National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act

How do you earn billions without any chance of liability? Why you enlist the government's help of course!

National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act 1986

Deal in an Autism Case Fuels Debate on Vaccine

March 8, 2008

By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON — Study after study has failed to show any link between vaccines and autism, but many parents of autistic children remain unconvinced. For the skeptics, the case of 9-year-old Hannah Poling shows that they have been right along.

The government has conceded that vaccines may have hurt Hannah, and it has agreed to pay her family for her care. Advocates say the settlement — reached last fall in a federal compensation court for people injured by vaccines, but disclosed only in recent days — is a long-overdue government recognition that vaccinations can cause autism.

“This decision gives people significant reason to be cautious about vaccinating their children,” John Gilmore, executive director of the group Autism United, said Friday.

Mr. Gilmore has filed his own claim that his son became autistic as a result of vaccinations.

Government officials say they have made no such concession.

“Let me be very clear that the government has made absolutely no statement indicating that vaccines are a cause of autism,” Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday. “That is a complete mischaracterization of the findings of the case and a complete mischaracterization of any of the science that we have at our disposal today.”

Hannah, of Athens, Ga., was 19 months old and developing normally in 2000 when she received five shots against nine infectious diseases. Two days later, she developed a fever, cried inconsolably and refused to walk. Over the next seven months she spiraled downward, and in 2001 she was given a diagnosis of autism.

Hannah’s father, Dr. Jon Poling, was a neurology resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the time, and she underwent an intensive series of tests that found a disorder in her mitochondria, the energy factories of the cells.

Such disorders are uncommon, their effects can be significant but varied, and the problems associated with them can show up immediately or lie dormant for years.

There are two theories about what happened to Hannah, said her mother, Terry Poling. The first is that she had an underlying mitochondrial disorder that vaccinations aggravated. The second is that vaccinations caused this disorder.

“The government chose to believe the first theory,” Ms. Poling said, but added, “We don’t know that she had an underlying disorder.”

In a news conference on Thursday, Dr. Edwin Trevathan, director of the National Center for Birth Defects and Development Disabilities at the disease control agency, said, “I don’t think we have any science that would lead us to believe that mitochondrial disorders are caused by vaccines.”

Dr. Trevathan explained that children with mitochondrial disorders often develop normally until they come down with an infection. Then their mitochondria are unable to manufacture the energy needed to nourish the brain. As a result, they regress.

The Poling case has become a flashpoint in the long-running controversy over thimerosal, a vaccine preservative containing mercury. Some people believe that thimerosal is behind the rising number of autism diagnoses. Among them is Lyn Redwood, director of the Coalition for SafeMinds.

Many of the vaccines Hannah received contained thimerosal, and to Ms. Redwood, she is more proof of thimerosal’s dangers.

The disease control centers, the Food and Drug Administration, the Institute of Medicine, the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all largely dismissed the notion that thimerosal causes or contributes to autism.

Five major studies have found no link, and since thimerosal’s removal from all routinely administered childhood vaccines in 2001, there has been no apparent effect on autism rates.

Many of those who believe in an autism-vaccine link dismiss all this evidence, and Hannah’s case fuels their cause.

“Her story is very important because it echoes so many others, and it’s clear that thimerosal played a role,” said Rita Shreffler, executive director of the National Autism Association.

Dr. and Mrs. Poling said Hannah did not prove the case against thimerosal, but Dr. Poling noted that there was no debate that vaccines had risks.

“They’re not safe for everybody,” he said, “and one person for whom they proved unsafe happened to be my daughter.”

If this happens a super flu bug is sure to follow

---

February 28, 2008

Panel Advises Flu Shots for Children Up to Age 18

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

All children ages 6 months to 18 years in this country should receive an influenza shot every year, a federal advisory panel said on Wednesday.

The recommendation expands by about 30 million the number of children who should get annual flu shots. Current pediatric recommendations call for influenza vaccinations for children ages 6 months to about 5 years.

In expanding the new upper age limit to 18 years, the aim is to reduce both the time children and parents lose from visits to pediatricians and missing school and the need for antibiotics for complications, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, who directs the disease agency’s program on immunization and respiratory diseases.

An added expected benefit would be indirect — to reduce the number of influenza cases among parents and other household members, and possibly spread to the general community.

The recommendation, which is voluntary, was made by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The C.D.C. and its parent, the Department of Health and Human Services, generally follow the advice of the committee, which is composed of vaccine experts from academia and the private sector.

The committee voted unanimously that the expanded immunization should start as soon as possible, but no later than the 2009-10 flu season. The centers expect that the vaccine industry, which made 132 million doses available this year, will be able to produce a sufficient supply in future years.

Every state but one has reported widespread influenza this winter. In Florida, activity is regional. Last week, the centers reported that 22 children had died in this influenza season.

The C.D.C. has long urged older adults and those with chronic ailments to get influenza shots each season.

In 2004, following the advisory committee’s recommendation, the centers urged that all infants ages 6 months to 23 months receive flu shots to protect them from serious complications of the viral illness. Hospitalization rates among the infant group rivals those among elderly Americans.

In 2006, the centers expanded the recommendation to include children ages 24 months to 59 months to provide them direct protection against influenza infection.

For initial protection, children ages 6 months to 9 years require two doses of flu vaccine, at least one month apart, the committee said. Then they should receive annual shots.

In a new study reported at Wednesday’s meeting, Dr. David K. Shay, who led a team from the C.D.C. and eight state health departments, found that full immunization against flu provided about a 75 percent effectiveness rate in preventing hospitalizations from influenza complications in the 2005-6 and 2006-7 influenza seasons. (The 75 percent rate could range, according to a standard statistical measure known as confidence intervals, from 41 percent to 91 percent.)

The study, which involved children ages 6 months to 23 months who had laboratory confirmed cases of influenza, will continue through this flu season. Because this season seems to be more severe than the last two, the researchers expect to have more cases to analyze and improve the statistical odds.

Vaccines are typically designed to protect against the three strains of influenza. Experts determine the strains based on data from current seasonal transmission and their judgment about future activity. Usually one or two strains are changed in each year’s vaccine.

But committees from the World Health Organization and the United States Food and Drug Administration voted earlier this month to change all three strains in next season’s vaccine. It is the first time that all three strains were changed at once, Dr. Nancy Cox, an influenza expert at the C.D.C., said in a news conference on Feb. 22.

The centers recommendations for annual flu shots for adults include all Americans ages 50 and older; people with chronic lung, heart and other ailments; health care workers; and women who will be pregnant during the influenza season.

Flu shot formula off target this year

When are people going to wake up to the flu vaccine hoax?

By David Brown
Washington Post
Published on: 02/11/08

Washington —- Seasonal influenza is spreading widely throughout the United States, with nearly half the cases caused by strains of the virus that are not directly covered by this year's flu vaccine.

Whether the winter will end up being worse than usual remains to be seen. Flu mortality in adults has been higher than in the last two years, but deaths in children —- an important marker of severity —- have been rare.

Nevertheless, this winter is likely to be one of the few times that public health experts lose the bet they make each year when they devise the formula for the flu vaccine —- eight months before the virus starts circulating in the fall to allow time to produce mass quantities of the vaccine.

"Most years, the prediction is very good," said Joseph Bresee, an influenza epidemiologist at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "In 16 of the last 19 years, we have had a well-matched vaccine."

But probably not this time.

What happened

Each year, the vaccine contains representatives of the three huge families of flu virus that are currently circulating. They are two main types of influenza A, H1N1 and H3N2, and influenza B.

The viruses in each of these lineages are constantly changing through mutation. Inevitably, one appears that is different enough that a person protected against them is not protected against the new variant.

A version of this scenario apparently happened twice this year.

> A new strain of H3N2 virus was identified in Brisbane, Australia, last February, a few weeks after the components of this winter's vaccine were chosen.

But it was too late to substitute "Brisbane/10" for the H3N2 strain, called "Wisconsin," that had been in the vaccine since the 2006-07 season. From the start of flu season until the beginning of February, 34 percent of flu viruses taken from patients around the country were Brisbane strains.

> At the same time, a strain of influenza B called "Yamagata," which is significantly different from the "Victoria" B strain in the vaccine, was taking off.

About 16 percent of all flu samples this winter are influenza B, and of them 93 percent are Yamagata.

Together, the Brisbane and Yamagata strains are accounting for 48 percent of all flu samples this winter —- and neither is in the vaccine.

Any benefit?

That does not mean the vaccine is without benefit. The immunity conferred by the Wisconsin strain may protect somewhat against its Brisbane descendant. A vaccinated person may have milder symptoms. But the vaccine is unlikely to prevent infection altogether in lots of people.

A study done by the Department of Defense last year after Brisbane emerged found that it was 52 percent effective in preventing infection.

That is much lower than the 70 percent to 90 percent protection provided by a well-matched vaccine given to healthy, young adults. But it is not useless, either.

"It wouldn't be optimal, but there should be a measure of protection, based on our past experience," said Nancy Cox, the chief flu virologist at CDC.

Protection against the Yamagata strain by the vaccine is probably also poor. The best evidence that Yamagata is not well covered by the vaccine is that it is just about the only strain of influenza B around.

"That probably indicates that the effectiveness of the vaccine may be less than ideal," Bresee said.

Next year?

Influenza virologists from around the world will gather in Geneva, Switzerland, this week to decide the formula for next year's vaccine.

Tamiflu-Resistant Flu Found in Nine European Nations

By Jason Gale

Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Influenza strains resistant to Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu were found in a samples from five more countries, indicating the mutant bug is more widespread than health officials reported earlier this week.

Tests on 437 virus specimens from patients with the H1N1 flu strain in 18 countries found 59 that harbored resistance to the pill, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in a statement yesterday. Resistant viruses were found in nine European countries, with Norway accounting for almost half.

Emerging resistance to Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, has led doctors to consider GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Relenza and other treatments for a disease the World Health Organization estimates causes 250,000 to 500,000 deaths globally each year. Experts are assessing the significance of the data and will release an interim assessment in the coming days, ECDC said.

``At this stage, it is impossible to say what the level of resistance is in influenza across Europe,'' the Stockholm-based health agency said. ``However from the limited data, the proportion of influenza viruses exhibiting resistance to oseltamivir must be significant, but not as high as in Norway.''

The H1N1 viruses identified in Europe that aren't susceptible to Tamiflu carry a so-called H274Y gene mutation that confers ``high-level resistance,'' Frederick Hayden, a researcher with the WHO's Global Influenza Program in Geneva, said in a Jan. 28 interview.

U.S. Strains

Of 109 H1N1 viral samples tested in the U.S. during the 2007-2008 flu season, 5.5 showed the same resistance-inducing mutation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Recent tests on samples from Europe found viruses with the H274Y mutation in Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and Finland, scientists from the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency said in a report published yesterday in Eurosurveillance, a newsletter on communicable diseases.

Earlier sampling found the mutant strain in France, the U.K., Denmark, France and Norway, the ECDC said in a Jan. 27 risk assessment report. Of 37 samples from Norway tested, 26 harbor resistance, the agency said yesterday.

``The oseltamivir resistance investigation is still in its early stages,'' researchers from the ECDC's Influenza Project Team wrote in a separate report in yesterday's Eurosurveillance. ``A more accurate picture will only emerge when many more specimens have been tested and more epidemiological information is available.''

Tests so far show that the mutated viruses are susceptible to Relenza and an older class of antiviral drugs known as adamantanes, the researchers said. There's insufficient evidence for authorities to consider changes to clinical guidelines, the researchers said.

No More Virulent

People who become ill with the Tamiflu-resistant H1N1 strain don't appear to become any more sick than people infected with ``normal'' seasonal flu, ECDC said.

Tamiflu, which generated 2.09 billion francs ($1.9 billion) in sales for Basel, Switzerland-based Roche in 2007, is the company's fifth-best-selling drug. Relenza, an inhaled medicine, had sales of 91 million pounds ($181 million) in 2006 for London-based Glaxo.

The medicines are being stockpiled by the Geneva-based WHO and governments around the world for use in the event of a pandemic, and to treat the H5N1 avian flu strain that's spread to more than 60 countries, infecting people in 14 of them.

The H5N1 bird flu strain could trigger a global outbreak if it adopts some of the characteristics of seasonal flu that enable it to be spread easily through coughing and sneezing.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 1, 2008 00:53 EST

Latest Affront to Common Sense

California study finds no link between vaccine ingredient, autism

Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Rates of autism have increased in California despite the removal of the preservative thimerosal from childhood vaccines seven years ago, a finding that researchers say disproves the theory that the mercury in thimerosal causes the mysterious neurological disorder.

The study, which analyzed autism rates in young children over a 12-year period, is the first to offer hard evidence that thimerosal plays no role in autism. Results of the study were released Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry, a publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"Whatever the explanation for this increase in children with autism, exposure to mercury in vaccines is not it," said Robert Schechter, a medical officer with the California Department of Health Services and lead author of the study. "Vaccines with thimerosal and without have been safe and appropriate to give to our children."

But even as researchers held up the study as absolute evidence that childhood vaccinations do not cause autism, some parents were quick to point out what they saw as flaws in the report. They stand by their claim that exposure to mercury - be it in a vaccine or from environmental sources - is a major cause of autism.

Cases of autism, a neurological disorder marked by profound communication problems and impaired social skills, have exploded in the past two decades, pushing the condition to the forefront of medical research. Autism was considered rare before the 1990s, afflicting as few as 5 children per 10,000 births, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated last year that as many as 1 in 150 children is diagnosed with autism now.

At least 300,000 children ages 4 to 17 had autism in 2004, according to the CDC, and as many as 1.5 million people in the United States currently have autism.

Symptoms usually appear in the first three years after birth. There is no cure, although therapy can help alleviate symptoms. Boys are nearly four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls.

Many researchers believe there is a genetic component to autism, but several large and vocal parent groups are convinced that exposure to heavy metals - especially mercury - is a major culprit.

Until 2001, most childhood vaccinations included thimerosal, exposing children to a small but significant amount of mercury. Based on recommendations from pediatricians, thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccinations in 2001. But rates of autism continued to increase, according to the new study.

The study found that rates of autism for 3-year-old children climbed from 0.3 per 1,000 births in 1993 to 1.3 per 1,000 births in 2003. Similar increases were shown for children of all ages.

Many neurological experts and child psychiatrists say the rise in autism rates is most probably due to increased awareness among parents and doctors, possibly resulting in over-reporting of symptoms. There also are cases of doctors giving autism diagnoses to children who have mild developmental disorders just to give them access to disability services, said Bryna Siegel, director of the Autism Clinic at UCSF.

"It's being over-reported, and we're just starting to do studies to figure out why that is," Siegel said. "A lot of clinicians will tell you off the record that they're well aware that kids with a diagnosis of autism will get a variety of services. They're willing to err on the side of autism to get those services."

Siegel said she understands why parents have been eager to prove a relationship between thimerosal and autism, but she thinks it's time to move past that theory.

"It's very hard for parents to find out that they've somehow passed this horrible disorder to their child," Siegel said. "But people like me are exasperated that so much money and attention has gone into disproving the mercury hypothesis, when it could have been going toward treatment and research."

Lyn Redwood, a board member of the National Autism Association who has a child with autism, said it's too soon to rule out environmental factors or even the role of thimerosal.

Many of the children in the California study probably got childhood vaccinations outside the United States, she pointed out. And it's now common for pregnant women to get flu shots, which still contain thimerosal and can therefore expose a fetus to mercury, she said.

"We need to look at these children and the metals in their body and not close the door on any theory," Redwood said. "When we get to the point where there is no more mercury in the vaccines, if they could go back to the database and figure out exposures for each child, then that's something. Otherwise, we're just guessing about whether or not there's an association."

Common Children's Vaccine Recalled

By LINDA A. JOHNSON
AP Business Writer

TRENTON, N.J. — The recall of a routine vaccine for babies due to contamination risks could trigger a shortage and likely will alarm parents, but officials said there is no known health threat.

The recall announced Wednesday covers roughly 1.2 million doses of the vaccine against Hib, which causes meningitis, pneumonia and other serious infections, and a combination vaccine for Hib and hepatitis B. The Hib vaccine is recommended for all children under 5 and is usually given in a three-shot series, starting at 2 months old.

Drugmaker Merck & Co. produces about half of the nation's annual supply of 14 million doses of Hib vaccine.

Merck recalled the lots after this week identifying a sterility problem in a Pennsylvania factory. It said sample vials from the recalled lots, tested before shipment, were not contaminated but the company could not assure sterility of the entire lots.

"The potential for contamination of any individual vaccine is low," said Kelley Dougherty, a spokeswoman for the Whitehouse Station-based company.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, echoed that in a news conference.

"This is not a health threat in the short run, but it is an inconvenience," she said.

Barbara Kuter, Merck's head of pediatric medical affairs, told The Associated Press that the company will not be able to supply any vaccine for at least nine months.

"Manufacture of vaccines is pretty complicated, and we have to basically make some changes in the process," then get approval from the Food and Drug Administration before resuming production and shipments, Kuter said. Merck hopes to restart production next fall, she said.

"It's likely that there's going to be a shortage of this product," Kuter said, adding that the impact on the public is unclear.

Donna Cary, spokeswoman for Sanofi Pasteur, the only other company making the vaccine for the U.S., said it was too soon to say whether it can boost production. The company, a unit of Paris-based drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA, makes an Hib vaccine in France that is distributed both to the U.S. and other countries.

"We're looking at what we can add and we're working closely with the CDC on this," to see whether some vaccine could be shifted to the U.S. from other countries, Cary said.

Health officials said they already are talking about prioritizing shots for American Indian and Alaska Native children, who are considered at higher risk for Hib-caused illnesses, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

It was unclear how many of the 1.2 million doses were administered to children.

The recalled doses, distributed beginning in April, are considered potent, so revaccinations won't be needed, Schuchat said.

Should the vaccine later prove contaminated, health officials believe most children will experience, at worst, skin irritation around the shot site. Problems could be worse for children with weakened immune systems.

Any problems would have appeared within a week of vaccination, Schuchat said, and there have been no such reports.

The contamination was on unspecified equipment used in making the vaccine. Kuter said a sterility test during a routine evaluation of Merck's West Point, Pa., vaccine plant determined that the equipment was contaminated with a common bacterium called Bacillus cereus, or B. cereus.

It is a spore-making microorganism commonly associated with food poisoning and causes diarrhea and vomiting in people who eat contaminated foods.

The recall is likely to heighten a debate over childhood vaccines, their safety and whether too many are required. Some parents are distrustful and suspect some vaccines of being linked to autism, although scientific studies have not shown a connection.

This week, New Jersey took a controversial step toward becoming the first state to require flu shots for preschoolers after a health advisory board backed new vaccine requirements over opposition from some worried parents.

Merck is one of the few drugmakers that make vaccines. Company representatives could not immediately say how much revenue the Hib vaccine produces.

While the company took a black eye with its September 2004 withdrawal of painkiller Vioxx due to increased heart attack risk, it has been performing well recently. It gave an upbeat assessment Tuesday in its annual briefing for analysts.

Five weeks ago, Merck reached a deal to settle up to 50,000 Vioxx lawsuits for $4.85 billion, an amount expected to save the company millions in trial costs.

Its stock price has more than recovered from its post-Vioxx slump, a two-year-old restructuring plan is going well, and profits are up. Merck posted a 62 percent increase in its third-quarter profit as revenues jumped 12 percent.

The company also has had an impressive seven new products approved for U.S. sale in the last two years, including three vaccines.

Merck shares fell 68 cents Wednesday to close at $59.72 before the recall announcement. The shares fell 12 cents in after-hours trading.

KNOW . . . The Autism – Vaccine Connection

KNOW . . . The Autism – Vaccine Connection

http://www.know-vaccines.org/autism.html

Autism is a disease involving the brain, the immune system, and the gastrointestinal tract. Once an uncommon disorder in the United States, the incidence of autism is now occurring at epidemic rates. Whereas during the 1970’s one in 10,000 children developed autism, it now affects as many as one in 500. What could explain this alarming trend?

Given the growing burden this epidemic is putting upon both our health care and school systems, it would be informative to know what causes this frightening disease. One might assume that genetics is the culprit since no other cause is offered. However, one might also ask how it is possible to have such an epidemic based solely on genetics. The fact is we are rarely invited to debate the controversy over the nature of this epidemic because the most plausible cause, which relates to changes in vaccination programs over the past three decades, is not readily accepted by a public that believes vaccination is safe, effective and health promoting.

While it is certain that genetics predisposes individuals to certain diseases, as with all pathology the triggers for disease involve immune system dysfunction brought about by dietary deficiencies and/or environmental stress. In the case of autism, research shows that a high percentage of those affected are victims of massive chemical toxicity. The neurological damage that is characteristic with autism is strikingly similar to the well-established side effects of mercury, aluminum and formaldehyde toxicity. These neurotoxins are common vaccine ingredients.

During the 1940's and 50's when only some of the population was exposed to only a few vaccines, autism was primarily confined to the upper and upper-middle socioeconomic classes, those who could afford good health care and the cost of vaccination.

During the 1970’s and 80’s, the federal government established goals for improving vaccination rates. To achieve high vaccination rates (97%), the government implemented nationwide vaccine initiatives, which included offering federal grants to states and encouraging strict enforcement (state mandates for forced vaccination). During this time period, the number of mandated vaccines gradually increased (from 8 in 1980 to 22 in 2000) as vaccination became a requirement for a much younger population (the majority of all 30 childhood vaccines are administered before the age of 18 months). Only after these developments did autism cross class lines. Today autism is widespread in all socioeconomic groups.

The way in which autism developed in children changed after the mid-1980’s. Parents began reporting that their children developed normally during the first year and half and THEN became autistic. It is a fact that most vaccines contain toxic mercury, many of them grossly in excess of EPA permissible standards for ADULTS!

In 1979, the mercury-containing MMR was added to the vaccine schedule. In 1988, the mercury-containing HIB vaccine was added. Mercury-containing Hepatitis B for newborns was added in the early 1990’s. Children receive all these vaccines, plus mercury-containing DTP, in three to four toxic doses during the first year and a half of their fragile lives, and the vaccines are usually administered simultaneously (multiple mercury-containing vaccines on the same day).

These facts beg the question: At what point does an immature immune system reach a saturation point for toxic chemicals injected into the blood stream? When mercury can't get processed out of body, it travels to the brain where it clings to tissue in the cerebellum (affecting movement and balance), in the amygdala (affecting emotional processing) and in the hippocampus (affecting the formation, sorting and storage of information). The strong correlation between autism and vaccine history becomes even more credible when the disease characteristics for both autism and mercury poisoning are compared:

The Autism – Vaccine Connection:
Comparison of Characteristics

	AUTISM	MERCURY POISONING
Motor Skills and Movement Disorders	Uncoordinated; clumsiness; rocking; circling; flaps arms; walks on toes; difficulty with walking, sitting, crawling; difficulty with swallowing or chewing	Uncoordinated; clumsiness; rocking; circling; flaps arms; walks on toes; difficulty with walking or sitting; difficulty with swallowing or chewing
Sensory Disorders	Oversensitive to sound; does not like to be touched; abnormal sensations in mouth, arms and legs	Oversensitive to sound; does not like to be touched; abnormal sensations in mouth, arms and legs
Speech, Hearing & Language Development	Delayed language or failure to develop speech; problems with articulation; mild to severe hearing loss; word use errors	Loss of speech or failure to develop speech; problems with articulation; mild to severe hearing loss; word retrieval problems
Cognitive Ability	Borderline intelligence; mental retardation (may be reversed); poor concentration and attention; difficulty following complex commands; difficulty with word comprehension; difficulty with understanding abstract ideas and symbols	Borderline intelligence; mental retardation (may be reversed); poor concentration & attention; difficulty following complex commands; difficulty with word comprehension; difficulty with understanding abstract ideas and symbols
Physical Characteristics and Functional Disturbances	Weakening muscle strength, especially upper body; rash, dermatitis; abnormal sweating; poor circulation and high heart rate; diarrhea, constipation, abdominal discomfort and incontinence; anorexia; seizures; tendency to have allergies and asthma; family history of autoimmune symptoms, especially rheumatoid arthritis	Weakening muscle strength, especially upper body; rash, dermatitis; abnormal sweating; poor circulation and high heart rate; diarrhea, constipation, abdominal discomfort and incontinence; anorexia; seizures; tendency to have allergies and asthma; more likely to have autoimmune symptoms, especially rheumatoid arthritis
Behavior	Difficulty sleeping; staring and unprovoked crying; injures self (such as head banging); social isolation	Difficulty sleeping; staring and unprovoked crying; injures self (such as head banging); social isolation
Visual Problems	Poor eye contact; blurred vision	Poor eye contact; blurred vision

Study Questions Flu Shot's Value for Older People

Tuesday, September 25, 2007; 12:00 AM

TUESDAY, Sept. 25 (HealthDay News) -- The ability of flu shots to reduce the risk of influenza-related death among people 65 and older may be greatly exaggerated, say researchers who reviewed the available scientific evidence.

This exaggeration is the result of "frailty selection bias" -- where not-so-frail older people are vaccinated more often than those who are infirm, the team said. It's also due to the use of non-specific clinical trail endpoints, such as death from any and all causes, wrote a group led by Dr. Lone Simonsen, of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

They reported their conclusions in the October issue ofThe Lancet Infectious Diseasesjournal.

The researchers noted that few clinical trials of flu vaccines have included seniors, especially those aged 70 and older -- the age group that accounts for 75 percent of all influenza-related deaths. Those studies that have been conducted with seniors suggested a steady decline in clinical benefits and vaccine antibody responses after age 70.

The review authors also found that, even though vaccination rates increased from 15 percent to 65 percent since 1980, studies have not been able to confirm a corresponding decline in flu-related deaths.

"Paradoxically, whereas those studies attribute about five percent of all winter deaths to influenza, many cohort studies report a 50 percent reduction in the total risk of death in winter -- a benefit ten times greater than the estimated influenza mortality burden," the review authors wrote.

Future studies on flu vaccines in older groups should use more specific endpoints and actual virus surveillance data for each flu season, rather than the current arbitrary four-month period, the team added.

Despite the current lack of evidence, the review authors do recommend that seniors continue to get flu shots.

"While awaiting an improved evidence base for influenza vaccine mortality benefits in elderly people, we suggest that this group should continue to be vaccinated against influenza. Influenza causes many deaths each year, and even a partly effective vaccine would be better than no vaccine at all," they said. "But the evidence base concerning influenza vaccine benefits in elderly people does need to be strengthened."

More information

Deadly Immunity

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Posted Jun 20, 2005 12:00 AM

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. 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 fifty-two 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 fifteenfold, 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 that "perhaps this study should not have been done at all." He added that "the research results have to be handled," warning that the study "will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group."

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 eleven-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. The measure was repealed by Congress 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 Dean Rosen, health policy adviser 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 Pharma 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 pre-eminent 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 twenty-five 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 eleven 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 twenty-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 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 twenty 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 twenty-two 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, ten 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 twenty-four hours of birth, and two-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 six-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 eleven vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of twenty-two 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. At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, infants routinely received three inoculations that contained a total of 62.5 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 99 times 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.

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 advisers, told me, "I think if we really have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next twenty 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 was part of a team that developed the measles vaccine and brought it to licensure in 1963. 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 advisers 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 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 and parents, the Institute of Medicine convened another panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the way the VSD had been used in the Verstraeten study, 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, Pennsylvania, 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 thirty-two 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.

NOTE: This story has been updated to correct several inaccuracies in the original, published version. As originally reported, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations before 1989, but the article failed to note that they were innoculated a total of eleven times with those vaccines, including boosters. The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms - an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. Finally, because of an editing error, the article misstated the contents of the rotavirus vaccine approved by the CDC. It did not contain thimerosal. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.

An earlier version of this story stated that the Institute of Medicine convened a second panel to review the work of the Immunization Safety Review Committee that had found no evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism. In fact, the IOM convened the second panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program, including those raised by critics of the IOM's earlier work. But the panel was not charged with reviewing the committee's findings. The story also inadvertently omitted a word and transposed two sentences in a quote by Dr. John Clements, and incorrectly stated that Dr. Sam Katz held a patent with Merck on the measles vaccine. In fact, Dr. Katz was part of a team that developed the vaccine and brought it to licensure, but he never held the patent. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.

CLARIFICATION: After publication of this story, Salon and Rolling Stone corrected an error that misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms – an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. At the time of the correction, we were aware that the comparison itself was flawed, but as journalists we considered it more appropriate to state the correct figure rather than replace it with another number entirely.

Since that earlier correction, however, it has become clear from responses to the article that the forty-percent number, while accurate, is misleading. It measures the total mercury load an infant received from vaccines during the first six months, calculates the daily average received based on average body weight, and then compares that number to the EPA daily limit. But infants did not receive the vaccines as a “daily average” – they received massive doses on a single day, through multiple shots. As the story states, these single-day doses exceeded the EPA limit by as much as 99 times. Based on the misunderstanding, and to avoid further confusion, we have amended the story to eliminate the forty-percent figure.

Correction: The story misattributed a quote to Andy Olson, former legislative counsel to Senator Bill Frist. The comment was made by Dean Rosen, health policy adviser to the senator. Rolling Stone and Salon.com regret the error.

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