by Evelyn Pringle
www.OpEdNews.com
David Kirby new book, "Evidence of Harm" is a must read for anyone
seeking to understand the connection between autism and childhood
vaccines containing the mercury based preservative Thimerosal. The
book examines the political and legal side of this travesty and
presents information that cannot be disputed.
The book is a result of a thorough investigation and is by no means
an anti-vaccine campaign. But most importantly, its obvious that
Kirby has no ax to grind.
"I was 100% unfamiliar with this story right up until November of
2002," Kirby says, "I had never met a person with autism in my life
and I had never heard of Thimerosal,"
"And I had certainly never heard of any connection between any form
of mercury and autism," he adds, "although I did know mercury was
not good for you. But I don't think I realized the extent to which
it could do damage in your body."
"Growing up in school," Kirby said, "I have tried...I have searched
my brain going back class by class, trying to think, "Could that kid
have been autistic?"
"But, I have seen autistic kids and no," he said, "I don't believe I
had ever met anybody""certainly no one who was diagnosed."
For people who insist that there is no epidemic and that it is just
better reporting and better diagnostics, "I really would like to
pose the question to them that Mark Blaxill, from Safe Minds, asks,"
Kirby said, "Where are all those people? Where are the
1 in 166 autistic adults? We can't find them."
The epidemic is real and politicians know it. On June 18, 2004,
Representative Dave Weldon (R-FL) took to the floor of Congress and
told members of congress, "I would like to take this time to address
what I consider to be a very growing problem, the epidemic of autism
and neurodevelopmental disorders that are plaguing our Nation."
"In January of this year, the Department of Health and Human
Services sent out an autism alarm to the Nation's pediatricians. In
this alarm, they stated that one in every 167 children is being
diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. I will repeat that. One
in every 167 children being born in the United States today is being
diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder. Furthermore, one in
seven children is being diagnosed with either a learning disability
or a behavioral disability."
"Mr. Speaker, something dreadful is happening to our youngest
generation, and we must sound the alarm and figure out what is going
on with our children," Weldon said.
According to Weldon, "autism was once in America a rare and
infrequently seen condition. I went through 4 years of medical
school, internship, residency, and years of private practice and
practice within the military and had not seen one single case. I
have seen case after case in my congressional district over the last
7 years, a disease that I had never seen before."
Weldon told the committee, "The number one question has been whether
neurologic problems were caused in some children by the high levels
of a mercury containing additive that was included in our vaccines
in the 1990s. This mercury containing additive is called thimerosol,
and in the 1990s, infants and unborn children were exposed to
significant amounts of mercury at a most critical point in their
development."
Ironically, Republican lawmakers are openly blaming Thimerosal and
seeking to have it banned. In addition to Weldon, Senator Roy Holand
(R-Missouri), also a physician by training, identified Thimerosal as
the culprit and got Missouri legislators to prohibit its use in
childhood vaccines in his state.
"As a physician, I've been concerned about the rising levels of
autism, and the more I've learned about thimerosal, the more
convinced I am that it causes neurological damage," said Holand.
"Mercury has no place being injected into children."
Evidence of Harm examines the politics involved and reads like
mystery. Kirby weaves together the determined efforts by parents to
force attention upon autism; the conflicting scientific evidence
regarding Thimerosal; and the behind-the-scenes maneuverings that
led to an investigation by the Department of Health and Human
Services into allegations of malfeasance on the part of employees at
the CDC and the FDA.
Kirby is no stranger to investigative journalism. He has been
writing extensively for the New York Times for the past seven years
and was a foreign correspondent in Mexico and Central America from
1986 -1990, where he covered the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua,
and the politics, corruption and natural disasters in Mexico. From
Latin America, he reported for UPI, the San Francisco Examiner,
Newsday, Arizona Republic, Houston Chronicle and the NBC Radio
Network.
Kirby keeps up with all the studies by independent scientists. "The
most important ones among them are the work of Jeff Bradstreet, Jill
James, and Dr.
Richard Deth, and others looking into this: Boyd Haley, of course,
from the University of Kentucky.
Mark and David Geier have looked more into the epidemiology than the
biology of this," he adds.
"The bottom line of what their studies are showing,"
Kirby says, "is that autistic kids retain heavy metals at a much
greater rate than normal kids; that they seem unable, in fact, to
actually excrete it."
There is a treatment known as "chelation" that is showing some
success when used to draw mercury out of the bodies of autistic
children.
"Following chelation," Kirby reports, "autistic children excrete far
higher levels of mercury than normal kids. And yet, in their baby
haircuts, we're finding that normal kids have much higher levels of
mercury in their hair," he said, "And that would then make sense,
because they were excreting it properly; the autistic kids were
holding onto it."
This theory is supported by research conducted by Mady Hornig which
took different strains of mice""one strain which was genetically
predisposed to have auto-immune disorders""and exposed them all to
the same level of vaccines that children would have received.
In the sensitive group of mice, Hornig noticed autistic-like
behavior and physiological development such as increased brain size
that you see in autistic children. Of course as always happens to
scientists who connect the dots on this issue, she has been attacked
for the study.
According to Kirby, people said, "How can you tell if a mouse has
autism or not?"
But he explains, "I'm not quite sure that was the point of the
study. I think the point of the study was to show that certain
members of the same species, with a genetic difference, will react
differently to the same level of mercury exposure due to a genetic
variance."
Which makes perfect sense. Those children whose bodies cannot rid
themselves of mercury become autistic. The August 2003 International
Journal of Toxicology study revealed that healthy children excreted
eight times more mercury via their hair than did autistic children.
In fact, the more severe a child's autistic symptoms, the less
mercury was excreted in her hair, indicating that mercury also could
be retained in the child's tissue, including her brain.
Thimerosal began to be slowly removed from vaccines in late 1999.
"That means new vaccines started to be produced without mercury in
them," Kirby said, "But as we know, all the vaccines on the shelf
with mercury stayed on the shelves""there was never a recall."
According to Kirby, "We have no idea how long it took to use up all
that mercury-containing vaccine, or even if it has all been used
up," he said, "The OSC has said that there may be vaccine out there
with an expiration date of 2005 that still contains the full amount
of mercury."
"We don't know when those lots were released; we don't know where
they were released; we don't know what kids in what part of the
country were getting mercury and what kids were not post 2000," he
warns.
The truth is there are still some vaccines out there that contain
full doses of the Thimerosal with expiration dates in the fall of
2005. They include:
Meningococcal Polysaccharide Vaccine (Aventis Pasteur) 10-dose Vial,
lot UB505AA - Expires 17 Jun 05 - 25 micrograms of mercury per dose
from Thimerosal; Td Vaccine (Aventis Pasteur) 10-dose Vial, lot
U1014AA - Expires 2 Sept 05 - 25 micrograms of mercury per dose from
Thimerosal; Tetanus Toxoid Absorbed Vaccine (Aventis Pasteur)
10-dose Vial, lot U1048BA - Expires
8 Sept 05 - 25 micrograms of mercury per dose from Thimerosal;
Tetanus Toxoid Vaccine (Aventis Pasteur) 15-dose Vial, lot U0775AA -
Expires 10 Mar 05 - 25 micrograms of mercury per dose from
Thimerosal; Japanese Encephalitis Vaccine (Je-Vax - Aventis
Pasteur) 3 x 1 mL Vials, lot EJN*196B - 35.7 micrograms of mercury
per dose from Thimerosal; Td Vaccine Mass. Department of Health, 7.5
mL Vial, lot
Td-102 - Expires 21 May 2005 - 8.3 micrograms of mercury per dose
from Thimerosal; Influenza Virus Vaccine (Fluzone - Aventis Pasteur)
5 mL Vial - 25 micrograms of mercury per dose from Thimerosal;
Pediatric DT Vaccine (Aventis Pasteur) 5 mL Vial - 25 micrograms of
mercury per dose from Thimerosal.
As late as 2003, a review of the Physician's Desk Reference showed
that three childhood vaccines were still being made with full doses
of Thimerosal.
Diphtheria-Tetanus-acellular-Pertussis (DTaP) manufactured by
Aventis-Pasteur in multi-dose vials contained 25 micrograms of
mercury, Haemophilus-influenza-Type b (HibTITTER) in multi-dose
vials manufactured by Wyeth contained 25 micrograms of mercury, and
pediatric hepatitis B vaccine manufactured by Merck contained 12.5
micrograms of mercury. These vaccines represented about half of the
childhood vaccines available for use in the US that year.
So we know that children may have been exposed to high levels of
mercury in 2003. The total childhood mercury intake could have been
more than 300 µg, according to the report in the Journal of American
Physicians and Surgeons Spring 2003 issue.
The bottom line Kirby says, "We do know that kids were getting
mercury right up through 2002, and perhaps later. We also know that
it is in the flu shots," he adds.
On January 19, 2004 Mark Geier, the internationally renowned genetic
researcher, discussed the flu vaccines with Kelley Omeara of Insight
News, "There is something called the blood/brain barrier, which
prevents some toxins from entering the brain. But ethyl mercury,
which is what is in the influenza vaccine, crosses that barrier," he
explained, "The influenza vaccine has 25 micrograms of mercury,
which means that to be at the recommended level of safety, and
assuming that you get no mercury from any other source, you'd have
to weigh 550 pounds to be safe."
The independent scientific research behind this public health crisis
is mounting and the public is beginning to sit up and take notice of
the media stories coming out that discuss the information contained
in Evidence of Harm.
For instance, an article titled, "Deadly Immunity,"
written by Robert Kennedy, Jr was co-published this month in Rolling
Stone and Salon. It mentions Evidence of Harm and discusses many of
the issues detailed in the book.
Kennedy's article, tells how in June 2000, the CDC held a conference
at the Simpsonwood Conference Center in Norcross, Ga, where doctors
and scientists gathered to discuss a preliminary study that indeed
found a statistically significant link between Thimerosal and
autism. From material obtained via the Freedom of Information Act,
Kennedy cites quotes that leave no doubt that the meeting's purpose,
ultimately, was to "whitewash the risks of Thimerosal, ordering
researchers to 'rule out' the chemical's link to
autism."
The American Prospect hailed the article as a "blockbuster piece,"
and on June 21, 2005, while discussing the article with Kennedy, Joe
Scarborough, on his MSNBC TV show, said that "there's no doubt in my
mind that Thimerosal causes, in my opinion, autism."
According to Dr Geier, "the current epidemic of autism may well be
the greatest iatrogenic epidemic in history. The damage already done
to our society is already in the trillions of dollars. The damage of
the
9/11 terrorist attacks, and that of the AIDS epidemic pale when
compared to the current epidemic of autism."
Or put another way, "To cling to a purely genetic explanation for
autism is a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion that one
lives in a comfortable and rational world where new chemicals and
technologies always mean progress; experts are always objective and
thorough; corporations are honest; and authorities can be trusted,"
says Harvard's Martha Herbert, "That human actions, rather than
genes, might be responsible for compromising the health of a
significant proportion of a whole generation is so painful as to be,
for many, unthinkable."
The vaccine makers, along with their complicit government scientists
and policy makers, have a lot to lose. If they don't find a way to
keep the public from finding out that they knowingly allowed an
entire generation of children to be damaged, the ensuing litigation
will spread through the nation's court system like wild-fire and
push tobacco and asbestos law suits down into small claims court.
The evidence presented in Kirby's book forces readers to face the
unthinkable and leads to one conclusion: a generation of innocent
and defenseless children were poisoned for profits by a greedy
segment of society mistakenly entrusted to protect the common good
of children all over the world.
Evelyn Pringle
epringle05@yahoo.com
(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an
investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in
government)
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