Jabbed

By 1999, the link between thimerosal and autism as well as non-thimerosal containing vaccines and autism was not new information to vaccine insiders. As previously mentioned, the Vaccine Court had awarded compensation to dozens of parents whose children had regressed into autism following vaccinations. Original MMR and DTaP package inserts included autism as a possible side effect. (Autism magically disappeared as a side effect in subsequent package inserts as well as from various government and other industry-influenced websites.)²^, ³^, ⁴^, ⁵

The problem for the vaccine industry was not that vaccines cause autism; the problem was that the industry was losing control of the vaccine story. People were connecting to the Internet, connecting with one another, and learning that the pretty public story of vaccines was really an ugly illusion.

The magicians might have been able to maintain the deception if they had maintained a vaccine schedule from a former era. Paralyzing children with the polio vaccine made sense to people still paralyzed with the fear of polio, but injuring and killing children with the highly reactive DTP vaccine made less sense. Giving newborn babies the neurotoxin thimerosal on the day of birth for the unnecessary Hepatitis B vaccine made no sense at all. And when The Church launched its crusade against chickenpox in 1995, it further trivialized its salvational role. In addition to chickenpox, the government saw fit to add the Hepatitis A vaccine to the schedule in 1995 as well as the rotavirus vaccine in 1998. With chickenpox, people at least knew about the disease, and many could therefore be convinced of the utility of the vaccine. But how many children in the neighborhood were suffering from Hepatitis A, and what the hell is rotavirus? A Department of Health official from Oregon answered that question in 2009 and explained why the Beaver State didn’t include it on its list of mandated vaccines: “Rotavirus is just some diarrhea for a day or two. It’s just not a big deal. That one will never be on our list.”6 It was, however, a big deal when the original rotavirus vaccine was pulled from the schedule a few months after it was introduced because it had injured and killed too many babies even for the CDC.

Congress was not impressed. In 1999, legislators held hearings on the hepatitis B vaccine, vaccine safety, and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Questions multiplied. Charges of incompetence, ignorance, conflicts of interest, and greed became part of the dialogue in Washington, DC, and among the growing numbers of vaccine informed scientists, medical professionals, parents, and patients.

A war was brewing. Lined up on one side were the causalities of the vaccine program—former believers whose children’s lives had been forever altered or lost entirely. A smattering of supporters stepped forward from every social class and from every profession: common folk as well as doctors, lawyers, scientists, clergy, professors, politicians, reporters, and celebrities.

Lined up on the other side was a multibillion-dollar industry that had created for itself unlimited growth potential with virtually zero accountability or liability. Supporters included a similar cast of lay individuals and professionals. Their numbers were enormous, their power limitless, and their influence endless.

Public health officials—the Church proselytizers—had successfully maintained the façade of unity in their fight against infectious disease. But when the fight against disease turned into a fight against vaccine-injured children, dissension broke out among the Church elite.

For many, perhaps most, protecting the vaccine program was paramount. Never mind the fact that Church healers had ignorantly injected millions of babies with a potent neurotoxin in excess of every governmental guideline. Never mind the fact that parents of vaccine-injured children were overwhelming the Vaccine Court. Proponents of the Protect-The-Program-And-The-Public-Be-Damned paradigm knew that removing thimerosal from vaccines would be an admission of error and culpability, would reduce vaccination compliance, and, most important, would reduce profit margins.

The European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) met in London on April 19, 1999, to address the thimerosal issue. The EMEA is responsible for establishing guidelines for the use of drugs and biologics in the European Union.⁷ The FDA’s Dr. Norman Baylor was present. (Baylor is the man with the cheesy slide show from Chapter 5 who glosses over the issue of vaccine ingredients.) Two months later, the EMEA issued a statement that, no doubt, displeased the majority of American public health policy makers:

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met in Atlanta for two days starting on June 20, 1999. Guided by CDC officials, the committee concluded that it would maintain its no preference policy on the issue of thimerosal in vaccines. This in spite of the fact that manufacturers assured the CDC that they had the capacity to switch to thimerosal-free vaccines with little interruption in supply. Dr. Neal Halsey argued for at least a reduction in the amount of thimerosal a child should receive in one day. No serious consideration was given to his suggestion. In the end, financial considerations trumped the safety of American children as evidenced by CDC’s Dr. Roger Bernier’s repeated statements:

We think that having this type of a more staged transition reduces the potential for financial losses of existing inventories, and this is somewhat akin to what was done in the transition from oral polio to inactivated polio . . .

It could entail financial losses of inventory if current vaccine inventory is wasted. It could harm one or more manufacturers and may then decrease the number of suppliers. . . .

The evidence justifying this kind of abrupt policy change does not appear to exist, and it could entail financial losses for all existing stocks of vaccines that contain thimerosal.⁹

Representative Dan Burton may well have been thinking of his own vaccine-injured grandchild when he and his committee later castigated Bernier and the CDC for their disgraceful priorities:

The financial health of the industry should never have been a factor in this decision. The financial health of vaccine manufacturers certainly should never have been more important to the Federal health officials than the health and well being [of] the nation’s children. . . . If there were any doubts about the neurological effects of ethylmercury in vaccines on children—and there were substantial doubts—the prevailing consideration should have been how best to protect children from potential harm. However, it appears that protecting the industry’s profits took precedent [sic] over protecting children from mercury damage.10

On June 22nd, Dr. Halsey participated in an FDA meeting in which the topic of thimerosal in vaccines was discussed. The following day, Halsey wrote a letter to the members of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, which he chaired:

In the past few days, I have become aware that the amount of thimerosal in most hepatitis B, DTaP, and Hib vaccines that we administer to infants results in a total dose of mercury that exceeds the maximum exposure recommended by the EPA, the FDA, CDC and WHO . . . .¹¹

A former FDA official, Dr. Peter Patriarca, described in an email message to Martin Meyers, Acting Director of the National Vaccine Program Office at the CDC, the potential fallout from removing thimerosal from vaccines, stating that it would

. . . raise questions about 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. It will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use. (We must keep in mind that the dose of ethylmercury was not generated by “rocket science”. Conversion of the percentage thimerosal to actual micrograms of mercury involves ninth grade algebra. What took the FDA so long to do the calculations? Why didn’t the CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?)¹²

Dr. Elain Esber sent an email message to Linda Suydam, her colleague in the FDA, describing the Public Health Service’s fear that stating a recommendation for thimerosal-free vaccines might “. . . result in unwarranted loss of confidence in immunization programs in the US and internationally, shortages of childhood vaccines might ensue, and other potential far-reaching ramifications are envisioned.”¹³

Esber’s use of the word “unwarranted” in this context demonstrates the profound bias of the majority of public health professionals in favor of vaccination over protecting the minds and bodies of American children from poisoning.

Dr. Ruth Enzel of the Department of Agriculture noted the same bias in a letter to three members of the American Academy of Pediatrics:

On July 7, 1999, the AAP issued a joint statement with the US Public Health Service. The statement represented a compromise between those who wanted to remove thimerosal from vaccines and those who didn’t. Representative Burton and committee summarized the statement with the following points:

• Acknowledged that some children may have been exposed to levels of mercury that exceed one Federal guideline on methylmercury during the first six months of life;

• Asserted that there is no evidence of any harm caused by thimerosal in vaccines;

• Called on vaccine manufacturers to make a clear commitment to reduce as expeditiously as possible the mercury content of their vaccines;

• Urged doctors and parents to immunize all children even if thimerosal-free vaccines are not available; and

• Encouraged doctors and parents to postpone the Hepatitis B vaccine (which contained thimerosal at the time and was generally given immediately after birth) until the child is two to six months old unless the mother tested positive for Hepatitis B.¹⁵

In August 1999, the National Vaccine Advisory Group and the Interagency Working Group on Vaccines met at Bethesda in the Lister Auditorium to discuss the thimerosal issue. As a result, thimerosal was banned from the hepatitis B vaccine, but American children continued to receive the neurotoxin until supplies were exhausted, approximately two to three years.¹⁶

The joint statement issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service put pressure on the CDC to announce its position on thimerosal. Accordingly, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met on October 20th to review the situation. The committee concluded:

The committee also warned against “failure to vaccinate newborns at high risk for perinatal hepatitis B virus . . .” and advised health care professionals to vaccinate all newborns—regardless of risk—with the hep B vaccine, whether or not the vaccine contained thimerosal.¹⁸

Russell Blaylock, MD, a harsh critic of CDC corruption, dressed down the ACIP for its ongoing allegiance to the pharmaceutical industry:

Now, we need to stop and think about what has transpired here. We have an important group here; the ACIP that . . . plays a role in vaccine policy that affects tens of millions of children every year. And, we have evidence from the thimerosal meeting in 1999 that the potential for serious injury to the infant’s brain is so serious that a recommendation for removal becomes policy. In addition, they are all fully aware that tiny babies are receiving mercury doses that exceed even EPA safety limits, yet all they can say is that we must “try to remove thimerosal as soon as possible.” Do they not worry about the tens of millions of babies that will continue receiving thimerosal-containing vaccines until they can get around to stopping the use of thimerosal?¹⁹

Congressman Burton also took a swing at the lackluster response from Federal officials:

During the same time period, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article in which the CDC advocated for restrictions against philosophical and/or religious exemptions to mandatory vaccinations, a position that that has since grown stronger.²¹ Clearly, the government’s long-term goal is mandatory vaccination regardless of vaccine contents.

In August, Burton and the Committee on Government Reform initiated an investigation into the Federal vaccine policy, starting at the top of the Department of Health and Human Services. Burton wrote to HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala requesting detailed personnel and financial records “on every staff employee within DHHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) who is involved with vaccines at any level.” Some two months later he followed up with a second request giving “Shalala one week to produce the records or face a subpoena.”

His request struck heavily at the CDC, where scores of staff members work on vaccine matters.

The CDC sent the records to Washington, where they were screened by DHHS lawyers and then forwarded to Burton’s committee in mid-October. Included in the records were emails, correspondence, résumés, financial disclosure forms, records of outside activities, and travel documents for the previous three years.

The FDA, NIH, HRSA officials, and members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) also were required to supply their information.²²

The Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) is a collaborative project between CDC’s Immunization Safety Office and nine health care organizations. The VSD started in 1990 and continues today in order to monitor safety of vaccines and conduct studies about rare and serious adverse events following immunization.²⁴

Barbara Lardy with America’s Health Insurance Plans states that the VSD is a “crucial part of the federal government’s systematic effort to monitor the safety of vaccines commonly used in the United States and to reassure public confidence in vaccines.”²⁵ The CDC had already researched the database and published an article in the June 1997 issue of Pediatrics touting the power of the VSD to identify problems in vaccine safety. Among other things, Robert Chen, then-chief of CDC/Immunization Safety Branch, and more than a dozen other researchers noted that the risk of seizures more than doubled on the same day the DTP vaccine was administered. They also found that the risk of seizures for the MMR vaccine increased by 300% “8 to 14 days after receipt of MMR. . . .”²⁶

Chen was confident that the VSD would exonerate thimerosal from any relationship with autism and thus legitimize the agency’s ongoing love affair with it. Thomas Verstraeten, a young CDC epidemiologist, was assigned to crunch the numbers, and he completed his initial findings in November and December of 1999. Far from reassuring, Verstraeten discovered that when he compared one-month-old babies with no thimerosal exposure to one-month-old babies with exposure levels at or above 25 micrograms of thimerosal, the relative risk of autism increased from 7.62 times (November results) to 11.35 times (December results).²⁷

Verstraeten’s November analysis also revealed the following increases in relative risk: ADHD (8.29), ADD w/o hyperactivity (6.38), Tics (5.65), Sleep disorders (4.98), and Speech/language (2.08).²⁸

Verstraeten first alluded to his findings on November 29 in an email message he sent to his supervisors Robert Davis and Frank DeStefano.

On December 17, the researcher followed up with another email message to the same individuals. The subject of the message was “It just won’t go away. . . .” Further analyses of the data had led the epidemiologist to the conclusion that “. . . except for epilepsy, all the harm is done in the first month.” He further wrote, “. . . some of the RRs [relative risks] increase over the categories and I haven’t yet found an alternative explanation. . . . Please let me know if you can think of one.” Verstraeten signed off with a cheery “Happy holidays!”³⁰

Thus began the saga of the now-infamous “Verstraeten Study”—one of several fraudulent studies the Institute of Medicine would cite four years later to justify its claim that thimerosal does not cause autism. Of course, the IOM never saw the figures that Verstraeten, Davis, DeStefano, and other CDC vaccine sociopaths saw. Neither did the 60 vaccine industry insiders who met at the CDC’s invitation in June 2000 in Norcross, Georgia, at the Simpsonwood Retreat Center. But what they saw there was still enough to destroy the public’s blind faith in the mystical power of the vaccine paradigm.

Chapter Fourteen

CRISIS AND DAMAGE
CONTROL

Chapter Fourteen

CRISIS AND DAMAGE CONTROL

CRISIS AND DAMAGE
CONTROL