June 21, 2000 and June 22, 2000 - In this two day meeting, Dr. Thomas Verstraeten discussed the Thimerosal/VSD study and some of its findings.  However, the more troubling findings of early datasets were not discussed at this two day meeting.  It is interesting to note the findings he discussed at this public meeting and the closed door meeting held at Simpsonwood are quite different from the findings in his confidential draft of February 29, 2000.   Dr. Verstraeten's paper of February 29, 2000 showed a 2.48 relative risk increase (a 248 percent increase) of autism in children who had received the mercury laced vaccines (see graph 3 at the top of page 15 ).  Even more troubling than the first written, yet unpublished, analysis of February 29, 2000 by Dr. Verstraeten and the CDC is the initial analysis which has been dubbed "Generation Zero" and was apparently never compiled into a formal report.  In this analysis, done in November  and December of 1999, CDC researchers found a relative risk of 11.35 for autism for those infants with >25 mcg exposure at one month.  In other words, children exposed to thimerosal levels as low as those found in the flu vaccine of today were over 11 times more likely to acquire a neurodevelopmental disorder. These results were so disquieting to the CDC they apparently felt the need to revise the data by including younger infants (not yet diagnosed) and pulled in data from a financially faltering Massachusetts HMO that dramatically under reported autism rates (due to a poorly designed database) and used these "new" calculations in the second and third drafts of this report.  Internal e-mails from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, obtained by SafeMinds under FOIA, appear to confirm this suspicion. All of these numerical permutations dramatically decreased the relationship of Thimerosal to the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism. Unfortunately for millions of children around the world, the published analysis of the VSD (Vaccine Safety Datalink) data had eliminated the risk, never informing others of their initial findings that were of great significance.  Sadly, this version would be repeatedly cited by other authors in many medical publications and news stories over the next few years, even today.  The various manipulations the dataset went through over the course of 4 years prior to publication is discussed in detail in the science section of the NoMercury website. In the November 5, 2003 issue of Pediatrics, Verstraeten, et al published data based upon the manipulated figures from the VSD study as discussed above. Ironically, even Neal Halsey, M.D., a staunch supporter of the National Immunization Program, and former Chairman of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), raised credibility issues as evidenced in his December 17, 2003 letter to Pediatrics.  In February 2004, Geier and Geier published a letter to the editor in Pediatrics which detailed the serious errors in the Verstraeten study. Most telling is the letter from Dr. Verstraeten himself to Pediatrics about the allegation that his study "cleared" thimerosal. Congressman David Weldon, M.D. (R-FL) has also detailed his concerns about the credibility of the these studies and suspected statistical cover-ups in his letter to Judy Gerberding, M.D., Director of the Centers for Disease Control, in his letter to her dated October 31, 2003.  Congressman Weldon stated:

“I am very concerned about activities that have taken place in the National Immunization Program (NIP) in the development of this study, and I believe the issues raised need your personal attention.”

“I found a disturbing pattern which merits a thorough, open, timely, and independent review by researchers outside of the CDC, HHS, the vaccine industry, and others with a conflict of interest in vaccine related issues (including many in University settings who may have conflicts).”

“A review of these documents leaves me very concerned that rather than seeking to understand whether or not some children were exposed to harmful levels of mercury in childhood vaccines in the 1990s, there may have been a selective use of the data to make the associations in the earliest study disappear.”

To date, there has been no corrective action taken at the CDC by Dr. Gerberding, in fact, the pattern of behavior continues to be reflected the their ongoing studies and published papers.

Our colleagues at Environmental Working Group, NoMercury and Safe Minds have each developed excellent overviews of the connection between mercury and neurodevelopmental disorders.  We invite you to review these documents. Environmental Working Group:

Click here to read "Overloaded?  New science, new insights about mercury and autism in susceptible children."

NoMercury

Click here to read "Is Mercury in Vaccines Dangerous?"

Safe Minds

Click here to read "Thimerosal and autism? A plausible hypothesis that should not be dismissed"

Click here to read Part 1 –Transcript of HHS "Workshop on Aluminum in Vaccines" – held on May 11, 2000 in Puerto Rico – and Click here to read Part 2 of the transcript

Click here to read "Aluminum Adjuvant Linked to Gulf War Syndrome Induces Motor Neuron Death in Mice."