Keene Sentinel (Submitted 5/25/02)

To the Editor

VACCINES UNDER FIRE

Thanks, Sentinel, for your book review of FATAL, Michael Palmer¹s new medical bestseller! It¹s a riveting story told by a master of the craft. I simply had to finish it, staying up well past my usual bedtime.

On one level FATAL is, as the book review suggests, science fiction about a future supervaccine. On another level it is a serious indictment of our current medical establishment, its cavalier attitude toward safety testing of vaccines, and its unhealthy links to pharmaceutical corporations.

Michael Palmer explained his personal interest in the subject:"As a physician and parent, my interest in vaccinations did not go beyond the perfunctory. If the pharmaceutical industry or the FDA or my family pediatrician said "vaccinate," I vaccinated. No questions asked. But after I watched my youngest son be so sick during the first few years of his life and then be diagnosed with "Asperger's Syndrome," I began to question the science behind vaccination.²

Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, commented, "After reading this book, people with no idea that vaccines can have serious side effects will understand why vaccine safety research needs to be made a much higher priority."

Currently there are numerous lawsuits concerning thimerosal (mercury preservative) in vaccines. Highly disturbing facts have been obtained as a result of the judicial discovery process. Waters & Kraus, the leading law firm in these suits, released several bombshells:

-- The CDC withheld critical evidence to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), instead supplying inconclusive information which contributed to the IOM's lack of conclusions regarding thimerosal in vaccines.

-- Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, as early as the 1930's, was aware of the harmful nature of thimerosal in vaccines.

-- Significant contributions were made by vaccine manufacturers to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Vaccine education advocate Sandy Mintz poses several fundamental questions:

³What Else Do Vaccine Manufacturers Know? When will doctors start listening to parents of vaccine-injured children and stop patronizing them and dismissing their concerns? When will they begin to honor the right of parents to determine what is best for their children? When will they return to the precept of the Hippocratic Oath to "first do no harm"? How much evidence do we, the public, need before we begin to object to what is happening to our children? When will we realize that until we stop automatically believing everything we are told, we, too, are responsible for the wrongs being done to our children? When will we all begin to see how conflict of interest compromises everything that is allegedly "known" about vaccine safety?²

Finally, please note that another significant book has just been released: WHAT YOUR DOCTOR WON¹T TELL YOU ABOUT CHILDHOOD VACCINES by Stephanie Cave, M.D. I urge the Sentinel to review it. Dr. Cave is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Family Medicine at Louisiana State University Medical School and is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. This guide by a respected physician should be in the hand of all young parents.

Gerhard Bedding