Fwd: Deadly immunity

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Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 09:51:07 -0500

Subject: [socialWandR] Deadly immunity

Definitely worth reading....

Deadly Immunity

The title above comes from one of the most stirring articles on health

care. Author F. Kennedy Jr. presented this article in the June

2005 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. The article starts off by

reporting on a secret meeting that was held at a retreat in Georgia in

June of 2000 in which fifty-two attendees representing high-level

officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top

vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and

representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including

GlaxoKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur were strickly

embargoed against sharing any information outside the meeting.

Participants attending this secret meeting, convened by the Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention, were repeatedly reminded that

there would be no making photocopies of documents, and no taking

papers with them when they left. The meeting was called to discuss a

disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety

of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and

young children.

Tom Verstraeten, a CDC epidemiologist had analyzed the agency`s

massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children.

He found that a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines

(thimerosal) appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in

autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. He

commented, " I was actually stunned by what I saw. " What Verstaeten

told the group was that since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had

recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative

be given to extremely young infants the estimated number of cases of

autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to

one in 166 children.

The article notes that the attendees were shocked. One doctor, Dr.

ston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University

of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the

meeting`s first day commented, " Forgive this personal comment -- I do

not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we

know better what is going on. "

However, as the F. Kennedy article further reported, instead of

taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply

of thimerosal, the attendees of this secret meeting spent most of the

next two days discussing how to cover up the startling data. Kennedy

noted that under the Freedom of Information Act, transcripts showed

that many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging

revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry`s

bottom line.

Dr. Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for

Children in Delaware stated, " This will be a resource to our very busy

plaintiff attorneys in this country. " He continued, " given the

sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of

the hands of, let`s say, less responsible hands. " Dr. Clements,

vaccines adviser at the World Health Organization, took a stronger

approach and stated that the study, " should not have been done at all "

and warned that the results " will be taken by others and will be used

in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to

be handled. "

Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization

concerned about the role of mercury in medicines was quoted in the

article by saying, " The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross

negligence. The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It`s

bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you`ve

ever seen. "

In summing up his article Kennedy stated his passion for doing this

investigation, " I devoted time to study this issue because I believe

that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the

evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the

pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American

children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest

scandals in the annals of American medicine. "