FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER
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August 3, 2001 Search
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[Last Tuesday we published a letter by Susanna Stoiber,
Executive Director Institute of Medicine (IOM) that requested a retraction of
comments made by Bernard Rimland Director of the Autism Research Institute
ARI). Rimland accused the IOM of
mischaracterizing one of their reports on MMR, vaccine connection at a press
conference. Stoiber asserted that the
IOM only announced the study and did not add any spin. Here now is Dr. Rimland’ s response to the
retraction request. -LS]
Dear Ms. Stoiber,
I am responding to your letter of July 25, 2001 requesting
that I publicly retract my recent editorial in the Autism Research Review concerning
the IOM report on MMR, vaccines and autism.
Let me instead suggest that you follow the advice of
fellow IOM member Professor Walter O. Spitzer: retract the report itself.
Dr. Spitzer, who has been a member of the IOM since 1986,
wrote in a letter published in London Sunday Times, May 27th, that
he is embarrassed by the process of the IOM report and urges its retraction
“until the message has been clarified.”
Dr. Spitzer is particularly distressed, as am I, by the
remarks by the Committee Chairperson, Dr. Marie McCormick at the press
conference announcing the release of the report. He objects, as do I, to Dr. McCormick ’s “spin” on the findings
of the Report, which amounted to the “unsubstantiated exoneration of the MMR by
one person.” The IOM suffers a self-inflicted
wound.
I think several retractions are in order, but by the
IOM and Dr. McCormick, and not by me.
Lenny Schafer, Editor Catherine Johnson PhD
Ron Sleith Kay Stammers
Editor@feat.org Edward Decelie CALENDAR: Michelle Guppy events@feat.org
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