Thimerosal and Autism Risk Investigation

To convene

an outside panel of experts in this area to try

and review the, the, uh, the findings so far that had been gleaned,

to

review the discussions that had taken place within CDC at

that point

By this time, the autism risk had been watered down to

1.69.

But Verstraeten had been finding a link between thimerosal and a whole array of

developmental disorders.

I'm not even sure if they knew it was being, uh, recorded, but it was, and a

transcript was, was, was made.

They took the extraordinary step of convening this external panel,

which doesn't

happen.

The transcript were quite adamant that, that this was a linear

relationship, that they had a problem here.

There were neurodevelopmental specialists, there were pediatricians, there were

biostatisticians, there was an epidemiologist, me.

Thomas Verstraeten is quoted as saying,

"Personally, I have three hypotheses.

My first hypothesis is that it's parental bias.

The children that are more likely to be vaccinated

are more likely to be picked up

and diagnosed.

Second hypothesis, I don't know. There's a bias that I've not yet

recognized,

and nobody has yet told me about it. Third hypothesis, it's true.

It's thimerosal."

Dr. Weil from American Academy of Pediatrics

said, "You can play with it all you

want. The results are real. They're statistically significant."

They're not unexpectable, expected.

Not unexpected. Other people like, uh, Dr.

Clements from World Health Organization said, "You know, we could have predicted

this outcome before the d- we did the study,

and now we're left hanging, and we

should-"

We should have never done the study.

"We should have never done this study."

Now, other scientists were worried, not so much from a

medical point of view, but from a legal point of view.

They were worried about lawsuits.

They were worried about people suing the drug companies.

There was enough, enough, um, um,

evidence there.

Toward the end of discussions, the participants

were asked to vote on a scale of

one to six how serious they felt these findings were.

Most of the people who did vote, voted one or two.

In other words, not very serious. Of course, they were members of the

public health establishment with a big vested interest

in the vaccine program.

One of those who voted a one was the chair of the panel himself.

I remember the chair of the panel's grandson being born, uh,

or the announcement

happening literally as we were in the middle of discussions.

Stood up and said that earlier that morning,

he had been called out into the

hall

because his first male grandson had just been born,

and there was no way that they were gonna vaccinate

that baby with thimerosal.

Sir, would you all raise your right hand, please?

Do you solemnly swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help

you God?

I do.

Seated.

I was chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, and we did,

uh, about four years of investigation into

vaccines. I had scientists come from all over the

world

a- and doctors from all over the world to, uh, to, uh, discuss it before my

committee, and that's how we, uh, came to the conclusions we did.

If there's any question whatsoever about mercury in vaccine, if there's even a

question, why in the world are you continuing to immunize kids with

something that's questionable? You can't... I... Give me an answer.

I don't understand it.

To date, you know, there is no, we have no evidence,

convincing evidence of harm from the

thimerosal.

I, I know, doctor.

That's because in, in vaccines.

No, I'm gonna yield. Doctor, I understand. You said that, and I understand that.

Here was Congressman Burton from the Government Reform Committee, as the

chairperson, investigating the issue of thimerosal in

medicine,

and they didn't tell the committee anything.

Can you imagine what that was like?

One day, they're behind closed doors, "We found all these effects.

Oh my God, what are we gonna do about it?" Next day,

testify before Congress, "No

links, no data. We need to do studies in the future."

Everything's fine.

If he had told the truth and pulled out from Simpsonwood a draft of

that

study, just think of how many thousands, probably tens of thousands

of children would've been spared.

When we had our hearings,

uh, we had somebody from the FDA testifying,

and I, uh, said

that, "My grandson got seven shots with mercury

in them, uh, and became

autistic very s- very shortly." And he said, "Well,

the, there's no, no evidence that that caused it." And I said,

"Would you like for

me to give you the content that was in there of mercury, seven

shots full? Would you let me shoot that into your arm?" And he looked at

me like he was shot, and said, "Well, no."

And I said, "Well, why?

If it's all right for my grandson to get seven shots with mercury in it, why is it

not, not all right for you to take one shot

with the same amount of mercury that he

got?"

One month after the Simpsonwood conference,

Thomas Verstraeten sent an email to

voice his frustrations over the pressure he was under to reduce the relative

risks. "I do not wish to be the advocate of the

anti-vaccine lobby and sound like

being convinced that thimerosal is or was harmful, but at least I feel we should

use sound scientific argumentation and not let our standards be dictated by

our

desire to disprove an unpleasant theory."

That was basically the end of Verstraeten's tenure at CDC.

Once he said that, he was doomed.

Then a year later, the fourth generation was presented at

the Institute of Medicine committee meeting that was held in

2001. There were two IOM meetings on vaccines.

The Institute of Medicine, known as the IOM,

was paid by the CDC to perform

two separate reviews of the evidence in relation to vaccines and autism.

The first was the 2001 IOM, and by this time, Verstraeten's fourth

generation showed a relative risk for autism that had once again been lowered,

this

time to 1.52.

When Verstraeten

presented his data that morning at the IOM, he said,

"As of 8:00 this morning, I no longer work for the CDC.

I am now an employee of GlaxoSmithKline, and I'll be going

back to Belgium to work for their Brussels office." Well, Glaxo, of course, is a

vaccine maker, uses thimerosal, and is a defendant in a lot of

lawsuits.

The 2001 IOM concluded the link between autism and thimerosal is

biologically plausible.

They emphasized the need to perform biological and clinical science.

After the IOM '01 report that found biologic plausibility,

the trial lawyers

came out of the woodwork and were filing class actions in civil court

and were kind

of gearing up the whole litigation machinery to go after industry,

and Eli Lilly

came along with a rider, Tollman Security Act, that would have

given the vaccine companies permanent immunity from suit.

10 years ago, it was 1 in 10,000.

Now, it's 1 in 250, a 40-fold increase in 10

years, and we had the audacity to take the only

tool

that these parents had out of their hands