FW: IOM hearing July 18 2001

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-----Original Message-----From: Binstock Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 6:39 PMMy general impression of the IOM hearing: (i) many among the IOM committee are sincerely interested in the possibility that ethylmercury injected with vaccines (during vaccinations) has caused a range of neurologic sequelae in this country and elsewhere; (ii) a core group from the CDC is attempting to obfuscate the initial findings of its own hand-picked research group (a study that is known as RL et al, Phase 1). (iii) the rhetoric in a study from U Rochester and/or NIAID and/or U Wash suggests that some U Wash and/or U Rochester and/or NIAID researchers are on the same team with the aforementioned CDC subgroup. (iv) some researchers and IOM staff are making efforts to understand the mechanisms of TMS-induced neurologic injuries and the range of phenotype (eg, ADHD, tics, seizures, anorexia, ASD, etc) that has been induced by early injections of ethylmercury (as thimerosal, 49.6% ethylmercury by weight). At the hearing, Dr. Neal Halsey -- long a vaccine zealot and a vaccine-policy big-wig -- apologized for having missed the significance of a vaccine-bottle's label that stated thimerosal, .01%. He apologized for not having done the math so as to convert that number into micrograms of ethylmercury. He also feels badly that other officials in regulatory agencies failed to realize the actual level of ethylmercury present in the vaccines. At the hearing, Polly Sager (of Nat Inst Allerg Inf Dis aka NIAID) outlined some "scientific questions" and described findings and interpretive conclusions from a recent NIAID study, wherein RhoGam-like exposures were not even considered. With that "small" omission, the group focused upon pharmacokinetics of ethylmercury (eHg) in human infants after eHg injections. Hg levels in blood, urine, and stools were evaluated. Major points included (i) the highest blood levels (and lowest stool levels) occurred within the first 7-8 days after ethylmercury was injected. Subsequently, blood Hg remained "low" and stool Hg steadily increased, reaching a peak around 15-18 days, then declining. The peak in fecal mercury seems based entirely upon thimerosal (which originally had been in i) a physician's syringe, and then ii) in the infant's blood). Then, Dr. Sager's last two slides offered: "Summary [a] * Blood mercury levels in full term infants within 30 days of receiving routine immunization with vaccines containing thimerosal were below EPA safety guidelines. * Blood mercury levels in these infants were lower than predicted using a 45 day half life for mercury. [c] * Mercury was detected in the stools of infants receiving vaccines containing thimerosal." "Conclusions [d] * Since levels of blood mercury were uniformly below safety guidelines, results suggest that thimerosal administered at 2 months of age does not pose undue risk of mercury toxicity in full-term infants. [e] * The blood half-life of mercury administered parenterally as thimerosal in infants appears to be shorter than the half-life of methyl mercury in adults, unline animal models of MeHg. This possibly accounts for the relatively short apparent half-life of ethyl mercury in this study." After hearing this presentation, Baskin, MD, PhD (autism-parent, neurologist, NIH-funded researcher; CAN big-wig) pointed out that item-d seems to ignore the fact that -- as indicated by the stool increase and by the fact of eHg injection -- TMS and eHg had been in the blood stream at an enhanced level at some time prior to the 30 days post-injection period. He made clear that he didn't believe that conclusion d was accurate. I here add that the "safety guidelines" (eg, the EPA "safe" limit for mHg) hardly applies to TMS because (i) TMS is injected, and (ii) TMS is injected during a vaccination, thus the eHg is present during an extended pulse of vaccination-induced cytokines (whereby BBB permeability and intestinal permeability are increased). Thus, with regard to thimerosal's ethylmercury, the EPA's "safe" limit is fictional and too too high. In other words, a "safe" level for injected ethylmercury (if such a level exists) is even lower than the EPA's "safe" limit for ingested organic mercury. In my opinion, the data offered by the NIAID/UWash/URoch groups is important. However, their conclusions seem political and purposefully inaccurate. The words 'diversionary' and "whitewash" comes to mind. We note also that the NIAID et al methods & conclusions do not mention infants sick or recently sick at the time of vaccination. As mentioned by Boyd Haley at the hearing and as found in various studies, endogenous glutathione is an important buffer against mercury toxicity, thus if for any among many physiological reasons, the infant's or toddler's endogenous GSH level is low as a vaccination occurs, then he or she will be more at risk from eHg toxicity. Interestingly, at breakfast before the hearing, Martha Herbert and I joined Jeff Bradstreet and invited FDA's Carbone to sit with us. After breakfast, I was able to chat with Dr. Neal Halsey, who had sat nearby. I mentioned not vaccinating sick kids. He mentioned that he believed in the importance of vaccinating sick kids. I countered with the effect of certain illnesses upon the child's amino acid profile and thus upon the child's endogenous glutathione level at the time of and in the hours and days subsequent to a vaccination episode. Dr. Halsey said he hadn't thought about that aspect of vaccinating sick kids. Now, let's return to CDC's obfuscations. Originally, the et al abstracts (April/May 2000) described a soft association between thimerosal and autism. This association would have been much stronger (a) had the HMO cohort not been filled with underreporting of autism, and ( had et al dared to used a "safe" limit slightly lower than the EPA's "safe" limit for ingested organic mercury. We must keep in mind that eHg was being injected and that event was occurring in the context of a vaccination (or multiple vaccinations in one episode), and for these reasons, the EPA's "safe" limit is dangerously too high. The CDC's response to its own study was promptly to recruit an "outside" team so as to redo the data, to do another, smaller study. Lo and behold, the TMS/autism association faded away -- even as a) and continue to haunt the study. With this background, we at the IOM meeting heard a proposal for a Phase 3 study much like the original et al and its more politically correct follow-up studies. A U Wash researcher ( Stehr-Green) said that autism would not be considered and seemed to be implying (or perhaps even stating) that this was due to the fact that the et al redone-study had not found an association between autism and TMS. (This was offered to us despite the testimony of some of the CDC principals re: the original et al findings). At the IOM meeting, my mind was becoming boggled with the Alice in Wonderland type of logic we were being asked to accept (from certain presenters, not from the IOM committee members). Not surprisingly, the team proposing the Phase 3 study that will not look at autism contains a major player (Dr. Bob Chen) in the development of the HepB vaccine and in its becoming injected into numerous neonates and infants. Again, if memory serves correctly, 'twas Baskin who stepped forth to say that the people most responsible for early-life injections of ethylmercury were the very people who are now "investigating" negative effects from ethylmercury injections. For these reasons, I believe that a fair summary of the IOM hearing is that many of the IOM members and some of the other presenters seem sincerely interested in what thimerosal injections may have done. Nonetheless, key players in the development of a TMS-containing vaccine for neonates, along with some allies, appear to be staging very clever diversions (whitewash?, cover-up?) that look like science and sound like science but instead are clever ways to create negative findings -- ie, must continue to fix the first et al study, must counter-act the testimony at the June 6,7 hearing. On the positive side: presentations by Mark Blaxill, Jeff Bradstreet, Baskin, Boyd Haley, and Jane El-Dahr were powerful and to the point. The IOM said that within about a month, the IOM webpage would contain verbatim transcripts of the testimony. At that time, 'twill be very important to see if comments (after presentations) are included, because several of us were able to counter misimpressions when offered by some of the presenters. And without the comments, the presentations (eg, by the CDC's TMS team and their allies) will not have balanced counterpoint. All in all, 'twas amazing to see the IOM having a public hearing in which a goodly portion of the data and presentations indicate the likelihood that thimerosal injections have created a large number of neurologically affected children.