Agencies lack credibility
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-07-05-oppose_x.htm

The success of our vaccine program rests firmly on the credibility of
public health agencies. But the once sterling reputations of agencies
such as the CDCP, FDA and the IOM have been badly damaged by the
release of transcripts of secret meetings that show government
officials conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry to hide the
damning results of data showing dramatic increases in neurological
disorders among children exposed to thimerosal.
The CDCP's efforts to repair the damage have been hampered by its claim
to have lost the original data, and its defiance of federal laws and
congressional requests requiring it to allow independent scientists or
the public to review federal vaccine safety data.

Meanwhile, several principal authors of the four European studies the
CDCP primarily relies on to defend thimerosal have close ties to the
pharmaceutical industry. Those connections weren't disclosed, in
violation of peer-review ethics. The CDCP was aware of those facts,
encouraged the studies and lobbied to get them published.

Those studies are all catastrophically flawed. Most glaringly, before
banning thimerosal, Denmark registered only autistics who were
hospitalized - one fifth of the afflicted populations. After the
withdrawal of thimerosal, Denmark began counting out-patient autistics
in its registries. The resulting spike in raw numbers therefore made it
appear that autism rates actually increased after the withdrawal of
thimerosal.

Clever use of this deceptive data by the study authors allowed the CDCP
to make the case that thimerosal was not linked to autism. Furthermore,
the European studies involved children exposed to a fraction of the
thimerosal concentrations used in America.

The CDCP has selectively ignored hundreds of biological, toxicological
and epidemiological studies linking thimerosal to a wide range of
neurological disorders, relying instead on its reputation and its faith
that journalists are too busy to read the science.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is president of Waterkeeper Alliance, an
environmental group, and the author of Crimes Against Nature: How
George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country.