Senate Report on Mercury in Vaccines says CDC and FDA are Guilty of Misconduct

By Caryn Talty | Be the first to comment on this article! »
Categories: Children, Children's Health

The decades old firestorm debate over whether or not thimerosal in vaccines causes Autism got heated up last week when Jenny McCarthy made her accusation on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The U.S. Senate has just released a report after an 18-month long investigation of the FDA and CDC concerning thimerosal levels in pediatric vaccines and the rising rates of neurological disorders in U.S. children. Their verdict: the FDA is guilty of forcing parents to inoculate their children with hazardous amounts of poisonous mercury in the name of disease control.

Senator Enzi (R-Wyoming), Ranking Member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, concluded,

“Two allegations were sustained [and] one allegation was partially substantiated…[the] FDA inappropriately utilized Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines regarding the dangers of mercury in vaccines containing thimerosal.”

In short: the FDA underestimated the toxicity of thimerosal [mercury] in vaccines required by law to be administered to countless infants and children.

The Senate report also indicated that:

• The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences screened “potential committee members for possible conflicts of interest,” then reviewed the evidence and found no link between mercury exposure from vaccines and autism.
• Government data was inaccessible to researchers seeking to prove thimerosal in vaccines is damaging to certain populations.
• Despite the decrease in mercury-laden vaccines for American children, vaccines manufactured and distributed to developing countries still contain thimerosal.

Parents with children suffering from neurological disorders such as autism, ADHD, and tourette syndrome (or other transient/chronic tic disorders) can find out if their child has been over exposed to thimerosal by getting a copy of their child’s immunization record. A good article to read on the subject is “CDC: Mercury in Vaccines Damaged Your Child. Or Not.” by David Kirby.

Kirby sums it up appropriately in his opening question:

“If you were informed that mercury in vaccines might double the risk of your son developing motor tics, increase his risk of “phonic tics” by nearly two-and-a-half times, and possibly cause speech, attention or behavioral problems in school, would you still allow him to be injected with the heavy metal — which, by the way, is 100 times more neurotoxic than that lead coating on his Chinese toys?”

http://healthy-family.org/caryn/220

Recommended books:

“Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy”

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. Congress repealed the measure 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 Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.