Autism and Thimerosal:

The Thimerosal Conspiracy

by Josh Day

Robert Kennedy, Jr. has written a chilling expose that details the latest outrages in the ongoing thimerosal and vaccine story. Though the facts are stunning, it is not at all surprising, given the government and Big Pharm's track record when it comes to injecting children with thimerosal.

Apparently, the government has known about thimerosal dangers for some time and has continued vaccinating infants and children with mercury, understanding full well the link to autism and other disorders.

In a chilling Wannsee conference-style meeting, top brass in the pharmaceutical empire, FDA and CDC lackeys, and their scientist dogs have concocted their own Final Solution in "handling" the thimerosal problem.

These men met and decided to cover up a study that proved a connection between thimerosal and autism, as well as other serious disorders.

Kennedy states:

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. [in] complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to 52 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 [....] There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left. (Kennedy)

And their appalling conclusion:

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.

[...] 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. John Clements, vaccines advisor 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 [the study's] findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that [the] 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. (Kennedy)

For a successful cover-up, it helps to have a pharmaceutically-connected lawmaker in one's corner.

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. Congress repealed the measure 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. (Kennedy)

Thimerosal is used in vaccines as a preservative to allow for mass production. Instead of single dose vials, vaccines now come in multi-dose bottles, which is cheaper to manufacture.

Again, the perpetual fear of a bioterrorism outbreak gives Big Pharm a blank check to cut corners as "cost considerations." If terrorists employ a biological attack, the drug lords claim, then only multi-dose vials could vaccinate the American public in an emergency. This nebulous scenario has allowed the drug empire to pump an entire generation of American children full of mercury, and thanks to the politicians in their pockets, new laws protect them from any accountability.

Kennedy gives a timeline of events for the generation some call the Thimerosal Generation.

Before 1989, American preschoolers received 11 vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 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. (Kennedy)

Kennedy goes on:

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 a total of 187 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 40 percent 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. Under the expanded schedule of vaccinations, multiple shots were often administered on a single day: At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, children routinely received three innoculations that delivered 99 times the approved limit of mercury. (Kennedy)

Everyone knows mercury is not good for you. Remember the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland? Hatters were notorious for being crazy or having the "shakes," and this was due to their working with mercury to cure the felt for hats. Mercury was once used to treat syphillus, and when an afflicted hatter discovered his treatment helped produce superior hats, employing mercury became the norm in the hat making industry during the 19th century. (Source: Mercury: Element of the Ancients)

And this toxic metal is being injected into infants.

The good news -- as if anything good could come out of this travesty -- is that thimerosal is being downsized, at least in vaccine production meant for American children.

However, "the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen" as well as in vaccines being sent to Third World countries (Kennedy).

In conclusion, let's take another look at the timeline and the rise in autism, and then we'll finish on an Amish note.

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, Penn., 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. (Kennedy)