(no subject)

[mattlistener]

I'm still assimilating the fact (as I now believe it to be) that for years our government knowingly aided pharmaceutical companies in the poisoning of babies (ie mercury in mandatory pediatric vaccines until 2004).

It's not like mercury (in the preservative molecule thimerosal) is a necessary evil here. It's a preservative that's only needed in multi-dose vials. Single dose vials can be safely used without it -- and are somewhat more expensive to make. However opposition to mercury in vaccines gets lumped with opposition to vaccines.

There's still mercury in non-pediatric vaccines today. We're still shipping pediatric vaccines with mercury around the world. I can't get my head around this.

Vaccine manufacturers are shielded from lawsuits by an act of congress. Bill Frist is trying to get a law passed to shield Eli Lilly (the company that invented thimerosal) from lawsuit as well.

Sean, if you were able to find and read the research pointed to by this article on salon.com (viewing of an ad required to read full article), I'd be very interested in your take on all this.

I've learned not to trust the government, but this honestly exceeds what I would have imagined was possible.

EDIT: Unfortunately, Dr. Mark Geier -- the only researcher to gain access to the CDC's research database of immunization records since it was turned over to a private company -- may be a tainted scientist. He's an expert witness in court cases seeking injury damages from vaccines, and his expertise is in genetics and obstetrics, not neurochemistry. His son is president of MedCon, a medical–legal consulting firm that helps vaccine injury claimants.

That said, the fact that the CDC has done its utmost to prevent this dataset from being studied further tells me that the CDC believes the truth is that mercury in vaccines is harmful. If they honestly believed the truth was that vaccines were safe they would be urgently calling for open, unbiased research in order to quell any fears.

EDIT2: Here's some source data: the Simpsonwood documents. See also selected exerpts therefrom. (Simpsonwood was the meeting referred to in the earlier-linked article, in which CDC scientists presented strong evidence for a thimerosal-autism link in a confidential setting.)

Comments

[zmook.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the whole Salon article, but I read the first page and a bit. I see what you mean about having trouble wrapping your head around it. It seems to take a very political tone on something that is more fundamentally a science issue.

Vaccine manufacturers are shielded from lawsuits by an act of congress.

Thing is, there are legitimate reasons for this. Vaccines are required to be given to healthy people, and it's intrinsically impossible to tell when they've actually saved any particular person. But you can certainly tell when they fail. If the vaccine manufacturer had to bear that whole risk, perhaps they would not find it worthwhile to make vaccines, and society as a whole would lose the enormous public-health benefit of an immunized population. I believe it is true that we have serious worries about our vaccine-production capacity. Last fall, for instance, there was a severe shortage of influenza vaccine after one large batch went bad and no replacement was available.

There also appear to be very legitimate reasons for wanting preservatives in vaccines -- according to this thimerosal page from the FDA, in 1928 12 children were killed by a staphylococcus-infected batch of a diphtheria vaccine.

I can see senior health officials panicking about all of this for honourable reasons.

That said, I am speaking mostly in the abstract here. If people have facts they could certainly show me I'm wrong.

[docorion.livejournal.com]

You see, this is my perspective also; thimerosal serves (served) some solid purposes, especially in vaccines in the developing world; the risk of diphtheria, HiB disease, etc. is *much* higher than the (frankly tiny by comparison) risk of autism, and storage is obviously a problem. As well, the 'small' increase in cost per dose is not absorbable by the third world, and if we stop making thimerosal preserved vaccines, more kids in the third world will die because their health care system cannot absorb the additional cost.

(That said, since we now can afford the more expensive vaccines in the developed world, I firmly support the removal of thimerosal from them. This may sound like a double standard, and one could argue that the developed world should absorb the additional cost for the developing world (and I find that argument compelling); the fact is that the people making the decision must deal with the real world, not the more ideal world we wish existed).

What bothers me a bit about the salon article and some reactions on my flist is the presumption of bad intent on the part of health officials. Believe me, **no one** is making Big Bucks on vaccines; the margin is tiny, and the legal exposure is enormous (I used to work in vaccine development, briefly; researchers, in particular, develop vaccines to try to relieve the burden of disease, not to make money, because they all know there is no money to be made). I'm still reading the original transcripts kindly linked to by mattlistener, and I intend to read them all, but thus far, I don't see any bad intent on the part of these folks, or necessarily a profit motivation-there are serious discussions of risks versus benefits, and where the balance lies. People may disagree with the conclusions made, but I firmly believe that the intent was to make the right decision for the majority of people, not to make money or to harm anyone.

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

More thoughts:

-I haven't seen any scientist or public health official call for researching to find a safer preservative that could take the place of thimerosal.

-It's not just autism we're talking about (though 1.8 million kids in China is a lot of autism). It's a whole spectrum including ADD, learning disabilities, speech difficulties, and developmental delays.

-Ethically speaking, we should eat the cost of providing thimerosal-free vaccines in the developing world, at least for infants.

-Shielding an industry from lawsuit will inevitably result in more outcomes of the kind that people would want to sue them for. I agree they should be protected when they have acted in good faith, but not when (from 2000-2004) they knew that mercury in dozens of vaccines and booster shots for kids was very dangerous -- and had a safe alternative that was at least affordable here.

-I can't agree that it's ever justified for a government agency to produce fake science, or require a scientist to rework their data to produce a more politically acceptable result. The head of the CDC should be fired.

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

As you read the transcripts, bear in mind the difference between the forthright comments of the scientists in the secret meeting, and the policy statement that followed it. The official position went from "based on the data we can neither accept or reject a causal connection between thimerosal and autism" before the meeting, to "we reject a causal connection based on the data" after the meeting. They also recommended that no further research be done on the matter.

[ceo]

Thanks for linking the documents. From the limited skimming I've done, it sounds like the attendees at that meeting were genuinely concerned about protecting the public without causing a panic.

[pressburger.livejournal.com]

Very very disturbing.

[pressburger.livejournal.com]

I emailed the Salon article referenced on ceo's page to a friend who has an autistic child. he responded with this.

http://www.autism-society.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6144