Alarming expose of research manipulation
Dr. Weldon's letter (at end) should make everyone question what they are 'officially' told
The Autism connection is amply demonstrated when autistic children are cured though Mercury detoxification see:
Mercury and Autism:
Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!): Mercury Detoxification Consensus Group Position Paper
Autism: a Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning [Short Version] [Long Version]
Vaccinations Contributing to Rise in Autism? [Transcript] Aired 11/20/02 on CNN
Chris Gupta>To those in government and the media whom it ought to concern:
The current flu vaccine now being flogged by the "health" authorities - with the help of a research challenged media - contains thimerosal 50% of which is comprised of the neurotoxin mercury, may or may not contain aluminum - also a neurotoxin, and formalin - a.k.a. formaldehyde (a known carcinogen and neurotoxin) and egg albumin (a potent allergen).
Those targeted with this vaccine include the elderly and the chronically ill. The immune system of the former is in decline and that of the latter is compromised. As a consequence both are highly vulnerable to adverse reactions caused by the toxins in these vaccines. The same holds true for infants whose immune systems are not fully developed or compromised because of genetic susceptibility or illness. Read the vaccine manufacturer's package insert for contraindications, side effects and the vaccine's contents.
Immuno-geneticist Dr. H. Hugh Fudenberg, MD (among the 15 most quoted scientists of this era with over 850 papers published in peer reviewed journals, http://www.nitrf.org/biblio.html , web site http://www.nitrf.org/fudenberg.html), in 1997 cited a ten year study conducted in the 1980's which demonstrated that those who have had five or more consecutive flu shots as opposed to one or two or no flu shots have a ten fold chance of developing Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Fudenberg attributed this to the mercury and aluminum that are present in these vaccines and until recently was present in most childhood vaccines.
"once Dr. Verstraeten began working for vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, he altered the data, sampling and methodology of the study so that results would point to enough inconsistencies to cast doubt" on the (mercury/autism) link.
The medical profession may hide its head like the proverbial ostrich over the vaccine/autism connection. However, it will not escape the condemnation and loss of public trust for its attempts to hide the facts. The media will not escape excoriation for its lack of due diligence while acting as a handmaiden for government , the medial profession and the vaccine industry.
Croft Woodruff
6262-A Fraser Street
604 327 3889
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NVIC Note: The questions surrounding the latest study in Pediatrics claiming there is no link between thimerosal and autism has gotten a lot of attention in the media. Here is a report from The Washington Times. At the end of this article is a copy of the letter that Congressman Weldon sent to the Centers for Disease Control. If you have a child with autism and mercury
poisoning, please contact your local media outlets and give them the letter from the Congressman. Tell them your personal story and experiences and ask them to cover this important issue.
The Washington Times
Mercury-laced vaccines a threat, child group says
November 3, 2003
By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A vaccine safety study of more than 124,000 babies that appears today in the journal Pediatrics concludes there are "no consistent significant associations" between mercury-laced vaccines and maladies such as autism or attention-deficit disorder.
However, an advocacy group is accusing federal researchers of finding such a link in "earlier, secret studies" and "manipulating data" to cover it up.
"They found the truth and then swept it under the rug," said Lyn Redwood, the mother of an autistic child and president of Safe Minds, a Cranford, N.J., organization dedicated to removing mercury from medical products.
Mercury is known to have toxic effects on the brain. Thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative, was used for decades to stabilize vaccines. Vaccines today contain little or no thimerosal.
Rep. Dave Weldon, Florida Republican and a physician, sent a letter Friday to Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), asking for a "thorough, open, timely and independent review" of the study.
"I have reviewed the [Pediatrics] article and have serious reservations about the four-year evaluation and conclusions of this study," Dr. Weldon said.
"While most childhood vaccines now have only trace amounts of mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines, it is critical that we know with certainty if children were injured in the 1990s," he wrote.
"I am a strong supporter of childhood vaccinations, and know that they have saved us from considerable death and suffering," he added. However, "[W]e must fully disclose adverse events" to preserve public confidence in vaccines.
The CDC study, led by Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, was based on vaccine and health data from 124,170 infants born between 1992 and 1999 at two health maintenance organizations and 16,717 children born between 1991 and 1997 at another HMO.
The researchers found "conflicting results" about links between vaccines and tics or language delays at different sites. However, they found no evidence of significant increased risks for autism or attention-deficit disorder.
Safe Minds leaders say that, according to materials obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. Verstraeten said during the early stages of the study that he thought he saw a "plausible" link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.
But, "once Dr. Verstraeten began working for vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, he altered the data, sampling and methodology of the study so that results would point to enough inconsistencies to cast doubt" on the link, the group said.
Specifically, they said, CDC researchers added data from a Massachusetts HMO even though it had data-management problems and the state is believed to have "severely under reported" its cases of autism. This data skewed the findings, the Safe Minds leaders said. Spokesmen for the CDC said Friday they were reviewing information about these "serious allegations."
CDC materials say there are no proven links between autism and vaccines, and American parents and health care workers should continue to immunize babies and young children against disease.
A spokeswoman at GlaxoSmithKline referred questions about the study to the CDC, since it was conducted when Dr. Verstraeten was in an agency fellowship program.
GlaxoSmithKline is named as a defendant in lawsuits filed by persons with autism.
A spokeswoman for the Pediatrics journal said that the CDC study was "peer-reviewed by multiple experts." Also, Dr. Verstraeten declared that he was a federal employee and had no conflict of interest when the study was performed, the journal said.
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You can view and print this letter as a .pdf at:
http://www.house.gov/weldon/issues/autism.pdf
October 31, 2003
Julie L. Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H.
Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Road, N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30333
Dr. Julie Gerberding,
I am writing to follow up on our conversation about the article (Verstraeten et. al.,) that will be published in the November 2003 issue of Pediatrics. I have reviewed the article and have serious reservations about the four-year evolution and conclusions of this study.
Much of what I observed transpired prior to your appointment a year ago as the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 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 am a strong supporter of childhood vaccinations and know that they have saved us from considerable death and suffering. A key part of our vaccination program is to ensure that we do everything possible to ensure that these vaccines, which are mandatory, are as safe as possible. We must fully disclose adverse events. Anything less than this undermines public confidence.
I have read the upcoming Pediatrics study and several earlier versions of this study dating back to February 2000. I have read various e-mails from Dr. Verstraeten and coauthors. I have reviewed the transcripts of a discussion at Simpsonwood, GA between the author, various CDC employees, and vaccine industry representatives. 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. While most childhood vaccines now only have trace amounts of mercury from thimerosal containing vaccines (TCVs), it is critical that we know with certainty if children were injured in the 1990s.
Furthermore, the lead author of the article, Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, worked for the CDC until he left over two years ago to work in Belgium for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a vaccine manufacturer facing liability over TCVs.
In violation of their own standards of conduct, Pediatrics failed to disclose that Dr. Verstraeten is employed by GSK and incorrectly identifies him as an employee of the CDC. This revelation undermines this study further.
The first version of the study, produced in February 2000, found a significant association between exposure to thimerosal containing vaccines (TCVs) and autism and neurological developmental delays (NDDs). When comparing children exposed to 62.5 µg of mercury by 3 months of age to those exposed to less than 37.5 µg, the study found a relative risk for autism of 2.48 for those with a higher exposure level. (While not significant in the 95% confidence interval for autism, this meets the legal standard of proof exceeding 2.0.) For NDDs the study found a relative risk of 1.59 and a definite upward trend as exposure levels increased.
A June 2000 version of the study applied various data manipulations to reduce the autism association to 1.69 and the authors went outside of the VSD database to secure data from a Massachusetts HMO (Harvard Pilgrim, HP) in order to counter the association found between TCVs and speech delay. At the time that HP's data was brought in, HP was in receivership by the state of Mass., its computer records had been in shambles for years, it had multiple computer systems that could not communicate with one another (Journal of Law, Ethics and Medicine Sept. 22, 2000), and it used a health care coding system totally different from the one used across the VSD. There are questions relating to a significant under reporting of Autism in Mass. The HP dataset is only about 15% of the HMO dataset used in the February 2000 study. There may also be significant problems with the statistical power of the HP dataset.
In June of 2000 a meeting was held in Simpsonwood, GA, involving the authors of the study, representatives of the CDC, and the vaccine industry. I have reviewed a transcript of this meeting that was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Comments from Simpsonwood, NJ meeting include: (summary form, not direct quotes):
We found a statistically significant relationship between exposures and outcomes. There is certainly an under ascertainment of adverse outcomes because some children are just simply not old enough to be diagnosed, the current incidence rates are much lower than we would expect to see (Verstraeten);
We could exclude the lowest exposure children from our database. Also suggested was removing the children that got the highest exposure levels since they represented an unusually high percentage of the outcomes. (Rhodes)
The significant association with language delay is quite large. (Verstraeten); This information should be kept confidential and considered embargoed; We can push and pull this data anyway we want to get the results we want; We can alter the exclusion criteria any we way we want, give reasonable justifications for doing so, and get any result we want;
There was really no need to do this study. We could have predicted the outcomes; I will not give TCVs to my grandson until I find out what is going on here.
Another version of the study - after further manipulation - finds no association between TCVs and autism, and no consistency across HMOs between TCVs and NDDs and speech delay.
The final version of the study concludes that "No consistent significant associations were found between TCVs and neurodevelopmental outcomes," and that the lack of consistency argues against an association. In reviewing the study there are data points where children with higher exposures to the neuortoxin mercury had fewer developmental disorders. This demonstrates to me how excessive manipulation of data can lead to absurd results. Such a conclusion is not unexpected from an author with a serious, though undisclosed, conflict of interest.
This study increases speculation of an association between TCVs and neurodevelopmental outcomes. I cannot say it was the author's intent to eliminate the earlier findings of an association. Nonetheless, the elimination of this association is exactly what happened and the manner in which this was achieved raises speculation. The dialogue at the Simpsonwood meeting clearly indicates how easily the authors could manipulate the data and have reasonable sounding justifications for many of their decisions.
The only way these issues are going to be resolved - and I have only mentioned a few of them - is by making this particular dataset and the entire VSD database open for independent analysis. One such independent researcher, Dr. Mark Geier, has already been approved by the CDC and the various IRBs to access this dataset. They have requested the CDC allow them to access this dataset and your staff indicated to my office that they would make this particular dataset available after the Pediatrics study is published.
Earlier this month the CDC had prepared three similar datasets for this researcher to review to allow him to reanalyze CDC study datasets. However when they accessed the datasets - which the researchers paid the CDC to assemble - the datasets were found to have no usable data in them. I request that you personally intervene with those in the CDC who are assembling this dataset to ensure that they provide the complete dataset, in a usable format, to these researchers within two weeks. The treatment that these well-published researchers have received from the CDC thus far has been abysmal and embarrassing. I would also be curious to know whether Dr. Verstraeten, an outside researcher for more than two years now, was required to go through the same process as Dr. Geier in order to continue accessing the VSD.
You have not been a part of creating this current situation, but you do have an opportunity to help resolve this issue and ensure that confidence and trustworthiness in the CDC and our national vaccination program is fully restored. I would ask that you work with me to ensure that a full, fair, and independent review is made of the VSD database to fully examine this matter. I would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to move this process forward.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to working with you on this urgent matter of great importance to our nation's most precious resource, our children.
Sincerely,
Dave Weldon, M.D.
Member of Congress
posted by Chris Gupta on Saturday November 15 2003
updated on Saturday September 24 2005URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2003/11/15/alarming_expose_of_research_manipulation.htm
