1 trillion over the next 50 years
would be required if the rising number of new cases
ceased in 2002.

However, because autism was doubling every four years,
Bradstreet warned, "this is likely an overly
conservative estimate. The societal cost could easily
be $3-4 trillion."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The amount of
potential earnings lost as a result of the large
number of children who will never be self-supporting
is impossibly to calculate. Many parents are
currently unable to work because they must stay home
to care for a disabled child. Anything short of a
miracle cure means these children will be disabled for
life.

If the Republicans succeed in passing legislation that
will immunize vaccine makers from liability for the
injuries they caused by Thimerosal, Americans had
better be prepared to pay higher taxes to cover the
cost of live-long care for the millions of kids who
have been damaged.

Evelyn Pringle
epringle05ATyahoo.com

(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media
TV and an investigative journalist focused on exposing
corruption in government)

http://oldamericancentury.org/pring_015.htm

http://www.independent-media.tv/group.cfm?ffield=media_producer&fvalue=Evelyn%20Pringle