"I’m investigating things that begin with the letter "M.” — The Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s
Alice
in Wonderland.
The term “mad as a hatter” has its roots in a tragic occupational hazard of the early hat making industry. Mercury nitrate was used in manufacturing felt hats. People eventually figured out that exposure to mercury caused nervous disorders, odd behavior, and even insanity. In
Danbury
,
Connecticut
, the hat making center of the world in the 19th century, the disease was so common it was known as “The Danbury Shakes.” Even with a clear link between mercury and a deadly disease the industry and the unions resisted banning mercury for years. Such is the inertia of common practice. When mercury substitutes were developed in the 1940’s, hatters stopped going mad.
Mercury still had its uses, however. In the 1930’s, as mercury was disappearing from the hat trade, the drug manufacturer, Eli Lilly, developed mercury-based thimerosal as a preservative for vaccines. Lilly hid results of its own tests that showed the compound was poisonous. In 1935 research by a Lilly competitor, Pittman-Moore, using dogs as subjects determined that thimerosal was “unsatisfactory as a serum for use on dogs.” Ely Lilly, however, still considered it just fine for humans. The CDC and FDA agreed. Thimerosal is still in use today as a preservative in vaccines.
According to a June 2005 Rolling Stone article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the CDC has known since 1999 that thimerosal causes autism and other neurological disorders in children. In 2000 the CDC and FDA sponsored a secret, invitation-only meeting for mucky mucks from the drug industry and government regulatory agencies. Everyone who was anyone in the vaccine industry was there, including the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization.
The meeting was secret because the CDC had a big problem. Kennedy had to obtain transcripts under the Freedom of Information Act. At the meeting the CDC revealed results of research by its own epidemiologist Tom Verstraeten that showed an unquestionable link between thimerosal in vaccines and neurological disease. There wasn’t any doubt. Verstraeten had massive amounts of CDC data to work with. His results approached statistical certainty.
Ironically it was the FDA/CDC recommendations in the early 1990’s that made the connection obvious. Before 1989 American kids received just three vaccinations against seven diseases — polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, and measles-mumps-rubella. The mercury preservatives in those vaccines were poisonous but not obviously so. Although autism had increased in lockstep with compulsory vaccinations, it still occurred in only one in 2500 children. After 1989, on federal recommendations, the number of immunizations received by American children before the first grade increased to twenty-two. The autism rate exploded to one in 165 children.
Nobody at the FDA or the CDC had thought to add up the total load of mercury that twenty-two inoculations would put into a developing brain. As it turns out, an infant who receives all the shots and boosters the feds recommended, is injected with 187 times the level of ethyl mercury the EPA considers safe in just the first six months of life. Even if mercury is metabolized and excreted as drug companies claim, that’s a lot of mercury.
You would naturally think the largest public health organization in the country would have immediately taken steps to notify us and stop any further poisoning of our children. You think that because that is what you or I would have done. But you and I don’t run the outfit that is largely responsible for poisoning hundreds of thousands of kids.
According to the transcripts, the last two days of the secret meeting were spent figuring out how to cover everything up. The CDC has subsequently given all the data used by Verstraeten to a private company so people couldn’t get it with a FOIA request. The CDC also commissioned further studies with specific instructions that the results should show no connection between thimerosal and autism. When you have the kind of resources the CDC has, you get what you want.
A series of flawed, dishonest, CDC sponsored studies got the required results. A study conducted by the
Institute
of
Medicine
, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that thimerosal is safe. The IOM went so far as to recommend that no further studies be conducted. Not even Congressmen are buying that.
RFK, Jr., heir apparent to the Kennedy political dynasty of uncommonly rich socialists, was stunned by the government’s lies, noting in his article that “Even many conservatives are shocked by the government’s trying to cover up the dangers of thimerosal.” Anything bad enough to shock a conservative must be grave indeed. Never the less, the report of the House Government Reform Committee investigation, overseen by Republican representative Dan Burton, did not equivocate. It said, “Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic.”
Those who question the thimerosal autism connection would say that correlation doesn’t prove causation, but that doesn’t mean that correlation isn’t convincing. In countries where thimerosal is banned autism is extremely rare. In countries to which thimerosal laced vaccines were exported after the CDC cover up began, autism rates have skyrocketed.
Iowa
and
California
have banned thimerosal. Autism rates in both states have begun to decline.
I found an informal, private, one-man study particularly convincing. Because vaccination is compulsory for school children, control groups, those who have never been vaccinated, are hard to find. But UPI reporter Bill Olmstead found such a group — the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The Amish refuse to inoculate their children for religious reasons. Olmstead scoured
Lancaster
County
for autistic children in the Amish population. Using national rates there should have been 130 cases. Olmstead found only four. One of those had been exposed to mercury from a power plant. Each of the other three had been vaccinated.
&nbs
p;
Nearly all vaccines are available now in thimerosal free formulations. If you need a shot, request mercury free vaccine. Check the package insert and the label on the vaccine. Government officials have been known to patronize the public.
Federal officials still claim that thimerosal is safe. The CDC has research to prove it. Maybe it is, but you’d have to be mad as a hatter to subject yourself or your kids to mercury laden vaccines if you don’t have to.
