FDA Knew Dangers Of Thimerosal-Vaccines For 60 Years

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 2 of 4 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

People who are still sitting on the fence over whether to believe that Thimerosal is the cause of the epidemic need only consider the staggering statistics. On February 15, 2005, the GAO, released a Report titled, "Special Education Children With Autism," that revealed the number of children ages 6 through 21 diagnosed with autism receiving special education services has increased more than 500% over the past 10 years.

State by state the numbers reveal enormity of this tragic situation. In Oregon, between 1989 and 1999, the number of school age kids with autism increased from 250 to 2,877 cases, according to the state's Department of Education statistics.

The Pennsylvania public school system is feeling the pressure. Statewide, over a10 year period, the number of children enrolled in special education classes for autism disorders has increased from 634 to 5,145 in 2002-03, the most recent year for which state statistics are available.

Federal Department of Education numbers reveal that Ohio only had 22 reported cases of autism in 1992 and by 2002, the number of cases had increased to 3,057. In Illinois, over the same decade, there was an increase from five cases to 3,802. In the same time frame, every state in the nation had an increase of at least 500 percent.

In addition, consider these odds. Fifteen years ago, autism affected only one in 10,000 children. Today, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC in January of 2004, the incidence of autism is one in every 166 kids.

Since 1999-2000, the number of Bucks County Pennsylvania autistic children receiving special education services has jumped at a rate of more than 22% every year, according to the US Department of Education.

Unlike normal kids, children with autism do not instinctively learn from observing other children around them. They must be taught even the simplest skills such as making eye contact, following directions, waiting their turn, or how to hold a conversation. In addition, behaviors, skills, and abilities vary from one child to the next and about 50% of autistic kids have few or no language skills. They often suffer from other problems that impair the learning process as well, such as hearing loss or epilepsy.

Therefore educating these children costs much more than is usually allotted for special education kids. For example, in Bucks Country, PA, for tuition, transportation, evaluations, and other services, the cost can reach $60,000 per child compared to $7,000 that the average special education student receives, according to David Mandell, co-chairman of the Pennsylvania Autism Task Force, in the September 12, 2004 Bucks County Courier

The question of why some children develop autism and others do not, appears to be the luck of the draw. For various reasons still not completely understood, the bodies of some kids are incapable of ridding themselves of mercury. In fact, an August 2003 International Journal of Toxicology study revealed that healthy normal children excreted eight times more mercury through their hair than did autistic children.

The suspicion that Thimerosal was causing the epidemic arose in 1997, when the FDA Modernization Act was passed which required the FDA to investigate the adverse effects of all products containing mercury. Within a year, the FDA ordered Thimerosal removed from over-the-counter products, which surely indicates that officials knew that far back that it was dangerous.

Once the amount of Thimerosal in vaccines was finally measured in 1999, the FDA discovered that children were receiving more than 100 times the EPA's safe limit for mercury by 18 months of age and yet officials allowed the preservative to remain in vaccines. To this very day flu vaccines given to pregnant women and 6 month old babies contain a full dose of Thimerosal.

There can be no denying that the FDA and CDC have long known of the damage caused by Thimerosal. A June 29, 1999, email from FDA scientist, Peter Patriarca to the head of the CDC office on vaccine safety, warned that the FDA would be criticized for being "'asleep at the switch' for decades by allowing a potentially hazardous compound to remain in many childhood vaccines and not forcing manufacturers to exclude it from new products."

Patriarca also pointed out the fact that calculating the cumulative dose of mercury in vaccines was not "rocket science" and involved only ninth-grade math. He then cited the questions that could be asked of the agencies: "What took the FDA so long to do the calculations? Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?"

A secret report from a meeting attended by officials from the FDA and CDC in 2000, obtained with a FOIA request, even contained a graph which specifically illustrated the findings of a child's increasing risk of developing symptoms of autism upon receiving the increased amounts of Thimerosal.

In a transcript of that secret meeting, Pediatrician Bill Weil, acknowledged the epidemic, "There are just a host of neurodevelopmental data that would suggest that we've got a serious problem.... The number of kids getting help in special education is growing nationally and state by state at a rate we have not seen before."

However, notwithstanding this clear recognition of injury to kids, and although individual states have passed laws banning Thimerosal, the FDA has never required drug makers to eliminate the preservative from any vaccines.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4