Vaccination - A Moral Crisis

[Guest guest]

________________________________

From: Voice of the Fans <votf@...>

rife-list

Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 8:56:49 PM

Subject: [rife-list] Vaccination - A Moral Crisis

Rife Friends,

" The following is a link concerning acidic vaccines

and their link to autism and other neurological dis-ease. 

This link and article was uncovered by using the Freedom

of Information Act request, by F. Kennedy Jr. 

My hope is when you read this article it will be

enough to really motivate you to rally against the

powers that be who blatantly hide the truth about

the toxic acidic effects of ALL vaccines (this includes

the latest vaccine for HPV called Gardasil which has

injured over 9000 and killed 27 young women in the last

6 months) that jeopardize the health and well-being of every child across our

country and the world!  Please write your

congressman or congresswoman today and ask to put an

end to ALL mandatory toxic acidic vaccines. "

Doc

 

Uncovered via the FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT reported

by ROBERT F KENNEDY JR

Deadly Immunity

F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government

cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal

By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists

and health officials gathered for a meeting at the

isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross,

Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist

retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to

the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy.

The agency had issued no public announcement of the

session -- only private invitations to fifty-two

attendees. There were 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. All of the scientific data under

discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the

participants, was strictly " embargoed. " There would

be no making photocopies of documents, no taking

papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives

had assembled 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. According to a CDC epidemiologist

named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's

massive database containing the medical records of

100,000 children, 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. " I was actually

stunned by what I saw, " Verstraeten told those assembled

at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier

studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and

speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity

and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA

had recommended that three additional vaccines laced

with the preservative be given to extremely young

infants -- in one case, within hours of birth --

the estimated number of cases of autism had

increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500

children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting

issues of life and death, the findings were frightening.

" You can play with this all you want, " Dr. Bill Weil,

a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics,

told the group. The results " are statistically

significant. " Dr. ston, an immunologist

and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose

grandson had been born early on the morning of the

meeting'sfirst day, was even more alarmed. " My gut

feeling? " he said. " Forgive this personal comment --

I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containi ng

vaccine until we know better what is going on. "

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public

and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials

and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next

two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data.

According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of

Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned

about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal

would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. " We

are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending

any lawsuits, " said Dr. Brent, a pediatrician

at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware.

" This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff

attorneys in this country. " Dr. Bob Chen, head of

vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that

" 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, declared

flatly 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. "

In fact, the government has proved to be far more

adept at handling the damage than at protecting

children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of

Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the

risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to " rule

out " the chemical's link to autism. It withheld

Verstraeten' s findings, even though they had been

slated for immediate publication, and told other

scientists that his original data had been " lost "

and could not be replicated. And to thwart the

Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant

database of vaccine records over to a private company,

declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time

Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003,

he had gone to work for GlaxoKline and reworked

his data to bury the link between thimerosal and

autism.

Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase

thimerosal out of injections given to American

infants -- but they continued to sell off their

mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year.

The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted

vaccines for export to developing countries and

allowing drug companies to continue using the

preservative in some American vaccines -- including

several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters

routinely given to eleven-year- olds.

The drug companies are also getting help from powerful

lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill

Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from

the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to

immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200

lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured

children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried

to seal all of the government's vaccine-related

documents -- including the Simpsonwood transcripts --

and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal,

from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly

slipped a rider known as the " Eli Lilly Protection

Act " into a homeland security bill, the company

contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000

copies of his book on bioterrorism. The measure was

repealed by Congress in 2003 -- but earlier this year,

Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism

bill that would deny compensation to children suffering

from vaccine-related brain disorders. " The lawsuits

are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine

producers out of business and limit our capacity to

deal with a biological attack by terrorists, " says

Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.

Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's

effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep.

Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a

three-year investigation of thimerosal after his

grandson was diagnosed with autism. " Thimerosal

used as a preservative in vaccines is directly

related to the autism epidemic, " his House Government

Reform Committee concluded in its final report.

" This epidemic in all probability may have been

prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep

at the switch regarding a lack of safety data

regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin. "

The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to

act, the committee added, out of " institutional

malfeasance for self protection " and " misplaced

protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry. "

The story of how government health agencies colluded

with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from

the public is a chilling case study of institutional

arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the

controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and

environmentalist who has spent years working on

issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers

of autistic children who were absolutely convinced

that their kids had been injured by vaccines.

Privately, I was skeptical.

I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source,

and I certainly understood the government's need to

reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the

eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on

it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry

Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized

his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee

for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations.

" Why should we scare people about immunization, " Waxman

pointed out at one hearing, " until we know the facts? "

It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts,

studying the leading scientific research and talking

with many of the nation's pre-eminent authorities on

mercury that I became convinced that the link between

thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological

disorders is real. Five of my own children are members

of the Thimerosal Generation -- those born between

1989 and 2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury

from vaccines. " The elementary grades are overwhelmed

with children who have symptoms of neurological or

immune-system damage, " Patti White, a school nurse,

told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999.

" Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier;

however, in twenty-five years of nursing I have never

seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very,

very wrong is happening to our children. "

More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism,

and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases

every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when

it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children

born in the months after thimerosal was first added

to baby vaccines in 1931.

Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is

caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They

argue that the increase is a result of better

diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable

at best, given that most of the new cases of autism

are clustered within a single generation of children.

" If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor

diagnosis, " scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the

world's authorities on mercury toxicity, " then where

are all the twenty-year- old autistics? " Other

researchers point out that Americans are exposed

to a greater cumulative " load " of mercury than

ever before, from contaminated fish to dental

fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines

may be only part of a much larger problem.

It's a concern that certainly deserves far more

attention than it has received -- but it overlooks

the fact that the mercury concentrations in

vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our

children.

What is most striking is the lengths to which many

of the leading detectives have gone to ignore --

and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal.

From the very beginning, the scientific case against

the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The

preservative, which is used to stem fungi and

bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury,

a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have

shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains

of primates and other animals after they are injected

with vaccines -- and that the developing brains of

infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977,

a Russian study found that adults exposed to much

lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given

to American children still suffered brain damage years

later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's

vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria,

Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries

have since followed suit.

" You couldn't even construct a study that shows

thimerosal is safe, " says Haley, who heads the

chemistry department at the University of Kentucky.

" It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal

into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply

it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it

in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these

things, it would be shocking if one could inject

it into an infant without causing damage. "

Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which

first developed thimerosal, knew from the start

that its product could cause damage -- and even

death -- in both animals and humans. In 1930, the

company tested thimerosal by administering it to

twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all

of whom died within weeks of being injected --

a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study

declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers

at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-,

warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's

safety " did not check with ours. " Half the dogs

Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines

became sick, leading researchers there to declare

the preservative " unsatisfactory as a serum intended

for use on dogs. "

In the decades that followed, the evidence against

thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second

World War, when the Department of Defense used the

preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required

Lilly to label it " poison. " In 1967, a study in

Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed

mice when added to injected vaccines.

Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that

thimerosal was " toxic to tissue cells " in concentrations

as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker

than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so,

the company continued to promote thimerosal as

" nontoxic " and also incorporated it into topical

disinfectants. In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto

hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with

thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.

In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter

products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the

agency considered banning it from animal vaccines.

But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended

that infants be injected with a series of mercury-

laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for

hepatitis B within twenty-four hours of birth, and

two-month-old infants would be immunized for

haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-

pertussis.

The drug industry knew the additional vaccines

posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved

the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the

fathers of Merck's vaccine programs, warned

the company that six-month-olds who were administered

the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury.

He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued,

" especially when used on infants and children, "

noting that the industry knew of nontoxic

alternatives. " The best way to go, " he added,

" is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines

without adding preservatives. "

For Merck and other drug companies, however, the

obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the

pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in

vials that contain multiple doses, which require

additional protection because they are more easily

contaminated by multiple needle entries.

The larger vials cost half as much to produce as

smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for

international agencies to distribute them to

impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced

with this " cost consideration, " Merck ignored

Hilleman's warnings, and government officials

continued to push more and more thimerosal-based

vaccines for children. Before 1989, American

preschoolers received only three vaccinations --

for polio, diphtheria-tetanus- pertussis and

measles-mumps- rubella. A decade later, thanks

to federal recommendations, children were receiving

a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time

they reached first grade.

As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of

autism among children exploded. During the 1990s,

40 million children were injected with thimerosal-

based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of

mercury during a period critical for brain development.

Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal,

it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative

dose of mercury that children would receive from

the mandated vaccines. " What took the FDA so long

to do the calculations? " Patriarca, director

of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail

to the CDC in 1999. " Why didn't CDC and the advisory

bodies do these calculations when they rapidly

expanded the childhood immunization schedule? "

But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who

received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the

age of six months were being injected with levels of

ethylmercury 187 times greater than the EPA's limit

for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related

neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists

that ethylmercury poses little danger because it

breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several

studies -- including one published in April by the

National Institutes of Health -- suggest that

ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing

brains and stays in the brain longer than

methylmercury.

Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist

that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect

infants from disease and that thimerosal is still

essential in developing nations, which, they often

claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that

don't require a preservative. Dr. Offit, one

of CDC's top vaccine advisers, told me, " I think if

we really have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we

will in the next twenty years, because we always do --

there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280

million people with single-dose vials. There has to

be multidose vials. "

But while public-health officials may have been well-

intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee

who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to

the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was

a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers

and shares a patent on a measles vaccine with Merck,

which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. Dr.

Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a

researcher for the vaccine companies and received

honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the

hepatitis B vaccine.

Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on

vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep.

Burton says that the CDC " routinely allows scientists

with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on

intellectual advisory committees that make

recommendations on new vaccines, " even though they

have " interests in the products and companies for

which they are supposed to be providing unbiased

oversight. " The House Government Reform Committee

discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who

approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine laced

with thimerosal " had financial ties to the

pharmaceutical companies that were developing

different versions of the vaccine. "

Offit, who shares a patent on the vaccine,

acknowledged to me that he " would make money " if

his vote to approve it eventually leads to a

marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion

that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC

approval might bias his judgment. " It provides no

conflict for me, " he insists. " I have simply been

informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When

I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying

to make recommendations that best benefited the

children in this country. It's offensive to say that

physicians and public-health people are in the pocket

of industry and thus are making decisions that they

know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way

it works. "

Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me

similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves

as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud

of their " partnerships " with pharmaceutical companies,

immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged

by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns

are endangering children's health. They are often

resentful of questioning. " Science, " says Offit,

" is best left to scientists. "

Still, some government officials were alarmed by

the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to

CDC administrators in 1999, Patriarca of the FDA

blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately

scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby

vaccines. " I'm not sure there will be an easy way out

of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and

immunization- policy bodies may have been asleep at

the switch re: thimerosal until now, " Patriarca wrote.

The close ties between regulatory officials and the

pharmaceutical industry, he added, " will also raise

questions about various advisory bodies regarding

aggressive recommendations for use " of thimerosal

in child vaccines.

If federal regulators and government scientists

failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal

over the years, no one could claim ignorance after

the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than

conduct more studies to test the link to autism and

other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics

over science. The agency turned its database on

childhood vaccines -- which had been developed largely

at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency,

America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it

could not be used for additional research. It also

instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory

organization that is part of the National Academy of

Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link

between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC

" wants us to declare, well, that these things are

pretty safe, " Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the

IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her

fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001.

" We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is

a true side effect " of thimerosal exposure. According

to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief

staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM

would conclude that the evidence was " inadequate to

accept or reject a causal relation " between thimerosal

and autism. That, she added, was the result " Walt

wants " -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director

of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

For those who had devoted their lives to promoting

vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal

threatened to undermine everything they had worked

for. " We've got a dragon by the tail here, " said Dr.

Kaback, another committee member. " The more

negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely

people are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we

know what the results of that will be. We are kind

of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the

trap, I think is the charge. "

Even in public, federal officials made it clear that

their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to

dispel doubts about vaccines. " Four current studies

are taking place to rule out the proposed link

between autism and thimerosal, " Dr. Gordon ,

then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research

at the National Institutes of Health, assured a

Princeton University gathering in May 2001. " In order

to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to

link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism,

we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to

assure parents of safety. " formerly served as

president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored

warnings about thimerosal's risks.

In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued

its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven

link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather

than reviewing the large body of literature describing

the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four

disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining

European countries, where children received much smaller

doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a

new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the

journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce

the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study

included children too young to have been diagnosed

with autism and overlooked others who showed signs

of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and --

in a startling position for a scientific body --

recommended that no further research be conducted.

The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no

one! Rep. Weldon, a Republican physician from

Florida who serves on the House Government Reform

Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying

it relied on a handful of studies that were " fatally

flawed " by " poor design " and failed to represent " all

the available scientific and medical research. " CDC

officials are not interested in an honest search for

the truth, Weldon told me, because " an association

between vaccines and autism would force them to admit

that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of

children. Who would want to make that conclusion

about themselves? "

Under pressure from congress, parents and a few of its

own panel members, the Institute of Medicine reluctantly

convened a second panel to review the findings of the

first. In February, the new panel, composed of

different scientists, criticized the earlier panel

for its lack of transparency and urged the CDC to

make its vaccine database available to the public.

So far, though, only two scientists have managed to

gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the

Genetics Center of America, and his son, ,

spent a year battling to obtain the medical records

from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of

Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the

Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a

powerful correlation between thimerosal and

neurological damage in children. One study, which

compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by

children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born

between 1990 and 1996, found a " very significant

relationship " between autism and vaccines. Another

study of educational performance found that kids who

received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were

nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with

autism and more than three times as likely to suffer

from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another

soon-to-be published study shows that autism rates

are in decline following the recent elimination of

thimerosal from most vaccines.

As the federal government worked to prevent scientists

from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study

the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of

UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies

himself. Searching for children who had not been

exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of population

that scientists typically use as a " control " in

experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster

County, Pennsylvania, who refuse to immunize their

infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted

calculated that there should be 130 autistics among

the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed

to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other

three -- including one child adopted from outside

the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.

At the state level, many officials have also conducted

in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute

of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa

legislature was carefully combing through all of the

available scientific and biological data. " After three

years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient

credible research to show a link between mercury and

the increased incidences in autism, " says state Sen.

Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation.

" The fact that Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism

began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines

were added to the children's vaccine schedules, is solid

evidence alone. " Last year, Iowa became the first state

to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California.

Similar bans are now under consideration in thirty-two

other states.

But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to

allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores

of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids

and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the

government continues to ship vaccines preserved

with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of

which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism

rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown

prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S.

drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that

there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although

reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders

also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua

and other developing countries that are now using

thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health

Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but

it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked

to neurological disorders " under review. "

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. " The CDC is guilty of incompetence and

gross negligence, " says Mark Blaxill, vice president

of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned

about the role of mercury in medicines. " The damage

caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger

than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than

anything you've ever seen. "

It's hard to calculate the damage to our country --

and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic

diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe

that America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative

is poisoning their children. It's not difficult to

predict how this scenario will be interpreted by

America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers --

many of them sincere, even idealistic -- who are

participating in efforts to hide the science on

thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the

lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations

from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided.

Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will

come back horribly to haunt our country and the

world's poorest populations.