EXPLODING AUTISM EPIDEMIC TIED TO GREED OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES

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http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette165.htmlMOUNTAIN VIEWS: EXPLODING AUTISM EPIDEMIC TIED TO GREED OF PHARMACEUTICALCOMPANIESBy John HanchetteOLEAN -- Here's an update on a topic featured in this space before: thealarming exponential increase in young children with autism. You may havemissed it, but late in June both houses of the New York State Legislaturepassed an act that, beginning in mid-2008, would prohibit further sale oruse of the mercury compound thimerosal in vaccines for children younger than3, and for inoculating pregnant women. The office of Gov. George Pataki hassaid he's still pondering whether to sign the legislation into law.If he does, it would make New York the fourth state to establish such alaw -- California, Iowa and Missouri are the others.

Similar legislation -- most of it with quicker effective dates -- has been introduced in Florida,Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio,Oregon, Utah, Washington, Tennessee and Rhode Island. A federal bill to banthimerosal from all childhood vaccines in the United States is sponsored byRep. David Weldon, a Florida Republican who is also a physician. He says inthe 1990s a baby who got all the recommended shots could be exposed tomercury levels significantly higher than those considered safe by theEnvironmental Protection Agency.Thimerosal, which contains a neurotoxin mercury compound, has been used formore than half a century as a preservative to prevent bacterialcontamination in vaccines. Just a decade ago, most Americans would have tobe "Jeopardy" champions just to identify the substance, but parents todayare more and more aware of it because many medical researchers believe it islinked

to the astounding increase in autism. If you're in your 20s, you hada 1 in 10,000 chance of ending up autistic. Today, that chance in the UnitedStates is about 1 in 166 births, according to the federal Centers forDisease Control and Prevention.The change in these numbers is statistically incredible, and indicates ahealth problem of epidemic proportions.As almost every concerned parent now knows, autistic children -- many ofthem once normal infants and toddlers -- display heartbreaking socialwithdrawal, loss of speech, reduced eye contact, temper tantrums, repetitivehand-flapping, seizures, constant sleep disturbance, aversion to eyecontact, a seemingly weakened immune system, and odd repetitive behaviorssuch as walking on their toes. The symptoms of infant mercury poisoning arealmost exactly the same.As more and more inoculations became required for infants and toddlers inthe late 1980s and early 1990s, big

pharmaceutical firms manufacturingvaccines started combining the shots in multi-dose vials.They were cheaper to produce, easier to store, and kept parents from makingtoo many trips to the doctor. The thimerosal also gave them longershelf-life. During this period, the number of vaccines containing thimerosalthat were added to the immunization schedule almost doubled. Kids sometimesgot three such injections in a single day, and usually ninethimerosal-containing shots during their first half-year of life, when theimmune system is still developing and vulnerable.It was during this period the astonishing rate of increase in autisticchildren started zooming upward.While pediatricians gave mothers tut-tut reassurances that the vaccinationswere totally safe, recently revealed documents show some government and drugindustry researchers had started wondering. The Los Angeles Times earlierthis year dug up a 1991 memo

circulated within the internal offices ofpharmaceutical giant Merck. It showed real concern among senior executivesover the significant level of mercury in many children's vaccines. It wasn'tuntil the summer of 1999 that the influential American Academy of Pediatricsand the federal Public Health Service issued a joint statement urging thepharmaceutical firms to remove thimerosal from their infant vaccines.They did, sort of.Much of the thimerosal-containing vaccine was shipped overseas to developingnations and countries like China, where autism rates have since rocketed.Some was dispatched to free health clinics in the United States. The mercurysubstance still appears here in some flu shots and booster inoculations fortetanus and diphtheria. (Russia, often described in the American media asabysmally backward in scientific matters, banned thimerosal from vaccines 20years ago. So have Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, Finland,

Austria, Denmarkand Japan.)The Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization continuedto insist thimerosal was safe, and in May of last year -- funded by theCDC -- the Institute of Medicine in Washington weighed in by statingscientific evidence in more than 200 studies "favors rejection of a causalrelationship" and that "all well-designed epidemiological studies provideevidence of no association between thimerosal and autism."Case closed? Hardly.The childhood health controversy has morphed into a growing fight in thepolitical arena. A recent catalyst is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 51 -- the sonof assassinated New York senator, presidential candidate and former AttorneyGeneral Robert F. Kennedy, JFK's younger brother. The current youngerKennedy, a lawyer and environmentalist, in June wrote an explosive articlein "Rolling Stone" magazine that described a secret June 2000 summit-likemeeting of doctors,

drug company execs, federal health officials and othervaccine experts called together by the CDC specifically "to discuss adisturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of ahost of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and youngchildren." Kennedy, who does not have an autistic child, said he began hisresearch thinking he would prove vaccines were not involved in the autismincrease.Instead, from documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act andan anonymous source who was present, Kennedy learned a CDC epidemiologist atthe meeting had declared that 100,000 medical records of children in the CDCmedical database had showed thimerosal was "directly related to the dramaticrise" in the autism epidemic.Instead of triggering further studies or promulgating this to the federalscientific community, the CDC embargoed the information -- even fromgovernment medical researchers -- but

showed the data to select members ofthe private drug industry. Typical federal behavior.ABC News got onto the buzz about Kennedy's assertions and prepared a specialreport that would have indicated credence, but network executives canceledit the night before airing. The content was rewritten in a fashion thatdiscredited Kennedy and his discoveries. The rebroadcast was sandwichedbetween expensive advertisements by big pharmaceutical companies.Kennedy upped the ante with an opinion piece last week in USA Today, inwhich he claimed the "once sterling reputations" of the CDC, the IOM and theFood and Drug Administration have all been tarnished "by the release oftranscripts of secret meetings that show government officials conspiringwith the pharmaceutical industry to hide the damning results of data showingdramatic increases in neurological disorders among children exposed tothimerosal."Kennedy scored the CDC for claiming

"to have lost the original data" and forits "defiance of federal laws and congressional requests requiring it toallow independent scientists or the public to review federal vaccine safetydata."He further accused the CDC of rigging studies finding thimerosal safe byrelying on principal authors who "have close ties to the pharmaceuticalindustry" and not disclosing those connections, even though the federalhealth agency was aware of them, and was similarly aware the studiescontained "deceptive data" which made the studies "catastrophically flawed."For instance, the CDC and other thimerosal defenders keep pointing to one ofthe studies that allegedly shows a big increase in autistic children inDenmark after that country disallowed use of the substance in its vaccines.Wouldn't that show conclusively that thimerosal is not to blame for autismincreases?One would think so, until one learns from Kennedy that Denmark --

beforebanning thimerosal -- was used to registering in its studies only autisticswho were hospitalized. That number represented only 20 percent of thosetruly afflicted. After banning thimerosal, Denmark began also countingout-patient children who showed autistic symptoms, four-fifths of the totalautistic population. Apples and oranges, not scientific parallels. Ofcourse, it appeared like the numbers spiked following the ban. A whole newcategory was being counted. The clever CDC, of course, never mentions this.The CDC, Kennedy further charged, "has selectively ignored hundreds ofbiological, toxicological and epidemiological studies linking thimerosal toa wide range of neurological disorders, relying instead on its reputationand its faith that journalists are too busy to read the science."The slopping over of the controversy into political circles is evenaffecting occupants of the White House -- the current one and a

possiblefuture resident of the executive mansion.Last September, when George W. Bush was campaigning for re-election, vaccinesafety advocates asked Bush to state his position on thimerosal. Dubyaresponded: "I support the removal of thimerosal from vaccines" forchildren." He also pledged to fund autism research.A parental group called Unlocking Autism last month unleashed a lobbying andadvertising campaign accusing Dubya of flip-flopping on the issue and doingnothing. Members say they got the cold shoulder when they tried to convinceWhite House officials and the Department of Health and Human Servicesthimerosal is still a problem.The possible future president in the middle of the controversy is SenateMajority Leader Bill Frist, a heart surgeon and powerful TennesseeRepublican who is notoriously protecting big pharmaceutical firms fromprivate lawsuits and who has feverishly (and successfully) tried to

denyresearchers access to the federal government's sophisticated database ofvaccine reaction documents.Frist, you may recall, is the slick politico who after 9/11 snuck aprovision into the Homeland Security Act that shielded the bigpharmaceutical company Eli Lilly -- developer of thimerosal -- from evenbeing subpoenaed in connection to vaccine lawsuits. He claimed he was justtrying to protect future research that would protect against bioterrorism.Yeah, sure.Shortly thereafter, Eli Lilly donated $10,000 to Frist's campaign fund andbought 5,000 copies of the senator's book on bioterrorism. The clauseprotecting the big drug firm from legal action was repealed in 2003, butFrist was not deterred. Early this year, he attached another section toanother anti-terrorism bill which denies compensation to children withvaccine-related brain damage. His office states vaccine-damage lawsuits "areof such magnitude that they could

put vaccine producers out of business andlimit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists." [Ed Note---if this isn't a biological attack by 'terrorists' I don't know what is....]Riiiight. Maybe this is why over the years pharmaceutical companies havedonated a total of almost $900,000 to Frist's campaign funds. Frist is goingto run for president in 2008. And he's going to get some tough questions onthis subject. Parents everywhere should hope young Kennedy keeps askingthem.--John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, isa former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning nationalcorrespondent. He was a founding editor of USA Today and was recently namedby Gannett as one of the Top 10 reporters of the past 25 years. He can becontacted via e-mail at

Hanchette6.Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com July 12 2005