Friday, January 4, 2008

CDC Questions and Their Response

Our questions and emails with the CDC are up. Check them out here and comment on this post.
It should be mentioned--the CDC did not send us a hard document in the mail...
The only contact I had with them was by phone and email. In a phone conversation they told me a dialog with Dr. Haley would be counterproductive.

10 comments:

tkasemodel said...

Ashely,

I too had some conversations with the CDC this past year. I wanted to find out how the individual states Vaccines for Childrens Programs ordered mercury free flu vaccines, and what I found out disturbed me very much.

I contacted Julie Orta from the CDC, our state's VFC Program Project Officer and Dr. Gregg Wallace of the National Immunization Program as well. The end result is that the CDC seems to be in absolute control of the supply and demand of mercury free vaccines.

The CDC tells the states to order mercury containing vaccines because "the manufacturers do not make enough thimerosal free". This is actually because it is not ordered in enough quantity to sell it all each year. Then the CDC goes to the manufacturers and says the "people" want mercury containing vaccines, so they limit the amount of mercury free vaccine production.

There is much more to this but the long and the short of it is that as long as the CDC can say they can ignore state law and distribute mercury free vaccines "evenly among the states", they will apparently make sure that mercury remains in vaccines for years to come.

Tim Kasemodel
Wayzata, MN

Anonymous said...

The CDC was right - any conversation with Professor Haley regarding autism is bound to be counterproductive, as well as misinformed. He's not a credible expert in court, and he's not credible on TV, where he only looks the part.

tkasemodel said...

I am quite sure that the automotive industry once said any conversation with Ralph Nader "is bound to counterproductive".......

Tobbacco companies probably once said any conversation with independant cancer researchers "is bound to counterproductive".......

If an accused criminal told the prosecuting attorney that any conversation with a witness to the crime "is bound to counterproductive" do you think they would say "Uh...OK"??

Ashley Reynolds and her team did their job and did it well. They reported both sides and let the viewers decide for themselves. They did not take the bait from the CDC like so many other reporters do.

Anonymous said...

You're assuming way too much, TK. Ralph Nader and your straw man "cancer researchers" dealt in facts, not wild speculation. The vaccine debate will rise and fall on the science, not the inane ranting of fringe characters like Haley and Ayoub. It's easy to fool student reporters at a small market TV station, and apparently it's easy to fool you, too. But judges aren't falling for it, and neither are the bona-fide researchers who concluded years ago that vaccines and mercury are not linked to autism.

Anonymous said...

1: Environ Health Perspect. 2006 Apr;114(4):477-83.

Perinatal immunotoxicity: why adult exposure assessment fails to predict risk.

Dietert RR, Piepenbrink MS.

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine,
Cornell University, North Tower Road, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. rrd1@cornell.edu

Recent research has pointed to the developing immune system as a remarkably
sensitive toxicologic target for environmental chemicals and drugs. In fact, the
perinatal period before and just after birth is replete with dynamic immune
changes, many of which do not occur in adults. These include not only the basic
maturation and distribution of immune cell types and selection against
autoreactive lymphocytes but also changes designed specifically to protect the
pregnancy against immune-mediated miscarriage. The newborn is then faced with
critical immune maturational adjustments to achieve an immune balance necessary
to combat myriad childhood and later-life diseases. All these processes set the
fetus and neonate completely apart from the adult regarding immunotoxicologic
risk. Yet for decades, safety evaluation has relied almost exclusively upon
exposure of the adult immune system to predict perinatal immune risk. Recent
workshops and forums have suggested a benefit in employing alternative exposures
that include exposure throughout early life stages. However, issues remain
concerning when and where such applications might be required. In this review we
discuss the reasons why immunotoxic assessment is important for current childhood
diseases and why adult exposure assessment cannot predict the effect of
xenobiotics on the developing immune system. It also provides examples of
developmental immunotoxicants where age-based risk appears to differ. Finally, it
stresses the need to replace adult exposure assessment for immune evaluation with
protocols that can protect the developing immune system.

Publication Types:
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Review

Mesh Terms:
Adult
Environmental Exposure*
Female
Humans
Immune System/drug effects*
Infant, Newborn
Maternal Exposure*
Pregnancy

PMID: 16581533 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

BillinMidMO said...

Once Again...I would point out that in Missouri (its KOMU in Columbia Missouri folks) vaccines for preschool age kids do NOT have Thimerosol as a preservative, and have not for some time. This was at the insistence of emotional testimony at the State Legislature from parents of children with autism, and NOT based on any science. (MMR and other "live attenuated" vaccines have NEVER had a preservative.)
Know that there are folks out there who do not believe in vaccines for cult-like reasons. There are also folks out there who believe aliens are held at area 51, the World Trade Center was an "inside job" with planted devices, and that Fluoridation is a communist plot.
These people anti vaccine people have taken advantage of families experiencing the pain of Autism to promote their ideas. They have also taken advantage of the gullible kid reporters at KOMU.

Anonymous said...

Yep.

You can find at least one MD or PhD to sign on to any idea, no matter how loopy. The vaccine "controversy" has lots of parallels with the hubbub over teaching evolution in public schools. The self-styled creationism "think tanks" are stocked with PhDs of all stripes who wrap themselves in the respectability of science, yet publish utter nonsense. A judge in Pennsylvania saw through the dishonesty of "intelligent design" a few years ago, just as judges in other venues are seeing through characters like Boyd Haley and Mark Geier today.

I wish news outlets took science reporting as seriously as their sports coverage. KOMU would never send a reporter who didn't know a safety from a wide receiver to cover a football game. Is public health less important?

Anonymous said...

Bill,

You may be correct that pre-school vaccines do not contain thimerosal as a preservative. But it is used in the manufacturer in process. Who is checking to see how much mercury is left behind after manufacturing and chelation process? Nobody. Do you really believe there is a safe level of a neuro toxic substance?
Research done at the University of Missouri showed that a single nanomolar amount of thimerosal is toxic to tissue cells.

You stereo typing of parents as anti vaccine is entirely misplaced, we were pro-vaccine and vaccinated our kids. That is why we warn others. Informed consent is necessary when dealing with others children. We believed what we were told, Vaccines are safe, and found out the hard way.

As a nurse it is hard to believe you don't see that a group of susceptible infants and toddlers, that don’t excrete heavy metals, could be damaged by microgram amounts of thimerosal which damages tissue cells at nanomolar levels. Common sense would tell you to not use mercury, the second most toxic substance known to man, in vaccines.

Anonymous said...

As a nurse, Bill appreciates the value of evidence, and the folly of magical thinking.

Anonymous said...

1: Toxicology. 1979 Mar-Apr;12(3):325-33.

Problems associated with the use of merthiolate as a preservative in anti-lymphocytic globulin.

Heyworth MF, Truelove SC.

The cytotoxic properties of 2 anti-lymphocytic globulin (ALG) preparations were investigated in vitro by measuring the release of 51Cr from labelled human peripheral blood mononuclear cells, tonsil lymphocytes and Chang cells, incubated with different concentrations of ALG. One of the ALG preparations showed non-selective cytotoxicity in the absence of complement. Evidence was obtained to suggest that this effect was due to merthiolate (sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate) which had been added to the ALG as a preservative during manufacture. The mercury concentration in the ALG was found to be greater than that stated by the manufacturers. It is conceivable that the clinical use of such as ALG preparation might lead to mercury accumulation in the tissues, with resulting toxic effects. The whole question of the use of merthiolate in the preparation of sera for administration to human subjects needs to be reconsidered.

MeSH Terms:

* Antilymphocyte Serum*
* Blood Preservation
* Cytotoxicity Tests, Immunologic
* Ethylmercury Compounds/toxicity*
* Humans
* Thimerosal/toxicity*


Substances:

* Antilymphocyte Serum
* Ethylmercury Compounds
* Thimerosal


PMID: 494313 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]