Posted on 06/22/2002 4:57:29 AM PDT by rubbertramp
Committee on Government Reform - “The Status of Research into Vaccine Safety and Autism” - Please read.
Committee on Government Reform - “The Status of Research into Vaccine Safety and Autism”
June 19, 2002 - 11:00 a.m.
2154 Rayburn House Office Building
In April the Committee conducted a hearing reviewing the epidemic of autism and the Department of Health and Human Service’s (HHS) response. Ten years ago, autism was thought to affect 1 in 10,000 individuals in the United States. When the Committee began its oversight investigation in 1999, autism was thought to affect 1 in 500 children. Today, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that autism affects 1 in 250 children.
In April we looked at the investment our Government has made into autism as compared to other epidemics. We showed in that hearing that the CDC and NIH have not provided adequate funding to address the issues in the manner that our Public Health Service agencies have used to address other epidemics.
(two charts comparing amount of funding for various diseases)
After our hearing, I joined with my colleagues on the Coalition on Autism Research and Education to request from our appropriators that at least 120 million dollars be made available in FY 2003 for autism research across the NIH and at that an additional $8 million be added to the CDC’s budget for autism research.
Giving more money to research is not the only answer though. Oversight is needed to make sure that research that is funded will sufficiently answer the questions regarding the epidemic, how to treat autism, and how to prevent the next ten years from seeing the statistic of 1 in 250 from becoming 1 in 25 children.
High quality clinical and laboratory research is needed now, not five or ten years from now. Independent analysis of previous epidemiological and case control studies is needed as well.
We have learned that a majority of parents whose children have late-onset or acquired autism believe it is vaccine-related. They deserve answers. We have also learned that the parents have been our best investigators in looking for both causes of autism and for treatments.
It has been parents who have formed non-profit organizations to raise research dollars to conduct the research that the CDC, the FDA, and the NIH have neglected to do. We have heard from many of these parents in the past, Elizabeth Birt, Rick Rollens, Shelley Reynolds, and Jeanna Smith, to name just a few. Each of these parents had healthy babies who became autistic after vaccination.
I might have been like many of the officials within the public health community – denying a connection - had I not witnessed this tragedy in my own family. I might not have believed the reports from parents like Scott and Laura Bono, Jeff Sell, Jeff and Shelly Segal, and Ginger Brown, who came to me with pictures, videos and medical records. I might have been like so many pediatricians who discounted the correlation between vaccination and the onset of fever, crying, and behavioral changes. Because both of my grandchildren suffered adverse reactions to vaccines, I could not ignore the parent’s plea for help. I could not ignore their evidence.
My only grandson became autistic right before my eyes – shortly after receiving his federally recommended and state-mandated vaccines. Without a full explanation of what was in the shots being given, my talkative, playful, outgoing healthy grandson Christian was subjected to very high levels of mercury through his vaccines. He also received the MMR vaccine. Within a few days he was showing signs of autism.
As part of our investigation, the Committee has reviewed ongoing concerns about vaccine safety, vaccine adverse events tracking, the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) Project, and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. I have joined with Congressman Weldon, Congressman Waxman and 32 other members of Congress in introducing HR 3741, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Improvement Act of 2002 to realign the compensation program with Congressional Intent.
In today’s hearing, we will receive a research update from several previous witnesses as well as new research findings that further support a connection between autism and vaccine adverse events. We will learn more about both the possible link between the use of the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal in vaccines and autism, as well as autistic entercolitis resulting from the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Through a Congressional mandate to review thimerosal content in medicines, the FDA learned that childhood vaccines, when given according to the CDC’s recommendations exposed over 8,000 children a day in the United States to levels of mercury that exceeded Federal guidelines. Is there a connection between this toxic exposure to mercury and the autism epidemic? We will hear from Dr. James Bradstreet and Dr. Vera Stejskal on this issue.
We have twice received testimony from Dr. Andrew Wakefield regarding his clinical research into autistic entercolitis. We will learn today that not only has he continued to conduct clinical research, but that this research is confirming the presence of vaccine-related measles RNA in the biopsies from autistic children. Dr. Wakefield - like many scientists who blaze new trails - has been attacked by his own profession. He has been forced out of his position at the Royal Free Hospital in England. He and his colleagues have fought an uphill battle to continue the research that has been a lone ray of hope for parents whose children have autistic entercolitis. Dr. Arthur Krigsman is joining us as well today to discuss his clinical findings of inflammatory bowel disorder in autistic children. He will share with us his initial findings as well as discuss his research plans currently with his Institutional Review Board for approval.
Do the epidemiological and case control studies, which the CDC has attempted to use to refute Dr. Wakefield’s laboratory results, answer the autism-vaccine questions honestly? Epidemiologist Dr. Walter Spitzer is back today to answer this question. What else is needed to prove or disprove a connection?
Unfortunately, rather than considering the preliminary clinical findings of Dr. Wakefield as a newly documented adverse reaction to a vaccine, the CDC attempted to refute these clinical findings through an epidemiological review. While epidemiological research is very important, it cannot be used to disprove laboratory and clinical findings. Valuable time was lost in replicating this research and determining whether the hypothesis was accurate.
Officials at HHS have aggressively denied any possible connection between vaccines and autism. They have waged an information campaign endorsing one conclusion on an issue where the science is still out. This has significantly undermined public confidence in the career public service professionals who are charged with balancing the dual roles of assuring the safety of vaccines and increasing immunization rates. Increasingly, parents come to us with concerns that integrity and an honest public health response to a crisis have been left by the wayside in lieu of protecting the public health agenda to fully immunize children. Parents are increasingly concerned that the Department may be inherently conflicted in its multiple roles of promoting immunization, regulating manufacturers, looking for adverse events, managing the vaccine injury compensation program, and developing new vaccines. Families share my concern that vaccine manufacturers have too much influence as well. How will HHS restore the public’s trust?
Access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD)
One of the primary topics to be discussed at this hearing is access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink. (VSD). To help fill scientific gaps, the CDC formed partnerships with eight large health maintenance organizations through an agreement with the American Association of Health Plans to continually evaluate vaccine safety. This project is known as the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) and includes medical records on millions of children and adults. Up until this year, access to data from the VSD has been limited to researchers affiliated with the CDC and a few of their handpicked friends. This ‘good old boy’s network” practice has predictably led to questions about the objectivity of the research and the fairness of the results.
The VSD data should be made available to all legitimate scientific researchers so that independent studies can be conducted and results verified. This database contains a wealth of data involving millions of patients over a ten-year period. If properly utilized, it can help researchers study vitally important questions about the safety of vaccines, the effects of mercury-based preservatives in childhood vaccines, and many other questions.
The Committee first raised this issue with the CDC two years ago. For two years the CDC delayed. Six months ago, we were informed that the CDC was developing a plan to expand access to the database. Finally, in February of this year, after a great deal of prompting from the Committee, Dr. Robert Chen, Chief of Vaccine Safety and Development at the National Immunization Program, informed Committee staff that the CDC had finalized its plan and that it was poised to put it into effect. Under this plan, any legitimate scientist could submit a proposal to the CDC to conduct research using VSD data and access to the data would be provided along with some basic safeguards.
In preparation for today’s hearing, Committee staff asked the CDC why the plan described to us in February had not yet been put into effect. The staff was informed that the plan had been put into effect. However, there had been no public announcement. How are researchers supposed to know about the availability of the data if there is no announcement? It took two years of prodding by this Committee to get the CDC to open up access to the database. For four months it appears that the CDC didn’t inform anybody but this Committee of the data’s availability.
That doesn’t make it appear that the CDC is making a good faith effort to open up this database. It looks to me like the CDC is trying to do the bare minimum that they have to do to get us off their backs. That’s not acceptable. That’s why I insisted that Dr. Chen be here today. I just want to ask him why they didn’t tell anyone about the database being available. I’d like to know how he expects researchers to use this data if nobody tells them it’s available.
Dr. Roger Bernier is here from the CDC to testify about these issues. He is accompanied by both Dr. Chen, the creator of the VSD Project and Dr. Frank DeStefano, the CDC official who is also a co-author of the MMR – IBD study. They are here to address our questions on the VSD project and the vaccine- autism research. The CDC employees are accompanied by Dr. Stephen Foote of the National Institutes of Health and Dr. William Egan of the Food and Drug Administration.
As representatives of the people, we have a responsibility to ensure that our public health officials are adequately and honestly addressing this epidemic and its possible links to vaccine injury.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. Our hearing record will remain open until July 3.
I now recognize the ranking minority member, Mr. Waxman for his opening statement.
If you are attempting to prove your point, you've certainly not done so. There is no empirical, clinical, or scientific study that correlates MMR and autism. I've reviewed the literature fully and the issue is about as moot as can be. The only individuals making this claim are liberals in the news media like at CBS 60 Minutes, NBC Dateline, ABC 20/20, and Time Magazine. None of these sources are credible and none have published any study that supports such conclusion. Instead, they have published meritless stories which create more stories and paint a political picture. Regretably, Dan Burton stands alone in his convictions. Autism has many causes, but MMR is certainly not one of them.
Go back to watching UFO's on Star Trek, bonesmccoy.
Scientists have found new evidence to support fears that the MMR vaccine is causing children to develop autism and bowel disease, The Telegraph can reveal today.
Specialists from Trinity College, Dublin, have detected the strain of measles virus used in the MMR jab in tissue samples from the inflamed intestines of 12 children, who each developed autism after receiving the injection.
The results will add further weight to claims that MMR may be responsible for a rapid rise in autism in children over the past decade.
Prof. O'Leary's results have been made public in a précis of a scientific presentation released ahead of a meeting of the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland next month. It was greeted with alarm by parents last night.
Look like someone forgot to ask Dr. O'Leary's opinion about all this. From this article: On 2 July 2002, however, Professor O'Leary rejected Dr Wakefield's interpretation of his work, insisting that it 'in no way establishes any link between the MMR vaccine and autism' (1). Indeed, he strongly recommended that parents should give their children MMR. O'Leary's judgement echoed that of other experts who had earlier dismissed Wakefield's claims for this research to the congressional committee in Washington. The first piece of evidence promising some support to the hypothesis advanced by Dr Wakefield in 1998 was thus discredited even before publication.
Though Professor O'Leary himself denied that his work gave any support to the case against MMR, in the weeks leading up to the July Dublin meeting it was widely cited by anti-MMR campaigners. Throughout June 2002, reports of the impending publication of this research provided a major publicity boost to a campaign that had flagged since the Christmas 2001 furore over whether Tony Blair's son Leo had had his MMR jab (a period in which the uptake of MMR had shown signs of recovery). The hype surrounding the O'Leary paper reveals much about the modus operandi of the campaign and its leading figure, Dr Wakefield.
OOOPS!
The above is from the post by bonesmccoy. Mercury is a neurotoxin. The vaccine manufacturers know this. They still do not want to get rid of it because it costs them a few bucks. No wonder the Japanese prefer measles to the risk of cognitive damage to otherwise perfect babies.
And arsenic is a potent poison, yet it is also an essential trace element for life. What's your point?
There is no rational scientist anywhere that would say the toxicity of a substance is independent of dose. The dose makes the poison.
They still do not want to get rid of it because it costs them a few bucks.
Do you have proof of this or is this just a paranoid delusion? Do you think if the vaccine manufacturers were doing something so nasty, the dems in Congress wouldn't be all over them right now in the current anti-business climate?
No wonder the Japanese prefer measles to the risk of cognitive damage to otherwise perfect babies.
Actually, I believe they banned the use of a vaccine that used the Urabe strain of mumps,and that was associated with an increased risk of aseptic meningitis. And since there is no alternative combination vaccination licensed in Japan, they went back to the separate shots. So your comment is a lie, they are immunizing against measles, and they do not "prefer measles".
However, since you do seem to "prefer measles", here is a story sure to warm your heart; Italy hit by measles epidemic . 358 children had to be hospitalized, thirteen developed encephalitis, which can cause brain damage, 63 developed pneumonia, and 3 died. All becuse of low vaccination rates. How wonderful.
I take it since you seem to be so enthralled with Japan and their governemt, you approve of their gun control measures also?
The point was that the vaccine manufacturers were already requested to remove the thiomerosal. EOM
You do realize that if you let your children drink out of most sinks and water fountains, they are ingesting lead AND arsenic?
So why isn't everybody sick?
Because there are safe levels for everything. If you don't realize that you have no business telling us anything.
THE DOSE MAKES THE POISON.
I don't really care what "you think". You are wrong.
The ever increasing life expectancy and ever decreasing childhood disease rates prove that you are wrong.
If you can not quote and point to the exact posting, there is no basis for your ridiculous claims.
You should punt the ball before we score the safety.
Look in the heading under thimersol....duh!
July 8, 2002
DOCS GET BONUS FOR GIVING MMR VACCINE
What Next? It seems that in the U.K., GPs have been getting payments for rounding up their patients for the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. If 90 per cent are vaccinated, they receive 2,865 pounds, but the payola drops to 955 pounds if only 70 per cent are vaccinated.
It seems now that the docs are concerned that they may be wrecking their credibility with their patients. Sure, especially since the MMR has become so controversial.
Let’s get this straight: they’ve been receiving extra money for vaccine targeting? Isn’t that a CONFLICT OF INTEREST? Or are British docs too dumb to understand that?
It is estimated more than 24,000 people could have been infected with measles. The three children who died were aged six months, four and 10. There were 981 reported cases of measles in the Campania region of southern Italy between January and May this year. Of those affected, 358 had to be hospitalised. Thirteen developed encephalitis, which can cause brain damage and 63 pneumonia. In Campania, where the largest city is Naples, only 53% of children have been vaccinated against measles by the age of two. OUTBREAK FEARS In the UK, latest figures show 84% are immunised by that age, compared to 92% in 1995. There have been 159 cases of measles so far this year, compared to the normal annual average of 100. After an increase in the number of cases of measles in London this year, some doctors warned their could be an outbreak there within the next two years if parents continue to reject MMR.
Experts say a measles epidemic in Italy, which has killed three children, is a lesson to parents about the importance of vaccination. It is estimated more than 24,000 people could have been infected with measles.
ANYTHING that they can do to get the number of vaccinated children up is a good thing. I'm amazed that you really seem to relish children suffering with preventable diseases.
Which vaccines do you think children should definitely get?
On the other hand, your ridiculous postings suggest that you are nothing but an anarchistic shrill, hysterical and panicked about the non-existant.
Obviously, fact has no place in your analyses.
Just for the record in this fact-filled discussion, that's not what Dr. Wakefield said, nor is it what the hospital medical school said, according to this news report.
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