“Healing Autism: No Finer a Cause on the Planet”

October 24, 2001 News Morgue Search www.feat.org/search/news.asp

PUBLIC HEALTH

· Immune to Reason: WSJ Editorial

· Letters to the Editor WSJ

Immune to Reason

Wall Street Journal targets safe minds for vaccine shortages To email a letter to the WSJ Editor: letter.editor@wsj.com or fax it to 609-520-7767. Make sure you send a copy to the FEAT Newsletter, too: editor@feat.org.

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Painfully Ignorant

[The following two letters are to the WSJ. Thanks to the abmd@yahoogroups.com email discussion list.]

I’m always amazed to read seemingly authoritative published opinions that are based, in fact, on blatant falsehoods, and never more so than I was upon reading yesterday’s “Immune to Reason”. The inaccuracies presented are at best, painfully ignorant and at worst, negligently misleading.

The FDA should have done its “fretting” (as the author refers to it) decades ago over the serious central nervous system damage inflicted upon infants and toddlers through mercury-containing immunizations. Because Thimerosal (ethyl mercury) was never safety tested in the United States, thousands of children have been poisoned by mercury through vaccines. While Thimerosal has been a component of most childhood vaccines since the 1930’s, more and more of these mercury-laced vaccines were added to the prescribed schedule over the years: in 1980, there were 8 vaccines and in 2001, there are 22. The huge rise in the number of neurodevelopmentally damaged children is in direct proportion to the increased number of required vaccines.

Additionally, children have become exposed in recent years to this highly toxic substance much earlier in life. On her day of birth, my 6 lb. 6 oz. daughter received 12.5 micrograms of mercury through the injection of the Hepatitis B vaccine. Repeated gross overexposures continued during the next two years. From 1991 through 2001, parents who adhered to the vaccine schedule unwittingly exposed their children to as much as 237.5 micrograms of mercury by the age of two. The EPA considers mercury exposures in adults excessive at anything over one tenth of one microgram per kg of body weight. An exposure of 237.5 micrograms in an infant could hardly be considered trivial as the author implies. (Interestingly, no “safe” exposure levels have been set for infants and children.)

Contrary to the author’s assertions of vaccine safety, the Institute of Medicine found that not only is it biologically plausible that Thimerosal caused many cases of autism, but that further studies on the mercury/autism link are necessary.

The vaccine makers in no way “scrambled” to get Thimerosal out of their vaccines as the author asserts. On the contrary, the FDA has allowed for a leisurely pace as mercury containing vaccines already on the shelves are used up before being replaced with Thimerosal-free versions. Rather than issuing a Class I recall of the toxic vaccines, this more cost-effective route sanctioned by the FDA guaranteed that more children would suffer the extreme consequences of mercury toxicity.

To characterize SAFE MINDS and other parents of children with mercury-induced disorders such as autism as hysterical is an unconscionable attempt to divert attention from the responsibility the vaccine makers have to the thousands of families devastated by this unnecessary exposure. The vast majority of these parents are not anti-vaccine but are pro mercury–free vaccines—with ample justification. These parents stood by helplessly as the cumulative effects of mercury toxicity robbed their normally developing children of language and other previously acquired skills.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of yesterday’s editorial is the potential for parents to continue assuming that all vaccines are safe.

Rita Cave Shreffler, Springfield, MO, ritamo65809@yahoo.com

CDC’s Damaging Spin

Senator Dan Burton has held several hearings over the past two years covering this very issue and has reached very different conclusions than your editorial. You should consider investigating their findings before writing any more editorials on the subject.

Also, just last week information came to light at the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting, a group of medical experts on vaccinations that advises the government, which indicated that the CDC repressed and altered a report showing that amounts of mercury received in childhood vaccines can indeed cause grave neurological damage to children.

I am horrified that the CDC knew and suppressed the fact that the schedule of thimerasol containing vaccines required for our children would harm them while all the time insisting that the immunization schedule was safe. There is no doubt that vaccines could be administered to our children on a less intensive schedule with fewer side effects. This is not a case of ten or fifteen kids being harmed, the numbers are in the thousands.

Kay Dykes, kaydykes@yahoo.com

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