美国疾病控制中心机密报告:硫柳汞与孤独症(英文)

宁刚

下文揭示了美国疾病控制中心(CDC)的机密原始研究报告证实:出生后三个月内的婴儿,

如体内随注射疫苗接受的汞为62.5mcg或更多者,则此后得孤独症的可能性为对照组的

2.48倍. (此研究结果包括小年龄组,且未考虑体重.)





The "Mothering Magazine" Article



Title:  Thimerosal Linked to Autism in Confidential CDC Study



    Controversy is mounting regarding the Center for Disease

    Control's (CDC) Thimerosal Vaccine Safety Data-Link Study (VSD)

    presented to the public at the July 15, 2001, Institute of Medicine

    (IOM) meeting on "Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and

    Neurodevelopmental Outcomes." Thimerosal is the mercury preservative

    used in vaccines and other biologics. The CDC study evaluated

    nuerodevelopmental injury and cumulative exposures to Thimerosal at

    one and three months of age by studying the health records of over

    100,000 children at four HMOs.



    The organization SAFEMINDS (Sensible Action for Ending

    Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders) has obtained an earlier,

    confidential February 2000 version of the VSD study through the

    Freedom of Information Act, as well as transcripts from a scientific

    review of this earlier study, which took place at Simpsonwood Retreat

    Center in Georgia. Serious disparities exist between the

    neurodevelopmental outcomes of the two different versions of the

    study. For over a year, SAFEMINDS and Congressman Dan Burton (R-

    Indiana) have been requesting the VSD raw data from the CDC for

    independent review. So far their requests have been denied.



    The Texas firm Waters and Kraus leads the consortium of 25 law

    firms in as many states in the first civil suit brought against

    vaccine manufacturers and alleges that the February 2000 confidential

    version of the VSD study clearly demonstrates "an exposure to more

    than 62.5 micrograms of mercury within the first three months of life

    significantly increases a child's risk of developing

    nuerodevelopmental orders such as speech and language delay, autism,

    stuttering, and attention deficit disorder." In fact, the study

    indicates that children at this exposure level are more than twice as

    likely (2.48) to develop autism as those not exposed. Waters and

    Kraus note: "Courts of law have generally upheld that a relative risk

    of 2.0 or higher is sufficient to substantiate that a given exposure

    causes disease.



    When the VSD study was presented at the July 2001 IOM meeting,

    the relative risk of autism had been reduced to 1.69. According to

    Mark Blaxill of SAFEMINDS, all previous versions of the study had

    used the same dataset. Yet for the version presented at the IOM

    meeting had an additional 34,334 children added to the database. The

    majority of the additional children were added by altering the

    inclusion criteria, as well as by updating the HMO data cycle by

    adding an additional year, 1998. The additional children were too

    young to have been diagnosed autistic since they were just turning

    two at the time the analysis was performed. Autism is diagnosed on

    the average at 44 months.



    When the author of the VSD study, Tom Verstraeten, first

    presented the confidential version for scientific review by a panel

    of experts at Simpsonwood in June 2000, he said, "One thing that is

    for sure, there is certainly an under-ascertainment of all these

    [neurodevelopmental disorders] because some of the children are just

    not old enough to be diagnosed. So the crude incidence rates

    are probably much lower than what you would expect because the cohort

    is still very young."



    The FDA and EPA called for the removal of mercury in infant

    vaccines beginning in 1999. At that time, vaccine manufacturers

    agreed to have thimerosal-free vaccines available at the beginning of

    2001 and later offered voluntary exchange for all remaining

    thimerosal vaccines still on the shelf. In July of 1999, the

    American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), under the leadership of

    pediatric vaccinologist Dr. Neal A. Halsey, met with officials from

    the CDC to ask that the birth dose of Hepatitis B be pushed back as

    far as six months of age. The CDC and members of its National

    Immunization Program (NIP) refused, arguing that there was no

    evidence of harm done. They didn't want to undermine public

    confidence in the vaccination program. After much negotiation, the

    CDC released an ambiguous and weak statement that suggested that in

    certain low-risk populations physicians could wait until babies were

    two months of age before they administered their first hepatitis B

    vaccine.



    The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the CDC

    committee that recommends the vaccines for the Childhood Immunization

    Schedule, has yet to state a preference for thimerosal-free

    vaccines. It was the ACIP that approved of the additions to the

    Childhood Immunization Schedule of hepatitis B and Hib in the late

    1980s and early 1990s, two thimerosal-containing vaccines that pushed

    infant ethyl mercury exposure levels far above any existing federal

    methyl mercury exposure guidelines.



    At the June 2000 Simpsonwood meeting, the following comment was

    made by a participant, "This association leads me to favor a

    recommendation that infants up to two years old not be immunized with

    thimerosal-containing vaccines if suitable alternative preparations

    are available?Forgive this personal comment, but I got called out at

    eight o'clock for an emergency phone call, and my daughter-in-law

    delivered a son by C-section. [This is] our first male in the line of

    the next generation, and I do not want that grandson to get a

    thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on?

    SAFEMINDS, a group founded by parents of children suffering from what

    they know to be mercury-induced neurological disorders, believes that

    everybody's child should have had this knowledge and option in June

    of 2000.



    Just how much thimerosal is too much for an infant? It depends

    on whom you ask. Chair of the IOM's Immunization Safety Review

    Committee, Dr. Marie McCormick, gave assurances to the public last

    October that it would be rare for any child who follows the vaccine

    schedule to exceed federal guidelines for methyl mercury exposure.

    Yet the confidential CDC study found that "the majority of children

    in their cohort exceeded the EPA limits at one and three months of

    age." The EPA guidelines allow for 0.1 mcg per kilogram of body

    weight per day. Depending on her weight, a three-month-old infant

    who received 62.5 micrograms of mercury in one day would exceed the

    EPA guidelines upwards of 78 times. And, as researchers were quick

    to point out at the July IOM meeting on thimerosal, the EPA's safe

    limit is based on gradually ingested methyl mercury via fish

    consumption. It was never meant to be used as a safety limit for

    injected bolus doses of ethyl mercury, which permeate the blood-brain

    barrier.



    According to Dr. Boyd Haley, head of the chemistry department at

    the University of Kentucky, and an internationally recognized

    researcher on the toxicity of mercury compounds, says no amount of

    thimerosal is a safe amount. He says, "It is well known that infants

    do not produce significant levels of bile or have adult renal

    capacity for several months after birth. Bilary transport is the

    major biochemical route by which mercury is removed from the body,

    and infants cannot do this very well." Haley adds that thimerosal is

    more toxic than mercury and that "giving a ten-pound infant a single

    vaccine in a day is the equivalent of giving a 100 pound adult 40

    vaccines in a day." He goes on to say, "We are not talking about

    causing death; we are talking about causing autism. As a scientist,

    you have to ask yourself, what's the most obvious neurotoxin that

    these children are being exposed to that could cause this?

    Thimerosal."



    According to a participant at the scientific review of the

    confidential CDC study held at Simpsonwood, "The number of dose-

    related relationships are linear and statistically significant. You

    can play with the numbers all you want. They are linear. The

    increased incidence of neurobehavioral problems in the past few

    decades is probably real. I work in the school system where my effort

    is entirely special education, and I have to say that the numbers of

    kids getting help in special education is growing nationally and

    state by state at a rate we have not seen before, we don't see that

    kind of genetic change in 30 years."



    It is now estimated that 17 percent of US children under the age

    of 18 are suffering from learning and/or behavioral disabilities.

    California's Department of Developmental Services just released it

    sobering statistics for 2001. It reported a 20 percent increase over

    the previous year 2000 for diagnoses of level-one autism. Level-one

    autism is the number one disability in the state of California,

    accounting for 35 percent of all new cases. Of the 16,802 persons

    with level-one autism in the California system, two-thirds of them

    are between the ages of birth and 13.



    How could a mistake of such magnitude have been made---one that

    has seemingly impacted a generation of children around the world? The

    FDA approves vaccines in a vacuum; they are not required to study

    cumulative exposures or the synergistic effects of receiving multiple

    vaccines in a single day. After the FDA approves a vaccine, it is

    reviewed for inclusion on the CDC's Advisory Committee on

    Immunization Practices (ACIP) vaccine schedule. In reviewing policy

    decisions that brought about the approval of the ill-fated rotavirus

    vaccine, Congressman Dan Burton found that the ACIP is riddled with

    conflicts of interest: committee members own stock in drug companies

    that make vaccines; committee members own patents for vaccines;

    conflicts of interest waivers are granted for members for a year at a

    time, and there are no public members or parents who have a vote on

    the same committee.



    Executive Director of the American Association of Physicians and

    Surgeons Jane Orient, MD, has long argued that because vaccines are

    state and federally mandated, the manufacturer and the physician are

    relieved of liability for adverse effects. On the other hand,

    physicians who advise against a mandated vaccine face increased legal

    liability if a patient is infected with that disease. Neither

    vaccine manufacturers nor medical personnel have any impetus to

    follow up on the safety or rationale of the product they are

    administering.



    It has been almost three years since Lynn Redwood, a nurse,

    mother of an autistic son, and one of the founders and current

    president of SAFEMINDS, first came across an FDA report mentioning

    that children who received vaccines within thimerosal might possibly

    exceed federal guidelines for mercury exposure. She went on to have

    a lock of her son's hair tested, and it revealed levels of mercury

    and aluminum at almost five times the acceptable amount. Redwood

    says, "I want parents to know what happened to their children, and I

    am starting to lose faith that our government and its various

    agencies are doing anything about this."



    For more information, see:

              www.safeminds.org

              www.iom.edu

              www.altcorp.com

              www.VaccineWebsite.com

              www.909shot.com

              www.autism-mercury.com

              Waters and Kraus: www.autismfraud.com