They say timing is everything.  In a move even Machiavelli might have found objectionable, Senator Frist has chosen to reintroduce the bill removing liability from Eli Lilly and other thimerosal producers at a time when the United States is fully preoccupied with concerns about war with Iraq.

Thimerosal in vaccines is thought by many to have played a critical role in the autism epidemic sweeping our country and wreaking untold havoc and harm on the lives of the families it strikes.  And while the "experts" like to pretend that any alleged lack of  "proof" is lack of evidence, even the Institute of Medicine has said the connection between autism and thimerosal is "biologically plausible", if neither proved nor disproved.  Since the report, more convincing evidence has begun to be revealed and mount in support of there being a connection between the two.

The earlier provision protecting drug manufacturers, which was snuck into the Homeland Security Act as a rider at the very end of the last Congress, but removed by the next Congress in one of its first moves, is now being cynically reintroduced in an important anti-terrorism related bill, rather than as a stand-alone.  According to The Right to Fight Mercury Damage Campaign and Safe Minds"the bill (S-15) combines three interrelated issues: Bioterrorism-'BioShield', creating a Smallpox Compensation Program and reforming the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act (VICA)."

Given this underhanded strategy, intense pressure will again be on to quickly pass the bill, rather than fairly debate it on its merits.

People all over the country are rallying together once again to fight this bill. 

Are our children to be sacrificed to "the bottom line".  Will the drug companies be let off the thimerosal hook?

Will the good doctor and his drug company cronies finally get away with it this time?

Sandy Mintz               

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), paraphrasing John Philpot Curran (1808)